System Lost: My Own Best Friend

I'm a murderer. We just killed people. I keep telling myself it was in self defense over and over like a mantra, but that does nothing to stop the tears running down my face like twin rivers. I can't even look at the bodies without breaking into uncontrolled sobbing, and I've thrown up twice. I can't stop shaking. The smell of blood and burnt fur and flesh fills the cave, which combines with the sound of Nipper eating to cause my gorge to rise once more. But there's nothing left. At least he finally stopped screaming.

It was self defense. We had no choice. I'm a murderer.

Maggie's been silent, but I can still feel her there. I fear I misjudged her. I thought she was a selfish, uncaring sociopath who was only interested in cooperating with us because she had no choice. She's not. I can feel her pain, and this is hurting her just as much if not more. What I don't understand is why she's still here, putting herself through all of this. Somebody has to front, but I'm certain she could go dormant if she wanted to, and I know she wants to.

"Vi," she croaks, breaking the silence at last, sounding as though her throat is raw despite being disembodied. "Let me front."

"Why?" I ask simply, my own voice just as froggy.

"You're not cut out for what comes next."

I suppress a flare of anger at that. "And what's that?"

"Taking care of the bodies," she answers. "Looting them, disposing of them. We can't leave them where they are or they'll rot, and this is the closest thing we have to a camp right now."

Despite the raw edge to her voice, she sounds oddly monotone. I never thought I would miss her arrogant, mocking tone and constant vulgarity.

"That's..." I swallow the bile rising in my throat at the thought of the people we killed. It was self defense. We had to. I can't bring myself to disagree with her, so I turn the argument around instead. "And you are?"

"No, but I'm not here, not real, just a figment of someone's imagination," she replies, an eerie one-eighty from her earlier arguments with Allison. "It's okay if I get hurt."

"Maggie, no," I protest. "That sounds like you're—I don't know, dissociated or something. It's not okay if you get hurt."

"Hm? Sure, that. I think I'm good at that," she says absently. "Someone has to be."

"That isn't..." I try to argue, but all I manage to do is start sobbing again.

This isn't fair. Why did it have to come to this? All we're trying to do is survive. Why is that so hard?

I stand up and wipe my eyes with the inside of the cloak, then replace the glasses that Violet took off earlier. They're all smudged again. I need to clean this all up before Allison wakes. She'll still remember all of it, but it will be easier to cope if it's not right in front of her face.

I start with the worst one. The charred corpse is still smouldering slightly, and there's not much to salvage here. His gun is ruined—the frame burnt to nothing and the barrel warped and melted from the heat. I carefully roll him over to check if anything else survived the fire, but in the end all I come away with is a few unmelted musket pellets, the orange crystal that was set into the firing mechanism of his rifle, and the worst smell in the world burning my sinuses.

I retch and cough as I move on to the next one—the big guy. Nipper has diligently devoured most of the brute's head and shows no signs of slowing down, completely undeterred by the skull and bones. I try not to pay much attention to that, leaving him to it. After we used him like a weapon, he deserves a reward for risking his life.

Due to the nature of his demise and Nipper's efforts, the large man's one of the messier corpses, with most of his stuff positively soaked in his own blood. I strip it all anyway. His cloak is far too large, but will make a good source of extra fabric, a blanket, or maybe even bedding if we can wash out the blood. The fabric is even rougher than ours, though—closer to leather or rawhide than whatever it is our cloak is made of—and has no pockets.

He has a belt with an attached pouch and an actual waterskin rather than the barely-cleaned lizard stomach we've been using. The pouch is empty except for a handful of dried cracker-like things wrapped in a small cloth that did nothing to save them from being pulverized in the scuffle.

The upper body is otherwise bare, so next is the skirt. I'm tempted to just leave it—it's roughly woven from some sort of plant fibers and is obviously way too big for us to wear. Still, the materials could be useful, so I pull it off, confirming that he was definitely a male.

On second thought, this thing is covered in blood and would probably disintegrate if we tried scrubbing it clean. I drape it back over his waist to preserve his modesty and leave it after all.

The last two are much nicer. Ironically, the one that started it all is by far the cleanest. Most of his head ended up painting the walls rather than his clothing, and the blood mostly pooled away from his body after he collapsed. His cloak is soft like cotton, and the sash across his chest is dyed a light blue. Like the big guy, he has a pouch at his waist, but it's completely empty for some reason. Finally, his skirt, while too big, is as soft as the cloak and the only completely clean item I've managed to retrieve so far.

The real prizes are his short spear and the buckler strapped to his wrist. An actual weapon and the only piece of armor any of them were wearing. The spear will be much more useful for hunting than the knife, and who knows when having a shield will come in handy—even if it's essentially just a small wooden circle.

"You know, Vi, you don't have to stay with me," I inform her, setting the recovered items down and making my way over to the final corpse.

"It's the least I can do," she mutters quietly. "Thank you for doing this. I'm sorry."

"Why apologize?" I ask. "I started it. You're the one who bailed me out at the end."

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"No, they started it," she insists. "We just defended ourselves."

"Okay."

That doesn't make either of us feel any better, even if it's true.

The last body is almost as badly messed up as the big dude, which is really unfortunate because she was the only one wearing an actual shirt—now thoroughly ruined by Vi's knife and the pool of blood she's in. Her cloak, though soaked in blood, is a richly dyed green silk, which is probably worth trying to recover. Her ruined shirt is the same material, as is her patterned skirt. The patterns are similar to the ones on the door, now that I look at it.

I recover all the clothes, putting them in a pile nearby. Who knows, maybe we can even fix the shirt? It's still all too big. The leader was the smallest of them and she's still over six feet tall not counting the horns. I guess the extra joint in their legs gives them some extra height but still, they seem to be larger than humans on average.

Finally I remove her belt pouch and fetch the real prize—her pistol. The wood is painted white, with fancy gold inlays and polished silver for the barrel and mechanism. The whole thing is about the size of my forearm and surprisingly heavy, with a half-burnt fuse attached to the lever mechanism.

"A matchlock," Violet comments. "Muzzle loaded. Probably decorative. It looks more expensive than practical."

"It still almost took our head off," I point out. "If I hadn't put out the match..."

"It's certainly functional," she agrees. "I'm just not sure it's practical."

I shrug and tuck it away, searching through the pouch. This one actually does have stuff in it. There's a small bundle of cord that appears to be replacement fuses for her pistol, a small pouch of musket balls, a thin metal rod, a few strings each tying a set of differently shaped coins together, and two crystal vials each holding about a mouthful each of some kind of colorless liquid.

"I wonder what these are," I remark, holding up one of the vials.

"No label, no color?" Violet muses. "Some kind of medicine maybe? Wait, don't—" I open the vial before she can stop me. "—do that..." she finishes lamely. "It might have been reactive. Definitely don't drink it!"

"I won't," I agree, sniffing at the opening and then recoiling from the familiar sinus-burning fumes of alcohol. "Phew, definitely some kind of medicine. Either that or a solvent—this is strong."

I replace the stopper and leave the vials in the pouch, setting it all aside. The last item of note is the leader's staff, which is—to my disappointment—just a stick. Potentially useful as a weapon or a walking stick, but otherwise completely unremarkable.

"How come there's no gunpowder?" Violet asks suddenly.

I blink. "Huh?"

"In the leader's pouch," Violet explains. "She had spare matchcord and ammunition, but no powder?"

Good question, but I'm not really in the mood to interrogate it right now.

"We'll have to figure that out later," I reply. "What should we do about the bodies?"

I've half a mind to just burn them, but aside from making our makeshift camp smell even worse than it already does, I'm worried about suffocation.

"I think all we can do is pile them in the corner for now," Violet says hesitantly. "Allie won't be happy about it, but I don't really see what else we can do at the moment."

Fair enough. I set about the grim task of rolling the bodies as far away from either the alcove or either of the exits as I can until we can figure out something better.

"Where is Allie, anyway?" Violet asks. "I thought she would have woken up by now."

"She'll come back when we're done," I grumble, straining with the effort of moving literal dead weight that's so much larger than me. "Once there's enough distance between her and all the dirty work."

"Maggie, I know we just went through a lot, but that's uncalled for."

"I'm not trying to be a bitch about it, Vi," I grunt as I finish moving the first of four, wiping the sweat from my brow. "That's just how it is. Allie keeps her hands clean—keeps her distance from the truly fucked up shit so that she can always be the precious ray of sunshine."

It's always been like that. I can feel it. Like a fundamental part of us that's always been there. As obvious as the sun rising—though come to think of it, we haven't seen that in a while, have we?

"I see you're back to being yourself again," Violet observes.

"Yeah," I sigh. "For better or worse."

"And how is that not being...uncharitable?"

I don't know what's worse—Allie's cutesy fake swears or Vi's total refusal to even engage with the concept of cursing.

"It's not. It's just how things are, like..." I snap my fingers, trying to come up with an analogy, but my head's still a bit fuzzy. "Do you want Allie to get traumatized by all this?" I ask instead.

"No, of course not," she answers. "Do you?"

"Nope. And that's the point. It's just who we are—what we are, maybe." I shrug. "You're not the only one trying to keep us safe. I'm just focused on a different kind of danger, I guess."

"I'm sorry, first you get upset with Allison for presuming that she's the original inhabitant of our body, and now you imply that our whole purpose is to keep her away from harm?"

"Not her—us!" I correct her. "All of us. I think Allie is the same as you and I. She's also protecting us, in her own way. Being that ray of sunshine is her role. If there even is an original us, it's probably buried so deep in our collective psyche that it may as well not exist."

Violet remains silent while I finish moving all the bodies—much to Nipper's consternation. Maybe I should just let him eat them. It's kinda fucked up, but it does solve the problem and he's not really showing any signs of slowing down. Well, it's sort of a choice that makes itself—I don't think I could stop him if I tried at this point.

I do my best to wipe off the sweat and blood with one of the cleaner bits of recovered cloth, then check on our clothes. They're still very slightly damp, but I'm sick of running around in the nude, so I start getting dressed anyway. We'll probably need another bath.

"By the way," I comment idly as I fight with Allison's ridiculous skinny-jeans. Maybe we should switch to one of those skirts. "It's not our whole purpose."

"Pardon?" Violet asks curiously, not following.

"You said I implied our whole purpose was keeping Allie away from harm," I remind her. "Not only is it not just Allie, but that's not our whole purpose. It's just one small facet of who we are. You're not just a [Savior] any more than I'm just a [Firecaster]. You're also a moron, stubborn, an insufferable nerd, a know-it-all—"

"Maggie..."

"—a tomboy, aggressive, obsessed with trying to martyr yourself—"

"Maggie, I get the point."

"The point," I huff, "is that you're a person. You are not just a figment of someone's imagination. Not mine, not Allie's—you are who you decide you are."

She doesn't respond for a long moment, before finally replying. "And you?"

I grimace as I finish pulling Allison's shirt on over her head. "I'm working on it."