Smoke and Mirror

Truth is, Anne's betrayal was to be expected.

That is not to say that Sasha had expected it. (The very thought had terrified her to the bone, so she had locked the idea away deep into her marrow and convinced herself it would never happen.) But past the initial anger and betrayal, once Sasha has licked her wounds and sharpened her sword, she has no choice but to admit that this was a long time coming. It's Anne's nature, to want to Do Good and Be Good, to look for those faraway ideals when her very tangible friends were right beside her. That's why Sasha always takes kid's gloves, when it comes to guiding her- why she has to resort to the petty emotional manipulation when it would be obvious that Sasha is right if she listened to logic alone.

Marcy is more rational. She doesn't value rules any more than transgression. It's something Sasha values a lot in her. She only needs to say I need you to do this, and Marcy will comply without a single question asked. And the other way around; Marcy and Sasha have always been direct with one another, standing on equal footing with Marcy's wit and Sasha's ambition. Marcy says I want this thing. Get it for me. And Sasha does. Sasha says we should do this. How do we make it work. And Marcy plots. They enable each other in the best of ways, and together it's much easier to drag Anne along.

Sasha understands Marcy. She groks Marcy, to steal one of her nerdy turn of phrases. When they meet in the third temple, Marcy tells her I love your outfit and immediately gets down to business, and Sasha replies I like yours too and she's back to swinging hammers. That's how it's always worked between them. They know each other. They know each other.

Marcy's hands are cold and clammy around Sasha's. Her eyes are wild, jumping from Anne to Sasha to Anne, panic seeping in her breath. "I did it for us."

Sasha slaps Marcy's hand away.

Marcy turns to Anne. Tries to appeal to her moral side. Marcy turns to Anne and she speaks she speaks she speak her whole being unraveling with each word and all Sasha can think of is how dare you, how fucking DARE you, we were equals you and I we don't twist each other like that, we were equal you and I if you had simply ASKED I would have jumped in without a second thought, we were equal you and I we KNEW each other how dare you how COULD you go behind my back,

There are a lot of different kind of horrors in this world. There is the thing that is not a deer; the horror of something so alien to you you can only define it by what it is not. There is the thing that is not a deer anymore; the horror of discovering that something once familiar and known has turned into the strange. There is the thing that is not a deer, and maybe never was; the horror of discovering that you have been tricked, manipulated, that something's true nature has been deliberately hidden from you.

This is none of them. The deer has always been a deer. This is Marcy, always been Marcy, always upfront about being Marcy.

Marcy collapses on the floor. She's crying. "I just didn't want to be alone."

Sasha had just been tremendously, monstrously wrong about who "Marcy" was.

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