(3) Sinless Days: Trying To Help

--- Bell ---

She found herself pacing in her room. This wasn’t exactly strange for her given how whenever she was locked in her cell without being chained down, she’d probably do the same thing. The fact that she wasn’t in a cell anymore probably wouldn’t have changed that habit too much.

What was different about this time was that she wasn’t pacing to think or pass time, but rather to try and burn off some of the stress from having her other-selves constantly whispering at the edge of her awareness. Something she knew she couldn’t trust, since more often than once they’d led her astray or tricked her into doing something that would get her in trouble back in the labs.

(But we’re free…) Her other-selves pointed out in an echoing voice.

“That doesn’t matter, you’ll try to ruin this for me and Scarlet.” She told her other-selves. “I won’t let you do that.”

“Uh, Bell?” Scarlet asked from the doorway to their room. “Everything okay?”

“Y-yeah, it’s… it’s just…” She made a gesture towards her head.

“Your other-selves?” Her sister grimaced, once more reminded of just how different their relationships with their other-selves were, namely that Scarlet only had to deal with one while she had to deal with a (legion.)

She shook her head and forced the thoughts down, no matter how much of a headache they gave her in retaliation.

“What are they saying?” Scarlet asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know.” She snapped. “I can’t trust them, you know that.”

Scarlet made a face like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure. “You know… you know they’re the only reason I got out of the lab, right?”

She couldn’t help but blink at that because while it was true that her voices were the only reason Scarlet was able to escape, that didn’t change the fact that they had caused her so much trouble over the years. Or all of the times they’d tried to tear her down and make her break under their constant whispering and berating of her every action.

“They. Can’t. Be. Trusted.” She repeated once more, if with a little more force.

Scarlet just stared at her for a moment. “Didn’t your other-selves help you save those kids at the warehouse?”

“Y-yeah, but… but they left me to rot when DeWolf turned.” She reminded her sister.

Scarlet bit her lip. “What if, what if your other-selves… what if they care more about doing what you want than about your wellbeing.”

“W-what do you mean?” She frowned.

“Well… you wanted to get me out and they did but left you in the labs, and you wanted to help the kids and they did but left you with DeWolf.” Scarlet tried to explain by repeating what she’d just said. “It’s, it’s like how my other-self doesn’t care about what I want to do, but will do whatever it takes to keep me alive. Only yours… do the opposite… maybe?”

“So what, they’ll do what I ask even if it means hurting me?” She scoffed, because she could remember a number of times where they’d hurt her when all she wanted was for them to stop.

“I-I said, maybe.” Scarlet tried to defend.

“Yeah, well-” (You’re making a mistake.)

She blinked at the interruption as her eyes began to sting.

“W-what?”

(You’re hurting… sister…)

She looked at Scarlet and realized that Scarlet looked distinctly withdrawn rather than her usual anger and confidence.

“Uh, am I interrupting something?” Mercer asked as he knocked on the door.

“Uh, no…” She swallowed, backing away from Scarlet, her sister.

“Right…” Mercer nodded, looking like he didn’t quite believe her before turning to Scarlet. “Anyway, I need to do something and I figured you’d want to tag along.”

“Y-yeah. Sure.” Scarlet told him before rushing out of the room in a way that underlined just how much she was screwing up.

Mercer looked at her for a moment before leaving to follow Scarlet.

“Fuck…” She cursed herself as she fell onto her bed.

After a moment she flipped over to stare at the ceiling fan before asking her other selves, “Why did you stop me?”

(Must protect… sister…) Her other selves answered.

“Yeah… I guess that is what I want most…” She admitted, as she wondered if Scarlet might’ve been onto something. (But can I really listen to them after everything else?)

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--- Scarlet ---

Unsure of what she could do to help Bell, her relationship with her other-self distinctly different from Bell’s relationship with her other-selves, she found herself somewhat thankful when Mercer knocked on the door and dragged her out onto the city streets with little preamble.

“Right, so Betty was telling me that your… hunger is stronger than Bell’s.” Mercer told her after a while.

“Yeah.” She nodded, knowing that he didn’t actually care about her eating habits the way other people did. (Then again Betty didn’t care either… Is it just them or is it something else?)

“Well, given how I actually know what a destabilized Malcontent looks like, we’ll be avoiding letting you go hungry.” The odd man continued, his eyes drifting over everything around them with a sort of passive sharpness as if he was barely looking at everything yet taking it all in at the same time. “Now given how your hunting up to this point has been, I know you can keep yourself fed. The problem is keeping yourself fed while not drawing anyone’s attention. Like you did mine.”

“And what does that mean?” She was fairly stealthy, supernaturally so at times if her other-self was feeling helpful, so she wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about.

“Well for starters we’re going to cover a few basics like finding prey that no one is going to miss.” He answered, before looking at her curiously. “Based on what I saw before I’m guessing whenever you got hungry you’d attack anyone who came at you in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah, I could smell the bad intentions on them.” She told him, though after a moment she remembered (He probably doesn’t know what-)

“Actually that was more the Malice clinging to them.” Mercer corrected her.

“The Malice?” She frowned. “Like the drugs or the stuff running through my blood?”

“Yeah, well the second one. The first was named after the second given its… sources.” Mercer explained, before looking like he was trying to remember something. “Malice in its natural state is a mix of mental and spiritual energy, and is typically tied to more violent impulses. On its own this isn’t notably powerful outside of those with mutations that allow them to actually gather said Malice, but it is something that ripples around everyone in the same way as every other energy that makes up reality.”

“Uh, I’ve got no idea what any of that means.” She admitted.

“Right, sorry.” Mercer coughed into his hand. “My mom is a Practitioner, and even though I can’t use magic she made sure I had a basic understanding of how the different Deviant energies work and interact with each other.”

“Your mom’s a Deviant?” She asked, not having ever known any Deviant with kids. Though given how her experiences were limited to (that hellhole) she doubted that meant much.

Mercer shook his head. “No, she’s not an Arcane, she just has this talisman that lets her use magic and a few spells. Her favorite is this one Necromancy spell that lets her drain a person’s life force to heal people. Sort of like how your eating people heals you.”

“Huh…” (Well that explains why he doesn’t seem to care about our eating habits at least.)

“Anyway, you can usually trust that sense to help you pick out any violent people in a crowd, though unless your control is really good you might mix up a wife beater who deserves to get his legs broken with a child killer who deserves to have his legs cut off and bled out.” Mercer told her. “What that means is that today I’m going to teach how to tell apart the assholes no one will miss, with the ones someone might miss… if only due to stockholm.”

--- Mercer ---

“Here, I think you might like these.” He told Bell as she dropped a box in front of the girl.

“Uh, what’s in here?” Bell asked him curiously.

“Open the box and find out.” He prodded with a gesture towards said cubic container.

The dark haired teen gave him a look before eventually giving in to curiosity and opening the box, only to blink at the contents. “Books?”

“Yeah, I raided the local library’s damaged book collection.” He explained, not pointing out that the librarian was more than happy to give him said collection given how much money he regularly donated to it so they could maintain their after school programs. “And well, you seem like the kind of person who’d appreciate this and I figured you’d like something to take your mind off of… things.” (Like whatever you and Scarlet were fighting about, because you don’t seem like the aggressive type.)

“Th-that’s uh, th-thanks but, uh…” Bell licked her lips clearly trying to find a way to tell him that-

“You don’t like reading.” He sighed, figuring Scarlet would be the only one of the pair to not enjoy reading. (Should’ve known… I mean most kids prefer watching TV to reading…)

“That’s not…” Bell grimaced.

“No, it’s fine. I get it.” He assured her, more than familiar with how desperate some kids were to not disappoint the person who helped them out of a bad situation. (I’m not like the asshole who would take advantage of a kid like that.)

“But I…” Bell’s eyes flashed black for a brief moment before she closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. After a moment she exhaled even slower before opening her eyes to reveal to them her regular silver and just a touch of determination to them. “I don’t think I can read them.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned, feeling the scar on his face ache in familiarity and hoping it wasn’t that.

“I… I liked reading when I was little but… I haven’t actually read in… years…” Bell admitted with a sigh before gesturing to the books. “I recognize a lot of my letters all over the place but I, I can’t really remember how they’re all supposed to sound… Like I remember my teachers were… Before I was taken my teachers were telling us how there are certain letters that when you put them together they make a different sound than they normally would?”

“You mean like how an S in front of an H makes the sh sound?” He asked, getting a bad feeling as he realized something terrible.

“Y-yeah.” Bell nodded her eyes sparkling as he understood that she was talking about something taught to most first or second graders. (Things taught to kids six or seven years old…)

He found himself just staring at the (Sixteen, fuck seventeen?) year old, hoping he wasn’t showing what he was feeling on his face.

“Wait here for just one second.” He told her before leaving for his room where, first he punched a wall while cursing those “Motherfucking Whore Sons of Bitch Ass Bastards!”, and second he grabbed a little part he’d been saving for his helmet but decided was more important here.

“Alright, this should help you out.” He assured Bell as he returned to her room and held the little device up. “This is a sort of auto-reader, it can read any language and turn it into english. Including english.”

To prove this he shifted through the books for something a little… younger than the other books before stopping on one with a familiar cover and opening it to the first chapter. With a click of a button a slight light shot out from the device and he directed it over the start of the text before the beautiful voice of a woman with a faint accent filled the room in an echo of the past.

“It was a nice day.

All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet.”