Madeline scratched her head, looking at the back of Jordyn’s metal dome as she took in her new living space. Viv had called her yesterday evening, letting her know the whole situation, and that Maddie would be helping out. It made sense. This was generally what Maddie did as co-leader – when she was actually working, anyway – and she was wrapped up in this whole Jordyn business as well. It was just… awkward. She had no idea how to speak to the other woman. Every time they’d interacted, it had either been fleeting or Maddie’d had a specific goal in mind. Now she just… had to talk to her. Eugh.
“You like it?” she forced herself to ask, brushing her fringe out of her eyes. She’d been letting her hair grow out a bit more, though she was keeping the sides shaved. She even had a tiny ponytail going on at the back.
Jordyn shrugged. “It’s pretty similar to where I was living before. Only, I had a toilet and a shower in my room.”
Maddie frowned. “Must have been cramped.”
Jordyn stepped inside, tugging her suitcase along behind her. It didn’t look very full. “What have you got packed in there?” Maddie asked. Maybe there was something she could help her get; actually do her job, and all that.
She put her suitcase down and sat on the bed. “Uh, sleepwear, underwear… my armour cleaning supplies. Some books.”
Madeline cocked her head to the side. “No casual clothes?”
Jordyn shook her head. “I’m not allowed to leave my room without my armour on anyway, so… there wouldn’t be much point.”
Madeline detected a hint of longing in her tone. And fair enough. She knew exactly what it was like to be forced to wear clothes you didn’t want to wear; to long for a certain style, all the while knowing that indulging yourself would be met with brutal punishment. Maybe she and Jordyn had more in common than she originally thought.
She hummed, joining Jordyn on the bed. She still had more specific stuff to go over with Jordyn’s whole orientation – like where the kitchen was, the rules on food, laundry, etcetera – but she wanted to give the woman some time to acclimate to the new space first. Either that meant more awkward silence, or… talking.
“You, uh… You look good,” Jordyn said, staring at the floor.
“Hm?” Maddie questioned. If this was that old crush flaring up, she really didn’t want to stick around. Jordyn was probably a lovely gal, but Madeline had far too much of her own baggage to even consider doing anything with a trauma-case of Jordyn’s calibre.
“Healthy, I mean,” she clarified. “You’ve put on a bit of weight since I last saw you, and you have a bit of a tan.”
Oh. Well, that wasn’t too surprising. Madeline had finally found herself a job, working in a warehouse. It was good exercise for her lethargic body, and exercising more meant eating more as well. She was actually starting to fit into her costume again. The tan was probably just from walking to and from the workplace in the sun, though personally she hadn’t really noticed it. Apparently, Jordyn was keeping a pretty close eye on her. It made sense with the ‘crush’ theory.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I’ve been keeping busy. Uh, more than usual, anyway.”
Jordyn nodded, and silence returned, hanging over them like a thick cloud. Madeline swallowed. She needed to keep this conversation going before she lost her mind.
“So, how do you feel about everything? Moving to the Union and all that?”
“Excited,” Jordyn replied. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in the facility, with Father or the scientists always looking over my shoulder, coming into my room whenever they want. I still have my duties, and I still have to go in for reports, but… I’m excited to have my own space, y’know?”
Maddie smiled. “I hear you, there. When I was a kid, I wasn’t even allowed to have a door in my room. I had no privacy whatsoever, and with parents as strict as mine were, that made growing up… pretty difficult. Especially considering they were transphobic assholes.”
Jordyn cocked her head to the side, and Madeline predicted her question before she even asked it. She doubted de Vygon gave his test-tube baby a thorough education on queer culture. “What does that mean?”
She took a deep breath. This was not the turn she wanted this conversation to take, but that was just what she got for trying to share a personal anecdote. “Well, ‘trans’ is short for ‘transgender.’ It means I was born anatomically male, but I found out that doesn’t work for me, and decided to become a girl. ‘Transphobic’ means people who don’t like that very much, and would prefer that I stay as a boy, even though it was killing me.”
“...Does that mean you have a penis even though you’re a girl?”
The bluntness of Jordyn’s question made Madeline snort. She couldn’t even get mad; the girl was too damn innocent. “Yes. Anatomy is just anatomy. Gender is social, and doesn’t necessarily have to match up. You could be a man if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to,” she answered surprisingly quickly.
Madeline smiled. “Me neither.”
“But… How was it killing you?”
Oh boy, they were really getting into it. Oh well, it was probably good for Jordyn to learn. “It’s… hard to describe to people who don’t know the feeling. But, it’s like, looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing someone who isn’t you, but not knowing why. You instinctively expect to see certain features, but they’re not there, and that discrepancy hurts. It’s being drawn to certain styles associated with the opposite gender, seeking out any way you can associate yourself more with the person you feel like inside. And the more you begin to notice the discrepancy, the worse it gets. Once you notice it’s there, you can never ignore it again. The only solace, aside from changing your identity to match your feelings, is total dissociation. And that’s no way to live.
“My parents wouldn’t let me dress in women’s clothes, or change my name or my pronouns, and if they caught me doing something like that, they would withhold food and… and beat me. It got to the point where I decided I would rather die than have to continue living as a boy, the pain was that bad. And the only way I’d get to live as a girl, as my true self, was if I did something drastic. So, I gave my parents an ultimatum. Either they accept me for who I am, or they never see me again. You can probably guess what they picked. I packed a bag full of the only feminine shit I could get my hands on, and I left and never looked back. It was the second-best decision I ever made.”
“Wow…” Jordyn muttered. “That’s… really brave of you. My dad does stuff like that too, but only when I do stuff to deserve it, so it’s not as bad. I can’t imagine ever running away like that. I don’t know how I’d survive.”
Madeline sighed, shaking her head. Try as she might to be apathetic, her heart fucking hurt for this girl. What a shit situation. “That’s the thing, Jordyn. No one deserves to be treated like that, no matter what they do.” She reached out and patted Jordyn on the back of her metal chestplate. “But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. You’ll be safe here. And you can see your dad as much or as little as you like.”
“Well, that’s not strictly true. I still have to see him every day for reports. But it’s okay. He’s my dad; I love him. Even… Even if he hurts me sometimes. I don’t just want to… disappear, you know?”
Madeline’s gut clenched. She rubbed her upper arm, over an old scar from a cigarette burn. It had been over 12 years since she last saw her birth parents. She couldn’t help but wonder what they’d been up to.
She cleared her throat. This conversation was getting a little too real for her. “Should we move on? I’ve still gotta go over some housekeeping stuff with you.”
Jordyn nodded. “Let’s do it.”
—
I sighed, staring across the kitchen longingly at the piece of toast Brianna was eating while I sipped my soup up through a straw. It had barely even been a week and I already couldn’t stand this liquid-only diet. It didn’t help that I was starved for two days before I could even start it. According to the medical team, I’d be allowed some softer foods in the coming weeks, but I wouldn’t be back to my normal diet for at least six. Hopefully, chilli and rice counted as a softer food. I was just lucky the break wasn’t bad enough that my jaw had to be surgically wired shut. Then I’d be screwed for months.
Living at the Union was… weird, for lack of a better word. I thought it wouldn’t be any different from back at the facility, but clearly I was mistaken. I had to source my own food, for one. No one was cooking meals like back home. I asked Brianna, and she said that she mostly lived off of takeaway, and whatever ‘instant noodles’ were. That didn’t really seem sufficient to me. Father had provided me with a bunch of pre-packaged broths and soups for the duration of my recovery, but once that was over, I wasn’t really sure what I was gonna do.
At least the beds were comfortable. The sleep I’d had after Madeline had finished briefing me was the best sleep of my entire life. It was like lying on a cloud. The privacy was nice, too; knowing there was never any chance that Father could walk into my room without warning.
I was mostly passing the time reading, or drawing, or talking to Brianna, or trying out that ‘painting’ thing Vivienne had shown me. I wasn’t quite as good at it as I was with drawing yet, but I was confident I could get there with some practice. It was really relaxing, and it felt good when an idea started to actually form into a finished product. It would be nice to get to work out as well, but I still wasn’t cleared for strenuous activity yet. Thanks again, Mr. Beaumond…
Someone just entered the conference room. No, a group of people. Vivienne, Madeline, Ashley, and… someone else who I couldn’t identify with just my shadows.
Inspired by the way Brianna used her smoke powers, for the past week I’d been laying down a very thin cloud of shadows, spread out around all the main parts of the Union HQ. Anytime someone moved through it, the cloud sent a ripple all the way back to me, and I’d be able to tell where everyone was and roughly what they were doing. It took a bit of concentration to use, but with all of this free time, I was quickly getting the hang of it. It was just… a little overwhelming, being in this unfamiliar new environment, and having an eye on everything helped me feel more secure.
I got up, wandering over to the conference room to see what was going on. It must have been something important if Ashley, Madeline, and Vivienne were all there.
“So, the plan is to get you set up in one of our rooms for now. We might need to make some modifications to accommodate for your injuries, but it shouldn’t take longer than a few hours to do that,” came Madeline’s voice, echoing down the hall as I approached.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Until then, you and I can go and grab lunch or something,” Vivienne said. “After you’ve put your stuff away, of course.”
“Thank you both,” said a familiar, husky voice. I froze right at the corner of the entrance, my heart pounding in my chest. “Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Well, if it wasn’t for what you did, we’d still be pretty much completely in the dark about this whole situation,” Ashley said. “This is the least we can do to pay you back.”
“How… is that whole situation going, by the way?” the newcomer asked. “Vivienne’s been keeping me mostly in the loop, but I heard-”
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about that out in the open,” Madeline interrupted.
My whole body flushed with adrenaline; sweat pricking at the back of my neck. I wanted to throw up. There was no way I could mistake that voice, not after all of the sleepless nights I spent hearing him scream in my memories.
Steve Matthews was at the Union.
“Right, sorry,” he said. “So, can I check out my room?”
“Sure thing, uncle,” Vivienne chirped.
They were coming this way. In a few seconds, Steve and Vivienne would be rounding that corner, and I’d come face-to-face with him again for the first time since that night. What was I supposed to do? What could I possibly say to him after what I did?
I turned and ran back to my room as fast as I could.
—
Brianna gently ran her fingers along my belly, tracing the indented scar Father gave me after I lost the sniper team all those months ago. My body buzzed with the remnants of our previous activities; relaxation and fatigue clawing at me and dragging me into a restful nap with Brianna at my back.
I’d finally been cleared for strenuous activity again, which meant exercise and patrols and reporting to Father, but it also meant getting to work off my anxieties with Brianna. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for this. My jaw still hurt, so we couldn’t really kiss as much as I wanted to or try any of that other stuff with my mouth, but it was okay. Brianna could easily make up for it, and she said that my hands were more than sufficient. Honestly, I was mostly here just for this; being held, feeling her warm, soft body pressing against my back. It didn’t make the ache from my whip scars go away entirely, but it was much easier to ignore them with her arms surrounding me. It was easier to forget about everything eating away at the back of my mind.
My half-lidded eyes caught on something, breaking the monotony of the brown bed sheets we were lying on. A single red hair, resting peacefully on the pillow. There was only one person I knew in the Union with hair that colour. Come to think of it, Brianna had mentioned that she did stuff like this with Vivienne too, didn’t she? Imagining that made my lower abdomen tingle. I wanted to do this stuff with Vivienne, too. If only I didn’t have this stupid rule about not showing my face. Maybe I could ask Vivienne to wear a blindfold?
It was a funny idea, but not one I was ever going to follow up on. The only reason this happened was because Brianna initiated it. I was still far too nervous around Vivienne to make the first move.
Inevitably, thinking about Vivienne led to thinking about her uncle. Steve had now been living at the Union for a full week, and I’d been doing my utmost to avoid ever running into him. My cloud of shadows made it easy to keep track of where he was, but it didn’t stop him from spending time in the places I wanted to be, forcing me to hide away in my room, bored out of my mind.
I really shouldn’t blame him; it wasn’t his fault I was too afraid to go anywhere near him. On the contrary, it was entirely my fault. It was my fault he was wheelchair-bound, attending painful physical therapy appointments almost daily. It was my fault he needed help to get into bed, and onto the toilet, and with making food. It was my fault he woke up nearly every night, gasping and sweating from nightmares. It was my fault his life and body were irreparably broken, and I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I could barely even look Vivienne in the eye anymore; not after I overheard her explain all of that to Brianna, voice tired and heartbroken.
“Hey,” Brianna said, squeezing me tighter for a second. “What’s wrong?”
I blinked, and realised I was crying. I hurriedly wiped the tears away, sniffling. “N-nothing.”
Brianna softly kissed the back of my head. “Come on, you can tell me. I promise I’ll keep it a secret.”
As much as my immediate instinct was to deny, deny, deny, my helmet was in the corner right now, facing the wall. If I whispered, I could tell Brianna anything I wanted, and Father would never find out. Obviously, I couldn’t just… tell her what happened between Steve and me, but maybe I could… dance around it a little. Present a vague, similar situation to my own, and see if maybe she could give me any advice. If things kept going the way they were, I was either going to lose my friends or lose my mind; I needed some help.
I took a deep breath, trying to formulate my thoughts in a way that wouldn’t reveal too much. “What would you do if… if you were forced to do something against your will that really really hurt someone you care about, but they didn’t know about it? Like… they didn’t know it was you that did it. But the guilt is still eating you up even months afterward?”
A long silence passed, and my anxiety steadily grew until Brianna replied. “Damn, that’s a tough one,” she said. “I… well, I think an important thing to consider is the fact that, if you were forced, it isn’t your fault, even if it really feels like it is.”
“Yeah, but… I could’ve chosen not to…” I muttered.
“That kinda defeats the purpose of ‘forced,’ don’t you think? If someone told me that they would kill my family unless I did a bunch of horrible shit, it would be really fucking hard for me to say no to that, you get me?”
“I guess…”
“Either way, I think you should fess up and apologise to the person if you ever get the opportunity. I know it’s probably pretty scary to think about, but don’t you think that person deserves – if not amendments – at least an apology? Who knows, maybe they’ll understand and forgive you. And even if they don’t, at least you’ll have finally gotten it off your chest.”
I hummed, trying to take her words to heart. She was probably right, but even thinking about finding Steve and apologising right now made me want to curl into a ball and disappear.
Brianna sensed my discomfort. She wrapped herself around me even tighter. “You don’t have to do anything right now, Jean Shorts. You can just stay here with me tonight.”
I let out a breath, letting that comforting idea wash over me as I turned and buried my face against her warm skin.
Wait… what?
“Jean shorts?” I questioned.
“You know. Jordyn. Jordy. Jords. Jorts. Jean Shorts. It’s a nickname.”
If Brianna could see, I would have been staring at her in confused disbelief. As it was, I just chuckled and closed my eyes.
Jean Shorts.
She was so silly.
—
I found him in a common room, late at night when there was no risk of anyone else intruding. My armour and helmet were still back in my dorm, stuffed into the corner with the lights off so that Father wouldn’t see me leave, assuming I was sleeping. My shadows covered the light from the hallway when I opened the door, and from there I wrapped a mask of darkness around my face and crept through the corridors. I was dressed in nothing but my sleepwear; a tanktop and briefs. It was as vulnerable as I could possibly make myself without stripping entirely. I wanted this interaction to be on as even ground as possible, and I couldn’t do that if I was still in that horrible black cage, with Father listening to every word I said.
Steve had his wheelchair rolled up against the wall, watching a movie on the TV. He looked calm. Relaxed. I didn’t want to ruin it. My gut screamed at me to just turn and go back to bed. I grit my teeth, trying to resist. This needed to happen, whether either of us wanted it or not.
I cleared my throat, stepping out of the shadows in the hallway. Steve looked up, his brows furrowing when he saw my exposed form.
“Is… Is that you, Jordyn?”
Part of me expected him to still sound the way he did that night; raspy and weak. Instead, his voice was as strong and clear as it had ever been.
I nodded, the shadows around my head bobbing along with me. “Y-yeah.”
His brow unfurrowed, but his face remained unparseable and blank. “I heard you were staying here too. Though, you’re so elusive I was starting to think I imagined Vivienne telling me.”
I swallowed nervously. “You were… looking for me?”
He shrugged. “Well, I haven’t seen you since I was hospitalised. I wanted to see how you were.”
I ignored the implied question in his words, letting the silence between us fester. My feelings didn’t matter. I just needed to rip the bandaid off. “Listen, detective. It… I… I don’t really know how to say this, but…”
“I know it was you,” he calmly said, interrupting me. “It’s pretty hard to mistake that voice when you’ve got your helmet on.”
It took me a second to process his words, but when they finally hit, my stomach dropped. “What? Y-you… you knew the whole time?”
He nodded. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell anyone. As far as Vivienne and the Union know, I was attacked by one of de Vygon’s agents.”
That made no sense. I could barely wrap my head around the concept. “I… why?”
“I don’t know. I guess, I didn’t want to alienate you further from everyone else. What happened wasn’t your fault. It was de Vygon’s. It’s not like you did all that out of your own desire to hurt me.” He looked away, staring back at the TV screen.
“But… But, I crippled you! B-because of me, you’ll never walk straight again!”
“Because of de Vygon,” Steve corrected, though there was pain in his eyes at my words. “You don’t blame the gun for shooting someone; you blame the person who pulled the trigger.”
“I-!” I paused, absorbing his meaning. Something in the core of my being shivered; an uncomfortable idea starting to form in the bottom of my mind. “I… I’m not a gun, though. I’m a person. I’m his daughter.”
Steve sighed, glancing back over with his eyes pinching at the edges. The pity in his gaze made me want to throw up. “As far as he’s concerned, you might as well be. The way he treats you; it’s not how any parent should treat their kid. He uses you as a weapon, pointing you at his enemies and pulling the trigger.”
A gun. A weapon. Just some… thing to bolster his police force and do his bidding. Was that really how Father saw me? No, it couldn’t be.
I looked down. “I… I know he doesn’t treat me right. I know that I have… so much less freedom than everyone else. But, he’s still my father, and I owe him my life. Nothing will change that. Regardless of who gave the order, it was still me that hurt you. I could have decided not to, but I did it anyway, because he asked. B-because… I can choose. You can’t say it wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve insisted.
“But-!”
“What would he have done to you if you hadn’t complied?” he asked. “No one else is listening. You aren’t wearing your helmet. You can tell me.”
…He was right. I could tell him. I could finally get the crushing fear of Father’s exact retribution off of my chest, and there was no way it could get back to him. But was that a good idea? I didn’t know.
But I’d come too far to stop now.
I took a deep breath, centering myself. “Th-there’s this… thing he does. I don’t know how he does it, but when he’s mad, he can make it so that it feels like my whole body is on fire, a-and I can’t move. B-but that’s usually for small things. If I refused to do what… what I did, I’d probably be banned from eating, and have to spend a few days in the penalisation room. He, um… He chains me up against the wall in uncomfortable positions, a-and then leaves me there for hours. O-or, he could beat me, or cut me. I- I know now that it isn’t normal, o-or good, but it’s just… how we are. It’s how we work. When I disobey him, Father hurts me. That’s just the way it is. If I really didn’t want to do it, I could’ve said so, and dealt with the consequences. I’ve been through them before.”
The anguished look on Steve’s face was like a knife in the gut. It wasn’t that bad, was it?
He rubbed his face, looking away. “Shit, kid. I’m so sorry.”
I sighed, trying not to think about that too much. “See? It’s my fault.”
He chuckled humourlessly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Jordyn. You were coerced into it under threat of fucking torture. There is no conceivable way it was your fault and not his. You wouldn’t have even thought about doing it if he hadn’t ordered you to in the first place. And it’s clear it’s been eating you up ever since. I don’t know what I can say to convince you that it wasn’t your fault, but clearly you came to me looking for something. What? Forgiveness? Absolution? You can have it! I know… I know the hurt isn’t gonna go away just like that, but I don’t blame you for what happened. I never did. It wasn’t your fault. You were just… a scared, abused little girl doing whatever she could to avoid getting hurt again. You’re still doing it. Because, if you think that it wasn’t your fault, then it’s his fault, and that’s a dangerous train of thought for you. So you’re taking the blame as much as possible to protect yourself from retribution.”
It felt like I could barely breathe. My cheeks were wet. “I… I don’t…” I trailed off. I didn’t know what to say.
Steve pursed his lips, looking at me like he could see right through the shadows and to the heart of my being. He sighed. “Let’s just… forget about everything, just for tonight. There’s no reason to hash it all out right now. Come on, sit down. We can watch this movie together.” He forced a shaky smile. “It’s good, I promise.”
I blankly nodded, stumbling over to the couch and pulling a blanket over my exposed form. It was weird to be out here without anything on.
He was right, though. Everything he said made too much sense. I just… didn’t know what to do with it all, crushing me from the inside until my lungs collapsed.
But, in the meantime, the movie was pretty good. Distraction would have to do for now.