Chapter Text
When Iris stepped into the bone-white, fluorescently lit cube of a cell, she was greeted by the sight of her own stolen smile beaming back at her from her sister's face. The condemned woman was seated calmly at a table in the center of the room, her right hand cuffed to one of the legs. The table itself was bolted securely to the floor. It was all very sensible and straight-forward, and it filled Iris with a quiet sense of dread. She bit her lip and did not smile back.
"Hello, dear sister," Dahlia said to her as the door closed on them. "I hope you're not here to save my soul. There was a chaplain came to try that last week. Queer little man, but he was persistent. I didn't have the heart to disappoint him, so I just cried and beat my breast until he was satisfied and left me alone. It was terribly dull, and at the end of it all I was still as wicked as ever."
"I don't think that you're wicked, Sis," Iris said softly, trying to ignore the lump in her throat as she looked her twin over. It was peculiar, but prison seemed to have brought the Fey out in Dahlia. The red in her hair had long ago washed out, leaving behind obsidian black. More strikingly, since her highly practiced, deceptively delicate comportment was no longer of any use to her, she had traded it in for her mother's strong, proud bearing.
"Oh, but I am, Sister Iris," Dahlia assured her. "I'm dreadfully wicked. I ought to be hanged—hanged until my head swells up and my tongue lolls out and blood comes draining from my mouth."
"Stop it," Iris pleaded with her as her hand jumped reflexively to her own slender neck.. "You mustn't say things like that."
"I've been a very bad girl," Dahlia continued, brushing her off with a pleasant smile. "But just a few weeks longer and all scores will be settled. I'm such a skinny little waif of a thing, you know, that I'll probably swing about horribly. I kept telling myself that I should put on weight, but I'm just too monstrously vain to go through with it. It will hurt more than it should this way, but at least I'll look pretty as I'm flailing around helplessly up in the air. It should be quite a sight. You will come to see it, won't you?"
Iris was beginning to feel physically ill. "Why do you do this?"
"Why shouldn't I? You agree, don't you? That I deserve to die?"
Yes, Iris thought, because Dahlia had taken life, because she had murdered three people in cold blood, tortured a fourth until he could no longer bear to live, and very nearly killed the sweetest, kindest, most selfless man Iris had ever had the good fortune of meeting. No, Iris thought, because Dahlia had been hurt more deeply than anyone but her sister could ever understand, and because Dahlia was her sister, her strong, clever, beautiful sister who had guarded and cared for her when their father had deemed them a nuisance and their mother a disgrace. "I don't want you to die," she said at last, because it was the only honest answer she could give. "But… it's the law."
"Of course. And the law is more important than your wicked old sister."
"What can I do?" Iris asked helplessly.
"Come closer," Dahlia said, as though it were an answer. "Why are you hovering in that corner, silly thing? I don't bite, you know."
Iris had not meant to hover. Dahlia was her other half, and she ached to be near her. Ever since she had walked into the room she had wanted nothing more than to rush to her sister and embrace her, to kiss the top of her head and dust her hair with tears of salt. But the last time she had done that, Dahlia had yelled at her and pushed her away. "You used to," Iris said fondly as she at last crossed the space between them. "When we were little. We were the terror of the village, remember?" Looking down on Dahlia seemed somehow wrong, so Iris kneeled beside her and looked up. "Back when we were inseparable. It seems so long ago."
She laid her head on her sister's legs and tried to imagine the rest of her life. Many times at the temple her mind and heart would go out to her sister, reaching across the distance like a streamer of lightning, an electric impulse that felt cold and dark and sought out the connection that could bring light and warmth, a connection that only happened once in a very great while. She dreaded the day she would wake up and find herself reaching into the ether, groping about in the dark for a light that had long gone out. Once in a while made her feel like half herself, but never? She was afraid that never would make her into a ghost.
"I remember," Dahlia assured her. She slipped her free hand under Iris's hood and combed her fingers through her sister's hair. "And I remember we used to sit for hours braiding and unbraiding each other's hair. Then there was that one time I cut all yours off. I was sorry afterwards—I had nothing to play with for months."
Iris closed her eyes and again resolved not to cry. Dahlia always got annoyed with her when she cried. Besides, right now they were together. In her head she was clinging franticly to the moment and to the cool touch of her sister's soft, deft fingers brushing against her scalp. The only painful thing was the thought that it would end.
Dahlia withdrew he hand. As Iris lay still and quiet, absorbed in the fading sensation of her sister's fingers on her skin and the slight spark of static lingering in her hair, there came a faint clinking sound from somewhere not far from her ear. Then her peace was shattered as her sister's lap vanished from beneath her head, dumping her to the floor.
Wasting no time even to stretch her legs, Dahlia pulled her sister to her feet, tore off her hood, and slipped the hairpin back into her braid. "Take off your clothes," she commanded.
"What?" Dahlia already had her shirt off by the time Iris figured out what was going on. "Sis, we can't just trade. It'll never work. Not here."
"It's never not worked before," Dahlia reminded her as she tugged loose the sash from Iris's waist. "Well, there's was that one time. But that was hardly my fault, now was it?"
Dusky Bridge. "Sis…"
"Amazing how much misery one silly little jewel can cause." Dahlia struggled to pull Iris's cassock up over her head. "Hold your arms up, you great lump! I have to do everything myself, don't I? I should have then, too. That way none of this would be happening."
I was scared. "Sis…"
"I'll kill her."
"Sorry, but you aren't going to get the chance."
"I don't want to think about it." Her cassock came off, then her undershirt. "Dahlia, I don't want—"
"Put these on," Dahlia demanded, thrusting her prison clothes into Iris's arms.
Iris looked into her sister's eyes imploringly. "I… I don't think that this is a good idea," she said.
Dahlia grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked down, forcing Iris onto her knees. "I said put them on! It isn't up for debate." Without another word, Iris hastily obeyed. When she had finished, Dahlia hauled her up by the collar of her black-striped shirt, shoved her into the chair, and clapped the shackle shut on her wrist.
"What happens to me, then?" Iris asked as her sister donned her temple robes.
"Wait five days—that's all it will take me to make a clean break—and then ask the nice guards to take your fingerprints. They'll see the mistake they've made. Is this how the sash goes?" Iris nodded. "Of course, if I'm going to be completely honest—and you know, dear sister, that I'm always honest with you—you won't be set free right away. Helping a Death Row inmate to escape is a serious crime. But if I can survive a few years in prison, so can you. After all, we are twins."
Iris gave the chain on her wrist a half-hearted tug. She was surprised at how much wearing handcuffs hurt; already the metal was digging painfully into her skin, cutting off the circulation in her hand. "I don't know. You're so much stronger than I am."
"Don't be such a baby." Tucking a few stray locks of hair under her hood, Dahlia drew herself up to her full height and glared down at her twin. "If you'd learned how to stand fast earlier, none of this would be necessary. Now you'll just have to do the best you can." She leaned over the chair and took one of her sister's braids in each hand. At first Iris was afraid that Dahlia would pull her hair again, but instead she plunged down and brushed lips with her, allowing one warm, gentle breath to escape into Iris's mouth before she pulled away and headed for the door.
Stunned speechless, Iris looked on in bewildered silence. Her lips tingled with heat, and the feeling spread until it covered every inch of her skin. She felt unstable, out of balance. Images were popping into her head that really, really should not be, and Dahlia was so beautiful in her impossible confidence, so radiant when things were going her way, so strong and clever and of course she would make it out. But that other idea had to go away, because it was a horrible, disgraceful, impossible thing to be thinking about one's sister, even worse than that other other idea she had been trying not to think of earlier.
"I'll kill her."
Yes, dwelling on the taste of Dahlia's lips was worse—decidedly worse—than dwelling on the fact that she never did reveal what "pressing matters elsewhere" had kept her from being on the bridge herself that fateful day.
"Sorry, but you aren't going to get the chance."
As the door opened and the guards escorted Dahlia out, calling her "Sister" and attempting to console her (for she was quite noticeably tearing up) and all the while shooting feelingless glances at her sister in the cell, Iris began to panic. She should and she shouldn't, she had to and she couldn't. She owed it to her sister, Dahlia, her other half, and she owed it to Feenie and Valerie and Mr. Armando and Mr. Swallow and poor, poor Mr. Fawles. And what about me? She pushed that question away, because she was owed nothing. She had failed everyone on both sides.
The veins in her shackled hand felt as though a thousand tiny icicles were stabbing into them from all directions.
"Look at her wrists!" Iris shouted suddenly, though in another instant she was unable to recall making up her mind to do so. But it was too late now, the guards were looking straight at her. "Look at her wrists, they'll be red where the handcuffs were! We switched places! I'm Iris, she's Dahlia!"
"You ungrateful little worm!" Dahlia shrieked, and in another instant was bearing down on her. Two small but surprisingly strong hands with long, thin fingers wrapped around Iris's throat. Choking, the temple maiden looked up at her sister and into the face of a stranger. Dahlia's nostrils were flared, her eyes narrowed and her pupils wide. Her smile was no longer the same one Iris saw when she looked in the mirror, but rather the clenched, tooth-baring grin of a death's head. Iris gasped in vain. Her whole body began to feel like her bound hand. The corners of her vision clouded over, and the darkness worked its way inward until all she could see were her sister's wild, demon-fire eyes.
The guards grabbed hold of Dahlia and wrestled her to the floor. "Your fault!" she screamed at her sister. "You're as much to blame as that bitch lawyer! Couldn't stay put on the bridge, couldn't get back the bottle, couldn't even do this! You're useless, that's what you are! Get out of my sight!"
Iris barely heard her. She was crying, retching, sweating all over and struggling to breathe. There was water on her skin and fire in her lungs and all in all it seemed so very stupidly, morbidly familiar.