She faced Lucy, her gray eyes were not cruel but not soft either. They were the eyes of something that had watched several civilizations go.
"You help people," Vert said, "because you do not believe you are owed your own life."
The square was quiet.
The pigeons were not quiet, but the square was.
"That's not it." Lucy started.
"You were given magic," Vert continued, in the same flat reportorial voice, "in a quality that other people consider obscene. You were given a once-in-a-millennium talent. You were not given the things that come with being a person in your family. You were given the loudest gift and the quietest welcome. And so you decided, somewhere very young, that the gift had to be paid back."
"Because I can help people." Lucy's voice had an edge now. "Because I have abilities that most people don't, and if I don't use them to help, then what's the point of having them?"
"Ah." Neila's lips curved. "So it's guilt."
"It's not guilt."
Neila turned to Vert. "My loss, usually I would be able to read people but I guess my hatred for these boring main characters clouded my judgement, maybe she isn't just a cookie cutter mc. "
The crowd flowed around them like water around stones. Lucy's crimson eyes fixed on Neila with an intensity that made the air feel heavier. "You don't know anything about me."
"You can't hide anything from me," Vert went on, looking only at Lucy, "You value your life less than you value the lives of the people on this street. You may not even think it in words. But you live it, every time you put yourself in front of something, you are comparing yourself with another person. You think you are being noble, you are not being noble."
The pigeons lifted, all at once.
Lucy's hand curled into a fist. The blood in the gutters rippled, responding to her agitation. "Shut up."
"Hah, how pathetic, she really is digging into you." Neila poked her cheek playfully.
"You help people," Vert said. "Because if you can make yourself useful enough, if you can save enough people, maybe someday you'll feel like you deserve to exist."
Silence.
"Stop…please. I don't want to know anything about myself. I don't want to know who I am, I don't want to know anything."
Vert took a step closer, her small frame somehow managing to loom.
"But you can't stop my curiosity, I've never met a human as weird as you, an inherent sense of justice born from an insecurity, how wonderful!"
Neila glanced at Vert.
[She really is picking into her, she really is ruthless when it comes to wanting to know more]
"Walke-"
Lucy turned on her, fast, fast enough that her dark blue ponytail swung against her shoulder. Her crimson eyes were too bright. The split in her tongue made the s in the next word hiss a little.
"Oh, are you going to weigh in? Are you? Are you going to weigh in, Neila? Are you going to be a help here?"
"I was going to suggest you breathe."
"I am breathing."
"You are hyperventilating."
"I'm breathing."
"You aren't."
"Don't handle me, Neila."
"I'm not handling you."
Lucy stood up. She didn't go anywhere. There was nowhere to go. She just stood, and she looked down at the two of them on the bench, the tiny gray goddess and the small blonde witch, and she could feel her face doing something it usually didn't do, which was: not perform.
"You know what's funny," Lucy said. Her voice was bright. Her voice was the brightest it had been all afternoon. "You know what's actually really funny, Neila?"
"What?"
"Is that you're sitting right there like you've got room to talk about anyone's coping mechanisms like you don't have your entire personality built on a foundation of-"
"Of?"
"Of being awful to people because it's easier than being kind to them. Of being mean to your servants because they couldn't be mean back. Of-"
"Oh, the servants. Are we doing the servants?"
"We're doing the servants."
"It's all the same thing."
"I think it's relevant."
"Do you?"
"I do."
"Do you remember any of their names?"
Lucy faltered.
"That's not-"
"It's a simple question, Lucy. Since you're so concerned about how I treat my servants, then tell me, do you remember their names?"
"I don't-"
"Just one."
"That's not the point!"
"Tell me one of your servants', then. The Walker ones. Even if you got kicked out of the family, there must be at least one..just one that you remember the name of."
"That's not the same."
"Isn't it?"
"It's not the same, Neila, you hurt them, you actually-"
"So what? What are you going to do about that? Help them? Help who specifically?"
Lucy opened her mouth.
Lucy closed her mouth.
Lucy's fist was shaking. The blood in the gutters had formed a web around her feet, crimson threads pulsing with her heartbeat.
"At least I'm trying to help people. At least I'm doing something. What do you do, Neila? You manipulate people and scheme. You use people and discard them when they're no longer useful. You humiliated people for fun. You made them kneel and thank you for the privilege of being abused."
Neila retaliated. "How stupid do you have to be to throw yourself into danger because you think other people deserve to live more than you do. You think if you save enough of them, it'll make up for the fact that you couldn't save your brother."
The blood in the gutters was rising now, thin crimson threads weaving through the cobblestones. The crowd had thinned, pedestrians giving the two women a wide berth without quite understanding why.
Lucy's voice was shaking. "You don't get to talk about Dominic."
"I'm not talking about Dominic." Neila crossed her arms. "How unbelievably idiotic do you have to be? I'm talking about the girl who smiles and says 'it's nothing' when someone thanks her, because she genuinely believes that her life is worth less than an old woman's groceries."
Neila kept going. She had stood up too, somewhere in there, and she was a head shorter than Lucy but it didn't read that way.
"You aren't a good person." Neila's eyes narrowed. "You only help people because it gives you a sense of purpose, to your meaningless little existence. You can't even take your problems head on, Vert said one little thing about you. One little thing about your psyche. And you didn't want to confront them, but instead chose to change the conversation instead, you're not even trying to run away, you're putting the blame onto ME!!"
"Neila —"
Neila said. "Don't Neila me. You hand out apples to feel good for the eight seconds it takes to do the thing, and then the second anyone looks at you sideways, the second anyone says Lucy, are you okay, you've already changed the subject to whether they're okay, because the only way you have ever learned to stand being looked at is to stand behind someone else."
The silence again.
Lucy's hand was a fist at her side.
"You're not allowed to-" Lucy started.
"To what."
"To diagnose me. You don't get to-"
"I'm not doing anything, Vert was the one to figure you out. I'm simply telling you to put that mask down, because frankly, I can't stand seeing that stupid sense of justice any longer."
"You're wrong."
"Am I?" Neila tilted her head. "Then why did you come on this search? Why did you volunteer to find Hoshimi?"
"Because he's my friend."
"Because you feel guilty. Because you think you failed him in the warehouse. Because you think if you can save him now, it'll make up for not saving him then." Neila's voice was relentless. "You don't care for his safety, you care about what you're feeling, you'd risk your life just to see him happy. Why? Because of your perverted sense of selfishness. You don't care about his safety, you don't care whether or not he's actually in danger, you just want to save him."
Lucy sat down. She didn't decide to sit down. Her knees decided. They had been holding her up for a number of minutes.
She landed on the bench between the two of them. The bench creaked. Vert moved her coat aside, politely, to give her room.
For a long time Lucy didn't say anything.
She watched the pigeons resettle.
The pigeons resettled the way they always resettled, which was: badly, in a different configuration, with one of them mad about it.
"I hate you two," Lucy started. "For what reason do you two…"
She stopped.
She started again.
"I don't think my life is worth more than them."
"I know," Vert said.
"I think I'm worthless."
"I know."
"I think, I think if it has to be me or one of them, and it's a real choice, and there's a clock on it, it should be them."
"Didn't what?"
"They didn't get given anything. Nobody gave them, they don't have what I have. They earned every day of it. And I was just born with everything and couldn't do anything, the people I try to save, at the very least one of them could've been a doctor or a firefighter, someone who is able to save more lives than me, someone who has more impact on this world than I do."
"I've never pretended to be good," Neila said quietly. "That's the difference between us. You're the one who's been lying to yourself."
"At least I'm trying to be better."
Lucy's breath was ragged. The blood web had spread to the walls now, crimson lines tracing the brickwork like veins. But she didn't attack. Didn't lash out. Just stood there, shaking, while Neila's words settled into the spaces she'd been trying to keep empty.
"You don't know what it's like," Lucy whispered.
"Of course I don't, why would I?"
Neila was looking at her shoes. Neila's shoes were spotless. Neila had a thing about her shoes.
"Anyways, don't be a pathetic little bitch and cry, Walker," Neila said, without looking up. "I'll leave."
"I'm not crying."
"Okay."
"I'm not."
"Sure, whatever."
Lucy was not crying.
After a while Neila said.
"You can't save anyone who doesn't want to be saved, you know."
"I know that."
"You don't, Walker. You say you do but you don't, because every single time someone in front of you is drowning, you go in. Every single time, you just go in. That is stupid of you, you can't save anyone, people can only save themselves."
Lucy made a sound.
It was not a word.
Neila's eyes were not soft. They've always been the same way.
"The only person you can save," Neila said, "is the idiot who your soul is inhabiting."
"That's-"
"There is a river," Vert announced. "You said there was a river."
"There's a river," Neila said.
"I would like to see the river."
"It's brown."