Doppelganger Visits: ROWAN COMBE

part i

for kirito

She is porcelain, painted, perfect. Not a single scratch taints her copied self, a work of art drawn from the depths of inspiration sparked by a dead girl and who she once was. There is a purpose driving the cogs and screws and sparks of electricity within her, a single consistent need that burns inside of her transparent heart. There's someone here she needs to see. Someone here she needs to kill-

No, not kill. (But she wants to.) But she's not allowed to. (But she wants to.) That's not how this works. (But she wants to.) She is broken, a wire out of place, porcelain on the outside and shattered on the inside. Her skin begins to crumble, leaking rustic drops of oil, sparks and scarlett.

Rowan Combe's ghost sees his figure in the distance.

In a foreign voice that doesn't belong to her, she recites her killer's words with perfect articulation. "Of course I rememba killin' Rowan." The ghost gains speed, silent steps quickening across the dirty floor, all the while staring at the boy that sang her to sleep with steel and hate as she recites his words with just as much spite and bitterness as he himself had. "It has been tha highlight of my time here." 

And then she is herself again - broken, but she was never quite right to begin with.

"You killed me."

She stops, a few feet away from Kirito, raising a hand to her chest.

"You killed me."

As she drags her fingertips across her heart, wounds burst open and the broken girl appears.

"You killed me."

She turns to point at his own beating life source and sputters some more: "You killed me. You killed me. You killed me-"

(It's rude to point. It's rude to point.)

"DON'T!" she shrieks suddenly, hand dropping from the air and clutching at her head. Whirring fills her mind - she is broken, broken, broken, she can't sleep and she's broken and it's rude to point and you killed me, you killed me, you killed me and it's rude to point. "DON'T!"

She stumbles away from the boy that killed her and leaves him with his own words.

part ii

for sue

When she sees the boy from home everything becomes a little harder. She still creaks and splutters with too much life and no matter how hard she tries her words won't stray from the echoes in her head. She doesn't want to hurt him - doesn't want to get too close in fear of her broken body lashing out and striking at him. This time, she's certain her hands will do more damage than they did all that time ago. "Don't!" she cries to herself, the only thing she can say. "Don't... don't... don't..."

She does it anyway.

Rowan Combe's ghost patters toward Sue, frightened by her pace. "Don't!" she whispers. "It's rude to point." A finger rises anyway. (If she lifts her thumb it could turn into a gun like the one in his hand and in a bang bang bang everything could stop.) "Don't" the ghost repeats, words jumbling in her mouth. "Don't. It's rude to point. Kill. It's rude to kill. Me. Where's... I can't... Don't. It's rude. I..."

Finally - finally - something clicks the right way around.

"Where's Kiena?"

A point of a finger won't lead her way - her own compass made of clockwork guides her to her final friend.

part iii

for kiena

Rowan Combe's ghost, covered in rust and blood, wanders quietly through the dusty arena. She is a whisper - a dream conjured from the ghost of a girl to mock her death one last time and to haunt the ones that so desperately tried to keep her alive. Eyes wandering around the strange place she has found herself in, her silent footsteps come to a halt. There is something wrong. And this something is not only inside her own metal skeleton - there is something wrong in this place. Something missing.

"Where's Stella?" she asks the figure in front of her. "Where's Stella?" Her words are a broken symphony designed to drive the tributes mad beyond belief - an echo of a girl shredded through jabber-jay songs. "Where's Stella?" she asks again, taking one step forward. "Where's Stella?" Another. "Where is she?" Another.

"I can't sleep" she whispers through the air. "Kiena, I can't sleep. I can't sleep. I can't sleep. I can't sleep."

Treading lightly, her voice rises.

"Kiena, I can't sleep. I can't sleep. Where's Stella? I can't sleep. I can't-"

(In a control room at the edge of the earth, someone pulls the plug on the girl reborn - she is faulty, broken, unable to be fixed.)

"I'm broken, Key."

Everything stops.

Crashing, she falls not into sleep but to the ground below her.