30th of November, 2018

rees-mogged: BOYS
rees-mogged: Boys
rees-mogged: Holy fucking shit
disciple-of-blanchard: ^ finally figured out the world is flat
rees-mogged: No this is way bigger than that
rees-mogged: You won't fucking believe it man
rees-mogged: I've scored a girl
disciple-of-blanchard: yeah i dont believe it
disciple-of-blanchard: theres a catch
darjeeling: holy shit RM
darjeeling: congrats
darjeeling: what's she like
rees-mogged: She's like
rees-mogged: Pretty
disciple-of-blanchard: burying the lede here RM
rees-mogged: Nice hair
rees-mogged: Cute little nose
rees-mogged: Big tits
rees-mogged: Definitely a trans girl but who gives a shit at this point
disciple-of-blanchard: there we go
disciple-of-blanchard: cant get real girls so hes settling for trannies
darjeeling: be nice ray
disciple-of-blanchard: anyone can pull a tranny
disciple-of-blanchard: easiest thing in the world
rees-mogged: How many trans girls have you pulled ray
disciple-of-blanchard: zero
rees-mogged: There we go
disciple-of-blanchard: because i havent lowered my standards
rees-mogged: Sure you haven’t
rees-mogged: How’s Stefan doing?
rees-mogged: Oh wait
rees-mogged: Anyway
rees-mogged: Piss break taking too long
rees-mogged: Gotta go
rees-mogged: Will report back
darjeeling: good luck have fun
disciple-of-blanchard: bye RM!
disciple-of-blanchard: is he gone now
disciple-of-blanchard: i cant fucking believe it
disciple-of-blanchard: dating a tranny
disciple-of-blanchard: has he finally given up
darjeeling: I'm happy for him
darjeeling: Let him have this
disciple-of-blanchard: well see how happy he is tomorrow after figuring out his date hasnt had GRS
disciple-of-blanchard: but somehow i doubt he cares
disciple-of-blanchard: hell probably suck her off regardless
disciple-of-blanchard: not that i can pretend to be above sucking dick
darjeeling: you really should delete this before he sees it tomorrow
disciple-of-blanchard: i know i know just sad and bitter
darjeeling: you'll get there too, don't worry
disciple-of-blanchard: easy for you to say
darjeeling: is it?
disciple-of-blanchard: no
disciple-of-blanchard: youve got it worse than us two
disciple-of-blanchard: im just being a pathetic fucking loser like always
disciple-of-blanchard: might as well own it rather than pretend to be something im not and act like the pathetic incel i am
disciple-of-blanchard: im so sorry i should just go to bed
disciple-of-blanchard: im too blackpilled tonight
darjeeling: you’re fine Ray
darjeeling: sometimes you just need to scream somewhere people hear you
disciple-of-blanchard: yeah
disciple-of-blanchard: all you can do to avoid the rope
disciple-of-blanchard: sorry thats definitely too much
darjeeling: I’m here if you need to talk
disciple-of-blanchard: i know you are
disciple-of-blanchard: but youve got enough loser shit to deal with as is
darjeeling: who doesn’t
disciple-of-blanchard: girls apparently
disciple-of-blanchard: they certainly like to hold us to that standard
disciple-of-blanchard: must be nice to be on that side of things
disciple-of-blanchard: the pretty girl all the boys fawn over
disciple-of-blanchard: because it sure as hell sucks here
disciple-of-blanchard: i know really fucking tranny feelings
disciple-of-blanchard: too much sissy porn
disciple-of-blanchard: does it fucking matter anymore
disciple-of-blanchard: i should just troon out and get a fucking incel to take care of me
disciple-of-blanchard: easiest thing in the world
disciple-of-blanchard: worked for that bitch pulling RM
darjeeling: yeah…
darjeeling: I wish things were easier for you
disciple-of-blanchard: im going to bed
darjeeling: probably a good idea
darjeeling: good night
darjeeling: be safe okay?
disciple-of-blanchard: i will
disciple-of-blanchard: gn

6th of March, 2019

Things have calmed down a lot since Faith was sent to the cells. The potential for things to truly boil over had come and gone. Yet, rather than blowing up in everyone's faces, it seems to have gone away with a whimper. Sponsors and subjects alike have taken multiple steps back, the former content to let the latter come to terms with the events of that night.

Jenny and Amy have handled it in much the same manner: they're just not doing anything at all, at this point. They're not working; they're not studying; they're barely communicating with their sponsors and definitely not with each other. Too much had happened for that to be possible.

Amy has ceded their collective bedroom to Jenny for now, unwilling to fight over it nor really willing to spend much time in her presence given the things that were said. It's difficult to feel comfortable sleeping in someone's bedroom after they imply they are willing to do violence against you, no matter how much you would trust them otherwise.

Amy's been sleeping on a couch on the ground floor instead. Kelynen has been trying to make her agree to sleep in her bedroom if need be — she insists could share with Viv or Rose instead — but it'd make Amy feel like a burden to do so. 

She really doesn’t want to be a burden. Nor does she want to feel much of anything else right now.

Her best friend of almost a decade hates her. Her girlfriend tried to mediate between the two because Amy proved herself incapable of staving off conflict, and got punished for it. 

Not to mention that Amy got both of them involved in all this bullshit, as they probably wouldn't even have noticed Faith and Jenny if it wasn't for her much higher-profile crimes. It's her fault they're here, it's her fault they can't get out, and it's her fault they're being punished as a result. 

It seems that Jenny's fate is much worse than Faith's. She might not be sent to the cells, but whatever news she was given when Eira dragged her out of their room and into her office must be terrible, if her reaction of deep depression is anything to go by. Amy's seen glimpses of her when going upstairs to pick some fresh clothes: she's completely resigned to something that she refuses to talk about.

The worst part is that Amy struggles to particularly care about whatever Jenny’s fate is. She's struggled to particularly care about anything for the past few weeks, sure, but that emotion has become even more inaccessible since. Because why care when nothing matters anymore?

They've lost. Thoroughly. The board is stacked against them, all their pieces are out of place, whatever resistance still exists is being wiped out methodically as the sponsors drag out the process of getting that checkmate. Why bother putting the effort in when you know you've lost that badly? Just move the same piece up and down the board to pass the turns until it too is eventually wiped out.

Perhaps Jenny feels the same way, both of her friends having betrayed her. Eira might not even have said very much. She has a way of saying just as much with silence as with one of her lectures, after all.

And Faith…

She's been trying not to think too much about her. Her mind will wander too much when she does, and it inevitably wanders into some truly terrible places. About her hurting as badly as Amy once had, down there. About Eira doing terrible things to her. That her trust in Vivienne might have been betrayed, a trust that Amy had in the past encouraged if only because Faith needed more people she got along with in her life.

But the truth is that she doesn't know. Vivienne said that Faith is doing fine, perhaps feeling more lonely than usual but nonetheless going through the motions of daily life in a way that neither Amy nor Jenny are managing. She's spending a lot of time with the sponsors — something Vivienne implied she very much needed — and they're pushing her towards some 'long-overdue conclusions' about herself and her future.

Vivienne wouldn't be a sponsor if she didn't immediately follow that up by suggesting that Amy has a lot to think about as well. Of course she does— but she wishes she didn't have to think at all, not for a while. She'd much rather keep sleeping and ignoring all the people around her.

But that wasn't to be, not with a sponsor like Kelynen assigned to her.

“Nope, Amy, we’re not doing this a fourth day in a row.” Loonie’s clear sponsor-like voice rings through the living room that Amy had claimed for herself. “You don’t have to work, but we’re getting you out of this room regardless.”

“But—”

“No buts.” She says, a hint of teasing to her tone. “A few days of rest are okay, but you won’t feel any better if you keep spending your days like this.”

Amy shows her sponsor a pouty face and is instantly punished for her insolence by having her nose booped. All she can do in response to that is pout even harder.

“This is an intervention, silly-billy. You need to do some things that make you feel better, because wallowing isn’t going to solve anything.”

“Sure feels like one.” She grumbles. “But I’m fine, really.”

Loonie vaguely gestures to the room around her, at the messy bed sheets she’d stolen out of the laundry, the pile of dirty plates on the table, the maid uniform discarded on one of the chairs and a pile of lesbian Victorian romances retrieved from the library days ago.

“Well, sure, but I can clean up. That’s what I’m for. I’m a maid.” She picks up a few of the plates and starts arranging them into a pile.

“Leaving plates in the sink isn’t cleaning up, Amy.”

“Well, it might as well be.” She mumbles. “They’re clean the next day!”

Loonie giggles. “And who do you think does that? Little fairy maids?”

“I’ll have you know that that is a very offensive, homophobic term.” Amy joins her sponsor in lowering the prior serious tone of the conversation, unwilling to put up with that shit right now.

“I’m sure it is, if I would expect someone to know every slur there is it would be you— but I’m not here to learn about something I don’t want to know, I’m here to have a conversation the two of us need to have sooner rather than later.”

Amy gives Loonie a look. “I’d prefer later.”

“I know you would, and so would I, but it’s important and I think it’d really help you deal with the next couple of weeks.” She leaves her sentence unfinished, preferring to leave something implied rather than stated.

“Without Faith.” Amy remarks, and Kelynen gives her an awkward if confirmatory nod.

“It’s not going to be an easy time.”

“Could we please leave this for another time?” Amy tries. “I’m already not feeling too well.”

“Amy—”

“I’ve a headache.”

“This is very—”

“I can’t see my girlfriend.” 

“I know, but—”

“My best friend hates me.” 

“Amy…”

“Eira wants to talk to me tomorrow.” She finishes. “You know how much of a toll it takes to put up with her when she gets like that.”

“Okay.” Loonie says, shaking her head. She’s never been good at arguing with Amy, or anyone really. “We can delay it until you feel better. But you can’t just push us away forever, you know. We’ll have talked through all this by the end of next week.”

Amy rolls her eyes. “Yes, sure, next week.”

“But I’m still staying with you all day, young lady.”

“You can’t just ‘young lady’ me, that’s Eira’s thing.” Amy pouts again.

“Oh, but I can. She gave me permission and all.” She grins. “If you want a relaxing day, you better get ready to watch movies all day.”

As if she had been prepared for this, her sponsor shows off all the Madagascar films. Amy looks at her for a second, contemplating the offer.

“That’s for kids.” She says.

“Yes.”

“I’m not that kind of little sister.” Amy protests.

“So? You don’t have to pay attention if you don’t want to. Besides, I like the penguins.” Kelynen grins, and Amy knows for a fact that this is going to be entirely truthful— her favourite animals in a silly film, of course Loonie was going to love that shit.

“This is bullshit. Trickery. Entrapment.”

“If you’d prefer not to watch the movies we could have that conversation—”

“Okay, I get it, we’ll watch the penguins.” She rolls her eyes, utterly defeated.

“I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think it is.” Loonie teases, turning the TV on.

“Yeah, sure, just turn it on.” She complains, claiming the most comfortable corner of the couch for herself before her sponsor can get back.

7th of March, 2019

Eira suggested the two of them play truth and dare for this biweekly check-in session. It's Amy’s fault, really, because she had some questions that she wanted Eira to answer and said so, openly. Eira, seemingly, also had questions she really wanted Amy to answer— and that mere concept is so terrifying that she should have said no to this entire setup instead of meekly nodding her agreement.

Actually, no, she shouldn't have said no to this offer, if only because Eira was going to get whatever answers she was looking for regardless and this set-up offers Amy a genuine chance to finally get a bit more information about what is going on here. Which just makes it even more confusing that Eira herself agreed to do this. It’s probably good to start with that.

"Truth." Eira offers, resting her hands on her interlaced fingers and smiling widely at Amy, the way she will sometimes do when she doesn't know what will happen, but still is quite certain the result will be quite entertaining regardless. Like she's watching a slow-motion car crash of her own devising.

"Why agree to doing this at all? You know everything about me already."

"Two reasons. One: there are, in fact, things we do not know about you. We have extensive documentation, yes, but we do not have your point of view for every event we deem important. I think it would be very enlightening to get your input as to what actually happened there. It’d clarify a lot of the… next steps we’ll have to take." She smiled even more deeply, the way she did when she knew she'd masterfully led Amy into another trap of hers. 

"Two: this is around the time that you would be expected to receive full disclosure— that is, the full purpose of this programme and where your sponsors originated from. Circumstances have led to the fact that you have significantly more — and significantly less — information than someone in your position would usually have access to. It'd be good to give you some more information about how this programme really functions. Especially considering Faith had already been fully disclosed a few weeks ago."

Faith had been fully disclosed already? So she knew about what would happen to her and still actively decided to stay? To get punished despite that knowledge? 

Amy had always guessed that Faith was quite vanilla, unlike Jenny and her, but clearly she'd missed a deep depravity somewhere in her soul. Maybe that's why they got along so well.

"Truth." Amy says, looking down at the floor. Whatever comes next is unlikely to be nice.

"It's been about a year since that chairmanship race for the Exeter Conservative club that you lost." Eira starts. Amy hates this already. Reminding her she’s a loser who couldn’t even turn her treasurership into a proper chairmanship. "Your opponent — or more accurately, some of his supporters — made the claim that you had made some 'unwanted sexual advances' towards other members of the club, heavily implying they were quite serious incidents indeed. Did you ever feel like these accusations were, or could have been true?"

She wants to fucking die. She wants to fucking die so badly. What kind of question is this? 'Oh, some people said you were a creepy prick, do you think that makes everything we're doing to you and your friends acceptable?'

But there is no universe in which she doesn't answer this question, so she answers it. She answers it honestly, because Eira can tell if she lies anyways. 

"I thought there could have been some incident." She whispers, not willing to quite say it out loud. "I was drunk a lot, back then. As one does at university. I get cuddly when I'm drunk. I also end up filtering my words a lot less. And sometimes— sometimes I forget things. I denied it, of course, because they never brought forward any evidence, but I could never believe that there truly wasn't anything there. Maybe I did hold someone in a way they didn't like, or say something I shouldn't have. I don't know. My mum— Mum had taught me to be careful with those kinds of things."

God, she could really use her mum right now.

Eira looks at her inquisitively, then leans forward and takes Amy's hand. "That's probably the thoughtful view to have," she says, "but you had nothing to be worried about. We looked into it. We found nothing. What we did find is chat logs between Cecil and his friends making fun of rape victims and allegations of sexual misconduct in general. I think this should be a good reminder that you can be better than them, that you are better than them, and that you should, perhaps, try to not share your ideological convictions with people who think any of this is okay."

Amy nods. She doesn’t really want to think about it too much. If this entire kidnapping thing had one silver lining, it's that she didn't have to think much about those people anymore.

"Truth." Eira offered, still extremely confident.

"You said Faith was fully disclosed, Vivienne said that Faith knew they were being watched, I know you have microphones everywhere— did you try to make everything that happened last week... happen? You could have intervened at any point."

"Faith acted alone, out of her own moral convictions. We didn't encourage her to act that way, or discourage her from acting. We merely watched and waited for something to happen. We might have tried to set the scene for conflict — Jenny needed to act out at one point or another — but we didn't try to influence these events once they had started. All we did was plan to make sure that the worst outcomes couldn't have happened."

"Because Jenny was dumb, and loud, and couldn't keep her mouth shut if her life depended on it." Amy adds.

"The purpose of a system is the outcomes it creates." Eira says, quoting half-a-dozen of Amy's dumbest teachers simultaneously. "This is, of course, a very bad theory. But I think there might be some more truth to this statement in this case than there usually would be. She’s still a perfectly intelligent young lady with the ability to keep her mouth shut if she needs to— but she didn’t want to, not in this case.”

Amy gives her a look; Eira chuckles.

“Let’s put it like this— both you and Jenny have shown a need to try to fight back in whatever way you can, believing that our intervention into your rapidly derailing lives has to be stopped. You both do so in your own unique ways, and it just happens that Jenny is perfectly willing to draw attention to herself if need be. Now, I won’t speculate much about what happened in her childhood to leave her this way, but this is the kind of behaviour someone learns when their suffering has long been ignored by the people around them and grows up in a culture where asking for help is seen as weakness, and bluffing can be seen as strength. I think it makes a lot of sense that she would try to become more masculine in the few moments she has to herself, when Rose isn’t there to immediately correct that behaviour.”

“That’s why we haven’t bothered to punish her, not in the traditional way— it’s a scream for help, on her part. I do not believe she ever expected to actually be handed a knife. Nor do I believe she would actually have used it. Her outburst at Faith was, in my interpretation, a way for her to reject the weapon without losing face. Not that it was going to stop me from having a much-needed conversation with her about this all, of course.”

She’s going to need a while to process all of that, especially because it’s left the one question Amy is most concerned about entirely unanswered: does Jenny actually hate her? Did she believe everything she said about her being a traitor? Or was it more of a bluff, a story she made up to scare Faith? Could she even have come up with it and argued for it so well if it was not her actual belief?

"Truth." Amy still wasn't feeling up to a dare. Truth be told, she's pretty sure she never will, not with Eira being the way she is. Given the things Eira asked her to do in the past. It could only be worse than that.

"It's been a few months since you told me about your interaction with Cecil, when he sexually assaulted that servant, Ilena." Eira's words are slow and careful in a way that forces Amy to pay attention if she wants to catch every implication. "You said that you felt disgusted being made to watch those events — I think most good people would — and yet you did absolutely nothing once you were made aware of an obvious criminal conspiracy which trafficks in young women.”

Somehow, the second question is worse than the first. Amy feels like she’s going to have to throw up. Not that it matters, as the head sponsor continues, her words as clear and confident as ever.

“You could have gone to the authorities, however flawed they may be. You knew people in high places whom you could have contacted. At the very least, you could have tried to inform relevant charities or organisations trying to deal with this very issue. You know how bad and destructive these things can be, as proven by your response to my earlier question, and will act even upon the presumption of such a thing existing, as your general behaviour over the past three months have proven. Yet you did none of those things for Ilena. You left that girl to her fate. I want to know why you abandoned that most basic of moral duties."

"He threatened me." Amy says, more as a defensive mechanism than any real argument. Because she really doesn't have much to say, not about this. She did the wrong thing. They both know she did. They both know this, in part, is penance for her sins. But Eira doesn’t have to rub it in like this.

"I am aware. I am also aware of the ways you tend to respond to explicit threats, especially the ones that work on you versus the ones that don't. To put it bluntly, you don't much care for direct threats when faced with moral injustice. You put yourself between a Faith and Vivienne when you didn't even know it was Faith in the first place and you ignored the obvious threat of severe punishment so you could help liberate your friends. Similarly, you believed Ilena's treatment an injustice, and I know that no amount of threats would stop you from acting on that information. Something else did."

Amy just looks up at Eira for guidance. She clearly has an answer in mind. Amy, too, has an answer in mind, one she doesn't want to formulate simply due to the fact that it makes her sound like a terrible, terrible person.

Neither of them talk for a few minutes. Slowly, she realises she's not going to get out of admitting this. It's probably for the best— she'd have to confront those demons one day or another.

"I needed his support, okay?" Amy whispers. "I was ambitious and stupid and I thought that he'd be better to have as a terrifying friend than an enemy. Well, not a friend— an ally."

"I'm sure Ilena would be delighted to hear that the one person who showed her any kindness that night ended up accepting her treatment as a matter-of-fact and was duly elected the Member of Parliament for Weston-super-Mare, to fulfill her duties as a loyal and most compromised backbencher suffering out her days in deep dysphoria and political irrelevance. That sounds much better than this very same woman helping save her from the clutches of the aristocracy and giving up on politics in favour of a much more wholesome career performing musicals in the West End, free of such suffering and the unrealistic expectations of her father."

"I know I fucked up, okay? You don't have to remind me." She sneers.

"Oh, Amy, but we do— because Ilena is merely an example of just how far you would go to sell out your own community for your personal advancement. May I remind you about your transphobic legislation? About your online activity? The posts you made on 4chan, the tweets you sent to people? You, Amy Finch, proved yourself deeply selfish and I would like for you to make amends for that in the future. We’ll excise that instinct of yours that is happy to look away, run to your hotel room and read those terrible stories rather than figuring out ways to help people who need your help so badly as Ilena did.”

She glares at Eira, feeling deeply insulted at this point. "As if that's got anything to do with this. If you want to say I'm getting ironic punishment, just fucking say so."

“Ironic punishment?” Eira asks, innocently. “All we’re asking from you is to make amends in one way or another.”

“You know what I mean.” Amy glares at her.

“Amy, I really don’t. Do you think the idea of volunteering to help trans women is so offensive an idea that it counts as punishment?”

“Well no,” She quickly clarifies. Obviously trans women who are so weak as to lose their fight with dysphoria need help, for they’re dealing with terrible mental illness. “But—”

“So you are willing to volunteer to help trans girls in the future.” Eira says with a grin, happy to have expertly trapped Amy yet again.

“Yes, I wouldn’t mind, but that’s not the point. We both know I was referring to the whole, sex slavery thing.” She can’t believe she has to refer to it explicitly.

“Amy, are you— You’re still on that nonsense?” Eira shakes her head, picks up two intimidatingly thick binders and promptly drops them on the desk with a loud thud. "I invite you to look through these files and walk away with the impression that Ms. Lambert is in any way involved with sexual slavery."

Amy does, if only to accept the distraction Eira so generously offered her just now. The first binder is filled with information about her former roommate, Nicolas Camden, whose party Amy had visited the day she saw Ilena getting sexually assaulted. It included a lot of information on him, some of which Amy knew and some of which Amy should have expected — he's gay, apparently — and some of which is entirely new to her— active involvement in the group chat that accused her of sexual misconduct. 

There's ample discussion about signs of possibly being cis-by-default or at least responding well to forced feminisation, as well some broader commentary on him as a person. At least one participant, a woman called Tabby, took the liberty of describing him as a 'fucking Tory cunt'. He wouldn’t be included in the upcoming 2019 intake, however, if only because they already had narrowed the list down to about ten candidates. 

The second file seemed to be about Cecil, including generally similar themes of alleged misdeeds: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, topped off with a list of actually-proven sexual misconduct and at least one attempted kidnapping— with various sponsors making fun of his incompetence in the comments. There wasn't a lot of discussion about him, though, with the conclusion to not involve him in the 2019 intake rather quickly drawn upon the realisation that he wanted to bring back the ‘Old Dorley’. Instead, his status was simply marked as E.

"Do I want to know what that means?" Amy asks, wanting to keep the distraction up for just a little bit longer.

"E for Elle." Eira grins. "Not to be included in any intake ever— he’ll be dealt with in other ways. Possibly lethal ones.”

She's just not going to comment on that.

"Now, I just want you to consider the fact that they were willing to let Elle deal with Cecil as she may for his sexual crimes, the fact that you've not been exposed to any unwanted sexual advances since you were here, the fact that Kelynen refused to use the shock bracelet when she figured out just how masochistic you are and, finally, the fact that you stand alone in this belief of yours that this is some sexual slavery ring despite repeatedly having been told this belief is bunk. It really seems to just be wishful thinking now, doesn't it?"

"Somehow I don't believe that you are just doing this out of the goodness of your heart, Eira. There has to be some ulterior motive.”"

"Oh, Amy, of course not— I do this because I'm terribly amused by you three, each in your own way. You, Amy, are endlessly entertaining despite your best efforts not to be. I could spend hours just watching you make silly faces as you think through my questions. Sometimes I think about how bad you would be at poker, sometimes I wonder what's going on in that silly little head of yours, and sometimes I try to guess what the next emotion will be as your inner monologue works its way through these issues. But that is as far as my less than perfect motivation for doing this goes: most of this is about taking curdled, self-harming trans women and turning them into  the happy young ladies they were always meant to be, as Maria did for me eight years ago."

"I don't know if I can believe that." Amy mumbles. "It's too good to be true."

"You might be the first girl to look at kidnapping, starvation, solitary isolation, tasers, shock bracelets, forced feminisation and your general time talking to me and decide that it's too good to be true." Eira teases. “Which, again, leads me to believe it’s pure wishful thinking on your end.”

“You can’t pretend you’d do all of this without some goal beyond forcing people struggling with gender dysphoria to transition.” She stares Eira in the eyes, really feeling the need to stand her ground now. “Like I said, there has to be an ulterior motive, and you can just admit there is.”

"Does there? Is that the old Amy talking, the one who threw a poor girl under the bus for her ambitions?” Eira glares back at her, pinning her down with her eyes. “Or is that the Amy we know talking, the one willing to go to bat for her friends and take on their suffering simply out of the goodness of her heart? The one who already knows better but can’t admit it to herself?"

"Fuck off." Amy responds, very articulately.

"Because I know you know that we might indeed do this out of the goodness of our hearts. Kelynen clearly does— you trust her instinctively. You don’t think she can do wrong. You believe Vivienne only wants the best for Faith. You don't know for sure about Rose, but don't see her as a threat for anything more serious than teasing."

"What about you, then?” Amy asks, half-accusatory and half out of genuine curiosity.

"You've cried in my arms at least three times, Amy. Sure, I'm intimidating, but that just makes you feel like you can trust me as a point of absolute safety. If I'm not the one hurting you, no one will— and you know I would do everything to avoid having to hurt you.”

Amy rolls her eyes at that. She knows she's just being obstinate for the sake of it right now, but she also doesn't quite want to admit that they probably mean well quite yet. It's hard to argue otherwise — not least because Eira has always been incredibly persuasive — but giving feels wrong, somehow. Like she's giving up much more than a stupid fantasy.

Accepting the sponsors mean well means accepting that this is something that can be reasonably construed as being good for Amy, which it definitely isn't. Sure, she has random pangs of gender euphoria now, but she'd still rather be out there as a wealthy young man. She would love to do so many of the things that being at the manor inherently denies her. Having an actually important job out there in the world rather than being the worst maid of seven in a random castle in Wales. She could be seeing the world, making friends, and finally getting around to that dream of getting an apartment in London with Faith.

Instead, she’s here, all alone. Depressed. Defeated. Broken. Sure, she has Faith, she has Jenny, but not in the way she’d wanted to have them. Nor does she have her mum, who she’s really started to miss recently. 

Amy wishes she’d followed Mum’s implicit suggestions and permission to transition— she wouldn’t have been here. She could have been happy.

Eira shushes her and sits Amy down on her lap, then holds her close, picking away the tears from her cheeks. "It's okay— you're going to be okay. You're going to be happy. All you need to do is trust us, okay? Just trust that we'll get you there. You, Faith, and Jenny, all together. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try." Amy mumbles. Of course Eira can read her mind. 

Or maybe she’s just that obvious.

"I know you will— but I need you to try your best. It’ll make what comes next so much easier. But that means you need to trust us absolutely."

Left with no words to speak, all she can do is nod affirmatively.

She'll try her best. She'll trust Eira absolutely.