After an hour I was feeling much more grateful for the grace Foster had given me, but watching my fellow squires being tortured alive gave me little joy. I knew I would have to join them as soon as I was able, and watching what lay in wait for me was concerning, to say the least. 

What was especially concerning was the girl I called Beet Barbie. She had been struggling badly at the end of her first lap, and by the time she came close to finishing her second she was stumbling from side to side. She was only twenty metres short when she collapsed, her face crashing clumsily into the ground. But I couldn’t laugh as Sergeant Foster walked over to her, like a patient hunter preparing to deliver the final blow. It didn’t take long for his voice to start echoing over the field, hurling abuse and obscenities as quickly and loudly as possible. I waited for her to get up and argue- but nothing happened. She lay face down in the dirt in a fashion that sent a jolt of fear down my spine, and before I knew it I was up and running, despite my sore legs. 

“Get up, you useless sack of shit!” bellowed Foster, seemingly unaware that something was wrong. “You think you can lie down and take a nap whenever you want?! Piss baby!”

Reaching Marianne’s side, I grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently- but there was no response. “Beet Barbie? Beet Barbi- Marianne?!”

“What, are you volunteering to run her laps for her, Richter?!” 

“Sir, I think she’s unconscious,” I said as I turned her over. Fortunately she was still breathing, but her face was an uncomfortable mix of red and white blotches. 

“Huh? Fuckin’ hell, all you squires are weak as piss! At least you have something to do, Richter - take her to the doc.”

I nodded hesitantly - unsure if I could carry her at all - but I wasn’t going to argue. Scooping her up into my arms, I was relieved to find that she was incredibly light, enough for me to princess-carry her to the medical office. 

“...huh?” groaned Marianne, awakening as I carried her off the field. “Put me down… I need… I need to finish-”

“Nope,” I said sternly. “No way am I letting you back out there.”

“Let go… let go!” she mumbled as she began to struggle in my arms. “I have to finish, I have to!”

“Shut up and eat this,” I grumbled as I shoved into her mouth a piece of hard tack I had been saving from lunch. “This is what happens when you don’t eat enough, okay? I feel like I’m carrying a skeleton.”

But the girl continued to struggle, weakly pushing away my offer. “I’m not hungry-”

“Suuuuure you’re not. You’re just dizzy and you feel sick to your stomach. That’s ‘cause you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast at your fancy mansion.” 

Marianne shook her head again. “Didn’t have breakfast…”

“Didn’t have breakfast?!” I looked at her, shocked. “You haven’t eaten anything at all today?! And you tried to run three kilometres on an empty stomach? Eat that tack right now, or I swear I’ll drop you.”

Begrudgingly she began to peck on the tough bread. It wasn’t great in terms of nutrients,  but it was all I had. “Easy… easy for you to say,” she mumbled as she nibbled. “I’m sure you enjoyed watching us suffer from your special spot in the Grandstands.The special privilege of ‘winning’ the tournament must be great,” she said with as much of a sneer as she could muster. 

I rolled my eyes at this and sneered back. “Yeah, sure. ‘Special privilege.’”

We arrived at the clinic before she could conjure up another snide remark. The doctor merely sighed and shook his head when he saw me for a second time that day; I could tell he was forming An Opinion about me. But before he could say anything I carried the girl over to a bed and carefully laid her down. I straightened up, planning to leave as quickly as possible, only for a wave of dizziness to wash over me. The doctor caught me as I staggered, an angry frown on his face. 

“I thought I told you to not exercise? What on earth are you doing, carrying patients around in your condition?”

“You- you said light exercise was f-fine!” I mumbled as he pushed me onto the bed next to Marianne. 

“Light! Light exercise was fine! Like a walk! Not carrying people around!”

“Or a three lap run around the parade ground?” I asked.

“No! Definitely not! Take off your dress; I need to check your stitches again.”

I reluctantly began to peel off my dress as he turned his attention to Marianne, poking and prodding her with a thermometre. 

“Hmm… looks like dehydration and heat stroke. Make sure you drink plenty of water-”

He cut off as Marianne gasped loudly; I spun around to see her staring at me with a look of horror. 

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Your back…” she whispered. 

“My back?” I reached back to feel hot liquid, and my fingers came away bloody. “Great… another dress ruined,” I sighed. “Still jealous of my ‘special privilege?’”

Marianne didn’t respond, her eyes still glued to my back in shock. The doctor sighed. 

“Just what I was afraid of. I’m going to have to redo all of those stitches. Those’ll scar much worse now. Say goodbye to backless dresses.”

I nodded mutely. It didn’t bother me; at least, not at that time. Despite my previous life experience, I was still a young and hotheaded girl, and ‘the rest of my life’ was a far off and distant concept. 

The doctor sighed and returned to his work, prescribing a cool wet cloth for Marianne and a set of new stitches for me. After treatment, he ordered us both to stay in the clinic overnight, then stormed out to “have a word with Cassandra.”

Marianne stayed surprisingly quiet throughout the rest of the day, even ignoring my poor attempts to make casual conversation. She was like a philosophical mannequin, seemingly lost in thought as she mechanically ate supper and readied herself for bed. I suspected she was deliberately ignoring me - likely to save her pride, or something like that. At least, that’s what I thought right up until the nurses put out the oil lamps and bade us goodnight. The gentle silence of the night settled over the two of us, broken only by the distant sounds of the garrison around us. I closed my eyes, trying to sleep when-

“I’m sorry…”

“Hmm?” I grunted in response to Marianne’s quiet whisper. 

“Are… are you asleep?”

“Not yet.”

The silence returned for a moment, and with it a heavy tension. I could hear her shifting in her bed, something wriggling within her that she needed to say. 

“I… I said I apologize. I… I didn’t realize you were so seriously wounded and I thought- I thought you were taking advantage of a privilege you hadn’t earned.”

I shrugged, and then realizing she couldn’t see me in the dark said aloud, “It’s okay. In a way, I’ve been taking advantage of things I haven’t earned from the start.”

She snorted. “So you admit the duel with Decathy was unjustified?”

“Hmmm… yeah. But I didn’t have a choice. Like you don’t have a choice either.”

I heard a hiss as Marriane sucked in air between her teeth. Another moment of silence followed before she asked, “How did you know?”

I rolled onto my side, turning to face where I knew she was. “You wanted to keep running, earlier today. You wanted to keep running even though it would kill you… because you were afraid of what would happen if you were expelled. I recognized that kind of desperation… because it lives in me too.”

A much longer silence followed, so long that I began to suspect she had fallen asleep. Then, just as my eyes began to close-

“You know… I may have misjudged you, Carrot-top.”

I gave a weak laugh in response. “And I you, Beet Barbie.”

“...what is ‘barbie?’”

“Ah… um… it's like another word for a pretty doll.” 

“A… pretty doll…?”

“Yeah… cause, um, you look like a doll.”

“A pretty doll…”

“Just go to sleep, okay?!”

Niame

*Disappears for another six months*