They sat quietly for a while. The candlelight on the desk flickered. Somewhere in the wall, a board groaned and went still again. Scarlett let her eyes rest on Rosa and simply…looked. The shawl wrapped tight around her, the tired downturn of her mouth, the way she kept worrying one corner of the fabric between her fingers. It was a fragility Scarlett rarely saw in her. Even less so in moments like this, when they weren't discussing Rosa's own troubles.

"Will you fall over and die if you talk about it?" Rosa finally asked. "Will I?"

"…No," Scarlett said.

"Then what's holding you back?"

"There are many things."

"Name them. Please."

Scarlett didn't. The words lined up in her mind, but they refused to march. She lowered her gaze to her hands instead, where the Hartford ring caught the light. When she spoke, it was almost more to herself.

"Arlene was…easy to confide in," she said slowly, each word deliberate. "And even then, that concession was…trying."

Like dragging a thorn through cloth.

"Are you worried about what it'll do to you," Rosa pressed, "or what it'll do to me?"

Scarlett still didn't answer.

"If it's me, toss the worries," the woman said. "I'll roll with it. Even if you told me you stuffed Anguish inside my ribcage and staged my life to be the little tragedy it was, I'd still—" she waved a hand "—well, I'd still be here."

Scarlett looked up. "I would not have done that."

"I know." Rosa's smile was thin but real. "I'm just trying to lift a stone off the cart for you, Scarlett. Trying to make it easier."

Scarlett let the room breathe around that. The old refusal rose in her like a taut muscle — it was something practised, automatic. It told her to stay closed, hold the line. By now, it was hard to tell if that belonged to Scarlett Hartford or to the woman she'd been before. She'd felt it with Arlene, too, though back then, it had been the system's traits squeezing tight. Yet even then, there had been cracks she could pry open with will.

This somehow felt narrower. Meaner.

And it surprised her. Genuinely. She'd imagined this conversation with Rosa a hundred times — the order of sentences, where Rosa would interrupt with a joke, where to pause. She'd believed preparation would dull the edge if the time ever came, even if she wasn't entirely sure it would.

But the edge was sharper than ever. Which said one thing. And the fact that she'd prepared at all said another.

Rosa watched her in that special way of hers. Always some cocktail of trust and gratitude. But now…spiked with uncertainty and anxious expectation.

Scarlett could see the woman almost start to slip into one of her old habits, ready to play a part for someone else's sake. But Rosa caught herself. She exhaled, tugged at the fringe of her shawl once, then raised her palm outward.

"Alright," she said. "How about this. A wager. I'll guess whatever secret you've got corked up and coiling under your ribs. I show my hand. If I'm right, you don't have to hide behind phrasing. If I'm wrong, you can tell me the sky's chartreuse and I'll nod along serenely like a well-trained birdie."

Before Scarlett could respond, Rosa rolled her shoulders, braced, chin tilting with a stagey poise. "Okay. Theory time. No heckling from the audience."

"Exhibit the First," she began, counting on her fingers. "You're, in reality, some age-old something—godling, relic-that-grew-a-soul, demi-what-have-you—wearing a very convincing person like a dress. The pauses, the precision, the way you sometimes stand like you were measured into yourself — those are the seams. Pros: explains the composure, the terrifying circle of acquaintances, and that whole 'Anomalous One' business. Cons: you bleed, your temper is alarmingly organic, and—I'm really sorry for saying this—I can't possibly see you as my elder."

Scarlett raised a brow.

"Exhibit the Second." Rosa's index finger joined the first. "You're a grouchy, cantankerous Scarlett from the future. You watched the world tumble into a proper mess and said, all serious, 'this will not do', and time, being a soft-hearted pushover, let you try it all over again. Pros: explains the literal future-awareness. Cons: you've already admitted you know the future, so why not the rest? And again, sorry, but there's no way you're older than me. I reject the very notion."

A third finger lifted. "Exhibit the Third: you struck a bargain with something enormous and scary and older than the gods and Viles—Fate, a mask of it, a cat in a hat—and the pact stuck to you in places. You can't speak about it to the living or somebody dies, or their Fate gets rewritten so they die, or your patron sulks and rearranges mountains." She scrunched her nose. "Pros: very dramatic, and you're nothing if not dramatic. Would also excuse some of your secrecy and the way you sprint up power like stairs. Cons: you don't take kindly to being pointed like a spear. Orders sit notoriously poorly on you."

The ring finger rose. "Exhibit the Fourth: you died. Not poetically, but properly. And something stitched you back together with leftover threads like those Memories. Pros: explains the seams, the weird disconnect you sometimes have. Cons: I'm not entirely convinced you know how to die."

She paused, looking at her hand as if debating the next. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier.

"Exhibit the Fifth." She raised her final finger, slow. "You're two people, braided together. One from here, one from…somewhere else. Zovivios, the far coast, one of the places I saw in that strange realm — I don't know. The braid holds most days, but I see strands when you talk about your sister, or when you look at that ring and your mouth sets like you're trying to remember what grief is, and which part belongs to which woman." She hesitated a beat. "…Pros: it fits the shape of you. The way you can be kinder than you think and crueler than you mean. Cons: …I don't know."

Her mouth tipped, not quite a smile. "Sub-exhibits are available by request: you're my elder self fallen backwards to stop me from making regrettable eyebrow choices; you're a very judgemental book—a thesaurus on a plinth with gilt edges and a foreword by some high-spun noblewoman—that learned to walk; or you're secretly three cats in a very expensive coat. These last ones mostly for morale and because I didn't have anything to do one night and needed ideas for a new tune."

Rosa looked down at her own hand and flexed her fingers, as if the act of naming had cost her something, then looked up again. "Here's the heart of it. I'm not saying any of these are true. Maybe a sliver is. Maybe none. Whatever the case, I'm not putting it back on the shelf. I'll keep it. I've been keeping it, in my head, in…pieces." She gestured lightly, a small sweep that took in the room, the desk, the ring on Scarlett's finger. "I'm trying to make this less heavy for you. If I'm wrong, you get to laugh at the cats-in-a-coat and correct the footnotes. If I'm close, you don't have to wrench the door off its hinges to tell me I'm in the room already."

For a moment, everything seemed to hold still. The candlelight, the air, even the refusal in Scarlett, caught on the edge of that last line. It was so very Rosa — the humour, the unavoidable flourish of nonsense to salt her truth, and the way she couldn't help pushing and cushioning at once.

It slipped out of Scarlett before she could stop it.

She laughed.

Not the small, controlled sound she usually permitted herself at times, but an unguarded, bright laugh that found its own echo against books and wood and glass. It felt…wrong for the office and stranger still in her mouth. She pressed her fingertips lightly to the desk as if to steady the unfamiliar shape of it, and the laugh thinned to breath.

Rosa blinked, relief and something like concern crossing her face in the same instant. She let out a soft chuckle that couldn't quite disguise the emotion beneath it. "Blazes," she said. "I don't think I've heard you laugh like that."

Scarlett met her eyes. The resistance that had held like iron a minute ago was still there. Still hardening. But for just a moment, a strand of it had loosened. A moment she could push through.

"Scarlett Hartford would never have laughed like that," she said. "That was…Amy."

Rosa went very still. "…Amy?"

"My name. Before this. Before I was here." Scarlett set her palms flat on the desk, steadying the rushing in her chest. "You wanted the cards. There they are."

Rosa just stared.

Scarlett studied her. "…Would you truly have such difficulty accepting that I might be your elder?"

If she recalled, Rosa was indeed a year or so older than Scarlett Hartford, which also made her older than Amy Bernal — though that wasn't always apparent in manner.

Rosa didn't laugh. Didn't smile. She only looked at her the way one might look at a statue the first time it moved.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The humour in Scarlett cooled, quieting. She considered Rosa's 'exhibits', turning them over. It made sense, of course, that Rosa would have her theories. After all they'd seen, after all their time together, how could she not? Still…Scarlett hadn't expected so many of those guesses to brush against the truth from different angles.

She was impressed, honestly. And a little afraid. Something in her felt gently, but cleanly, exposed.

"Scarlett…" Rosa finally said.

"Yes?"

Rosa met her eyes. Scarlett could read it there — not shock, but the sediment it left behind. Was Rosa unsettled that she'd been partly right? That Scarlett had admitted it? That the mask had slipped and there was, in fact, something beneath?

"Thank you," the woman said.

Scarlett stilled.

The more collected Rosa was back. The one who listened, who tucked her words carefully. There was something else there, too. Relief, pride, maybe both, caught at the corner of her expression.

"As for the age thing," she added, a breath of humour threading back through, "I'll allow provisional seniority if you promise not to lord it over me more than, say, twice a season."

"…I do not need seniority to lord over you."

"Suppose that's true enough." Rosa's eyes warmed, but then turned more serious again. "What was I right about? What did I miss?"

Scarlett considered her, then inclined her head. "Several of your theories had a grain of truth. But the fifth was the closest."

"The braid," Rosa said softly.

"Yes, though that is not the term I would have used." Scarlett drew a breath. "I am not the original Scarlett Hartford. I…share what was hers. This life. This body. Her impulses, attachments, hatreds… They are mine whether I will it or not. Or, at the very least, they were." Her gaze dropped briefly to the ring on her finger. "The first theory is wrong in its entirety. I am no godling, relic, nor demi-anything. The fourth is also incorrect, as far as I am aware. The second contains the first truths, though it is largely mistaken. I am not a future version of this woman. However, I have lived through the future in a sense. The third—" she paused. "—is not wholly false, but it is not the core of me. There is a bargain of sorts, but not one I chose, and it is not what has kept me silent."

Rosa didn't interrupt. She only watched her, and when Scarlett looked up, Rosa simply nodded for her to continue.

"My name…my original name is Amy," she said. "Amy Bernal. I came from…elsewhere. Not a Memory. Not a place you could chart on any map. It may have been more akin to what you saw in those visions. An entirely separate world." Her mouth pressed thin. "I suspect that when you hear the truth of my origins and my feats, you will be much less impressed with me."

The bard raised both eyebrows. "Shouldn't I be the judge of that?"

"Perhaps." Scarlett was quiet for a moment, weighing her words. She'd already thrown out anything she might have rehearsed. It didn't feel right. "…When I woke in this world, I had little understanding of what had happened. I simply opened my eyes in Scarlett Hartford's life, brought here by…something. I have tried to be exacting with words when it mattered, but there is no clean colloquial vocabulary for this. Prisoner, guest, inheritor — none of it is quite right. I am what remains of one woman, inside what was left of another."

The candle on the desk hissed once, then steadied. Scarlett watched it for a moment, letting the flame burn brighter.

"I told Arlene," she said. "All of it, as you guessed. At the time, I was wrestling with who I was. Amy or Scarlett. Which of them was feeling what. Whether I could be good, or if that question even applied to me. Some of those doubts have been answered since. Others have only grown murkier."

"How…how is 'Scarlett' different from 'Amy'?" Rosa asked.

Scarlett gave a small, sour laugh. "That is one of the questions I struggle to decide my own answer to. But I suspect that is not what you meant. You are asking about the difference between the original Scarlett and the original Amy." She shook her head slightly. "The answer is that they were very, very different in most ways. You may assume any of the worst parts of me now come from Scarlett Hartford, and that every rumour you have heard of her past is true. She was an unlikeable, ruthless individual, living by her own uncharitable code."

Her voice lowered. "As for Amy Bernal…she was ordinary. Unremarkable. There is not much more to be said, other than that she understood little of her own heart because she saw no need to."

"I'm finding it hard to picture any version of you as just ordinary," Rosa remarked with a light grin.

"And that is the illusion you are living under," Scarlett replied. "The illusion this entire world is part of."

Scarlett locked gazes with her.

"Remember…" she said. "This is what you asked for."

She lifted her hand, and from the candle on the desk, a stream of flame uncoiled, snaking across the room until it flowered before Rosa, creating a window filled with neat rows of burning numbers and text.

Rosa frowned slightly. "Scarlett Hartford… 'Skills'? 'Traits'? 'Dignified August'…?"

"What you see is a system window. My system window. Just as it appeared when I first awoke in this world. In this body."

Rosa blinked, confusion flickering across her face as she looked from the fiery script to Scarlett.

"The concept itself will be foreign to you. It is unique to my world. We did not have magic, but our means, our creations, our reach, were far beyond what you would see in the empire. In some ways, it was comparable to the Zuver. In others, greater. But the scope of that civilisation is not important. What matters is what I did with it."

She moved her hand, and more flames surged from the candle, expanding rapidly before collapsing into a broader shape at the centre of the room.

After her pyrokinesis had been upgraded to [Argent Pyrokinesis] following her encounter with Fate's fracture, Scarlett had spent a considerable amount of time in that place — testing the new skill, deciphering the scroll Itris had given her, and honing every thread of control. Her command of fire had grown to a degree she could never have imagined a few months back.

Now the fire coalesced into a vista not unlike the one Fate's fracture had once revealed: her old room, rendered in pale orange flames. The outlines of the bed, the scattered clothes, the shelving, all picked out in burning contours. At the desk sat the silhouette of her former self, hunched before the twin glow of two flickering monitors.

"We had something called video games," she said, shaping the scene. "Think of them as cousins to your ballads, or a theatre's play. Stories, but interactive. They carried whole worlds—narratives you could walk through—repeatable, revisitable, experienced by anyone in their own home."

"Oh." The short sound slipped from Rosa. The sort of sound people made when puzzle pieces clicked.

Scarlett turned to her. "You understand where this is leading."

Rosa's mouth pulled into something that wasn't quite a grimace, but something crooked. Uneasy. "I do. This is one of those, isn't it? We're inside one of your stories."

"Within the same narrative, yes." Scarlett nodded. "But not literally inside. It is a reconstruction of that story. For what ultimate reason, I still do not fully know. However, I have at last come to understand the forces involved in making it come to being."

"Was Fate one of those?"

"It was. Fate grafted the narrative of the game onto this world."

Rosa was silent for several seconds, thinking. "…And no story's complete without its heroes and villains, I suppose. I think I'm starting to understand why Fynn and I mattered in Beld Thylelion. Why you sought us out in particular."

"Indeed. You were characters in that story, Rosa. Recruitable companions. Written pieces meant to make the player's journey more compelling. In all, there were ten alternatives, and those were the reflections we saw in Beld Thylelion."

Rosa watched the burning scene in the room's centre.

Scarlett flicked her fingers, summoning another ribbon of flame. It shaped itself into a second window before Rosa: a quest-completion pane. "The power that brought me here sought to mimic the game mechanics from my world. So it assigned me quests. Tasks rewarded upon completion. Recruiting you was among them."

With another flick, a third fiery window appeared, this one a copy of Scarlett's current status window. "This is how I reached the point where I am today. The strength. A mixture of providence and structure. An ordinary woman handed knowledge of the future, granted unnatural acceleration towards power, and forced into a frame of traits to blend into this setting."

Her tone slipped, self-derision seeping through as she named aloud some of the truths she had, until now, only acknowledged in sleepless hours of meaningless paperwork and silence. Something about revealing this to Rosa made her feel she had to lay it bare like this, even if it only made her feel more exposed.

Rosa said nothing. Her eyes moved between the windows and the little vista of flames, reading the contours as if they might shift and reveal more. Scarlett, in turn, studied the set of her jaw, the faint creases at her eyes, trying to read the woman.

"Tell me," she said eventually, "are you disappointed? That most of what you admire—most of what you see in me—is forced? That the composure, the 'Dignified August', the knowledge, the power — all of it is pushed on me by another's hand, rather than earned or deserved?"

Rosa's head turned to her.

"No," she answered instantly.

Scarlett blinked. "So simply?"

Rosa motioned towards the burning panes. "That window could spit out 'Magnanimous, Terrible, and Impossibly Stubborn' all night, and I'd still have to deal with the woman in front of me." She gestured at the fiery outline of the old room. "If a tavern owner pays the band to play one tune, you can still choose to sing harmony instead of the melody. Maybe the tavern forced the song, but you chose the note. You chose where to stand, and who to stand with." Her hand fell. "You chose me. And Fynn."

"I did not choose you. My meeting you that day was the act of a third actor interfering with Fate."

"I'm not talking about that," Rosa said, voice firm now. "I'm talking about the choices you've made. Just paying us to work with you isn't the same as choosing us. Choice comes with time, with words, with knowing someone. Understanding how broken I was in the head and the heart and still keeping me by your side. Still saving me." The bard's violet eyes fixed on hers. "Can I say it doesn't feel strange, hearing you're not just the Scarlett I thought I knew? No. But that doesn't mean I don't know you. You're more than your words, your temper, even your actions alone. And if I'm honest, you don't need me to tell you that for it to be true."

The words settled. Something inside Scarlett unclenched, though she let no more than a breath show it.

Rosa looked back to the windows. "Do I find your 'Dignified August' funny and endearing? Absolutely." There was a ghost of a grin. "Would I miss it if it were gone? Also yes. But I didn't stay because of labels I thought fit you. I stayed because you kept being whoever you are even when it cost you. Forced varnish isn't the wood."

Silence took a seat with them. Scarlett held it for a few moments, then closed her hand. The conjured panes and burning room guttered away, fire unspooling back into the candle's small wick. The office seemed to shrink with the retreat of the light.

Rosa stayed quiet, watching the last glow fade. When she spoke, it was gentler. "For reference, what do you want me to call you? Amy…or Scarlett?"

Scarlett's first answer died on her tongue.

"…I don't know," she said instead.

Rosa's eyes widened slightly, then she nodded. "Maybe we can figure that out together." She shrugged one shoulder beneath the shawl. "We can try it on in different rooms, so to speak. See what fits where. What feels like you. Amy in here, when it's just us and bad candlelight. Scarlett out there, when there are people who need her to be a storm. And if it changes, it changes."

Scarlett considered that. The clean practicality of it. At this point, she really had no idea what she preferred.

"That may be acceptable," she said.

"Generous of you." Rosa smiled.

The silence returned.

"There's a lot more to be said though, isn't there?" Rosa motioned. "About Fate. About what brought you here, and all of that."

"There is."

"I'd still like to hear it, if you'll tell me. It might help me sort through…what you said about my part in things. Not that I'm panicking, mind you. I told you I'd roll with it, and I'm nothing if not a lady of my word." She leaned back, eyes narrowing in thought, then brightening. "But before we plunge into all the destiny and doom, I want to hear more about your world. Quick question: those square glowing things you were sitting in front of—that was supposed to be you, I guess—what were they?"

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