Chapter Eight

The high alert had seemingly been for nothing, Lila had been perfectly sweet and nice for the following week or so, and Faith took back over the routine, leaving Sabrina free to do other things, like filling out another round of applications. Faith agreed to turn them in for her once more. The days had gone normally, with their own strange cadence of bizarre bedtimes, open affection, and random visits to one another's beds for the purposes of cuddling to sleep.

It was honestly the happiest she had ever felt.

Sabrina woke with a smile, slipping from the bed and heading for the shower. Faith was going to be at Angie's again the following day, Sabrina had decided to be as lazy as possible in the meantime. She reached for the doorknob to her room, unconsciously resting her left hand on the dresser... and was surprised to hear a loud "clunk".

There was a bracelet on her left wrist. Shiny metal, simple. She had never seen it before in her life, but there it was. Reaching down, she tried to pull it off her wrist but it was too small to go over her hand. She turned it around and around, but there was no clasp. There was a hinge on one side of the smooth steel oval... and on the other was a tiny, recessed bolt. With a frown, she stepped out of her room and looked around for the prankster responsible.

Lila was already on the couch, playing away.

"Hey Lila. Do you know what this is all about?" Sabrina held her hand up, showing the bracelet.

"Oh yeah." Lila smiled and put the controller down, leaving the game paused. Faith stood in the doorway of the kitchen. "I got that for you, because you're so slippery."

"What?"

"I got you a present! You should say 'thank you'."

"Thanks for the thought, but how do I take it off?"

"You don't." Lila beamed, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on her hands. "Isn't it great?"

"What do you mean you don't. Lila, how do I take the bracelet off?" She tugged at it again, trying to force the clasp open, but it may as well have been solid. "Who put this on me?"

"I did." Faith's smile was nothing short of smug.

"Why!?"

"Because," Lila snapped as she stood up and grabbed the bracelet, "I'm tired of you slipping away from me." She twisted and Sabrina's eyes went wide as she found herself being forced to the ground.

"Ow!" She couldn't twist, she couldn't escape. The bracelet gave Lila the perfect handhold. "Let go!"

"Say you're beneath me."

Sabrina's eyes narrowed as it became clear what this was all about. "I won't." She winced as Lila twisted again, forcing her face to the floor. Trying again to pull away, she only succeeded in bruising her wrist. "Ow! Okay, okay. I'm beneath you."

"There!" Lila let go, sounding sweet and gentle as she sat back down. "That wasn't so hard, was it? You start at the bottom, I'm not ready for you to be anywhere else. Now, grab a controller and let's play."

Sabrina sat up, rubbing her wrist. "Look, this is not okay. You locked this thing on me without asking and I want it off."

"We'll take it off when we're sure you're going to be good." Faith turned, heading back to the kitchen and talking over her shoulder as she went. "That won't take long, right?"

"You can't be serious. You have locked a bracelet on my wrist. You can't do this!"

Faith turned around, hands on her hips. "Our house, our rules. It doesn't hurt you, it's just to stop you from weaseling away when you're in trouble. It's not worth leaving over, right? Just a bracelet."

Sabrina sighed. "No, you're right. Just... promise me you'll take it off soon? It's really heavy."

"Like I said, I'm sure it'll be real soon. Because you're going to be good."

Showering with the bracelet was a pain, but even under the water she couldn't slip it off - though she tried. She thought about texting Jules and asking for advice, but it seemed silly. Jules would laugh at her over it, like it was some big funny prank. Lila seemed mostly playful when she said things about being "beneath her", but Faith seemed entirely too serious. But she was right. It wasn't worth throwing her new family away over. She decided to talk to Kinsley about it, she probably didn't know what was going on.

▲ ▲ ▲

"Of course I know about it." Kinsley reached over and grabbed the arm of Faith's chair, where Sabrina had sat down, and pulled her close. "We bought that bracelet for Faith originally."

"Wait, what?"

"Faith was a bit of a troublemaker. We needed a way to keep her hands out of the way sometimes - she wore one on each wrist. Are you hoping for the other one?"

"No!" Sabrina's eyes shot wide as she reared back in the chair. This wasn't how she had expected this conversation to go at all! She had expected Kinsley to demand that Faith take the bracelet off of her, but that was seeming less and less likely. It was still worth a shot, however. "I want it off. Please get Faith to give me the key."

"It doesn't work that way." Kinsley shrugged, her mouth curled in a sardonic smile. "You have to fight your own battles."

"What does that even mean!?"

"It means, you're on the bottom because you're on the bottom. You could have made Lila submit to you, you could force Faith to submit to you. If you can't, then you belong on the bottom."

"That's insane, you can't just treat people this way. This is wrong, Kinsley! Can't you see that it's wrong?"

"What's wrong about it?" Kinsley stood, towering over Sabrina and standing close to her, forcing her to look up. "Society says that being queer is wrong, should we listen to that? We watch out for each other, we take care of each other, but we have our own hierarchy within the Dollhouse. That's just the way it is."

"Then I'm leaving." Sabrina's heart was in her throat as she made the threat, hoping desperately that Kinsley wouldn't call her bluff. She had nowhere to go, she had essentially no connections outside of the house at this point.

Kinsley just sat back down, spinning her chair slowly until Sabrina was staring at the back of her shoulder. "Pack your stuff and go. You can keep the clothes we got for you. Good luck."

"I... " Tears welled up in Sabrina's eyes. Kinsley had called, and she was holding nothing. "I need to stay for a few more days, until I have another place lined up."

"You didn't have another place when you came here." Kinsley didn't even turn her head, eyes locked on the computer screens and her voice steely. "No, Bree. If you're out, you're out. You're leaving before dinner tonight. I'm sorry we couldn't help you after all."

"But I have nowhere else to go! I thought we were friends!"

Finally, she turned back around. There was pain in her eyes. Sabrina's lip quivered as a tear ran down her cheek.

"You had nowhere else to go when you came to us. We accepted you with open arms, we brought you into our queer family and we asked you to stay. You think I don't know that we're different? I do. Not everyone can handle us, but that doesn't mean we're going to compromise ourselves for you or anyone else. That's part of what it means to be a doll. We'll stick up for you no matter what, we'll stand by you come Hell or high water. But we'll expect you to do the same. Faith was on the bottom once. Now she's not. That's just the way it goes."

"So I'm on the bottom until someone else comes!? Who knows how long that could be, I can't take it!"

"Then fight. Do you really think Faith was on the bottom before you showed up at the door? Think about it. Between the two of them, who leads who?"

She did think about it. She pondered it for many long moments. It didn't seem, honestly, like either of the two of them was beneath the other. They teased each other, they taunted each other, they dared each other - Faith was gentle with Lila, but if the girl pushed, she stood up for herself... generally. Sometimes she'd just go along with whatever Lila wanted, sometimes she wouldn't.

"Neither of them?"

"Exactly. They're in a constant back-and-forth, sometimes it's Lila, sometimes it's Faith. Maybe sometimes it'll be you."

"I don't know if I have it in me?"

"Does it matter?" Kinsley leaned back, placing her fingers steepled on her chin. "You're leaving today, after all."

"I want to stay."

"Do you now." It wasn't a question. There was a steel to Kinsley's blue eyes, a hard edge to her voice. "Why should I let you?"

Fear rose in Sabrina. Fear that she had thrown it all away. "Because you're my friend? Because I need you?"

"Do you belong here?"

"Because I belong here." Sabrina said it with conviction.

"Kneel."

"What?"

Kinsley's eyes narrowed as she lowered her hands and leaned forward. "On your knees. Now."

Swallowing hard, Sabrina considered her options. This was the moment of truth. Go along with their weird leadership game or leave, possibly even that minute.

She slipped out of her chair and knelt on the floor, looking up at Kinsley with uncertainty in her eyes.

"Bree. If you want to stay, you have to tell me your place."

Sabrina's chest felt incredibly tight as she allowed the words to pass her lips. "On the bottom."

"Lean down and kiss my feet."

"What?" Sabrina's eyes widened, her mouth a circle of surprise.

"Lean down. And kiss my feet." The edge was back.

With a grimace, Sabrina leaned forward and pressed her lips to the top of one of Kinsley's bare feet, and then the other. She rose again, looking up.

"Good girl." The words didn't come with that warm tingle of pleasure this time, they came with a feeling of shame, a black snake coiled in the pit of her stomach. "Now go apologize to Faith and tell her that you tried to go around her."

Kinsley turned her chair around, leaving Sabrina staring at the leather of the back of the chair.

The conversation was over. But a new fear bloomed.

What was Faith going to do when she told her?

Nothing seemed certain.

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"So you tried to go around me, huh? You thought you could get out of a punishment that way?"

"I'm being punished for being double-jointed!? That's not my fault!" Sabrina stared up at Faith from her place on the floor, on her knees. Faith and Lila hadn't been around when she had come downstairs after talking to Kinsley.

She had had time to stew.

"You're being punished for always escaping punishment! We might as well call you Ms. Eel, you get away so easily." Faith reached down and grabbed the metal bracelet to drive the point home. Her hand landed on Sabrina's forearm at first and she pulled away instinctually, but Faith grabbed the steel ring all the same. She pulled, yanking the metal into Sabrina's wrist again, causing her to yelp and crawl behind Faith as quickly as she could. "See? That's much better."

"I don't like this, Faith... "

"All you have to do is be good, and we'll take it off."

"Yeah!" Lila smirked from her spot on the couch, munching a burrito that she and Faith had gotten from the drive-thru. She spoke around a mouth half-full of meat and cheese. "Jus' be good! Faith had to do it too."

"Lila!" Faith glared at her, and Lila wilted.

"What? You did... "

It didn't help Sabrina, however, who was still quite trapped by the unremovable bracelet. There was no way she could twist, turn, or adjust to escape this. She had a choice: fight back and really put herself into it, or give in.

She wasn't ready to fight.

"Okay, I'll be good. Please let go... "

"We brought you dinner." Faith pulled on the bracelet again, swinging Sabrina's wrist to and fro, purposefully reminding her of her predicament. "But now you have to eat it on the floor. Because you tried to go around me."

"Like a pet! You're like Mamoru now. Maybe we should call you Usagi!"

The implication stung. Sabrina winced, pulling her wrist close to her chest after Faith finally let go.

"Take Kinsley her food. Then come back down and sit on the floor in front of the couch and we'll give you yours. That's your spot for tonight."

"Okay... " Sabrina hung her head. If she was compliant, they'd take the bracelet off. It was that or leave, and she wasn't ready. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were. All she had to do was behave and then they would...

"No. Say, 'Yes, Faith'. And thank me for the food."

"Yes Faith," Sabrina averted her eyes, she could feel Faith's on her skin. "Thank you for the food."

She grabbed the smaller bag with the vegetarian food and half-ran for the stairs, her heart feeling tight.