Alice doesn’t think that any of her sisters struggle the same way that she does.
She’s the oldest of them by a year but she seems to have more problems with what she’s done. Besides Yelena, she’s been under chemical subjugation the longest and her memory is spotty. She doesn’t remember her late teens or her early twenties other than vague periods of foggy memories.
She has scars on her that she doesn’t remember getting. She runs her fingers over them and wonders what caused them. She knows what knife wounds, gunshot wounds, and cigarette burns look like. But some of these stump her and she doesn’t even know when she got them.
Yelena has been a very big help to her in regards to her memory. Yelena likes taking photographs so that Alice can recall good memories easily and if she thinks for even a moment that she’s forgetting then she can pull out a photo album and look through them.
Alice has terrible night terrors. Sometimes she doesn’t even know if they’re memories that her mind suppressed or something that her brain conjured up just to torture her. She’s so used to biting herself to keep herself quiet that she has a few scars littered on her arms. The thick leather arm guards that Yelena bought her help and sometimes when she sinks her teeth into leather instead of her skin does she realize that she’s not there anymore.
She doesn’t know if any of her sisters carry the same guilt that she does. Alice spirals at the smallest of things, so afraid of doing something wrong. She can hear the girls that she killed in the Red Room, whispering just over her shoulder that she’s messing something up, that she’ll be in so much trouble, to hide, keep quiet, stop-stop-stop!
Alice isn’t usually a runner, she’s always so afraid of getting into trouble, but one time it came to be too much and Alice bolted out the back door.
She didn’t stop running until she was heaving for air, her hands on her knees as she hunched over, and came face to face with flowers.
It was a field full of them. Bright and soft, gently swaying with the breeze that carried their sweet scent to Alice’s nose.
It makes Alice think of the children she’s killed, the little girls who still had innocence in them and would no doubt pick every flower in the field.
There, in a field of calm, Alice screams. She tells the ghosts to shut up and leave her alone, that she can’t think. She screams until her voice goes hoarse and she’s so lightheaded that she collapses back into the field of flowers.
Staring up at the clouds in the sky, Alice feels a wave of calm come over her as she takes a moment to be surrounded by the flowers and stare up at the soft fluffy clouds decorating the sky.
It’s quiet.
There in the field, she feels peace.
When she’s ready, she manages to find her way back home to Yelena’s arms.
She’s only three years younger than Yelena but she’s so maternal that Alice can’t help but think of her as ‘mom’.
The field becomes her safe place. When everything begins to get too much, Alice flees to the field and screams until she can’t anymore. She finds herself screaming to the ghosts but also screaming about her regrets. Nobody can hear her but the wind carries her guilt and regret away and leaves her feeling calm.
When Alice’s little sisters seem to be spiraling and falling apart like she is, Alice will offer to take them out and she will take them to the field.
She encourages them to scream. Her heart hurts when she listens to her little sisters scream into the sky until their voice goes hoarse and sometimes there are tears rolling down their cheeks.
Alice will guide them to lay down in the field and they will watch the clouds. Her very little sisters will sometimes curl into her. Mischa, who learned from her partner, teaches Alice how to make flower crowns.
Now when Alice takes her siblings out, she will teach them too. Often Yelena will clean up wilting flower petals off the floor of their bedrooms from the flower crown that they’ve hung over the bedpost.
But the field only silenced the ghosts lingering over Alice’s shoulders for so long. At first, Alice carried them around with her so that she didn’t forget what she had done. She worried that if she ever got to the point of killing without remorse or guilt then she was truly broken and insane. She tethered these ghosts to her in fear of forgetting that she was human.
But now that she’s free, these ghosts linger and she doesn’t know how to make them go away.
She told Yelena about them. She told Yelena that she doesn’t know how to make them stop and Yelena give her this sad smile with nothing but understanding in her eyes.
Alice didn’t realize that Yelena did a lot of research until she approaches her one day and presents her with articles that she found. Ultimately, Alice needed to find a way to forgive herself.
Alice didn’t know how to do that. She told Yelena so.
Yelena finds more articles and does more research, and she returns with more papers.
Alice finds herself with clean sheets of paper and a black ink pen, curled up in her bed and writing to the ghosts.
She doesn’t remember some of their names. But she writes a note to each and every one of them.
She tells them that she’s sorry. She’s sorry for the life she took. She’s sorry that she can’t remember exactly what she did. She’s sorry that she wasn’t in control of herself. She’s sorry that they met such a violent end.
She writes apology after apology and signs her name at the end.
There’s a large clearing in the woods just behind the house and Alice finds herself digging holes in the ground with Yelena. A row of thirteen small holes a foot deep.
Yelena pulls a lighter out of her vest and they burn one letter over each hole, letting the ashes collect in the dirt. Together they bury the ashes of the letters and make small crosses from sticks and twine.
Alice picks flowers from the field and she weaves together a flower crown to rest over each cross, placing the remaining flowers down over the graves.
She weeps. Yelena holds her.
She has no bodies. She has no names. But making a place for them to rest helps.
The whispers slowly start to stop. Once a week Alice will come out to the clearing and will replace the flowers and mourn.
One day, Alice notices that her shoulders don’t feel so heavy anymore.
She thinks maybe she learned to forgive herself.