I'd probably be locked up, or running the streets

Dawn shivered slightly when the met the eyes of the woman standing before her. Those eyes weren’t the uneasy, shaky eyes of Ella, they hid something fiercer and more determined.

“So…” She swallowed her uncertainty and her doubts, and **** the words past her lips. “So you’re… Cinder. Is that right?”

The tan girl pressed her lips into a tight scowl and narrowed her eyes. “You… do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She snapped.

Dawn winced. “…Yeah,” she admitted, taking an uneasy step backwards. The pressure coming off the other woman was overpowering. “And I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to press her as hard as I did… that was wrong of me.”

Amelia and Morgana both looked at Dawn in surprise.

“But you did mean to press her,” Cinder snapped, taking a step towards Dawn. “Do you have any idea what I do to people who hurt Ella!? People like you, who torment her with your words and fill her heart with fear and pain!?”

“You can hate me if you want,” Dawn snapped back, standing her ground this time. “I know that was possibly the worst way to handle the situation… but I can’t exactly afford to take things lightly and go slow.”

Cinder’s eyes widened slightly and she stopped in place. She looked at Dawn with renewed interest and suspicion.

“…Oh?”

“W-wait, Dawn… what… are you saying…?” Morgana was still a few steps behind the others. She looked between Cinder and Dawn in confusion. “Did you… did you push Ella this far on purpose?”

“I wanted to have a talk with Cinder,” Dawn said, not taking her eyes off the tan woman in front of her. “I didn’t like having to pressure Ella the way I did… I’ll acknowledge that was wrong of me. If she doesn’t ever want to speak to me again, I wouldn’t blame her.”

“You think I’d ever let you get close to her after this?” Cinder snarled. “Oh, that’s adorable…”

“Dawn…” Morgana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Dawn had been so kind and considerate back when she’d first met the cat girl. Morgana couldn’t believe that same woman would torment Ella the way she apparently had.

“I didn’t expect a reaction like that,” Dawn admitted, frowning slightly. “I misread the situation. But that’s because I had no idea Ella would be so resistant to letting me talk to you.”

“It’s not unthinkable,” Amelia said quietly. “For someone with DID, their alters can be a very sensitive subject.” Especially when the alter was someone as unstable as Cinder clearly was.

Cinder’s eye twitched. “So you **** me out… to have a chat? Well, I don’t talk to people who hurt Ella! I make them hurt right back!”

She stormed towards Dawn, but Amelia put herself between the two girls.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” she said, scowling at the taller brunette. “If you use **** here, it won’t go well for you. Haven’t you figured that out already?”

“Mierda…” Cinder spat. She clenched her fists but didn’t take another step forward, knowing that Amelia raised a valid point. She glared past the woman at Dawn, who shrank back slightly.

“Judging by your behavior, I’d guess that you’re an alter who was born to protect Ella and keep her safe,” Dawn said quietly. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Cinder just glared at her in response. “…Something like that,” she finally spat out.

“But Ella’s terrified of you,” Dawn pressed. “What did you do? What happened to Ella to make her so frightened and afraid of interacting with other people? And what did she mean when she said she wouldn’t hurt anyone again? And that orange jumpsuit…”

Dawn was connecting puzzle pieces together, and arriving at a very dark conclusion.

Cinder grunted something and rolled her eyes. “Well, you’ve already mostly figured it out, haven’t you? Does it really need saying?”

“It does,” Dawn said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you in the first place, Cinder. Because I had a feeling that Ella- or, more accurately, you- hurt someone before. I wouldn’t normally take such a heavy-handed approach- and I didn’t mean for things to go as badly as they did- but I needed to talk with you before things got out of hand.”

Dawn felt miserable. But she didn’t really have a choice here.

If Cinder and Ella were so unstable that they represented a tangible threat to the people Dawn cared about, then Dawn needed to take steps to ensure that nothing bad would happen.

As nice as Ella might have been, she was an unstable time bomb. And Dawn needed to make sure that when she finally went off, the resulting fallout wouldn’t destroy everything that they’d all tried to build up these past weeks.

So she did something horrible, knowing Ella would hate her for it. And she felt sick to her stomach at her ruthlessness.

“So much effort,” Cinder scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Treating Ella with such scorn and suspicion… I should have expected that!”

“Suspicion yes,” Dawn admitted readily. “But I never scorned her!”

“Oh, you didn’t?” Cinder sneered. “Then what? You’ll be perfectly happy being her friend, is that it? Even knowing that I’m in that head of hers too?”

“I don’t see why not,” Dawn replied. “…Although… that’s if she actually still wants to be my friend, obviously.”

Dawn didn’t have a lot of faith in that outcome, for obvious reasons.

Cinder clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes in disgust. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, little girl,” she spat.

“I’m older than you,” Dawn snapped, her eye twitching. Her size wasn’t everything. “And like I said… that would be up to Ella. I don’t know if she can forgive me pressuring her into letting you out… but I can look past a hell of a lot.”

Cinder raised her eyebrow and leaned forward, studying Dawn carefully. Amelia tensed and stepped between the two of them again, not liking what she was seeing in the other woman’s eyes.

“Cinder…” She warned her.

“You said you can forgive a lot… well, what about ****?” Cinder asked.

Dawn tensed. That was what she’d feared. “So… you killed somebody?”

“I killed several somebodies,” Cinder replied. She almost sounded proud. “That witch of a stepmother, and her whore daughters… I sent all three of them to burn in hell where they belong, after what they did to my Ella!” Her voice had started off calm, but by the end she was raving like a lunatic. “Those bitches… those cunts deserved it!”

“A stepmother… and her daughters…” Amelia shook her head incredulously. “So that’s it… you really are just like Cinderella…”

“Cinderella who killed her stepmother and stepsisters… well that’s… something.” Dawn was trying to make sense of what she was hearing, but it was pretty difficult. She dealt with the real world, not with faerie tales.

“Like I said,” Cinder spat, “those bitches had it coming. You don’t know… every day… what they did to Ella-! They tormented her! Tortured her! Over and over, just like you lot! She had no one, nobody… so I… so I had to step in!”

Dawn watched in horror as Cinder broke down in front of her, tugging frantically at her hair. “I had to stop them… I had to… all of them… if they would just stop… if they would just leave her alone… but they wouldn’t…”

Her eyes were distant and glassy. To Dawn’s horror, it looked like she’d brought the twisted, fractured psyche of the poor girl back into that moment.

“They needed to be stopped before they hurt Ella even more…” Cinder whispered. She sank to her knees and started trembling. “I had to be the one… the one to… I watched it happen… no… I-I made it happen… that… there was so much blood, I couldn’t stop, I…”

Dawn stood petrified. Never in a million years, with all her genius, would she have expected something like this to happen. Amelia couldn’t act either. With Ella’s visceral recoil to her presence, she was afraid that as a stepmother herself, anything she tried to do would just set Cinder off even more. That would be the absolute worst for everybody. No, there had to be something else, someone who could reach out to her without…

With both intelligent women frozen in place, it was Morgana who approached Cinder first. Terrified, cowardly Morgana who saw just how much the damaged woman was hurting. Even if Cinder wasn’t Ella, Morgana could see that she was frightened and she didn’t want that.

“Hey… it’s okay…” Morgana said, kneeling down next to Cinder as she writhed on the floor. “It’s over now… you don’t have to worry.”

In all honesty Morgana was still terrified by the woman in front of her. While Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was also a killer, Morgana hadn’t interacted with her the way she had interacted with Ella and tried to befriend her. Really, this was the first time she’d ever approached a real-life murderer so closely.

And she knew she shouldn’t. She knew she should leave her alone; every bone in her body was telling her to run and not to look back.

But she couldn’t help remembering how happy Ella had looked when Morgana said she wanted to be her friend. She could see Ella’s joy as she devoured the feast before her eyes.

Ella was still her friend, even if she had this woman in her mind as well. Morgana didn’t know a lot about DID, not nearly as much as Dawn and Amelia clearly did. But she knew- or at least, she believed- that Cinder and Ella could be befriended.

“It’s okay…” She repeated, reaching a comforting hand out to Cinder.

Before it could touch her, the other woman slapped it away.

“Stay away from me!” She roared, leaping to her feet and shoving Morgana aside. “You think I need your pity!? I don’t need anything! Just leave Ella and I alone!”

“H-hey!” Seeing Morgana fall over was enough to shake Dawn out of her paralysis. “Morgana! Are you okay?!”

“I-I’m fine…” Morgana stammered, crawling away. She looked like she was about to cry. But she held her ground and looked up at Cinder with weak eyes. “I just… I’m sorry, Cinder…”

Cinder glared at her, and her hands shook. She looked like she wanted to wring Morgana’s neck, but she held back.

Taking a deep breath, the latina exhaled, and then stomped her foot in frustration.

“You bitches… what do you want?” She spat, her eyes leaping from target to target. “Tormenting Ella like this… just to hear the truth? Well, you’ve heard it. Now leave her alone!”

“That wasn’t it at all!” Dawn pleaded. “I wanted to know the truth, that’s right… but now that I do… Cinder, I’m not trying to hurt you, and I’m definitely not trying to hurt Ella! I just wanted to get to know you… so I could be sure you weren’t a threat. That you wouldn’t end up severing Nick’s relationships, or try to turn us all against each other. I just… I just wanted to help…”

Her ears and tail drooped down. Dawn may have just wanted to help, but she’d gone about it in the absolute worst way possible, and she could see that now.

Cinder glared at her.

“You don’t understand anything,” she spat, shaking her head in disgust. “All you’ve done is hurt Ella even more… and why? Because the truth is just that important to you, is that it?”

“Yes,” Dawn said, not even trying to deny it. “The truth is everything. With the truth, we can talk with one another honestly, and become friends. That’s truly what I believe.”

But of course, that ship had probably sailed, at least as far as Cinder and Ella were concerned.

Cinder looked like she had a mountain of words to unload on Dawn, and most of them were curses. But she held her tongue and glared at her instead.

Then she turned to Morgana.

“You bitches stay away from Ella,” she spat. “If you go near her again, then I’m gonna come out. And you’re not going to like what happens next.”

Cinder turned to leave, but Dawn couldn’t let that happen.

She’d already violated the other girl’s boundaries multiple times today. Was it really so bad if she did it once more?

“Wait!”

She snapped out her hand and grabbed Cinder by the wrist, startling the other girl.

“H-hey! Let me go!” Cinder spat, trying to shake her arm free. She turned and glared at Dawn in disbelief, and Dawn glared back up at her.

“I’m not done talking to you!” The vet exclaimed.

“I don’t care!” Cinder shouted back, trying to free her hand. But Dawn’s grip was a tight one, and Cinder couldn’t break it without trying to injure the other girl.

Growling indecipherable slurs in Spanish Cinder wound back her fist and swung it right at Dawn’s face. It was just a feint; a bluff. Something to make Dawn back off.

But she didn’t.

Maybe she was still thinking rationally enough to realize that Cinder wouldn’t actually try to hurt her, or maybe she didn’t even care at this point. But Dawn refused to let go, and Cinder’s fist stopped an inch before her face.

“Raaaaaaghhh!” She screamed in impotent rage. Dakota’s rules about forbidding **** were keeping her from intimidating the other girl in compliance, and Cinder wasn’t handling it very well. She raged and spat and screamed, but Dawn held firm and refused to back down.

“This isn’t okay,” Dawn said softly. “You can’t just use **** and intimidation to get your way, Cinder. Dakota won’t allow that. All you’re doing is making things even worse for Ella. And we both know that’s not what you want.”

What she wanted?! What she wanted!?

“The only thing I want is for you to let me fucking GO!” Cinder shouted, tugging at her wrist again. “Why are you doing this!? You fucking scrawny coño!”

Dawn raised her eyebrow. She could see Cinder imploding right in front of her, but didn’t know how she should react to that.

What she did know, though, was that she had to keep holding on. Cinder was going to run the second she let go, and that couldn’t happen.

Not if she had any chance of holding a real conversation with Ella after this.

“You and Ella are exactly the same,” she said firmly.

Cinder’s eyes widened and she stopped thrashing, as if she was trying to process what Dawn had just told her. She stared incredulously at the other girl.

“…Fucking what?” She asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “The same?! Are you fucking mental!? We are NOT the same!”

“Not in superficial ways, maybe,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “But you both keep running from difficult situations. You just do it in different ways. Ella runs away physically; she distances herself from the problem, or, if she can’t do that, she retreats to the corner of her mind, and leaves things to you.”

Dawn barely knew the girl and already she could see that.

“But I’m not like her!” Cinder hissed. “I don’t run away from anything!”

“**** is just another example of running away,” Dawn replied.

Cinder stared at her. Again, it seemed like she was rather slow in processing what the other girl was saying.

“Dawn, what are you doing?” Morgana whimpered. She had taken cover behind Amelia, and had apparently given up any hope of getting through to Cinder or Ella in her present condition.

“I’m telling her the truth,” Dawn said, tightening her grip on Cinder’s wrist. “Listen, Cinder, I get it. You’re not the most intellectual sort. But take it from someone who is, all you’re doing is running away from your problems. You did it when you killed your stepfamily, and you’re doing it right now.”

“Those people deserved to die!” Cinder spat. “And so do you, for hurting Ella!”

“I won’t deny that I hurt Ella, and I’ll gladly apologize for that,” Dawn replied. “And I won’t deny that your stepfamily may have gotten what was coming to them. But that doesn’t change my point in the slightest.”

Cinder glared at her. “…What do you mean?” She growled.

Dawn shook her head. “When you’re confronted with something painful and difficult, is the first thing you do resorting to ****?”

Cinder winced. “Y-yeah…” She muttered.

“That’s the problem,” Dawn said, her voice turning gentle. “You can’t just rely on **** for everything, Cinder. Especially not here. And you’ve already figured that out. That’s why you couldn’t punch me, because you knew that if you did, Dakota would punish you for it, probably with a transformation- and Ella would get the same punishment.”

Cinder had apparently been created to keep Ella safe. Even if her methods were self-destructive, she wouldn’t do something that would have such a direct and obvious consequence for Ella. That was what Dawn had gambled on- and she’d been right.

“So fucking what!?” Cinder roared. “You think that means I’m running away?!”

“You’re obviously running away,” Dawn replied. “That’s what **** is. When someone gets angry and violent, it’s because they can’t use logic and reason to express themselves. They can’t talk things out or think clearly. And that’s you. All you do is lash out at the pain instead of trying to push past it like a rational adult. You’re not different than someone who takes a gun and shoots up the school to lash out against their bullies. But that self-destructiveness won’t help you here, and you need to realize that. Or you’re just going to hurt Ella even more in the future. So stop running away from your problems and lashing out with ****! You’re an adult, and you need to act like one!”

Dawn knew she was asking a lot. To start, there was some question of whether or not Cinder could even technically be considered an adult in the first place. After all, she wasn’t even technically a person, just a creation born from Ella’s fractured mind.

But on the off chance that she could be reasoned with, Dawn needed to try. If she could get Cinder to calm down and behave, then maybe… maybe Ella wouldn’t have to be afraid of losing control anymore. Maybe she could become a more complete person.

It was a long shot- and frankly, Dawn knew that nothing she was doing would ever be endorsed by any reputable psychologist.

But it was the best she could do right now, dealing with the psychotic woman she had in her grasp.

That’s when she realized just how quiet Cinder was being.

“Cinder?” Dawn asked softly. “Say something, would you?”

She raised her head, and Dawn gazed into a pair of watery amber eyes hidden behind chocolate bangs.

But they weren’t Cinder’s eyes. They were Ella’s.