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[headline_maker]

It was madness, utter madness, all across the island. Somewhere beneath the usual flurry of questions running through Sacharissa's mind was a keen sense of relief. She had escaped this time, thank gods. From the shouts and shrieks coming from all around, she seemed to be one of the lucky few who could make that claim

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[never_atone]

Briony's wandering mind never alighted on any one thought for very long. On occasion something great and powerful might strike her, engaging her whole mind and body, occupying that great cerebral muscle for hours at a time, but on the whole, now, in these days, Briony attempted to keep her interests and ideas mundane.

But on the subject of Sacharissa Cripslock, much more time had been spent than Briony felt right. Rupert's words had never fully left her. My brother's fiance. No mention of Maladicta at all. Briony could not understand it, and she struggled tirelessly against her own sense of reason in an effort to prove Sacharissa's goodness and innocence. But no matter how Briony observed the facts as they were, she could not make a fitting story of them, nothing that would evince her friend's morality and kindness.

All these thoughts buzzed in her mind like bees, busily gathering facts like so much pollen and producing the bare skeletons of a story like so much honeycomb: idea built upon idea, sweet but light and hollow at once. The confusion and madness around her did not make her halt, but the sight of her own face did, and rather than a greeting Briony could only look, a frown of contemplation and disbelief on her clear brow.

[headline_maker]

Sacharissa returned the stare, herself confused by Briony's expression. "Briony," she said after a few moments, "are you quite all right?" She thought a moment, then added, "For that matter, are you you?"

Maladicta and William, at least, were still themselves, but figuring out everyone else on the island was difficult at best. She didn't really think it like Briony to stand and stare, but it wasn't exactly an ordinary day, and she looked patiently back.

[never_atone]

The simple answers came first. "Yes," she said, her words accompanied by a series of small nods. "Yes, I am myself."

What she really wished to say, all the questions that filled her mind to bursting, was too difficult to say just there. It wasn't a proper setting. "I.. I'm sorry, I.. I hardly know what to say to you." Briony's sin, Briony's betrayal would always be greater by far to the crimes against the heart and soul that any other might commit. But looking at Sacharissa's face just then, a vision of concern and kindness and sweetness, Briony felt doubly betrayed.

[headline_maker]

"To me?" Sacharissa echoed, more confused now than before. Something was wrong here. What, however, seemed to have nothing to do with the ongoing chaos, and if it wasn't that, she couldn't begin to guess what it might be. Aside from this bodyswitching business, everything had been perfectly normal lately. "Is something the matter, Briony?" Though she racked her mind for something, there was no answer to be found.

[never_atone]

The wrong setting. It was an absolutely terrible setting. There was no sense of privacy whatsoever here, the sound of angry and surprised voices creating a sort of muted chaotic background that perhaps mirrored some of the conflict of emotions within Briony, but not by much.

Jaw setting into something of a determined air, Briony stepped forward, catching Sacharissa as she went, hooking them together arm in arm like friends or sisters. Confidantes. Briony could only hope that Sacharissa would confide in her now, with something approaching sense. She wanted to believe so badly that she was not in the wrong.

"I met Rupert," she began once they were past the threshold of the Compound, out in the open air where hushed tones would not be overheard by any passer-by. "I spoke with him. He said that you were engaged to his brother, William. I didn't say anything, of course, but I don't understand. How could you be so cruel to Maladicta as to rebuke her now? What did she do?"

[headline_maker]

"She did nothing," Sacharissa protested, stepping away to stare at Briony. The engagement had been in place for such a long time now that she sometimes forgot there were people who didn't know, people who were new to the island. It was difficult to put into words properly, and few things frustrated Sacharissa so much as things which eluded description.

"I love her -- I'm in love with her," she insisted. "I would never end our engagement. Rupert is... he's a dear friend, but he sometimes words things poorly. I am engaged to William, yes -- as is Maladicta. And we are engaged to her. It's strange and complicated, I know, but I haven't put her aside or rebuked her. The arrangement was her idea to begin with."

She and Rupert would have to have a little talk about this.

[never_atone]

Sacharissa pulled away, which was nothing that Briony did not expect, but her face flushed with the red specter of shame none the less. Of course she had gotten it wrong. Of course she had spoken unwisely, rudely even. But whereas a simple confirmation or denial either way would have sufficed, Sacharissa's explanation only summoned more questions.

"You're... marrying two people?" Briony stammered, plainly confused. "But.. how?"

[headline_maker]

"It's not the done thing, I know," Sacharissa said. Gods, there were still days when she felt as if she were justifying this wedding to the world. She was happy, at least in most ways, and that had to be enough. Wasn't it? She glanced away from Briony and then down to her own hands. "It's not even been done here and things are so different here, so strange. But I love them both, gods help me, and they love me and they love each other, so what other solution was there?" They couldn't have stayed the way they'd been forever. She didn't want to think of it now, how she might have spent the rest of her time here miserable and alone, watching them be happy together without her.

[never_atone]

"But--" It flew in the face of everything that Briony had ever believed, about love and life and happy endings. The idea that there was one perfect partner for every person in the world was hard to believe in and of itself, but Briony believed in it wholeheartedly. But two people?

"But how can you-- I mean to say-- It's not the policy of it you understand. There are different culture and times here. To say that a marriage between three people is strange is an understatement." More like to an abomination in her mother's eyes, certainly. It reeked of unfaithfulness and debauchery, indulgence and hedonist values, but Briony tried to keep such opinions from her tone of voice. Into her expression it surely crept. "The point of marriage -- the point of love -- is to give your heart, completely and utterly, to another person. How can you-- If you give your whole heart to one, how can you give it to another? If you give it to two, how can you say you truly love one?"

[headline_maker]

"How does loving one person detract from loving another?" Sacharissa countered. "Surely you can't say you love your mother any less for loving your father. People meet and love and part and love again, and that doesn't make the first love any less true."

Had she been able to keep from loving either of them, there was a point long ago when she would gladly have done so. Knowing it was her future to marry William at home, it would have been the work of an instant to decide to go home again, given the option. Turning her back on all of this had been her greatest wish until she'd been given a chance at something greater still. And yet, for all of Sacharissa's earnest emotion and her deftness with pen and paper, she found it all but impossible to make the situation clear to Briony. "Should we all three be denied a more perfect happiness because it goes against the grain? Should we choose one to be turned away just because it's not the usual way of things to do otherwise?"

[never_atone]

Indignantly Briony's jaw dropped, her eyes flying wide at the impropriety of Sacharissa's counter argument. "I love my mother and father as a child should love her parents, which is quite different from the way a woman should love her husband!" The very difference in the quality of such relationships brought a flash of a blush to Briony's cheeks, just from alluding to the nature of a married couple's situation.

"This has nothing-- This has very little to do with how radical this decision is," Briony said, quickly recovering her senses. "How can you be happy knowing that you do not have all of your husband's love? All his loyalty? That he has another that holds his heart just as much? You deserve it all, as does Maladicta, as does William. Parceling it out equally amongst all three of you, like it's something that can be measured, it's wrong. To all of you."

[headline_maker]

"And what would you have us do instead?" Sacharissa demanded. "Should I -- should I hold back, then, because there are too many of us? Let go of my chance at happiness so they might be sure of each other? I wasted too long doing that, Briony. I love him, I have for so long, and to stand down and watch them together, so right and I alone --" The memory was still too much to bear sometimes. She'd never been able to be as happy for them as a good friend should have been. Knowing what she could have had at home made it no easier.

"But I would never have dared to make a move and risk their happiness. I stood aside so long, and was miserable because it seemed the right thing. He loves her, and I can't begrudge him that anymore can I help loving her myself. I don't think we have to divvy up our hearts like gold or something of that nature. I can't believe there's a limited supply."

[never_atone]

"You were supposed to do just as you had done!" Briony replied strongly, more upset at the fact that Sacharissa had been chosen the right path, but then strayed due to some unknown reason, if any at all. "Happiness is not meant for all. Even I am not silly enough to believe that. You love him. You love her. But you can love another. You can stand your ground and do what is right, not indulge in what makes you happy simply because it makes you happy. You may be sad and lonely for a while, but you would be better for it!"

[headline_maker]

"Oh, -ing hells," Sacharissa muttered, eyes rolling. The last thing she needed was a lecture from her own face. She'd made all the same arguments to herself the last year and gotten nowhere. There was sense and then there was making a martyr of those who'd tied themselves to the pyre.

There was probably a happier metaphor for it, but she couldn't think of one right then.

"It's not as if I seduced the pair of them into straying or anything of the sort. Maladicta came to me, to both of us, so if you'd like to defend her honor, you can go interrogate her on the matter." Seeing no call to stay any longer, Sacharissa nodded curtly to Briony and started away.

[never_atone]

That Sacharissa would shift the blame to Maladicta, rather than taking credit and blame for her own mistakes, greatly surprised Briony, though in later, quieter moments perhaps she would not be so befuddled. They shared but a face and figure; Sacharissa, though the prettier and more blessed, clearly had her own set of trials which, given her superior qualities, taxed her greater than they would Briony.

A cornucopia of words threatened to spill from her lips, even with Sacharissa departure, but while Briony was by no means a saint, she did possess enough good breeding not to pursue an argument past a suitable point, and especially not to call after someone who had dismissed her like some urchin on the street. Her mind a tumultuous hurricane, she turned away as well.