Chapter 19Dark, Damp, Cold27 February 2022“Dorley Hall.” Kelynen says. She looks broken, anxious, and most of all unsure. “Where do I even start?”

  Ace doesn’t know what Dorley Hall did to hurt Kelynen, but clearly it hurt her a lot. Maybe she shouldn’t want to know, even if it is, somehow, relevant to what Ace was feeling. Just seeing Kelynen reduced to this state made her forget whatever it was she felt, though.

  “Okay. So. Dorley Hall is mostly a dorm for disadvantaged women in Almsworth, owned by Elle.” Kelynen’s words come slowly, every word thought through multiple times before being said. Maybe Ace can learn from that. “But it also operates a… rehabilitation centre for boys succumbing to toxic masculinity. Down in the basement. I, um, I was a part of that. On both sides. I was both rehabilitated and rehabilitator.”

  “But you’re not even male.” Ace notes. “Did they think you’re like, male socialised?”

  Kelynen looks at her puzzled, stuck trying to interpret Ace’s comments before continuing with her story. “I was very much male back then. At least, I was convinced I was. I grew up on a farm. Did the kind of things you do as a boy in a rural area. Cause problems, some petty crime, be a dick to all the dies. The kind of petty crime you get away with because all the adults think it’s just how boys are. They think it’s good, actually, when you get in dumb brawls over stupid shit, because it’s what they did back in their youth, because there’s never been anything to do in those pces. It’s all an excuse for violently enforcing the patriarchy, though. Anyhow. When I got into Saints by some miracle they helped me move to Almsworth, and I just continued along the same lines I always did. Because no one cared, not where I lived.

  “And then I found myself waking up in a cell under Dorley Hall.”

  Ace, at this point, realises the programme is a bit less voluntary than she assumed. “Oh.”

  “Sorry. I’m kind of burying the lead here. They took me in as a boy, told me I’m a really bad one at that, and then turned me into a woman. Whether I liked it or not. I do like it, it fits me much better than being one of those for the rest of my life, but—” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “Like, um, like the stories.” Ace has, at Amy’s insistence, read a story or two written by a certain woman Ayms only identified as ‘Maria’. They were kinda hot, but growing darker now that she knows they’re realistic.

  “Yes.” Kelynen nods. “Like the stories. But much more real and less, um, horny.”

  Ace feels bad for really having enjoyed the smut and slightly touching herself to some of them. “I’m so sorry.” She isn’t sure what she’s sorry for, but definitely something.

  “Now, they kept me down there for a year, and then basically prisoner in Dorley Hall for another two. I learned how to be a girl there. I met Eira, who was the sponsor of one of the other girls in my intake, and we got along well. Certainly better than I got along with my sponsor, who was— who was doing her job.”

  Ace shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “You’re my sponsor. Is this, um,” She can’t quite conceptualise her thoughts, let alone turn them into coherent sentences.

  “Yes.” She nods. “I am your sponsor, because we kind of took the structure of Dorley Hall at first and just used it here. Even if we don’t use the methods. Not the same methods we use for the first years, anyhow, it’s simir to the second years—”

  Ace is getting more confused by the second. Kelynen isn’t great at expining things, and Ace, rather rudely, tunes her out for a moment, paying the barest of attention.

  “And they had those horrible little mugs? Like, with jokes about getting your balls cut off — which we need to schedule for you still, by the way, if you want it this year, at least — and you had like dozens of the things, strewn throughout the building, because it helps normalise the fact that you had your balls removed after being kidnapped and were turned into a good little girl who would then go on to make sure another shitty little boy got his orchi as well.”

  “Hold up—” Ace is going to get what soon? “Balls removed?”

  “We can talk about that ter.” Kelynen says, booping Ace on the nose in an entirely confusing move which does, somewhat, distract her for a fraction of a second. She feels overwhelmed by information right now, anyhow.

  “So, after graduating, I tried to sponsor my own boy, it didn’t really work out — he wasn’t too nasty by the end, just quite a bit too cis, and struggling immensely with what we were doing to him — and, we, um, we had him washed out.” Kelynen seems very ashamed of what she’s saying.

  “Washed out?”

  “Yeah. Something akin to death. It’s not actually death, we’ve been told, but it might as well be. Never to be seen again, certainly.” Kelynen makes herself small, looking at Ace with tears in her eyes. “I still hate myself for what I did to that poor boy.”

  Ace isn’t sure how to respond to the fact that Kelynen just admitted to basically just having someone murdered. Or something equivalent to murder. She shouldn’t feel sorry for her — she does, because she’s weak and easily attached to people when she allows herself to get attached — she should, like, call the police!

  “And because I didn’t want to do all that again, but I really wanted, a, um, second year girl to help be a girl — I really loved teaching them — I talked to Rose and Viv, and we came up with the concept to just skip the nasty first step and find trans girls to help! People who actually want it. At the same time, you had some girls looking into maybe including some very toxic eggs into the intake, somehow. So they were trawling through that nasty fascist website, and they found some candidates, but they quickly figured out some were, well, girls. They just insisted that they should never give in to that feeling. Some ideas were exchanged, as were some names, and that’s how we ended up here.”

  Another pile of information being dumped onto her already very overloaded head doesn’t stop Ace from noticing the fact that one very critical element is being left out from this story. “But, um, the maids part? And the, um, sex?”

  “That’s a story for another day—”

  “Was Ayms kidnapped to be a sex sve?”

  “No!” Kelynen snaps for a split second, then lowers her voice again in shock at herself. “Never.”

  “But, the girls here, they’re doing things with Elle?”

  “Elle is a really lonely woman.” Kelynen tries to keep her voice level. “One with particur interests in other women, that is. When we discussed the subject, no one ever raised the idea of anything like that. It just… developed. It happened to be like that, because the girls we took in were really horny, and Viv and Rose were dating, and I then got involved with Viv and Rose because who else was I going to do things with, and Eira once, drunkenly, allowed Elle to kiss her and it kind of devolved from there. Because we’re a bunch of women stuck in one building, right? And might as well recruit on that basis, if we were going to recruit more, because we don’t want anyone to get lonely here. And Elle was all too willing to go along with things, anyhow.”

  “Okay. This is a lot.”

  “It would be.” Kelynen nods. “Life gets weird once you’re drawn into the general universe of Dorley Hall.”

  “Is it okay if I take a moment to think?” Ace asks. “Like, alone.”

  Kelynen seems really quite unsure for a moment. “I would like you to be with someone.”

  “Do I really have to?” Ace protests.

  “The st time you needed to think alone, you spent 7 days in bed and refused to eat.” Kelynen frowns. Ace is very uncomfortable with the fact that Kelynen pretends to care so much. She really mustn’t give her what she wants.

  “I won’t! Not this time.” Ace pouts. She probably would, given someone just admitted to her they were kidnapped, forcibly feminised, had someone murdered and helped found some weird polycule.

  “Gwen knows.” Kelynen insists. She really doesn’t believe Ace anymore. Probably deserved. “You should talk to her.”

  Ace isn’t sure how Gwen would have reacted to this, but she can’t imagine her reaction was in any way all that rational. Not like her reaction is rational, either, given parts of the story did turn her on, but Gwen would have been worse. Horny, probably.

  “Do I really have to?”

  “Yes. I’ll send her to look after you. Because you can’t keep running from people when things get a little uncomfortable.”

  “Okay.” She sighs, rolls her eyes, and tries not to comment on the idea that this conversation would just be a little uncomfortable.

  Ace hates having so many sisters who genuinely care about her.

  ***

  Ace made her way down the spiral staircase, running just slightly, into the very cold cells below the manor. She debates stealing a bottle of something from the massive wine celrs but decides against it.

  She sits on the cold stones, leans against the cold stone wall, and hopes that Gwen will just appear out of nowhere.

  It takes a little while.

  It’s good that Gwen is taking her damn time. Ace has just been forced to deal with the information dump of a lifetime! She’ll have to process the fact that Kelynen, for example, didn’t come to her gender voluntarily. That she tried to do it to others, and that a significant part of being here is because she wanted to carry out her— her fetish on girls who would be less likely to compin about receiving that treatment.

  She had someone killed. For being too cis to handle being turned into a girl.

  Turned involuntarily into women when Ace can’t even voluntarily make herself be one. It’s disgusting.

  And now Ace has to live with at least four people who have been involved in that entire charade, that insult to transfemininity?And just when she’d started to trust them a little bit?

  Ace would much rather not have known. Because she had a fun little thing going with Amy, and that’s ruined now. With the knowledge that it’s more than just a kinky fantasy. And, more importantly, she now has to be haunted by the knowledge for the rest of her life!

  For no reason!

  The bars of the cell door rattle as it opens. Ace looks up, and sees a very concerned Gwen looking at her.

  “Did you really have to hide here?” The girl compins, trying to keep the conversation light. “I’m freezing my non-existent tits off.”

  “People won’t find me here.” Ace insists for a moment, just to watch Gwen raise her eyebrow.

  “People will if you make it a pattern that you always hide here. Come on. Let’s go somewhere nicer.” Gwen offers her a hand, trying to pull Ace up off the ground. The fact that Ace offers resistance just leads to Gwen putting her weight into it, pulling on her with both arms, and comically falling backwards, ft on her arse. She has to stop herself from ughing.

  “Okay. You win.” Gwen pouts, and Ace can’t help but feel envious of her effortless femininity, even if the femininity mostly involves being a teenage girl. “We’re staying in the dark, damp, sad girl cell. We’re gonna suffer, and you’ll make me be all cold, and force me to have thoughts.”

  “Sorry.” Ace mumbles.

  “It’s fine, it just makes me…” Gwen blushes. “You know.”

  “I know?” Ace is more than a little confused.

  “I don’t want to say it, Alice.” Gwen makes a face which, if anything, implies that she very much wants to say it.

  “Okay.” Ace isn’t going to push her. It’s all a distraction from the fact that Kelynen worked for serial killers! She can keep her thoughts.

  “It makes me horny.” Gwen whispers, unable to not say it. “I’m very horny right now. And I don’t want to be horny, because Lulu told me you need to talk about Dorley Hall, but you know how hard it is to talk about Dorley Hall in the first pce without getting horny? I was like, begging Vivi to transfer when she told me. The bit with the tasers? Not knowing what’s happening to you? Oh my god, the homoerotic tension between boys and ‘boys’ and girls? It’s fucking— It’s quite fucking something. My brain can’t really handle it, especially not when I’m in a cell and can imagine Fey standing on the other side of the bars and telling me I’m going to be a good girl and I don’t want it but I kinda do? I mean, I do want it, but in my thoughts I don’t and that just makes it even hotter and—”

  “Um?” Ace tries to stop Gwen before she gets too many ideas. The st thing she needs is to be convinced that Dorley Hall is, in fact, kinda hot. Not when there are such obvious fws.

  “Don’t you agree?” She asks, taking Ace’s hand.

  “I’m trying not to.” Ace knows she’s admitting too much, but these words were going to leave her regardless. She’s blushing so intensely that Gwen would have pushed her until she admits, and if she gets Gwen pushing, there’s a 75% chance that Gwen would start acting it all out for her benefit.

  “Why not? It’s not just kinda hot. It’s really hot.” Gwen insists. “And if you want me to not be all horny about it you really should get me in a pce without, like, fantasies attached. And maybe some bnkets too.”

  “I’d rather not—” Ace tries to say. She’s not sure why she wants to be here, other than that she wants to be in a kinda miserable pce as opposed to the vibe Gwen seems to be going for, which is way more comfy and likely to convince her that it isn’t as bad as it should be! Because she’d try to bribe her with hot chocote or something. Maybe a cuddle. And it’d fucking work, too.

  “I thought you’re supposed to be, like, a good girl.” Gwen says. “I’m not. I’m not a good girl. I’m a bad girl, and I like being that, because I might end up here for fun reasons rather than sad reasons. This is not a good girl space.”

  “I’m not a good girl though! I don’t stop hurting people.” Ace yells, hoping Gwen will talk about something useful or go away. “I was telling Kelynen this. That I don’t deserve everything that’s being offered to me. She was telling me that I’m not as bad as I think I am, about how deserving shouldn’t be based on past behaviour and then she brought up the fucking forcefem murder castle as an example of how she was worse! And how she still deserved to get all the free estradiol and surgery and a pce to stay. It’s not the same though. But she got it as, like, punishment. She was punished by the fetishistic murder people, doing all that to others again, doing it to us in a different way! But this pce is like a gift. Not a punishment. At least I would deserve Dorley Hall.”

  “How did you get the idea that it's fetishistic? Or that murder is involved? Or that it’s a punishment?”

  “You were just telling me about how horny it makes you.” Ace tries to lower her voice a little. She shouldn’t be yelling at Gwen. “You’re into punishment.”

  “That I have a fetish doesn’t mean that they have a fetish, Alice.” Gwen looks at her pretty disappointed. “You should be more generous to Lulu. She’s just trying to help you out.”

  “She had people killed!” Fuck it. Maybe she should yell at Gwen.

  “No, she didn’t!” Gwen yells back. Even when angry, she can yell like a woman.

  Ace fucking hates herself. Maybe she deserves Dorley Hall. “Washed out. Whatever.”

  “She tried to save a man from a path of utter destruction. Like most of the girls at Dorley Hall were leaving behind before they got there. If that didn’t work out, that’s not on her. That’s on the system. Because. It. Doesn’t. Care. About. Women.” Gwen speaks the st words with a level of venom that Ace has never heard before. “Especially not our kind of women. So why the fuck shouldn’t I support some girls who are trying to fix a problem the world doesn’t care about? They get given the opportunity of a lifetime to fix themselves and be out there, as, as—” Gwen takes a second to breathe and lower her voice. “As beautiful women. People we could aspire to be like. Maybe you didn’t notice it at the party two weeks ago, when a dozen girls from Dorley visited us, but they’re really sweet, kind, pretty and fun to be around. You couldn’t guess they used to be the kind of guys who once would have gone on to do horrible things.”

  “Is there anything which would make them deserve that treatment?” Ace looks away from Gwen. She can’t believe that she actually has to deal with someone defending that shit.

  “Yes.” Gwen whispers.

  “Like what?”

  “There is.”

  “Like what, Gwen?” Ace is definitely annoyed now.

  “Things you don’t want to know!” Gwen shouts, her voice echoing through the hallway. She looks more shocked than angry, and before Ace can say anything, Gwen pulls her legs close to her chest and hides her face in her skirt.

  “Are you okay?” Ace leans in to try to take Gwen’s hand, just to be spped away.

  “No. I don’t want to talk about it.” The girl insists. “I don’t want to fucking think about it ever again.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ace creates a little distance between Gwen and herself.

  “You shouldn’t be. Or maybe you should. I don’t know.” Gwen sobs. “You just don’t understand. That’s fine. I don’t want you to understand. My opinion is very much my own. But I do want you to respect both my opinion and my sisters.”

  She really shouldn’t ask it. She really shouldn’t ask it.

  Ace can’t help herself, because all she does is hurt people. “Respect the practice of forcibly feminising and potentially murdering people?”

  Gwen looks up from her skirt. She looks like a mess — still prettier than Ace though — and her voice is a little rougher than it was before. “I want to say very many very rude things. But I won’t.”

  Another way Gwen is better than she is. Stupid, stupid Ace.

  “I’m not going to expin myself to you.” Gwen stands up, slowly, measuredly. She’s too controlled: the fun little girl is gone. “Because I don’t think it’d help you. Or, more importantly, me. I’m making myself vulnerable by even thinking about it. I’m making myself angry, too.

  “When you’ve gone through certain things, have had to fear certain people in your life, when you’ve feared for your safety at the hands of men you don’t care when Dorley Hall pick out some nasty individuals who could still be saved and stop them from being their worst selves. You don’t care if some of them never see freedom again. Too many people are being hurt as is! The status quo fucking sucks! Someone has to do something, and they’re the only game in town.”

  Ace almost suggests alternative pathways, such as the police — not a good option, now that she thinks about it — or social services — equally fwed — but contradicting Gwen at this point seems like it could only ruin any friendship they have.

  “Maybe you should care about all that pain.” She suggests, hoping Gwen will just go away. She’s starting to be convinced, and really doesn’t want to be.

  “Maybe you should stop caring.” Gwen says calmly, but with an edge of losing her patience. “Living with Fey and Vivi is the best fucking thing ever happened to me. I fucking love them. I loved Fey before I ended up here, I’ve grown to love Vivi, and she loves me back. I met her a month ago and she’s so supportive and loving and protective and she makes me feel safe.”

  Why can’t Gwen just leave her be? Why does she have to care? Ace never wanted anyone to care about her. Yet here she is, being too patient, too sweet, treating her like she matters when she shouldn’t matter.

  She can’t even be a woman! Gwen, even when angry, crying, hurt and scared still outshines her a thousandfold!

  Gwen is a better person, a better woman and definitely a much better friend than Ace has ever been.

  If Ace doesn’t deserve this pce, she most definitely doesn’t deserve Gwen.

  The words leave her quickly, so she doesn’t have to think about what she’s saying. So they’re said, Gwen feels hurt, and stops caring about her.

  “How can you feel safe around her knowing what Dorley Hall does? Who she was?”

  Gwen takes a second to respond, but when she does, Ace realises she’s fucked up.

  “I don’t care if she used to be someone horrible! Vivi is one of the greatest people I know now. She always had that in her. She’s always been like this, but felt forced to act out in one way or another. She made mistakes, like we all make mistakes, and if you judge her for a second for that, if you’re a bitch to her or to Rose or to Lulu over it, I will never forgive you!”

  “Gwen—”

  “At least they try to deal with their issues like adults! They try to be better people! They managed to be!” Gwen continues. “Rather than always hiding from their problems or pushing people away, they confronted them. Something we could all learn from them about.”

  The girl in front of her breathes rapidly and deeply, like she’s just run an entire marathon. Doesn’t say anything, giving Ace a chance to respond again, to apologise, to try to make up for what she’s done wrong, but the scale of Ace’s fuck-up is still too hard to comprehend. Because Gwen hasn’t gone away, even if she should have, and is still there, hurt as she is, still giving Ace a chance.

  She lingers on the option. Considers it for what feels like hours. She wants to cim it, feels unworthy still, but has no one to talk to anymore.

  But before Ace feels ready to answer, Gwen whispers her ‘good night’ and walks up the stairs, away from someone who really wants to be able to apologise. To better herself, even if she’s unworthy, even if she’s incapable.

  And now there’s no one.

  Just Ace, her guilt, her regrets, the dark, the damp and the cold.