The soft glow jewels lying on the cavern shelf cast blue shadows across Sally's face. She stared at herself in the mirror and the girl on the other side stared back. Her blue eyes were wide, hollow. Dark circles shown under them. Her lips were pale. Dark crept around the edges of her face from the empty cave room behind her, tucking around her long auburn tendrils.
The "mirror" was a pane of tinted glass the boys had salvaged. Sonic had found it, Tails had cut it and placed in on the ledge shelf. Bunnie had spent hours staring into it when working either on her own hair or Sally's. She almost imagined Bunnie's thick accent echoing through the room.
Sally had not been able to sleep again, like she had predicted. But for a different reason now. Her mind was racing.
Bunnie is alive. And she needs help.
When she had first heard the call, Sally had not moved or spoken. She had sat there, propped up against the couch as Crème shouted nonstop.
The radio had cut Bunnie off in mid-sentence. Bunnie must have been in danger. Bunnie was clearly going to die. Why did she have to listen to Bunnie speak once more? To be unable to speak back to her. To not be able to say goodbye once and for all—
But what if she was still alive?
Why did it even make a difference?
Bunnie had tried to call her. To tell her something. So that she could get in contact with someone who would fight.
"Am I not allowed to die in peace?" Sally mouthed to the girl in the mirror. "You can play the princess until it's over and they'll never know…but you know, Sally…you can do nothing….you can do nothing to stop this."
Did that even matter?
Did winning even matter?
She could almost hear Sonic's voice demanding the question in her ears.
"Then why can I not mourn like other girls?" she whispered. No one would expect a grieving village girl to do anything but lie down and grieve if her parents had died. "Why can princesses not cry like other-" she stopped short, pinching her lips.
"Goodbye, Daddy!" the princess shouted.
Her father's face flashed through her mind.
She could not cry in front of Mama and the rest of the palace entourage. Then they would know she was afraid.
And a princess could not be afraid.
Sally's blue eyes burned with light as she stared at herself. She leaned closer to the mirror, a lock of her auburn hair falling into her face. She did not push it back.
"But I am afraid." Sally whispered.
She had cried. Her kingdom was gone. Her father was gone. Her mother was dead.
She had not behaved like a princess.
Confusion shown in her eyes.
Really which one could do nothing? The princess or the girl? In the end, weren't they both just the girl? The princess was just a name to add on to the girl, wasn't it?
Then if the girl could do nothing, then neither could the princess.
But if the girl could do something, then so could the princess. But first, the princess had to be a girl.
And girls cried. Because they loved things and it hurt when those things were destroyed.
And they could get back up and fight.
Bunnie had done it.
All those years reading books about valor and kingdoms and war. All those lessons with her instructors, all the speeches she had crafted, all the decorum, all the history. All the afternoons on her knees repeating the Warrior Source Code, thinking she knew exactly what it meant.
"You thought you knew how to fight, Sally," she whispered to the mirror. "But you really were a brat."
Sally began to clench her fists as she leaned back. She stared at the lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. She lifted a finger and pushed it out of line of her face. It fell back.
Sally's gaze fell on Bunnie's pair of scissors lying on a small ledge next to the mirror. She snatched them up.
As she snipped through the first lock of her auburn hair, her mind began to whir, pushing for vision, a plan, a strategy. Her eyes began to flash. The tears began to drip down her cheeks.
Sonic had been lying, but he had also been right, and she had known it all along.
