Dylan Howell & Jessica Heart vs. Scarlett Carsons & Kirsten Scott

[Kemal Yilmaz]

4 RP Limit Total for Tag

3500 Word Per RP

Deadline: 11:59:59 pm ET SUNDAY, November 1, 2026

[Kirsten Scott]

APOSTASY CHAPTER 13: THE TWO FAMILIES

[కᨶꪖꪹꪶꫀᡶᡶ ᨶꪖꪹకꪮ᭢క]

The garden gate had been chained shut so long that the ivy had learned to grow through its links.

Scarlett Carsons stood outside it with a pair of bolt cutters resting against her thigh, watching rain gather on the little brass sign bolted to the ironwork. PRIVATE PROPERTY. Beyond the bars, roses leaned over collapsed borders. Nettles crowded the gravel. A cracked fountain held a shallow bowl of black water, and something small moved beneath the dead leaves floating on its surface.

The place looked abandoned from the road. Up close, abandonment seemed like the wrong word. Someone had put a fresh padlock on the gate. Someone still cared enough to keep people out while everything inside slowly strangled.

Scarlett fitted the cutters around the shackle.

The first squeeze did nothing except drive the handles into her palms. She adjusted her grip, planted one boot against the gatepost, and tried again. Metal snapped with a sound much smaller than she had expected. Afterward came the faint settling of the chain, then traffic passing somewhere beyond the wall.

No thunder. No audience. Just an opening where there had been none.

She pulled the gate inward.

Her phone vibrated before she reached the fountain. Kiresten Scott had sent three words.

You there yet?

Scarlett photographed the broken lock lying in the wet gravel and sent it back.

The reply arrived almost immediately.

Subtle.

For the first time that morning, Scarlett smiled.

She tucked the phone away and stepped into the garden, pushing a wet branch aside with her shoulder. Red petals clung to the black fabric of her coat. One caught against her collar and stayed there, bright enough to look deliberate.

They had called this place the Red Garden before Scarlett ever found it. She liked that. Some things arrived with names worth keeping.

Others needed to be earned.

Inside the greenhouse, the air smelled of rust, damp wood, and the mineral sweetness of broken clay. Scarlett set a canvas bag on a potting bench and unpacked gloves, a folding saw, two bottles of water, and a cheap camera mounted on a little tripod. She placed that last, turning it toward a chair beneath a pane of glass crazed with old fractures.

Then she considered the chair, changed her mind, and left it empty.

There was work to do before she had anything worth saying.

She started with a rosebush that had grown sideways through the greenhouse door. Its branches had knotted together so tightly that she could not tell which belonged to the living plant and which had died seasons ago. Each careless movement brought a thorn through her glove. She stopped trying to yank it free and began following individual stems back toward their roots.

That was how Kiresten found her twenty minutes later: crouched in the doorway, frowning at a branch as though it had personally insulted her.

“You planning to wrestle it?”

“Considering it.”

“Bad reach advantage.”

Scarlett glanced up. Kiresten stood under a dark umbrella with a second bag hanging from her wrist. She looked from the saw to the gloves to the camera, taking inventory without asking permission.

“You said you needed somewhere quiet.”

“It was quiet.”

“Before the burglary?”

“Gate was being unreasonable.”

Kiresten closed the umbrella and leaned it against the wall. From her bag came a pair of thick gardening gloves and a paper sack already translucent with rain.

“Breakfast,” she said.

Scarlett looked at the gloves.

“What?” Kiresten asked. “You sent a picture of bolt cutters. I made an educated guess.”

Something in Scarlett's chest loosened. She covered it by reaching for the sack.

The sandwiches were cold. They ate standing beneath the greenhouse roof while rain ticked against the surviving glass. Neither woman rushed to fill the silence. Beyond the doorway, a robin landed on the fountain and inspected them with the suspicious confidence of a landlord.

Eventually Kiresten nodded toward the camera.

“For them?”

“Eventually.”

“Dylan and Jessica might be disappointed if you spend the whole thing talking about drainage.”

“They'll survive disappointment.”

“Let's make sure that's all they survive.”

Scarlett looked sideways at her. Kiresten took another bite, entirely unbothered.

There it was again: the strange, practical comfort of having someone beside her who understood the assignment without needing it dressed in ceremony. Teaming again could have meant hours discussing what familiarity was supposed to buy them. Instead, Kiresten had brought gloves.

Scarlett wiped her hands on the paper sack.

“I don't want to do the thing where we pretend knowing each other means nothing can go wrong.”

“Good,” Kiresten said. “Because things can go wrong.”

“You're supposed to offer reassurance.”

“I brought breakfast.”

Scarlett laughed once, short and surprised. Then Kiresten's expression settled.

“We can know each other and still have to pay attention. Those aren't opposites.”

Outside, the robin dropped into the weeds.

Scarlett looked at the doorway again.

“Help me get this open.”

They worked from opposite sides of the rosebush. Scarlett cut the dead wood while Kiresten held the living branches away from the blade. It demanded a concentration neither woman could fake. A wrong pull tightened the whole mess. A rushed cut risked taking something healthy with it. Twice Scarlett stopped when Kiresten told her to wait, and both times she found a green stem hidden beneath the brown.

By the time the doorway cleared, sweat had gathered beneath Scarlett's coat despite the cold.

Kiresten dragged the severed branches outside and came back brushing dirt from her sleeve.

“Your turn.”

Scarlett looked toward the camera.

She had imagined anger would arrive ready for use. Instead she felt the ache in her hands, the weight of breakfast in her stomach, and the ridiculous irritation of a petal stuck somewhere behind her neck. Real things. Things nobody could improve by adding a spotlight.

She switched on the camera.

For a moment she watched the red recording light.

“Dylan Howell. Jessica Heart.”

She rested her hands against the edge of the bench.

“The Great and Secret Show. I've been thinking about what happens when the show has to stop. When somebody gets close enough that the name doesn't matter, and there's no distance left between what you want people to believe and what your body can actually do.”

She looked down at the dirt caught in the creases of her gloves, then peeled them off.

“That's where we're meeting you.”

Kiresten moved behind the camera, quietly clearing a cracked pot from beneath her boot.

“I'm not going to stand here and tell you a clever name makes you harmless. Two people who choose to be a team give me something to take seriously. You can make decisions together. You can cover ground together. If one of you knows exactly when the other needs an opening, that matters. I've had enough people hit me to understand that confidence doesn't stop a forearm.”

Scarlett flexed her fingers. A shallow thorn scratch crossed the base of her thumb.

“But I don't owe your name my imagination. I don't have to make you bigger in my head before the bell even rings. Dylan, you're a man I can reach. Jessica, you're a woman who still has to breathe when the pace gets ugly. Whatever you bring into that ring, it has to fit inside the same rules of distance and timing and exhaustion that everybody else lives under.”

A gust pushed rain through the open doorway. Scarlett did not turn.

“And I'm bringing somebody who knows when to tell me to wait.”

She let that settle before continuing.

“Maybe that sounds small. Maybe you'd prefer the version where I tell you Kiresten and I are unstoppable because we're together again. That's a lovely sentence. It's also useless the first time somebody gets trapped in your corner.”

Kiresten folded her arms, listening.

“Again doesn't win matches. Again gives you a responsibility. It means you've already had a chance to notice how the other person moves, what happens when they're hurt, how quickly frustration can turn a sensible decision into a stupid one. You can waste that knowledge posing together, or you can use it.”

Scarlett leaned slightly toward the lens.

“We're going to use it.”

The rain grew heavier, drumming against the roof with enough force that she raised her voice.

“If you isolate me, I'm going to work. Every inch toward our corner is going to cost something, and I'm prepared to pay it. If you isolate Kiresten, you won't find me standing on the apron making concerned faces for a camera. I'll be watching your feet. Your hands. The second one of you looks away because you think the difficult part is finished.”

She paused.

“And when that hand reaches mine, I'm coming through those ropes with a purpose.”

Behind the camera, Kiresten's gaze remained steady.

Scarlett could feel the speech beginning to gather speed, could hear the tempting rhythm of promises made cheaply. She stopped herself. Looked toward the fountain. Took a drink of water.

Then she returned to the lens.

“I don't need to promise a perfect night to promise you a difficult one.”

They stopped recording when water began dripping onto the camera.

Kiresten carried it farther inside while Scarlett set a bucket beneath the leak. The bucket had a hole in it. For several seconds they watched the water run straight through and disappear between the floorboards.

“Strong metaphor,” Kiresten said.

“Don't encourage it.”

They found an intact basin beneath the bench. Moving it disturbed a colony of woodlice, which scattered into the dark with considerably more organization than Scarlett felt she possessed.

Her phone lit up on the bench. The match graphic filled the screen: their names opposite Dylan Howell and Jessica Heart. Four people flattened into clean lettering, the complicated business of hurting and trusting reduced to something that could be shared with a thumb.

Scarlett stared longer than she meant to.

“What?” Kiresten asked.

“Nothing.”

Kiresten waited.

Scarlett exhaled through her nose.

“I hate how easy it looks from outside.”

“The graphic?”

“All of it. They put two names together and everyone starts talking like the hard part already happened.”

Kiresten leaned against the bench.

“Hard part usually happens after somebody gets hit.”

Scarlett rubbed the scratch on her thumb.

“I can handle getting hit.”

“I know.”

“It's the other part.”

She did not explain immediately. Kiresten gave her room, which somehow made explaining harder.

“Standing there and knowing you can see an opening I can't. Having to believe you'll move before I have time to check.”

“You want a guarantee?”

“No.”

“Good. Haven't got one.”

Scarlett looked at her.

Kiresten lifted a shoulder. “I can give you attention. I can give you the work. I can tell you that if I make a mistake, I'll still be there trying to fix it. That's what I've got.”

For a while, there was only rain.

Then Scarlett nodded.

“That'll do.”

They reset the camera beside the cleared doorway. This time Scarlett stayed standing with the garden behind her. Kiresten checked the frame, then stepped away from the lens.

“The thing about resistance,” Scarlett began, “is that people love it when it's already become a story. They love the photograph. The raised fist. The moment somebody looks brave enough to put on a poster.”

She hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her coat.

“They don't love how repetitive it gets. How often it means doing the same difficult thing after it stopped feeling dramatic. Getting up. Getting your guard back. Moving your feet when everything from your knees down wants to stay still.”

Her eyes shifted toward the severed branches piled outside.

“This garden didn't become a mess in one spectacular afternoon. It happened a little at a time. And opening it isn't going to happen because I stood here and gave it a speech.”

She looked back.

“Dylan, Jessica, that's the resistance you're getting. The boring kind, right up until it ruins your night. The kind that makes you run the sequence again because the first one didn't finish anything. The kind that keeps a shoulder alive underneath your weight. The kind that forces you to spend another breath, another step, another second you thought you had saved.”

Scarlett pushed away from the doorframe.

“I want you tired enough to start making choices you wouldn't make fresh. I want you looking toward your corner a fraction too early. I want the space between your decision and your movement to get just wide enough for us to put a hand in it.”

Kiresten watched from beside the bench.

“And I know what you're thinking. That's everybody's plan. Wear the other team down. Find the opening. Get the win. Fine. The plan isn't a secret. You'll know exactly what we're trying to do while we're doing it. You'll still have to stop us.”

She smiled without warmth.

“There's your show.”

Wind lifted the branches behind her, shaking loose a thin scatter of water.

“I'm not interested in whether you can make an entrance. I'm interested in what Jessica does when Dylan needs help and helping him leaves her exposed. I'm interested in what Dylan chooses when chasing me means losing track of Kiresten. Those decisions happen fast. Faster than speeches. Faster than reputations.”

She took one step closer.

“And if you're good at them, we'll have to get better while we're in there. I can live with that. I'd rather know exactly how hard the work is than borrow confidence from pretending you won't make us do any.”

Scarlett's expression hardened.

“But don't mistake respect for accommodation. There won't be a comfortable place for you to stand just because I've admitted you can fight. You're going to have to move me. You're going to have to move her. You're going to have to earn every single moment you get to feel safe.”

A droplet fell from the roof between Scarlett and the camera.

She did not blink.

“And safety has a very short shelf life in a tag match.”

By afternoon, the rain had thinned to a silver mist. They cleared enough of the central path to reach a neglected bed beneath the far wall. Most of its roses had gone to hips, small red fruits bright among the leaves. One flower remained, bowed beneath its own wet weight.

Scarlett crouched beside it.

Kiresten stopped behind her. “Going to pick it?”

“No.”

“Would make a good closing shot.”

Scarlett studied the stem. Someone had tied it to a rotten support with wire that now cut into the bark. She reached into her pocket for the little cutters and snipped the wire instead. The branch shifted, trembling, then settled against the wall.

“It can stay where it is.”

Kiresten crouched too, examining the old support.

“This needs replacing.”

“Most of it does.”

“You keeping the place?”

Scarlett looked around at the weeds, the broken fountain, the greenhouse patched with dirty sky.

“I haven't got that far.”

“Someone's going to ask about the lock.”

“They can.”

Kiresten grinned. “There's the resistance.”

Scarlett shook her head, but she was smiling too.

The word had felt heavier inside the greenhouse, carrying all the things she wanted the match to mean. Out here it became smaller and more useful. A cut wire. A cleared doorway. Someone staying to hold a branch while you got your hands free.

She stood, brushing mud from her knees.

“One more.”

They brought the camera outside.

Scarlett positioned it at the edge of the path, low enough that the red roses appeared behind her shoulder instead of above her head. Kiresten checked that it was recording, then came to stand beside her.

For a few seconds neither spoke.

Scarlett could hear a mower starting in another garden, the cough of an engine refusing its first attempt. Somewhere close, water continued dripping into the useless bucket they had forgotten to move.

Ordinary sounds. A world continuing without waiting for anybody to become ready.

She looked into the lens.

“Kiresten Scott and Scarlett Carsons. Together again. You can put whatever expectations you want on those words, Dylan. Jessica. We have our own.”

Kiresten's shoulder brushed hers.

“We expect to have to fight for position. We expect you to try to separate us. We expect the first clean opening to disappear if we hesitate. And we expect each other to keep working when the match stops looking the way we pictured it.”

Scarlett breathed in slowly.

“That's where I trust her. In the part we can't rehearse here. In the moment when I'm reaching without looking and she's already moving.”

She glanced at Kiresten, then back toward the camera.

“The Great and Secret Show can have the beautiful name. You can have all the possibilities people hear when they say it. When we meet, you get the actual women standing across from you. Mud on the boots. Air in the lungs. Hands ready.”

Kiresten lifted her chin slightly.

Scarlett continued, quieter now.

“I won't promise you that we leave untouched. I won't insult either team by pretending wanting this badly enough makes getting it simple. But when you put me down, I will make you check whether I stayed there. When you turn toward Kiresten, you will have to remember where you left me.”

She stepped forward, close enough to see her reflection in the little dark lens.

“And when you hear the referee counting, don't assume the story has finally become yours. Keep your weight down. Keep your eyes open. Because somewhere in that count, there's still a shoulder trying to rise. Somewhere beyond your reach, there's still a hand waiting.”

Her voice settled.

“We're coming to make that matter.”

Before she could touch the switch, Kiresten caught her wrist.

“Leave it running.”

Scarlett looked at her, surprised by how quickly the request brought her attention back from the speech to the person standing beside her.

Kiresten faced the lens.

“She reaches, I reach. That's the part you need to understand.”

There was no change in her voice, no attempt to borrow Scarlett's rhythm. She sounded exactly as she had while discussing the leaking roof.

“You can spend the whole match trying to make that difficult. You should. We'd do the same. But don't build your night around hoping one of us gets tired of the responsibility.”

Scarlett let her hand fall.

Kiresten looked toward her then, and the camera became something incidental, a machine accidentally included in a conversation that would have happened anyway.

“If you need the tag, take it.”

Scarlett's jaw tightened. Such a simple instruction, and somehow it found the stubborn place in her immediately. The place that confused needing help with giving something away. She could imagine herself ignoring the corner for one more exchange, trying to prove she still controlled a moment already slipping beyond her.

Kiresten saw the argument before Scarlett spoke it.

“You don't have to be finished to let me start.”

Behind them, a loose strip of greenhouse flashing rattled against its frame.

Scarlett looked down at her bare hands. The scratches were shallow, but she remembered how much longer the first branch had taken when she tried to hold everything herself.

“All right,” she said.

Kiresten did not ask her to make it bigger than that.

Scarlett turned back toward the camera.

“There. That's something real you can take with you. I can stand here talking about trust all afternoon, but that doesn't mean anything unless I change a decision when it matters. So here's mine. When the smart move is the tag, I'm making the tag.”

She felt the promise settle somewhere uncomfortable and necessary.

“Dylan, Jessica, if you're counting on pride to keep us conveniently separated, find another plan. I'm coming to win with my partner. That means letting her be my partner.”

Kiresten offered her hand between them, palm open.

Scarlett met it.

It was a brief slap, awkward without ring ropes or a referee or the desperate momentum of a match. Their hands separated almost immediately. Still, Scarlett felt it after the contact ended, a warmth across the same fingers that had spent the morning closing around tools.

She looked at Kiresten and nodded once. This time, she knew at last exactly what she was agreeing to.

She switched the camera off herself.

Afterward, Kiresten carried the equipment while Scarlett went back to retrieve their bags. She took the broken padlock from the gravel and slipped it into an outside pocket. Leaving it lying there suddenly felt careless, like expecting somebody else to clean up after the statement she had made.

At the gate, she turned back.

The path was still narrow. Most of the garden remained a wreck. From this distance, their hours of work could almost disappear inside everything left undone.

But the greenhouse doorway stood open.

Scarlett held the gate while Kiresten passed through, then followed her into the street. Behind them, the freed branch shifted in the breeze, and the last red flower lifted slightly from the wall.

[Simple77]

OOC: Best of luck!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JX9U...it?tab=t.0