Cycle

Kind girls don’t get rescued.
They wait.
They adjust.
They learn how to be small so no one has to deal with them.
She couldn’t make love stay.
Men came.
They admired her mind.
They wanted her body.

They loved the idea of her.
Then they left.
She told herself she didn’t need them.
She told herself she was above it.
She lied.
So she studied.
Hard. Harder.
If she couldn’t be loved, she would still matter.
If she couldn’t be held, she would still be remembered.

Genetics.
Cell division became predictable.
If life was a system, then maybe she was too.

Maybe her childhood had wired her wrong.
Maybe her teenage years had taught her the wrong lessons.
Maybe her trauma had written instructions into her brain.
You are safe when you do this.
You are safe when you don’t do that.

And if that was true, then maybe it could be corrected.
At work, they praised her.
In meetings, they listened.
In journals, her name meant something.
None of it touched the empty part.

Then her experiments started to work.
And she didn’t celebrate.
She panicked.
Because if this was possible, then her life so far hadn’t been fate.
It had been… optional.
All the wrong turns.
All the waiting.
All the nights she told herself she was fine.
Optional.
She didn’t hesitate.
She took a few days off.
Then more.
Days turned to months.
At forty-five, Keva Pi crossed the line.

Parthenogenesis.

She did it.
She impregnated herself with herself.
How fucked up is that?

And yet – she was happy.
When the test turned positive, she slid down the bathroom wall and laughed until it hurt.
Then she cried.
Then she laughed again.
The euphoria.
The fear.

For the first time in her life, she felt like she had a purpose.
She pressed her hand to her stomach.
My, she thought.
She sang to the baby.
She cooked too.
Simple things at first.
Pasta. Tomatoes. Olive oil.
Food that felt warm. Food that felt safe.
Keva Pi didn’t think of it as teaching taste.
She thought of it as care.
She ate carefully.
She did everything right.

She deserved it, they deserved it.
When the baby was born at home, in secret, Keva Pi cut the cord herself.
A secret delivered in secret.
She looked at her, so small, so innocent.
It was Keva.
Looking back at her.

“Keva,” she whispered, shaking, sobbing.
“I’m here now.
You are safe.
I promise you.”
And she meant it.
She wanted to protect the little girl in her.
The little girl.
And she did.
For a while, she kept every promise.
She fed her. Rocked her.

Keva could speak her mind, she was allowed to make mistakes.
She was allowed to be herself.
Pi knew just the way to speak to her, to get her to understand right from wrong.
Pi walked away from the lab. From papers. From the world.
Her past achievements would still bring in money – more than enough.
But also,
She didn’t want to share.
Nobody would know – Beta was still a child – they wouldn’t see the resemblance yet.
Beta was her second chance.
Her dream.
And the dream came true.

Keva Beta grew up safe.
And she grew up loving the same food.
Pasta nights.
Sauce simmering for hours.
It tasted like home.
It tasted like being held.
That’s the thing people don’t understand.
Safety changes you.

Keva Pi talked to her about feelings.
About sadness.
About fear.
About being strong and still being soft.
“I didn’t have this,” Keva Pi admitted once, voice low.
“So I’m giving it to you.”
Keva Beta believed her.
In primary school, Keva Beta’s grades were average.
Keva Pi smiled and said, “That’s okay.”
And she meant it.
Average meant she wasn’t being crushed.
But Keva Pi wanted her to have what she never had.

Joy without punishment.
Creativity without shame.
So she signed her up for things.
Dance.
Music.
Workshops.
Keva Pi felt it in her blood.
This is what we are.

Keva Beta loved it.
The stage.
The applause.
The feeling of being wanted for something she could do.
People started recognising her.
Keva Pi watched with pride.
And grief.

Because this was the life she had wanted.
And she had built it for someone else.
Boys wanted Keva Beta.
She dismissed most of them.

She didn’t have time.
She had music.
She had movement.
She had a mother who loved her.
When she did start drifting toward one boy – one who didn’t treat her like a trophy – Keva Pi didn’t forbid it.
She never forbade.
She only guided.

“Be careful,” she said gently.
“Don’t rush,” she said kindly.
“Wait for the right person,” she said like it was wisdom and not fear.
It sounded like love.
Keva Beta listened.
One night, after a show, Keva Beta sat with Keva Pi at the kitchen table.
Her voice was still warm from singing.
Her body still buzzing.

“Mom,” she asked softly. “What did it feel like… being pregnant with me?”
Keva Pi froze.
Keva Beta laughed, nervous.
“Do you think it would be weird if I tried it too?”
Silence.
Keva Pi looked at her – the life she had made, the safety she had wrapped her in.
“It was the first time,” Keva Pi said slowly, “that I felt like I belonged to this world.”
Keva Beta nodded.
She understood.
She had grown up held.
Seen.
Loved.
She didn’t want a child.
She wanted a constant.

Someone who would understand her without explanation.
Someone who would stay.
“I would never ask you,” Keva Pi whispered.
She didn’t have to.
Keva Beta chose it.
At nineteen, Keva Beta was pregnant.
Out of the belief that closeness was love.
And that was how the cycle learned to continue.
Keva Pi taught Keva Beta the dos and don’ts of this system.

Keva Gamma was born into echoes.
And into bodies that looked the same.
But weren’t.
Keva Pi carried herself differently. Softer. A body that had learned to store, to protect, to endure.
Keva Beta was toned. Strong from movement, from dance, from being seen and celebrated.
Keva Gamma herself was slimmer, unremarkable, a body that hadn’t yet chosen how to survive.
But
Sometimes they stood in the same room and it felt wrong. Like the same life unfolding in parallel, out of sync.

It was like a multiverse collapsed into one house.
There were pictures everywhere.
Baby pictures.
School pictures.
Teenage pictures.
All the same face.

“Look,” Keva Beta would say, tapping a frame. “This is how you’re going to look.”
Keva Gamma stared too long.
She grew up surrounded by futures that had already happened.
Three versions of her in the same rooms.
She felt it in small, ugly moments.
When she laughed and Keva Beta said, “I used to laugh like that.” When she cried and Keva Pi said, “I know. I know. It makes all of us sad.”
Even her feelings had a history.

By sixteen, Keva Gamma was already tired of being a continuation.
She avoided mirrors.
When she did look, she didn’t see herself.
She saw Keva Beta.
The same face, just… ahead of her. Older. Already lived.

She knew it was her.
And it made her feel violated.
The person staring back at me is me, she thought.
But she is not me.
It was like her reflection had been borrowed from the future.
Like her body had been decided for her before she arrived in it.
She would turn away quickly, heart racing, skin crawling.

Not fear.
Displacement.
She didn’t hate them.
She loved them.
That was the worst part.
She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

She just wanted air.
Sometimes it showed up in small things.
A friend offering her something different to eat.
Something Keva Pi never cooked.
Something Keva Beta wrinkled her nose at.
Keva Gamma hesitated.
Did she actually dislike it?
Or had she just never learned how to want it?
Who would she have been – if no one had known her before she spoke? If no one had predicted her face, her talents, her endings?
One evening, when Keva Beta and Keva Pi were talking about her again, as if she were a plan still being drawn, Keva Gamma spoke.

“I want another Keva,” she said.
The room went still.
Keva Pi looked up, startled.
Keva Beta frowned, confused.
Keva Gamma kept her voice steady.
“Not here,” she said. “Not like this.”

She swallowed.
“I want her to grow up far from us,” she said. “Somewhere she isn’t watched. Somewhere she doesn’t wake up inside other people’s expectations.”
Her hands shook.
But her eyes didn’t.
“I want to know what I could have been… without Kevas raising me.”
Silence.
Not disagreement.
Consideration.

Keva Pi’s face tightened.
Keva Beta reached for Keva Gamma’s hand.
“We’d still love her,” Keva Beta said.
Keva Gamma nodded.
That was the first time the cycle tried to correct itself.

Because even distance was still a decision.
Even absence was still design.
Keva Gamma went through with it.
But not immediately.
Before the lab, before the decision became irreversible, she tried something else.

She tried a man.
Not love. Not forever.
Just… normal.
Someone outside the house. Outside the faces. Outside the echo.
He was kind enough. Ordinary. He didn’t look at her like he already knew her future.

For a while, she liked that.
When she got pregnant, she let him believe the child was his.
She told herself it wasn’t a lie.
A mother and a father.
Two reference points this time.

A chance for the child to be shaped by someone who wasn’t a Keva.
For four years, it almost worked.
Keva Alpha called him Dad.
He learned her habits.
Her moods.
Her small preferences.

And then one day, he left.
No drama.
No violence.
Just absence.
Keva Gamma didn’t beg him to stay.
She had learned better than that.

But Keva Beta didn’t know what to do with the silence.
She had grown up loved.
Never rejected.
Never left out.

She tried to explain it.
She tried to soften it.
She tried to make it make sense.

It didn’t.
And that was when Keva Gamma understood something she hadn’t wanted to admit:
So she went through with it.
At sixteen, she carried another version of herself.
To set free.

Keva Alpha was born in a different city.
A smaller house.
Blank walls.
No photo timelines.
No frames predicting her face.
No chorus of older selves finishing her sentences.
Keva Gamma tried.
Fiercely.

A life that wasn’t an instruction.
But blood carries more than features.
And love carries habits.
Keva Pi called more often as she aged.
Keva Beta visited when she could.

They brought gifts. Advice. Certainty.

They didn’t mean to smother.
They just didn’t know how not to.
Keva Alpha grew up feeling the invisible hand anyway.
Even in things that were supposed to be harmless.
Meals.
Preferences.
Comfort.

She noticed how they all reached for the same dishes.
How they all avoided the same flavours.
And she wondered
Was this who they were?
Or who they had been taught to be?
In expectations dressed as care.
In the way adults said “we” when they meant “you.”
And Keva Alpha, she was the rebel part.
Just the part of Keva Pi that had made the Keva Beta come alive.

The part that said: what if I don’t want to fit?

Keva Pi got old.

Misplaced objects.
Anger that came too fast.
Apologies that came too late.

And when Keva Pi started fading for real, Keva Gamma brought Keva Alpha back.
Because death has gravity.
Keva Alpha was twelve when Keva Pi died.
Ninety-two years old.
“A full life,” people said.
Keva Alpha stood at the foot of the bed and watched the breathing stop.
And it didn’t feel like losing someone.
It felt like watching herself.

A strange emptiness.
A weight lifted.
It should have felt better.
But it didn’t.
It just felt unknown.

She had seen herself young. Adult. Old.
A whole life compressed into twelve years.
It felt like being robbed of time she hadn’t yet lived.
As if nothing new was waiting—only the same moments, rearranged, already witnessed.
That’s me, she thought.
Literally.

That face.
That body.

That ending.

Death is part of life.
It is… finished.

Keva Pi had done everything to fit.
She had bent.
She had adapted.
She had softened herself until she fit.

And she still died.

Inevitable.

So what was left?
What else could this system bring her?
Nothing.
Keva Alpha felt something settle inside her.
Clarity.

If the ending comes anyway, then I will meet it on my terms.

She walked the house that night.
The photographs.
The lab.
The rooms where the same face had grown old in different orders.
And she understood.
There was no monster here.

Just hope.
Hope had made all of them.
But it still led to the same ending.
If she did nothing, it would go on.

Because everyone was scared.
Scared to be alone, to fail.
Scared to be unloved.

Keva Alpha didn’t hate them.
She understood them.
But she refused the cage.
She didn’t want to be “better.”
She wanted to be unknown.
So she ended the instructions.

Quietly.

Not like a phoenix.
She did not burn to be reborn.
She burned it so nothing would rise from it again.
When the fire started, it took the lab first.
Then the photographs.
The clothes.
Then the walls that had confused repetition for love.
Keva Beta, Keva Gamma.
Then her.
Finally.
Freedom.