“So before you woke up in the dirt . . . nothing?”
You can feel the magic, pulling you. Whatever you say, it will be the truth. You’ve no choice about that for the moment. Jester doesn’t seem to be sorry at all.
“There is no before. Whatever happened before is not me. Some asshole got buried in the dirt. Fuck him. I am enjoying what I’m doing; I want nothing to do with that. Anything that came before, I was happy to just leave it be.”
“Do you really not want to know your past?” Nott is hesitant, hands in front of her, nervous.
“I really don’t. Whoever that was came to that end, and I want nothing to do with that. Whatever it was, it doesn’t feel good when I– the moment when something creeps through, I don’t like it. I don’t want anything to do with it. I was happy! I liked the circus! The circus was great!”
She tries again: “I’m sorry to belabor this, but what if you had a good life before this? What if you were famous or rich or had friends or family?”
At this, Yasha tries to intervene, how you love her, ”I think he’s quite an amazing person–“ but you interrupt anyway.
“Okay, here’s the thing that you’re not catching. That wasn’t me. This is mine. I don’t want anything from that other person anymore. That
 person is someone else. It was– I’m in for a penny, might as well. I’m told, although I don’t entirely remember this part, that I only said the word empty over and over again for the first week.”
“Empty. That sounds terrible. I don’t want to remember anything. I don’t want to anybody else’s baggage in my head and I don’t want anybody else’s problems, thoughts, ideas. I like this person, right now is a good person. Is a fine person. Is a happy person. It’s very freeing. It’s the best thing– it’s the thing that happened to me. It’s not the best thing that happened to me, it’s the thing that happened to me. I found peace in building a new person.
What if the past feels that I owe it something?”
Beau pipes in, loud and brash as always. “You don’t owe your past shit. If I don’t feel anything about my past, but I still remember it and I still don’t give a fuck about where I came from then, why should you care about shit that you don’t even remember?”
You scowl right back at her.
“I spent two years before I met you all cajoling people, occasionally ripping them off, occasionally doing a good turn here or there. Never trust the truth. The truth is vicious. The truth thinks you owe it something. None of that. I like my bullshit. It’s good. It’s happy. It makes other people happy."
Nott, again: “But it’s not who you are . . . ?”
“It is exactly who I am. I may be a liar but I’m never a betrayer. I’m honest in my work, and I believe in doing a good turn. I’ve never cheated you out of money. I’ve never robbed from you. I stayed with that circus for two years, I know how people treat each other. It’s important. I don’t care where you’ve been. I don’t care what terrible things any of you have done. You’re here now. This is how it works.
I do my best every town I went to and every town I left, no matter how they treated me– and a lot of them treated me with deep disrespect. I left every town better than I found it.”
You can feel Beau’s glare from across the room. You don’t care. You don’t care at all what she thinks of you.
“Let me make this abundantly clear. My name is Molly. That person is dead and not me. It’s just a person who had this body. They abandoned it.
[In turn, she tries to look away - but she's in the memory before she can, in that frustration and denial.
...More than maybe anything else she's seen so far, this is jarring. In several ways, this is so different from the way she normally thinks and behaves, from the way she lives her life, that it takes her a few seconds after the memory fades to say anything. It's clear from her expression that she can't quite comprehend it, or if she can, that she doesn't agree.]
You - that was yours? [There's a beat, before:] ...I don't understand.
[ . . . Wonderful! Exquisite symmetry. To be forced open on the table in front of the whole Nein before he was ready, and now, to be forced open again, guts to the world, by the memory of their interrogation.
He just pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, thinking it over, before:]
Which part? I won't guarantee I won't lie. No Zone of Truth spell on me this time.
[Not being held down by your past is a nice enough idea, she thinks, but an idea is all it is to her. She could say that nobody can choose to leave it behind like that, but he clearly has. After a moment:]
You really - there was never a moment where you wanted to know? Not if you had a family, or what happened to lead to you being... the place you came out of?
He takes a moment to answer, trying to match the same steady belief he'd held in the memory.]
A grave. I came out of a grave. Do you think that creature that went into that unmarked, cold hole in the ground had friends who truly cared? A family? A life I'd want anything to do with?
[If she's paying attention, there's a hesitation that is there that might not have been before.]
[He's almost angry for a moment, to be questioned so hard again about it. Hadn't she just seen Nott pushing and pushing and asking the same things? Hadn't he already answered these? But--
Then he just looks miserable. Sick and tired.]
Yes. Every piece I learn is a fresh new fucking misery.
[There's at least a bit of a wry laugh at that. That type of thing does exist! Probably. But.]
Funnily enough, before Beau was here - the thought crossed my mind. A wish to exorcise a ghost. That sort of thing. I suppose I'd remain somewhere else, in some-- [grave.] But it'd have helped them.
[Work, she's about to ask, but the concerned glance she gives him is long enough that suddenly, he'll feel like he's in another time.
You're much younger in this memory, and you're in a dark, cold room. There's a table in the center of the room laid out with exquisite food, warm candles illuminating the people who sit - but you aren't one of them. You didn't win any of your fights today, you know, so you haven't been invited to the table to eat that food. You're given a small amount of stale bread, old enough that it just barely hasn't started to grow mold yet, and left to sit near the corner of the drafty room on the ground. You're so hungry. You wish that, even for a day, you could sit at that table with the other girls and taste that food, feel the warm candlelight. But you've never been strong enough.
The next day, though, something changes. During the day's fights... For the first time, you win. For the first time, you do well enough that you can sit at the table. You can taste the food that the rest of the girls eat. Compared to the cold, stale bread you've been eating for months, it's so warm and filling that you want to cry. You can't remember the last time you weren't hungry.
You don't forget that feeling. You start winning the fights by any means necessary. Not all of the girls survive through it. Some of them cry before you kill them, and some of them beg. The staff in the mansion start to look at you with fear in their eyes. You don't care. You're not going to starve. You're going to live. You're going to have power. You're going to be strong. Strong enough to be safe, strong enough that someday you'll never remember the taste of that stale bread, the feeling of sitting alone in the dark corner of the room while you wished and waited. The group of other girls gets smaller and smaller, but it doesn't matter. If this is the only way to make it in the world, you'll do it.
[Well it takes him a second a come back to reality after
that
fear and blood and burning, burning hunger - there's something about being ripped out of your own head for these moments that's so vertigo-inducing, nauseating almost, the violation of a memory that isn't yours
he lets her back away from him if she likes, he isn't chasing or anything, but after a second (breathing, remembering how to fucking breath, shit) he holds up his hands as in a surrender.]
Look, shit-- Fuck!
[Okay maybe he needs another second.]
Remember what I said? I don’t care where you’ve been. You're here now.
[It's a little bit louder, a little bit angrier, than it needs to be. She wrestles herself out of the memory of battles that have been over for hundreds of years, and prepares herself for a hatred that she's faced before. When it sinks in that he's not giving her the same, there's a release of some of that tension, but she still looks like she's expecting something else, something worse to come from him.
Her voice quiets a little when she continues, but:]
Do you remember what I told you? In the end, all you have is - the person you are.
[People come. People go, even when she tries her hardest to hold on to them. The things she's done, and the person that grew out of doing those things, has stayed.]
[He doesn't flinch at the anger. If she's expecting judgment, he's digging his heels in. he stubbornly is refusing to give it, one way or the other. the same tight look and crossed arms he'd had in that memory.]
I don't know that person. I know this person. In front of me. Is that you right now, in this moment? [funny, the reflection on one of their first conversations. What do you think of me, right now? `Weird.`] It's-- It's as I said, there isn't some deep dark truth I could learn that'd change what I think of you.
[She stops for a second, making a frustrated noise as she shoves a hand through her hair, trying to articulate exactly why she has a problem with that idea. It's not the fact that he isn't angry at her. That's - well, she won't admit it, but that's a relief. But...]
Do you think that if I felt threatened, I wouldn't do that again? That I'm an entirely different girl than I was back then? I'm not. [she told him she didn't want to lie to him about who she is.] The world hasn't changed, so neither have I.
Someone taught you to do that, but is that the thing you actually want to do? Seems like you make a new choice every day, yeah? I won't argue not having a past doesn't make it easier. It is a little easier. Some bastard put a bunch of bloody eyeballs on this body, did loads of creepy shit to it, taught it all sorts of nasty things, and I chose something different.
Worlds can change. Sometimes you die and show up on a-- wherever this is.
[She hesitates for a long moment, not sure what to say about that or muster up the frustration she'd been feeling a moment ago after hearing that news. But...]
...I hope you do make it home. Both of you. I think you both deserve to. [She means that.] I guess I don't know much about the world you come from, but it seems like a nice place from what I saw in that simulation. I hope you'll get to travel more and see more of your world when you both leave together.
[After a moment:]
Sometimes it's nice to pretend I come from somewhere like that. [...] You know, right before I came here, for the first time, I helped someone even though it made things pretty inconvenient for me! But for me, making that kind of choice is an exception. Even that decision almost got me killed.
Good bits and bad bits, like anywhere else I expect.
[Oh, sorry, he is making a face that will get him punched very shortly by Endorsi. it is very like, I knew it.]
I'd say in my experience, the choice to help someone is more often than not the one that ends up with you on your ass and the cleric standing over you. Think the almost is the key there.
[ . . . ]
What made you make that decision? To help someone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
2/2
“So before you woke up in the dirt . . . nothing?”
You can feel the magic, pulling you. Whatever you say, it will be the truth. You’ve no choice about that for the moment. Jester doesn’t seem to be sorry at all.
“There is no before. Whatever happened before is not me. Some asshole got buried in the dirt. Fuck him. I am enjoying what I’m doing; I want nothing to do with that. Anything that came before, I was happy to just leave it be.”
“Do you really not want to know your past?” Nott is hesitant, hands in front of her, nervous.
“I really don’t. Whoever that was came to that end, and I want nothing to do with that. Whatever it was, it doesn’t feel good when I– the moment when something creeps through, I don’t like it. I don’t want anything to do with it. I was happy! I liked the circus! The circus was great!”
She tries again: “I’m sorry to belabor this, but what if you had a good life before this? What if you were famous or rich or had friends or family?”
At this, Yasha tries to intervene, how you love her, ”I think he’s quite an amazing person–“ but you interrupt anyway.
“Okay, here’s the thing that you’re not catching. That wasn’t me. This is mine. I don’t want anything from that other person anymore. That
 person is someone else. It was– I’m in for a penny, might as well. I’m told, although I don’t entirely remember this part, that I only said the word empty over and over again for the first week.”
Caleb, asks: “M.T.? Or empty?”
“Empty. That sounds terrible. I don’t want to remember anything. I don’t want to anybody else’s baggage in my head and I don’t want anybody else’s problems, thoughts, ideas. I like this person, right now is a good person. Is a fine person. Is a happy person. It’s very freeing. It’s the best thing– it’s the thing that happened to me. It’s not the best thing that happened to me, it’s the thing that happened to me. I found peace in building a new person.
What if the past feels that I owe it something?”
Beau pipes in, loud and brash as always. “You don’t owe your past shit. If I don’t feel anything about my past, but I still remember it and I still don’t give a fuck about where I came from then, why should you care about shit that you don’t even remember?”
You scowl right back at her.
“I spent two years before I met you all cajoling people, occasionally ripping them off, occasionally doing a good turn here or there. Never trust the truth. The truth is vicious. The truth thinks you owe it something. None of that. I like my bullshit. It’s good. It’s happy. It makes other people happy."
Nott, again: “But it’s not who you are . . . ?”
“It is exactly who I am. I may be a liar but I’m never a betrayer. I’m honest in my work, and I believe in doing a good turn. I’ve never cheated you out of money. I’ve never robbed from you. I stayed with that circus for two years, I know how people treat each other. It’s important. I don’t care where you’ve been. I don’t care what terrible things any of you have done. You’re here now. This is how it works.
I do my best every town I went to and every town I left, no matter how they treated me– and a lot of them treated me with deep disrespect. I left every town better than I found it.”
You can feel Beau’s glare from across the room. You don’t care. You don’t care at all what she thinks of you.
“Let me make this abundantly clear. My name is Molly. That person is dead and not me. It’s just a person who had this body. They abandoned it.
it’s mine now.”
And the memory fades. ]
no subject
...More than maybe anything else she's seen so far, this is jarring. In several ways, this is so different from the way she normally thinks and behaves, from the way she lives her life, that it takes her a few seconds after the memory fades to say anything. It's clear from her expression that she can't quite comprehend it, or if she can, that she doesn't agree.]
You - that was yours? [There's a beat, before:] ...I don't understand.
[Obviously.]
no subject
He just pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, thinking it over, before:]
Which part? I won't guarantee I won't lie. No Zone of Truth spell on me this time.
no subject
[Not being held down by your past is a nice enough idea, she thinks, but an idea is all it is to her. She could say that nobody can choose to leave it behind like that, but he clearly has. After a moment:]
You really - there was never a moment where you wanted to know? Not if you had a family, or what happened to lead to you being... the place you came out of?
no subject
Has he?
He takes a moment to answer, trying to match the same steady belief he'd held in the memory.]
A grave. I came out of a grave. Do you think that creature that went into that unmarked, cold hole in the ground had friends who truly cared? A family? A life I'd want anything to do with?
[If she's paying attention, there's a hesitation that is there that might not have been before.]
no subject
[She still looks deeply skeptical, but—]
Maybe it's none of my business. [...But, she does notice.] But, are you really sure about that?
no subject
Then he just looks miserable. Sick and tired.]
Yes. Every piece I learn is a fresh new fucking misery.
no subject
After a moment, a little more casually, like she's realized she might have taken a step too far and is trying to walk it back:]
I wonder if there's a spell for that.
no subject
To do what, exactly?
no subject
I don’t know. To forget those pieces again, if you hate them so much.
no subject
Funnily enough, before Beau was here - the thought crossed my mind. A wish to exorcise a ghost. That sort of thing. I suppose I'd remain somewhere else, in some-- [grave.] But it'd have helped them.
no subject
[Work, she's about to ask, but the concerned glance she gives him is long enough that suddenly, he'll feel like he's in another time.
You're much younger in this memory, and you're in a dark, cold room. There's a table in the center of the room laid out with exquisite food, warm candles illuminating the people who sit - but you aren't one of them. You didn't win any of your fights today, you know, so you haven't been invited to the table to eat that food. You're given a small amount of stale bread, old enough that it just barely hasn't started to grow mold yet, and left to sit near the corner of the drafty room on the ground. You're so hungry. You wish that, even for a day, you could sit at that table with the other girls and taste that food, feel the warm candlelight. But you've never been strong enough.
The next day, though, something changes. During the day's fights... For the first time, you win. For the first time, you do well enough that you can sit at the table. You can taste the food that the rest of the girls eat. Compared to the cold, stale bread you've been eating for months, it's so warm and filling that you want to cry. You can't remember the last time you weren't hungry.
You don't forget that feeling. You start winning the fights by any means necessary. Not all of the girls survive through it. Some of them cry before you kill them, and some of them beg. The staff in the mansion start to look at you with fear in their eyes. You don't care. You're not going to starve. You're going to live. You're going to have power. You're going to be strong. Strong enough to be safe, strong enough that someday you'll never remember the taste of that stale bread, the feeling of sitting alone in the dark corner of the room while you wished and waited. The group of other girls gets smaller and smaller, but it doesn't matter. If this is the only way to make it in the world, you'll do it.
Even after the rest of them are gone, you will survive.
As the memory ends, she's moving away from him as quickly as she can, hands pressed over her mouth.]
no subject
that
fear and blood and burning, burning hunger - there's something about being ripped out of your own head for these moments that's so vertigo-inducing, nauseating almost, the violation of a memory that isn't yours
he lets her back away from him if she likes, he isn't chasing or anything, but after a second (breathing, remembering how to fucking breath, shit) he holds up his hands as in a surrender.]
Look, shit-- Fuck!
[Okay maybe he needs another second.]
Remember what I said? I don’t care where you’ve been. You're here now.
no subject
[It's a little bit louder, a little bit angrier, than it needs to be. She wrestles herself out of the memory of battles that have been over for hundreds of years, and prepares herself for a hatred that she's faced before. When it sinks in that he's not giving her the same, there's a release of some of that tension, but she still looks like she's expecting something else, something worse to come from him.
Her voice quiets a little when she continues, but:]
Do you remember what I told you? In the end, all you have is - the person you are.
[People come. People go, even when she tries her hardest to hold on to them. The things she's done, and the person that grew out of doing those things, has stayed.]
no subject
I don't know that person. I know this person. In front of me. Is that you right now, in this moment? [funny, the reflection on one of their first conversations. What do you think of me, right now? `Weird.`] It's-- It's as I said, there isn't some deep dark truth I could learn that'd change what I think of you.
no subject
[She stops for a second, making a frustrated noise as she shoves a hand through her hair, trying to articulate exactly why she has a problem with that idea. It's not the fact that he isn't angry at her. That's - well, she won't admit it, but that's a relief. But...]
Do you think that if I felt threatened, I wouldn't do that again? That I'm an entirely different girl than I was back then? I'm not. [she told him she didn't want to lie to him about who she is.] The world hasn't changed, so neither have I.
no subject
[He shrugs at that.]
Someone taught you to do that, but is that the thing you actually want to do? Seems like you make a new choice every day, yeah? I won't argue not having a past doesn't make it easier. It is a little easier. Some bastard put a bunch of bloody eyeballs on this body, did loads of creepy shit to it, taught it all sorts of nasty things, and I chose something different.
Worlds can change. Sometimes you die and show up on a-- wherever this is.
no subject
But I thought you... The profiles said...?
[Undying.]
no subject
[haha!]
no subject
[It does, but the more important question is—]
You didn't come back?
no subject
[It matters a little, but,]
Listen, I crawled out of one grave. Whatever went into that grave wasn't me. I happened to have met another one before I came here.
[He sniffs, trying to decide if he's going to continue or not, but--]
According to Beau, no. I have not come back again.
no subject
[She hesitates for a long moment, not sure what to say about that or muster up the frustration she'd been feeling a moment ago after hearing that news. But...]
Was that your wish, then? To come back?
no subject
Mm. Seemed the obvious choice. Though now, of course, her fate also resides with me.
no subject
[After a moment:]
Sometimes it's nice to pretend I come from somewhere like that. [...] You know, right before I came here, for the first time, I helped someone even though it made things pretty inconvenient for me! But for me, making that kind of choice is an exception. Even that decision almost got me killed.
no subject
[Oh, sorry, he is making a face that will get him punched very shortly by Endorsi. it is very like, I knew it.]
I'd say in my experience, the choice to help someone is more often than not the one that ends up with you on your ass and the cleric standing over you. Think the almost is the key there.
[ . . . ]
What made you make that decision? To help someone.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)