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.
Clerics...? Oh, right. Well, wave controllers can't do that kind of thing, so I'm lucky it was just almost.
[She is giving him the most unamused face in the world as she notices his expression, but she does give that question some honest thought before she says anything.]
Well, the girl I was ordered to kill... The easiest way to explain it is probably that things have always been hard for her because of who she is, and how she was born. So maybe I thought she deserved a break for once! Who knows. [flippant. but then, muttered:] Besides, the guy who gave me that order really annoyed me... I don't like being pushed into things.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.]
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[She still looks deeply skeptical, but—]
Maybe it's none of my business. [...But, she does notice.] But, are you really sure about that?
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Then he just looks miserable. Sick and tired.]
Yes. Every piece I learn is a fresh new fucking misery.
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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.
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To do what, exactly?
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I don’t know. To forget those pieces again, if you hate them so much.
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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.
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[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.]
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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.
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[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.]
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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.
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[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.
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[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.
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But I thought you... The profiles said...?
[Undying.]
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[haha!]
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[It does, but the more important question is—]
You didn't come back?
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[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.
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[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?
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Mm. Seemed the obvious choice. Though now, of course, her fate also resides with me.
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[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.
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[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.
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[She is giving him the most unamused face in the world as she notices his expression, but she does give that question some honest thought before she says anything.]
Well, the girl I was ordered to kill... The easiest way to explain it is probably that things have always been hard for her because of who she is, and how she was born. So maybe I thought she deserved a break for once! Who knows. [flippant. but then, muttered:] Besides, the guy who gave me that order really annoyed me... I don't like being pushed into things.
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[don't be mean to jester she isn't here
also the expression . . . . . . it's getting worse . . . . . . . ]
If you ask me, 'purely to spite bastards' is a perfectly grand reason to do a good turn now and then.
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