you can keep on getting better [open]

[hauntedsavior]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: May catchall
When: May
Where: A bar in Cellar Door, other locations to come

Content Warnings: Light alcohol use, conversations about humanity and murder, blood, vampirism

a. if you want, you can buy yourself a drink [at the bar]

[anna's made plans with a couple people to hang out this month. it's not a tense environment at all, and sometimes she can even be seen on the tiny little stage playing some chilled out bass grooves for the patrons. no concrete songs, really, mostly just improv for vibes. when she's not on stage, and most of the time she's not, she's nestled herself down into a booth down near the end. it's quiet, well-lit but not obtrusively so. people around here know her and know that that's basically her seat, so any conversations that happen there are as private as they're gonna get.]

[she's expecting a few people to show up as she nurses a beer that's so weak she might as well not be drinking anything at all. probably for the best that she's sober for these talks, whatever they end up bringing with them.]

Hey. Glad you could make it. [she tilts her drink at her guest.]

b. no you'll never drink like me [for kainé]

[there's always been a few problems with going out and hunting beasts, no matter how confident and comfortable it makes anna feel. no matter how many lives she saves, she's always putting herself at risk of corruption or injury or beasthood or all three, and one of these days it's gonna sneak up on her. all at once, extremely loudly and incredibly close.]

[anyway, when she comes back home this time, it's clear that she's been in better shape. she limps her way into the house, and she's at least cognizant enough to fix her roommate/girlfriend with a sheepish little look as she holds her side. the cloth there isn't dripping yet, but it's clear that it didn't start as red as it is now.]

Motherfucker out there got the best of me. [she's talking like she's not in pain, or like she's trying very hard to pretend she isn't.] I think I stopped most of the bleeding myself. Don't suppose we've got anything here that can help seal it up before I go to the doctor?

Comments

[forwantofahorse]

Exactly. [Anna isn't... quick on the uptake, necessarily, but when she does find the mental wherewithal to up the take she can at least process it. Unlike Battler.] On a different layer of reality than the one I came from, Gaap, Shannon, Beatrice, and all the others are real people, with their own thoughts, dreams, and aspirations. But "I," the person who wrote their story, don't exist. If the curtain is pulled back and the reality of the lonely girl who created them is revealed, then the characters in the fiction just become that, characters, all played by the same actor. Yet if I'm not there, then they're in a world all their own.

...they got a happy ending, and I was a stepping stone... Wait, no, no. I'm getting ahead of-

[The bitterness creeping into Sayo's tone stops short and vanishes entirely when Anna compliments her, and Sayo blushes to complement the buzzed flush across her face.]

Th- Thank you. It's... one of the few things I'm good at, really...

Right. Where was I?

[Back into the story.]

Of course. That was when I fell in love.

Every year, the rest of the family would come together at Rokkenjima for the family conference. Natsuhi was insistent on everything being absolutely perfect, so the first time it came around after I started working I was having a nervous breakdown right alongside her. But between my shifts, Kumasawa pulled me away, telling me that "Beatrice-sama would make sure her favorite devotee won't get in trouble for taking a break every now and then, hohoho!" Then, she pushed me in the direction of the cousins.

Before that first conference, Jessica was friendly, but there was a distance between us. One that couldn't be crossed, no matter how hard she tried. Her mother was insistent on disallowing her from "fraternizing with the lower classes," and she was so bright I was afraid of her. George was so much older than me—or what age I said I was—that the few times he'd come to Rokkenjima I was too intimidated to even make eye contact with him. And I hadn't even met Battler yet.

That day, though, when we all came together for the first time... it was magical, in the truest sense of the word. Even though I was too nervous to do anything more than squeak out a few words at the three of them at a time, I learned what real friendship felt like. I was always either too ahead of the curve or too behind to get to know other people at my school, too young to connect with anyone my age at work or at the orphanage, but then...

It was like a whole new world opened up for me, one that made life bearable even outside the sweet fantasy of witches. Especially with Battler. He mentioned struggling with a mystery novel toward the end of the first conference I attended, and I somehow managed to stutter something about having a few hints, if he'd like. After that, every time he came to the island—not just for the conferences, but whenever Rudolf and Asumu visited—we'd trade mystery novels, talk about our own interpretations... I finally found a way to express the parts of myself that I'd only indulged in as "Beatrice." I got to be witty, I got to be intelligent, I got to be something other than Shannon in my everyday life.

We grew closer, and closer. Shy glances traded in lulls of the conversation. Stumbling metaphors, reaching out through the guise of clumsily-threaded interpretations. It was young love, I think, but we were too afraid to come out and say it in case the other person didn't see it either.

But... as this was all happening, as I found a reason to exist as "myself..." My life at the Ushiromiya mansion grew more miserable. I finally saw that there was something beyond that everyday toil and drudgery, and it made the misery, the starvation, the scolding, the loneliness, even worse. I wanted to escape, I wanted to quit, I wanted to leave Rokkenjima altogether, yet I could never find the courage to tell my guardians any of it.

It was when he was twelve, and I was thirteen—Shannon, of course, was only ten at the time—that he said it. Some dumb, irresponsible line that he'd probably cribbed at least some of from his father.

"If, someday, you decide to quit... you can come over to my place. Then we won't need to worry about our time running out anymore. When that day comes, I'll come riding for you on a white horse."

[Sayo's already bittersweet smile takes on an even more sour quality as she stares down at her beer.]

That was when I knew I was head over heels, and that Battler felt the same way. So I decided. I'd quit in a year, leave with Battler, and have the happily ever after I'd always wanted.

And then...

[hauntedsavior]

[battler. ange's older brother. sayo was in love with him? they were in love with each other? this grows more complicated by the second, but there's absolutely no way that a story like this could be told any other way. she's certain of that.]

And then. [it feels like this is the point in the story where everything changes again. it feels like they're finally at the point where anna knows the ending goes. but she's been wrong before. either way, she's practically on the edge of her seat.]

He never arrived on that white horse, did he. You never had the chance to quit because something just... changed. So suddenly that nobody could predict it.

[will sayo appreciate anna trying to take guesses on this last missing piece? will that stop anna from doing it anyway?]

[forwantofahorse]

[Sayo appreciates the engagement, even though discerning the trajectory of this tragedy is trivial. It's another sign that Anna is truly listening, looking. That Sayo's story is being heard instead of just told.

Even now, revisiting these memories clogs Sayo's throat, as if she could pretend her suffering never happened if she never talked about the knives that she drove into her own guts over and over again. But if she stopped now, what would be the point of telling the story to this point?

She had to keep going. Forward, always—that's the ideal that Sayo strives for in Trench.]

Soon after, Battler's mother, Asumu, died after a long illness that left her bedridden for most of the year. A few months later, his father's mistress, Kyrie, gave birth to his little sister: Ange.

Battler couldn't begrudge Kyrie, despite her playing an equal role in the affair with Rudolf. But he absolutely could not forgive his father for cheating on Asumu while she laid dying in the hospital. The argument escalated, the two of them refused to back down because apparently bullheaded buffoonery runs in the family, and Battler decided to leave the family and live with Asumu's parents.

No more visits to Rokkenjima. No more family conferences. No more meetings beneath the arbor. No white horses.

...I convinced myself it was a trial from God, at first. [Sayo determinedly maps out the whorls in the wood instead of looking Anna in the eye.] That He knew that I wasn't determined enough to commit to Battler's offer, and that I had to strengthen my faith in my prince and my will to leave to find a new life before he'd come for me.

I prayed, a little bit each night. First directionless prayers, thoughts into the void. Then I was convinced it wasn't working because I wasn't doing it right, so I dug out the hymnal that all of the Gospel House orphans left unread in the dustiest corner of their rooms and read from that. Still nothing. I kept doing it, though, because what else was I supposed to do? And when nothing came of it I felt even more unworthy.

Funny, isn't it? For the girl who'd made friends of witches and demons to start turning to God. What a hypocrite.

Years passed. Everyone in my class started changing, talking about puberty, getting interested in boys, and each of their words felt like daggers stabbed into my heart. All the other girls filled out but I... it was like I was frozen in time. I grew a few inches, sure. But I never got curves, I never had my period, and I was so deeply sure that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that the doubts began gnawing at my brain every night that it was me who kept Battler away, that I was cursed somehow, and that's why God never answered my prayers and why I was so lonely every night.

Still, I held fast, even as work got more miserable with the dream of freedom just beyond my grasp. Every time a family member forgot about Battler even in passing I felt like grabbing them by the lapels and screaming at them that he was still out there, he existed, that he was coming back. That I wasn't blowing things out of proportion, that it wasn't just some cheesy line, that he really loved me even when nobody else did.

[Sayo scoffs.] I don't think I was really in love with Battler after he left. I was in love with the idea of Ushiromiya Battler. The prince on a white horse who would sweep me off my feet and carry me away and make the decision to leave for me since I was too much of a coward to do it myself. That's the most pathetic part. I could've walked away at any time. Being a servant of the Ushiromiya family pays well, and I'd been earning money since for more than half a decade by that time. Genji and Kumasawa and Nanjo would've protested, but I have no doubt that eventually they'd cave and help me find a life elsewhere.

I was just too terrified of the world to act on that idea, and... I think, even back then, I'd already convinced myself that I deserved the torture.

[A long pause.]

Then, the family conference of 1983. It felt like a miracle. Kyrie brought letters from Battler, and George handed them out.

And...

[Sayo's eyes are hollow.]

[hauntedsavior]

[she could talk a lot right now about her own relationship with god. about how she was raised in a catholic family and how her parents adhered so grotesquely to its principles that she ended up disowned when she came out. about how, in her own darkest times, she remembered throwing prayers His way as though it would help her in the slightest. as though she hadn't been abandoned by two Fathers.]

[it's in the middle, before sayo returns to the conference of 1983, that anna says something in passing.]

We should talk about God together one of these days. I think we'd have a lot to share.

[but she doesn't want to interrupt much more than that, and she's looking at sayo carefully as the story comes to another peak, like a roller coaster about to plunge her heart into ice.]

What did yours say? Or... did you even get one...?

[forwantofahorse]

[Sayo holds up her empty hands, smiling grimly.

It was absurd, looking back on it. How that one final indignity had shattered everything for her—no, not even something, the lack of something. How funny it seemed looking back on it is the only reason why she's not bursting into tears now.]

It was to be expected, of course. For all Battler knew, the maids quit after just a few years of working at the mansion. He had no reason to believe I was even still on Rokkenjima—from his perspective, sick of the family as he was, he must've thought that I probably took the first opportunity I could to get out of there just like him.

But I couldn't think of it that way. There was no future for, "Shannon"—no one loved her, no one remembered her; she couldn't even be a woman properly. [Even now, the venom in each of Sayo's words is deadly as she recalls that awful night.] When I looked at my reflection, not even the witches of my fantasies could show themselves to comfort me. There was only the harsh, ugly truth of a lonely not-girl.

That was the first time I broke my mirror.

I thought, looking at the shards of myself, this wretched thing rotting away as it pretended to be a woman... maybe there was a reason why I couldn't be a girl, no matter how hard I tried. That it'd be easier if there was another "me."

Next week, a new servant arrived to work at Rokkenjima. A surly young man named Kanon. Rude, standoffish, cold... he could say everything I wished I could say, was everything that Shannon couldn't be. Being him was another kind of torture, one that forced me to feel every last one of my imperfections, but... there was release, too. In both being able to speak what was on my mind, and in not having to play the role of the perfect, demure woman.

It may sound odd, but, [Sayo laughs, something bittersweet in her eyes,] those were the best days of my life, I think. That brief year between the '83 conference and my eighteenth birthday. Shannon and George began to notice each other as a man and a woman, delicately moving toward romance. Jessica was infatuated with Kanon, and as much as it was embarrassing, it was... nice, getting her attention. I think part of me realized that I loved her as myself too. And Maria was old enough to be enchanted by Beatrice, and the magic of witchcraft helped her escape her own awful home even if it was just for a brief while.

Then, one day...

[Her fists clench, and Sayo stares down at the tablecloth.] I don't remember the exact date, but looking back on it, that's when Kinzo must have known. I was serving him tea as usual, tripped as usual, fell, got hot tea all over my shoes, Kumasawa had to take them off to make sure I didn't get burns...

Polydactyly is a common trait in the Ushiromiya family. It's a sign of good fortune—why Kinzo was chosen to be the head after the Great Kanto Earthquake, actually.

None... of my scars during the... procedures that were done to me as an infant were given proper aftercare. I've been scarred my entire life.

So I know he saw the scar where my extra toe should've been.

It wasn't long after that when Beatrice's portrait and its epitaph were hung in the main hall.

[hauntedsavior]

[it sounds like sayo's mirror never truly got pieced back together, not by the end of this. it's so many different personalities, different people to try to keep track of, and god help her there's a little bit in there that resonates with anna, too. the idea of... well, the gender stuff, yeah, just a little. she's not going to bring that up right now, though, because not even she's sure about it yet, but. it doesn't sound foreign. it doesn't sound as confusing as it could be.]

[well, that's wrong. it's still very confusing. but it's a little more relatable than it would've been otherwise.]

So it was just... this one tiny thing that took everything down around you. In the end, that was all it took. Everything you lived through, everything you suffered for... all the things you tried to build for yourself came crashing down just because one person saw one little thread and knew enough to pull at it.

[she's had her talk with palamedes by now. she could take this information and run with it. but sayo is more important to her right now.]

Does it feel like that could happen here, too? [she asks it like a friend might, even though she knows it's going to upset someone else.] That you're always just teetering on the edge of something like that again?