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]

[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?