Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The tunnel was only just wide enough. Like last time. Like every time before. Only ever just wide enough. Elster knew better now than to second-guess. She was cursed with primordial truths, bid to toil away with perfect clarity rather than to stumble, blissfully ignorant, down darkened halls. She was no longer content to act purely on instinct. But was that really true? Did the simplest kind of instinct not drive her even now?

She’d brought no weapons with her this time, which would have dug painfully into her sides as she crawled, writhing like a worm, through the narrow pinprick tunnel. She would not need them. At least, that was what she hoped. Elster had no idea what to expect. No idea what to do. She knew that, once she emerged, she would flop down face-first into a cramped bedroom, an intimate place borne entirely from memory. Not her memories, this time. Ariane’s. The dreamer. Goddess. She would flop down face-first into her childhood squat, look at her serials lining the shelf, see the flag of the Nation and yearn, not for the first time nor the last, to tear it down and burn it to stinking cinders.

Did it still count as instinct if the knowledge was not truly her own?

The light ahead was brighter now, but still she squirmed. Not long. She took it in small eternities, knowing how soon she could anticipate her escape by the size of that prick of light. A hundredth of an inch to a tenth, a half an inch to one, one inch to two.The tunnel should not have admitted her and yet it did, for even the concrete shifted just so. She could feel it bending around her, closing up in her wake, opening ahead of her. What should have been the wet mechanics of a swallowing throat. The crumbling decay of Rotfront being left behind, so drilled into her sense memory that it was almost as much a home to Elster as it had been to Ariane. How many times there? How many bullets fired? How many heads crushed? How many cards drawn? The girl from Ariane’s paintings melting away. The pale light of a monitor stinging her weary eyes. The journey. The Nowhere. The ship in the desert. The hole in the mine. Concrete and dust and flesh flexing around her in throes of pain.

Sierpinski.

Surging ahead: A final seal broken, a final hallway, a final confrontation. A woman, and then a man, and then a ship, and then—

A pod. All things, playing out how they must. How they had to play out. Ariane would have told her to put the book away, Ellie, you already know how this one ends. And Ellie would have grinned at her and said, you’re one to talk, and kept reading anyway, and always she would feel a pang of remorse. Because it was done? Because there was no more journey left to travel?

Because, sometimes, she did not prefer the way it ended?

Some nights they stayed up together, pressed close, and Elster whispered wishful thoughts. The story ought to end this way, not that. Ariane would scrunch her nose and tell her her idea was silly, and that the misery was the point. This was not a story to have a pleasant ending. But, in her magnanimous way, she would twirl a finger through Elster’s hair and urge her to go on. Tell me how it should end, my Magpie. Mein Elster. 我的喜鵲. Once, Elster would struggle to find the words, the spark. Then, it would come easier to her. Later still, reading for her as she lay dying, even Ariane would be so far-gone that she no longer could tell the difference between how it ought to have ended and what pretty lies Elster came up with.

And it was always lies, towards the end. For every story, a happy ending, no matter how inexplicable. Deep somewhere in her core, hilariously, laughably, she was an optimist. Who would have thought?

The tunnel abruptly came to its expected end, and Elster pulled herself out, felt the tunnel contort shut the moment her legs were free of it. Nothing. A wall with a stain on it. A crate, which she pulled herself along over until she was stepping back onto the floor. The tunnel was gone. End of the road. A desk, a flag. Elster had the urge to sit back on that crate for a minute, to think about her next steps. Plan them out. Already she was anticipating what was supposed to come next. Her adrenaline was beginning to spike — she’d have to be quick on her feet, resolute of mind. Eyes on the prize. Don’t let the spears hit you. Bob and weave. Aim straight when he swings down. No point trying to dodge, it’s never fucking worked. Not even once. Always. Always in the eye, always with the same searing pain, impossible to become accustomed to yet incapable of stopping her. Always, always, always paltry compared to what would come after.

But ‘next’ had no meaning to her anymore. Not really. It was a dark void. The anticipation was false — rather, it wasn’t really for that expected string to come, no matter how much her body had become accustomed to it, to thinking that, maybe this time it would be different. Somehow. Insanity. No, she was shaking for an entirely different reason because for once, Elster had no idea what would happen. She’d never come this far with the tools she now carried, which jingled at her belt as she regarded the path forward. And to the sound of it, ringing in her head like an anthem, three-nine-four-eight-six-six-oh-one-seven-oh-two-four-

A door. Crimson light seeped in from the cracks, a familiar, well-worn path. Instinct told her to walk through it. Perhaps this time, truly, it would be different. Perhaps she would make it this time, and find within herself the willpower to do what she convinced herself had to be done.

Elster stared at it for a long time, and then turned to the corner of the room where the safe awaited.

Three chains. Three locks. Three keys. One giant unknown.

Elster knelt. She did not have to examine the padlocks — she already knew which key would go where. She’d looked them over countless times before, wondering fruitlessly at what might lie within, even as she was pulled invariably towards the dreary, miserable routine that was the attempted euthanization of Ariane Yeong. The locks were inviolate, invincible, the contents of the safe a mystery that she would never have the luxury of discerning. Not once, not ever, had she found their keys, no matter how hard she tried. Every time she saw the safe, every time she made a mental note to bring along some tool next time, some knack, some memory, it would never matter. She would, inevitably, walk through that door. Her entire being would be swallowed up whole by the enormity of her coming sin, and take every could-have should-have would-have into the screaming abyss. She would wake up in a calibration pod. She would leave Penrose-512. She would wake up in a bathroom, and the whole sorry ordeal would begin again.

Instinct was all she had. Sense memory. The trauma scars would bleed her until she had no choice but to recall their origins. Every cycle, a bit more progress. Every step, repeated. Every agony.

Every agony.

Be not afraid. Certainly not. She had long since descended deeply into a kind of resignation that went beyond understanding. Pistol barrel against her skull, Elster could not say what drove her. The dance was rehearsed a thousand times over until every intricacy lost all meaning. A lifetime of suffering fixed in one determined flash. Each and every time.

What had changed this time, then? She dearly would have liked to know. All she could remember were the steps. The discovery of the first key, a sudden resonating thrill in her heart. Yet how had she gotten there? What had driven her to look in that place?

Instinct?

No. Compulsion. Yet there was no fugue, no loss of time, no struggling against her own limbs acting of their own accord. She would enter a room and she would find the key. To know without knowing and without explanation.

First came love.

Second came eternity.

Third came sacrifice.

One by one did every chain slacken and fall limp. This, then, was her purpose. One last trial. One final puzzle. A message— no, the message. The only message that ever mattered. A signal for her and for her alone, for it was a cry out into the void for absolution. Forever. Elster stared at the keypad for one long moment and then shut her eyes, her fingers dancing along the numbers OH-ONE-OH-SIX-FOUR until, at last, there came a final click, one final twist, one final pull, and then—

Inside the safe was a potted lily. Inside the safe was a promise.

Her final alteration to the story.

Forever.

Elster reached out and—

On a windswept day, she left only a final memento where six memorials stood—

And in that dark place where power pulsated like a beating heart—

She carefully placed her tribute—

She carefully placed her promise—

“I will be with you forever,” whispered Lilith Itou.

“I will be with you forever,” whispered LSTR-512.

A final offering made, duly accepted. And in the spaces between seconds, between all that ever was and all that ever will be, there came a rumble, a note similar to, but not quite, satisfaction. Further away still, far beyond comprehension, a long-awaited debut was at long-last made. The Herald was in Her kingdom. All was right in the world. In those radiant moments, in that time that was not time, the Herald looked upon Her work and was pleased. She was content to, for but the briefest of breaths, forget the ghosts of her life. Forget the nightmare, forget the petty construct that lesser minds called ‘Nation,’ for her very essence had scattered it all to be as dust. There would be just the slightest of work to be done, and then She would at last know supremacy. She would be King. Just a little longer.

And yet.

And yet on the cusp of finality, She found Herself alone. It seemed there was something She should have known. Forever. Just when she thought she was winning. Clarity. Forever. Her Knight. Her servant. Gone. A final offering. Life for life. Life for power. Life for forever.

No. No, no, no. So close, We are so close, leave it behind, let it—

The Herald fled. The ghosts of her life blew wilder than before, and all was cast down into miserable darkness, she fled. To squat in the fruits of her own destruction, content to live and die as a speck among motes of dust billowing in the gale, ignorant. Ignorant. All for what?

Elster’s eyes slowly creaked open. A blink, then a flutter. Creaking. The subtle, soft groaning of metal. Where…

Horribly, the first thought that struck her was that it did not work. What didn’t work? She was back in the crumbling Penrose, still cast in its perpetual dour crimson glow. What didn’t work? Why was she…

A shock of white hair and tear streaked cheeks ripped her back to herself. Alive. Alive. Alive. Instinct, finally ascendant once more, duly took over. She flung herself forward, ignored the ache of death that had claimed her, and she fiercely held Ariane. She would never let her go again. Never again. Ever.

Eventually they rose. They sobbed. They danced. They left. Soon they would flee that place. Soon they would travel the stars together again - never again would she leave her. Nothing else mattered but her. Any length. Any measure. She would walk any path and suffer any pain. Just like before. Just like always.

And yet failure chased her. Again and again they came across misery. Again and again Ariane refused to see the miracle that was her own life. She didn’t get it, didn’t understand that nothing else mattered to Elster. And still, and still, no matter what, she couldn’t convince her. Couldn’t. The guilt. The horrible, horrible guilt. Ariane had to make it right and how? How could she? It tormented Elster. Useless. Pointless. They had their wish, she’d rewritten the rules, they’d somehow, SOMEHOW come together again, and it simply wasn’t good enough.

But slowly, ever so slowly, Elster began to see. And in that moment, in that presence of community and continuation, in that light of something new, just as clarity began to worm its way into her mind, it all came crashing back down.

Pain. Torment. Agony. Absence. Ariane was struck down and Elster had been left alone yet again, yet hers was the duty of a most loyal knight. Rescue her purpose. Live for love and nothing else. Suffer for her.

And in those passing days, in those days of renewed toil and hardship, a dark scene persistently squatted in Elster’s mind, a notion that through it all, she could not quite shake no matter how hard she tried. No matter who she killed, no matter what she did in service to Ariane Yeong, her thoughts would turn constantly to that inexplicable tunnel, to that inexplicable bedroom, to that inexplicable door from her most vivid of nightmares.

The notion that, perhaps, she should have followed routine after all, and simply been content to remain in the hell she’d once known.