Title: Chrysalis
Author: DareDelvil
Disclaimer: Namco, Monolith Soft, Tri-Crescendo. Dare doesn't appear on this list.
Rating: G
Spoilers: Ending! If you haven't finished the game, DON'T READ IT!
Pairing: Some Kalas x Melodia and Kalas x Xelha. Very light.
Words: c.1,100
Summary: Post-game. Seeing a stranger in the mirror is the least of one survivor's concerns.
Author's Notes: This was a random burst of inspiration. Since I rarely feel like writing for its own sake any more, I took advantage of it. I've taken some liberties, but they seem plausible to me and that's what fanfic's for. A short piece, about two hours work all told with no beta save my own, but it's the first piece of inspired writing I've done in months. Enjoy.
Dedication: This one's for yhibiki, who first loved her, and for amidoh who's been nurturing her ever since. You're both awesome. (Note – these guys are on the BK community on LiveJournal – just do a site search for "batenkaitos" and you should spot them. )
Chrysalis
Her eyes follow her image wherever she goes. Vanity was never a trait of hers – indeed, she used to shun mirrors save to arrange her hair each morning. Now, she looks into them to an obsessive degree. No reflective surface is spared her glance. Every pane of glass in every window, every polished metal tray in every pastry shop, every quiet pool in every corner of Detourne has known her face, and the strange expression she wears whenever she catches sight of herself. When she is alone, with only her reflection for company, she will sit and stare into her own eyes, touch her pale skin, gently paw at the roots of her hair.
She sees a new stranger every time.
She has never been normal. Even the sickly child who rarely saw the light of day was aware that she was different somehow. After the miraculous recovery that would have repercussions for more than herself, she found herself being told exactly how different she was by almost everyone she met. Grown-ups would remark loudly upon her unusual colouring and doll-like features whenever she appeared. Children were less kind. No one wanted to be friends with the little freak. Her grandfather, knowing next to nothing of little girls, could do nothing to console her (though she did not cry, not even when they pushed her down those stone steps – she cut her hands so badly that no amount of magnus could remove the need for bandages) or improve the situation. Instead he gave her paintbrushes and paints and pianos, oil pastels and paper and pens and embroidery threads and tutors by the dozen, and watched her become the accomplished young lady he would hopefully understand. Typically, he did not begin to understand what she was truly becoming until after it was very much too late.
He probably shouldn't have lied to her. Good intentions paved the road to a worse hell than he could ever have anticipated. The best part was that no one saw it coming. Armed with a brilliant mind and a charming smile, she hoodwinked entire nations. Only part of that was Malpercio. He realises that, and is understandably wary of letting her out alone. He tells her that everything he does is to protect her, but she knows better. She's wise to him now. No amount of his fussing and worrying and locking doors does any good. She keeps her wings a secret, and he searches compulsively for the key she must have stolen in order to leave the manor as frequently and as silently as she does.
On occasion, she wonders whether she was ever human. The height of the first summer finds her as chill as ever, and though she suffers from the heat it cannot warm her skin for months of trying. Gazing into the pool, she lets the stained-glass butterfly fragments hang loosely from her shoulders and fusses over her changing features. Darker patches still remain, though mercifully she can hide them with the odd white powder she has had all her life and never used. She took a perfect complexion for granted, even if perfect was as white and cold as death. The blue boy, he and his tan, ruined all that in a split second. Sometimes she hates him for saving her life. Sometimes she loves him for trying, no matter how he has ruined her. That same blue lingers in her hair, runs through irises like a poison she cannot clean away. No chestnut truffle to cure the past.
She sings her own songs. The promised song of the ocean only makes her weaker – to hear the waves upon the shore brings dizziness, nausea, a faint despair. Freakish though she is, she does not want to lose herself to that all-encompassing dream. Dreams, like clothes, do not suit everyone. She is too tied to the skies, too set into the shape of pale flesh and crystalline wings to be anything else. Leaving her wings behind would be to forsake another song – one not of the world, but of herself. She does not want to be a creature of the ocean. There is enough salt water in sorrow. Not that she ever cries. Not for the blue boy, stolen away by the queen of that same ocean, not for the children she left without parents, not for her own heart so carelessly used by good and evil alike.
Glass falls from gossamer when no one is watching. Tears do not clink when they find the ground.
Wings are not her only secret. Traces of her lost child linger on, along with the hallmarks of her unnatural second birth. A pulse so slow it could almost be missed altogether has never caused any ill effects. Neither has the cold that seems to follow her everywhere. At least it suits the image, but for the blue that grows out a little more each day. The rest is less congruent: this fragile porcelain figure finds solid rock no obstacle. Pebbles turn to sand in her grip. A grown man is not so much a burden as a plaything, tossed idly from hand to hand. When the blue boy drew her from Malpercio's flesh, a little of the ancient power he called his own came with her. She has little use for it. If only the world would find some jeopardy, she might have some purpose again. In that sense, peace, like the dream of the ocean, has never suited her. That dream slides languidly past her, carrying everyone else along with it. She watches them go with the same smile she always wore. Only some of them are sharp enough to notice how brittle it seems. A shard of the old world, slowly weathered by the tide of change, she hopes no one will ask her how it feels to be free.
When the blue has faded, when she has finally scoured away all traces of that boy and his forgotten love, she will give up her wings and enter the new world. Part of her does not want to linger so long. Part of her wants never to leave this quiet place of change at all, though she knows it must be done. The world will not wait, is not waiting for her. There are lands to be ruled, people to be watched over, sights to be seen and lives to be lived. Some day she will step out of the darkness, leaving her wings and her dreams behind (but not her songs, never her songs), and see what the new day holds for the last child of the sky.
She fingers white roots, examines them in the reflecting pool with purple eyes that slowly fade to red.
Some day.
Fin
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