A/N: Oh God, it's alive! So after the longest unintended hiatus in forever, I'm finally writing again. It feels great. I've just gotten into Persona 4. Not very far into the game yet but it's a great game to get back into the flow with. This weird Igor/Margaret maybe-but-not-really thing came around after someone requested an adorable, sexually tense SoujixChie. Just goes to show what my mind thinks is cute. Vague Persona 3 references, pre-Persona 4, touches of Frankenstein and existentialism and I don't even know what else. Read into it or not if you like. Reviews are nice if you are so inclined.
Impossible only means you haven't found the solution yet.
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Anonymous
impossibility
She takes her sister's old place as if she does not expect him to notice. But in this world of unchanging change, of consistently unstoppable forces and immovable objects, even the tiniest details don't escape his bulging eyes. And she will not escape him, either, will not escape his sculptor's hands and tools.
He smiles, for she does not know this, cannot know this yet. She looks down, as if searching for answers beneath the shifting seats. The room changes around them, seeking the next hero to brandish the cards and mate them, who may just have better luck than the one who came before him.
But bah! Enough of him, whatever his name may have been. There is something far closer, and much prettier, in front of Igor, and he aims to analyze it further.
"I've heard such…multiple stories of you, Margaret," Igor smiles at her, revealing a set of cramped, pearl-colored teeth. She shifts shyly away from him, the Compendium in between them. "I dare say you are even lovelier than your sister gave you credit for."
She looks up at him, crimson lips pursed, and does not blink. Her amber eyes are fascinating, the very color of insects' graves. "I thank you for the compliment, sir."
She busies herself with straightening the pleats of her skirt and shaking off the dust of the Compendium's bound, featureless face. His gloved hands are mere inches from her legs, but he is not so brash, so bold as to touch her, oh no! Not yet. It would not suit a gentleman of his cavalier, nor a lady of hers. There is work to be done, time to slip through fingers, before such a thing is permissible.
"Do you ever consider, my dear Margaret," he asks, hands tight on his polished cane, veins in his eye red with stifling air, "how we came to be here?"
"…I don't consider such things, sir," Margaret says dutifully. How very much like her sister, he thinks. He wonders if that should be true in all things. "I recognize that I am here because I have a duty to attend to. You do as well. It is strange and unnatural to consider anything beyond that."
"Oh, Margaret." His voice is soft with pity, but if she recognizes his tone, she does not react to it. "Blessed with such beauty, and surely a brain to match, and you cannot consider these things?"
"It leads down a road I cannot follow." Margaret pretends to read the Compendium, fingernails bright against the gold-lined pages, but he sees those jewel-work eyes of hers move over the words, not under them.
"And why can't you?"
She keeps up her charade and does not look to him, fascinated with the picture of a Fool's persona by the name of Izanagi. "It distracts me from my purpose."
"Margaret…there is so much more to life than purpose. How else do you explain the existence of this very room? Our very existence?"
"Benevolence," she volunteers, finally setting the Compendium aside. "A higher power. Happenstance." She shrugs. "You may have a preference. But they are one and the same."
"None of those things exist here." He hopes to shock her and sees her body only stiffen in response. She casts aside her tome.
"Then what does?"
"You, Margaret. And I, Igor. And the power that lays dormant here, outside ourselves, which we alone can channel." He sweeps his hand across the horizon of supernovae and nebulae, of things yet untouched and unborn, things that belong to them. "Consider it…a union, between you and I. And all that you see is what we may create."
"…are we nothing but tools, then, for what will come after us?" The question frightens her as she says it. He already has seized her mind with the very idea, as he had suspected. Her sister was similarly afraid, an easy task to accomplish in a dimension beyond the reasonable imagination.
"You know the answer," he says, with his sphinx-like lips. Oh, how riddles can change everything.
Is there an answer, my dear? he wonders. Or will you be at my side forever, asking for one more hint, one more clue, just something else to help you try to discover it yourself? Will you ever give birth to an answer I can love? Or will you be whisked away by Death with that question still in your mouth?
"Search yourself, Margaret," he tells her. "And you will come to understand what you wish to seek. But, a warning, to be fair. It may take some time to discover it." He revels in refusing to yield to her, knowledge comfortable in his pocket like a secret key.
She stands subdued while she considers it, like a statue, pulse hidden from his view, until she opens her eyes again, those deep amber eyes, and looks at him as if she has just come ashore from a deep sea.
"…we have time, Igor. And I will stay here with you until I find a suitable reply. You have asked the questions. And it is only fair that I provide you with an answer."
"Very good," he nods. "I knew you would have a place here, my dear."
Nothing but time, he thinks.
Nothing but time and everything but time, in this land of paradoxes where dreams and reality cannot touch, in this land of paradoxes where everything and nothing exists, in this land of paradoxes where impossibilities live only a short while, in this land of paradoxes where a monster can take the hand of a much handsomer man's bride.
And claim her for his own.
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