Irony
Chapter Four
"W-what are you doing?"
Battler backed away from Rosa in horror, his eyes wide and his mouth partially open. A delicate strand of gossamer saliva hung in the air, suspended between Rosa and Battler's open mouths; a physical representation of what Rosa had done. It was a solid piece of evidence that perhaps, this time, she had completely lost her mind.
She couldn't take this back.
Rosa's trembling fingers found her parted lips, open in an 'o' just like Battler's. She moved suddenly, jerking her head backwards as the full realization of what she'd done hit her. Her sudden movement severed that horrible, hateful spider web thin strand of saliva. It disappeared as though it had never been there at all. However, Rosa couldn't scrub clean the taste of Ushiromiya Battler from her mouth. It was spreading across her tongue, just like the flavor of fine tea.
Impossible to deny.
She had really done it. S-she really had...
Rosa's face was pale; so white she could have been a paper cut out, or one of those Halloween ghosts Maria was so fond of. She didn't know why she'd done it- except, for a few seconds, it had seemed so necessary.
She didn't want Battler to leave her (she didn't want to be alone) but now, as she quailed under the look of horror Battler gave her, she knew she'd made a mistake. A terrible mistake.
"Poor little Rosa~" the witch's cruel voice crooned in Rosa's ear (inside her own head). "You can't do anything right, can you? Kikikiki~"
Maybe that was why Rosa was always alone. She was so desperate, so needy- and people took advantage of that. They used her. And then they threw her aside.
Battler had more decency than those other men. Battler, despite being young, and despite having wild hair that wouldn't lie flat no matter how many times he patted it down or ran a comb through it, was a real gentleman. Battler was kind and considerate- Rosa knew that much from the brief discussion they'd had. H-he wasn't like the other men...
He wouldn't use Rosa.
Instead, he'd simply recoil in fear- because he was still young (far too young), and he said he wanted to help her but he could never hope to shoulder all of Rosa's pain. Thirty-seven years of false fantasies and helpless dreams and ruined romances and blood staining her fingers (it smelt of rust; salty sea air and rust, and Rosa's mouth tasted like vomit- as though something had died inside her mouth) was far too much for any person to hold. It had been selfish of Rosa to force all that pain onto Battler.
A-and, besides...
H-he was twenty years younger than her.
She was his Aunt, f-for God's sake.
W-what had she been hoping for? Obviously he would push her away. Even though Battler was kind and considerate- she could tell by the fond way he'd spoken of Ange and the small smiles he offered Rosa when he tried to comfort her- he would obviously be abhorred by Rosa's advances.
The desperation of a mad woman; destined to die a lonely spinster.
What a cheerful future she had stretching out in front of her.
Ha.
And when she was a child, she'd dreamed of princes on white horses and fairytale palaces.
W-what had she done?
What would happen if (when) Battler told Kyrie and Rudolf? Obviously, Rosa's other relatives would find out- and then they'd all despise her. Or maybe they'd look at her with false pity instead, sympathy burning a hole through her stomach like acid, and that would be even worse.
Poor Rosa, Eva would say, smirking. I always knew she'd do something like this. Her life is falling apart around her; all she has left is that annoying brat who won't shut up when she's told. And nobody wants a woman who already has a child. No wonder she's so desperate! But to think- she'd actually try something with her own relative who's half her age? How sad!
Rosa's fingers fisted in her hair, tugging at handfuls of it whilst her trembling body slumped against the table. She didn't have the strength to keep sitting upright. She didn't have the strength to do much of anything, really.
Her hands smelt of blood.
Her mouth was filled with Battler's saliva.
She might have been imagining it, given her state of hysteria, but it felt like she was going to choke.
W-what was she going to do?
She was going to be alone again, of course. People always said they'd stay with her but they never meant it; never, never, never; and maybe there was a reason for that. It was all her fault.
Stupid Rosa; the youngest sibling; the girl who still believed in true love and fairytales; the girl who couldn't do anything right.
The girl who killed Beatrice.
The woman who forced herself on Battler.
"Useless!~ You're uselessss~ I already told you; people like you should just die!"
"I-I'm not going to tell anybody about this," said Battler, his voice shaking. It cut through Rosa's internal monologue like a knife, digging into her flesh to make new wounds- dragging out internal organs and mixed emotions (none of them very happy) in fresh showers of red blood. "I-I... I... I-I think it would be wrong. B-but Rosa... I think you need some help. A-and I'm sorry I couldn't... But... I can't... I-I don't know what to do."
Rosa didn't want to look at Battler.
She couldn't.
Battler was trying to be so mature, so responsible- but it was only natural he wouldn't know what to do. Rosa hardly knew what she was doing herself anymore.
Her world was slipping out from beneath her fingertips.
Or... maybe it already had a long time ago.
Battler was afraid of her- she knew it. And maybe she was a little afraid of herself, too. She didn't know what she was doing anymore- but she was so afraid and lonely (a little girl running through a fairytale forest, only the day was getting dark and she was tripping over fallen branches and she'd lost her way) she didn't much care.
Battler left her.
They always left her.
And she didn't blame them.
S-she...
She hated herself.
Rosa's stomach turned and she knew, instinctively, she was going to be sick. N-no, that wasn't it. She had to be sick- she had no choice. She had to purge the taste of Battler, with his smiles and compassion and confusion, out of her mouth.
Rosa got to her feet, clumsy and graceless, knocking her chair over in the process. She staggered to the kitchen sink, fingers slipping underneath the touch of cold metal that bit through her flesh.
It burnt her throat when she vomited, profusely- again and again, until she could hardly keep herself standing upright. Her legs trembled. It felt as though they would give away underneath the dead weight of her body.
Being sick didn't help.
It made her feel worse.
Shuddering, still feeling ill though there was nothing left in her body to regurgitate save air, Rosa slumped down onto the floor, her arms wrapping round her knees.
She began to cry.
"W-why are you showing me this? What the fuck are you doing? Do you think this is funny?" Ushiromiya Battler shouted, his hands balling into fists as he glared at Beatrice.
Beatrice looked up at Battler with a bored expression flickering across her face. She looked at Battler disinterestedly; he might as well have been a stain on the floor, or dirt on the sole of her shoe.
"I'm not showing you my beautifully laid out game board to get a few laughs, Battlerrr~" said Beatrice, rolling her eyes. She spoke in a very condescending tone heavily laced with sarcasm, as though Battler were a stubborn five year old who couldn't grasp the simple concept of two plus two equaling four. "Maybe there's a reason I orchestrated such beautiful scenes with my pieces. You just need to look a little deeeeper~ Kikikiki~"
"Y-you...Y-you..." But Battler couldn't finish his sentence. He didn't have the words in his vocabulary to fully describe what, exactly, Beatrice was.
The image of his Aunt Rosa, completely broken and defeated, crouching on the floor with her arms round her knees, was… I-it was so pathetically tragic it could bring Battler to tears.
Battler could hardly watch Rosa without feeling his heart constrict in his chest. When Rosa had, with a look of such desperation on her face it seemed likely she would die, tightened her grip on piece-Battler's fingers and pressed her lips against his own, Battler had felt a small part of him splinter away and fall into an empty gulf of nothing.
A memory stirred at the back of Battler's mind.
The young Rosa, girlish pigtails and wide eyes, side-stepping round the jagged rocks to uncover Beatrice's dead body.
The young Rosa, who looked so much like Maria it was just a little bit eerie, had turned her head- her face ashen, knees giving way underneath her- and vomited onto the ground.
Battler had seen the light of innocence burn out in Rosa's eyes then. The hollow, empty look in her face when piece-Battler pulled away from the adult version of Rosa had been exactly the same.
Haunting.
It were as if she was looking upon the bloodied corpse of Beatrice once more when Battler pulled away; as though he'd pulled her whole world out from underneath her feet.
Roas was still broken.
Completely broken.
Rosa- his aunt, the woman who always seemed so dependable (despite her 'disputes' with Maria)- had collapsed under the weight of her own misery until she was barely recognizable as a human being anymore. She looked just a little girl again; just as lost and lonely and upset... And maybe, Battler thought, she'd always been like that. Maybe Beatrice's death had tripped a wire inside her head, or pushed something out of place, and Rosa had never fully recovered.
Seeing a fully grown woman break down and cry like that had been horrible; perhaps even worse than the multiple gruesome deaths Beatrice subjected to.
Battler glared at Beatrice with such smoldering hate it was a wonder his eyes didn't catch fire. He strode towards the smirking witch purposefully and, within three footsteps, was stood right in front her. His hand smashed against the back of her white chair.
Crunch.
Battler winced. Alright, maybe that show of pseudo-masculinity had been an error of judgment on his part, giving punching solid objects like chairs really was quite painful.
However, Battler tried to suppress the agony that was budding through his hand.
The rest of his body was numb with anger so the searing pain in his crushed knuckles was quite the contrast- a little bit like going out in the snow, then drinking hot chocolate immediately afterwards.
Battler had done that with Ange once, after they'd made snow angels (indistinct, indeterminate snow shapes, more like) in the back garden one cold January morning…
But that didn't matter now.
Of course.
The memory of Ange, his beloved little sister, had further spurred Battler's sense of justice, though. He remembered the dead-eyed, broken form of the young Rosa stood before Beatrice's equally broken, mangled corpse. No child should have to be subjected to something like that. If Battler ever saw Ange with a similar blankness consuming her face, he'd…
H-he would know what to do.
He had to protect the people he cared about from Beatrice and her cruel games. Rosa wasn't that much more different to Maria or Ange, in a way. It didn't matter that she was Battler's aunt; that didn't matter at all.
If somebody was in pain you extended your hand and helped them.
No matter what.
"Stop smiling like it's a funny- o-or a really big, hilarious joke," Battler snapped, leaning over Beatrice. Their faces were so close their noses almost bumped, and when Battler spoke flecks of his spit landed on Beatrice's face as the poison-tipped words fell off his tongue. "It's not. Y-you can't... You can't fucking play around with people's emotions like that."
Beatrice's ocean blue eyes narrowed. "I'm not 'playing around'. Stupid Battlerrr~ I'm being incredibly serious. If I am playing, as you put it, then I'm playing to win."
"A-and how is breaking down Aunt Rosa going to help you win? What, exactly, is it going to help you win? Y-you're just doing this because you enjoy it, aren't you, you… y-you… Y-you fucking sadist!"
There was another crunch, as Battler slammed his fist into Beatrice's chair again.
It still hurt.
He really should have learnt from last time; but Battler felt so angry he hardly even felt the pain.
"I'm not a sadist. I'm not cruel for the sake of being cruel," said Beatrice, her voice surprisingly calm. For once, she wasn't returning Battler's vitriol with childish insults or insane laughter. She sounded oddly serious. "Keep in mind that I cannot manipulate pieces to act out of character. I am showing a realistic outcome of events that could have happened. At least... from an emotional view point, at any rate."
Battler's eyes widened. He drew away from Beatrice slowly, staggering, like a zombie.
Realization dawned.
"Y-you're saying... y-you're saying Rosa has... always been like this?" asked Battler, his voice barely a whisper.
"She has a lot of conflicting emotions, like most human beings. I merely manipulated the more extreme ones to show you that particular scenario."
"B-but... But why?"
"Why...?" asked Beatrice, her voice trailing off in thought. She tipped her head back, golden bangs shifting gently at the slight movement, as she stared up at the white, white ceiling. "Why, I wonder," she muttered, more to herself than to Battler, her eyes still pointedly looking away from Battler. "That's something you'll have to figure out for yourself."
Battler winced as though he'd been hit in the stomach.
"S-so you've decided to fuck around with people's emotions now? It wasn't enough simply to kill them in the most horrible, brutal ways possible? Y-you... You have to unearth my family members' old memories and drive them all insane before you oh-so-kindly kill them off, huh? Didn't you ever think that some things are private; some people think and feel things they don't want others to know! Have some human decency!"
Beatrice sighed, closing her eyes. It looked as though she was getting a headache. "I'm not being cruel for my own entertainment, I already told you. I really wish you'd listen when I speak to you, Battlerrrr. Then maybe you wouldn't be so incompetent. Kikiki~"
However, Beatrice's laughter was surprisingly weak; a shadow of her usual insane cackles. At that moment, Beatrice sounded a lot like an actress half-heartedly playing a role she didn't want to fill.
Couldn't somebody else take her role… just for a little while?
Battler, however, was far too angry to care.
A voice at the back of Battler's head (a voice more rational than the one that came from his mouth) told him he had to calm down. This was exactly what Beatrice wanted. Beatrice wanted his emotions to get the better of him, until he became so angry he could hardly see straight and he began to make mistakes. He had to remain unaffected and aloof if he wanted to win this game.
But the vision of Rosa- both her younger and older selves- with tear-filled eyes, trying to hold onto broken dreams and happiness as they drained away between her cupped hands, was simply too much.
Thinking about it was... too painful.
"You're a monster," Battler said, stabbing a finger at Beatrice. "A cruel, heartless bitch. I don't even want to look at you right now."
"Leave then," said Beatrice, her voice light and unaffected. "I'll keep the game on hold for you. Don't leave me waiting too long, though, Battlerrr, or I'll get bored. I might start digging into Natsuhi next~ She has a lot of pent-up feelings you'd be verrry interested in hearing. Kikiki~"
There was a small pause as Battler tried to process those words- far more cutting than any red truth Beatrice had attacked his defenses with.
Then-
"Fuck you," Battler snarled.
And he dissolved in a flurry of golden butterflies.
"Are you alright, Milady?" asked Ronove, his voice considerably more gentle than usual, as he poured Beatrice a cup of tea.
Kyrie was right- tea really was soothing. It was a good alternative if aspirin wasn't available. Then again, the source of Beatrice's headache wasn't something that could be cured with medication; it was something rooted inside her heart, which had been building and building for the past thousand years.
And it was all because of him.
Battler.
"I'm fine," said Beatrice tiredly. For perhaps the first time, she truly sounded her age. Her voice was dry, lifeless, as though she were a corpse. "It's just... heh..."
Beatrice smiled a humorless smile, accepting the cup of tea from her butler. She took a sip of it, not caring it was scalding hot.
Beatrice sighed, setting the teacup back down on the saucer. The small chink noise split through the silence. It was louder than it should have been.
"...He called me heartless," said Beatrice, after a small pause.
She smiled.
What a great joke.
Ushiromiya Battler knew so little it was actually kind of funny.
Or maybe…
It was actually quite depressing.
Beatrice couldn't tell anymore.
She'd been on the stage too long- and now she wanted to change out of her costume and step out of character. Being horrible took far too much effort- and if her only reward was a cup of tea, it didn't seem worth it.
Not really.
Not anymore.
This carefully set up 'game' was quickly losing the leading lady's appeal.
