Title: if you stare into the abyss…
A/N: For the Concordia IDV zine! I wanted to do a little exploration of the various characters we start off with in the story—their slow descent into madness, the way the house, the environment, just everything starts to affect them.
Summary: The abyss stares back. And Freddy, Emma, Emily, Kreacher, and Orpheus have been walking that tightrope for too long, there's no going back.
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He is going mad. On some level, Freddy is aware of this fact, aware of the lie it holds. That he wants to believe he is going mad and not already insane. That if he repeats it to himself often enough, then he can pretend he's fine, that he can leave this mansion any moment he wants to.
That is perhaps the biggest lie. From the moment he read the letter, the promise inside it to avenge Martha's death, he knew he couldn't leave. Freddy will do anything to find Martha's killer. Lie, cheat, steal—even leave Lisa to whatever fate the game has in store for her.
Lisa. Freddy secretly steals a peek at her whenever they cross paths. That girl is Lisa, no matter what she calls herself now. Even dressed in overalls and smudging her face with dirt can't hide her mother's smile or button nose. She is Lisa before she's Emma, and Martha's daughter before either of those.
The sane part of him realizes this is a chance. He can save Lisa, grab her by the hand and escape this place. Martha would like that, she always regretted leaving Lisa behind. The girl has a small part of Martha, but a small part is better than nothing.
Yet the letter beckons, calling him with a siren's voice. Martha's killer is in the house. Martha's killer is somewhere near.
This is what he has lived for all this time. If Lisa dies in the process, well, she gets to see her mother again. Who wouldn't want that?
-x-
He is going mad. Or perhaps he has always been mad. It's hard for Kreacher to remember anymore, when he started having two personalities instead of one. When he began to alternate between good and bad.
When he is good, he remembers for a brief instance who the girl in front of him is. She's Lisa, the latest child in his orphanage, smiling only when the other children drag her out to play. Shy, soft-spoken, gangly, she's half-fish and half-fowl, in that awkward state between teen and adult. Kreacher has to protect her from the church and their solutions.
Yet that feeling slips out of his fingers like his next target's coin purse. In its place stands possession and greed, a desire to take and to take and to take. Everything in the world is his, he just has to wish for it. Emma is also his, she just doesn't realize it. The other Kreacher calls him bad, but that's only because he is too weak to realize his desires.
The world does not give, it is not a charity. To survive you must be ruthless and selfish. Just as he sold the orphanage, Kreacher will sell every other player in this game to ensure his survival. Every other player except for Emma, of course.
She is his, after all.
-x-
She is going mad. In a rare moment of clarity, Emma realizes that she has to be, thinking a scarecrow is talking to her. Scarecrows are inanimate objects, created by people to scare birds. They are pieces of straw and cloth given shape, unable to love or laugh or talk. Any warmth she felt must have been sunlight heating fabric or perhaps her own feverish mind tricking her.
There is a reason she is in the house, but she doesn't quite remember why. It has to be important, for her to leave everything behind and live in a mansion full of strangers. The building is old, unfamiliar. It speaks of a wealth she never had.
Yet.
Yet.
Yet Emma cannot say that everything here is new. Freddy looks at her sometimes, like he knows who she is, and Kreacher has brief moments of kindness, where his touch is inviting instead of horrifying. Even Emily sometimes acts like they've met before, her questions probing and personal.
It tickles her patchwork memories, bringing with it images and names she can't comprehend. She is five, her father's hug the warmest thing she's ever known. She is eight and listening to her mother creep out backdoor. She is ten and the world seems grey as she stands outside the metal gates of an orphanage. She is fifteen and sitting in a chair, staring at the bright lights as the doctor softly tells her it won't hurt. She is Lisa and she is Emma and she is a gardener. All the things that make her converge at once.
It is too much and the memories slip from her grasp, once more into the void. She is just Emma, a simple gardener with no past.
She is just Emma, standing in the garden. Scarecrows cannot talk, but this one did, making her pulse race and heart flutter. It must be love.
Maybe she can talk about it to Emily.
-x-
She is going mad. Emily must be, to have agreed to this challenge, to come stay at this place. The grounds are full of ruins and monsters keep them trapped until the game starts. The prize isn't worth the risks and she knows better than anyone what happens in such uneven battles.
All Emily needs, really, is a second chance. A way to redeem herself for the lives lost to her hands. All she has ever wanted to do is to help others. All she can do, it seems, is harm others. Good intentions don't necessarily give way to good actions and this is a lesson she has learned in blood and heartache. There are three bodies on her operating table—
No, that isn't right. There are only two bodies. The third one is right in front of her, in the form of a lovesick gardener. Now she goes by Emma, but Emily would recognize Lisa anywhere. It's in the way Emma's hand grips hers, the same way Lisa did as she lay on the operating table, her eyes trusting as Emily injected the morphine. It's in the way Emma looks at her, adoring and full of awe, as though she had never seen a doctor before.
It's too late to leave now. The game will start soon. Emma looks nervous and Emily wants to tell her there's nothing to be scared of.
They are together, after all, and Emily will do anything for Emma. Anything.
-x-
Orpheus steps back from the diaries, from the entries he consumed by the hour. Only madness lay that way, in immersing himself from one lost character to next. There were only so many stories he could read, so many people he could slip into, before he lost sight of who he is. Anymore than he already has, that is.
There are things here that jog his memories, as scattered as they are. Images, shapes, blurry sensations that lead him to believe that his diary is on that shelf too. Perhaps he will slip into his old self soon. Perhaps he already has.
And then what? Will he stop being Orpheus, start being the monster in the mirror?
Or is it too late for that?
Orpheus is going mad. That is, if he isn't already mad.