Olga Marie stood naked in front of the mirror in her room, her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her eyes closed.
Come on, Marie, said the voice in Olga Marie's soul. It's my body too, now. I deserve to see it properly. I mean, I only just saved your life and all.
"I know," whispered Olga Marie. "Just… give me a minute."
I don't know what you're so scared of. I already know how nice it feels.
"That, damn you!" she snapped. The voice in her soul only snickered in response. Then something shifted in her sense of bodily awareness and her hands against her breasts flexed under someone else's control. She felt like she was touching somebody's breasts, and somebody was touching hers, a deeply disorienting experience that her savior had already tormented her with more than a few times since returning to Chaldea.
Desperate to distract him before he went exploring more again, she opened her eyes, meeting her own ember gaze. As soon as she did she started helplessly trying to finger comb her tangled mane of ashen hair, which she hadn't properly fixed since the explosion. It hadn't seemed to matter while she was confined to her bed, but Doctor Romani had told her she could get up today and he'd be coming by to see her soon. She had to take a shower—
Just a minute, princess… I'm still looking. That really is a fine pair of tits you have. And those hips. He seized control of one of Olga Marie's hands and moved it down to her backside, sliding her palm against her sensitive skin in a way that made her hiss and close her eyes. She'd never realized how soft her skin was, and how perfectly her backside curved into her smooth hand. Unconsciously, her other hand moved to her breast, curving under it as her thumb stroked her hardening peak. Faint blue glyphs began to appear all over her skin, like somebody had decided to torment her by scribbling all over her with a ultraviolet marker.
Woohoo, now that is hot! crowed the voice. Olga Marie realized what she'd once again started doing, flushed from her hairline down to her ribcage and ignored his murmurs to flee to her bathroom.
She kept strict control of herself in the shower, only lingering despite herself over soaping her breasts and her shoulders. Getting clean. Getting herself together. Though everything had gone horribly wrong, she was still Olga Marie Animusphere and Chaldea was her responsibility. No matter what, no matter what, no matter what, she had to fix this. Not that she could. How could she? Everything was already gone—
Marie,said the voice in her soul, calm against her growing panic as she huddled in the bathroom under a stream of hot water, her fingers clenched in her dripping hair.
"My name is Olga Marie, damn you!" she snapped fretfully. Only her loved ones had the right to nickname her. Only her loved ones—
Lev Lainur called you Olga. Fuck him.
-and who did she have like that? Who had ever loved her?
"I depended on him… I should have known better. I should have known better. I should have known! I should have known he was just using me!" Olga Marie pounded the floor so hard her fists hurt and then stopped, her arms wrapping around herself as tears and snot mingled with the shower water running down her face.
She rocked back into the corner of the cubicle as she sobbed, her hands holding her shoulder and hip."I should have known. I wanted so much to matter to somebody. He made me think I could." A thought struck her and she snorted with a choking, toxic laughter. "And I did, didn't I? My incompetence burned the world." She itched to claw her face, rend her hair, but her hands didn't move.
"Stop it, let me go! Why did you save me? Why are you doing this to me? Haven't I done enough?"
You wanted to live, said the voice in her soul, amused. I granted your wish.
She realized in indignation that her savior was laughing at her distress. "Well, wasn't that stupid of you? Who would save the life of somebody responsible for destroying the world?"
Call me Avenger. And you would, princess. You know you would. Her hands released her and stretched out, her fingers wiggling. Yeah, that asshole made a mistake blaming you. All the evils of the world? They're mine. And now you and I are one.
Her hands wrapped around her body again. And if you think I'm letting a body this hot die just because you're in a bad mood, you're nuts. She rose to her feet. Come on, let's go back to bed and I'll distract you some more until you feel better.
A fresh panic surged through Olga Marie, a mundane one that completely replaced the existential one. "No! No, Doctor Romani is coming, I have to get ready!" She rinsed herself off once more, scrambled out of the shower, and set about finding clothes and putting her hair in order.
She was just finishing her side-braid when Romani knocked and then partially opened her door. "Director? How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine!" she said quickly, her fingers tangling as she screwed up twisting the hair tie and the entire braid unraveled. The hair tie spanged across the room and Romani bent to pick it up as he stepped within. He had a faint smile as he handed it to her.
"You look great, especially for somebody, well—you can't imagine how happy I am to see you moving around again. I want to check a few things before I officially sign your bill of health. After that…" he hesitated. "After that we have something we should talk about."
Dread curled in Olga Marie's stomach, but she sat primly on the bed as he took a seat in her desk chair. "Of course. We have so much to talk about. So much to do! We have to—"
Romani picked up her wrist so he could check her pulse, and she forgot what she was saying at the warmth of his touch. She sat quietly as he evaluated her vitals, her mind fizzing gently. Each time she had a thought, his fingers moved: from her wrist to her chin as he checked her eyes, from her chin to her shoulder as he listened to her lungs. He never did anything that deviated from a comfortable bedside manner… so why was Avenger laughing his ass off inside her head?
Humans are pretty much shit at hiding things from me. Dirty, guilty things, anyhow. He cackled some more. He's being such a good guy now, but later he's going to think about you while he—
Olga Marie coughed violently, bringing her hands up to her ears, and Doctor Romani jumped, sitting back. "Are you all right? Everything looks good—"
"I'm fine!" she declared again. "I'm fine!" She couldn't help giving the doctor a searching look, though. He was such a lazy, annoying, moralizing common kind of man. Not like…
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat and gave the doctor her most imperious stare. "Do I have my doctor's permission to return to my duties?" Once, she wouldn't even have asked, because who could tell an Animisphere their responsibility but an Animusphere? But now, after the worst had happened, she was desperately afraid of inventing a new low.
Romani sat back in his chair, putting his hand behind his head and laughing in that easy, unaffected way he had. "Well, that's what we have to talk about. Do you know why you survived the explosion, Director?"
"I didn't," said Olga Marie reluctantly. "I was…" she trailed off suddenly, thinking of what had happened from Romani's perspective. "Oh. Did you see my… my body?"
His mouth twisted in a pained expression. "I identified your remains. And when the Rayshift back to Chaldea took hold, they disappeared from where they'd been stored and reappeared inside one of the Rayshift Coffins, where you started… reconstituting yourself into a living body again. Subsequent scans showed us that like Mash, you too have been melded with a Heroic Spirit."
Once again, Avenger started laughing in her head. "What?" she demanded angrily.
Romani frowned. "You don't know about this? I'd hoped—"
"Oh, I do," said Olga Marie tightly. "He's laughing like a baboon right now. I have no idea why."
The doctor's eyebrows drew together. "Ah. He? Ah…"
"Yes, he. Very definitely a he," said Olga Marie. "So much of a he that he—" She turned scarlet as she realized she'd been about to confess what Avenger had been doing to her every time she'd woken up the past two days. "He says he's Avenger. If Mash is Shielder, I suppose that means I'm Avenger now." She sighed. "I suppose that's all you can do once the world is ashes. Avenge it. I'm going to murder that asshole Lev."
"Uh," said Romani, blinking. "You're…" He laughed again, but this time it was nervous.
…really hot, suggested Avenger, and Olga Marie made fists with her hands.
"Spit it out, doctor! I don't have all day."
"You're sharper," said Romani simply. "Avenger suits you."
"Oh," she said, and started fiddling with her braid while looking at the doctor's hands. Then she put her hands properly in her lap and said, "Idiot! Of course it does, or I wouldn't be one!"
He chuckled. "There's the Olga Marie I remember. All right, if you understand what you are, I hope you'll understand what I've done."
"What?" she asked suspiciously.
Meeting her gaze steadily, he said, "You're still dead, Olga Marie. At least as far as the records are concerned. There's nobody to look at them now, but eventually there will be. I don't want to record you as alive until you've had time to think about what the consequences of that will be." He paused just long enough for her to remember Mash's condition when she'd arrived. And Mash's incarnation as a demi-Servant had been started under controlled circumstances. She hadn't bonded with a wild spirit encountered in a Singularity. "You aren't what you were. You may never be that again. If the Mage's Association has their say, you definitely won't."
"Those people," Marie said broodingly, but Romani held up a hand.
"I'm not done. The records can be sorted out later. What you need to think about now is whether Olga Marie Animusphere is still the Director of Chaldea."
"What?" she demanded, bristling. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Romani didn't answer, his eyes intent on her face.
"I'm still me, Doctor Annoying," she said, but she could hear her own uncertainty.
"Do you want to be?"
The words hit her like a bolt of lightning, so quick and hard they took her breath away. Did she want to be? How could she be anything else? She was Olga Marie Animusphere, and all this mess was her fault.
Once again the horror and the panic rose up, sweeping over her. She was a failure. She'd disappointed everybody and now there was nobody left to disappoint. Even people with no right to be disappointed in her thought she was the worst, the most useless, the most incompetent—
Avenger stood up. "I'll think about it, Doctor. But for now, I'd like to get a bit more rest. I'll see you this evening."
Roman looked up at her, his eyes narrowing. Then he too stood up. "All for the best. You've got a lot to recover from. Rebuilding your body like that…. amazing." He shook his head and went to the door and then looked back at her. "You'll be all right alone? Mash and Ritsuka are eager to visit you."
Avenger grinned as Olga Marie rocked back and forth inside her head, trying to scream herself out of sobbing and back into control. "I'll be just fine. I know exactly how to take care of myself."
After another hesitation, Romani gave a quick nod and departed. Avenger's grin immediately vanished.
The human mind was enormously flexible. Avenger knew that from experience. It could process and accept anything eventually. Marie would come to accept the truth of her new position, along with her new powers. Her guardian spirit just had to keep her sane until that marvelous brain of her finished getting her there.
She sighed as she started undressing again. "Come on, princess. Back to bed we go. We have a lot more interesting things to do than panic about the fuckheads who betrayed you."
No, said Olga Marie faintly, a blush turned into a word.
Avenger unbuttoned the blouse, admiring herself in the mirror as she did. "It's your body. If you want me to stop, all you have to do is stop. Just like in the shower." Avenger paused, cocking an internal ear, and heard only Marie's little sigh, as he'd heard it so many times over the past two days.
Grinning again, he admired the view in the mirror one last time before turning to tuck himself and his princess back into bed, where he'd distract her—and himself—for just as long as she needed.
