Two updates in a week! What on Earth next? Again, despite the long delay, this chapter (and indeed the remainder of the story, which ought to be completed by the end of Chapter 12) is pretty much unchanged from my original plans for it. We're moving into the wrap-up stages now, which means fewer Sues and more Mary vs. Slayer... or does it?
Chapter 11: Retroactive Continuity
The more she thought about it, the more she knew that this was the only thing that might work, indeed, the only thing she was even capable of trying. Mary stopped pacing and stared at the wall above the narrow bed, wishing that there'd been even the tiniest of windows there. She'd have liked to have seen...
No. She couldn't afford any doubts, or regrets. Mary closed her eyes, took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and slowly began to speak.
"Slayer? I hope you're listening. I've a story for you, and I think you'll like it. I think you'll find it rather... compelling."
Silence. Mary took that as a good sign, and went on. "Ten years ago, the story begins. In winter. It's dark, wet, and a girl and her parents have spent the last seven hours driving back from a funeral. Her mother's sister's the one who's just died, her only other close relative.
"Anyway, it's winter, and it's cold. The roads have been getting icy, dangerously so. The girl never sees how the accident starts - or maybe she does, and just doesn't remember, because this isn't an accident that my parents were ever going to survive. However it happened, it happened, and at some point I got knocked unconscious. When I wake up, a lost and traumatised orphan... well, it won't be in the back end of beyond's best excuse for an intensive care unit. Not any more."
Mary opened her eyes to the sound of deep, malicious laughter.
Beautiful. I didn't think you'd try this for ages yet, you know.
Mary shook her head. "I don't care what you think. I know you can't stop me doing thi..."
And why would I want to? Elaborate all you want, but don't mistake the
outcome. Make a true Sue of yourself, and you WILL die. Just like all
the rest.
"Perhaps," Mary admitted. An almost-hysterical giggle slipped from her mouth, as she struggled to take the fact in. Well, it was a definite possibility, especially if SueSlayer did everything in its power to see that things worked out that way. It would need her death, she realised, with everything she had planned for it. Turning back the clock, Bamf!-ing her onto Pern, constructing her life there in accordance with her wishes... those things in themselves would no doubt be trivial for the creature, but that wasn't how she was hoping to hurt it. No, in order to take her from her life then, Slayer would need to undo everything she'd done since. And not just everything she'd done, but everything she'd caused to happen, too. A ripple spreading out through time and space, erasing every last trace of her except perhaps for a sad footnote in a country newspaper... None of this would have happened, nothing at all, no-one would have died... and as well as expending all that effort, SueSlayer would surely have to lose every last bit of the power it had gained since it had first contacted her, maybe even more than that.
That was where she'd start.
Laughter echoed around the room once again, and Mary felt a sinking feeling in the core of her body. It was trying to make her doubt herself, trying to...
And then SueSlayer showed her just a fraction of what it was capable of, the sheer horror of it all pouring into her mind from every angle. It would do all she asked, down to every last detail, and there was nothing, nothing she could do to stop it finding some flaw that could be exploited, some means of killing her horribly, and it didn't matter even if she weakened it close to oblivion in the process, because she'd never, never, live long enough for it to be enough.
Gasping for breath, Mary realised she'd collapsed to the floor. She felt ill, weak and blind as a newborn kitten. She pressed her hands to her ears to try to block out the laughter, squeezed her eyes shut and slumped over her knees, almost ready to give up, but knowing that she couldn't. People had died, but she could do something about that. Even if she couldn't stop SueSlayer from feeding on her Sue-death and returning stronger than ever, finding a new proxy and starting the whole thing in motion again, at least she'd be rectifying her own mistakes. That would be worth it, wouldn't it? It'd be damning not to at least try, and...
And...
And the principle was sound!
A sudden surge of hope rushed through her. She'd been so close, so close to making the mistake that the Slayer was banking on - believing that she could make a better Mary Sue than all the rest had done, a perfect, canon-compatible alter-ego that wouldn't die of madness or stupidity, that wouldn't require the whole planet to be turned on end and its inhabitants turned into one-dimensional pod-people fulfilling her every whim. And Slayer was right, no matter how much effort she put into designing her new life, there'd always be something she'd overlooked.
But that wasn't what she was about to do.
Mary opened her eyes again, and pulled herself to her feet. This was it. "I'm not lying unconscious in the ICU, I'm on a coldsleep tank on the Bahrain, orbiting the planet of Pern. A fourteen year old war-orphan, with all the proper paperwork, nothing remarkable at all. Not even my own name, which I'm keeping. And I don't know what happens next, and neither do you, except that it won't conflict with canon at all. So that means no hard-to-explain death in the early years, no special achievements or bonfire-lighting honours, nothing except whatever I choose to do, unpredictably, second by second."
SueSlayer's laughter finally trailed away into silence.
You believe that changes things? it asked softly.
Why else would it try so hard to break her will, to terrify her into acting too swiftly or not at all? What else could explain that scintilla of urgent fear she'd felt, that tiny fraction that hadn't been her own? Mary's mouth felt dry, and she swallowed nervously. "Does it change things? Denying you direct control of events? Forcing you to let things unfold naturally, to place me in a universe where anything could happen? Yes. I've seen what you are now, I know you, and I know this'll change things enough."
It had to. All she needed to do was survive there for as long as possible, to live out as much of her natural lifespan as possible. Every minute she spent still breathing would weaken it further and faster. She knew it. It knew it.
It was time.
Mary held the image of her requirements firmly in her mind, and rapidly reeled off the alphanumeric string she'd first seen only a handful of days before. After that, there was just one more thing to say.
"I'm a fourteen year old orphan in a cold-sleep tank on the Bahrain, which has just entered orbit around Pern. For Faranth's sake, take me there."
And then she was gone.
