Game for a Memory
Chapter 6

The Endless Sorcerer was still there when the other half of Tohya had slipped out of conscious awareness once more. Tohya confessed himself mildly surprised. The Endless Sorcerer hadn't done so yet. Had explained very little but only gave hints and commands that stopped the game from stalling entirely. Had he waited because he thought Tohya would not recall the next hint until now? But that was incorrect, wasn't it? Battler Ushiromiya might have been elsewise occupied, but Hachijo Tohya had disassociated from that and – when the pain had ebbed away – with a clear mind.

'Well?' he asked, after the silence cushioned them.

'Well,' the Endless Sorcerer mimicked. 'What do you think?'

'What's to think about?' Tohya returned. 'The Battler Ushiromiya part of me is getting his head straight, while the Hachijo Tohya part is looking at the mystery at a somewhat different angle, but this isn't about the mystery at all, right?'

'Right,' said the Endless Sorcerer. 'The truth of the mystery lies elsewhere, and the key will eventually fall into your hands. Whether that's you as Battler Ushiromiya or Hachijo Tohya…' He shrugged and smiled. 'Well, I suppose it doesn't matter, after the fact. Our little game will have finished by then.'

'Will it have?' Tohya wondered. 'I wonder if time is a factor at all, aside from in my head.'

'Somewhat of a factor,' the Endless Sorcerer allowed. 'And it's not just you. It's me as well.'

'The Endless Sorcerer, the mystery draft-writer and the secret survivor of Rokkenjima.' Tohya snorted. It sounded a bit ridiculous when he put it like that, but it was still the truth of the matter. 'As for the time, have we had too little or too much of it?'

'A little of both, perhaps,' said the Endless Sorcerer. 'That is the meaning of "eternal", or "endless", after all. Until the victor happily hands over her spoils because she's tired of fighting with the same outcome every time, and then another fool comes along and resurrects her so the endless battle begins anew…'

'The Endless Witch Beatrice, and the Endless Sorcerer Battler,' said Tohya. 'A battle in truth, or is it the subconscious despair of being unable to save her.'

'Then I am that guilt and desire personified?' the Endless Sorcerer asked. 'And ultimately we arrive back at the question as to what is magic and what is mystery…' He laughed. 'But not ultimately. We've veered off the topic, instead.'

'We have,' agreed Tohya. 'And the mystery draft-writer is only superficially curious. And Battler is tired.'

'They say the journey a thousand kilometres long begins with a single step,' the Endless Sorcerer replied. 'Or perhaps it's not the metric system they use in that saying. Probably not.' He was still smiling. They were drifting onto a tangent, after all. An irrelevant spiel… because which of them really cared what system of measurement was used in an old proverb? 'But if a journey is a thousand kilometres long in a straight line, what do you think happens with a single misstep?'

'You veer off course.' That was obvious, really.

'And if you take two?'

'They might equal,' Tohya said, a little thoughtfully. 'They may cancel each other out – but what are the chances if each step being equal and opposing so perfectly? On a long journey, even being 0.01 degrees out would lead to reaching a vastly different point.'

'Exactly that,' said the Endless Sorcerer, 'assuming the road in question is a straight line with no landmarks, of course. But where would you find a road like that? In the middle of a desert? In an ocean?'

When he'd drifted, without memories or sense nor direction? Probably.

'But roads in our modern area have signs, and buildings on the side, or mountains on the horizon…' He trailed off. 'A slight misstep is far less concerning there because there are beacons you can follow back to the path. But that only holds true to physical paths. What of the more abstract ones?'

Part of Tohya wondered why they were even having such a philosophical discussion, but he entertained it anyway. 'Paths with clear plans and endpoints and milestones along the way are equivalent to ones with signposts, I imagine,' he said. 'As for the more abstract ones, the ones we humans call our life dreams…'

'They may well be in the middle of a desert or ocean,' the Endless Sorcerer agreed. 'For all that we think we're on the right path towards it…or not.'

'So what?' asked Tohya, climbing to his feet. 'What does any of that have to do with now?'

'What indeed?' asked the Endless Sorcerer. 'To Hachijo Tohya, you mean? I should think the meaning towards Battler Ushiromiya is obvious.'

He was right, of course. The retellings of the Rokkenjima stirred up a hornet's nest, so to speak, and Battler wanted the truth and the ability to mourn all that had been lost in it – but which of those had been more important? The truth? No, somehow he didn't think so, for all the endless battle had been about the truth.

Battler was a quiet, dim, echo of memory now. It was Tohya, all Tohya, who spoke to the Endless Sorcerer now.

'Peace,' he said finally. 'I want peace.'

And maybe he was speaking for Battler Ushiromiya there as well. Speaking for the both of them. One thing he was sure they agreed on. Was sure they both wanted.

'What sort of peace?' the Endless Sorcerer pushed. 'For some, peace is a true death. For others, it's to resolve unanswered questions, or heal unanswered hurts. And for others still, to forget the past and start afresh…'

And it was no longer that simple. 'Starting afresh became impossible,' said Tohya slowly. 'Perhaps, as long as the possibility of those memories existed, it was always impossible.'

'Possibility and impossibility,' said the Endless Sorcerer. 'Does the Battler Ushiromiya part of you recall the witch Bernkastel?'

'Bernkastel,' Tohya repeated, frowning. 'Perhaps. Nothing specific.'

'Another witch,' the Endless Sorcerer explained, 'and like Beatrice and I, a human once upon a time until her desires transcended her death. She is the witch of miracles, who can search though a sea of endless fragments and stumble into the best-case scenario so long as the possibility of it occurring is not zero.'

'A witch of probability then,' said Tohya, wondering if he should really be amused. But there was no conflicting response from within his heart. Nothing to offset it. 'A gambling witch.'

The Endless Sorcerer seemed amused as well. 'They were all gamblers,' he said. 'Featherine, Lambdadelta, Bernkastel… Featherine you know, of course.'

'Should I?' asked Tohya, who'd never heard the name before.

The Endless Sorcerer chuckled at that. 'You wound know her better as Hachijo Ikuko,' he said, and at the dumfounded look he received in return, explained: 'The Rokkenjima incident has several layers, after all… regardless of whether they were born of human imagination or gave birth to the added complexity of the tale. Beatrice is a firm presence in all the fragments, as Bernkastel would call them, and so am I.'

'As Battler Ushiromiya or the Endless Sorcerer?' asked Tohya rhetorically.

'Which indeed,' the Endless Sorcerer replied. 'But the other players, they are less well known and presumed. The mystery writer in decline who found a message bottle that sparked her muse and the muse of many others. The girl on the shipwreck off the coast of Rokkenjima who, it turned out, had not floated into the massacre after all. And then there are other tales that may or may not wind together with this one: a miko and a major in the army in a far off Japanese town…'

'Hinamizawa,' said Tohya. Naturally, he'd heard of that mystery as well, even if too sparsely and too late. 'The curse of Oyashiro. Another mystery with many theories until the truth came out… Or, at least, a full and solid explanation that didn't rely on magic to fill the gaps.'

'And yet, if magic can be proven to exist, the entire "truth" falls apart. And the same can be said of many truths. The truth of what happened here is one of them.'

'Perhaps,' said Tohya, 'however as the truth is not on display at the moment, it's a bit of a moot point.'

'True enough.' The Endless Sorcerer closed his eyes and sighed. 'What now?' he asked. 'You've been quiet.'

Tohya rather thought he'd been rather talkative, but perhaps the Endless Sorcerer was now addressing the other life inside of him. And it didn't answer. 'There is a difference between accepting because one is simply tired of fighting or not in a state of mind in which they can fight,' Tohya said, after the pause. 'And accepting because it is something they truly believe, from the bottom of their heart.'

'That is true.' The Endless Sorcerer smiled softly. 'And yet, can you find understanding at all if you are constantly locked in battle?'

Tohya snorted at that. 'It was a long and needless farce.'

'Perhaps it was long,' the Endless Sorcerer accepted, 'but it was certainly not needless. Tell me, Hachijo Tohya, what will you do when faced with the headlights now? Your battle with your past and your future has left its peak and reached its trough. Perhaps things will stay like that. Perhaps the two sides of you will clash once again, clash until you reach that high pitch once more –'

'In which case, should I expect you again?' asked Tohya dryly. 'In any case, don't take me for a fool. I'm well aware this isn't a trough in any sense of the word. Closer to the average, but it's not quite that as well.'

'Not quite,' the Endless Sorcerer agreed, 'but close enough.'

Post A/N: Wasn't planning on having this here, but a couple of things wound up happening. :D Firstly, a remi had her wires crossed in the last chapter. Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out Aznereth! All fixed now (I think).

Secondly, there's some talk about the identity of the witches (aside from Beatrice) in this chapter. I'm not – or meta-BATTLER isn't, I guess – saying Erika or Rika necessarily are Bernkastel, or that Miyo Takano is Lambdadelta. I'm just saying they're all possibilities in the fragments/versions of the tale that are written. I don't think either of them were confirmed in Umineko (there was something about Bernkastel being a cat and I don't see how that relates to the Hinamizawa identity except for when Rika had a neko costume as a punishment game…). So yeah, not advocating anything there. Just saying they're possibilities. And after reading Dear Mr. M, my head's trying to understand that narrator's motives…

And lastly, the pacing wasn't what I thought it was originally, so the story's been reduced to seven chapters. So next chapter's the last and this one wound up mostly dialogue-based when it was originally supposed to be split up over the last three chapters. I'll edit the first chapter to fix up the chapter set boot camp prompt then, since I can't use a seven-chaptered fic for an eight-chaptered prompt.