So some of you might be thinking that the authors notes and stuff are getting kind of weird. So I'll try to keep them as normal as I can. It's just...the other stories kind of...went off the rails for a bit there, too. But they're back on track now, as is this one. In other news, I was voted the best author ever to exist on FanFiction and the world by myself. Yay me! Autographs start here, if you can find out exactly where 'here' is. I'm stalling.
Window to the Past
Chapter 24: Wyvern is Deception
Fey's tears were pressed into Mia's back. She felt empty. All she had heard was the word 'Matthew' and suddenly everything came back. It was Mia who had climbed up onto the counter at three years old and lost the ability to speak. It was Mia's father who was dying on a hospital bed. It was Mia who had shielded her mother from the knowledge of the torture she was put through at school. It was Mia's sister who had disappeared three years ago. It was Mia who nearly drowned in that river. It was Mia. It was Toby, Alice, Daphne, David, Adrian, Mabel and Tristan. They were Matthew Choreman.
And she wasn't real. She was a defense mechanism. An invention. Matthew was a boy. She wasn't. Mia was fake.
But she couldn't be, right? She was real. She felt real. So she had to be real. Fey must be mistaken.
"Wait, Matthew? Who's Matthew?" Mia asked, letting Fey go.
Fey gave her a confused expression, before fumbling to explain her feelings. "Your voice...This tape was the only tie I've had to my family since I came here...I've always fantasized and thought about what you'd sound like if you could talk, and...you sound...exactly...like I'd thought you would..." She looked down at the ground, embarrassed. "I'd had an inkling that you might be...but I guess I let it get away from me."
Mia felt terrible. Watching the hope die in Fey's eyes was one of the most torturous things she had ever been put through. But Fey couldn't have these delusions. She couldn't be lied to. But these memories...Mia would have to see for herself what they meant. "Who's Matthew?"
Fey sat down on a chair sadly. "He's my brother. He lost his voice when he was three from a really bad cooking accident. That recording is the only time I remember him talking. But he was homeschooled for a long time. We didn't want him getting bullied. We found out our dad had a really bad illness, and we tried to stick close to keep our mom from worrying. And then...I disappeared. I came here. I washed up on the far west shore. And I've been here for three years. When I met you...and found out that you'd just...'dropped in'...I got my hopes up. But what are the odds that you're my brother anyway?"
Lost voice...check, Mia thought, flustered. Cooking accident...check. Third-degree burns...check. Bullied. Dad with sickness. Fey disappeared three years ago. Check. Check. Check.
Fey sighed. "I mean...he's human."
Oh my God. Mia felt like she was going to cry. She's right.
"You're right," she whispered.
Fey looked up at her. "Huh?"
"I...I am Matthew, I think," she said, resigned. Tears began to fall from her eyes as Mia accepted it. She was fake. She didn't matter. Nothing she had done had ever mattered. "I'm not Mia. I'm Matthew."
Fey looked like she was going to cry again, but for a markedly different reason than Mia. Again she got up, and again she and Mia hugged.
No, she thought bitterly. Not Mia. Matthew. I'm not Mia anymore. There is no Mia.
There was no Mia. There is no Mia.
Mia does not exist.
There is only Matthew.
Chaos took his hands away from the laptop. He didn't even realize what he had just written. It had just occurred to him. It had just felt natural.
It had felt...right.
But this was Cameron's story, not his! Did he have the right to do that?
He looked at Cameron's body, limp on the ground. Did he have the right to do that? No. But he did it anyways.
Chaos sighed. He had made a promise to Cameron to finish the story. But what exactly did finishing the story mean?
Adrian was thrust forward. The first thing he perceived was that he was embracing his sister. This took him quite a bit by surprise. He pushed away from Fey. She gave a surprised cry, and Adrian muttered an apology.
"Sorry, just adjusting to this revelation thing now," he said in a low voice.
Fey gave him a strange look, before donning one of recognition. "Oh. Right. The personality thing. I..." She cracked a smile. "I almost forgot about that. Sorry, Tristan."
Adrian gave her an unimpressed look. "No."
Fey brought her head back. "Oh. Um...Alice?"
"Don't insult me!" Adrian said with a scowl and a small laugh.
"Ah, I've got it now!" Fey said, her smile widening. "You're Adrian!"
"About time," he said with a smirk. "Though...I guess it's Matthew now. Matthew," he said slowly, testing out the name. He frowned. "Name sucks. I like mine better. Alright, I'm going to go back to my room. I need to sort all this crap out," he excused himself as he rushed into his room and removed his diary from the sack. He pulled the pen out of the spine and began to write.
"I'm not crazy, right? Fey's our sister? Burns? Not being able to speak and everything like that? That's all real? And does anyone else feel like somebody's missing? Like when Daphne turned tail? Ah, look at me; asking questions like a f...shmeckin' idiot. Seriously, though. All this stuff. Did everybody get that? Because if not, I call dibs at being leader."
"My dreams!" David wrote excitedly. "That's what they are! The dreams and the drawings're all the human stuff that happened to us! The river, the cooking thing, the bullies, all of them! I KNEW we weren't puffballs for that stuff! And we're Matthew! I like that name!"
"I can think of at least two people who don't," Daphne wrote caustically. "Mia just went and killed herself."
"What?! Why?!" Toby exclaimed. "What did you do to her!? Was it something we did? Was it something I said?"
"No," Tristan cut in. "It wasn't you, Toby. It was the fact that we are officially male now."
"...I don't get it," David wrote.
Tristan began to explain. "We've been struggling over who's real and who isn't. Now that we know we're male, Alice, Mia, Daphne, and Mabel are guaranteed to be fake. Apparently, Mia didn't take it very well and killed herself. Perhaps Alice did too. I haven't seen her."
"No, I'm here," Alice wrote with a frown. "Though you seem really nonchalant that part of you just died. I'm just sticking around because of what Mabel said. Even if I'm not real, I'm still a part of this body."
"Eh, she's just being dramatic," Adrian scoffed. "She'll probably come back later. Like Daphne, except without a vendetta."
"Again, you're kind of just passing over the fact that she wants to kill us," Tristan said.
"She doesn't want too kill us, right?" David asked. "She's a part of us, right? So she'd be killing herself if she killed us, and that's dumb."
"That's the beauty of it, David," Daphne concluded. "Two birds with one stone."
"Don't listen to her, we'll be fine," Alice tried to hastily comfort him.
"You guys are all drama queens. I'm fine," Mia wrote. "Well...I'm alive. I'm far from fine."
Fey, in the meantime, was left to cope with her feelings. After three years, she had finally found her brother. And yet...she couldn't stop her mind from wandering elsewhere.
As she waited for Matthew to finish writing in his journal, Fey paced the room. As she had waited for the surgery, she had memorized every square inch of this waiting room. The third chair from the left had a slash across it from when Michael got a bit too rowdy waiting for a transplant. There was a scorch mark on the wall from Paula's bombs when she had been testing out her new ones that were engineered to explode when touching anything but her skin. There was a small crater on the ground from...something about Marco. She couldn't remember what.
All these names...Fey thought to herself. Where did they all go? It's almost as if-
Was that a scream? Without thinking, she rushed into Matthew's room. "Are you alright?" she practically yelled.
Matthew blinked and looked up from his diary. "Huh?"
"Oh, sorry," Fey said apologetically. She closed the door again, and her frown deepened. What was that? She could've sworn someone had said something there.
Her eyes drifted to the only door she didn't know the contents of. The door to the basement.
No! I can't! Liz is my...Fey searched for the right word. 'Friend'? No, not really...My friend's friend!
But I want to know what's in there...
It's an invasion of privacy!
What about that scream? Can I just leave them there in distress?
Fey squinted her eyes shut, unable to make up her mind. Fortunately, she didn't have to.
"Fey? What are you doing here?" Liz asked as she pushed the door open. "Of course, I was looking for you, so this is convenient, but why are you in the clinic?"
"I wanted to see M-" Fey choked on her own words. How much does Liz know about him again...? "Cece. I wanted to show him that I can hear stuff now."
Liz shot her a confused look as she went to her office. "Cece and you are friends? I suppose you did fight Tac but is that really...Well, that's none of my concern. Oh, erm, Fey?" She stopped short of walking into her office.
"Yeah?"
"Since Cece and you know each other, I was wondering if you could tell me if he has any outstanding illnesses or disabilities, physical or otherwise."
"Uhhh..." Fey stalled. Should she tell Liz about Matthew's problem? Liz was calling him Cece, but did that mean she knew, or she didn't? Fey decided to play dumb. "Hold on a second," she said as she walked over to Matthew's door. "Hey, Mmm...Cece? Do you have any outstanding illnesses or disabilities, mental or-"
"Physical," Liz corrected in a quiet voice.
"Right," Fey acknowledged. "Physical or otherwise?"
"Who wants to know?" his voice came from inside.
Fey looked over to Liz, who shook her head, telling Fey not to mention her.
"Just curious," Fey said, cringing when she heard the faint sound of Liz's utter disapproval. Namely, a disappointed sigh. "So, do-"
"No."
"A-alright, then," she finished, turning to Liz and giving a shrug.
Liz nodded. "I'm going out on the field for a bit," she said as she grabbed a few books and put them in a bag. "Don't stay here too long."
"Alright. Cece and I were just about to go to Linden to ask about-"
"Don't go to Linden," Liz stressed suddenly, catching Fey off guard.
Fey gave her a look. "What? Why?"
Liz looked Fey right in the eyes and refused to break eye contact. "He's psychotic."
Mia stared at Matthew's journal and heaved a sigh. This wasn't her journal. Could she write in it? Well...they had to know.
"You guys are all drama queens," she wrote. "I'm fine."
Chewing on the pen, Mia frowned. Nope. That's wrong.
"Well...I'm alive. I'm far from fine."
Again, Mia leaned back from the page. She wanted to leave it like that, but she had to get more off her chest. Otherwise, she'd end up like...Daphne.
"I say that because I just found out that I don't exist. I don't really have a name anymore. I mean...Matthew was a boy. That means that us girls are ruled out for sure. We're just made up imaginary friends because one of you boys got bullied too much. I'm fake. It feels weird to write that, like I'm in denial. But I can't be alive. Don't worry, I'm not going to kill myself or anything. I'm not angry. I'm just"
Mia paused, staring at the page. She rested on the table and tried to sort her thoughts out. That's what this was about, right? Sorting her thoughts out. That was the entire point of the journal.
And what about her thoughts, anyways? Were they really even that?
I should've seen this coming, she thought. I was...a character, really. A character from a cute little story. Just a flat character with one or two quirks. I talk a lot. That's basically it. That's my quirk. I'm a chatter box. I even sound like some stupid twelve-year-old made me up. I'm not real.
She picked up the pen and began to write.
"I'm just kind of discouraged. Though I sort of knew in the back of my mind I wasn't real anyways. It's just a bit of a shocker to finally find it out, you know? I just feel like I'm kind of...useless now. I mean, what have I even really done since I've been here? Be friendly? Is that really very useful?"
"Dissociative Identity Disorder is a coping mechanism," Mabel wrote almost immediately. "If you were never needed, you wouldn't have been created in the first place."
"And honestly, what have any of us done since we've been here?" Alice asked. "...I mean, what have any of us done that's helped us find our family? Fey just kind of came out of nowhere."
"I normally would not care less about whether you left or not," Tristan continued. "But judging from Daphne, I think I'd be better off if you didn't."
"Nah, you can't get rid of me that easily," Mia said. "I'll be fine. It's a pretty big change, but I'll be fine."
Mia stared down at the page, trying to convince herself that what she was writing was how she felt.
Cameron woke up in a familiar white space. He rubbed his head; he must have bumped it when he fell.
"Chaos?" he asked, looking around. This place was painfully empty, and the whiteness went on forever. "Chaos, are you here?"
But Chaos wasn't there. Nobody was there.
"Hellooo?"
"Linden can't be a psychopath! He's so polite!" Fey protested. "I mean...he's kind of freaky, yeah, but it doesn't mean he's out in left field!"
"I didn't say he was a psychopath," Liz corrected. "I said he was psychotic. That means he suffers from some sort of psychosis. Psychopathy is something much more specific...though I believe he might suffer from that, too. Psychopathy is a constant display of extremely antisocial behaviour, along with a lack of empathy or moral judgment."
"So you're saying that Linden has a constant...display of...what you said?" Fey asked. "I don't know, he sounds pretty social to me."
"You know the Copy Ability he has and what it lets him do, right?"
"Copy, and yeah, I know what it does-"
"No you don't."
"Oh."
Liz sighed. "It gives him comprehension, yes. But he has probably told you that it takes him some time before he can fully understand something. Has he told you this?"
Fey nodded. "Yeah, he demonstrated it, actually."
"It's a lie. He understands everything instantaneously. And it isn't just written works, either. Living things, too."
"Wait, you mean-"
"That's not even the worst part," Liz said darkly. "When he has that headgear on...he can't control it. With the Copy Ability engaged, he receives a nonstop onslaught of information from absolutely everything around him. This, coupled with the Copy's side effect...you know what it is, don't you?"
"Yeah," Fey said, her voice shaking as she began to catch on to what Liz was saying. "You lose the ability to forget."
"His brain isn't big enough to hold all that information," Liz finished. "Stay away from him. I'll see you later, Fey. I need to perform a follow-up operation to make sure there are no...well, side effects from the surgery."
"Alright," Fey agreed, before remembering something. "Wait, no, that won't-"
But Liz was already out the door. Fey huffed in annoyance. She'd have to talk to Liz about it later. Instead, she approached the door that Matthew had disappeared behind. Just as she was about to knock, however, Matthew walked out with red eyes and a peaceful expression.
"Hey," he said. Or she...Fey shook her head. All this multiple personality business always threw her off. How was he supposed to tell who Matthew was from just a 'hey'?
"Hi," she said, deciding to dance around what name she'd use for now. "Um...we've got to go to Linden's for a while. I have something I want to ask you."
Chaos took a break from typing. He looked again at the limp body of Cameron. He began to lose remorse. Yeah, it was wrong of him to shoot him. But he couldn't unshoot him, right? What was done was done. There wasn't anything he could do about it.
Chaos's gaze drifted from the corpse to the gun on the table. He picked up the gun and turned it in his hands. Was it just him, or did the gun still feel warm? He gently nudged the trigger, feeling the springs coil under his finger. And there, in that feeling, was the twinge of regret he was looking for.
The twinge of humanity.
He was still sane. Right?
Finally, he looked back at the story. Liz talking about Linden being psychotic...it struck a nerve. It was like the characters were having this conversation themselves, rather than being directly influenced by an outside force.
Cameron had always said that was what he had wanted with his stories.
Window to the Past was in good hands.
Memories were starting to come back to him now. The gun. The story going out of control. Chaos. Cameron sat down on the white ground and put his chin in his hands.
Why Chaos? he asked himself. Why would he do this? Was...he jealous?
Cameron raised his right hand to touch the place where Chaos had shot him. It was smooth with no sign of an injury there. What did that mean? Was he dead? No...he couldn't be. He couldn't really explain why, but Cameron was pretty sure he wasn't dead.
Wyvern was mercifully less cold than it usually was. Mia hated the cold. She and Fey walked alongside the commercial avenue of Wyvern. Again, the street was eerily empty, with almost literally nobody other than the two siblings outside.
"So, Fey, what did you want to ask me?"
"Well, you know how I told you that I've been spending these past three years looking for a way back home?" Fey asked.
Mia nodded. "Yeah. I'm guessing the question has something to do with that. Though," Mia laughed a bit. "That's kind of obvious, isn't it? You know, I feel like I do that a lot. I try to act smart by guessing something obvious. It doesn't usually work, though. Looking smart, I mean."
Fey blinked, then continued. "Y-yeah. Um, anyways, I've been looking across this continent for..."
Mia, if only for a few seconds, tuned Fey out. She had done it. She'd lived up to her character name. She'd talked too much. Mia wanted to slap herself in the face, to reprimand herself for being so predictable and flat, but...could she? After all, she was predictable and flat. She was supposed to be predictable and flat. She's only one-eighth of a complete person. Maybe less.
"...and so I've decided I'm going to go north, to the continent Corfort. And...I want you to come with me," Fey finished, looking over at Mia.
"What? Why?" Mia was caught off guard, lost in her own thoughts. She wanted to scold herself for getting caught in her stereotype again, but that would lead into a loop, so she decided to save the punishment for later.
Fey seemed a bit surprised by her reaction. "I mean, you're my br...my, um...sibling. I'm not about to leave you here to fend for yourself. Unless you want to give me the...uh...cold shoulder. Y'know. By staying in Wyvern...but...Corfort's colder than Wyvern. And...does cold shoulder even work...? We don't have shoulders...dang it, I flubbed it up again!"
"Sure, I'll go with you," Mia said, disregarding Fey's failed pun. "You're right. We are siblings. Who knows, maybe we can only go back when we're together."
Fey smiled and nodded. "Alright, it's settled, then. That's why we're going to the library. I want to get an atlas so we can read up on Corfort and see if there's anything way up there that could help us."
"And then we'll be home atlas!"
Fey stopped on the sidewalk and began to whisper to herself. Mia turned around, concerned.
"Atlas...atlas...at last...Oh my God, I'm an idiot! How could I have missed that?!"
Mia laughed out loud, and she felt happy.
Fey, living in Wyvern for two and a half years, was used to the cold. But that wasn't to say that the translation of temperature into the library wasn't leaps forward in levels of comfort.
Linden stepped forward to greet them. "Ah, hello, Fey. And...Miss Alice, it's good to see you again."
Fey didn't know much about Matthew's personality business, but she was pretty sure Mia was out right now. Nonetheless, Matthew stuck...her...stub out and shook with Linden.
It was at this moment Fey noticed Linden was wearing his headgear. This wasn't unusual; he said he liked wearing it when he wanted to get some reading done. But in light of what Liz had told her...that headgear seemed a lot less innocent.
"What can I help the two of you with today?" he asked as he began to walk towards the non-fiction section.
"Could we get an atlas of Corfort, please?" Fey asked.
"We have two selections. We have one for the layman, with all the details you'd need to know for a simple trip," Linden said, looking over the shelves. "We also have another that is incredibly in depth, incredibly comprehensive, and it's quite...large."
"We'll take that one," Fey confirmed, "if that's okay."
"Ah, well..." Linden gave a polite smile, before looking up at a chest on the shelf behind him. "I apologize, miss, but I must ask you to retrieve it yourself."
"It's in there?" Matthew asked. "In that box?"
Linden laughed. "No, that box is the atlas."
"Ah," Fey said simply, the colour draining from her face. "Well. Ma...Alice. Could you get it, please?"
"What? Why me?"
Fey was pretty sure it was Mia out, but she had to be careful of what she called her. She looked up at the atlas again and sighed. "Fine. Get me a chair and hold it steady.
Five minutes later, Fey was trying to keep her lungs inside her body as she teetered on the top of the chair. The atlas was resting precariously on top of her head, and she was stumbling, trying to keep her balance. Finally, she regained it. Fey began to step down from the chair, and with a lot of effort, prevented herself from being crushed by the heavy book.
She threw it on a nearby table with a heavy thunk. Dust spewed from the underside of the atlas, suggesting nobody had been using it for a while.
"F-Fey!" Mia looked at Fey with wide eyes.
Wait...that isn't Mia, Fey thought, slightly annoyed. How am I going to get used to this? And...which one of them is my brother?
Fey tried to hide this new question from the new personality that popped up. "You switched, didn't you?"
Matthew gave a very small nod. "I-I guess. Toby. Um...what are we doing?"
Gesturing to the book in front of her, Fey explained. "We're going to go north to Corfort together and try to find a way back home. We need to look for places that have legends, or mysterious stuff, or anything of that ilk."
"A-alright," said Toby. "Just give me a second, I don't want anyone else getting lost." He took out his journal and began to write in it.
Fey watched him. It was just like how he used to write in his journal when he wanted to speak. Even though Matthew was a puffball now, the same motions went into it. The same concentrated expression, the same way his pen moved, everything was the same. She was looking at her brother.
But then the personalities switched, and whoever this was began writing again. Fey gaped. They had the exact same method! Somehow, this was a different person, yet they used all the same mannerisms as her brother! How was she supposed to tell?
Matthew looked over at her, and Fey realized he must have caught on to her watching. She quickly turned around and began to read the atlas.
Which one is Matthew? Is it Tristan? Adrian? Toby? David? Could it be one of the girls? I...
I don't recognize any of them.
Fey sat back in her chair. It was true. Until she actually heard Matthew's voice, she had had no idea that this orange puffball with the messed up mind was her brother. She should've been able to tell. She had spent twelve odd years with him; she knew how he worded his sentences and carried himself. So why were all of these personalities so foreign? None of them had struck a chord with her when they were taking down Tac. None of them had rung a bell when they met for the first time in Wyvern.
She gave a sideways glance to the puffball writing furiously beside her. Who was he?
"Okay, finished," Matthew closed the diary. He looked over at Fey, seemed to remember something, and spoke. "Alice. I'm Alice."
Fey gave a small nod, trying to hide the blush that resulted from mistaking Alice's gender. She didn't even know the gender.
"...Alright, this city's motto is 'bathed in history'. Do you think that's a lead?"
"...There's a natural monument of rocks here that natives thought was sacred..."
"...Third night of the third moon? What does that mean...?"
"...I think I read the word 'portal'!...Wait. No. That's 'orchard', not 'portal'..."
"...What are we even looking for, anyways? A portal? A bottomless pit?..."
Their conversation went on for what felt like hours as they pored over the atlas, inspecting every page for something resembling a clue.
"Ah! Here!" Fey pointed at a city near the southeast corner. "This city. Yvolial. It says it has catacombs beneath it that are closely related to supernatural goings-on."
"How does that help?" Alice asked.
Fey smiled, and pointed to a single word describing the supernatural goings-on.
'Interdimensional'.