My mother cried when I was born.
I hadn't known that, of course the first time I'd lived this life I wouldn't have been able to remember it.
This time though with hundreds of lives that had changed my very physicialogy I could comprehend the sobs that came from the woman that birthed me. Her tears wetting the rough blanket I was wrapped in. I could understand the Shu exclamations that came from her mouth as my tiny hand clenched and unclenched as it glowed. She was grieving her child's life, terrified that I'd been born Grisha. Terrified that I was more than that.
I understand then my mother had known I was the sun summoner at my very birth.
A small sigh came from me as I heard the system sound in my mind.
[Welcome back Agent 171 to your original world. With the Agency's final farewell we gift you...]
Of course there was a final mission.
[...the Save the Villain System.]
If I could have laughed I would have.
Like calls to like, a voice from so long ago whispered in my mind.
Aleksandr wouldn't know what hit him, once I deemed him ready to grace with my presence.
[Surplus points have been allotted. System bonding...]
A rush of information came into my mind. Different perspectives of the story I once lived. I saw Aleksandr just a bit more clearer.
He had simply got lost.
He had a noble goal once, a promise he'd made after a traumatic event when he was thirteen; but he'd lost sight of it somewhere along the way.
Unlike Agents who had a whole organization supporting them, keeping them sane; he'd had no one all those hundreds of years. And no I didn't count his mother.
[Good luck Agent 171 on your second chance.]
I was Alina Starkov again.
Daughter of a poor merchant and his wife, a runaway Shu experiment.
My mother never recovered from my birth.
Something had changed though because of instead of staying in the settlement of Dva Stolba my mother followed my father on his travels bringing me with her. She never stopped looking behind her, always afraid, always suspicious of people.
I wondered if at my birth I hadn't shone the first time around.
By the time, I was eight my parents were still alive but they had made the fatal mistake of deciding to cross the Fold.
Someone had lit a lighter and chaos descended. My mother seeing me stiffen and prepare to fight dragged me to the back. I could have fought her but there was a strange light in her eyes as she forebade me from leaving the barrel she stuffed me into.
No one survived but in the cracks of the barrel I could see my mother give herself over to the light.
It was horrifying and an almost beautiful in a desperate sort of way as my mother exploded into light. Nothing was left of her or the volcra that had attacked the ship, but no one was alive that would tell the tale. My mother had been a sun summoner, but she'd suppressed her gift for too long.
I sat curled up for awhile my eyes still seeing white dots after the light show. I buried my head into my knees, I was an orphan once again.
The first night I slept in the Fold dreams of the stag came. I knew this time when I found it, it would be different.