Archive of Our Own

1

The first time, Ray died before he had a chance to save anyone. 

He was seven years old, and Mama Isabella found the disassembled toys under his bed. Then she found the scars behind his ear and the lighter fluid beneath the floorboards, and the next day he was taken to the gate.

He said nothing. He wouldn’t compromise his siblings’ happiness, not when they had no chance of escape.

There was a demon waiting at the gate. Taller than the ones in his snapshot memories, he thought, and all the more intimidating. Still, he didn’t waver. He stood still and refused to run, because if he was going to die he could spare them the satisfaction of a hunt.

The first time Ray died, it was from a flower through the heart, wielded by his mother.

2

Ray woke up surrounded by darkness, floating in a warm liquid, a familiar song resonating in his ears. Back in his first memory, he thought. He’d heard of having your life flash before your eyes, but this was weirdly detailed for his last moments of life. 

After hours of floating in darkness, the song long since over, Ray was forced to conclude that he was once again an unborn fetus. Which made no sense at all, obviously, given that he was supposed to be dead. Well, some religions believed in reincarnation, right? But in that case he should be reborn as a new person, from a different mother, without any of his previous life’s memories. The likelihood of anyone else knowing Isabella’s song was next to nothing, though, so his only remaining option was time travel.

Damn. Time travel. Who would’ve thought. Him, forced to live a life of lies a second time. Maybe he could live a little longer this time. Why him, anyway? Did it have to do with his lack of infantile amnesia? Or was it completely random?

Too many questions and no resources to solve them. Ray would sigh if he had functioning lungs. Instead, he kicked at Isabella’s hand, and curled into himself to sleep. Hopefully he’d get lucky enough to sleep through his birth. That would definitely be a traumatizing experience.

He did not, in fact, get to sleep through his birth. He did figure out how to repress the memory (mostly) by burying it under new information. He stayed awake as much as he could, memorizing names and faces in the Headquarters, trying to pack as much useful information as he could into his brain. He caught snippets of conversations, tiny scraps of information about the outside world. Mentions of a bridge for demons, a Gateway for humans, humans named Ratri who brought supplies, the names of other farms and demon towns; all of it, he remembered. He wasn't trying to read through the entire Gracefield library for nothing. 

A year flashed by, and then he was back in Gracefield, arriving only two months after Isabella became the Mom. He gleefully watched as she tried to contain the chaos, still new at the job and not quite perfect yet. That changed over the years, however, as she soon established her subtle iron grip over the House. 

Time passed. Emma and Norman arrived not long after them, the family he’d grown more used to following after them. For the first six years of his life, Ray remained inconspicuous, studying as always in the library and getting deliberately average scores on the tests. Not low enough to get him shipped off at six, but not high enough to draw attention. He was lucky that he got enough of a head start to be able to pull it off.

Then he turned six, and his strategy changed. Last time, he was found out by Isabella, and that was his downfall. It was nigh-impossible to hide things from her, no matter how careful he was. So, he figured a distraction might help.

So on his sixth birthday, Ray cut the tracker out of his ear and waited for Isabella to show her face. With enough information to keep her in check, Ray proposed a deal.

She accepted.

For the next six years he walked a tightrope, slowly increasing his scores until he was on par with Emma and Norman, reporting to Isabella while gathering supplies for the escape, avoiding his siblings so he wouldn’t get attached. He spent all his time either working on the escape plan or studying in the library. His mechanical work was done at night, in an unused room, where Isabella would never find him. He started taking naps in the library or the forest to make up for the lost sleep.

One day at a time, he moved forward.

When he was 11, he saw the opportunity to bring in Emma and Norman, and he took it. It was getting close to his birthday, and he needed to speed things up. But of course, they screwed up, and now Isabella was suspicious. Fantastic.

Ray didn’t die, the second time around. Norman did, on the night before his shipment, by jumping off the cliff surrounding Gracefield.

The instant Ray heard he had disappeared, he knew. Emma knew, too, and while she sobbed Ray felt a tightening in his chest. Like something tugging him backwards, through another plane of existence, and then the world spun and disappeared.

3

Ray was a baby again. Well, at least this time he was a newborn, not a fetus. Lucky. He didn’t know how this worked, and his theories were no closer to being proven than at the start of his last life. 

So once again, he waited.

He waited, and this time when Emma was brought to Gracefield a few months after him, her eyes lit up with recognition. Her first word was “Ray,” much to Isabella’s annoyance. He didn’t quite dare to hope, but then Norman looked at him with the same spark of recognition, and while he was smart enough to hide better from Isabella he still made it clear that he remembered.

Where there once was one, now there were three. 

Ray still made the deal with Isabella. The three of them were still top scorers. Their siblings were still shipped off one-by-one. 

They worked together in the dead of night, planning an escape sooner rather than later. Ray expedites the material-gathering process for the tracker-disabling device, now that he already knows what he needs. Norman becomes strategically interested in sewing, and Emma organizes games of extreme tag for training. 

It’s Norman’s idea to bring in some of their older siblings. There’s a ten-year-old with perfect scores, Jason, who’s a bit arrogant but still kind to his siblings. Norman thinks he’s trustworthy. Reluctantly, Ray agrees.

It turns out to be a mistake. Jason tells Isabella, convinced that they’re crazy. Ray is shipped off the next week.

4-?

The next few loops go much the same. They make plans, some going farther than others, but ultimately failing in the end. Ray should be discouraged by this, but every time they learn something new they can use, a tidbit of information to help them on the next attempt. He knows that someday, they’ll get this right.

He finds out some things about the loops themselves, as well. In loop 6 they try recruiting Jason again, when he’s a bit younger, and manage to fully get him on their side. In loop 7 Ray arrives at Gracefield to find Jason already prepping his own escape. 

Time stops being quite as important, and from loops 7-10 they focus on recruitment. Mostly older kids, since recruiting anyone younger would push back the timetable of the escape. The sooner they can do it, the better. 

In loop 11, they succeed in escaping for the first time. The world outside, however, is a dangerous place. On the first day two of their members are eaten by a wild demon, and they’re sent back to the beginning again.

By loop 16 they’ve met Sonju and Mujika, but don’t have much to go on from there. They end up stuck, unable to move forward, living in the demon-infested forest. They don’t survive long before pursuers from Gracefield catch up to them.

In loop 17 they try a new strategy. Despite Emma’s protests, they arrange multiple escapes, allowing the older kids to escape in a group once Jason is nearly 12, and then letting the three of them stay to gather information for longer. 

Isabella’s suspicions are in full force in this loop, given the successful escape, but he didn’t make the deal this time and so Ray, Norman, and Emma aren’t scrutinized for a while. However, things change when Sister Krone shows up several years early compared to the second timeline. 

During the years with Sister Krone, they discover the key they had been missing: a pen with the initials W.M. etched into it. Emma makes the connection to William Minerva (they had puzzled over the books for several loops before declaring them a dead end--they’re lucky Emma remembered), and Norman figures out that B06-32 is a set of coordinates. To where, they don’t know, but they have a lead beyond Gracefield. 

The three of them escape with the pen the next day, and follow the subtle clues to their siblings’ hideout. 

At B06-32, they discover the shelter. For a moment, Ray allows himself to hope that this will be the last loop.

Ha. If only. 

Ray ends up staying behind while Jason and several others go to Goldy Pond. Everyone knows the instant one of them dies out there, because the next moment it’s the beginning of loop 18. 

They find out what happened as they each arrive at the House: Goldy Pond was a demon hunting ground, and the (still nameless) man led them right into a trap. But it’s promising, so they stir up just enough trouble to bring in Sister Krone, steal the pen, and escape when Ray is four. From there it’s just a matter of retracing their steps. 

By loop 25 they’ve reverted to the multiple escapes strategy, leaving the youngest of them to grow up in the relative safety of the House (and steal the pen) while the others wait for them in the bunker. When Ray is nearly twelve, they escape and head off to join them, and then they mount an expedition to Goldy Pond. By this point they know the best strategies to defeat every demon besides Leuvis, but Ray has a good feeling about this one.

They defeat Leuvis and find the real Goldy Pond underneath the hunting ground. While it’s not a solution, it does give them valuable information going forward. Ray memorizes every word, as usual, and they continue on back to the bunker.

They last for a while this time, despite the risks taken. But then the bunker just has to get attacked, and Yugo and Lucas die. 

Good thing they thought to warn their new allies about the time loops in advance, this time. 

They start meeting at the bunker (at least two people from each farm know how to break into it, at this point) every time they escape. Sometimes the goldy pond kids don’t bother and just let themselves get shipped off, then escape from Goldy Pond instead. Emma gives them a lecture about this after the third time they started a new loop prematurely because one of them got careless and died at Goldy Pond. They start escaping properly after that. 

Sonju and Mujika are having a blast, too. While the kids are cooped up in the farms, they’ve been using their extra time (they only loop back as far as Yugo and Lucas, not to their births, which is interesting but inexplicable) to search for clues about the Seven Walls. They figure out the entrance in loop 56, after which a lot of loops go by in quick succession. Ray gets used to looping back while he’s still a baby, fully expecting to miss several loops each time. By loop 83 they’ve determined that none of the adults or goldy pond kids are capable of making it through the Seven Walls, and by loop 90 they’ve ruled out the older Gracefield kids, which leaves him, Norman, and Emma.

In loop 94, Emma forges a new Promise. By now it’s laughably easy to break back into Gracefield and bulldoze their security, accessing the Gate in the final test that God set for Emma. the next instant they’re in the human world, and Ray lets himself breathe, because it’s over.

Except it’s not, because Emma is missing, and when they find her two years later she doesn’t remember them at all. 

No one dies in loop 94, but Ray sends them back one last time anyway.

Emma’s regained her memory when they meet again in Gracefield, and she chews him out for throwing out a perfect ending for her sake. That’s a bit unfair, considering she’s been the one insisting that they not leave anyone behind this whole time. He snaps, insisting that she counts too, and they wouldn’t have looped back if her losing her memory didn’t count as losing her.  

Going through the plan is easy now, and as soon as the three of them are out of Gracefield, they’re going to try again. Ray and Norman will go with Emma to forge a promise, and this time, they won’t let the demon god take their family as a reward. 

Emma states the promise, and when it comes time for the reward God looks at Ray and says, “You have already made this deal before, and this is your curse.” 

They can go to the human world. They can live long, happy lives. But as soon as one of them dies they’ll come right back here to do it all over again, and again, and again.

Both blessing and curse, God says. This entertainment is its reward. 

Ray isn’t sure how he was the one to make the Promise the first time, when it should have been Emma, but he thinks he doesn’t regret it. So what if he has to live out an eternity in the same life, over and over? 

For once, he understands what he was thinking. He understands the plan. He’s found a loophole, and judging by God’s smirk, it’s there on purpose.

They live long, happy lives in the human world, and while they’re there Ray makes it his mission to befriend every single person from the demon world that he can. The mothers and sisters, the other cattle children, everyone. He doesn’t state his plan, not explicitly, but he thinks that Emma and Norman catch on, because they start reaching out too. 

The next time Ray is born, it’s in the bunker, and Gracefield has long since been burnt to the ground. The demon world is in chaos, with only Leuvis and Sonju and Mujika holding it together. Now all the humans have figured out his plan, and they send ambassadors to the demon towns, both to establish peace and to establish connections.

In the next loop, he finds that the farms have been abolished for two human generations, and Mujika sits comfortably on the throne. Humans have their own towns near where the farms used to be, including Goldy Pond, which is perfectly habitable after all. They’re segregated from demons, but progress is being made. 

In the next loop, the farms were abolished even sooner, and humans live comfortably amongst demons as equals, save for a few rare extremists. 

In the next loop, humans and demons are almost completely equal. Him, Emma, and Norman all go to school together with both human and demon children. 

Things keep getting better, loop after loop, with no one bothering to escape to the human world. Things come to a halt eventually, at the point where Mujika is looping back to her birth, since there isn’t an easy solution until she comes around. But progress is still made slowly, and after two hundred loops Ray is finally born into a world that was never separated at all. 

After all, God didn’t give him a curse. It gave him a gift- a way to send information beyond his birth, to rewrite history one generation at a time. After all, knowing that solutions are possible is a wonderful way to avoid the conflict in the first place.

The rules have changed, he notes. He is the center of the loops and always will be, and with so many generations in play it is a necessity to not loop back when just one of them dies. After all, that would defeat the purpose, as Ray would end up looping before he’s born. So the rules change, and Ray can still trigger a loop if he wants, but now it’s tied to his own death only. 

Eventually, the rules change again. God concedes, and on the five hundredth loop, Ray dies a peaceful final death.

And the world moves on.