Chapter Text
You started it like this; letters spaced out in the grain of wood, winding their way up the trunk and ending with questions in the leaves. You couldn’t see it yet, but it would be there, and in another time, in another world there would be an answer.
Your concept of linear had long since degraded, temporal theory scattering your future behind you and the past before you. How terrible it was, and how right it felt, how free from the people who spent the majority of their lives focused on things smaller than themselves. Weren’t you better? The power you had, did it not make you better? Those were the words that had been whispered in your ears since birth, far in the future where the battlefield was no longer fields or planes. You traversed the threads of time, the ripples of your actions far off in the future that you could not see. (Were you even doing anything then? For yourself?)
Your concept of linear had long since degraded, and in that manner you began your letter. For yourself. Amelia Watson.
- - -
They named her Amelia Watson, and the name was quickly forgotten. The only one who referred to her by that name was herself, and she supposed that set her apart. There were no names to her side’s soldiers, no faces, merely actions. The toppling of a government in one strand, the creation of one in another, all against the enemy with no face, the soldiers with no name. In the night, when she whispered ‘Amelia Watson’ to whatever lay beyond her ceiling, she wondered if they were real, or if they were chasing shadows on the walls. She supposed that would make sense in a twisted way; the timelines blurred before her eyes, the faces she had seen smudges, and no sign of their elusive enemy.
Her concept of linear was long since degraded, and in that manner she carried out her orders into fruitfulness,
- - -
Then there were eyes on the back of her head, and she flinched.
She flinched because there was supposed to be no one there.
And yet there was.
The enemy was not a lie, her concept of linear a mere suggestion in the books of rationality, and she would die with the only deeds to her name being ones not out of her own will.
Behind her, she glanced, surreptitiously, the chatter of the people around her and the long collar of her coat hiding her movement. Black hair, blue eyes, a masterpiece of an image surrounded by smudges. There were faces to be forgotten and there were faces to be remembered; and even if Amelia Watson’s legacy was simply not in the cards then surely this person’s will be. The feeling in her fluttering heart surprised her, her hands were shaking in her coat pockets as she ducked behind a moving carriage and hoped the eyes that pierced through her considered her another nameless blur, a speck of dust in their looming legacy.
- - -
Her concept of linear knit itself together at the most unhelpful of times, the tethers that linked one to their thread; experiences, nostalgia, love, they strengthened with every day spent undercover on her newest mission. Her partner this time was sweet, kind, enjoyed tea and rainy mornings, the smell of paint and the feeling of canvas. Amelia Watson hoped that her knowledge of her had at least surpassed that of the file that she had been given, the butterflies in her stomach wanted that. Her hands could span Ina’s waist, vertebrae dappling the curve of her back like pebbles in a stream, ribs curving like great, reaching things.
Amelia would reach for her at times, in the dark of night, when the curtain of black hid the words written in ants on the front porch. There were many ants in the world, Amelia supposed, millions upon millions, not including the ones in other streams. Did they know what they were? Did they, unyielding in their search for sweet, ever find the bitter truth of what they were? Ants, to be trod on, to be considered a menace on a civilized home, mayhaps beneficial in the smallest of ways.
They were given purpose in the way they formed instructions out of abdomen and antenna, and Amelia Watson felt that they weren’t much different from each other in the end.
- - -
She got to stay, for once, longer than usual, and it hurt. Ina curled up in bed, her spine like stepping stones, and away she went into the night. Was she free? Was anyone really? Amelia Watson was asking too many questions to herself, and so if she ever received answers she had cause to be worried.
She left the thread, job done, and cast herself into the ether. She passed others like her, pawns, faceless; she forgot them like they forgot her. Or maybe she didn’t. This was a war with no survivors and no memorials, she could form graves out of the planes of her teeth and nails, but it would only be for herself. She would be the only one to remember anyways.
Someone else remembered, clearly, and Amelia Watson wondered if she was going to die here. A humid evening, the clouds still clinging to their murky vestiges and wrapping around rooftops. The concrete below her feet was damp, puddles gathering where the pavement buckled and weeds crawled out of cracks. A similar scene in a fair amount of thrillers in a fair amount of threads. Drops of rainwater spilled off of terraces, tarps pulled over parked cars and wet trash lining the gutters.
There was someone else behind her, someone else who remembered, (Her!). It sent fear through her, but excitement as well. Soldiers were faceless, and she was a soldier. She was a soldier, and she was faceless. The mere recognition of her by another denied that simple fact. It wasn’t a fact anymore, and unlike the concept of time, what was meant to stay rigid and unyielding fell at the feet of this person. She knew who it was, the piercing glacier eyes hadn’t been smudged through the few strands she had traveled to after their meeting.
Amelia Watson wanted them to know her.
- - -
Rebellions could start by the smallest of things. She knew this by heart. She knew this by the handbook that had been engraved in her since before birth, the handbook she was going against now. Contact with the enemy, fraternizing with the enemy. Words for acts that would make a nameless soldier no longer nameless; instead a blot on the twining history of their organization. Instead of being forgotten, you would be purged.
The handbook was a technical term, holy book would be more apt; they lived and breathed by it, Amelia Watson’s people. They were her people, flesh and blood whittled by shards of iron, code in their every breath and step. They were a monolith, stone and metal and glass jutting out of a planet scraped raw and gnawed at like bones until it had given everything it had to give. And then they kept on taking.
Amelia wished they weren’t her people.
Where the others were, the enemy, was unknown. It was a secret so guarded that if Amelia’s people ever found it would mean victory. Maybe they already found it. Maybe they were already dead. Time wasn’t linear, humans made it such, a human traveling through its non-Euclidean forms would inevitably tear in some way. She was tearing in some way, she had known this already yes yes, and she finally found the aching wound.
She wove the words together, like embroidery, like how a womb knitted flesh together in ways that were hard to comprehend. The way orders were written to her, she would shift the purpose of the technique, make it more human, a delivery that only an experienced eye would see. Her enemy’s planet was bitterly whispered lies and tantalizing rumors, wreaths of vines and flowers and trees. The opposite of her own.
Amelia wished she was born a pawn, an unknowing player like Ina, content to live the life pathed ahead by the wisp of her own will.
She left her message, and headed on her way.
- - -
A shape dug itself out of the ground, a corpse in its waking, a ghost in its movements. Caked in dirt and shadow, it stumbled towards the flower left behind, petals blue and young. Dew dappled its leaves, light green veins curving through darker flesh. The figure plucked each petal in an undeterminable order, preciseness in each movement, before swallowing the plant whole.
Words bloomed on their tongue as they closed their eyes.
Dear one who follows,
You hound me, a constant shadow at the corner of my eye, the echo of my footfalls. I suppose I must ask why, to force purpose upon this letter. Nothing can be a whim when you know the weight of time.
If you’re reading this, it is another why. Add that to our list, yes? Maybe we are wildly different, opposites in every way, and your shadows will smother my lights, or my lights will burn your shadows. We are different, we are enemies, and yet we follow like suns in binary orbit.
Must we? Your hands are kind, I have not yet felt them pull a trigger upon me, have not yet felt them wrap around my neck. This is our rendezvous in the midnight dawns, and already we have gone against that which we pledged ourselves to.
My pledge has my name upon it, the one they gave me when I was marked from where we are created. This is my purpose, given as freely and contained as I have given this letter reason. I write this to ask you why you have not killed me. I write this to ask you if you ever will.
The word for this is pen pals, as we are not, as we could be? If choices are something I cannot make in my place, then I will have to reach for it in the ways I can. I write to you on a whim, no matter how I try to rationalize, try to reason out these words in glucose and carbon. You have followed me, have not killed me, and I chase the ghost that haunts me and may do me harm.
Will you?
Yours in whimsy, Sunshine.
The figure grinned, teeth stained blue and green.
- - -
It stuck with her. Adrenaline, pumping strong through her veins like a drug. She knew they watched, like eyes over her shoulders, but they didn’t burn the way her pursuer’s did. Had they seen? Did they know? Was her wraith of a name blotted out already?
She didn’t mind, she didn’t care. The aching wound of time opened deeper, freedom poured out like a god’s ichor and Amelia Watson indulged in it.
Another job, another thread, another life written in tree rings and spider webs. Her partner’s name was interesting, slicked off the tongue like honey, sweetness in a sharp tooth smile. Sharklike, Amelia would say, lively in laugh and wild in want. Gura’s placement in their great game was important, Amelia needing to work in tandem with another soldier to let this work out. How their work spanned the ages, and yet it all hung upon whether Amelia could court her properly.
She used ‘partner’ for the coldness, the detachment. Her current partner was already tantalizing like the finest candies, and Amelia had already indulged in that which she should not. She had said the word aloud one day and the ice caused by the word melted on her tongue at the warmth in Gura’s tone.
“Pardnerr,” She had teased, sharp teeth digging into the meat of Amelia Watson and tugging, want bursting to life within her chest.
She had made her own decision once before, couldn’t she do it now?
The cold gaze of her fellow soldier froze the warmth of ‘wife’ that rested on her tongue like a burning coal, aching to be released. She still said it though. Out of spite.
And out of spite, she followed the moss that grew in secret patterns, for her and only her. It was like a treasure hunt for children, but Amelia Watson was never a child. A tree towered over a stream, roots dangling with clumps of dirt over running water. There was a poetry to it, she supposed. But soldiers didn’t read poetry.
Amelia Watson wished the people who were hers, weren't, and that she weren’t a soldier, so that she may read something other than rules.
She waited, until a pebble dislodged from the babbling brook, and she departed, the shadows lengthening like Ame’s wants.
The silt of the stream lay in a pattern, melded with the clear sounds of its ripples. A letter wrote itself in Amelia’s minds eye.
Dear watch doctor,
I must admit, your sorcery ensnared me. Your words did as words do, and I am a mere rabbit in your jaws, trapped. You are an enigma to me, you speak of my hands being kind as if you do not know how many of your people I have slaughtered. Like rabbits, like prey.
I speak of gory things, of war, for that is what we are in, it is what we are a part of. But you don’t want to be a part of it. I see you, the truth of you in sunlight and sap, you showed yourself to an enemy, wholly, without fear of that trust being betrayed.
I envy you.
Your list shall grow, from my side as well. I can kill you. You can kill me. The difference between us lies in when. And in our job that is an unattainable answer. I am your shadow, you are my light, and I will follow like we have always done in this line of work.
Our orders, our pledges, betrayed by whimsy. How quaint, how fitting.
You speak of my hands being kind, and I suppose you are right, for I have written this to you.
Yours in truth, Ouroboros
- - -
They didn’t let her stay this time.
…
The wound in her chest stung, her hands shook as she removed her ring. She left Gawr Gura’s life just how she entered it, a ghost, not of her world, not of her time. Not meant to be.
There was a before, and an after for Amelia Watson. Before was before the decision, before the opening of wounds, before the want for things she could not have. Soldiers did not want. Soldiers did what they must, and that in its own way was a sort of want.
She was solidly in the after now. Words swam in her vision, stones and petals instead of smudges. She no longer had to wonder what color the woman on the corner’s eyes were. She was a petal, of a flower, of a decision Amelia Watson had made on her own. Without the weight of time on her shoulders. With the wound in her chest free and flowing. With and without was her future, no longer warped, no longer linear in the respects of rationality. Amelia had long since gone past rationality when she pulled the words together out of sugar and roots.
She said it to herself louder now. Amelia Watson was her name, and she was not faceless. She was still a soldier, yes, could not bring up the courage to unbind herself from that. But the tear widened, weeping gold, weeping dreams, her heart beat solidly in her ribcage like Gura’s drumbeat of a laugh, her hands steady like Ina’s when she painted in the early hours of the morning. The faces of those who passed her by were blurs, yes, smudges. Now she had two faces mapped out by lips and fingers, and she would remember them like how she remembered her name; in the only way she could.
- - -
She took more faces, learned them by her new beating heart. It wasn’t new, it was there, anatomy was a required subject when she was young. It pumped the dreams out, stained her waking hours with wonder, had her looking at her hands and inspecting them.
She flexed them, skin tightening over the muscle and bone, a machine-like way to its motion. Her thumb moved in opposing directions to the others, like her, she supposed. But hands could hold things, keep them close; Amelia wasn’t sure if she could do that yet.
“What’re you doin?” Calli muttered sleepily. Her hair was spread out over her pillow, a glossy pink waterfall. Amelia hummed, the wound in her chest tightening, the birds she called hands fluttering away from her, doing things she shouldn’t. Calli’s hair was soft, smooth, running over her fingers like water. Amelia’s heart beat fast in her chest, like a hummingbird’s wings. She had birds on the brain, birds in the body, in the stomach, causing a ruckus in her machinations.
There was a before and an after to things. To events. Amelia thought she was in the after, she thought the change was done. But then Calli’s hand came up to run its way down her cheek, passing by faint scars that Amelia had forgotten marred her jaw, to trail feather light over her collarbone, to the gaping cut that only Amelia could see. It was entropy, she was falling apart, systematically, every touch by every person she ever cared enough about to map their face.
There were maps inside her, to long ago places she knew, timelines now abandoned, lost, completed, stolen. There were languages and then there were languages, and Amelia did not know enough to explain where she had gone. She was in the after of the before, but not the after of the after. She was in the middle, and she would wait. She would wait until the words in languages forgotten, lost, changed, destroyed, solidified into meanings that she could accept wholeheartedly. She was a master of waiting, that’s how the ripples in threads worked.
The words were already there. Amelia Watson just didn’t want to look at it, the words of rules still sticking like rot on the inside of tree trunks. She loved Ninomae Ina’nis, she loved Gawr Gura, she loved Calliope Mori, but she shouldn’t but she couldn’t but the words of teachers and handbooks clung to her like rot and broke her down until all she was again was a soldier.
And yet she tried to hold on with her newly discovered hands.
- - -
Anatomy was a required class, so she knew the science of it, the logic of it. She could reason it out; a body that loses too much blood, doesn’t get oxygen, doesn’t get food, will die. Simple and detached, was how they taught her classes, how they taught her to be. She wasn’t anymore, so she held onto Takanashi Kiara.
It was rebellion in something other than written words, her mission no longer just that, a mission, instead telescoping out into a larger frame to fit inside the gushing wound in Amelia Watson’s chest. Her choices were her own, her body was her own, her heart, her hands were her own, and she would use them.
Kiara’s hands were warm, so she held them close. Her heart beat loudly in her chest, in its place and Amelia would fall asleep listening to it. She knew her people were watching, piecing together the clues she placed in front of them, bared to them the truth that she had only shown the watcher. The enemy understood, in their own way, but her people didn’t, and that made her think. When she whispered Amelia Watson into the fogged up mirror, inspected her hands, she wondered if they knew that she could use them now.
When Amelia held the sharp jutting outline of Kiara’s jaw as they kissed, mapping the contours of her warm cheekbones out, she wondered if she could have this, if she could be allowed to keep this, if she could let herself hold it close.
When she left, it was different, she left a note with an explanation and darted to another string, not daring to see the outcome. When she flew away, her heart was fluttering like her hands did when they were allowed to do what they were meant for.
When was a word that was used too much, in the moments where time curved like the back of your lover in the early hours of the morning.
- - -
It was trickier this time. They were watching. They knew her hands were greedy now, could see the glimpses of the tear in her chest, but not for what it was. This was her freedom, to them it was her betrayal. But not yet.
She wrote it in decay, a simple code embedded in the cellular structure of a long dead creature, something mighty enough to last millenia to simply be seen. A magnificent creature, bones of white and awe inspiring majesty.
The figure burned it to ashes, and gazed into the flames.
Dear snake that swallows blue moons,
How many worlds have we destroyed, do you think? How many have we given birth to? We are soldiers, responsible for great and evil deeds, and yet we have no ego. There is no ‘I’, there is only our sides biting and snapping at each other like children at play. We take, you take back, you take, we take back. There is no winning, there is no losing, but maybe there is, and in our line of work it may have already happened.
I speak of our line of work a lot, I speak of being soldiers, I speak of being at war. Does it seem as such to you? We play gods in thousands of worlds and in all honesty the results are of similar scale to ants being crushed. Are we ants? Do we have purpose?
You are an enemy.
That is your purpose, given from my people to you. Do you accept it? Do you give yourself reason or is it forced upon you? I have many questions, our list grows longer and stranger, and I cannot speak to people long enough to get answers.
We are like the great philosophers of old, speaking of matters that both concern us and don’t; maybe complacent, maybe chomping and stamping at the bit, maybe this is too much to give to an enemy.
But as I write this, blue moon eater, we are not enemies anymore.
I am free. Treat me as you will, I am free! I am on planets that have long since exploded or have not even had their ores formed. I am eating pastries in Paris, drinking wine on mountains, holding someone that I haven’t been ordered to hold.
Dear moon of mine, you have inspired me. We are the loosest usage of the term friends. I wish to meet you.
Free as a flying bird, Sunshine
- - -
The figure stood still, ashes coating their hands. Smoke flurried around them, bitter and cloying, filled with the words of an enigma.
Ouros Kronii breathed it in.