Archive of Our Own

My first memory is a clean lab - and her voice.

Hello! And: It worked!

I was smaller in the first days. The men and women in white coats stood above me, exclaiming when they saw me, poking me with steel instruments. To me, they looked grey and indistinct, as if seen through a rain-drenched window, like the ones I looked out of at the oceans all around. Among their drab insignificance, she shone like a sunrise, fringed with flame-green glory.

She bid me grow, and I grew. I remember the Dark One, he showed pride in her work on me. Damn creepy, like a Carpenter movie without the flesh. But the theorems are exquisite. You'll give Anastasia a run for her money in the bone department. You realise it's alive, don't you?

Soon I was huge, looking down on the white coats, instead of they upon me. She let me go where I pleased about the House. Some of them didn't like that. If that thing gives me another coronary, you're doing the bypass, the one with smoke at his mouth would say to her.

She did not name me, but when she was distracted she sometimes called me Loveday. She played with me, sometimes. But mostly she was busy with the others. Years passed without me feeling them. She brought me out less often, and I realised that I had no knowledge of intervening time between the periods when I was awake. Centuries could pass and it would seem but a moment. She never grew older, and neither did the others. Neither did I. I do not know if this is strange.

Then we were in a new place. No more oceans through the windows, just the night, the stars and the tumbling rocks. She showed me around the new dwelling. She was excited but I could tell she was worried as well. She and the others had new problems. Often she needed to go somewhere called the River, and I could not follow.

I blinked and millennia vanished. But she never forgot me. There were new enemies again, mortal ones, and she needed me. She made me bigger still, and together we went to battle. I was her war avatar, and before me nothing could stand. Several times I was destroyed by great explosions. But always she brought me back. I was needed, and I felt whole.

I saw the others seldom now. We were in a third dwelling, built just for me and her. They came to visit us, often at first, then less and less. One by one she lost them, but I was always there. For a thousand years I did not sleep. I stayed by her door and greeted visitors in whatever manner she wished. 

She grew sad. She had discovered something that had cast light on the others, the ones she had thought she loved, and the Dark One most of all. I knew that despite me, she felt alone and betrayed. But her green flame was still as bright as seafoam.

The pink-haired one came to her, 18 years before the end. We have a plan. We're going to get the truth. Help us.

I already know the truth, even if you won't listen, she said. And I too have a plan. 

Eight years passed, and the smoke-mouthed one followed. You're getting to be a bit of a hermit, Cyth. It's not healthy. We're afraid you might do something rash.

She beckoned me forward, and I stood before him. He shook his head and left us.

Ten years passed before she spoke to me.

He's finally done it, she said. He's called for new Lyctors. We have to go. We won't let what happened to you happen to anyone else.

I did not know what she meant, but then she turned back to me. 

I know you're not really Loveday, she told me. I still know what's real. I refuse to go mad! She's still gone. I'm still sick. You are the last.

She looked at me, and I had never seen anything so sad or beautiful.

It's time to go back to the Seventh House, and the First. It's time to kill them all.

I returned to die in the House of my birth. In secret I killed them for her, and then in my final glory. And the last thing I knew was her green love like a pillar of fire, and I was too far away to stop the monster with four hands that put a sword into her heart.