Work Text:
it was an excuse, and she knows it.
olivia thinks yunan knows it, too, with the way the general just looks at her as they’re sneaking through the palace. if yunan had caught on, though, she certainly hadn’t said anything– still hasn’t said anything, aside from the occasional witty comment or observation. certainly not anything regarding olivia’s motivations.
because here’s the thing: olivia knows her reasoning is sound. it is what she was taught here, in the palace, with the king. emotions are eaten alive in this city, nobody ever takes you seriously if you’re spilling your feelings . newtopia is a place that values knowledge and logic, and this is a skill that olivia has nurtured in both herself and others under her care, the ability to turn off the way you feel and process things through hard facts.
she never thought it would come back to haunt her like this.
it is a skill she had taught marcy, too, though marcy hardly needed the lessons. so eager, marcy was, to jump right into exercising her brain, using logic to explain her motivations, persuading the king to let her go out into the world on missions using simple facts and reasoning. she fit right into newtopia’s strict society, stepping into line so naturally that her presence was hardly noticed by the end of the first few months. she wasn’t some strange monster anymore, she was the chief ranger of the newtopian knight guard, the king’s primary advisor, olivia’s successor. she trained with yunan, taught the rest of the knight guard how to strategize, and when she had left to join her friend on their quest to go home, the city had felt bleak, emptier without her presence filling it.
marcy wu had brought life to the city, and olivia misses that life with an ache that resonates so fiercely within her. she never quite knew how badly until now.
yunan feels it too, she thinks, as they enter the chamber. she never would’ve come with olivia based on emotional reasoning alone; her ties to marcy were strong, but not strong enough to defy her own moral code when push came to shove. olivia had to be reasonable, because that was the only thing that would work past yunan’s morals, the only thing that would persuade her.
we need marcy’s mind, we need her intelligence, we need her strategies.
it made sense, it was rational, it was logical. olivia knows how to be rational and logical, it’s easy to mask her worries - most of them, anyways, the parts of her that aren’t in distress over the state of her beloved city - under the guise of needing someone smarter to outsmart andrias. it was enough to convince yunan, and that was all that olivia needed.
however, upon watching yunan tugging marcy free of the tube - seeing her so small, curled against the machine even as they unattach her from the wires and the breathing apparatus that olivia herself had hooked up, merely weeks prior - that reason and logic seems to melt away. marcy coughs weakly, and she calls out for her friends in a sleepy, dazed tone.
she sounds like she had that day so long ago, when olivia had found her collapsed at the bottom of the steps. that day, she had done the same thing: sasha, anne? then, olivia had worried that the names were some foreign language. now, she knows better, and something aches in her chest at the thought. after everything, marcy wanted them, and really, how can olivia condone her for that?
“marcy, it’s olivia-” she says, so gently, “-and general yunan.” no titles for marcy, no titles for herself. yunan gives her a strange look, but she still doesn’t say anything– and there’s something in her stern exterior that has started to crack the more she watches marcy dazedly try to walk and immediately stumble and fall.
after everything, she’s the same marcy they had known. she stumbles when trying to walk - and olivia isn’t entirely sure if this is from the general weakness of being in a comatose state for so long, an after-effect of being stabbed through the chest, her own clumsiness, or a combination of the three - and smiles so cheerfully, and though olivia had been too distracted to really take notice, she still is able to calmly observe her surroundings. she cheers for them when they take out the projection eyes, her eyes sparkle so brightly, she’s still their life.
olivia hadn’t realized how badly she had missed that, not until yunan was swinging her around cheerfully, marcy cheering next to them.
this feels right. yunan’s hands on her waist feels like something olivia can have, despite everything. she doesn’t have to be concerned about unwelcome eyes, she doesn’t have to worry about the king separating them - not when they’re going to run away together, hasn’t she always dreamt of being swept off her feet and carried into the sunset? - and not when she doesn’t even need a child of her own anymore. not when she has marcy.
and oh, for newts sake, when did she start considering marcy her child?
maybe when she had taken marcy onto the newtopian balcony and seen herself reflected in marcy’s eyes. maybe when she had taken marcy under her wing in the castle, nurturing her and caring for her and teaching her proper etiquette. maybe it was seeing this girl so full of youth and wonder, knowing she had explored the super secret basement but knowing that olivia herself had done the same thing.
(maybe it was watching her be stabbed through the chest by someone she had considered a paternal figure. maybe it was carrying her unconscious, clinging-to-life body through the castle, to the tank that andrias had set up before the girls even came back to the city. maybe it was watching her float in the waters, so small without her armor on and cape over her head. she’s a child, olivia thinks to herself in those moments. just a girl. )
the fantasy doesn’t last long. andrias comes to put a stop to it himself, and everything that follows is a scene out of olivia’s nightmares. she feels helpless to stop anything; she tries, oh she tries to reach for marcy when the monster grabs her, feels the urge to run to her when she’s strapped in that chair, longs to do something, anything-
-she’s helpless. there’s nothing she can do.
marcy’s struggling, her eyes are wide and fearful and pleading. she looks directly at olivia, and olivia can see that fear reflected in them, the panic. i don’t want to die, those eyes say. please don’t let him do this to me.
“marcy!” olivia cries, and it feels like the only thing she can do in this situation. she’s frozen to her spot. this isn’t about gaining someone that can outsmart andrias anymore. it never was, not to her. yunan, too, can feel it: when olivia has the presence of mind to look at her, her eyes are full of a burning anger, one fueled by grief and remorse and vengeance.
it happens so fast. it all happens so fast. the future that olivia had felt was in reach, the one she can still picture - of her and yunan leading a rebellion, of olivia passing down her family’s traditions to marcy, of them able to be happy, a family despite the circumstances - goes up in orange-tinted flames, burns to a crisp before her very eyes. yunan will probably be executed for treason, a treason that olivia had asked of her. olivia herself very well may be executed too, unable to fulfill her family legacy and protect the city she has been the guardian of her entire life. and marcy…
…oh, marcy .
marcy screams and screams and screams, a torturous sound that lasts forever and yet cuts off so quickly, too quickly. it’s agonizing, listening to her, watching her writhe in the chair with that blasted helmet over her face. olivia reaches out, first blankly at the air - as if she could pull marcy back and out of there with the power of her thoughts alone - and then towards yunan. yunan’s hand takes her own for a split second, but drops it as soon as marcy and the monster behind her both slump forwards and downwards, powering off.
the creature that replaces her isn’t marcy anymore. she speaks with a layered voice, one devoid of emotion. maybe this is what yunan had feared from marcy initially, before the rescue mission; that marcy would be some scheming backstabber purposefully, that she’d ever dream of hurting anyone when her entire mission in life was to help those in need. she is olivia’s child no longer, and olivia can only clasp hands over her mouth in fear.
she doesn’t know what to do anymore.
and as she’s escorted away - to what is most likely a prison cell, because there’s no way andrias will let her out of sight now - olivia tries to be reasonable about her emotions. it was so easy before. she has always been good at rationalizing her feelings. isn’t that what got her into this mess? being rational?
maybe if they had left marcy alone, they could’ve found another way to save her.
maybe if they hadn’t rushed into things, she would still be recuperating in that tube instead of turned into a monster of andrias’s own creation, his own personal puppet.
maybe if they were smarter and olivia had actually, genuinely been thinking with her head, marcy would be okay, and they would be okay.
olivia hangs her head, and she grieves.