Work Text:
It was snowing when Sumire died.
She didn’t remember much of her own death. Or rather, the death Maruki designed for her, just wisps and fragments of a life she never properly lived. Still, even as the rest of Maruki’s reality faded from her mind, her thoughts would linger on the question:
How did she die?
There was an open field, blanketed in white, empty as far as the eye could see, an iridescent sheen in her foggy breaths, a single spider lily at her feet, unaffected by the chill, its petals redder than her sisters’ blood, but that was it. Never could she remember her corpse, any reasoning for her death. Not even grief touched the quiet piece of her mind still clouded by Maruki’s promises of the somber peace of the grave.
In the dead of night, sitting in Kasumi’s room felt no different than staring at her own grave. Her hand gravitated to Kasumi’s ribbon, strewn haphazardly across the otherwise neat floor. It was soft between her fingertips, airy. The kind of ribbon that would dance if only it could defy gravity—it was just like Kasumi that way.
It wasn’t real, she knew, Maruki’s reality was never real. Kasumi was the one to die, and there was nothing peaceful about her tumultuous end. And yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if Sumire died that day too.
Or, maybe, it was better to ask whether Sumire existed at all.
When she looked back up from the floor, she was struck by how pristine the room was, even as the anniversary of Kasumi’s death stumbled ever closer. Not a speck of dust was out of place, there never was, never could be, not with someone like Kasumi. It didn’t matter how quickly she flitted from one place to another, her dance through life was nothing but flawless, only ever cluttered in the abundance of trophies and medals littering her shelves.
A familiar, ugly twinge touched her chest, and for a moment she felt like Sumire again: the bitterly jealous shadow of her sister, always second or third or fourth best, always wishing the spotlight would blind her for once.
“My warrior, you’ve already tempted such a fate,” Vanadis whispered, featherlight against her ear.
Sumire slumped lifelessly.
Vanadis was right, of course. She did try, long before Maruki did. It started with little things, of course: wearing contacts more often, bolder starts to her routines, a louder voice, a happier smile. Every attempt failed miserably. Kasumi began practicing routines with a hoop instead of ribbon, contacts made her eyes dry and the world wobble nauseously, and no matter how widely she smiled, how enthusiastically she spoke, it always fell flat. Hollow without Kasumi’s natural charm and confidence.
Her eyes fell to Kasumi’s desk, to the crimson tube of lipstick that Kasumi had been so excited to show her once she’d finally convinced their parents to let her buy it, and when Sumire looked into the mirror it was Kasumi standing in her reflection, hand steady as she carefully applied the shock of color to her lower lip.
“It looks good,” was all she could think to say, “red suits you.”
“Right?” Kasumi laughed, smile so wide she was struggling to properly apply it, “I just knew it was perfect from the moment I saw it.”
And it was, it fit Kasumi perfectly. It felt like every other day someone was complimenting her on the bold look.
Sumire’s fingers itched, twitching forward without her permission, so she hid desperate things in her palms. “You’re really good at that.”
“It’s just practice.” Their eyes met in the mirror as she added, “you’d pick it up in no time if you tried.”
“Can I…” but she hesitated, the words lodged painfully in her throat. A glance was all it took, and Kasumi was dragging her over to the mirror, pressing the tube into her hands and offering her brightest smile.
“Go ahead!”
It seemed so effortless when Kasumi applied it, the way the color glided across her lips, the way her feet floated across the floor, the way her whole existence spiraled into everything and nothing simultaneously. But Sumire was clumsy, her fingers shaking and wobbly as she tried to replicate the same neat line Kasumi long perfected.
When she finished, it felt a little like looking at a kid’s crayon portrait.
Kasumi hummed thoughtfully, but her lips twisted into just a little too much of a grimace to be entirely contemplative. “Here, why don’t you try this one too?” She took the red, and in its place handed Sumire a pale, dull, peachy color, one that hardly showed once she’d scrubbed the gemlike crimson away.
“See,” Kasumi said, “it’s perfect for you.”
Sumire stared at her reflection, at the lipstick she didn’t know when she picked up, into her own reflection, barely visible in dim light.
Kasumi’s face looked back, mirroring every expression: pain, sorrow, hesitance, even her own numbness staring back at her through her sister’s eyes, her sister’s skin—never quite right grafted over her own face. Even with Maruki’s doctoring it had never looked right: the sound of her voice, the stilted, hesitant lurch of her body like a marionette desperately trying to catch up to its strings.
Sumire died with Kasumi, but she was dying long before Kasumi ever did.
But now she knows the truth. She’s faced the pain of reality and escaped the grasp of her delusions, and that should have been it, right? And yet, she could only ever see Kasumi’s face in the mirror, no matter how she hid it behind her glasses and her hair, Kasumi was always there.
No…it wasn’t just Kasumi in her reflection anymore, because she wasn’t just Sumire anymore. She had another name now, a new place in the world, one of excitement and danger and where she could possess all the grace in the world.
For a moment she stood there, allowing herself to imagine the mask that adorned Violet’s face, the confidence brimming in her veins, the way her rebellious heart would leap at any chance to fight, to express herself, to prove herself—
The thought startled her, jolting her from her reverie, and when she looked back into the mirror her stomach coiled at the realization that she could no longer see Violet.
Only Joker.
Joker, whose ever-flowing electric confidence ran through her veins, whose cocky grin and easy wit silvered her tongue and smoothed her grace, whose rebellion draped itself over her shoulders like a second skin. The man she so deeply admired from the moment they met, who so easily inspired the skill and courage she only ever dreamed she could grasp.
The man she turned to the moment she began wearing Kasumi’s skin.
The realization didn’t shock her as much as it should have. Has she always known? A drowning man will grasp for anything to stay afloat, and that’s what she was, wasn’t she? A rotting corpse only born again in lightning, resuscitated to stumble its way through the world blind and desperate for a fresh victim to make its own, one it found in Joker, in Violet.
Deep within her chest she could feel fiery wings brush her ribs: Vanadis, so strong even now she could feel the raw thrill of it buzzing in her fingers. But she wasn’t Sumire’s strength, never was, always adorned in Arsene’s midnight wings, crimson horns, and burning eyes. A borrowed heart on borrowed time. How long would it be until that strength ran out? Until Joker wasn’t enough to keep her standing on her own feet?
When she opened her eyes, Sumire didn’t stand in her mirror. No, instead there stood the heaped ruins of the patchwork quilt she so desperately wove of the people she loved, their features snipped from a magazine and plastered over her like a second skin: Kasumi’s hair, Joker’s gloves, Kasumi’s confidence, Joker’s rebellion, their beauty stitched together into the Frankenstein’s monster now staring back at her.
The creature once known as Sumire.
In the mirror the monster’s eyes had reddened, heavy tears building in the corners of her eyes—but could they even be called her eyes anymore? If she peeled back her skin, would there be any remnants of Sumire beneath the lies she lived? Or would there be nothing left but the shriveled corpse of the girl she once was? A pile of dust and ash that would disappear once and for all in a single breath.
Sumire tore her eyes away from the girl in the mirror, but no matter where else she tried to look she could still see it, the ghostly murmurs of a girl long dead haunting every empty surface. There was no one except Kasumi left, no matter how many months had passed since Kasumi’s death or weeks since Sumire learned the truth. Always Kasumi in the spotlight or on stage getting their parents’ praise or friends’ admiration, always Joker in the shadows now, the dark recluse of everyone’s eyes, both soaring higher and higher so far into the sky she could hardly even see—
And then…Sumire faltered, the words caught on the tip of her tongue. And then…
The hall outside Kasumi’s room was quiet, still, the only sound her soft footsteps as she walked just a few feet, and found herself face to face with a familiar door, utterly identical to Kasumi’s, if not for the slivers of warm light shining out from its edges. Her hand lingered on the handle just a moment, long enough for her stolen heart to brace itself against the blinding flash when the door creaked open.
At first glance, Sumire’s room wasn’t much different from Kasumi’s: her desk a little more cluttered, her curtains a different style, her medals a different shade. As kids, they always had to have matching clothes, matching rooms, matching lives, because they were twins, practically identical on the surface.
Even now, though, she could see remnants of Sumire scattered about the room. The glasses she’d spent months wondering why she’d found in her room instead of her sister’s, the rows upon rows of fiction books, most of them romance, that she’d found herself collecting (Kasumi always thought they were too cheesy), bento boxes she made because she dreaded the day what energy she had finally left her (playing the sport Kasumi loved, that Kasumi insisted they try together).
Her heart ached as she brushed her fingertips along the rim of the empty cup on her desk, the same she’d use whenever she made Kasumi tea. Caffeinated, because Kasumi was a night owl even when she had to wake up at five in the morning every day. Inside, the remnants of the tea Maruki once so earnestly suggested she try, until she reminded him that she didn’t know how to make tea, because being Kasumi meant letting Maruki surgically remove what remnants of Sumire were left in her soul.
She felt the sob cracking her chest before she felt the tears, slapping both hands over her mouth to stifle the sobs as they broke her once even breathing, clamping down harder when even that failed to muffle her anguish.
No matter where she looked, it all led back to them: Kasumi, Joker, even Maruki—anyone in the world, anyone but Sumire.
There was…simply nothing. Nothing left of the person she tried so hard to be—nothing left that was truly hers and hers alone. Even her rebellion, her persona, just a fragment of someone else’s will: the person she always wished she could be. But no matter how hard she tried she was frozen reaching out towards the sky, desperate to fly without the wings to lift her.
No—she wasn’t frozen, she was trapped, falling in slow motion, the world whirling past her, her wings a Frankenstein fabrication, made of Kasumi’s bones and Joker’s feathers without the nerves to break her fall.
And now she’s finally hit the ground, forced to stare at the broken remnants of everything Sumire once was.
“Look,” something inside her pleaded, but Sumire couldn’t bear to, couldn’t let herself, not when she was hardly keeping herself together just knowing what she would see.
“Open your eyes,” it insisted yet, that quiet little voice in her chest, so distantly familiar and so foreign still, not Vanadis’ burning rebellion nor Cendrillon’s ever-boiling determination. It was softer in its insistence, gentler in its clutch but no less firm in its grip as it peeled her hands away from her mouth, quieting her heaving breaths.
“Look,” it whispered, and she did, almost startled by the face staring back at her. The girl’s eyes were red and puffy, her skin pale, hands shaking where they were frozen in the air. Pieces stuck out like jagged shards: Kasumi’s face, Joker’s eyes, but in-between the seams she could see that same gentleness re-emerge, light as a feather dancing between her fingertips. Everywhere she looked that same familiarity lingered, hidden between the cracks: the color of her hair, the calluses of her fingers, the rolling thunder flickering in her veins.
There was life somehow, old and new, scarred and torn and cast aside for everything she wasn’t. Because it wasn’t Sumire, at least, not the Sumire she so long detested. But if she picked out the broken shards, pieced them back together, maybe she would see someone like Sumire in her reflection. Someone with limbs of their own, legs that, no matter how they trembled or fell, still found the strength to stand alone. Someone with a heart, no matter how weak, that beat for her and her alone. Someone who didn't have someone else’s threads to hold her together.
Someone who could live.
It wouldn’t be easy, those same shards she once upon a time so dearly treasured would slice her fingers, would bury themselves deep into her skin. She would have to let those same threads holding her remnants together unravel, and trust that no matter how long it took, no matter how much it hurt, those threads were never what truly held Sumire together.
In the mirror, she watched a new face emerge from the depths of her soul: smooth, carved like a marble sculpture, not quite perfect, cracked and crumbling at its edges, but between the cracks she could see liquid gold holding her heart together. A shimmering hand grasped her own, and held it over the steady, calm beat of her heart.
Her heart. Sumire felt herself smile at the thought, one that would break and ache and never be the same it once was, but one that could escape the mad doctor’s delusions, that would give her the strength to fly, to piece herself together every time she unraveled. And no matter what happened, no matter who she met or admired or loved, this heart would be hers.
“I am thou, and thou art I,” Ella pledged.
And when she looked into the mirror, there stood Sumire staring back at her.