Work Text:
Jarilo-VI’s crisp air is so cold it almost hurts to breathe. There are some things not even the temperature control blessing the Trailblaze path grants can change. March can’t help but smile as she walks through the outskirts of Belobog, snow crunching underneath her boots. Dan Heng is scanning their surroundings, looking for their objective, but Stelle is staring at March instead.
March lifts her camera before sticking out her tongue. Stelle mimics her, only to startle when a snowflake lands on her tongue, eyes going wide and staring up at the sky. Snowflakes never fail to distract her. Just like the thousands of other things in the world that seem to be totally new to her. March giggles at the sight and snaps a picture at just the right moment.
Stelle rolls her eyes at the sound of the shutter, coming back down to earth as she always does. March just smiles, putting away her camera and taking Stelle’s hand to follow Dan Heng at a leisurely pace. He’s way up ahead by now, but she knows him. He won’t leave them behind, not really.
“Why were you staring?”
Stelle shrugs, a bit uneasily. Her shoulders are slightly tense, but she doesn’t let go of March’s hand. “I guess I was wondering.” Her eyes flit to March’s hairline.
March grins and uses her free hand to sweep her bangs aside. “Isn’t it a marvelous shade of purple? I got it from the ringmaster in the circus I used to be a part of! It’s the same color as the lining of his show jacket — I was so jealous of it when I was a kid! I was determined to have his job when I was older, but I think it was more about getting to wear the costume than the actual job, you know? Swinging around on the trapeze was pretty fun all on its own already, but I could have never gotten his top hat to stay on my head while doing it!”
Stelle quietly studies the purple smudge on her forehead, matching her thumb to it. It’s the same size, which makes it quite unlikely March gained it when she was very young, because marks grow along with the person. Marks from a parent are usually very large for that very reason. It’s unlikely, but it’s what she chose for life thirty-four all the same.
March isn’t sure if Stelle knows enough about marks to know that yet, but she remains quiet about it either way.
March swings their hands between them as they walk through the snow, keeping an eye out for the supplies they promised Natasha they’d bring back from the surface.
Stelle looks at the world like she’s never seen it before. March was never like that. Even back when she woke up without even knowing her name — only her soulmarks proof she’d existed before she’d been found — she had at least known the basics of living. She had never been surprised by snow, nor had a strange fascination with trash cans. Presumably, because a parent had once taught her it was dirty (like in life sixteen, when her father was a garbageman and tried to prevent her from hugging him when he came home from work. March always ignored him and hugged him anyway, shower or no shower) whereas Stelle has no such associations.
Maybe March knows more about her past than she thought she did.
Her camera bounces against her hip, and ever-present reminder of the memories she’s making right now. She has sixty-seven different versions of her past. Number sixty-eight is the life she’s currently documenting.
The viewfinder cannot find the past she does not know, and neither can she find the owners of the purple smudge, of the brown handprint on her back, of the soft pink spot just above her hip. But she knows where the twin handprints that grace her waist and shoulder came from — Himeko and Welt, lifting her out of the remains of the ice they had found her in. She knows where the teal mark on her palm comes from — shoving Dan Heng’s face away when she woke up. There’s the tiny splotch of blush discoloration on her lips where she kissed Pom-Pom on the forehead through their fur. And last but never, ever least — Stelle, who had stained her fingers gold the very first time March had touched her as if to show off just what a treasure she would be.
March has always been loved, by people she knows and by people she does not remember.
She can’t help but be grateful for that.
She doesn’t need a viewfinder to take another physical reminder of all the love inked into her skin, into her soul, but it never hurts to use it anyway to celebrate the life she’s built. To remember every single detail of the happiness she’s encountered, immortalized forever. Memory or no.
With a smile on her face, she tugs on Stelle’s hand, making her stumble but not fall as March speeds up.
“Come on,” she calls. “I want to take a picture!”