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“Okay, here we are!” Marcille says as she holds the door open for Izutsumi.
The beastkin scrambles into the dingy little shop, stiff and bunched up even under her rather comically thick layer of winterwear. She’s just a bundle of knitted wool and thick cloth.
Ugh, she hates the winters. And she hates the fact it’s still just early winter. And the fact Marcille says she looks cute buried under a wool cap and mittens.
And the fact she has to be outside at all.
“… And why are we here?” she huffs, glancing around the place.
Of course it would have been too much to assume they were going somewhere warm. But no, this is some dimly little hovel of a shop, lined with shelves and tables full of… junk from all she can see. A drafty hovel.
Marcille looks around too. Apparently this all looks a lot more impressive to her.
“Well, Laios’ birthday is coming up, and…”
“No, I mean why are we here? I dunno what the weirdo wants”, the girl scoffs, and rolls her eyes. Her tail would be lashing, but she’s keeping it under the coat.
She’s not stupid; of course she remembers how Marcille just needed to drag her out here in this stupid sleety weather because Laios’ birthday iss coming up in a week. Apparently, he likes this place.
Looking around, Izutsumi supposes she’s not surprised; the shop is nothing but, apparently, weird curios from all around and everywhere. Exotic items from exotic places. From… art to… whatever all that is supposed to be.
Or, as far as she is concerned, junk that the bearded old man squinting at them is selling at a huge markup because it’s someone else’s junk that smells weird.
Going by her smile, Marcille clearly doesn’t see it that way. She’s looking around all keen and intrested. Just like the man probably hopes.
“Well… I thought it’d be fun to check out, you know? And besides, I think some of this stuff might be from… well, from where you’re from. So, I was thinking that maybe… it’d be nice if you found something that reminded you of home?”
Izutsumi squints, in roughly the same way Marcille once did when she saw the dead crow the beastkin forgot under the bed.
What a horrible idea. She’s got no clue why she’d want to be reminded of any of that. Why she’d want to remember at all.
Home… she never had a home to begin with. Only… owners. If there ever was a home, a real one, once… she has no memory of that, and she’s just fine that way. Doesn’t matter to her.
As far as she’s concerned her life as its worth even remembering started here.
“Egh”, is all she cares to communicate to Marcille, about all that. She’s not about to start explaining any of that.
Marcille sighs and rolls her eyes. But then she just pats Izutsumi on a heavily padded shoulder.
“Well, look around. I’m going to go talk to the man and see if he’s got anything that Laios would like. I… suppose he’d want something…”
“… Something you’ll feel dirty buying him”, Izutsumi scoffs.
Marcille rolls her eyes again, and then just walks off. And Izutsumi casts another glance around. Well, since she’s already here… maybe there’s at least something worthwhile to look at…
-
Izutsumi goes through table after table, and shelf after shelf, of… stuff. Weird weapons, and carved bits of wood and stone and bone and whatever else, to animal bits in jars, to things she has no idea of. To… painted bowls and clothes and whatever.
And junk. So much weird junk. Stuff that just seems like everyday crap that really is special only because it’s from very far away.
She pads past the shelves, little boots tapping against the floor. Plenty of old traces of weird smells her nose manages to just barely latch onto, too. Too numerous and weird to mean anything.
She manages to find the… eastern stuff, too. Some of it’s from Wa. She snorts when she sees that this man is actually selling actual junk here. Junk she recognizes. Chipped sake bottles people usually throw away. A single damn frayed sandal. A horribly ragged old temari.
Well, some of it’s better. She wonders where the swords came from. Maybe the same place the dented samurai helmet. And while she has no idea about calligraphy or pottery, at least some of it seems like it’s not horrible.
She rolls her eyes and tries to forget she ever saw any of that. She is, once again, entirely right, as she is in all things: being reminded of any of this just makes her feel horribly, horribly sour…
Around that stuff is… other stuff from the Eastern archipelago, it seems. She’s not so familiar with this. So many small islands there, all with their own weird people. She has no idea where the various things on the shelves are from, exactly, or whose they once were.
She tries to ignore the small, niggling thought at the back of her head that some of this stuff possibly shares its origins with her. She does not need to know.
The smells here are just as old and faded and weird… but there’s something off about them too. Just the tiniest amount of… weird tingling, when some of them hit her. They come and go too fast to latch onto. Like her nose is trying to remember things it never smelled.
And finally, that weird tingling leads her to stare at an old, ragged doll, on the corner of a table, surrounded by cookware and knives. She wouldn’t give it two glances normally. But… for whatever reason, her eye lingers for a moment.
An ugly, old thing. Straw-stuffed, made of rough cloth. Barely any colour on it. It’s had a rough life… and clearly, before it even came here. Most of the rough animal hair dotting its head has fallen off. Its stitched face barely looks like it anymore. It’s dirty.
It’s… ugly, honestly. But… her eyes just don’t want to leave it. Her nose tries to take in the old, dirty smell. It almost… means something, doesn’t it.
She frowns at the doll. Something about it… is off. No, not off… something about it is right.
She cannot say what. She does not know. Izutsumi knows nothing about dolls. It's just a bundle of hay and cloth and whatever. But something about it…
… is familiar.
She flinches. It… is touching some part of her that makes her terrified. She feels… small. She… feels something she has never felt… yet knows she has felt many times.
In a life before her own. That's the only conclusion she can make.
When… she wasn't her yet. When she was someone she did not know.
She feels dreadful, looking at it. She squints and stares. Looking at the doll… it's like something is tearing open bits of her she didn't know existed.
An instinct, honed by a lifetime of experience and misery, flares out in a warning. This doll is pain. She knows the warning well. There is, somehow, pain in this ugly lump of cloth… and she should leave. She does not need more pains in her life.
She takes a step back… and then forward again. Frowns harder. Her head refuses to reveal why she needs to care about this damn thing.
Come on. It’s just a stupid doll. What's so special about it? It's… just a doll. Just a dirty doll.
A dirty doll clutched in dirty hands. In a smoky, dim house. Near a… fire. And there is…
Izutsumi gasps. Her breath hitches.
… there is a song. She does not remember the song. She does not know it. These ears have never heard it. But she knows it, like a memory before memory. There is a song, and there is… someone singing. So quiet. So gentle.
She blinks. She’s panting. The flash that went through her head, so quickly she’s still not sure what it was, is turning into a terrible crawling in her spine.
She realizes she's still staring at it. The doll. Just sitting there on the table.
Do not touch it, says a part of her. One that she knows she should listen to. It’s never led her wrong when it comes to staying out of trouble.
Only pain there. Be happy you don't know those things. Be happy it is all dead. Get away from it. Let this pass too. Forget all this ever was.
The flash is fading. Izutsumi teeters. Her mind scrabbles to somehow hold onto something that existed before it existed, in any real way. But there is nothing. Like a vanishing dream.
Good. Let it pass. It won’t come back.
Against the warning, against her own intentions, she steps forward. As if something in her knows better what she needs to do now. She pushes out a hand. It hovers over the doll.
Her breathing is still climbing. It feels as if she is grasping a blade lodged into her guts. Desperate to get it out… terrified of what happens then.
Let it go. You're stronger without this. You don't need more pain. This is only pain. You've had enough. Let it go.
She withdraws her hand. Takes a breath.
Maybe. Maybe that's right. Usually is. Pain… is pain. She's got plenty already. She does not need to dig up any more. She… is Izutsumi, and she knows all she needs to be that. She's herself. She's stronger than that, than old memories that mean nothing.
Leave the blade in. Let it seal the scar. Don't tear open something you never felt at all.
She turns around. Does as she always does. She’s already forgetting all this.
Maybe that's right. Maybe pain is useless to dig at. Maybe…
Something in her is not getting the hint.
… Maybe not all pains are the same. Maybe she has never tasted of this one. And maybe… she needs to know if it's there at all. Before it goes.
She turns. Grabs the doll. It's rough. Hard straw scratches her hand. Rough cloth presses against her fingers.
She stares at it. Nothing. This doll is just an ugly little toy, not anything that matters to her. There is no memory here. Not blade to tear out.
She huffs and turns the thing over in her hand. Rolls her eyes. So stupid to get all worked up over that. It's just whatever, isn't it. Just a normal, ugly doll. It…
… It is just like so many dolls so many kids have held in so many places. It's just like the one held in small, skinny hands. So many times. Dragged around like a little friend. Taken on so many adventures around…
Izutsumi has to cough. Something's trying to choke her.
… around a home. And played with so many times next to a warm hearth while a dinner's cooking, and then…
A sharp, painful gasp escapes. Forces through a throat that feels like it's clamped shut.
… and then, two hands that feel so big and so strong go under the arms and lift up and tell to put the doll away, because it's time to eat. And… there are… warm lips that press against a head just like they have many, many times. Promising…
How can one doll drop a grown woman on her ass? How can one doll make an assassin trained in pain and discipline and toughness whimper? How can a stupid little thing of sackcloth feel like it's tearing her heart out?
Izutsumi does not know. She only knows… she's sitting down and staring at a doll that she's just thrown from her hands like a hot coal. And yet it still burns her, even as she recoils bunches up.
… Promising to care and protect always. Promising nothing bad will happen. Promising to raise a strong, good, smart girl who'll make her… make her mother very proud and… and…
Her face is burning. So much. Her chest is splitting. Pains she never knew existed in her flare up. Things she never had hurt like lopped-off limbs.
… promising to love always.
-
"Izutsumi? Are… you okay?"
She's still on the floor. How long has she been sitting on the floor? How long… has she been staring at that doll?
Can't be long. Yet… it might have been an eternity, for how many things are roiling inside. For how much has gone through her.
A memory too old and fragmented and frayed to even be called a memory. A recognition of something that's not there at all. A pain for something that never was.
A flash fading like a dream, smoke through fingers desperately trying to hold on.
"What's wrong?"
Izutsumi looks up, with swollen eyes. She opens her mouth and closes it again. What is wrong? She cannot say. What could she say? Even if she wanted to say anything at all?
How could she explain? That she's hurting for something she does not remember, and terrified of things she could not name? That the only thing she weeps for now is not ever having known a thing at all?
That… that someone whose name, or face, or voice she does not remember or know promised her something she could not even say out loud for how it tears at her.
She cannot say anything at all. She can only stare up at Marcille with pain that does not know words.
"Do you… want the doll?"
A squeak escapes from Izutsumi's lips. She scrabbles up. No whip has ever bitten so badly into her as those words. No whip has ever cut like this at all.
And yet… it paralyzes her and leaves her gasping and hurting all the same.
Yes, she wants it. She needs it. She desperately, truly needs it. Like she has needed always. She needs all the things that were lost before she ever got to have them.
But…
No, she never, ever wants to see it again. She does not want something that would only hurt her, for even now she knows she will never truly have any of those things. That they will never return to her. They are only a loss. Someone else's loss.
Marcille picks it up, and looks at her, still waiting for an answer.
And Izutsumi does the only thing she can. The only thing that has ever given her respite from pains too numerous and too deep to say.
She buries the blade back in. She lets it fester. As something that was never hers slips back down into the murk.
"Who'd want some stupid ugly thing like that? They should just throw it away."
She turns her back to it. It is for someone else. It is for a child, with a family, and a mother, and love. It is for someone who will grow into an adult, having known those things, and who can say what they mean at all.
There is no such child here, and she never had any of those. The one who did died before she was born at all.
… And she was never a child at all. She was merely a thing.
She walks away, leaving Marcille to stare after her, still clutching the doll.
Pain… truly is only pain. Nothing to be gained from it.
-
Come evening, Izutsumi sits to the side in Marcille’s chambers, stealing glances at her as she studies some book at the table. Mouth tensing and forming words her throat does not dare let out. Mind full of urgent protests.
Do not touch this. You put it away already. You felt it. It was pain, and nothing else. Do not touch this anymore. Let it go. Go to sleep and forget it all. You already know none of this is for you.
It would be easier. So much easier. To let it all pass, and trust that she’ll know to turn her back, should the pain ever come again. As she has done, all her life. Pain is a cruelty she needs no more of.
And yet…
“Marcille.”
The word tumbles out, almost on accident. Yet, after it comes, and Marcille turns to look, she can no longer hold it back.
“Hmh?”
“You… had folks. Parents. Right?”
She stares, frowning for just a moment at the question. But then, her face softens, as if comprehending why anyone would ever ask that question.
A part of Izutsumi blanches at that. This is already far too much, she’s too exposed. And yet, she forces herself steady, as Marcille finally opens her mouth.
“Well… yes. I guess everyone has had parents, even if they… aren’t in their life anymore.”
Izutsumi can hear the way she hesitates and looks for a way to put it. For her, clearly.
She looks down for a moment, at hands barely even human. Has she? Did she ever have parents? Nothing in her body is that which they gave her. Her flesh is an accursed thing. Her body was not made with love. It was made with dark magic.
Her mind, too. No memory of anything from before this body. This… unnatural mongrel thing. So… what of her really is from a parent? What… in her was ever anyone’s child? Her soul? She does not even know what that means.
She knows that what those… succubus things showed her back then, in the dungeon, was not really even an image of her mom. She did ask Marcille, later. They can only conjure up what you already know. And… she and doesn’t, know. No memory of… anything.
Except now, maybe. No face, or voice, or anything, but… still a memory.
But… were those earlier flashes of memories… anything but some scraps remaining from someone cut apart to make something more grotesque? Something… that was never loved, never raised? Only made and discarded?
She pushes that aside. That’s not the point now. The point… is with Marcille, still staring at her.
No, that is the point. The point is, it’s not for you. The point is, parents are not something you need to worry about. For you, there’s only fakes that mean so little you can tear them apart and feel nothing. Because you’re just a…
She forces that aside. Not… the point.
“Why… do people make such a big deal out of all that?”
Marcille stares at her again. The frown creeps back in. Though now, it looks slightly more pensive. She ponders a question no amount of book smarts makes easier to answer.
“Well… Parents are… what a child is supposed to have, you know? They… raise you, and they love you and… protect you. They’re the ones that are supposed to teach you things, and make sure you have all you need to grow up right.”
She sounds so difficult, laying it out. Maybe because it’s a difficult question. Or maybe because she’s still glancing at Izutsumi awkwardly, as if afraid she’ll say something cruel.
Izutsumi looks off again. She turns it over and over in her head, tries to think on it. To feel it. To find some recognition in herself. But… there is none.
The only childhood she knew was pain. No raising, no loving, no protection. In fact, only all the opposites of that.
And all the other children around her, later on… well. She does not really know how the Nakamoto children were raised. But the ninja trainees… most of them orphans. All of them given a hard and merciless upbringing designed to kill all weakness.
So… no. She cannot really say that any of that means anything to her. And that makes sense, she supposes. Even if she had parents in some… technical sense, they did not mean anything. And… why would they, anyway?
Why would she feel pain for any of that? Seems stupid anyway. She’s stronger without.
See. You’re lucky, that way. No way to feel pain for something you don’t have. Now forget it.
“Do you… want to talk about something?”
Izutsumi glances up. Marcille’s still staring. The way she’s looking… she’s worried, isn’t she. And… sad.
Say no. Go to bed. You’ve messed with this too much already. It doesn’t mean anything to you, and it doesn’t need to, either. You never had anything, and whining about it won’t be any better.
“… Tell me about… your parents? What they… did?”
Izutsumi grimaces, inwards, when the words escape her. Why does she keep poking at this. Why does she need to understand what it means to have something she never did?
She already knows enough anyway. She saw the ugly octopus thing and heard it talking about Marcille’s dad. She knows this story ends badly, too. Honestly, parents just sound like a good way to get hurt…
“Oh. Um… if you want me to?” Marcille says, after a bit. She puts her book away.
Carefully, reluctantly, Izutsumi sits down at the table, and listens, as Marcille reminisces about a childhood that is older than her whole existence, in any form at all.
She listens, quietly, tentatively, to recollections of a young life very different from anything she recognizes. To… days that don’t sound like anything, and evenings and nights that sound even less.
To how there was a mother, and a father, and how they took care of a little Marcille. How they would show her things, and teach her things, and clothe her and feed her and all that. How they would sit at a table and eat meals together
How, during the evenings, there was a father who would play with her, and read her stories from an old book, and later help her read them too. How, during the nights, there was a mother who would hum her a little song, and hold her, and make sure she was safe.
And so many other things. Izutsumi listens to them all… and feels very little. Just things that happened to someone else. Things she cannot miss, for she never knew what they meant in the first place.
It doesn’t feel like she knows anything more about why she’d ever even have needed a parent, or any of the pain of knowing she might have had them and might have lost them too.
She’s not sure why Marcille keeps smiling little smiles, sometimes happy and sometimes sad, as she talks about all that. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling at all.
And that’s good. You don’t need it. Keep away from it. Nothing to be gained.
And by the time Marcille’s finally yawning and calling it quits, Izutsumi’s pretty convinced that that annoying, persistent noise in her head really is right. This is stupid, isn’t it? Not for her. At best, asking for trouble.
-
Come nightfall, Izutsumi lies in bed, watching as Marcille settles down for the night as well. She knows now how stupid it all is anyway. How all that parent stuff just doesn’t mean anything. She knows she ought to just sleep now and forget.
And yet… and yet her mouth wants something. Wants to ask for… something.
Don’t. Why are you thinking about that crap? Why would you need any more of this? You’re not a child, and never were. It’ll just be weird, and she’ll think so too. Lay it off and be happy you’re still just as clueless.
“Hey… Marcille?”
“Hmh?”
“Can you… show me how… how your mom did that thing? When… she put you to bed?”
There’s a moment of quiet, before Marcille turns around. There’s some surprise on her face. maybe even a bit of confusion. It’s a weird thing to ask for, isn’t it.
It is. It really is. Especially for one who never had any of this in the first place…
But then… her face softens. Even more than earlier. There’s… a sad look. One that almost makes Izutsumi tell her she shouldn’t be sad, because it doesn’t mean anything anyway.
“Okay. Sure. I’ll… show you.”
Izutsumi lies down and tries to look like she doesn’t really care one way or the other, as Marcille wraps her arms around her, gently, and cradles her, and pulls her closer. It doesn’t really feel different from any other time it’s happened. They’ve hugged plenty.
The tune that Marcille hums doesn’t really sound like anything either. Doesn’t mean anything. Even if it’s a nice calm tune.
This is doing less than the doll did. And that was just some fluke, too.
See. You’re just making a fool of yourself, here. Just tell her to quit and say you were just fooling around.
But… she doesn’t. She lingers there, in those arms, and listens to the tune. And while it doesn’t mean anything to her or make her remember anything… there is a tiny little thought that manages to worm in, despite all her attempts to push it off.
Shut up. Right now. Don’t go there.
Maybe… it would have meant something when she was tiny, and filthy, and hurting, in a cage. If even once, just once, there had been arms around her, and a gentle humming in her ears. And a feeling like she was… safe from the pain. Safe from the people.
Stop.
Maybe… it would not have hurt so much when she was just a bit bigger, and bruised and scraped all over from training and punishment, if there were arms to hold her. And a humming in her ears, rather than voices telling her how ugly and wrong she was, to live at all.
This isn’t you. Stop. Stop trying to make this hurt.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay if it hurts. It’s all okay. I’m here”, Marcille hums.
Izutsumi would like to ask what she even means. Of course it’s okay. Not like anything’s wrong in the first place. None of this means anything. It doesn’t hurt anyway. This means nothing at all, for all the nothing at all she’s had all her life, instead of this.
She’d like to ask her, and tell her all that… but she can’t, for how thick her throat feels. And because she’d make ugly and stupid noises that also mean nothing if she did. Because… this is all just… nothing, isn’t it?
… It has always been nothing. For her, there is only… nothing.
See. Just had to dig and dig until you managed to find the pain again…
-
Come night, Izutsumi lingers between waking and dreams, in that state where lies of the mind and the mouth mean nothing to the yearnings and truths of the soul, cradled in arms of a lover humming a gentle little tune.
And as she teeters half-awake, her mind finally allows her to admit that which a lifetime of pains has made too cruel for her to put to words, even for herself.
For a moment she hopes, desperately, that those arms around her were the ones she never knew. That just once, only this once, she could remember the safety they promised.
And that that tune lingering in her ears was the one her mind doesn't know; that it stirred in her something she lost before she had anything at all.
And that the one holding her, and giving her her love, and cherishing her were, for just one moment lost in dreams, the first one who ever did so, and that she could remember her face, and scent, and name… and what it felt like to be safe and know nothing of pain.
That for just a little while, she remembered those things her mind has no true memories of. That she knew what having them meant at all.
So that she could say, just once, that she ever had them.
But those things are long gone, and there is no recollection of them in a mind that only truly came to be after they were already lost. No arms of a mother have held this body. No love… has graced any part of her.
And so, she languishes and lingers, without knowing.
-
And yet… just as sleep makes to claim Izutsumi, something stirs. Like an echo of an echo. Like a faded half-memory etched deeper than the mind, or the body, or anything else one might feel. Jolted just a tiny little bit.
As if her very soul, unbuckled by the mind now drifting off, recalled something too deeply felt to ever be truly gone.
Sleep now, my sweet. You are safe. Nothing bad will happen. Mother loves you. Mother is proud of you and will always love you, no matter what. Sleep now, and tomorrow will be a new day. Good night.
And so she does.
-
Come morning, Izutsumi wakes up to find her face drenched with tears, and a horrible pain tearing at her. Wracked by sobs the likes of which she has never felt.
"Hey. Hey, are you okay? What's wrong?" comes the gentle voice, and the hand on her shoulder, as Marcille turns to her.
Izutsumi… does not know. She has never felt such a pain. She hurts for something she does not fully understand, and in a way she doesn't know. Even yesterday was only something vague. This… is stark and clear.
It's nothing. You don't even know. You're hurting for nothing at all. Let it go.
"I don't…" she starts… and closes her mouth again.
She does not know… but the pain does. The pain itself.
This pain… is too true to be anything but her very own, etched so deep it holds true, even as her mind falters to recognize it. It tears at something deeper… something that was there to feel it, even when no other part of her was.
And so, even as it cuts, she lets it tell her all she needs to know, with certainty that silences any pitiful voice of self-deception and doubt. She takes in the pain and knows it is truly her very own.
She does not remember. Not in her mind, or her body. They are both wrong, both different from the ones given to her at the first… but this pain is all hers, and all true. It has been there for so long. And now she knows it. She hurts.
The pain of a loss. A grievous pain, for a grievous loss. The pain… of a soul that has loved, and lost, and yearns for it again.
She hurts as one who was brought to this world with love, and cherished, so truly that even if she was twisted and changed and cursed, the pain is no lesser for it. She hurts…
… as only one who misses and needs her mother can.
And so Izutsumi knows.
“I… I had a mom.”
Marcille blinks.
“You… had a mother?”
Izutsumi nods. It seems like such an obvious thing. Of course there was someone. Yet, at the same time… she has never truly known the meaning of it before. She has never felt the seemingly obvious truth before. But now, in the pain of the absence, she understands.
"I… loved my mom. And my mom loved me too. And she took care of me. And I… was happy."
The words come out as a pitiful, sobbing whimper, wracking her all the more and laying her low.
"Oh… sweetie", Marcille breathes out, and wraps the girl tightly in her arms, as she shakes and trembles.
"I'm sure she did. She really did."
And finally, Izutsumi lets go. She lets the pain truly come. Even as it tears her open and chokes her, she takes it in, desperately. For now, she knows why she so needed this pain. A pain that does not torture but cherishes.
She clings to the tears, as much as she clings to the arms holding her. She etches them from soul to memory, so that she will never forget the way they tore at her. So that she will always know.
That she, too, had and deserved that love. That not even all this cruel world could take that from her.
-
And come evening, some days later, Izutsumi lingers in bed, in the arms of a loving partner again. Staring out at a shelf, where an ugly old doll sits, staring back at her.
She’s not stupid. She knows it’s not her doll. Just close enough to matter. And even if it was, it will never change anything or bring anything back. And it still stings her, to look at it, even though it hasn’t even brought up any more vague flashes of memories of memories.
But… maybe that does not need to matter so much. Maybe, like this, just between waking and dreams, she can, for a little while, forget what is or is not, or what should be, and only care for… what once was. What she knows was.
A little girl, and a mother.
“… Good night. I love you too.”