Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There had been so many versions of the woman who called herself Ciboulette, and even more roles that those versions had played at one time or another.

She had even once been a good Catholic girl: the perfect, loving daughter, right up until she wasn’t.

She was also sneaking out at night with her then-girlfriend, playing the corruptible daredevil, at the same time she kept up her original role for her parents and teachers.

In the end the two roles conflicted. Scheduling, costuming, makeup, lines to memorize. Cib just couldn’t keep up the charade.

It was a good final show, though: tears on all sides, and hers were genuine. A mark of a brilliant actress, a prodigal talent.

She even saw her parents again for a few repeat performances, while they tried to coax and persuade her back into the role they’d chosen, until finally the encores trailed off and ceased entirely. 

She got a letter in the mail a year or so after the last one: her mother had died and then her father, causes unspecified, and although she was an estranged daughter, she was still, apparently, in the will.

A modest sum was signed over in a boringly formal ceremony at the bank, devoid of the grief she knew she should feel, and then she could devote all her time to performing, to honing her craft. For pay or at least recognition, that is: again, she had been acting all her life.

The first time she could remember feeling like she wasn't playing some sort of character was with her.

Ragan made Ciboulette so angry, at first – she was stubborn, she was stone where Cib was water, and none of that ever did change. But the rock gave the water a path to take and enriched it with minerals, while the water slowly carved the rock, consenting, into the most beautiful shapes.

The ebb and flow of it, the naturalness of it – of this thing that grew between them, so much more simply and effortlessly than it had with other girls back in France. This thing that Cib’s parents had insisted was un natural. She wished she could take Ray back to meet them, to try to prove them wrong, to show her to them so they could see their real daughter after all, after all this time.

If Ciboulette had a wish – if she had made a deal with the devil to enter this hell called the Room of Swords – it would be to be known. And to finally know herself.

Chapter Text

After

Don’s pained and panicked voice sounded like it was coming from very far away, and almost echoed in the too-empty room. “We have to get out of here! At his level he could cause a huge explosion!”

Cib watched them leave, unmoving herself, invisible and forgotten. Was there something she was supposed to do…?

Everyone else – everyone else was gone, weren’t they? Back into the portal…

Gyrus was panting, doubled over, clutching his neck. No shadows spilling out of him now. She watched, didn’t move – was she going to watch him die? Would it take her out, too?

She barely recognized him anymore. And his eyes – if they could have seen her – she doubted he would recognize her, either. He hadn’t seemed to know or care for Don. He’d barely recognized Kodya. 

He was a better actor than she was, she realized. To have appeared to truly love Kodya all this time… She should be jealous.

She couldn’t feel a damn thing.

She watched Gyrus stagger, pull himself together just enough to open a new portal. A power she’d never known about in all their years fighting side by side. She watched him manage to stumble through.

And then he was gone. There was blood and scorch marks on the floor and nothing else, nothing to show that twelve – thirteen? There was no way Gyrus survived those wounds – people had died here.

Nothing to show that Cib was here.

She stayed.

She didn’t see a reason not to.

It was a long, long time before she noticed anything at all again. Somebody was calling her name.

“Cib! Cibby!”

It was Feather. They looked and sounded – panicked. She was briefly startled out of her stupor. She’d never seen Feather so ruffled before.

“I’m right here,” she said, voice cracking, and Feather looked around wildly for a moment before Cib remembered to make herself visible again. It took some effort. She wasn’t sure why. Ever since she’d first held a boss sword, flicking herself on and off like that had always been second nature.

“Oh, thank God,” Feather said, another thing Cib had never heard from them before, on this day of so many firsts, and pulled her into a hug. She thought she felt tears soaking her shirt. “Kodya said – he said he wasn’t sure, where you – if you were –”

They shook their head. Yes, they were definitely dampening Cib’s clothing. That meant they were crying. That was… unusual. Unexpected.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Feather said, squeezing her tightly enough to lift her a little off her feet. That seemed – wrong. Incorrect.

She wasn’t okay.

She couldn’t even figure out how to pretend to be.

She walked like she was in a haze, and she wasn’t sure how she got to the infirmary, or when, or why. Maybe Feather had brought her, but they weren’t here now. She wasn’t injured. Was she?

“There’s nothing left for you to do here, Cib,” Nephthys said, firmly but kindly despite the edge to her voice. Cib couldn’t make out her facial expression through blurry eyes. “Go and rest.” Exhaustion, that was it. What she was feeling. Or not feeling.

Numb and mute, Cib made her way to her quarters. She’d done the decorating herself, and she suddenly hated all of it, wanted to tear it all down. Ray hadn’t seen the point, she’d insisted. But she’d smiled as Cib beautified their space, their home –

There was a blue rose sitting in a cup on the desk. Ray had brought it back for her from a supply realm just – just yesterday, and –

She threw the cup across the room. It shattered, and a few petals fluttered down separately as the flower came to rest among the debris. Suddenly, awfully remorseful, Cib ran to it, sat down amongst the shards, picked the rose up and cradled it to her chest. She didn’t even feel the thorns they hadn’t gotten around to clipping off as they pierced her hands.

“What am I –” Her voice cracked, broke. She couldn’t get the words out. What am I supposed to do without you?

Who am I supposed to be?

The answer became clear during Don’s convalescence. A leader, that was who Cib needed to be. She and Ragan had led most of the expeditions to realms after Gyrus had – after that day in the rock monster realm, that first prelude to the incident. She was the most experienced voyager left, at least the most experienced able voyager. Physically, anyway.

And she was the one others had always looked to for morale, for entertainment. She couldn’t let them down. They needed it more than she did. Because Cib already knew how to keep going, no matter what. (The show must go on, who cares if your feet are bleeding!?) Even when she couldn’t remember why it could possibly matter.

Before

“It’s funny,” Gyrus said, grunting as he screwed the pipe into place at an awkward angle. Cib took his tools from him when he was done. “Thanks,” he said, wiping sweat off his forehead and unbending himself.

“I’ll take the next one,” she offered.

He shook his head. “You’re too short. Appreciate it, though.”

“You could lift me with your powers?” she suggested, and he blinked and then widened his eyes. 

“Are you sure?” he asked, and she nodded.

He took the wrench back from her and passed her the next length of pipe, then lifted her into the air.

“What were you saying before, though?” she asked, as she contorted herself into the small space and gestured for the wrench.

“Oh.” She couldn’t look back at him, but he sounded embarrassed. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on! I’m doing you a favor, tell me what’s up,” she cajoled him.

“Just… I didn’t have a lot of friends. Or… um. Any friends. Back home. And now I have you, and Don, and most of the people we’re finding seem to like me… it’s just really nice.”

She paused for a second. “You’re waiting for it to all come crashing down, aren’t you?”

She wasn’t sure what made her ask him that. Perhaps it was just that neither of them had to look at each other’s faces, right now. Didn’t have to risk being seen, or figure out what expression to perform.

Just words. Maybe he could handle that amount of honesty.

Maybe she could.

Because it always came crashing down -- the personas she built always eventually failed, collapsed, and all that was left was the dust and ash of friendships, relationships, families. 

“I guess a little bit.”

“Me too,” she said, and triumphantly turned back from the pipe, pretending she’d only just secured it now instead of earlier in the conversation, when it was too vulnerable to look back. She grinned at him. It was partly real. “At least we can tell them we’ve built the place, eh? So, thanks for letting me help you.”

He looked startled, then unsure, then laughed -- which was what she’d been gunning for. “Ulterior motives, Cib?”

“Always,” she said flippantly. But truthfully.

After

“You can go first, but I’m coming with you on the next one,” she promised.

Kodya looked her up and down, his eyes unreadable. They had always been so expressive. So had hers, she supposed. But hers had been a performance she could no longer bring herself to bother with. Kodya wore his heart on his sleeve, and now it was broken.

“Fine.” 

She held out her hand for him to shake, and tried not to reflect on honor.

That was the first night she asked Feather for help instead. She hadn’t thought she would miss him -- seeing him, and remembering what they’d both seen and shared, was salt on a wound. But he understood. And he didn’t try to fix her, didn’t tell her that they’d all get through it together -- the sort of nonsense she tried to force herself to spout at everybody else.

Maybe that was it: she didn’t have to pretend, around him.

Just like it had felt like she hadn’t with Ray.

But she was a completely different person now. Or maybe it meant who she was with Ray had been another character she was playing after all. She was too tired to figure it out. She didn’t see the point.

She borrowed an experimental substance Feather had been brewing from some plants in a supply realm, and pressed the wilting blue rose before it fully died. Then set it as a bookmark into a journal that Mimi had made for her by hand, that she’d never used.

She lost track of time during the weeks it took for Kodya to return, and tried her best to sober up as he healed afterwards.

The next, joint mission went disastrously. Months of arguments were finally solved when they went their separate ways and attempted the realm independently, and Kodya completed it within two voyages of that date.

Cib walked slowly to the gate once it appeared, not sure if what she was feeling was shame, exhaustion, or relief.

She didn’t join him in the next realm. He didn’t ask, but rather left in the middle of the night, leaving behind a share stone full of his soothing and dampening powers at her door. She wondered what he’d originally been training it for, but that didn’t stop her from using it.

Chapter Text

Ciboulette had spent the past two years assiduously NOT thinking about what she would do when she saw Gyrus again.

She certainly hadn’t thought about what she would do if she saw him with boss sword scars on his stomach, against all agreements they had made. It tore at what was left of her heart: that after she had vouched for him, had prevented Xinju’s group from forcibly resetting him, Kodya had betrayed her.

And he wasn’t even here to rail at, not really. Not that she wouldn’t spend some time, later, cursing at his lifeless husk.

But when she first saw Gyrus her mind went blank. And she did the only thing she knew how to do on instinct.

She created the role she played for him and the others then on the fly. Woven from the strands of the experienced leader who had supported Kodya’s ventures into the realms, tattered from years of share stone soothe spells and Feather’s concoctions. The gracious widow, speaking calm and reason and justice, when inside — the blank space in her head was, on further inspection, composed of rioting technicolor pixels, a maelstrom of feelings of betrayal and instincts for revenge that even she recoiled from when she got too close.

So: play a part. Any part. Several parts. Whatever the folks around you need, whatever the shattered, chaotic pieces of your soul insist on, whatever seems right in the moment.

Improvise.

“Well, I cannot say this is what we planned for,” she said, holding her hand out in the face of Xinju’s sword, his righteous anger that she did not, could not share right now. Lest she drop the facade, lose the role, break character, give in to that roiling chaos in her mind. She’d spent two years barely staying afloat. “But let’s not be hasty. The man is half dead. I think we can keep him under control.”

“It’s Gyrus,” Xinju ground out through his teeth. As if that was the only argument he needed to make. It ought to be. For part of Cib, it was.

“He saved us all!” the red headed rookie with her own sword insisted, edging closer to the ally she’d found in Ciboulette, perhaps unconsciously. “Ye wouldst have to go through me!”

“No one will be going through anybody until we figure out what’s happening, amigos,” Don said, rolling up. He threw Cib a grateful glance like a bouquet. Validation. Confirmation she was doing the right thing, that she’d said the right lines.

“Are ye in charge of this place?” the knight asked, looking down at him with a bit of a dubious glance, and Cib bristled at the implied criticism. She had no idea what he’d been through. What they all had. She had no right….

Easy, now. Pick one color, one wave from the sea. Play a single dimension of a character you can understand. Keep it believable.

“I am,” Don said mildly. “And I am in charge of enforcing our agreement that Gyrus was to return as a blank slate, or not at all.” He cast a glance at Kodya’s unresponsive form cradled in the pink-haired rookie’s arms.

“Kody’s soul... I think it’s inside Gyrus,” Neph pleaded to him, herself supporting an unconscious, gravely injured Gyrus. “I can feel it. Please —“

“They’re both traitors!” Xinju shouted.

“Perhaps,” Don said, nodding. “But we can’t interrogate either of them in the state they’re in. Nor are they much of a threat.”

That set of disagreeing murmurs around the tense room. “It’s Gyrus, it could be a ruse.”

“So, Neph, only heal Gyrus as much as you need to to keep him from dying before we have our answers,” Cib suggested, shocked at how easily his name came off her tongue. As if they’d never been friends, comrades in arms, or enemies. As if it wasn’t the name of the man who’d killed the only person who’d ever loved her fully, without a mask.

But she wore one now, and it was solidifying as she spoke. Easily discarded, but easily replaceable, also.

“Is that acceptable to you, Xinju?” she asked over Nepthys’ shocked and sputtered protestations.

Don gave her a nod along with a raised eyebrow. “Will you keep an eye on him, amiga?”

She inclined her head.

Nephthys scowled at her as Cib followed her to the infirmary, unable to bring herself to help support Gyrus’ limp weight, to touch his battered skin. The redhead stepped up instead, while the pink haired girl carried Kodya in her arms like he weighed little more than a baby, and scowled off any attempts at help, even from Cib.

Cib came along anyway, because she’d promised. It didn’t matter what the rookies thought. It didn’t really matter what anyone thought, but morale was important. Wasn’t it? If not, what had she been wasting her time on these past, dark years?

Nephthys started to get to work, and Cib turned away to avoid seeing her minister to Gyrus as if he were somebody who deserved tenderness. She sat down on an empty bed, feeling drained already.

“I do not understand,” the redhead said, arms crossed over her chest. Some crosstalk with Nepththys had revealed that her name was Tori, and the other rookie was Sylvia. Cib looked up at her slowly, and met with piercing, accusatory green eyes. “Are ye a friend or an enemy?”

Ciboulette blinked several times, trying to figure out how to parse that question. She looked around for clues, but Neph was preoccupied, and Sylvia  was staring her down as well, although less aggressively. 

“To him?” Cib guessed, jerking her head briefly towards Gyrus and then back. “Both, I suppose. To you? That’s your choice.”

“And what are my choices, here? What is their meaning?”

Cib smiled despite herself. Tori seemed just as confused as she was. “We are attempting to collect the swords and escape. Your help would be welcome.”

“And Gyrus?”

“I would hope you might listen to the full story before you judge us.”

Tori sat down at last, shucking off some of her armor. “Only since ye have offered the same right to him.”

Syl folded her muscular arms and nodded in agreement, sitting on the ground cross legged next to the bed Tori had chosen.

Cib took a deep breath, and forced herself to sit up straight, and meet the rookies’ gazes.

She had never had to tell this story before. Even to the post-incident recruits — few and far between, until now. The others had always explained, filled in the gaps as much and as little as necessary.

And Gyrus himself had never been there. Had only been a whispered name, a horrifying bargain they had made but might not actually have to fulfill.

Now they did. Even if they reset him again, there would still be a Gyrus to contend with. A real presence, a living man.

At least for now he was unconscious.

At least for now she didn’t have to look at him.

She took a deep breath, and when she spoke, it was flat. Affectless. She didn’t mean to, didn’t want to. She needed to convince these rookies, get them on her side! But she just — couldn’t find even a speck of feeling in her that she could pull out into her voice other than this bleak gray. And she couldn’t borrow the feeling from some other life experience as if for a role she was playing. Not for this. There was nothing like enough to this but the thing itself, and the emotions for this were… inaccessible, at the moment.

Too complex, for a believable character’s introduction to the show.

“You might already know that he used to be one of us. But three years ago, he turned on us. He tried to kill Don; he did kill Xinju’s chakra clone.” She noticed Tori interject, both rookies looking puzzled, but she couldn’t let herself stop speaking. She’d never be able to start again. “It does not matter. He killed someone. A friend. And then he disappeared. We thought….” 

She swallowed; her throat tightened. If a croak counted as a vocal inflection, well then good; now she didn’t sound quite so passionless. She trained her gaze on a spot on the wall behind Tori and to the left, and clenched her fists in her loose pants. “We thought he might have just gone insane. The pressures of this place. The pressures we put on him.” 

She’d felt bad, guilty even, to have done that, to have let that happen to her oldest friend. And then… “He came back after a year. Just… appeared out of nowhere. He and Don were fighting, Don sounded the alarm. We had been expecting it. I thought… I thought he could be reasoned with. I was his oldest friend besides Don, and Kodya was… well. If Kodya couldn’t get through to him, nobody could. But Kodya was not there yet. My power set includes invisibility, so I snuck away from the battle. I kissed Ray goodbye… I told her, ne t'inquiete…. not to worry…”

She heard Tori take a breath at the word “her”, and filed it away as useless information.

Because, “When Kodya and I got back — it could not have been more than a few minutes — everyone was gone but Don. Not just dead, but shadowed. That is… it is the kind of death you cannot come back from, even here. Kodya killed Gyrus. I do not recall when Don lost his legs, before or after that. I think…” She shook her head. It didn’t matter: how much time she’d lost, how scattered and tangled the events were in her mind, after Ragan was gone. Nothing had mattered then, for a very long time.

She was honestly not sure if anything mattered now.

But on the off chance it did, at least to the others, she’d play her part.

Slowly she came back to the role she was playing, the one she had improvised for herself in front of the crowd. Better to stick to it for now, until she came up with something better to keep herself going. “I know he died and was reset. I saw him dying, bleeding out, and I can tell that the man you brought with you is younger.” Like the one she’d first met, a decade ago now. Young and scared and already starting to harden around the eyes, but he’d put a sword in her hand and led her out of hell into a place where she could fight the monsters and nightmares she’d been somehow surrounded with.

She hadn’t realized then, that he was one of them himself, all along.

“But he is not to be underestimated. So. I am willing to give him a chance to explain himself, to prove himself. Is that not fair?” She raised her hands, palms up, and finally lifted her face to her audience.

The wobble she put into her lip might have been intentional or it might have been an involuntary spasm: she wasn’t quite sure. It helped sell it, she thought: the idea that she didn’t want to walk over there, wake her old, dear friend and enemy up, and rip off what remained of his limbs.

It must have been somewhat convincing. Tori relaxed her shoulders, and after a second, Sylvia uncrossed her arms.

But then Tori opened her mouth, and Cib felt a wave of exhaustion at the aggression in her voice. “That does not make sense. Gyrus has proven himself a stalwart companion in battle – I cannot imagine – there must be a reason –”

The exhaustion was replaced by red, blind rage that covered the scene. Cib hadn’t even noticed she’d stood up, or balled her fists, until she heard Nephthys’ voice cutting in. 

Neph’s voice was almost as flat as Cib’s had sounded, and infinitely more tired. “No. It happened. I was there, too.”

Tori rounded on her. “And how can we trust ye know the whole story, thyself?”

Nephthys gritted her teeth. “If you want to stay in my infirmary, you will stop trying to pick fights with the people that need to be here. That includes my patients, myself, and right now, Cibby. Who, by the way, is being a lot calmer and kinder than she ought to be given what she’s gone through and what she’s just told you. A complete stranger.”

Somewhat distantly, Cib was glad Nephthys was recognizing her character’s efforts.

She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved not to have to fight the redhead. She almost wanted something to take out her anger on, to briefly placate the waves that inconvenient emotion was causing in her mind.

She deliberately didn’t look over at Gyrus’ prone form.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit back down, and spread her hands out welcomingly. Back straight, head up, eyes open – God, she hoped they weren’t too empty. “I understand why you’re having trouble trusting us. From your perspective, we just all-but attacked your ally. Someone who guided you through the realms. I know what that means, to a rookie.” She swallowed. For her, that had been – She shook her head as if to clear the memory. That self-assured smile that had hidden something darker than she’d ever imagined. And imagination had never been something she’d lacked, until the incident. “But we would not – if he were not dangerous, more dangerous than you can possibly believe yet, we would not be doing this. I swear.” The force of that danger made her voice shake. “I – what can I do, to prove it to you?”

After all, what was left of her? Why shouldn’t she offer up the rawest parts of herself to a stranger or two, to protect the people she’d promised to protect? At least it was for a cause. And it was for these rookies’ own good, too, even if she couldn’t make herself care about them yet. (Couldn’t risk it. As if it were a calculation, and not because the well of being able to give a damn had long been dry.)

“What did he do?” Tori asked, after briefly conferring with Sylvia. “Tell me exactly.”

“I –” Ciboulette felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff. “Tomorrow. Can I – can I tell you tomorrow instead? Please?”

Nephthys looked between the three of them, saw Tori open her mouth and interceded once again. “Tori. That’s not an easy request you’ve just made. And I promise…” She gulped audibly. “Any gaps in Cibby’s story, or any doubts you have, I’ll try to fill in myself, as long as Gyrus isn’t awake to hear.”

Tori’s lip curled. If she had been Ragan, Ciboulette knew that expression would be at their combined cowardice. She would have done quite a lot to avoid having Ragan think ill of her, but – Tori wasn’t Ragan. Ragan was gone.

She hoped, desperately and not for the first time, that Ray hadn’t thought her a coward for running to get Kodya. For leaving her behind.

She didn’t fucking care what Tori thought.