Work Text:
*This story is told from Quinn’s point of view
“I just… I keep having these nightmares.”
A short-haired woman in a casual suit nodded at me, writing a few notes in notebook that sat on her lap. She pushed up her glasses to get a better look at me, her clinical expression doing little to make me feel any better.
“Say more,” the woman replied. Her voice was really starting to get under my skin. It was so… even. It grated on me more and more with every syllable, like proverbial nails on a proverbial chalkboard.
“I just… never mind. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“You’re here because your anger is hurting the people you love, dear.” She said it so matter of factly that it made me want to punch something and fade into nothingness simultaneously. I growled and rolled my eyes, turning my body to face away from her.
“Therapy won’t help you if you won’t let it,” she said, trying her best to sound reassuring. It didn’t help.
“I don’t even want to be here!” I turned back to face her, raising my voice a bit more than I probably should have. “My sister forced me to come.”
“Quinn, you shouted at your partner.”
Pangs of regret hit my stomach like throwing knives sinking into their target. “Shut up!” I said, grabbing a pillow from the couch and hurtling it toward her. The anger was met equally with sorrow, and tears began to stream down my eyes. The woman just stared back at me, boring straight into my soul. I finally sat back down, curling in on myself.
“Fine,” I said, wiping away the wetness from my cheeks. “Guess I have nothing else to lose…”
---
I close my eyes, and I see a dark, lifeless palace. The gray stone that makes up the walls squeezes me, sucking out whatever life I may have had. I sit on a throne on the far side of the room, candles poking through the blackness. A large, horned figure kneels before me, and I bark my orders. He stands, bows, and returns some time later, covered in blood. Two more emerge, looking exactly the same. They follow my commands like loyal servants, never once thinking on their own. In my heart I feel nothing but pain. It consumes me until there is nothing left, and before me lay the lifeless bodies of everyone I hold dear.
A beautiful woman with silver hair pokes her head through the door, but I know in my heart she’s not real. An amalgamation of algorithms, an AI with no true purpose. I raise my hand and my demons slaughter her just as easily as all the others. The world resets.
I close my eyes and see a cramped studio apartment. A woman with my eyes sits at a kotatsu in the center of the room playing a video game. She’s exhausted. She hasn’t slept in a week. In the morning, she returns to her office job. She hardly ever speaks, preferring to interact with the digital world rather than the real one. A young lady at the train station takes note, trying to strike up a conversation. She’s young and beautiful, with long silver hair.
The woman ignores her. I ignore her. Before long, she stops trying. One day, the woman notices the girl coming toward her once more. She says nothing and simply steps in front of a train. The girl never recovers. The world resets.
I close my eyes, and the palace reappears. A blonde woman lies before me, unmoving. A lesser version of myself screams and inside I cannot help but feel vindicated. The world shall burn along with myself, and the cycle will end. My lesser names me: Demon Queen. She vows to destroy me. She doesn’t realize how worthless her promise really is.
Yet before I can even move, a bright light envelopes everything I can see. It’s warm and peaceful. I feel free.
I open my eyes and see my parent’s house. My family is inside, enjoying their Christmas festivities. I walk in, but no one acknowledges me. I become a ghost in my own life, ever present but never noticed. Years go by, and a woman I recognize appears before me. She is still young and beautiful, with long silver hair. She tells me her name is Lily. She’ll be an easy target.
But something happens that I don’t expect. She sees me. Truly sees me. Sees the pain, the aggression, the hatred of the world. Yet she stays at my side and doesn’t let go. The world goes on.
The guilt never subsides.
---
“It feels so real,” I say, having finally found a comfortable position. “I know they’re just dreams but… they feel like memories. I shouldn’t be alive right now. I don’t deserve it.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen…” my therapist muttered, taking off her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose.
“I’m… sorry?” I said, shifting my gaze back toward her. An ethereal light blinded me briefly. When I regained my sighed, the woman in front of me was replaced with a gray haired girl. She looked clinical, sterile, and somehow… angelic.
“Hello, Oohashi Rei.” The girl’s voice was almost electronic. Gazing upon her felt like being punched in the gut. My head spun. Hazy dreams became sharp memories as I struggled against the pounding in my skull. But just as the pain became unbearable, everything clicked into place. Everything made sense.
“TAIM.”
The girl sighed. “Why didn’t the memory wipe work…?” She paced around the office, barely noticing my existence. She conjured a floating screen in front of her and swiped through various diagrams, muttering to herself all the while.
“TAIM, what is going on?”
“You’re not the administrator anymore, I don’t have to answer to you.”
“Override code: 07192-”
“Don’t waste your breath. All the codes have been reset. Everything has. So why do you remember…?”
“What is going on here?!” I raised my voice, tired of TAIM’s little charade. She sighed and finally turned toward me.
“After the new administrator took power, she asked if I could keep you in the system as a new actor. Same basic personality, but no memory of the loop system and freedom from the shackles your mind has placed on you. She wanted you to have the chance at a happy existence.”
Guilt washed over me like a tidal wave. “After everything that happened? You expect me to believe they chose kindness?”
“Ruthlessness was your MO, Rei,” TAIM replied flippantly. “Oh! I see.”
“What?”
“Just a typo in a line of code. I’ll just fix it and reboot you, that should do the trick.”
“W-wait!” I reached out and swatted TAIM’s hand. Her eyes met mine with a bewildered look. “I don’t… I don’t want to be rebooted.”
“You can’t possibly be saying you want to LIVE with these memories?” TAIM’s bewilderment was replaced with shock, as though the thought had never once occurred to her.
“I did all of that and… they chose to let me live. They granted me freedom. They… they brought me to Lily.” I took TAIM’s hand and gestured toward the couch, where I sat her down gently.
“You know this already but I don’t believe in God. I didn’t before my memories returned, and I certainly don’t now. But Lily does. She believes in a higher power that’s merciful and forgives. She’s endured so much pain in her life, but she does her best to model those beliefs and give everyone a second chance. Even when it’s a bad idea. Even when they don’t deserve it.
“I’ve done so much harm, both in this life and past ones. But Lily always reaches out. She sees me, she sees my pain, and she loves me anyway. So I can sit here and be consumed by regret, let myself go crazy once again…or I can choose to believe her. I can choose to wake up every day and see the hope in her eyes and go ‘Yeah, this is why I’m here’. And I think, for once, I’d like to try that out.”
“Your memories will reset with each loop, you know. And by the next cycle, I’ll have probably fixed the code.”
“Even better,” I smiled. “Then I get to know her all over again.”
“Are you sure this is what you want, Rei?”
“It’s Quinn now,” I nodded. “And yes. But you have to promise to let me have a real therapist. It seems like I have some stuff to work out.”
TAIM sighed and stood up, taking her original spot back in my therapist’s chair. “Very well.”
In a flash, TAIM was gone and the original woman I had come to meet had returned. She looked around sheepishly, then checked her watch.
“I am so sorry Miss Taylor, but it appears that’s our time for today. I’m not sure how that all managed to go by so quickly…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, putting on my leather jacket. “Same time next week?”
“Same time next week.”
I opened the door to the sound of barking dogs. They ran to the door and, once they realized it was me, quieted down and sat obediently. I walked over to the kitchen and gave each of them a treat which they ate readily, tails wagging all the while.
“H-hey, Quinn…” a small voice uttered from the hallway. Although she was in pajamas, Lily was as radiant as ever. Perhaps even more so. I ran up and hugged her as tightly as I could, spinning her around.
“I see you’re in a good mood,” she said, taking the tiniest step back. I stood tall and cleared my throat.
“Therapy was, um, good,” I said. “A-and I’m really sorry I shouted at you… I’m going to try really hard to be better.”
Lily smiled in the soft, loving way she always did. “It’s okay, Lily-”
“No, you don’t understand,” I interrupted, knowing she was about to say something self-deprecating. “You deserve better. And I want to be better for you. There’s a lot in my life that I’ve done… things I may never forgive myself for. But I’m going to keep going to therapy and I’m going to keep doing whatever it takes. No more shouting.”
Lily gently held me, placing her head on my chest. She signed softly and my heart melted. “What did I do to deserve you?”
“No fair,” I teased. “I was going to say that!”
“Hm… perhaps you’ll have to punish me later, then.”
“I think that can be arranged.”