Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Do you love me, Mother?

Will you keep me around, Mother, or will I be discarded like Phantom just as soon as that spider reaches our home and you have consumed her power?

I hum a gentle tune as I tend to the flowers below your resting place.

When we were younger, Phantom, Sharpe and I came up with a melody for you.

Back when you used to sing us lullabies late at night, when the bugs in the Citadel below began to fall silent.

You banished Phantom into the Exhaust Organ and left Sharpe to endlessly patrol the empty streets of the holy, golden city at our feet, naught more than a corpse, just like the kingdom it sits atop of.

You don't let me leave the Citadel much anymore, Mother.

The white flowers in my hands are just as fake as my silken heart. Still I care for them as if they were real.

I long to see the outside again.

But I know what happened to Phantom.

And I don't want to upset you, Mother, because I love you.

But I don't think you feel the same about me.

I know it took much to imbue me with this life. This facade of what the bugs out there experience.

You don't let me choose my own path, you don't let me decide my fate.

I must bring you the child of a Weaver.

And what will happen when you have taken her for yourself?

Will I be thrown away like nothing more than a doll that you have been playing with?

Despite their fake nature, the flowers smell nice today.

I hear the thumping of your heart in the distance, high atop your Cradle.

I know I am not the daughter you wanted.

I was spun into this world to fill a role, and yet I cannot even manage that.

I am just a cheap imitation of life.

A fragile thread spun to be a child to you.

I miss speaking with Phantom. It has been so long since I saw them last.

I know they disobeyed you, Mother, but do they deserve to remain in the Exhaust Organ forever, alone, with only the mindless vermin to keep them company?

They were but a child too, Mother. Your child.

Would you lock me away forever too, never to be seen again, if I did something you did not approve of?

Would you do that to Sharpe?

The flowers are as unchanging as I am.

I do not know why I tend to something that will remain as it is forever, regardless of my care.

I stop humming the melody we wrote for you.

I raise my gaze up to your resting place.

Do I not deserve an answer anymore, Mother?

Why do you not love me anymore?

Chapter Text

My hands work the Exhaust Organ like a musician their instrument - with careful, yet firm movements.

Each press of a key is a reminder of my tireless task to keep the gleaming Citadel above free of excess steam and unnecessary silk dregs. That the Sinner's Road below is enveloped in the mix of smog and steam does not matter; the low lands do not need to be clean. Only our pinnacle, only the Citadel, must remain clean.

Clean of unwanted things, like me. Of things that do not obey, things that go their own way. Things not clean enough for the golden streets of the Citadel, like the vermin I must share the Exhaust Organ with.

I have a task, and I must complete it at any cost.

I want to move my legs, but silken threads keep me here. 

A harrowing cry rips from my throat as my hands slam down on the keys of the Exhaust Organ, a discordant tune disrupts the gentle melody I had been playing for the past few hours.

Echoes of the cry ripple through the Mist, a choir of damnation.

I finally let go of the pressed keys after longer than it should have taken. I readjust my position in my seat. The Exhaust Organ is hauntingly quiet for a brief, precious few seconds.

My hands begin to move again. Whether by my own want or someone else's hands, I am not sure anymore.

Why must you hate me so, Mother?

Haven't I endured my punishment long enough?

Do you not see the failing thread of my silken form, unraveling before your very own gaze?

Must I die to be granted absolution for my mistakes?

The gentle melody finally continues.

The smog and silk dregs of the Exhaust Organ have tainted my white dress grey.

It is old and fraying, like me.

I could not be the child Mother wanted me to be, so I must pay for this misdeed not of my own as if it were a fault committed by me.

I remember when you let me stay below your Cradle, Mother, with my brother and sister. I remember the warm touch of your silk, when it was still a comfort and not a prison.

I remember the beautiful white flowers that Lace always painstakingly takes care of for you, even if you pay neither of them any heed.

I remember Sharpe securing your Cradle to keep you safe, even if you do not care for his safety in the same way.

I remember when you let me see the world beyond the Exhaust Organ, before I upset you.

The tune stops for a brief few seconds before my hands move on their own to continue it.

Why am I not the child you wanted, Mother?

You created me from your thread, your silk. I was made to be who you wanted me to be. So how was I not?

Your imitation of life beats away steadily in form of my silk-spun heart, and each day I feel the beat grow weaker.

You doomed me to die a slow, fading death, Mother.

Help me, Mother.

I miss when you would sing lullabies to us from your own resting place.

I miss the loving embrace of your thread.

I miss my sister. I miss my brother.

Why can you not love me anymore, Mother?

I suddenly stand up and rip my hands away from the Exhaust Organ. All sound seems to stop except for the thumping of my fake heart.

Sharp claws rip the broken white mask off my face. Silky white tears drop onto the floor.

Hands reach for the head. I tear at my blackened hair, not elegant white like my sister's.

I rip handfuls of strands from the silk, no matter how much it hurts. The once distinct form of it has become nothing but a frayed, fading mess.

My legs shake as another sob echoes through the Exhaust Organ.

Black, silken strands drop to the floor.

I am unraveling, Mother.

Save me, Mother.

Like many times before, I tear at the thread structure imitating an arm with silken fangs. I don't get far until suddenly I still, and as if I was a machine, cease my episode.

I sit back down, and my hands over above the Exhaust Organ once more.

You made me play here alone forever, Mother.

To rot away with the vermin that call these caverns home.

You refuse my wish to leave the Exhaust Organ and see my siblings again.

You refuse my wish to go out on my own terms.

You need to see my punishment carried out for as long as it takes.

To see your control over your child.

Because good children do not stray from their mothers' words.

But I know none of us is the child you want us to be.

Chapter Text

My feet carry me into this place once again.

I cannot stop looking at it.

The husks are long dead and decaying, and will remain that way until an intruder arrives.

It is so dark.

But I keep moving anyways.

Was this the place of my creation, Mother?

I am the inverse of the desecrated bodies of this laboratory.

Where they are Soul infused with Silk, I am Silk infused with Soul.

I know I am not like Phantom or Lace.

Was I just an experiment for you, Mother?

A test to see how long something with less Soul than Silk could be sustained?

So you could make the two of them?

There is a twisted husk not far from me as I climb into the ventilation of the Whiteward, most other pathways long having been blocked from decay.

A short crawl leads me back to that room.

There is hundreds of bodies stacked on one another, never to wake again.

In the center of the room is a machine.

I remember hearing the recordings in the Vaults, once.

The screams haunt me.

Did I scream like them when you made me, Mother?

Do you love me as you love Lace and loved Phantom?

I know I am their inferior version.

I am not what you wanted me to be.

Not the child you wanted me to be.

Are my siblings the children you wanted, or are none of us good enough, Mother?

A trembling hand finds its way onto the cold, heartless steel of the machine.

My own patchwork heart, just a fragile imitation of a real life, beats away in my chest with anxiety.

Do you know I've seen this, mother?

Do you know it haunts me so?

I cannot stop coming back here.

Like a thread it pulls me back in every time.

Even now, I can hear the screams in my head. As if the operations were still ongoing.

I know it is not quite the same. I wasn't made through Silk being forced into Soul. I know the Soul that holds together my entire being was used to imbue the silk with an imitation of life.

A hand trails the machine, feeling the sharp needles as I pass them.

Was the Soul needed for my creation taken from these lifeless corpses that will rise again when an intruder makes it here?

Am I but an amalgamation of these helpless pilgrims, molded into something new?

The terror suddenly grasps me, and without realizing it, I find myself rushing out of the Whiteward, silken tears falling from my face onto the dreg-covered floor.

Why must be inferior to my siblings in your eyes, Mother?

Mother, do you still love me?