Chapter Text
If there’s one thing Mophead was sure he hated, it’s not knowing shit.
It’s why he went through the trouble of holding Munroe’s life hostage over the secret he kept, painful as that was. Information mattered. Answers mattered. And yet, even after learning who he used to be—or at least, who inhabited this body before him—he was left with a deep, churning dissatisfaction that the truth didn't fix like he wanted and expected it to. In addition, the lack of resolution stationed a cryptic hollow in his chest without a clue how he's supposed to close it, and in moments of weakness, it fed on his thoughts like a parasite.
It’s likely because of the amnesia, but frustration also gnawed at Mophead for not having the vocabulary to put into words why the name Eriche Wolff rubbed him the wrong way. Partially wrong, anyway.
The rest of it was a tangle of emotions and things his half-empty brain couldn’t put a name to because logically, there wasn’t any particular reason to dislike it in the first place. And even if he did feel a faint connection with the name at all, which he didn’t, he knew Munroe wouldn’t let him claim the name of a dead loved one. And the last thing Mophead wanted to do was parade an identity that did not belong to him. If anything, Munroe drew that boundary himself, and Mophead reinforced it by offering condolences for the loss of his best friend. They were in agreement then.
Which dropped Mophead back to square one: he was no one.
“You okay, me boy?” Warwick’s voice yanked him out of his thoughts.
“Huh? Oh,” Mophead looked down at his cards, the chips on the table, and attempted to recall the rules Warwick went over while he was ruminating in his head. And drew a blank. “Well…” he sheepishly admitted, “I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention.”
“Right. It's just brag, me boy,” Warwick sighed. “Simplest game we got. Figured it’d be good for sharpening your memory.”
“That shitty attention span too, maybe.” Carrie jumped in. “There goes our wild card.”
“Now, now, Carrie,” Warwick collected Mophead’s cards and shuffled the whole deck. “We’re getting somewhere. No need to bully the lad.”
“I am absolutely going to bully the lad if that makes him any better at this. This is our third game in an hour,” he clicked his tongue. “I think it's helping.”
Mophead squinted at his newly distributed cards. “Okay, so. Remind me again… what am I doing.”
The chair creaked as Warwick leaned back. “Three cards, and that's it. Best hand wins. You either brag your hand’s better, raise the stakes by betting, or you fold if—”
“—If you're a coward or your cards are shit,” Carrie completed for him. “Or both.”
“To put it simply,” Warwick agreed. “Let's try this again. Runs beat pairs, pairs beat high cards. A three run's good, but three of a kind’s better. Ace high’s worth braggin’ about if you've got the nerve.”
“And if ya don't believe him,” Carrie said, tapping the pile of chips, “you call his bluff and watch the bloke suffer.”
Mophead nodded slowly, now recalling the bits and pieces of information that did land before completely zoning out earlier. “Right, it's just lying. With cards?”
“Hah! Now you're gettin’ it,” Carrie said approvingly.
A seven, eight and nine were lined up in perfect sequence in Mophead's hands when he looked back down. “Is this any good?”
Warwick leaned over and Carrie let out a low whistle.
“Well I'll be damned,” Carrie said, “you've got a run.”
Mophead blinked. “I do?”
“Seven, eight, nine,” Warwick confirmed. “Clean as you like.”
A beat passed, and Mophead stared at his cards, then the chips on the table, and back at the two observing him. “So,” he said, “I'm supposed to… act confident.”
Carrie snorted. “What else?”
Vaguely remembering how Warwick played against Carrie in the previous round, Mophead straightened in his chair, placed his cards face-down on the table, and pushed a small stack of chips forward with all the confidence only a clueless man would have. A hearty laugh came out of Carrie as Warwick nodded, clearly pleased.
“Shit, lad.” Carrie swung an arm around his shoulders and waved a rusty flask in front of him. “Keep that luck with ya and you'll be winnin’ shit like this proper.”
Whatever was inside sloshed thickly. “What is that,” Mophead asked weakly.
“A man's drink,” Carrie said, “well. If you've the stomach for it.”
Mophead’s eyes narrowed as he considered this on top of the other similar ideas Carrie had been introducing to him this entire week. “...And if I don't?”
The door swung open behind them as Carrie opened his mouth to respond, and Munroe stepped in with a blank look on his face. “Mop, we've been assigned wetwork again,” he sighed.
Mophead and Carrie groaned in unison, but for entirely different reasons. Warwick let out a “damn, again?” under his breath.
“Fuck!” Carrie slammed a palm on the table. “The game was just getting good!”
“Why is it always us?” Mophead said, already weary.
“Yeah! You're shit at it, too!” Carrie added.
Mophead ignored this.
“Hell if I know.” Munroe gave them a half shrug. “Let’s just get it over with. Whatever you've been doing can wait.”
“Whatever I've been doing is helping Mop get one step closer to being useful ‘round here,” Carrie sniffed and took a swig out of the rusty flask.
Munroe was unimpressed. “Right. Let's help the amnesiac by making him an inebriated gambling addict.” He said. “Mop, let's go.”
“Ah, this was meant to sharpen his memory,” Warwick said. “Strategizing was supposed to come naturally as a result.”
“Ha! Knew you'd see the merit of my wisdom.” Carrie said.
Warwick snorted. “You wanted the lad to gamble for more alcohol.”
Leaving the two in the room to their own devices, Mophead fell into step with Munroe to the wetroom. Neither had spoken a word, though verbalizing their disdain for their upcoming task seemed unnecessary when it was already spelled out on the worn look on their faces, and they had run out of words to say in complaint long ago.
Munroe broke the silence first. “Gambling, really?”
A small smile twitched on the corner of Mophead's lips. “I wasn't planning on doing anything with it. Just thought it'd be nice to have something to pass the time around here.”
“That's what drinking is for, but I'm not gonna be the one who encourages you to do that,” Munroe said.
Mophead hummed in response, not quite believing him. They continued their walk, the only sound present being their boots echoing faintly through the corridors. After a moment, Mophead blurted, “Carrie said it was a man's drink.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he swallowed, mild discomfort crawling up his throat, followed by annoyance upon realizing that the unknown feeling was sitting uninvited like a heavy stone in his chest again. “And before that, he said people might think I'm more lass than lad—whatever that means—if I don't prove I'm not around here?”
For a moment, Mophead was relieved his hair concealed enough of his face to hide the cringe he couldn't pull back fast enough. He searched internally for reasons to justify initiating this and found nothing. This conversation was entirely unsolicited. Perhaps it was already a point in their odd relationship that easing into casual conversation with Munroe made Mophead overly comfortable which compelled him to share more, share something that, for some reason, felt a touch too sensitive. And there was no way to backtrack now that they were crossing this bridge.
But of course, information mattered and answers mattered, and Munroe was the safest bet he had at the moment to provide some useful insight or another perspective. Like last time, a small voice reminded him, and his frown deepened. Except this time he was fairly certain that whatever he was going through at present wasn't as mangling as waking up without memory.
Maybe.
Mophead cleared his throat and decided to let at least a few things tumble out. “There are things I’m expected to know but I don’t, and I get the strangest reactions when people find that out.”
Munroe’s eyebrows were furrowed. “Like?”
“You thought I was joking that one time when I said I didn’t know what shaving was,” Mophead reminded him flatly.
“Ah. Well. That was a little…” Munroe began, then stopped upon seeing the glare Mophead gave him. He sighed. “It did seem a little odd to me, that's all.”
“Have you seen me grow any facial hair?”
Munroe blinked. “Okay, yeah. No. Well.”
“Yeah, dumb question. Anyway,” turning his gaze ahead, Mophead added, “there was another time Carrie asked why I don’t spit.”
“...Spit.” The furrow in Munroe’s eyebrows deepened in confusion.
“Apparently there were circumstances I was supposed to. Outdoors, after drinking, after… asserting something.” Mophead mirrored his expression. “I told him that sounded disgusting, and he said I was being a wuss.”
A sound escaped Munroe that might have been a laugh he tried to hold back but he stifled it poorly with a cough.
“And boots,” Mophead continued. “Warwick once sat me down and explained how to break them in, and Carrie commented how it was odd that I didn’t know that already. I was under the impression you simply wore them until they stopped hurting. They both said ‘I was doing it wrong’. Well,” he paused to correct himself, “Carrie did. But I didn’t need to hear it from Warwick to know he held the same sentiment. I didn’t know there was a method.”
“There’s not really a—”
“And sitting,” he pressed on exasperatedly. “I crossed my legs at the knees one time in a certain way and Carrie asked if I was experimenting or just uncomfortable with something. I asked him with what, and he just snickered, saying something along the lines of, ‘lookin’ like a regal lady’ and that my pretty face didn't help. I didn’t need any more pointers to figure out that sitting cross-legged like that was wrong, apparently.”
“I mean…” Munroe rubbed his neck. “There’s nothing wrong if—”
Mophead cut him off before he could finish that thought. “Saying nothing’s wrong doesn’t make it so.”
“I just meant—”
“I know what you’re trying to say,” he cut him off again, then deflated. He didn’t mean to sound accusatory and yet the words land exactly in that way in his own ears. If this were a stage play, Mophead was the only performer who hadn't read the script. Not that he had the papers to begin with. If these things were as meaningless as Munroe was trying to put them, why did they sting every time others made him aware?
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m seen as something else when I’m not trying to be, and I’m somehow less for not knowing these things in particular. I think,” Mophead paused, “I’m doing a lot of things wrong.”
Munroe didn’t answer right away, choosing to invite some silence back in between them on their walk. Mophead could tell from his focused expression that he was carefully curating a better response in his head. He was grateful for that.
Munroe huffed after a moment, not quite a laugh this time, but the crinkle in his eyes was evident. “I mean, you don't have to be anything,” he said earnestly, “least of all what Carrie thinks you should be.”
Mophead nodded, filing that rule away. Or maybe the absence of a rule. It didn't matter, because—
“I… honestly don't know how I feel about that,” he admitted. “About not being anything…” And it's also awful not knowing anything, he omitted the thought before it slipped out.
“Well, for what it's worth, I hope you're not trying to be just like Carrie,” Munroe said, nudging Mophead slightly. “It’d be a cause for concern if you started picking up his mannerisms.”
The very thought of that punched a sound of disgust out of Mophead, and Munroe laughed at him.
“I'm not that susceptible,” he scoffed.
Munroe’s hands flew up. “Can never be too careful, mate. People get mixed in more ways than one ‘round here.”
—
They completed wetwork in silence for the most part, save for moments of trading small talk in the hour they spent hacking away at corpses.
Before they began distributing the bodies into the machine, Mophead placed a hand on the container Munroe lifted. “I'll take it from here,” he said. “I owe you one from last time.”
Munroe’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise. “Oh. Well. You're not one to take no for an answer, so I'll head off, then.”
If he had said that some weeks ago, Mophead would have taken offense at the jab, but now the addition held no underlying malice. Mophead rolled his eyes as he took the container. Joking about that incident made it easier between the two than never bringing it up again. He sighed. “I'm never living that down, huh?”
“Nah,” Munroe grinned and waved as he left the room.
Mophead continued the distribution with the weight in his chest as his only company to interact with. It felt as if it was waiting to be named by him. But I don't even have a name for myself, he thought bitterly, much less a name for you.
The machine’s heartbeat reverberated around the room. If it were sentient, then it knew how to operate, live, with purpose and intention, knowing its own function in the world. It did not rein in its obligation to consider if its function served good or evil.
He longed for the same resolve and could only imagine what it meant to move with absolute certainty. He briefly pressed a hand to his sternum, wondering if he might locate the mechanism inside that failed to calibrate into a sense of normalcy, a sense of living without the quiet strife of occupying a shape that resisted recognition. Only an organic, steady thudding met his fingers, keeping time for a revelation he had yet to encounter.
With the last of the bodies out of the cart, he began wheeling it back to the wetroom, and turning the corner—
“Oh!” He jerked the cart before it collided with the person rounding the same corner. “I'm sorr—”
He trailed off when he met her eyes.
“My apologies,” the nurse said, eyes lingering on Mophead for a beat, and recognition softened the surprise on her face. She stepped to the side of the cart, closer to him. “Oh, it is you,” she greeted him with a smile. “I hope your search is going well?”
The question fell somewhere near the stone in his chest and stirred it.
“Ah. Hello,” his hands fidgeted at his sides. “Well, yes. Actually, I found out who I used to be. Or more like—” he paused, “—who was here before me.”
She nodded. “And?”
“I, uh…” He swallowed. The truth about Eriche was easy to admit, but something else was not. “I'm not him?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I just—” he raised his shoulders and gestured at himself, at nothing, at something he hoped she would figure out for him instead. The idea of stepping into Eriche Wolff’s identity made him shudder, like a persistent wrongness similar to wearing uniform a size too large and being acutely aware that the seams are in unfamiliar places, all the while constantly adjusting it to make it feel more comfortable. “I just don't fit,” he settled for quietly. “I don't know him or have his memories. Whoever Eriche Wolff was, I don’t think I’m anywhere close to that.”
The nurse regarded him with a thoughtful hum.
“That's not unusual,” she said. “Resurrection is far from tidy if not at all. Some wake up with their memories intact and still feel displaced. Others wake up with less and feel… crowded, I suppose. The body carries much history even when the mind does not.”
“Mhm.” Displaced and crowded—the two words resonated with him. His head was tilted slightly to allow more strands of hair to veil his eyes; they were darting towards anything else but the nurse's gaze.
She noticed his discomfort. “Ah, pardon my manners—I should have asked how you were faring first.”
Air caught shallowly in his lungs. “I don't want to trouble you more than I already have,” he said.
“You’ve done no such thing. Worry not,” she reassured gently, then added, “I’ve witnessed many different cases along this thread we are on. I will not judge.”
She spoke like she was addressing both him and the stone he carried in his chest.
Mophead weighed his options. She did not seem the type to offer kindness with hidden intent, nor to dispense advice only to hold it against him later. The suspicion lingered reflexively and on instinct—then he recalled the patience she had already shown him, in their first meeting and now in this encounter, and guiltily retracted the suspicion. Too many experiences with others have trained him to expect something barbed beneath the surface.
She offered him her time and presence; it only felt right to surrender at least a fragment of the stone in return, if not the whole weight of it. Still, he resisted holding her here longer than necessary, knowing such a request was too much to ask of someone whose time was already spoken for.
“It still feels like I'm performing and failing at it,” he said, words tumbling out, “I'm not Eriche, but I don't exactly know who I am, either, and I also don't know if I fit into this body. Or if I'm the problem at all. But the who people expect me to be doesn't—” he flexed his fingers nervously, “—I don't know. I don't recognize myself in any of whatever they all think of me as. And I never asked in the first place, and all these instructions and expectations that I'm supposed to just know for having this body and- I look between myself and my own body and—” he stammered into peeved silence, unable to continue. Warmth flooded into his cheeks in mortification, realizing he had just rambled unabashedly to someone who considered him a stranger.
Unbothered, she studied him with attentiveness. “What you're pointing to has a name,” she said simply. “Dysphoria.”
He stared, not recognizing that word.
“A persistent distress caused by mismatch between what you perceive yourself to be,” she explained, “and what your physical body and its history may tell you instead. You inhabit an exterior that is seen by others differently than what you recognize, since you’re looking from the inside out.”
Mophead swallowed. He was unsure if he liked where this was heading.
The nurse continued, “After resurrection, continuity of form does not guarantee continuity of self. The mind inherently seeks alignment and, in failing that, produces tension. It's not uncommon to feel estranged from your own reflection. That's why we advise to keep away from reflective surfaces.”
He shifted his weight. The stone in his chest pressed harder, acknowledging itself in her words.
“So,” he said, “this constant wrongness— that's part of it?”
She nodded. “It is.”
A breath Mophead had been unconsciously holding was let out. “But this is different. It just is. I doubt I’m supposed to be feeling this way. How come I've never heard of anyone else experiencing this?” A pause, “something in me is broken,” he concluded.
“Unresolved,” she quickly corrected as if expecting this response. “And asking why is a healthy instinct. Many here struggle with similar questions, but are… withheld, I suppose. Unfortunately, we lack the counselors to meet the demand, so small conversations in corridors must sometimes suffice.”
The apologetic smile she gave was oddly comforting.
Confusion circled back through Mophead. “Withheld? Why?”
Her smile dimmed into slight forlornness. “Stigma. Such vulnerability is often met with ridicule and disparagement. I'm sure you know of this already.”
Silence settled in between them for a moment. She did not rush to fill it, only watching him with a patience that made the quiet feel deliberate rather than empty.
“What do I do?” he asked.
She considered him for a moment. “Explore,” she said. “You might begin by gathering more information. Ask those who knew Eriche what he was like, not to align more with him but to find out what else doesn’t align. Alignment can be discovered through rejection as much as through recognition.”
His eyes fell downcast. Not quite the answer he was looking for. Name what else is missing.
He wondered how much of a self could be built from the absence of things.
He was nothing.
“Tabula rasa, my friend,” the phrase pulled his gaze back to hers, once again seeing through him. Her eyes were caring and so full of understanding. “You’re a beginning that happens to share a form. Think of dysphoria as a signal that points to a question; you are allowed to take as much time as needed to find its answer. But you first need to give yourself the gift of patience.”
Blank slate, Mophead recalled the term during their first meeting. A beginning that happens to share a form. It sounded vast more than hopeful, terrifying in the way one might have felt treading in uncharted territory.
“I don’t even think I know the right question to ask in the first place,” he muttered.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Questions tend to reveal themselves at the right moments. I have no doubt you’ll find out soon enough now that you’re aware, as your mind will subconsciously seek them out.”
Mophead could only hope that was true.