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The building was a lot smaller than Makima remembered. Just a slightly larger than average house, really. In her memories it was always looming, at times a great and unassailable castle, at times a prison. Now it stood abandoned, its garden overgrown and choked with weeds, its fences crumbling. Every window was clouded by a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. There wasn't even any sign of anyone trying to break in over the long, lonesome years that the house stood empty. Only a weathered sign above the door served as evidence that anyone had ever lived here, ever filled these rooms with laughter.
Green Hill Orphanage.
"You sure about this, red?"
Makima had come here with all five of her girlfriends, ostensibly as security but in reality moral support. Without some kind of anchor there was no chance in hell she could get through this without going... catatonic. Or worse. She still wasn't sure she could.
The counterattack against the yakuza had gone off without a hitch. No casualties, not even any injuries, though Makima supposed that was to be expected when most of their forces could heal via the blood of their enemies.
A little too well, in one very loud, chaotic case. She was supposed to schedule a blood draining for Power, but once again Makima had gotten... distracted. Mired in memories, sucked down into mud of her past like a horse that stumbled off the trail.
She knew she risked drowning, and yet foolishly she had let herself sink. In search of what she wasn't sure. Just that it needed to be uncovered.
"I expected an empty lot, to be honest. Maybe a pile of rubble. Seeing it still standing feels... wrong, somehow." Makima mused, before turning to Quanxi and the others. She looked at them for a moment, their caring yet apprehensive faces, then gave a curt nod. "Yes, I'm sure."
Makima led the way through the front gate, across overgrown cobblestones and creaking wooden steps. She could recall some of the other children coming out onto the front porch to play, or just to laze about and try to strike up conversations with people passing them on the street. She remembered being grateful that they were outside, so she could sit by herself in relative silence. There were times when she'd wanted to go out and join them, play pirate or samurai or whatever else had grabbed everyone's attention that day. She couldn't recall why she'd chosen not to.
She swallowed thickly, then stepped aside to let Quanxi pick the lock to the front door. A solid kick would bring it down, but they weren't here to destroy. There'd be no catharsis in that. This wasn't the home she'd hated the most. Even with the more subtle mode of entry however, they still had to put in some force to get the door open after it had swelled into its frame over the years.
"We're probably the first people to set foot in here in decades..." Pingtsi mumbled, holding onto Tsugihagi like she was a stuffed animal, though in truth it was hard to tell who was clinging to who. Her eel looked around cautiously, swivelling like a periscope. "It feels like we shouldn't be here."
"I won't force you to come with me." Makima replied, running her finger along an old coat hook covered in dust. "Any of you. You can wait outside, if you want."
She of course left it unspoken that she would really prefer that they stay with her. They knew. They always knew.
"Nah, we're doing this. I'm just pointing out that the vibes are entirely off." Pingtsi murmured. A couple of the other Fiends hummed in agreement.
With all the furniture long since taken out, the group's footsteps echoed across empty spaces, and Makima could almost hear them resonate with the memories buried in these walls like stubborn mould. She could hear the other children, always so loud and raucous, laughing, screaming, crying. They stepped into the kitchen and the smell of winter stew filled her nose as if there was a pot of it still boiling on the stove.
It should have smelled of home. Of watching kids' movies in the living room while old Akiba-san put another log on the fireplace, of finally getting to feel like she had friends. Siblings, even. Instead all Makima could remember was how she'd had to eat that damn stew five or more times a week because the orphanage was struggling with money, and was a hair's breadth from shuttering years earlier than it did. She'd grown to dread that smell near the end.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The recollection was so vivid it made her nauseous, and she almost collapsed before steadying herself on the kitchen counter, drawing heavy breaths.
"I'm fine, I'm fine..." she mumbled as two sets of hands, Long's and Cosmo's, came to help support her. "I just... wasn't ready. I mean jesus, look at the place. You could still live here."
The idea of making this place into a home again brought a fresh wave of nausea, and she found herself clinging to her girlfriends like they were the only thing keeping her from sinking. It would be like desecrating a grave.
"Maybe not fine..." she added, muffled by Long's shoulder. The girls helped her down onto the floor so she could sit, and soon after someone pressed a water bottle into her hand. Quanxi had started carrying one for emergencies, at Pingtsi's insistence.
They gave her space to breathe as she drank, slowly, just to settle her stomach.
"Halloween?" Cosmo said quietly, slowly rubbing circles into her shoulder.
"I want to keep going..." Makima mumbled in reply, leaning her head on the Fiend's shoulder. "But maybe we cut it short earlier than intended."
She was about to add that they could come back later, but that felt like making a promise that'd nag on her til the end of days. If she didn't put these memories to bed today, they would pursue her forevermore. Makima needed closure, and the idea that there would be something left untouched here when she left simply didn't sit right with her. No, she would keep going until she no longer could, then congratulate herself on a job well done.
Easier said than done. But there was likely no universe, no version of this excursion, that wouldn't feel like a failure in the end.
Once she felt up to it, her girlfriends helped her to stand and they proceeded out of the kitchen, further into the house.
The nails on which paintings and photographs had once hung were still driven into the walls. There were no longer any carpets to cushion the sound of their footsteps. And when they finally turned the corner into the living room, the only sign that it had once been such were the scrapes in the floorboards from carelessly dragging the couches around.
"How many children did you say used to live here?" Quanxi asked, her eye fixed on old, faded drawings painted directly onto the wallpaper in the corner of the room.
"Twenty-eight, I think, by the time I was taken away. Most of them had lost parents to Devil attacks." Makima replied, subtly taking Tsugihagi's hand as she walked around the room, in case the nausea took her again and she was at risk of falling. She recognised one of those drawings as her own. Four stick figures with long hair, riding on horseback.
"That's a lot of kids to put in one house..." Long mumbled, flinching a little when one of the floorboards creaked far louder than the others as she put her foot on it. Makima looked over at where she'd stepped, and felt a chill run down her back.
Like she'd just crossed paths with a ghost.
Slowly she made her way over and knelt by the creaky floorboard. Tapping it with her knuckles produced a hollow sound.
"I wonder if they're still here..."
The boy had his back to the door as he played, holding his toys so that it looked like the doll with the red hair was walking the little wooden doggy on wheels. He let slip a rare smile.
"Hey you!" another boy shouted from behind, forcing the first to turn around with a scowl. His face was hazy and indistinct, just like all the others, but the scent had become familiar. Too familiar. "Gimme one of those."
"No." the boy with the dog replied, petulantly.
"You've always got two toys. The rest of us only get one each. So, share!"
"No. They're friends. They have to stick together."
The boy with the dog and the doll stood up and hid the toys behind his back, his eerie red and gold eyes fixed on the bully's non-face. It was like looking into a murky lake and trying to make out the fish. The bully crossed his arms and puffed out his chest.
"Why do you always play with that doll, anyway? That's a girl's toy."
The boy didn't know why that question hurt so much, nor did he have an answer. He wouldn't know what that doll meant to him for years.
They kept staring at eachother for several seconds, until the air in the room grew too tense. There were no adults around to stop what happened next, as the bully stepped forward and shoved the boy roughly. The boy dropped his toys, and got upset. A thin chain flew forth from his finger and buried itself in the bully's forehead.
"Leave, and never come back!" the boy shouted, demanded, and the bully obeyed. Nobody would see him ever again.
And the boy simply turned back to his toys, and fixed the wheel that had come off the dog in the scuffle.
Makima's hands trembled as she reached for the box hidden beneath the old floorboard, awash with painful memories. She'd barely had time to hide her little keepsake before the government agents took her away. Back then she'd thought that wherever they took her, she'd break out and be able to come back for it. The fanciful daydreaming of a child, convinced that the world would bend to her whims. That because she had power, she could do anything.
But nobody at the facility feared her like she needed them to. Too busy celebrating their victory, and documenting the findings of their experiments.
She slowly took the box from his resting place, and brushed a hand across the dust-covered lid to reveal a colourful depiction of a meadow full of animals. The paint had long since faded and lost its lustre.
How many years had been stolen from her? She couldn't remember most of them. She may have been a Devil, but she was still a child, what could have been if she'd been raised with kindness? If she had received even a single hug, been touched even once by someone who wasn't trying to hurt her? So much suffering could have been avoided. So much evil left uncommitted. But they had never considered her a child, or even a person, or even really a Devil. Just a tool, a weapon, an object to be used as they pleased.
"I'm scared to open it." Makima blurted out suddenly, her voice thick with building tears. Her thumb hovered over the lid's clasp.
"We'll help." Quanxi replied, gently laying her hands on Makima's, brushing the back of her knuckles. More hands joined them. Warm, twitchy, stitched, curious ones. They anchored her, guided her, and as one they flipped the clasp and slowly opened the old box.
They were still there. More worn than she remembered them, but still. A raggedy cloth doll in a white dress with long, red hair made of yarn, and a little wooden doggy with wheels and a string coming out of its nose. Makima picked them up carefully, like she was afraid they'd crumble to pieces, then finally just wept. The weight of the whole experience, a hundred different turbulent emotions, finally got to her and she felt her body go limp.
It felt stupid to get so attached to inanimate objects, to assign personhood to the lifeless. But equally, it felt like Makima had recovered a part of herself. Maybe the past would have been better left buried, but that wasn't the choice she'd made. Instead she'd kept digging and found... closure, or some measure of it.
One less piece of herself in someone else's hands.