Chapter Text
You wake up from your nap, feeling refreshed. It really was a good idea to rest before going up against the King tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to be tired while fighting for the fate of the country!
You’re still a bit drowsy though. Sleep’s sweet embrace calls for you… But you can’t spend the rest of the day sleeping. That would be a waste. So even though you were having such a nice rest, you force yourself to get up.
Wake up, Siffrin. You have a country to save.
You get up, stretch your arms and yawn so hard your jaw cracks. It’s a bit weird you woke up before Mira checked in on you but today is an important day. She must be busy, along with everyone else.
Except when you cross the bridge, you find her sittting on a bench, staring at some papers, looking devastated. You like to think you’re good at detecting small changes in people’s expressions. You sometimes interpret them incorrectly, but you do notice them. However, even someone with terrible perception skills would be able to see how utterly pained she looks.
Mira’s eyes are dazed and filled with exhaustion so deep it makes you wonder what happened while you were napping. Her eyelids are half closed, like she wants to fall asleep on the spot, but her body language is tense and undeniably awake. There's a tiny frown on her face, and she’s arched downwards, clutching her papers tightly like they offended her on a personal level.
You don’t even think about doing anything else and immediately sit next to her.
“Mira, what’s wrong?”
Her eyes lock onto you fast, and for a few seconds she just stares at you like your very existence is a surprise.
“Nothing’s wrong, Siffrin,” she says in a clipped voice that you have never heard Mira use.
You don’t want to upset her more, but you also want to help. So you decide to push only one more time. “Are you… sure?”
Her frown intensifies, and her grip on the papers gets tighter. “No! Of course not! How could I be fine right now!?”
This is not how you wanted things to go, she’s clearly more stressed than you thought. Stars, maybe you aren’t as good at reading people as you thought you were. But you’re here now, so you have to try to help her.
You put on what you hope is a reassuring smile and say “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll beat the King tomorrow!”
“…Beating the King is the last thing I want to do right now.”
You feel your face scrunching up in confusion. “But don’t we want to save Vaugarde?”
“Change. Yes, of course we do. We must be the saviors and get rid of that monster. Over and over again. It's our job, and the entire country needs us to...” she mutters. It doesn’t even seem like she’s talking to you. It’s like she's forgotten you're here.
“Uh… What do you mean?”
Mirabelle scowls at you. Up to now, she’d looked dead inside and incredibly stressed and bitter. Now, she looks angry in a way you didn’t think was possible to see in Mira’s face.
“And you don’t even know. Change, you don’t even know. We’re trapped in hell because of you and you don’t even know!!! You’re useless!! Always soooo mysterious, Siffrin, always talking as if you're better than me even though you’re the most useless one of us all!!!”
You flinch. On some level, you knew all this already, but hearing her say it aloud makes it feel so much more real. Useless, stupid Siffrin, always messing things up. You must apologize. It's the least you can do. You say “I’m sorry,” but she cuts you off before you can speak a single more word.
“No, Siffrin, you don’t get to apologize when you don’t remember a thing! You don’t even know what I’m talking about! You forget everything each and every time! You don’t even know us!!”
That stuns you even more than what she had said before. You’ve been travelling together for months. Saved each other more times than you can count. Cooked and ate meals together. Nicknamed each other. They even accepted your gifts. Did it only matter to you?
“We’re constantly changing all around you while you remain stagnant! No matter how much we push you or change everything around you or beg you to change, you just won’t!!! But we need you to change or we’ll be stuck here for eternity!”
“M-Mira,” you stutter out. You feel hollow, like you’ve just been pierced through the chest and a vital part of you has been torn away. You’re not even sure what you want to say, but you’ve got to say something.
Mira likes… liked you. She worried for you even when she shouldn’t have and thought you were strong and capable. She healed your injuries even when there were better uses for her energy and was always incredibly nice even when you forgot simple words. She’s- She was your friend. She even let you nickname her, so you must have been friends, and she must’ve cared about you.
But she doesn’t anymore. You can’t remember what you messed up, but it must’ve been big for this to happen.
You’ve always been a forgetful person. You forget what things are called, who some people are and their names, the last few towns you’ve visited, what you had for breakfast yesterday, where you got your clothes from, where you were born, if you had parents or friends or siblings, what your own name is. You forget a lot. You’re very forgetful and it’s often gotten people to brand you as impolite or stupid. Usually both, even if most were too nice to say it aloud.
What’s to say you couldn’t have forgotten something this important?
“What did I do wrong?”, you ask, hiding in the collar of your cloak.
Mirabelle looks guilty for a moment, tightly gripping her arms and staring downwards, before spitting out “You’ve trapped us in hell. I don’t want to see you right now, Siffrin. Just… I don’t know. Why are you even like this?” She mumbles the question under her breath, like she's not speaking to you again.
“Why can’t you just forget about your stupid fake god that abandoned you and- and believe in something real so we can all kill the King and leave?”
She gets up and sighs. “Just… leave me alone. Okay, Siffrin...?”
You watch her walk away and don’t avert your vision until she’s fully out of sight. Wouldn’t want to bother her with this, after all.
Your eyes get cloudy with tears and you cry as quietly as you can.