Chapter Text
You had a very strong feeling that you were dead.
You couldn't remember your name. Not yet, at least.
You weren't thinking. Dead people can't think. But you could feel that you were dead. You could feel and remember every moment of your entire life at once, sprawled out before you like stained glass or colored ice. From what you could make out in your blurred memories came the outline of a life. You had parents. You had friends. They were people you loved and people you hated, always switching but seemingly never at the same time. You didn't know if they deserved your hatred, but you knew that it was in your nature to hate. After all, hate keeps you from being hurt again.
You were somewhere strange. It was a dark ocean, so dark that there was nothing there, even darker than dark. There was nothing above you and nothing below you, and you couldn't feel if you were even there or not. You felt that you were always the kind of person to drown. At least, it seemed that that was the closest thing to the truth. You had spent too many minutes under the surface of a pool, too many hours staring into the crests and troughs of the sea, too much time laid down in the bathtub as a child not to. There was something deeply ironic about you being abruptly revived underneath the surface, in the depths of an ocean you couldn't drown in.
Somewhere in the water, there were black shards of ice, dark glass made of water, there too, splintering off of the rest, disconnected. They were smooth enough to touch, but they were too sharp and cold to hold and bring close: Who you wanted to be, who you loved, what you wanted to do, what you wished you were like. Failed dreams, but dreams all the same.
At the edge of the shadowy ice lay one clear memory: a sharp betrayal, loss, and loss, and loss; crying, desperation, a choice, fear that ran deep within every atom of your body, and then nothing at all.
Of course it had happened. You were so alone for so long. You were always alone, even when other people were there. You could feel them leaving before the idea could begin to cross their minds. Everyone left eventually, anyways. You grew numb to the loss because it was inevitable. Everywhere you went, you hastily closed doors and forcefully broke strings that tied you to them.
Nothing was ever enough. Failed dreams weren't enough to keep you there. You were trapped in the wrong world at the wrong time in the wrong place and in the wrong shape, and you had always hated being wrong.
Suddenly, a vast sound echoed through the waters:
"ARE YOU THERE?"
"ARE WE CONNECTED?"
And just as suddenly, you became aware of yourself. There was a red soul floating in the water, and it-- no, she was you.
And now she was no longer alone. Now there was someone watching over her. She loved not being alone, but she hated not being alone. She didn't want another watchful eye surveilling her and all of her behavior. Anyone who saw her could just as easily judge her, or worse, hurt her. She was sick of people like that. She didn't want to be observed, she wanted to be… something else. Despite all of that, though, being watched was comforting, in a sick sort of way. At least she wasn't completely alone while she was completely alone. At least she had something that could approximate company.
The voice clearly also had recognized that it wasn't alone, booming:
"EXCELLENT."
"TRULY EXCELLENT."
"NOW."
"WE MAY BEGIN."
"FIRST."
"YOU MUST CREATE A VESSEL."
The voice prompted her to… design a body? A body of her own. She had always wished for a choice like this. But all of the pieces looked dead, just like her-- gray and drowned, just like her. Of course. Her soul hummed.
Head. She chose the last one, the one with long and wide and curly hair. Body. The fourth one, wide like her. And… weren't all of these legs the same? None of them were hers. She would never find ones like hers. She didn't deserve to. She should just give up-
Focus, she thought. It was one of her first clear thoughts. I can hate myself later.
She chose the last pair of legs.
Her patron, this Voice, then prompted her to choose traits: Its favorite food. Soft. Did she deserve it, though? Everything else was rough, but it felt wrong to give herself this. Her thoughts were a mess. Her favorite blood type? C… Something about that was important, something deep that she couldn't place. Its favorite color? She flinched at cyan, memories of fire and turmoil and pain clawing at the periphery of her vision, daring her to stare the past in the eye. She chose its polar opposite, red, warmth and comfort and You. Of course, she gave it the gift of Kindness. She had to be kind. She needed to be kind. It's all she had ever wanted. To be good. To be important.
She had always wanted to be important, to be the most important, even. On her own warped scale of what the truth was, either she was the most important to someone, or nothing at all, and nothing else. So was everyone else to her in turn. It was all that really mattered. At some point, no one was her most important, and she drifted away and away and away, out to sea and over the horizon.
Pulling her back to her senses, the Voice then asked her for her opinion on her new Vessel. Hope. For once, she allowed herself to hope. Maybe this body could be hers. Maybe this was a second chance. Maybe this was what she needed. She promised her honesty and immediately accepted the risk of what would happen next.
Finally, it asked her name, and she remembered what it was. And… something about this sequence was familiar, she felt. She couldn't quite place it. She would provide her own name, but it felt out of place, like there wasn't enough space in this new world for her name, for her true form, for what she really was. No, she had to choose something different. It was a nickname, a shorter and more palatable version of her true name, if you thought about it.
_____. Five letters, spelled out carefully, one at a time.
She didn't have to say it out loud, because even if she could, the Voice would already know. How wonderful it was for her to be known like that.
"AND WHAT ABOUT THE CREATOR?"
She paused. No. This time, her body's name would be her own. Did she really deserve for her body's name to be different from her again, when it had been for so long? No, this time it would be different. Her new life would be different, and it would be hers.
_____. Five letters, again, spelled out one at a time.
"OF COURSE
OF COURSE."
"OF COURSE THEY ARE THE SAME."
She knew that this body was hers. It was made with love, and care, more care than she had ever shown the one she had had before.
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME."
"YOUR ANSWERS"
"YOUR WONDERFUL CREATION"
She felt her soul drift towards her new body, and-
"Will now be discarded. No one can choose who they are in this world."
It was torn away. The Hope she had just given to her new vessel was torn away. Who was she to hope, anyway? Her hope had been torn away many times before, and this was no different.. She tumbled further down and down and down, into someone else's body. She tumbled further down and down and down, into a world where her choices don't matter.
Well, she thought resignedly, I always was the kind of person to drown, wasn't I? She braced for impact, knowing that once again, who she was had been chosen for her.
"Your"
"name"
"is…"