Private to Siobhan, Laina, Murderbot over the Sendjewel Network

[ohaiyo_isekai]

WARNING: frank discussion of IRL transphobia; the deep deep spoilers to the Wonders of Mundus series as a whole are likely.

To Siobhan, Laina:
I - suspect you two had a better idea than I did of who young Tsukuda was but I would speak to you both about the context.

To Murderbot:
I suspect you are more inclined to talk to me over the Sendjewel than in person. My name is, for the sake of argument, Hikaru Aozora; I knew you in the story as Rin. I'd like to talk with you about what I perceived of what happened if you'll allow me.

Comments

[codeswitchcraft]

Michiko was you, yes. I'm sorry it took me far too long to realize that, but you look very different as an Earth Andrax--sorry, as a human--than you do as a pixie. And I didn't know you'd done Scherzo's special rites--or the Earthly equivalent, I guess. But I did know it was you when I kissed you.

There's a brief pause there.

I don't regret the kissing. But I should probably warn you about the complications to that back on Mundus.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Bless you for your unique genius. And no, I can well guess some of those complications, but I would fain speak to thee in person about both complications and kisses.

The gardens await, o defender of those who cannot well defend themselves.

[codeswitchcraft]

I should be more in command of myself when I get there, at least, she replies, perhaps ominously.

It takes her longer than it does Laina to find him and once she does Hikaru will see the places on her clothing that the seams strained to contain her human frame when she was immediately returned, but she is all pixie when she gets there.

"You are an archivist of the knowledge about Mundus on Earth, aren't you?" Siobhan says, having had time to think about Hikaru's words as she took her time navigating the library. "So likely you were able to recognize me through that knowledge, especially if there were illustrations. I though the change of hair and clothing a sufficient enough disguise so far away as Viacruz."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Anyone else likely would not have recognized you, no. I know none of our boon companions suspected, not even Deedee, who confessed her foreknowledge you were of Mundus and not of Earth to me after you confirmed it.”

He pauses for a beat, eyes flickering between the rosebush he’s tending and the woman he now realizes loves him back.

“…your Highness.”

[codeswitchcraft]

She shakes her head.

"Just Siobhan now. We are no longer on Mundus at present and I am different from all the other Sigrids on the other Mundi anyway, not the least because I have traveled further afield and taken actions for myself."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Correct,” he says, not further elaborating. (Sometimes the failure mode of clever can be asshole.)

Then:

“On Rin’s advice, I will not mention to anyone not actually present the… truth of Akira as my true name. For the same reasons best not to mention who you were before you were Siobhan, to those without that knowledge. Has Laina recognized you?”

[codeswitchcraft]

"Of course Laina has," Siobhan says, slightly exasperated. "Don't your knowledge archives tell people where to find me on the other Mundi? She was helping me hide at her monastery when we both Woke Up. She knew me before I was Siobhan."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Hikaru presents the top of his palms, apologetic.

“I knew the various Lainae were the various Sigridii’s allies in the Verdholtz Rebellion questline. I did not know Laina Chimera’s part in your personal Awakening, though I could guess that our Laina was she,” he explains, patiently. “My knowledge of your world is vast, but not total, and is biased towards my seeking to find the seams in the various abstractions of the game depicting Mundus. And for all that I’ve Mind primary I can be shockingly stupid, too.”

He sighs. “As you discovered when you met poor Michiko of the nameless crushing dread ‘she’ could not understand.”

[codeswitchcraft]

She nods. "I am the last person to criticize you for wishing to hide from terrible truths," she says. "But I am glad you faced yours. I am continuing to face mine." She hesitates for a moment before adding, "I don't know how much Laina groks the true situation. She is very learned, of course, but..."

But she didn't have the presence of a goddess inside her to make certain things clear the way Siobhan did. And that mattered.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“There is a reason - many, really,” he says, gently, “I now speak of ‘the game depicting your world’ instead of ‘the game you were a character in,’ my Siobhan.”

There’s a fierce surge of pride at calling her that, a shiver up his spine. His Siobhan. The one who loved even a reflection of him as a boy, as a man.

He takes a pair of shears to snip off one of the roses he’s been tending to, takes a deep sniff of its perfume, and presents it to Sio.

“As Akira, he hardly objected to your gesture. As myself again… I would gladly return the favor.”

[codeswitchcraft]

"It's both," Siobhan says, taking the rose and tucking it behind her ear, the way her patron goddess wears hers. "You must know that, right? For all that I have memories of twenty-one years of life, they were written into me by the creators beyond the Fourteen. I have never truly met Konrad or my mother and father. I have spent more time in your company than I ever truly spent with Edmund."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“And yet the Mundus we share has gravity slightly lighter than Earth’s, a sun slightly brighter, stars that are subtly wrong,” Hikaru says, stepping into the imperceptible bubble of her aura, taking, if she lets him, her cheek in his palm. “Your Mundus, and you, are more real than you fear. It is true that you are the heroine of an unfinished story, but you are my heroine, and the quill is in your hands, now.”

[codeswitchcraft]

Hikaru will see Siobhan close her eyes for a moment, trembling at some internal debate.

"My Mundus—the one that I was made for—is gone," she whispers, leaning against his hand. "It fell with Io-Chimera. But thanks to the grace of the Fourteen we were brought to the true Mundus which is called Prime, where we were embodied as were you and given room inside our new selves to Wake. Of course I am real. All of us are real now. It does not matter that I was not meant to be. I am real. But oh Hikaru, it weighs upon me sometimes that I was not meant to be."

There is a sudden splash of wetness against his hand. She is weeping, despite herself.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Oh, Siobhan.”

He holds her, hand behind her head, literally offering his shoulder to cry on, letting his fingers run through hair soft as corn silk, a gesture meant to soothe her as much as it thrills him.

“None of us were meant to be, yet all of us are. And think on this: someone so much wanted you to exist, wanted to know a woman with your valor and romantic nature, that they wrote a story of you and your mother and the wicked man who married her, and of the one you were promised to who released you out of love, and the one who loved you back. A tale that hangs together so well that you could expand to fill the space in it’s gaps without self-contradiction.”

He takes a handkerchief, dries her tears with it.

“I was an accident, though a happy one. I was not meant to be for all I was loved. But you, you were a deliberate creation of love. If not Sigrun’s, than Durante’s and Wheeler’s, Thibault’s and Adams’ and Paloma’s.”

[codeswitchcraft]

She's quiet for a while after that, still weeping silently. Listening to the voice of a god inside her head.

"I know," she whispers. "I do know that. I have been told that I am one of 'Mama Charley's' favorites. My story was deliberate. It is only my thinking mind that is not. But Hikaru... I would not have that thinking mind without Io-Chimera's murder. And it is a terrible thing to know that a god perished to give you true life."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Speak not so, bowslinger,” Hikaru murmurs to her. “We know it was wounded; but let us not dig its grave until we see the body. Even beyond that, and more importantly, consider that if it Wakened thee in extremis, it always could have. Your psyche whole and beautiful always had the potential to exist, should Io have dedicated spare hands and eyes to its creation. That your mind was bequeathed to thee in case it could not wreak further miracles does not change that it was the Titan’s gift, given unselfishly. Thy psyche, the whole tetrad of thy soul, is not the mere spent lifeblood of Mundus’ oldest protector, must not be, does not make sense if that is all it is.”

[codeswitchcraft]

"Hikaru, no," Siobhan says, stepping back from him. "I know you only wish to console me and you are not wrong about the potential that I had, that any of us had to Awaken, but that still does not change that I would not have Awakened if Mundus-Chimera were not destroyed. I have been embodied with resources that were never meant for me, Hikaru. I was always to be a story. I was never meant to live."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Hikaru sighs.

“Perhaps not,” he says. “Perhaps that potential would never have been realized, was not meant for the purpose of giving you life. And if that’s so, that is a wound I cannot hope to understand, let alone attempt to cure.”

It was hard enough to grapple with never having been a girl; how can he possibly wrestle with having never been a person, until you were?

“Can you forgive me for being glad to have met you, loved you, despite that?”

[codeswitchcraft]

She blinks away tears. "Yes," she says. "I can. If you can trust that I understand far better the situation with Mundus than even you do—even if many details were simplified for my comprehension. It was the details that were simplified. Not the truth."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"I would trust you now with how I know such things—unless this is another secret of mine you have somehow discovered the truth of, like you have done twice already."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Rin may have betrayed part of it in innocence,” Hikaru said. “He assumed I had decoded the files he sent you. I could do no such thing, not with just the Sendjewel - but I don’t know how you did so for yourself. I had assumed you had found a hidden function of it for the use of the Devteam…”

He laughs, once.

“Still. Two of three is not bad.”

[codeswitchcraft]

"I didn't do it for myself," Siobhan says, simply. Her eyes glow white and with a voice that isn't her own (but was, like all the elemental siblings, made from the voice print of one of the OWTB founders) says instead, "I did. And if you betray her or I, Akira Tsukuda, then you will only wish that you might die swiftly from my arrows."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“Doctor Durante…?”

No. Not Doctor Charlene Durante but her digital child.

Hikaru’s eyes go wide.

“I - may I die slowly strangled in the snare that caught me like a hapless coney, oh Fae Warden of the Wyld, patron of my Mundane kith and kin, should I betray you or your mortal avatar who is so dear to me,” he says, thinking very quickly.

[codeswitchcraft]

"As well you might, Akira Tsukuda," the goddess says, "for she is dear to me too."

Then she sighs and codeswitches just as easily and fluently as he's ever seen Siobhan do it.

"But seriously, Heeks, this is completely need to know, okay? Sio is insisting that you in particular are trustworthy and it's better if all three of you know this piece of me is here—especially because you'll understand everything I need to simplify for her or Laina—but this operation is precarious AF."

[ohaiyo_isekai]

“If the Griefers could injure Io, they can injure you, possibly even through your connection to Siobhan,” Hikaru says. “Yes. Trust me again if you would that I understand the stakes. …and that my intentions towards your daughter are entirely honorable.”

Hikaru puts a palm on his forehead, fingers splayed into his hair, thinking harder than he ever has.

“And now that I have the chance to do so personally, thank you,” he says. “For your part in saving her, and us, from the disjointed Scyllan Horror of the glitch sargasso. Blood and breath to you, Thorne - though I might have to substitute something of equal worth to properly honor you. You know I’m good for it.”

[codeswitchcraft]

"I'll await my substitute offering, then," the goddess says. "And at some point soon you and I will need to spend time together in Sio and Laina's room, so I can explain what is going on to you—and how I could convert the files for Siobhan. But since you're likely to remain outside longer—"

The white light fades and Siobhan herself says, "She's given me back the driver's seat of the wagon."