Work Text:
Marie had never had a home. Not in the traditional sense, and perhaps barely even without it. What little she could remember of her parents amounted to the melodies of ivory keys and sweet lullabies whose words had already faded long before she took this deal. Home was narrow halls and the embrace of papa while he bounced her on his knee. It was pictures of strangers on the wall, and mama’s fingers ghosting them all with stories on her lips. It was food, and water, and she could only assume love, though some days it was harder to remember what that must have felt like.
The Heart beat and whispered - burned her ribs and itched at the skin remaining. It shrouded her in the malaise of indifference, in the despair of knowing things had been better once. In the anger of knowing who’d taken it.
Marie had never had a home, but at least she’d had others.
The children of Hildgard’s ‘Orphanage’ were, all of them, amazing and wonderful. They were survivors. They were uniquely equipped to reach out and push and punch and struggle and bite and yell and do all the things children should be allowed to do. They needed help, needed structure after losing everything (as she herself had) - and Marie had done-- she believed-- a decent job at providing some. They listened to her because she helped take care of them. Traveled out and found things that could be fixed, spoke cordially and wore the clothes well. Rommelgrad was a bombed out shell of a place, but it still had life.
The sun beat mercilessly upon the shriveled and dying grounds. Years ago Queen Nancy spilled enough blood to change the color of the soil in the gaps between cities. No-Man’s Land on the whole was the melting point of three entire kingdoms’ worth of refugees, all desperately trying to survive, but seldom did they ever turn upon one another. What would they even gain?
“Valentine, do you know this place…?” Marie asked. The manor was in sight. No children were resting under the apple tree, and it looked like someone had taken the rope from which a swing used to hang.
“I can’t say I have,” Valentine answered dutifully. A lie, but it didn’t matter.
“I lived here once. For some years, in fact.”
The double doors at the entrance were-- unblocked. Marie pushed through the one on the left, remembering how they’d moved furniture in front of the one on the right because it tended to come unlatched with enough wind. Most of the window-panes were still boarded up. Inside, the foyer spilled out into a two-tiered staircase, the old, smooth wood of the banisters curling up and out to the second floor. She half expected to see curious eyes wondering what she’d brought home - and for a moment, the Heart might have made it so. But there was no such thing.
Some of the art - useless as it was in their hands for anything but doodling on - had been slashed or punctured in places by bullet holes. A struggle had taken place, and Marie could feel the air of death, thick and heavy.
“I know it likely doesn’t interest you,” Marie said, ghosting up the stairs, fingers playing along the handrails. “But I also know you have no option but to listen.”
“So magnanimous,” Valentine praised sarcastically.
“Yes. It is,” she said, unbothered. “Altogether, there were forty of us, give or take. We shared the clothes and resources of this manor, abandoned as it was by some noble or another in their rush to find safety. The very dress I wear now came from these closets.”
Marie’s palms traced the rough wallpaper, peeling or full of air-bubbles as it was at times. Some uncommon shade of green for the area, and especially uncommon as all of No-Man’s Land continued to shrivel. Fleur-de-lis patterns and the graffiti of a dozen troublemakers marked the passage of time, some more faded than others. Down this hall, take a left. Two doors down… there.
The wooden door was barely open, the knob loose and rickety. It creaked, and the spring-loaded cushions of the sofa greeted her warmly. The couch, the cabinet, the pillows leaking down from their seams, the bundle of blankets that didn’t itch, all ready for a movie night
vanished.
There was no light coming from the TV, no static whispers. Marie did not need to turn to know Valentine had followed, silent as her footsteps might be. Marie’s were not. They plodded over the short carpet and traveled the short distance to the TV as she fiddled with the bent antennae and turned its dials. “We used to have a schedule. Every day, there was a new reason to get up. Leo and Luna liked nature documentaries, which came on every wednesday. Jacks loved magic shows, even if he had no hope of ever recreating a single trick. Forget whatever resources they might have needed, the footage itself was so poor that…”
It flickered to life, raised as perhaps only she could have managed. Or perhaps that was just the Heart trying to take some pride. A song Marie hadn’t heard in months blared out with perfect audio, no matter the artificial snow that marred the image. Annie: Dream Blazer of the Stars was still ongoing. In two months, the season would end. Marie raised a finger to one eye, even though she knew it was bone dry.
“...”
“You’re kidding me. You used to watch ‘Annie’?” Valentine asked.
“Is it really so absurd?” The Skullgirl turned her head, a combination of technicolor lights washing her profile in shadow just as the flames did. “Someone bravely fighting for what’s right, able to do the right thing even at the cost of their life?”
“Her stance on Skullgirls has always been pretty clear, though.”
“Yes. It has.” Marie agreed. “They always lose in the end.”
Valentine shook her head, so slightly that Marie might not have spotted it if the Heart didn’t whisper the discord of the woman’s soul directly into her ear. The nurse sat on the sofa opposite the TV, sensing they’d be taking a break. Marie sat closer than was advised by health professionals - though neither of them said anything about it. There wasn’t much use in trying to change the behaviors of the dead, and Marie had missed the magic of watching adventures that may as well have taken place in a different universe.
Twenty five minutes of misadventure, morals of love and responsibility, and a foreboding eyecatch detailing some inevitable encounter next episode, Marie rose, traveling to the closet in the same room.
“I would end up passing out often on that sofa,” she muttered. There weren’t many coats or pants or anything left here, for one reason or another, but the few that did still hang hid something important. “The girl I loved, she would stay up through the night watching adult entertainment - more mature cartoons with gore and the like, or dramas about investigations, or bittersweet anime re-broadcast from the Chess Kingdom. She would watch anything and everything, and use it all to tell the most amazing stories to me and the others. No one had a bigger heart than her, but in the end, the Medici bled it dry the same way they do everything else. Maimed and punished her for daring to do as Annie would have.”
With the barest slivers of light from the TV, she could make out the dark marker. It was small - so small that she had no idea if anyone else ever found it, but that had never been the point. When others caught fever or cold and they had no medicine to aid them - when someone fell to depression and the land’s curse took them into the Trinity’s embrace far too soon, Marie had wanted a way to keep the love in her heart immortal. This small thing, a dark and solemn heart with the letters ‘P+M’ in it the way they’d be carved into a tree, had been the best Marie could ever think of.
To this day, that mark had outlived both of them.
“... she was maimed,” Marie said solemnly. “For doing as I should have.”
Valentine’s shadow boxed in the light, as perhaps curiosity got the better of her. “How do you know she’s not still alive?”
“Because I did nothing to help her.” The Trinity punished the unjust and the selfish especially in time. Patricia hadn’t deserved the treatment at all, but Marie knew that she deserved everything that had happened since that day. The Heart, constant companion as it was, flared in support. It was the warmth her cold, dead body still needed.
Marie gestured for the woman to step aside and she did, turning off the TV before departing. Take a right, then a left. Down the hall, and…
Twilight poured in through the most open window of them all, an egress built into the far wall where someone could sit to watch. Ignoring the dilapidated section of the ceiling, the strange, tiled room had only three things in it. A small, ornate end-table, the phonograph and its collection of miscellaneous (sometimes scratched) records, and the black marks on the ground styled after feet that Percival had painted to teach others how to ballroom dance.
“I’ve seen the impossible done before.” Valentine offered quietly. “Giving up hope just because you think you saw the end… would Annie have given up like that?”
Marie searched, but not for long, pleased to find the desired record with no trouble at all. The Medici had apparently not seen fit to plunder their collection. “No, I doubt she would.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because,” Marie slid the record free from its sleeve, carefully replacing the one that had already been there. The needle was set into the groove, and the low buzz and clicking all records gave pre-empted the music itself. “Annie was the other girl. My role is to avenge her. To avenge them all.”
With both feet planted at one and two, Marie moved in time with the waltz, the phantom image of a fiery redhead with two left feet placing one hand at her hip while she placed one over the other girl’s shoulder. In the dust-filled air, dying light streaming through the space, it was easier to imagine her outline in the clutter. Marie hummed, unlike a lullaby, unlike a story, but full of something she liked to think was still love.
Marie had never had a home. At times, it felt as though she couldn’t feel love the same way others did - though whether it was an effect of the Heart or hardship, she couldn’t say. But at least she’d had people.
At least she’d known Patricia, and could do right by her name.
Marie had never had a home.
But she would make sure others got to keep their own.
“... Valentine.” Marie said, concluding her waltz. “I don’t care if you betray me. I don’t care what your plans are for the Heart, nor for Double. But I ask that you… wait. Until the Medici are no more.” She stared out at the horizon. In the direction of New Meridian, where slavers made their money and the leadership simply allowed it to happen. “This is my one and only request.”
“I see.” Valentine said quietly. “I’ll wait, then.”
For once, Marie had no idea if it was a lie or not. The discord between them was too harsh to possibly parse.
“...you’ve done a good thing, helping me.” Marie said, hoping it would help. “I’m grateful.”
“Am I dismissed?”
“Yes. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Stars filled the air. Cold leaked in through the cracks in the glass. Marie stared, and stared, and stared.
Soon… very soon… she’d find out if Patricia could forgive her or not.