Chapter Text
Main theme: Let You Down by Dawid Podsiadlo
Chapter Theme: Clair de Lune from the New Danganronpa V3 White soundtrack
Once more, the first thing that Reese noticed was the light.
And once more, it hurt.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force the intrusive light, but like before, it didn't work. She let out a soft, exhausted groan and forced herself to confront the threat facing her.
She opened her eyes.
The light blinded her for a moment, but her pupils dilated and allowed her to make out the details of the room around her. It was small, with walls and a ceiling as white as the bed she was laying in. A thin metal frame held up the soft mattress and quilt, and a long patch of metal covered up the rough metal implants in her shoulder that had now been sealed up. Her metal limb was gone. A blood bag and an IV drip were connected to her one remaining arm. She jostled the quilt to look underneath. Her body was covered in bandages.
But she was still alive.
She was still alive...
While others were not.
Reese sighed. She needed to get out of this bed and find something to occupy her mind before the inevitable survivor's guilt hit her like a flood. She tried to get up from her place, but someone ran in and forced her down-
Bad man horrible man smiling touching blood everywhere on him on her get off get off get it off
Reese let out a scream as she thrashed about in place, the nurse moving herself back to protect herself as she scratched her only good arm in the air and tugged at the wires connected to her wrist and-
A hand pressed down on her chest. Another took hold of her wrist.
"Miss Chloris, stop!"
She didn't, her panic only increasing as she tried to free herself from the oppressive grip that held her like a vice, looking up to the horrid terrible evil stop it stop it stop it man holding her down and-
A helmeted visage greeted her, white and gold and blue. Four arms connected to an armoured body.
"A... Apollo?"
He nodded.
At the side of the room, the pretty girl with rosy hair, honey-gold skin, and heterochromatic eyes peered into the room and grasped the doorframe. Grey-blue and silver eyes stared at her, deeply into her. The nurse at the side of the bed stepped forward and readjusted the tubes connected to her arm, pushing them back into place.
Reese began to calm down. Her body began to go limp and lax. All the fight in her body escaped her as Apollo let go of her arm, letting it fall onto the bed beneath her as her chest heaved and took in breath after breath. She suddenly felt light, shallow, like a leaf ready to be blown away in the wind. She looked up to Apollo and blinked.
"I'm... back...?"
"In Jewel, yes."
She took in a breath. Apollo reached out a hand to calm her, but balled and retracted it. He must've seen her reaction to the nurse trying to hold her down and decided against it. Safer that way, really.
"It's good to see you again, Miss Chloris," Apollo told her. Jewel was a small community, but it was also tightly knit. Everyone knew everyone, so it didn't surprise Reese that Apollo knew who she was.
She shot him a weary smile, "Yeah... you too..." she paused for a few moments before asking, "Do you... always greet people in the hospital?"
"Not always, but events in the last few months have made it a requirement of the job."
Reese hummed in understanding. Gods above, her throat was raw. How long had she been out for? She felt shallow, like she had been hollowed out. Her body was thin and frail. Numbness covered her like a blanket. It was like thousands of pins and needles had slithered into her skin and shred her nerves into a million pieces.
She let her head hit the pillow beneath her, focusing her eyes on the nurse attending to her one remaining arm. Nurse Penrose, her name was. Good woman, she was. Reese remembered going to her when she had scraped her knee skating with DJ that one time. To see that she had made it through the Ascendant Court's attack on the entire world was a relief, to say the least-
She had survived.
But who else had?
"My parents..." Reese rasped out as she leant her head upwards. Her body was sweaty underneath the quilt covering her. She continued, "Where are... where are they...?"
"..."
"...A... Apollo?"
"..."
"...Where are they?"
"...Reese," Apollo began, his voice heavy with loss, "I'm sorry but they... they didn't make it."
…No.
No...
Reese felt her head fall back into her pillow as she stared at the ceiling. She wished that she could cry, but she had long since run out of tears to shed.
She was just so tired, and her body now felt like lead.
Her home was perfectly intact.
The Chloris family household - squared away right in the centre of the town - had been one of the few structures in Jewel that hadn't been damaged in any sort of way. Sure, there were other homes that hadn't been hit by mortar shells and artillery fire, but even they had been hit with superficial damage, like shattered windows or a broken door or even scrapes across the paint and bricks.
The house that she once called home was the exact opposite. No windows were cracked, no doors were chipped, not even a mark on the walls. It was as sound as the day that she had left half a year ago.
It was haunting to see, a display of human craftsmanship, an artwork to the world that had come before, standing tall in stark contrast to the broken shells around it. It was so unreal, like someone had framed a painting from a gallery about the follies of war and superimposed it onto reality.
Or maybe the universe really did hate her.
She turned the key in the door and stepped inside. It was cold within the old home. The heating hadn't been put on for a long time. She pressed a switch on the wall next to the door and the lights flickered on. The power was still working, it seemed.
She walked through the house, not bothering to close the door behind her. Into the living room. A pair of sofas around a glass table covered with engineering magazines. A dull fireplace. A maroon and cream rug underneath her feet.
Into the kitchen and dining room. White walls, brown cupboards, and a marble counter. An empty wooden table surrounded by four chairs. A sink filled with cold dirty water. Clean plates on the draining board. An empty mug stained by dried coffee on the side. A tiled floor.
Up the carpeted stairs. Pass by the bathroom and parent's room. The sound on an old grandfather clock still ticking. She looked inside to see a cleanly made double bed. Folded towels next to a bag. They must've been preparing to take them out to a medical centre or something like that before they got called out.
Apollo told her that her parents had, like so many others in the town, been conscripted into the defence of Jewel by the Golden Sun militia, that they had both died on the frontlines against the Grimm, that they had died together, and in a relatively painless fashion.
She could tell when he was telling the truth. It was in his face, the way he talked and moved. He had been telling the truth about her parents, he had been telling the truth about how they died, and he had been telling the truth about how they had died together.
But about them dying painlessly...
"Did they die in pain?"
"No."
Liar.
She opened the door to her bedroom and stepped inside, turning on the light
Dark blue walls with green patterns and frames like tattoos covering them. White wooden frames around the corners, bottoms and tops of the walls. Painted wooden shelved filled with mementos of her travels with her family. She ran her hand over the glass covering them and observed her trophies. An old plaster that was never used. A lump of coal that she had found on a beach. Another rock that she had used to kill her first Grimm. A torn bandana that she once wore.
She walked further into the room. Parts of a skateboard laid in her room. Nails and screws and a stray wheel on her desk. A rung of skateboards attached to the wall. A lazily stacked pile of books in the corner. A dark purple bed with a blue pillow and quilt. She looked up to the ceiling and found the old shapes of stars shining through the cuts in the shade of her room's light.
She collapsed onto her bed and sat absolutely still. The room was exactly the same as she had left it. Her parents hadn't touched anything at all in it. They'd left her room undisturbed.
She didn't know whether to be happy or sad about it.
This was her home. This was her room. It was perfectly intact, unbroken, and as idyllically perfect as she had imagined it in her dreams on the long journey back home. She should be happy to be back.
She should be.
But she wasn't.
This was her house, but it wasn't her home. Nothing was, nowhere was. Everything about the room that she sat in suddenly felt unreal, like she was in a dream. Everything in this room just felt so meaningless, as if they just existed for existence's sake. The mementos in her cupboards were menagerie of objects that once held meaning to her, but now they seem so silly and pointless. The skateboards on the walls felt childish, so far removed from the woman that she was now, and the books just seemed like wastes of paper. Even the silly little light above her felt infantile in its childlike wonder.
Everything in this room had lost all meaning to her. It was a stab to her heart, a reminder of her sudden transformation from child to adult.
Because that was what she was, now. An adult.
When the Second Great War began six months ago, she had been only seventeen years old. A child filled with innocence. She had left this home and this town and this life with nothing but dreams and a vague idea of what the hell she wanted to do with her life when she grew up...
But then, the war had begun, and she had been thrown into the front. She had been dropped into the worst conflict in all of Remnant's history, and now that innocence had been lost, wiped away like a stain on glass. All she had left now was sour bitterness and melancholy, and now...
Now she had no idea what she was supposed to do.
What was she supposed to do with her life now? What was she supposed to accomplish? She had nothing left, no steam in her body, and no dreams of what's to come after this war, if it ever truly would end.
Her life before the war had been short and sweet, but now it tasted like ash in the mouth. Now she knew nothing but the war.
Was this what everyone across Remnant was facing? Was this the dilemma of all young people across the entire world faced?
Older folk wouldn't understand it. Not when they had families and jobs and lives to return home to once all of this was over, but for the people like her - the young and the soft and the new with no memories beyond the horror and the violence, with only the trauma and the sickness and the vague memories of nebulous, uncertain ambitions and future prospects...
What were they all supposed to do now?
They were directionless, purposeless...
Lost.
Reese choked back a laugh, "We are the lost generation..."
…
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…
"R-Reese?"
She tilted her head up to see that someone had followed her inside this place that she once knew as her home. The pretty girl with honey skin and rosy hair in a short ponytail and grey-blue and silver eyes. She was dressed in a pair of loose jeans and an unzipped red jumper with a black hood. A red and black beanie covered the top of her head, and a loose black scarf was slung around her neck. Underneath her jumper was a black shirt one size too big for her, a cute little bunny emblazoned on it.
Gods, she was as young as she was, and from the looks of it she was just as scarred. Maybe not physically, but definitely mentally, emotionally.
They were both broken people in a broken world.
Reese's voice was still raspy, but she was able to get out, "Who are... you?"
The girl hesitated for a second, before going, "I... I'm May... May Zedong," gods, she had such a pretty voice, "I just... wanted to check up on you."
"...Did Apollo send you?"
"...N-No."
"Liar."
The girl's head reeled back in a slight fright for a second, and Reese instantly felt bad. She sighed and turned her head to the side and let the girl - 'May Zedong' - walk into the room, slowly sitting herself down on the bed next to her as the two women fell into an uncomfortable silence.
"...What's the point of all this?" Reese finally asked no one in particular, earning May's attention as she looked up to the ceiling above her, "This war, why are we fighting it? Why...?"
"...I don't know," May quietly spoke, "I wish I knew, but... I don't."
"...Yeah..."
It was then that Reese finally noticed the photo on her desk. She should've seen it earlier, it was always there. She'd just never noted it in her mind. Getting up from her bed, she approached the desk and carefully picked up the photo with her one remaining arm, tilting it slightly so that she could look into the frame.
It was her, smiling and cheerful and with both arms around the two people at her sides. At her left was her mother, ginger haired and teal eyed and with a cocky smile about her. To her right was her father, hair a bright green shade and eyes a shining blue, his face much more timid and calm.
They had taken this photo on the day that she had left for Haven, for Mistral. She was wrong, they had come into the room. They had placed the photo there for her.
…
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Reese dropped the photo as her hand began to tremble.
"I can't stay here..."
The tears finally began to flow.
"I... can't stay here..."
The manor and farming estate known as the Second Arcadia was suddenly so much more inviting - so much more comforting - than her home could ever be. That kind girl, May, had allowed her to bunk in her room in the manor whilst she recovered. Reese was surprised that the girl had a room in the Arc's family manor, but when she had asked about it, May had simply said that it was a complicated affair.
And besides, others had been staying in the estate as well.
When the Surge ended three months ago, the Arc family had opened the doors of their estate open to the hundreds of refugees that had come flooding into the town for safety, as well as those in the town itself that had lost their homes in the conflict. They had provided sanctuary to those that wanted it, and granted salvation to those that needed it.
And though the numbers that had once occupied the old home had dwindled, that simple circumstance hadn't changed.
A tent city had formed around the manor, itself covered by new stone and mortar in brickwork and patches. Multicoloured tents and shacks had formed rows and columns in the garden fields as people in rags and cloth travelled from improv home to home, moving between the innards of the open door manor to the ramshackle village that had formed in its shadow.
When she walked past the grounds - past the dilapidated camps and the makeshift stands and the pitying stares of those who had lost just as much as her - and into the manor halls, she could see the various old rugs and carpets that had been scattered across the grounds, the old pictures and decorations removed from the walls, the floors worn out with fresh misuse. It was so much different from the scant few memories she held of the few times she had been invited into the manor by Jaune and his sisters (and even they seemed distant and alien now, lost in the annals of time and innocence), the plush walls bare, the chandelier overhead missing, taken away to be melted down for glass.
A friendly face, sharp yet welcoming, greeted her at the door, "Reese?" Viola Arc began, dropping the towels in her arms to hug her, "Oh god, Reese, I am..." she paused, realising that Reese was shaking in her grasp, and let her go, allowing her to calm down before noticing the stump where her left arm used to be and going, "Oh Reese, I am... I'm so sorry."
"...I know," was all that Reese could manage to say. Internally, she wanted to ask a million different questions: where did her parents die? Did she see it? Are Jaune and DJ okay? Why was she feeling sorry when she had nothing to do with everything that Reese had lost?
But instead, she had no energy within her to say anything. None at all.
May grabbed her hand and began to lead her forward. Reese shivered at the touch and clenched her fingers around her smooth, yet calloused grip. May and Viola exchanged some words as the former explained the situation to the latter. Viola looked to the side and called upon one of her sisters, but Reese didn't recognise her. She had the traditional blonde hair and blue eyes that marked Jaune's current generation of siblings, but her hair was long and her teeth were sharp, and the dress that she wore looked like it was made of rags rather than any traditional cloth.
"Sara," Viola began to the small girl. 'Sara'? That was her name? Jaune didn't have any sisters named Sara? At least not as far as she knew, "Could you get Reese some fresh clothes, please? I think we have a fresh pair her size in the kitchen."
"Okay!" the girl gave a clumsy salute as she began to tumble along to a nearby door, only to be- "Ah, not again!" -Be tackled by the twins Jackie and Jill, the two of them holding braids and irons in their hands and giggling about giving her a cute ponytail, only for the girl in question-
What the...
-To suddenly twirl herself around them, all without hurting the two or even laying a finger on them, summersault into the air and land on her feet with the grace of a butterfly, all with her eyes suddenly crimson and her face suddenly stony and sharp.
"I still do not like that," the girl's voice, despite her age, seemed to drop an octave or two as she walked off through the door, all the while Jackie and Jill, instead of being vexed by the girl suddenly dodging their advances in the realm of fashion, simply giggled happily at her actions and followed her through the door, all with a spring in their steps as they did.
Reese shot May and Viola a glance, confused at the sight before her.
"Oh, that's Sara," Viola began, "Rui-Arc Sara," she saw Reese's face grow more perplexed, "She was adopted into the family not too long ago, a few weeks after the Ascendant Court invaded."
"...And the..."
"It's not my place to say."
"...Ah," was all that Reese could say, before she allowed herself to be pulled up the once grandiose stairs by May, right into Jaune's old room.
It was painfully familiar to Reese, having spent time hanging out with Jaune in here back during their days in Jewel together. It had been shared by Jaune and Viola - two siblings that had been closer with each other than even the twins - and it showed. One half of the room was painted with white and orange walls, with a silver-framed bed and a space where a set of weights used to sit. The other side had dark blue walls with white outlines, and held a bed with a wooden frame and a scattered collection of magazines and comics on the ground. Right in the centre of the room, in the space of the blue and orange carpet beneath the window, was an old table with a small TV balanced atop it with a gaming console, a pair of controllers, and a small stack of video game boxes, sitting around it.
But there wasn't much else that made the room recognisable. The gold and cream sheets that once covered the beds were gone, replaced with naked quilt and pillows that didn't look particularly comfortable. Much of what had given the room its split personality was missing, leaving it suspiciously bare as Reese stepped over the sparse clothes that had been scattered over the ground.
"It's quite...a change from what... from what I knew," Reese sighed out as she gave the room a wide look before sitting down, fidgeting in place.
May just nodded, "Yeah..."
She let out a mirthless chuckle.
"Jaune's going to hate it when he comes back..."
…
What?
Reese stopped.
Her body went still.
Her mind froze as her eyes slowly and carefully turned to look at May, her hands balled into fists as she looked at the woman beside her with wide eyes and an open mouth.
"He's... he's alive?"
May blinked, and looked at her, "Y-You... knew him?"
"Answer the question," she rasped.
"...Yeah. He's alive," May finally said after a moment's pause, "And I think... I think he's the reason that I'm alive as well. Him and his friends as well, before they all returned to Beacon... back in Vale."
Reese was fairly certain that he was the reason that they were all alive, but she didn't say it. She had one other question in mind.
"And... and DJ? Is he... is he alive? Is he alright?"
May blinked again, "...Who?"
Reese's heart clenched. Her fingers became clammy. Her breathing quickened its pace.
"D... DJ? Techion? Big bulky guy. Red body. Red visor. Orange luminescent patterns," her speech quickened, "Had a Headmaster semblance that allowed him to pick up and manipulate radio signals. Had blue rings at the side of his head and glowed whenever he picked up a signal or frequency or whatever."
May paused, looked up to the ceiling in thought. The silence seemed to stretch on forever and ever and it made Reese want to scream out shake her and demand that she tell her or-
"I... I think Jaune was talking to someone like that... yeah, he was. I remember him from then and... and a bit earlier."
"...So he's fine?"
May nodded, "Yeah... I think he is."
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"Oh thank God."
Reese collapsed her head into her hands, and began to weep.
"Oh thank God..."
She welcomed the hand that May put on her shoulder. It was a gentle touch (and Reese found herself longing for it).
A long time (or at least, it felt like it) passed after that, and Reese was soon left to her own thoughts. Her tears (she didn't know that she had any left in her) of relief were all dried up, her cheeks were slowly losing their red flush, and her breathing had slowed to a calm rhythm.
She was alone in the room, left to herself.
Actually, no she wasn't. When the strange girl that was Rui-Arc Sara brought them her new clothes - a simple white shirt and black trousers, black socks, and a grey pair of undergarments - she hadn't really left. At least, not as far as she knew. Sara had closed the door behind her when May walked out as well, but she could still feel her eyes on her, watching her from some hidden corner of the room, or through some random hole in the wall, or just somewhere at all. She didn't know where, and no matter how much she looked around the room, she couldn't spot anyone at all.
It was calming, yet unsettling, and it seemed to promise pain unto her if she dared try anything against the residents of the manor, temporary or not.
The Arc family had a resident guardian angel now. Lucky for them.
…
Reese bit the inside of her cheek.
The relief that Jaune and DJ were alive and well had drained from her, the brief flash of joy and happiness of their survival giving way to a harsh bitterness.
Her family had died. Her parents were dead. Her team was dead. Her crush, Arslan, was dead. Her friends were dead. Almost everyone that she had ever cared about was dead and gone, leaving her as the sole survivor and the one to wade through all the mud and muck of the world and left to fend for herself, and for what? To return to an empty home and an empty life, with nothing left for her to fight for? Nothing at all?
But Jaune...? Jaune had his friends, had his family, had his home, had it all.
And he still chose to go back to Vale. He chose to leave it all behind.
And for what? To fight a hopeless, bitter war, all for a world that seemed to want nothing more than to kill them all?
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair at all. Why did he get to keep everything while she lost it all? Why did he get to have a home and a family and everyone that he cared about whilst everyone around her just kept dying and dying and dying?
Why? Why did he get to keep it all when she lost everything?
It didn't make sense.
It didn't make any sense at all...
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"It never does. Life is cruel and unpredictable like that. All we can do is take the punches as best we can, and keep going strong. We keep moving forward.
"Because sometimes, that's all that we can do."
…Had she been talking out loud?
The voice of the young girl did not answer.
Saphron and Terra got out of Argus, with their little baby Adrien as well.
She was so happy for them.
No, really, she was. They were a good couple, and they deserved to escape the hellhole that became of Argus and northern Anima.
But at the same time… the relief that she felt in her stomach was mixed with that suddenly familiar well of bitterness, of anger at them making it through, seemingly no worse for wear, than her. They lost their home, but they had each other, at least. They had their family.
Reese couldn't say the same.
It hurt to walk, with all the ulcers and warts and scabs that covered the soles of her feet from all the lax of care that she had given them during her three month trek across the continent, but she waded through it to leave the bedroom above, go down the stairs, and sit herself in one of the messy rooms – now threadbare and plundered for supplies – where Saphron was feeding Adrien his lunch of baby food in leu of any actual food in the house, and Terra was keeping watch over them.
They didn't say anything to her, and she didn't say anything to them for a long while before going, "How did you guys get out of Argus?"
Saphron blinked in surprise, and Terra looked confused, "Eh?"
Reese realised their confusion, and moved to clarify, "Er, Jaune talked to me about you guys, back in the day... about how you two - you three - were living in Vale, and I... yeah."
Saphron paused, then gaped, "So you're Reese... I remember Jaune showing us a picture of you a year ago..." she gave her a solemn smile, "He spoke a lot about you..."
Reese rose an eyebrow, "Anything that I should be worried about...?"
"Hm? Oh, all of it was good, I promise."
"Ah..." Reese nodded in turn, letting the assurance settle for a moment before restating her question, "So... how did you get out of Argus...?"
Saphron hummed, a sense of discomfort coming over her. It was Terra instead who answered with, "We escaped the city before it came under attack... travelled for weeks before getting picked up by a Bullhead pilot on their way to Jewel," she let out a humourless chuckle, "Got here just in time to get thrown onto the frontlines of the Surge, defending the town and all that. It's... it's honestly amazing that we were able to survive as long as we did."
"...Yeah," Reese quietly groused as she turned her gaze to the floor beneath them, "It is..."
That ugly feeling that had been building inside of her was back, growing bigger and stronger with each passing moment. Reese felt her eyelid twitch for a second before she let out a sigh, oblivious to the growing tensity in the room.
They had their families. She didn't. They had their friends. She didn't. They had their lovers. She didn't. They survived with no missing limbs or blood or scars to boot. She didn't.
They were able to keep everything, and she lost it all...
It was so unfair.
What had she done to deserve all of this... bullshit? What had she done to spite the universe so much that it decided to treat her like its own personal plaything, a toy to bend until it broke? Why did she have to suffer whilst others got off scot-free?
It didn't make sense, and she hated it, despised it even.
She felt her hands clench into fists. They shook. Next to her, Saphron and Terra subtly scooted away.
A hand fell upon her shoulder, soft yet calloused. This time, she didn't shiver away from the touch.
Her head tilted up. May, the pretty girl. She sat down next to her and gave her a comforting look. She revelled in it.
"Are you... okay?" she asked hesitantly. Her voice was soothing, like an angel's melody.
After a long pause, she gave an answer.
"I'm fine."
She wasn't fine.
…
She needed to punch something.
As it turned out, boxing an old car was not as cathartic as she had hoped for. Especially with just one arm.
Her knuckles were sore and swollen as she kept punching the old burnt-out car beside the estate, lost in a swale of reeds and grass, with weeds and roots growing within its old components, but still she kept hitting it. Still, she kept trying to vent the anger and the rage that was building and building and building deep inside of her.
But it wasn't working. It was still there, and it kept growing and growing like a hungry worm.
So she kept hitting it. She kept punching it and punching it and punching it and-
The memories of all the people she had lost began to replay in her head.
Scarlet, Sun, Neptune... Backlash, Ash, Nera, Deluge... Nadir, Bolin... her mother... her father...
Arslan...
Her rage boiled over. She let out a scream, a guttural bellow from the deepest part of her heart, made scratchy and raspy by the poor quality and soreness of her throat and vocal cords, and threw one last punch into the blackened metal husk beneath her.
It did not buckle. It did not bend. The only marker of her attack on it was a small bump and a flicker of blood. Meanwhile her knuckles were smarting, bloody, and quite possibly broken, but she pushed as much of her aura into her fingers as she could to heal them, or at least patch up the bone (shame she couldn't use it to grow a whole new arm).
The pain wasn't as soothing as she had hoped it was. Go figure.
She let out a shaky breath, and moved to find a pond somewhere to wipe off the blood and rust before deciding against it. The water in those ponds probably contained a million different microbes and so on that could give her another million different diseases. Best to just find a sink somewhere and run it under the tab.
She walked away, back to the manor, back to the town, back to anywhere with running water, each step with an uncomfortable shake to them.
The anger was still there.
The anger, the sorrow, the guilt... it was all there, coiling around her heart in a triad of misery threatening to pull her down into hell itself. It was a blackened, ugly thing, like a parasite that tried to suck away everything that she was and replace it with this other her, vengeful and jealous and envious, and all she wanted to do right now was scream at the world, of the injustice done to her, of what she had to sacrifice, of what she had to lose, to fight in a war that didn't make sense to her, of anything and everything...
And yet, somehow, she knew that it wouldn't be enough.
It would never be enough.
"My god, Reese... what- what have you done to your hand?"
Reese instantly recognised that cute stutter and turned her head to the side, spotting May approaching her with a concerned expression across her beautiful face. Her miasmic thoughts drained away as she looked around, recognising the walls of the Arc manor, recognising the clear night sky above them. How long had she been walking? Had she been that lost in her own mind that she had completely failed to notice where she was going?
May held her arm as she pulled her into the manor through the backdoor, leading her into the kitchen and turning on the sink tap to put her hand under, working to wash away the blood and flecks of rust from her knuckles as gently and thoroughly as she could.
Reese blushed.
She was really pretty.
Reese couldn't stop looking at her.
It was night-time, and she and May were resting in their beds. The room was almost completely dark, with the moonlight shining through the windows giving her some clarity in the murky world. The night sky through the window was clear and pricked by starlight, like needles through a paper sheet. The shattered moon hung like a chandelier, a decorative art piece to hang up on the wall. The walls of the room around her were suddenly darker, more oppressive than ever before.
This wasn't her home.
She wasn't sure why she had been granted a room to share instead of being sent down to camp with all the others. Maybe it was because she knew Jaune back in the day, and they had decided to privilege her because of it. Heh. She got a real bedroom and an actual bed for the first time in three months because of pseudo-family connections. Score one for nepotism.
Still though, she was thankful. She got to share a room with May.
Even in the murky darkness of the night, she was an ethereal sight. Delicate skin, rosy hair, soft parted lips, an angel's sigh... she was beautiful.
Reese wanted to touch her.
Her hands balled into fists and began to shake. Her eyes darted from May to herself over and over again. Every nerve in her body was at war with itself.
She shouldn't do this.
This was wrong. This was wrong this was wrong this was wrong.
Horrible. Horrid. Amoral.
The people she once knew would be disgusted by what she was about to do.
…
But they weren't here.
They weren't here.
Screw them, and screw this. She was owed this.
She was owed this by all of them.
Just one touch.
Just... one...
With her one arm, she quietly pulled off the quilt covering her and got up from the bed. As silent as a mouse, she pressed her bare feet against the ground and began to slowly walk forward across the floor. The gap between her bed and May's was barely a few steps, yet it felt like an eternity to cross.
One step. Her arm twitched.
Two steps. Her breathing hitched up a notch.
Three steps. Stop. Wait. Listen. Not a peep from her. Only the melodic pace of her breathing. Continue.
Four steps. Wonder. Reconsider. Think about what she was about to do. Disregard in her dreamlike mind, tired and needy.
Five steps.
She arrived.
Soft hair. Smooth lips. Honeylike skin. Fragile features. Warm breasts and hips. A comforting aura. An hourglass figure. All locked behind a quilt.
She pulled it off, and was hypnotised by the sight before her.
All of May's body, all her beauty, all her magnificence.
All just for her. Reese clambered onto the bed and over May. It was awkward to do so with only one arm, but she managed it anyway.
May's skin looked so delicate, so deliciously delightful. A delicacy all on itself. Her lips looked so plush, so kissable.
Reese's head dipped down and-
"What are you doing?"
May's eyes were open. Grey-blue and silver stared into teal through the darkness. The silver seemed to glow. When had she woken up?
"...Let me have this," Reese said as her head began to lower once more, but a hand pressed against the top of her chest and stopped her.
"Reese, get off me," May spoke with a sharpness, with a confidence, that she hadn't heard in her before. She suddenly felt cold.
"Please," Reese readjusted herself, pushing her one good hand onto May's breast-
"Get off me!"
A shove. A tumble. Reese hit the floor hard and all the breath was knocked out of her. She didn't even get the chance to regain her equilibrium before May was atop her, holding her down by the one arm and chest and pinning her to the floor.
"Reese-"
"Get off of me!"
The two of them began to wrestle on the ground, May keeping the woman pinned down onto the carpeted ground and Reese trying to kick at her and free her arm from her grasp. Any worming desires that had once made their way into her had now been discarded and forgotten. Now the frothing anger and boiling rage was back and angry, and now, suddenly, all she needed to do was free herself and hit something and hit her and scream and take her anger out onto-
A long, thin pair of blades, connected to short, frail limbs, wrapped themselves around her throat. Reese's eyes widened as a small head loomed over her, the crimson eyes held within almost glowing in the darkness.
"Think very carefully about about your next move."
Rui-Arc Sara's voice was as sharp as the blades at her throat. Reese felt her body go limp under the threat, losing the will to keep fighting as May slowly moved her down and forced her into a position where she couldn't fight back anymore.
It was only when the blades slowly left her throat that she was allowed to breathe.
The silence between the three of them was deafening, but May was quick to break through it by asking, "Reese... what was that just now...? What were you trying to do?"
She knew. She just wanted to hear it from her.
And it was here that Reese finally became aware of what she had just tried to do.
She began to cry.
"...Let me have this."
"Wha-"
"Just let me have this!"
Reese began to try and wrestle herself out of May's hold as her body became hot and red with blinding anger and maddening grief. Her legs kicked against the ground, her arm balled into a fist and trying to free itself from May's grip, her head rocking across the floor as wet tears streaked down her red cheeked face. The crimson eyed Sara had to push her hands down onto Reese's shoulders just to keep her still, and even then she was still violently kicking around on the ground.
Everything inside of her came out in a torrent.
"Why won't you let me have this?! Please! Am I not good enough for you May!? Is that it!? I'm not good enough for you!?"
"Reese, calm down-"
"I'm not good enough for you, am I?! I'm not good enough for you, I'm not good enough for Arslan, I'm not good enough for anyone! Is that why they left me?! Is that why they all died, or does the universe just hate me that much?!"
"Reese-"
"Everyone I loved is dead, May! DEAD! I have no one left for me, no one! The woman I loved is dead, my parents are dead, everyone is either dead or fucked off, AND I'M STILL FUCKING HERE!"
"Reese!"
"So why does everyone else get to keep their families!? Why does everyone else get to keep their happiness?! Why does everyone get to keep their friends and families and homes and lovers and loved ones and get to stay happy and safe while I'm left with shit!? I'm left with nothing! Everything has been taken from me because of a war that doesn't even make sense, and everyone else gets to stay happy!"
"R-Reese..."
"Why does everyone around me keep dying!? Why does everyone keep leaving me!? Why can't I just be happy...!?"
Reese began to choke on her own tears.
"W-Why do people ke-keep leaving me..."
She sobbed.
"WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP LEAVING ME!?"
As soon as she had stopped screaming, all the fight left her in an instant. Her body went lax and her arm and legs went limp against the floor, her head rolling to the side as the hot tears leaked from her eyes, rolled messily down her face and faded into the carpet beneath them. Her breathing became ragged and worn, uneven and messy. Snot dribbled down her nose as she sucked in deep heaves of air.
"I just... I just want... I just want..."
She finally began to calm herself down as her thoughts stopped racing.
"...Oh god... I just want it to stop... I just want it to end..."
Reese could do nothing but sob on the ground. She wanted to do nothing but sob on the ground. She wanted to fade away and lose herself in the world, lose herself to the universe, become nothing and nothingness and fade away into the darkness, reunited with the ones that she had loved and lost.
She just wanted wanted the pain to end.
Please... just let the pain end.
…
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…
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…
"I lost everything too."
Reese blinked, the tears in her eyes blurring her vision as she looked up to see May staring down at her, a solemn expression across her face.
"When I was younger, I lost my mother before my father abandoned me... years later, I got picked up by a group of boys that I would consider both my team and family, but... I lost them too."
She sighed.
"I never had a home, and every family that I had left me..." she said with a deep sadness to her, and from the side, Sara seemed to share that same expression as her eyes faded back to blue, "Until now, that is."
Reese looked up at her.
"We can't change the past, and we can't bring back the people that we lost... but maybe... maybe we can find a new family... here. With them. With us."
May gave her a kind look.
"They've already accepted me... and they've already accepted Sara... they'll accept you as well."
…
Reese broke down into tears once more, smothered by her own heat and shame, and May enveloped her into her arms.
She was so tired.
She wanted peace.
She just wanted some peace...
"She tried to- oh, when I get my hands on her, I'll-"
"Viola, don't," May said to the second eldest Arc sibling, "Please."
She and Viola were gathered in the Arc family manor kitchen, alongside Apollo and the rest of the Arc siblings, including Adrien and Sara. Reese wasn't with them. She was in the room above, looked over by two of Apollo's men by the names of Sara Marin (different Sara) and Narek Zoran.
(She had asked him as to why she needed the guards.
"After what happened last night? Better safe than sorry."
She couldn't deny that point. Not entirely, at least.)
"She tried to assault you," Viola shot back, "She tried to- fuck, I can't even say it," she rubbed her forehead and let out a growl, "She's already tried it once, what's stopping her from doing it again?"
"She won't," May went, a wave of fresh confidence filling her as she spoke, "I know it."
"Do you? Do you really?" Viola let out a groan of annoyance as she folded her arms together and shot May a narrowed glare, "Why are you so insistent on this, May? Is this like a crush thing, or-"
"No," May shook her head, "Even if I liked girls, which I don't, I wouldn't... look, Reese doesn't need a lover right now. Not at this moment. She needs a friend."
"Like you? The friend that she treated so well before?" Viola's voice was laced with sarcasm.
In an instant, all of the confidence in May left her, and she returned to her usual stutter, "I-I mean... maybe..."
"Viola's right," to the side, Saphron spoke as Terra held baby Adrien in her hands, "She tried to hurt you, and she tried to touch you. I'm not exactly keen to trust her with-"
"She won't hurt her again."
Everyone blinked, and looked down at Sara as she all looked up at them innocently. Even Jackie and Jill had stopped braiding her hair as they stared at her, Rouge tilting her head to the side, her hearing aid sticking out in her ear, and Doris and Jenna looked away from their book to look at her.
Terra spoke up, "We can't be certain about-"
"She won't."
Viola shot her a raised eyebrow, "And how do you know that?"
Sara shrugged, "I just do."
"...Right," Viola let out another groan before she pointed to May with a stern expression, "I still don't trust her, and she's not living here. I don't care if she was Jaune's old friend and if she's been through shit; we've all been through shit, and we've all lost people. That doesn't give her the excuse to try and fucking rape you."
"Viola, I don't think she knew what she was doing," May responded, "She's so clouded by her own grief, by her own loss... I-I don't think she was even aware of what... of what she was trying to do."
"And yet she still did it."
"Look, Reese isn't a bad woman, I can tell. What she is is frightened and confused, and that can make people irrational."
"Rapists tend to be by nature."
"She's not a rapist."
"What the fuck do you call that last night then?"
"A mistake... and an honest one on her part."
A long sigh escaped from Viola's lips as she leant her head back in frustration, "Why are you so insistent on trying to help her when she clearly doesn't deserve it?"
"L-Look, she's not a bad woman. I can tell. But she's a wounded girl who's mind is... is clouded. Murky by her own grief. She almost made a mistake, and we stopped her before she could go through with it. I don't-" she paused, "I don't think she was even going to go through with it. Not as far as we think she might of, at least."
"You can't know that."
"I know."
"So you admit it?"
May furrowed her brow. The confidence began to swell once more inside her, "I can't know everything for certain... but she's not lost, she just broken."
"And you think you can fix her?"
"I know we can."
She swapped out 'I' for 'We'.
Viola's eye twitched, and she looked to Apollo for guidance, "Thoughts?"
"I can't tell you anymore than what we're all thinking," Apollo mused diplomatically, "But our May's right about one thing: Ms. Chloris is broken. I don't need to be a certified psychiatrist to point out the mental strain that she's going through."
"You have experience?"
"Survivor's guilt, shellshock, clinical depression, I can go on," Apollo grunted, "I'm not just the leader of a Faunus house, but a militia and an entire town recovering from a war. I kind of have to have experience with these things."
"I-I can help her," May stuttered. Dammit, she didn't mean to do that, "I know I can. I can help her get... maybe not better, but maybe good enough to feel better."
"Ms. Zedong, she may never be 'Better'," Apollo cut in with, a frown underneath his helmet, "This isn't the aftermath of a Huntress mission gone awry, this is full on post-traumatic stress disorder. It's the same with all the other people camping around the manor outside, I'm surprised that half of them even have the strength to get out of their beds. You know why he have the guards outside patrolling the camp grounds? It isn't just for infiltrators. I've got half my staff keeping these guys on suicide watch, and we're still training up another batch of therapists and psychiatrists to replace the ones we lost in the last battle."
"...So... you're saying that it can't be done...?"
"No... I'm just saying that it will be difficult. Extremely so."
Viola shot him a narrowed glare, "Why are you taking her side in this?"
"You and I both know Ms. Chloris from back in the day, don't you? She was a kind girl, and I imagine she still is, even in this. I might not be able to forgive what she did, but that doesn't mean I can just forget about her."
"Hidden depths are just that, Apollo, hidden. Who the hell knows what's going on inside her head?"
"I know," Apollo added, "But I can't just forget the person that she was before."
"And I can't forget what she tried to do."
"You don't have to. I'm just saying... maybe we should give her a chance."
…
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…
"...If this was any other person..."
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…
Viola let out a groan.
"She's not staying here," she pointed to May, "I don't care what any of you say; if she can't control herself around you, then I'm not trusted her around my sisters, or anyone else," she looked down to Sara, "That includes you."
Sara smiled.
May didn't say anything. She just sent her a nod and shaky smile.
"...Do you really think you can, what? Help her? Make her feel better?"
"...I'll do my best."
To her credit, Viola sent her a smile of her own.
"I know you will."
What had she done?
What. Had. She. Done?
She was sick to her stomach, the knot of anger inside her replaced by the gnawing feeling of horror and guilt and shame. Her skin was red, her face wet with tears. Everything hurt. Phantom pains from her lost arm plagued her and made her want to itch them. She felt like she was about to puke.
What had she tried to do?
She felt unworthy of living, unworthy of existence. She had tried to do something monstrous, and this was her punishment.
Sickness.
Pain.
Loneliness.
Solitude.
Perhaps that was why the universe was punishing her. It had seen what she would soon do in her future and take everything away from her as her sentence. It was the only thing that made sense in her mind, the only thing that explained why everything and everyone had left her, had been taken from her, had died and been destroyed without any sense of meaning behind them.
It was the only thing that still kept her going. The only thing that kept her alive.
Maybe she was already dead. Maybe she was dead, and this was hell.
Maybe...
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Oh, what was the point anymore? Everyone was dead, nothing made sense anymore, and now she had just driven away the only person that still gave a damn about her, all because she couldn't fucking control her own disgusting desires. Her own home was uncomfortably alien to her, everyone that she had ever loved was dead, and now here she was, alone, at the end.
What was the point of still going on if there was nothing left to live for?
Her hand reached to her throat.
There was nothing left now, but to-
A hand clasped around her wrist. Reese looked up, and grey-blue and silver stared down at her.
May.
"Don't."
Her command was hypnotic, and she obeyed, letting her hand be guided down to her lap as May sat down beside her on the bed, the both of them looking down to the floor.
…
"We can't bring back the past... but maybe we can make a new future..."
May's words soaked themselves into Reese, and she burst into tears once more, her head falling into her hand as May clasped a hand around her shoulder and kept her company.
She'd lost everything... she'd lost everyone... and she'd done things... things that would haunt her until the end of her days...
There was nothing left for her. Nothing at all.
But maybe... in this place, in this home, with these people...
Maybe she could find something new...
And someone knew.
Reese Chloris was a broken, shattered woman...
But maybe, just maybe, she can be put back together.