[memshare] Sunrise's Request
May. 19th, 2024 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troublereductionCW: Mentions of blood
About three days after Sunrise came back from one of Chiaroscuro's many shadowlands carrying her own arm, and Velvet had to sew it back on for her (again), she asks to speak to you alone when you're both the only ones awake by the campfire. She rarely asks for anything, especially company, so you are more than willing to oblige her.
When you ask her what's up, she takes a long time to answer you—not unusual. In your experience, she doesn't often speak without collecting her thoughts first. Trying to figure out what she's thinking is also usually a challenge, because her grasp of body language is, at best, dubious. Right now, her hands are folded in her lap where she's sitting next to you, her shawl pulled over her shoulders. You wait patiently, poking at the fire with a stick to fill the space of this conversation.
It takes her a good half minute to say, "I talked to Ms. Velvet about my condition. I asked her if she knew anything about it."
"Yeah?" You have to admit, you're curious about the resident necromancer-adjacent's thoughts on Sunrise's…everything. "What'd she say?"
"She said...that all she has is conjecture." The way Sunrise speaks comes off more as repeating what was told to her, because the choice of words is not typical of her. "That since I can...think and feel beyond instinct, I am not something that was 'brought back from the dead'. I am 'a new life in a reused body'."
...Huh. When it's put that way, some things about Sunrise make a lot more sense. Like the way she still looks at the world with wonder, how every gift she's been given is safely kept in her allotted trunk, her wish to pet animals that would never let her do so. "And?" Because you know there's more to it than just that.
"This body..." One hand moves to gesture to herself. It's never 'my body' with her. Always 'this body'. "Still came from someone else. I am still undead, so I must still follow the 'rules' in some way. The undead linger because they have attachments to the world. So, she thinks I have a living anchor, somewhere." Though the way Sunrise says it, it seems she knows perfectly well who that is.
(You can privately confirm this. Once, you thought to check her fate, and to your surprise, you found she still had one. It was tied to someone else in the Loom of Fate, a knot so tight and twisted that you doubt even a Sidereal could unravel it, so she was still a part of it by proxy. Someone in the Convention on the Dead would be having a field day or fit if they knew.)
"And it ain't one of us," you point out, "So I'm guessin' they're still safe and sound somewhere?"
It takes a moment too long for her to answer. "...Yes. But..." Her hand drops back down to her lap. "Things that linger too long do not...stay themselves. Attachments lead to obsessions, obsessions lead to...the burning of everything else, for it." Sunrise tries to express a concept in a way she knows: fire, fuel, burning things away, like the Rising Smoke. "...It has been five years for me. That is already too long. Sometimes, I do not feel like myself."
You hate that you sort of know what she means, as much as you want to protest that five years is hardly any time at all for someone so young. Certainly much less than many things that haunt Creation. Every time her true nature shows and people understandably find it repulsive, things happen; the time Echo had to pull her out of the way of a blade before it took her head off like she was a doll, when she was transfixed with the patterns her blood made on the ground and Velvet had to drag her to safety, when she kept apologizing to you for a perceived failure you couldn't imagine. Alarming, worrying.
Perhaps this is why you have a bad feeling when she finally turns to look at you. Then, she says in the same quiet, gentle, almost dry tone she always has, "Mr. Day, if I am no longer myself and cannot come back, please exterminate me."
There are so many things wrong with this. 'Exterminate.' The way she so plainly speaks about this like she is saying the sun rises in the East and that water is wet. The assumption that the loss of self is inevitable. Where do you even start? "Missy, do you know what you're askin' me?"
"I am asking you to take appropriate measures in the event the worst happens."
"You're askin' me to kill you." It takes remarkable restraint that you haven't raised your voice yet.
"Is that not appropriate?" she responds with a tilt of her head, and it takes even greater restraint for you to not scream.
"That's...I don't wanna hurt you, missy," you admit instead. "Why are you askin' me?"
The lack of expression on Sunrise's face does not change. The only hint of doubt is in how she looks down to her hands in her lap, before she looks back up to you and answers, ever earnest, "Because I think you will regret it the least of all of us."
...
In the two years since you've known Sunrise, you've learnt to take whatever she says about regret seriously. It is a feeling so fundamentally tied to her being that she grasps it in a way few others can, even if she frequently can't explain it. You would know, because she did it to you before and you had to shut that door. This, however, is not something you ever expected.
"What makes you say that?" you finally venture, though you know you'll regret it.
"Mr. Radiant Voice and Ms. Echo...care too much about me. They will be forever changed if I ask them," she says, and you think she sounds almost ashamed. "And Ms. Velvet already carries so many regrets. She wishes for them to burn her to ashes. ...I cannot ask her." Sympathy, or maybe even pity. "So it is left to you, Mr. Day. I think you will not enjoy it, because you care about me. But it will not change you, nor will you let it harm you."
You want to protest this. That you truly don't want to hurt her, that she doesn't get to decide that it won't change you, that you have enough regrets as is and she surely knows that. You don't want this burden. But you look into her eyes and see only a purity of intention and a sincere plea, without a speck of judgment, even if she doesn't know how to express how she feels.
"Mr. Day, if.." Her voice trails off. Sunrise collects her words. It is the most words you've heard from her in a long time. "If there comes a time when I cannot fulfil her last wishes anymore, then there is no reason for me to stay. If I become the same as the other restless dead, I should be exterminated like them. I...do not want to stay, if I cannot be myself." Her gaze never leaves you the entire time. Her fingers curl in her skirt. "Please promise me, Mr. Day."
How unfair.
You love this strange girl. It's in her idiosyncrasies, strangeness and gentleness that you see a desire for serenity. How she keeps every little gift she's ever received like they're treasures; how she wants to feel a cat's fur beneath her cold and numb fingertips; how although you've never seen her laugh or cry, the small smiles from her are a sign of hope. It is what separates her from the restless dead. And for that reason, you wish only serenity for her, that she will be blessed with joy like every child deserves to experience in their life.
So you should say no. You shouldn't make this promise. It's not fair to either of you.
You—
"...I promise."
—understand that you have been given a duty, and like so many other times, when duty calls, you rise to it.
You worry about what she might do if she doesn't have this reassurance of a solution. You fear that you cannot convince her that it doesn't have to be this way when she knows very well the fate of all restless dead. This is the serenity she has chosen, and until you can show her the way to a kinder, gentler one, it is the only promise that she will accept. A failing on your part.
Sunrise's fingers finally unfurl from her skirt. Her expression is as unchanged as ever, but strangely, she seems relieved. "...Thank you."
Then, she gestures for you to lean down closer. You quietly assent by doing so, and her gloved hand reaches up to touch your head, carefully feeling your hair.
You hate that you've made a promise you don't want to and don't intend to keep, yet you probably will if that bleak fate comes to pass.
…Even so, love endures.
About three days after Sunrise came back from one of Chiaroscuro's many shadowlands carrying her own arm, and Velvet had to sew it back on for her (again), she asks to speak to you alone when you're both the only ones awake by the campfire. She rarely asks for anything, especially company, so you are more than willing to oblige her.
When you ask her what's up, she takes a long time to answer you—not unusual. In your experience, she doesn't often speak without collecting her thoughts first. Trying to figure out what she's thinking is also usually a challenge, because her grasp of body language is, at best, dubious. Right now, her hands are folded in her lap where she's sitting next to you, her shawl pulled over her shoulders. You wait patiently, poking at the fire with a stick to fill the space of this conversation.
It takes her a good half minute to say, "I talked to Ms. Velvet about my condition. I asked her if she knew anything about it."
"Yeah?" You have to admit, you're curious about the resident necromancer-adjacent's thoughts on Sunrise's…everything. "What'd she say?"
"She said...that all she has is conjecture." The way Sunrise speaks comes off more as repeating what was told to her, because the choice of words is not typical of her. "That since I can...think and feel beyond instinct, I am not something that was 'brought back from the dead'. I am 'a new life in a reused body'."
...Huh. When it's put that way, some things about Sunrise make a lot more sense. Like the way she still looks at the world with wonder, how every gift she's been given is safely kept in her allotted trunk, her wish to pet animals that would never let her do so. "And?" Because you know there's more to it than just that.
"This body..." One hand moves to gesture to herself. It's never 'my body' with her. Always 'this body'. "Still came from someone else. I am still undead, so I must still follow the 'rules' in some way. The undead linger because they have attachments to the world. So, she thinks I have a living anchor, somewhere." Though the way Sunrise says it, it seems she knows perfectly well who that is.
(You can privately confirm this. Once, you thought to check her fate, and to your surprise, you found she still had one. It was tied to someone else in the Loom of Fate, a knot so tight and twisted that you doubt even a Sidereal could unravel it, so she was still a part of it by proxy. Someone in the Convention on the Dead would be having a field day or fit if they knew.)
"And it ain't one of us," you point out, "So I'm guessin' they're still safe and sound somewhere?"
It takes a moment too long for her to answer. "...Yes. But..." Her hand drops back down to her lap. "Things that linger too long do not...stay themselves. Attachments lead to obsessions, obsessions lead to...the burning of everything else, for it." Sunrise tries to express a concept in a way she knows: fire, fuel, burning things away, like the Rising Smoke. "...It has been five years for me. That is already too long. Sometimes, I do not feel like myself."
You hate that you sort of know what she means, as much as you want to protest that five years is hardly any time at all for someone so young. Certainly much less than many things that haunt Creation. Every time her true nature shows and people understandably find it repulsive, things happen; the time Echo had to pull her out of the way of a blade before it took her head off like she was a doll, when she was transfixed with the patterns her blood made on the ground and Velvet had to drag her to safety, when she kept apologizing to you for a perceived failure you couldn't imagine. Alarming, worrying.
Perhaps this is why you have a bad feeling when she finally turns to look at you. Then, she says in the same quiet, gentle, almost dry tone she always has, "Mr. Day, if I am no longer myself and cannot come back, please exterminate me."
There are so many things wrong with this. 'Exterminate.' The way she so plainly speaks about this like she is saying the sun rises in the East and that water is wet. The assumption that the loss of self is inevitable. Where do you even start? "Missy, do you know what you're askin' me?"
"I am asking you to take appropriate measures in the event the worst happens."
"You're askin' me to kill you." It takes remarkable restraint that you haven't raised your voice yet.
"Is that not appropriate?" she responds with a tilt of her head, and it takes even greater restraint for you to not scream.
"That's...I don't wanna hurt you, missy," you admit instead. "Why are you askin' me?"
The lack of expression on Sunrise's face does not change. The only hint of doubt is in how she looks down to her hands in her lap, before she looks back up to you and answers, ever earnest, "Because I think you will regret it the least of all of us."
...
In the two years since you've known Sunrise, you've learnt to take whatever she says about regret seriously. It is a feeling so fundamentally tied to her being that she grasps it in a way few others can, even if she frequently can't explain it. You would know, because she did it to you before and you had to shut that door. This, however, is not something you ever expected.
"What makes you say that?" you finally venture, though you know you'll regret it.
"Mr. Radiant Voice and Ms. Echo...care too much about me. They will be forever changed if I ask them," she says, and you think she sounds almost ashamed. "And Ms. Velvet already carries so many regrets. She wishes for them to burn her to ashes. ...I cannot ask her." Sympathy, or maybe even pity. "So it is left to you, Mr. Day. I think you will not enjoy it, because you care about me. But it will not change you, nor will you let it harm you."
You want to protest this. That you truly don't want to hurt her, that she doesn't get to decide that it won't change you, that you have enough regrets as is and she surely knows that. You don't want this burden. But you look into her eyes and see only a purity of intention and a sincere plea, without a speck of judgment, even if she doesn't know how to express how she feels.
"Mr. Day, if.." Her voice trails off. Sunrise collects her words. It is the most words you've heard from her in a long time. "If there comes a time when I cannot fulfil her last wishes anymore, then there is no reason for me to stay. If I become the same as the other restless dead, I should be exterminated like them. I...do not want to stay, if I cannot be myself." Her gaze never leaves you the entire time. Her fingers curl in her skirt. "Please promise me, Mr. Day."
How unfair.
You love this strange girl. It's in her idiosyncrasies, strangeness and gentleness that you see a desire for serenity. How she keeps every little gift she's ever received like they're treasures; how she wants to feel a cat's fur beneath her cold and numb fingertips; how although you've never seen her laugh or cry, the small smiles from her are a sign of hope. It is what separates her from the restless dead. And for that reason, you wish only serenity for her, that she will be blessed with joy like every child deserves to experience in their life.
So you should say no. You shouldn't make this promise. It's not fair to either of you.
You—
"...I promise."
—understand that you have been given a duty, and like so many other times, when duty calls, you rise to it.
You worry about what she might do if she doesn't have this reassurance of a solution. You fear that you cannot convince her that it doesn't have to be this way when she knows very well the fate of all restless dead. This is the serenity she has chosen, and until you can show her the way to a kinder, gentler one, it is the only promise that she will accept. A failing on your part.
Sunrise's fingers finally unfurl from her skirt. Her expression is as unchanged as ever, but strangely, she seems relieved. "...Thank you."
Then, she gestures for you to lean down closer. You quietly assent by doing so, and her gloved hand reaches up to touch your head, carefully feeling your hair.
You hate that you've made a promise you don't want to and don't intend to keep, yet you probably will if that bleak fate comes to pass.
…Even so, love endures.
