Recollections of a Forgotten Past (Epilogue)
{ They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world:
someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.}
She was in her mother’s arms.
It was so soft, so gentle; it held her close like it was afraid to lose her again.
Why did you let me go, Mama?
She grasped those arms tightly, snuggling against her mother’s body.
A mother’s warmth, that was what she yearned for. Her lips curled up into a satisfied smile – everything else was forgotten. She smiled happily, blissfully. She hadn’t worked those muscles in such a long time, she was afraid they wouldn’t work for her anymore. For a long while, she was content in just hugging her mother and listening to her calm breathing. Everything was serene. And for the first time in a long time, she was happy.
Mama, let’s be together forever. She mumbled, burying her face into the nape of her mother’s neck.
It was then her body froze, her iron-made instincts screamed at her to get away. She jerked away, suddenly noticing that her mother’s skin had turned ice-cold.
Mama…? She asked uncertainly, staring into her mother’s eyes. In a second, those laughing brown eyes turned into deep pools of black holes, and her mother began to transform into something twisted.
She screamed, kicking as she backed away further and further from the monster which was transforming in front of her. Her mother’s limbs broke apart one by one, until no more than a stub was left; and her hair started falling down like leaves during autumn. Her skin changed into angry pink, and her face morphed and morphed until it looked like something strikingly familiar –
“No… Get away, get away from me!!” She wanted to get on her feet and run, but somehow they turned into dead weight. She could only drag herself away from the figure who was calling her, her eyes already wet with tears.
Mother…. Why are you running away…?
“No… please…” Knowing there was no way out, she covered her face with her hands, her hands full of blood. And suddenly everything turned red, everything was painful, and everything was a nightmare.
She was the mother now. She was the one who turned her child away. She was the one who ran away from her son.
She had yearned for a mother’s warmth, yet she had never given it to her own son. She was hurt at her mother for letting them take her away, but that was the very thing she let happen to him. She had once blamed her mother for not protecting her, but she could not even protect her own son. It was not fair , she cried, she never had a chance, she never had a chance, she wanted to, but she just never had a chance .
The figure continued haunting her, taunting her, driving her to the corner where there was nowhere else to back away and screamed, and wept and accused her of everything she had ever accused her mother of.
And she sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed.
When she woke up, the first thing she realised was that she was lying on something soft.
It took her awhile to register that she was lying on a bed. She had almost forgotten how it felt like, and it was so comfortable she could forget about the pain for a moment.
It was dark, save for the moonlight shimmering in from the windows of the room she was in. She couldn’t move, so she tried to make sense of her surroundings using what she could see in her line of vision.
“You’re awake,” said the dark-haired teenager who was sitting on a chair near her bed. The shadows cast by the trees outside played across his face, obscuring his facial features from her vision.
Seven opened her mouth and tried to talk, but her throat was so dry she ended up coughing instead.
“Here.” Water was placed against her lips, and she managed several small sips. The young man then removed the glass and put it on the table again.
“Where–” She started, but the man in black shook his head and told her not to speak.
“You are safe now.” He said simply, giving her what she supposed, was a smile. It seemed like he was feeling rather uncomfortable, or more appropriately, awkward. It seemed like he didn’t know what to say or what to explain for his actions.
She couldn’t understand it either. She was more confused than happy at her survival. Why was it her who survived? Why did she survive, after she had decided to give up? Why was he there? Why did he save her?
All those questions remain unanswered, he did not give her any answers, and she did not ask.
After a few days of resting, she soon found out from the nurses that the young man’s name was ‘Emiya Kiritsugu’. Despite having no relationship to her and having no reason to save her, he visited her every day at the hospital, paid for her medical fees, asked the doctors and nurses about her condition.
She could not fathom why he would go to such lengths to help her. Being mistreated and tossed around for so long, it was the act of kindness that struck fear into her heart, her mind struggling to find a reason for justify his actions. She found none. Every day she waited for him to provide some sort of explanation, even as he only visited for a few minutes each day. She did not know where he was from, as he spoke her language with a foreign accent. There was no problems with communication, since he hardly spoke to her anyway. Yet, it was this man of few words that made her nervous - as if she was about to pay a huge price for the kindness she had received.
And she was anxious to find out what it was.
The day before she was discharged, he sat down beside her bed.
“I need an assistant.” He said simply.
Those four words seem to make everything fall in place. Seven nodded for him to continue. She was right, there was a price to pay. After all those days of guessing and waiting, she was finally going to hear it. Even though the doctors and nurses have been nothing but gentle and kind to her, there was always an underlying suspicion that they were going to do something awful to her after the initial caring treatment. She had never been treated like this before, and the confused soldier was simply at a loss of what to think.
“I am an assassin.” The man named Kiritsugu said. “If you are willing to kill for a living, I can train you.”
What surprised Seven the most was not that he was an assassin or that he was offering to train her.
It was the fact that he was giving her a choice.
She blinked, unsure of how to react. He was allowing her to say no? Wouldn’t that mean that everything he had done for her would be in vain? She had been ready to become a slave, to be sold, or even to suffer a worser fate, but all her was asking her was to do what she had been doing her whole life - to kill for a living. And she was free to refuse.
“Why me?” She asked, the questions finally pouring out of her mouth. “Why did you save me?”
“It was too late to save anyone else.” He shrugged. “You were the only one who was still breathing.”
Seven stared. His answer seemed to make sense, yet it left her with more questions. Why was he there? Why did he wander into a bombing zone? Who was he?
She kept her mouth shut. It was against the rules to ask questions, she remembered. Only she wasn’t in the barracks anymore. She was with a man named Emiya Kiritsugu and was about to become his assistant.
She wondered if he would whip her the same way they had if she asked him those questions.
“I will follow you.” She replied. She had a purpose now , she thought. She had nowhere else, no one else to go to.
Emiya Kiritsugu nodded solemnly. “What is your name?”
He frowned. “I meant your real name.”
Confusion swept across her face again. “That is my n ― ”
It was then she remembered.
Emiya Kiritsugu is his name.
A wave of panic rushed through her veins as she struggled to answer his question. She had a real name , she reasoned. She had just forgotten it because they were all commanded to forget their real names. But that wasn’t all, there were more things that she had forgotten. Her past. What was she doing before she arrived at the barracks? Where was she living? Who was she living with? Her family? Did she have a mother ―
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp sting that seemed to slice through her head. She whimpered, clutching her head in agony as pain engulfed her soul, blocking her from retrieving her memories. Like a blade, it sawed through her skull over and over again, the pain getting worse when she tried again to access her locked memories. Her fingers tugged at her hair as she curled herself into a ball, shaking and groaning as she forgot about Kiritsugu and the hospital that she was in, and everything in her world was pain, only pain.
She couldn’t hear Kiritsugu yelling at her, telling her to calm down. She couldn’t feel his steady arms on her wrists, trying to pry them away from scratching harshly at her scalp. She couldn’t see the doctors and nurses rushing in, lifting up her sleeve to insert a needle into her right arm...
As her mind slowly became numb, and her body lost all energy, she felt someone gently laying her down on her bed. Looking up with a rather hazy vision, she could somewhat make out the face of a stranger with dark hair, the man who saved her life, now her mentor.
“We’ll just have to think up a new name, then.” He said in a low voice.
Watching the way he tucked her in, the way he spoke to the doctors urgently about something that sounded like ‘post traumatic stress disorder’, and the way he looked at her not of pity, but of purpose…
She silently pledged her life to follow him wherever he went.
She was given a passport shortly after.
Her name was Hisau Maiya.
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
snowghoul
areudirty
jbbartram-illu
kianamaiart
