Vol.4 Ch.3 – The Price Of A Name III
Chapter 3: The Price Of A Name III
Mariana came to slowly. It hadn't taken her nearly as long to wake up from her memory dive when she'd been inside Alejandro's head. Partly that had been because that dive had been much shallower than this, more an attempt to understand her own powers than a serious attempt to dig through his memories, and partly it had been because she'd had to be careful inside Sub— Aurora, rising slowly back to the surface lest she bump into another one of those cloying, horrible memories.
When she finally opened her eyes she stared into the startling golden eyes of the butterfly girl. The girl didn't look horrified by her own past though. She looked... concerned.
“It was bad, wasn't it?”
“What makes you say that?” Mariana asked with false levity.
The girl gave her a wry smile, reached up and wiped away the tears running down Mariana's face.
“Right,” she said. “Thanks Aurora...”
The girl froze.
“So it worked?” Elaine asked from the chair, reminding both of them that she was there.
“It did,” Mariana said. “Aurora O'Connor.” She looked back at the butterfly girl. “Does that ring a bell?”
The girl's hand flew to her throat, feeling around for something that wasn't there. When that didn't work her eyes darted around, searching for something, anything. She was panicking. Mariana, despite the way she spoke, was very good at reacting to sudden changes and so she wrapped her arms around Aurora, holding her close and giving her something to hold onto.
“Shh...” Mariana cooed.
She girl didn't cry, didn't sob, but she clung onto Mariana, shivering, for at least ten minutes before she regained her composure.
“I...” She began, her voice breaking.
Before she could try again Elaine gently touched her cheek with the back of her hand and, when she looked over, Elaine handed her a glass of water.
“Thank you,” the girl said hoarsely after gulping down half the glass. “I was... I was a person...”
Mariana didn't know what to make of that statement so she just let the girl get it all out.
“I thought I was grown in a vat... that I was born like this, born an object... But that's wrong. I... I had a life. I had a family.” Her face twisted up in rage. “He didn't just take my name away, he took my memories.” Her hands balled into fists and Elaine yanked the glass of water out of her hand before she could crush it by accident.
When she had the glass out of harm's way Elaine made broad sweeping motions that Mariana knew meant she was messing around with her CARD.
Just about every person at the compound, except for Aurora, wore a CARD around their necks, a Communicative Augmented Reality Device. Not only did the device contain all the functions of a normal smartphone, they also allowed the user to access Base 15's own database, fed with information from their monitoring division staffed by mermaids and a ton of information from both Heaven and Hell. And, of course, by tapping directly into the wearer's mind the gadget let the user allocate the EXP gained from killing the horrors outside with the click of a virtual button.
In this case, however, Mariana was fairly sure Elaine was either looking up missing persons reports on Aurora or contacting someone to do it for her. With any luck, the girl's family was still alive.
“Do you remember anything now?” she asked Aurora.
“It's... fragmentary,” Aurora admitted. “I can kind of see the memories you pulled my name from and...” She paused. “Oh god. How could I have been this stupid?!”
Elaine's face twisted up in confusion but Mariana didn't feel like enlightening her right then. Aurora was the main priority.
“You couldn't have known, Aurora,” she soothed the girl. “You applied for a secretary position, for Pete's sake. None of this is your fault.”
“Y-yeah,” Aurora said, calming down. “It's just...”
“I get it.”
“Thank you.”
Mariana sat up, then pulled herself out from under the girl. It had been easy to ignore the contact in the moment but the more things calmed down the weirder it felt to her to share physical contact with something she barely knew, even if it felt like she knew Aurora better now than most of the people she'd spent her childhood with.
“Then if you're okay I think it's best if you let Jeanne and Rachel set you up with your own room.”
“Right,” Aurora said. “And thank you for your help.”
“You're welcome.”
“Do you want me to stay with you, to collect your payment?” Elaine asked, reminding the two of them that she was still there.
Mariana felt the corners of her mouth droop. Did she really project that kind of mercenary attitude? Well, she supposed it was inevitable. Faced with a girl who had experienced unimaginable trauma she had put a price on helping the girl. Had her plan already failed because she hadn't considered how her actions would look to other people?
“Help her get settled in,” she said. “When you're sure she's fine, text me. I'll come to your room.”
“Understood,” Elaine said, her tone a little softer now.
**
Mariana hadn't quite kicked Elaine and the butt— Aurora out but it had felt like it, at least a little bit. And despite one of the most fascinating people she'd ever met following her around like a puppy Elaine found her mind wandering back to the strange woman.
Her demand had been incredibly off-putting, especially given the situation. Her odd mannerisms and way of speaking hadn't endeared her to Elaine, either. But she had shown Aurora real compassion and had come through for her. And her reactions had made it clear that she hadn't even been aware of how she appeared to other people. Was that why she seemed so... lonely? Once Aurora had stopped freaking out Mariana had seemed almost uncomfortable with the physical contact.
Elaine had met people like that before, people who were so isolated that even the slightest bit of physical contact made them feel self-conscious. She knew Alejandro, liked him even, but if this was how he treated teammates he wasn't romantically interested in then she'd need to have words with him. Nobody deserved to feel unwanted.
Of course, those words caused her to pause in her tracks. Had she been making Abigail feel this way? Abigail was, or had been until Aurora had joined, the only one in Elaine's team not in a romantic relationship with her. And while Elaine did her best to spend time with the girl, her withdrawn nature made it rather difficult. Maybe she shouldn't be so quick to judge Alejandro. After all, Abigail, too, didn't like being touched though from what little she had revealed about herself this wasn't because of neglect but because of past trauma.
Either way, up until Aurora had joined Abigail had been Elaine's biggest worry when it came to her team, especially after the blow to her already low confidence she'd suffered after Jeanne had knocked her out. And that, of course, brought Elaine's mind wandering back to Jeanne, whom she and Aurora still needed to talk to.
Jeanne was, technically, Elaine's superior. And while Elaine was adamant about never disrespecting someone for things that had happened in the bedroom, the way Jeanne had practically worshiped her in bed made it hard to think of the angel as her boss. She should be more humble and less full of herself. Even after Jeanne had used that underhanded trick to knock Abigail out Elaine could have still turned the situation around. She could have let herself lose. She hadn't had to fight like a lion to eke out a win without Abigail's help. She could have just suffered the loss and told Abigail that she couldn't win without her help. Abigail would still have suffered a blow to her self-esteem, but not as harsh. But her own stupid stubborn pride had kept her from just accepting defeat. But why?
She considered whether this was because of Typhon's Soul Shard inside her. Soul Shards did, after all, color the personality of their bearer. But no, that didn't track. Jeanne had never lorded her superiority over everyone at the compound. She was simply stronger than everyone except the Professor, or she had been until Elaine had transcended humanity.
Was it because of Tiamat, then? Tiamat was a mother goddess, so maybe? No, that didn't track either. Yes, she had been thoroughly incensed by what had happened to Abigail. Tiamat had even given her a new power because of it. But in the end, the only thing that had kept Elaine fighting had been her own pride. She'd had too many easy victories. Even the Siege of Ohio, for as horrific as it had seemed at the time, had concluded with minimal casualties. As in, no member of Project Divinity had been killed and most injuries suffered had been minor. Even the camp guards had made it through with only some broken ribs from when Abigail had been forced to hold them off with gravity magic after they'd succumbed to the Red Rider's miasma. Elaine had become complacent. She'd assumed that her own power was enough to save the day and that she only had to fall back on her teammates in the rare instances when that didn't hold true.
That way of thinking would get either her or her teammates killed eventually. At the same time, everything inside her balked at the idea of forgiving or, worse yet, apologizing to Jeanne. She supposed she'd need to bite the bullet and talk to the angel like a civilized person.
She was pulled out of her musings when Aurora asked: “Are you alright?”
Elaine looked up, only then realizing that she'd been standing around for God knew how long.
“Sorry,” Elaine said. “Lost in thought.”
“Am I a bother?” the girl asked.
“Hardly,” Elaine said, stroking the girl's cheek with a single knuckle and noticing that the girl didn't flinch away, actually leaned into the gentle touch. “There's been... a lot of stuff going on. Annoying interpersonal stuff. Nothing you need to concern yourself with. This is my problem to deal with. Meeting Jeanne is going to be a little awkward though, maybe.”
“I see,” Aurora said. “If you'd rather I do this alone...?”
“Nah,” Elaine said. “I'm with you all the way. Just need to put on my big girl pants and talk to her.”
“Okay.”
**
Sub— Aurora felt a strange combination of anxiety and elation. Not only was she free, she had her name back. And the memories associated with that name were beginning to come back to her, all the nice memories of a life before she'd been stupid enough to sign up with IDS of all companies.
At the same time, the knowledge that she wasn't a vat-grown clone body modified into... this... came with a certain worry. She'd had a life. She'd had a family. There was every chance her family had died in the Invasion, yet another reason to despise Caulder. But these people had given her so much already. Could she really ask them to search for her family? And, as her butterfly wings twitched on her back she tacked on another question: Would they even recognize her? Would they even want her back? She didn't feel like a freak, especially with the way she'd been treated here so far but at the same time, how many people had butterfly wings and golden eyes? But that wasn't the only thing making her anxious.
She was being a bother to these people, she knew she was. Even if Elaine's current problems weren't her fault or business, her sheer presence and her trauma would only add to them. She was not stupid enough to spit on her and her teammates' kindness, though. She knew she was broken, knew she needed help. But she still felt guilty about it.
And then there was that Mariana woman. The memory dive the woman had done for her had been one-way but Aurora didn't need memory powers to know that Mariana was lonely, crushingly lonely. And for at least a moment there she'd seemed content to be with Elaine and her. Maybe she should talk about this with Elaine, or maybe with Rachel. She didn't want to add yet another batch of problems to Elaine's plate.
She chuckled soundlessly. Life under Caulder's thumb had been simpler than this, so much simpler. But even so, she would never return to that life. Because it hadn't been life. It had been an existence tinged in horror. This was life, with all the complications it implied. And she wouldn't have it any other way.