𝔒𝔫𝔠𝔢 𝔘𝔭𝔬𝔫 𝔐𝔬𝔡𝔰 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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onceuponacomm2021-07-17 09:08 pm
faentasy) wrote in onceuponacomm2021-07-17 09:08 pm
EPILOGUE
Epilogue
After all is said and done, in the wake of the void and sprinting through one final door.
You come out into light. Sunlight actually, a backyard in what appears to be a typical suburban town, if you're familiar with those. The sun shines cheerfully overheard, blissfully unaware of what everyone has went through. And this is everyone, as faces you haven't seen in weeks tumble out in one pile from a basement door.
Happy Saturday, everyone.
There's plenty of reunions and catching up to do, but you've utterly left Aira Niluc behind you after seven long weeks. And through the window of the house which looks like it has seen a better seen better days is one wall mural that reads "And they all lived Happily Ever After".
[[ Happy Golden End everyone, you've earned it! There's still the matter of sorting out where to next, but everyone is whole and alive and without button eyes. Using the knowledge from the object Phil had and the beldam's magic, they can also now world hop only one side effect...the portal that opens to everyone else's worlds here? Is made entirely of pixie dust. Everyone's powers will also restore fully over the course of the next few hours. ]]
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[ Yuri rubs at her eyes. There's so much she needs to tell Rika, but... would she even want to hear it at this point? She breathes in shakily. ]
Hello again, my lady.
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[Oh, Rika absolutely does want to hear it! Seriously, what was going on over there?!]
I had...no clue...wh-when did all of that with Hamelin happen?! You'd have told me if I hadn't died, right?!
[Not that it entirely matters anymore, but still. Rika considers herself a decent secret keeper if Yuri had said something!]
s-spoilers
[ A wet laugh. ]
The beginning? My beginning, I suppose. You see, my lady, you had to repeat over a century - but I... I had to repeat thousands of cycles. I'm like him, a character in a story, one that restarts and repeats the more people read it. And I knew each time - I was the only character who was aware.
[ Her voice still echoes the sheer loneliness she felt. All that despair. All that rage. Helplessness. ]
Re: s-spoilers
[Rika's face pales a bit, and she instantly returns that hug. The isolation and despair in Yuri's voice...it's the same sort that Rika could hear from herself every time she died.]
...and the story always ended the same?
tw implied abuse/torture
[ ... ]
So you see... I was in the best position to understand what it meant to have to play a role. Heroine or Villain, there isn't much of a difference if you're unwilling, is there?
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[Rika's voice wavers--Yuri was tortured in those endings on top of that? How terrible. Living through worlds that always come out a dead end isn't something Rika would subject anyone to.]
I suppose I can understand that. Any fate you're forced into is an unkind one...
[Knowing that Hamelin was in that same situation adds the pieces to the puzzle Rika didn't completely understand: of course Yuri would sympathize with someone trapped. Rika can't deny that she might have done the same thing McGillis did had she been approached, and she can't deny she might have been a bit more charitable to Hamelin had she been in the situation to find out his issues earlier.]
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[ Thank you, Rika, for all that. ]
I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you. What you must have felt down there, seeing everything and unable to say it...