I am not her.

I stared at the diary from across the room, the red binding just barely visible from the bag’s opening. I sat on the bed, hugging my legs, begging for the natural conclusions I was drawing to be a mistake of my mind.

I have no right to read that… Not yet. Please. Let me be myself, a little longer.

So now you cower from your reality? The bravado gone?

No!

I couldn't stand seeing it, knowing Lorn kept it after all this time, thinking of what Solah would say. More of the withdrawn attitude influencing me gave me less reason to hold my anger towards either Lorn or Mother. I wanted to pin it on Solah, all of it, but they can’t see her, they can’t hear her. Knowing Lorn kept that book, meant that they must have kept it with the intent to discuss it with Kiyomi.

But I’m not her.

I felt myself clenching my own teeth together.

All the same, they didn’t tell me.

My own lie to Beryl and Vaughn came to mind, and I felt like an utter hypocrite.

Fuck it, there’s nothing else to call it. I am one.

“Tch.”

I couldn't help from audibly clicking my tongue.

So much time… at least.

I hugged my legs tighter.

At least I was able to go that long without confronting myself…

I looked back down at my chest before settling my chin on my knees.

Before somehow being told, I had to try again. To exist on my lonesome. I ‘didn’t want to die.’

I focused on the cool softness of the comforter beneath my feet.

I’m not sure I wanted to live, either… At least, not like this, stealing something not my own. But I’m not even sure whose life this really is.

“Kiyomi?”

A knock at my door followed mothers voice, calling my name through the wood of the door and tugging at my heartstrings as I found myself wanting her to comfort me.

“You can come in.”

The door cracked open, mothers ears beating the rest of her head through the doorway as she peaked in. She seemed concerned, not the overprotective concern, but the same kind of concern she showed when I became self-conscious about my chest, or when she intended to hear me out with helping Beryl way back.

“Hey you, you can’t hide anything from Mama.”

She smiled softly as she crept into the room, closing the door back behind her.

I can hide a whole fucking lot, but… sorry.

I felt sick enough of my own lying to even chastise myself.

“Nope, I can’t.”

I smirked.

Of course, she figured something was wrong, figured they saw it with how I shut down the conversation on Krakow… They’ve known me since I was a little girl…

“What’s the matter?”

She plopped down on the bed, her tail wrapping around us as she leaned close.

Fuck, where do I even start? Can’t talk to you about half of it.

I half smirked, leaning back into her shoulder.

“Krakow sucked.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

She wrapped one of her arms around my shoulder, trying her best to comfort me without even knowing what it was I was beating myself down over.

“What happened?”

I just leaned into her slightly harder, wanting to turn my head into her chest.

“I couldn’t even—“

I wanted to whimper, but at the same time, I didn’t even feel like asking if she knew either. All the same, my voice cracked as I spoke.

“I may have remembered.”

“Remembered?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

She seemed confused for a moment, and my whimpering escaped my lips as she leaned over into my periphery.

“About home, before. About Va’ren…”

It took all of two seconds for her expression to shift, into what though, I couldn’t tell, before she brought her other arm up to fully encompass me in a hug.

“Oh Gods’, Kiyomi— I’m here, I’m here.”

I wanted to cry, but at the same time, I couldn’t force myself to ask. I felt wrung dry, and all that lingered was the sense of dread, the freshly planted fact that this was my life now.

Do it! ‘Did you know? Did you hide it from me, too?’ Do. It.

But I could only manage a sentence I hated to force in it’s stead.

“I just want to go to bed now, I— I just want to be alone for a bit.”

“Kiyomi?”

“I didn’t get enough time to myself in Krakow. I just want to be alone.”

A lie, a bold-faced fuckin lie, just call her out, then apologize! Like with Lorn, easy enough, right?

“Please?”

I asked, working the words through my chattering teeth. Yet, against what could have been her very nature, as every atom of our minds probably screamed to do otherwise, she relented.

I am alone, aren’t I?

I told myself those words when I knew they were a lie as well, but I couldn't help but think otherwise.

“I’ll—“

Silence.

“I love you, Kiyomi… I’ll be in my room, if you need.”

Her words were shaky, then gone, for however long I didn't know. The only marker of time I could remember for the rest of the night was the flicker of the lights in the city, and the auditory death of the crowds downstairs as business came to a standstill.

————————————————————————————————————-

Another dream, another night of hating myself. Conscious, knowing my reality, separate from this, a memory that could not be redone. It was welcome that it wasn't a nightmare, but a shitty memory nonetheless.

Field hospital, under guard, in quarantine, south of Luxembourg, fluorescent lights, cold, barely clothed by a shitty set of leftover scrubs. I was unshaven, the five o'clock shadow on my face making me a near different person entirely as I sat there. Amongst everyone in the unit, amongst Mike, Luara, Jonas, everyone else called aside, here I sat. Staring through a shitty plexiglass wall, alive, wishing I weren’t, with my one and only friend, sitting across from me in an old plastic lawn chair, a guitar in hand. Lucas plucked at the strings, muttering the lyrics in Czech.

“Y'know, I find the stories my old man told me before he kicked the bucket… I find some comfort in them, still.”

He stopped his playing.

“He used to talk about ‘how tough it was, when the USSR fell.”

Lucas began the tune anew, broken, and uneven.

“What were the lines again, here? In English? Aaah, let's see. Kdyz me– hm, kdyz me brali– ah, okay.”

Lucas continued through the initial tune, renewing his flow.

“They shut me in the baaarracs, started ed-ucati-ing me.

How should I the proper soOoldier be, and protect my land-la-la-la. And protect my land.”

He smirked, suppressing some off kind of exhale.

“Sounds better in Czech, shit.”

He tapped the hollow-bodied guitar, then sat it against the wall beside him.

“They tell me that I'm the only person that doesn't make your eyes gloss over.”

He raised his brow.

“So I will continue my story, since you want to be a sad prick, while people are still out there dying.”

He sneered as he leaned forward over his knees.

“When the USSR fell, my old man, used to say it was the toughest time of his life. He said that his old man said the same when the reds cracked down and took away our place as a nation… before we became Czechia– fuck i hate talking about this stuff in English. We have it tougher now, and we’ll tell our children just the same, and they may come to see a worse world than even us– Damnit, second fucking language, and formal shit is where I try not to fuck up.”

He tilted his head to the side before looking forward again.

“Aidan, you are alive. Do you understand how lucky you are?”

He asked, I didn’t respond. I didn't want to.

Was I lucky?

I dropped my head to my right, resting it on the wall.

“Mike is dead, and I'm here.”

Lucas scratched his head, as if I'd said the same thing a dozen times.

“He is, and you are here, Aidan. You're alive, don't you recognize the value of that? Ha– you–”

He laughed, stood, then approached the plexy glass.

“Y'know, the way your fucking eyes glaze over? Pisses me off.”

He unholstered a handgun, approaching the glass and leaning against it with his opposite palm.

“You keep saying it like it’s a bad thing, as if millions didn't wish to be where you are now, against all odds.”

He placed the handgun against the glass, the barrel not pointed at me, but in my direction at the least.

“Aidan, I am here because I got lucky, just the same. Everyone I know–”

He bit his cheek, looking away.

“I want to think otherwise, And this talk from you Yankees has me hoping. The rumor mill, about the Adriatic's on the eastern front having held a fortress city. I hope it's true, and while I can't bank on it, that is better than I could ever hope for.”

Lucas dropped the hand he used to point the gun.

“Aidan, you, my friend. You are the only factual thing I have left in my life that can be considered good. If you won't hang on to that, for yourself, for Mike, for the others. Then do it for the people who actually have hope for you. Myself, that medic woman that damn near dropped her panties for you– fuck, for that cunt of a Sergeant that led the detail that fucked you into this situation.”

Lucas placed the gun back in its holster.

“Aidan, you– baaah, fuckin–”

He waved a hand at the air.

“For fuck– fuck it! You pussy, you fucking pussy! Aidan, you know what? Sure, you should be a fuckin mutie, puking your fuckin bile out after killing some family somewhere! Is that how you wanted this to end?”

Lucas’s taunting managed to coax the first actual reaction from me in days. From anything whatsoever, be it a wince, a sneeze, or a single look of surprise. And the thing he coaxed out was disgust.

“Aaah, there it is, there's the fuckin Catan.”

He held out his hands like claws.

“The American mountain lion, Catan, the fucker that fought in Kansas City, but won't say what the hell he saw through the rift.”

Lucas spit at the ground.

“The same Catan that wants to look the ‘gift horse in the face’, and spit on the fact that someone saved him. That someone took his chance to die. Is that him? Cause that's not my friend.”

He flopped back into the chair, the balcony of his armor nearly denting the drywall.

“No, mustn’t be him. I’m still waiting for him to show up. To show up so I can tell him how happy I am that he’s alive–”

He shot a sideways glance at me, anger sowed with something else, something recognizable.

“Not whoever this is, wearing his skin.”

He plucked at the guitar again.

“If you've forgotten, you've saved lives, regardless of your thoughts. They dropped your commission that Mike put through, but if you can turn this around? No point in keeping a mute officer, but an angry and death-deprived Sergeant? They love that, apparently, think you’ll make one hell of a martyr for propaganda. Would you agree?”

He looked up, more of the anger.

“And this bastard impersonating my friend, he'll just let that happen.”

The tune took over in its loop once more, Lucas looking down to his fingers as they traced the strings of his instrument. He looked in pain, like he was in pain himself, somehow.

“Na pokoji po vecerce ke zdi jsem se pritulil, ja vzpomnel jsem si na svou miiilou.

Krasne jsem si zabulil-lil-lil-lil, krasne jsem si zabulil.

Hmmnnn hmmm, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-Hm-hmmm.”

He continued to loop, then, the dream took an unexpected turn, a diversion from the actual memory.

“You're repeating your past, aren't you?”

I am not.

You are.

The same look of anger at what this dream version of Lucas took as a doppelganger. The tune continued as his hand blurred, and everything lost its form.

“Acting pitiful and refusing the gifts life lays before you.”

He continued to play.

“Stubborn, as always. Here you sit, sulking in your own sadness while everything crumbles around you. You'll come around, like before. You just need the encouragement… and the see the love of those around you.”

The memory from there was a garbled mess, the blur of days and weeks passed within seconds. And then the low drone of a conversational crowd took over.

—----------------------------------------------------------

Gasp

With the blur of consciousness returning, I shot upward, my hands posted into the bed. I escaped the memories that continued to haunt me. No night of peaceful sleep, but, more frequently, absent of tears.