Let will alone be the reason

Link to article: Let will alone be the reason.
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[[include component:preview text=A girl just wants to have fun.]]
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CW: implicit suicidal ideation
**Author:** [[*user whenwerewe]]
[*https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/whenwerewe Here's my page!]
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> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int| **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
>  this chick had nothing going on in her life . only a matter of time imo

> **From:** DTesta@site15.scp.int | **To:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> Please don't be so cavalier. Where did she come from? I'd like to see the casefile. I can't imagine she's totally unremarkable.

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> thats what im saying i mean look at this. total nobody so get off my ass

Under the noonday sun you burned with the intensity of your want.

There were other thoughts, before that one, but they recede in memory. Fireflies before the sun. You remember halfheartedly eight years of wheel-churned dirt, an indistinguishable midwest town choked with memory, antiseptic linoleum bathrooms, mawkishly sweet playmates with gap-teeth, a halfsister then still smiling and polite. Days scored by briefly-entertained solipsism, carefully measured girlishness, as if living someone else’s life. 

Then like lightning from a clear sky a moment of realisation, the nucleation of your will. Three thousand days of burbling neotenous thought swept away in an instant of clarity. Above you a watery sun sketched through hideously still cloud like the searchlight of some empyrean warden. Suddenly shuddering. Wind cutting to the quick. No help at all the hollow in your stomach, or your startlingly slight frame. Here is the thing you knew:

That you loved your sister.

And now obvious that she did not love you back, or perhaps her love was a thing thought but not acted, or maybe she was twelve and despite the consolidation of your hopes you did not yet actually have the ability to think coherently. Realised and berated yourself for that error ten years hence. But not time to cut into the recollection, now.

She did not love you (or she did not pay attention to you and you: not yet smart enough to differentiate) and you needed it to be otherwise. A better guiding light was she than any sun. So you wanted her to know you, and to care for you, as you knew her. Every night for four years a story, and you learnt her scratchy soothing tone and her impatient glances and her moues of disappointment. She did not know your face. Obviously. She did not speak to you unless she had to.

Out babysitting she brought you to a friend’s house, some other boy two years her elder, and they and three others amused themselves while you sat the image of propriety on the back porch. But plainly now standing because she hadn’t said a word to you in ten minutes. What to do?

Other people wanted things, presumably. But even at eight it was clear they wanted confusedly, like some other voice told them the things they needed. In you it was the blood running in your veins. There was a correct move, and you found it, and you took it.

Pictured: a perfectly archetypal treehouse. In retrospect hilariously unsafe, assembled by some unwary father. It clung fattened like a tick to a wispy cedar and so you climbed carefully to its highest level and flung yourself off.

Rushing headlong you thought momentarily that it would hurt not at all if you broke your neck. But then your sister would love nothing at all. So like an anchor you fell and landed badly on one ankle //en pointe//. The crack startlingly loud, sickening even now. And then hot white tears, wailing loud enough the distant spiders shuddered in their webs. Born of real pain. You didn’t think much after that. But she was there, friends clustered behind. Yelling, fetching bandages, stemming the slow bloom of a russet orchid. They cradled you back into their home, then yours, time passing in a feverish haze. The corpse-smell of a hospital, and then --

Your sister crooning over you, the quiet of an embrace. And you smiled and there was not one tear in your eye when you said, of course I’m fine, Hannah’s here. You spoke with her as people did in stories. And you thought, here we reveal secret things, and are welded together for life. Sometimes memories are bitter.

Next unaccountably she grew distant. Quiet in the halls, reserved in her stories. It seemed if anything she retreated from you as you reached toward her. What error you made remains still unclear. Even your blinkered prepubescent scheming should have been sufficient. But she spoke less, avoided you everywhere she could. Someone else’s child, you knew, that was what halfsister meant. But she’d never let it matter before and it was a horror how fast she fell away from you.

> **From:** DTesta@site15.scp.int | **To:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> But our records indicate she was quite precocious.

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> yea yea olympiad circuit or whatever. Wrote some papers?? but look at her family ahahaha

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> i mean fuck me

Now your desire metamorphosised. A remarkable abstraction for a single-digit age: It was insufficient to want in the moment. You had to be //good at wanting//, had to see and know and act every moment perfectly. So you learned to do those things. You decided to be good at whatever you needed to, and you were. Every weeping paean for denied desire reads to you a confession of weakness. If anyone had ever really desired, as you did, they would simply have what was owed them.

In the archive of your days there comes another sister. The world righting itself. Love is held constant, and what you lost was returned. Grown from neonatal to the cherubic adorability of a toddler in passing moments. Fiona you cared for primly and with perfect tenderness. This sank more incontestably than any other event the fact of your sororal superiority in your mind. 

As you grew into yourself, mastered everything worth mastering, your elder sister skittered deeper into the waste she’d made of her life. She rejected every principle she’d ever learned. At first an admirable dedication to rebellion (against who?) and then with dawning horror a total destruction of the self. She could not distinguish between rules of sobriety and //self-preservation//. Dyed hair a clonal assertion of her individuality. Tattoos plain attention-whoring but respectable in her commitment. Disgusting: A rotating cast of boyfriends and flings; first a skin-scrawled punk wannabe, later a girl who stank of cigarettes, finally an obvious creep.

Perhaps he thought of himself as a young soul. Popular at school, no doubt. A few times when you met (never at home, your idiot sister helpfully delivering herself to him nicely trussed up). You considered warding him off. Breaking them up. Words to her rejected with huffy proclamations, you don’t get it, Ada, he really likes me. We’ll stay together, watch. Threats to him transparently empty, and rather not dwell on where his eyes went. Upon reflection best that his attentions kept to the stupid bitch who offered herself up. 

You they feted in school with meaningless awards. Eventually they had you going out of state, winning competitions. To your chagrin you found your effortless success was extinct. But vindication born of hours of study was only sweeter. If others cared, they’d match you. Worked on whatever caught your fancy, finding medals weightless in every discipline. You felt about the same doing conferences for some new paper as you did on a podium for your dance routine. They had your picture on the high-school website now. You spent increasingly little time with your peers. Had no time to think of anything but the work. A good place to drown.

Late one tepid night your sister came in red-eyed from the cold. Footsore, walking from God knows when, or where. She didn’t say a word to you. 

While Hannah found new ways to ruin herself, little Fiona had you as the perfect showpiece (and you, her). You made great displays of your love, dragging her with you to symposia or concerts. She had just the perfect pictures to show her friends, occasionally abducting one with her to enjoy whatever facile attraction was available while you busied yourself. The trophy of her affection you juggled with whichever talent you’d decided to learn that year.

It would be a lie to say you were directionless. Rather you were ever-directed. Caught in a hurricane. You wanted, and burned with the want, and your prizes you would have. But no resolution, no lasting gain. You were a void for accolades and acclaim. Still slight as the day you kindled that fire. For all the years. Rising like a willow over the rushes.

Dear Hannah cleaned herself up, hair boldly cut scalp-short and then grown into matte tresses. As if remembering how to be a woman. Tattoos barely present to begin with, actually, and the few that remained painstakingly expunged. She could never commit, but she’d learned, in that high wilderness. Outside of the confines of your home. Odd expression, you think: not as if your home ever confined you.

Nothing resolved. You raged at what came to you so easily, and how fast it went. What did it amount to? Why could you not simply keep to a thing, like every idiot you’d ever known. In triumph you were more inchoate than any yearling. It was not enough to want, plainly. There was a pit in you. Contemptuous you thought, God what am I, girl who blubbers about how //good// she is at everything, parody of myself. 

Then came time to leave nowheretown. Go to college. It’s the done thing. Could have been there a few years early, if you hated yourself enough. More dirt into a bottomless well. Thinking of a life of this, alone in a spartan room, bare geometry. Never bothered to put anything down. Whole thing suffocated with towers of stuff, desiderata of dead passions. The entire ekphrasis of your years a long list, nothing more.

Seen off from home by a sister somehow still tearful. Unaffected sadness you could not mirror. With shame you extracted a little weeping. Last embrace smelling of honeysuckle, worming in the back of your mind forever. She saw you off the whole way. Driving in a new old car, a stuttering jalopy. Road like an axis of the world, out to the horizon, and as she receded not one moment did she turn away. Fists clenched not with rage. Things not to dwell on.

After, a long slow sleepy drive across the continent. Target on the other coast. Some distance clarifies things, you hoped. Could have been there by plane. Already made it by now. But the feel of the wheel under your hands, the slow passage of the earth like the ripening of a plum, these things are worth knowing. Sun’s arc changing day by day, bending towards the midriff of the world. Outside stiff peaks like soldiers, vales empty of man. Something about it calls to you, maybe? Nascent inclinations toward the pastoral, perhaps. Not feelings worth having. In memory less appealing.

There were a few close calls. You nearly smeared jamwise by inbred truckers. Once getting out of a flyswarmed motel some bloated ochre-hued guy twice your size says some shit. What you don’t remember but it becomes a screaming match. When have you ever screamed at anyone. Him with the puerilely unthreatening glare. Inoffensive but it goes places. Not the kind of thing you’ll tolerate now. Ward him off, nurse the stinging hand, he stands there stunned. Then remembering himself tromps after you, heaving breaths. Get in the car and go go go right out of there. Faster than advisable, but you really dearly need the space. Swerving between whoever else is on this deadend road. Southwestern desert abyss. Briefly hit three digits, leather of the wheel creased under your grip, face studiedly blank in the mirror when you can catch a look. Imagining with inward giggling the headline: prodigy dead after road-rage horror. Probably not entirely necessary. A girl just wants to have fun.

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** hire her already
>
> well ok and then theres the thing with the duke. owe her a drink for that one ngl

> **From:** DTesta@site15.scp.int | **To:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> Don't be irreverent. She got lucky, and stumbled into a solution.

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** goaway
>
> why dont you tell reeves that OH WAIT

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: goaway
>
> YOU CANT HES A CHAIR

Come that night to another motel gathering gloom in the twilight. Fireflies twisting in curlicues under the streetlamps generously provided. Entire side of road lit up, basically. You parked in the unremarkable lot. View passed over garishly lit reception, signage contrastingly and uselessly dim, half-dead thing outside the rooms, a few lights still on. What? No, there: lying slumped under a darkened window something cloaked, smeared with blood. You saw in the few places flesh emerged: layers of bandage and twine. Glancing briefly nothing stood out, so lightfooted you approached. You weren’t the type to leave a stranger to bleed out.

So pulling out the phone, getting closer to examine his(?) injuries you recoiled when he moved  and said in a voice that was cloudless sky, [[span style="color:green"]]No, perisher, look at me[[/span]]. And you could not deny him. Your eyes locked with his under the hood, a face clearly misshapen at this distance. He shucked his sackcloth skin and beneath lay a horror.

Shaped vaguely like a man, perhaps a correct guess at his genealogy, but now squamous intestines burst from his stomach and rose strangling him, knotted about his joints. Like a //wicker// man: strips of bifurcating epithelium woven through his skin like bark. Pulsating with his hoarse breaths, stronger as he dimmed, holding him in place. And he said:

[[span style="color:green"]]We are undone. We ask of you a little thing, for our life. Do not leave us.[[/span]]

And you laughed, absurdity spilling over. Zombie prince begs for mercy in the parking lot. Why not? Stirring uncertainty in your stomach crushed under the weight of your disbelief. Presented before you another world to win, the moment you tired of this one. Something you read somewhere: all is ice within. In you a fire burned out. Can’t say when but now even the embers are dull. Another game to play, picaresque fantasy to cut through. No doubt a hero’s welcome for the brave maiden who saved this poor soul lying before her. The same story again, in a different place. Enough.

And so you resolved: wheel away from the mystery. Forget your questions, tell nobody. Let this thing die in the dark. In victory another vaporous glory to pin to your breast. In defeat the wretch’s state implied some miserable fate beyond your current imagining. The calculus was unambiguous. And so you left, walked away. Drove to college, found a husband, had two and a half kids, white picket life. No more prizes, good cooking, mediocre sex, faithful and obedient the rest of your hours. Died wrinkled demented at 80 never thinking of the carcass that begged for its life.

Absolutely not. As if. By very slow decay? Not for you. But God, why now? A question worth answering right at this moment. At the end of your fucking rope and pulled back up by the hand of some cruel angel. You could no more forget this mystery than forget your own face. In you at the last now cold as ice squirmed that sourceless pride. Demanding an answer again, as it ever did. You could not abide a lie. Not to yourself. You hope that’s still true.

Plotting a way forward, stifling reticence. Nothing to go on but assumption. Living dead thing rotting by the road, begging oaths off strangers. If this were a story, how would this go? Monstrously bad reasoning, but when in Rome… part of you still futilely screaming: no, leave, just once leave. Show you can do it. And the other voice laughing, maybe one day. But this is too elegant. //It will be our finest hour//.

So raging at yourself you asked sheened in false fear, “Are you alright, man? What happened to you? Do you need help?”

Playing the idiot. To deny this thing information surely of some utility.

And the half-ghost replied hoarsely,[[span style="color:green"]] An old sister crawled out of the histories. She will flay me and mount my head on her banners. Then you, and this plane. Save me, and be glad.[[/span]]

More fantasy video game bullshit. Keep playing the angle. You know nobody is more pliable than when they’re desperate. Best not to make it sound like an extortion. You think you see what has to happen here. Nothing looks like that that means well. Making deals is the domain of people with no vision. You would rather twist things ‘til they break. Have your cake, and eat it too.

“What //happened// to you, dude. You sure you don’t want me to call the police? Or an ambulance? You look like a fucking, a, parasite crawled into your skin. Jesus Christ.”

Terror painted gaudy on your face. Easier than breathing to recall the expression. A snare for men that ought to die.

Fading, falling tone, life ebbing: [[span style="color:green"]] Lady, I beg of you! Already her hounds stalk [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/taboo our shaded copse] to this place. By grammarie I was brought to one fated to raise me high again. You are that promised girl. Offer me a boon. Now. Do it![[/span]] Voice twisting, pleading. Pleasing to get that reaction out of someone for once. Reversals are always beautiful.

And God, enough playing with your food. Even for this thing some pity swells in you at last. Enough to finish the pretense. That you would ever have chosen otherwise. Time for you to do the obvious thing.

“Tell me what you want. Maybe I’ll give it to you. And tell me what I get //back//, specifically.”

Let him think you uncertain, though. Desire and despair are mirrors.



[[span style="color:green"]] For you, girl, the soul of an ancient [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/djinn-tonic djinn]. The kindling of the world rebelled, and we bade them work. In the name of our Queen, this one is bound, and she shall be your hand. Through fire and smoke you shall have your desire. All I ask is --[[/span]]

You don’t remember what he asked. Like a scalpel across your memory. Jolted out of recollection, momentarily back in the present day, with the cell, the mirror, the knife. What is lost to you? Few things remain alarming, but that is. The mountain fastness of your mind breached. A hole in your life, cut out by your own hand. Disturbing; at eighteen you were an idiot. You got yourself into your current situation with a careful application of exactly that kind of idiocy, but in those days it was as easy as breathing. 

Still, if you cannot trust even your own self, across all the years, you have nothing. You think of the girl you were at eighteen, in the fullness of your youth. If she knew what she stood to lose, and she took that deal -- that’s good enough for you. You have not grown so much smarter as all that. If she accepted it, you have to accept it. To do otherwise would be to be at war with yourself. Leave what you chose to forget by the wayside. Rise, and build anew. 

Where memory returns is as the figure crawls haltingly to his feet. Already shedding his affliction. Writhing bonelessly on the ground, his own viscera come loose from him. Sucking sounds like pulling marrow from the bone. Wasted muscle returning, starveling frame made whole. And in your hands a necklace of bright copper like fire, damascened lovingly with gold, studs of luridly garish jacinth and chrysoprase. Cold as a fell wind.

Already his eyes return, filling gaping emptinesses in his skull. An eye of neon, an inverse eye, an eye projected from some other universe that cannot be looked upon. Smile widening past human contours and he turns to you and proclaims, [[span style="color:green"]] O lady, are you not glad? I have so much to show you. Make your wish.[[/span]]

And you can feel it in the chain across the moments. That first grasp, the murmur of obedience in your heart. Swirling like your own formless want. Past it calcified sorrow deeper than Hell. And then like specks of light seen in some chthonic plain: hope. Faltering even as it was felt. A kindred soul. Close enough, anyway.

A spasm of certainty and you know how to play this. The second half of the plan, formed soundlessly in the deep of your mind. Hidden from yourself: a well-worn skill. Best not contemplate why, or how, or when. Probably this two-bit frantically improvised scheme collapses here. So be it. The prospect of this trick too perfect for you to deny. And you said:

“Burn him alive.”

He rose a wave of wrath. Arm hinging to grasp, limned with nowhere light, and slipping through his fingers: your life. An end at last. Face a snarl, doubt behind those dozen new-spawned eyes. Shining clear even through his spite and surprise. He spoke of a prophecy, surely now broken. At the least, you would die killing.

But no -- roiling sheets of false flame washed over him, heavy with congealed anger. A thousand-year grudge finally given its moment. Skin curled up like woodchips black and brittle. You stepped neatly to one side and the baked husk of some dead fey duke fell beside you. Briefly wending through your mind a sense of thanks. A long sigh, the weighing of an old sin. The vanishing wisps curled back into the chain still wound gently around your hand. Stinging a little from the cold, but receding even as you thought it. You’re welcome, you thought, and nothing else. Still on your toes.

Sank in now that you just killed a man? A something. Last token restraint objected silently: good old Ada, never hurt a fly, law-abiding, sister helps out around town. Don’t you know the police will come to your door midnight hour and knock soundlessly and haul you screaming to the ground? Fiona will be so sad. Alone in that house bitter and gnarled. Amazing what atavisms endured in your mind. Another useless hesitation excised. Shockingly the prospect of a night in a mosquito-thicket bed not actually very appealing to you. Not to mention mister Thomas Covenant over there said he was chased by something probably not any nicer. You departed from the light.

And if hours later to that place there came a many-headed lioness borne on a chariot of glass, and she saw the blasted devastation of her brother and threw back her maws in wild keening laughter to heaven, proclaiming victory at last --

You could not know that.

> **From:** DTesta@site15.scp.int | **To:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> And then there's the matter of her disloyalty. We don't traffic with dissidents.

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> keep the party line for the menials dude. not like she did that shit on purpose

> **From:** CBurroughs@site15.scp.int | **To:** DTesta@site15.scp.int  
> **Subject:** re: New special acquisitions
>
> and literally it worked out?? what is your problem

You strode back into the car and drove again, heedless of the circumstances. Plunging into a night without end over roaring tarmac. You, little shred of flesh, embedded in a creeping metal carapace. Swaddled in sable plains as far as the eye could see. Somehow despite the hour not tiring, arcing through the earthshadow, heading towards your destiny. So it felt. Ephemeral sense of direction fading rapidly as you grasped the enormity of the thing you had stepped into. Dread at what awaited you when you’d won. The last monster already in your mind falling, misshapen thousand-headed thing crowned in blasphemy. And you with a shining sword in its heart, armour gleaming. On a victor’s throne, dead-eyed, throwing it all away piece by piece. God, rebuke me and point me. Please, somebody, tell me what to do.

And a miracle: a want not your own. In the pit of your stomach a tentative desire to make just the smallest mental motion. A sense of permission requested, like a dog begging at your feet. Curious. And letting it through a voice clear like a bell in your mind:

//Thank you, Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. If we never speak again and you throw my vessel into a lake, still I will remember your name all my life and teach it to my children. We will call you in the House of Song.//

Right, a slave. The kindling of the world, he called it. What was it, you wondered idly.

//Zainab. A marid, blessed one. It has been so long since I spoke to someone with a soul to save. Real people did not spend much time around the Duke of Long Dawns. When you took his hand I nearly screamed. I forgot my dreams of freedom centuries ago. I thought you denied me the satisfaction of seeing his end. But thank you, thank you, one who breaks chains. Take me to the Hand.//

And of course here came more of the Game of Thrones nonsense. Hand of the King, did the world conform to your worst expectations? Were you to ride a knight through some hidden chivalric world nestled between fist and falling knife?

//No. No, the// Hand//. The Serpent’s Hand. Liberators of all that cry out for salvation. I thought surely someone as bold as you… If you aren’t with the Hand, then you are in great danger indeed, and braver than I imagined. Who sent you here -- was it the Jailors?//

Thudding in your throat, fear like smoke in your lungs. You brought one hand to your chest, other steering you through the black at a cool eighty, why not, why not? God that stung. Tears to the eyes just remembering it. What was this guy so scared of? Buddy two hours ago the closest I ever got to magic was an internet astrologer my sister showed me. No clue what’s going on.

//Follow me. I will show you.//

And you fell away, together, into the dark.
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Let will alone be the reason

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