Mother and I
by Haze
It takes three words to shatter something vital within Ayako Haibara.
Breaking like a mirror when you put your fist through it.
Breaking like bones.
She's breaking, and I--
"Who are you?" Sakuya asks, sitting up in bed, wearing a serene smile.
Crushed, crunched, ground up.
I'm breaking too.
Yo plants his hand on Ayako's shoulder. An action conveying calm reassurance. He's only acting tough.
And you're breaking too.
"It's me," Ayako tries. "Ayako."
"That's a beautiful name," Sakuya tells her. She brushes the long black hair from Ayako's face and tucks it behind her ear.
"I know. You picked it."
Our house is burning with us three inside.
We'll burn up beyond recognition.
"Ayako." Yo, this time. His tone is measured, but betrays a brittleness. Breaking, breaking, breaking any time now. "Perhaps you ought to--"
"My head hurts." Ayako jerks herself away from the both of them and bolts from the room.
Sakuya's hand lingers in the air.
"Yo... Did I do something wrong?"
He leans in and embraces her. He strokes her hair, soothingly.
"It's all right. Don't worry. It's all right."
Inside Sakuya's head, a memory only almost surfaces. It's dragged back down and consumed by cacophony.
----
Inside Ayako's head, human beings exist in three categories.
The first category is Plaything, its subcategories including Potential Playthings and Discarded Playthings.
The second category is Other Objects, its subcategories including Irritants and Irrelevants. (Irritants may overlap with Discarded Playthings.)
The third and final category is Real People.
This category encompasses Ayako, Yo, and Sakuya.
There are further ways that Ayako mentally categorizes others, such as by Ugly or Beautiful, but those exist within the primary three.
Real People transcend being merely Ugly or Beautiful. The totality of their being cannot be summed up with a single trait. They can be irritants without being Irritants.
They encompass all whom Ayako is capable of loving without harming.
And they love in her turn.
If you are forgotten, the love that was held for you is forgotten too.
And if knowing that you are loved becomes piece of yourself, and if you, yourself, are fragmenting --
Ayako takes off in search of Madoka.
Maybe her plaything can soothe her mind.
----
Madoka bruises so prettily.
Blue, red, yellow, purple. So many colors for Ayako to feast her eyes upon.
Madoka cries so prettily too.
Madoka is the prettiest toy of them all. Having to share her with Misaki and that girl in black is such a pain.
When the girl in black gets in the way of Ayako's playtime, it's almost like...
Like Misaki telling me to go away.
And someone else -- saying to me, in a voice I know...
What are you saying?
I know... I know your voice, but...
Your voice and her voice as one.
Overlapping voices.
Who the hell are you?
Her head actually hurts this time.
That girl in black, always staying by Misaki's side... It infuriates her for a reason she can't place.
"A... Aya... ko?" the trembling Madoka asks, yanking Ayako from her stupor.
"...Don't forget, Madoka. You're my toy. No one else's."
"I'm... I'm... I guess..."
"Don't forget. I'll keep breaking you, piece by piece. You'll always remember. I'll always remember."
"What... Ayako, what are you gonna do?"
I want something to myself.
Forever. Forever.
"Scars don't forget."
"Ayako?"
"Stay still."
I'll remember even when I'm dead.
But you won't, mother.
That's why Madoka has to belong to me.
She'll keep me "me".
We can't replace each other.
I won't let her forget me.
Madoka screams.
----
In the end, the nurse assigned to Ayako intervenes before she can get very far into marking her own name into Madoka's arm.
----
Madoka's pretty bruises weren't enough to lift Ayako's spirits for long, and that damned nurse got in her way right at the most important part.
She'll have to finish the job later. Find a way to keep Madoka quiet. It'd be easier if she were unconscious, but not nearly as fun. Madoka ought to watch as Ayako stakes her inerasable claim to her plaything.
Ayako enters the canopied room, dragging along a doll that she intends to disassemble and decorate her room with.
Staring into the doll's simple, unpainted face, Ayako thinks, Mother's room is full of dolls.
They're not pretty in Ayako's eyes, but she doesn't try to fix them by breaking them anymore.
She took one of the porcelain dolls, once, and shattered it to perfection, thinking that Sakuya would find it beautiful too.
It made her sad instead, and it filled Ayako with a bad feeling she couldn't name.
If she broke all of her mother's dolls, would it shock Sakuya into remembering her?
No, probably not. In fact... it's a fuzzy recollection, blurred by the Moonlight Syndrome, but didn't her mother say she puts herself into the dolls?
When Ayako destroyed that porcelain doll, did she break a part of her mother?
Was that why Sakuya looked so sad?
The bad feeling wells up in Ayako. It's in her head and her stomach and her chest.
She rips the head off the doll in her hands.
She breaks its left arm, and its right.
She drops it to the floor where it makes a thunk sound and she stomps on it.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP
Ayako lets out a wretched sob as her foot caves the doll's chest in.
Everything's breaking in the ugliest way.
Then comes a quiet knocking from the other room. Yo's room.
She's not yet too old to run to her father for comfort, and does just so.
----
They sit on the bed. She clings to the front of his shirt and muffles her cries against the fabric. Yo holds her close, rubbing her back.
Hands that kill yet hands that cradle.
"She forgot me. She forgot me."
"I know. It hurts, doesn't it?"
"It's stabbing. Piercing. Knives and needles gutting me. It hurts."
He has to give her hope. It's all they have.
"Ayako. Your grandfather and I are doing everything we can to restore her memory. We're going to save her, and cure Moonlight Syndrome. You'll be saved too, Ayako. Luckily, your case is already only mild, so your recovery chances are very--"
She balls up her fist and strikes him in the chest. Yo flinches at the blow, and that's the extent of his reaction.
"She forgot me, but I bet she remembers Misaki! She remembers her, doesn't she?!" Ayako snarls.
Yo seems to stop breathing for a moment.
"She can't choose what she remembers, Ayako," he says carefully. "It's painful, and unfair. It hurts her too. Believe me."
"If she remembers Misaki, she can love Misaki! If she forgets me, she can't love me!"
Yo takes Ayako by the shoulders and gently pushes her back, just far enough that he can look her in the eyes.
(Bloodshot, puffy. The glittering gold of her eyes is dull.)
"Sakuya will always love you. Even when she forgets who you are."
"Liar. You're a filthy liar. She loves Misaki more than me. Doesn't she?!" The accusation pours from a raw voice warped by tears.
He shakes his head. "Not at all. You will always be her Ayako. You can't be replaced like some kind of doll. When her memories return, she'll shower you in all the love she has."
"...And what about Misaki?"
"She'll be far away. She won't be needed anymore."
"I wish I could kill her," Ayako whispers. "I know how to do it. But then mother would be sad."
"That's why you're a good girl, Ayako. Be patient a little longer. Keep doing what makes you happy... and stay yourself."
At long last Ayako has cried herself out. She rests her head against Yo's chest.
"...You have to fix it, Yo. You have to fix this. We aren't supposed to be the ones who break. It's hideous."
Staidly, Yo says, "I promise you. I'll save us."
----
But he can't save them.
----
Her face is going to burst open. It will split asunder, an open wound. All that's inside her head will come spilling out. She'll be drained of self like slaughter stock of blood. Mangled beyond recognition, 'breaking' into 'broken'.
She calls for Yo.
Yo can't hear her cries.
She calls for her mother.
----
There is no screaming. No begging. No wailing.
The island is silent. The birds and insects outside have gone quiet. It is as if all sound in the world has been swallowed up.
Only Ayako, her hands gripping her face so hard it nearly bleeds, still makes noise.
The door to her room does not open.
A shadow falls over her all the same.
If Ayako peeks, she will be destroyed.
She's sure of it.
The shadow reaches down and tucks a lock of long black hair behind her ear.
Ayako imagines the shadow's face-that-isn't. Churning, distorting. Breaking in perpetuum.
Shards of glass breaking into smaller shards of glass breaking into smaller shards of glass. They'll all pierce Ayako's face and oblivion will take her.
Yet she is tempted. Drawn to the scribbled out face in her mind's eye, wretched and somehow beautiful.
Eyes squeezed shut, her violently trembling fingers begin to part. Just... one look. Just one.
The shadow's hand covers Ayako's face.
The hand is cold, yet warm.
The memory of warmth accompanies this cold hand.
Then the shadow is gone, as if it were never there.
----
A lone girl has survived the disaster that obliterated the population of Rogetsu Isle.
Her condition is critical, and the doctors do not expect her to improve.
She doesn't speak of what happened. She doesn't remember.
Her own name is lost to her.
She's empty.
----
In the girl's final moments, she remembers one thing; a broken little fragment of a memory.
Ayako cries out for her mother.
No one answers.