Without question, she had stagnated since her first visit to the surrounding. Sure she had, off and on, attempted to battle. Well... more or less she had floundered through combat, much in the way she had attempted to frighten off a space whale with an fuzzy black cat slipper.
...She still missed that slipper. And the old band shirt, she'd loved wearing to bed until it had been totally destroyed by... well...
...Everything. Monster spit. Gnaw marks. Memories.
she might have been able to forgive the rest, but she couldn't wash the memories out of the ragged remains. Couldn't look at it, or even so much as a gold fish, without remembering standing in the make shift infirmary as this huge strange creature that looked like a flying coelacanth.
She remembered trying to stand with their rescuers and she still remembered dying.
She was haunted, more or less, by her own ghost, and it still felt as though no matter what she tried, it wasn't good enough. She'd felt strong before she'd awakened. She had felt brave in spite of her fear, brave enough to stand for humanity, to demand that they have the right to fight for themselves if they so chose, but that was before she'd died for that right.
The Surrounding had brought her back to life but it hadn't brought her confidence with it. She was pretty sure that was still in the belly of the Coelacanth.
She had trained to fight, as best as you could, with a pink scarf, she had powered up in spite of her terror at being granted this 'other' self... but she still doubted.
She wasn't sure any more than she was brave. Or strong. Or that someone else should not have been awakened as Hara Berezaiti, to serve the Princess Chronos and the surrounding.
She hadn't even visited her wonder, not until now.
She honestly hadn't been back at all. Everything about the Surrounding scared her, so she was trying, damn hard, to face that fear.
It was more or less easy to fid, even had she missed it, the circular nature of the Surrounding would have made it possible to get there one way or another. It was... kind of mountainous. Like the top of a craggy mountain had burst it's way into one of the wonders, surrounded by swirling mist and the path to it's quaint, round green door with black iron scroll work flowers and two torches, which for reasons she found almost laughable, stood out as the most unbelievable aspect of the entire set up.
She stopped near the door, anxiety bubbling up in waves. It was like having the nerve endings in her mind rubbed raw and then being blown on by an soft breeze. A quiet singing sort of agony that was exhausting and paralyzing, and in a certain way familiar.
Hard to get help for something that was very hard to explain to a therapist without revealing yourself to have been awakened as a 'terrorist'. With her head scarf she was additionally worried about that terrorist reputation. People reacted to that sort of things these days. It gave you sympathy for people who had been painted as villains, even if you'd never been in their shoes before.
"I'm going to do this. It's fine."
She spoke out loud to try and convince herself, and tried to ignore the tremor.
"We protect the surrounding. We won. It's just an old place, full of dust. All I'm going to find is dust and old furniture."
And maybe she'd actually believe that if she kept repeating it. It was hard not to picture the door opening to a huge set of jaws, or a flock of tiny biting things, but she reached for the handle anyway.
Choked on fear
Swallowed
And opened the door.
There were no monsters. No hungry jaws. Just a long room with arched ceilings and rough wooden beams hung with lamps. The beams themselves had been carved with fantastic creatures, and the plastered ceiling was covered in faded, colorful murals of tiny flowers and verdant green.
The floor was all even, terracotta and blue tile, with more painted flowers, white like miniature stars, and as her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside, she saw that on either side of the door were carved wooden creatures, strange and fantastic, like a strange cross of a dog, a lion and a peacock... fierce clawed, but....
...The eyes were gentle.
She wasn't even clear exactly what about carved eyes on a bird monster qualified as 'gentle' but they were, and she wondered how long they had watched over this room, this Wonder.
Maybe they'd been flesh once, maybe they had waited so long that they had turned to...
No that was stupid. And only in her dreams of late did people turn into statues. She wasn't even sure what that was supposed to mean. She understood the part about being helpless, but not the paralysis of others, unless it was a metaphor for her, personally being paralyzed by fear.
"Maybe there's a way to... hang up my scarf." She sighed, but she was already pretty sure that the answer was no. That the only way she'd hang up the scarf and title would be if she died again, and then who knew what would happen. If someone else would take her place or if they would simply be left without one particularly useless Page.
Her eyes burned with the familiar acid sting of tears as she stepped inside, rubbing at them and sniffling as she shut the door behind herself. There was no one here, no one to pretend that it was just the dust, and she could barely have pretended anyway. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks and soaked her scarf when she tried to wipe them away, turning the room into a whirling kaleidoscope of colors as she tried to focus and explore.
"Goddamnit!"
This wasn't why she had come here. This had been somehow supposed to magically make her be... be...
She didn't even know. She couldn't be who she used to be any more. She couldn't go back to not believing in magic, or knights, or senshi, or transformations and coming back from the dead. All that was gone now and she was just stumbling around in the dark, trying to move forward and not even sure she was doing that right.
She was definitely doing it wrong now, she was sure, as she sank to the tiled floor and just cried, pouring out an ocean of exhaustion and fear that she'd been desperately trying to keep back for the sake of everyone. Alfheim. Athene. Chronos. Her parents.
The list was depressingly short these days.
"Knights aren't supposed to be this ******** up. They aren't supposed to need therapy or pills or... or be this scared all the damn time." there was no one to argue with, but she argued anyway, with herself at least.
Pharos only needed kittens to be bubbly. Why couldn't she be... was Pharos normal? She wanted to be some kind of normal where it took so little to be ok.
You seem so sure of that... since it isn't true.
The voice was quiet, polite, and so wholly unexpected that Hara threw herself backward, scrambling on the floor mostly on her back as she searched for the source, which proved to be the faint apparition of a woman with black hair and dark gray eyes, wearing an uniform remarkably similar to her own. sso much so she would have said it was the same uniform, and... maybe it was. She'd heard whispers about reincarnations and ancestors, and had put them out of mind, never originally figuring that she would be here, like she was now.
"O-o-ohmygod y-you're..."
"Hara Berezaiti. The last to hold that name, before you. It has been a long and silent wait."
God how she missed being able to deny every bit of this. It would have been so so very much easier if she could just say that it was all in her head. A hallucination. Or a hologram. she could buy a hologram. She could buy hallucination. She just didn't want to buy talking to the ghost of a woman who could only be disappointed in her pathetic replacement.
But she looked surprisingly calm and even kind for someone who was, Holi was sure, looking at the most crushing failure of a Page that ever did... Page.
The woman stepped forward... in so much as a ghost could, and Holi scooted backward again almost by instinct, eyes saucer wide until her back and shoulders bumped against an unyielding plaster wall.
"Why are you so sure you're not a good knight?"
The dead woman asked, kneeling down with her hands on her knees, just out of reach. Could they have touched anyway?
"B-because I'm... I'm not! I-- I didn't even think magic was real before all this started! I was... I was stupid! I tied to stand up and fight with the Senshi and the Knights and I just wasn't strong enough and..."
The ghost of a woman held up her hand in a gesture to silence her, and Holi obeyed, pulling her knees up to her chin and staring over them anxiously, her arms drawing them up tighter to her.
You stood up to protect those who could not protect themselves. You stood to help, knowing your odds were poor, but knowing that it would improve the odds of others. You believed that it was worth the risk, worth the fear. And you continue to stand. You came here... didn't you? I did not summon you.
"W-well...no... N-no I guess you didn't..." She didn't uncurl, but she didn't look for a way to bolt either.
"But I just... I'm horrible at this. I'm messed up."
"And I suppose you feel as though you're the first to have walked away from a terrible battle with wounds on your heart...
The woman reached out as though she would have gently stroked the side of Holi's cheek, then dropped her hair with a soft, slightly sad expression. "It's much harder to write tales of glory about a wound no one can see. But they have always existed. Likely they always will, and they hurt no less than any other hurt. But they do not make you less. If you did not hurt because you saw such horrible things... that... that might make you less. If you could not recoil when others suffered, that would be less. That isn't strength, that's a place for darkness to creep in, and we should not seek to be homes to that Darkness."
Holi glanced down at her knees, thinking of the battle, about the way the Agents that had come spoke, talking as though they were the heros, and yet... all of them. Even the dark senshi, like Mimistrobell, there was something twisted up and wrong inside them. Something rotten and spreading, that offended her so deeply that she had joined others and irrationally screamed at the Codex when it spoke of Knights as being neutral, as though they could ever defend such a twisted thing.
Chaos would never need them. Not when it fed on the worst in people. It was the good parts that needed help, that grated off and broke to pieces, and made her feel like the broken shards of her heart were cutting her apart inside.
She started to cry again, and gulped it back aggressively.
"But I'm just not strong enough!"
"And what is strength?
"Well it's... everyone fights so much better..."
And is better at hurting someone else always the best way to protect?
She wasn't sure where this was leading, but she shook her head, blinking.
"...N.... no? I guess... I mean... s-oommmmmetimes you have to...take them... away from being hurt?"
Shelter them, let them heal...
She frowned, turning over the question in her head, the answers, as the other woman smiled.
"Now you're begining to understand. Not all strength comes from here..." she made as though to rest her hand on Holi's, and the touch was barely tangible, like the brush of a feather, as Holi slowly, cautiously, lowered her knees.
"Our strength comes from here... She added, reaching forward and resting her translucent palm against Holi's rib cage, where her heart beat like an startled bird against cage bars, and somewhere deep inside she felt a warm glow, something bold, and comforting she'd almost forgotten. Like being in the kitchen with her family and feeling secure and safe and happy... The feeling she'd had helping move rocks with Princess Chronos, and when she had painstakingly assembled marzipan cats and other sweets in the Leo kitchens.
It was a different kind of strength, but it was her strength, to comfort and protect, and it was wonderful to feel it awakening again, even a little. She saw the woman smile again and then fade away into whisps of light as the sense of strength seemed to spread outward, awakening and changing everything that it touched.
Words written on torn off can labels.
"I saw real magic for the first time since you brought me those candy bars...."
Real magic.
Her magic.
Squire Hara Berzaiti of Chronos, awakened.
