I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly

[unastregadoro.livejournal.com]

WHO: A Certain Trolling Golden Witch (unastregadoro )
WHERE: Some random abandoned theatre, then the mean streets of the City
WHEN: The night of the 26th
WARNINGS: Angst no Naku Koro Ni, copious amounts of Italian (I was too lazy to translate it okay)
SUMMARY: Beatrice deploys the Major's machine.  Except for some reason, her heart's just not in it.
FORMAT: If your mom was para

"Come, let us sing."

Virgilia would always tell Beatrice that after they would finish up learning magic for the day, during the halcyon days of the latter's formative years.  Before she became the Golden Witch.  When she was still a nameless child otherwise called "Princess."  The name "Beatrice," she had to work to earn.

"Addio, fiorito asil
di letizia e d’amor!"  

So Beatrice sang, as she raised her arms in the middle of the stage, glowing with an intensity that illuminates the dark and decrepit theatre; almost rejuvenating it, bringing it back to its heyday before time decided to move on and entertain itself in other ways.   The light that gathers in the center of the stage slowly comes together to form what resembles an enormous treasure chest, but with various hoses and furnaces sprouting from it.

But her eyes are closed as she is singing.  For some reason, she doesn't particularly care to revel in her work this time around----like she normally would. 

Tonight, she just wants to get it over and done with.  Too much had happened already, and too much was still happening.  She was tired.  She was weary.  She just wanted to sleep.  She thought the game she had planned with the Major would be fun, but now it just strikes her as redundant, as just another chapter in the endless story that had been her life thus far.  

...She briefly wondered if maybe Virgilia had felt such weariness during her tenure as Beatrice, The Golden Witch.  Although Beatrice herself had been around for a thousand years (and counting), Virgilia had been around for even longer.  Perhaps that had been why Virgilia had chosen her as her successor? Because she wanted to pass on the burden to someone else?

Because she was just tired of it all?

"With endlessness comes endless boredom," Beatrice herself had said to Bernkastel once, during one of their many, many games.  She could no longer remember if it had been another game or the game involving the Ushiromiyas.   And that was precisely what she had expected when she first arrived here in the City; same crap, different day.  Or world, rather.  She figured she'd find another routine: find a bunch of pawns to mess with, and paint the City red.

But she'd proven herself wrong.  Instead, what she came upon were a trio of children needing protection.  One was a nightingale of a boy held prisoner by a cruel king of a superior.  Another was a young girl still trying to find herself and her powers a place in the world. 

And the last one was just one pawn in a larger game involving another endless cycle of light and darkness, life and death. 

"Addio, fiorito asil,
non reggo al tuo squallor."

Perhaps she was not a butterfly all along, like everyone had seen her as, what she herself had fancied.  No.  Rokkenjima had merely been her chrysalis---fitting, for it had been her prison for as far back as she could remember. 

The City was her metamorphosis.  And it was now, only now, that the chrysalis was starting to crack.  She had managed to save Matsuka and Lyra.

But she had failed Bakura.  Failed him because of a cruel twist of fate.  Because of her own selfishness and whimsy.  Now what? He was dead.  Killed on the orders of the Major. 

But would he return, as Keith Anyan did? 

But would he return changed, as Keith Anyan did?  But Keith was now slowly but surely embarking on a quest for redemption.  What would happen if Bakura returned? Bakura's heart had always been in the right place before his death.  He simply didn't believe in himself enough, refused to believe in himself enough.
 
Like Keith, would Bakura become the inverse of his previous self, if he returned?

The mere thought of that prompts the tears Beatrice was holding back and trying to ignore through the singing are now breaking free---yet another crack in the chrysalis.  

"Ah, non reggo al tuo squallor.
Fuggo, fuggo, ah, son vil!
Addio, non reggo al tuo squallor,
Ah! son vil,
ah! son vil!" 

She understood now.

She was becoming Virgilia and Bakura was now her Beatrice, lost to the darkness.  And the Major was Lambdadelta, her cruel master.

Her cruel master who had led her onto this path of endlessness, in the first place.

***

"The blood is still on your hands, as it's on mine as well."

Truer words.

Except she would much rather die than actually admit that they were true---especially since they came from a man she once sought to destroy.

But why was she thinking of them now that she was exiting the theatre, with a blank, cold expression on her face, safely hidden by her parasol?  She wasn't responsible, was she? She would never dream of harming Bakura.  He was a child.  Children needed to be protected, as she told Sirius.  Nevermind that she saw so much of herself in Bakura, and...

No.

A sob escapes, unbidden.

The Major had killed him to provide a distraction.  A distraction for Beatrice's sake, so that way no one would discover the device she had just created, for the Hate Gas.

It was her fault.  She might as well have----

---No.

Whether or not he was right in saying those words to her didn't matter anymore.  Her part in all of this was done.  She'd screwed up.  Bakura was dead and that was that.

There was no turning back.

She would watch the City burn.

And yet...

"Who...am I?" Beatrice murmurs in a soft, broken voice to herself, as she strolls into the beckoning night.