life on loan
This Iemitsu fic I've been working on for ages should be done in a couple of days, maybe? *glee* :D
In the meantime, there is, ah ha, more Pandora Hearts fic. o_O Yeesh.
This is a day in the life of Echo, whose life is of course a misery. Still. I love Echo. She handles her shitty life so well, considering.
Fic has dubious consent issues...although no more than implied by canon. I found it creepy as hell in canon. *shares this feeling*
Spoilers through Ch. 47! Pandora Hearts doesn't belong to me.
Life on Loan
This body is a cage.
The body sits on Vincent’s lap as he runs his hand between the breasts, down the stomach, up under her tunic. He likes to do that; it’s the reason he has her wear it. He moves his fingers and she gasps.
It’s a shame that Echo can feel what’s being done to the cage. The body loves this, of course. It would. It belongs to Noise, after all.
None of it is really any of Echo’s business, so she tries to ignore it. She’s getting better about that. Lots of practice.
“I’m trusting you to take care of this,” Vincent murmurs between kisses down the neck, something between a threat and a promise. “I can trust you, can’t I? Echo.”
“Yes, Master Vincent,” she answers in a damnably wavering voice. Noise’s body is very irritating. Possibly even more irritating than Vincent.
“We wouldn’t want another incident like that unfortunate slip with the Rainsworth girl. Would we?”
Pain.
Noise’s body loves this kind of pain.
“No,” Echo gasps. “Master Vincent.”
The body shudders with pleasure, and Echo hates it.
* * *
Vincent wants her to find a man and kill him. He could have just told her that without the theatrics, but it’s not his way. She’s given up trying to make sense of what he does. She suspects he doesn’t understand himself, half the time.
The man is easy to find, and even easier to kill. Creatures of habit usually are. This one went to the same bar every day. He was a sad man who spent all his daylight hours drinking away the world.
Echo thinks that if she had her own body, she might have been on the barstool next to him. But she doesn’t have a body or a barstool, and that’s why that man is dead.
Vincent had told her that the man always left the bar for an hour at lunchtime, so all she had to do was wait. He left exactly on schedule. She jumped down on him from the roof and cut his throat. He probably never knew what hit him.
She drags his body behind the trash bins in the alley and takes his wallet. Reveille is a big city with a fair amount of crime, and if the man has no wallet, people will assume he died during a violent robbery.
This is the easiest job Echo’s done in months; it didn’t even take half an hour.
She heads home.
She doesn’t know whether the man she killed was a good man or a bad one, or just somewhere in between, like most people. She doesn’t know why Vincent wanted him dead. She doesn’t worry about it too much. At least this time it was no one she knew.
This was a simple job, and she’s pleased with it. As long as she doesn’t run into any confusing people who tell her strange things and make her forget that she isn’t a real person, there won’t be any trouble. It’ll be a good day.
Of course Oz Vessarius appears a block later, as if she conjured him up. Complete with idiotic grin. It’s a market day; the road’s blocked off and packed with carts and stands and shoppers. There are hundreds of people. Why is it that among all these hundreds of people, the one she managed to practically run into is Oz? It’s not reasonable. It’s statistically unlikely. It’s annoying.
“You’re in my way,” she says.
“Ekkie!” he cries.
She hates that name. She hates it the way she hates the sound of nails screeching down a chalkboard. “It’s Echo.”
“I haven’t seen you for ages! Not since we had tea with Pandora. How have you been? Oh, you’ve got something on your face, hang on.”
Uninvited, he rubs his thumb against Noise’s cheek, thinking he’s touching Echo’s. It makes Echo jealous, which makes no sense.
She hates Oz sometimes. He taught her what happiness feels like, and now she knows when she isn’t happy. Which is always. Why was that something she needed to know? Why did he look so pleased when he taught her? Was it sadism or stupidity?
And yet it’s addictive, being around him. She understands a little, now, why the body is so attached to Vincent. It’s not because the touch itself is so amazing, but because once you’ve had it, you can’t live without it. Happiness, she thinks, is something that exists to be taken away.
Yes, she hates Oz Vessarius sometimes. She hates him right now.
He doesn’t know that, though. He doesn’t know anything, standing in front of her like an idiot, staring at his thumb. “Ekkie,” he says. “This looks like blood.”
“Echo!”
“Is it yours?”
She frowns at him. “It’s not.”
“Ah.” He smiles. “That’s good! You have a tough job, don’t you? Hey, Gil’s buying lunch-you should eat with us.”
Echo isn’t sure what a normal person’s reaction to the blood would have been, but she’s pretty sure Oz’s reaction wasn’t anything like it. “I’m busy.”
“Well, you have to eat sometime. And I’ll treat you, so it’ll be no trouble!”
“Who is going to treat her?” growls Gilbert. He’s been standing behind Oz for a while, which is funny, because Oz thought he was buying lunch. He seizes Oz’s hair, tilts his head back, and glares down at him. Oz smiles back, even with his neck at that odd angle.
According to Oz, Gilbert belongs to him the same way Echo belongs to Vincent. Gilbert seems to enjoy it much more than Echo does, though. Maybe Oz is a more careful owner? He certainly has Gilbert on a much looser leash.
“It is my money, you know,” Oz is arguing.
“It’s the estate’s money, you mean.”
“Well, Gil, that’s kind of how it goes. Do you want me to take up a trade or something?”
“Oz!”
A trade? Hm. If Echo had a body, she would take up a trade. She would make fireworks.
“Hello, Echo. Did Vincent give you the day off?” Gilbert asks, releasing Oz and smiling at her. She quite likes Gilbert, even if he does ask incredibly stupid questions. Of course, she doesn’t like him as well as Vincent does. Vincent always has to take everything too far.
“Good afternoon, Master Gilbert. My work is completed and I’m heading back home. Right away. Master Vincent will be angry if-”
“I’ll explain it to him, if you like. Don’t worry,” Gilbert says, and Oz beams happily at him.
Wonderful. Now there’s no escape at all.
“Oz, what is taking you so long?” a voice bursts out from the crowd. Echo turns to see Oz’s chain marching toward them. “I’m starving!”
“Sorry, Alice. But I ran into Ekkie, so I invited her to have lunch with us.”
“Fine, whatever, can we just eat already? Where’s the food?”
“It’s Echo,” Echo mutters, trailing hopelessly after Oz and Gilbert and the chain. Gilbert puts a sympathetic hand on Noise’s head and ruffles the hair a little. Echo looks up at him, surprised. He’s smiling at her again.
He’s a funny one. Not like his brother at all.
Gilbert and Oz go off to buy food, ordering Echo and the chain, Alice, to wait for them. Echo is used to orders. She settles in to wait.
Oz’s chain is apparently less used to orders, and she’s not taking well to them at all. Echo wishes she would stop fidgeting around and just hold still.
“You smell like meat,” Alice the chain announces once she’s bored with fidgeting. Echo frowns and looks down at Noise’s body. Meat?
There’s blood on the arm. It’s not quite meat, but it’s probably what Alice is talking about. Echo looks back up to find the chain watching her with sharp eyes.
“Did you kill something?” Alice asks. “Or did…someone else?”
“Who else would have?” Answering a question with a question is a good way to make people leave you alone. Most people, that is. But not this one. Maybe chains work differently.
“I don’t know. You seem pretty complicated.” Alice reaches out and taps Noise’s chest just below the base of the throat. “You and not-you. It’s like…I’ve seen it before, or…done it. Before.”
“Why are you talking to me?”
“Because I don’t remember, but I feel like you do.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not-”
“You are!”
“Leave me alone!”
Alice doesn’t leave her alone. Instead, she leans ominously forward and stares. Echo reaches for her knife, but doesn’t draw it, because Alice…belongs to Oz.
Echo hates Oz sometimes.
“Fine,” Alice decides at last. “I’ll leave you alone, if…”
She trails meaningfully off, and Echo sighs, waiting. She knows all about blackmail; Vincent loves blackmail. It makes Echo tired.
“If! You buy me meat.” Alice folds her arms triumphantly and smirks. “All that blood smell made me hungry, and it’s your fault. So it’s fair.”
This doesn’t make any sense. Echo scowls at Alice, trying to see what she’s after, what she wants, why she’s doing this-
And there’s nothing. Alice’s eyes are clear, not an ulterior motive in sight. Echo doesn’t understand. “Meat?”
Alice nods firmly. “Lots of meat. Extra meat! For later!”
Blinding-white innocence, the same as Oz’s. It makes no sense at all, not for either one of them. Alice is the bloody rabbit, the murderer of hundreds. Oz is…well, Echo knows his father. Oz and Alice shouldn’t be innocent. They can’t be.
Maybe it’s not innocence, then. But whatever it is, they both have it, and Echo’s lost it. Unless it’s something she never had in the first place.
A hand claps down on the shoulder; Echo jumps violently and spins. And gasps, sharp and painful as a scream.
Xerxes Break.
Oz knows that Echo doesn’t like Vincent. Alice seems to know that Echo’s sharing the body. But Break.
Break knows.
“I’ll buy the lady’s meat on your behalf,” says Xerxes Break. “After all, I do owe you a favor.”
“…Favor? But. But you-”
“My Lady Sharon’s life is worth any amount of return,” he says, producing a handkerchief with a flourish and holding it out to her. “Any amount.”
Echo doesn’t understand this man at all.
“I wouldn’t trust any meat you bought, you clowny bastard,” Alice grumbles indignantly, breaking the moment.
Break ignores her. “Your arm is bleeding,” he tells Echo, eye sharp, gauging. “Hadn’t you noticed?”
She looks, and it’s true. She must have gotten scratched climbing onto the roof. It’s fairly deep. Echo spends so much time ignoring the body that sometimes she misses important things.
So the blood that made Alice the chain hungry was this body’s blood? That must mean Alice the chain wants to eat Noise. Interesting.
Echo takes Break’s handkerchief and ties it carelessly around Noise’s arm. She supposes the scratch might get infected. Oh, well. If Noise doesn’t want the body getting hurt, maybe she should watch over it more often herself.
“Thank you,” she tells Xerxes Break.
Xerxes Break says, “Hm.”
* * *
By the time Echo finally escapes from Oz and company and makes it home, Lottie is the only one left waiting for her.
“Where is Master Vincent?” Echo asks mechanically, tired, tired, tired. The job was easy, but Oz was exhausting. All of them were. Talking and laughing and looking at her and wanting her to say things and do things and respond. She’s tired enough that she’d let Noise take over, except the wounds haven’t healed yet-and there’s a brand new one today. Those wounds aren’t the kind of pain that Noise likes.
The body belongs to Noise; they’ve never disagreed about that. Noise is more comfortable in the body, and Echo is more comfortable behind the curtain. It’s understood.
Or it was understood until Echo was forced outside, forced to meet people Noise might someday kill. Forced to care about things that should be none of her business. Now she can’t be happy either way. The curtain can’t save her from her own resentment.
In a way, this is Oz’s fault, too.
“Vincent? He went out,” Lottie says, eyeing her thoughtfully. It must be confusing for someone who knows Noise so well to talk to her echo. “He should be back in a couple of hours.”
Echo could have spent more time with Oz.
Echo didn’t want to spend more time with Oz.
“Oh.” Now what? She doesn’t want to stay awake another two hours. She wants to go to bed and be alone and not be stuck in this body. Just for a few hours, just to pretend for a while.
She used to record everything in her diary, but lately, she’s always pretending instead. Pretending pointless things. That she has her own body and her own barstool. That she makes fireworks for a living. That she’s never heard of Noise, never met Vincent. That when Oz Vessarius touches the face she lives behind, he’s actually touching her.
It’s stupid to pretend, she knows that. But she does it every day.
Today it will have to wait, though. She belongs to the Nightrays and to Noise, and they’ll always come first. Even the most ridiculous things that Oz Vessarius and Xerxes Break and Alice the chain can say won’t change that. She has to stay awake until she can report to Vincent, and that’s all there is to it.
“You look exhausted,” says Lottie, the stranger-but-not. Lottie knows this body very well, even if she doesn’t know the person wearing it. The body must look as tired as Echo feels. How strange that it works both ways, that she can affect the body as much as the body affects her.
She could destroy this body if she wanted to, just like breaking someone else’s toy. Noise would never see it coming.
“Come sit with me,” Lottie says, moving to one of the softest couches and patting the seat beside her. “Sit with me and sleep until he comes back.”
“I can’t-”
“I’ll wake you up as soon as I hear him at the door. That’ll give you enough time, won’t it?”
Echo thinks about that. Between the front door and here, there’s a long hallway, a left turn, a flight of stairs, another hallway, third door on the right. Two minutes and fifteen seconds, the way Vincent walks. Enough time. “Yes,” she says. “But why…?”
“Because I like you better than Vincent. Come on. Sit down.”
People don’t like Echo better than Vincent. People don’t compare Echo to other people, Echo isn’t real-
“Stop staring at me like I just declared the sky green and come sit down. Or else I will make you.”
Threats are comfortingly familiar; Echo latches onto them. It doesn’t have to make sense. Nothing has to make sense in this world. She should know that by now.
She settles next to Lottie, who’s warm and soft, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from her, just like Oz and Alice. It doesn’t feel real at all, but Echo’s much too tired to care. She’ll have plenty of time to worry about everything later. She’ll have a lifetime.
For now, Echo snuggles into Lottie’s side, and she pretends herself to sleep.