Part 13: Forgetting the Sound of Your Voice

Burning pink-orange hues illuminated the solarium as the day descended into twilight, casting a melancholy glow across the silhouette of the Herald of Light. Gazing dispassionately at the dying rays as she sat straight-backed in her chair, the platinum-haired woman seemed entirely oblivious of her surroundings; perhaps the desire to watch the setting sun was simple autonomic nerve response, requiring no conscious thought.

Left alone with her mother, V came to stand beside her, resting a hand on the other woman’s shoulder as they both looked out through the clear glass. If the former Herald felt that touch, she offered no reaction, which came as no surprise to the daughter; there was only a one-sided conversation to be had here, sentimental words passing from the younger rabbit to the elder. Even that was strange to consider, as V had lived a life that far exceeded the length of her mother’s and yet now the damage to her neural net had equalized the two. Cut-off from so much of her twisted stack, the only memories that remained accessible to her were those that UltraCraft had gifted her, entangling them with her save data: a childhood spent playing with Genevieve, the moments together in her chambers, her rude arrival on the surface of the planet, Herdsplitter’s wonderful comfort in the Wolf Lord’s den … ⸻ and the subsequent birth of her own children.

“I hope you don’t hate me,” she started, a wry smile playing across her lips. “I never meant to take the place of your daughter.”

Sitting quietly, there was no indication the former Herald even heard her; the only thing distinguishing her from a painted statue was the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.

“I don’t know how to apologize for my crime,” V continued, a morose sigh hissing between her teeth, “but maybe my own death will be punishment enough.” Flashing the other woman a bright grin, she drew her into a conspiratorial humor. “Look at this way: now your daughter won’t have to perform the Lunar Cry, right? Surely that makes us even.”

The other woman didn’t so much as twitch. If she had understood the joke, she didn’t acknowledge it.

“Not to bore you with my own sentimental details,” the younger rabbit whinged regretfully, changing tack, “but you and I are kind of perfect for each other. You see, I never had a mom ⸻ not really, anyway.” Shrugging as she pretended to indifference, she acknowledged the miserable truth. “There was a woman that gave birth to me, and she ‘raised’ me, too, if you want to call it that. Still, the one thing I’m certain of is that no matter how many times she told me that she loved me, she never meant it. I was less a daughter and more of a dog, and not a particularly useful one.”

The former Herald weathered the awful story with admirable grace.

“Maybe I never stopped being one,” she mused, traipsing through whatever horrible details of her life she could still remember. “Or at least, some kind of pet, anyway ⸻ a Bunny, if you’d like. Either way, I’ve never gotten to be a real person, y’know? Human, I mean. I didn’t have a childhood, I slunk my way through ‘university,’ educating myself in all the subtle ways to disguise myself as a normal person and bury the clumsy monster that I am. Even after I finished growing up, all I did was flee from my existence, hiding myself inside my little games ⸻ not that it mattered, of course, since no one ever went looking for me.”

Offering her steadfast companionship, the seated woman generously allowed V to continue the self-centered diatribe.

“And now I’ve come to the end of it all,” she muttered angrily, frustrated with herself. “It wasn’t really much of a run, was it? Thirty-seven wretched years with absolutely nothing to show for it. I mean, sure, Vincent and Victoria are well-liked, and Voss is respected in certain circles ⸻ but they’re not me, are they?”

Dignified as always, the former Herald evidently knew better than to respond to such bitter rhetoric.

“Kariss told me the ritual is going to blank my name ⸻ which is patently ridiculous, of course, since no one ever knew it in the first place.” Raking her free hand through platinum locks, she distracted herself from the pain of her honest admissions. “And now I’ll never be able to tell anyone what it was, either.” Letting out a tense sigh, she couldn't even find the humor inside herself to laugh ironically.

Perhaps the elder woman might have reminded V of all the people who had professed their love for her, for whom the concept of a “name” might not have been so important, but she kept her lips sealed. It was a polite consideration, really, not to bring up Lacey and Varina when V would never again be able to see them again after the ritual ⸻ or at least, she would never be conscious of such a meeting. The mother’s kind gesture didn’t go unnoticed.

“I could tell you my name, I guess,” V mumbled, reveling in her miserable melancholy. “Would you like that? It’d be a secret between the two of us. A special bond between mother and daughter.”

As though understanding the offer held hidden knives, the other woman declined to respond.

“I can’t fault your obstinacy,” the bunnygirl chuffed, just as frustrated with herself as anything else. “Despite the fact that I chose it myself, I know that name hasn't ever fit me ⸻ I was never beautiful enough to possess it. And I’m still not. And I’ll never be.”

Annoyed with the other woman’s cavalier dismissal of her words, V left her side, coming around to face the former Herald directly. Her mother didn’t so much as look up, perhaps indicating that she had been enjoying the view of the sunset and hoped to continue the same.

“This was my first chance in four decades to finally live,” she growled irritably, leaning close to the other woman, setting her hands on the arm-rests to hold herself up. “I have everything now: amazing girlfriends who say they love me, a wonderfully-strong body, a position in this digital society that matters to other people, and … ⸻ and two precious angels, who I’m never going to see again. Who are going to grow up without me.” Grimacing, she struggled to hold in her horrible guilt, even as it leaked from her mouth. “And now I’ve inflicted my same, stupid torment on them: they’ll never have a mother, either.”

Of course the older woman could perceive the cruelty of the revelation, but there was no blame in her eyes as she stared back at her daughter. Perhaps it was a show of solidarity, a shared understanding that sometimes love itself wasn’t enough on its own, and despite trying as hard as they both possibly could, they couldn’t always be there for their children. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was one that the former Herald gave freely, without judgement.

“All those people who say they love me ⸻ who I should love in return ⸻ and all I’m doing is hurting them.” An agonizing ache grew in her chest, as though she could feel her heart break in real time. “At least they’ll have a pretty corpse to remember me by.”

Never one for such dark humor, the elder rabbit elected not to encourage such sardonic sentiment with so much as even a chuckle.

“All my life,” V pressed on, furious tears building in the corners of her ruby-red eyes, “I’ve lived with this awful void where my heart should be, this awful nothing inside of me. Every single day it tears at my insides, reminding me of what I lack, of how I’ve failed, of all the reasons why I’ll never be fully-human ⸻ and now it’s all I’ll have left, here at the end. That’s all that will remain of me after I’m gone: an endless nothing.”

Finally, her manic fever had reached its apex, tearing down the younger rabbit. Overcome by the weight of her emotions, the strength went out of her body, drawn out in a tide of tears. Collapsing onto her knees, she clutched at her “mother,” crying into the other woman’s lap.

“It’s not fair,” she seethed, weeping openly, shaking with rage.

And it wasn’t fair, the rabbit burdened by her hundred-thousand scars: vicious hands, careless violence, righteous violation, all the ways in which a man could defile a child ⸻ and no one had given a fuck. Gripping handfuls of the other woman’s clothing in her tight fists, she screamed her bitter pain, pouring out everything she’d been holding in for decades ⸻ but there were no words to describe injustice, or the perverse insistence that the character and standing of “good men” were far more important than the life of a teenage faggot.

How could she ever believe in love, when that word had punctuated every strike of her father’s fists? “This will hurt me more than it will hurt you,” he’d said before he raped her, flexing the conviction of a man of God. Where were her protectors then?

The universe had delighted in her torture for almost four decades, and these few weeks of bliss were an awful prank, one last kick in the ribs before they put her down for good. At last she had been shown affection, had been treated to care, had found safety in another woman’s touch ⸻ and all of it would be snatched from her hands before she could even appreciate it.

Clenching her teeth so hard that they hurt, she gnashed her fangs, grieving for herself. Lifting her head, she held the older woman’s gaze, a panicked desperation writhing in her eyes, begging for even a hint of absolution as acrimonious tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Why the fuck was I even born?”

Slowly, with delicate intention, the former Herald’s eyes left the cold glass of the solarium and gently fell to her lap, where her tormented daughter wept. Extending an artless hand with all the grace and compassion that her body still possessed, she set it atop the younger rabbit’s head, softly petting her in tiny, barely-moving strokes.

No words fell from the matron’s lips, but V could understand the boundless kindness whispered within her ruby-red eyes.

Chest heaving as she labored for breath, the Herald of Twilight sobbed openly, clinging to her real mother.

Her final meal was a muted affair. Lacey had gone all-out, of course, putting together all the comfort-food that she could manage on such a short schedule, but the little cow’s constant sniffling was hard to ignore; while V ate what she could, she did so wielding her fork with one hand, her other arm wrapped around the smaller girl’s shoulders as Lacey quietly wept against her.

Herdsplitter was still conspicuously absent from the family gathering, despite a place having been set for her at the table. Even in UltraCraft, the Lady Bloodwolf had yet to return to Velody, leaving Moonfang and Arvina to manage everything in her absence. The lack of her presence hurt, certainly, but V contented herself with the belief that the wolfish woman was simply taking the bunnygirl’s impending death very poorly, choosing to hide her grief from her loyal subjects; the demands of being a duchess were more understandable than the insane idea that the amazon didn’t care, at least.

Having eaten, she asked her polycule to allow her some privacy in the flat; though it pained them to acquiesce, they left her alone in one of the side rooms, a half-decorated space that had been someone’s office, or maybe a studio. Laying herself out on the floor, V found what solace she could in solitude; it would’ve hurt more to be surrounded by her girlfriends, knowing that they would only be watching her die, disappearing into her final moments.

Leaving her dying body in realspace, she somberly readied herself in UltraCraft, dressing herself in the same sheer drape from her first moments inside the game. Lacey was present to help, of course, the little cow unwilling to leave her alone until the exact moment that she was required to; even then, calling it a “tearful farewell” was an understatement, and it had taken two of the cowgirls to hold her back as Kariss led V away.

Alone at last in the same purification pool she had arrived in, she let herself drift in the lukewarm water, staring up at the ceiling.

It wouldn’t be long now until the end of her existence. Surviving the Lunar Cry was a nice daydream, but there would be no going back to realspace. Raising her arm in both worlds, she lifted her hand above her face; water dripped from her fingers in UltraCraft, but her human body stayed completely still, the unresponsive limb twitching against the hardwood floor.

As more and more of her neural net tore itself apart, only the RealDimension mirror was truly functional. She tried humming to herself to soothe the miserable knowledge of her erasure, but only the barest melody remained; she couldn’t remember any of her favorite songs, much less the lyrics, and even the fact that she had been a songstress at all had started to drift away from her. Soon, perhaps, even that much would be gone, her ability to sing lost forever as it was deleted alongside her consciousness.

Only two things remained: the miserable weight of her trauma, and the brilliantly-flawed weeks that she had spent inside the game. Playing out in parallel, her joys and suffering intermingled, pleasure becoming indistinguishable from pain. It was, at least, her, the assurance that “V” still lived inside her body. Analogous to the small-matrix limiters on the UltraCraft AI, she wondered if she wouldn’t be better off without herself; if her personality no longer held back the Herald of Twilight, then perhaps whatever remained of her after the Lunar Cry would be allowed to learn and grow, becoming her own person.

It was a beautiful thought, and so she held it in both hands, shielding it from harsh reality.

If she couldn’t hold onto hope, then there was no point in being alive.

At the very least, if “V” were completely erased, then she could no longer make mistakes or wound anyone around her, and so she would become incapable of fucking up anything else. The nothing inside her whispered that this was preferable, and for once she indulged it as a comfort rather than a sense of hopelessness; though it pained her to know that she wouldn’t be able to watch Estelle and Silvermane grow up, her absence ensured that she would never be able to hurt her little darlings.

They would be safe from the monster that was their mother.

Clutching her misery and her dreams close to her chest, she descended into the earth.