Chapter 17: Past VI - Broken Chains
As Annabelle began to recount her experiences, it was like the floodgates to her memories and emotions burst open and everything began to flow out.
At first, Belevere had to guide her along, asking her questions. But as she went on, Annabelle found that Belevere didn’t even need to encourage her anymore—she just kept on talking and she almost couldn’t stop.
Annabelle told Belevere about the events in chronological order, starting from her first memories, but then she began to deviate. Sometimes one memory triggered another and she skipped to that one instead. She bounced around her childhood, sometimes leaving a tale half-told only to come back three stories late to finish it.
It never felt disjointed or anything, though. It didn’t matter, because for the first half of her life, everything had been monotonous, with no start or end.
It was the same thing over and over. Pilot something and then become paralyzed or faint from the pain. Then she’d get patched up by the mysterious people that she had once thought were her friends.
But once, when she had been wandering around the huge underground complex she had spent most of her childhood in, she overheard the man she had trusted most laughing at her behind her back, calling her a freak.
When she ran, she caught their attention. That was the day her world lost all light, and no one even pretended to be nice to her anymore.
Afterwards, she’d be told to try piloting again until she couldn’t take it anymore. Over, and over, until she had grown enough piloting even a humanoid mech no longer hurt her as long as she did not synchronize for too long.
Her whole childhood revolved around mechs. There had been nothing else.
By the time Annabelle finally finished, noon had come and gone, and the clouds outside were starting to become orange, dyed from the setting sun. Despite having skipped lunch, she did not feel hungry at all.
She felt full, content. Warm. She couldn’t remember feeling so warm before, even when she had been with Belevere. She had a feeling that the days after today will be much warmer.
Belevere hadn’t said anything for a while. Annabelle looked back, unsure what she’d find. Would it be pity? Or anger for her?
Belevere’s face was morphed into a mask of disgust and horror.
“Bel?”
“Oh, Anne. I’m so sorry. I just can’t believe it,” Belevere finally said, shaking her head. “How could she go to such extents? Before now, I didn’t consider that she’d resort to such senseless and wanton cruelty. Does she even see you as a daughter?!”
Annabelle looked away. “I don’t know anymore. Before I came here, I had thought that our relationship was normal. Painful, but normal. Now, I’m not so sure...”
“What kind of purpose does hitting you even serve?” Belevere mumbled. She looked like she couldn’t wrap her mind around Vesmelda’s actions.
Annabelle couldn’t figure out the rationale behind what her mother did either.
Logically, beatings and violent reprimands were only proper motivations in the short term. It worked for a little while at first, but as soon as the beatings stopped, productivity dropped. They learned that in the academy that negative reinforcements didn’t work.
Her own experience proved that.
If her mother had instead treated her with love and respect like Belevere did, it would have been better for her development in the long run. If her mother had given her encouragement and help instead of blows when she failed, Annabelle believed that she’d have been a much better pilot than she was now.
Since her mother emphasized her skill at piloting so much, why hadn’t she taken the most optimal method for improving her?
Even if she had to start piloting from a young age, her mother could have at least lied and framed it as something positive and necessary—something for her own good. That, combined with kindness like Belevere always showed her, her childhood would have been relatively healthy on top of possessing an even greater advantage over other pilots her age.
But what if her mother hadn’t been solely aiming to improve her skill at piloting from the start? Perhaps, there was something else that had to be accomplished in parallel that necessitated the abuse.
Annabelle grabbed her own shoulders, hugging herself tight protectively. Belevere noticed her movements and lent her her own warmth.
“What are you thinking about?” Belevere asked.
Annabelle shook her head, signaling that she didn’t want to talk right now. She didn’t want to lose her train of thought.
The more she followed that train, the more she had a suspicion that she had stumbled upon the truth.
Recounting the past not only cleared her mind and made her less afraid of her mother, it also gave her an opportunity to see her past from another perspective—a perspective different from the scared young girl whose mindset she had been trapped in for years and had just now escaped completely.
At first appearance, it appeared as if her mother had been trying to create the ultimate mech pilot. That had been Annabelle’s initial assumption.
But like she had thought earlier, treating her like a human being would have allowed her to become a better pilot than she was now. But it would also have given her a sense of independence and allowed her to push against the limitations that her mother set down.
An independent pilot, no matter how skilled, was not the final goal.
No, what her mother wanted was an unthinking pawn that would execute every one of her orders without question. An unthinking pawn so used to her shackles, she’d never even think of breaking free no matter how much she hated her mother.
Had her mother succeeded, Annabelle would have been like an elephant that was chained while it was still small.
And being small, it could not break those chains. Its struggle against the chains day and night proved to the elephants that the chains were much too strong to break, so when it grew up, even though it could easily break the chains if it so wished, the elephant never did, for it had been conditioned to think that the chains were unbreakable.
Like that elephant, if she had never met Belevere, she would have been shackled to her mother out of fear, even after she had grown into a pilot too powerful for her mother to contain.
If her mother’s goal was total control over her all along, it made sense that she chose to break her spirit instead of raising her. Her mother did not need a free-spirited pawn, and so Vesmelda shaved it away over the years.
It took meeting Belevere for her spirit of independence and the ability to think for herself to finally rekindle. Belevere had been the one to stoke the flames until it burned almost as strong as anyone else’s.
If she had never met Belevere, who was the only one who managed to get through to her, she would never have broken free.
Then, perhaps today, instead of sitting in Belevere’s warm lap, she would be an unthinking knight under her mother’s command, forever cursing her but never working up the courage to break free.
“I’m glad I met you. Thanks to you, I’m free,” Annabelle said, pressing up against the girl behind her.
To Annabelle, it was enough that her friend—though she should call her her girlfriend now—was willing to listen to her and supported her as she cut herself free from the shackles of her past.
Behind her, Belevere suddenly gave herself a shake as if waking up from a trance that Annabelle had not been aware of.
“No, not yet,” Belevere whispered.
“I’m sorry?” Annabelle asked. What was Belevere talking about?
“I said, not yet. As long as your mother is alive, you are not completely free,” Belevere growled. “She will always hound you, trying to get you back into her folds. Unforgivable. She is truly unforgivable!”
The last words were spat out, said with such certainty that Annabelle didn’t doubt them. Movement in front of her caught her eyes, but there was nothing there. Then it came again, and this time, Annabelle caught it.
The air was shimmering, and the hair on her neck stood up on end. Something seemed to crackle as a wave of energy rolled off of Belevere.
Annabelle closed her eyes.
Even if it was against her own mother, she will follow Belevere. Belevere will fight her future, and she will always stand with Belevere. For the sake of their future together, uninterrupted by troubles, they must eliminate all obstacles now.
“That’s right. She is unforgivable.”
The scientist, while unethical, has no real connection with Anna. As a result, his actions are more forgivable, because what he's doing is in pursuit of science rather than unadulterated cruelty. His methods are cruel, unusual, unethical, but in the end what he's doing might turn out to benefit society in the long run. Perhaps he doesn't have the most selfless of motivations, but hey, at least it does something for someone.
The mother is just evil. She's subjected her own daughter to cruel experiments, adding on even more cruelty to ensure the child doesn't get any thoughts of breaking free. She does this why? For her own benefit. All of this only serves to benefit her, no one else. Hell even Maxime is better, sure his actions crippled a prodigy (to his knowledge), but at least his actions had the goal of helping his son. A hell of a lot more than I can say about Vesmelda.
both deserve to go to hell, don't get me wrong, but the scientist will at least have made a contribution to society through his research that no one else would have dared to attempt.
Well said
I have more distaste for the scientist in this situation. They're at least someone who should know better, but instead enabled it for their own personal gain. The mother appears twisted from the start, so they're distasteful but also simple on that front. She was always going to do that, but she could have been stuck doing it without a group of highly trained support personnel enabling her desires.
Which is to say, the mom is doing it for a pawn, she has something to actually gain from it at the end of the day. The scientist is in it for the simple process of being allowed to do it.
The scientist we can take, the mother on the other hand should burn in hell a thousand lifetimes
I'm still wondering what the value of a mech is in this universe, since it doesn't seem to be addressed yet.
Since they're so focused on pilots it seems like either the mechs would be extremely high value, or low value. The fact they were ripping mechs apart so carelessly in the tournament makes them seem like they have low value as well. Otherwise the techs would want to rip their heads off for using them as weapons and makeshift armaments.