puppeteer.
aka my take on what Norman said to Ayshe in the demon realm
In her first month at the human world, Ayshe isn’t quite sure why she hasn’t yet killed William Minerva.
She should, she thinks as she absentmindedly strokes her dogs’ fur, she really ought to. He would deserve it too, even now — the injustice of patricide doesn’t fade in a year, she finds.
(And yet, she reflects now, he hadn’t seemed to mind all that much when his own mother had been skewered by the royal farm head. All the more reason to kill him, she thinks: the man — no, boy — was too devoid of anything to keep his chance at life.)
She watches him now, striding into the House the cattle children share with an air that borders on presumptuous. The rest of his brothers and sisters follow one by one, each one looking more downtrodden than the next. They must have returned from another of their searches, she guesses.
Ayshe can say this much: she does not spare him — Minerva, Norman, 22194, whatever the hell he had taken to calling himself these days — out of pity for him. No, she thinks, watching the youngest of the children huddle close to one another and rub furiously at their eyes. The older ones — Gilda, Ray and Don — take to comforting them in turns, their own brows drawn taut with concern. One of them, a little, dark-haired girl no older than 8, has her head buried in Gilda’s arms.
She leaves him be because: against her better wishes, she has taken a liking to his family. The cattle children are already grieving; Ayshe will not be the one to take their older brother from them too.
She watches him now, half-hidden by the partially-closed door to his study. His bowed head is braced against the steeple of his hands and there is a definite, resigned set to his shoulders. There is no trace of his haughtiness now — he almost looks in prayer. As if gods answered to the prayers of murderers.
Good, Ayshe thinks savagely. Let it hurt.
Let him know how it felt to lose the person most important to you.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Ayshe’s ears are still ringing. She doesn’t think she hears him correctly.
“I want to know,” Norman repeats, having the gall to look her in the eyes. “How can I get to the Seven Walls from this world?”
He had called her into his study, long after the other children had gone to bed. Perhaps he thinks he can save face this way.
When Ayshe merely stares at him, aghast, he continues: “We can’t rule out the possibility that Emma might be there. Ray is the only one who’s entered the Seven Walls before and even he can’t get back in, not even with the water and the vida from the demon realm. So I thought you might know of an alternate way.”
He stops here, finally having the decency to look abashed. He pronounces vida too lightly, she realizes, as if he didn’t quite know how to let the word sit on his tongue.
In one swift motion, Ayshe lunges forward, slamming him into the panelled wall behind him. His head strikes against the wood with a dull thunk. His aborted pronunciation, the sheer disbelief etched in his face — the pressure behind her eyes only threatens to build at these infractions and Ayshe thinks she may just go blind with rage.
She presses the back of her elbow into his Adam’s apple.
“Like I’d help you,” she snarls in the old tongue, breathing heavily. “What was it you said to me?”
She laughs derisively, and beneath her arm, she feels him stiffen at the sound.
“‘You can have your revenge after we get to the new world,’” Ayshe recalls his words, struggling to keep her voice even. “Well, I haven’t killed you, have I? I saved your sorry skin, didn’t I? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”
The last of her words come out in a scream, and Norman’s face slackens.
“Emma’s got nothing to do with that,” Norman chokes from beneath her hold, and her language comes out foreign on his tongue. Vaguely, Ayshe remembers that the drugs the cattle children had been given at that experimental farm had irreversibly damaged their lungs. She makes it a point to press harder against his throat.
“I’m the one who screwed up your life,” Norman gasps, fighting to speak. “You can take that out on me. Just do this one thing for my family first.”
“I have done plenty for your family!” Ayshe yells. “After everything you did, I am letting you live —“
“So then kill me!” Norman shouts in English, and with a surprising strength, he shoves her away from him. “Kill me, torture me, do whatever you want to me!”
His blue eyes have a wild look about them, and Ayshe actually takes a step back. Her anger, her sheer indignation at the injustice of it all does not stop her from forgetting that — William Minerva is the single, most dangerous human being to have ever come out of their world.
“Take it out on me,” he repeats hoarsely. And without warning, he sinks to his knees. For just one, mad moment, Ayshe thinks his illness has finally caught up to him, but then he lowers his head and it occurs to her that he is pleading.
“She’s been gone for over a month now,” he says tremulously, kneeling before Ayshe. “We don’t know if she’s alive or safe or — or — if she even knows we’re looking for her. I don’t give a damn what you do to me. But I couldn’t live with myself if something happens to her.”
Ayshe considers him carefully. If she had begged for her father’s life like this, would Minerva have spared him?
“I don’t want to kill you,” Ayshe says at last, surprising even herself. “I don’t want you dying without knowing what it feels like.”
She scoffs when a flicker of confusion passes over his face.
“Do you wish you had been faster?” she asks, and his features harden. “That if you had been smarter you might have actually been able to save her? Does it kill you that the only reason you’re still alive is because she —“
“Shut up,” Norman suddenly says in the old tongue, but Ayshe ignores him and his mutilated pronunciation, continuing in English:
“It’s destroying you, isn’t it?” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “That someone you love is suffering, and you can blame everyone else for it but — you know you could have stopped it from happening, don’t you?”
For once, she notes vindictively, he is at a loss for words. Before she is quite certain of what she is doing, she is marching out the study, slamming the door behind her as she does.
Her eyes find Gilda nestled in an armchair on the opposite end of the living room. She is the only other person there, and it occurs to Ayshe that she had probably been waiting to see if Norman could convince her or not.
Gilda’s arms are folded over her chest, and her lips are set in a thin line. So she heard everything, Ayshe realizes. She finds she doesn’t care.
“I didn’t ask your sister to bring me here,” Ayshe says abruptly when Gilda continues to stare.
“No,” agrees Gilda, looking at Ayshe with something akin to pity in her expression. “But I didn’t ask anyone to kill your father either.”
And with that, Gilda lifts herself off the armchair, brushing past Ayshe to enter Norman’s study.
Ayshe waits until the door closes with a click before sinking into the empty armchair.
He had it coming, she thinks, leaning her head over her knees. After all, Ayshe has been feeling this way for years — why couldn’t her father’s murderer feel it for even a month?
The image of him on his knees, his stricken expression comes into her head unbidden and disappointingly, Ayshe finds it gives her no satisfaction at all.
