towerofanimus | 8th Recipe - Secret Ingredient [Closed]

Entry tags:

8th Recipe - Secret Ingredient [Closed]

Characters: Kazumi and Saki
Setting: Dorms, Saki's Room
Format: Prose
Summary: A gift from home contains memories best left unremembered - or unknown.
Warnings: Existential crisis?

With the party and everything going on, it had taken a while for Kazumi to get around to her own present in her room. The basket of food was certainly appreciated, but she was more curious about the other item she found in her trunk. A small diary that looked like it had been in a fire, the words "Diario M.K" on it. She'd never seen it before... was it hers, from before she'd lost her memories? Was "M" her family name then? Curious, she took a seat on the bed and started flipping through it.

Recipes, memories - she'd met Yuuri before the other girls? And then the Pleiades, the happy memories she didn't have. It was nice to have them now. Still, she flipped through, eager to see if there was something leading up to when she'd lost her memories, beyond what Umika had restored to her that night so long ago, to when Airi had kidnapped her...

The last entry sent a chill down Kazumi's spine. Was this after Yuuri had become a witch? Had she... felt that kind of shock? Now that Kazumi thought of it... if she had made her friends into magical girls, wasn't it her fault they'd become witches? But they'd vowed to reject the Puella Magi system, to work beyond that, hadn't they? So why was this despairing entry the last writing in her diary...?

It was as she was wondering all this that the letter fell out of the back. Picking it up, Kazumi opened it to read.

None of it made any sense. It couldn't possibly make any sense. She didn't want it to make any sense... but she had to know.

Letter in hand and diary clutched to her chest, Kazumi rushed over to Saki's room, heart in her throat and mind a storm of questions as she knocked at the door.

"Saki...? Are you in?"

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"Kazumi?"

Saki was at the door the moment she heard the knock, ushering her friend inside.

"You look like you've seen a ghost..." Which, given the Tower, wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "What happened?"

"I..." Kazumi's voice trailed off as she tried to organize her thoughts, letting herself be herded inside. Taking a seat on one of the beds, she looked up to her friend with trouble gaze. "Saki, the last thing I remember before coming here is going to sleep after Umika helped me get back my memories that night in the Freezer... are you... from after that?"

Saki took a long, deep breath at the question, intentionally slowing down as she stepped inside and sat down. There hadn't really been a chance to ask before, or so she had been telling herself. Not between Halloween and everything that had happened, then recovering from that, then this month's illnesses. But those were excuses, and they weren't going to last forever.

"The last thing I remember is from quite a ways after that. I - I - "

She shook her head, starting to stand up but then deciding against it.

"I kept telling myself I would tell you what happens in the future, but I didn't. I thought it would do nothing but hurt you, and the last thing I want to do is hurt you."

Kazumi shook her head. "No, it's fine. I trust you, Saki. I just..."

Taking a breath to try and still her own trembling, she looked up and held out the letter for Saki to take and read.

"I don't... understand what's written here... I'm not sure if... I want to." The paper rattled with how her hand was shaking as she held it, her other fingers tightening about that burnt diary clutched to her chest. "The last entry, this letter... I don't remember any of it. What happened after that night? What happened before I lost my memories?"

Saki was silent as she took the letter, reading it slowly. As she read, the color slowly drained from her face, and she couldn't help the way her hands shook.

"I knew that back home, you would eventually get this diary. Kaoru found it and gave it to you, with that letter, because she truly wanted to protect you."

She folded the letter and put it back into the envelope carefully.

"The story isn't happy. I don't - I'm not proud of my part in it. But I owe it to you to tell you.

The girl in the diary...her name was Kazusa Michiru, but everyone called her Kazumi. And she was a magical girl. She saved my life. And it's because of her that I became a magical girl.

...and...one day. One day, we found out that magical girls turn into witches."

"...Saki?" Kazumi asked, concern on her voice as she saw her friend's expression while she read the letter. She wanted to know what it meant, who Michiru was, but she did her best not to interrupt and let Saki talk at her own pace.

"That wasn't... my journal?" Kazumi said quietly. But this girl, Michiru, her nickname was Kazumi... why did she have the same name as her? Wasn't... she the one who'd saved Saki's life? But now Saki was saying Michiru had...

"That was... Yuuri, wasn't it? We'd found out when Yuuri had become a witch, right?"

"It...no. It isn't, though you have more right to it than anyone else does."

Saki paused, taking a long breath, then another. None of that kept her voice steady, and none of it could stop the tears.

"...after that night, the night Umika unsealed your memories...that's when things all began to go wrong. That night, after everyone took you home..."

Hey, Saki...let's kill Kazumi. Another voice - a voice of a friend, a girl who was practically a sister - echoed in Saki's ears, and she shook harder, balling her hands into the fabric of her bedcovers as she continued.

"...I'm so sorry. Satomi...I don't know what she was thinking. But she used her magic on me. I couldn't break free right away, and I almost killed you that night before I could.

And then she...she said what the rest of us hadn't. She told you about Michiru. And how Michiru became a witch. We couldn't accept that she was gone, after we - we did what we had to. We refused to accept it. And so we looked for a way to bring her back.

...we tried, and we thought we had done it, but...no. We tried again, and we tried again, and we tried again. And every time, something went wrong.

So we - we tried again, but without Michiru's memories.

That's why Kaoru said what she did. Michiru is Michiru. And you're Kazumi."

Kazumi listened, but she couldn't understand. It didn't make sense to her. Michiru... had become a witch? Who was Michiru? If this was her diary, didn't that make Michiru the one they'd all loved? The one who'd saved them? The one who'd been with Yuuri? The one in all those memories Umika had shown her? If that was Michiru...

Then who was Kazumi?

"Saki, who... who am I?" she asked, voice trembling. "If Michiru was the one in the diary... were those not my memories Umika gave me? Was that... not me? Who... who am I?!"

"You were..." Saki had to take a deep breath, then another, before continuing, and even then her words were uneven.

It was always going to fall to me in the end, wasn't it? I... She shook her head, trying to regain her composure, but nothing worked, and she refused spin another lie into the tangled web they had already woven. That would only cause more hurt.

"We created your body. We had tried before, and giving Michiru's memories from the start. It never worked. Every time, the result...the result was a witch appearing immediately.

So we tried a different way, with you, giving you those memories slowly. But still, Satomi wanted to erase you. The rest of us didn't. We wound up fighting her for your sake. It doesn't have a happy ending.

And I...it doesn't matter now, what's in that diary. You're Kazumi. You're as real as any of us. And that's all that matters."

"I was... created?" The truth she hadn't wanted to see was coming together. "I... I'm a copy of Michiru? And there were... others?" And because of her creation, Satomi had...

"So Satomi is really..." Kazumi's voice trailed off, unable to comprehend it. The letter had said so, but it didn't make sense. Even know, with Saki telling her, she couldn't imagine a world in which Satomi had died. A world where she had died because she'd tried to kill her.

"This, this can't be true..."

"Yes. You were created. But you are not a copy of anyone. I...I wanted Michiru back as much as, if not more, than, anyone, but I don't - "

Saki's voice cracked, and she had to stop and swallow hard around a lump in her throat.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you. And that has nothing to do with Michiru and everything to do with you. You have a good heart, and that...it's why I didn't want to tell you. I knew it would only hurt you. I didn't want to do that."

She shook her head again.

"I wish it weren't true."

"I... so those memories... none of that was mine?" Kazumi asked, still shaken up. "From that moment, before I woke up in that trunk... I don't remember anything because... there was nothing to remember?" And no one had told her any of it.

Kazumi shuddered, drawing up her legs onto the bed and curling up, arms around her knees as tears began to fall.

"I thought... I thought there wouldn't be any more secrets between us..." she sobbed out. "I... is this because I'm not really your friend, Michiru?"

"...yes. Yes, but --"

Saki's voice trailed off. All she could do was listen for a moment, until that question. The question of not really being Michiru.

"No! It's because this place is hard enough without wondering what's going on outside! You said to all of us that you refused to let a magical girl, born from hope, fall into despair. I made that promise to myself when I realized you didn't know what exactly happened at home."

Saki's words surprised her with how vehement they sounded, but after a moment, she continued.

"But you're right. No more secrets. Let me - let me just tell you what I remember.

You...you were angry and upset after seeing the diary and the letter. You ran away for a while, and I honestly have no idea what you did until you called us all to the Freezer.

You looked like you were close to your limit, and you said you'd put up seals all over the place. If any of the rest of us tried to use magic, the seals would go off and the Freezer would stop working. Every magical girl inside would turn into a witch...

Then you asked why we didn't give you Michiru's memories. I explained that every time we tried, the clone snapped and became a murderer. We took it as Michiru's will and stopped trying to implant her memories at the start. We created a different person with the same face, to reject her death...

At that point, you said that you wouldn't allow magical girls, born from hope, to fall into despair. You told us to try and revive Satomi and keep trying to revive Michiru, because that was our responsibility after creating you. And you asked if we would be friends if you were just a normal girl."

Saki stopped, extending a hand.

"The answer to that is yes. Kaoru explained it perfectly: we became your friend when you were brand new. That seemed to be enough of an answer. You stopped being angry, but it didn't stop you from continuing to turn into a witch. You went so far as to eat those awful Evil Nuts we'd confiscated and had hidden in the Freezer. And all along, you asked us to kill you, to start over again.

You put up a barrier, and you started attacking hard, knocking Nico out, immobilizing Kaoru temporarily, and hurting the rest of us. I - I didn't want to kill you, but I knew I had to. So I kept attacking, to the limit of my ability, even with the others telling me to stop.

Kaoru finally convinced me, then Mirai attacked. We thought she had killed you, till Nico showed us she pulled some of her clone tricks.

...and then, and I don't know why, she cast a magic spell and produced an Evil Nut. The last thing I remember is Nico pressing it into my forehead."

At some point, Saki had withdrawn her hand and wrapped her arms loosely around herself. Now, she rocked a little, trying not to cry.

"That's what happens. I didn't tell you because I honestly didn't want to hurt you, and that has nothing to do with Michiru."

Because of the Tower... it was confusing, frightening here, without things from home but... to not tell her something like this, to let her believe she was someone she wasn't for so long...

Kazumi could only twist her hands in anguish as she did her best to listen. Raptly, she listened to Saki's words, trying to imagine, to wonder. What happened. Why it happened. If she'd found out before... if Satomi had tried to kill her, and been killed, and found out she wasn't who she thought she was... the person she'd thought she was all these months in the Tower, ever since that night she'd gone to sleep, thinking there were finally no secrets among them, only to find all that was a lie as well... of course she'd run. How could she stay there? But what had brought her back...?

Kazumi clutched the diary in her hands. Michiru's diary... her diary, with Kaoru's letter. The letter telling her that Kaoru would protect her at any cost, that she was her own person... and then she'd called everyone to the Freezer?

"I... that's why. That's why I asked you to kill me, even going so far as to turn into a witch - no, even if I hadn't, I would have made it look like that, wouldn't I?" said Kazumi quietly, Saki's story suddenly making sense, falling into place. "I just... wanted you girls to be happy."

Tears were starting to roll down Kazumi's cheek. It was abstract, and she was still in shock over it all, but hearing it be told, she knew in her heart it was the choice she'd make again if she had the chance. She wouldn't... let it end like this, even if it cost her own life.

"That's right. You - you wanted all of us to be happy, no matter what it took from you."

Saki's words were quiet, said through her own tears.

"And that's why I...I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want that to be a choice you had to make again. I didn't want that to be something you ever had to think about. I wanted you to be able to go on with a smile, because who wants to see one of their friends sad? It was selfish of me, maybe, but I didn't want that to happen. Not now. Not ever. I am so sorry."

"No, it wasn't selfish," Kazumi assured her, turning and wrapping her arms around the other girl, holding her close. "You only wanted me to be happy. But I want you girls to be happy too. I don't want Michiru and your story to end in despair. I... we'll find some way to fix it, I know." She wasn't sure how, or if it was possible or even mattered here, but she wouldn't give up that hope.

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8th Recipe - Secret Ingredient [Closed]

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