Free

A fitting name indeed

As much as she'd loved her parents, Hope had never been able to forgive them for giving her that name - her mother had been pregnant when Spring took over Winter, destroyed its conduit and killed its Queen and when, months later, her daughter had been born, a slave from the instant she took her first breath, the only name she and her husband could think of was Hope. Whenever she'd confronted them about that as a child, Hope's parents had always answered with 'And what would you have liked us to call you, Despair?' never once had her younger self replied with the 'Yes' that wanted to escape her lips, never once had she admitted it would have been much more fitting.

Despair. That's what her life had been made of anyway; despair and silence and fear and pain and overwhelming desires not to get up the next morning. But that same fear that almost made her disobey was also what kept her from disobeying, death frightened her much more than her life at the moment so, even the two mornings when one of her parents hadn't been able to get up - two consecutive mornings, first her father and then her mother; needless to say, she didn't see either of them again - she stood silently, and silently went on with her day. Only a night a few weeks later did she realize she'd never even learned their names - but who could blame her? No one had all that much time to talk, especially not a little girl who ate far too little and worked far too much, and she'd only been ten.

Even with her parent's death always fresh in her memories, Hope couldn't recall crying even once - that used to worry her mother to the point that her father said he'd once heard that the first queen of Winter could withstand the cold because all the tears she should have shed throughout her life had frozen around her heart and protected it from any other ice. Her mother hadn't believed it, but Hope liked to think that it was true, that she was like the first Winterian queen, but she always knew she wasn't 'Even if the story was true' she'd think 'I'm nothing like she was. Or, rather, she was nothing like I am - she was a queen, she had magic, she was free. I don't even have the freedom' she'd repeated that sentence in her head so many times, for so long, that she ended up accepting the fact that she'd never even be free as her only reality - only death presented a possibility of freedom, but that freedom scared her as much as the reality, maybe even more.

Slowly but surely, she forced herself to see even the idea of reality she'd created for herself as nothing more than a bad dream that kept her from trying to sleep in it with even more horrible dreams, any hope she might have had of ever waking up from it crushed by her own way of thinking without the girl ever realizing. She'd stay awake at night and stared at the blackness around her without understanding how others could sleep, letting any remotely positive feelings - or any feelings at all - escape under the cover of the night.

She might be named Hope, but she'd long lost all hope and, therefore, she'd lost herself - she'd become no more than a moving empty carcass. Hopeless.

"Hopeless" she said to herself one night, not long after she'd turned thirteen, before humorlessly snorting "now that would've been a fitting name. I wonder why Mother and Father never thought of it, it's a good name for someone who can't escape from nightmares, is it not?" She almost never spoke during the day anymore; as she saw it, there was no point, the only person who understood and shared Hope's opinions was, after all, Hope herself, and she preferred seeing reality as a dream instead of having to face it head-on - she'd always been a coward, there had never been any hope in this world for her. Not until almost three years later.

The morning the slavery she'd been born into would end was only weeks before her sixteenth birthday, but she only realized that later - people who lived in a dream weren't good at realizing things, she'd noted years ago, and that was why she couldn't recall almost a single thing about whatever it was that happened before she felt energy pouring into her body, energy cold enough to match the never shed tears around her heart.

Hope saw other Winterians use that energy and strength to fight off Spring soldiers, but couldn't bring herself to move a finger. Instead, she held onto as much of that energy, that magic, as she could, trying not to fall to the ground - how had she managed to stay upright until then? Maybe empty carcasses didn't actually need energy. But, as much as she would have liked to talk that topic over with herself, she had no time, because she had a much more important choice to make.

The queen, a girl not much older than her - although evidently with a lot more strength in her body - was she supposed to follow her blindly? She couldn't help but feel angry at the girl's mother for failing to protect Winter and then dying to escape the worst part of the defeat, and the girl herself seemed to have evaded slavery for most of her life too; but the queen girl... she'd freed them, she'd come for them like Hope's parents had always - well... hoped someone would.

Conflicted feelings.That was a first for her, and she wasn't sure how to handle it - was there a right choice and a wrong choice? It had always been behaving and surviving or doing something stupid and dying until that moment, the choices to make had been easy and obvious. While she'd never known any true home, her parents had been truly happy once, was it selfish of her to resent the daughter of the woman who'd allowed that to be taken away from them, even when it had been that daughter that'd given her what her parents had wished for her? Was it wrong or right to follow the one who'd given her her hope - herself - back and given her freedom?

She knew the others would follow the queen, and she knew her parents would have, too, but she... she was free now, and she had hope. She had hope and she was free but, as soon as she realized that, she felt dead - those were the only two things her parents had told her they wished for her, so what was waiting for her now? Was she expected to live without a care in the world once she forgot she'd ever been a slave? How could she ever try to let go of the memories that were her whole life?

Memories.

Memory.

She liked it. Maybe that could be her name from now on. Maybe, if she never forgot all the Winterian deaths in Abril, the souls of her parents would stay with her.

Some part of her knew a battle was taking place, but she only moved when the sound of weapons clashing faded. Something brushed her leg and she stopped dead in her tracks, only to look down to see her hair, unbelievably dirty, that reached her knees - when had it gotten so long? How had it not bothered her before? Probably empty carcasses didn't notice things like that. The first sharp thing she came across was the sword of a Spring soldier; embedded in its owner's own chest, covered in blood.

She didn't mind. She picked it up, ignoring the blood dripping on her bare feet, and only moved again when the supposedly white mane she'd called hair was all on the floor except for whatever strands she'd deemed to be too close to her scalp to be cut with a sword she didn't know how to handle properly. Memory's hair was red at the tips now, but she wouldn't have complained even if she had someone to complain to; the red looked beautiful with the white - maybe she'd try to find a way to keep the tips red after she washed the dirt, dust and blood away.

No one tried to stop her when she simply walked away. Every person she passed - Winterian, a Spring citizen or Cordellan - stared at her, but no one said a word or took a step in her direction, no one said anything about the lone underfed Winterian girl with short, unevenly cut, reddened-at-the-tips hair who left red footprints because her feet were coated in blood from whatever puddles of it she'd stepped on. It didn't matter; they'd forget about that pale skin and those blue eyes they'd only seen for a few seconds, especially since they would see many more like hers during that day - and, even if someone did remember, they'd most likely think she was dead.

But she wouldn't die. If she'd survived slavery she could survive anything else the world wanted to throw at her. She would soon be erased from the memories of anyone who had ever met her - she'd never done anything remarkable anyway - but she wouldn't forget, she'd go in whatever direction she was walking that day, maybe she'd leave Primoria, too, but she'd remember.

She'd remember her father's false story about the first queen of Winter and why she never felt cold, she'd remember her mother's patient smile whenever she got angry, and she'd remember getting upset over her name - 'They really did get that wrong, though' she added mentally 'Hope should have been Mother's name, it was never meant for me' she'd remember this thought too, she decided.

Remember. "Memory, huh?" used to her voice being the only sound in the darkness, she was surprised by how weak it sounded in a city, in daylight, after a battle "A fitting name indeed."