Chapter Text
Universe is a fickle creature.
It gives extraordinary kindness, showers you in joy, makes elation your best friend, grants you peace. It also is unbearably cruel, giving you immeasurable grief, shoves your face into the brutality of the world and then drowns you in all encompassing sadness, a living nightmare you aren't able to leave or even comprehend.
It was a long time since Becky Blackbell tried to even try to comprehend it. She's been living it since she was nine years old and that was enough.
She learned the truth about the universe on a sunny Sunday. She would relive that sunny Sunday every day until she finally met her end.
It was normal.
That wasn't a word Becky used anymore.
She remembers it vividly, the only day in her whole life she will remember fully, from the beautiful beginning to a cruel end.
As it was in her habit she woke and then groggily toddled to the dining room where Martha was already waiting with a warm smile on her face and even warmed breakfast. In a few moments she was joined by her parents and showered with love and affection.
She later understood it wasn't how every child started their day, some of them sat alone in big, empty dining rooms, with no warm smiles or words of affection.
After that she would get dressed and spend time playing in the garden wishing for her best friend to be there.
God how naive she was.
She still wished her best friend was here.
Later she washed up and joined her mother for tea in the greenhouse where she felt like a proper lady discussing all the important topics such as fashion trends and all the new celebrity gossip. She felt so grown up then.
Years later when she started learning the ropes of the business from her father she understood what it actually meant to be a grown up.
After finishing the tea she went to the playroom where she and Martha played board games. Martha took them too seriously but Becky didn't mind it as she liked being challenged.
Later she understood that Martha never quite left the war, or rather that war never actually left Martha. Her precise strategic moves, her insistence on thinking through every move, the tightened jaw and few blank looks she gave the wall clear indication of also knowing the truth about the universe.
After that she got tired and then ate dinner after which she moved to the main room to watch the rerun of Love in Berlint.
Then the phone call came.
Martha took it, ever the loyal butler and after ending the call with a blank face she went to Becky’s father’s study where he was probably completing some paperwork or doing other things related to business.
At the time, Becky paid it no mind. Martha often took off in the direction of her father’s study after taking a phone call, it was a very normal day after all.
Until it wasn't.
Her parents entered the living room, their faces stricken, and they immediately hugged Becky. Tight.
Her mother was the one who revealed the ugly truth of the world to her.
The Forger family was dead.
Becky cried. She cried into her parents arms. She cried in the bath. She cried in bed. She cried the next day. She cried the next week. She cried next month.
She thinks she never actually stopped crying ever since that moment.
Funnily enough, while she remembers the sunny Sunday in eerie detail, she remembers the day of the funeral in glimpses.
Her reflection in the mirror; black dress, hair down, puffy face.
The flowers at the service; provided by Mrs. Forger’s gardening club, white lilies and their sickeningly sweet smell, chrysanthemums and oddly enough a few irises.
And the detail ingrained in her mind the hardest. Three matching caskets, with one being a lot smaller than the other two.
All of them closed.
It was her first funeral, she didn't know that caskets could be open during the service.
Later when she was a teenager she went to a public library. There she looked for newspapers published on the Monday after the sunny Sunday.
A car crash. A drunk driver in the wrong lane. All three Forgers and their family dog dead on impact. Both cars went up in flames. Identified by Dr. Forger’s half burned ID.
Then she understood why the caskets were closed.
After the funeral, her parents sent her to a psychologist. She didn't like her doctor one bit. The woman was calm and put together, a gentle smile on her face that reminded her of Dr. Forger’s smile when he explained something to her and Anya. She didn't like that.
The woman told her about the five stages of grief.
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
Becky thinks she never actually left denial.
The woman also tells her that the time will heal pain. She lied.
Despite her whole world crashing on that sunny Sunday, Earth continued to spin, as if the universe didn't just claim the best three people in the world. Maybe the universe wanted them for itself, to selfishly bask in their glory. To forever hold them in a warm embrace while Becky has been left out in the cold.
Well that is not the point. Point is, life moved on, and Becky pretended to move on too.
She excelled in her studies, to honour Anya’s desire to become an Imperial Scholar. To reach the sky and hold onto stars and never let go. Becky fulfilled her friend’s dream.
Then she took over her father’s business. It was unseemly for a woman in that age to hold a company's fate in her perfectly manicured hands, but her parents always obliged her. So she took what was already good and made it great.
She never married. All the romance had lost its flavour the moment she realized Anya would never be her maid of honour. They'd never gossip together about their husbands, they'd never maneuver the ballrooms together with other wives of wealthy men and made connections of their own while the men still believed they held all the power, their kids wouldn't grow up together to be best friends. Anya was dead and Becky did not want to experience any of that without Anya. Some nights she wondered that maybe she wanted to experience it with Anya, but she quickly banished all those thoughts.
There was no point in thinking about that if Anya’s body laid cold, six feet under.
While she couldn't say she lived, she definitely existed, maybe on some better days she could say she survived. Got a bit better. Some days she could even grasp bits of peace.
And then it all fell apart.
It was evening. She was attending a grand ball, thrown by one of her business partners. She didn't actually remember the occasion, she just showed up where she was expected and mingled with other rich people looking to make connections with the infamous Blackbell spinster.
She was 26, she was still young but people of her rank already had at least one child by her age and her adamant refusal to even consider any of the countless marriage proposals firmly placed her in the eccentric spinster category.
So she stood, almost like an equal, with the wealthiest of Ostania’s men, sipping her champagne when she caught a glimpse.
A glimpse of green.
A glimpse of forest green.
A glimpse of cat-like forest green eyes.
She froze.
She looked around hopelessly trying to find the same forest green that haunted her dreams. But she didn't see anything. Anything out of the ordinary at least.
She was broken out of her stupor by a sound of glass hitting the marble floor.
Her glass shattered and her company looked at her in pity when she quickly apologized and left the scene.
After that it got worse.
She not only kept seeing things. She also heard, smelled, even tasted.
She heard that giggle which Anya was known for when she found something amusing.
She smelled Ms. Forger’s perfumes, a sweet rose smell which permeated every room she entered for even the briefest second.
She tasted the famous pie Dr. Forger made for Anya’s eight birthday.
But the worst of all? The cat-like green eyes never stopped following her. She saw them everywhere she went. During parties, on her run to the bank. When she made an urgent visit to the hospital to check on her mother after she had a health scare. In the city hall when she was depositing some documents pertaining to her company. Once even, she saw a whole woman, with those beautifully haunting cat-like forest green eyes. She looked nothing like her dearest Anya. Her features were sharp where Anya’s were round. Her hair was platinum blonde and waist length in place of Anya’s short pink curls. She embodied elegance, importance and coldness while Anya was clumsiness, joy, gentleness and warmth. But that woman has Anya’s eyes.
Before Becky could even approach her, she vanished into thin air. Like a ghost.
She knew she was losing her mind.
She knew that Anya was dead.
She still could not help but dream of the reality in which that woman was Anya, and they danced until their feet were bleeding.
That night she woke up from a dream and those cat-like forest green eyes stared at her from behind her window.
When she moved they vanished.
And so Becky picked up her phone and dialled a phone number she hadn't called in years.