eternity » megumi backstory
count: 4.6K
notes: angst. lots of angst. :D
France, Winter 1778
There was nothing. Nothing in nothing. A whirl of something in the middle of the nothing…a whirl of something white, something brown-the turning of wheels and the snowflakes falling in the sky. A hand. One hand. Five outstretched fingers. One scream-a crack-a frantic groping-
“Papa!”
Where was this? Where was she? What kind of strange country was this, where all the people were golden-haired and blue-eyed, and their skin was so very pale? The streets were marked up with signs which she could not read. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité…that meant nothing to her. Neither could she understand the high, merry voices jabbering away at each other on the streets. She knew nothing. She remembered something.
She remembered China. She remembered a lush garden and a lake. A smiling lady which she called “Mama”…she grew up in China-she was four years old now. She spoke Chinese-was going to learn how to read, too, but then Papa had come and taken her here. Wherever here was…she knew that her father wasn’t quite like her mother. Her father had golden hair like the people in this country. Her mother had black hair and black eyes and a weak smile-she never quite smiled completely, it was more of a nervous, weak grimace. And then her father had said something about leaving. She remembered a bit of yelling and then she was being packed into first a carriage and then carried on horseback, sitting in front of her father. He told her stories the whole way.
Then they’d gotten here and…what had happened? She was alone, kneeling on the stone streets, trying to figure out what was happening. Streams of Chinese flew out of her mouth. What was her name? She’d forgotten. No one ever called her by name.
It was cold. She just realized how very cold it was. She was still wearing her summer clothes, because they were the lightest for the journey. But now that seemed to be a big mistake. The thin fabric did nothing to block out the cold snow. She wandered here and there, the tips of her fingers, her toes, her lips turning blue. Her eyes-big, unnatural green-seemed over-bright and feverish, maybe even a little mad. She wanted her father! Not a bunch of curious kids, all with the same golden hair and blue eyes, staring at her from underneath their warm hats.
“Papa?” she asked innocently. There was, of course, no answer. “Papa…where are you?”
For hours and hours she wandered the streets. The sun was going down-that was a familiar sight, at least. The sun was going down meant danger! She started to run, but she was so weak that all she managed were two tiny steps, and then she toppled forwards into the soft snow.
The first sensation she had was of a very sharp pain in her ankle. Then she realized she was quite warm. And clean. She’d forgotten what clean felt like. It made her feel so light. And cool, in a comfortable way, except she was quite warm also. She realized that she was wearing rich-feeling bedclothes, the kind that was soft but not tickly, and her bed was so soft. Wondering what kind of fairy had transported her to this place, she got out of bed, still warm, and walked around the room.
How did she end up in a room? That was the biggest question she had. There was a window in her room-one that looked out onto a street that was white with snow, and colorful with the beautiful dresses that the foreign people in this foreign country wore. She saw a chair by her bed, with a dress like that hanging on it. Giggling, she pulled it on-it was just her size. Quite warm now, she wondered if there was any food in this mysterious house. A pair of gloves lay beside her pillow-those were at once slipped on the cold hands, and then a dainty pair of boots went on her small feet.
When she opened the door, someone was standing outside in the hall, surveying her. To her surprise he looked like someone from China. Eyes widening, she asked, “Who are you?”
To her immense surprise, he replied in Chinese, “Song Xiuyi.”
The words meant nothing to her-she didn’t know who that was. But he looked nice enough. Continuing to speak, she tugged on his hand a little, “Where am I? How did I get here? Are you a fairy?”
One of his eyebrows shot up! She’d never seen only one eyebrow go up at a time. He had a pleasantly older-brother sort of voice and for a second she thought she saw him smile. He looked friendly when he smiled, instead of bored, as he did now. “Not a fairy, sorry. This is France. Do you know what France is?”
France! “Yes!” she replied, suddenly understanding where her father had taken her, “My papa is from France! But…then, why are you here?”
“I’m…playing here,” he shrugged.
“Aren’t you kind of old to be playing?” she asked curiously, “You must be at least fifty years old…” She had a very vague sense of age. Her mother, she knew, was only twenty-three, and her father must be around thirty, she thought. But somehow this strange man looked a lot older, even though he didn’t look older. She found it hard to explain, and didn’t think about it anymore.
He smiled again, quickly, “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” again her monstrous eyes widened, “That is pretty old, hmm?”
“I guess so.”
Before she could ask any questions, another man appeared, who looked even older, if that was possible. He looked very old, even though, again, he didn’t look old. Again she found it hard to explain why she thought he looked old. Xiuyi at once walked away, leaving her alone with the strange man.
“Did he ask your name?” the man asked, smiling. He had a very wide smile, and very white teeth. But she couldn’t understand anything he said, even though he looked like a Chinaman too. He was probably insane, she decided, so she asked him,
“Who are you?”
But strangely enough he understand her question. In a very horrible accent he explained, “My name is Shin. What is your name?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, looking a little worried, “What is my name?”
But he only smiled. His smile was very intense, and she noticed that his teeth were unusually sharp. Maybe he cleaned them a lot-he looked rich enough to, at the very least. She smiled back uncertainly. He held out his hand to her, and she put hers in-he led her down the hallway and down the stairs and then into a giant room with so much food! She fell to the table on her knees. But she could recognize none of the foods, except the apples.
“Eat,” he prompted gently, lifting a slice of bread and putting it into her hand.
“What is it?”
He didn’t know how to answer, but he broke off half of a piece and then put it into his own mouth. “See?”
Intrigued, she mirrored his actions and found her mouth filled with a fresh, warm sort of…dough? A fiber-like sort of thing. It tasted good-crackly on the outside and soft on the inside. Within minutes she had consumed half of the bread on the heavily-laden table. She found that she was so hungry. He handed her a cup of water and she swallowed it in two big gulps.
When she was full, her face looked a lot livelier. “Thank you,” she said. She had manners.
“You are welcome,” he replied. Then he held out his hand to her again, and she put hers in again, and again he led her somewhere-outside, in the snow, seeing that she had put on her boots and gloves properly. A very happy, merry little girl she looked now, although she was basically an orphan.
They spent the entire day playing in the snow. What a lot of fun they had! Even though Shin could not speak her language very well, he understood what she was saying, and they always laughed at the same time. The sun was just going down when he stopped, suddenly not smiling anymore. He motioned for her to go inside the house again, and then told her to find Xiuyi (Shuichi, he called him).
She obeyed blindly, sensing that danger was somehow close to her. Skittering back to her little room, she closed the door, changed into her bedclothes again and then closed her eyes, falling asleep.
France, Summer 1784
Bread, good. Still fresh from the day before. Quickly shoving a few pieces into her mouth, she tidied her little spot in the alley wall, carefully moving a bunch of boxes into the entrance hole and then, smoothing out her skirt, hurried down the little alley. She was ten years old now. No longer did she wonder what had happened to the strange, strangely familiar men she had spent that one day with, when she’d first arrived in France. They had vanished the next day, and though she often visited the house, it was utterly deserted.
She came to the conclusion that they had abandoned her. Running down the streets, she turned right, right, and left, bounded into a building and skipped up the stairs. When she opened her mouth to speak, her French was flawless. She no longer spoke Chinese-not even the slightest bit, except for two words: father and mother. “Sorry I’m late,” she snapped out, no longer the innocent inquiring child, but an impatient, hardened almost-teenager.
“Doesn’t make much difference, Claudette,” the elderly matron sitting sewing at a table admonished gently, “We all know you don’t get much done, why, how come you to be in the seamstress business, anyways?”
Claudette was her current name. Last year she’d gone mostly by Annette. “I don’t know,” she replied bluntly, shockingly blunt for a girl her age. But she did know-she’d wanted to make those beautiful dresses, like the first one she had, the one that was so fancy. “I need the money.”
“Where do you live, anyhow?”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” she replied, sneering.
She was hard at work, cutting out pieces of fabric and making many mistakes, until Madam Perrot allowed her to take a break for lunch. She threw off the heavy apron, feeling grateful for the first time that day, and exited the little building-shop to go buy more bread.
Halfway down to the bread line a sudden hand put itself again her wrist. Spitting, angry, she whipped her head (and her heavy braid) around, hitting several people in the process.
She dropped her coins into the street. “You.”
Shin smiled back at her, “You have grown,” he said cheerily, in French that was at least as good as hers.
“Why are you here? Why didn’t you grow?” she snapped back at him, “You’re still…however old you are. It’s been so many years.”
“You’ve changed,” he only responded a little wistfully, “You’re different.”
“But you’re not,” she said hotly, fidgeting with her braid and looking very annoyed, “What are you?”
“It’s who are you, mon cherie,” he corrected, smiling again-she’d forgotten how creepy his smile could be. It was only after she turned eight, when she first became accustomed to the staring of men-that she realized how much worse-and how much better-Shin’s smile was. “I am Shin, don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” she sighed, “You abandoned me when I was four. You left me alone on the street. Are you expecting me to thank you?”
“No, no,” Shin smiled wider, “I just wanted to say hello, and how are you?”
“Horribly, thanks to you,” she snapped, picking up her coins and stalking off without a backwards glance, her long braid trailing behind her-tawny-gold now, shimmering in the sunlight. She’d dyed her hair a few shades lighter to blend in with the crowd-it also made her look less Chinese and more French.
France, Spring 1787
Thirteen years old-a teenager now. She was Estella this year. A festive spring party-her new master had allowed to go. She had long since quit her seamstress job, instead choosing to study something musical. Right now she was learning the great works of Bach and Vivaldi. Secretly she would have liked to see a Mozart opera, but as they were both high in demand and also highly controversial, she refrained from asking. At the moment she was at the party to listen and study some popular music. Songs about freedom had begun to pick up in the western reaches of France, at last.
But that was not really why she wanted so badly to go, enough to beg on her knees.
She had washed herself-no, scrubbed herself clean in her master’s great house, allowed him to order a presentable looking dress for her to wear, allowed him to take her to a place where the women made her long hair shine in the light and then put it up. She allowed the women to pierce her ears with shell earrings that shimmered when near the ocean. For the first time in her life she looked older than she really was.
She floated coolly into the great dance hall, imitating the other girls and women, keeping her eye on the door and the small piano in the corner. For an agonizing fifteen minutes she flitted around, waiting, waiting, even hastily downing a glass of champagne while she tried to calm herself.
Then they arrived. Lord Shin and Lord Shuichi of Japan-they sauntered smoothly into the hall. Lord Shin at once made himself comfortable with the ladies. Lord Shuichi headed straight for the alcohol. She made herself count to three before following him-she caught up with him three feet away. “My Lord,” she said, making a small curtsey.
He looked at her up and down, trying to remember.
“You must be about fifty tonight, are you tired?” she asked, in an utterly failing attempt to blink in that enticing sort of way her master had been trying to teach her (very funny, those lessons were). Lord Shuichi looked as though some large rock had just landed on his head.
“You’ve grown,” he commented. “What are you doing-how are you-what’s happened?”
“I’m studying music,” she replied, shaking her head impatiently, “I heard you would be here tonight.”
“You heard correctly, I suppose,” again the quick smile came and went, “You look much older, yourself.”
“Yes…”
“What is your name, anyways?” Shuichi asked her, as the two of them hid in a small room, anxious to avoid Lord Shin and his train of ladies.
“I don’t have one-I tell people to call me Estella, but I will change it next year,” she shrugged. Shuichi almost snorted-almost.
“Estella? What kind of ridiculous name is that?”
“I think it’s nice,” she frowned, “Don’t you?”
“No, I think English names are nicer,” he retorted childishly.
“You’re seventeen,” she said suddenly.
“Yes, I am,” he replied, rolling his eyes.
“Why are you seventeen?”
“Pardon?”
“When I was four…you were…”
When she woke, she was in her master’s house, lying on the soft chair by the fireplace. The previous night seemed to have been a dream-she was once again dressed her in peasant garb-her hair was tangled-the lovely shell earrings nowhere to be found. What was going on? Hadn’t she been at a party last night? Standing up, she knocked on the door of her master’s study.
“Yes, child?”
“What happened to the party?” she asked.
But a second before the answer came, she suddenly knew what he was going to say. “What party? Child, have you been drinking? Good Lord, I’ve always told you that alcohol was bad for your voice…”
notes: angst. lots of angst. :D
France, Winter 1778
There was nothing. Nothing in nothing. A whirl of something in the middle of the nothing…a whirl of something white, something brown-the turning of wheels and the snowflakes falling in the sky. A hand. One hand. Five outstretched fingers. One scream-a crack-a frantic groping-
“Papa!”
Where was this? Where was she? What kind of strange country was this, where all the people were golden-haired and blue-eyed, and their skin was so very pale? The streets were marked up with signs which she could not read. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité…that meant nothing to her. Neither could she understand the high, merry voices jabbering away at each other on the streets. She knew nothing. She remembered something.
She remembered China. She remembered a lush garden and a lake. A smiling lady which she called “Mama”…she grew up in China-she was four years old now. She spoke Chinese-was going to learn how to read, too, but then Papa had come and taken her here. Wherever here was…she knew that her father wasn’t quite like her mother. Her father had golden hair like the people in this country. Her mother had black hair and black eyes and a weak smile-she never quite smiled completely, it was more of a nervous, weak grimace. And then her father had said something about leaving. She remembered a bit of yelling and then she was being packed into first a carriage and then carried on horseback, sitting in front of her father. He told her stories the whole way.
Then they’d gotten here and…what had happened? She was alone, kneeling on the stone streets, trying to figure out what was happening. Streams of Chinese flew out of her mouth. What was her name? She’d forgotten. No one ever called her by name.
It was cold. She just realized how very cold it was. She was still wearing her summer clothes, because they were the lightest for the journey. But now that seemed to be a big mistake. The thin fabric did nothing to block out the cold snow. She wandered here and there, the tips of her fingers, her toes, her lips turning blue. Her eyes-big, unnatural green-seemed over-bright and feverish, maybe even a little mad. She wanted her father! Not a bunch of curious kids, all with the same golden hair and blue eyes, staring at her from underneath their warm hats.
“Papa?” she asked innocently. There was, of course, no answer. “Papa…where are you?”
For hours and hours she wandered the streets. The sun was going down-that was a familiar sight, at least. The sun was going down meant danger! She started to run, but she was so weak that all she managed were two tiny steps, and then she toppled forwards into the soft snow.
The first sensation she had was of a very sharp pain in her ankle. Then she realized she was quite warm. And clean. She’d forgotten what clean felt like. It made her feel so light. And cool, in a comfortable way, except she was quite warm also. She realized that she was wearing rich-feeling bedclothes, the kind that was soft but not tickly, and her bed was so soft. Wondering what kind of fairy had transported her to this place, she got out of bed, still warm, and walked around the room.
How did she end up in a room? That was the biggest question she had. There was a window in her room-one that looked out onto a street that was white with snow, and colorful with the beautiful dresses that the foreign people in this foreign country wore. She saw a chair by her bed, with a dress like that hanging on it. Giggling, she pulled it on-it was just her size. Quite warm now, she wondered if there was any food in this mysterious house. A pair of gloves lay beside her pillow-those were at once slipped on the cold hands, and then a dainty pair of boots went on her small feet.
When she opened the door, someone was standing outside in the hall, surveying her. To her surprise he looked like someone from China. Eyes widening, she asked, “Who are you?”
To her immense surprise, he replied in Chinese, “Song Xiuyi.”
The words meant nothing to her-she didn’t know who that was. But he looked nice enough. Continuing to speak, she tugged on his hand a little, “Where am I? How did I get here? Are you a fairy?”
One of his eyebrows shot up! She’d never seen only one eyebrow go up at a time. He had a pleasantly older-brother sort of voice and for a second she thought she saw him smile. He looked friendly when he smiled, instead of bored, as he did now. “Not a fairy, sorry. This is France. Do you know what France is?”
France! “Yes!” she replied, suddenly understanding where her father had taken her, “My papa is from France! But…then, why are you here?”
“I’m…playing here,” he shrugged.
“Aren’t you kind of old to be playing?” she asked curiously, “You must be at least fifty years old…” She had a very vague sense of age. Her mother, she knew, was only twenty-three, and her father must be around thirty, she thought. But somehow this strange man looked a lot older, even though he didn’t look older. She found it hard to explain, and didn’t think about it anymore.
He smiled again, quickly, “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” again her monstrous eyes widened, “That is pretty old, hmm?”
“I guess so.”
Before she could ask any questions, another man appeared, who looked even older, if that was possible. He looked very old, even though, again, he didn’t look old. Again she found it hard to explain why she thought he looked old. Xiuyi at once walked away, leaving her alone with the strange man.
“Did he ask your name?” the man asked, smiling. He had a very wide smile, and very white teeth. But she couldn’t understand anything he said, even though he looked like a Chinaman too. He was probably insane, she decided, so she asked him,
“Who are you?”
But strangely enough he understand her question. In a very horrible accent he explained, “My name is Shin. What is your name?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, looking a little worried, “What is my name?”
But he only smiled. His smile was very intense, and she noticed that his teeth were unusually sharp. Maybe he cleaned them a lot-he looked rich enough to, at the very least. She smiled back uncertainly. He held out his hand to her, and she put hers in-he led her down the hallway and down the stairs and then into a giant room with so much food! She fell to the table on her knees. But she could recognize none of the foods, except the apples.
“Eat,” he prompted gently, lifting a slice of bread and putting it into her hand.
“What is it?”
He didn’t know how to answer, but he broke off half of a piece and then put it into his own mouth. “See?”
Intrigued, she mirrored his actions and found her mouth filled with a fresh, warm sort of…dough? A fiber-like sort of thing. It tasted good-crackly on the outside and soft on the inside. Within minutes she had consumed half of the bread on the heavily-laden table. She found that she was so hungry. He handed her a cup of water and she swallowed it in two big gulps.
When she was full, her face looked a lot livelier. “Thank you,” she said. She had manners.
“You are welcome,” he replied. Then he held out his hand to her again, and she put hers in again, and again he led her somewhere-outside, in the snow, seeing that she had put on her boots and gloves properly. A very happy, merry little girl she looked now, although she was basically an orphan.
They spent the entire day playing in the snow. What a lot of fun they had! Even though Shin could not speak her language very well, he understood what she was saying, and they always laughed at the same time. The sun was just going down when he stopped, suddenly not smiling anymore. He motioned for her to go inside the house again, and then told her to find Xiuyi (Shuichi, he called him).
She obeyed blindly, sensing that danger was somehow close to her. Skittering back to her little room, she closed the door, changed into her bedclothes again and then closed her eyes, falling asleep.
France, Summer 1784
Bread, good. Still fresh from the day before. Quickly shoving a few pieces into her mouth, she tidied her little spot in the alley wall, carefully moving a bunch of boxes into the entrance hole and then, smoothing out her skirt, hurried down the little alley. She was ten years old now. No longer did she wonder what had happened to the strange, strangely familiar men she had spent that one day with, when she’d first arrived in France. They had vanished the next day, and though she often visited the house, it was utterly deserted.
She came to the conclusion that they had abandoned her. Running down the streets, she turned right, right, and left, bounded into a building and skipped up the stairs. When she opened her mouth to speak, her French was flawless. She no longer spoke Chinese-not even the slightest bit, except for two words: father and mother. “Sorry I’m late,” she snapped out, no longer the innocent inquiring child, but an impatient, hardened almost-teenager.
“Doesn’t make much difference, Claudette,” the elderly matron sitting sewing at a table admonished gently, “We all know you don’t get much done, why, how come you to be in the seamstress business, anyways?”
Claudette was her current name. Last year she’d gone mostly by Annette. “I don’t know,” she replied bluntly, shockingly blunt for a girl her age. But she did know-she’d wanted to make those beautiful dresses, like the first one she had, the one that was so fancy. “I need the money.”
“Where do you live, anyhow?”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” she replied, sneering.
She was hard at work, cutting out pieces of fabric and making many mistakes, until Madam Perrot allowed her to take a break for lunch. She threw off the heavy apron, feeling grateful for the first time that day, and exited the little building-shop to go buy more bread.
Halfway down to the bread line a sudden hand put itself again her wrist. Spitting, angry, she whipped her head (and her heavy braid) around, hitting several people in the process.
She dropped her coins into the street. “You.”
Shin smiled back at her, “You have grown,” he said cheerily, in French that was at least as good as hers.
“Why are you here? Why didn’t you grow?” she snapped back at him, “You’re still…however old you are. It’s been so many years.”
“You’ve changed,” he only responded a little wistfully, “You’re different.”
“But you’re not,” she said hotly, fidgeting with her braid and looking very annoyed, “What are you?”
“It’s who are you, mon cherie,” he corrected, smiling again-she’d forgotten how creepy his smile could be. It was only after she turned eight, when she first became accustomed to the staring of men-that she realized how much worse-and how much better-Shin’s smile was. “I am Shin, don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” she sighed, “You abandoned me when I was four. You left me alone on the street. Are you expecting me to thank you?”
“No, no,” Shin smiled wider, “I just wanted to say hello, and how are you?”
“Horribly, thanks to you,” she snapped, picking up her coins and stalking off without a backwards glance, her long braid trailing behind her-tawny-gold now, shimmering in the sunlight. She’d dyed her hair a few shades lighter to blend in with the crowd-it also made her look less Chinese and more French.
France, Spring 1787
Thirteen years old-a teenager now. She was Estella this year. A festive spring party-her new master had allowed to go. She had long since quit her seamstress job, instead choosing to study something musical. Right now she was learning the great works of Bach and Vivaldi. Secretly she would have liked to see a Mozart opera, but as they were both high in demand and also highly controversial, she refrained from asking. At the moment she was at the party to listen and study some popular music. Songs about freedom had begun to pick up in the western reaches of France, at last.
But that was not really why she wanted so badly to go, enough to beg on her knees.
She had washed herself-no, scrubbed herself clean in her master’s great house, allowed him to order a presentable looking dress for her to wear, allowed him to take her to a place where the women made her long hair shine in the light and then put it up. She allowed the women to pierce her ears with shell earrings that shimmered when near the ocean. For the first time in her life she looked older than she really was.
She floated coolly into the great dance hall, imitating the other girls and women, keeping her eye on the door and the small piano in the corner. For an agonizing fifteen minutes she flitted around, waiting, waiting, even hastily downing a glass of champagne while she tried to calm herself.
Then they arrived. Lord Shin and Lord Shuichi of Japan-they sauntered smoothly into the hall. Lord Shin at once made himself comfortable with the ladies. Lord Shuichi headed straight for the alcohol. She made herself count to three before following him-she caught up with him three feet away. “My Lord,” she said, making a small curtsey.
He looked at her up and down, trying to remember.
“You must be about fifty tonight, are you tired?” she asked, in an utterly failing attempt to blink in that enticing sort of way her master had been trying to teach her (very funny, those lessons were). Lord Shuichi looked as though some large rock had just landed on his head.
“You’ve grown,” he commented. “What are you doing-how are you-what’s happened?”
“I’m studying music,” she replied, shaking her head impatiently, “I heard you would be here tonight.”
“You heard correctly, I suppose,” again the quick smile came and went, “You look much older, yourself.”
“Yes…”
“What is your name, anyways?” Shuichi asked her, as the two of them hid in a small room, anxious to avoid Lord Shin and his train of ladies.
“I don’t have one-I tell people to call me Estella, but I will change it next year,” she shrugged. Shuichi almost snorted-almost.
“Estella? What kind of ridiculous name is that?”
“I think it’s nice,” she frowned, “Don’t you?”
“No, I think English names are nicer,” he retorted childishly.
“You’re seventeen,” she said suddenly.
“Yes, I am,” he replied, rolling his eyes.
“Why are you seventeen?”
“Pardon?”
“When I was four…you were…”
When she woke, she was in her master’s house, lying on the soft chair by the fireplace. The previous night seemed to have been a dream-she was once again dressed her in peasant garb-her hair was tangled-the lovely shell earrings nowhere to be found. What was going on? Hadn’t she been at a party last night? Standing up, she knocked on the door of her master’s study.
“Yes, child?”
“What happened to the party?” she asked.
But a second before the answer came, she suddenly knew what he was going to say. “What party? Child, have you been drinking? Good Lord, I’ve always told you that alcohol was bad for your voice…”