What will it take? To return to myself?Perhaps the saddest form of change is when you’re the only one undergoing it. Ever since I was… Abducted, sold to the Dodici by my father, things have been different.
I used to laugh when Napoli would tell a horrid joke only to piss off Gratia. But now I just find myself staring back at Luke mirroring his emotions. He smiles, so do I. Shiro went out of his way in order to perform a good deed when I was in the infirmary, went out and bought a pizza for me. I ate until he left.
People look at me like expensive china. Like if they say the wrong thing I’ll tip, eventually break –
“Bianca? I can do this up on my own if you want.” Luke said to me, taking a slight step backwards in order to take his tie into his own hands. The dorm room snapped back into focus, Cian and Jack both out waiting for us, we were accepting a complimentary cruise on behalf of Beacon today. We could only look our bests.
“No, sorry Luke, I’ve got it.” I say moving my eyes in such a way that I make him think I’ve snapped out of it. I gently loop through the final knot and laugh passively.
“There you go, you look good Luke.”“Well, if you hadn’t helped me pick out my outfit then I probably would’ve been all mismatched… Could’ve done without having to change behind your wings though. Any old changing room would’ve worked!”Luke was testing me.
“Ohohoho, if that’s true then you can use a changing room when you’ve earned one, through fashion!”His eyes tense for a moment and then fade into the cooler, duller lack of focus. It seems I had passed.
Luke turned to leave the room, but as if he heard my thoughts he stopped at the doorknob.
“Bianca?”Maybe I hadn’t.
“Yes Luke?”“Would you tell me if something was wrong?”“Of course.”“…” Luke took a deep sigh and rubbed his shoulder with his other hand, casually at first, but seemingly also to reduce some stress. “You shouldn’t lie to your teammates. We’re here for you, okay?”
“Of course!” I said in an unconvincing voice.
“Yeah, I guess that’s about right.” Luke said exiting the room and leaving me alone with myself.
“Bianca.”
I turn around, only to see myself, not in the outfit I’m wearing. When I look at the me standing there, she seems…. Happy. Her wings are doing the same motions mine once did when they would flutter slightly almost like a dog wagging his tail.
“Why so sad, Bianca?”
“Why so sad?” I say to myself, confused. For a moment we stare at each other, before she lets out a shrill laugh at me.
“Why’re you sad, I don’t understand?”
She asks me.
“I’m no-““Bianca, stop. I’m you, I remember feeling like that, but I remember when it stopped, and it was before this.”
“I-I why, how did you get here? What are you?”“I dunno… I was being helped out by a friend out with some training, walked off and now I’m here.”
Bianca- I mean I said to me…
“What should I call you?” I asked my newfound clone, I placed a hand on my handbag.
“Jesus before you call me anything don’t swing a weapon.”
“Right… You would know that.”“Yeah, no reason to be hasty. Haven’t you learned to relax yet after our little field trip?”
“How can you just call it-““I moved on Bianca.”
She snapped this time. A flare of anger I hadn’t seen before, others had described it at me, the twitch of my upper lip, my wings furling like fangs.
“My patience is limited. It happened, it was bad, I’ve moved on. You were supposed to have moved on.”
“Bianca?” “Luke! I-““You done? I don’t mean to rush you but we’re on a bit of a deadline.”Didn’t he see?
She’s not there.
What is she looking at?While the rest of JCBL and I were standing here, atop a stage, everyone stood proudly straight up, with their backs arched and their hands behind them. Except for me, of course. Since we’d be standing for a while I was using crutches. It was a ceremony and it’d be impolite of me to be seated as one of the few guests of honour. Of course I was also sitting in the front row. Staring at myself. Bianca stared blankly into my eyes. Why was she following herself, if she was from another version of my own timeline why would she be so obsessed with seeing a worse version of herself.
It also begged a question.
Am I the worse version of myself? Was I living in some kind of alternate timeline in which nothing went correctly?
As I finished these questions and continued to stare into my own eyes, the happier Bianca simply nodded as if she knew I was about to think that. But that didn’t make any sense.
Unless of course she truly wasn’t there.
But then as if a message from some god, Luke leaned over with a gentle elbow. He whispered quietly into my ear.
“That girl kind of looks like you Bianca, you two related?”Oh.
Not crazy.
I’m standing here looking at myself, looking at my own face doing the exact same thing I did when I was proven right and someone hadn’t believed me. Her brow raised, shoulders following suit. But this Bianca… She looked fine.
How did she look fine, how was she here, how did she disappear before, why wouldn’t she leave me alone?
So many questions and yet, somehow I knew that I wasn’t going to get a clear answer out of them.
I was so stunned. Yet, she, she was so elegant. She was
literally me and yet no one recognized her. Because of what I had become, what the Dodici had made me.
Pathetic, a shell of myself, a shell of anyone really. Whoever was talking to me, I followed their cue. Forever dancing around conversations, they made a joke and laughed, I laughed just a bit more. They raised their eyebrows talking about some news, I raised mine a bit more.
But this Bianca. She was awful. She didn’t have a thing about her that didn’t piss me off. Sitting there, doing… her own thing.
“Why are you here?”I ask myself, I found me on the rooftop of the dorms. It is raining.
She has Gelure. So she wasn’t abducted after all.
I look to my right after waiting too long for her response. A team of hunters and huntress’ are bringing in some long lost items from missions. A team that finds missing important items from old mission zones. Before anymore dots connect she’s at my throat.
I feel Gelure’s distinguishable cold imbalanced steel kiss the skin near my chin and my eyes close for a moment.
“You’re not ready to die and you know it.”
She says to me.
“How could someone whose had it so perfectly know that?” I ask bewildered, my eyes shoot open and I see something.
She is slightly past me.
I can see her wings. They looked so perfect from back there. But up close.
“You can see the scars huh?”
She said, the blade loosened from my throat for an instant, which is enough for my action.
I brought La Vie up towards Gelure, I knew exactly where to hit it. Of course, Bianca knew exactly how to block La Vie as well, after all.
It was our training weapon growing up.
With a mutual flap of our wings we increased the space between one another, never breaking eye sight.
“You were kidnapped by them too.”“Of course I was.”
“Then why are you so content?”“You’ve seen it already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” I shout, the raindrops brushing my lips as I do.
“You’ve been so focused on yourself you’ve completely ignored the entirety of the reason as to why I’m still happy.”
“What’s that?”“You don’t deserve to know if you can’t say it for yourself!”
She’s at me again.
First the Waltz.The first conversation starts with a metallic clang as she brings Gelure down upon me.
As I deflect her blow I dodge diagonally.
She knows that’s where I’m headed and before I can get there the blade has met me.
A small tap of the blade and La Vie send both of us skidding along the water backwards, we extend our wings to keep balance. She looks at my wings as I look at hers. We both find reason to be angry with one another.
But once again she continues on the advance. A sullen anger in her eyes.
She seems angry, and yet, so much better off. Where is that coming from, that feeling of pity for myself?
This paradox keeps my attention for a nanosecond too long.
Gelure’s blade skids along my side, I let her know how I feel with a strong kick to her side. I feel something crunch as she twists to attempt to deviate from the blow. It doesn’t work as well as she intended. I catch her once more with La Vie, this time on the temple.
But my presses cause Gelure to have cut deeper than I intended.
We both feel the water on our heels as we skid backwards once more.
Fine then, we’ll move to the salsa next.She comes once more, as I remove my newly reddened hand from my side I know that the time to finish this is nearing. I extend La Vie, into its spear form. Glancing Gelure off of my side. I flick the spear up as I glide it towards Bianca’s hand and it flies into the air, flipping around violently.
Yet it suddenly stops.
Bianca looks dead on at me with a smile.
Of course, my semblance.
I immediately spin my spear around and slash in front of me, landing a glancing blow on Gelure knocking it away. But, of course, this Bianca is as good if not better with my semblance as I am and it’s soon on the return.
I leap into the air to avoid a stab to my thigh. My wings deliver a powerful flap, I can feel each of the raindrops I hit as they also get sent towards Bianca.
But the sword follows and I soon find myself flying in order to evade it. This is the first time I’ve really flown in a long time.
I pull the smile off my face as I whip around and close my wings around me, once again narrowly avoiding contact with Gelure and causing myself to dive.
“You’ll have to strike eventually.” She cries out, through a loud thunderclap.
But she needn’t worry about that. As I extend my wings to full mast and flap as strong as I can I am directly in front of her.
I stab forward but I am blocked by nothing other than La Vie.
Gelure returns to her hand and she faces me with a smile, sword and spear in hand.
Finally, the time has come, for the foxtrot.The Owl Faunus looks at me with a sad look. “I don’t see it.” She says. Water streams down her face and it becomes difficult to tell whether or not there are tears or if the rain has picked up. But her approach continues, unrelentingly.
A strong overhead strike is deflected by my spear but quickly after another stab with her own spear comes for my midsection. I thrust my palm out and my semblance takes care of the rest as her spear is blown upwards.
I use my semblance to blow it out of her hand but with a flick of her wrist it is back.
She twists carefully bringing her right hand with Gelure across my spear creating resistance. Abandoning that post means taking a slash and keeping it means taking a stab.
I attempt once more to thrust my palm out towards her spear but find it too late as the spear still pierces my side.
My vision darkens a little as I see the red begin to crop up on her midsection.
But that doesn’t make sense.
She looks at me with that same expression once more, the expression I use when someone proves my point for them.
I glance back at the hunters and huntresses as they offload their truck.
I see Gelure.
I remember the scars on her wings.
“You’re really me.”“It’s about time you’ve got your head around it. It didn’t take me this long to figure out when it was my turn.”
“But how-“[“That’s not important. What is important is that you regain your focus, but mostly yourself.”
She says to me
We both clutch our sides as she drops to her knees.
“You were talking about them before right?”“About all those who put their necks on the line to make sure you got out alright? About the team that took you in, helped you stand?”
“Yeah.”“Yeah that’s who I was talking about.”
“You’re missing someone.”“You wouldn’t count Estelle either.”
“Not her.” I say finally interrupting myself. I feel my worry leave, I have the edge on her, on my own anxieties and fears.
“Who then?”
“Me.” I say, digging my nails around the puncture wound before standing up.
“I got here, I sat through Vitoria’s beatings, abuse, indignities.”“You don’t know what-“
“You had it so much worse didn’t you?”“What are you talking abou-“
“You poor thing. Don’t you realize? I am Bianca Nuit, and it is by my own tenacity that I can stand here, after being knocked down, beaten and stripped of everything. I am the one who has chosen to stand back up. And when I fly, it's because I choose to fly.”“I see.”
“Don’t forget that.”“I won’t… Bianca. Thank you.”
She’s gone again. Will I have to do that one day?
Fight myself?
Teach myself those lessons?
I hear a door crash open, my hazy vision picks Luke out of the raindrops, though if it wasn’t for his unique hairstyling I wouldn’t have been able to.
It seems my knees are submerged, my hands feel sore from holding my body up. I guess I’m on my hands and knees. Luke grabs my spear and pricks his finger with it.
I can hear him saying something but as my chest rises and falls I only hear one thing.
It’s a nurse speaking to me.
From when I first was let out.
“Don’t take it too hard, god knows you’re barely being held together as it is.”My hearing starts to get fuzzier and the sky seems like it’s brightening up.
Am I dying? Is it time?
A hospital gown and a sleeping Luke say otherwise. When did I get here?
I sit up and as if Luke was waiting for that he awakens.
“Don’t even think about it. What happened up there? You were stabbed!” Luke’s worry has caused him to build up multiple questions while he waiting for my consciousness to return.
“I’m not sure.” I say in a tone that is surely familiar to Luke by now. I look around the room, it is all too familiar. “I’m a little too used to this place.”
“I guess I’ll leave you be then.” Luke says falling into his old habit. I used to tell him I needed to be alone when I was in the infirmary.
“Luke.”“Yeah?”“Can you stay?”“Yeah.”“Thank you.”“Don’t worry about it. It’s what teammates do.” 
Plank Sinatra
