LTSV - Lost & Found 14 (Patreon)

Unfortunately, Mira had no more opportunity for questions because Vesper guided her back into the private sitting room where Cecily had resumed her knitting and Colvin was in the process of setting an empty plate into the dumbwaiter. The kitchens were fast, at least.

Cecily looked up and her face brightened when she saw it was Vesper and Mira. She’d had her shoulders up around her ears when they first came in. It looked like she and Colvin weren’t getting along, just yet. His reception of Cecily had cooled noticeably when he realized who she was and Mira knew from the game that he regarded her as an active threat to Violet’s safety. She just hadn’t realized that he formed that opinion before ever meeting Violet in person.

“I’ve given Mister Adelram an outline of his primary responsibilities,” Vesper explained. She guided Mira to a seat and pointed at it in case Mira didn’t get the hint. She was going to be tiresome about the ‘no unnecessarily stimulation or excitement’ rule that Dr. Padre left, Mira could already tell. “He is technically my direct report, but I’ve detached him to your service. We’ll review matters at the end of the fiscal year and, if you both find this partnership agreeable, then you can negotiate a permanent contract then.”

“I’ll be in your care, Mister… Colvin,” Mira hesitated for a second when using his personal name.

“And I yours,” Colvin replied with a smile.

000

The remainder of Mira’s first day with a personal aide was unremarkable. Colvin excused himself to get acquainted with Nanny and Anna. Then he and Nanny left the hotel room together to visit all of Mira’s local properties and make sure that they matched their descriptions in Nanny’s ledger while Cecily sat with Mira.

Vesper received a call on her walking crystal shortly before they left and vanished into her study until dinner, which left Mira and Cecily the task of reviewing candidates for the townhouse staff and Cecily’s ladies maid, which arrived from the service agency Nanny recommended to them in the afternoon post.

Cecily’s maid was an easy choice. In the game, Vesper gave her a budget for lodging and told her to hire a personal servant when circumstances conspired to leave the academy, before she took the exam for early university admission. As fate would have it, Ginger Reed was included among the resumes that the agency sent them and Mira recalled that Ginger said had been looking for a position for a long time before Cecily hired her.

Ginger was the middle daughter of a factory family and had a breathing condition that made it hard for her to work around fumes or airborne particulates. Her condition was also resistant to the cheap healing potions that factory owners used to keep their workforce healthy, so her family sent her to service school in the hopes that she could land a comfortable position as a ladies maid, which they thought was the job best suited to her talents and least likely to endanger her health since the big houses usually had enchantments on the windows to keep pollution and pollen out, while still letting her provide for herself. 

What they hadn’t banked on was the fact that most young upper class women trained their own personal attendants from a young age and kept them close long after. Violet’s original maid would have left the household with her in the normal way of things, but she must have been in Madame’s pocket, if Nanny had chosen to replace her. Luckily for Ginger, Cecily’s background made it difficult for her to find someone through personal connections who was already trained, the way Nanny had for Mira. 

Ginger was loyal, clever, and street smart in all the ways that Cecily was not. She was the heroine’s primary support in the second game and added an additional layer of difficulty for any player who’d chosen a tricky route to pursue because, not only did you have to keep Cecily from seeing the love interests doing things she didn’t approve of, you also had to make sure Ginger didn’t catch them at it either by giving her errands or switching her day off. She would not hesitate to snitch on the boys.

“This one comes highly recommended by her instructors,” Mira said as she pushed Ginger’s resume over for Cecily’s review. There were a few other candidates, but they weren’t as accomplished. “Her style book has examples of both short and long hairstyles too. Everyone else seems more familiar with long hair.”

“I do like her better than the others,” Cecily admitted once she’d read it over and reviewed Ginger’s book. “I’m still getting used to having short hair, but I might keep it this way. I look very different, don’t I?”

“It flatters you,” Mira agreed. Cecily had big bouncy princess hair in the first game when it was loose from her farmgirl braid, which was probably why her father and brothers made her wear it like that because it made her look and feel like a child in need of guidance. Her short hair, though, made her look closer to her actual age and was in keeping with the woman she would become.

“I’ll ask them to send this girl over tomorrow, in that case,” Cecily agreed with a sunny smile. Then she showed Mira the cook’s resume and sample menu she’d been looking over. “Would you consider this person? She completed the Royal Medical Institute’s Dietary Medicine course. Your condition can be partially managed through diet. Would you be willing to try?”

Mira vaguely recalled hearing about the ketogenic diet being a viable treatment in some of the places she's lived for epilepsy in children. Was it the same for adults? “We’ll bring her in on a trial run,” she decided out loud. “If the food is inedible, I will hire someone else.”

Cecily started to note down the cook’s name on her little list, but paused. “Senior…” she paused and swallowed. “...are you really alright with me staying with you? You don’t remember everything that’s happened between us. I’m grateful and happy, but I’m also worried that you wouldn’t have made the same choice if you remembered everything.”

“I remember some things,” Mira lied. Actually, Violet’s memories provided little to no information about Cecily at all. If nothing else, that proved to Mira that Violet couldn’t be Cecily’s mysterious bully. Violet had barely even known her and what bits she did remember primarily had to do with Prince Andrei. “I don’t remember tormenting you, but I do remember that you were afraid of me.”

“That…” Cecily pursed her lips. “...that was something different. I never believed you were the one putting needles in my clothes or stealing my things. I always thought it was my brothers picking on me, but father didn’t like it if I argued with them so I couldn’t say anything and then An… then the others jumped to conclusions and wouldn’t listen to me when I argued with them. No, I–I was nervous around you for a different reason. Vesper told you about—what my first family was doing to me, but you already knew. You came into the bathroom one night while I was washing up and you saw. It was after we’d come back from summer break, so…” she trailed off, looking ashamed.

Mira was surprised to be confronted with a memory. Her memory of the game was a still frame of Cecily standing up in a porcelain tub from the back. Her long hair obscured everything but her ankles and wrists. Violet’s memory showed a skinny and pale little girl lunging for her towel. Her arms and legs were littered with healing welts and a few stray bruises, but her upper arm sported the unmistakable yellow-green outline of a man’s hand.

She frowned. “I think I remember that. You were in the bath?” she asked. “Did I say anything?

Cecily blushed. “Yes, I was soaking in one of the tubs with some salts and forgot to close the curtains. You asked if I was alright and I asked you to leave. Afterwards, I was afraid that you’d report it to the guidance office. Father said that he’d stop paying my tuition if I embarrassed him or if I alienated Prince Andrei from the family in any way.” 

Ugh, how disgustingly typical. “Planning on milking that connection for you, was he?” she asked, forgetting to modulate her language for the current setting. 

Cecily squeaked and covered her mouth to stifle her nervous laughter. 

“I think he really was,” she admitted. “Andrei barely knows Father is alive, though, and he doesn’t like my brothers at all. They’ve been rude to me in front of him and he remembers things like that. Father blamed me when Andrei refused to give them recommendations for university so he cut my allowance. I was already on thin ice at home. That–that’s why I was nervous around you in school and I didn’t know how to face you afterwards.” She wet her lips. “Do–do you maybe remember why you never told anyone? It’s good that you didn’t, but I was never quite sure why.”

“I don’t,” Mira said and shook her head. “I would hope that it was because children in abusive homes are put in more danger when well-meaning adults carelessly interfere. Perhaps I thought the guidance officer might make your situation worse or maybe I thought that his majesty would notice and intervene.”

“Oh, no, Andrei doesn’t know.” Cecily dropped her gaze. “He just thinks I’m clumsy. I–I should probably tell him the truth, shouldn’t I? Now that I don’t have to go back? It’s just lying now, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” Mira shrugged her shoulders. She’d long since given up on the idea of honesty being absolutely necessary to living an authentic life. Not everyone was entitled to know about her personal affairs. “It depends on how much you want people to know about your experience. Exposing Sir Rousseau as a child abuser could be cathartic and he deserves to be shamed for it, but you must also consider how that knowledge will color other people’s attitude towards you. It’s hard to stop being seen as the victim once people get started and it may become harder for you to escape his memory when others are constantly reminding you of what he did. It’s not fair, but it will happen.” 

Mira had been incarnated into her fair share of abusive households. It was common for the villainesses in the stories she lived out to be part of a cycle of domestic violence that spilled out onto the protagonist. 

She’d dragged her abusers’ crime into the light of day and she’d also cut them out of her life to the point where it was hard to remember their names anymore, years later. Both tactics had their positive and negative aspects. These days, though, she would probably escape first to ensure her own comfort and then come back later when she was ready to slowly strip them of everything they treasured before killing them and leaving their bodies behind in the ashes of whatever they had left. Catharsis really was the best medicine, but she was certain that plan wouldn’t hold any appeal for Cecily.

Cecily buried her face in her hands for a good long minute. “I don’t know what I want,” she whispered eventually.  

“You don’t need to decide today,” Mira told her gently. “Vesper and I will support you in whatever you decide. Do you mind a rude question?”

“I’ve already been rude,” Cecily sniffed. Her turquoise eyes were shimmering with a thin veil of tears. “Go ahead.”

“Why do you let the marks heal naturally?” Mira asked. “You’re a Negentropy mage. You could heal them with a single thought.”

Cecily pulled out her kerchief, dried her eyes, and blew her nose before she answered. “It’s silly…” she hesitated, “...but I wanted proof that it happened. I didn’t want anyone to know, but my brothers always made me question myself and sometimes I even wanted to believe that I made it all up, that they would never. So I stopped healing myself, because it was easier to let them persuade me when I didn’t still hurt.”

That made an awful, terrible sort of sense and Mira reluctantly ached for the child in front of her. She’d been in Cecily’s shoes before, back in her very first life, before she’d entered this endless cycle of rebirth. She remembered questioning her own memories, her own sense of reality, because the people who should have loved her best made her do it. It took dozens of lifetimes to shed the last few clinging wisps of that persistent insecurity. So Mira did something she normally wouldn’t do. 

“Then, I’ll continue to be rude,” she said. “Vesper and I will remind you whenever you want that your experiences are real. You don’t need the bruises anymore and, if you want, Vesper is in a position to make Sir Rousseau regret that he was ever born without anyone ever needing to know every particular detail of your degradation.”

Mira could do it herself with ease, and she might yet, depending on her mood, but Cecily wouldn’t believe it if she said so. Cecily had decided that Mira needed looking after and she wasn’t going to shed that attitude anytime soon.

Every version of this girl that Mira had ever met was always so stubborn in her own way. 

Cecily blinked hard and dropped her gaze. “I–I’ll think about it,” she said. “Everything is all so different now, I don’t know what I want. You don’t think it’s wrong to hide it from my friends?”

“I doubt they tell you everything about their problems either, dear,” Mira pointed out. She was the person who knew that best. All the love interests had more backstory to reveal in the second game. Even Andrei, who arguably loved Cecily best, was still keeping her a little bit at a distance. It was just that Cecily likely hadn’t been allowed to have boundaries before, so she didn’t know what was normal. 

That refreshing, open personality of hers that drew in her love interests came from a dark place.