Chapter Text
There is no winning this—Saya knows it.
Her opponent stands alert and unharmed, leveling his blade-hand at her while she pauses to catch her breath, her shoulders slumped from the weight of her weapon, her stance open to attack. But he makes no move for the offense, simply watching her, waiting.
"That's enough, isn't it, Saya? There's no reason to fight anymore," Solomon says gently.
Saya grips her weapon. She'd barely survived the Schiff the day or two before. If not for Haji and their sheer amount of luck, she'd have been dead long before setting foot in the Zoo. But luck is not on her side now, and Haji is nowhere to be seen.
Solomon beckons to Saya with an open palm, but Saya slashes his hand as soon as it extends too far out to her. (In the background, she hears Diva erupt into a wild fit of laughter. "Solomon got rejected!")
To hell with it—Saya will go down fighting if she has to.
And she does: three seconds later, she feels her body completely shut down on its own, faster than Saya can keep up with. Her mind barely registers her knees buckling, her body falling to her side and curling inwards.
Gasping, she clutches her chest as she's seized by a cramping in her ribs. The Chiropteran in her screams and thrashes, struggling against the rapid loss of consciousness.
"You don't have enough blood, onee-chan," Diva states matter-of-factly. "It's a smorgasbord around you, too..."
"We're different," Saya chokes out. She frantically fumbles around for her sword's handle and realizes that she can't feel her hands at all.
"No," Diva replies, just as the tingling spreads further up to Saya's neck and face. Saya's world narrows down to Diva's bright blue heels as she says,
"We're exactly the same."
+++
A song. Mangled corpses of children scattered on an open field. It snows and then it pours rivers of blood, but the fires burn hot and bright still. Her father grins but his insides are missing.
Kai aims a gun at her. He fires.
Saya jerks awake.
The change of scenery is disorienting, the near-darkness even more so. If not for the single oil lamp burning above her corner and lighting her immediate surroundings, she'd have mistaken herself to be dead, trapped in some ungodly lightless underworld.
Unless this is it: oversized shackles wrapped tight over her wrists, her ankles fettered securely to the cold, hard ground. Thick, iron bars a handful of feet away cage her in this tinier corner of the room.
She shivers. The cell feels damp and the air is musty. A familiar smell, like that of the last crypt she'd awoken in.
Except she hadn't woken from hibernation, she'd been fighting—
The Zoo.
Solomon.
Diva.
Adrenaline shoots up into Saya's veins. She'd been fighting. She'd lost. And she'd been…spared? Locked away here, wherever 'here' is.
Saya has yet to decide if this is a fate worse than death. Instead, she focuses on a plan of escape. She makes the mistake of standing too soon; the room spins when she gets to her feet, and she sits back with a thump, grabbing her head in an attempt to stop the nausea.
She remains as is until the vertigo subsides, meanwhile feeling and listening to the rhythm of her own heartbeat.
Haji. Riku. Kai.
If Solomon had gotten to her, it meant he'd beaten Haji somehow. And as for Kai and Riku… Her last image of her brothers had been horrific: Kai cradling an unconscious Riku in his arms, two bloody punctures on the younger brother's neck where Diva had bitten him—
The memory alone has her violently hurling in the corner of the room. She's wiping her mouth with the back of her hand when the door swings open.
"I see you're awake now," her visitor, no, captor, says.
A broad jaw and slicked-back hair. His deep blue eyes study Saya closely, as if she were some interesting specimen to behold.
Saya bristles under his calculating gaze. She can't place where she's seen him before, but she's dead certain of her abhorrence for him. "Where am I?"
He does not deign to answer her question, simply staring at Saya like she'd never spoken at all. He unlocks the gate to Saya's cage, but does not enter the space. Instead, he looks over his shoulder, demeanor brightening. "You've been graced with a visit," he says, stepping aside.
Diva comes into view. "Hello, onee-chan," she greets cheerily. "Oh…gross." She wrinkles her nose at the smell of upchuck, but approaches Saya anyway. "Did you sleep well? Any bad dreams?"
Saya ignores the question. "Where am I?" she demands. "Release me now!"
"Is that how you're going to thank me?" Diva questions innocently, folding her arms behind her. "Because I did a good job of not killing you, you know."
Saya scoffs. If Diva were standing any closer, she'd have clawed at her face or spit on her. Diva just barely stays out of reach though, jeering at her with her bright, sapphire eyes.
"Do you like your new room?" Diva continues, glancing up and around at the four corners of Saya's prison cell. "There wasn't any time to fix this place up—wasn't really expecting to have you over." At this, she giggles.
"Let me go, Diva," Saya growls, violently tugging at her bonds.
"Nope~!"
"Let me go!" Saya struggles again.
Diva giggles. "Go on, do it again. Third time's the charm!"
She shivers deliciously as her twin's eyes glow crimson, and when Saya yanks at the chains again, she does so with twice as much force; it's quite impressive.
But Saya's efforts are just as futile, much to Diva's visible delight. She tut-tuts her as Saya pants from the exertion. "Careful, onee-chan," she warns pleasantly, "you don't want to push yourself too hard, do you?" Saya throws her a venomous look and Diva winks playfully at her.
That sets Saya off again.
"Diva!" she cries angrily, voice rising a pitch in her growing desperation. "Free me now or else—"
"Or else what, onee-chan~?" Diva says in a sing-song, peering at her tauntingly. "Are you going to pull out a big, scary sword and kill me with it? Or maybe faint like you did last time—"
Saya lunges at her. Diva steps back once to avoid her, then grabs her by the hair and hurls Saya back into the wall.
The impact fractures several bones, Saya feels it, but before her body can even begin to heal itself, Diva seizes her by the throat and single-handedly lifts her up in the air. It's a miracle this doesn't put Saya in a temporary paralysis at all.
Diva presses Saya into the now-damaged wall, choking her. "Really?" she questions, frowning, completely dropping her childish acting. "This is how you show me gratitude for sparing your miserable life? I thought you'd be better than this."
Saya drains the last of her Chiropteran strength as she clutches Diva's hand, digging her nails into her flesh, desperately trying to break free from her hold. But Diva's grip is vise-like, immovable.
"Maybe I should kill you now and save myself the trouble," Diva muses. "What do you think, Amshel?"
"If that is what you wish, Diva," is her Chevalier's monotonous reply.
Saya feels like her eyes are about to pop out, her neck about to cave in and break under the pressure of Diva's grip. But she does not plead mercy. The noises she hears herself make are pathetic, pitiful, but she will never plead mercy.
"Hmm.." The sight of her sister dangling helplessly and kicking her feet in the air is amusing enough that Diva briefly considers following through with strangulation. (Not that it would kill Saya for good, anyway. Diva would have to do something more drastic, but that's a game for later.) So no. She releases her hold after another moment of pondering and her sister drops to the floor on her hands and knees, coughing and gasping as oxygen rushes back into her stuttering lungs. Like a fish out of water—it makes Diva grin.
"What," Saya wheezes, clasping her injured throat, "You - - too scared to do it? Too scared - - to kill me?"
"Saya-oneesama," Diva begins cheerily, savoring the sound of Saya's rattling breaths, "I will treasure the day when I finally kill you. And it will not be a quick death, I promise you that… But that day isn't today, you see. You demand for your freedom and for your end, but you will get neither from me. This life is not yours to live anymore. From here on out," and Diva says this with relish, just as Saya lifts her head to glare at her, "I decide what happens to you."
She waits expectantly for Saya's response. Her sister is quiet for a moment before she speaks again,
"Why…why are you doing this?"
"Why? Because, silly," Diva replies like the answer is obvious, "I want to make you hurt just as bad as I did!"
At Saya's bewildered expression, she persists with, "Do you remember how I was locked in that tower for my entire life? And you'd come visit me everyday! It was fun for a while, until that man-thing of yours," she spits, "came along…
"But! Things are different now. I'll be outside, singing and playing in the sun, while you'll be stuck here, forgotten!" Diva giggles madly at this, as if she'd just cracked the world's funniest joke.
"You can't keep me here forever," Saya replies with a fiery resolve that Diva finds oddly endearing. "I'll get out somehow, and when I do—"
"If you do—"
"I will kill Every. Last. One of you."
"Always so extreme, onee-chan," Diva sighs dreamily. "But you won't get out. You never will get out."
"I will—"
"You won't—"
"Diva—"
"Saya~" Diva sings, and Saya belatedly realizes she's being toyed with.
"Shut! UP!"
Diva stops short.
There's a deadly pause, a sudden stillness that makes Saya's hair stand on end.
"Make me."
She freezes at the abrupt change in Diva's tone. She stares at the ground, waiting for one heartbeat. Two. Three. And then she looks up.
"Go on," Diva continues, watching her with a cold, dead expression. "See what happens."
A dangerous tension floods the air, like that of an arrowed pulled taut:
Saya swallows. She says nothing.
Diva steps forward to test her reaction. Her sister’s instinctive response is to shuffle back despite the unwavered loathing in her eyes.
Diva smirks. "That's what I thought."
Saya, wisely, bites back an answer to that. Instead, she drops her gaze, finally hanging her back down and conceding defeat.
It marks the end of Diva's game.
While Diva may take immense pleasure in watching her poor onee-chan on her hands and knees, she is also quick to lose interest in her. She'd won this round too easily; surely Saya-neechan can put up more of a fight in their future encounters.
But this shall be it, for now, Diva decides. There will be more days to come, more ways to make Saya hurt.
She finally turns away, shifting her attention back to Amshel. "I'm hungry," she declares, clinging to the old gentleman without further acknowledging her new, favorite toy.
"Shall I prepare you a meal, Diva?"
"Keep it awake," Diva tells him without a 'please' or 'thank you'. "I want to see it beg and cry first."
The gentleman chuckles. "As you wish, my Queen."
+++
And just like that, Saya is left alone.
She pulls herself upright, grunting in discomfort as her bones and muscles continue to heal and realign themselves.
Saya sniffles.
She feels the sting of unwanted tears as the gravity of the situation finally sinks in, yet she refuses to cry. If she were to break down now it would mean accepting this new reality: that she has been captured and imprisoned in this windowless cell, never to see the light of day again.
Diva will hold true to her words and it'll only be a matter of time before she finally tires of Saya and disposes of her.
Saya will have to stay positive and vigilant even in the wake of all the possible future horrors she will have to face because…well. It'll only be a matter of time before she breaks, too.
+++
Diva is practically bouncing on her heels as they exit the dungeon stairwell, so joyful in fact, that she'd accidentally trodden on Amshel's impeccably-shined dress shoes. He says nothing of it and neither does she, skipping out merrily into the sunlight and humming to herself. She sees him about to lock the door and says in a critical voice, "She's not going to escape, Amshel. Two locked doors is enough."
"Of course," Amshel says dutifully, pocketing the padlock and key.
"Hey, Amshel," Diva says, twirling around to face him once more. "Will you set my meal loose in the house? I promise I won't make a mess of it like last time."
She's lying; she always leaves a mess. Nonetheless, her Chevalier chuckles fondly at her. "Whatever makes you happy, my Queen."
She smiles and makes her way back to the manor, disappearing from his view in just a blink of an eye.
+++
As Diva skips her way back to the manor, she spots another one of her Chevaliers out in the backyard, seated at an outdoor table, sipping tea and reading a book. It's impossible to miss him, what with his frilly, purple button-down and bright pink pants.
"Oh, Nathan! There you are," she says.
"Someone's in a good mood today," remarks Nathan as he watches Diva skip up to him. He sets his book down.
"I paid Saya-neechan a visit," Diva says happily.
Nathan peers at her with interest. "And how is our darling Saya doing? Still alive, I hope?"
"You care about onee-chan more than me?" Diva inquires hastily, pouting.
Nathan taps her on the nose. Only he could get away with doing something like that. "Don't be silly, love. I was just wondering."
"Oh. Good." Diva's pout is replaced by a smile once more. "She was awake when we visited! I made her so, so mad." She giggles at the memory of it.
"Rewriting the script to the story, aren't you?" Nathan smirks as he leans his chin on a clenched palm. "If I recall correctly, she used to visit you regularly back in the Zoo. But now…"
"Now the roles are reversed! I'll be happy and she won't be! I'm going to have so much fun!"
+++
His knuckles are bruised and his head is throbbing painfully. Punching and banging his forehead against the wall has done little to ease his grief; if anything the physical pain only adds to his existing misery.
"Saya," Kai whispers hoarsely, leaning his burning forehead against the cool surface of the wall. "Riku…"
He'd lost them both in less than a day. They'd tracked Saya down to the Zoo, finally, but at what cost? Riku had gone into hemorrhagic shock within the same hour of losing his blood; he'd passed on during the drive to the nearest hospital. And as for Saya?
It is the same scene as that in Yekaterinburg: there'd been no trace of her save for a broken sword and its bloody tip. There hadn't even been a note because she'd been abducted this time, stolen away by the enemy.
Haji had been the one to tell them, admitting his failure to protect his Queen from Diva and her Chevalier. He'd searched for them far and wide soon after he'd recovered, but they'd been gone long since then.
At least, Kai had thought bitterly, At least there isn't a body. It means she's still alive.
She has to be.
If she'd been killed, Haji would have known in that instant. Their link would've been severed, and he'd have felt it.
I will find her, he'd said resolutely. No matter what it takes. As soon as they'd returned to HQ with Riku's body, he'd gone out searching for Saya again, leaving Kai behind.
Riku had been stored in the ship's morgue for the time being. His burial has not been decided; it won't be until the next several days.
It is just Kai now, standing alone in his room, with no pillar to lean on. At the very least no one has to see him cry; he falls to his knees and sits there for a while, weeping quietly.
The adults have yet to check on him.