Chapter Text
On Monday, Siffrin no-middle-name no-last-name wakes up, blinking their single eye in light that streams in through the curtains of the inn room, and decides they’re going to kill themself. It would not, after all, be the first time.
Still, though, it’s been just upwards of a year since their last performance, and they need practice to get into the groove of it again. On Monday, he goes downstairs and offers the innkeeper help washing the dishes. She agrees. Afterwards, she offers to take a cut out of what they owe.
On Tuesday, they calculate how much spare change they’ll have at the end of their stay, and go to the boulanger to buy a pain of chocolate and a croissant. He eats the pain of chocolate and gives the croissant to a very hungry street cat.
On Wednesday, they cut stars into their arm. They sleep through a lot of that day, so they climb up to the roof to watch the stars come nightfall.
On Thursday, they flirt with the idea of writing a suicide note. An apology to their past friends for the terrible things they said on that day before they broke out. The words just don’t flow together right. They’ve never been good at writing in languages other than their native one. And they can’t even remember their mother tongue, so that says something.
On Friday, Siffrin pays the innkeeper. They go to the bar and order several drinks until they’re brave and drunk. Then he walks deep into the woods. They take off their cloak and hang it off a tree branch like a coattree. They brandish their knife. Their shadow whispers hateful words to them. And from there it’s easy, a motion he’s done hundreds of times. Finding that right spot on his neck, digging his trusty knife in, and yanking.
On Monday, Siffrin no-middle-name no-last-name wakes up, blinking their single eye in light that streams in through the curtains of the inn room, and decides they’re going to kill themself. It would not, after all, be the first time.
They do, however, add to this new script a little panic attack, hyperventilating into their sheets. They have not felt that familiar tug on their stomach, that pungent scent of burnt sugar, in a long, long time, and it’s enough to horrify them all over again. But their mission hasn’t changed.
Wiser in the ways of time loops than they were in Dormont, they stick to the script first thing. Dishwashing. Boulanger. Cutting. Failed draft of another suicide note. On Friday, though, they get inspiration–they leave their cloak in the room along with a note asking the innkeeper to give it to the next cold traveller they see. Maybe that will appease the Universe. They must have looped back last time because of the lack of balance. Maybe. Then they go into the woods. They cry a little, this time. After all, it really hurts, as do the hateful words of their shadow. Then they kill themself again.
On Monday, Siffrin no-middle-name no-last-name wakes up, blinking their single eye in light that streams in through the curtains of the inn room, and decides they’re going to kill themself. It would not, after all, be the first time.
This must be a matter of dragging things out. Yes, they’re getting their own grief all over everything. That won’t do. He slits his neck then and there, ruining the darkless bedsheets.
On Monday, Siffrin no-middle-name no-last-name wakes up, blinking their single eye in light that streams in through the curtains of the inn room, and decides they’re going to kill themself. It would not, after all, be the first time.
They groan in frustration. Okay, this is going to be a Whole Thing, isn’t it? Well, all right then, Universe. Wake up, Siffrin. You have to find a way to kill yourself.
. . .
On Monday, Isabeau wakes up in his apartment in Jouvente. His week is mundane. They all are. Today he works halfheartedly on a sewing project (but what’s the use without his favorite model?) On Tuesday, he gets letters from both MIrabelle and Odile, and he writes back. On Wednesday, he mails out his replies and goes for a jog. On Thursday, he picks up groceries. On Friday, he trashes a letter from Jouvente’s Defender committee. On Monday, he wants to make some tweaks to last week’s designs, but when he opens his sketchbook…his work from then is no longer there? And wait, did he just sleep through the weekend, or did he just lose track of the days? On Tuesday, he gets the same letters from Mirabelle and Odile. And that confirms to him that nope, this isn’t normal. He definitely went back in time. He looks out for any lives he has to save this week, anything important he has to Change, but, uh, everything seems fine and normal? He loops again. This time, he actually checks the Tuesday newspaper and reads the headline, ‘Rogue Savior’ Siffrin Found Dead From Suicide, Experts Warn of ‘Dangers of Isolation.’
The world stops spinning, and resumes in the opposite direction.
. . .
On Monday, Mirabelle wakes up and realizes immediately that she’s gone back in time because Claude made the EXACT SAME explosion as before and when reprimanded for waking her up like this TWO WEEKS IN A ROW, they’re genuinely confused. They could have been feigning innocence, but Mirabelle knows her roommate too well for that.
Mirabelle does what she usually does when she’s encountered something she doesn’t understand and searches Dormont’s library, looking for anything she can about Time Craft. She continues on Tuesday. On Wednesday, she has a date scheduled. She lives through that again, feeling a million miles away, revulsion following every touch, guilt and shame and hopelessness and fear of loneliness and memory of what Siffrin said that last day before the King weighing on her like she’s the Running One jogging about with weights tied to her limbs. On Thursday, the librarian takes pity on her and shows her the secret library. On Friday, she scours both libraries with few results. She makes a list in her brain of any books that might be remotely helpful and falls asleep muttering it to herself, hoping she won’t forget them all come morning
On Monday-again, she thankfully does remember. She begins reading those. She learns that Time Craft is impossible and scholars are trying to figure out how the crab the King pulled it off.
On Tuesday, the Head Housemaiden calls her to her office. Mirabelle is thrilled, at first, to see a Change in the time loop. This must link to the reason she’s here in the first place! The Head Housemaiden looks so devastated when Mirabelle walks in that she freezes in place.
Euphrasie? she asks. What’s going on?
Oh, Mirabelle, dear one… Bright tears drip down Euphrasie’s face. I am so, so sorry to tell you this, but…last night, one of your companions from your journey…departed from us.
Mirabelle freezes. She’s sloshed in icy water, burnt to a crisp in fire. She doesn’t know what to do. Who? she asks. But she knows, oh, she knows.
The travelling one, young Siffrin. They…they have committed suicide.
For the rest of the week, Mirabelle ignores her books in favor of staying in bed. For the first half of the week, she screams and cries at the top of her lungs while Claude and her other friends rub her back comfortingly and try to coax her to eat something. For the second half, she runs out of water reserves and simply sniffles into the pillow and thinks over what a fool she’s been. A fool to never ask them how they were feeling. A fool to objectify them, make them a character in a story, make them a part of her story in the first place. A fool to see them lashing out, in pain, and to answer with a slap on the face and a declaration of friendship broken.
A fool, a fool, a stagnant fool.
On Monday Mirabelle wakes up. And she thinks, Oh. Oh, of course. That’s what I’m doing here. She sits up, not even bothering to tell of Claude, and goes directly to Euphrasie for help.
. . .
Odiles’s repeated weeks were uneventful. She researches Time Craft. She asks a leading expert to interview her, and they say that there’s a theory going around that a different, forgotten form of Craft can be used to harness it. That’s one lead. And she gets her money back when she loops.
News travels much slower over water than in one country. It’s on Friday that she learns her little crow, her former charge, her lost one, put a knife through his throat last Monday. It’s in a tucked away column of the newspaper, like it doesn’t matter. Odile somehow feels violated by fate for having lived through the week not knowing. She also feels a bit murderous, but she isn’t that depraved, not after only two weeks looping, so she settles for burning an empty building down.
On Monday, she wakes up with one goal in mind: learning Teleportation Craft. After all, it’s a week and a half journey to Vaugarde even on the most expensive, fast-paced boats in the world, and may her gem be crushed if she lets this stand. Even if she has to learn one of the most difficult forms of Craft in known history.