Chương 1038: Day One Thousand And Thirty-Six

Dear Diary, Sometimes I wonder if there's any rhyme or reason to my depression. Like, okay, yeah, I get it, chronic depression is chronic. That means that no matter what happens to me, it will always be there, lurking, hiding somewhere under the surface. It's something that springs out whenever it fuckin' feels like it, or so it seems. But for over a dozen years I got inundated with the idea that it was somehow 'treatable'.

Which, I mean, if the neuroscientists are right, and I have no reason to believe they're not, and it's due to some kind of chemical imbalance in my head, then some kind of pill that balances those chemicals ought to treat it. I tried a couple different ones back in the day, and at least one of them seemed like it sorta helped, but then my problem is that my depression isn't stable. It fluctuates. Maybe that means it's actually bipolar disorder or manic depression or some other diagnosis.

I'm not any kind of doctor, and I'm definitely not a head shrink, I'm just a poor lucky bitch who read a lot. Thing is, legitimate scientific studies into human biochemistry aside, there was a shit ton of ableism and woo floating around back in the day.

'Oh, exercising until you exhaust yourself will solve it'.

'Go touch grass, getting back to nature will solve it'.

'Oh, meditate on your chakras, getting your energy flow balanced will solve it'.

'Oh, just regulate your diet and lose weight and that'll solve it'.

'Oh, Hot Yoga will solve it'. At least that last fuckin' one got me plenty of bean polishing material. Fuck, now that I'm thinking about it, I wasn't in the back row of that particular class, which means maybe somebody out there wound up polishing the pearl to Downward Facing Dog sticking my ass up in the air. If I'd known that then, I probably would have felt some kinda way, as hypocritical as it would have been.

As it is, my considered opinion is that I hope they popped off hard as fuck and slept well that night, because since they weren't creepy enough to tell me about it, it literally did not impact my life in the slightest. At any rate, no amount of people telling me I was a fat ass, out of shape, inflexible hermit with anger issues ever did shit about my depression.

I've been told that those SSRI things work best if you can keep on them for a while, and I never managed more than a month before the insurance company said 'no, she's not allowed to have dopamine, she's just gonna turn it into meth'.

So maybe I might have known what kind of drug to steal, but given that at least one of my friends back in the day had four different sets of 'failed to off herself' scars from the wrong medication, I'm not gonna roll the dice without professional consultation, which I don't think I'm getting any time soon.

Yeah, maybe I could Scry up what medicine would work, but with the way the Fates love them some crack rock, that would be my most hilariously inappropriate Scrying failure, and I'd wind up taking out most of the eastern seaboard in my next attempt at self-removal. Not that I want to do another. Not really, not even when my depression is really bad. Maybe I want to hide so I'm not a problem for anybody else. Maybe I'm on a hair trigger and want to blame my depression on something so I can smash it.

Maybe I want to smash and be smashed in whatever manner is available until I feel something, then fall asleep without lying there for hours. Maybe I want to go to sleep and never wake up, dreaming forever. Shit, that last one might actually be a Mimic thing, or maybe one of the points of congruence between my old life and my new one.

At any rate, I think I'm making progress, because as I stepped back from my mini celebration with the Math class after all of them passed their pop quizzes, which involved me stepping over and acquiring a few Drivers' chocolate cakes, I realized I was coming down from more than just a sugar high. Of course shortly after I stepped into the dining room with all the kids in tow, they returned from a quick foray to their rooms carrying their assorted sleepover stuff.

"You need to get dinner and a bath first, girls." Unfortunately, my smallest daughter has somehow managed to gather up all the smarts of all her mamas and utilize them, not to mention having cajones bigger than her whole damn body, because she looked at me and said, "bud we wanna ead wif gwampa an gwamma." I realized I was crashing, and wanted to snap, but managed to keep myself under some kind of control. Okay, I didn't snap. I did sigh and facepalm. Dad? Yes, Daughter?

Can you and Mom come for dinner and bath time tonight?

"Certainly, Daughter." I blinked, looked a little owlishly at him, then looked over at Menace.

"Somehow I think I've been conned." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. That got me a pair of the world's shittiest innocent looks, one from Dad where he stepped toward me with his arms held out for a hug, one from Menace where she'd leapt into Mom's arms. I could laugh, cry, or scream, but eventually I just shook my head, accepted the hug, and collapsed into my chair.

Sigyn led the kids back to the kitchen and somehow managed to make a whole batch of focaccia bread and brownies. Okay, I'm not sure if they count as 'brownies' if they're coffee flavored rather than chocolate. I'm also not sure how the Alliance manages to get coffee, although to be fair I mostly see it used as a spice rather than a daily beverage, and that requires a lot less coffee.

Realizing that as I settled into the Bath after dinner put a kind of blip into my oncoming crash, because it reminded me of that whole thing about me having Skills, that I'd been learning and improving the whole time since I got here. Maybe even enough of a blip to make it more of a slow, gentle collapse into fatigued exhaustion than any kind of horrible catastrophe. Dreamt of my ladies singing to me. Not seven syllable serenades, either, but some kind of lullabies.

I have no idea what the lyrics were, because for whatever reason dream logic still applies, and I can't always make out words or remember them in the morning. But I know they referenced me. Like, both the words 'Mimic' and 'Tabitha' showed up in those lullabies, and it really sounded sort of like the songs were saying that the person being sung to was under the protection of Mimic, of Tabitha Diaz, of the Goddess of Children, of their Playmate, Defender, Protector, and Avenger.

Which made no fuckin' sense, but then dreams rarely do. Tallulah, Siobhan, and Saffron stepped back to Dad's place with me while Marie and Sigyn stayed back with the kids. Once all of us were settled, and today Dad had somehow managed to score some nice nutty brown ale for us to keep our whistles wet, he looked at me and said, "so, Daughter. You seem beset." I sighed. Nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am." He opened his mouth to ask, and I gently cut him off, shaking my head.

"But I still gotta do this. I gotta do this when it's hard. Maybe even more than when it's easy." Saffron put her arms around me from one side, and Siobhan did so from the other.

"We are so proud of you, Goof."

"We are," Siobhan echoed.

"Thanks, guys." I put my arms around them, pulled them to me.

"I've been thinking a lot about Afterlives lately. Well, that and the whole 'judge of everything' thing. I... I'm not tryna be down on myself here, but I'm not sure I'm qualified on either of those."

"You have to be, love." I gave Saffron a look, and she bowed her head and continued.

"You are fated to consume all of reality. In the end..." She trailed off, but I waited for her to finish. Tallulah came to her aid.

"In the end, you will be the only one who remains." Tears leaked out of my eyes at that.

"I... I don't want to lose you guys." She shrugged.

"We will all of us eventually wind up in your Maw, although..." She trailed off, getting a look not unlike Saffron had.

"Anybody wanna tell the non-Archmage in this group what both of you two realized?"

"Multiple things," said Tallulah. Saffron spoke almost as if she was finishing Tallulah's statement, "intertwined one with another until it is difficult even for us to parse them." I turned to Dad.

"You got any idea?" He shook his head.

"I am not an Archmage, despite my dabbling. Archmage Darling?" Siobhan nodded, opened her mouth to speak, then kinda chewed air for a bit, like she knew what she wanted to say, but couldn't say it for some reason. I heard something whisper in the back of my mind, and a moment later an amusedly frustrated Marie with her hands full of pink fabric showed up and said, "Archery." Yeah, apparently my Reason and Memory really are kinda amped up, but my innate stupidity...

No, not stupidity, because it was compatible with my Murder Mittens. Half formed thoughts and ideas fell together in my head until I blurted out.

"I can't shoot for shit any more." The other three blinked, then nodded, like I'd just said something profound about what they'd been pondering. At that point Dad said, "I'm very glad you've had some kind of breakthrough, but I don't follow?"

"I... I took Diana's Archery. When she was Artemis and I took her arms, I took her Archery. I took Apollo's as well, both when I took his bow and when I ate him." He just nodded, like I was discussing my diet plan or some banal, boring shit.

"So I assumed." He paused.

"You no longer have it?" I shook my head.

"Lost about half when I fixed Diana's arms. Lost the rest... Shit, I'm not exactly sure. Could have been when I Revived her, could have been when I gave her the new bow made from her brother's remains."

"So that which goes in...?" He prompted. I was still trying to think how to phrase it when, fully controlled by her pending nerdgasm, my Kitten blurted out, "that which Mimic consumes need not remain within her for all of eternity." Marie nodded at that point, firmly enough to draw the eyes of everyone in the room, before shrugging and saying, "Changed." Then she disappeared, returning to whatever sewing project she'd been working on. It hit me then. What she'd realized. What she'd done. What I'd seen her do.

What I'd done, entirely without realizing, I don't think. I wasn't even sure if I was right or not, or if she was right or just making assumptions, or if both of us, as Deities, could have made something happen just by wanting it bad enough, believing in it hard enough. I broke down. I broke down, and if none of them really understood, they held me, said quiet soothing things to me while I wept. I kept trying to say something, but the word wouldn't come out.

One word wouldn't come out, and the other I didn't even dare think. I wept for moments, for minutes, for more time than ever existed, and I couldn't say whether they were tears of sorrow, joy, or stark raving terror. Over and over I tried to say the safer name, knowing Kitten would figure it out, hoping that having to engage her brain to understand would keep her from collapsing. I tried. I tried so hard, but no matter what I did, the name 'Garde' wouldn't come out of my mouth.

As the sun set, the other finally did.

"Anise."