if you can see it

I liked this one more than the last one. Thanks for listening. — S

The only wolves on this island are in that house.

If this is what 'figuring things out' looks like for you, you're closer to getting it than you think!

Battler stared down at the Agatha Christie novel set in her lap. Sad Cypress.

There was only one friend Battler had on Rokkenjima who would have signed a note S. They'd discussed And Then There Were None in 1979, when he was 11 and she was 8. The locked room solution was fascinating, they'd both agreed, but it was dry. Lacking heart.

Sad Cypress was different. It was aptly named, about the family drama as much as the mystery. While they waited for the other groups to come through the doors, Battler skimmed through the pages to jog her memory. Why was reading this book with Shannon — no, with Sayo — in 1980 so important…?

A Poirot novel, the secondary lead was a woman whose partner had made his preferences in women explicitly clear. She didn't — couldn't — match them, but she tried anyways, desperate to keep him in her life.

Battler nearly tears the page with the force with which she grips the book.

In 1980, Ushiromiya Battler was a well-intentioned but stupid twelve year-old boy who had just learned where his father stashed his western dirty magazines. He was… more than fascinated, but a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of sex or relationships once removed from the abstract ether. So when he was prompted to describe his ideal girlfriend, he'd said blonde, blue-eyed, and bouncy. Someone who would be rude to him, maybe even mean, in the interest of being playful, focusing less on romance than on spending time and having fun together.

Someone… a lot like Beato.

And nothing like Shannon, who was probably the closest he'd come to a crush at that point in his life. Still was, if she was being honest with herself. In fact, hadn't she said some pretty embarrassing things to Shannon at the time, in an effort to impress her? To let her know how much Battler liked her without having to say it?

Hadn't she… promised… to take her away from Rokkenjima?

And abandoned her for six years instead?

There is a connection forming in Battler's mind. It's nonsensical, ridiculous, maybe even impossible, and yet there's a lurching, aching feeling in her chest telling her it's true.

There are details she can't make out yet, tricks that she doesn't understand, but she told Beato she was putting their game on hold. Certainly those can wait until they're back on Rokkenjima, and they can throw red and blue at each other until the entire tale is unraveled.

What can't wait is understanding Beato. So many parts of this world seem tailor-made to hurt her, and Battler refuses to give them any more ammo.

And so Battler grabs onto it, this fragile, impossible truth, and she follows it to its logical conclusion.

She thinks about Danny and Duo, how she didn't recognize them as the same person until it was pointed out to her. She realizes that she's never been in the same room with Shannon and Kanon before, only seen them together in the scenes Beato had written for her. She hears Beato's voice echoing in her ears, I was never very good at pretending to be a man. She remembers finding breast forms in her bag in Yellowjackets.

Memories burn in her mind, flashing by her closed eyes. An orphanage funded by Ushiromiya Kinzo. A woman never older than her twenties, appearing over and over again across the decades, dead and dying and disappeared. The Head's ring burning in her pocket. A truth she almost realized a full gameboard ago, but was too scared, too disgusted, to admit was even possible.

She remembers that broken promise and can all but feel Sayo's pinky finger wrapped around hers. Without love, it cannot be seen. That's what Beato and Virgilia were always saying, right?

Battler looks with love and knows, down to the marrow of her bones, the red of her blood, that she's right.

"Crying again, Battler?"

Fuck, she was. She hadn't actually realized it, or the hunched over way she was sitting, covering the book and hugging her knees. Pulling herself upright again almost aches.

Beato stands in front of her, smirking. Her tone is teasing, but there's a lack of sharpness in her expression. She's not mocking her, even as she says, "Don't tell me. Everything is useless, just all useless?"

Battler reaches a hand to wipe back some of the tears still streaming down her cheeks. She can feel the smile, wide and toothy, stretch across her own face. The words tumble out in blue almost without her meaning them. "The opposite. I finally figured it out. Let's talk."