User blog:Sunshineandravioli/The Process of Shattering - Long-Forgotten Happiness



Hello again, wikians! As you might remember, I previously allowed the community to vote on one of several new, non-TDI stories to be posted on the blog, which resulted in two winners - the first, New Initiative, and the second, The Process of Shattering. Before we can get to the second title, however, I'd like to bring you the oneshot that inspired the creation of the story, entitled Long-Forgotten Happiness. Written with no outline whatsoever, going forth naturally with only one base concept in mind, the alternate canon the story suggested posed so many incredible possibilities that I wanted to explore them and se what happened leading up to the oneshot I had written, which of course resulted in The Process of Shattering being started. Before you read, however, be warned that Long-Forgotten Happiness is rated T for mild language and violence, and will contain MASSIVE SPOILERS for the game Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. If you have been considering playing the game and do not wish to have the plot spoiled for you, I would suggest you refrain from reading the story for now, but otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

Long-Forgotten Happiness: A Oneshot
“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Clive barely bothered to glance up from the control panel, the dozens of screens fixated above him revealing every minuscule movement that was made in every room of the mobile fortress. He didn’t have to look to see who he was speaking to. He knew there was only one other person in the room with him, and considering she was being held in a glass cage of his own ingenious design, she didn’t pose much of a threat to him.

“Of course I remember you,” he scoffed, the slightest bit offended by the idiocy of her inquiry. “You’re the professor’s daughter.”

There was silence after that, and Clive chuckled to himself at the knowledge that Layton’s only child was at his mercy, unable to stop him and unable to save herself. He could probably kill her right then and there, he mused darkly, and she wouldn’t be able to do a bloody thing about it. No one would. He had no plans to do that, of course; no, a part of him wanted the professor to find her. After all, that was the whole reason he’d kept her here rather than simply leaving her with Flora in the ventilation room – he knew Layton wouldn’t dare abandon his precious daughter, and thus, he would have to come face-to-face with Clive at some point, at which point the young man cockily assumed he would be able to overpower the man. Sheer genius, he laughed, a twisted grin spreading across his face.

“You really don’t remember,” he heard the girl mumble, a statement that ripped the smile right off his face. What on earth was that supposed to mean? He’d just told her he knew who she was! So what was this mindless little girl referring to?

“…what exactly do you mean?” He inquired slowly, turning just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye, both irritated by her vague statements and honestly curious as to what she might be talking about. She was not facing him, and did not turn to catch his gaze; she stood perpendicular to him, hands pressed against the cool glass of her cage, her eyes turned downwards with a look of both hopelessness and consideration. A part of him felt she looked eerily familiar, but he chalked that up to the fact that she was Layton’s child. She looked quite a bit like him, after all.

“I suppose I should have figured as such,” she sighed, almost seeming not to hear his question, blinking slowly as her fingers tensed ever-so-slightly against the glass wall that contained her. “You’re not him. Not anymore.”

He turned a bit further now, giving her his full attention, brow furrowed into a quizzical expression. “I don’t understand,” he grumbled, one hand falling to his side and balling into a fist. “What do you mean?”

She glanced up at him from the corner of her eye now, giving him a shy smile, one that held no emotion in it whatsoever yet still made his heart skip a beat in a combination of fear and intrigue. “You forgot, Clive,” she murmured, eyes growing glassy with tears. “You forgot your promise.”

“I never made you any promises,” he snapped, whirling around to face her, the lack of understanding he had at her cryptic words sending him into a fit. “What on earth are you talking about?!”

“You promised, Clive,” she quietly repeated, laughing hollowly and staring at the floor again. “You promised you would always be my friend – that you’d never forget me. And you broke your promise.”

The words seemed to echo in the young man’s mind, and for an instant he was eleven years old again, playing innocently in the streets outside that goddamned research institute, back when his parents were still alive and he hadn’t the slightest clue that life as he knew it would soon be torn away from him in the name of progress. The days when that little girl, not even three years old and a bundle of childish joy, would occasionally visit the lab with her mother and eagerly rush to see him, lavishing him with smiles and giggles and requests to play with her. The little girl who had made him pinky-promise that he would be her friend forever, that he would not forget her no matter how many years went by.

The child that he’d assumed had died with her mother – with his parents – when that bloody time machine exploded and took away everything he’d ever known.

“…Maria…?” He breathed, disbelieving. It couldn’t be true. She had died with the rest of them; the only one who’d escaped that horrific scene, besides him, had been the blasted man who’d caused the whole thing. And that little girl… he’d only ever seen her mother. She’d told him stories about her father, yes, childish tall tales of an amazing man who was smarter and nicer than anyone, but he’d never seen her father. The girl before him now was just the opposite, having a father and no mother. They couldn’t be the same person…

…and yet they were. She had the same warm smile, the same unruly brown hair and large round ears, the rosy cheeks and the insatiable desire to make those around her happy solely through her presence. The professor’s daughter and Maria, the girl from the research institute, were one and the same.

“You forgot about me, Clive,” she noted once again, hands clenching into fists against the glass. “You broke your promise.”

“…I thought you were dead,” he admitted slowly, still having trouble comprehending that this girl, this child of Layton’s that he should want to see destroyed with the rest of them, was that little girl who’d endeared herself to him so. “You were there with your mother when the explosion happened… I thought you’d died with the rest of them…”

She shook her head, closing her eyes as if to avoid reliving those memories; he certainly couldn’t blame her for that. “I was in the hospital for a month after the accident,” she murmured, “and in and out for months afterwards so they could be certain I’d live. I kept waiting for you to visit me and you never came.” She threw him an accusatory glare, again repeating, “You forgot about me…”

“I never forgot,” he pleaded, shocked by his own sudden display of emotion. “Maria, I never forgot you. I thought of you almost every day after the explosion.” Gesturing to the machine they stood in, grinning at her desperately, he continued, “This wasn’t just for my parents – this was for you, too. For your mother. For all of you. I wanted justice for all of you…”

Now her head snapped up, her wide eyes boring into his, and he froze on the spot, wondering what it was he’d done wrong now. “You call this justice, Clive?” She gaped, voice shaky and disbelieving. “All these people you deceived- all this destruction- all this death- you call this justice?!”

He blinked spastically, again not understanding. Who was speaking now, he wondered, the professor’s daughter or Maria? Did it matter? Weren’t they the same thing? “Maria,” he murmured, “please. People like Bill… they need to learn just what kind of suffering their actions inflict, even if we have to do it the hard way. He must pay for his crimes. All of those like him must pay… you understand, don’t you, Maria? He killed your mother, too. Surely you want justice as much as I do.”

“I want justice, but I don’t want this,” she snapped, gesturing out the window of the mobile fortress, drawing the young man’s attention to the buildings that had already fallen to rubble from his attack, to fires that had started to spread and people who’d begun to flee from him. “Clive, this isn’t justice!! Justice is when a man who has done wrong is called out on his actions and pays the appropriate price! Bill being tried and imprisoned for the things he did – that’s the justice I desire! This – the deception, the captures, the destruction, the killing – all these things you’re doing – none of it is justice!!”

“You’re wrong,” he protested, shaking his head more to himself than her, eyes growing wide as her words attacked him. Part of him was shaken because his precious Maria – that sweet little girl he’d wanted justice for – was now turning on him, but another small, secret part of him was reluctant to listen because he knew deep down that she was right. “Please, Maria. This has to be done. They have to pay...!”

“Who has to pay, Clive?” She questioned pleadingly, increasingly desperate as she attempted to get through to him. “Bill? Dimitri? What about my father – you got him involved too! And Luke? Flora? Do they have to pay, too? You certainly seemed eager enough to drag them into this! What about all of the scientists you kidnapped – most of whom hadn’t even entered the field until long after the accident! Inspector Chelmey and Barton? Spring and Cog? The people you tricked into living in the future London? Are they all to blame for what happened that day?!”

“Stop it,” he snapped, placing his hands over his ears as if that would make her barrage of truths end. “I have to do this… it’s for the best, Maria; I’m going to create a better world…!”

“A better world,” she repeated, sounding unconvinced, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Turing back to the window that provided them a view of the destruction being unleashed on London, she gave him a grave look and instructed, slowly and deliberately, “Look out there, Clive. Really look out there. About how many of those people would you like to bet are the corrupt politicians and remorseless scientists you’re so desperate to deliver justice to? Not very many, I bet.”

He remained silent, fists clenching, but a part of him knew she was right. Most of London’s science community was back in the underground city, considering he and Dimitri had kidnapped the capital’s greatest minds, and not many of the politicians were situated in this part of town. Still, he refused to concede to her points, desperately forcing himself to believe his cause was still just.

“On the other hand,” she continued, voice still unwavering, “look out there and tell me how many of those people you think are parents. How many mothers and fathers are out there right now, do you think? How many of them do you think have children they love? How many of those homes you’ve just destroyed do you think had at least one family in them? How many children do you think are experiencing the same thing a certain little boy did ten years ago – watching their home burn and praying their parents will escape alive, even though they know in the deepest part of their hearts that they won’t?”

She turned to give him a dark look, one that sent fear up and down his spine in spite of himself. “But I suppose it’s all right in the end, isn’t it? After all,” she noted, voice gaining an almost acidy undertone, “you’re trying to make a better world.”

“Stop it,” he pleaded again, shooting her a fierce glare, feeling anger bubble up from deep inside him, coursing through his veins. He wouldn’t listen to her. He couldn’t, if he wanted to make himself believe he was still right.

“A better world,” she repeated, turning his words against him. “Sacrifice in the name of progress – the very idea that led to your parents’ deaths; to my mother’s death; to the month my father spent unconscious in a hospital, attacked simply because he tried to find out how the love of his life was taken away from him; to me – a two year old girl – being rushed to a hospital, half-conscious and practically bleeding to death with a goddamned piece of shrapnel lodged in my shoulder, and spending a bloody month wondering if I was going to die and why it was I wasn’t dead like my mother-” she paused, staring straight into his eyes, into his very being. “…to the little boy who played in the streets with me losing everything he ever knew.”

“Stop it…!”

“You’re becoming the one thing you wanted so badly to destroy, Clive,” she declared, ignoring his pleas. “You can stop it – you know you can – but you won’t. You’ve become consumed by this – this desperate desire to achieve what you’ve deluded yourself into thinking is justice. But it’s not, Clive. You’re simply pursuing your interpretation of progress no matter how much others have to suffer for it – just like him.”

“No,” he protested, denying her relentless words of truth like he truly was delusional, fury beginning to cloud his vision. “Stop it, stop it, stop it…!”

“You’ve become him, Clive. You’ve become Bill.”

“STOP IT!!”

In a flash his building rage overtook him, and half-aware of his actions, he pounded the button on the control panel that opened her glass cage and lunged forward before she could blink. His fist connected with the side of her face in an instant, and unable to brace herself or see him coming, she could do nothing but crumple to the ground from the impact. Shouting and cursing nonsensically, he thrust his foot repeatedly into her ribcage, remorseless as she lurched and flopped like a rag doll. When he’d had enough of that, he grabbed her chin in a grip tight enough that he half-wondered if he could make her face shatter like that of a porcelain figure, pulling her up to his eye level and glaring at her with fire in his eyes.

For a moment, the reflection he saw in her glassy eyes honestly scared him, a monster with a dark, fiery glare and no remorse, wanting nothing short of total annihilation. She did not show fear, however, simply stared up at him blankly but for a brow slightly furrowed in irritation. The skin over her left cheekbone was beginning to swell and discolor from the blow he’d delivered to it, a thin line of crimson had been drawn from her bloody lower lip down her chin, and her breath came in unsteady, uncertain gasps and heaves. He could only assume he’d bruised, if not broken, a few of her ribs with his assault. Yet no regret came; this girl, this thing that had so frankly denounced everything he’d worked so hard to achieve, was no longer Maria in his eyes.

“I could kill you, you know,” he informed her quite plainly through clenched teeth, tightening his grip around her face to prove his power to her. “I could kill you right here and now and no one would be able to stop me. Not you. Not your precious professor. Not Bill. Not anyone.”

Her eyes narrowed, the tears in them threatening to spill over. “Do it,” she spat, momentarily taking him aback. “That’s just one more innocent you’ll have slaughtered by the time this day is over.”

Blind rage overtook him, and with a wordless cry of fury he tossed her to the ground with a force he wasn’t aware he was capable of, her head hitting the steel flooring with a sickening thud. Before she could even think about regaining her bearings, he’d stormed over to the control panel again and brought her cage around her once more, fed up with dealing with the insolent little creature. He had more important things to be focusing on, anyways – like driving this unstoppable war machine onwards into the heart of London.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing backwards with a combination of satisfaction and concern when he heard her stagger to her feet. She held herself up with one hand against the class wall of her cage, the other clutching her side; he could only assume his previous prognosis of a few bruised or broken ribs was undeniably correct. The welt on her cheek where he’d punched her was growing more prominent by the moment, and he saw now that streams of blood were dripping from her nose; he wondered arbitrarily if he’d broken it when he threw her to the ground. She stared at him through narrowed eyes in a strange combination of anger and desperation, the tears having finally broken free and begun streaming down her face, and gave a single shaky breath.

“I loved you.”

For a moment everything stopped for Clive, and in that instant the girl before him was Maria again – a Maria that had become battered, bruised and bloody at his own hands – and his eyes grew wide in horror at the things he’d just done. Before he could exit his state of shock, however, her gaze softened and she shook her head to herself, eyes moving to the floor. “No,” she murmured, voice low and deliberate. “That’s not true. I loved him. I loved that little boy that promised me he would be with me forever; the little boy I refused to believe might have gotten caught in that explosion all those years ago; the little boy I waited ten bloody years to hear from again, waiting so goddamn patiently for him even though a part of me knew he’d broken his promise and forgotten me.”

Her eyes moved up to meet his again, a low, smoldering fire in them, her expression almost accusatory. “But you killed him,” she stated quietly, another round of tears spilling forth. “You killed the boy I loved so dearly and put this monster in his place.”

She broke their locked gazes then, turning perpendicular to him again and sinking slowly to the ground, one hand still pressed against the glass and the other clutching her damaged ribs. Clive could only stare, eyes wide, every word that had left her lips stinging his heart like she’d made them out of acid and shot them right through him like arrows. Monster, he repeated, sending another fresh wave of pain over him. His Maria – his beloved Maria, the sweet little girl he’d wanted so badly to avenge – thought he was a monster. And he was, wasn’t he? He’d built this… this thing that caused nothing but destruction. He’d hurt his precious Maria; beat her mercilessly simply for telling the truth. He’d deceived everyone, from the scientists to the professor, to Luke and Flora, to Dimitri, to the Family, to the people in the fake Future London, to…

…to himself. He’d deluded himself into thinking that all these things he was doing were right, that this maniacal course of action could be justified. It couldn’t be justified. Innocents were dying, needless destruction was occurring, he was wrong and Maria was right and –

No. He couldn’t believe that, he decided, forcing back the senseless tears that had begun to form from his eyes and turning back to the control panel, prepared to continue his assault. Maria was wrong, she was wrong; this was what had to be done. This was justice, justice for her and for her mother and for his parents and for every innocent that had died in Bill’s quest for power. This was right. It had to be… he couldn’t afford to believe he was wrong.

“…I was so certain,” he heard Maria’s shaky voice murmur, glancing behind him just enough to see she was staring upwards with teary eyes, more than likely not speaking to him anymore. “For so long I forced myself to believe that boy was alive – that he’d gotten through that terrible day and that he’d remember his promise and come back to me someday.” She gave a strange, broken kind of smile, an empty laugh, and continued, “But I was wrong. He died that day, too. He died and now this monster is using his face…”

He cringed and focused all his attention on the control panel, throwing himself into his delusion of justice to escape his pain just as he had for so many years. There was silence for a few minutes before Maria gave that hollow, humorless chuckle again, interrupted by a shaky breath that he assumed was her crying.

“Do you remember that song, Clive?” She shakily inquired, tears flowing freely down her cheeks now. “The one my mother taught you – the one you used to sing for me? I loved that song so much… it reminded me of your promise. It reminds me of when the people I loved so much were still alive…”

He didn’t respond – couldn’t respond – couldn’t look at her out of fear his resolve might finally break if he did so. Then, suddenly, seemingly out of thin air, he heard her quiet, musical voice whisper out a melody he’d thought he’d forgotten:

“Run with me, my darling, and we’ll be freed forever, ''Even if we don’t make it, at least we’ll die together…”'

His hands clenched into fists on the control panel, and for the first time in God knows how many years Clive found himself fighting back tears, the familiar tune grabbing his heartstrings and tugging on them hard enough that he wondered if he could be ripped apart by sheer emotion. He did remember that song, that song that had intrigued him and brought up feelings he never quiet understood, even when he was a child and that woman at the research institute had first taught him the tune, affecting him even more now that he fully grasped its meaning. He didn’t have any of that anymore, he realized – he was too stubborn to run from his own self-destruction; he had no one to free him; he had no one who would die with him. Not anymore.

A brief morbid chuckle escaped him, and the tortured young man turned his gaze to the monitors again, wondering if Layton had made his way into the fortress and if he was coming for him yet. A part of him, a tiny, broken part of him knew why it was that he’d made the seemingly-contradictory decision to call upon the professor – the one man truly capable of stopping Clive’s plan – and bring him there to the fake Future London. And that was because that same miniscule part of him remembered the man in the top hat who’d stopped him from running into the burning rubble of his apartment in search of his parents, knew that the man had saved him from his own insanity once, and hoped that he would be able to do it again.

So far, it was working brilliantly, if in unexpected ways. Layton’s daughter had already delivered the first immensely effective blow, planted the seeds of doubt… reminded him of happiness he’d long since forgotten.

Forcing back his tears and standing tall before the control panel, Clive put on a false air of confidence and awaited the professor’s arrival. A showdown for the ages was soon to begin, and only time would tell if the broken, bitter young man, victim to his own insanity, would be able to be saved again.

He threw one final glance behind him – one last look at the girl that he knew, deep down, he still loved – before turning all his attention to the destruction outside his window, and a strangely serene smile crept across his face.

Even if we don’t make it… at least we’ll die together…

- END: LONG-FORGOTTEN HAPPINESS

Trivia

 * The entire one-shot was written based on the concept of Clive having once been friends with Layton's daughter, Maria, and having kidnapped her alongside Flora during the climax of Unwound Future, unaware of her identity. The rest of the story was written from there as ideas developed, with no particular planning or outline.
 * Maria was not present in the Professor Layton games, and was an original character created by the authoress. As she is Layton's daughter, the authoress had to determine when and how she was born, which contributed to the development of the "alternate canon" that intrigued the authoress enough to create The Process of Shattering.
 * For those unfamiliar with the Professor Layton series, Clive's "Mobile Fortress" is, as it sounds, an enormous robotic creation with a variety of mounted firearms and grappling hooks, created by Clive with the intent of destroying London. As is partially explained in-story, he did so in pursuit of the "justice" he never recieve after the accident that killed his parents and Maria's mother - one caused by a greedy scientist, Bill Hawks, attempting to sell technology for money and power - was covered up by corrupt politicians.
 * As is explained in the story, Clive was not aware of Layton's identity as Maria's father back when he knew her, having only met her mother. When they met again during the events of Unwound Future, Maria was, coincidentally, never referred to by name in front of Clive; thus, because he never knew who Maria's father was, he did not make the connection as to her identity. Furthermore, he and Maria never learned each other's last names when they were children.
 * Maria is thirteen during the story, having just celebrated her birthday a few months before. She was about two and a half the day of the accident, which took place a bit over ten years beforehand. Clive is estimated to be twenty-one, having been eleven when the accident took place, being a bit less than nine years older than Maria.
 * Maria and Clive had no contact or knowledge of each other’s whereabouts since the day of the accident. There was next to no media coverage on the incident, and the last Clive had seen of Maria had been her going into the lab just before the explosion occurred within, so he believed her to have been killed alongside her mother. Maria, more optimistically, convinced herself Clive had lived and that he was still thinking of her as he had promised.
 * As is clear from their conversation, Maria and Clive formed conflicting images of justice in the aftermath of the accident. Maria, in spite of having a more firsthand and brutal look at the injustices of the incident, still had her father to support and guide her; she subsequently was taught that hatred was wrong and formed a more balanced, optimistic opinion on justice. Clive, conversely, was orphaned due to the accident and had no one to truly help him rehabilitate afterwards, subsequently succumbing to his hatred and forming a darker, more jaded view of how justice should be enacted.
 * Once The Process of Shattering began being developed, Clive's assault of Maria grew from a display of his already-established mental and emotional instability to an illustration of how Clive's being driven by hate has led to him becoming like the very man he despises so. The Process of Shattering reveals that, on the day of the accident, Bill Hawks struck Maria across the face after she pleaded with him to stop the malfunctioning machine that would cause the explosion moments later, leaving her with a large bruise on her left cheek. Ten years later, Clive's transformation by hatred leads him to strike Maria in the exact same way and leave her with the exact same bruise.
 * When the oneshot began being written, Maria was not originally going to have romantic feelings for Clive. As the story was written, however, the characters and the idea developed to the point that it seemed only natural. The Process of Shattering will go into more detail on how she develops said feelings.
 * For many years, Maria clung to the concept of her childhood friend having survived the accident and kept his promise to her, using it as a coping mechanism of sorts. The revelation of how much he has changed, coupled with the brief return of a personality more similar to the one she knew (when he first realized who she was) only for him to attack her nonetheless, serves as her ultimate breaking point where she finally relents to the depression that has plagued her since the accident. The aftereffects will be detailed further in The Process of Shattering.
 * Maria's song excerpt is not from any real existing song. The authoress made it up herself, and apologizes, as she is admittedly a bit of a horrible songwriter.
 * Clive having met Claire in the past is based off of a fanfiction the authoress once read where a young Clive occasionally visited Claire and Dimitri at the lab before the accident occurred. Furthermore, it only stands to reason that, if he met Maria during her visits to the lab with her mother, he and Maria's mother would at least be faintly familiar with each other (if only through their shared connection to Maria).
 * As with Maria's affections for Clive, Clive's returned feelings were not originally planned, and developed naturally as the story was written.