Chapter Text
Jeanne Alter stands up, her armour smouldering.
To be an Alter is a mockery, a sardonic joke where her existence is a punchline. Every alter is missing something - for Jeanne, she is missing any kind of regulation.
Her temperature wildly oscillates, with her freezing in the cold rooms of Chaldea, and burning up in battle as she wields fire. Every inch of her armour sticks to skin that lacks the room to sweat, more akin to a branding iron than actual protection.
When the soldier slices at her, the agony of the blade is transcendent. Something is fundamentally right as the nerves in her arm scream out, sticky blood flowing like molasses, like burned sugar that sticks and never, ever stops burning.
When wrath wells up, she is a gale force of fury, a tempest that brooks no resistance. Swinging La Pucelle, the roman is obliterated under flame and steel - the heat reducing him to sweet, sweet cinders. Instead of satisfaction, there is a deep sense of right and overwhelming joy. A battle mania that refuses to pass until the adrenaline bleeds away, leaving her dazed and lost.
She hears the rest of the cohort referring to the “Lunatic Witch”. She cackles, of course, because how could she not? The mania is deep, and she is in Orleans once more, burning each cardinal once more.
She’s in the field too, not just in Orleans. The feeling of a mind locked in two places at once is disorienting and forces the veins in her neck to beat faster as adrenaline surges, but the feeling is endless and the drive is never-ending, and her body warps and changes as each blow breaks a man totally. Spines, arms, skulls. Nothing escapes her rampage.
To be an alter and an avenger is a joke, and the punchline is Jeanne. She couldn’t forgive, even if she wanted to, and she will always flip between absolute, all-consuming hatred, and terrible, endless shame that envelops her and eats her alive. Right now she sits in the hatred, breaking these men full of hubris that would condemn her again.
They can never burn her again, for she has beaten them to it.
Later that day, Jeanne’s haze passes, and she is sitting in the Infirmary. The more substantial damages are agony, the superficial ones have passed. The burns cross her entire body, and the soft clothes are a delight, a sensory Elysium that holds her still, even as Nightingale watches her.
The nurse mutters something about tetanus, and a needle impales her. Logically, it’s a small needle, but she can barely move her arm at this moment. The nerves beg for death, and shame at such a small thing bringing her to near-tears fuels wrath again. The Nurse leaves quickly, and Jeanne screams, in fury and pain, in embarrassment and hatred.
There is a beautiful face before her, and soft fingers coil around her own. Cold sensations in her fingers fight warmth in her chest.
Every impulse fights at once. Jeanne wants to kill and maim. Jeanne wants to love and hold.
There is only one way to resolve such a conflict - to push away, and hide. And so Jeanne does - she pushes the radiant expression away, she flees, and she resolves to not be found.
When she is next seen, she will pretend she doesn’t remember it. If she wants to love, then the only way she can do that is by protecting someone from herself.
The next day, Master does not accept her apologies. They say “It’s fine. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Jalter.” and she resists the urge to scream at them, to call them an idiot and a fool.
As if she’s afraid of them. They should be afraid of baiting an animal like her.
But she can’t make herself say that, she can’t make herself push them away again. So she grumbles and mumbles something that only she hears, and mutters a “thank you”, and Master smiles, a radiant smile that they hate.
It’s that smile that they want to protect. It’s that smile that she crumples herself over and over again for. She should be destroying herself and she wants to remain.
Fingers interlock, and so many feelings fill her. She’d love to carry on, but instead she freezes internally, not sure what words will continue and what words will break this and what outcome is desirable.
Later that night, Master kisses her, and she wants that human badly.
She wants to bite and scratch them, to make them beg at her altar.
She wants them to hold her and to understand.
She wants to drive them away, because they deserve better.
So many contradictory horrors, and each of them unspeakable.
So instead, she mumbles something in affection, and Fujimaru kisses her forehead, and says “I know.”
When she goes to sleep, her forehead feels sweet and sticky, like sugar that is unburned. No less of a chaotic wildfire, but directed into a more positive way, akin to how flame may be directed to only burn away the things that need pruning. Fire can never be tamed, but it can be directed into a more sustainable burn. She prays that that is possible.
But she knows that it most likely is not. Alas, above all else, Jeanne Alter is selfish in the way that Jeanne herself is not. And worse yet, she is just as foolish and arrogant.