Work Text:
[CLICK]
ARCHIVIST
Statement of... Angèle, was it? Full name?
ANGÈLE
Oh, just, ah... Dupont, yes, that’s fine. Angèle Dupont.
ARCHIVIST
Hm. And what is your statement regarding?
ANGÈLE
Regarding... well, my suicide. If that’s alright?
[ANGÈLE GIVES A SMALL LAUGH, MORE OF A LIGHT WHEEZE. THE ARCHIVIST CLEARS HIS THROAT.]
ARCHIVIST
...Very well. Statement of Angèle… Dupont, regarding her suicide. Statement begins.
[A SHIFTING OF CLOTH. LEGS UNCROSSING, CROSSING?]
ANGÈLE
Well, I have always been very alone, you see.
I grew up in Provence, Sisteron to be exact.
I never went back after I left, but it remains clear in my mind. It is a beautiful memory, in some ways, and in others it digs like a thorn in my heart.
I had some appreciation of it as a child, but it was marred by a need for escape that followed me through most of my life. I was unwanted and was given away. I was difficult to place. My temperament was agreeable to many of the families they hoped to give me to, but I left something to be desired. No one wanted me for long. So, I spent most of my time as a ward of the church. It is one thing, I think, to be of a religious family. It is another to be raised by the priests and nuns. It shaped me as Catholicism shapes most children and it was all I had.
As I said, my temperament was difficult, for some. I was quiet, that was fine. But I stared too much, spoke too little, never wanted to play with other children. I was dull. Picky. I didn’t like hugs.
[wry] Too feminine.
The list goes on, I heard a great many things said. They thought there was something wrong with me. But I did my prayers. I was clean and attentive. They could mark it off as just being a bit odd.
I was often left to my own devices. I was homeschooled by some of the nuns. When my lessons would end and they had their duties to attend to I would take my work for the day and wander through town or farther out. That was when it all started, I think.
Sisteron is beautiful. Green. Situated right on the Durance.
Often I would go out and lay in the fields, looking up into that great blue. Listen to the life around me. And sometimes... I would hear God in my ear, a voice on the wind. I never once doubted that it had to be Him and the pressure of that terrified me. I couldn’t understand why He would come to me, even as a child the weight of sin bore down upon me, but He spoke to me so... sweetly, with a love I’d never known. Promising me the sky. The scale of the world above me would all at once become so painfully clear and I would be overtaken by such a grief like I’d never felt before. Like something in me had been... cut out, taken, and was just out reach.
I would go home, eyes red and swollen with tears, and no one ever asked why. But that was fine. What could I tell them? How would they understand? I knew the way they spoke of God’s will and though it gripped me it had never felt so... true as what I heard on those quiet afternoons.
I grew more reclusive. I had never been particularly social but what I knew now only served to alienate me further. I grew up. I left France. Things had been hard. It never got easier. I had nothing, no goals, no aspirations, no connections. I was alone every step of the way. Except for the wind. It was a very difficult time for me, the weight of living felt oppressive.
Every day I would wake to work a job that crushed me, left me cornered and my pride bruised, and every night I would sleep in my rotting apartment and strain to hear the breeze and His loving words. It was not enough.
Things got worse, somehow. I tried to kill myself more than once, you know, but it never went right. I was bad at it. I hope you never have to experience that kind of failure. The despair that comes when you can’t even end your own life.
[A STRAINED LAUGH. TIRED.]
Worse yet was the guilt. To have God in my ear but still turn from Him in such a way. I still heard Him but I thought it was scorn, disappointment. Maybe it was, but I know now it was born from love above all else. And a wish for me to simply see. To understand what was meant for me. And one day I did.
I realized I had been wrong this whole time. He had been interfering, I wasn’t a failure just— Just a fool. All I had to do was fall. And. And so I did. I asked the wind to hold me and it did.
And so here we are.
ARCHIVIST
When was this?
ANGÈLE
Oh, what does it matter in the grand scheme of things?
...
I can’t remember, honestly. I suppose I should be older than I appear, though I don’t think by all that much. I’ve never had the best memory.
ARCHIVIST
And what do you do now?
ANGÈLE
I’ve found companionship. And I like to find those like me these days.
ARCHIVIST
Others tied to the Vast? Are you... Do you work with the Fairchilds?
ANGÈLE
Oh, no. We’ve been in contact, I believe, but I don’t find them particularly compelling. I’ve never been one much for... family. No, I mean those who are ready to fall.
ARCHIVIST
I... see, and that is—
ANGÈLE
It is a beautiful fear, you know. The way it mingles with the despair but also that dogged determination you can only find in someone prepared to take their own life. It brings me to tears, bearing witness to it time and time again.
ARCHIVIST
If- If they’re already- Why do you take it into your own hands?
[ANGÈLE HUMS, SOFT.]
ANGÈLE
Archivist, I do not push them. It is... when you’ve reached that point, and you hear that sweet voice on the wind, and you hear of the forever blue, of that Vast embrace... It’s all that matters. It’s all you want. That security. That love. They take my hand and we go together.
ARCHIVIST
And they—
ANGÈLE
To die is its own peace. One I know now I will never be allowed, not when I want it. I envy them as much as I love my god.
It saved me, once, and now it has all of me. And it will take as it pleases. And I will feed it. That is our pact. Just as you have with your god.
ARCHIVIST
It is not my god and regardless I don’t kill for it.
[CHAIR SCRAPES AGAINST FLOOR, A GUST OF WIND(?) MUFFLES ANGÈLE’S VOICE.]
ANGÈLE
Not yet.
ARCHIVIST
What—
[APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS, ARCHIVIST STARTLES. BRIEF SOUND OF A KISS. A STRANGLED GASP, SOUNDS OF CHOKING, THEN PANTING.]
ANGÈLE
Take care, Archivist. Thank you for listening, really.
[FLUTTERING OF PAPERS, RETREATING FOOTSTEPS. A DOOR CREAKS OPEN, THEN IS SHUT GENTLY.]
[COUGHING FOLLOWED BY WHEEZING, HEAVING BREATHS.]
ARCHIVIST
[sputtering] E-end—
[cough] End recording.
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