New Life, Old Grudges

(So, it will help if you've read this chapter, but I don't know if it will be necessary. Otherwise, all of the spoilers will be for stuff you guys probably read about in the leadup to, or during the wedding, and otherwise relate to Riley.)

When he got to take a break during the wedding, Felix decided to take a pause to catch up on some mail he hadn't had time to read at the bunker. Both were letters from Riley he wanted to have read before he talked to her in person for the first time. It would help soften what was likely to be a difficult conversation for him. Not because he disliked her, but rather because for someone he barely knew, her rage early on was just too relatable. Too easy to see the person he used to be in her, and perhaps the person she had moved on from.

So he opened the first letter, and began to read...

Felix,

Sorry this took so long. I read it the day it came and then just... didn't answer for a while. I knew what I wanted to say and somehow that made it harder to actually say it.

It's not odd getting mail from a Master in another season, for the record. I've got a whole pile of letters at this point from people who've never met me, all telling me I'm not as broken as I think I am. You're just the first one who also runs a season. Weird club, but here we are.

I picked up on the Austin thing. You don't need to explain it to me. You made a call, it cost something, and you'd make it again — you didn't dress that up to make the letter sound nicer, and I respect that. Most people say "I've made peace with it" like peace is somewhere you get to and just stay. Like it's not a battle you fight every day. You said what anger actually did to you, that it put you in a defensive crouch when people needed more from you, and that's a lot more honest.

I blamed people too, for a long time. A couple of them earned it, honestly, but no one you would know. And blame doesn't fix anything, it just gives you somewhere to stand so you don't have to look at the actual hole. I know that from the inside.

And thank you, for the Laura thing. I've heard "it's not your fault" from people who love me plenty of times, and I believe they mean it. But it's different hearing it from somebody with nothing riding on whether I feel better. You just called it what it was. A shitstorm. Nobody's fault. I think I'm going to use that phrase, actually — it's done more for me in one sentence than "you couldn't have known" ever managed in a hundred.

Hope your season's kinder than it used to be. Hope you get to "less important" faster than I did.

Riley

Felix was thankful for the first letter already. It had helped him get closure on the decision he had made with Austin, because even at the time, he knew he was letting Austin die. He just didn't realize what had happened would, in some ways, be even worse than that. Riley's reaction had let him make peace with not only what had happened, but his willingness to, even knowing what he did in the present, to do it again. Austin was incapable of learning from their mistakes, being a black hole of narcissism that consumed everyone around them, and so it wasn't worth saving them.

More than that, it showed Felix he help bring someone closure on a painful topic. As someone who often felt useless to those around him, even after many reality alterations to his past, it felt great. It didn't feel like he had to get passed through because of incompetence again, or had butted in to something he didn't understand. He had been helpful for Matt Hawkins as well, and that, along with this first letter from Riley, had assured Felix that his days of having to be carried by those around him were coming to an end.

The next letter Felix opened from Riley however was surprising, because of a single revelation. One that he had seen the result of earlier that day, but hadn't realized what it had meant yet.

Felix —

Ignore everything in the last letter. Well, don't ignore it, just — it's still true, all of it, I meant it. But something happened and I can't sit on it.

He's alive. I don't know how, I don't need to know how, he's just here and he's warm and he cried at 3am and I got to be furious about being tired instead of grieving, and I don't have words good enough for what that trade feels like.

I'm not okay. I'm the good kind of not okay. I keep checking he's breathing. I keep waiting for someone to tell me it doesn't count somehow. Nobody has and I don't think anyone's going to.

I don't even know why you're the one I'm telling at 4am instead of sleeping. Maybe because you're the one who told me not to let anger run the show and I want you to know I'm trying and the universe went and did something completely insane and unearned right when I was trying. And I don't know what to do with that except tell someone I've never met at 4am and hope they understand.

Riley

This did change everything. Not only for the power it implied Andy, or someone else had, but also because Riley had been rewarded for letting go. Probably not on purpose, and not directly, but still, she had gotten her baby back after living a life that had become defined by his death, and then his absence. Undoing death of course was a theme of Andy's wedding, given his Laura had come back from the dead, and the sense that Andy had earned that. It made Felix's struggles feel petty, given there wasn't anyone missing from his life except those he wanted gone.

"You're looking awfully glum for someone at a wedding," Noah said behind Felix. "What gives?"

"Oh, it's just... Riley's baby came back," Felix said. "And while it probably wasn't a direct result of her letting go of her anger at Andy, and everyone else... she felt like it was a reward for that. It brought some feelings to the surface I didn't expect."

The slime girl didn't respond immediately. Felix suspected she wanted him to stew in those feelings for a bit. Before he said anything else though, Noah said, "If it makes you feel incompetent, that is wrong. If it makes you feel petty..."

That caused Felix to face the slime girl, who continued once he was facing her.

"... then you may be right," Noah finished. "So which is it?"

"Petty if I had to pick," Felix said. "These people got their loved ones back, whereas I can't get over something that happened multiple retroactive reality alterations ago, or forgive Smith despite the amount she has been tormented by the show."

Noah let silence fill the air between them before replying. Why did Felix's best friend want him to soak in his emotions like this? Was it to punish him? Or to get him to understand a deeper lesson?

"Felix, I say this as your best friend, you were a terrible master in the first round," Noah said. "You almost let Hailey get eliminated, and you were too withdrawn from the people around you because of rage. We've been over this, but it does repeating.

Before Felix could respond, Noah shifted. "However, you are a far better guy than you were in the first round, and that's not just because you had retroactive alterations. It's also because you were willing to hurt yourself for our benefit, and the benefit of your world."

That surprised Felix. "I didn't-"

"I don't need to know the details Felix," Noah raised one of her slimey hands. "All I know is that you had to do something that hurt, potentially forever, so as to spare us, and our world, from further suffering. Most masters wouldn't do that Felix."

"If that's the case, then how am I still petty?" Felix asked. "And don't lie to me."

"What happened to your mother was wrong Felix," Noah said. "I wish I could say her name, but I cannot, because we live in a world with onomancy, and we are being watched by countless people I cannot see. I wish I could tell you that she won't be hurt again, that punishing Austin means no one else will try to rape her, but we both know that isn't true."

The slime girl let the words sit, crushing in their brutal honesty as they were.

"But you know that," Noah said. "You know we do not live in a just world, or universe. Harem Hotel would not exist in a just world, neither would eldritch abominations, or the countless people who die because of horrible people, many of whom are rather mundane. And yet, I'm not sure you ever really accepted that."

Noah's words made Felix feel trapped, and the slime girl was just getting started. "I know the thing you wanted from Austin that you never got was an apologizing. Him saying, without evasion or some other bullshit, that what he did to your mother was wrong. That the hell he put her through, and by extension you, was wrong. But he could never do that, because he was, on a fundamental level, incapable of doing that. But the thing is Felix, he is suffering for it right now, and on a level so intense that even his narcissism will get pierced by it. I know being reminded of how uncaring the world is hurts, but if you truly want to feel better, you have to let him go."

"What happened to you was wrong," Noah said. "Maybe, unlike Austin, Smith will be able to realize that, and meaningfully apologize to you for it. But unlike Austin, whatever Smith did doesn't deserve elimination. What Smith did, after several reality alterations, definitely doesn't deserve elimination."

"You're right," Felix began to tear up. "I just... wish I was more capable of accepting that, and I don't know why I'm not."

Noah gave him a thoughtful expression. "I think it's because the demon, and Harem Hotel more broadly, gave you the idea that it could make the world fair through magic. And that's one heck of a thing to dangle in front of someone whose life was often very unfair."

"Now, enough about weighty topics like forgiveness," Noah said. "We're at a wedding with great people, and even for those of us without traditional tongues, guts or mouths, great food. Lets go enjoy it..."