AnimeCon Harem 12: Me Grandmother has a Scar (Patreon)

   What am I even doing here? Brian wondered, staring with impatience at the padded sword that had been pressed into his hand.

   It didn’t even resemble a sword to him. Without a crossguard or any basic defining features, it looked like a giant elongated prop popsicle, or something. That the foam of the blade had been wrapped in a gray cloth cover didn’t make it resemble metal. In contrast, across from him Rebecca’s weapon did look a lot like a sword, because it at least featured beveled tapering edges and sported an obvious crossguard. The foam one-sided viking axe that had hung from her belt earlier looked even more ornate.

   He was in absolutely no mood to play around doing a little mock sword-battle with Rebecca’s LARP thing right now. Maybe later, maybe someday, but not now, not while Stephanie was still so upset. All he felt was the strong, almost overwhelming compulsion to do everything he could to be there for her, to hold her and comfort her until she felt better.

   Which is probably the point, Brian looked up and across the taped area of carpet that was one of the sparring rings here towards Rebecca in her viking tunic with her wild tangle of hair. They think she needs space from me, that I’m… I don’t know, smothering her or being overbearing or something right now, after she got shoved into all my messy Chloe trouble. And, maybe they’re even right, just… it’s really galling, and I don’t want to be here doing this right now.

   Brian didn’t even feel real comfortable engaging in foam weapon combat when he was this pissed off and frustrated. His mind was still racing with Chloe’s shrieking words, and the undercurrent of fear beneath it all just kept growing and growing, especially with the way Emily and Kelly took off without hardly saying a word. Maybe this was it; maybe the other shoe had finally dropped, and Brian’s implausible streak of lucky events this weekend had finally ground to a halt. Maybe all the bad luck was rushing in to catching up with him, now.

   “How does it feel?” Rebecca asked him, giving him an appraising look. “How’s the balance? Give it a few swings—that’s just one of our basic loaner short-swords. It’s a little light. If you think you’d rather try something else, we can borrow you something a bit longer or with a bit more heft to it.”

   “Nah, it’s… fine,” Brian shrugged, not really caring. “Don’t think it’s going to matter.”

   He didn’t want to fight her. No, what he really didn’t want was Rebecca to be right about the subtle reasoning she’d had been trying to sugarcoat for him, didn’t want Stephanie to need space from him to think about things before she could start feeling better. Brian knew that was selfish, just—ugghhh. With a sigh, he finally gave the sword in his hands a half-hearted swipe through the air in vexation.

   I just. I didn’t want things to be like this.

   “Brian…” Rebecca’s own blade faltered a bit at his apparent lack of enthusiasm, and she put on a sympathetic look. “I know you don’t really want to do this, but—”

   “You’re right, I really don’t want to fight you,” Brian agreed, making a face.

   “—But, I think you need this right now,” Rebecca continued. “You need to hit something really hard, I think. When’s the last time you just did something that let you really just vent everything out?”

   The thought gave him pause, because he didn’t have an answer.

   His daily morning runs were a ritual that helped mitigate all the stress and hurt, they were his method of dealing with things. But, Brian also had a sense that it wasn’t quite what she meant. Running was to him—symbolically at least—putting things behind him and trying to move on without having to look back. It was a great time to clear his thoughts, it was a way of coping and it helped tremendously, but it wasn’t exactly facing up to the things that bothered him in a direct way. Rebecca wanted him to get it all out, to swing and smash the flimsy-seeming foam sword in his hands against something in a surge of aggression.

   For a split-second, he was tempted to do just that.

   Then he buried it, on reflex shoving those feelings deep back down inside himself. The fact that some part of maybe did need that kind of release made him feel disgusted and uneasy with himself, and Brian again began to consider just bowing out before the match began—setting down the padded weapon and refusing to fight. He just wasn’t comfortable doing it, and that was that.

   “Brian,” Rebecca warned, and something in the way her eyes were watching him fundamentally changed. “Listen to me. You’re not going to back out of this. I’m not going to let you return to Stephanie until you’ve at least tried to hit me with your sword.”

   “Don’t really want to fight you,” Brian repeated.

   “I can see that,” Rebecca stared him down. “But, why not? You’re not afraid of me—and there’s dozens of fighters in this room who can’t say the same. Why don’t you want to blow off a little steam? Why did you always refuse to fight back with Chloe?”

   “That’s… c’mon, that’s a little personal,” Brian made a face. And weird. Seems kinda… off, right now. Like, the things she’s saying—dozens of fighters afraid of REBECCA, of all people?

   “Exactly the point, Brian,” Rebecca reminded him as she advanced towards the middle of the ring. “You don’t want to fight, because you don't want to vent. You don’t want to vent, because you refuse to open up. Brian, tap swords with me.”

   She extended the blade of her sword up and into the air and watched him with expectant eyes that all at once seemed unfamiliar to him. Rebecca never acted like this—she was the soft-spoken and somewhat drowsy-looking girl who never left a strong impression. He acknowledged that she was real deep into the LARP community stuff, but he’d always assumed she was mostly a part of this in a supporting role. Crafting the authentic gear, or sewing historical designs, sharing patterns with other enthusiasts, that sort of thing.

   This Rebecca seemed like she was actually out for blood.

   At the same time, he knew she was somewhat right. Brian honestly didn’t want to dredge up old painful memories or open up or work through things. He didn’t want to ever fight. Brian was completely used to pinning down any and all of his own feelings of anger with the entire weight of his being, so that they never ever budged an inch or had a chance to manifest in reality.

   Because—yeah, my dad was violent, and he had a nasty temper, Brian admitted to himself. Sometimes he’d hit me, and I could TELL he was striking out because of emotion, could tell it wasn’t something he even thought about. Or cared about. He just did it. That was who he was—and it’s not who I ever, EVER want to be. It sickens me just knowing that his blood lives on in my veins, that some part of me might be like him in any way. I don’t ever want to discover more.

   “You have to tap swords together to start the match,” the referee—a guy with a goatee wearing a yellow tabard over his medieval tunic prompted.

   When I shared that with Chloe—the ONLY person I’ve ever really shared that with, she was even a little disgusted by it. That being abusive runs in my family, that I might carry on some of those traits. I know that’s why she… was maybe a little inflexible with me on everything. I didn’t disagree with that and I don’t think I do now, either. A lot of the things she did helped reinforce the fact that—

   “Brian,” Rebecca’s call snapped him out of his introspection. “I know you don’t want to do this, and I’m sorry. But you do need to do this. This is a conversation we need to have, whether you can open up with your words, or you can talk to me through swinging a sword. Just—talk to me. I’m here for you, right now. Right here.”

   He couldn’t help but pause, regarding her in surprise once again. This definitely wasn’t like Rebecca, this was... assertive. When she had a sword drawn it was like she became an entirely different person, like a hidden fount of confidence opened up and poured out of her. Her personality and demeanor were transformed, and she went from being some sort of mild-mannered wallflower girl who at best would let out exasperated sighs as she picked up after Emily to being… this. There wasn’t really any other way to describe the glint in her eyes right now other than dangerous.

   Dangerous and beautiful.

   Not completely sure himself why he was doing it, Brian brought the thin padded sword up and tapped weapons with her. As he did, Rebecca seemed to light up with energy—her eyes filled with glee and the pleased smile growing on her face was nothing like the sweet cutesy ones he’d seen her make in the past. Different. She’s totally different. She’s going to—

   Even though he put himself on guard in an instant, he still almost missed her first blow, because a moment after touching swords with him, Rebecca exploded into motion. The blade she’d been extending out moved into an immediate arc with a deft twist of her wrist and Rebecca’s back foot lunged in, carrying her entire body in to invade his space. Having never swordfought before, Brian had no technique to speak of. The best he could manage was smash his sword in towards the oncoming one.

   The blow was deceptively hard, hard enough to numb his fingers, and her attack twirled back and forth to strike at him again from the right side and then the left a moment later, with no apparent loss in exerted force or momentum. Brian blocked all three strikes—barely—out of reflex and was staring at her weapon in a haze of tension preparing for the next hit when Rebecca danced back out of his range with a teasing smile.

   Jesus, Brian blanched. She’s REALLY fucking fast. Was I supposed to attempt getting in a hit of my own somewhere?

   “Whew, sorry there. Excited,” Rebecca said with a predatory gleam in her eyes. “We haven’t met like this before, and—I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we ever would. I’m glad we are, though.”

   A slight pang of guilt washed through him, because his first immediate instinct was to just throw in the towel. She was obviously extremely experienced in this swordfighting stuff, and there was no way he was going to do anything but embarrass himself out here. He didn’t want to fight her, or anyone, to begin with. But, at the same time, he couldn’t just back out here, because he had a definite sense that Rebecca was genuinely excited to show her this side of herself, to cut her way through the veil of preconceptions he’d layered over her and really connect with him.

   “In the ring here I’m not really Rebecca anymore, and so you might be… confused to see me not act like the Rebecca you’ve known,” Rebecca elaborated in excitement. “I’d love for you to get to know me as Mara. Well, it’s complicated. Hoh boy, is this gonna get complicated.”

   “You definitely seem different, here,” Brian said, trying to copy the way she was holding her sword into a guard position. She noticed, and her smile grew a little wider.

   “Emily wants to insist that I have a split personality—but that isn’t true,” Rebecca—no, Mara continued, stepping forward again to pummel him with another horrifyingly heavy blow. There was something graceful and succinct about the way she moved her feet, as though she was just shifting from one stance to another, but somehow it always brought her into striking range of his body almost before he could even react.

   “Some have wanted to label me as having D.I.D.—dissociative personality disorder—but, that’s not true, either,” Mara said, using the way her sword glanced off of his clumsy block to swing increased momentum into her next hit, one that he failed to catch at all. Her sword hit his shoulder hard, slammed down hard enough to break his posture.

   “Clean hit,” the herald shouted. “Kill, by Order rules. Lost limb by Daegonhir rules.”

   “We’re having a conversation, not a proper match,” Mara waved off the referee. “Don’t mind who hits who and give us some space. This isn’t about winning or losing—I just want him and I to open up to each other and talk, alright?”

   “Me grandmother had a scar!” One of the onlookers wearing a viking tunic called into the ring with cupped hands.

   “Cynric, when I want you telling my story, I’ll shove my hand into your yellow innards, reach up your scrawny throat, and puppet your halfwit face into telling it properly,” Mara warned with a dangerous flash of her eyes.

   Mara didn’t seem completely committed to her next attack, and after Brian managed to bat it aside he tried his first strike of his own. It was as futile as he’d expected—there might as well have been an invisible area directly surrounding her, where nothing he could do was going to reach her. With what seemed like contemptuous ease, she parried away his sword.

   “Good—try again,” Mara encouraged him, seeming pleased that he’d made an attempt. “You’re doing fine.”

   Against his better judgement, Brian took a half step forward to try another swing, and Mara instantly pointed her sword and stabbed him in the guts, nearly doubling him over with the sheer sudden force of it. Her reaction was way too fast, but she wasn’t mocking him or even smiling anymore—those hazel eyes were watching him warily, as if to say her not going easy on him was her own way of showing him respect.

   “Ya can’t broadcast yer swings, mate,” One of the LARPers in the small audience gathered around their ring advised him. “If ya step in like—”

   “He’s doing fine on his own,” Mara said. “Fast recovery, for a new fighter. In fact, the rest of you lot—bugger off and get out of sight so we can have some privacy for this.”

   As the small crowd began to disperse, Mara stalked across the ring counterclockwise, and so Brian did the same. It was hard not to be conscious of how she was using some sort of footwork to move and he was just scuttling with sideways steps like an awkward crab. Her sword flashed up and out—but then moved in relatively slow, at a tepid enough pace for him to knock aside. Playing on a hunch he extended and threw out a similar slash towards her, which she likewise turned away.

   “Emily just told me earlier that she thought of me as a very private person,” Mara remarked, throwing another somewhat lazy sword strike out for him to deflect. “But, I don’t think that’s all that true, either. My story, it’s just—it’s complicated. For the longest time, I wasn’t comfortable sharing it because of that. I didn’t have perspective. I think you might have the same problem.”

   “I don’t really have a story,” Brian said as he struck with his sword. The two had for now fallen into a companionable back-and-forth volley of tepid swipes and parries as they circled each other. Probing at my defenses—with her words, at least. It’s not like she even needs to otherwise.

   “That’s not true,” Mara gave Brian a wolfish smile. “That’s not true at all. How about... I tell you my story, and then if you feel up to it, you can share yours in return?

   “I grew up in… let’s call it a traveling motorcade,” Mara said. “A caravan of medieval enthusiasts. Always on the road; living in campsites, or in the woods, at state fairgrounds, and at interstate rest stops,” Mara smiled at remembering. “My mother, she was herself brought up in a hippie van, at this young age she fell in with a crowd of Renaissance fair reenactors—she did eventually also go to school, go on to get her master’s degree in Medieval philology. My father, he is an Olympic level fencer who specializes in sabre fighting, he helped found the current-day SCE and CHEMA medieval combat organizations. They’re both lifers, they both live for the medieval lifestyle.

   “If we lived in different times, they would be considered great parents. They made me strong, decisive, and able to protect myself. Here in modern times... I was unsociable, violent, and honestly completely unable to acclimate myself to ‘normal’ people, normal society. At seven years old I had yet to attend public school of any kind, had little to no interaction with children my age, and I was more comfortable sleeping, bathing, and going to the bathroom outdoors rather than indoors. I was, in every way, a wild child.

   “Thus—my paternal grandparents stepped in,” Mara said with a dramatic flair. “To no one’s surprise but Mother and Father, Grandpa and Grandma easily win legal custody of me. Suddenly, I was a little wildling from the dark ages, living instead in a quiet little community of old people. Pink flamingos in the yard, windowboxes with flowers growing in them. Cable television, public schooling, church, bedtimes.

   “Well, wouldn’t you know it? I was unable to adjust,” Mara laughed. “I went from being a wild child to being a complete terror, to being the feral kid from that Mad Macks movie. Refused to ever speak, tore down all the clothes they’d hung up in the closet for me and built myself a little sleeping nest in there. Stole food, actually broke into a neighbor’s house to raid a pantry once, cute ragged little wild-haired seven-year-old me. Was regularly chased down by the police when I tried to run away from school or run away from home.

   “There was talk of putting me in a juvie program of some sorts, or putting me on some serious prescription medications, to get me under control,” Mara said. “Grandma… well, she wouldn’t have any of that. Saved me from a life of being either locked up in a difficult kids home or experiencing a life under constant sedation. God—I owe her so much.

   “So, my Grandmother. Instead of pills or programs she one day confronts me,” Mara smiled, her eyes dancing. “It was… something, and it’s scary to look back on how fierce we were. All the damage we did! Over a two-hour-long all-out battle between a seven-year old girl and a fifty-five year old woman, the TV set and glass coffee table were both destroyed. A window was broken, the big wooden curio cabinet and curtains were pulled down, the drywall in the hallway was full of holes, the pictures were off the walls. We’d wrestled each other to the floor at the end of the hall, both of us were bruised and battered all over... and my teeth were buried deep, deep into her forearm.

   “I bit her, I just sunk my vicious little teeth into her arm and refused to let go,” Mara said. “I think somewhere in all the rage and hate there past all reason and sanity I just completely threw away my humanity. Became a dangerous animal. And then—do you know what she did to me?

   “She held me. Trapped me in against her body and stroked my hair. She cried for me, this stupid thoughtless animal with its fangs still deep into the tissue of her arm, and talked to me. I’d thought the whole time we fought that she was angry—but, she wasn’t angry. She wasn’t upset. There was only… sadness, she was crying for me, for this unfortunate way things had turned out to make her granddaughter so miserable and unhappy and unable to be a happy normal little girl.

   “I don’t even know how to explain what happened. Before I knew it, I was sobbing. Wailing, in fear and frustration and just… anguish. When Grandpa got home, he almost has a heart attack, at seeing the state we were in. The state the house was in! Immediately he tries to pull me—this apparent rabid animal—away from her, but she wouldn’t let him. She turned away from him with me, shouted him down. She’s… my grandmother is the greatest woman I’ve ever known, and the greatest woman I’ll ever know.

   “When I did finally calm down and manage to... detach myself from her… there was blood. So much blood,” Mara remembered, shaking her head. “Saw what I’d done, and finally felt shame and sadness and horror. That’s what really returned me from being a stupid animal back into being a little human girl. Grandpa right away tries to rush her to the hospital—she doesn’t let him. She holds him back still, cradles her arm against herself like it’s just nothing worth worrying about, wipes my tears and tells me over and over again that it wasn’t my fault. That it was going to be okay, that we were going to make it all work and find a solution together. She cleans me up, tucks me into bed—it was late by then already—and I was out like a light.

   “An ambulance had to pick her up,” Mara said with a bitter, slightly furious expression. “Bite wound didn’t just need stitches—the muscle was torn, she had to have surgery. She lost full range of movement for her fingers, and to this day she can’t really grip things with that hand. Grandma, she just insists that it’s nothing, nothing to fuss over, that a dog bit her, and that then the darn scamp ran away. They told her that no, it very clearly was not a canine bite, she remains adamant that she’s not fucking senile and shuts down all further lines of inquiry. I’m sorry, I don’t normally swear—she really did phrase it that way to them. My Grandmother, well, she can be a little stubborn.

   “After that, I was… really hollowed out. I was an empty, obedient little doll, for the first year after that. I’d tried to throw away my humanity, I bit the literal hand that fed me, and still she never ever ever gave up on me,” Mara explained with a sober expression. “Even when it cost her dearly. Those I LARP and battlegame with here, the people who know me as Mara, they all know the story. ‘Me grandmother has a scar!’ Well, my grandmother does have a scar. A ghastly scar, along her forearm. The kind of vicious mauling you only really see from a dangerous animal attack, the kind where a hunk of flesh is clearly gone forever and they’ve had difficulty suturing the skin back over what remains.

   “But my Grandmother never once blamed me. She sat with me every day, this kindly old woman with enough patience to fill oceans, and loved me and doted on me and taught me how to speak and read and be a young lady and treat others properly and act appropriately and set a good Christian example and raised me up into a person who would someday have the strength to help others.

   “And all of those days, I would stare at that terrible wound, the kind of nasty wound that you can’t help but look at and think to yourself what manner of creature did THAT—while knowing exactly what creature did that to her. To say that I completely idolized her or that she was my whole world doesn’t really cut it—I still idolize her, and she is still the greatest woman who has ever lived.

   “Anyways. One day when I was thirteen or so, she drives me out to the park near our house, because she’d seen some nice young boys in these silly medieval tunics, smacking each other with foam swords,” Mara said. “Pool noodle foam and a mess of duct tape, on PVC or mop handles—looking back, they were a total mess. I was terrified, I was drawn to it , I longed for it, I wanted to run over and fight them all and I also at the same time I didn’t want to leave my seat, didn’t even want to unbuckle my seatbelt—because the thought of... devolving back into what I’d been, of losing myself to that… it. It. Well, Grandma she didn’t take no for an answer—said that being a wild child was always going to be a part of me, that I was strong enough now to not lose my way.

   “She was right!” Mara beamed. “How could she not be? The wild child in me was still there, but I was now able to temper myself with her discipline and wisdom. Was able to—eventually—reconnect with my parents. Became a fair hand at the wild things that I’ve always loved, because I can appreciate and understand them like I never would have been able to without my grandmother. I became Mara, became strong.

   “I do love camping, and field combat, and letting myself run wild—that may be the real me, and maybe deep down I really am the wild one, really am Mara. But I aspire to be like my Grandmother, I aspire to be her Rebecca, to be the legacy of her strength and compassion in this world. To always make her proud, and someday do for others some tiny fraction of what she’s done for me.

   “That’s my entire story— now you know me,” Rebecca winked. “I don’t talk about it often, and most of those I’ve told tend to embellish things in the retelling. I only told Emily my story once, and that day she decided she was my friend forever. We have been, we’ve been friends ever since.

   “I hope that you and I can be great friends. I’d love if you could open up to me, but I also don’t expect you to right away. Right away, right now what I want you to try to do is hit me with that sword, as hard as you can. Swing at me with no reservations, come at me like I’m everything that’s been set against you in this world, come at me like you mean it. You don’t have to worry about hurting me.

“Brian, I want you to just—let it all out.”

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