Grounds (Waifu Catalog)

[Eifa]

---

My name is Malty S. Melromarc.

I think.

It's been a while since anyone called me that. The Company uses numbers. The contractors use… other things. Pet names. Degradations. Sometimes nothing at all, because why would you name something you don't intend to keep?

I was the First Princess of Melromarc, once. I remember that. I hold onto it sometimes, in the dark, turning the memory over like a worn stone — Ī ⱳⱥꞩ ꞩꝋᵯēꝋꞥē, Ī ⱳⱥꞩ ꞩꝋᵯēꝋꞥē, Ī ⱳⱥꞩ ꞩꝋᵯēꝋꞥē — but the edges have gone smooth now. Hard to grip. Hard to remember why it mattered.

I was cunning.

I was beautiful.

I was going to be queen.

Funny, the things you think will save you.

---

The cell is cold.

It's always cold. I don't know why I still notice. You'd think after enough time the body would simply… adjust. Accept. Stop sending signals that no longer serve any purpose.

But I still feel it. The cold. Settling into my bones like an old friend who's overstayed their welcome but refuses to leave.

I'm sitting in the corner. I don't remember moving to the corner. I do that sometimes now — lose time, find myself somewhere I don't recall choosing to be. The Company medics said it was within acceptable parameters for a unit of my… history.

Acceptable parameters.

Everything is within acceptable parameters here. The scars. The damage. The way I sometimes forget how to swallow and have to remind myself, step by step, like a child learning for the first time. ₳₵₵Ɇ₱₮₳฿ⱠɆ. As long as the product still functions. As long as it can still be sold.

I pull my knees to my chest.

I'm naked. I've been naked for… I don't know. A while. Clothing costs resources, and resources aren't wasted on units in transit. I used to be ashamed of that. Used to try to cover myself with my hands, curl into shapes that hid the worst of it, maintain some pathetic scrap of dignity.

I don't bother anymore.

What's the point?

They've already seen everything. Everyone has already seen everything. My body stopped being mine so long ago that modesty feels like a language I used to speak but have since forgotten. I know the words exist. I just can't remember what they mean.

---

There are scars.

I try not to look at them, but they're hard to avoid when they cover so much. Curse marks that twist across my ribs in patterns that still ache when the weather changes — except there is no weather here, just the same sterile recycled air, so maybe the aching is just memory. Phantom pain from a body that hasn't accepted what's been done to it.

Weapon wounds. Training accidents, some contractors called them. Let's see how much the princess can take. The Company healed the ones that impaired function. The rest they left. Cost-benefit analysis. I wasn't worth the credits.

And other damage. In other places.

I don't think about that.

I don't.

Sometimes my mind tries to go there anyway — drags me back to rooms I don't want to remember, to hands I can still feel even now, to sounds that come back in the quiet moments when there's nothing else to fill the silence—

I dig my nails into my palms. Focus on the small sharp pain. Anchor myself here, in this cold cell, in this present moment that is terrible but at least is *now* and not *then*.

Breathe.

Don't think. Don't remember. Just breathe.

The cell is cold.

I am tired.

These are the only facts that matter.

---

I don't know how long I have been sitting there.

Time moves strangely in Company facilities. No windows. No clocks. Just the endless hum of machines and the occasional distant sound of footsteps that never seem to come for you until suddenly they do.

I used to count seconds. Minutes. Tried to maintain some grip on the passage of hours. But the numbers got away from me eventually, slipped through my fingers like water, and now I just… exist. In the gaps between things.

Waiting.

Always waiting.

The worst part isn't the fear. Fear requires energy, requires some part of you to still believe that what comes next might be different from what came before. Fear is almost hopeful, in its own twisted way.

No.

The worst part is the tiredness.

The bone-deep exhaustion that comes from being afraid for so long that your body simply gives up on the emotion. Can't sustain it. Let it drain away until all that's left is this gray, heavy nothing that sits in your chest like a stone.

I am so tired.

I am so tired of being passed from hand to hand.

I am so tired of learning new rules, new preferences, new ways to minimize the damage.

I am so tired of hoping that this one might be different, might be better, might at least be *quick* — and being wrong, every single time.

I am so tired of being wrong.

The door will open eventually. It always does. And someone will take me somewhere, and something will happen, and I will survive it or I won't, and either way the universe will continue on without noticing or caring.

That's the truth they don't put in the catalog.

*Slightly Used.*

*Previously Owned.*

No one tells you that the cruelest thing isn't the pain. The cruelest thing is learning that you can survive it. That the human mind is horrifyingly adaptable. That you will live through things you were certain would kill you, and then you'll live through the next thing, and the next, and the next, and there is no limit to what a person can endure when the alternative is simply… stopping.

And you can't stop.

You can never stop.

You just keep going, and going, and going, until you can't remember what you were going toward in the first place.

---

The door opens.

I don't react.

Once, I would have flinched. Scrambled to my feet. Tried to make myself small, or large, or whatever shape seemed most likely to invite mercy. I learned quickly that there is no right shape. No correct response. What pleases one contractor enrages another. What earns you gentleness from one earns you punishment from the next.

So I stopped trying to predict.

I just… wait.

"Unit M-7749. Transfer authorized."

The agent's voice is flat. Bored. This is just paperwork to them. I am paperwork to them.

I don't look up.

"Follow."

I stand.

My legs shake. They've been shaking for a while now — the last contractor preferred me weakened, kept me on the edge of starvation because he said it made my eyes look more desperate and he liked that — but the Company's medics corrected the muscle atrophy during processing. Immobile units are harder to transport. The shaking is just… leftover what my body remembers what it's supposed to feel even though the physical cause has been removed.

I follow the agent.

One foot in front of the other. Simple mechanics. Don't need will or desire or any of the things that used to feel important. Just… movement. The body knows how to move even when the mind has checked out.

The hallway is long.

White walls. White floor. White lights that buzz faintly overhead, a sound so constant I've stopped consciously hearing it but can't quite ignore. Other doors line the corridor. Other cells. Other units in transit, waiting for their own agents, their own transfers, their own next chapters in stories that none of them asked to be part of.

I wonder, sometimes, if any of them were famous in their worlds. Heroes. Villains. People who used to be someone.

𝐈⃥⃒̸ 𝐰⃥⃒̸𝐚⃥⃒̸𝐬⃥⃒̸ 𝐚⃥⃒̸ 𝐩⃥⃒̸𝐫⃥⃒̸𝐢⃥⃒̸𝐧⃥⃒̸𝐜⃥⃒̸𝐞⃥⃒̸𝐬⃥⃒̸𝐬⃥⃒̸.⃥⃒̸

The thought surfaces and sinks again, a dead thing floating briefly before the water closes over it.

𝐈⃥⃒̸ 𝐰⃥⃒̸𝐚⃥⃒̸𝐬⃥⃒̸ 𝐠⃥⃒̸𝐨⃥⃒̸𝐢⃥⃒̸𝐧⃥⃒̸𝐠⃥⃒̸ 𝐭⃥⃒̸𝐨⃥⃒̸ 𝐛⃥⃒̸𝐞⃥⃒̸ 𝐪⃥⃒̸𝐮⃥⃒̸𝐞⃥⃒̸𝐞⃥⃒̸𝐧⃥⃒̸.⃥⃒̸

I keep walking.

The agent doesn't even look at me. I'm just cargo being transported from point A to point B. You don't make conversation with cargo.

I used to try, in the beginning. Asked questions. Demanded answers. Insisted on my rights, as if rights were something that existed here, as if anyone cared about the protests of a product that had already been bought and paid for.

The agents taught me better.

One of them knew healing magic. Could hurt you as much as she wanted and then undo the damage before the next shift. She had three hours with me before my transfer. I don't remember what question I asked to set her off.

I remember the three hours.

I remember every second of them.

I don't ask questions anymore.

---

The hallway ends.

The agent stops in front of a door that looks like every other door then press something on their tablet. The door slides open with a soft hiss.

"Inside. Wait for processing."

I walk through.

The door closes behind me.

---

This room is different.

Not much. Not enough to matter. But different.

There's a desk. A chair behind it. A figure sitting in the chair, face obscured by the folder they're reading. The lighting is the same sterile white as everywhere else, but something about the arrangement suggests… an office. A workspace. A place where decisions are made rather than simply carried out.

I stand just inside the door, naked and scarred, and I wait.

The figure doesn't acknowledge me.

Pages turn. Slow. Methodical. The soft sound of paper against paper fills the silence. I can see their hands — human-looking, though that means nothing here — and the glint of a ring on one finger.

I wait. And wait. Ⱥnd waīⱦ. And w̳͍̮͈ͥ̒ͮ́̎͆̓͝͝a̴̸̴̡̢̨̱̱͇͉̯͔̰͍͍̠̿ͦ̎ͥ̎̀̆͂̊͒̎͆̒̽͘͜͝į̸̷̧̪̮̼̗͍̙́̏̍̍̅ͪ͑͋ͬ̔t̸̸̶̡̧̡̛̛̪̝̩͉͈̤͈͉̞̬̯̗̹͎̀ͣͣͥ̀̈͗̽͑̎̂̐̏͒̓ͧ̌̔͘̕͟͝͠͝ͅ..

Eventually, the figure speaks.

"Malty S. Melromarc."

It's not a question. It's an inventory check.

My throat clicks shut. I've learned the hard way that sound is dangerous. Speak, and you're insolent. Stay silent, and you're sullen. There is no right answer, only different varieties of pain.

So I went still. It's safer to be a statue than a person.

The figure turns to another page. Their eyes move down the text. I can't read their expression — they haven't looked up yet, haven't bothered to see what they've purchased — but something in the air shifts.

A pause.

Longer than the others.

"…I see."

Two words. Neutral tone. But something in them lands differently. Like they've found an unexpected line item in an otherwise routine report.

I wonder what the file says. What notes the previous contractors left. There's a place for that, I've learned. A review section. Feedback.

P̸r̷o̴d̸u̶c̷t̶ ̵p̸e̷r̵f̸o̵r̶m̷e̶d̶ ̵a̵s̸ ̵e̸x̷p̴e̶c̴t̸e̶d̸. W̴o̵u̶l̸d̵ ̶r̶e̸c̸o̷m̵m̷e̸n̶d̸ ̵f̴o̷r̶ ̴u̶s̷e̷r̸s̵ ̵w̶h̷o̶ ̴e̵n̸j̷o̵y̶—

I don't wonder too hard.

Some things are better not to know.

The figure reaches for something on their desk. A stamp. Old-fashioned. Out of place in this world of tablets and digital interfaces. They press it to the final page with a soft *thunk* — decisive, final, the sound of one chapter ending and another beginning.

"Approved."

The word settles into me like sediment sinking to the bottom of a still pond.

Approved.

Sold.

Again.

The figure gestures toward the wall behind me.

"Door."

I turn.

There's a door where there wasn't one before.

It's wrong. Everything about it is wrong. The frame is wooden — actual *wood*, dark and worn and ancient-looking — set into the sterile white wall like a wound. The handle is brass, tarnished with age. A small bell hangs above it, the kind you'd see in a shop from a world that still believed in quaint things.

I stare at it.

The door does not explain itself.

"Your new contractor is waiting," the figure says. They've already returned to their paperwork. Already moved on to the next file, the next unit, the next transaction.

I'm no longer their concern.

Another contractor.

Another set of preferences to learn.

Another chapter in a story I never wanted to be part of.

I walk to the door.

My hand finds the handle.

It's warm.

That's wrong too. Everything here is cold. But the brass is warm under my fingers, almost alive, and the grain of the wood is rough against my palm, and for a moment I just stand there, touching something that feels real in a way nothing has felt real in so long—

I push.

The door swings open.

The bell chimes.

And—

---

Color.

That's the first thing. Color. Warm wood and soft light and green — plants in the window, actual living plants, leaves catching sunlight that streams through glass that isn't reinforced or monitored or anything except —

I stumble forward without meaning to. The door swings shut behind me with a soft click. The sound of the Company — that constant low hum, the buzz of lights, the recycled air that tasted like nothing — cuts off like someone flipping a switch.

Silence.

No.

Not silence.

Quiet.

The soft gurgle of water through an espresso machine. The distant sound of something — music? — playing too softly to identify. The creak of old floorboards under my feet.

I'm in a coffee shop.

I'm standing in the middle of a coffee shop.

The absurdity of it hits me so hard I forget how to breathe.

Small tables with chairs tucked neatly beneath them. A long counter with brass fixtures and glass jars filled with beans. A chalkboard menu on the wall, covered in handwriting I can't read. Flowers — flowers — in tiny vases on each table, yellow and white and pink, so aggressively cheerful it almost hurts to look at them.

Sunlight.

Warmth.

The smell of fresh coffee and something sweet, cinnamon maybe, or vanilla, something that makes my stomach clench with a hunger I'd forgotten I was capable of feeling.

"Ah."

The voice comes from behind the counter.

I flinch. Can't help it. The reflex outruns the thought, and by the time I register someone is here, my body has already obeyed the instinct. I curl inward, protecting my neck, making myself a smaller target. A prey animal caught in open ground.

"Welcome."

I look up.

The man behind the counter is… not what I expected.

I'm not sure what I expected. Someone cruel. Someone hungry. Someone with that particular gleam in their eyes that I've learned to recognize.

But this man is just… making coffee.

He's maybe thirty. Maybe older. The kind of face that doesn't commit to an age. Pleasant features. Soft eyes. An apron tied neatly over clothes that look comfortable rather than expensive. He's holding a cup, pouring something into it with the careful attention of someone who takes this single task very seriously.

He looks at me.

I stand frozen in the doorway — naked and scarred and so utterly out of place in this warm, bright space — and he looks at me the way you'd look at a customer who's come in from the rain.

Calm.

Unhurried.

His eyes traveled over me once. I feel the assessment — the curse marks, the weapon scars, the other damage that the Company didn't bother to fix because I wasn't worth the credits — but there's no heat in it. No hunger. No possessive satisfaction at what he's purchased.

Just observation. Clinical. Like a doctor noting symptoms.

"Oh," he says. Mild. Unsurprised. "That won't do."

And between one heartbeat and the next, I'm clothed.

I can't help it.

I gasp.

The fabric is soft — so soft it almost hurts— and warm and it covers me, a simple dress in deep burgundy that falls past my knees and has sleeves and I'm wearing shoes, actual shoes with soft soles, and I can't remember the last time I—

I press my hands against the fabric. Feel it shift under my palms. Real. Solid. Present.

The scars are still there underneath. I can feel them. But they're covered now. And if I don't look at them, I can almost pretend they didn't exist.

My eyes burn.

I don't cry. I don't remember how to cry. But something in my chest cracks, just a little, at this small and incomprehensible kindness.

"Better," the man says.

He's already turned back to his coffee. Like he didn't just— like this is normal — like—

"Sit wherever you'd like." He gestures vaguely at the empty tables. "I'll bring you something in a moment."

I don't move.

I can't move.

This is wrong. This is a trick. This is the part where the kindness reveals itself as setup, where the warmth turns cold, where I learn what he actually wants and it's always something, it's ⱥłⱳⱥɏꞩ—

"OH!"

The shout comes from somewhere in the back.

I flinch again. The voice is bright, loud, completely wrong for this moment — someone excited, someone who actually sounds happy — and my brain cannot make it fit into any pattern I know.

"She's here already!?"

Crash.

The sound of something falling over. Hurried footsteps. A door banging open.

And then—

A girl bursts into the shop.

She's young. A teenager, maybe. Blonde hair, bright eyes, a school uniform visible under a small apron that's already coming untied. She's carrying two cups of coffee and she's moving way too fast and her foot catches on the doorframe and she's falling, she's definitely falling—
The stumble turns into a spin. The spin turns into a pivot. Suddenly she's upright, both cups perfectly level.

Too smooth.

I've watched the Cardinal Heroes fight. I used to think that was grace. But compared to this? The Heroes look like puppets—jerked around by stats and invisible strings.

This girl moves like she's the one holding the handle.

Then she bounces forward, all teenage energy and cheer, and the impression dissolves.

Mostly.

"Hi!" She beams at me. All teeth. "You must be the new one!"

I stare at her.

She doesn't seem to mind.

"I'm—" She pauses. Glances at the man behind the counter. "What am I going by this time?"

"Lucy," he says. Doesn't look up from his cup.

"Right! Lucy!" She deposits the coffees on the nearest table with more enthusiasm than precision. "Come sit! You look like you need—" She tilts her head, considering. "Coffee. Definitely coffee. And maybe a nap. And probably some food? You're very thin. Not in a fun way. In the concerning way."

She pulls out a chair and pats the seat expectantly.

I don't move.

The man continues making coffee.

The sunlight continues streaming through the windows.

The girl — *Lucy* — continues smiling, patient and bright.

None of this makes sense.

"I don't—" My voice cracks. Splinters. How long since I spoke? The words feel like stones in my mouth. "I don't understand."

Lucy's smile softens. Not pity. Not the performed sympathy I've seen from contractors who wanted to seem kind before showing their true face.

"That's okay," she says.

She sits down, props her chin on her hand, and looks at me like I'm an interesting puzzle rather than a broken thing.

"You don't have to understand yet. You just have to sit."

She pushes the second coffee cup toward the empty chair.

"Drink something. It'll help."

"Help with *what*?"

The question comes out sharper than I meant. There's an edge — something old, something that remembers being a princess who didn't take orders from serving girls.

The moment it leaves my mouth, I flinch.

Shoulders up. Eyes down. Body bracing for impact — a slap, a shock, whatever correction comes for speaking out of turn. The response is automatic. Pathetic. I hate it, hate that I can't stop it, hate what they made me into.

Nothing comes.

I risk a glance upward.

Lucy's still smiling. Not the sharp smile that precedes pain. Not the cold smile that means you've made a mistake and you'll pay for it later. Just... the same smile. Warm. Unbothered. Like I hadn't just snapped at her. Like I'm allowed to have edges.

That's wrong.

That's so wrong it makes my skin crawl.

I know how to navigate cruelty. I know the rhythm of punishment and appeasement, how to read the temperature of a room, when to grovel and when to be silent. I was *good* at it. I survived because I was good at it.

I don't know what to do with this.

"Good question," Lucy says, as if nothing happened. As if I didn't just bare my teeth at her like a cornered animal.

She leans back, coffee cradled in both hands. The sunlight catches her hair, turns it gold, and for just a moment—

Something else looks out from behind her eyes.

Something that has watched stars die.

Then she blinks, and she's just a teenager with a coffee cup.

"We'll figure it out together," she says. "But first—" She taps the rim. "Drink. Trust me. He's weirdly good at it."

"I heard that," the man says from behind the counter.

"You were supposed to hear it! It was a compliment!"

He makes a noncommittal sound. Continues his work.

Lucy grins at me.

I stand in the middle of a coffee shop, wearing a dress I didn't choose, holding onto reality by my fingernails, and a monster in a school uniform offers me a cup of coffee like it's the most normal thing in the world.

My legs move without my permission.

I cross the shop. Lower myself into the chair. My hands find the cup — warm, solid, *real* — and wrap around it like holding on for dear life.

The coffee smells good.

Everything smells good.

I don't trust it.

I don't trust any of this.

But I'm so tired. And the chair is soft. And the sunlight is warm. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, nothing is hurting me.

"There's a price," I say. My voice is steadier now. Still cracked, still rough, but *mine*. "There's always a price. Everything in the catalog has a price. So what do you *want* from me?"

The question hangs in the air.

Lucy tilts her head.

"What do you want?" she asks.

I don't answer.

I don't know how.

Wanting things is dangerous. Wanting things gives people leverage. Wanting things means having something that can be taken away, and I have learned — in rooms I won't think about, in ways I won't remember — that the safest thing is to want nothing at all.

Lucy nods, like my silence is answer enough.

"That's okay too," she says. "You don't have to know yet. That's kind of the whole point."

She sips her coffee.

The man behind the counter starts on a new cup.

The bell above the door stays silent.

And I sit in a coffee shop that shouldn't exist, holding a cup I didn't ask for, wearing kindness I didn't earn, and I wait for the trap to spring.

It doesn't.

The sunlight stays warm.

The coffee stays hot.

And somewhere, deep beneath the exhaustion and the fear and the gray heavy nothing that has lived in my chest for so long—

Something stirs.

Not hope.

I won't call it hope.

But for the first time in longer than I can remember — I don't want to run.

---

A/N: My first story up here and it comes from a random bout of brain-fart I had a while ago. Discussion appreciated I suppose.

 

[Naberius]

I wasn't expecting Hurt/Comfort from a Waifu Catalogue fic, but weirder things have happened; taking in Slightly Used waifus and helping them to recover is a good premise and your writing style really sells the emotions - or lack thereof - that Malty is feeling. I also like your choice of Malty as the PoV character, since a character that's so widely hated is perfect for a waifu that's been traded from one abusive Contractor to another.

All in all, good shit. I hope to see more.

 

[loki98065]

so is this a contractor who works for the arch angel of benevolence. or just a good contractor?

 

[Apollo_Man]

*Pulls out a tray of baked chicken penne, a cocoa milkshake and a tissue box*

Welp, this seems to got me both hooked and dreading for the big sad.