The Valkyrie Project - Chapter 19

Mei cocked her head they had poured over the sims for techniques the girls had used even without realizing it. "But you only used pleasure in a few spots? Or did you use it actively for intimidation to draw fire?" she said realizing it was the latter. They had noticed the fear but just attributed it to seeing the Valkyrie suddenly unmask her presence. But then she thought about it again. Masking was an inward action, denying all around you your presence. She felt the girls disappear as they experimented with the better masking technique, even the wisp of something she'd used to detect them prior was gone. She realized Tina must have done this awhile back without thinking about it. But projection was directed, it required actively thinking about who and what. She tested it on the girls projecting disappointment to them watching both of their faces fall as they worried they'd done something wrong again. She quickly swapped it for love and affection watching them collapse back on the mats with relief. "Huh, interesting technique. Val's going to love it if she hasn't figured it out yet?"

Mei felt a warmth around herself as if she was being hugged, pure affection "What technique?" Val asked innocently as she entered to check their progress. Mei focused on the feeling of a boop on the nose and sent it right back as an experiment causing the blond to wrinkle her nose. "Tina had figured it out awhile back and just assumed that viral knowledge meant you'd figure it out when you needed it."

Crystal sighed at that "Viral knowledge is nice, if the Valkyrie and nun" she gestured to Kira "have been in contact. But we need to record these things too so that if we need to send a technique to a sister we can. Please don't just assume viral knowledge in the future." she begged. She knew she'd have to test half these techniques that night with Sandy just to make sure she didn't fail to convey them and knew how they worked.

Celestra took that moment to literally pop into existence behind her sister "Don't be such a square Crys... tal" she said finishing the name as she remembered her sister preferred her full name and not the pet-name reminder of her old dead-name.

"Thank you for remembering my name Cel. So what do we owe this gracious visit of 'The Brain Fairy' too..." Crystal teased her sister testing the technique to send out the impression of Cel with fairy wings and magic star wand.

Cel raised her eyebrow and just smooched Crystal's forehead, knowing better than to continue it. "Val and I just came from a session with Ilya." she said softly getting a nod from Crystal.

Ilya had come out of the tank physically OK, but that was about all that could be said. For the first few weeks she refused to sleep without Val next to her.

Cel sighed "If only I was 'The Brain Fairy' I could just magic away what they did to her. Change the past so she wouldn't have to come to terms with the things she's done."

Val shook her head "If not her then it would have been me instead; or another set of twins. Assuming they didn't, which they probably did." Cel nodded acknowledging the word's truth.

"Sister Celestra?" Kira spoke up "I wonder if I may be of any assistance, in the church we get many souls that have been... egregiously harmed. In many cases we have to slowly help them process that they are loved." Cel looked to Val who was shaking her head yes to indicate this was the best idea thus far.

Ilya sat just out of a shaft of sunlight, her arms around her legs as she looked out on the Parade Ground of the base. A unit drilling as a platoon of Valkyrie did an early morning PT. She moved a hand down to her belly subconsciously, her fingers resting where the scar would have been concealed in the nanosuit she'd been given to wear. Her eyes looking at the black inhibitor band around her wrist.

She felt Val and Cel's presence at the door, and another warm and bubbly presence she didn't know. She withdrew into herself as the door to her room opened the three entering before the door closed behind them. Ilya saw Val sigh. "Come on out Ilya, the sister won't bite... much." Ilya stayed hidden, part of her curious what they would do. Val and Cel began to focus but the third person with them tapped them out of trying to detect her. That person was wearing a nanosuit too, but it looked like a lewd mockery of a nun's habit. Ilya drew further into herself assuming this was one of the accursed priestess of the church of the so called 'goddess' her sister belonged to. Deprogrammed or no, she was still extremely skeptical of it.

"If I may?" Kira asked the two.

Val "You're welcome to try sister, but it will likely take time for Ilya to warm to you, silly brat that she is" she needled her concealed twin.

Kira just nodded and focused the love and warmth of the goddess in herself, she'd been practicing this all night just for this moment. She let herself fall away to the point of being basically not there. She strained to hold the presence of the goddess within herself.

Cel, Ilya, and Val all looked on as Kira's presence disappeared but did not conceal herself. They watched curiously as a bead of sweat started on her forehead. Then her breathing quickened, all three could tell her body temperature was rising. Ilya dropped her concealment and looked on in confusion at the other two. Val shrugged "I mean if it was to get you to reveal yourself than it worked, but I'd still like to know if she's ok?" Val said to Ilya.

Kira prayed silently for the strength to endure and complete the ritual as more and more of the goddess' presence flowed into her. She went until she could hold no more and then a bit beyond that before she let the goddess take her.

Where Kira had once been a void of presence the room suddenly overflowed. But it wasn't the nun, Val and Cel locked eyes as they recognized it from services. "My goddess" Val muttered... a bit accurately.

Ilya however was the main focus of the goddess, the avatar moving Kira as she embraced the damaged former assassin. Ilya just cried into the goddess' breast as she felt those arms embrace her. Warmth, love, comfort, lewdness, laughter, fun, compassion, and hope.... just so much overwhelming love flowed into the red head as she felt the goddess' lips meet her own. Pure divine love searing her self-hate away.

The room around them was gone, Kira, Val, and Cel seemed so far away. She stood in the field outside her childhood home. She looked around, several girls she knew from childhood used hung out on swings. Ilya knew two of the three were dead by her own hand. She cried and tried to shout at them to flee before she could kill them. Soldiers exited the apartment block she'd lived in. Her hand went to her mouth as she saw herself and Val, just eighteen being dragged out by the conscription squad. She felt a kiss against her cheek as the goddess gently held her, crying as she watched them be forced into the army against their will, neither had wanted to fight. Both saw the war as pointless and had protested. It had turned out that protest had made them a priority.

The scene changed she saw Val in a machine, a machine that was brainwashing and taking her sister away from her. She watched her younger self scream and try to fight the guards to protect her twin. One kicking her hard as the facility leader ordered them to turn her into a 'doll'; code word for a brainwashed and mindfucked killing machine.

Ilya nearly collapsed as she watched her younger self get forced into the machine that would make her associate killing people and pain with pleasure. She felt the warm comforting arm around her waist squeeze her gently, she looked over into the eyes of the goddess. They were endless wells of empathy and love. She realized this wasn't just to make her live painful memories of her past but to confront the pain that was festering in her soul. She nodded acceptance as the scene changed again.

It was a week later, and they were in her best friend's apartment next to her parents. It had been her first mission, she'd been ordered to kill. She'd killed the entire family brutally, torturing her best friend to death. Ilya already crying to sob into the goddess' arms as she watched the spark of life leave her best friend's eyes.

The scene played out over and over and over in rapid succession, each kill growing easier as she did them. She'd cum each time as her conditioning made her get off from the brutality.

Then the scene stopped again as she begged the supreme leader to let her kill her traitorous sister after Val had refused to be repatriated. Her eyes went wide as he ordered her to sterilize herself so that none of her bloodline could betray the country and the people ever again. She listened to her screams as she did so in a brutal improvised surgery. It had taken weeks to recover from it and the infection, she was still sure that the doctors had only let her live because she'd have killed them and their families if they had let her suffer.

She watched as she moved back in with her parents pretending to have ended her service after being wounded in battle. Then the note had come Val was alive and working for the enemy. She wanted to sneak them out. So she'd laid a trap with their parents as bait, She knew that after she killed Val she'd have to kill herself to expunge the taint of her bloodline, there could be no other way. She watched as she planned the trap carefully; all the while Val, ever the intelligence officer, had figured out her trap. She remembered showing up at her trap... only to find that not only were her parents not there; nothing was set up as she had ordered. Her guards swearing up and down that she'd told them she was delaying it due to the still partial moon. But the truth was simpler, Val had played her like a fiddle and stolen their parents out from her grasp right under her nose. She had been wroth, leaving their bodies rotting in a field for the failure.

She'd been determined before, but she'd become obsessed now. Ilya watched her younger self try to lure Val out repeatedly, but the blond twin had escaped each trap deftly. Always leaving some token of love behind, each token she burned and destroyed rather than allow herself to feel any sort of love for her twin.

She watched as the bomb nano was developed, she'd heard about the church of the so-called goddess growing in the enemy's land. It was growing in her own country too. So she'd ordered the secret police to raid the congregations, she took one of their so-called blessed and an old assassin 'Boris' a lazy and useless slob that missed more than he hit. She'd tossed them into the brainwashing machines. She'd delighted in fucking with Boris though; to her, he'd deserved the brain fucking she'd given him. When she was done he was basically a drone designed to kill Engels, her sister's old boss, now the high priestess of the church. She didn't care about the church itself, it was just a way to draw out Val.

She'd used a sect that spanned the border and was violently opposed to the church of the goddess as her pawns. Val had been spotted wearing a veil at a service in the main cathedral, so this was perfect. She let them supply Boris and his cover. She'd injected both with bomb nano, knowing that either he'd succeed in his primary mission and kill Val or get caught and kill her by exploding as she interrogated him. Either way worked. So she waited.... and then Val had sent her another token.

She had raged, before deciding to act herself. If none of her gambits could draw Val out she'd try one final roll of the dice. She'd injected the entire cult with bomb nano having them target every single church in the capital where Val was known to be. She hadn't really cared if they succeeded or failed. But she'd grinned like a maniac at hearing the news report and seeing the destruction even one of the cultists exploding could do. Hearing that two Valkyrie and a Priestess had been grievously wounded made her giddy. She knew that all the cultists would point Val back to her, and so she'd waited. Ilya's eyes widened as she recognized the wounded priestess as the one who'd come into her room. But the name escaped her. Her memory didn't have that information. At that time and place the nun was just a small victory against her sister. She was sickened by her past self's adulation of death.

The goddess paused time as the scene shifted again, she could see Val and the girls concealing themselves on the roof as the Valkyrie moved in. She walked around the scene as she saw Val crying as she'd injected herself with a trigger to the bomb nano. The pain on her sister's face giving tell to just how much she was loved. Fingers squeezed her own as the scene dragged on, Val's nano countering the bomb but leaving her on death's door. She watched as Jesse and Jaime didn't hesitate to save the life of someone that had literally just tried to kill them not once but twice. The scene faded away.

Ilya looked at the goddess "But why?" she asked. The goddess didn't answer, the deity pressing her finger to Ilya's chest love and compassion that Ilya for years had suppressed, flooding out. Every time she'd cried internally destroying her sister's gifts. Every time she'd mourned the passing of a friend or trusted lieutenant she'd killed in rage. Love and mourning all mixed together in a torrent of emotion, Ilya screaming at the top of her lungs as it flowed through her. The dam had been broken. The chains she'd used to lock up her heart in pain and suffering stripped away. In there she found the eighteen-year-old her, crying and sobbing begging to be let out for her to stop. The goddess gently directed her to go to her younger self. She wrapped her arms around her younger self, the first thing she could touch in this world besides the goddess. She hugged herself tightly and sobbed "I'm sorry" as the goddess had hugged them both.

Ilya opened her eyes, the room coming into focus. Her head was resting in the sister's lap. The nun idly stroking her hair. She felt no fear of the sister now, no hate, no self loathing. She raised her fingers touching the sister's face as a beautiful smile beamed back at her. The goddess was gone, and yet very, very much not. She could feel her presence everywhere, warm and cozy, comforting, yet lewd and playful. "I'm sorry sister, I hid in fear of myself." she found herself saying.

"I know." The nun nodded.

Ilya lifted her head, they were on her bed. It was dark outside and Val and Cel were napping against each other in the window seat. Someone had put a blanket over them. She saw Val stir "Mmhm, Awake at last sleeping beauty?" her twin teased her. But the tease hit on many levels, after all it felt like this was the first time she'd woken up from the bad dream that had started when they were rounded up by the conscription squad.

"If I'm a princess... does that make you my prince?" Ilya asked looking up with a smile at the priestess realizing that she still didn't know her name. "So what is my prince's name?" she asked.

"Kira" the sister answered, holding her fingers loosely. "But I think the goddess was your prince, not I." The sister chuckled, a sound full of warmth. "At best I was her humble steed." The words bringing to mind the image of the sister in pony play bondage gear carrying around the goddess.

"Did she...?" Ilya started but Kira was already shaking her head no.

"No, what she shares with each of us is for us to decide if we wish to share." Kira said with a smile, as if she'd been through exactly the same thing before.

"Why me?" Ilya couldn't figure out why the priestess and goddess would save her. She was a murderer that had tried to kill her not that long ago.

"Why not?" Kira asked back. "The goddess loves all her children, even the most wayward. I do not know what she showed you, but I know that you were not your own until just now. The goddess helped you unlock your heart, so you can heal."

Ilya's stared up at Sister Kira's kind visage. She looked into the nun's eyes, and they spoke of endless compassion and understanding. But there was steel there too. She closed her fingers around the sister's own. Her eyes shifting to the sleeping Cel and barely awake Val, who was slowly extricating herself before laying on the bed next to her like they had as children, their parents telling them to sleep in their small apartment.

Val kissed her sister's cheek as she had so many times before, and yet it had been so long. Ilya began crying again, the two holding her tightly as she sobbed. She realized at that moment her healing process was beginning, but that she had people that loved her, and she was not alone.

Ilya stood next to Val, the sun dappling through leaves onto their shoulders as they stood in a quiet corner of field, surrounded by birch trees. The gravestones in front of them bearing the names of their parents. Val regretted telling the other Valkyrie her parents were in hiding, a lie only Tina and Mei knew the truth of. She'd come clean after Ilya had been captured.

Ilya traced her fingers over the marble, their father had died first. Their mother a week later "She died of heartbreak." she said. Val's arm around her shoulder.

"Yes, mama couldn't keep going after papa died." The blond twin said softly.

"Did they....?" Ilya asking fear in her eyes that her parents knew what she'd become. But Val shook her head.

"No, or at least I don't think so? They had their own sources. Even to the day they died I never figured out how they got messages out then, although I found plenty of evidence later. They knew you were an assassin at least. But they never knew you were tasked with killing them and me I don't think. Or if they did, they never let on. I didn't know until after they'd died they knew that they were bait for me. Even if they didn't know you were the hunter. Mama may have suspected. But I don't think Papa could imagine his little girl as a killer." Val explained. She'd found it better to be honest with Ilya in the past couple of weeks since hear heart had unlocked.

They rose and made their way back to the small house on the land that her parents had lived and ultimately died in. Ilya gasped as she saw pictures of them as children on the walls. She had thought they had left everything including those when they had left.

Jesse and Jaime were in the kitchen helping Tina make a meal. Ilya looked to her sister "Why did you keep it?" she asked gesturing to the home.

"Because it is the last link I had to better times, to when we were children before the war." Val said softly. Ilya knew her sister wasn't that sentimental, but what she did keep meant a great deal to her.

She made her way through the house, most of what she saw was new to her other than photographs and her parents wedding rings. But then in a bedroom something caught her eye. Two toy bears worn non-identically. They had been their childhood toys. One hers, the other her sister's. She looked up at Val "But... how? I used these to start the fire in their apartment after I discovered you'd spirited them away."

Val gave her sister the devious grin she'd seen and returned in kind so many times as children "Did you? Or did you use a very well constructed copy that contained a monitoring device?"

"Were you always so far ahead of me?" Ilya asked as Val leaned in the doorway.

"No, but I was doing what my training had taught me. Where you were taught to be an assassin I was taught to act in subterfuge to be a spy. They told me that if I ever betrayed them you'd be sent after me." Her sister explained.

"But you did anyway..."

Val nodded, they hadn't yet talked about why she'd refused repatriation. "When I was captured, initially I felt the pull of their pheromones. But that went away with the neutralizer shot. But when it came time go back I couldn't make myself. My heart had fallen in love with Tina, I couldn't explain it. They were beyond suspicious of course. So I told them everything, well after I tested that I couldn't lie that is. Finally, they put Cel on me to make sure I understood what I was doing, that I wasn't being programmed to do it or some such. While she definitely undid plenty of programming and brainwashing it was clear I was in love, and they couldn't send me back against my will. I don't think Tina wanted me at first. I was just a weird thing she couldn't get rid of. So she let me become a Valkyrie after Mei and Cel cleared me. I took care of the broken spear, the Valkyrie that couldn't be allowed to serve. I don't think she took pity on me so much as she cared about them. She'd visit them daily when she could, and we'd chat. Finally, one day I awoke, and Tina was sharing my bed." Val trailed off. Before looking at her sister's identical emerald green eyes with a smile "Funny the things we do for love."