anathemic | mask or menace

[ Case in point, really. Such a tiny gesture, but if she could press those words like a flower and save them all up... ]

If that's how it is, I'll be sure to let them all know who's boss.

Damn straight.

Okay, so different question, same theme: is there anything you'll be submitting to the museum from your own memories?

I'd like to see some pieces from your home, if there's any of them you'd like to put in. Like, I don't know, the operas if nothing else.

You want to see my memories?

Of course I do, if you're comfortable sharing them.
They're a part of you. I don't know if you have pictures back home, but in my world, we'd have tons and tons of photographs from all over someone's life, maybe even home videos. A way of sharing your past with someone. These holocron things sound more immersive, but otherwise...

A real shame then that I can't see any of yours. I suppose you're right and this kind of project will have to suffice somehow.

It's almost strange to think about now because all of my old friends were in the same position as me. All our memories were shared, and in that way it was almost like a family. But somehow, Anathema, I think if it had been you there with me instead...none it would have gone wrong.

[ There's a sudden, powerful tremor of emotion, something important she's on the verge of before carefully pulling back again. ]

I'll take some time to think about it, so I don't just offer up some birdshit useless memory, like that time I burped out opera lyrics at the imperial spymaster.

Part of me wishes I could have been -- even if I had somewhere dreadfully important to be. Everything in its right appointed predetermined place and all.

And hey, opera lyrics are nice too. I'm also trying to think what I'd throw into the pot. More to come on that front, TBD?

Come on, you don't want to dazzle me with your heroics, even just a little fucking bit? Puzzling out the right way to fend off the apocalypse via prophecy and all of that?

It wasn't quite so dazzling. Quite a bit of panic-driving in a small, shitty car, yelling and throwing pieces of paper.

Oh yeah? Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, darling, but you're pretty adorable when you're flustered. Paper-flinging or not.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure I'll love to see it.

The Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse were, admittedly, pretty cool.

[ this is probably an unfair tease, anathema ]

Can't have a sexy heroine without some fun villains to smite, is that it?

You realize what'll happen if you leave all of this to my imagination, I'm hoping? Better to spill the beans before I find someone to write that opera for me. I'll name it something fantastic, like: Anathema Saves the Word: With Help From Some Ancestors and a Band of Plucky Do-Gooders Too, Probably.

You say that as if that's not a pretty excellent outcome that I would be all in favour of.

Besides, I can really tell who's the writer in this relationship; that title's got a better zing to it than the actual family tome (viz.: 'The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch').

Glad we can agree about the quality of the subject matter.

Yeah, well, nobody's going to fucking blame you for burning the second volume. I'm more invested in your side of the story anyway, rather than whatever your wizened ancestor had in mind.

To Sal’s credit, she doesn’t immediately start a fistfight with the first person she can see. Not like the first time she ported to this military base, at least. Chalk up this particular bout of generosity to waking up with a sudden rush of lost memories returning to her — months spent fighting her own doubts and fears for even the smallest shreds of hope and peace. An entirely new life she started building; or it was, at least, before she was ripped away.

New friends, comrades to rush to her side during a fight, and a home of Sal’s very own.

And her.

That’s the galling part of it all, isn’t it? Losing what’s important. Whatever she finds to hold dear, it’s never safe and never rightly hers to keep. You can understand, then, why she might have the urge to punch at least someone out.

If only she wasn’t in such a hurry. Taking the communicator they give her, folding up the stupid piece of paper with her powers written on it and stuffing it in her jacket, she makes an immediate run for the exit. Pushing past soldiers and even vaulting over some dumb fuck kneeling down and taking up half the hallway, Sal doesn’t have time for anything but one single, solitary focus.

All of these months that have gone by for her, all of the fighting and the heists and the damn stinking airships with their damn shitty, secret cargo — they can all go right up a Scrath’s ass. She shoves her way through the doors and out into the street. Unlike the snow-covered lands around Terassus, it’s perfectly balmy here in Cape Canaveral.

No wars that she can see. No Revolution airships clouding up the peaceful, blue sky and trying to bomb the shit out of Imperium mages, or whoever else is caught in their unfortunate crosshairs. As Sal herself can tell you, war and death hardly discriminate.

But there’s nothing like that here. Just normal, happy people going along with their daily lives. So accustomed to the coming and goings of imPorts that they can’t even be bothered to seem shocked or horrified. A little girl with an ice cream cone waves at Sal from across the street. Again, like before, the reality of this place hits her like a slap to the face.

But unlike that first port-in, she doesn’t concern herself with her magic, wasting away hours reveling in flight. After a long time spent away, off in some distant and war-torn land, it would be natural for anyone to have the urge to come rushing back home.

So Sal does.

So she contacts Anathema.

Her grip is firm when pointing her gun and ferocious when she swings her sword; so why is it that, while holding up this tiny little talking device, she has to struggle with the sudden quake of her hands? Her thoughts scatter around like marbles, leaving Sal to struggle to find the words she needs to send. The questions she needs to ask.

The sun is high in the sky and offers nothing but warmth, but for a moment she’s right back on the floor of that tomb. Weakened, bloody, holding out a hand for someone to come and help her.

It’s the icy, gripping fear of being left alone. Abandoned. Forgotten by those you —

Where are you? Can I see you?

It’s all she can think to say. There’s too much to process. How long has she been away? How much has changed? Not so long and not so much that Anathema would...everything in her chest feels like fire and she tries with no success to ignore it. To drown out the doubts in her mind.

Sal barely has a grip on the communicator, so she fights off a shiver, holding it tightly against her chest and waiting for a reply.

Anathema drops her communicator.

It's not graceful or elegant at all. She'd long-ago set Sal's message notification to be its own unique sound effect, so she'd stop lurching for it in desperate hope every time anyone under the sun messaged her, so she'd know not to let her heart scrabble its way into her throat. This time, that sound makes her scramble for the communicator, trying to unlock it, instead dropping it, swearing up a storm, hoping she hasn't cracked the goddamn screen, before she's finally able to seize it and type out a response as quickly as she can:

I'm at home. Where are you? Are you okay? Are you back?

Do you remember me?

I'm at the base, just dropped in. I'll come to Jeopardy.

She doesn't hesitate. Not for a second. Sal is guilty of so much, and being single-minded, hotly in pursuit of one goal regardless of anything else happening — the world could be in flames and she'd only keep moving forward. In this case, it's in Anathema's direction.

There's no pause for anything else, although a more cautious or methodical person just might clean themselves up first. She's standing in the street as if she's just come out of an endless length of battles and only crawled away by the skin of her teeth, careening from one disaster to the next. But she doesn't feel the poorly bandaged sword wounds, the countless bruises or the weight of travel.

It's just her and this tiny device and her boots moving quickly in the direction of the porter station.

Remember? What does she remember? A witch standing outside a church, looking curious. A tiny flame in the palm of her (their) hand. Sharing a bed, sharing so much that the worry she's lost it, could lose it yet, it feels worse than any alchemic she's ever taken and sears its way painfully down her throat, into her lungs, filling up her veins with dread.

Of course she remembers this. Why bother to remember anything else?

I didn't forget. I'm still in one piece, in all my fucking brilliant glory. Hope you forgive me if I don't fly home to shower first.

Shit, assuming my apartment's still alright. Are you alright?

It's nonsense, the words don't mean anything, she just...needs to keep talking, to stay tethered to this lifeline before she can step up to that doorway and make certain with her own eyes. To see Anathema and know that she's safe.

It's the only place she wants to come back to.

It hasn't been a full month, so you still have the apartment. I've popped in and kept an eye on it. ~~I broke some of your~~

I fed the cat. As promised.

Get here now. I'm fine.

Reader, she is not fine. Anathema's been ebbing over the last few weeks, sometimes furious, sometimes grief-stricken, usually pacing in circles. Livid at the fact that there's no easy guideline for the future or prophecy in her pocket to say She'll be back tomorrow or She'll be back in a month or She will never, ever return to you. She's enjoyed the blank slate and freedom of going off-book, mostly, but this unpredictably is something else. This one catches in her throat, has left her distracted and morose and inconsolable. She hates it, hates it, hates it.

She's not even grinning at her communicator, can't find it in herself to be happy or celebrate just yet, because of the complicated roil of emotions in her chest: it doesn't feel real. It's not going to feel real until she lays actual eyes on Sal and confirms it for herself.

Thanks. For that. Everything.

It's just no good, Sal is better at action than she is puzzling over the grandest thing to say. Everything sounds foolish and clumsy and not enough, not by any degree. She already knew full well the awful guilt of leaving someone voluntarily, after all.

Just picking up and moving on somehow.

Leaving when you don't mean to, when everything you want — everything you need but didn't have the words to ask for, is already right in front of you...that's unfathomably worse. So she doesn't waste any time in booking it over to the porter. She pushes through the queue like some asshole whose house is on fire, but with her gun and sword belted at her waist, is there anyone alive who's really going to stop her?

Thankfully not. She remembers the route she would always fly to Anathema's residence over in Jeopardy. Her mind is too preoccupied to even wrap around the realization that she can do it, all of her magic, everything she thought she needed to be happy again, to be whole again. But It's not the magic that's ever made Salazanca ki Ioril who she is, of course.

Never had been.

Stepping up to the house, or more like landing ungracefully out on the lawn at a mad clip, she smacks the door full-fisted. Anyone, any sane person, would never open the door to a woman who looks like she just crawled out of the trenches, looking so determined.

"Anathema," she calls out, her gloved palm resting flat against the door. The name is wrung out of her throat in such a way that whole operas couldn't do proper justice to. The sort of anguish, a yearning that only a dying hero could make, as the music quiets down and the lights on the stage grow colder. Nobody in the audience even dares make a sound, holding their breath and somehow praying for the impossible.

A sad song, but not their song.

The door rips open as if Anathema's just been camped out in the living room, one foot bouncing impatiently and restlessly against the floor, while she sat listening for the door (which, in fairness, is exactly what she's been doing). She goes scurrying for the front door almost quick enough to go sliding on the floor, and as soon as she sees Sal, she goes still and lets her dark eyes roam up and down the other woman, drinking in the sight of her.

Sal looks absolutely terrible. Alarm and concern flickers across Anathema's face, before she bursts out, "What the hell happened to you?" before she doesn't wait for an answer, already propelling herself over the threshold and into the other woman's arms, colliding ungracefully with her bruises, arms hooking around Sal's neck as she buries her face in her shoulder, feeling her breath heaving in her lungs.

So this is what it felt like. Being on the other end, when she vanished to the City, and Sal was the one left behind and wondering and waiting and worrying.

She can't say she likes having the shoe on the other foot.

There's no time to speak yet, nothing comes before the need to just sink into that familiar embrace. Sal holds in a breath, but for all her wounds and bruises sting and nag at the crushing, desperate need for contact, she doesn't mind. With absolute certainty, she knows she'd go through them all again and so much more if it meant finding her way back here again.

Her arms slide around Anathema's waist effortlessly. When she breathes again finally, taking in the familiar scent of her girlfriend's perfume and the warm feel of breath against her shoulder, it's more than enough to send her over. The tears sting her eyes and Sal is tough alright, she tries holding it all in, but she also knows it's a damn futile effort.

Closing her eyes, she feels the wet of her own tears as they slide down her cheek and understands, very clearly now, that there's no guard against this. Anathema, savior of the world, heir to a heavy name, witch and scryer, has proven capable of what the best warriors in Sal's world would kill over. She finds the weak point in her armor easily, breaking it apart and grasps right at the truth of it all.

Out here in the warm daylight, there's no hiding from it.

"I'm home," she whispers hoarsely. "I'm home now, it'll be alright. I'll tell you all about everything, whatever you want to know."

Sal only lets go enough to move her hands up to cup Anathema's face. Her leather gloves smell of gunsmoke and the palms are worn from so much travel. Her face is covered in tears and dirt, there's a bruise by her jaw and a scrape above one eyebrow, but she forgets all about it. "You've still got that fucking bandage kit around here somewhere, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I have a stupid girlfriend who has a tendency to keep getting herself injured." In an odd inversion, Anathema — often so logical but also hot under the collar, over-emotional at times — isn't actually crying. She feels too overwrought and wrung-out and stunned, and like she spent all her tears on Sal's kitchen floor already, grieving this loss. Sal's hands are on her face, but then Anathema is mirroring her, gently swiping at Sal's cheek to brush some of the dirt away.

"I can get you a washcloth, too, to clean you up a bit. Jesus."

She's glad, suddenly, that none of her housemates are around to witness this reunion. Some moments deserve and need their privacy. Kicking the front door shut, she drags her towards the kitchen (which, between cooking and brewing potions and making her constant tea, really is Anathema's favourite spot in this house).

Sal would like to say that she hasn't forgotten all of her fond memories of walking into this kitchen, as well as the feeling of safety in Anathema's presence while she's patching up her wounds but...that's the trouble, isn't it? Unlike every memory Sal would wager her soul to forget, as painful and numerous as the scars spread across her skin, they were all taken from her in an instant.

It's only been weeks here, but for Sal it's been far longer. She gingerly moves out a chair from the table to sit; to behave, for once, and let the witch look at all of what's she's done to herself. Having left her dirty boots and heavy jacket at the door, she only has to make the effort of placing her sword and gun on the table.

Maybe it's only at this moment where Sal begins to be herself again; not that person fighting for her life, charging through armies, scraping by every deadly encounter by the skin of her teeth and clearly with the devil's own luck. When Jero had made her up to look normal, it was a fleeting moment, and she knew how fake the whole image appeared. How fleeting. Cosmetics can hide the scars, but they can't touch the hurt beneath them.

But this — she takes a seat to watch Anathema bustle around the kitchen in a way that makes her chest burn with a familiar feeling, this doesn't feel like some opera farce. It's not a show, it's just her and the girl who she remembers meant the world to her.

"Yeah, well, you should see the other guy," she says, with a bare fraction of her usual bravado. "However many of them there were, anyway, I can't ever keep track of shit like that." It should be a boost to her own confidence, but like everything else, the memory of how heavy Anathema's presence hits her returns with a ferocious vengeance. There's so little room to act tough, so she scrubs the tears that threaten to come out again with her dirty palms instead. Shit! Fuck! Pull it together, asshole.

When Anathema finally turns around, she looks faintly disapproving, unamused. She's carrying a bowl of hot water and a clean cloth that she dunks in before gently dabbing at Sal's face (she could let the other woman do it herself, but she's feeling selfish; wants her hands on Sal, wants that reassuring solidity beneath her, proving she's actually here, actually sitting at her kitchen table again).

"What did you do? What happened?"

This is perhaps a more frantic, less-measured way of grilling her and welcoming her back, but— this is the first time Anathema's dealt with this. The particular, peculiar of Port-outs and timelines diverging and spinning out unexpectedly, weeks here turning into longer over there.

No one's ever come back before.

Normally Sal would make the effort to whine a bit, often in a way that she secretly enjoys whenever her girlfriend starts to fuss over her like this, but for now she rests her hands on her knees and tries her best to sit still. Behave, for once. For all that Anathema's attention is stern, bordering harsh, she still feels a frantic heartbeat in her throat at that touch.

She closes her eyes and tries to focus on the question, instead of the brush of the damp cloth against her cheek, reminding her again of the scar which marrs it. Not everything can be washed away, least of all what she’s done in her life or what’s been done to her in kind.

"It was work," Sal admits. "You remember that freemaker I told you about, Two Lonely Old Men? He said he wanted to stop the wars and the fighting, and maybe finally give people a chance at something better. All he needed to do it was a single, powerful Relic, so my crew was sent to get it. Of course, for all the good a power like that can offer, nobody ever hires me to do anything the nice way."

There's a twitch in her shoulders that she clamps down on, the desire to reach out again, to pull Anathema back into an embrace and stay like that. She tilts her face to lean into the other woman’s palm.

"So we, uh, fought a bunch of people on some big and fancy airships and tried stealing the Relic from the army while they were en route to Weiless. And then the damn Imperium came on their war birds to also steal it, and the cultists and their fucking spooky god-thing —"

This sounds so much worse now that she's having to explain it out loud. Like she broke an important promise, and even worse, forgot it altogether. A hero in some opera would sing about the battles they fought, the wrongs they put to right. This seems more like she spent her whole time away stumbling through an endless stream of escalating battles, somehow pulling through by the skin of her teeth — which is pretty fucking accurate.

“It doesn’t matter. All he wanted in the end was revenge. And whatever it was that I found on the airship — it’s like your angels and your demons and all the fucking weird people here who claim to be some kind of higher-being. It cares as much for peace as a boot on the ant that crushes down on it.”

Sal sighs and hesitantly opens her eyes again. The disappointment in knowing, that for all she and her crew suffered to try and make a difference in the world, that they would walk away empty-handed ought to mean more in the moment. But it’s obvious in those clear blue eyes of hers, a gaze that searches Anathema’s hard expression, almost pleading, that Sal cares far more about what she thinks.

Anathema processes all that while she fixates on a particular smudge of dried blood on Sal's jaw, wipes it away with her thumb, carefully working to clean up this evidence of all the endless, endless fighting and injuries. "This, for the record," she starts, slowly picking her way through her words, half-teasing, "is why we don't fuss with ineffable magical relics that we aren't entirely sure how they work."

Then again. Anathema's own curiosity always got the better of her, and who's to say she wouldn't have fallen into the same damn trap if an opportunity like that had been dangled in front of her? So she stops, props her elbows against her knees and cocks her head thoughtfully. Reassesses, and then admits exactly that: "Although. Fair's fair: I probably would've done the same thing, if someone was trying to make things better."

It twists her heart into fitful knots, knowing that Sal was apparently lied to. Again. Manipulated. Again. Whenever someone hires someone else to do their dirty work, perhaps they're always inherently untrustworthy in some way.

"It sounds like you were trying to do a good thing, at least. For what you thought was a good cause."

mask or menace | ic inbox.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

❤️💙

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject