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 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.
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.
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.
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."
"Maybe," Sal hesitantly agrees. She's never really sure of her own actions, but if anyone is wise enough to determine such things then obviously it should be Anathema. Trusting in that, she holds those words close to her heart.
"But enough about how I've screwed things up back home," she says. "What about you?"
She's not really used to asking these kinds of delicate questions; or, well, she was starting to figure it out once. At least before being hurled back into the giant pile of birdshit back home. Now—it's like Anathema said before, months ago. All of these memories of other worlds clashing into one another, lives diverging in different directions.
It's both complicated and annoying, so her need to fiddle around finally wins out. She reaches over the table for the first aid kit, digging around until she grabs hold of a bandaid. Peeling back the paper wrapping, she continues, "I guess not as much time has gone by, but if experience teaches us any fucking thing, it's that you can pack a hell of a lot of disasters in just a few weeks."
Anathema laces her fingers together; moreso to keep her hands to herself and resist the urge to reach out and keep fussing over Sal, at least for just this minute, while she's already working on the band-aid. She bites her lip. Just drinking up the reassuring sight of her; the relief at the fact that she's back, here, to sit with her in the kitchen and fill in the blanks.
And that the blanks hadn't lasted all that long, all things considered.
"Perhaps surprisingly, it's been a pretty quiet couple weeks? I mean, Adam accidentally opened a cursed box and set loose an infestation of magical spiders in the shop, but— that was more benign irritation than world-destroying drama, so I don't really consider it a disaster. Darth Nox opened his museum, you'll probably want to go check that out. I saw some of your—"
A swallow. An uncharacteristic tremble in her voice, a clenching of her throat.
"I saw some of your memories. And I don't really remember how else I filled up the days. It really sucked, Sal." Anathema had been trying to stay crisp, businesslike, warm and capable, but it falls apart a little now. "I really missed you. I was afraid I'd lost you."
Sal is busy pushing up the edge of her shirt, offering a glimpse of — just how good she is at getting scratched up, really, and slapping the bandaid over a messy cut along her abdomen. Realizing now, for the first time since she went peeling out of Cape Canaveral, how much weight she’s lost in those months gone. A lack of comfort and a lack of care, just taught muscle and a collection of wounds both old and new.
She pushes away from this thought at the slight tremor in Anathema’s voice. Sal’s head jerks up, as quick and alert as if she hears a gunshot; but any danger she can find means nothing if the woman she — cares for is giving her a look like that. She has to clench her jaw and will herself to stop getting all weepy-eyed if she has any damn hope of getting through this conversation intact.
Because for all that time spent away, she knows now, and can see how this all has pieced together. Every old friend, lover, enemy made, every person she’s let down or left behind. Sal knows now what she couldn’t offer, that piece of herself that wouldn’t budge, even when the world shifts and sky sets alight; it makes all the sense in the world now, because that piece of her, what’s good and true and bigger than magic, better than machines, and can change there world more than any Relic.
Anathema has it. Maybe she’s had it all along, kept locked up tight in whatever world she came from; it’s only here, in this chaotic, fractious collision of souls that Sal can see it. Understand it. Succumb to that understanding, because what else is there now than to stand up in front of the truth.
No more running.
Clearing her throat in a way that isn’t subtle, because Sal doesn’t want to have to go through this conversation warbling it out like some weepy, two-coin opera actor, she reaches over and takes Anathema’s hand. She wants that reassurance just as much, needs to know, with certainty, that this isn’t some cruel dream. Something that’ll disappear again in a moment’s notice, when she wants nothing more than to be right here, in this kitchen, with this witch who’s trying damn hard to be strong about this.
“You won’t lose me,” she says, in that certain way Sal does when she needs to fight her way through an alley, or a barroom, or even a whole army. The certainty that, whatever the odds, whatever the impossibility, there’s nothing and no one that can change her mind. (While her heart is still racing, racing in her chest, and a faint tremor makes her hand momentarily lose its grip.)
“Anathema,” Sal says, cherishing it as she always does, “during all of those months I spent back there, none of it felt...right. I’d lie awake sometimes and I couldn’t place it. And maybe I would’ve liked to take down those corrupt people in power out there, just to say that I’ve finally done something right, something you’d maybe be proud of but —”
She takes a deep breath, tries to keep eye contact.
“But I know this is where I belong and who I belong with. And any good I can do to help people, I want you to be right there with me when I do it. Besides, I’m pretty fucking amazing at killing cursed spiders, if ever that shit comes up again.” There’s a frown set suddenly, comically, as if the realization is only now dawning on her. “What the fuck was Adam even thinking?”
"Right? He's a dummy, but I suppose I'll keep him around anyway. I like him a bit."
It's a piece of humour, an attempt at levity to try to knuckle through this moment. Anathema hasn't ever had to go through this before. Every relationship before had been fleeting, temporary, a blip on the radar when she had something far more preoccupying looming over her head, the possible end of the entire world to deal with. And then Newt had been— preordained, but in the end little more than a distraction.
Her fingers flex within Sal's hand, fingers curling in on themselves and then around hers, tightening. "And I love you. You know that, right?"
Her dark eyes are riveted on Sal's, her face solemn and frayed around the edges. Anathema doesn't shy away from the truth or saying how she feels; never has.
Sal's familiar with all kinds of truth, and all the wrong kinds of love. But this isn't the kind of honesty that's barbed in thorns, a love that hurts so much to touch; never has been. She knows, because she's learned so much about Anathema in these past months, that it's safe to reach out for this, and unlike in her old nightmares, she won't be left to fall.
She says I love you before she has a chance to second guess herself. The words tumble out barely a breath after Anathema's own confession and her blue eyes fill with so many emotions. Standing triumphant, however, over all of them is love.
There's a sudden lump in her throat that she forces down again (nope, no, fuck that), and without something else clever to say, Sal leans down to where they're holding hands. She gently kisses the back of Anathema's hand, and it's as much of a promise as her words. Solemn, reverent, a vow being made in the quiet space of a warm kitchen, a secret moment for only the pair of them to share. Saying I love you again, pressing the words softly against Anathema's knuckles, she slowly sits up.
She looks almost...well, can someone with a scar slashed across their cheek look bashful?
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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.
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I broke some of yourI 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.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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"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).
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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."
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"But enough about how I've screwed things up back home," she says. "What about you?"
She's not really used to asking these kinds of delicate questions; or, well, she was starting to figure it out once. At least before being hurled back into the giant pile of birdshit back home. Now—it's like Anathema said before, months ago. All of these memories of other worlds clashing into one another, lives diverging in different directions.
It's both complicated and annoying, so her need to fiddle around finally wins out. She reaches over the table for the first aid kit, digging around until she grabs hold of a bandaid. Peeling back the paper wrapping, she continues, "I guess not as much time has gone by, but if experience teaches us any fucking thing, it's that you can pack a hell of a lot of disasters in just a few weeks."
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And that the blanks hadn't lasted all that long, all things considered.
"Perhaps surprisingly, it's been a pretty quiet couple weeks? I mean, Adam accidentally opened a cursed box and set loose an infestation of magical spiders in the shop, but— that was more benign irritation than world-destroying drama, so I don't really consider it a disaster. Darth Nox opened his museum, you'll probably want to go check that out. I saw some of your—"
A swallow. An uncharacteristic tremble in her voice, a clenching of her throat.
"I saw some of your memories. And I don't really remember how else I filled up the days. It really sucked, Sal." Anathema had been trying to stay crisp, businesslike, warm and capable, but it falls apart a little now. "I really missed you. I was afraid I'd lost you."
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She pushes away from this thought at the slight tremor in Anathema’s voice. Sal’s head jerks up, as quick and alert as if she hears a gunshot; but any danger she can find means nothing if the woman she — cares for is giving her a look like that. She has to clench her jaw and will herself to stop getting all weepy-eyed if she has any damn hope of getting through this conversation intact.
Because for all that time spent away, she knows now, and can see how this all has pieced together. Every old friend, lover, enemy made, every person she’s let down or left behind. Sal knows now what she couldn’t offer, that piece of herself that wouldn’t budge, even when the world shifts and sky sets alight; it makes all the sense in the world now, because that piece of her, what’s good and true and bigger than magic, better than machines, and can change there world more than any Relic.
Anathema has it. Maybe she’s had it all along, kept locked up tight in whatever world she came from; it’s only here, in this chaotic, fractious collision of souls that Sal can see it. Understand it. Succumb to that understanding, because what else is there now than to stand up in front of the truth.
No more running.
Clearing her throat in a way that isn’t subtle, because Sal doesn’t want to have to go through this conversation warbling it out like some weepy, two-coin opera actor, she reaches over and takes Anathema’s hand. She wants that reassurance just as much, needs to know, with certainty, that this isn’t some cruel dream. Something that’ll disappear again in a moment’s notice, when she wants nothing more than to be right here, in this kitchen, with this witch who’s trying damn hard to be strong about this.
“You won’t lose me,” she says, in that certain way Sal does when she needs to fight her way through an alley, or a barroom, or even a whole army. The certainty that, whatever the odds, whatever the impossibility, there’s nothing and no one that can change her mind. (While her heart is still racing, racing in her chest, and a faint tremor makes her hand momentarily lose its grip.)
“Anathema,” Sal says, cherishing it as she always does, “during all of those months I spent back there, none of it felt...right. I’d lie awake sometimes and I couldn’t place it. And maybe I would’ve liked to take down those corrupt people in power out there, just to say that I’ve finally done something right, something you’d maybe be proud of but —”
She takes a deep breath, tries to keep eye contact.
“But I know this is where I belong and who I belong with. And any good I can do to help people, I want you to be right there with me when I do it. Besides, I’m pretty fucking amazing at killing cursed spiders, if ever that shit comes up again.” There’s a frown set suddenly, comically, as if the realization is only now dawning on her. “What the fuck was Adam even thinking?”
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It's a piece of humour, an attempt at levity to try to knuckle through this moment. Anathema hasn't ever had to go through this before. Every relationship before had been fleeting, temporary, a blip on the radar when she had something far more preoccupying looming over her head, the possible end of the entire world to deal with. And then Newt had been— preordained, but in the end little more than a distraction.
Her fingers flex within Sal's hand, fingers curling in on themselves and then around hers, tightening. "And I love you. You know that, right?"
Her dark eyes are riveted on Sal's, her face solemn and frayed around the edges. Anathema doesn't shy away from the truth or saying how she feels; never has.
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She says I love you before she has a chance to second guess herself. The words tumble out barely a breath after Anathema's own confession and her blue eyes fill with so many emotions. Standing triumphant, however, over all of them is love.
There's a sudden lump in her throat that she forces down again (nope, no, fuck that), and without something else clever to say, Sal leans down to where they're holding hands. She gently kisses the back of Anathema's hand, and it's as much of a promise as her words. Solemn, reverent, a vow being made in the quiet space of a warm kitchen, a secret moment for only the pair of them to share. Saying I love you again, pressing the words softly against Anathema's knuckles, she slowly sits up.
She looks almost...well, can someone with a scar slashed across their cheek look bashful?