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?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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?”
no subject
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.
no subject
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?