057 ☣ But now am found

[fridgetothefire]

[She feels brittle and stretched, like an old rubber band, achy and shocky. The world isn't quite steady. She blinks open tacky eyelids, sees blue sky instead of read cape, then closes them again, takes carefully counted breaths, tries to center herself in her body until the static clears. She sits up, and realizes dimly that the world really isn't steady. She's in a little motorboat on a charming neighborhood canal of some sort, rocking lightly with the shallow waves. The position of the sun suggests it's afternoon. She doesn't have a hangover but she still feels strange, unreal and full of echoes. Her back aches where she was laying on something - her communicator. Her breath whooshes out as memory rushes in, and she swallows several times, picks it up with hands that shake only slightly.]


[Public, video]

[Anya has messy hair and a drawn expression, carefully tamping down on hope and fear alike.]

...hello, this is Anya, can anyone hear this?



[Private to the Admiral, a little later]

Give me an expanded storage room off the maintenance office and I'll be able to stock up better.

Comments

[with_my_teacup]

Anya.

[He sounds a little angry, but that's not what he's feeling-- it's painful but not bad.]

Been more than a week since I lost track of you and Ben.

[fridgetothefire]

Mom.

[It pops out, reflexive and unprecedented at once, teary with relief and everything else she's been holding back while she tries not to let her mind whizz through the whole gamut of worst case possibilities. She claps her hand over her mouth a second later, then drops it, breaths in, shivery and small.]

I don't remember. Anything. I was - in the office, I think? And then. Here.

Which Ben, is he, what happened?

[ Private ]

[bargemods]

Granted.

[ Private ]

[fridgetothefire]

Thank you.

When everything's packed and sorted, I'm going to need to go looking for Ben.

Unless you can tell me where he is.

[She doesn't expect it; she isn't even angry, not now. It's just the flat truth.]

[dinosize]

Yeah.

[fridgetothefire]

Thank fuck.

Where are you now?

[strangehistorian]

Hello, Anya!

[fridgetothefire]

Hey. Chromie.

Riddick says we lost people - do we know who all yet?

[darknessb4me]

We're paired. Temporarily.

[yes, hello to you too arthas.]

[fridgetothefire]

Oh, fantastic.

[Her sarcasm is less about Arthas himself than her irritation at being given a duty in absentia that she was totally unable to fulfill.]

Riddick let you off the ship, or someone else?

[She assumes he found someone to do it.]

[youwillgotohell]

Yes--

[Morgana fumbles her communicator in the desperation to say something. When the picture steadies again, she exhales a relieved breath.]

You remember, don't you?

[fridgetothefire]

I - yes, I mean, I remember the ship and you and the other ship, but I was just in maintenance, and suddenly we could talk to everyone we lost and then -

- and then nothing.

Riddick says we won but I. I don't remember that.

[godsays]

You came back.

[fridgetothefire]

I don't remember being gone.

[Which is kind of creepy, Zane!!!]

[punched_hitler]

You bet we can.

And it's good to hear from you. Are you okay?

[fridgetothefire]

...I feel like a bean bag chair that got ripped open on the highway and scattered over a couple miles and smushed and run over, and then someone came and collected all the beans and poured them back in and stitched everything up.

Not, like, in a painful way. Just very. Jumbled.

[maced_eggs]

Hello, love. Were you gone? Been difficult keeping track of people 'round here.

[fridgetothefire]

Apparently I was.

[Slightly disgruntled, but it breaks into a watery smile.]

It's really good to see you back.

[myresponsibility]

Just some nerd who might've missed having his buddy around.

[fridgetothefire]

Hey, nerd. Are the walls still standing?

[This is not as rhetorical as she would like.]

voice

[persecutioncomplex]

I hear you. [It's more of a breath than anything else, relief at the fly who stings her into being better buzzing into her ears again, empty rooms being filled, and she doesn't really know how to answer.]

Are you with us?

voice

[fridgetothefire]

I seem to have caught up with you. Or you have with me. Or something like that.

[fireincarnate]

[Jean stumbles, almost dropping groceries.

She keeps her mind open, always - the dynamic thrum of Amsterdam is almost part of her, now - but this is sudden and striking and familiar.

Her communicator flies up from her pocket, and her mind navigates the controls until -

Oh, thank God.]

Anya! [Her smile is achingly relieved.] You - you're a few streets over from me. Are you okay? Do you need anything?

[private]

[fridgetothefire]

...can you, like. Check my head?

[This is not a thing it is comfortable for her to ask. She is afraid. But she's more afraid of what Jean might fight than the vulnerability of her looking.]

I don't. Know where I was or if I'm quite the same person or.

[Put back together right is the thing she keeps thinking, even though she has no evidence she wasn't just slipped from one moment on the ship to another in Amsterdam like a card by sleight-of-hand, no evidence that she was somehow disassembled. Except for the shaky subjective strangeness of her own experience, this morning.]

[videocamera]

I can hear you. Hey.

[He says it without thinking, really, because despite how dull he feels right now there's a little spike of gladness in him that she's back and that's weird enough that he doesn't know what else to say.]

[fridgetothefire]

Hey, shutterbug.

[She's tired and worried and perturbed, but she's glad to see him too.]

Are you hiding in your room right now? By any chance?

[Just yaknow theoretically that might be what you're doing.]