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

[maced_eggs]

I want to go home. Except I don't know where home is anymore.

[private]

[fridgetothefire]

Wait. Until.

[Anya is usually of the 'get it over with' school of unpleasant undertakings, so this is doubly unusual.]

I'd prefer in person. So I can see it's you.

[She can't imagine trusting this to anyone else.]

[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.]

[private]

[fireincarnate]

Okay.

[She pockets the comm, an then she's drifting into the air, letting her mind guide her.]

[fridgetothefire]

Home is where you build a life.

What life do you want, Mason? Because you've got a lot of people who want to help you get there.

[fridgetothefire]

[There's a bench by the water. She takes slow breaths, lets herself feel the smooth-worn slats and the spray on the air, rubs her arms, feels the faint texture of her scars under her sleeves. This is her body. This is her.]

[fireincarnate]

[Jean lands a few feet away, and even feeling Anya's uncertainty, apprehension, she can't help but grin.

She's here. She's real. She's alive. It's difficult, not to just rush over and embrace her, but there'll be time for that later. Once they've figured everything out.

So she just walks, letting her bags drift out of her arms and float beside her.]

How do you feel? [It's often a useless question, at least diagnostically, but Anya - she's sharply analytical, keenly self aware.]

[videocamera]

["Shutterbug." He sort of gets caught off-guard and smile-frowns at that, because... people don't usually call him names relating to his camera without them being mean. And it's not mean coming from her.]

Amsterdam's kind of... not my thing.

[Yes. He's totally hiding in his room.]

[fridgetothefire]

Odd. A little - unreal. Shuffled, maybe? Not in the sense of having things mixed up in my head, I can remember it all right, or I think I can. But like - god, I don't know. Like rumpled laundry someone threw in the drawer without folding, it fits but it sort of doesn't.

get on deck loser we're going shopping

[fridgetothefire]

Sure it is. Lots of adorable boats and dutch people and eminently filmable things.

Anyway, I need extra hands to run around the hardware store and replace everything we used up the last few months. Come help and I'll turn you lose with some spree money afterward. You can spend it on tech upgrades or stupidly good chocolate if you're not into weed.

[with_my_teacup]

[Riddick runs, when he has to, in the same grim un-winded lightly-sweating miles-on-end way that most humans jog. He's not at a sprint-- he's afraid he'll miss her in the city if he's too focused on speed--but he's moving fast enough to get a few puzzles looks. Attention is a small price to pay right now.

When he sees her--finally, just a flash of her face in a crowd but he knows it like some animals can pick out their young in a sea of other young.]

Anya, I'm on your three, standing under a striped overhang--barber shop, sign's in Dutch.

[fireincarnate]

Like you were remade. [Her gaze is sharper, now, as she looks at Anya - really looks.]

...Do you have all your scars? Your tattoos?

[fridgetothefire]

[She shivers, a tiny bit - there's breeze off the water, after the perpetual indoors of the barge - but holds out her hands with a skewed grin, trying for brave.]

I've even got my blisters from working the miter saw yesterday.

Or. However many days it was.

[fireincarnate]

[Jean reaches out - slowly, carefully - to place her hands over Anya's. Her own are always cool, unless she wills it differently, as cool and smooth as the breeze that brushes them.

Anya's feel like they always have, rough and warm and alive.]

If you were remade - they made an effort to get it right. [The Admiral?]

[fridgetothefire]

[And then she's there, throwing herself onto him for a hug, and she can't shake if she's holding on too tight to move.]

[fridgetothefire]

I don't. I just don't know.

[She grits her teeth, grips Jean's hands but not too tight. There's a gap, or - not a gap any more than a jump cut in film is a gap, smoothly flicking from one frame to another without pause, but that sort of shift, an unrecorded interim perfectly skipped between the maintenance office and the motorboat. But she is, in every perceivable way, precisely herself.]

[with_my_teacup]

[He hugs her like he's trying to wrap his body around her, armor her up with his muscle and bone. He presses his cheek to hers, gets her scent, feels her breathe and her heart beating. He doesn't say any of it, how he was afraid he'd lost her where she couldn't be gotten back, that somehow she'd been consumed like the other barge, something -- that she was gone in a way that left no room for her to be brilliant, a schemer, a survivor .]

[godsays]

I know.

I always do.

I'm glad you're back.

[fridgetothefire]

[She clings and clings, still disoriented, it seems impossible that everything happened and she missed it, impossible that they are still fractured, chasing the lost. She is still chasing the lost. She breathes, the not-quite human feline clean of him, lets the warmth press into her bones, until her calves start to ache where she's on tiptoe just a bit, and then a little longer than that.]

[fridgetothefire]

Thank you, Zane.

[with_my_teacup]

[He stands like that, unmoving and pretty much immobile, for long minutes.]

Okay.

Okay.

Let's get you something to eat. Fix up the blood sugar. I'll catch you up on the details.

[maced_eggs]

[He turns wide, frightened eyes up to Anya, shaking his head]

Love, I don't have a life. Haven't had one in forty years. It's too late. There's nothing left for me.

[youwillgotohell]

Won.

[She's not certain she likes that word, here, but she can't deny that on some level, it fits.]

We're back, at least.

[She doesn't add that they lost some people.]

The Admiral sent us into this city for supplies.

[videocamera]

[It's a good thing she plays the maintenance card because it makes it so much easier for him to agree. It's his job. This is part of his job.

A new camera might be cool, if he can find one.]

... Fine. Okay. Are you-- Where are you?

[myresponsibility]

Technically. And literally, I think. The damage is gone, but we're missing some stuff.