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]

Nah. I stayed clear.

Oh, but I missed you. I missed this place. Even if I hate it some days, I missed the fuckin' barge.

[fridgetothefire]

I hate it sometimes, too.

[A weird confession, painful and pinched, because it's home, it's the best home she's had in fifteen years. But it's a hard place, sometimes, even for someone who suits it as well as she does.]

It's okay to feel both. It's - crazy and extraordinary and. Well, you know.

I missed you too. The other Mason was awful.

[maced_eggs]

He's not me. He doesn't deserve being here. Or maybe he does, I'm not sure how that works, really.

Can we never do that again?

[fridgetothefire]

I usually say it's not about deserving. But I don't think he belonged here.

[There wasn't anything in him that wanted to change, anything that would benefit from the barge's pressure or benefit anyone else.]

I damn well hope we don't.

[maced_eggs]

...I've got to fucking graduate now. Don't I?

[fridgetothefire]

Guess so.

[Smiling, ducked down. She doesn't feel like he has to, not any more than she's always hoped he would, but if this is something that will help him put pressure on himself, she's not going to contradict it.]

[maced_eggs]

He makes it so you have to. That last month, that was worse'n all the years of being a reaper put together.

Fucking hell..

[fridgetothefire]

Sounds awful.

[And, you know, he can vent at her if he wants.]

[maced_eggs]

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

[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.

[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.

[fridgetothefire]

Neither have I, Mason. I died in the sixties. You got here a little more circuitously than me, but - all the same.


You don't have to go back where you came from, you know. There wasn't anything left for us, not where we were. That's why they call it a second chance. Or seventh, or - that's not the part that matters.

[maced_eggs]

But then I wouldn't be with the people I like.

[fridgetothefire]

You know, we're not all gonna stay in the same place.

[Sad but true. Barge attrition has taken a lot from Anya.]

But I'm pretty sure there's a few who'd love to have you around wherever they end up going.

[maced_eggs]

I've stayed in the same place for forty years. And I've been fucking it up for just that long.

[fridgetothefire]

Were you trying to change, for most of that forty years?

[maced_eggs]

Fuck no. I liked being the way I was.

[fridgetothefire]

But you weren't especially happy, were you. Not all together.

[maced_eggs]

I was too drunk to know what was all together and what wasn't.

Undead means being broken, Anya love. Not all together.

[fridgetothefire]

Why?

[maced_eggs]

Because we're not truly living and we haven't truly moved on to the afterlife. We're stuck in the inbetween. Don't belong to either world. It's like being a ghost.