068 ☣ cindery, nonexistent, radiant

[fridgetothefire]

[Video]

[She's posting from the floor of the maintenance office, where she is on a tarp in the middle of a mess, boxes and sponges and bits of felt and ash and mutilated pens scattered all around her. She has smears of blue and black ink on her face and hands and bathrobe she's wearing - which, when she turns, is open in a deep V-wedge to keep her mostly decent without touching the red, fist-sized external heart now clutching steadily in the center of her chest. She tries to brush her hair out of her face, and adds to the ink smudges.]

If you're fighting the parasites, or demons, or whatever they are, come by the office. I made stamps with the anti-possession sigil on them. They're a little haphazard, but they'll work. Once you clear someone, stamp them. I don't want anyone getting reinfected.


[Open Spam, wibbly time through through the general throwdown arc]

[Anya is also running around exorcising people herself, knocking on doors, poking anyone she finds to see if they'll snarl or flinch. She's weary and bloody and bruised, after the first one or two, and she could probably use some backup to help fight the monsters once she forces them to manifest with the rituals Dean taught her.]


[Spam for Ben, backdated a wee bit to before the sha throwdown kicked into high gear]

[With Dean shuffled off to the kitchens, Andrew gone, and Stephen and Tig in comas, no is left in maintenance to notice Anya not turning up to work but Peter, and he won't hassle her about it. So when she wakes up to find a fresh heart tucked between and a little below her breasts, arteries and veins sliding back under the skin, the raw muscle wet and twitch, rabbit-fast with her shock, she decides that today is a good day to hide in her room and eat jerky and crackers and do nothing and see no one.

Until, of course, he comes to check on her, and her door opens for him, just like it always does.]

Comments

[darknessb4me]

How can you protect someone from possession with a stamp?

[fridgetothefire]

How can you do anything with any magic? It's a sigil. The protection is in the symbology of it. The ink gets absorbed into the skin, imbues meaning into the boundary of the body - I don't know a ton of the theory, but it works.

It's not a long-term solution, but it can last us until we've cleared these things out.

[Action!]

[mistconduct]

[Still healing his jaw, Chris sits in his room when Anya's knock sounds at his door. Wearily, he gets up and wanders over to the door]

Mmmph?

[Action!]

[fridgetothefire]

Chris, it's me, open the door.

[She sounds tired, more than anything.]

[Action!]

[mistconduct]

[A pause, as Chris begins to unlock the door, opening it up]

I riddent riss of 'en.

[Translation: I didn't piss off Ben]

[Action!]

[fridgetothefire]

I'm not here because I'm mad at you.

[She eels in as soon as there's enough space, hefting a heavy hand-held drill with the largest drill bit she has attached, the one for boring anchor holes in concrete, or anything else.]

You're confirmed as infected.

[Action!]

[mistconduct]

'UCK!

[Chris reels back, looking startled. He drops down on his bed and scrambles for the gun tucked underneath]

'ut uhm UCK, Aya?!

[Translation: What the fuck, Anya?!]

[Action!]

[fridgetothefire]

[Sorry, she grins. Manages not to actually laugh, though.]

Sit the fuck down. This is for the monster thing, not you. There's a ritual to force it out and take its own form.

[Action!]

[mistconduct]

Ut mons'er thing?!

[He gives an annoyed huff through his jaw wired shut, scowling]

[Action!]

[fridgetothefire]

The one you're infected with that's been making you wonder if you should just hate yourself, without any actual self-awareness or proportionality.

I said sit. You'll feel better in a minute, I promise.

[warisart]

[The dining hall is full of passengers showing up with extreme and impossible body modifications. There is a time when Ben would have taken one look at them and known them for Nomlies with absolute certainty, would have attacked them, maybe killed them. Even once he graduated, there would have been the urge to speed his pulse and slide adrenaline into his system like a needle into a vein, painful but not by enough to matter.

Today he just stared at them and moved back into the kitchen; there's too much to do and he feels the anxiety scrabble for a handhold where much greater problems have already taken them all but that's as far as it gets. He avoids them and he finishes his task list and he leaves the kitchen for the day. Later, he fails to save Abigail and he fails to kill the man who killed her, and he knows he was right: there are greater problems in his life now than monsters that he didn't make up, but that he made real.

When he can do nothing further in the infirmary he comes here, and when he looks up from closing the door he sees something else that isn't possible. It's not like the picture on the card his brother held out to him years ago, begging answers, begging sense; it's messier, and more delicate, and real. He blinks, just once, slowly - and then speaks in a very small, very faintly trembling voice,]

I can see your heart.

[He should be concerned, he thinks, but his nerves are too frayed and numb for that; what he feels instead is that maybe he is finally once more insane.]

[fridgetothefire]

...that's real.

[She's not sure if this needs to be said or not. But it's eerie enough for her, and he looks - something. Not shattered. Stricken, perhaps.]

I'd cover it, but it's. Raw. Sorry.

[warisart]

[Covering it wouldn't make it go away, anyway, he thinks to tell her but doesn't; not stricken, not shattered, not eerie. A touch unnerved. The doubt of the devout that are willing to believe in miracles but have seen no evidence of them.

Not that he hasn't seen evidence of this particular miracle. Just never anything so blatant.

(He reminds himself that that miracle was one he made up again, and again, and again, but the back of his throat still itches to believe.)]

Does it hurt?

[fridgetothefire]

Only if I'm not careful.

[It's in synch with her normal heart, a low echo, a little faster than her usual resting rate, a prickle of nebulous fear. She doesn't know exactly what's happening or how to navigate it, only that it means a staggering amount.]

[warisart]

[If he listens hard, he can hear that, hear the slightly off, syncopated rhythm of both hearts as they continually catch up to one another and then fall apart, catch up and fall apart.

He does, for a few long moments, because it's soothing. Even when he tells himself he needs to step back now, that it's just the flood, it doesn't mean anything other than what it does, that Anya is affected and they need to make a contingency plan for how to navigate it, how to meet her responsibilities, how to avoid someone else taking advantage of it. He wonders if it's struck, if she'll die or if her own heart will be sufficient.

But falling the other way pulls more strongly; wanting to take it as a sign, wanting to love her again for being something that they both have to know she isn't. He has plenty of reasons to love her. She doesn't have to be a goddess. But when he draws in a breath to ask another question, to ask what she needs him to do, the weight of everything else presses into the space just a little bit more and his breath hitches.

Everything in his chest, his throat, his head feels like it's constricting, and he waits for it to loosen again, draws another short, hoarse breath when it doesn't; when he finally pushes breath back out, his vision is blurring. He wants so badly to ask her to just tell him what to do, to fold quietly and gratefully into that kind of willing and unthinking obedience, and knows how unfair it is to ask it of her.

But he's fighting back against too much else right now and his next inhale is as choked as the previous, thicker.]

We should... we should... [He shakes his head. He doesn't know what they should.]

[fridgetothefire]

It's okay. It will be.

[She doesn't know exactly what she's assuring him of, only that she wants to reassure, and that she doesn't want to do whatever she should, doesn't want to go clean blood off another stairwell landing or build anything or fight anyone, not now, not yet, not when she still feels sensitive and scared and light-headed all at once, not when Ben is here, looking like that, when all she wants is to stay with him.]

[warisart]

[It takes him a moment, but he does nod. Nods again, swallows, and breathes out wetly.

He doesn't so much decide to move, his eyes flicking side to side, to her face - not quite her eyes but her mouth, her cheeks, the space where her neck and jaw meet - back to the extra heart where he always lingers just a moment; but he certainly can't decide to leave. A part of him wants to, wants to shrink back into the wilderness away from everything he doesn't understand, wants to hide in the dark corners of moldering buildings overrun by vines and vermin that are not afraid of him, but he doesn't really want to. He wants to stay close. He wants to be told what to do.

But it will be okay. It is. So he moves, at first without thinking, but when he notices himself doing so he decides deliberately to sit close, to agree that way, to see if goddesses are warm like humans are; he nudges this last thought a bit further away from the others when he notices it, doesn't dismiss it but tries not to allow it entry either, fails but acknowledges that. He sits down right beside her, close enough to feel the shiver of her breath, that his own pulse muddies the rhythm of her dual hearts.]

Jack asked... [He doesn't remember everything reliably, doesn't remember it always in order, but most of what happened at Manticore is forever imbued into his memory. He remembers the breathing and heartbeats of his unit pressing around him, the weight of their confusion, their eagerness to understand.]

You can see her heart. Zack... said she was beautiful. And Max wanted to know who she was.

She'd watch over us. [He leans, ever so slightly, into the human solidity of Anya, knows they are separate, knows it down to his bones, has to, has to, but they blur together when he closes his eyes against the sting in them and breathes in. His words before had the vague softness of memory; now he aims them more solidly at her instead:] She'll watch over us.

[fridgetothefire]

I can do that.

[It sounds like a child's promise in her mouth, tremulous and a tiny bit petulant, Anya at three years old getting dressed in her winter layers or crawling into the little chicken coop for eggs, telling her indulgent father I can do that all by myself! like so many children before and after her. An aspirational promise, hopeful of being trusted with the opportunity, nervous of the weight.

She can't make everything turn out fine. But she can watch over him. Wants to, for the rest of their lives.

She doesn't know if it's the right thing to say, or if there is a right thing to say, if she should be quashing this. But it's already firmly planted in liminal space by the barge's caprice, the lines between her and Her blurred with every soft thudding beat, and she wants so badly to be enough.

She leans toward him too, wraps an arm gingerly around his shoulders, approving, welcoming. Echoes herself, in the way that is meant to sound like a confident reaffirmation but generally sounds like the speaker needs to convince herself.]

I can do that.

Spam - wibbly time, present-dated-ish

[takeyouapart]

[Not long after his exorcism, Merlin reviews the network he's been neglecting, and goes down to the maintenance office for what seems like an obvious precaution. He does not want to be reinfected, thank you, and likewise anyone he's able to help while this is being cleared up.]

Anya...?

Spam - wibbly time, present-dated-ish

[fridgetothefire]

Hi.

[She's cleaning off some of the ink with a damp rag, and she looks exhausted - exorcism is more than just saying the words. All the strength and will in you gets pitted against a thing made of malevolence and feasting, a thing that does not want to obey.]

Re: Spam - wibbly time, present-dated-ish

[takeyouapart]

Hi.

[He crosses the threshold. First things first; she seems like the kind of person who prefers pragmatism.]

Do you have any stamps left?

[fridgetothefire]

[She waves him over.]

Yeah. You've been cleared? Pull your sleeve up.

[takeyouapart]

[He obeys her automatically.]

Do you know if anyone else needs it? I can help.

[fridgetothefire]

[She stamps him briskly on the back of his arm, where the skin wears off slower.]

There's a handful of people - do you know if your magic can pinpoint these things? Or just make me less tired?

[She sounds more like begging that she meant to, but she thinks Morgana did that for her once. She probably has more names waiting on her comm now. She takes a breath and tries to compose herself, gathers a rough stamp and inkpad.]

Here, there should probably be one in the infirmary.

[takeyouapart]

Thank you.

[He accepts the tools and looks Anya over. She looks a bit bruised, certainly worse for wear.]

I could heal you. Maybe do something about the tiredness as well. And - I can drive those things out and kill them, if there's more out there.