069 ☣ hair dissipating like smoke

[fridgetothefire]

[Voice]

[Anya is singing, a silly french folksong for children, meant to teach words for parts of the body. But her voice is wavering, sometimes fast and insistent, sometimes tentative and quiet, all of it transposed into an eerie minor key.


[Open spam]

[She sits on deck, still singing, going through the expanding verses over and over. She has acquired - and killed, with one hard snap of the neck, although her ripped and stained sleeves show she was made to bleed for it - one of the part-velociraptor chickens that have colonized the otherwise changeable world of the enclosure. She has, as per the song, plucked off all its feathers, pulled off its beak, put out its eyes. She is scraping away the scaly skin beneath the down with one of her little black knives, seems totally absorbed in the task.]


[OOC Note: Anya has, for various reasons, but mostly immediately due to one exorcism that went badly awry, lost her grip on sanity. Anyone with psychic or magical senses should definitely pick up that this is not a purely psychological break - she has a lot of bad, bad mojo that has broken loose in her skull.]

Comments

[voice]

[rhapsody_in]

[No one else sits around singing French songs while sounding as if they want to do a Lucia di Lammermoor impression instead. Bleu's curiosity is immediately piqued, and she sings a questioning, maybe mocking, lyric back.]

Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui as le cœur gai.
Tu as le cœur à rire… moi je l’ai à pleurer.

[voice]

[fridgetothefire]

[She laughs. Because she is bid to laugh, or because it is very funny, for someone to call her a joyous heart. She doesn't know herself, only that the laughter is happening to her, high peeling cackles crawling up her throat like ants, trickling and tickling, scattered on puffs of her breath.]

[voice]

[rhapsody_in]

Aren't you a doll. [Bleu is amused, listening to Anya laugh as if she's tracing a symphony's motifs. This has to be insanity. In and of itself that doesn't worry her.]

[voice]

[fridgetothefire]

Crack it open, there's a smaller doll inside.

[She makes clucking noises with her tongue, clack clack clack, for opening matroyshka.]

[spam]

[rickitikitarr]

[He spots her on deck, and immediately susses that all is not right. He'd been planning to return that taser, but...

Well. He crouches down in front of her, asks, quietly and firmly;]

Anya?

[spam]

[fridgetothefire]

[She curls in on herself, slow and subtle, just a little, as he gets close, eyes flicking up to him when he says her name, expression shuttered and shadowed, a little reproachful. She leans closer, then, puts a fingertip on his lips, eyes dark and wide and solemn.]


Shhhhh. Don't ever tell your true name.

[spam]

[rickitikitarr]

Oh darling, don't I know it.

[Settling down next to her, watching her carefully.]

Did something happen?

[spam]

[fridgetothefire]

[She traces the edge of his face, cheek, jawline, peering at him very seriously. Then her eyes drop to the mangled avian carcass again. She digs around in it, rough and impatient, dog-like tugs, then in a few deft cuts pares free the wishbone, and holds it out to him.]

A gift. No tricks.

Except one.

[spam]

[rickitikitarr]

Which one? Explain for me, you know I'm hopeless.

[Lacing his little finger around the other side of the bone, obligingly, wondering if this is a thing in her world.]

I think we need to let this dry out, first. It won't do a thing for us right now.

[spam]

[fridgetothefire]

Keep what you take.

[Doleful, almost sorry. Instead of pulling, she just lets it go. The wish is his responsibility, now.]

[Spam]

[youwillgotohell]

[The song puts her on edge, and though she draws breath to ask after her friend, she decides rather to ask in person. It doesn't take long to find her: and when she sees what Anya is caught up in, her brow knits slowly together.]

Dinner?

[She moves to sit beside Anya, gathering her skirts.]

[Spam]

[fridgetothefire]

[She stares at Morgana for a moment, guileless, inquisitive, then cracks open the heavy slab of the breastbone in one strike, slices out the red little heart, offers it warm, her arm poised like she might hold out a daisy.]

[Spam]

[youwillgotohell]

[Well that's unexpected. Morgana watches, eyes following each stroke of the knife, and she stares at the heart for a long, silent moment.]

You don't want it?

[She's unnerved, and working hard to hide it.]

[Spam]

[fridgetothefire]

It's small to share.

[Maybe not too small, but small. Such is the way of hearts.]

[Spam]

[youwillgotohell]

[Morgana's mouth curls up at the corner in a wry smile.]

Hearts are rarely too small.

[ Spam ]

[warisart]

[The gore doesn't bother Ben; he's not even entirely surprised to find Anya in the midst of the activity, not really. What catches his attention first is the location - no, what catches his attention first is the scent of blood out in the open, and then that it's coming from her; then he wonders if this serves a purpose and moves closer - and then what concerns him is the wounds on her arms. Not only for their existence, but for the uncontrolled mingle of her blood with the chicken's. He doesn't register the song at all, though the part of him intimately familiar with insanity prickles to life.

He knows something is wrong because he knows Anya. He has been watching for it for days, ever since he failed to notice it in Abigail, but this was not gradual. She was fine this morning, or as fine as they have been since last November, which begs a little exception. He approaches from the side, crouches down beside her, unafraid - of her, anyway.]

Anya? Are you waiting here for someone?

[ Spam ]

[fridgetothefire]

No. No. No.


[Tense and miserable, flinching slightly from whatever awareness the question brought up. She is not - no one is coming, or no one she wants to come. No.]

[ Spam ]

[warisart]

[He hesitates, unsure what the tone means, if he should reassure or further question. Part of him becomes instantly wary, and the line of it stretches both ways when he tests it: protective, instantly, if anyone she doesn't want to come should approach. Unnerved, because he recognizes this, but not enough to name it. Yet.

His eyes drop to her hands, the mess of them and the dead bird, then raise back to her face.]

What's happened? Anya?

[ Spam ]

[fridgetothefire]

Got company. Got -

[There aren't voices, it's not a creature, not with the stamp on her arm. But it feels like company, malevolent and sizzling and foreign. An invasive weed she planted herself, abruptly well-fertilized, bursting through the ground of her, catching at her ankles and her hair, burrs, tall stalks, easy to get lost in.

She shivers hard, although the temperature hasn't changed, wraps her arms around herself.]

- verming. Termites eat a house. You have to ask a vampire in. Unless you don't.

[ Spam ]

[warisart]

[Ben shivers, too, although his is imperceptible and he does not react to it. It's the way she almost answered his question but not quite, the way she hasn't looked at him at all, nor said his name. Small things that most would take for granted but that he notices, glaring, in their absence as much as he does, gleaming, in their presence.

He knows she was helping with the Sha. He doesn't understand what that means, not really, has watched the Barge swallowed whole by fairytale threats being ordered into reality and then bludgeoned to death however they might; but he remembers everyone acting strange and he remembers Dillon saying it was intruders.

He reaches for her hand.] Anya, come with me. If you've been hurt somehow, we need to find out so we can turn it back.

[ Private : Voice ]

[surfaceshine]

[It takes Dean three days to feel steady enough - and motivated enough - to return for work. It's awkward as fuck, everyone is worn out, no one but Luna talks. None of the inmate crew is bothered by this: they know their work and they know how to do it with a minimum of communication.

It's as he's leaving that the warden makes the comment that has him opening a line to Anya later. He missed the initial transmission: he was asleep. He wants to go back to sleep, but first:]

If you weren't going to do it, you shouldn't have said anything. I didn't ask you to cover me.

[ Private : Voice ]

[fridgetothefire]

Don't ask questions.

[Bristly, her mouth twisted up, not meeting his eye, staring askew to the side.]

[ Private : Voice ]

[surfaceshine]

[Which, in turn, makes him bristle as well where previously he was only annoyed.]

Bullshit. You're the one always up in my face. I didn't even start this.

[ Private : Voice ]

[fridgetothefire]

You said. You said. Told me.

Can you just do it.

[A mean tilted smile, a bitter inward-curving thing.]

Like a challenge.

[ Private : Voice ]

[surfaceshine]

[This is enough to draw him up short, abrupt but not comedic. He is still wary, still suspicious, but suddenly less certain of the ground on which he was standing.]

...are we talking about the same thing?