Anya Lehnsherr | Earth 97400 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fridgetothefire) wrote2015-05-17 09:46 pm
fridgetothefire) wrote2015-05-17 09:46 pm
072 ☣ Last night I was a cypress tree
[Video, public]
[Anya looks very tired, but a great deal more put together than last time - except for the crumbling remnants of bone spikes, like the bases of marble columns in Roman ruins, like terrible broken teeth, now almost entirely covered by the admiral's cap.]
Some of you remember the mirror barge, and some of you don't. You can ask your neighbor for the gory details if you want. The point is, the ship was in bad shape. Worse than now. And the other barge was - feeding on it, as far as we could tell, parasitically. The walls were rotting, and the Admiral needed to conserve power to chase the other ship before we were eroded entirely.
There was a warden, then, who'd been on the ship for - four years? Five? Longer than anyone but Arthas, I think. And when I asked her, she said she'd never seen everyone on the barge manage to work together to do anything.
But we did. People volunteered, and wardens agreed to certain unanimous incentives for inmates, and the whole ship, more or less, helped me keep the place in one piece until we could reverse the drain. I....
[She trails off for a moment, then blinks, comes back to herself, scrubs a hand down her face, pops a bottle of advil out of her desk drawer and swallows two dry.]
We all assume we can't work together, that we'll squabble and go our own ways because most of the time, that's what works. But we can. When we have to.
It - takes it out of me, when I dare try to will us to sail straight. When I try to get lost inmates back, there's no exhaustion, no headaches, nothing. So this is something we can affect. We should try to do it together, instead of haphazard and maybe hitting each other with our metaphorical oars.
Everyone who's gotten some of this, if you're willing - and I know there's a lot we don't know, and nobody has to, but if you're willing to try with me - I think we should pick a common goal. Somewhere on early twenty-first century earth would be best, I think, since that seems to be...common, in whatever neighborhood or transdimensional archipelago we're usually traveling through. But the direction doesn't matter so much as long as we can agree on one. And then take it in shifts, to keep ourselves stable and the pressure steady, too.
Thoughts?
[Spam for Pietro]
[A few days after his arrival, she goes to slip a pamphlet under his door, just in case.]
[Anya looks very tired, but a great deal more put together than last time - except for the crumbling remnants of bone spikes, like the bases of marble columns in Roman ruins, like terrible broken teeth, now almost entirely covered by the admiral's cap.]
Some of you remember the mirror barge, and some of you don't. You can ask your neighbor for the gory details if you want. The point is, the ship was in bad shape. Worse than now. And the other barge was - feeding on it, as far as we could tell, parasitically. The walls were rotting, and the Admiral needed to conserve power to chase the other ship before we were eroded entirely.
There was a warden, then, who'd been on the ship for - four years? Five? Longer than anyone but Arthas, I think. And when I asked her, she said she'd never seen everyone on the barge manage to work together to do anything.
But we did. People volunteered, and wardens agreed to certain unanimous incentives for inmates, and the whole ship, more or less, helped me keep the place in one piece until we could reverse the drain. I....
[She trails off for a moment, then blinks, comes back to herself, scrubs a hand down her face, pops a bottle of advil out of her desk drawer and swallows two dry.]
We all assume we can't work together, that we'll squabble and go our own ways because most of the time, that's what works. But we can. When we have to.
It - takes it out of me, when I dare try to will us to sail straight. When I try to get lost inmates back, there's no exhaustion, no headaches, nothing. So this is something we can affect. We should try to do it together, instead of haphazard and maybe hitting each other with our metaphorical oars.
Everyone who's gotten some of this, if you're willing - and I know there's a lot we don't know, and nobody has to, but if you're willing to try with me - I think we should pick a common goal. Somewhere on early twenty-first century earth would be best, I think, since that seems to be...common, in whatever neighborhood or transdimensional archipelago we're usually traveling through. But the direction doesn't matter so much as long as we can agree on one. And then take it in shifts, to keep ourselves stable and the pressure steady, too.
Thoughts?
[Spam for Pietro]
[A few days after his arrival, she goes to slip a pamphlet under his door, just in case.]
no subject
[He manages a crooked smile of that, a bastard's grin, all teeth and no charm, oozes his way inside after her and kicks the door shut behind him. He loves her for all of her right now, her exhaustion and her frankness and her stupid beautiful windowseat. Handing her a bottle, he collapses not on the seat but on the floor in front of it, leaning his head back with a thunk against the wall.]
I feel fucking awful.
You feel fucking awful, Anya?
no subject
She knows who she is, now. She's clear again, and she can see all her ugly fault lines, all the cracks and crevasses. She feels like she's still broken, deep down, doesn't know how long it will take her reassembled shards to knit back together underneath the cast of functionality Morgana managed to grant her.
And now. Pietro, and Rikki, and the impossible demand that she put her mind on the line as a conduit for mysterious powers yet again - but she has to. Because this isn't fixing itself.]
I feel fucking abominable.
[She slumps next to him, takes a grateful swig.]
no subject
[He takes the other bottle - the Campari, as it happens - and drinks, a long slow drink that feels like the end of the world and tastes like fucking cough syrup. When he pulls away from it, it's with a surprised 'ahh', like he's forgotten Campari tastes like shit. (He hasn't. That's why he brought it.)]
Can you believe.
Can you believe, Anya, this bullshit that never fucking ends? I mean, I know you can. You made the rousing speech and everything. But Jesus fucking Christ.
[He squeezes her shoulder with every enunciation, Jesus fucking Christ, and doesn't talk about Zane or Mickey or what he did to himself, or anything that he should be talking about.]
no subject
I knew it was coming.
[She whispers this, a sick, miserable confession.]
Something. Eventually. Arthas told me he'd hurt us, and I said I knew.
[That she wouldn't expect anything less, that she would have done nothing less, in her own old prison; that it was one more thing to love him for. She wasn't lying, is the worst part. She can't even be angry at him, just lost and stunned and struggling, and she hates herself a little for it.]
no subject
[The only thing Cassel didn't know was how successful he'd be.]
[He sighs, squeezes her shoulder again.]
I'd hurt us, too, if I were him.