fridgetothefire | 009 ☣ Private Messages + Zero spam

009 ☣ Private Messages + Zero spam

[Private text to Lua, Ben, and Alex, with a voice version sent of the same message sent to Cass]

I have a decent stockpile of non-perishable food, bottled water, and an extensive first aid kit in my cabin, 5-13. It's in the cupboards under the window seat. You've all got access. Take it if you need it.

[Private text to Pietro]

Are you busy?

[Private voice to Erik]

If you're not dying, talk to me.

[Despite the demand, her voice is strained, shaky, raspy. She's not going to cry, but she's already been screaming tonight.]

[Zero Spam - arrival - OTA]

She sprawls onto the floor of her cell with a thud, off-balance from the sudden shift in velocity, her hair in a wild mess as though she were caught in a windstorm, her face shocked, her breath coming in shallow gasps. After a few moments of stunned stillness, she drags herself to a corner and curls into as small a space as she can. Keeping her eyes open, She focuses on a point on the far wall, counting her breaths as they slow, trying to figure out what on earth to do next.

[Zero spam - later - OTA]

She's pacing, with long, mathematically precise strides, a look of furious concentration on her face. She's standing rigidly upright, taking up more space than usual, exhausting the confines of her cell. Pained flinches twitch across her face but she doesn't let it break her stride. Sweat trickles down her face but she only brushes it out of her eyes, refusing to even strip off her overshirt. She can see the fire, feel it, hear the jeering. But her body isn't damaged, isn't small enough, doesn't fit into the horrors of memory. She moves and it responds. Step-step-turn, step-step-turn, step-step-turn.

[Zero spam - some other time - OTA]

She's shivering hard, but it's better than the heat. She's learned that practicing her drills to keep warm - anything strenuous enough to get her short of breath - will lead to visions of Castiel choking her again, struggling uselessly while her vision blurred black, caught in a limbo of dying and not quite getting there.

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[He doesn't mind the demand, not when he hears the tone of her voice.]

I'm not dying. Where are you?

Zero. I just - I saw him, my father was here and he hates me, please -

[Ugh. Ugh, Anya. :c] I'm c--

[wait maybe that is not best, miserable pause.] Do you want me there?

Just, can you just talk to me? Your voice is different enough and, you're real but he won't stop screaming.

All right.

[But. What does he say.] He's not real. He's gone, Anya. He can't hurt you.

You'll be out of there soon. [She will, even if he has to rip the place apart B(]

He's dead, he can't. But it's true, it's all things he really said. He's never going to not hate me ever again. I ruined everything.

[All his plans. Most days she can be proud of it, but it's hard right now.]

He didn't deserve you. He was a monster, Anya. He was a poor excuse for a man. [God, this is hard, and he's trying so carefully to keep his voice level.]

I'm glad he's dead.

[She doesn't disagree with any of it. But part of her will never stop wishing he'd loved her.]

It runs in the family.

[It's mumbled and cracked, and she grinds the heels of her palms into her eyes. She wants to scream at her father to shut up but it won't help, it'll just mean she's given in to the prison.]

Let's talk about something else.

Edited 2013-03-31 01:21 (UTC)

You're not a monster. [And God, he sounds - he sounds sad, and he's trying hard not to. He knows what feeling like a monster is like.]

All right. Tell me - your favorite food. Your favorite flowers. Tell me about you.

Roast hedgehog. Sternhyazinthen.

[She doesn't remember the English word for it, but he'd probably recognize the German better, if he knows the tiny alpine flower at all.]

You didn't. [Get married.] Go to Ukraine, like him. Where did you go?

[He nods to himself, silent; he can't think of the English, either.] Good choice.

[And there's another pause, because that is a hard story and it hits very close to home, right now. But she's suffering, and his suffering isn't prominent, not now, anyway. He'll manage. He'll find a way to manage.]

I traveled. Spent years learning to hunt Nazis. I spent longer years hunting them.

[Part of her - the part that bothered to ask at first, the part perfectly willing to use her own pain to find the answers she wants - thinks about pressing the question. But he's helping her, and she can hear the faint reluctance, the strain. Why can't your kind manage anything, her father bellows, and she imagines driving broken glass into his eye.]

Tell me a story. It doesn't have to be real.

A story. [For a moment, he can't remember any stories. Did he ever know any? But abruptly, he remembers one his mother once told.]

Once upon a time, [Because that's how these things are supposed to start, aren't they,] there was a rabbi. He lived in Poland with his wife and three daughters. The girls grew up well; the oldest had a talent as a seamstress. The middle girl had a beautiful singing voice. Only the third girl, Mireleh, had no special talent. Still, the rabbi loved her all the same.

He knew he loved his daughters, but he did not know how they loved him. So he asked: of his oldest daughter, he asked, "how much do you love me?" And she replied, "I love you as much as diamonds." He asked his second daughter the same, and she said, "Father, I love you as much as gold and silver." But when he asked Mireleh, she said, "I love you the way meat loves salt."

The rabbi was hurt. "What," he said, "you love me no more than salt?" He was reckless, and angry, and forgot that this was a daughter whom he loved: he told her to leave, and never come back.

She fled, as hurt as her father; she had never meant to insult him. While she wandered, she came across an old man seated on a rock; he was kind, and told her to dry her eyes. Then he told her to follow the path east, to Rabbi ben Yitzhak's home. There, she joined their house as a maid, and sometimes a cook. She worked there for several years. The rabbi's son - I don't remember-- [Whatever, he'll make it up.] --Joshua, fell in love with Mireleh. At their wedding, nearly all the city was invited - including Mireleh's family, who have missed her all this time. At the wedding feast, Mireleh served her father's dinner herself; he didn't recognize her, with the veil she still wore. And when he ate, he exclaimed about how terrible it was, how tasteless and bland. He wanted to pay a fortune to bring them better food.

Mireleh took off her veil, then, and finally told him that meat not only needs salt, it loves salt, and that he was willing to trade silver, gold, and diamonds - for salt.

He understood what he hadn't years ago, and cried, and begged her forgiveness. They lived - they lived happily ever after. [That's how you're supposed to end, right? He's silent for a moment, listening for Anya's breathing, just to know she's still there and all right.]

I'm not a very good story teller. I think I forgot a part.

[She's there, and her breathing is soft, a little shaky, but steady. She feels small and heartbroken. Her father used to tell her stories too, before the fire, although never such neat ones; her three-year-old self was too prone to the narrative insertion of magic frogs and pink woodpeckers and the voices of passing clouds. She misses it so much, and Erik isn't as good at it, his voice doesn't hit quite the same rumbling register, his cadences choppy with awkwardness, no silly accents for the different characters. But he's doing it anyway, just the same, and part of her adores him for it. The story itself hurts, personal and clean and incisively sharp, like a knife, like a greenstick fracture, an unloved child who was right, who could be okay. It feels like a gulp of freezing mountain air in the winter, overwhelming but somehow good, fresh. Her father's growling castigation trails away, and she doesn't know if it's because she wants to hear him now, in a useless and terrible way, or if concentrating on Erik's story and the contrast and the reality of him was enough to dislodge the apparition.]

No, that was. That was good, thank you.

Edited 2013-03-31 03:19 (UTC)

You're welcome. [He sounds almost embarrassed, like he doesn't think he ought to be thanked for that, but he doesn't try to wave it off.] I'm not sure I have any other stories. [No decent ones, anyway.]

I'm sure you do.

[Everyone has stories, decent or not.]

But it's okay. He's - I can't hear him anymore.

[She's a little nervous about whatever's next, but at least this worked.]

[That's a relief, at least, and he exhales quietly.] Good. [Except that's where his thoughts go, too; something has to fill the space.]

Do you want me to keep talking?

It's alright. I think I hear someone coming, anyway.

And thanks.

You're welcome. [Because at least he felt like he did something of worth for her.]

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009 ☣ Private Messages + Zero spam

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[Private] man I am so sorry for this

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