fridgetothefire | 015 ☣ Voice + Spam

[Private to Alex, Bruce, Ben, Cass, and Pietro.]

I'm going to be okay.

[Private to the above + Riddick, Felix, Cassel, Rhade, and Dean.]

Let me know if you made it. Please.

[Public, a day or two after.]

If anyone who got hurt is still laid up, in the infirmary or wherever else, and wants me to bring them some books from the library, I'd be happy to.

I can read to you too, if you want, although I can't make promises how long my voice will last.

[It's still a little bit hoarse from screaming, but Anya knows all about painful, boring recoveries. She imagines most people on the barge will have more company than she used to, but it can't hurt to offer.]

[Spam for Erik]

[After a night of deep, utterly dreamless post-adrenaline-crash sleep, Anya manages to drag herself into out of bed, because she can't stand the thought of more trail rations when she could get real breakfast. And there in the hall, just stepping out of his own room, is Erik. He's not her father, he never was and he never will be. But he's something like it, and he told her stories once, trying to protect her from the man who keeps haunting her all too literally. After a moment of staring, Anya flings herself at him and clings on tight.]

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[By the time he gets back, she's sitting cross-legged with the helmet in her lap, balaced against her calves, tracing the sharp curves around the face with an inscrutable solemnity.]

[It's jarring enough that he pauses, staring at her, but his eyes drop immediately to that helmet, and as he looks, something closes off in his face.

He goes to set the plates down on the nearest table, and starts making a plate.]

Ask. [Better than ignoring it, which he did consider, for just a moment.]

[Her eyes flick up to meet his, still unafraid, and her voice is soft. She hasn't come to any conclusions yet, but she's trying to puzzle something out, how all the threads of their worlds and her barge-assisted nightmares intertwine.]

Where did you get this?

Shaw. [He focuses on the pancakes, and that makes it easier.] Sebastian Shaw. I took it when I killed him.

[She's very, very glad she convinced Charles to give her the background. It makes it easier to nod instead of pry.]

The thing in Silent Hill had this. Or something very like it.

[It's a plain comment, observational and unadorned. She unfolds, put it back where she found it on the desk, and joins him at the table.]

Edited 2013-06-13 20:46 (UTC)

[He holds his tongue for a moment, sliding the first plate to her before piling his own. He doesn't speak until he's finished and sitting again, looking across the table at her.]

Apparently it's something else I have in common across universes. [He doesn't sound particularly happy about that. Can't one thing - even one awful thing - be only his own?]

[The thing you got from Shaw is a thing you share with the worst versions of yourself. Are you surprised?]

My father didn't have one. He had the cape, though. I guess the nightmare was supposed to be a mix of Magneto aesthetics.

[If she's analytical about it, then she doesn't have to feel sad things, right? Right. BRB pouring syrup.]

[Okay, no, he just hates it a lot.]

Perhaps. [He watches her pour, ignoring his own pancakes for the moment. It's very strange, and his eyes flick toward the helmet again before settling on her.]

It's a reminder.

A reminder of what?

[It's not a challenge, exactly. She understands the impulse. But there are a lot of possible lessons to take from Shaw's death.]

Of what he was like. [Of isolation and pain, of anger and loss and, to some small extent, relief and release.]

It reminds me not to be like him. [Not to become him.]

[She nods. Good.]

Someone gave me my father's cape for Christmas. I still have it.

Why? [He's not particularly perturbed by that; it would be pretty hypocritical. But it's only fair to ask.]

[Toothy smile.]

It means I won.

[Welp not sure how to feel about that really.]

That you won, or he lost?

[It is a little disquieting, yes.]

It means I won. It means an ant can kill a god.

...it means I'm safe.

[Some of these things are lies, and some are true. But the cape is all of them.]

[He hesitates, attention paused on her. Definitely disquieting.]

You're not an ant. And he wasn't a god.

[In a perfect deadpan]

I am, on occasion, hyperbolic.

[Nom nom pancakes.]

Metaphors are used for a reason. [He's having a very sudden flashback to Bargewell, and it's very, very strange.]

Does having it still make you feel better?

Yeah.

And I like ants. They're a good metaphor.

Small but strong, weak alone, mighty together. Divided we fall, united we conquer?

[That makes her smile, a little crookedly. Normally she tries to phrase it in more accurate entomology, but - yes. Basically.]

Easy to kill, impossible to wipe out.

[His mouth crooks similarly.] I'd hate to be like anything that's easy to kill. [And he's turning his attention to his pancakes before they get cold.]

[Waspishly]

Well, how lucky for you.

I can't imagine why you would. [HE WASN'T MAKING IT A SPECIES THING, GOD.]

What I want doesn't have anything to do with it.

[spam]

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