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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.

What does?

[Just a little frosty.]

I'm going to be easy to kill until the day the Admiral lets me stay dead. Until then -

- I'd like to think of my life as something worthwhile in spite of its fragility.

Killing isn't easy. [Except when it is. He'd learned to kill, but when he was sixteen, he crushed two men's heads in their helmets. After, he'd thrown up, clutching Schmidt's coin.

But he gets the point of this, and he leans back in his chair.]

IS that what you think, that I want to wipe humans out? That all mutants do?

Physically, it is. Flesh is a very vulnerable system.

[Including yours, she doesn't say, but she's thought about it. He'd be much easier to kill than her father.]

No. I don't think you want that.

[It's quiet, because whether he wants it or not, he is perfect kindling for the fire of escalation. And she isn't sure what he does want.]

[She doesn't have to: he thinks it too. Just because he can deflect bullets, just because he can turn a knife on its wielder, doesn't mean he's invulnerable. And he knows that very well.]

Good. [And he wants to believe her, needs to believe her, because if at least one of them can think well of him, then he can hold to the idea that he won't become her father somewhere down the line.]

[She considers the weight of the moment, his shirt still a little stained where she cried all over it, the way he wished she weren't afraid. Maybe she can just ask. Maybe he'd tell her, if she pushed right now. She meets his eyes, lets her own lost uncertainty show.]

What do you want?

[He holds her gaze for a long moment, then exhales loudly and looks down at his pancakes as he pushes them around his plate. He meets her eyes again before answering.]

I want to live as openly and freely as they do. Without fear of reprisal or retaliation.

[It strikes her in the chest, painfully familiar, painfully fair, nothing she can begrudge. The relentless part of her wants to keep pushing, to say and what will you do to get it, but she can bring herself to say the words, can't possibly forfeit this fledgling closeness.]

...me too.

[Soft, but sweet, rueful understanding and kinship offered.]

[He nods slowly, because he remembers what he's been told about her life, always will. It's what they deserve, what everyone deserves, there is very little else that he knows and understands so clearly. So he just nods, because there's really nothing else to say. He can't express how much he appreciates that kinship, so all he can do is accept it and return it.]

[She smiles a little bit wider, finishes her pancakes and helps herself to a few more. It's - she hopes - a companionable sort of silence.]

015 ☣ Voice + Spam

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