fridgetothefire | 025 ☣ private to the admiral + spam

[Spam]

[Anya is not taking Lua's disappearance well. She wraps herself in her father's cape and sits on her windowseat, staring out at the strange void beyond. For the first time, it seems more empty than amazing. She skips her maintenance shift and hides in the library, searching for the most out-of-the-way rooms and dim corners sheltered by dusty long-undisturbed stacks and reads Doctor Zhivago for the third time. She doesn't turn up to meals, grabbing snacks from the Dining Hall when she can't sleep in the wee hours of the night, subsisting off that and her emergency 'weird flood' stockpile rations. She doesn't call anyone else. She just wouldn't know what to say.]

[OOC: This is a catch-all post for anyone who would reach out to her after Jesse's announcement; replies may be either spam or network. She will probably answer.]

[Private to the Admiral; Voice]

I'm grateful that you decided to give me a chance. I've said it to other people, maybe it's time I said it to you. I know you probably don't give a damn if any of us like you, but there it is. I think your goals - as stated - are ambitious and worthwhile and that you're doing the best you can, even when things seem awful.

So I like you. But this is not a request. This is a fact.

You will not pair me with any other warden. When I graduate - and I will - you will give Lua whatever she was going to ask for, wherever in the multiverse she is. Because I wouldn't be anything like who I am if it weren't for her, because you made a goddamn deal. And I will hold you to it, one way or another. I know you know what I'm capable of.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She's surprised to see Touko, but not shocked. She figures lots of people have their own reasons to aim for the odd times. She wonders if all the barge's hermits will ever settle out to an equilibrium of successful mutual avoidance. Maybe they already have, and she's messing it up. She can't care too much. She nods at Touko, doesn't say anything else until she asks her question, gives her a small shrug.]

I skipped dinner. I'm hungry.

[She finds an orange, starts peeling it in one long, continuous piece.]

[I should go, she has to hold herself back from saying. Anya has seen enough of her that's disgusting and messy and dirty and hasn't done anything yet, so if she stays, more that's worse can't happen.

She's vaguely aware something's wrong, puts it together with what she's noticed, heard, over the past few days, and knows that she's socially expected to comment, even if she wants to leave it alone. She leans over the table, still trying to hide her food.]

You didn't expect anything.

Expect anything about what?

[She doesn't know what to expect from Touko, most of the time; she's clever and contrary, self-absorbed in a way that denies and deflects and turns everything around. She takes sharp turns and Anya dashes to keep up, sometimes. Now, she's just - honestly not sure where they've begun.]

When she disappeared. [It's self-evident to Touko: what else could she be thinking about? She remembers how she was after Junko left, so of course someone she (probably) loved more is going to be even more of a shock.]/i>

Oh.

[She's surprised, dully, and she shouldn't be. No matter how self-centered Touko's thought patterns are, she's still smart and paranoid; of course she would notice.]

No. I didn't, there wasn't - I didn't even get to say goodbye.

[He voice wavers, just a little. Damnit.]

[She remembers her own confusion, then fury, as one warden walked out without telling her, in the middle of the worst she'd had it on that ship, then Chromie not even making it half the same time before disappearing. She's red at the thought, and looks away. She wants to be kind tonight.]

You never do.

I'm sorry.

[Because she is, because it shouldn't have happened to Touko either. But it's distant. She can't care so much about other people's problems right now, because she just. Hurts.]

I-i meant you.

I figured it out after the first time. They always leave.

Lua was supposed to be different.

[It pops out, smaller and more vulnerable than she planned for anything to be. She knows it's a mistake, as soon as she says it, but she can't take it back. Doesn't know if she wants to.]

People want you to think that.

[She's just as weak sometimes, crying when she wakes up with new cuts and straining to hear the news left blaring in the next room so she can know just who it was she's going to miss, but she's come to expect anyone who really matters disappearing. That's part of having to live.]

[Anya scowls.]

She wasn't lying. She meant it. She didn't get a choice.

Do you think she'd tell you if she did? That she'd want you to remember her that way?

[She would Anya thinks, because Lua told her about leaving for the day, the time she went to see Amanda. But this is different and the implication that she'd just - that she'd abandon her without a word, deliberately, just to preserve some kind of loyalty that wasn't worth staying for -]

Shut up!

[Touko's glasses are on the floor, skittered three feet away, didn't break. The punch was fierce and fluid and perfectly followed-through. Anya didn't think about it even a little bit. She drags in a shalllow breath, uncurls her fingers from the neat fist Bruce showed her that would protect her from breaking her own bones accidentally.]

You don't know anything about her so just - shut up.

[She grabs another snack, she doesn't even know what, and turns on her heel, retreating faster than her racing pulse.]

025 ☣ private to the admiral + spam

spam

spam

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject