fridgetothefire | 027 ☣ some messages

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027 ☣ some messages

[Private to Zane, Abigail, and Cassel, vaguetimed after the breach, Wednesday-ish?]

...how are you guys?

[Private to Ben, Wednesdayish]

Thank you.

[Private to Sylvanas, thursday]

[Her voice is small, nervous and tentative, though there isn't really fear in it, just uncertainty that she ought to be asking at all.]

I know we haven't spoken, much. I'm really sorry if this is - rude or painful, or anything, and you don't have to answer. I just.

You hate Arthas, right?

[Private to Mal, Friday, text, sent right before she dies]

I've decided to let Arthas make me a zombie for a few days. If all goes as planned, I will be able to resist any and all brain-eating urges. If it's messed up or he lied to me about what's going to happen, being killed will reset me to my normal self. I don't want any of the people who love me to have to do it. Could you check by Cabin 1x17 in the next few minutes and make sure I don't emerge on the warpath? If you don't want to, I'd trust Beatrix to do it too.

Thanks.

[Private to Arthas, Friday]

I'm ready. Is now good for you?

[OOC: I may add other starters to this post as older things play out/I think of them. If anyone has something they want to have brought up with Anya BEFORE she becomes a zombie, let me know and I will add it. There will probably be a separate public zombie post later.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She always wears long sleeves, to hide her burn scars, so she hugs her elbows a little, but she can stand the chill for a few minutes easily enough. It's comforting, in an odd way, makes her think of the glaciers that were once a minor haven for her.]

Okay. Is there anything else I should know?

[She doesn't expect him to volunteer much of anything. She's not stalling, exactly. It just seems odd to wait to be killed without saying anything.]

Nothing that can't better be explained by showing you.

[He pulls the door shut behind them; it booms in an appropriately ominous fashion.]

Are you ready?

[It does seem odd, and he's a touch awkward but reminds himself that this is necessary.]

[She smiles, just the tiniest bit. The awkwardness is heartening, in a weird way. She drops her arms to her sides, steps into his reach.]

Probably not.

But there's no point wasting time.

No.

[Arthas reaches - carefully, as if trying not to spook a deer - to put one of his gloves on top of Anya's head and the other under her chin.

He gives her a look - last chance to back out.]

[He heart rate speeds up a little, but her breathing stays deliberately slow and even. His white hair makes her think of Magneto. But he wouldn't have given her a choice in the first place. She meets Arthas's eyes.]

Do it.

[Arthas pulls hard in opposite directions until he feels bone splinter and then catches Anya under the arms before she can fall.

That done, the uncertainty vanishes from his expression; it takes him less than a second to raise a properly preserved human simply because he's done it so many times but calling back the soul is another matter this time.

He sets her corpse on its feet and tethers her mind back. Usually he'd build in a receptor beforehand to force it to re-attatch and furthermore dictate how he wants it to behave once re-awoken, but this time - she should know how she wants to be, shouldn't she? What she's used to?

Arthas makes the perfunctory physical and sensory connections and then simply lets her soul find its own way in, if it wants to, out of habit and instinct.

This may be disorienting.]

[Ache and break - black - dim and cold and still - and burning, burning cold like the time she accidentally put her hand in lye, only all over, all through her like mist, like chlorine gas - it drifts and sears and does not disturb her rational tranquility, thoughts quick but toneless, like bored fingernails tapping on a desk, she is a zombie and it feels like ice and chlorine and the grey an hour before dawn, she is learning this, the experiment something like worked, she is bored in spite of this, waiting -

- for three days her soul was apart from her and they were at odds, her mind was a cold controlling thing - like it is now - focused, like it isn't, she is simply aware - and he -

itmalachaithesoul

- is so wary, even though Anya Lehnsherr is not Anya Gaeta or Anya Hobbs, peers gingerly across the raw ripped chasm of death between them, approaches anyway because their shapes are matched, because it is their nature, because there is an empty place in her cold calculations where it fits and Anya -

- does not reject it, winces and whimpers and yearns and does not reach out to regain it, but she receives it, stares at infinity in the paired mirrors of their eyes, human-zombie and marsupial-metaphor, her impulse and intellect, her cruelty and her compassion judging each other in every meticulous particular, without rebuffing, without renouncing. My good side is my bad side. A möbius strip only has one side. She understands herself this way, and it becomes true, cogsteeth grating into place, scraps stitched roughly into whole cloth. She opens her eyes. When did she close them? Well. She was dead. She considers what to report.]

That was more bearable than I expected.

[He steps back to a respectful distance now that she's awake. There's a connection between them now simply by virtue of having gone through the same thing and being made of the same magic.]

Good. How do you feel, are you alright?

[He's far more openly concerned now, simply used to trusting comrades in undeath without thinking about it.]

I feel - removed. Not far. One step of metaphorical removal. A little - numb, off-kilter, but not bad.

[She frowns, lines of concentration between her eyebrows, pushing, analyzing.]

Not compelled. My thoughts are the same, compared to what I remember. I understand my reasons for deciding to do this, and my worries about the risks, and so far it seems to have gone well. I feel a little less - viscerally triumphant, than I would expect based on my living reactions to successful gambles.

[For something that relies on self-reporting subtle mental states, Anya is probably one of the best test subjects he could have hoped for.]

Good. Very good. Keep me in the loop about anything you notice that's different.

[Arthas clasps his hands behind his back and smirks.]

Interested in magic lessons, how that you have it?

[Yes. She smiles for that, depressed affect or not, because she always wants to learn. Magic makes her think suddenly of Wanda - not her own, but the angry young woman her own age here on the barge. Wanda would hate this, Anya muses, but she thinks maybe she would understand, too. And then there's a rap at the door.]

Yes. But in just a moment. I need to take care of something.

[This is another experiment, going to the door without waiting for his permission, tugging it open. Sure enough, it's Mal. Anya holds up her hands, in the traditional I'm-harmless gesture.]

Good news. No insatiable cravings for murder and mayhem.

Edited 2013-09-28 06:05 (UTC)

Fine.

[He wanders to the back of the room while she talks, to retrieve his cloak. She had a backup plan. Good.]

[After a brief conversation, she says goodbye and turns back to him. She flexes her hand a few times after closing the door and turning the doorknob, because the intricate instinctive little movements of the hand feel all off. It doesn't change, but she ignores it.]

Thanks.

So...magic?

[A little hopeful, a little eager.]

[He nods.]

Do you have any mage training already?

[Sometimes girls learn a few spells around when boys are learning to ride and shoot. Can't hurt to ask.]

[She shakes her head.]

No, I'm sorry.

I watched my sister, when she was first figuring out how her hexes worked, but I was never capable of it. And I think it would have been a very different system anyway.

I'd rather not do any potentially destructive experimenting in my cabin. CES?

Sure.

Who'll let us in?

I like to stand on the deck and glare at everyone who walks by.

[Failing that, the deck would work too. He opens the door and holds it open; come on.]

[She actually laughs, a little, soft but bright, and slips through the door at his invitation.]

I guess that would probably work.

[Arthas presses on the leering steel skull carved into the door to lock it behind them; the handle vanishes into thin air.]

It takes awhile, but it's better than asking my warden for favors.

[Fordring asks too many questions. Why do you need to get into the CES? What are you going to do there? Whose severed arm is that?]

Fair enough.

I have a few people I could ask normally, but...I just want to sort this out for myself first. You know?

[Arthas shrugs with one shoulder and starts down the hall.]

It's up to you. Do you care if someone sees you on deck? It'd be my second choice since it's open.

[No walls to accidentally rot down to the metal piping.]

[She considers.]

The Deck's alright. I'd...rather they didn't yet, but if someone I'm close to me sees, I'll handle it then.

[Still, it's not ideal. She texts Mal a request as they walk, because - well, she already knows.]

Edited 2013-09-29 17:49 (UTC)

[It's a short walk up to the deck from the first floor and when the door to the deck is opened Arthas sweeps it by reflex - deserted, which is usual for this late. It wasn't so long ago that he didn't sleep at all.]

[She follows him out. She's always been fond of the view, and it's...strange, now, all in delicate grey. Eerie and still lovely.]

Okay. So where should we start?

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spam - i'm just making shit up right now idk

wheeeeee

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