who's seen jezebel? | september catch-all

[acidjail]

Who: Mercymorn the First, Paul Atreides, Ortus Nigenad, and you
What: September catch-all, open and closed prompts
When: Throughout September
Where: Trench and other Trench

Content Warnings: Cults, body horror, psychological horror, violence, death, marked by thread

Comments

[acidjail]

Despite Woe's apparent unconcern, there is a minute shift in her shoulders when the android proves as incapable as her sister of raising a weapon against a human. It's less the unstitching of mortal terror and more the reprieve of being exempted from an errand, but it's more of an impact that Woe would be happy to know could be perceived. Perhaps that will count for something. It's more likely that it won't.

"Humans are a generally disappointing prospect," Woe says, frostily, "It is only by grace that we are saved, and through grace that we endure...among our many other foibles."

Dinah and the young man accompanying her wait for them under a cracked, dead streetlight. The young man is alertly impassive, taking everything in and projecting nothing out; Dinah is his inverse, fidgeting from one foot to another in distraction until she sees them turn the turn, her relief at seeing the face of Anna honest and clear.

"She didn't do a thing to you," Woe adds, frost plunged to degrees measured only in Kelvins, "Keep that in mind, whatever you call yourself."

[hauntedsavior]

A2 doesn't say much, which may be a reprieve. She doesn't know anything of grace, of saving people. She can't understand humanity even after years riding alongside one of them. All she knows is her programming, and the truth behind that programming, and she wishes that she could even work up the energy to fume about it. But it's been years and years of the same lie, debunked and recycled within other models, and it's been years of dealing with the loss of the last person in A2's life to believe that lie. And the stupid, stupid things someone will do when they believe a lie enough.

In an uncharacteristic move, A2 is not paying an enormous amount of attention as the little adventuring party reconvenes. She looks down at the girl who's trying to find the face of someone who is no longer present, and all she can do is reflect back as unmoving, as inhuman as polished stone. "I know who did what to me," she says simply, once the four of them are together again. At least Woe's iciness is a comfortable temperature—and at least it doesn't extend beyond iciness. There's no threat in the way that A2 looks at Dinah or the other person. Stern and flat and serious, but not out for blood. "Let's finish this. We've dragged it out long enough."

[acidjail]

“The first sensible thing you’ve said.”

With that tart retort, Woe has little else to say to the android for the duration of their trip, cutting off Dinah’s faltering questions with an upraised hand. They travel in silence away from the camp, proceeding to the ruined wasteland where a cairn sits, and the young man watches over them as Woe proceeds with distinct professionalism through the ghoulishly intimate ritual. She is not unkind with her hand dripping in mingled blood and filth on Anna’s chest, Dinah huddled at the android’s side looking between them both with hope that slices through any and all trepidation.

The portal comes, a blazing sigil in the air that Woe all but shoves the pair of them through as she remains anchored on her own side (with lashings of tendon and bone hooks at her feet, in case Anna feels clever), and all at once, Anna and Dinah are safely on the other side. The girl detaches from her shyly at first, and then, at the first deep breath of clean, sweet air, she trembles, clasping her hands over her mouth at she beholds the world renewed.

“I’m home,” she says, in great, shaken wonder, and then she whirls back on her feet to toss herself on Anna in a fervent hug, burying her teary face in her shoulder, “Thank you, thank you, thank you -“

It will be a touch of work to pry her off, but the ward on Anna’s face won’t so much as twitch at her doing so. Dinah will eventually make her fumbled goodbyes and dart off in search of her loved ones, hair fanning out like wings behind her as she goes.

[hauntedsavior]

The ritual is far grosser than A2 expected. She doesn't flinch at the idea of being smeared in blood; she's had worse. Applying it so meticulously is almost cute. The buzz of magic hums along her insides and she's not afraid, exactly, but on her guard the entire time. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end one final time, but this time A2 can understand where it's coming from. And then the ritual is complete, and the world is back to the one that A2 remembers. (Remembers from behind one eye. Remembers as a passenger. Feeling this all on her face, even if she's borrowing it from somebody else, is brand new. It's astounding. Salt fills what she's come to call her lungs as she breathes in deep.)

And she's taken out of her reverie by the press of a human body against her shoulder. Anna would know how to handle that sort of reaction from Dinah. A2 stands there stock still for a moment, then hesitantly presses her hand against the little human girl's back. Is this the kind of person that the one who shares this body has made of it? It must be, from the reaction of this person she saved. Anna must be, A2 thinks, very good at being a human. Complicated and angry and full of love at the same time as being afraid and cowering and begging for someone else to show her how love can be a shield all its own.

A2 doesn't know what any of that means. All A2 knows is that she's going to receive a good grade in protecting this human, something her programming assures her is both normal to want and possible to achieve. She watches Dinah go, then, off to whatever place she's going to go. And A2 steps away, into a town that she's lived in for a year and has never truly, actually known. The other humans here recognize her, but they don't seem too put off by any show of stoicism, which is for the best. Her footsteps take her along a path she shouldn't recognize, to a home with a fresh garden in front of it and a lock on the door that the key in her pocket knows.

She walks into a house that is only halfway hers, into a room with an unmade bed surrounded by the life of someone who only looks like her. And she finds the omni in her pocket, and she leaves Anna a message. A2 stretches out on a bed that doesn't belong to her and closes her eyes (no), and when she wakes up again, she doubts she'll still be in control. But she doesn't want control anyway, does she. Not right now.