deercountry | 13 . autumn catch-all

Pyrrha huffs a laugh. "Don't forget I can feel what's happening over there," she says, "Reaction times. Dexterity. Bodies tell a lot if you listen." It's social, friendly. The night back home is going well. The beach wasn't the disaster it could have been. There's no need to rake him over the coals that very second.

She pulls out graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. "I'm roasting, you're building s'mores," Pyrrha directs. "Keep them in that perfect state of goodness while you're at it." A task, something to focus his attention. Plus it lets her practice her ranged technique, only the marshmallows get treated nicer than D's internal organs will.

The first one bursts gently into flame alone on a small plate.

"For this I will forgive you," he tells her, and pops a raw marshmallow into his mouth. Still, he obediently crinkles his way through the package of graham crackers and starts separating out chocolate. Some of the enjoyable haze is burning off: he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Pyrrha never pulls a guy aside to make s'mores just for the hell of it.

She rolls her eyes, affectionate. It'd be such a nice moment, if they had the luxury of them. It's something she's never believed she'll get, but she wants it one day when they've put in enough work, when they've built community, when Trench is more than a blood filled dumpster bonfire on the beach.

"I met someone new tonight," Pyrrha says, dropping just a touch of the humor from her voice. A signal, as clear a signpost as, say, shooting him in the face since he's paying attention. "Said I should learn more about her. I want to know your take. You good for that?" An honest question. The answer can be no and that's that. It's s'mores, it's relaxed, it's life.

Yeah, yeah: now they're getting down to it. He leans back against the counter on his elbows and worries a chocolate wrapper with his thumb.

"Might as well," he says. He already has a feeling.

They haven't even managed one s'more. Pyrrha extinguishes the flame from the marshmallow on the plate, picks up the goopy mess with limited structural integrity, and sets it on a graham cracker. Carry on, it says.

"Anna Amarande," Pyrrha says the name like firing a bullet.

No shock there. He tops it with another graham cracker and watches the chocolate start to melt. In payment for tolerating this conversation with something approximating good grace and humor, he eats the first sacrificial s'more.

With crumbs on his chin, John says:

"Not sure we have time to unpack all of that." But he carries on, with marshmallow guts between his fingers and chocolate smudged down his thumb: "She's something interesting, physically and necromantically. I've had a decent look, and there was a time I thought she might ask me to dig my fingers in— I mean, less weird than that sounds, obviously— for science. Decent hand with a sword and a bolt of lightning, too. She's a Coldblood."

Like you could be said, but John doesn't often acknowledge the ways in which the local gods have changed them. He deigns to acknowledge one of the elephants crammed in here with them, as though that might satisfy her:

"We got along alright before the boat trip."

Pyrrha knows Anna's a Coldblood. Girl lit up a cigarette in front of her. That's hard to miss. Almost as hard as watching Pyrrha roast a marshmallow directly without any visible flame (the heat is inside the house). Yes John, she's saying she's a Coldblood without saying she's a Coldblood.

For all that, the summary tells her almost nothing new. Waver called her a pirate. Anna said she was pre-rez and they get the same jokes. "Explain interesting," Pyrrha says. They can get to the drama later. Anna wants Pyrrha to know who she is? She'll start with the basics.

He's aware she's showing off, nudging him with her new power, the kind he hadn't gifted. He won't rise to it. Everyone look at how chill he's being; behold God resisting an opportunity to be a petty dick.

"She's a soul melange," he says, being an avoidant dick instead. The more he gives her of the stuff that doesn't matter, the more readily he can sidestep the really thorny questions. "Body is synthetic below the neck, standard human above, give or take. She's made up of two people. More one than the other, near as I can tell. Like a host took on a revenant and it integrated."

Pyrrha raises an eyebrow. It's right there. It'd be easy to inhale as Pyrrha and exhale as Duty. Her soul may only be one soul, but her identity is a melange, and part of it is integrated with Gideon.

"Relatable," Pyrrha quips, "which part made her like your shoelaces?" Something she can manage with a straight face because she can manage anything. It's no more a non sequitor than any of the myriad references he doesn't explain.

She doesn't take the bait, either, not half so far as she could. It passes untouched between them. For a moment he thinks she's being kind, and this won't be a bad one, actually.

But it's Pyrrha, so of course there's a one-two punch. He sways back like she really has hit him.

"I am not drunk enough for this," John informs her, and he puts another marshmallow on a plate. Raises his eyebrows expectantly at her, for all that it doesn't hide the look in his eyes. "I'll need another bribe."

While she's doing that, he settles back against the counter again, but this time without the easy slouch: he folds himself carefully back into an imitation of the same ease, but there's tension in his shoulders and in his jaw. He turns the words over carefully, and says:

"We're of an era, more or less. Maybe less. It's enough for some overlap."

It sounds tidy and interesting, like that. Sympathetic. Some overlap.

Over so many years, Pyrrha bristles with the right combination of words to hit John with. It's a bit like using mysterious munitions, not quite sure where the mark will land. Gets the job done.

The next marshmallow burns on the altar of their partnership while Pyrrha crouches to grab one bottle from below the sink and reaches up for another up high. She pulls out a shot glass and a whiskey glass. The first she fills with the bleach from below the counter. The second she fills with wine meant for cooking not drinking. She motions to the row of bribes which include a black crisped marshmallow threatening to collapse to goo.

"Not quite the same Earths," Pyrrha notes. John's cagey and a touch wounded. They aren't on good terms. She's not playing matchmaker, but if they're both running around trailing blood from open wounds, they aren't going to get anywhere.

"There's a lot of people from Earth here," she notes, "Why her? What about her? Is she really the only one to steal from the president?" It's his own jokes again, coming back to haunt him. Ten thousand years is a long time to sit in the background and watch.

She says Earth, and apparently they're beyond a one-two punch. This flinch is worse: it's the kind where he goes too-still, too-quiet. Something in his eyes is faraway, breathlessly remote. This one isn't funny.

"Stop saying it." His voice comes raw and bitten. The pain has scrunched up around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. It's there in the frozen silence of his hands. "Just leave it."

John takes the bleach, raises it in bitter cheers, and knocks it back. This is a stunt meant to convey what she is putting him through, and below that: he'd promised not to let himself be tortured, once. Like hell he'll decline a petty technicality. He makes a hideous sound as it goes down, thumps his chest, and ignores the next-room-over startle from Augustine.

"Ask why I killed her," he says, low and stripped, "so we can get on with our night."

Pyrrha looks at John, and the pain is a damn kick me sign in this town. There are too many people from Earth, they very well may be on another Earth... He cannot rid Trench of the name.

There's Trench, there's tomorrow, and there's tonight. Tonight Pyrrha can set it down and be, if not gentle, kind. So that's it, Pyrrha wonders. Someone he can have that with without using the name itself. The same act he's been pulling for ten thousand years, only it's a two person bit instead of a one man show with an audience that doesn't know the material.

The burnt marshmallow collapses to sticky sweet goo across the bottom of the plate.

Pyrrha pours a second shot of bleach and downs it. Nasty shit, but it's a show of solidarity. She rests her hand on his shoulder, over the moonlit hand print. "That's not the most important part," Pyrrha says, "John, please tell me why you killed her and what you relationship you want with her now."

She squeezes his shoulder softly and stands next to him, lightly pressed side to side. Pyrrha's there with him, and his answer won't change that.

Fucking hell, she has to go and be decent at the worst moments.

She lets him have his retreat, and John exhales frustration as she folds in at his side: it denies him any real out, stops just short of pressing him away. She has him tidily cornered, the way she always does. He steadies under the hand on his shoulder, swilling the dregs of bleach in his stupid shot glass. She takes her own hit, and he chokes secondhand at the feeling. It comes up as a bad laugh.

He says: "She knows all the words to Annabel Lee."

John looks at her, then, something achingly bitter still tangled up in the unhappy set of his mouth.

"That's it. That's all. I mean, hell— a sword and a bad attitude, that's nothing. I didn't need to drop her for that." She'd been a Beast, but who hasn't. "It's not like Lazarus, the kid who fucks with dreams. This is worse than that, you know?"

He drums his fingers, nervous habit, against the countertop. He puts down his horrible shot glass, the motion shrugging him free from the warm weight of her hand.

"She gets it. Not just academically." John scrubs a hand over his face; he is abruptly no longer interested in getting drunk. Not over party games they've all played ten thousand times. "I want to brood about it in peace, thanks for asking."

God damned Annabel Lee.

Pyrrha nods. She doesn't know the words to Annabel Lee, but she gets the weight of it, the weapon, the loaded gun, the sword through John's heart. 30-year-old deadbeat with an emotional nuke, and Anna thinks she cannot hold her own. Pyrrha won't teach her to weaponize Annabel Lee, but it will still sit there staring John in the face.

Ten thousand years without anyone getting it. Pyrrha's not entirely convinced John didn't do that to himself—whether he still is glad he did it or simply refuses to call it a mistake—and considers them all off the table for getting Annabel Lee. Miracle of miracles, Anna Amarande gets the poem and still didn't know jack shit about the end of the world. Irresistible.

"You're welcome," Pyrrha says, "Needed to change the dressing on that one." She burns the marshmallow to nothing and pulls out the next, leaning against the edge of the counter with exhausted bones and a heavy heart.

13 . autumn catch-all

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