deercountry | fall for me from reality [open]

Entry tags:

fall for me from reality [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you
What: November catch-all!
When: Throughout November
Where: The Entertainment Feed; Anna's usual club; other locations TBD

Content Warnings: Manipulation, blood + oil, lacerations, restraints

a. hold shut the wounds of the past [for murderbot]

An android walks into the Entertainment Feed. Stop me if you've heard this one before. She's wrapped in a heavier coat than usual, black fur around the collar, and she's wearing a new-looking pair of black jeans with no holes in it except for the ones that the guy who made them put in there for her feet and torso. Her boots are the ones she used to sail with, and her jeans are tucked into them. And, because she's committed to her own brand, she's got a white t-shirt with a faded picture of yet another robot on it.

"Anna Amarande," she says to one of the drones, identifying herself like she'd been asked. "Fantasy Twitter user rin should be expecting me? We have some things to discuss."

b. to the rhythm of eternity [open]

Anna usually limits her performances at the bar she's taken to calling her home in Cellar Door to three nights a week, but lately, she's felt a little more inspired than usual. She's chalking that one up to the Tower's influence, and she'd feel a little ungrateful if she didn't bump it up to five nights a week for at least a little while. She's playing most of the songs in her repertoire over a given week, her voice and her bass on full display with any other instruments covered by backing tracks from the glowing projected screen of her Omni.

Of course, maybe you didn't walk into this bar to listen to Anna play music. Maybe you're here for a conversation—maybe something important, maybe just catching up with old friends. If that's the case, she's glad to wave you over to the booth that she's stolen for herself in the back, dimly lit but private. She's got a bottle of beer in her hand as she does it, and she tilts it towards the bartender as if to say "one more for my friend".

"Hey, glad you could make it. C'mon, let's take a load off for a bit. What's been up with you?"

c. there are burning cathedrals [for makima]

This is going to be interesting, she thinks. She'd met Makima online in a curious conversation about godliness, and she wonders very much whether it's going to play out the same way in person. Right now, she's dressed as normal; it's a little bit colder this morning, so she has her thick, fur-collared coat over those new black jeans and Hatsune Miku tee, and she's looking around the coffee shop for anyone who looks even remotely like a Makima.

"Hey," says the woman with more souls than eyes once she's pretty sure she's got the right person. "Sorry, usually the places I hang are a little... grungier than this. Hope I didn't keep you waiting long. You're Makima?"

d. turning the skies into glass [friend of mine]

"All right," Anna says, in the heavier coat she's been wearing this whole time. She shrugs her shoulders up to wrap the collar around her neck properly, and she adjusts the strap over her chest that secures her katana to her back. "We're here to find something to help the Tower. Thanks for coming along." She turns her head towards her companion and smiles appreciatively. "I'm not in the business of walking into danger alone anymore. So—"

She reaches into her pocket and slips the crescent necklace she'd gotten from the Reckoning over her head, around her neck. "This can make sure that at least someone already knows where we are, in case there's an emergency, but how are you with tracking? I don't think a lot of us have been out this deep in the woods before." She looks back out ahead of them; the trees might be starting to die off, but that doesn't make the thicket of branches before them any less intimidating. She rolls her neck until it cracks, then starts walking forward, because there's nothing else for it. "Let's save a god's life."

e. i cannot pretend that i never think of you [for ange]

She's lost track of time. The zealots didn't seem to enjoy what they found when they'd cut into her side very much, and she can still feel the blood and oil oozing out of her very slowly. If nothing else, she thinks, they know how to keep people alive enough to actually treat them like a farm. She would find it funny if there were anything to laugh about, that this is the second time this year she'd ended up strung up and in restraints waiting for something mysterious to return and do whatever it is that they want to do.

Right now, Anna feels woozy. Half-awake, really, with her head lolling and her white hair streaked with red. The zealots, from what she can remember, had left her alone for the moment to try to figure out what exactly it is she has inside her. She remembers frenzied talk about how the Tower can't accept any of this because it's not flesh, it's not real, and she can only assume that they're waiting to commune with whoever, whatever to get a real answer. Her thoughts are going in circles right now. She misses her friends, her loved ones, her family. She wishes that she weren't here. Hell, she doesn't even have her katana with her, so even if she found some way to get out of these chains holding her upright, the ones on her wrists spreading her arms wide and the ones on her legs binding them together, she wouldn't be able to do anything but tap into the teachings of Sensei Lawrence.

She laughs dry into the darkened, empty room. Someone's going to save her. Right?

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"Clarence Vanderweele," she says with drama and disgust warring for dominance in her voice. "One of the four founders of the city, and absolutely demented in the head."

This guy isn't fun to think about, but to the best of her knowledge, he's been neutralized, so she can at least talk about him in the past tense. Fortunately, she thinks, there's no reason to expect that he's still out there or that he's going to find her again.

"He tied up his own personal timeline into so many knots that he made himself inextricable from the history of the city. If anyone tried to figure out his origin story, he was already two steps ahead of them finding a way to make his legacy permanent." She might as well talk about his plan a little bit, too; it's where the eugenics enters into it, after all. "His legacy was pitting all the souls of all the worlds that had been destroyed to create Recollé against each other and making sure that only the strongest got the right to be reborn. He was the one who decided what strength meant, of course."

Luz wrinkled her nose at this. She knew exactly what that sounded like to her, and the idea that someone could come from a world like that was astonishing.

"That's like if one Nazi got a free pass to remake things," she said. "The strongest? Why? Doesn't he realize the kind of person that would attr-oh. I guess that is the point, right?"

That certainly didn't sit right by her. Imagine having to try and live against those kind of conditions!

"And you say he was one of four other founders?!"

"Oh, thank god." She exhales a laugh, like she's been dancing around something and hasn't had the guts to say it for a long time. "Nobody liked when I called him a Nazi, but that's what he was, you know? Like, my parents were alive when the wall was up and Opa and Oma lived through the war. Vanderweele was a fucking Nazi."

Man. So freeing to be able to use that word. "He was kind of the outcast of the founders, though. The other three locked him up in a prison tower that he was never supposed to be able to escape from, but surprise surprise, he found a way." She shakes her head. "Like I said, he made himself a permanent part of the timeline, or as permanent as he thought he could do. But he tried to make his last attack for control of the city and wasn't expecting someone like me to meet him there. So he's not a problem anymore. And it turns out that his whole idea was bullshit anyway—we had more than enough resources to help everybody reincarnate instead of just his stupid 'survival of the fittest' BS."

"But he is!" Luz looked flabbergasted. "That whole stupid idea that 'only the strong' deserve certain things! It just means you get to kill off the people you don't consider worthy! Guess who was also fine with that idea? Nazis!"

Really, why didn't people just call a spade a spade? It was like the Emperor and his whole "chosen" coven again!

"Wow, thank goodness!" Luz was starting to worry for her future when Anna brought that up. "So you're kind of a hero in your world? I mean, you helped stop Vanderwheele, right?"

Oh, there's a lot of things to worry about for Anna's future, make no mistake. She just tries to avoid them however she can by talking about the past, like how healthy people do. Those who learn history are sometimes still doomed to repeat it, after all.

"I wouldn't call myself a hero," she says, bypassing all her other thoughts and waving her hand modestly. "I was just someone who had the ability to help people and enough motivation to protect the city that made me. I was just doing the right thing with what the world gave me."

It could be modesty, really, but it's more likely the idea of imagining herself as any sort of hero is too much responsibility. If she's never anyone's hero, she can never let them down.

Luz could understand that, although living in the past was, as Luz would learn, not exactly a great way of avoiding bad things in Trench. It tended to bubble back onto the surface, and at the worst possible time.

"Right, but some people can't even do that!" Luz pointed out. "You'd think 'hey, they see injustice, they'll help out!' The reality is that most people are really scared of looking different, or worse, being punished and made an example of! It's pretty admirable to try in spite of all of that!"

Luz honestly should have thought of that last part though, as Anna's thoughts on being a hero were very accurate for Luz's mental state there.

Anna nods along. Maybe it's admirable, or maybe there's something a little more bitter fueling her, but either way she can't argue with results.

"I mean, I guess I figured that my parents couldn't kick me out again for being weird and different, so I might as well have gone for it," she says like it's a joke. Like she hasn't been stewing over it on and off for the past decade. It's fine.

"But I guess there is more to it, too, you know? Like... I'm older, I've seen a lot more of the world, I've lived through more shit. I feel like I have to be the one to stop kids like you from being thrown into the fray." She looks off to the side, her expression not unreadable but certainly not simple. And she continues, "Maybe I've got it wrong. I don't know. But that's how I'm living my life."

Luz was always reminded that she could have lived a worst life than the one she had: there had been plenty of people she knew her age who were still struggling.

"You got kicked out? For being-"

Weird and different. Things Luz had come to appreciate about herself, even if she knew other people made fun of her for it. Besides, in a world like this, what exactly did those words mean?

But the last thing she said, Luz couldn't help but chuckle.

"I think you're a little too late for that. I've been here over a year, but the place before this one was worse, and some of that I know because of other people's memories. Then again, you've probably seen worse than I could probably imagine."

She shrugged. "If I were you, maybe all the new parts would take some time to get used to. Other than that, I'd say you seem like a pretty nice person."

"Gay," she says quickly. "I got kicked out for being gay." But it's not a huge deal. It's really not! It's fine.

"And yeah, I think maybe I missed the boat on keeping people safe or whatever. One of my other friends was telling me about how this place used to be super bad for a lot of people, and it already ain't great now, so I can't imagine what Deerington was really like in its prime." Still, despite it, she doesn't seem too torn up about it. She knows she can't be everywhere at once, and over a year ago, she was still dealing with her own stuff. Her own, slightly more normal but still no less agonizing stuff.

She says nothing about being a nice person. It's rude to accept compliments, probably. (It isn't. She's just being weird about it.)

"Oh," Luz said, trying to seem understanding even though the idea made her seethe. "Was that really such a big problem for your family, that you couldn't stay home with them at all?"

Luz had not thought about what her mother might think of her, well, bisexuality, but then it wouldn't very likely come up since it had been so long since she was on Earth. She liked to think her Mami wouldn't mind, but who could say?

"I don't think anyone could always be doing that. When I first got to Deerington, I was pretty happy being a kid and using my glyphs when I had to. But once I kinda lost my found family and the monsters started to get more frequent, well. You had to roll with the punches or die and then come back altered. I opted for the former."

Luz knew, even saying that, she had been lucky. She never had to deal with October, which had gotten so bad it made people practically insane.

"This place is still an adjustment, but it's more livable at least."

Anna sighs a little and leans back on the stage, putting her palms flat. Her bass strap chafes against her neck.

"Yeah. For them, it was. They grew up thinking that anything that went against God's will was a sin, and it turns out that counted for their daughter, too." She looks up towards the ceiling, like she's trying to get an audience with God on her own terms. "But whatever. It was ten years ago, and they'll never know anything about what I'm turning into unless I tell them."

And she never will, so problem's solved. This is how it works.

"What do you mean come back altered, though? 'Cause as far as I can tell, you don't change anything by dying and coming back here."

Luz noted the stance and braced herself.

"What does you liking a girl have to do with God in the first place? They're your parents! Shouldn't they at least be happy you can be honest with who it is that makes you happy?"

Luz might not have agreed with everything that happened with her mom, but she was sure her mother loved her and would have done anything to try and understand her daughter more.

"Well here, no. Back in Deerington though, you lose your memory, and sometimes more than that. My friend Vira died so many times her head was detachable! Now that she'd in Trench, she'd pretty happy its firmly in place again."

Not that this feature had ever bothered Luz, who'd gotten used to that though Eda anyway.

"Okay, kid, I could talk about the hypocrisy of religion and the garbage that my parents started believing for weeks at this point," and she admits that with only a little weariness in her words, "But I think you're gonna have to be the one to back things up for me now."

She gets out of that contemplative little power stance she'd taken and leans forward again, like she's way more interested in listening than talking right now. "When people died in Recollé, they either stayed dead forever," and she doesn't want to think about Lillian right now, "Or they came back and it took a while for their memories to come back to them." Not like she wants to think about Clover much either, but.

"So when you say Deerington took more than just memories, what kind of stuff are you talking about?" She'll get to the headless part in a second. Probably.

"I'll bet you could," Luz said, and here was where they were going to get into some of the less "happier" parts of talking about Deerington. Luz had done her best not to die there, and luckily, she was at the tail end of its existence anyway, but it didn't change her seeing a lot of friends who had weathered the results of some of what Deerington had to offer.

"That was a little like how it was in Deerington. You didn't stay dead, but you did lose more of your memory when you died more than once, and even when you came back, you had to go through a really bad sick spell."

And then came the other stuff.

"Some memories don't come back, or take too long, so some people would exchange things to get them back. Sometimes it was an eye, or a limb. Things could get pretty bad. I'm not even getting into the sheer funkery that was October."

Yes, she said funkery. Luz still, after all this time, could not bear to curse.

Anna nods, and she shakes the hair from her face to show her eyepatch more clearly as Luz continues the history lesson.

"Yeah. I know a little about giving things up in the name of what's important to you," she says, her tone a little more solemn, a little quieter. A voice that didn't belong to someone she loved echoes in her head: I could do anything if it meant keeping the people I want. What about you? And she tries to ignore it, the same way she tried to ignore it back then.

Instead, there's recognition making its way to her words: "I've heard a little about Octobers, too. Blood and death and a lot of really hardcore horror stuff." (Her October had been July, and she really hopes that isn't the new October, but none of it would ever work out like that, would it?) "But I've been here a full year and some change now, so I at least know the vibes of the place month to month. I think we're getting out of the worst of it. Just gotta make it to the new year."

Luz looked at the eyepatch, moving to do something and then stopping herself.

Of course she couldn't do anything about this. She knew that. There was no way to just fix all of the stuff that had changed Alice, anymore that she could have changed and saved Dipper or Clementine or any of the friends she had who were forever changed because of the sacrifices that they had to make in a place like Deerington or Trench.

"They were pretty bad. I somehow wound up missing the worst of that. Didn't mean I didn't have to deal with some of my own trauma though. Maybe not a whole mess of blood in the streets, but other things could still happen."

She sighed. "And hope the new year is nicer? I can get behind that."

"Yeah. Yeah, the new year should be nicer." She's speaking with a quiet sort of reverence about the idea. "It's almost January, yeah? And Madam G throws that big-ass party, or I guess she did last year and I got the idea it was an annual thing." She does gnaw at her lower lip, though, an uneasy feeling in her stomach about it. Whatever's affecting the Pthumerians now, she just hopes it doesn't start spreading.

"That's where I figured I could make a living doing music around here, too. Everyone seemed to be having such a good time, and when the world's falling apart, it always feels good to give people something they can relate to." She pushes herself up, slowly getting to her feet on the stage. "It's all Madam G's doing. And if she lets me, I'd love to play her party. So maybe if I play loud enough, she'll hear me."

"I sure hope so." Luz didn't have high hopes there though. With the stuff that was affecting the Pthumerians, she imagined that they hadn't heard the last of it and were going to have to hunker down and get ready for some more bad happenings going down. Madame Generosity was usually pretty nice though, so she was at least counting on a relatively nice January.

Luz did smile at this explanation though. "In that case, maybe I can do something too, to help get more people to check out your wonderful singing! I can draw a poster for you, or maybe put out a light display when you're performing? That way, it'd be even more likely that Madam Generosity would hear you!"

Oh god, she almost forgot what it's like dealing with actual kids who have all that enthusiasm still within them. It's cute, almost. Doesn't make her want one of her own or anything, but she still gives a warm smile at just how eager all these suggestions are.

"If you want," she says, her tone gently encouraging. "I don't know if I'm much for light shows, but why the hell not actually do some advertising, you know? Come on down and see... Anna," which comes out with far less wonder and prestige than it might seem. "I don't really have a name for the musical project yet. But the Trenchies know who I am, at least. Other Sleepers... don't think I spend a lot of time talking about it. Maybe it could work."

Luz had been in plenty situations where she felt like she lost some of her enthusiasm: it was actually good that she was starting to get some of her old spunk back.

"Exactly! Trust me, some advertising can do wonders! We can workshop a name later. But we can start with a poster, and then I can formulate a kind of light show advertising outside of the bar! You'd be surprised what the right combinations of glyphs will do!"

Anna laughs, and it's bright enough to match the stage lights. "Then let me wrap up my set and we'll see what we can do later, Luz. Right now I got some other big stuff brewin' with the band, but we'll see what happens with that, and then... well. You'll be the first one I come to for advertising."

"Ooh, really? I can't wait to see what else you'll come up with!"

Luz was all smiles. If there was one thing she loved, it was making someone's artistic aspirations come true!

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fall for me from reality [open]

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Spoilers, Luz mom not only accepts Luz's sexuality, she wears a rainbow pin after that!

hell yeah good for owl house

Luz's mom is so much more amazing than people gave her credit for

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