"I'm sorry that I don't know you," she says, and the words spiral into the black hole that's replaced the fission bomb that's replaced anything human within Apollonia. She steps away from the door, pushes off the frame, stands on the steps. The moment doesn't stun her for long; nothing does, anymore. Her fingers close around the fragments of bone that she'd been able to dig up, the ones she'd been preparing to cast as a halo around the head of the Man Who Became God. She doesn't throw them yet, but her fingers ball into a fist with nothing but a thin layer of fabric protecting the stolen body of the Saint of Joy.
"Fine." She says it tersely when her body has already all but agreed to it. "You sound insane, but fine." Not-Mercymorn is the one who is insane here. Of course. Not Apollonia. No, she remembers the truth. She remembers what really happened. She remembers that Mercymorn is a real person, that the two of them have spent centuries on the Mithraeum together, that they've loathed each other and everyone else around them with such directness that it could only be called their own utterly distorted sense of friendship. These are simple facts about Apollonia's life. Irrefutable, because she lived through them, and she remembers them so clearly.
But for the doubt, she would do fine. But for the doubt, she would be able to hold the objective truth of her own reality before her like an aegis.
"Do you think you can explain your way out of this?" She feels her stomach twist. It's all a lie. It's all a lie, and none of it was ever real, and she will never know the truth. Even the things she felt she could trust are crumbling away. John has found a way to destroy her so completely that she's being written out of other people's lives. This must be Hell. "Truly?"
no subject
"Fine." She says it tersely when her body has already all but agreed to it. "You sound insane, but fine." Not-Mercymorn is the one who is insane here. Of course. Not Apollonia. No, she remembers the truth. She remembers what really happened. She remembers that Mercymorn is a real person, that the two of them have spent centuries on the Mithraeum together, that they've loathed each other and everyone else around them with such directness that it could only be called their own utterly distorted sense of friendship. These are simple facts about Apollonia's life. Irrefutable, because she lived through them, and she remembers them so clearly.
But for the doubt, she would do fine. But for the doubt, she would be able to hold the objective truth of her own reality before her like an aegis.
"Do you think you can explain your way out of this?" She feels her stomach twist. It's all a lie. It's all a lie, and none of it was ever real, and she will never know the truth. Even the things she felt she could trust are crumbling away. John has found a way to destroy her so completely that she's being written out of other people's lives. This must be Hell. "Truly?"