15 . JOHNUARY

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: All around him, John's friends and loved ones begin to shed their skins. Also: Riteoir.
When: January
Where: Gaze and the new city.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

[hauntedsavior]

Hi, John.

[she says his name like a curse. of all the things that have changed about the saint of fealty, one thing that has remained constant is her voice. for good or for ill, it may be the greatest hint towards what lies under this shed-skin façade.]

I traveled all the way back to that city they call Trench trying to find you. It's a good thing Mercymorn was there to point me in the right direction, or we would never have reunited like this. [a lie, but what would He care of lies? she stares into the eyes of God and takes one graceless step back, as though her words will only be turned on her if she's close enough.] Then again, you've always been good at making yourself scarce when I need you.

You thought you were finished with me. You thought your little problem child of a Lyctor would finally be gone and you could get back to whatever your plans were always meant to be without us. [she rolls her eyes.] It must be so irritating for you.

[necrolord]

I wouldn't say irritating, [ he hedges, in the voice he uses when he is stalling. Trying to put space between them, for all that he holds still while she steps away. ] Surprising, yes.

[ It's the voice that cinches it. It's when I need you that holds him mesmerized, still looking at her like he means to puzzle out every detail, no matter how light he keeps his voice. ]

But as you can see, [ and he spreads his hands to the nonsense around them, the great empty ruin of a city neither of them ultimately care about, ] my plans are pretty sidetracked right about now. Maybe we can talk this out.

[hauntedsavior]

Oh, now you want to talk it out. You hide the truth of Lyctorhood from all of us—you hide it from me, you hide it from me when you've known for a myriad how much it would mean to me to know what it is I left behind.

[her fists clench at her sides, but she can feel her nose tingling and her eyes welling up as she continues to talk, continues to spiral. they say that anger is just love disappointed, and no one has ever disappointed apollonia more than the man who became God.]

And you tear me into pieces, you turn me into a vapor, and now—now!, you're interested in talking through things? I should commit deicide. I should take your awful fucking crown of bone and turn it into a choke collar. Would that make You care about me? Would that make you see me as one of Your own? Do we all need to have some grand scheme against you to be worthy of Your love?

[she's closed the distance again before she can even call attention to having done it. she is standing at her full height, ready to assassinate her God, and she is crying thin streaks down her face. the whites of eyes that do not belong to her have gone red.]

Why can I never be good enough for you, my Lord?

[necrolord]

[ It's this. It's the last and worst fight, except that Trench likes to fuck with him in ways he'd never even imagined, because none of his fights ever really end: he's locked in a room with everybody who's violently dumped him and a few people he was never with, who still get to take their swing anyway.

He does not know what was done to her. He doesn't know her name, doesn't know her cavalier, cannot recognize the way her throat hitches and her shoulders tremble with tension— Anna never did her yelling in person, it was just the thump of a punched wall and ragged breathing from a city away—

But she's bare inches away from him, and he recognizes this. He knows it down to his bones, this shuddering and miserable fury. He's been asked it before, just not in these words. He's lived in dread of this from the day they made him the throne. ]

Nobody can.

[ His voice has dropped low, grave and distant. He's stopped looking at her like a puzzle, now: God looks at her like an inevitability, like an old and dreaded ghost. He doesn't have questions. He can put it together on his own, and what a hell of an indictment that is. ]

It's not you, it's me.

[ It is a quiet and painful revelation, that even when she's become this, he is only ever himself. ]

[hauntedsavior]

Is that supposed to satisfy me?

[she spits it out. she can't handle this. she looks into his eyes that she's always thought seemed so appropriate to how hollow and empty he is within, and she cannot control her own emotions. like she's ever been able to. apollonia sees the Lord her God before her and she is overcome with a flood that has already begun leaking out of her but it makes her want to writhe and seethe and die to hear that He dares to blame Himself.]

Do you expect me to be happy with that answer? Do you think I'll... I'll roll over and go away if you keep denying me this? It hasn't worked for a myriad, and it isn't going to work now. [she rears her arm back like she's going to punch him, but she freezes in place like she can't even do that properly. there's tension throughout her entire body that, once, mercymorn might even have offered to ease. but joy is gone from her life, and it is gone from His, and she stares at His Holy Fucking Eyes and recognizes an emptiness roiling within her.]

[it is too terrible to bear. to come to the mountain and see the face of her God in the end of all things. to gaze upon Him like a mirror and construct her own reflection. ten thousand years of this can infest her, spiderweb cracks scattering across her face.]

You have had so... so long to explain anything to me. Just once. Just once, John. [she holds up her pointer finger, and she weeps the words.] And even in death you won't tell me the truth. You tell me that this is your fault, but you created me with this... this eternal love inside me, fighting against everything else I've ever felt. Fueling me like a—like a reactor. And you expect me to believe that this was Your divine vision. This is what you wanted me to be. And this entire time, I have only ever wanted one thing from You.

[she grabs her God's wrists tightly and pulls herself up to him, and she tries to kiss john gaius.]

[necrolord]

[ He looks at her like she's hurting him, the whole time. Like she's a storm to weather, a natural disaster on his doorstep, like he recognizes and has resigned himself to this pain. Her voice catches and hitches like it'll tear chunks out of her, and he watches it all with the crushed exhaustion of a man watching something burn to the ground.

She catches his wrists and surges up to meet him, and he does the worst thing, the unforgivable thing, the bit he won't be able to take back: he lets her.

She kisses him like she wants to die. She kisses him like any of them could. She's all of them; everyone he's loved, everyone he's held onto for ten thousand years too long, every ghost he's dragged kicking and screaming past the end of the line. He doesn't need her story, because he knows it. He doesn't love her, but he does. This is the worst of him: he wants to take her love and hold it in his hands, he wants to know the shape of it, even though it isn't his.

He probably kisses like her John. That's embarrassing. This is all really fucking sad. ]

[hauntedsavior]

[he lets her. he lets her and she doesn't know what to do with it. she stays there, shy of pressing against him but still locked in the kiss, for as much time as she can steal. her grip loosens, but her eyes stay closed. she can't look at him while she does this.]

[if she looks at him, she will see herself again. she'll see ten thousand years of unrequited love and the single moment that she's stuck in right now where she has never come off as more pathetic in her life. if she stays for a moment longer, it will mean something. it will have to. she has not crossed so many planets and lived so many centuries for this to be meaningless in the end of her life. she has not. it cannot.]

[but she feels nothing.]

[the void yawns within her, and she feels nothing. her god is at her fingertips, hanging from her lips, and she feels nothing. she lets go of his wrists, and she feels nothing, and she pulls her head back, and she feels nothing.]

[she doesn't open her eyes, and her lips barely move.]

Tell me you love me. Please.

[necrolord]

[ For a moment, one fucking moment, something shifts inside him. Something clicks into place. It's the kind of recognition he feels in his chest, clawing slowly up into his throat, and once it really hits his brain it could tear through him like tissue paper.

I forgive you everything, Lord.

He could kill her. It would be kindest. He could do it so gentle, so clean, with his lips at her brow and his voice in her ear. There's no other kind thing he could do for her, at this point. There's nothing else left for them that's good.

Maybe she'd wash up as herself again, as Anna, and this woman would stay dead. Funny how much of his murder looks like running, at the end of the day. Funny how it always has.

He smooths a hand up to cup the side of her face, the pads of his fingers tracing the familiar edge of her jaw, the unfamiliar spill of her hair. He lingers at the dip of her temple. He could kill her so sweetly, but he knows how it would go: she'd just wash up again. It spits them all out like flotsam, and won't let him decide when anything should end. ]

I'd like to.

[ When she opens her eyes, John is looking at her with a horrible, searching pity, a great distance of nonrecognition; he wonders who gave her the green. ]

But— and this is awkward—

[ He drops his hand and tries to smile, but he can't manage it quite right. ]

I can't remember your name.

[hauntedsavior]

[his touch on her skin is the closest she feels she will ever get to what she desires, after how long he stays silent. and what a fool she is to continue making demands of her God. what an awful, awful fool she would be to think that she has this authority, that she is owed anything from someone stronger than her, smarter than her, greater than her. she should count herself lucky that he looks her way.]

[her eyelids flutter open and she is staring at him staring into her. she is basking in the warmth that he shines on her as a barren rock four billion miles from its sun might. even now, she recognizes the way he looks at her. even now, she knows that she's trained herself to be satisfied with anything she can get. like creatures who live deep, deep in the undersea trenches of the First House, she has transformed into an unrecognizable beast of teeth and eyes, greedy for nourishment and skin utterly transparent. she is an ugly creature, and no one would love her.]

[and then he says that he does not remember her name, and she feels something.]

I... [her eyes open wider, both of them, and her mouth with them, and her jaw trembles as though she hasn't had enough reason to bawl in the past ten minutes. she is a fool. she has always been a fool. she is so unlovable and insignificant that the Lord her God does not even remember who she is and why would he when there is nothing but pity and regret in the way he l̸o̴o̴k̵s̷ ̸a̵t̴ ̶h̶e̵r̷. she is nothing. she is nothing. she is nothing.]

[she curls her fist and punches him in the stomach, a reaction that she had hoped she would be able to delay forever. her face twists and she feels her body connecting to as much ambient thanergy as she can within this library. life does not become her any longer.]

I am your fealty! I have given everything to you! [a window shatters not far away, the glass covering the floor with glitter.] You are the reason I live and breathe and you are the reason I tear my own body to pieces. You are the root of everything. You are wretched. You are heartless. And I cannot help but love you. [a bookshelf near apollonia's head goes up, sending pages and wood splinters flying. her words tremble through the sound of the dust settling.] I am made whole by you.

[her body shakes. she cannot think of anything else to say.]

[she turns her back on her God.]

[necrolord]

[ Well. That goes badly.

Of all things, he didn't expect the punch. It doubles him over with a plain human wheeze of surprise, blinking in bewilderment, dazedly ready for some grander attack— ready to weather whatever she does to him, whatever means she chooses to pry him apart in vengeance— but she doesn't. She just yells.

Her voice fractures, catches, splinters like the wood which hits in chips around his feet. You are heartless doesn't hurt him; I am made whole by you twists his expression in distant anguish, in recognition, in ugly longing. He can't even pretend he isn't the one who did this to her. He'd do it. He would love the heaving undying corpse she'd make of herself for him.

She turns away, and he lets her go. ]