deercountry | we begin vindicated [open]

Entry tags:

we begin vindicated [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: Event catch-all
When: Throughout December
Where: In Trench, in the sixth layer of Recollé, and 9,920 years in the future

Content Warnings: Eye trauma, explosions, hunting, blood, likely mentions of sacrificial death and depersonalization

Creating a Winter Mourning comes as an easy feat to Anna. She's been doing more than enough of it lately in a much more literal sense. Having a blessing towards some of the Pthumerians she hasn't had the chance to commune with yet probably can't be a bad thing.

It's glowing, the light serving as a gently pulsing beacon outside her window. Looking at it is almost mesmerizing; for a moment, it feels like it's going to bring peace to the torment that she's been feeling inside since the month turned. She reaches out and touches it, and in an instant...

a. we forget who we were meant to be

It's 2019. From the other wall of a glass jar, a white-haired woman with one eye is crawling through a ruined, sickly-green lab. She is not screaming in pain, but she is crying. No blood spills from her face, but she still would never wish anyone to see her like this. Her hand comes down on shards of broken glass, but she barely registers it. The air around her swirls with white souls that, in the flickering light and the ambient energy, almost seem to take form around the pathetic, destroyed woman.

Anna never wondered what she looked like when this happened. She knows everything about the events that just transpired, and her spectral head looks to the area that her younger self is crawling from. The brain that stole her eye is dead, and within this sixth layer of reality, the boundary between Anna, A2, 2B, and Kainé is thinner than ever. It's a wonder that she's able to maintain her own form even as a memory, because as she thinks about it all, she can feel her body flickering to take on the shape of the other women. She looks around to see if anyone followed her down—if she's experiencing her own memories then it makes sense someone else is there with her—and mutters somewhat musically, "Pay no attention to the ghost that follows."

b. a broken image of how it should be

It's 11,941, give or take a year, and two YoRHa units stand off to the side watching an enormous explosion in the distance. Anna, or at least the person who people have come to know as Anna, stands behind a cleaner, less ruined version of the android she's turning into. That android is on her knees, almost ready to weep, in front of a massive army of bronze-bodied, red-eyed machines. In an instant, the android shoves herself to her feet and screams a battle cry. A wave of debris follows from the explosion, taking out nearly everything between her and the epicenter. The shockwave stops before it can reach the android, but she won't let that stop her from trying to take down every last machine in her path. Her sword, less elegant than the one on Anna's back, flashes as she goes on the attack.

Anna stands there, her eyepatch fresh and new in black, her clothing an elegant, meticulously-stitched dress, her heels adding even more height to her form. She is not moving, though, not joining the fight. Because she knows full well what this is and what just happened. The person next to her may elect to join the fight with the not-truly-nameless android, the one whose appearance would match Anna's perfectly were it not for the eyepatch, or they may wish to stand back and speak with her. The bloodlust that often fuels Anna in these battles is not present at the moment; instead, she almost seems relieved.

c. crack a smile and lie through our teeth

Or, perhaps, she doesn't touch the Mourning. She leaves it to rest in her home and takes her blade out with her to the streets. Her longcoat high, the brim of her hat over her face, her eyepatch gone revealing the intimidating black-gold glass beneath it. Her blade stays in one hand, and the gun that Ruby Rose has been training her how to use is in the other. Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.

She stalks the streets in the pale moonlight, succumbing to the vengeance deep within her. Emotions that should be directed inward are ready to explode outward, and she is fully prepared to become a creature of persistence. An android designed only for combat, ready to lash out at the world that has stolen her from the city she loves.

A hunter must hunt. She has no need for traps, for subterfuge. The Amaranth's strategy has never once progressed beyond having a sword. She stands there on the wet cobblestones, stock still in front of what may be prey or what may be an ally, insofar as there are any allies to be had in this wretched night. She tilts her head up and sniffs the air. "What's that smell?" she rasps out. "The sweet blood... it sings to me." It may be gauche to tell someone your blood type, but are you willing to risk silence?

d. in the end we would rather be anything but lonely

((more prompts to be added. if you're interested in more, DM me or hit me up on

roseward!!)))

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"She makes it out," Anna says. "She doesn't die here, no matter how much she wants to."

A2's body is starting to shake on the battlefield. Anna knows how this memory plays out, knows that Flynn doesn't need to help. But when she sees that shuddering, red-tinged stagger that the woman who would share Anna's body is taking towards another wave of machines, and she sees Flynn's hand moving towards his sword, it's hard to say no. She draws her own katana with a smooth elegance that fits her dress and stature, and she smiles at Flynn.

"But it's close." The machines are regrouping, forming another assault. The small, stubby ones aren't playing as much of a part in this one. Instead, they're sending a platoon of machines that stand as tall as Anna with thorny shields and electrified axes. It's rough for A2 after this one, but it doesn't have to be. Anna assumes a ready stance, one foot behind the other. "Let's be knights."

And she's jumping into the fray to save herself.

Flynn jumps after her, smooth as anything: he has put fighting into his blood, or perhaps it was always there. His father was a knight, after all, and an excellent one until he did something very like this. Flynn thinks briefly of the pieces of his armor the way he does sometimes at the beginning of battles, and then banishes the thought in favor of falling behind Anna. Let her be Captain here: she knows this fight better than anyone, after all, and certainly better than Flynn.

No matter how much she wants to.

Flynn grits his teeth, takes in those electrified axes, and calls to mind the thudding words of a spell. The ground under his feet lights up with complex magic as Flynn focuses, his hands on the hilt of his sword like a staff. He shouts only half the incantation— "Begone!" and then light lances through the air, slamming into one of the taller machines like a piercing star.

"Why," he grits out, charging into the slightly-stunned void a spell like that always leaves, "does she want to die?"

Just because she knows this fight doesn't mean she's ever interfered with it, and if she alters one of A2's memories then is she even going to be the same person? Does it matter? Does she even like the person she is now anymore?

And isn't all of this in service of getting A2 a better ending anyway? She shoves the questions aside and cuts her palm, smearing blood on her blade that turns to frost. It's a new element for her, one that she doesn't usually know how to control, but freezing the metal will make it more brittle. A jump to one side to avoid an axe come thundering down on her head, close enough that she can swear it gets some of her hair with it. Meanwhile, Flynn's over there shooting laser beams, and it looks like he might need some cover. She gets herself to his side, making sure she has his back while he gathers up more magical energy or whatever it is he has to do. Her blade slices one of the shields in half, then locks with the gripping hand left behind to prevent a two-handed swing.

"Because," she answers with her own jaw set in place. "She doesn't have anything left after No.4. Not her friends," and she pushes the machine back with a grunt. "Not love. Not the world she thought she knew."

"What happened to them?" Flynn asks as the ground lights up again. He's no combat mage, not like Rita, with a spell arsenal as long as his arm and an understanding of formulae to rival any Imperial mage. With Anna close, though, he can aim long-range, take out the machines around A2 before she gets cut down: isn't that the point of this, to help her with a battle she should not have to fight alone?

Magic sears the air. Flynn feels it in his teeth sometimes when it's thick like this, lets the spell build up around him until the ground is bright. He lets it go with another shout, and this one sends lances of light spiralling into a few of the machines.

Flashy magic. He and Yuri must make a good team, she thinks as she keeps defending him while he focuses on the real issue. A lancing blow through the chest of one of the machines freezes it over, and she leaps upward to drag her blade through and split it apart into a mess of metal and wires.

"It's all a goddamned lie," she says when she lands, then starts taking on the ones enclosing on Flynn in a sweeping arc of her blade. It's not something she has specifics on, but she knows enough to know the gist of it. "The android commander takes orders from machines," she says as she slices into another one. "It's not a war. It's one hand playing against itself forever."

Flynn falters for a moment, his eyes going wide. He recovers just in time to whirl and slam his sword into another approaching machine, snaps it clean in half with a physical arte and whirls back to Anna to demand, "What?"

A war manufactured can only mean one thing: some greater purpose, some thing at the top benefitting the architects and hurting everyone sent off to fight in it. It isn't exactly what Flynn remembers from his own world but it's close enough to send anger and adrenaline coursing through him. And it sounds like Anna—or A2, some version of her? It's still so unclear—lost everything to it.

That's probably the right reaction for someone hearing about this for the first time. God knows Anna felt that way too when she first realized it. "Yeah," she grits out. There's another bit of a break in enemies after that assault, so Anna keeps her head on a swivel to see if A2 is even paying attention to them. No dice, which is probably for the best.

"She was supposed to die here along with everyone she cares about. Her data was just going to get harvested and fed back into the next line of androids. Just another tin soldier for whoever's running the show to throw away." Just like all of the ones from every war back home. "You look at all of this and tell me it doesn't make you wish for a better ending."

She really is a bleeding heart, isn't she. God.

"Something has to change," Flynn agrees immediately. He's flagging, tired after using so much mana at once—it does strange things to the skin, makes you oversensitive and achy to be used like a human blastia, channeling shaped mana—but he can't leave A2 and Anna to fight a pointless war, even if she doesn't die here. If there's something he can do to help, then Flynn owes that to her. So he whips into motion instead, all perfectly-trained forms and actual tactics, unlike Yuri's wild blur of half-wrong artes, to push the little circle that has formed around them wider. Easier to help A2 if they're closer, so he has to get there.

He doesn't have to channel, though, which means as he leaps into the air in a neat execution of Tiger Blade he can ask, anger simmering in his voice, "Why the war, then? What is the point?"

"Don't burn yourself out," she warns, dodging the question at first. It looks like he has it under control, but there's no need to go crazy here when this battle's victory is already decided. She cuts her palm again to get a fresh coat of ice on her blade, then sweeps it out in front of her to spray chilling crystals on a group of enemies behind them that freezes them to the ground. Catching the vibe that Flynn is going for, she's trying to eliminate the resistance from the rear to give them more time and space to maneuver in.

With the rear line stuck in place, she leaps backwards, further than she strictly needs to, and plunges her blade down on another machine. Once she lands, the dust around her kicking up, she finally actually answers. "I never found out. I don't know if she did, either. But if I had to guess?" She cuts the head from the machine she'd plunged through and glares at the rest. Some of them seem to be backing off? That's not right. That's not how this goes. Are they afraid of the two of them? "It's not money, or power, or resources. It's for fun. Constant death and destruction because it's fun for whoever's running the show."

"For fun?" Flynn's voice turns dangerous, sharp as the edge of his sword he's currently whirling with to cut a machine off at the knees. "A war, and so much pain and death—"

It's his greatest fear, truly.

If Flynn lets himself think too hard about Alexei, about the path he walked, about all the Children of the Full Moon and how easily he'd fallen into simply following orders, marching to the tune of an Empire which had never supported him—about this war, for fun and amusement by the powerful because they can do whatever they want, can't they? Unchallenged and unchecked, power gone mad?

What if cries a small voice inside him as Flynn shoves his foot into the machine's middle, uses it as leverage to leap up and slam his sword right back down through its head, what if you become the same way? What if you're not strong enough, and you become just like them?

"That's why she's a traitor now," Anna continues, swinging her sword with a little less ferocity than normal. Her next blow doesn't even connect with anything, because she can see an increasing number of machines turning their attention to the two of them and hesitating on their next attacks. Anna straightens her own back and shakes motor oil-slicked hair from her face. The chill of her blade radiates around her. "Because she knows the truth and the machines never got to her." And her head jerks a little to the sight in front of them. "Hey, Flynn."

The machine forces are noticeably thinner now, owing to their efforts and the efforts of the android that they've slowly been approaching. Anna doesn't seem especially worn out right now, which she's only noticing now that the machines don't seem to be redoubling their efforts to kill both her and Flynn. As a threat, she brandishes her sword, still slick with ice and oil. Questions that she hasn't considered in a long time, not since her childhood, bubble up to the surface. "Do you think they're afraid of death? Or do you think that they don't know anything else?"

"I wonder the same about the monsters we drive off," Flynn says quietly as he whirls, placing himself back-to-back with Anna. She's easy to fight with, full of Yuri's ferocity and strength, and more than that, he trusts her. Of course he does: how could he not? "I don't know. I—hope not. Does that make me weak?"

She doesn't exactly know how to respond to that at first until she's back to back with him. It's a good feeling, having someone here like this. Reminds her of something that Ruby told her recently, about the idea of having a companion with her in every fight. This is, of course, just the slightest bit different from what Ruby meant, but still.

"No." She says it with certainty forged in battle and friendship both. "It makes you human. And we have to hold on to that for as long as we can." She sounds deathly serious about this in a way that comes from history, not just of the world she comes from but her own personal history, as well. "There's more than one way to turn into a beast, Flynn."

"That's what I worry about," Flynn says quietly. The machines are still hanging back, like they are fearful, like Flynn and Anna together are a threat. Like they understand that the closer they get, the more likely they are to die. Flynn swallows and straightens up. "Does power always corrupt? When you lose your way, what is the path after that? How quickly do you become something you never thought you could?"

He waves a hand for Anna to follow. If the machines are afraid, let them be. Perhaps they can carve a path to A2 so she truly doesn't have to fight alone.

As soon as she realizes that Flynn is just walking them right up to A2, Anna falters in her footsteps; the bravado behind her eyes flickers. In a question of whether Anna or A2 will blink first, they have their answer now. She hangs behind him and lowers her blade just a little.

"Wait," she tries to say but listens to it come out only as a mumbled word. If that's the best she can muster, she'd better not protest any more. She picks up her pace and joins him at his side again. He was talking about beast transformation, right? Philosophy. Deep questions. She can work with that.

"I don't know if it always corrupts or not. I have more than I ever thought I would and I think I'm still holding on to who I am," she says, ignoring the myriad ways this place has made her more hotheaded, angrier. Only at times, but they're dangerous times. "But the path forward... it's always there. Sometimes you just need a friend to pull you back to it."

Flynn thinks about Yuri, because Flynn always thinks about Yuri: Yuri pulls him back, Yuri grounds him when Flynn spirals off into worry or grand plans without grounding in reality. Yuri reminds him what really matters, that the small fights are the most important.

"I worry," he admits, and slams a magic-lit blade into the body of a machine too slow to retreat, "that without a friend, I would become a monster just like the people creating this war. I wish I could trust that without people like you and Yuri, I wouldn't, but—what drove them to make this choice? What causes that? Perhaps they started out just like you or I."

"Maybe they did," she says after a long pause and a mirroring thrust through one more machine. The path to A2 is all but clear now and Anna doesn't want to keep taking steps along it for the moment; she stands where she is instead, though less firmly than she'd like.

"But when you're left alone, no one's there to pull you out. You do the things that you want to do with no one allowed to stop you. You destroy others... or you destroy yourself," she says, carefully, her eye sliding towards Flynn. "That's why it's so important to stay together and keep your friends close. Because without that," and she pauses, takes a breath, looks at Flynn directly. "Without that, I'll end up back in a place that I never wanted to be again. So you're stuck with me now, Scifo."

Without that, without him. Flynn sucks in a quiet breath at the weight of it, curls it into himself and presses it beneath his armor. She can be an anchor in this awful place. If someone needs him—if she really does need him like she says—then maybe he can stay here.

But they are fighting and it sings in his blood, and so Flynn smiles and it's not a polite thing at all, nothing like the usual smile on his face. This one is bright and full of life, the energy he only gets from swinging his sword like this. "Convenient, since you're stuck with me as well. Do we press on? Can we help her?

It's a new look for Flynn, Anna thinks, but it suits him the same as most other things suit him. He never really looks like he's doubting himself, even while they're talking about deep worries; that's, at least, the impression she gets from him. And it's the opposite with Anna right now, as she shifts her weight from foot to foot and glances over at the path to A2.

There's no reason to posture about it, though. She can be honest with him, she realizes, as the faltering from earlier melts away. "I'm not ready to meet her," she admits. "Not like this."

Flynn wants to press on it. Of course he does, he can't help himself, he wants to press on everything, wants to test the sturdiness of the whole world and see where it breaks beneath his gauntlets, but Anna is shifting and worried and admitting things that look like it take effort, and so Flynn shoves back the impulse that says keep fighting, keep going, knights don't give up and nods.

Which is convenient, because at that moment, as Flynn is about to tell her that he understands, a stag presses its graceful way from between the machines, looking placidly at them both. Flynn sucks in a breath and lets his sword lower just slightly. "That... is not meant to be here, I assume."

There's... a stag here, now. And if she were still learning new things from A2, she's sure that now would be the time when she finds out whether there was (will be?) wildlife when she's from. So she can't answer whether it belongs or not, but.

"Probably not," she says, approaching the stag carefully with a scrutinizing eye. "Even odds that it's something to do with Trench. Maybe it's how we get back there." And she looks to Flynn, and she's got a look of satisfaction on her face. "I think I'm good to head back if you are. I got what I wanted out of this."

"I am fascinated to hear what you wanted out of this," Flynn tells her as he moves toward the creature. It watches them placidly, entirely out of place on a battlefield surrounded by the straggling remains of machines who are slowly figuring out that Flynn and Anna aren't going to fight back anymore. There is a frisson of intent in the air, the electric moment before a troup redoubles or a monster gets a second wind. It prickles on Flynn's skin, raises the small hairs at the back of his neck. "And I believe that is indeed our cue to leave, because I do not believe our friends are pleased about our intervention."

Helpfully, the stag lowers its large head and its forelegs, like an invitation for them to climb it. Flynn hesitates only a moment before gesturing for Anna to approach the thing first. It's the knight in him: he can't help but be the rear guard.

The chivalry is almost charming. She scoffs out a laugh and hops on the stag, waiting for it to bear both of them back home. Once they're safe, she decides, she'll tell the story—because it'll be quick, and because he deserves to know after everything they've seen so far. Mercifully, the machines, agitated though they may be, don't seem to be able to follow them through. She's more than okay with that.

When they do arrive back home, they emerge inside Anna's house, in front of the Winter Mourning she'd set up in her main room. It's notable, and maybe almost depressingly so, as the centerpiece of her decoration here. Sure, there's functional furniture; they can sit down, for example, and Anna does. But there's nothing of note hanging on the walls, no accent pieces, nothing that would suggest anyone makes a life for themself here instead of simply using this place as a shelter for the elements.

"Well," she starts, not even deigning to apologize for the way she lives. "Fascinate no more. But it's more of my weird soul stuff, so brace yourself for that first."

Anna is like Yuri in so many ways. Yuri makes a place feel lived-in through clutter, certainly, in contrast with Flynn's rigid neatness, but he doesn't really decorate, either. If he had his way, their walls would probably be bare and white. It's a familiar feeling, glancing around a room and seeing a space for existing rather than one for living, but it still makes Flynn sort of sad.

Perhaps that's the bones. Perhaps that's everything he just saw, and the fading adrenaline from battle leaching from his system. He's surprised to find himself still burned from a few stray sparks, his hands tight from gripping his sword.

Slowly, rolling his wrists in slow circles, Flynn settles onto a chair opposite Anna.

"I'm braced," he says quietly. "It cannot be any stranger than anything I've experienced here."

"Challenge accepted," she says with a little bit of a laugh behind the words. With all the priming she's done for him, it probably won't really be that bad after all, but it's funny to lean into it.

"So that was A2. And until right now, I didn't think that she was still here with me." That much should be clear by now. She looks at Flynn, recalling the conversation from October. Recalling most of their conversations, really. Her hands press against her legs, and she straightens up a little. "All that time I was talking about being alone, it wasn't just... everyone from home, you know?

"Like, her soul is part of me. It's intertwined with mine forever, or at least that's what I always thought it would be like." It's informed a lot of her decisions so far, and silently she just prays that Flynn understands what she's going to confess. "When I came here, I stopped getting new memories from her. My body stopped changing. I didn't even find some... tchotchke or whatever that she used to own just off sitting in a mailbox in the middle of the city. I really, really thought that she was just...

"Gone." She pauses to give the word room to breathe, and to give herself time to form her next sentences. "So I thought that I was so alone, not even the person I was carrying inside my own body was still with me. Until just now." And she turns her head, gestures with an open palm to the Mourning. "Until we went in there, and I saw a memory that I knew was only hers. Now I have proof." Her hand curls again, and she presses it to her chest, and she smiles knowingly at her friend. "Cold, hard proof that she's still here with me."

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uhhh nier automata spoilers i guess

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