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!!)))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

Flynn can imagine, in a way.

He listens with the gravity that this commands, taking in the words as best he can, which is—

Well. Yuri is not the other half of him in such a literal way, but Flynn remembers watching him walk away. He remembers being proud and angry and sad all at once, the determination filling him to his teeth to keep both of their promises inside himself, to follow through on it all. He'd stood strong and tall until he'd gotten back to their room and found Yuri's bed still unmade with a towel flung over it, like he'd never left, and then proud strong Flynn had wilted into tears, hidden shamefully in his pillow. He'd cried until his face was hot and his head was aching, mourning the future he thought he would have with his best friend, sick with worry and the pressure of carrying it all alone.

To have that ripped from inside you, to walk alone for what felt like the first time in your life...

Flynn's heart contracts at the word gone, feeling its weight in the air around him. He can taste the loneliness like salt, stinging his tongue. No wonder Anna was suffering.

"Do you think," he asks into the resulting silence, watching her with understanding that clings to his ribs, "she was always there? Just... silent? Or has she reconnected with you?"

With what she knows about the relationship that Flynn and Yuri have with each other, no matter what label they decide to put or not put on it, she has a deep sense that Flynn understands this pain. Possibly too well. But with enough luck and more love, there won't be a reason to feel that way ever again. That's what she's hoping, at least, when he asks that question of her.

"I—" And as coolly as she wants to answer it, like she's been practicing or something, all of this really did just happen and she's still working through everything about her new reality. Her eye closes in the aftershock of the surprise, and the tension she's carrying in her back catches and releases. She tries not to keep him waiting too long, though; it doesn't feel right to not have some kind of answer.

"I think she's been there this whole time," she settles on, which is truth based in faith, in hope, again in love. "I just didn't know how to listen to her when she wasn't screaming her history at me. I never stopped to wonder if she was quiet because she didn't have to scream anymore."

"How could you, if she had been screaming before?" Flynn asks quietly, wondering at the shapes in her voice. He can almost see the determined form of A2 unfurling again before impossible odds, fighting because there is nothing else to do. He can see her echoes in Anna, certainly. "Perhaps she didn't know, either. How to reach you in this new place, what would make you listen. She doesn't strike me as the type to give up."

She smiles graciously, glad that Flynn is meeting her on this and that, for once, it feels easy to explain what's been going on inside her chest this whole time. Guess it just took seeing it for themselves.

"Like I said, she wanted to lose, but she's just... still going. Always, into eternity. Maybe that's why we ended up there instead of one of my own." She looks away, then, trying to hide the embarrassment creeping into the curve of her lips, the tint of her face. "I've been asking for some kind of sign since I got here. Lots of late nights staying up, begging for someone to listen. And she was listening to me the whole time."

Flynn is so glad that Anna isn't alone.

He knows it's different. She has him, and he has her, and she has other friends, certainly—Yuri, at the very least, who is the most reliable and caring person Flynn knows, and who anyone would be lucky to have as a friend. Having friends here, though, and having someone connected to your soul who understands you, who is trying to reach you—those are very different things.

Flynn shifts forward in his chair, feeling the fabric under him, wondering. "Do you suppose there's anything we can do to... make you easier to reach? Some way of strengthening her voice, so that you don't ever have to wonder?"

Now, that is a good question.

"You might be able to... god, I don't know. I never figured out how the soul magic worked, but you're damn good with a lot of magic if your show in there is anything to go by," she says, unable to ignore just how much ass he kicked and how cool of a knight he makes. "If you or anyone else figures out a way to keep the process going? That might help."

But that's also a big undertaking, and she's not sure if she'd want to take it much further than this, on top of that. It's just a hypothetical at this point. "Other than that, I think I just have to work on being a little happier and stopping myself from getting as low as it's been in the past. Which you're... really, really helping with. You and everyone."

"That's all combat magic," Flynn says after a moment, trying and utterly failing not to be too touched by all of that. That he's helping with that—that Anna is finding it easier to be happier, even in part because of him—isn't that why he became a knight? Isn't that what he dreamed of, to be able to make a tangible difference in the lives of people who could use kindness and assistance instead of jeering and attacks?

It means everything to him.

"Perhaps," he says, quietly, watching Anna, "we can ask someone else, and in the meantime you and I can keep our promise to do something more... casual, and unrelated to our own demons. I'm certainly no research mage, to figure out a new form of magic, but if I can help—I want to help. I want to be of service. It's all I've ever wanted, really."

She laughs, but it's more of a slow breath with a smile on her face, because she knows these conversations always come back to that and she's just. Not great at doing fun things with someone, is she? She looks down to her lap, then back up to Flynn.

"You're helping all on your own. But let's do some fun stuff, yeah. I'm thinking of heading out and doing open mics more, if you want to join me. Could use a singer," she says playfully, drawing out the word, not knowing for a second if Flynn can actually sing. "Could teach you some of the songs from back home. Hit Trench with a little, you know, howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear, but you're a king and I'm a lionheart."

Flynn listens to her voice with a smile growing on his face, leaning forward with elbows braced on his knees for the impromptu performance. Some of the cobwebs of memory and sadness, clinging in the corners of the room, drift away. A king and his lionheart indeed. There is so much in Anna.

"I'm no performer," he says after a moment, his smile widening, "and I've certainly never heard music like that, although, did you know there are performances on our devices that we can simply watch back? If you'd like an audience, I am more than willing to make a supportive sign."

"Oh yeah, there's some bootlegs shows in there that I've actually been to. Probably wouldn't be able to spot me in the crowd, but I looked a little different back then. Hair more your color, dressed way more emo," and she's just talking a totally different language right now, but the thing is that, like. She immediately seems so much happier now that she gets the chance to talk about this kind of thing.

"Don't have to be a performer to appreciate it, though. And who knows, maybe I'll throw Yuri the same question and he'll surprise you with a serenade." She will. Sidestep the part about him making a sign. Because as easy as the words come when she's talking about music, she still gets a little embarrassed showing that level of enthusiasm, much less encouraging it.

"Yuri might surprise you," Flynn laughs, letting that lightness creep in and stay, lifting them up. "He was drafted into being in a play once and really stole the show, quite against the script. Don't expect him to follow any sorts of rules. Is this your hobby, then? Music, things like that?"

"Yeah. I play electric bass and sing a little, but I'm not, like, a pro at either of them," she says, not sure if Flynn will know what an electric bass is. She has one in her bedroom, but she doesn't want to grab it quite yet.

"Music's the kind of thing that's been there for me when I felt like I didn't have anything else. I just think... there's so many different ways for people to put the way they feel down into words. And I wish this place had a bigger music scene, 'cause I love being in the crowd and supporting whoever's on stage."

She could go into a lot, like a lot of detail about specifics. But as the energy gets its hooks in her brain again, she can still keep herself under control. For a little. "I'm mostly into, like, emo, hardcore, pop punk, and I was just dipping my toes into prog a little more before I got brought here. Grew up on pop punk, though. Met Rose while a Fall Out Boy song was playing in the background and I learned every goddamn word of it." She laughs breathily at her own little personal confession and moves on past it.

"Anyway, like, yeah. I could fill you in on so much stuff. Anything from, like, Fall Out Boy or BMTH to, like, Haken or like real texture-y post-rock like Silversun, or—" There it is. She cuts herself off, grabs her Omni, and puts it down in projector mode between them.

"Listen, just look through my playlists and pick something that jumps out at you. I can tell you more. If you want."

"I want," Flynn says, as he leans forward even more until he's very nearly not on the chair at all. "Although I have to admit that you may as well have been explaining blastia formulae to me for all that I understood anything you just said. Those are... instruments? Kinds of music?" He flicks—a gesture, at least, that makes sense to him, as does the projection feature of the Omni—through the playlists, squinting at the unfamiliar name. "I grew up on the music from the Lower Quarter, which was largely loud, meant for dancing, and not precisely meant for children. Hanks had a fiddle. Is any of this for dancing?"

we begin vindicated [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

faLL OUT BOY; GOD; YOU ARE MY FAVORITE PERSON

recovering scene kid anna amarande is ALWAYS here

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)