Realistic or Modern Phantom Voices | ellarose & Syntra

[ellarose]

It was absurd enough to all have been a dream, really. Not just her attempted escape from 'Ivy', but the past three days in their entirety. Had Clara awoken safely in her own bed, she could've easily believed the rational narrative that all of the events she'd experienced were comprised into a long, feverish nightmare. And once she'd brushed it all off with a couple of calming breaths, she could've simply gone about her day and lived her life as usual. It was a convenient (if incredibly cheap) plot device in countless movies-- and she'd have gladly accepted it over her current reality. It'd ended very much like a nightmare, after all. Flying and falling, falling, falling down to the ground as her wings shattered to pieces like glass. But regaining consciousness to find herself in immense pain immediately informed her that she was still living in this cruel new version of reality. Ah. So that actually happened. She'd actually wielded shadows like swords, grew wings, and then fell from the sky after what felt like a bolt of lightning took her down. All of it had been real and she could feel it in the way every inch of her ached.

Her back hurt worst of all, where her branding in particular burned. It was almost as if the hot kiss of iron pressed over her skin repeatedly in order to solidify that, yes, no matter how hard she tried to run, she was doomed to be a sacrifice.

Clara blacked out the instant she'd been struck with Ivy's crossbow. She must've fallen, as it certainly felt as though she'd fallen, but she couldn't remember what'd happened to her after that. Realistically, that fall would have surely killed her. So either Ivy or one of her so-called 'friends' had to have decided to catch her before she hit on the ground. But for what reason? Weren't they planning to kill her anyway? Why prolong the inevitable, then? With bandages wrapped tightly around her torso and arms, covered in bruises and little cuts, it looked as though she had at least gotten caught up in one of the trees below before she'd been 'rescued' from her fate. Well, rescued only to be captured and placed... wherever the hell this was.

If the bandages indicated anything, it was that they intended to keep her alive. For now. But Clara wasn't very optimistic that the murder cult intended to keep her around for very much longer. Let's just call it a hunch. Aside from the pain, the first thing she realized when her heavy eyes flitted open was just how dark it was. If anything, she could tell she was tied up on the floor of a small cage. It reminded her of the one she had been locked in, in that vision of the past where Lizzie... ugh. Empty-eyed and led over a ledge to her death. That was going to be her soon enough, wasn't it? Another sacrifice, just waiting for her turn on the chopping block.

Clara squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her cage was in a room. Obviously. The carpet was a plush red velvet, the only source of light appeared to come from a fancy candelabra flickering on a weird altar in the middle of the room and the air was thick with the scent of freshly burnt sage. Appropriately ritualistic, wasn't it? And within the flickering shadows, she could almost see the shape of a second cage standing on the opposite end of the room. Even more than that, she could hear the distinct sounds of a second person groaning and coming to... potentially inside of it? She couldn't tell for sure. The altar obstructed her view. Hm. Who...

'We have your beloved Thea already'. Ivy had said. No. No, no, no. But who else could it be but Thea? Clara's heart raced and suddenly she was wide awake. Thea. Her one glimmer of hope and happiness, highlighting this horrific experience like a warm ray of sunshine. The person she would've been disappointed to discover was just a figment of her imagination if she'd woken up and discovered it was all a dream. Or... at least that would've been her opinion before 'Ivy' and all of the drama that ensued from there. In that moment, though, her heartache and jealousy felt so very small and insignificant compared the absolute shit they were in now. Maybe they wouldn't ever recover from whatever terrible she'd said when she was drunk. Thea left her behind for a reason. Maybe she still stood by that decision. Even if they weren't friends anymore, even if things could never go back to the way they were before... at the end of everything? All she really wanted was for her to be okay.

Nothing could ever convince Clara that Thea deserved death. Because none of them did. She came to that conclusion when she chose to fight Ivy and would continue to stand by it until she took her final breath.

"Is someone there?" Clara mumbled, discovering the hard way that her mouth was dry and sandpapery. Ugh. It felt like she must've been out for days, but there was really no way of knowing for certain. When it came to Thea, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be right or if she wanted to be wrong that she was in there with her. But she had to ask to know for sure. "...Thea? Is that you?"

 

[Syntra]

Ah, shit. Fuck, shit, fuck! A woman more eloquent than Thea might have found better, more descriptive words for her situation, but as far as she was concerned? They weren't fucking needed. Like, this was the equivalent of trying to invent a food tastier than pizza-- technically, you could succeed, but even adopting that goal would out you as a pretentious fucking idiot. As someone who just wasn't worthy of the gloriousness of dough thinner than some people's egos, nor of the genius of the tomato sauce! ...fuck, now Thea was craving pizza. She was also craving her freedom, mind you, but both of those things seemed about as distant as Mount fucking Everest now.

...honestly? Thea kind of regretted that her brain hadn't called it a day. Like, how hard would it be to make her lose her memory? In the movies, the plot twist was so fucking common that you'd guess even banging your head against your desk would wipe the fuck out of it, but nooo! Here she was, remembered everything in vivid detail. (Clara, and the disgusted look she'd given her. 'Stay away from me.' Ivy's sweet smile, somehow sharper than the edge of a knife. Those fucking cultists, wearing their triumphant smirks that she couldn't wait to wipe off their inbred-looking faces. The sad thing about it, though? That it wouldn't fucking happen. No matter how far Thea stretched the reality, it refused to assume the shape of her usual power fantasies. Just, nope. In this dark, sad little cell, every iteration of it always ended up looked like her goddamn obituary. 'Thea Holloway, died in her twenties. Nobody fucking cared and that was a good thing, because people shouldn't waste their love on worthless bitches.' Mommy probably would cry at her funeral, but would she do it out of genuine sorrow or in hopes of swindling more money out of her rich, soulless friends? Something told her that option B was right.)

Shit, if only her head wasn't spinning so wildly! Thea wasn't sure what kind of bullshit they'd fed her, but the chemical cocktail must have been pretty fucking intense to make her feel like that-- as if her whole-ass spirit had been torn out of her body, and hovering a few inches above the ground. There was this... weird fucking disconnect, you know? The scar did hurt, but in this distant, almost metaphorical way. 'Hmm, I wonder why that is,' the demon teased. 'But, since I am in a generous mood today, I might as well tell you. It's because you don't belong to yourself, crow! Soon enough, you shall be devoured, and the sad clusterfuck that you called your life may finally end. As far as I am concerned, that is a mercy.' Ugh! Did the demon have to keep dropping those fucking truth bombs? Like, Thea was sure that if you looked up the word 'pathetic' in a thesaurus, her pic would be right next to it at this point. 'A dumb, clingy bitch with no boundaries,' the small text would say. 'Avoid at all costs. Oh, and recently, she has also developed auditory hallucinations.' Wait, what? No, this was no fucking hallucination! This was-- was--

"Clara," Thea grasped the bars, perhaps hoping that the Power of LoveTM would help her break them into tiny pieces. (Spoiler: it didn't fucking work. Duh.) "Clara? Is that you?" Her eyes should have gotten used to the darkness ages ago, but for some reason, it didn't happen-- she could still guess the presence of her not-friend more than she could actually see her. (That shadow in the opposite cell... that was her, wasn't it? It fucking had to be!) "Shit," Thea giggled, balancing on the thin line between amusement and hysteria. (Was she happy to meet her like that? On the one hand, it meant she was still alive, but on the other... well, it also implied that that status was currently on thin fucking ice. You know, since that ice was also carrying the weight of a whole-ass demon!)

"This is the worst reunion ever. Like, infinitely more awkward than you meeting your ex in the supermarket while stocking up on your depression ice-cream. Didn't get too far, either, huh?" And then, as if it still fucking mattered, she deflated a bit. "I'm sorry. I did try to stay away, but those guys' arguments were real fucking convincing. And, by arguments, I mean that they almost strangled me. Or that I almost strangled myself? I tried the Harry Potter cosplay thing you sometimes have going on, and it kind of backfired on me. I guess I was never meant to wield the Excalibur, or some shit. Thea the Unworthy. How does that fucking title sound?"

 

[ellarose]

"You... tried to stay away?" Clara asked quietly, uncomprehending. Tried. Meaning that yes-- duh-- she did leave on purpose. (That wasn't the part she was confused about, given that checked out with what she'd suspected had happened in the first place. Because if someone had kidnapped Thea in the middle night, why wouldn't they have spared themselves the time and trouble and taken her as well? That narrative just didn't make any sense.) What she really wanted to know was why she apologized and phrased it as if she was trying to do her some kind of favor. Before Clara could work up the nerve to ask, however, Thea began referring to the cultists 'arguments', Harry Potter cosplay and strangling? Concern took precedence over everything else. Especially after she went on to give herself that unbefitting 'Thea the Unworthy' title. It was a jarring contrast to the confidence she usually exuded that she couldn't help but respond immediately, incredulously. "What? Thea, that doesn't matter. You killed a zombie with an axe. You slew a dragon and even attacked a wolf as a mouse. You never needed to rely on the demon to be a badass." That's what I like about you. She blushed. (Like? Liked? She had no idea where she was at anymore.) Well, either way... should any of these thoughts remain unspoken when they were already courting the thin, fragile line between life and death? This was it, wasn't it? The cages and this creepy ritualistic setting made that abundantly clear.

...And who knew if they had five hours left or five minutes?

"Unlike me. I tried to escape, too." Clara sighed, staring at her hands in the dark. Sure, the whole shadow manipulation thing scared her once. Whatever abilities she possessed, they were developing faster than she could've ever imagined now. She couldn't decide whether the strength it lent her was empowering or foreboding. "And it's just like you said... I didn't get away either." Obviously. "Ivy shot me down with a crossbow."

Geez. Zombies, dragons, and the fact that Thea had been turned into a mouse? Clara getting shot out of the sky with a crossbow? She stopped pausing to think about the hand of impossible weirdness they'd been dealt a while ago... but whenever she did, she could confront the fact that it was still batshit on every possible level. Seriously. What kind of lives were they living right now? The kinds of lives that are about to end soon, her conscience reminded her for the umpteenth time. Hm. Did no one ever manage to report on any legitimate evidence of ghosts and the supernatural because they got killed by it too quickly to do so?

"She's a bitch." Clara sighed tiredly, rubbing the back of her neck. Saw that one coming, didn't she? Of course, complaining about Ivy wasn't a productive use of what could be their last moments. She wasn't going to be unnecessarily petty by saying 'I told you so', though. Apparently she'd been petty enough the other night that Thea felt justified in abandoning her altogether for it. Still. There was something about Ivy... "She wanted revenge for someone called Eleanor. Does that name ring a bell?" Ah. And now she was trying to play detective again. Not that it mattered anymore. They were cornered. Not only were they cornered, but they were trapped in cages. She seriously doubted that cultists that had been hunting them down for years would've carelessly left the doors unlocked.

"...Never mind." Clara wrapped her arms around herself. Maybe she was trying to think about anything other than, well... whatever sad, fragmented thing remained of her relationship to Thea? "I don't know why I keep trying to figure this out when we're going to die anyway."

'Have you finally learned your place? It took you long enough.' The demon taunted. His voice was jarringly loud. Louder than she'd ever heard it before in her life. So much so that Clara jumped with surprise and banged her head against the bars of her cage in the process. A booming metallic 'clang' echoed in the room when her skull knocked against it. Ouch. 'Aw. Why so jumpy, little raven? We're friends, aren't we? In fact, I've never felt closer to you than I do right now.' He laughed. 'There's no point in talking things out with crow, is there? She left you for dead! Me, though? Oh, well you know I would never leave you like that.'

Clara shuddered. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

"Thea..." Clara's heart pounded. She was afraid to ask, to learn whatever terrible mistake she made. But she had to ask. "Why did you leave like that?" There it was. "I was beyond drunk. And I know that's not an excuse... but I don't remember everything I said. I just know I said a lot. And it must've been bad if it made you want to..." She sucked in a sharp breath, too choked up to continue. Every torturous thought she'd built up since discovering she'd gone missing swam through her mind at once. Because what in the world had she done to destroy what had to have been one of the most meaningful relationship she'd ever formed?

 

[Syntra]

“Yeah, except that I ran out of my fucking badass points the second it mattered. This is like… like acing your mock entrance exams, and then fucking up the real deal because you were too busy throwing up all over yourself.” It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but you know what? Give her a fucking break! Being stuck in a damn cage wasn’t all too intellectually stimulating, and the same went for the depressing fucking darkness. All the great artists of pretty much any era needed their muse, which-- waaaait. Wait, wait, wait. Stop the goddamn presses! Had Clara just called her a badass? For once, Thea found herself sort of thankful for the poor lighting, because she must have been blushing like crazy. Shit, had her cheeks been any brighter, the cultists could have used them instead of traffic lights! (What Did This MeanTM, though? Was this, like, pity validation? Empathy handouts? ‘We’re going to die, anyway, so I might as well humor the bitch. Maybe it will score me some sweet heaven cash!’ She didn’t necessarily think that Clara was like that, but… well, it was hard to tell where they stood anymore. The trajectory was shrouded in fog, too. Like, what the fuck were they? Enemies to lovers, 200k words, alternative universe? Or something much more realistic, such as the stars of some ~artsy~ flick about the fragility of relationships? Thea could no longer recognize the genre, and that fucking scared her.)

“What a bitch,” she scoffed, biting her lip in the process. “What is everyone’s fucking problem, anyway? Do they give people some fancy-ass Pokémon collectibles in exchange for betraying us? If so, I would love one, too. I’ve been my own worst enemy for a loooong while now, so like, I do think that those efforts deserve to be appreciated.” And, no, this wasn’t about Ivy per se. Ivy was a mere tip of the iceberg-- a hot, blonde tip, but ultimately, just a manifestation of a larger fucking tendency. (Only Thea Holloway could destroy Thea Holloway, she often liked to say. The problem with that, however? Thea Holloway was super invested in doing exactly that, and every step she had ever taken had led her closer to that bottomless fucking abyss. …why? For the thrill of hurling herself off that cliff? For the few moments of weightlessness, before her body shattered over the rocks? She didn’t know, and thus she couldn’t say. The monster sleeping in her belly did want something, though, and it wouldn’t stop till it fucking got it. Regardless of the price.) “But, man, a crossbow is so fucking extra. How big of a cringy cosplayer do you have to be to unironically use that? Stop pretending that you’re Legolas or some shit and just buy a goddamn gun.” …which, of course, wasn’t the fucking point! Ugh. Thea the Uworthy? More like Thea the Heartless, with the amount of consideration she’d just extended to her not-friend.

“Are you okay, though? You don’t sound as if you’ve been shot. I mean, I’m not an expert at these things, but wouldn’t there be more of an ouch, ouch vibe to you?” Oookay, couldn’t someone please shoot her? With each passing second, Thea was becoming more and more convinced that that was the optimal way of fixing her dumbass fucking brain. Sometimes, a bullet was the only medicine! “I’m sorry I didn’t notice,” she offered an apology, perhaps as an olive branch. “Her being a grade A bitch, I mean. I was, um, too busy.” Too busy exploring the depths of her mouth, but somehow, Thea felt that Clara didn’t need to be reminded of that. Like, the mind was usually pretty competent at recording all the things you didn’t want to remember, y’know? Unlike with dates and appointments and foreign language vocab, which got chucked into the oblivion pretty much immediately. “Eleanor,” Thea repeated. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Probably some anime pillow waifu that happens to be part of her tragic fucking backstory. Does it matter?” To her, it certainly didn’t. While Thea could appreciate a sexy villainess in fiction, the lines got a little more blurred when she was the victim, as opposed to some faceless fucking NPC!

‘I thought you accepted that you were a NPC?’ the demon inquired. ‘But don’t worry, crow! That analysis is woefully inaccurate. Technically speaking, you are more of a… hmm, ingredient. A very important one. You shall help me rise to true power, and in doing so, you shall find your true purpose. Few people are blessed like that, I think.’

Oooh, edgy! Feeding the trolls was the stupidest fucking thing you could do, though, so Thea decided that she wasn’t going to give him more of her precious attention. Just, nope. Instead, she looked at Clara, and… well, a few question marks popped above her head.

“Because you asked me to?” the brunette asked, uncomprehending. “You said that you didn’t want to see me again. What else was I supposed to do, wear a potato sack over my fucking head? I figured that you wanted me to fuck off, Clara.” But, but, but, what if that wasn’t true? Clara’s tone at least suggested that she had not expected that outcome. (A new, wild hope sprouted somewhere in her chest, and Thea didn’t even bother to crush it. What would the point of that be? It wasn’t like false hopes could hurt you more than literal cultists.) “It made sense to me. Like, I fucked up so much trying to get over you, and so I thought you wanted to forget I ever existed. Was that… not what you meant?”

 

[ellarose]

"My, ah... my wings took the brunt of the shot." Clara admitted. Sure it sounded absurd, just like everything else, but she supposed that Thea of all people would get it. Thea and only Thea, really. Anyone else would think she was stretching the truth and sculpting her trauma into some kind of bizarre, sarcastic joke. Plenty of people just loved to pin her with the whole 'tortured artist' archetype, like it was some kind of weird coping mechanism. (But she couldn't even blame them. The voices, the shadows, her reality? As she'd acknowledged before and would undoubtedly acknowledge again-- it was all fucking creepy and strange. It'd felt like she existed in a world all of her own, tuning everyone out because she knew it just wasn't worth it to connect with anyone who wouldn't take her seriously... until Thea showed up and bypassed all of her usual rules.) "I mean, I feel like I lost a fistfight with whatever tree I fell into afterwards. Otherwise I guess I'm okay?" She flexed her toes and cringed as a dull pain sprang through her left leg. Hadn't tried putting pressure on her feet yet, which throbbed the way all of her did. There was no way to tell if she'd sprained her ankle or anything like that while curled up in a cage. Not like a sprained ankle mattered much if she wasn't going to need to walk anywhere anymore. "As okay as I can be in this mess, anyway." Which was to say she wasn't actually okay at all, when she really thought about it.

Thea's apology effectively untied one of the big, tangled knots in Clara's chest. Sure, it'd cost them a lot to reach this understanding... but it helped to be validated at least in the fact that Ivy had been horrible to her, for lack of a better word.

"We only knew her for a night. And she acted that way when you weren't around, mostly. Probably on purpose." Clara sighed. It was more than just the flirting, too. The dog comment, the weird statistics, the self-help books. "It was like she knew exactly what to say to get under my skin. Like the..." She paused and tilted her head. "Like the demon." Huh. Now that she thought about it, there had to be a kernel of truth in that 'on purpose' part, right? Of course it was orchestrated on some level because she was involved with the cult. And yet she also knew information that she really shouldn't have known otherwise. Could she have heard the demon's voice in her head as well? If that was the case... had she actually been one of them after all? She did have a branding, after all. And she had spoken so personally about what they'd been through, too. (For whatever reason, the cultists couldn't reach the demon directly themselves. If that ritual she'd seen from her past meant anything, using her younger self as some kind of vessel to communicate with him... was 'Ivy' their designated vessel now? And was Eleanor another sacrificed kid?) A fellow sacrifice and a cultist? Was that even possible?

'Afraid I have another favorite, raven? Hate to break it to you, but you don't have nearly enough time to puzzle this out. Why bother?' The demon sighed, as if he was growing quite tired of her now. His tone changed real quick, didn't it? 'And don't tell me you're going to forgive crow? Need I remind you again? She left you for dead.'

Hm. Their resident demon was getting pretty persistent on this whole 'left for dead' narrative. So persistent, in fact, that Clara couldn't help but wonder why. Because when she looked at that night with a clearer frame of mind, at the way Ivy had antagonized her all while blatantly cozying up to Thea? The intention had obviously been to divide them! And it had worked. They fell for her trap and now they were in cages.

"...What?" Clara blinked, surprised. Did she really say that she never wanted to see her again? Because that seemed a bit extreme. As in, there was no scenario where she imagined phrasing it with those exact terms. Would she really have asked her to cut ties altogether rather than simply just asking to be left alone? But she'd been drunk and upset, so maybe? "Thea... I didn't mean that. I'm sorry I gave you that impression. Whatever I said, I only said it because I knew I needed some space. I was a mess... I do remember that much. I needed to calm down and sort myself out." Namely figure out why she felt such a visceral revulsion seeing Ivy flirt with Thea. Watching Ivy lean in close, placing her hand on Thea's hip and her lips on her earlobe and-- ugh. No! It didn't matter now. Fucked up so much trying to get over you. Oh. Well... that was something, wasn't it? An indirect confession of sorts. It was hard to know what to do with it now, though. Her heart seemed to pound and sink at the same time, like some struggling, drowning thing.

"I couldn't forget you even if I tried. You're Thea Holloway." Clara sighed softly, the sound more fond than anything else. "And I wasn't trying to, mind you. Because that wasn't what I wanted." She squeezed her eyes shut, as if to deny the weird stinging in her eyes the satisfaction of making her cry. Why did it end up like this? "When I saw you with her, it felt like you had already forgotten me. Like I didn't exist anymore. And..." Fuck it. "I was jealous. And while it made me say stupid, mean things... it also forced me to admit to myself that I've never met anyone who makes me feel the way you do. Thea, do you have any idea how worried I was when I realized you were gone?"

Clara's heart intensified in the act of violent drowning, her hands shook along with it, and she curled herself tighter. Oof. Every inch of her was wracked with this feeling, fear and something else. She couldn't tell if it was hope or sadness for what never was and never would be. Maybe it was a strange concoction of everything all at once.

"I'm not used to falling for anyone this quickly... and I didn't want to screw things up by rushing into anything before I was ready. I wanted a little more time. But it seemed to me like you already moved on before I could work up the nerve." Clara exhaled shakily. "Guess I was stupid to want time in the first place, seeing as we're running out of it now."

 

[Syntra]

Sooo, it was a foregone fucking conclusion that Thea would wake up soon, right? Most likely with an iron boot crushing her face, too, because the phrase 'treating one's prisoners with respect' might as well have been kryptonite to the cultists. 'Hurrr durrr, gotta break them first so that the lazy-ass demon doesn't have to chew!' ...or something. Anyway, the reason why Thea was spinning this particular conspiracy theory was totally valid, and it was because Clara was talking. That wouldn't have been so weird on its own-- she wasn't a moron who couldn't string a meaningful fucking sentence together, regardless of her quiet nature. You know what was strange about it, though? The contents of her speech. The Actual PointTM. Like, wow, who would have guessed that people... often didn't mean what they said? Not literally, at the very least? Someone call the firefighters, 'cause the revelation set Thea Holloway's mind on fucking fire. "You, um, might not have said the 'fuck off forever' part," she admitted. "I did hear it in there, though. My hearing is awesome like that." And, by 'awesome', the brunette actually meant 'defective'. Wonderful, right? Yet another reason to discard her and never fucking look back. "I... I dunno, I guess it's because I've never really gotten a second chance before," she confessed, somehow feeling more comfortable to do so in the semblance of anonymity the darkness provided. (It was like pulling a blanket over your head and sharing secrets with a friend, kind of. Like the nightmare fucking version of it.) "It was always 'Thea do this, Thea do that,' and when I couldn't, poof, game over. Too bad, bitch. So, I might have expected it from you as well?" Her throat felt tight, almost suspiciously so, but nope, Thea Holloway wasn't about to cry. Not fucking happening. She was just, uhh, suffering from an early onset throat crampitis? A deadly, deadly disease, which had claimed thousands of lives! ...and at least one girl's fucking dignity. Ugh.

"Yeah," she smiled ruefully, "Thea Disaster Holloway. The current holder of the 'Greatest Fuck Up of the Century' title! Of course you can't fucking forget about me, Clara." Still, she supposed, it was probably better than fading into obscurity. Like, infinitely so. NPCs could live their meaningless NPC lives, with a dog and a white picket fence and a house with a mortgage so hardcore it would even give Jack the Ripper a heart attack--unlike them,Thea liked to live dangerously. On the fringes of their society, where all the legends dwelled, she would... she would... "You were worried about me?" the brunette repeated, somewhat stupidly. "I, um, haven't thought of that. A recurring fucking issue, if I'm being honest."

Clara didn't stop there, though. No, her speech went on, and the trajectory was heading towards SomethingTM, and, fuck, where was the goddamn pause button when you needed it?! 'Cause Thea wasn't ready to hear this! Well, she was, but also wasn't, but maybe she would be in like five seconds? You know, after she hyperventilated a bit, said 'Mississippi' three times and gave herself a few slaps for good fucking measure. (Alert, alert! FeelingsTM emerging. The chances of making a total fucking asshole out of yourself: sky high. The chances of fucking up: all but guaranteed. The state of your hair: atrocious. Abandon all fucking hope.) Ugh! Why couldn't fate at least give her a good hair day? Demise would have been a little more acceptable had she looked like one of those tragic Victorian ladies who suffered from the Cough of DeathTM, and not like the human version of dumpster fire.

"I was jealous," Clara said. "Not used to falling for anyone this quickly." Oh. OH. Could your heart, like, leap out of your chest? 'Cause it felt like Thea's heart for sure was going to do exactly that! Thump, thump, thump, it went, and... shit, it wouldn't shock her if those wings sprouted from her back, either. (Or if her brain got fucking fried at the spot, for that matter. Clara liked her! Liked liked her! Would have been much more idyllic if not for the whole cage thing, but hey, you couldn't have everything in life.) "You weren't stupid to want that. Fuck, if you'd told me, I would have waited. I just didn't want to get attached to someone who didn't feel that way about me, y'know? Hence the whole Ivyzilla fiasco. Clara, I..." she gulped, "...I know I can be a lot. Trust me, that isn't fucking difficult to notice. You're important to me, though, and I could have toned my a-lot-ness down. I could have... could have been a less of a brat, I guess."

Yeah, could have, except that didn't fucking matter because they were just waiting for those bastards to cut their hearts out in some fucked up ritual now. Sighx100! "Look," Thea licked her lips, "I'm not gonna name this 'cause I don't want to freak you out even more, but I have never felt this way about anyone before. So, um, there's that. You have Clara-exclusive privileges. Like, a shit ton of them."

'Clara,' a new voice popped up in her head, quiet but urgent. Clara-exclusive access. The third brick. The third brick!'

And, hey, what the fuck did they have to lose? One big, fat nothing! "You hearing anything?" Thea pressed herself against the bars, sounding hopeful against her will. Could they make it out of this death trap, after all...? She and her almost-certainly-gf? Oh god, please, please, please! "A little bird tells me you should try the third brick. I swear, if this is some joke at our expense, I'm gonna kill that fucker for the second fucking time."

 

[ellarose]

"Mhm. You are a lot." Clara said in her blunt way. What? There was no point in denying that, was there, if Thea was going as far as to say it herself? If that was what she genuinely believed, if that was how she interpreted herself, it was clear that she'd take any pointblank denial of that fact as some kind of pretty little lie she'd woven to spare her feelings. Empty, comforting words. She shrugged, though, as if it wasn't that big of a deal. Because it really wasn't. Not to her, anyway. "That's better than being too little. I... I like that about you, okay? So don't you dare start toning yourself down now." Her voice turned a bit softer. Geez. Leave it to Thea Holloway to break all of her usual rules again, now that she was opening herself up in the dark. But if her friend-- or more-than-friend-- was being vulnerable with her by sharing her weaknesses, she might as well do her best to meet her halfway there. It was only fair. "I try to hide it... but I can be a lot too. Hard not to be when you grow up hearing voices in your head. Figure it must come with the territory." It was her turn to wear a rueful smile then. "Let's just agree we were both brats and move on. Okay?"

Wasn't this cruel? Unfair on the next level? There was all kinds of potential buzzing eagerly like electricity in the space that separated them, the space she no longer wanted to remain between them. But where was potential supposed to go now that they were trapped? It'd be squashed and squandered before they could do anything real with it. They were never in the romance genre, as nice as that would’ve been. They were in horror.

Or a horror comedy, maybe, since it always felt like someone was laughing at their expense. The voice in their heads. The demon.

What an asshole.

Thea's most official confession of all somehow got Clara to smile and cry at the same time. She had someone who liked her like she liked them, someone who'd care if she died. And they were about to die together. The rollercoaster ride comprised of deep drops of agony mixed with skyrocketing happiness was a trippy fucking combination. "In that case, I'm honored. I've never been someone's exclusive before." She gave a wobbly laugh while tears started to stream down her face. A mess and it showed... but at least she wasn't alone for once. Although she might have said more, perhaps that Thea was of course granted those same privileges, her train of thought was halted by Thea's question.

"No...? At least not yet." Clara attempted to scrub her cheeks dry on her shoulders, her expression turning serious as she listened carefully. "Why? Are you hearing something?"

Contrarily, there was a dull ringing in Clara's ears. It almost felt as though there was a layer of cotton nestled between herself and the voices she was used to hearing, like something was obstructing it. There was no time to consider that in any further depth, though, when Thea supplied the information that her own voices supplied. Maybe that would be enough?

"The third brick..." Clara inched around her cage, squinting in the darkness to see if she could find whatever the voice could've been referring to. Sure enough on the floor directly in front there was a slightly discolored brick sticking slightly outwards where the red velvet carpet ended. It looked like it had a three written on it in black marker? "Okay. I think I see it." She bit her lip, "This might take me a second. They tied my hands." Probably because Ivy saw her using them to fight. They were scared of her. (They should be, really. Because if she ever got out? She wasn't sure how much mercy she was willing to show these creeps anymore.) Maneuvering herself around at an angle where she could stick her arms through the bars of the cage, she clumsily flailed her hands around in every possible direction before she finally pressed down on the third brick. "There."

The ground rumbled for a moment, as if Clara had flipped some kind of hidden switch to unlock a secret room in a mystery novel. And then the room fell away to reveal their cages set on... what appeared to be a big stage in a theater? Instead of a red velvet carpet, they were now flanked by red velvet curtains.

"Oh my, my, my. The everlasting romance between the sun and the moon is really quite tragic, isn't it?" A sentient scale of justice hobbled to the center of the stage between their cages, as if it was one of those cursed objects escaped from Beauty and the Beast. Well. Okay then. This was a thing that was happening now. "For when one rises the other must fall."

When the scale said those words, a loud cranking sound echoed in the theatre. Clara yelped, her heart jumping like a startled rabbit in her chest as her cage was lifted high up into the air on some kind of pulley. And as hers went up, Thea's descended down through a trap door in the stage into darkness below. "Thea!"

So that fear of heights? Officially confirmed. Clara trembled, her mind filled with shattered wings and Ivy's crossbow. She vaugely registered cardboard cutouts of stars on string descending like stage props in a children's play, framing the cage as if to create the night sky around her.

"Now, now. I am not a monster, dears! You will be allowed to leave your cages once you answer my questions." The scale of justice tutted. "But you must reflect and answer them honestly. Deal? And the first one is really quite an easy one." A microphone on a stand appeared in front of it, then, allowing her voice to boom throughout the entirety of the theatre with a commanding grandness. "Question number one! Which of these things are you more afraid of? Heights?" Clara's cage shook and glowed a faint gold. "Or the dark?" Then Thea's cage, in the shadows did the same.

The ropes around Clara's wrists unravelled, then, and... turned into a quill? A long piece of parchment paper unrolled out of thin air before her, prompting her to answer. With a sigh, she wrote 'heights' and watched in awe as the words disappeared from the page a moment later, as if being absorbed into it like water into a sponge.

Underneath the stage below at the same exact time, a quill and parchment paper appeared before Thea and also prompted her to answer.

 

[Syntra]

Woo hoo, a convenient fucking ticket out of this goddamn hell! Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen, because Thea Holloway for sure wasn't staying. This cage had never suited her aesthetic, anyway-- props to the demon for pushing the bird motive to its absolute limits, the brunette guessed, but had she wanted to look like a cheap goth stereotype, she would have bought all of her clothes at Hot Topic. Sooo, given that she hadn't fucking done it? Yeah, not too interested in that. "I could just about kiss you right now," Thea chuckled as the weight was lifted from her chest, so fast it made her head spin. "Or, like, literally any time. Has anyone ever told you just how kissable those lips are, Clara? 'Cause I've been thinking about that recently, and they gave me ideas. Could write a whole fucking thesis about that." And, yeah, it might not have been the best time for flirting, but you know what? Fuck that. Social conventions kind of stopped being relevant in those life-and-death situations, seeing as they hadn't been designed for them! Like, you wouldn't hold a door open for a lady if that very same lady turned out to be a thirsty-ass vampire, right? ...unless she was hot and you were into that kind of thing, which may or may not have been the case with Thea. (Come to think of it, Clara in a vampire cosplay might have been... No! No, bad brain! While those fantasies were no longer Forbidden FruitTM, there was a time and place for everything, sheesh. A time and place that wasn't whatever... whatever this was. Shit, weren't the cages supposed to disappear? If so, then Thea Holloway would love to fill out her fucking bug report!)

"Uhhh... you aware that that isn't true, right?" she raised her eyebrow nonetheless, unfazed by this new development. (Talking fucking objects? Considering the caliber of bullshit FateTM had thrown at them recently, that was honestly pretty tame. What was next, ice-cream that begged not to be eaten? Too fucking bad, for Thea Holloway was merciless.) "Like, go with this edgy-ass narrative if you want to, but nothing is actually rising or falling. That's a pretty Earth-centric view. The sun and the moon are just chilli.... aaargh!" So, a note to self: don't fucking lecture supernatural fucks. Really fucking don't, unless you were trying to figure out how to get one of those crazy-ass amusement park rides for free! (The cage sank into the darkness, like a heavy boot might sink into mud. She could feel ghostly hands all over herself, leaving hot, searing fingerprints on her skin, and...!)

"Silence, Miss Holloway," the scales recommended. "After all, you are being judged. Wouldn't you say that you are meant to answer questions instead of creating more of them, hmm? For now, you may enjoy a glimpse of the future punishments!"

Which, what kind of fucked up judicial system was that? Where was her fucking lawyer?! Thea may not have been one of those pathetic crime show nerds, but she did know that the very foundation of their justice revolved around hot women in tight suits arguing with each other endlessly and maybe having an enemies to lovers romance afterwards. Needless to say, this was sooo not that! (The shadows coiled around her arm, in this snake-like manner, and pressed themselves into her. 'Let me in,' a new voice whispered, causing her to shiver. Just, what the fucking fuck? And, in case you were wondering, the f-bombs she had dropped absolutely weren't excessive. Nope, this was the exact right amount. Any fewer than that, and you might arrive to the conclusion that this wasn't the most arcane bullshit to ever bullshit! 'Come on, don't play hard to get. Haven't you always wanted that? Don't pretend that you don't know me, Thea. Not when you were the one who...') The words dissolved in the darkness, and yet, yet the remnants scraped against her ears, against her skin, against her very fucking soul. Was this what getting tattooed with acid felt like? 'Cause that was the only association her brain was providing.

'Darkness,' she wrote with trembling hands, once the restraints relented. The idea to lie hadn't even crossed her mind, and the scales above her giggled. "Why, of course! I am not surprised. The sun shines high in the sky, while the moon thrives best when nothing else is seen. You both ought to stay where you are, I think! Fear only makes humans more honest, so I'm actually doing the two of you a huge favor. The next question, you see, won't be as easy to deal with." Easy to deal with? Easy to deal with?! If this was some bizarre fucking appetizer, then what would the main course be? Being torn limb from limb and fed to hungry wolves? So far, this prison break was not going the way Thea had expected it to. (-10/10, mainly due to the cages that just refused to disappear. Like, c'moooon, someone throw them a fucking bone here! Pretty please? ...no. No, of course not.)

"It's simple enough to talk about one's fears, you see? Everyone has them. In that, they are much like opinions. They only make you human, for you are all pathetic, fragile things. What of your sins, though? Sins are where it gets truly interesting. Personal. Well, don't be shy! What was your greatest crime? Write it down, and share with the audience. Tell us how you felt about it, too. And remember, sun and moon, no lying! Lies make me very, very, very sad."

 

[ellarose]

Clara closed her eyes, trying to forget the fact that she was still suspended high up in the air. They'd answered honestly and yet the scale had decided not to reward them for it, but to keep them right where they were as if to rub their fears in their faces. (There was the implication that lies led to punishments, though. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she wasn't stupid enough to test it and find out. Typically the things that threatened to kill them in these places did their best to make good on those promises whenever possible.) When she stared at the blank sheet of parchment and heard the next question boom through the theatre, however, dread settled heavily in the pit of her stomach. Sins? Greatest crime? Oh no. No, no, no! She didn't want to answer that. Anything but that. Clutching the quill in her hand so tightly that her fingers ached, she found she was only a few breaths away from a full-blown panic attack. Thump, thump, thump. The bars of the cage in front of her fuzzed and blood rushed in her ears. It passed through her mind in flashes. Trembling little fingers on the trigger. The explosive sound of the gunshot.

"Tick tock! I need answers, ladies." The scale hopped up and down, thumping loudly against the stage in a way that reminded her of a frazzled drama teacher. "Your greatest crimes. We are simply dying to find out. And if you cannot tell us then perhaps you shall die instead!"

Overhead Clara heard an ominous creaking noise. Her cage began to rock back and forth, as if to taunt her with the prospect that it could fall at any second. That wasn't helping the mounting panic, of course, but it did incentivize her to press the quill to the parchment. Fine!

'I shot someone.' Clara scrawled quickly before tossing the quill down and pressing her hands to either side of her head. The specifics weren't necessary, were they? The only one present to truly judge her for it was Thea, she supposed. The demon knew, as the bastard knew everything, and the scale wasn't even real. (And of all of them, of anyone in the whole world, Thea's was the only one whose opinion truly mattered to her. And she still said she liked her. She really liked her even after seeing those illusionary glimpses of the broken old trailer Clara grew up in, as well as her papa and his gun and... not only that, but Thea had been there to hold her steady when she was forced to confront it.) What could possibly go wrong, then? She wasn't sure if it was the smartest idea to ask that question, though. Because it was always when that question was asked that everything proceeded to go horribly, unequivocally wrong.

"Well then! Let's bring you both front and center to share, shall we?" The scale announced. A loud cranking echoed as their cages were lowered and also lifted until they settled firmly onto the stage at the same level. The object stopped in front of Clara's cage first. "Starting with you. Hmmm..."

Clara wasn't sure at what point she had curled herself into a tight little ball, but she did. Reverting to those childlike defense mechanisms because there was nothing else she could do, when the memories reigned over her mind and put her back in that place. As much as she hated heights, she didn't want to be seen by anyone. Didn't want anyone to look at her.

"You shot someone? Well, technically that is not a lie but..." The scale tut tutted. "That is not very specific, miss Clair de Lune! I asked for details. You must elaborate. Get personal. Tell us. Who did you shoot?"

Clara didn't speak. Not because she was stubborn or defiant or had a death wish or anything like that. Her throat was afflicted with a tightness she couldn't loosen at will. She knew what she did. But all of these years, she had never admitted it out loud before.

"Ah, that's right. You were a child when you committed your crime, weren't you? Perhaps you need a refresher, then?" The scale almost sounded sympathetic. Except the cursed object's intentions were not at all sympathetic when it pulled that bloodied stuffed rabbit out of thin air. "Does this help? It was a strange case, wasn't it? Your fate depended on the testimony of this rabbit." Suddenly the rabbit was in the cage with her. Get that thing away from me. She closed her eyes to pretend that it wasn't. "If you cannot tell us, then at least do the honor of pressing the paw. The audio recording will explain everything!"

Clara just shook her head. No, she wasn't going to press the paw. She wasn't even going to touch the thing. (She couldn't bear to hear it, not again. The crackling of static, the threats, the shot.) Who cared if there was a punishment? There was no punishment worse than being forced to relive her childhood trauma under the hellish heat of a spotlight.

"Acting like a petulant child, I see. Your inability to speak is precisely what escalated the mess you were in that day. You do understand that, do you not?" The scale sighed heavily. The 'audience' of shadow people murmured impatiently behind it. "Fine! The show must go on. Since I am merciful, I will circle back to you. And if you cannot answer by then? You will be punished."

The object bounced over to Thea's cage next. Although it did not have an expression, their body language was expressive enough to say they were expectant.

"Thea. Your name is in the word 'theatre', you know. You were made for the spotlight!" The scale sang, "Perhaps you shall show Clara here how it is done. What is your greatest crime?"

 

[Syntra]

Just asking them about their greatest crime? You know, in the same way you'd ask someone what they'd fucking had for dinner? Sheesh, this had to be the laziest goddamn """investigation""" Thea Holloway had seen in her miserable life! The rl equivalent of those trashy-ass modern crime shows-- the ones where they just kept zooming in on the crime scene photos with their ~fancy gadgets~, till the suspect's literal name emerged from the pixels. Like, what the fuck? Did they not deserve some Colombo type, at least? That guy had for sure put some effort into his mental traps, and as a fellow troll, Thea Holloway could appreciate that sort of thing. It was sort of like... well, like admiring an intricate pattern on a hand-made carpet, except that, instead of the actual patterns, you were getting all misty-eyed over fucking with people. Wholesome/10!

...only if the people who were getting fucked with weren't a) you, b) someone close to you, though. And, despite being stuck down there in the darkness? Thea's ears picked up on every word easily, as if Clara and the demented scale were standing right next to her. (No, the brunette did not like what she was hearing. Not one bit. In fact, if there were machines that could measure the true depth of one's emotional frustration, that of Thea would dwarf the fucking Grand Canyon!) "Hey! What is this, fucking victim-blaming 101?" 'Cause, in case the scale had failed to notice, Clara had been a child. A child, with a child's brain and a child's logic. If you had been given a magical button that would make all your worries go away, wouldn't you press it at that age? Despite it being shaped like a fucking trigger? Yes, yes and yes, a thousand times yes! Anyone claiming anything else was just too drunk on the 'well, I would have done better' juice, probably because they had no accomplishments of that existed outside of their own head. Like yes, Tommy, you sure as fuck would have stopped 9/11 from happening! Now go back to your fucking basement, mommy needs you to collect your dirty socks. "And also, also, are we going to pretend that all lives are fucking sacred? Ridiculous! If you are asking me, Clara took one for the team. The world has been infinitely better since that bastard stopped breathing, too. Like, my skin problems disappeared the second his vile ass was terminated. One moment, I looked like a leper, and then, boom! Fucking gone. I didn't know why it happened back then, but I can for sure connect the dots now. He was, like, poisoning the environment with his grossness. The term's called 'grossness osmosis'. Fucking google it."

Despite not really being all too expressive, the scale somehow managed to look unimpressed. "Yes, but nobody was asking you, Thea. I know you have a lot of opinions, but that doesn't mean you have to shove them down everyone's throat. Now, will you answer my question?"

Her worst crime, her worst crime. Hmm, hmm. That wasn't as simple as her admitting to shanking that nurse, now was it? Even someone as dedicated to not analyzing the patterns as Thea was had realized by that point that the nightmare realms were, to put it mildly, the fucking opposite of straightforward. When someone there asked you to jump, your reaction shouldn't be to ask how high-- it should be to jump on their fucking head and shatter their skull. Out-of-the-box thinking, in other words. The exact sort of thing she happened to be good at!

"Well... I did kill someone," Thea finally said, oh so casually. From her tone alone, you might think she was discussing her experiences with the latest Call of Duty game, or maybe the way in which they'd fucked up her last Starbucks order. Weirdly enough, the shadows... didn't react? They fluttered in the corner, as if encouraging her to speak. Well, okay! That she could deliver on, alright. "The bitch fucking deserved it, though. Like, it was illegal, but only because our justice system was designed by absolute morons. I don't even feel guilty. If she didn't want to get stabbed, then she shouldn't have acted like someone who desperately needed some stabbing. There are people who are basically knife magnets, you feel me? Or bullet magnets, or axe magnets, or... well, you get my fucking point." What was she feeling guilty about, though? Surely, there had to be something, buried under the layers and layers of ~too cool for school~ attitude.

"My real worst crime is not treating some people like I should have," she admitted, with her heart somewhere in her throat. (Thump, thump, thump, it danced, and somehow, Thea just knew she was on the right track. She fucking had to be, because no false shortcut had ever put up so much resistance. Being enticing was their entire fucking point, y'know? Easy, empty calories, like the cheap chocolate bar from your local dollar store. ...you couldn't fucking live on that, either. Just, no.)

"Via jumping to conclusions and shit. I guess I was trying to protect myself, but like, with barbed wire. Hilarious, huh? And then I wondered why nobody really wanted to visit, with my fucking front porch looking like that." Oh yeah, a mystery for the ages for sure! How come the superficial convo bitch only ever got involved in skin-deep friendships? Must have been, like, due to her astrological sign. Or due to some ancient curse! (Clara had helped her realize that, about five seconds ago. Who would have guessed that voicing one's issues... helped??? Like??? Black fucking magic, indeed.) "So, yeah. It's that. That, and pressuring Clara when she needed more time."

 

[ellarose]

Clara's mind shaped itself into an inescapable labyrinth. 'Talk about it. How am I supposed to...' With echoing footsteps, she wandered it reluctantly, attempting to recreate the scene as it was so that she could in turn find the least painful way to put it into words. (Oof. Should've known that her ability to speak up would be put to the test once again. And if she couldn't do it? She'd be offed by the cruel design of this game they'd been forced to play. Papa was essentially trying to kill her all over again, at this world's insistence to punish her if she couldn't.) Deep down, as crisp and vivid as the trauma itself was in her mind, human memories weren't the most reliable thing in the world. Perception could so easily warp everything. And seeing the world through a child's eyes versus seeing the world through the eyes of an adult who knew better now made it even hazier. She remembered being scared to close her eyes to go to sleep every night, as each little creak and groan of the trailer alerted her mind to a potential threat. Those days of endless fear and fidgeting, picking at her skin and tugging her eyelashes off. Raoul's concern, because he had moved out by then, and the rabbit he had given her 'just in case' something bad happened and she couldn't talk about it afterwards. The gun she'd accidentally discovered under the sofa looking for her red crayon, sleek and shiny in the case. For her, the very existence of the gun reinforced the reality of all of those threats that had, for a time, almost began to sound hollow because she'd heard them so often.

Papa saw her playing with the shadows, creating little puppets on the wall to entertain herself. That was when it started. But it got exponentially worse when he discovered her sketchbooks and her stories. The things that made Clara who she was... or rather Beatrice who she was what really set him off in the end. (He drank so much, loved his booze more than he loved her. Maybe for a time he convinced himself he was hallucinating when he saw her sculpting shadows like they were clay, paranoid and unable to trust his own mind. Once he found tangible evidence he could use to justify his hate, though? It was all over.) It wasn't the demon in the end. It was her. Papa was furious, he burned every page right in front of her. And then...

When Thea spoke, every word spun a thread for her to follow out of the labyrinth. It'd probably cause the average person a good deal of alarm, to be confronted with someone could so nonchalantly claim to have killed someone and not even feel a little bit of remorse for it. Clara, though? She found that admirable. There a great deal of things in this world that killed without remorse. They'd learned the way the world worked as early as they'd been kidnapped by a freaking murder cult as children. So why should they feel guilty for sticking up for themselves in self-defense, in doing what was necessary to survive? Their fragile human lives were pit against a demon. Early on, it was clear that they couldn't survive while also keeping their hands pure and clean of any blood.

Then Thea continued, with a clear-ringing genuinely that she had to have fought hard to scrape up. For as often as the other woman spoke and how speaking itself never seemed to be a problem for her... the admission itself was far too raw to be easy. There was so much packed into those few words and all she wanted to do after hearing them was hold her and make her feel protected, as if to make up for the all the times when she didn't. It was clear in that moment that even for someone as talkative as Thea, there were obviously some things that were much, much harder to say than others. She was sunny, yes, and Clara lo-- loved? Loved her for that. (Too soon, too soon! A frantic voice in her head panicked. In that moment, though, Clara told it to fuck right off. 'That, and pressuring Clara when she needed more time.' Maybe Thea... Thea of all people was worth the risk.) Thea was more than the smiles and the jokes, though. She'd been through heavy shit, too. Even if she didn't showcase it, or use it as a reason to close herself off from people the same way that she did, it didn't make her suffering and hardships any less valid.

The point was, Clara saw Thea's herculean effort for what it was. And she knew she had to try, too. At the very least she had to try so that she could survive long enough to get the hell out of this cage and hold her the way she wanted to.

"Ah. Thank you very much, Thea." The scale appeared to believe the same. And really, how could it not? "You've articulated yourself wonderfully and honestly. And we all commend the effort." In response, the shadowy audience gave a smattering of applause. "It is like we're looking upon you in the daylight, is it not? I think such efforts should be rewarded." And with that? A loud click echoed as Thea's cage was lifted from the darkness and the door sprang wide open.

Oh. Could it be that the cages represented their pasts? The things that kept them imprisoned for so long and held them back. Once they got out, maybe then, maybe together they could...

"Meanwhile the moon is shrouded in illusions. The truth is never as it appears to be with you." The scale sighed and swayed back and forth as if to shake their head. "Now, Clara. You must have realized this when Thea defended you, did you not? Go on and tell us what really happened."

There was a long stretch of silence. 'The world has been infinitely better since that bastard stopped breathing.' Clara's every breath rattled, the events suspended as ominously as a priceless vase during an earthquake as she worked up the nerve to speak the truth. Once she shattered it, it'd effectively reveal what was actually hiding within.

"I didn't kill my papa." Clara finally admitted, out loud and to herself, staring blankly into the corner of her cage. Her heartbeat became louder than her thoughts as she hugged onto the bars. There was nothing else inside to grab except for that rabbit and she was still determined not to touch the thing. She didn't kill her papa. It was easier to think that she did, though. The shot, the blood, the way his body went perfectly limp on the floor... the scene in her head allowed for that narrative to feel very real for her. But in reality, their neighbors had heard the shot immediately. The paramedics were called and-- well, the wound wasn't fatal. Papa went into intensive care and they saved him. He'd been in a coma for weeks. Then he woke up.

"I only shot him." And yet there was part of Clara that wanted so badly to be the girl who killed her father. For a time, she could even convince herself of that version of events to help herself sleep at night. It wasn't a title most little girls wanted for themselves... but it was a title she'd found comfort in over the years. Because knowing he was dead and that she had seen to it properly would've been a weight lifted off of her shoulders. That'd be one less scary monster waiting around the corner for her. Revising it that way in her head made it so much more convenient for her to ignore the fact that he was still out there somewhere. "I didn't kill him. But... I wish I did." That was the thing, wasn't it? She wished death on him for years and years and it made her feel exactly like the she-devil he always said she was. "He escaped before they could charge him for everything he did to me. No one knows where he is now." Her words were flat, but her eyes stung while she spoke them. Of course there was even more to it than that. The guilt. The real crime at the heart of all of this. "My brother sacrificed everything to adopt me when he was twenty-one. He felt so guilty." But none of it was Raoul's fault and she would fight him on that until the day she died. He was living his own life, went off to college on a scholarship he worked tirelessly to earn. He'd been reluctant to leave her with papa. She'd written on her little notepad that she'd be okay if he did, that she wanted him to be happy and to take the opportunity. Of course she didn't know back then just how bad it'd get when he was gone. "But I'm the one who's guilty. I shot papa but the only life I ended that day was Raoul's."

 

[Syntra]

In all honesty? Thea half-expected to get fucking eviscerated at the spot. The demon and his jolly bunch of cursed fuckers were about as well-adjusted as your average high school teacher, and similarly appreciative of any signs of independent fucking thinking. Perhaps there just… wasn’t any deeper meaning to this. Like, maybe the scale only wanted to hear their Tragic BackstoriesTM because the demonic TV was shit-- their equivalent of Netflix could have canceled their favorite show, resulting in them looking to replace their daily dosage of emotional torture. ‘Ooo, fresh new traumas!’ they may have been thinking. ‘The bitches are so broken that it should last me for a century or two, at least.’ Yeah, except that then Thea ‘Party Pooper’ Holloway came, and instead of groveling on her knees, she introduced the concepts of ‘dignity’, ‘playing against the stereotype’ and ‘not giving a fuck.’ Well, wouldn’t that make you angry? If you happened to be a nightmarish fucking scale deriving your pleasure from watching others squirm, that was!

For once, though, it seemed that her bullshit radar was off. Like, way, way, way off! Think guillotine vs. birthday cake level of difference, and against all expectations, she found herself standing on the birthday cake end of the spectrum. "Uhh... thanks?" she raised her eyebrow, still waiting for the dream to turn into a nightmare. (This shit had the peculiar tendency to do exactly that, y'know? The bastard pulling the strings from the shadow enjoyed giving you what you thought you wanted, only to reveal that it had actually been something else that entire time. 'Hurrr durrr, item X is actually item Y in disguise! Here at Creepy Demon Industries, we love Subverting ExpectationsTM.' Ah, yes, comedy fucking gold.) Despite her suspicions, though? None of her worries actually materialized, and when the cage opened with a quiet 'click', Thea waved at the audience. "Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen! I'll be here all fucking week. Should you want an autograph, you can venmo me the money first. Kinda on the run here, you see? I do love my fans, but a girl has to eat." The triumph tasted so sweet that she almost forgot the drama wasn't over, but when the scale mentioned Clara again? Yeah, Thea snapped back into reality reeeal fucking quick. "C'mon, friendo. Wasn't my story good enough for you? Everyone knows that the sun is, like, the main course, and the moon is the dessert. You can fucking go without the desert, I'm sure. I mean, have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? Losing some weight might do fucking wonders for you."

If scales could glare, then Thea would surely be lying dead on the floor by that point. "Don't push your luck, girl. Besides, have you truly got no manners? Weight is a sensitive topic for many people, and you never know who might be hurt by your words. Reflect on that, Thea Holloway." Jesus fucking Christ, were they really going to clutch their pearls over that? Like, helloooo, context called and it wanted to have a word with you! The last time she had checked, inappropriate jokes were still more appropriate than, you know, locking two hot chicks in a cage and threatening them to resolve their traumas, or else. (It would have been fucking bad with non-hot chicks, too, but Thea felt that their hotness was important. A super, super important plot point, in fact. Like, they were both hot, (maybe) l*ved each other, and yet it hadn't really gone anywhere, right? That had to change. The laws of storytelling fucking demanded so, and Thea wasn't about to try and violate them! That was the equivalent of begging the universe to fuck you over, man.)

Clara had always listened to her, regardless of how wild her tangents had gotten, and so Thea intended to return the favor. How bad could it be, anyway? After her sleeping with her not-ex in that bitch-ass fucking hospital, she must have run out of all the fucks to give. It wasn't that she didn't care, but like... the human capacity to be shocked was somewhat limited, y'know? People who had spent the last few years living in a war zone were no longer impressed by finding bloodied limbs on their front porch, and Thea felt this was kind of like that. Just, what could even register as disconcerting to her at this point? Clara selling her soul to the Devil? Okay, sweetie, go live your best life. Her murdering children? Eh, probably had had her reasons. The prospect of her having secretly written Twilight, and inventing the Stephenie Meyer persona to escape the criticisms revolving around it being a piece of Mormon propaganda? That... would have been hard to swallow, but at least they could retire with their millions and millions of $$$. Looking at it from a certain angle, it was basically money made off scamming idiots, right? One of the noblest purposes in life!

...and yet, yet what Clara said next still managed to take her fucking breath away. Just, what? What Did That MeanTM? "Are you... sad 'cause you didn't get to kill him?" Thea tilted her head aside. "I mean, we can go on a fucking road trip and finish the job. Don't be so hard on yourself, Clara. You were a kid! Statistically speaking, kids are bad at killing adults. Or other kids. Or, uh, large animals, I guess. Come to think of it, they are only really good at tearing the wings off the flies' backs, and that isn't their fucking fault. Can't be a Rambo in when you're rocking Frodo's body, okay?" Except that that wasn't it, either. Oh no, no, no. Apparently, she felt... guilty about her brother's choices? What?

Thea just stared at Clara, her expression unreadable. (Even the cheering audience shut up, plunging the entire theatre into this awkward-ass silence. The entire world had stopped turning, it seemed, its eyes set on them only. "You?" she finally asked. "Guilty? Look, Clara, I don't know shit about your brother, but this isn't your fucking choice to make. What, you think he's some puppet? An android programmed to protect his baby sister at all costs? No, he fucking did what he did because he loves you! This is about him, not you. You think he'd be happy to hear you talk like that?"

The scale rattled, as if trying to attract their attention. "Ahem! That's Miss Sun for you, stealing the show. Frankly, I am not even angry. Miss Moon, you have conquered your fears beautifully. Time to escape from your cage, don't you think?"

And, at that exact moment, the demon touched Clara's mind. He did so with claws of fire, leaving deep, deep wounds behind, and...! 'Oh, but I don't think that, little dove. Time to pay your debts.'

 

[ellarose]

Two questions had seemed too few. Suspiciously so. The second question was a loaded one, that was to be sure. It had taken everything out of Clara just to answer it. But somehow she initially thought that this little game was going to span on for much longer. Three questions at least. It was the staple fairytale number-- three bears, three gifts, three wishes. It fit a pattern, all right? So the incredulous relief at the prospect of being let out of the cage hardly even registered with her before her very soul was torn to pieces and effectively burned away from the forefront of her mind. It'd happened so suddenly that all she had managed to do with her last moment was to cradle her aching head in her arms, let out a shocked little whimper, and then she was gone. As in disconnected from her body gone. When she opened her eyes again, she might as well not have even opened them at all... for she was lost in pitch darkness. The darkness breathed and had a pulse and it closed in all around her. When she frantically felt around in the dark, her hands did not find the hard floor of her cage, but something soft and fleshy. 'What...? No.'

“Yes, guilty." The demon as 'Clara' didn't move from the cage and continued to hold her head in her arms to keep her face effectively hidden like some kind of statue frozen in shame. "...Don’t you see, Thea? I’m like a parasite. If I wasn’t around Raoul could have lived a normal life. He’d be free of everything I burdened him with. Was that not the message you were trying to send when you left me for dead?" 'She' scoffed bitterly. "I was always stopping you from making decisions with my incessant worrying, I've panicked at nearly every turn. Now I'm your burden as well. You must've known on a subconscious level that you'd go much further without me.”

'Stop.' Clara heard every word and the pieces clicked into place. The demon was trying to destroy everything they just rebuilt! She tried to claw her way forward, towards what she instinctively thought might have been a tunnel out of this metaphysical hell, but it felt as though she was moving through molasses. Every inch of progress she made caused the scars the demon had left in her spirit to burn even fiercer yet. It left her in such visceral pain that she morbidly wondered if continuing on this path would destroy her altogether. (She might as well have been the belly of a monster with the way the grotesque walls breathed around her. So what would happen if her spirit actually perished here in this space? Would the demon get to claim her body forever? No! That couldn't happen.) She collapsed and trembled, waiting for the heat to subside as she listened to him use her voice. He used her lips to speak in the real world... and on some level, she could still feel it. It was like being drugged up and getting the sense that her limbs were indeed still her own, still intact... but with a cloudy disconnect that kept her from truly feeling anything at all. 'Stop! Don't listen to him, Thea.' It was in vain. Clara spoke, but her lips never obeyed the command. The demon, hiding 'her' face, snickered at her attempt. Bastard.

'You keep forgetting your place, dove. Raven? I've stopped keeping track. And I won't need to for very much longer.' The demon's voice echoed. Horrific hands grew from the fleshy substance beneath her, effectively grabbing her wrists and ankles to keep her pinned where she was. 'Did you think I was going to let you escape just like that? Oh no, no, no.'

“Of course I never expected you of all people to understand what I'm going through. Because unlike you, I stop to think before I act, as well as think about the way my decisions impact others. And I take responsibility when they do.” The demon raised Clara's head very slowly, then. Keeping her expression carefully indifferent, he tilted her head towards the scale. “Why are you letting me off so easily? There are some sins that deserve to be punished. So to answer your question... no. I don't think I deserve to escape this cage. In fact, I think I deserve to die."

"Clara?" Even the scale sounded uncomfortable at this point. Maybe even a touch guilty. "...Oh dear. Did I push her too far just now? Have I broken her?"

'What did I tell you, raven? My birds need to stay in their cages. And that includes you.' Clara struggled against the restraints as the fleshy substance began dragging her down like quicksand. This was agony. She was drowning in all the things she couldn't say, helpless to do nothing but watch the demon perform her role in the story... and perform it terribly at that. 'Shall we test crow and see just how much she cherishes you?' No. No, no, no. Tests were Ivy's thing. Even with their recent problems, Clara didn't need to test Thea. (Not that she would in any set of circumstances, because testing anyone was gross and manipulative.) Anyway, hadn't the last few days proven enough? They'd saved each other time and time again.

"By all means... leave now if you'd like a head start. You don't need to see this." 'Clara' spoke directly to Thea, "And I don't want you to come crying to me how unfair the world is if you chose the power of friendship over common fucking sense." A beat passed. Then another. "Time's up."

An obsidian dagger materialized in 'Clara's' hand. If the demon's presence in her wasn't already blatantly obvious by then, it might as well have been confirmed without a doubt at that point. The demon casually traced a few thin, criss-crossing lines over Clara's arms. He watched with rapt, dark eyes while beads of red dribbled down them, as if fascinated once more by the fragility of the human body. Then he dangled the tip tauntingly over her heart.

"M-m-master." The scale whimpered quietly and shuddered. Then it disappeared from Thea's side in a puff of smoke.

"What do you say, crow? You wanted her heart for yourself, didn't you?" 'Clara' smirked. "I could give it to you right now. If I recall correctly, you said something about wanting to be a heart surgeon. Perhaps you could study it and pursue a career other than making everyone's lives miserable. What do you say?"

 

[Syntra]

Eh? Fucking eh?! Thea stared at Clara as poison dropped from her words, each drop deadlier than the one before it. Just, what the fuck was going on? This shitty-ass narrative wasn’t what she expected from her friend, who had proven to be a) both in touch with reality, b) not a chronic dumbass. “You weren’t a fucking parasite, Clara. You were a kid. And like, yeah, kids kind of are parasites, but you’d have to be a motherfucking alien to call them that. It’s their job to be helpless. And also, newsflash-- Raoul wouldn’t have had a normal fucking life. Never. He would have walked away with some premium, grade A trauma, because dead little sisters aren’t something you just shrug off!” Like, what kind of twisted-ass logic was that? You got a shitty lot in life, and somehow, that meant you were worse than Stalin? Yeah, not on Thea Holloway’s watch! Scumbags getting away with their scumbaggery was the one thing she was allergic to, so this shit sure as hell wasn’t going to fly. “All of it, literally every single aspect, was your fucking father’s fault. If you want to point your finger at someone, he’s still conveniently there.” Was she, uh, somehow forgetting that? It sure as hell felt like that, for reasons beyond her grasp. Shit, this was like one of those bad crime dramas where the butler was twirling his obvious villain moustache, wearing gloves stained with blood, and the idiot detective still thought that the lord had died of Natural CausesTM! Of course, if she had thought it was bad before, then the preview of what Clara was going to say next would have knocked her the fuck out.

“Clara?” If hurt could be hurt from her tone, then yeah, that was the case because Thea did fucking feel hurt. Like!!! Hadn’t they vowed to do the communication thing properly? To do better? When the authors of self-help books spoke about that sort of crap, it felt like cheap, sentimentality-fueled cash grab, but Thea meant it. She really fucking wanted to avoid falling into the same old traps, and it seemed like Clara did, too. Why the fuck was she putting words in her mouth, then? Words that might as well have been knives? (‘Because you were never on the same page, crow,’ the demon laughed. ‘Never, never, never! You cannot fix what is broken, I’m afraid. She may not look that way, but I’ve been inside of her head, you know? It took many, many, many years of breaking for her to reach her current shape, and you can’t just… erase that. What happened once cannot unhappen.’)

”You fucking know I didn’t leave you for dead,” Thea fought against the narrative, putting her proverbial fingers into her ears. (Lalala, lalala, she couldn’t hear him! No freeloader-ass demons got to enjoy the access to her precious brain, no sireee-- not without paying for Thea+ Premium, at least. Would-be brainwashers were no longer allowed to be this fucking stingy!) “I’ve explained it already. You believed me. Like what, do I have to repeat myself over and over every fucking day? Is this some bizarre-ass memory condition?” The goldfish syndrome, Thea would have called it, except that she didn’t feel like coming up with creative-ass euphemisms. Not right now. (The bridges they’d rebuilt? The wood they had used for that must have been infested with fucking woodworms, because it didn’t seem like they could support their weight. They were crumbling due to all those ExpectationsTM, that, despite her never really voicing them, were absolutely there. Had she been stupid for planning their wedding three years in advance? For thinking that there was a girl out there for her, just like the Hollywood propaganda claimed? For hoping that someone could like her for being herself? …it was the fucking Tamagotchi situation all over again. No, really. Regardless of how often you fed the mechanism, it was programmed to die, and so it fucking did! Now switch the ‘Tamagotchi’ for ‘Thea’s relationships’ and the analogy was perfect.)

‘That’s right, crow. Finally, you understand. Shouldn’t you at least try to save yourself, though? Run, crow. Run, like the little rat in the maze that you are! Not that you’ll actually be able to escape, mind you, but I do enjoy your pathetic attempts. They make for fine entertainment.’ Which, wait. Wasn’t this all too fucking convenient? For the demon, that was? Maybe Thea was looking at the whole fucking mess with glasses so rose-tinted they would have been more suitable for a fucking Barbie commercial, but she just… didn’t think that Clara would say all that. Not the Clara that had watched her reveal her deepest fears, and soothed every single one of them. You know who would say that shit, though? The one who actually had something to gain by acting like a one dimensional-ass fucking villain. The demon! The demon who, fortunately for him, lived rent-free in their heads. And, like, he had possessed them before, hadn’t he? In a much, much flashier way, but as far as Thea knew, there was no rule that was straight up making him light the fireworks every single time. (Besides, when the scale called him master? Fucking master, out of all things? Yeah, the brunette sincerely doubted that Clara had been promoted to the position of the demonic CEO in the span of whole-ass five seconds!)

A dagger. A dagger, and also Clara’s heart. Those two words never should have appeared in the same sentence, let alone this close together, and yet they did! (Shit. Shit, Thea could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, drumming furiously. A solution. A fucking solution, now! all of the voices in her head screamed, and she wasn’t at all sure whether they belonged to herself, or all those murdered children. For all intents and purposes, they might have been one and the same.)

And, hey, she might have come up with a good plan!

There wasn’t enough time, though. There never was.

So, instead of that? Thea shoved Clara with all of her might, attempting to wrestle the dagger away from her. “Let go, you little fuck,” she shouted. “You think you’re fucking being stealthy? You’re not. I know your demonic ass when I see it, and I can totally tell it’s you. Your bitchiness levels aren’t matching up to those of Clara!” (They were zero, btw., but Thea wasn’t exactly in the position to elaborate. No, she had to grab the dagger, ideally by the hilt, and--)

‘A fatal mistake, crow,’ the demon smiled, showing all of his perfect, sharp teeth. ‘I don’t mind tasting your flesh first.’

So, that dagger? It turned out it could extend its blade at will, turning into a sword. A sword for which cutting off a human arm was a child’s play, actually. And how did she know? Well…

Thud!

…watching your own arm hit the floor was a convincing fucking argument.

 

[ellarose]

'No, stay back!' Clara yelled, her voice breaking as it reached a volume it may have never reached before. But no one heard a thing. The cage she was trapped inside burst into glowing ashes that scattered like fireflies when Thea tackled her, knocking her back against bars before they disintegrated the confines around them away into nothing. She dropped hard against the stage beneath the other woman with a loud, echoing thump. No amount of physical pain could deter the demon inside, though. The struggle ensued, the blade extended outward and then...

And then...

And then...

Thump. Drip, drip, drip. The ringing in Clara's ears was so piercing that every noise, however close it was to her, sounded faraway. Her breath and Thea's breath. Her heartbeat and Thea's heartbeat. The endless drip, drip, drip. Blood spilled down from where Thea's arm used to be, rapidly pooling beside their entangled bodies on the stage. Where Thea's arm used to be. Used to be. Used to... The demon raised her arm again, poised to do even more irreparable damage when--

'No!' Clara screamed, louder than she had ever screamed before in her life, until her throat was rendered raw and her mental prison shattered from the force of it. Desperately scraping her way past the burning pain that scorched through her very soul, she endured every ounce of it to pull herself forward, forward, forward until she got close enough to grab the demon by his despicable throat, digging her nails in deep as she wrested control back from his hands. Choking him with all her might, she obliterated any of the words he could have taunted her with. 'Don't touch her again you bastard.'

The sword clattered to the stage and smashed into a thousand tiny pieces. Clara's body convulsed beneath Thea's and then went deathly still as the dark clouds in her eyes cleared away to reveal the softer brown hiding beneath. A number of sensations bombarded her at once. The stage pressed against her back. The scars the demon left with the dagger, the bruises the struggle aggravated. The warmth of Thea pressed on top of her, the heat of her blood rushing over them. She trembled with that realization. Wracked with terror, she felt as though she'd never be still again. She'd be perpetually haunted and shivering with the fear of losing her, with the vision of her arm being slashed over and over...

"Th--th--thea." Clara cried weakly. She curled her fingers inward, finding that they obeyed her again. And they were covered in blood. Her bloodstained hands wielded the sword. The sword that had cut Thea's arm from her body. Her friend-- her-- they never got to specify exactly what they were to each other-- she was losing so much blood and she couldn't fix this. She could still feel her heartbeat through the press of their chests, however faint it was. But she wasn't naive. At this rate it wouldn't be long before... before...

'Please. Someone help us.' Clara wept freely. She wasn't sure who she was pleading with at this point. Perhaps to anyone who was still listening, who still cared. 'Help her.'

The shadows moved all on their own, swarming to Clara's aid as if on instinct. They wrapped themselves protectively around Thea's open wound, creating something of a makeshift bandage to staunch the bleeding. The scale clattered forward slowly and then morphed into a little girl... a little girl who happened to be missing both of her own arms. She knelt beside them, watching sympathetically from behind her big, round glasses.

"I'm sorry, Clara. I must've took my game too far. I-- I didn't know that this was going to happen. Poor Thea." The little ghost girl sniffled. "It's going to be okay. My daddy's almost here. He's a detective and he's coming to find you. There will be justice. He swears it and I believe in him." She began to fade, softer and softer as a set of footsteps echoed louder and louder on the floor. "You'll help him, won't you? You'll make sure the world doesn't forget about us?"

Clara only had the strength to offer the slightest nod in reply as the ghost faded away. She felt her own consciousness slipping as the doors to the 'theatre' swung open and the voices of a few frantic, concerned men rang in her ears.

***

When Thea's eyes opened again, she would discover herself lying in an unfamiliar bed. It was hard to say how much time had passed since that moment in the theatre-- all she would have known was that the place where her arm once was was stitched up and wound up tightly with fresh gauze. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the blinds by the window, casting shafts of orange around the room she was in. It smelled fresh and earthy, the interior gave the impression that she was in some lofty cabin out in the woods. Alive, not dead. Patched up, certainly. But her arm...

"Oh, you're awake." A man spoke. He very much gave off the impression of a gentle giant, sitting in the chair at her bedside with genuine relief painted on his face. Thea might have noticed something slightly familiar about him, despite the fact that she had never met him before. Maybe it was the soft brown of his eyes, or even the sound of his voice? Had she heard it somewhere before? "...It's Thea, right? How are you feeling?" The expression on his face was mixed with concern as well as something that said he clearly wasn't expecting her to smile and tell him that she felt 'fine and dandy', considering the obvious. If anything, he gave off the impression that he was willing to hear her out with all the patience in the world and do whatever was necessarily to assist. "If you need anything at all, just say the word. I'm at your service for the next two hours or so." With that said, he gave an awkward, gentlemanly little bow from his seat.

Geez. What was a person even supposed to say in this situation?

"This must be really confusing." He cleared his throat sheepishly and cupped the back of his neck in one of his hands. "I'm, uh, Clara's brother. Raoul. And I'm on Thea duty right now. Fuck, she'll be so relieved when she hears that you're awake... I'll go get her soon, if you want to see her." He paused, clearly hesitant to breach the subject too far before Thea had the chance to process her situation and surroundings in full. "I don't want to rush you to talk about it if you don't want to. Clara hasn't said a word since we found the two of you three days ago. If it's not too difficult, do you think you could tell me what happened?"

 

[Syntra]

Darkness. Fucking darkness, everywhere she looked. What was this, anyway? The capital of edginess? 'Cause Thea Holloway was too pretty for that bullshit! Too pretty, and also--

"Look at your side, Thea."

For some reason, that suggestion... well, it unearthed dread, buried deep within. You know, kind of like that realization that you had forgotten your mom's packaged lunch in your school bag and that the summer vacation was almost over? Yeah, except that about million times more severe. "No. I don't fucking want to."

"Oh. You think that you will escape, don't you?"

"Escape? From fucking what?"

"Don't pretend that you don't know, Thea. You may be stupid, but you aren't that stupid. Or have you forgotten?" Forgotten, forgotten, forgotten, echoed in her head, over and over and over. At that point, it might as well have been some creepy-ass mantra, used by... huh. By some weird cultists? Right, the cultists! The losers who thought that basing their entire self-worth around worshiping the ~right~ supernatural fuck, and the aforementioned supernatural fuck himself. The demon. The demon, or His Grand Assholery, as Thea preferred to call him. That he enjoyed the taste of flesh wasn't... wait, what? The taste of flesh? That was when some force did compel her to look at her side, almost as her gaze was pulled by some fucking magnet. And, shortly afterwards? Her arm burst into flames, the ashes peeling away like old promises.

With a jolt, Thea opened her eyes. Which, okay, wow, maybe she shouldn't have fucking done that-- not when the light was this sharp, and this unpleasant to look into. In her opinion, the sun should have toned it the fuck down. Like, was this a targeted attack? A way to get rid of Thea Holloway, for she shone too brightly for the star's insecurities to handle it? Not to be insensitive about it, buuut yeah, the brunette officially diagnosed it with 'the little bitch' syndrome.

Speaking of things that weren't little bitch issues, though? Her arm hurt. It really, really, really fucking hurt, as if someone had put it into a blender in order to get some delicious human smoothie, and... ah. Ah, okay. That explained a lot of things. What, you ask? Well, looking at it. Looking at it, and seeing the ugly, pitiful, stump that remained there. (Uninvited, the memories came to the surface. The epic argument, the way they'd been captured, the cages, and, shit, the way that fucking bastard had seized Clara! ...and also her genius idea to test just how well arms could compete with swords. Spoiler alert: not too fucking well. Like, the score was about -9000 : 0!) Thea just... stared at the thing, not even noticing the presence of that giant-ass guy at first. (How was this real? Surreal bullshit had sort of become a daily thing for them, and yet nothing, nothing felt more bizarre than this-- than her having an arm, and suddenly... not. Poof. Gone. Fucking erased from existence. A fun juxtaposition, Thea supposed, in that it was and also wasn't. As in, in her head, it did exist, y'know? But, as always, reality stubbornly refused to do the right thing and conform to her expectations. A goddamn crime, if you asked her. Especially now, when she was... was... ah, fuck, what the hell was the pc term for that nowadays? Nah, Thea didn't want to think about it. What she wanted to do was to crawl under the bed, close her eyes again, and, like, fucking disappear? Dissolve into the nothingness that had been so eager to embrace her earlier, before she had regained her consciousness.)

Of course, not even that mercy was afforded to her. Other people had the gall to exist, you see, and they demanded their explanations as well! "Confusing doesn't even begin to fucking describe it. I'm gonna take this over the earlier mindfuckery, though," Thea sank back into the pillows, feeling... well, some kind of way. Comforted, mostly, because this must have meant that Clara was a) alive, b) clear-headed enough not to try to murder the fuck out of everyone who didn't think the demon was the best thing since sliced bread. Still, on the other hand? Not having your fucking arm usually was enough to ruin your day, week, and most of your life as well. "Raoul, huh? Yeah, I'm... I'm glad to meet you, I guess. I'd shake your hand, but, you know," Thea chuckled awkwardly. "Kind of hard to do now. But hey, my life is a fucking videogame now, so wait for a bit and maybe it will respawn." (Wishful thinking? What was that? Thea Holloway didn't know her, thanks for asking! Every idea that had ever hatched in her head was based on pure, 100% Rationality, so kindly fuck off with your doubts.) "Clara," she gasped, her throat suddenly feeling very tight. "Is she okay? Yeah, you bet your ass I want to see her." More than words could possibly express, too. Thea didn't know what she was going to say exactly, but like, she needed her there, you see? For reasons. (Maybe, if she got to look at her face, the brunette could conclude that it had all been worth it. That, somehow, what she'd gained was more precious than what she'd lost. And on some level, she did know it to be true! ...but that didn't mean she was especially happy about it. Nah, nobody could want that from her.)

Raoul, being the responsible big bro type, of course wanted to know what had happened exactly. Well, why the fuck not? At least Thea wasn't going to be the only one confused out of their mind here! "Uh, yeah, sure. So like, basically, we got kidnapped by a deranged-ass cult. Clara got possessed by a demon, which, by the way, already lives in our fucking heads. I guess he paid for some premium access? He made her do some suicidal shit, but me, being the dashing fucking heroine I am, rushed in there and took that hit for her. That's what fucking happened, Raoul. Now care to tell me how we ended up here? I'm not complaining, but... uh, we were in cages."

 

[ellarose]

"She's..." Raoul began, watching Thea thoughtfully as he paused to phrase his answer. Observing her reaction to Clara softened his expression even further, giving him incentive to offer her more than just the obligatory response. "Shaken up. But she'll be okay. And I'm sure she'll feel a hell of a lot better now that you're awake." He drummed his fingers lightly against the side of his chair before balling them into a fist. It went without saying that this was... well, an awkward situation to be in to say the very least. But to his credit, he was trying nonetheless. "Even without saying anything, I can tell you mean a lot to her. Seriously. Clara wouldn't leave your side for a second if she had her way." He managed a rueful smile as he continued his explanation, deciding to clarify before those implications could be taken in a negative way. "I, uh, caught her sleeping in here earlier and carried her to her room. But I guarantee she'll be back as soon as she wakes up."

Raoul listened and nodded slowly along with Thea's story as she told it... up until she got to the bit about demonic possession. If he thought something about it, though, he was careful not to let it show on his face. In a way, the topic of demonic possession itself might have made him a touch more guarded than anything else.

"Right. So the cult part we already know about. Although to be honest, I only know the bare minimum here... I only just got in touch with detective Parker while I was searching for Clara these last couple of days. He's the real expert on all of this." Raoul decided to start with the part that he could keep up with. "Those bastards got real sloppy, sending a squadron of guys impersonating cops to our apartment that day. Since you two got away the way you did, you attracted just enough attention to give the detective a fresh trail to follow." He backtracked then, deciding to elaborate further. "Detective Parker's daughter was involved in that kidnapping incident all those years ago. Unlike you guys, she... didn't make it. He's been trying his damndest to bring them to justice ever since." Then he shook his head and squinted, as if he was having trouble putting the rest of it together. "Anyway. We ended up getting anonymous tip on the whereabouts of their base. That's when we found you guys."

Curiously enough, it was at that same moment that an armless ghost girl appeared, sitting idly at the end of Thea's bed. Without a hand to wave with, she simply tilted her head and nodded once by way of greeting.

"Glad we found you when we did, but I..." Raoul sighed and hung his head, clearly not noticing the ghost in the room. "I'm just sorry we didn't make it there sooner. Can't even imagine the kind of shit you two've gone through these last couple of days." Running his hand through his hair, he continued. "I was scared shitless when Clara went missing all those years ago. But all this time, I never knew it was this fucked up. She never told me anything. Now she's stopped talking again and I don't know what I should..." With a sharp exhale, he stopped himself short. "No, sorry. That's not your problem. Last thing you need right now is more problems." It was abundantly clear he didn't mean that in a condescending way, either. The same way it was abundantly clear that, well, Thea's arm was missing and she needed time to recover. "The detective set us up in a safe house. So you can rest easy now."

Raoul seemed hesitant to revisit the topic of demonic possession. But it wasn't necessarily the kind of thing that could go ignored, either.

"Dean used to swear that Clara was possessed. I always thought he was full of shit, but... now you're saying it too." Raoul pinched the bridge of his nose as if he couldn't decide how to feel about it. Of course, Thea wasn't giving off the same paranoid impression that Clara's father always did. Claiming to want to see her again in spite of the fact, as well as claiming that she saved her. Obviously wasn't the same thing. "Wild thing is, it tracks with the detective's theories too. I can't say I follow you completely, but... if you say you saved her, I believe you." He shook his head. "No. What I should be saying is thank you."

"...Anyway. I won't bombard you with anymore questions. Unless there anything at all I can get for you? Water? A bite to eat? Extra blankets?" Raoul offered. Then, deciding not to go overkill, he reflected on the initial impression he got from Thea. "Some privacy? If you want to chill by yourself for a while I'd completely understand."

 

[Syntra]

Ah. Ah, okay. Shaken up, Thea supposed, was good. Like, not ideal, of course, but what was ideal in this shit-ass world? A lifetime’s supply of pizza delivered to you directly, for free, and with whatever topping you happened to crave that very day! Certainly not things like trauma, losing your arms, or, you know, most of the features that her life had been “””blessed””” with so far. “Yeah, that checks out. Like, she’s such a worrywart. Whenever I got even slightly hurt, she was basically ready to perform surgery on the spot. Wouldn’t fucking shock me if she pulled out a scalpel from her purse, along with some blood bags that she happened to buy for all those what-if scenarios.” Couldn’t even blame her, huh? Considering that those what-if scenarios had transformed into reality, in the same way a nightmare sometimes turned out to be prophetic. “I’m glad she’s fine, though,” Thea sighed, suddenly looking… well, tired. Maybe more tired than she’d ever been. “I was… worried.” An understatement of the fucking year, considering what that bastard had tried to do to her. Had she not run in there like a madwoman, would Clara have been alive at this point? (…would she still have had her arm? It was fucking sickening, to think about it in these Clara vs. her literal body part terms, but she couldn’t not do that. Not right now, at least. With the wound being so fucking fresh she could still feel it, her thoughts just… kept returning there, really. Like a fucking moth to a flame.)

Anyway, no way this confession wasn’t going to backfire. Clara’s brother or not, Raoul wasn’t just going to shrug, accept that his entire fucking reality was a lie and then offer her a tray of homemade cookies. Just, nuh uh. This wasn’t Thea’s first rodeo, y’know? And the last time she had shared the wonderful fucking news of sharing her head with a demonic roommate… well, it had been bad. Like, insane asylum-level of bad. The only reason why she was pretty sure he wouldn’t call an ambulance for her? Clara. Clara, who was a) alive, b) conscious, and would not stand for any of that shit. (Really, honesty was a luxury. A fucking inconvenience, too, because despite all the ‘hurrr durrr, only lies offend me’ statements, people could get reeeeeally triggered over being told what you genuinely thought. But what do you meaaan, how come you think that xyz book is bad? I thought we were best friends! And that, ladies and gentlemen, was trivial stuff! When it came to things that actually mcfucking mattered, people were almost guaranteed to flip out. Even an honest appraisal of one’s political opinions was enough to send most people into hysterics, so like, what was stopping Raoul from absolutely losing his shit here? You know, since Thea had just accused his precious little sister from being possessed by a literal demon. A demon, which was a thing that only should have existed in shitty fantasy books! And, like, not to judge-- had someone told her a story like that, then, without a set of very personal experiences, she would have assumed that they were an overly invested LARPer, too.)

Except that, instead of laughing her in the face, Raoul… proceeded to demolish her expectations? Fucking wow. Who would have thought that people who hadn’t actually seen the shit she had didn’t have to call her a) a liar, b) a psycho, c) both? Thea had kind of thought that the world had been calibrated to randomly assign one of those settings to others, no exceptions. And yet, here he was, with his unconditional trust and reasonable takes! What was this, some fucking family friendly Disney show? Guess not, considering the cultists, the literal demon and, you know, mutilation. Haha. “Someone is actually investigating this shit? I thought the cops were too busy shooting unarmed citizens and, like, keeping the donut economy alive. No offense, though.” Not really caring whether Raoul thought her to be a weirdo or not, she waved at the little girl casually-- out of the ghosts they had met so far, she def was the one to win the ‘least bratty’ award, and Thea could appreciate that sort of thing. “I… yeah. It’s, um, been a lot. Most of it. Like, if this shit happened in a movie, you’d fucking call it contrived. I wanna speak to the managers of supernatural bullshittery.” What was this, a source of empathy that didn’t exist in her imagination only? Stop the fucking presses! (Oddly enough, it felt… weird. Like receiving a package that was meant for someone else, really. Accepting it was just a step away from theft, and so Thea kind of needed to devalue it with all those sarcastic little frills. That still amounted to theft, of course, but at least she wasn’t stealing expensive shit now! Hahaha… haha… ha. Nope, no deep-seated emotional issues there at all.)

When Raoul offered the deadly combo of apology and thanks, though? More than anything else, Thea felt disarmed. Vulnerable, ‘cause those words somehow targeted the exact cracks in her armor. If you convinced yourself that you didn’t want the whole ‘wholesome family dynamics’ experience, getting a sample could be disconcerting, you know? “It’s… fine,” she looked downwards, pulling the blanket closer to her body. “I honestly didn’t fucking expect anyone to find us at all. And I saved her because I wanted to, so we’re cool. Water would be nice, I guess? Clara, too, when she wakes up. I wanna see her.”

 

[ellarose]

It ran on a loop whenever Clara closed her eyes. Through a blurry sea of cotton, she heard the sound of her heartbeat in her ears pounding in nightmarish harmony with Thea's footsteps. Running towards her unhesitatingly. (And that was just the thing, wasn't it? The fact that not even an ounce of hesitation held her back when she barged forward to protect her. The same way Raoul hadn't hesitated to give up his life to take her under his wing. Heavy stones of guilt packed themselves tight in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about it, weighing her down. If she was stronger, the sort of person who didn't panic and flounder amidst a crisis, people wouldn't assume that she needed the protection. Then she wouldn't be endangering the people she cared about the very most like this.) Then there was impact of slamming onto the stage beneath her, the echoing thump of their bodies hitting the stage... followed by the thump of Thea's arm shortly thereafter.

Clara hadn't been able to move through it all. Even so, she felt the blade pressed in the palm of her hand. Felt the warmth of Thea's blood pouring down, down, down. She felt it all so viscerally she might as well have committed the act herself. She did and she didn't. The edges between what she did and didn't do blurred whenever she fell asleep, when her mind insisted upon replaying it on that torturous loop. It was always at about the time where her bloodied hands began to shake and she cried Thea's name that her eyes snapped open.

'Thea.' Clara peeled herself up from her bed, gazing confusedly around the empty room when she realized she wasn't at her bedside. (There was a jolting, gut-reaction that the demon had taken control of her again, that he had murdered everyone and taken her elsewhere and...) No. Gazing down at herself, she was relieved to find herself clean of any blood. The shower, the fresh clothes, the bed. They were small comforts amid the hell she found herself in ever since that night. And she was clean. She was clean. And she was okay. (The blood remained on her hands, though, whether she washed it off or not. It was always be there, just like Thea's arm was forever... gone.) Fine, maybe she wasn't okay. But she would be. (Would she really?) Thea. She just needed to see Thea. If she'd be okay, then maybe she could find a way to get there herself. (Unless that was a selfish wish. Because what if Thea didn't want to see her anymore? That'd be perfectly valid. She wouldn't even blame her, after...)

Clara wasn't sure when she got out of bed and padded out of the room, but she had as if on autopilot. She moved lethargically, like a ghost haunting the halls as she strode into the kitchen to prepare the tray that she always prepared when she went to visit Thea's room. She needed to be prepared for when she woke up, needed to have everything she might have wanted. Water, pain meds, food... and that little emergency alarm she had written on the first shopping list. Raoul and the detective had exchanged a worried glance. But she didn't think it was overkill. Because what if the demon came back? The risk of being left alone together was much too high not to have a plan. Because what happened to them the other day could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

"Clara?" Startled, she almost dropped the glass of water she'd been pouring. It was probably a blessing in disguise that detective Parker always spoke to her like she was a rabbit he was afraid of spooking. He was sitting at the table behind a mountain of paperwork and sipping at a black coffee. "Your brother called me at the office and told me that Thea's awake." With a 'click', the cup hit the table again. "She said she wants to see you."

Clara fumbled to set the water on the tray, casting an alarmed glance towards the hall. The news might as well have turned her heart into a sledgehammer, slamming, slamming, slamming against her chest. Thea was awake? And... she actually wanted to see her? Did she hear that right?

"I bought a pizza. Why don't you take it up to her while you're at it?" The detective managed a light little chuckle. "You wrote that in all caps at the top of that shopping list. I figured it was important."

Clara simply nodded. It was important! Very much so. Because Thea loved pizza. And now that the detective mentioned it, she could smell it as well. Following the scent, she found the cardboard box sitting on the counter and set the tray she prepared on top to bring it all together. Sure, she could have brought a single slice on the tray. But how was she to know how hungry Thea might have been up there? Maybe she'd want three slices instead of just one. Maybe she'd want one of the pieces with toppings... or maybe she would rather have cheese.

"Good luck." The detective said as Clara left. He seemed... nice. One day, she resolved, she would answer his questions and talk to him. Pick his brain about all the things he knew, perhaps give him some of the pieces of the puzzle she'd collected on her own. Right now, though, the last thing she wanted to think about was the mess they were in. Her mind was too consumed with Thea, with making sure she was comfortable and safe to do anything else.

Clara's heart pounded harder and harder yet as she approached Thea's room. She hoped she would like the pizza. But in a way, she also felt ridiculous. What was she going to say? 'Sorry about cutting off your arm. Here's some pizza. Are we cool?' Yeah... like she said. Ridiculous.

When she made it there, considered maneuvering the bundle in her arms to knock on the doorframe to make absolute certain her presence was wanted... but before she could potentially make a fool of herself and drop everything in her attempt, her eyes met Thea's. The emotions swimming through her conflicted. She was happy to see her alive, concerned for her wellbeing, scared that things between them might never be the same again. 'Okay, Clara. No turning back now.' Bolstering all the courage she possessed, she walked inside and took her usual seat at her bedside, setting the pizza and tray down on the floor by her feet for the time being. (She had to fight the impulse to hold her. Because what if she didn't want to be held by the person who did this to her? She'd understand. She really would.) With fidgeting hands, she reached for the little emergency buzzer and set it on the bedside table in plain sight. That way if she felt unsafe at any point, she could press it and...

"I brought pizza." Clara spoke for the first time since the incident that day, staring at the floor. Damn. It sounded just as lame as it had sounded in her head. "I also brought some..." Her words were strangled somewhere along the way and she gestured at the tray, the water and pain meds to supply the rest of the explanation. It'd be a stupid question to ask if it still hurt. The pain she was in, the loss she must have been feeling right now... that wasn't the sort of thing anyone could make up for with words. "I-- I know it doesn't make up for... for..." She felt small. Small, powerless and overwhelmingly guilty. The weight crushed her chest, but she owed it to Thea to keep pushing through it. No matter what, she needed to be present so that she could try to be there for her. She deserved that much. That and so much more.

"Thea... I'm sorry." Clara never knew what to say... and now her eyes were welling with the tears she'd stubbornly refused to shed until that very moment. Ugh. Leave it to her to mess this up catastrophically! Thea needed comfort right now. Not this. Not her and her mess. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop him."

 

[Syntra]

Ah. Clara. Yay, Clara! It totally made sense that she was there, didn't it? Considering that she had asked her to come and everything. Like, expecting anything else would have been the equivalent of buying shoes and then wondering why they hadn't magically transformed into fucking butterflies. Haha. Hahaha! (Don't get her wrong, Thea was happy to see her. Few things could have made her happier, come to think of it. Not even fucking Pokémon turning out to be real would have been nearly as great as Clara being okay, and like, that was super super high on her personal Ladder of Awesomeness. Still, despite that? The last time she'd seen her, she had been chopping her arm off. That, uh, soured one's mood. Yeah. It wasn't her, Thea reminded herself. The bastard had forced her. Which, sure, 100% true! ...but it was also 100% true that she could hardly steady her breath, or even look her in the eye. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!)

"Awesome!" she beamed, trying to look NormalTM. NormalcyTM was good-- and everyone knew that Normal!Thea Holloway danced through life with all the grace of a ballerina. So what if it was harder to keep one's balance with one limb missing? Tough luck, buttercup! Armless bitches had to find a way to fucking deal, 'cause arms weren't milk teeth. Nuh uh, that shit wasn't growing back. No fucking arm fairy would help here, so why dwell on it? Technically, she could blame Clara for the rest of her life, but like... there was nothing to be gained from that. (It could just as easily have been her. It hadn't been, but it could have. Who was to say why the demon had picked Clara? No reason to assume it hadn't been a coin toss, really. Their positions could have been reversed, with her friend (?) sitting on the bed and Thea being absolutely fucking destroyed over hurting her like that. And, like, Clara was destroyed, make no mistake! She could see that, plain as fucking day, and it broke her heart all over again. What was it like, to feel responsible for something you had no say in? ...actually, her friend was way more familiar with it than she should have been. This was the Raoul fiasco all over again, this time with Supernatural Bullshittery as a cherry on top.)

"Man, I've been craving pizza like crazy all this time. How did you know? I swear, if I had to pick between murdering a bitch and never eating pizza again, I'd start sharpening my knife. Are there any mushrooms? I can't fucking stand mushrooms," Thea prattled on, attempting to bury all of it under words, words, and more words. Like, if she talked at the speed of fucking light, Clara wouldn't notice anything, right? Because her doing that meant her Being Okay. (And, eventually, maybe that would start being true as well. The chance of that happening was all Thea had, and so she grasped at it with all the eagerness of a drowning woman. Just, hahaha! As long as they avoided the topic, everything would be Just PeachyTM.)

...ah. Ah, there they went. They'd managed to avoid it for, what, five fucking seconds? Even for that, Thea supposed, she should have been thankful. Shit, is she crying? No. No, no, no! That was Absolute Nightmare ScenarioTM-- nobody cried in front of Thea, and so she didn't know how to deal with that. Not even remotely. (Would a hug work? Maybe, if it didn't fucking showcase that a critical component of her was missing. Ugh! Why the hell was their culture so arm-centric? You never noticed these things till... well, y'know.) "Clara," she winced, allowing her big mouth to take over, "that's fine. I, uh, never wanted that arm, anyway. It clashed with my personal sense of style. Like, you know how pirates wear patches? This will be kind of like that, but with a prosthetic. I'll buy a real fancy one, you'll see. It'll be the coolest arm in the neighborhood! Now, can you hand me a slice?" Oof, smooth. Crisis fucking averted! Another victory for Thea Holloway's unparalleled social skills. (And as for the tears welling up in her eyes? If she looked away hard enough, Clara definitely wouldn't notice.)

 

[ellarose]

It went without saying that Clara had trouble talking. Opening up. Saying words in general. And now that she was confronted with a situation where even the average person would struggle to find the right words to say (mostly because there was no combination of words in any language that could fix a situation this fucked up) no one could really fault her for biting her lip and staring at the floor, could they? On top of her earlier reasoning, the 'average person' typically didn't have to cope with demonic possession and cutting off the arm of a friend who might have become something more someday... had they not cut off said arm. Of course she was at a loss here. Not only was she crying in front of Thea-- which was mortifying enough as it was-- but she couldn't bear to look at the other woman when she was obviously trying to avoid her gaze.

Clara heard the words that Thea didn't say clearer than the words that she did say. 'She doesn't really want to see me.' The realization filled her throat with bile that she struggled to swallow down. That was fine, then. It wasn't that much of a shocker, was it? In fact, the concept that she had wanted to see her after that catastrophe was just as believable as her saying that she wanted to lose her arm just now. Which was to say that it was total bull. (Maybe initially Thea had thought that she wanted to see her. But it would've made perfect sense if she regretted that request upon seeing her again.) And while it hurt like hell, she wouldn't blame her for that. Couldn't. No one could rewrite the memories of their trauma. They couldn't go back and edit the demon's figure over her own to point the blame where it rightfully belonged. The demon had said horrible things with Clara's lips and used Clara's hands to cut off Thea's arm and there was nothing they could do to change those mental images. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just like there was nothing either of them could say to make any of this remotely okay.

Rubbing her eyes dry on her sleeve, Clara silently busied herself with the pizza. (Despite everything, it'd be unnecessarily cruel to bring it in, tantalize her with the aroma, and then duck out before offering her the slice she'd asked for.) Grabbing a piece of cheese and avoiding the half loaded with toppings (and mushrooms) she set it on the plate she'd brought and then placed said plate in a convenient place where Thea could help herself.

"...There." Clara bunched her hands in her lap. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. What was she waiting for now? There was no way she could put Thea through this for any longer. What she was going through now was painful enough without her inserting herself into the picture, bringing her mess along with her undoubtedly unnerving presence. "I'm sorry." Apologizing again. Genius. (Yeah, right.) There wasn't much else for her to say though. Her emotions about all of this were complex and roiling in her gut, challenging to voice in a way that would make any sense. But if there was anything she could articulate it was that she was sorry. For all of it. "You... don't have to lie to protect me, Thea. I can read the room."

Clara stared at the floor as she brought herself to her feet, pausing just to make sure everything she'd brought into the room was easily accessible. Then she began to head for the door.

"I must be the last person you want to see right now. For good reason, too." Clara reasoned when she reached the doorway, saying what they both must've been thinking. She was making it worse, wasn't she? Besides, who knew how dangerous it was? If the demon could take over her body at any given moment, she really ought to be locked in her bedroom. Locked in and probably tied up for good measure, like what papa did to her when he was extra paranoid. Who would've known that his apparent delusions about her being a she-devil would someday come true like this? "I shouldn't have come in here."

 

[Syntra]

"Thanks!" Thea grinned, because, once again, her grinning was a Normal ThingTM. What was that emo-ass quote again? 'Over your smile, they can't see your tears?' And, hey, maybe she had made that one up, but it didn't fucking matter 'cause there was a lot of wisdom in it. "I really think that whoever invented pizza must be, like, sitting right next to fucking god himself in heaven. A certified VIP motherfucker. Aw, this is really good! The best pizza I have ever eaten. I guess it's because of the, uh, inherent pizza-ness of the situation? As in..." Thea continued to prattle on, caring very little the thread of her narrative was about to snap, "...this totally is a moment that needs a pizza. Hence, the inherent pizza-ness. It's, um, a scientific term." Haha, score! There wasn't any awkwardness here at all-- if Thea chose not to see it, then it didn't fucking exist. That was how reality worked, right? Right? ...or not. Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Again, Thea could have composed a fucking Shakespearean sonnet about how ~broken-hearted~ she felt right now, watching Clara suffer over something the bastard had done, but there was no point to that. 'Shit' very much sufficed.

"No. No, wait, Clara! I..." I, what? 'I actually think that my not-gf chopping my arm off is pretty hot?' Yeah, considering how well her last excuse worked out, the brunette didn't think this one would fare that much better. Ugh. Ughx100! Now if only her own tears stopped streaming down her face, that would have been fucking swell. Like, what was their evolutionary advantage? To let your enemies know you were weak and thus in a prime fucking position to be murdered? "Don't go," she settled on, gripping the edge of her blanket. "Don't leave me alone. Like, I asked you to come, right? Which is why you're here now. Duh." Yeah, a wonderful fucking summary of their fucking situation! You know, in case some hypothetical observers had missed the last episode of this soap opera and needed it. Thea took a breath, more to calm herself down than anything else. Gotta go with honesty here, huh? Honesty was the key to people's hearts, or something sentimental like that. "...I know you didn't do it. It wasn't you, Clara. It really, really wasn't, and, like, it's not your fault that the demon is a nasty fucker. Could have fucking happened to anyone." Yes, but it had happened to her. The pain throbbing in her stump, with each beat of her heart? It reminded her, even without words, the reality of... well, of literally everything. Of her fucking having to live like that, for the remainder of her pitiful existence.

"I just," she scratched the back of her head awkwardly, breaking into a wobbly smile, "I guess my brain needs to get on board? Again, I do know, but I... I dunno, I can't help my reactions. I see you, and boom! Instant bad feelings. It's like, uh... like showing a spider to a fucking arachnophobic. You're cuter than spiders, of course, but it's the principle that matters here." Ah, fuck! Had she just compared her probably-never-gf to a goddamn spider? To the universal symbol of grossness? This level of fuck up was so impressive that Thea wondered how it was possible that an irl achievement didn't pop up above her head! You know, something like 'the dumbest bitch alive.'

"By which I mean, it's automatic. Automatic, and also stupid as fuck. So, um, maybe exposure therapy could help? 'Cause I would like to be exposed to you. I like looking at you, Clara." Ugh, curse her traitor lips for trembling like that! It totally must have made her look like a certified FoolTM, but... well, she had lost the last shreds of her dignity with her arm, she guessed. Why not lean into it, then? She was Thea Holloway, and if Thea Holloway was good at something, it definitely was going from 0 to 100 within three fucking seconds. Right! It was now or never. "I want to keep looking at you. Without these... these weird hang ups. Call me desperate, but I think I may love you? So me not being able to even do that would be a problem." Oof. Fucking oof. This totally was straight out of the Desperate Bitch Handbook, wasn't it? Given the way her life was turning out, she might as well have written it!

 

[ellarose]

Clara paused reluctantly in the doorway when Thea told her to wait. Although she wasn't sure why. There was no need to keep up this charade, was there? Because if her presence made her feel even worse than she already did then she didn't want to be there either. It was unbearable, being made into a source of discomfort in the lives of the people she cared about like this. Without fail, it always spawned those thoughts that they'd all be better off if she just disappeared altogether. The weight piled on her chest every time she dared to lie down to sleep, crushing her, reminding her. Whenever she thought about it, she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. That was how she felt, watching Thea try to dodge their reality with anecdotes and excuses. ('It's not Thea's fault. This is exactly how the demon wants me to feel.' She acknowledged that on some level. Isolating and dividing them was exactly how he won this sick game of his. They only had a chance when they were together and so she wasn't going to do anything recklessly dangerous out of desperation. Who was to say though that there wasn't some amount of truth in that way of thinking, though? If the demon could yank her strings and manipulate her like a puppet, he could make that rhetoric he'd spouted a reality. He... he already had. He made her a danger to Thea in the worst possible way and now-- and now she couldn't even stand to look at her.) Was Thea so committed to making her feel better that she was shoving down her own suffering? Because, if she hadn't noticed already, that only made this situation even worse for Clara. Sure she made it sound convincing when she said she didn't want to be left alone, so much that her heart nearly broke, but maybe... 'Put your foot down, Clara. If it's better for her, you need to leave--'

But then Thea began comparing her to a spider? What? Clara stuck her lip out and held herself, still facing away as she considered it. What she was saying wasn't so nonsensical though, was it? Because she was actually telling the truth this time. 'I see you and boom! Instant bad feelings.' That was obvious. The natural response she would have expected after what they'd just gone through. Although she wasn't thrilled about this development-- of course she wasn't-- it was better to know that she was being honest rather than suffering with whatever she was coping with in silence for her sake. "Claraphobia." She whispered under her breath, a touch bitterly. It was hard not to be. They'd been so close, hadn't they? So close to being something more and now... the person she wanted to be with was afraid of her. It called to mind the classroom from the other night and that faceless teacher asking about their phobias. (If asked now, Thea would no doubt have to say her name for it to qualify as the truthful answer she desired so much.) There was that, yes, and the absolutely draining sucker-punch of foreshadowing, the way the teacher alluded to the fact that she was her father's daughter and--

Exposure therapy? Clara tilted her head and furrowed her brow, finally whirling around to give Thea the most incredulous stare she'd ever given her. In a way, it was a relief to confront the fact that they were both crying messes at this point. Now that they were looking at each other right in the face, she saw a clear reflection of her own struggles in Thea's teary eyes. They understood each other on a level that no one else could. Because they both had been victims of the demon's cruel game. Human girls with vulnerable human hearts-- human girls who weren't built for whatever the fuck they'd been signed up for when they were too young to sign their own names on whatever paperwork this fucked up ritualistic bullshit entailed. Now that she was being honest, she needed to listen and to take Thea's feelings into account. She needed to believe her. After all, how often had their supernatural side effects been written off as jokes or lies in their lifetimes? Thea was more than the humor she used to defend herself. So, so much more. And she deserved to be heard.

"I-- I just... if you're afraid... I'm--" Clara stumbled around the concept of staying regardless, her lower lip trembling just as much. Frozen in the doorway, she was torn between being there for Thea and her own fear. Because now, on a level more visceral than ever before, she was scared of scaring Thea. All this time, she was the one person she didn't want seeing her as... well, a monster. "I-- I don't want t-to make things worse. I don't want to hurt you m-more than I..."

'I think I may love you. I think I may love you. I may love you.'

And then Clara.exe stopped working. Reboot, reboot, reboot!

"...W-what?" Clara started as everything else shattered around the word 'love'. Ah. That was an, um, an interesting word, wasn't it? Love. ('I bet if I told the bitch 'I love you', she'd say it back.' Ivy's voice sprang into her mind when it shouldn't have been there at all. Uninvited, just like the demon's, calling to mind the day she overheard her cold, mocking tone. The day the single remaining thread holding them together finally snapped.) The thing was, no one had ever told Clara they loved her and meant it... perhaps with the exceptions of the familial love she must've received from her deceased mother and Raoul. It happened so fast. Faster than whatever sorry excuse of a relationship she and Ivy had developed over the years. And yet when Thea said those words, she believed she meant them. Because Thea was the opposite of Ivy. (Which, yes, was precisely why she li-- loved... loved her. Because Thea was Thea... and there was no one else on this world like her. Not to mention that she was the furthest one could get from a conniving mean girl who played games with the hearts of women.) The honesty rang clearly in her tone, it was written all over her face. She said she may love her and she meant it. "L-l-l-lo--"

Love. Love, love, love. Clara held her face in her hands, her ears burning bright red with embarrassment. Was Thea sure about this, though? Like, couldn't she see what an absolute mess she was signing up for here?

"W--when I thought I might lose you I..." Clara was still hiding her face. But she was trying. No one could tell her she wasn't trying. "I h-h-had this thought and..." Shit. Her throat went dry and her heart fluttered as fast a hummingbird's wings. "Y-y-you punk. I w-wanted to..." She hiccuped on a rising sob. Even so, she found the courage to lower her hands from her face slowly, paying no mind for once to the fact that they were shaking as much as her lip was. "I wanted to say it f-first." Great confession, really. Called her a punk and everything! So romantic. Blushing even harder, she amended her tone to be a touch more gentle. "W-what I mean to say is... I think I may love you, too."

 

[Syntra]

Hello? Hellooo? Thea Holloway here, trying to reach her own pathetic-ass brain. Not to bitch about the organ that kept her body (mostly) functional, but like… how had it not grasped the message behind the very fucking simple ‘I need more time?’ ‘Cause springing a goddamn love confession on Clara was not the definition of patience! (And, as if that hadn’t been bad enough on its own, she’d also resorted to ‘I may love you.’ May? Fucking may? This wasn’t a restaurant, where it was acceptable to say shit like ‘well, I may order fries with that.‘ Love was a Big Fucking DealTM, and in going for such a lukewarm statement, she had definitely disqualified herself from the race for Clara’s heart. Is it, uh, is it too late to pretend that the demon actually gave me brain damage? (…pretty optimistic of her to assume it would be pretending, come to think of it. Like, as Clara had pointed out, over and over and over again, it really had been three fucking days! Normal people didn’t attach that fast, now did they? They needed, like, three dates at a minimum before they even considered having feelings, as opposed to falling head over heels for the first girl that happened to share her particular brand of trauma.) “Uh,” Thea said, feeling like a bigger and bigger dumbass with each passing second. “But like, if you don’t want to reciprocate, that’s fine. I can definitely give you more time. Or, um, I can disappear from your life, too. I am not about to become a professional fucking stalker just because of my feelings… being all feely around you.” Being all feely around her. Being all fucking feely around her! Yeah, you could officially erase the ‘pretending’ part from all the public records-- if Thea Holloway hadn’t had brain damage prior to this fucking fiasco, she sure as hell did have it now. (Did she qualify for government fucking assistance? That would be the one (1) good thing about it!)

“It’s fine. Really. I mean, I did make a complete idiot out of myself, but I’m used to that. Like, I’m pretty sure that my blood pressure drops real fucking low without the idiot hormone. So, uh, thanks for helping me supply it? You’re the best.” So, you know how certain animals used camouflage as their primary survival technique? Thea was kind of like that, except that, instead of camouflage per se, she resorted to talking, talking and talking, till the words themselves stopped making any sort of sense. Which, fucking brilliant! If she had embarrassed herself via saying something stupid, it was only logical to attack the concept of coherence on the metaphysical fucking level.

Understandably, Clara was… confused. Shit, who wouldn’t be? Had Thea herself asked for some time, she would have been fucking bewildered that her stupid-ass partner couldn’t follow such simple instructions, too. (Inwardly, she prepared herself for the worst. ‘What?’ the Clara in her mind smirked. ‘You think I’m gonna take pity on you, now that you’re fucking damaged goods? Too bad, I don’t pick up trash!’ And, yeah, that scenario was even more far-fetched than dinosaurs suddenly coming to life again and declaring Thea their fucking queen, but it, uh, helped to set the expectations. The general mood of this interaction, too. Besides, it was better to work with The Worst Outcome EverTM, wasn’t it? ‘Cause then you got to feel relieved and not, you know, absolutely fucking destroyed.)

Except that, like so many times before, Clara shocked the hell out of her again. “What?” It was Thea’s turn to stare now, her gaze blank. Had she, uh, misheard? If so, it had to be a pretty serious case of ear malfunction-- her gf (???) kept speaking, you see, and no contradiction ever turned up. If anything, the narrative only ever got reinforced. (Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Clara, loving her? That idea was firmly in the ‘too fucking good to be true’ territory, and yet that was exactly what she was saying, with those pretty lips of hers. Ah, damn. Would it be too awkward to faint here and there? ‘Cause Thea was getting in touch with her inner Victorian lady, judging by all that fucking blushing.) “A-ah. Sorry,” she mumbled, at a loss for words. “I guess I can let you do the other things first? All the things that you may want. You get, um, the exclusive rights.” Unhelpfully, Thea’s corny-ass imagination provided the wedding bells as a soundtrack, but she suppressed the idea before it could take root. Nuh uh! There was fast, and then there was ‘slamming into a fucking tree at full-speed’ fast. It may not have looked as if Thea knew the difference between the two, but… yeah. If her recent experiences had taught her anything, it was that she had to be slightly more careful than she’d been. “C’mon. I want to… uh, talk? I think it’s about fucking time.” Gently, she squeezed Clara’s hand and then tapped on the side of her bed, clearly signaling for her to sit down.

“I… suppose we should work out the safety measures first. Like, I want to hear what you felt before it happened. The possession, I mean. Was there any signal, or anything that might tip me off, or…?” No point in ignoring the elephant in the room, after all-- or the demon inside of their head, as the case might be. Sooner or later, it had to come up! And better sooner, so they could avoid a fuck up of similar proportions again. “I don’t know if you remember,” she gulped, “but he threatened to fucking kill you. That’s why I just… rushed in there. I couldn’t deal with the prospect.”

 

[ellarose]

"Safety measures. Right." Clara nodded stiffly. She couldn't believe she was hearing those words from Thea of all people, the queen of impulsivity herself... but here they were. It wasn't like she could blame her for that, though. The reason why she was concerned about that was as obvious as the fact that her arm was missing. Though she did sit on the bed at her request, she was careful to keep her distance. (Don't get her wrong... after a confession she would have liked to get closer. Loved it, even. But respecting boundaries always came first. Cozying in while Thea still suffered from a case of Claraphobia was the equivalent of draping an anaconda around the shoulders of someone who was terrified of snakes, or perhaps tossing someone into the ocean without a life vest after they admitted they were afraid of drowning.) They both had all of the incentive in the world to be cautious thanks to their resident demon. Their resident demon whose voice she actually... hadn't heard since that night. Was he staying quiet on purpose, so that he could take her by surprise the next time that he struck? She stared at her hands, closing them into fists when they started to tremble. She could still see the blood all over them. "Oh. I remember." Of course she remembered. "I could... I could even feel it, to a certain extent. But no matter how hard I fought against him, I couldn't move. It was like I was trapped in a monster's stomach. In... in some other world? I see it in my nightmares sometimes. From there I was held down and forced to... to watch while..."

Clara froze, tensing purely out of habit when she acknowledged how bizarre it all sounded. Except that she was talking to Thea here. And Thea was specially equipped to understand the level of absurdity they were dealing with. It wasn't going to sound like some kind of outlandish excuse she'd made up on the fly. Because, no, it was not a way of 'coping with her trauma with creativity' the way the social workers had thought when they paged through her notebooks and sketchbooks. Long ago she'd resorted to wielding her truths like sarcasm. Opening up genuinely like this... it was still so new for her.

"As for what I felt..." Clara's voice felt thick. Closing her eyes, she brought her hand around to the back of her own neck and squeezed. "I used to feel an ache in the back of my neck whenever he was close. This time, though? Nothing." When she opened her eyes again, they were full of fear. "The other day, he... tore right into me and took control. Without warning." Yeah. That was what was so goddamned terrifying about it. Ever since he took over in the forest, when she panicked and killed those guys his voice had been louder. Closer.

"The only signal I can think of was that he acted like a little bitch beforehand." Yeah. Clara said what she said. Without stuttering, too. It was the truth and she felt she deserved to say it. "He appeared right after I confessed to my 'crime'. Thea, those awful things he made me say..." Those horrible, terrible things, "That wasn't me. You know that, right? Ever since I woke up in that cage, he was trying to push the narrative that you left me for dead. I wasn't listening for a second. I believed you over him and... he must've..." Her brow furrowed. The demon was actively trying to keep them apart for some reason. When they'd spoken honestly, though, and were about to escape their cages-- "We were about to escape after he put in all that effort to tear us apart, and... he must've gotten desperate for some reason."

Clara squinted, her eyes overflowing with indications that she was beginning to puzzle something out in her head. Since she woke up and waited for Thea's recovery, she'd written down as much as she could remember about the last couple of days. The demon's taunts and clues, the symbolism with the cards and the birds. Before she went to sleep, she resolved to pore over her notes again. Perhaps she would have to speak to the detective, now that she had found her voice again as well.

"Come to think of it, I... I actually haven't heard his voice since I woke up." Clara mentioned carefully. She waited, as if anticipating that the demon might take that as a cue to appear and laugh at her for thinking she was rid of him. This time, though? That didn't happen. Hm. Interesting. She finally found the courage to look at Thea again, tilting her head inquisitively as she brought a hand to her chin. "How about you?" She paused again. "...If he could have done that all along, he would've killed us a long time ago. Don't you think? I wonder if he needs to rest after that stunt he pulled."

If that was the case, then maybe Clara could hold Thea close the way she wanted to without all of these fears holding her back. Except they still didn't know that for sure. Maybe the demon was just waiting for them to get comfortable again so that he could pounce again. Strike again, too, and ensure that he didn't miss the vitals this time. And so, even with that figment of hope just within her reach, she remained rooted where she was. Watching at a safe distance.