scythe_anastasia | (no subject)

Anastasia still doesn't know how to feel when they return to their suite in a Fulcrum City hotel. It's too early for relief. No matter how pleased the others were at dinner, no matter how well things technically went, a stopgap isn't a solution. She's still standing there with her finger in the dyke, stalling for time.

But they have time. And she'd be lying if she said it wasn't just a little bit satisfying to imagine Goddard stomping home to sulk. He'll probably get right down to making everyone around him miserable, but at least that's the worst he can do. He doesn't have the entire Midamerican Scythedom under his influence, yet -- and if things go well on Endura, he never will.

She lets her focus drift as she heads toward the en-suite bathroom, wondering what Endura will be like. She's heard stories, and figured she'd visit it sooner or later, but not this soon. And definitely not under these circumstances. 'Bringing an inquest before the Grandslayers' is a far cry from 'going on vacation with Marie.' She wonders if they'll be able to actually enjoy the visit, or if she'll be too busy worrying about the inquest to take in the sights.

Probably the latter, if she's being honest with herself.

As she steps into the bathroom, everything shifts in an eyeblink, the space before her blowing out to encompass an entire city street. Anastasia reels, trying to set her hand on a door frame that no longer exists and instead just batting at the empty air.

"What--?" is the only word that escapes her before she catches herself. She is a Scythe. Scythes don't panic in the middle of a public thoroughfare. She takes a slow breath, then steps back out of the flow of foot traffic, where she can look around without being in the way.

This isn't Fulcrum City. Everything looks too... old-fashioned. The cars are all being driven by actual people, and there's no sign of the Thunderhead's ubiquitous array of cameras. The road has holes in it, as if someone dug up chunks of the pavement with a spoon, a bizarre detail that occupies a full five seconds of her attention. Where on earth would something like that be allowed to exist without being repaired?

Is... is this Texas?

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It's the inevitable question, but all the same, it hits him like a ton of bricks. That lightness he felt at the sight of Citra fades away, replaced by a weariness he never knew he was holding onto. His shoulders sag. Some of that tiredness creeps into his expression, into his eyes as he looks at her.

"More than a year." His voice is quiet and tight. Back home, even, there's nothing that he could have wished for more than to just see her, to know she was okay, to feel like he wasn't alone in all of this. And now that she's here, he hardly knows what to do with himself.

He exhales and though his voice stays steady, there's pain there. Obvious, perhaps, only to her.

"I've missed you."

That shouldn't be possible. She's seen him in the last year; they've spoken. And for months afterwards, she knew he was out there. Scythe Lucifer kept himself busy.

But none of the rest of this should be possible, either. They shouldn't be in a different dimension, in the Age of Mortality. If that can be true, an inexplicable time difference can't be off the table. And Rowan wouldn't, couldn't fake the invisible weight that bows his shoulders or the bone-deep exhaustion she can see in his eyes.

Anger paralyzes her for a moment: anger at this place for drawing them both in but making him wait for her, anger at herself for pulling him into an alleyway and interrogating him when he hasn't seen her in over a year, anger at the necessary, unnecessary distance between them that she still hesitates to close because she learned restraint too well.

And then she moves, releasing his sleeve so she can wrap her arms around him and pull him close, tucking her chin over his shoulder. Her face is a little mashed into the hood of his sweatshirt, and she refuses to care. "I missed you, too," she murmurs.

He has no idea what day it is back home for her. Rowan knows that people from the same world come from different times, on occasion, have a disconnect of memory and future that they have to resolve. Perhaps he should ask her how long it's been for her, if he only escaped yesterday or if it's the future and they haven't seen each other in months. He has no idea.

But she pulls him in for a hug and just for that moment it feels so, so good. They weren't allowed to show affection like this when they were apprentices and as scythes -- well, as her as a scythe -- things were touch and go at best. But it's the best thing he could imagine, right now or ever.

He huffs out a breath as his arms go around her, holding her tight to him.

"I'm sorry you're here," Rowan says quietly. "Instead of home. But I'm also so very not sorry at all."

His arms close around her, and it's better than it has any right to be. And sort of stupid, too, to think that they haven't been this close since they were sparring apprentices pinning each other to a mat. She knows exactly why they couldn't do this back home, but it's hard to remember any of those good, sensible reasons now. And she feels a little swooping sensation inside her as it occurs to her that none of those good, sensible reasons need apply in a dimension with no Scythedom to disapprove.

She's getting ahead of herself. She still barely knows which way is up, and a lot can happen in a year. Get ahold of yourself, Anastasia.

Rowan's admission makes her laugh, and the laugh seems to jostle something loose inside her. "I bet," she says, dropping back onto her heels with a faint but irrepressible smile. "What have you been doing all this time?"

For a good, long time, Rowan would have done anything to make Citra smile. It's good to see it now, despite the circumstances, or maybe because of them. There's no reason to do anything but smile right now. They're just two friends, reuniting after a long time. (Very long, for Rowan.)

That's all, right?

His hands itch with the desire to touch her more, anywhere really, just to assure himself that she's real and whole and there. But he takes them away politely to shove them in the pockets of his jeans. Ducking his head, Rowan tries to hide a snort and bites his lip.

"I, ah... I work at a store. Selling little mechanical inventions. Toys, mostly."

This is so, so ridiculous.

"Sometimes he teaches me how to make things."

She tries to bite back a grin, she really does. It's not like she can blame him for getting a relatively normal job. Without a Scythedom -- or any need to start one -- a regular job is really all that's left. She'll probably have to think about getting one, too, sooner or later. But she's getting ahead of herself again; there are more immediate concerns for her to worry about.

Still, 'Rowan the shop boy' is so far removed from what she knows of him that she can't help an incredulous smile. "Scythe Lucifer," she slowly recites, "the toy store attendant." He has siblings, he's probably not bad with kids, but still. He used to terrorize the very people who should have had the least to fear, and now he sells little gizmos to children? Imagining the look on Marie's face, if she were here to hear this, is almost enough to make her keel over. She hastily covers her mouth with her hand, but it's a lost cause, and half a second later, she's giggling.

"Not just an attendant, though," she says between bouts. "You said you make them, too?" That's... kind of delightful, actually. If it were anyone else, it would just be charming, but it's Rowan, which makes it hilarious as well. "You'll have to show me. I insist on seeing the toy shop."

She's aware that this is just a temporary reprieve from what will probably be more insanity. Teasing Rowan doesn't change the fact that she's apparently traveled into another dimension populated almost entirely by mortal strangers. But this, whatever this is right now, is better than hyperventilating against a wall, so she'll take it.

It's a delight to see her smile, to see her. (He's never going to get over that, ever. It doesn't matter how long they both stay in Darrow; Rowan is never fully going to come to grips with the fact that Citra is here, with him, to stay, for a while.)

Even though he does have to blush at the teasing. Rowan shifts back to lean against the alley wall -- they really should start walking soon, to look around -- and lightly kicks the side of the calf with his foot. He's put up with far, far worse when it comes to being taunted and teased, and from Citra is feels strangely natural. They never had much opportunity for giggles and playfulness in their training and especially not afterwards. But Citra might just know him better than anyone else in the world, despite what she doesn't know about what happened to him.

"Alright, alright," he chuckles, ducking his head again. "You'll see it soon enough. I've got a shift tomorrow, so..."

He shakes his head and shrugs at the same time, trying to shake off this bewildering feeling. How is this his life right now?

"You have an apartment. You have an ID card and stuff we should get. And I can show you around town and fill you in on some of the stranger stuff that goes on around here."

Citra -- it's hard not to think of herself as just Citra, with him -- sobers a little. It ought to just be a throwaway remark, him having a shift tomorrow, but it reminds her that he has a whole life here that she knows next to nothing about. Working at a shop is a far cry from being a Scythe (renegade or not). And it's funny, sure, but it's jarring, too.

She knows her Rowan Damisch, but she's not sure how well she knows this one.

"Wait -- I have an apartment?" she repeats incredulously. The Age of Mortality isn't exactly known for how well it provided for its citizens. She'd presumed Rowan got the job not just out of boredom, but because he needed the money. There's no Thunderhead to mandate and provide basic accommodations here. "And an ID card?" she looks even more skeptical at that; no one's hauled her into a government office (or whatever they do here) and taken her picture. If Darrow was really expecting her, she'd expect the city to have sent a--a delegate, or something. Someone official to intercept her and explain things.

He notes the change in her expression and wishes he could undo what he's said. It's nothing, it's a meaningless remark, but it makes Citra lose her giggling smile and therefore it's a terrible thing to have said.

He's not even sure which part of what he said makes her react like that. But whichever part, it's got to go.

Rowan huffs out a sigh at the questions and pushes off the brick wall to stand properly. Starting to move towards the main street, he glances over his shoulder to make sure Citra's following.

"It's confusing but... think of the city of Darrow like the Thunderhead. It knows all about you, all about us, and sometimes it's kind. But not always."

It's probably past time that they stopped lurking in an alleyway for no real reason, and she falls into step beside him without argument. She starts getting looks from other pedestrians as soon as they hit the public thoroughfare. Not because she's a Scythe, she quickly realizes -- her robe and ring wouldn't signify anything, here -- but because she looks weird. It makes her gut twist, knowing she just looks silly and not respectable, but she grits her teeth and keeps her chin up. Her robes might look desperately out of place, but at least they're heated.

"So it gives us an apartment, but no official welcome," she says, wavering between 'bewildered' and 'unimpressed.' How many people arrive here, panic, go to ground, and don't even figure out there's an apartment with their name on it? It's what she could imagine Rowan doing. Not the panicking, but fading into the shadows and trying to figure it all out on his own. It's a bad system.

Glancing over at him, she softens. "Not that I'd prefer some city official to you." There are so many things she could do -- touch his shoulder, reach for his hand -- and nothing stopping her but force of habit, and this new, roiling uncertainty regarding who they are to one another, and what a year might do to someone. So she keeps her hands to herself, even as she adds, "This is definitely better than that would have been."

She can blame her faint blush on the stares she’s getting.

They definitely do have to get her new clothes. Which... will be weird. It was weird for Rowan, even if he used regular clothes back in the day when he was a renegade scythe. But he never thought of the clothes as his, as anything other than a different uniform for a different kind of job. Here, it's another matter entirely. They will have to buy several pieces of clothing for Citra, stuff that will go in a closet, so that one day she'll open the door and have to decide what to wear. Like a regular person.

There's so much she's going to have to go through. But at least she won't do it alone. Not like Rowan did.

He quirks his mouth in a grin, also feeling a tinge of heat on his cheeks from her sweet words. They're barely anything at all, but he understands the full meaning behind it. Or thinks he does.

"I think the packet of information is supposed to be the welcome. Everyone pointed me to it and some tried to help. But people are... different here. Some of them."

He notes the stares and, with pursed lips, he leans in to murmur to her. "I know you're not bothered," Rowans says, "but it could be worse. I showed up in a revival center gown. In the snow."

There, laugh at his expense Citra.

So there's a whole packet. Citra shakes her head, still not liking the disparity between how ready the city seems to be for new arrivals and how little it actually tries to steer them in the right direction. It sounds like everyone just has to rely on the kindness of strangers to make it that far. Don't the locals get tired of finding random, confused people wandering the streets?

She's probably proof of that much. It hadn't taken her long to duck into that alleyway to try and get her bearings, but enough people saw her that someone else could have said something, if they'd really wanted to. Probably what Rowan means by 'different,' which now feels like a charitable choice of words.

"Different how?" she asks, in case she's wrong, and there's some other bit of weirdness she should be looking out for.

Her eyes widen at the circumstances of his own arrival, and she snorts at the mental image it conjures up before it occurs to her to wonder at the broader circumstances. "Revival center? What happened? Were you caught?" She would have heard if that had happened -- the whole Midamerican Scythedom would have been buzzing with the news -- but maybe word just hadn't reached her, yet.

Even though that's all a world away (and over a year ago, from his perspective), it's still an alarming thought. Without waiting for her permission, her hand reaches out and clasps his wrist.

"Some of them -- only some of them -- are colder," he tries to explain. It's not as if everyone in the Age of Immortality was kindhearted and charitable, going out of their way to help their fellow man. But many of the natives have a dim outlook on "foreigners," he's noticed, and people are protective of themselves.

"It's only natural. Trouble might mean death, instead of inconvenience. They don't want to stick their necks out for people they don't know. It makes the ones who do take chances stand out." In a brilliant way, Rowan has found.

He thinks of Eleanor, for example, then promptly stops thinking of her. There's enough to distract him now that he can.

Like Citra's reaction to his story. That was not at all the reaction he had been hoping for, but in hindsight, how else could she react? It feels as if Texas and Goddard and all that mess is miles and miles, ages and ages away from him. Not that he's forgotten, but he can compartmentalize with the best of them. That was Then. This is Now. Then, it was survival. Now, it's funny.

Isn't it?

He looks at her for a moment, unable to even begin to assemble an explanation that would be to her liking. That would actually explain everything as well as not make her absolutely lose her mind. But he can't. So he evades.

"When are you from?" he asks. "Time's funny... I've heard of people showing up from the same world but from different times...." They pass by Rowan's favorite coffee shop and he nods. Another convenient distraction, and an honest one.

"Hungry?"

Citra narrows her eyes, recognizing the evasion for what it is and not liking it. His first question is sensible enough that she can't really excuse not answering it, though. He's already been here for over a year; who's to say that they disappeared from home at the same time? They can't be that far off in the grand scheme of things -- he's old enough to know who she is, and young enough that he can't have vanished too long after she did. But they might not quite line up.

He might not know Goddard's back.

His second question is just a non-sequitur, and she frowns. "Not really, no," she says with a pointed quirk of her eyebrows. It's true -- she just came from dinner, and while she could politely sip a cup of something, she's far from hungry -- but more than that, it's a refusal to just let that ugly implication sit there, ignored, while he tries to distract her with coffee. "And it was the Year of the Raptor when I left, just after the Winter Conclave. What about you?"

Oh, how he wishes that would have worked. Getting her a cup of coffee, a nice little sandwich, that would have been distracting enough to give him time to come up with a plausible explanation for what he had been up to. Now he has to scramble.

He licks his lips and shakes his head. "Capybara." Which means he's, what, six months behind her? He'd lost track during his time in Texas, with Goddard.

Why, why had be been so stupid with Brahms?

"I don't--" Something like a wince flashes over his features. He manages to look Citra in the eye, rather than be blatantly evasive.

"We have to be careful about this. I don't want to know what happens in the future. And if you know what happens to me... You might do things that shouldn't be done."

Edited Date: 2019-04-02 08:45 pm (UTC)

"Like help you?" she asks pointedly, brow furrowed. The chilling part is that she already hasn't, if he's from Capybara. Whatever landed him in a revival center happened months ago, with her none the wiser. Maybe that should be encouraging. If it resulted in him getting caught by the Blade Guard or something, she definitely would have known.

But she doesn't know how he could have wound up in a revival center without getting caught, and that's not encouraging at all.

Citra pulls in a breath, then huffs it out, frustrated. "We're stuck in some random dimension with nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs, and you think it would be bad to share information? Come up with some kind of plan?" What could Scythe Lucifer do with the knowledge of Goddard's resurrection and a several month head start? They could use this, weird as it is. It would almost be a waste not to.

His mind tracks the same channel as hers, brows rising in a kind of firm yet defensive expression.

"If there were something you could do, don't you think you would have already done it?" he counters. "I would have done it? It doesn't-- I don't think it works that way, Citra. I don't."

He's stuck in a corner with no way out. He's past the point of pretending that nothing happened out of the ordinary back home, that he's simply doing his duty of gleaning the ungleanable and evil. But, if there's one fact he's got on his side, it's that things are so horrible that Citra couldn't possibly guess at what truly happened.

"I got into trouble. I got into a recovery center. I got out. To here. I think. I assume. I woke up here, not there, so for all I know there are BladeGuards waiting for me."

"If there were BladeGuards waiting for you, I'd know by now," she points out, still unhappy, but losing steam. That's one small perk of being from the future, as far as Rowan is concerned: she's certain that if he'd been caught by the BladeGuard a few months ago, everyone would have been told as soon as possible. He spent too much time terrorizing the Scythedom to be quietly tucked away upon being captured.

The Winter Conclave would have featured a very different kind of spectacle than Goddard's reemergence.

There's still something he's not telling her, and she gives him a sharp, searching look -- less because she thinks she'll be able to figure it out just by staring at him, or because she thinks he'll cave, and more because she wants him to know he's not off the hook. Then she shakes her head with a soft sigh.

"So where are they hiding this packet of mine?"

Rowan gives her a look, pursed lips and while not quite disbelieving not quite believing either. There's so much that she doesn't know, about what's happened to him, about Goddard and Xenocrates. He wouldn't put it past the High Blade to hide his capture, just for a little while, because Goddard blackmailed him or because he waited for the right moment.

He knows from that look that he's not going to get away with this scot free, but a little breathing room is all he needs. He'll tell her. Maybe. One day. But today definitely is not that day.

"Train station." They're already headed in that direction, so Rowan resumes their walk, away from the cafe. He kind of wishes he had a coffee now, or something stronger.

"There you get ID, apartment, and cash. You get a stipend every month, enough to get by but nothing extravagant. Everything seems normal. Until strange things start happening."

This is the second time he's mentioned 'strange' things happening in the city. It's hard not to wonder what qualifies as weird in a place that apparently functions as some sort of pan-dimensional nexus, and she glances over at him, brow furrowed.

"Stranger than pulling random people from other dimensions into this one?" she asks. Presuming it's random. It's grabbed both Rowan and her, so maybe it isn't. "None of this is normal." She sounds sharper than she means to, the shock of her own arrival mingling with her frustration over what Rowan's not telling her and her uneasiness over the fact that he's been here long enough to know what Darrow's 'normal' looks like in the first place. None of this should be normal for either of them.

He makes a soft acknowledging noise at Citra's question.

"Somewhere along the line, that gets normal," he admits. It's strange to admit, perhaps, but it's true. Just like it gets somewhat normal to be the only (or near only) immortal in a sea of mortals.

"Just like being a scythe got normal. Didn't it?"

Being treated differently. Being the only one with immunity, with ability, in a sea of people who moved like sheep through their lives.

"Until... weird things happen." Like Goddard. Like them being pitted against each other. Like her skirting the rules so beautifully, so masterfully. And him choosing the path that he did.

"But in this case, it's... okay." He sighs and gives her another look, brows arched in emphasis. Believe him, Citra, because he's not playing with you. Promise.

"On New Year's Eve? The gingerbread cookies came to life and tried to kill everyone."

Citra tips her head a little to one side, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. There were aspects of being a scythe that took some getting used to, and new habits and routines to develop, but calling it normal is a bit much. Maybe it's just that 'normal,' to her ears, sounds a little too much like 'comfortable.' And being a scythe shouldn't feel comfortable, just as it shouldn't feel easy or fun.

She remembers Marie's warning about how being Goddards apprentice would change him. She wonders if she's reading too much into it.

"I think 'normal' is a stretch," she says, a part of her noting that it's a more diplomatic response than what Rowan might consider usual. A more Anastasia response. "It makes it sound easy, or routine, and it's not. Or it wasn't the way I did it."

She gives him a more openly dubious look as he braces himself to explain Darrow's brand of weird, just because his tone and his please-believe-me expression invite a little preemptive skepticism. But what he describes is so absurd that she doesn't think he could make it up, and she barks out a startled laugh.

"Cookies?" she repeats, diplomacy heaved out the window for the time being. "Come on."

It's almost a shame that Rowan's nanites are still functional and working, when it would be useful to show her a scar or two from a blade wielded by a gingerbread man. As it stands, he doesn't have anything to argue with her that it's true.

Except...

He spins on his heel and looks at the stream of people moving around them. He nods at someone up ahead, someone who's come into that cafe Rowan likes more than a few times. He knows his name, knows what he does, but they're not friends. Still, he gives him a greeting like he would any other day.

"Hey, man, my friend's new." Mild discomfort flashes across the other man's face, but Rowan continues on so quickly that it disappears easily.

"Tell her what happened at Kagura. On New Year's."

"Aw, man." He chuckles as though this is old news (it is) and nothing to be concerned about (it is). "Killer cookies. Crazy, right?"

"Right," Rowan says with his own matching chuckle. Totally normal stuff here.

"See you around."

Citra notes that flicker of unease across the other person's face, a familiar response wholly divorced from the familiar context, and it's both habit and stubborn pride that keep her from wincing or ducking her head. At least she chose to be a scythe. She went into it with her eyes open, and found a method of gleaning that she could be proud of. But the discomfort she causes here is harder to swallow; it's not her fault she's new. If the locals have really been living with this for years, they should know by now that no one's coming here on purpose.

But it's not as if she has to befriend this guy, or even speak to him. He just confirms what Rowan said about killer cookies, and then he's on his way. Citra stares after him for a second or two, mouth slightly open. Then, pressing her lips together, she turns back to Rowan.

"I hate it here," she deadpans, mostly for a lack of any other rejoinder.

Rowan snorts lightly at the response. He missed her; he loves her. It's hard to look at her right now and hear her in that tone of voice and not love her dearly. It's such a simple thing, so mundane, but it means so much to him.

"You'll get used to it," he promises. Maybe he's only so sanguine because she's here, her presence filling him with glee. But it's true that, in the end, she will find a way to adapt. She's Citra. Of course she will.