westwhere | tell me now of the very soul that look alike

Red tips her glass to the side to watch the liquid within it before she looks back up at Vanessa when she says she had only done it once before. It might be surprising if Red did not recognize the primordial soul within the woman. For that soul to be tapped into, it must be natural in a sense even if that spell has only ever been used by Vanessa one other time.

A pack of dogs - definitely not so grand or large as Cerberus and a pack of bats, but then again, a man is no match for a minotaur. It would need to be grander, sharper. She takes another sip from her glass, wondering at the thought of being unleashed on Hades - a vile god. Would she love it or hate it, because she knows she is to obey him. Most likely some strange creation. Still her hackles rise protectively, baring her teeth briefly, instinctively at that: 'a vile man'.

"What'd he do?"

Vanessa once felt similarly (magnified) in regards to the man ─ protective over her old mentor and friend. It had extended beyond that by the end. Pure, unadulterated hate. His death had been more than vengeance. Joan would have slapped her until her face was red if she tried to call it justice.

"What vile men do when denied what they want. He tormented my friend in order to gain her land for his own purposes. The small-minded people in town were no kinder to her, despite the services she provided them."

Despite that, Joan had given her the deed and wanted her to stay and carry on her services. The new Cut-Wife of Ballentree Moor. She'd thought Vanessa a selfish bitch for refusing, and she was right. Deep down, still, Vanessa hopes that the people there suffer for their lack of a hedgewitch. They deserve to suffer for what they did.

She brings the glass to her lips, just enough for a taste. It's rougher than her usual fare, but she's still grateful for the burn in her throat. Grounding.

"I know the Nightcomers had their influence in directing the witch hunt that ended in her death, but that man... His was cruelty that needed little guidance. He had them burn her, then brand me. He thought to tame me like his cattle, and for a time, I was soft enough to let him think so. I still wonder at why."

Anger rises up in her as Vanessa goes on to explain what exactly this vile man did. There's no surprise that a vile man cannot handle being denied what they want, cannot handle a great deal. They often received some of the worst punishments in the Underworld though Hades judgement was never very consistent. Still she finds herself terribly angry to know this man tormented Vanessa's friends, burned her friend, branded Vanessa-

There's a sharp look in Red's eyes - the fire of her anger and protectiveness and loyalty swelling like a volcano that wishes to be released all over again.

He's already dead though, torn to bits by a pack of dogs. It's a perfect way for such a piece of shit man to go.

"He- a brand?" She hisses out a breath but the words themselves sound like a growl, and then downs her drink entirely, closing her eyes, allowing the burn to settle at the back of her own throat. Her eyes close. "I hope his death was slow and he was conscious for most of it."

She breathes through her anger, fills her glass, and then stares into it, finding her words are softer after a moment.

"...you wonder why you were soft for a time?"

Hers is such a different reaction than Ethan's, but then Red doesn't seem to carry the ghosts of torment that he does. Vanessa would do anything to keep Red from setting on a path that creates any such guilt, and yet she'd been the one to set her to kill. What if she had succeeded?

But the look in Red's eyes when Vanessa glances up suggests that her lack of remorse isn't for lack of savagery. Whatever monster that Ethan kept inside, he wasn't ready to accept it without damning himself. In this, Red's no doubt had more time to come to terms with any bloody past she's had.

If anything, it must be the human aspects that cause Red the most struggle, and Vanessa's aware that what occurred in the labrynth must have impacted it. She's proven that the line between Cerberus and Red is not so well defined. Even now, with only bits and pieces flickering through her memories, she can recall the brilliance of Cerberus. Was it simpler to exist like that?

It had seemed simple to Vanessa in that moment. Everything had lined up perfectly.

"Perhaps I was scared...of what would happen should I try. My friend, she...was the first witch I ever met. The only Daywalker I ever knew. She did not want me to be beckoned into the night."

Edited 2022-11-28 00:34 (UTC)

"...because you could get lost to it, swallowed up by it?"

Red's voice is hoarse as she stares at her drink in hand again without looking up, but she remembers that is what she had worried about as Vanessa started her spell. It seemed like that dark and powerful magic inside of her might just- might just drown her entirely in the strength of it.

She scrubs at her face a bit.

"I'm sorry about your friend." She swirls the alcohol in her glass without having anymore of it quite yet.

"What does it feel like for you?" When she uses it that spell, when she reaches out to that part of herself she so clearly struggles with. Red can understand that - how right and how wrong it can feel at the same time.

To be lost to it... Is that how it had looked? Vanessa's memories of such events have always been unclear, but everything has been different since coming to Serthica. Although she still can't profess utter clarity as to the entire event, she remembers enough to have an answer for Red. One that isn't comforting, not to her. To be lost, at least...there is hope that one can be found by someone kind.

"It was she who taught me the Verbis Diablo's meaning, but nothing such as that spell. That is...from a forbidden text that she hoped I would never use. It felt...different."

Joan would also scoff at any condolences offered, no doubt, especially in light of Vanessa becoming such a disappointment. Better that she didn't live to see it, after all. Vanessa knows she's crueler still to think so.

"Wretched in its ugliness, yet..." Vanessa struggles to find the words, no matter what amount of poetry she's devoured since youth. "Transcendent. Near to a sort of..."

She hadn't intended to be vague, as Red deserves some transparency, but Vanessa realizes she had been about to say divinity, and no matter how far she's fallen from the faith, Vanessa can't bring herself to blaspheme to such a degree aloud. Her lips press tight and her head gently turns at any further attempt to describe it.

"What of you? Do you remember what you felt?"

It's part of why Red wanted to ask.

How ever it looked like from the outside, she can't know how it really felt at all. The other reason she asked is because she thinks Vanessa is one of the only people who can know what it feels like - to be more than one thing at once, to not know how those pieces fit together if they even do fit at all. She wasn't supposed to leave the Underworld at all, and she barely made sense when she was there.

Now it's-

Her gaze lifts at the two vastly different ways of describing it. Wretched in its ugliness but then transcendent. She trails off. She doesn't finish the sentence. Red doesn't think the word divinity, but she does fill in that blank with: 'godliness'. She sips more of the drink, finding it burns, finding her head swims with it now.

"Can only remember bits and pieces. It felt... right. Good. Felt like being swallowed up and awakened, like being unleashed and caged all at the same fucking time. Felt like being called to obey... darkness, and I recognized it - you or-" The mother of darkness, she remembers thinking that, knowing that. "Felt like being a weapon." She wanted to be wielded, but there's still too much nausea and shame to admit that. She swallows, and a near growl leaves her: "I wanted to tear them apart before- the minotaurs for what they did to you both, I didn't have the claws and teeth to do so." Her jaw locks as her own anger returns. Her hand tightens on the glass, and she sips down the drink until she can't feel it anymore.

"When I was in the Underworld, I could switch between this and that whenever I wanted. Couldn't figure out how to do it here, and I didn't know what would happen if I did so I was afraid to."

The carrying of dichotomies in the soul is something Vanessa understands well, as is that violent morality most applicable to the defense loved ones. When lives hang in the balance, there's little time for worrying over the release of one's own feral nature. But, to be considered a weapon is so very particular, and the glass trembles in her hand as she searches her friend's features.

It's strange that Red wouldn't hate her, then. For all she says of it feeling 'good', to be wielded as a weapon seems like an act her former master would have claimed. She feels bloodless for the chill in the room if she worries at having momentarily filched Hades' dog whistle.

"How did you return to this form? You've regained your choice in the matter, then?"

She stares into the glass of liquor in her hand, watching the liquid move to one side then the next as she tilts it right then left and again. So much of it is difficult to put to words, but Vanessa's raw honesty helped her find her own even if it's kind of fucked regardless.

"Before the Tower, the Doctor helped put an anchor in my head when I told him I was worried about all of that. Once he... made you sleep, I could hold on to that instead when he reminded me."

Who she was, who he was. And she was able to switch back. Eventually, she would have likely figured it out on her own, but the anchor made it infinitely easier to switch and made sure there's more of her in Cerberus than even usual.

"I'd probably still need practice before I could get good at it, but that really helped."

Once he made Vanessa sleep. Any resentment she feels over that is impractical, and if anything she understands just how vital the Doctor was to getting them through the labyrinth. In his own way, he had saved them both, just as they had strived to save him. What might have happened if he hadn't gathered the situation under control? She's better off not knowing, but it will always nag at her.

She rests the still full glass on the table's edge, reaching instead to favor one of the rolled cannabis cigarettes that Red brought. They're styled a bit differently than Vanessa's, but they light up just as easily. She'll manage a couple drags before offering it to Red, a thin stream of smoke whispering off to the side of the sofa before Vanessa gives into her curiosity.

"What do you mean, an anchor?"

Edited 2022-11-30 23:58 (UTC)

Red sets her empty glass beside Vanessa's full one and then reaches over for it, taking a long drag from it as well. She watches the smoke trail up and away from the end of it and then her gaze lifts to Vanessa.

"You'd have to ask the Doctor about it to really know the details."

She doesn't really know herself. Her talents aren't psychic but more with the soul, auras, all of that - whatever the fuck that even actually means. And maybe she should have- she should have learned more about it before agreeing to just let him into her head. It's just so easy to follow where she's led.

"He psychically went into my mind after getting my permission, and he only went where I said he could" even when he saw Clara and her speaking, he didn't look any further, "I could sense him in there until he found Cerberus, and then he placed this psychic anchor there, said a bunch of really nice things about me, about who... this-" She releases a breath. This pat of her is, this half? "Kind of like being grounded in your own mind."

"You came out stronger for your trials. I should expect nothing less of you." The Doctor may have dropped an anchor with kind words, but it was Red who found strength in them to climb the chains.

It frightens Vanessa to think of anyone entering her mind like that, despite how she's intruded into the memories of others. The Doctor had once acted like he had nothing to fear from within her mind, but she wonders if he still thinks that now. For whatever reason, that hasn't sent the Doctor or Red fleeing in the opposite direction.

Whatever he had to say about Red to draw out her confidence, Vanessa doesn't ask. Such a matter is private, and she's touched to know even this much. Rather awed, too. The Doctor goes out of his way to protect others in ways she didn't know could be possible. She wonders if─hopes that─it reminds her that she's no longer lonely. Even when they should part once the beacon is discovered.

It's a waste to worry about that, but she often does. What will happen to Red? Can she go find her own life? Can she stay free but anchored? Isn't it what Vanessa would want for herself? What she can't have, she would pray for others, but she has nothing left to say to God.

Red doesn't know that she deserves that praise, staring at the smoke as it slips up from the end of the joint. It feels like nothing much is ever under her control, but she also knows Vanessa wouldn't give the words lightly - she would only say them if she really meant them. The warm haze of the alcohol she'd downed remains in the pit of her stomach, and she allows it all to fully relax her as wound up as she'd been when she arrived. She offers the joint back to Vanessa in the quiet that follows.

"...here it felt like the Unwinding was shit enough but then the Tower came and kicked it clear out of the fuckin' water."

She cradles the glass again.

"Makes you wonder what'll come next."

There's the beacon, but Red tries not to think about that. They're staying here to help the city so they'll be here when it's unearthed and powered up again. Fei's gone somehow already. Things feel so very tentative at times. She hates that, but that's the price of living on a mortal realm, the chance to care about people and the chance to lose them too.

Though she takes the cigarette back, Vanessa only takes one lingering pull before letting it hang uselessly between her fingers, her gaze often slipping between looking somewhere far-off and then peering Red and her disposition over. Idly, she wonders how much alcohol such a small form can handle.

Whatever comes next, Vanessa will need to take care with how she defends herself and others in the future. It's a comfort to know that Red has found a way to anchor her monster, but that resistance hasn't yet been tested against the monster within Vanessa, and should the Verbis Diablo truly consume souls, then hers ought to be the only one lost to it, if it hasn't been already.

Again there's a bittersweet mingling of resentment and gratitude when she considers how the Doctor put her to sleep. Grateful for Red's sake...and the Doctor's. The both of them might still have the chance to learn what it means to live for their own sakes.

"At least we need not wonder at who our friends are." It's no small thing, especially in Vanessa's dark corner of the world. "I hope you know that you may always rely on me to look upon you with affection and trust. To a degree not easily found in the life I've led."

Red releases a slow breath, pulling her knees up to her chest as she rests her chin there, allowing the alcohol and the marijuana to mingle together in her system. Her fingertips press against her legs, and she closes her eyes until Vanessa speaks. Then she's looking over her knees at her.

She is not so eloquent especially at the moment - the way Vanessa says it, it's almost like poetry. But she swallows through some thick feeling in her throat.

"I feel the same, and yeah, never before in my own... existence." Has she had that before someone she trusts, and yes. "So."

It matters. It's important.

"Thanks for coming after me when that asshole dragged me through the hallways by that rope."

Vanessa hasn't imbibed enough of anything to feel much beyond the slight calming of her nerves, which is enough to make her appreciate Red's words for what they are without worrying too much about how undeserving she is of such considerations. She hopes that Red has met others to also earn such a trust, and that she will continue to. That she will know love in all its forms, and with each heartbreak find a way to turn that love inward. To do what Vanessa never could.

The image of Red sitting in such a position is all too familiar. How many times has Vanessa clutched at her knees whenever the ground below felt too unsteady?

She stretches to pull the ash tray near, resting the cigarette there should Red wish for any more. Vanessa isn't sure she needs it, but she isn't one to hinder the vices of her friends. She's one to sit near and nurture, at least when she isn't drowning in her own woe. The vision that Red creates is enough to pull Vanessa out of that self-pity, long enough to appreciate that trust that Red is offering.

Carefully, she smooths back the girl's long hair, letting it trail between her fingers after combing it behind her ear. She would have chased the minotaur ceaselessly to try to save Red. She would have found a way to tear into it with the bats even sooner, more like.

"It was the Doctor who managed to save you." Something that he had done more than once. She had expected him to be clever, and he was when he used the rope, but she hadn't expected an axe throw quite like that. "I know in my heart that he, too, would do anything to ensure your happiness."

Edited 2022-12-08 19:04 (UTC)

Red breathes out the heaviness in her lungs and stares at her own hands. She doesn't say anything in response, because there's nothing to say. This entire world is temporary. They're not supposed to be here. The beacon will be activated again, and they're all supposed to go through it back to where they belong, back to their own worlds, far away from the one that brought them together.

This isn't that place where they belong. No matter how much she cares about Vanessa, about the Doctor, about Emilia and Hermione, and- and Fei's already gone. No matter what she'd do to protect them. The rest will go too, and if she gets sent back, she gets sent back somewhere she doesn't belong. Really, she doesn't belong anywhere (too mortal and not, too girl and not, too monster and not), but what a depressing fucking thing to say or think or anything.

She looks over at Vanessa - an aching kind of smile. She does take the cigarette, another drag, focusing on Vanessa's gentle touch in her hair as her eyes close again.

"The beacon's gonna get activated next, huh? If we do what we're supposed to do here."

She hates to talk of it, but there's no use hiding from the path that the Merchant has been driving them all down. It's always been a precarious state of being–a family in transit–yet the closeness is no shallower for it. The loyalty will be lifelong, for however much longer that is, if Vanessa's memory will remain her own. She hopes that Red will remain a presence in her heart until the very end.

"That is the hope."

She doesn't blame Red's lack of enthusiasm for the idea. If Vanessa didn't have to go...if Sir Malcolm's life didn't depend on it, then...what would she do? It's a dangerous way of thinking. Far too indulgent.

"You don't have to go, should it be activated. Will you make a new life here?"

If Serthica remains too dangerous, then there are safer cities, aren't there? There will be threats everywhere, no doubt, but what does Red have to fear with Cerberus at her beckoning? Isn't it better to take the gamble for the idea of freedom? It's something Vanessa would risk, if she could.

"I don't know."

Truthfully, Red hasn't really thought about it much. If she stays, she stays surrounded by a bunch of people who are entirely human, who don't tango with gods, who were born and will one day die. She stays in a world where the Undead want to claim her, and they probably shouldn't get their hands on Cerberus. If she goes, she doesn't know what happens either. Hades will try to find her, but maybe she'll have time before he does.

She did escape with two people who could have been her friends maybe if she were able to spend any time with them before being dragged here instead. She never thought she'd actually be able to leave the Underworld at all when she escaped, thought it'd drag her right back in and under its water, drown her for trying. Probably it's only because Persephone was with them, and it was her hand she held on the way out.

She doesn't lift her head again even when she asks: "...what about you?"

Vanessa doesn't much like the thought of Red returning to a life spent running. Yet, how can Vanessa pass any judgment on such considerations? Vanessa has spent her whole life running, though she would like to claim she had turned to face the beast more often than not. In truth, she'd only faced it to invite it in.

Despite her growing connection with this place—with Red and the Doctor—she has obligations as well, and for the first time in a long while, Vanessa is returning so that she can stop running. It's the only way to save her friend. Sir Malcolm had once called her the daughter he deserved, and it had not been meant in kindness, but it was true enough. Their past sins and paths forward were inexorably twined, and she knows that she can't abandon him now.

Even if it means returning to where Satan thrives.

Eyes cast off to the side, Vanessa sighs and murmurs, "My path forward is the same. Serthica hasn't changed that."

But it has changed how she feels about it. In some ways, she's found a peace with what's within; in the connection she's found to others who are strikingly like her. In other ways, it has sent her adrift. Her life could have been better here, even in its current state. At least here, nobody hunts the Mother of Evil for her singular use and nothing else.

tell me now of the very soul that look alike

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