CLOSED. don't ask what happens when the curtains draw.

[tropfatale]

Who: Megan Gwynn & Sonja Garin.
What: Sonja brings Megan the antidote, and later, an explanation.
Where: Megan's place.
Warnings: Discussion of sexual assault, suicidal ideation, Sonja's very existence, at least narrative thoughts of violence.

There are probably many, many people in Baedal better-suited to going to speak to a young woman who has been violated by magic in a terrible way, to explain to her what has been done. Unfortunately, the only person in the city with the necessary knowledge to create an antidote is one of the least qualified counselors around, and she knows it, too; she doesn't let herself become awkward because that's not her way, but when she turns up on Megan's doorstep (in her leather pants, crop top, and leather jacket), she's got a tension in her shoulders. Admittedly, some of this tension is to do with wanting to beat Hilmi with a sack of hammers, but she's trying to quell that until later.

She knocks at the front door. While she's aware that Megan might well be too far gone to answer (she doesn't know what the time frame is like, that's the problem--none of them know as much as they should), she figures she ought to do this before trying to break in like a total maniac. That's restraint, right?

Fuck it. She wonders if she should just castrate the guy after this.

Comments

tw: suicidal ideation

[gwynn]

It's not surprising that there isn't any answer except, after a moment, the faint miaowing of a cat. The front door is unlocked, so at least nobody is going to have to break in a window. Immediately upon the door opening, a giant fluffy cat begins to purr hard and twine around Sonja's ankles, like she knows that someone is finally here to help.

Megan's apartment is a disaster -- the remnants of the party she threw a week ago are still everywhere, but half-gone, like she made an aborted attempt to clean up before she just stopped. In the kitchen, there's an open bag of cat food on the floor, which her cat has evidently been helping herself to.

Megan only knows someone is here because her cat left her. She hasn't left her up until then, had come up and sat on top of her and purred all week when her person stopped coming downstairs to play, as if the nearness of her could bring her back from wherever she's gone. Megan realises she forgot to lock her front door and barely considers going to do something about it -- she just does. Not. Care. If it's burglars, they can steal all her shitty stuff. If it's someone she knows, they can fuck off.

She's lying in front of her window upstairs, where she built a little nest so she could people-watch, the first thing she did when she moved into this place. Gauzy curtains, fairy lights, heavy blankets, it was supposed to be a place for her to decompress, but now she's wrapped herself in it like a funeral shroud. On her vanity, there are bottles of perfume, little girly knick-knacks, hair ties, empty lipstick tubes, a stuffed animal that a regular of hers bought her, all strewn there like shrapnel from some strange war. The entire upstairs is coated in a very thin layer of pastel dust, too fine to be chalk.

She stopped eating days ago, and she stopped getting up for water earlier today. She knows there are things in her bathroom that could help her, she could end this if she could just make the effort of walking the ten feet, but it's too hard, and all she can think about anyway is who would clean up the mess? Instead, she gave up, laid down and waited to die.