multiversallogs | there is another world; there is a better world; well, there must be.

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there is another world; there is a better world; well, there must be.

Who: Ilde Decima & Cindy
What: The less than triumphant return.
Where: Initially, the Valhalla Inn arrival area.
When: Misdi
Notes: The London Mysteries: Apocalypse cast have had a canon update; Ilde, for reasons detailed within, arrives home first.
Warnings: Suicide (& suicide pact), body horror (flesh suits), PTSD-related panic attack, general goriness and trauma. Hit me up if I’ve missed something and I’ll edit it in.

DONT PANIC.

Ilde keeps staring at the words and-- they don’t help, really, because she remembers that Sonja did that and then she remembers that Sonja isn’t here because Sonja is in New York and nobody is coming for her, not anybody, there was no time and that’s why she’s here and she can’t say better here than there because it isn’t this time and it can’t be, not even with the unreal sound of meat and carapace sliding sickly and twisting into place under skin and she shouldn’t have been able to hear it but the sound won’t leave her mind now, the sight of ripples in dead flesh and eyes opening--

There is still so much blood; her heartbeat feels wrong, beating out of time, beating at all. Kelly isn’t with her and that feels wrong, too, nothing in this room but blood sliding down her skin to pool on the tile below her and a pamphlet she’s already read a hundred fucking times. Her CiD. The razor-blades she’s still clutching in her hand, the only place where her skin isn’t inappropriately unbroken now; she supposes a dead faerie would be of no fucking use at all to Baedal. It hurts, and that doesn’t seem fair, after everything. She should drop them.

Her hands tremble, but for a long time that’s the only movement she manages.

--there’s no time, Ilde--

When the video message goes through to Cindy, the screen is smeared red and where the CiD fell it’s the words carved into the tile that are visible: DONT PANIC. It’s Ilde’s number, from the arrival room; the sound of her breathing, hitching every now and again in long, forced deep breaths, just the unsteady near-silence of all the control she has energy for.

It’s as far as she got, with the first number that came to mind. Cindy’s going to have to figure out ‘come get me’ on her own.

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Meanwhile, Cindy putters around the house, refilling the dog's food and water bowls and doing some general straightening up of the place. She's not about to get on her knees and scrub the kitchen floor, but she does fluff the couch cushions, open a couple windows for air and light, wash a few dishes and puts together a cup of tea and a sandwich for Ilde. Her stepmother would probably laugh at her right now for returning back to her old house servant ways, but that bitch is dead and rotting so Cindy doesn't spend a moment thinking about her.

She listens out for the running water to stop and for Ilde to come downstairs. One happens, but the other doesn't. It's enough to get Cindy climbing the stairs just in time to hear Ilde talking to a cat. Her face says all the confusion in the world is right here.

"I died," she repeats, for Cindy, Angus having successfully been coaxed into her lap and settling there, walking a circle before he sits down and reiterates his claim on this particular fairy. "That's what we did. It was the only way."

The only way? No, there's always another way, Cindy thinks. She's the queen of having a backup plan for her backup places, a plan C for her plan B. This only way bullshit doesn't fly.

"The hell you mean it was the only way? I think you got the who gets killed roles reversed." She stands there in the doorway, arms crossed against her chest, because nothing about anything makes sense.

It's a little too harsh, a little too soon and Ilde doesn't know exactly how to explain; there had been nothing else, it was die one way or die another, and the other way was so much fucking worse. Her first instinct is just to stop talking, to withdraw, because this is hard and she's so tired, and it's such a mess. There's too much going on and too much to figure out and she doesn't know what happened afterwards, she doesn't know what's going on right now with the enclave and it eats at her.

There wasn't anything else they could've done. (What if there was? What if she should've waited? What if Cindy is right and it was wrong and this is her fault?)

"It was better than the alternative," she says, quietly, and when she finally does say it, she sounds absolutely certain.

Cindy would apologize if she was capable of seeing letting yourself die in order to win a war. It's one thing to die while fighting; it's certainly another to die instead of fighting.

"Do tell me what the alternative was. I'm curious." She doesn't move an inch, really expecting a clear answer from Ilde.

It's not a question she wants to answer, mostly because it's not something she wants to think about in any kind of detail. It takes her a while, not looking at Cindy, reliving those moments in horrific detail in her mind; she can't stop remembering the other faqra witch.

"My soul would've been consumed. There isn't any coming back from that. I would've been used to further Lucas' endgame. I was kidnapped from the battle for the specific purpose and held prisoner with Kelly; I'm not preferred prey but it would've hurt Sonja. It was supposed to hurt Sonja. I was a footnote, but it would've been satisfaction on her. He was in a hurry, though. Sonja could've stopped him, maybe, but we couldn't. We couldn't even stop the things holding us. He didn't have time to fuck around because she would've come. But she wouldn't be able to come quick enough."

Her voice is empty; it hurts, to be forced through this, and while the examination of it assures her that she's right, the painful part is the doubt, the judgement, the fact that she has to sit here justifying her own death to somebody else. After a few moments of silence, Angus spills out of her lap and Ilde bolts to the bathroom to throw up.

She wanted clear. She got clear. Cindy drags a hand across her face and sighs because it's obvious she had to push Ilde emotionally to get anything out of her. Not the way she wanted things to go but what's done is done. She leaves Ilde to retch in the bathroom for a few minutes before she walks to stand in that doorway now.

"Are you done?" Vomiting she means. Don't be mistaken, Cindy does have some compassion in her, but it comes out more in her being oddly proud that Ilde decided to end things her way. "Come on. Get up. Just because you're dead doesn't mean I'll let you lie on the bathroom floor."

Ilde was going to die that day, one way or the other; she knows, she is sure, that the right thing to do was go out her way. That she could at least take that victory away from him. She's still dead, but it's her choice - Kelly's, and hers - and not his, and seriously, fuck that guy.

This is what runs through her mind as she rests her hands and weight on the toilet seat, letting herself steady before she says anything. "I've got it," she says, vaguely, possibly meaning composure and probably being wrong about that. There's not much in her stomach, though, and she spits out the taste of bile before she straightens. Water. Maybe mouthwash--

...or hugs, first, Cindy just cope.

Hugs aren't poison. Cindy can deal with them and any and all hugs from Ilde. The woman needs something solid anyway. Cindy tugs Ilde closer to her by wrapping her arms around Ilde's shoulder and slowly strokesher still damp hair.

"I made you a sandwich and I want you to eat it." Do dead people in Baedal need to eat? The non vampire, cruovore type dead people, that is.

"Okay." Ivan had got her sandwiches, too, weeks ago (not as many for him as for her) when things had got messy; it had been surreal, she remembers. Not bad sandwiches, though, which is an odd thought that she ignores, pressing her forehead to Cindy's shoulder while she gets her feet back under her.

Cindy may be the queen of tough love, but she's not about to push Ilde away. In fact, she squeezes her even tighter. Even the hardest bitches need a hug now and then, and though Ilde isn't what Cindy would describe as a hard bitch, she will describe herself as one. And she needs the hug herself. God forbid she admit she worried and missed Ilde.

The fairy has made herself a little place in Cindy's heart, okay?

Sooner or later, they do actually have to go downstairs; it's a while, but it does happen and Ilde picks determinedly at the sandwich in question, not hungry but well aware that she should eat something. Focus. When she feels more sure of her own feet and how well she can be alone, she'll go down to the river, and -- that'll help, she thinks. She knows. Just not yet.

There's so much she needs to do that it's overwhelming and it's not what she should be thinking about yet, not what she's ready for, except it's the only way she knows how to cope. (Or to not cope and pretend.) It's the only way she knows how to react.

Definitely not yet on Ilde being alone. Cindy accompanies her to the kitchen, choosing to stand leaning against the counter, sipping a cup of tea and watching Ilde pick at her meal. She's not sure what her next move should be. Ilde needs therapy (for a whole host of problems that have come before dying... like vampire problems), at the very least to come to terms with it, but Cindy is a spy and a shoe schlepper. She isn't certified to do much but buy booze and keep it coming as a coping mechanism.

"I'm staying here." For the night, for a week, for however long it takes for Ilde to get back on her feet. Cindy isn't taking no for an answer.

Ilde, looking up at her, nods once and -- relaxes, just barely. It's surreal, being here without Sonja; it's all she can think of, that she hasn't been since they met and it picks at her. She thinks if she were all by herself, properly, she'd just-- it just wouldn't be right.

"I have to, um...I have to figure things out." But that can wait.

Cindy nods. "Yeah, you do." But she still isn't leaving. In fact, right after Ilde finishes eating--which she will because Cindy will make sure that plate is sparkling clean--she's going to find wherever Ilde and Sonja store their linens and make a little bed out of the couch. She's slept on worse. She can deal.

"Thank you," she says, quietly; the words feel vastly insufficient, but they're all there is right now and she means it.

They may feel that way, but they mean the world to Cindy. In her line of work, she usually gets a paycheck without those words. They come few and far in between.

"Don't mention it, doll," she replies after walking over to gently ruffle Ilde's hair. "Just doing my job." As a friend.

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there is another world; there is a better world; well, there must be.

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