multiversallogs | 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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"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.

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

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