Realistic or Modern Phantom Voices | ellarose & Syntra

[ellarose]

Booze. How very predictable for a teenage boy. Clara kept her thoughts to herself, however, sensing that Ian would appreciate her opinion as much as he appreciated her 'big words' earlier. If it was for the sake of getting them out of this place intact, she supposed she could spend her wish on a six pack. Should be simple enough, no? Like, even her lazy, deadbeat papa was capable of picking himself up every now and then to drag himself to the liqueur store. Except things were never that simple, were they? The fish was stingier about rules than she was. Good grief. Development? What development? He’s dead. Ian stagnated in his teenage years and wasn’t getting any older! In fact, if he had aged normally as the years passed by, he'd be approximately eight to ten years older than herself and Thea right now. If he were still alive, technically he’d be well above the legal drinking age by now. This, however, was another thought she chose to keep to herself. Seriously, the overprotective fish would genuinely make a better parent than her own—

Oh. Okay. An idea may have been coming to her now. Ian kept calling her a boring nerd, which gave her a reputation of sorts. An image imprinted in his mind and in this world of his, one that wasn't capable of expanding much beyond his own expectations. She could use that to her advantage, couldn’t she? Helping Ian was necessary. The tower tarot’s meaning, as she understood from her research, involved chaos, yes, but also change. Although Ian expressed a distaste for growing up, the fish was keeping him from experiencing new things. From, well, changing. While she wasn't about to advocate for underage drinking or anything, she understood that this was the sort of thing that some people considered an important milestone. Booze, in her humble opinion, wasn’t worth all the hype… but who was she to judge him for wanting to try it for himself? Especially when this wish came from a teenage boy who lost his life way, way too soon?

“Booze is overrated, anyway.” Clara noted smoothly, examining her nails as if disinterested. “In fact, it’s really gross.”

“Figures, coming from a nerd.” Ian snarked. Ready to fight and eating right out of the palm of her hand. Good. “Bet you’ve never even given it a chance. Too damn prissy.”

“And don’t even get me started on what it’ll do to your body.” Clara didn’t answer him, crossing her arms haughtily as she continued her argument. “You think growing up is bad? Well, start this early on booze and…” She shuddered for dramatic effect. And clearly, Ian never heard the phrase ‘glow up’ before— which, for all extents and purposes, was true for her! No longer was she the girl who smelled like garbage, who had oily hair and hand-me-down clothes. She was meticulous about keeping herself tidy because she refused— utterly refused— to revert back to that version of herself. And Thea didn’t look so bad herself, okay? In fact, she was very— ah— okay, she needed to stop before she lost track of her objective.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” The fish agreed with her vehemently. Ah ha. Hook line and sinker.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want, Ian. We’ll have to think of something else instead.” Clara nodded decisively. Bringing her index finger to her chin, her toffee colored eyes flicked skyward. “Perhaps reminding you of simple, childhood joys would work? Supervised parties, moonbounces, laughing children, cake and ice cream. That kind of thing.” She appealed to the fish, hoping she was painting a picture that resembled one of those overly joyful parties she’d seen in movies. In other words, a situation that would’ve also sounded obscenely horrific to a too cool for school adolescent boy. The stare of gobsmacked disgust that Ian threw her way seemed to drift right over her head as she continued. "We can indulge in some safe, harmless fun."

Here goes nothing. Determinedly, Clara held her chin high and braced herself. “...I wish for you to take the three of us back to the memory of my seventh birthday."

"Eh. Sounds acceptable enough to me." The fish shrugged her fins and, much like the first time, the gong-like sound thundered in the air, and their surroundings started to blur and twist—

"Oh, fuck no!" Ian protested with such genuine teenage boy horror jam-packed into his tone that Clara might have found it amusing if she hadn't been dreading it so much. "I don't want to go to your stupid baby birthday party—“

With a whoosh, the lush fairytale forest was replaced by a dusty old trailer park. A scraggily, hairless cat sprung out of the nearby bushes, frightened off by their sudden appearance. Ah, Stew. Poor old cat. She wondered whatever became of him, but... right now, there were more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, the dingy old trailer standing in front of them. The windows were all dark save for one, which flickered with a bluish light flashing from the cheap television inside. Her old home really did look like a set for a campy horror movie, huh. Dread permeated the air around it and crept beneath her skin. Dread and embarrassment. ‘You said you’d never come back. And here you are.’

“You have fifteen minutes.” The fish’s voice rang out, as if from a speaker hidden in the dark clouds above. Evidently, the fish couldn’t see what they did in that moment. “Have fun, kids!”

“…What. What is this dump?” Ian really didn’t have any place to lecture Thea about tact, did he?

“You wanted booze, didn’t you?” Clara said before’ dump’ could pierce the part of her that still cared. She kept her eyes trained firmly on the trailer. Now that she was there, she, uh… really didn’t want to go inside. Seven-year-old Beatrice wanted a new set of markers for her birthday. Of course, she knew in her heart of hearts that it wasn’t going to happen. Papa often forgot her birthday the same way Santa Claus forgot to visit on Christmas. In fact, he slid ‘a cold one’ over when she casually informed him of that fact. 'My little girl's growing up so fast', he’d slurred. Thinking she was older, no doubt, because she had to step up and act the part of the adult when nobody else would. Anyway. Booze was the one thing they were never in short supply of. Which was precisely why they were there. Her past had already been dredged up enough as it was. Might as well bring it full circle, right? “You'll find plenty in there. Go knock yourself out."

‘I can help you get vengeance, dove. If you let me take control.’ The demon’s voice whispered. ‘Wouldn’t it be so satisfying?’

“…I’m not going inside.” Clara wouldn’t dare to. This was as far as she could go without losing her nerve. Hesitantly, she walked towards the side of the trailer, finding the familiar footholds to hoist herself up to the roof. At least the stars in the sky were pretty. Hopefully they’d be pretty enough to distract her from all of this. “I’ll be up here. Just let me know when you’re done.”

 

[Syntra]

Booze... bad? Now that was a configuration of words that Thea didn't encounter all too often, alright. Not that she was one of those sad fucks who unironically considered getting wasted to be an actual personality trait, but like... hello? Was there anything better than sweet wine, and the smile of an even sweeter girl? 'Cause she sure as fuck hadn't encountered it yet, that was for certain. Nope, never! "Yeah," Thea nodded regardless, because Clara must have been going somewhere with this blasphemy, "that's right. Like, the movies make it look cool enough, but they don't really portray the digestive problems. No wonder, if you ask me. Have you ever shat so hard that you had no idea whether you were still shitting, or just beginning to bleed? Well, it's kind of like that-- they never tell you about the really dark stuff." ...what? Thea wasn't being inappropriate here, or anything! Everyone knew that chicks loved Gruff HeroesTM, and there was nothing more gruff than exploring the... uh, the forgotten facets of anatomy.

"Eww," Ian made a face. "You think I'm seriously gonna believe that, Thea? My parents drank as well, you know! And, no, they didn't block the bathroom for days after each party they attended. I will give you bonus points for creativity, though-- that's the one of the stupidest reasons I have ever heard."

Pursing her lips, Thea huffed. "Stupidest? It's creative, my man. Thinking outside of the box and shit. If you stay in your comfy box for the rest of your unlife, you will never be able to..." ..., what, grow up? Yeah, that ship had kinda sailed already, when those pathetic demon worshipers had decided to end him before he had had the chance to do so. "...uh, solve the Rubik's cube. Yep. Brainteasers are more important than we give them credit for, Ian. Like, they're a good diagnostic tool for, um, ascertaining whether you can think in bullshitty ways?"

"...okay, I have no idea what's happening anymore, but seeing you dig your own grave for some reason is kinda entertaining. I was wrong about you, though-- you are a nerd as well, Thea Holloway. A big one." What!!! Never in her life had the brunette been so insulted, and that it was a prepubescent boy who had found the crack in her armor was doubly humiliating. Quick! You need a sufficiently cool comeback, otherwise you're never gonna live that down, and--)

Ah, alright, it seemed that they were interrupting their regularly scheduled program for some weird-ass form of time travel. Cool, cool! It wasn't like Thea had wanted a semblance of normalcy, or anything like that. Natural laws were for the weak, only intended to limit one's potential! ...aww, shit. Was that where Clara had grown up? The brunette hadn't expected, like, a golden palace, but still, this was AwkwardTM. The levels of embarrassment were off the charts, actually! (Blah blah blah, nope, Thea didn't judge her. It just... kind of felt like watching someone sing a song for one of those dumbass talent shows and cringing when they forgot the lyrics, you see? Except that it a) wasn't their fault, b) wasn't a single opportunity being ruined, but their entire fucking life. Oh well! Maybe it didn't feel like that, after all.)

"Man, that was a good idea," she turned to Clara, deciding to keep all the 'I'm so sorry' comments to herself. (Aside from pity, what would she have derived from them? A big fat nothing, and contrary to the popular opinion, Thea actually knew when to not waste her breath. Imagine that!) "Shit sucks, yeah," mildly speaking, "but... um, no buts. Shit sucks, period. When is your birthday, anyway?" 'Cause while she couldn't erase her shit father forgetting about his daughter's most important day, Thea could at least fucking make her future birthdays better, god dammit. No force in the universe could prevent her from doing so, in fact! "Also, what's your favorite cake? I'm asking for, um, scientific reasons. The most scientific reasons of them all!"

That, of course, was when Suspicious SoundsTM reached their ears. Okay, did she even want to know what was happening inside? As always, the answer was 'no,' but DestinyTM willed it otherwise. In the next moment, the door flew open-- first, she saw Ian, clutching a few unopened beer cans close to his chest, and right behind him... right behind him, there was Clara's fucking father. In his hands, he was holding what looked like a fucking shotgun, and his step? Well, let's just say that he may or may not have been drinking to the point of his motor skills being... uh, influenced. (Read: destroyed!)

"Fuckin' rat," he snarled. "Why would ya steal from me, boy? Is that how you wanna die?" His cold eyes grew even colder, though, when his gaze met Clara's. "Aaah, Beatrice. This is your fault, isn't it? You must told the boy to steal from your old, sick father! Don't believe for a second that I am not aware, she-devil." Swiftly, he re-adjusted his shotgun, and after that? After that, it was pointing at Clara. "You'll pay for that!"

 

[ellarose]

"Welcome to the club." Clara quipped lightly, sensing that Thea might've needed a little comforting after obtaining the label of nerd. Some people took it in in stride, sure, maybe even chose to wear it as a badge of pride henceforth. Thea, however, seemed awfully concerned with being 'cool' earlier. (Not that being a nerd didn't mean you couldn't also be cool, mind you. The lady knights, pirates, and warriors of this world would beg to differ-- and the only ones who couldn't see it for themselves were hopeless!) And if she recalled how stylish Thea looked while wielding an axe and a sword, for that matter, well... she really oughtn't be too concerned about all of that. Putting this observation into words, though? That may be only a fraction less embarrassing than confronting the pitiful hoarder trailer sitting in front of them now. Shit sucks, Thea had said, and Clara silently agreed with her.

“October eleventh. And you?” Clara answered her question, not thinking much of it until the flavor of cake was mentioned. Oh. Her shoulders slumped and she stared at her feet. There was a reason why she never spoke about her childhood after she changed her name. One was because of the psychogenic aphonia, of course, but even then, by the time that she could speak she didn't particularly want to. It was embarrassing and shameful and traumatic. And moreover, it wasn't what she wanted those around her to visualize when they looked at her. Who wanted to be defined by a past they were desperate to forget? While Clara didn't particularly care what most people thought at the end of the day, Thea wasn't most people. "Hold on. My life isn't that sad, all right? I’ve had birthday cake before.” Clara's lips screwed into a slight pout. She had to verify that before she was thrown under waves of immense sympathy, on par with what you might give an abandoned kitten mewling in a cardboard box. In the rain. Oh no, why did her brain have to conjure a mental image so heartbreaking...? Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to scoop Spooks up into her arms and hold her close. Yeah. A cuddle from her fur baby. That was the only medicine that could cure whatever afflicted her right now.

Thea had mentioned knowing her way around the kitchen, though. And if cake-baking was another skill on her growing list of special talents, then-- who would she be to refuse dessert? “But if you really want to know..." For science, of course, "It’s—“

Clara's favorite flavor of cake would have to be left on a cliffhanger, though, as her fake papa barged in on the moment. Fake, She reminded herself, trying to calm her heart before it could pump itself into a untamable frenzy. Fake, fake, fake. This mantra did very little for her by the time he pulled his shotgun on her, though. When she flinched and shivered, the smirk that crept onto his face in response was... gross. Gross and revealing. Looking back at him now, from the perspective of an adult, she guessed it made sense. He had so little to his name that having a defenseless little kid around gave him someone he could actually control.

"Just look at you, all grown up. I warned you, didn't I, that you'd grow up to look just like your mama? A face like yours invites all kindsa trouble. Your... your mama was trouble and you're goin' down the same hell-bound path." Her fake father's tongue didn't seem to fit comfortably in his mouth while he spoke. Truthfully, comments about her mother didn't really bother her so much. They were distasteful, yes, but this sort of nonsense hurt Raoul more than anyone. And since his hurt was basically hers, it was a good thing that he wasn't around to witness this mess. It was comments like these that often started fistfights... ones that ended with her makeshift first-aid kit in her lap and the heaviness of guilt weighing her heart. "My good girl's become a vixen. I tried to stop it, I did, I tried to keep you pure and now--"

Monologuing nonsense, aim unsteady... the fear in Clara's heart gradually ebbed as he went on and on. Honestly? If she could disarm a sober cop in the real world, if she had the courage to willingly decide to go back to a place that brought her so much grief with her wish, then she could also handle this fake bastard. An illusion, a mere shadow of her fears. She could handle this... and she wouldn't even need the help of their friendly neighborhood demon to do it. Tightening her hands into fists, she boldly grabbed the other end of the shotgun and yanked with all her might. "First of all, I'm not your girl." She reproached after successfully disarming him. And she wasn't. Not anymore. Not in this world or the real one. And come to think of it, she distinctly remembered him passing out before dinner on her seventh birthday. The timeline was off and therefore easy enough to disconnect from. "Second of all, you're drunk. Go back to sleep."

Clara sounded much calmer than she felt. It was laughably easy to push him onto the ground. She clambered over him when her window of opportunity opened, terror inspiring her to move lightning-quick as she smacked him over the head with the blunt end of the shotgun. Once. Twice. Did she hit him a third time as well? She lost track, somewhere along the way as she watched his eyes roll back. Blood pooled under his head and warmed her hands. (He's not real. He's not. The blood looked real, yes, but this was all fake. She didn't just... she didn't...) Slowly, ever so slowly, she eased herself back up onto her feet. Dress torn, drenched in water and blood-- his and her own-- with a shotgun clutched in her hands? Ugh. What has this place turned her into? A mess, that's what. The shotgun hit the floor with a loud 'crack' after it slipped from her fingers. Her exhausted arms hung limply at her sides. Okay. Deep breaths. She needed...

"Hey, Ian." She said numbly, nodding to the cans in his arms. "Give me one of those."

 

[Syntra]

Sheesh, what was with parents and their inability to… uh, fucking parent? The last time Thea had checked the definition of that word in a respectable thesaurus, it wasn’t ‘to shatter your kid’s sense of self,’ but it very well might have been, considering how many idiots read it like that! (The comparison to her mom? Gross. Super gross! What was the father-daughter version of Oedipus’ fucking complex, hmmm? Something like that probably existed, if only because the Greeks were freaky, but she couldn’t be bothered to whip out her cellphone and straight up google it. Just, nope. The final verdict was that he was a goddamn bitch, and nobody needed to know more than that!) “All kinds of trouble?” Thea raised her eyebrow. “Like your dumbass comments, you mean? Fuck off, pal.”

Normally, she would have tried to get him to realize just how nasty he was being, but with his brand of “””tact””” and “””understanding”””? Yeah, even a fucking amoeba would have grasped it faster! And amoebas didn’t even have brains in the traditional sense of the word, so that was the level of ignorance they were working with here. (No, Thea wasn’t even going to pretend that she wasn’t MadTM. Stoic dudebros who somehow thought that showing even a hint of emotion equaled to you losing the argument were full of shit, y’know? Righteous rage was the most valid emotion of them all, and to think that Clara had grown up listening to this kind nonsense… Well, they could bond over founding a Shitty Parents Survivors club, theoretically speaking, but that didn’t exactly please her. No, not at all. They should have, like, bonded over both of them being cute af, not over mutually shared traumas! That wasn’t the romantic comedy she’d dreamt of for so long, man. It was some… some fucked up thriller, if anything, and nope, Thea did not like those. What was so appealing about watching others struggle, anyway? Only a damn sociopath would derive pleasure from something like that, so what did it say about their culture, hmm? Nothing good, the brunette was certain.)

“Okay,” Thea lifted her chin, “should I kill him now or later? Any last words you’d like to say to him before that?” Because, really, in a situation such as this one, termination was the only option. The bastard wasn’t even real, so there was no excuse-- like, hahaha, who would come to arrest you? Pretend police, with their pretend handcuffs? Excuse her, but Thea was not exactly shaking in her boots! Like, in case you needed a reality check, let her remind you that she had slain a motherfucking dragon about fifteen minutes ago. What could one abusive asshole possibly do to her? Even that shotgun of his looked wimpy! (…fine, fine, it didn’t, though as long as Thea didn’t take it seriously, it couldn’t hurt her. As in, that wasn’t how this shit worked. Protagonists, especially ones as pretty as she was, were rarely killed by a third-rate, b-tier supporting character!) “C’mon, stand aside and…” ‘and I will deal with him,’ she wanted to say, buuut it turned out that that sort of thing wasn’t necessary. Not at all, actually. …wow. Who knew that Clara had it in her? You know, the same Clara who had always tried to go for the ‘civilized solution’ and wagged her finger whenever Thea followed the good ol’ ‘might makes right’ principle? Dude, that was just so cool! (Also, how awesome was it that her companion actually had such an upper body strength? Whew, it totally was getting a little hot here, okay! Like, no, Thea wasn’t a weirdo who used horror movies for certain, ehm, private fantasies, but let’s be honest, it was impossible to force your brain to stop making connections. It was a goddamn pattern-recognizing machine, so recognize stuff it did! You couldn’t just… turn that feature off because it felt vaguely inappropriate from time to time, dude. It was the product of entire millennia of evolution, and… and shit! Basic biology didn’t really care about other people’s feelings, sad as it was.)

In the background, Ian just… sort of stared at Clara, really. “You fucking kidding me?” he asked, with newfound respect in his voice. Really, one would have been tempted to guess that Clara had undergone some sort of magical transformation-- from the queen of all nerds to a full-fledged rock star, presumably. “Remind me to stay on your good side, dude.” Without hesitation, he handed her a can, and then he opened one for himself. “Cheers, I guess?”

“Yeah, cheers. Definitely cheers,” Thea took a can of her own, deciding that this situation desperately required some booze. “Congratz, by the way!” she exclaimed, grinning wildly. “Every good story needs a slaying of the parental figure, even if it’s usually more, uh, metaphorical.” You know what else a good story needed, though? A denouement! Falling action! A cherry on the top, so to say, because without that, no cake would ever be truly complete. (Well, that, and Thea also figured that it would be better for Clara not to dwell too much on what had just transpired. Yeah, yeah, her father had deserved being murdered, but what would happen once the adrenaline wore off? Guilt would emerge, most likely, which wasn’t something the brunette wanted for her not gf. Just, nope! Better to distract her from everything, as fast as possible.) “So, good job. No, really. I think I’m gonna name you my knight now, because obviously, you’re qualified enough. Rise, ser Clara!” And, with that? With that, Thea pressed a small kiss on the back of her hand. “Is that how you knight people? I admit, I don’t have much experience in this department.”

 

[ellarose]

Clara sniffed her drink tentatively before bringing it to her lips. Tilting her head back, she took a swig she would have considered quite daring on a normal day. The bitter liquid set her throat on fire, her nose stung, her eyes watered and... yep. This was her papa's crappy brand all right. Though the alcohol dissolved a layer of her nerves, as she hoped it would, the prevalent taste of regret struggled to agree with her stomach. (Oh, great. Too late to listen to her voice of reason, lecturing her on the foolishness of consuming booze poofed into existence by the vastly unknown ghost-realm. She heard it loud and clear, she wouldn't even begin to pretend that she didn't, but it hadn't really set in until she had already taken a drink. Figures. That was often how it went with bad decisions.) Ever since she got up, the world around her-- inside and out-- became a thick soup of nothingness. Made it awful hard to care about anything, least of all herself. Pressing the soles of her feet harder against the earth, she steeled herself and downed some more.

And then something, or rather someone, managed to find her hand in the heart of the haze surrounding her.

Thea and her big, dumb grin came into focus. For a moment, she was the only person who existed in Clara's world. And before she was even remotely prepared, her soft lips pressed against the back of her hand. Soft. Very soft. When her mind unhelpfully painted the visual of her friend's lips traveling up her arm and to, ah, other places... electricity careened from where she touched her, zipping from her shoulders to her toes. Excitement? No, fear? Or an accumulation of the two, perhaps. That was exactly it, probably, though she didn't want to admit it. Heat scorched her skin, threatened to burn her up, and she quickly registered the need to throw a metaphorical bucket of cold water over herself before she could turn into a human wildfire.

"I-- I-- I--" Clara bit her lip to stop the untimely return of her stutter before Thea and Ian suspected her of being a malfunctioning robot-- or, heaven forbid, suspected the racy thought that just drifted through her mind. Well, say something. Anything! "I can't be a knight." She proclaimed with a panicked little pout, "I'm too short. Did you know? You won't even qualify as a princess at Disneyland unless you're five-foot-four to five-foot... uh, eight I think?" Or was it seven? This was silly. This was so silly and Ian was probably going revoke the compliment he had given her earlier for it. "I'm tall enough to be Tinkerbell. That's it." Tall enough or short enough? Drawing attention to her height, or her lack thereof, may not have been the right way to go about this in retrospect. (And, uh, maybe it was embarrassing to reveal that she was privy to this information at all? Then again, she had confided in Thea about her interest in amusement parks earlier. Ah, whatever.) Either way, it does very little to erase the pink in her cheeks. Come to think of it, she still had to look up to look at Ian. He must've been a year or two younger than her brother when...

There was only so much that they could learn from poor Lizzie. Ian, being as old as he was at the time, may have garnered valuable information about their kidnappers. Maybe he witnessed something important, something that cost him his eyes. That, however, was undoubtedly a touchy subject and...

"I hope the booze lived up to your expectations." Clara's gaze fluttered downward, vision doubling once more when she saw the blood. "The fish isn't going to be very happy if she finds out about this. I..." There was a bathroom inside the trailer that she could use, but... going through the door meant stepping over his body and-- oof. The alcohol really didn't settle well. One misstep and she could easily lose her lunch. But if the fish took one look at her, it would be glaringly obvious that they didn't attend a normal seven-year-old girl's birthday party. She wasn't sure what kind of consequences they might face, but, ah. Better to be prepared, right? "I'm going to try and wash some of this off before our fifteen minutes is up. There's also a first-aid kit somewhere around here, so..."

Right. It was in her old room, if you could even call it that, considering it was smaller than the typical walk-in closet. Still, if it rematerialized as realistically as the booze, then presumably she could find it and tend to their wounds. Thea's burns, the gashes on her own back. To face whatever awaited them next, it'd be ideal to be their best.

Of course, she didn't account for the presence of her younger self. While she relived the past quite a few times in the past forty-eight hours-- she had yet to encounter two versions of herself existing at the same place and time. At some point, little Beatrice hugged the shotgun she'd dropped to her chest, as if determined to keep it away from them. Rather than point it at anyone, though, she simply stared up at them. Small and scrawny, with wide, fearful eyes that looked just a bit too large for her face. Clara, unnerved and choked with guilt, could only stare back at her.

"Is he... dead?" Her younger self managed to speak first. Even staring at the corpse of her father, her tone was strangely accepting. (This whole scene wasn't real, though. This never even happened. So Clara honestly... wasn't sure what to expect from her fake self. How accurately could this place pinpoint her past thoughts and memories, anyway?) "Oh. You've come to take me away, haven't you?"

Clara couldn't speak. Memories long forgotten crept at the corners of her mind, but they were all too blurry.

"I'm not stupid! I noticed a long time ago. You're the owners of that van with the weird symbols on it, right? Always parked out by the bus stop. I told papa I was worried. I told him and he-- he--" Little Beatrice continued, eyes glittering in the dark like she was going to cry, although she held it in no doubt to appear strong. Clara couldn't remember, but she at least knew herself well enough to understand that she was going to say 'papa didn't care'. Because when a kid has to wake her father to remind him to feed her at night, the probability is he won't notice right away when his only daughter goes missing. Which, yeah, he didn't. Raoul was the one who searched tirelessly for her. (The sad truth was that neglected girls like her were the ones that people expected to go missing every now and then. Because that was the cruel world they lived in. The world that continued to turn on without pausing to grieve.) Van with the weird symbols, though. Hm. Come to think of it, a van was tailing her yesterday, guiding her towards the cemetery. Towards Thea. Was this something they could trace? A lead they could pursue? "Why aren't you saying anything? What do you want from me!?" She raised the shotgun, her aim wobbly and unthreatening.

Ah. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. This was surreal on a whole new level. Clara's legs jellied and every sound around her warbled out. It may not have been real, but she couldn't just kill her younger self the same way she killed her father.

 

[Syntra]

Ehehe! Was it just her, or did the kiss have an EffectTM? Like, Thea was hardly the second coming of Sherlock Holmes, but her action and Clara's reaction sure as hell seemed to be... hmm, connected. And, honestly? The brunette didn't blame her! Just like most people, she did own a mirror, and so she knew that she was a pretty good catch-- nice skin, pretty eyes, luscious, shiny hair, and the best personality under the sun. Who would not get flustered in this context? Some Hollywood celebrity, most likely, but only because those people had an overly inflated sense of self-worth! Which, btw, wasn't something that Thea struggled with at all. Nuh uh, nothing to see here. (Anyway, if she were to judge Clara's response on a scale of cuteness, ranging from one to ten? Over nine thousand, baby! Man, this slow seduction shit really was where it was at-- she hadn't really experienced it before, not with her flavor of directness, but maybe those cheesy movies that she'd always laughed at had been right all along. Hmm, hmm! One always learned, as it turned out.) "Yeah?" she grinned, her smile becoming a little more lopsided. "Well, you're a knight in my heart already, Clara. I'm sorry, but Disneyland doesn't own my imagination. Whatchu gonna do about it, huh? Although..." her eyes sparkled with a mischievous fire, "...if those rules are that important to you, I guess you might bribe me into abandoning the idea. Just a thought. You think you have something I might want?" And, yup, it was a total coincidence that she accompanied the question with a small caress! (Just... just checking for injuries and such, my dude. Good ol' patricide generally was a risky endeavor, you see? This instance of it might or might not have been real, but that didn't mean she couldn't use it as an excu-- uh, an extremely valid justification! Smooth, Thea. Real smooth.)

"Oh my god," Ian rolled his missing eyes, with all the contempt of a love-repulsed teenager, "had I known my first booze experience would be like that, I would have wished for something else. Get a room, you two, will you?"

To her own surprise, Thea's cheeks tinted red. "Well, maybe that was our plan all along, Ian. You know, promoting responsibility," yup, that was basically her second name, "and... um..." What, birth control? Because, technically speaking, the two of them couldn't, you know, inflict their hellspawn upon the world. (Somehow, it didn't feel like a Good IdeaTM to bring that up now, though. See? Thea Holloway did have a filter, even if it could be somewhat liberal when it came to discerning what should be said and what probably shouldn't!) "Forget it," the brunette concluded. "You'll get that one once you're older. I mean, there's probably, like, reincarnation or something, right?"

"Why do you think so? Because one aspect of the supernatural bullshittery proved to be real?" Ian frowned. "I don't know, I haven't exactly met Santa yet, so that line of thought feels fake to me. Besides, I don't really want to move on. What's so wrong with existing like this? Not only do I not have to become old and decrepit like you," what!!! "but I actually have stability now. I don't need to worry about, say, rent or grades. Who can say that about themselves, huh? You may have fallen for the real life scam, but that doesn't mean everyone else has, too. I get to enjoy my worry-free existence, so stop shilling misery to me!"

"...didn't you say you were bored?"

"For a while! Plus, boredom is still better than starving to death because you didn't feel like... like jumping through all those pointless hoops," the boy waved his hand.

Meanwhile, though? Meanwhile, an entirely different drama was taking place in the trailer, just a few steps away from them. Wait, is that...? Thea jerked her head around, as if she was a puppet with a particularly clumsy handler, and, ah, there she was! Clara's mini-me. (Okay, why not! Interacting with a traumatized daughter of the fucker you had killed just seconds ago wasn't awkward at all, no sireee. The corpse hadn't even grown cold yet, but surely, they'd get along just fine! ...or would they? It didn't exactly seem as if the kiddo was having a mental breakdown over it, or at least not to Thea. On the other hand, what were they supposed to say? 'Hi, this is your future self and her not-yet-gf, make sure to kiss the hell out of her when you meet her for real?' If all the movies about time-travel had taught her anything, it was that people knowing their future was what fucked shit up! ...well, that, and that the plot always fell apart in the end because the concept was dumb, but duh, not the point here.)

A sudden flash of inspiration struck her then, though, and Thea? Thea smiled, so wide that her mouth hurt. "No, actually. I mean, do we look like CPS workers? Look at the guy, little lady-- I don't think that eyeless teenagers are the most common employees there. Anyway, we haven't killed your father." Casually, she kicked the body, and watched it... not get up. Good, good! Their last zombie adventure had given her a healthy dose of paranoia re: dead bastards actually staying dead, but it was nice to see that, for once, her worries were unfounded. "We couldn't, because this is a dream. I guess your subconsciousness realized you weren't going to get your birthday party unless it did something about it? So it granted you this special, special dream. Happy birthday, Beatrice! We're here to play with you. What is it that you'd like to do, on this super important day?" ...drop the shotgun, hopefully, though Thea felt that she shouldn't be too pushy about that.

 

[ellarose]

Clara crossed her arms and shot Thea a wary side-eye. Keeping quiet, she decidedly had no verbal input on whether or not she agreed with her method. While she had frozen in her tracks, Thea was the first to act and therefore the one steering this ship of theirs. Rightfully so, but... heaven help them. Hm. What might have consoled her seven year old self in these circumstances? One might ask, shouldn't she of all people know? The thing was, it wasn't just years, but experiences and sweeping changes that separated her present from her past. Needless to say, she drew a complete blank. She had been seven years old when her life was hijacked by those kidnappers. For all extents and purposes, this was a small glimpse into her life just before that nightmare ever touched her. That uneventful birthday may well be the last real memory she possesses of that year in her life, the last point of clarity before the rest fizzles out. And she survived in some small part because she wasn't easily susceptible to adults and their lies. So...

"Eyeless..." Beatrice squinted in the darkness. Her expression mirrored Clara's almost exactly in skepticism, down to the subtle little twitch of her brow as she listened to Thea. It might've been an amusing sight, really, if not for the shotgun leveled between them. And upon getting a better look at Ian's face, registering the fact that he really was eyeless, she inched even further away from them. "Are you going to take my eyes, too? A-a-and you're probably going to sew buttons in them, like..." Buttons? Uh oh. When Clara connected the dots, it was clear she was envisioning the plot of Coraline. Which meant that Thea's whole angle of playing games with her was going to backfire real fast. Crap. "You're real pretty, just like the other mother was supposed to be... and you're promising all these things, so..." If Ian plainly told her that he wasn't in any danger, though, that ought to clear things right up--

"Oooh, that's right! I'm doomed, but it's not too late for you. Get out while you can, little girl!" Ian cried with terror, playing right into her misconceptions. He dragged his hands under his eyes for special effect until she flinched away with terror. "Get out while you caaaan!"

"You're all trashed!" Beatrice observed shakily, noticing the cans of booze. Although they weren't, really, Clara couldn't exactly blame her for coming to that conclusion. "F-fine. I'll play a game with you." Though her lower lip wobbled, she managed to reign in her composure quite well. Whether that was a byproduct of her not being a real person or an accurate reflection of what her younger self would have been capable of, she really wasn't sure. The lines that stood between reality and fiction were rather hard to find in this place. "Hide and seek. I'm going to hide and... and I-- I'll shoot whoever finds me first in the head." She scrambled back into the darkness of the hall, the frantic movements of even her tiny body managing to sway and rattle the flimsy old trailer. "Just go away! Leave me alone!"

When all was still again, Clara brought her hands to her temples and sighed. How absurd. Her younger self in this world may have been some kind of illusion, but... that day was shitty. This day was shitty. And maybe the sight of herself as a child, backed into a corner and frightened, tugged at her heartstrings just a bit.

"Pfft. Did you see the look on her face?" Ian laughed at her expense. Suddenly, Clara's patience was thinner than the tightrope she was forced to walk. "Priceless!"

"...Did you have to be such a jerk?" Clara asked point-blank, shooting him an unimpressed glare.

"What, you think Thea's idea was going to work? She obviously wasn't buying it." Ian shrugged, nonchalant. "It was funny. Besides, it's not like she's real."

"Thea's idea could have worked. At least she tried." Clara stressed with a quiet huff, running her fingers through her hair. In fact, Thea's idea could have actually been sweet. Um. In a weird, cathartic way. Maybe. The concept of giving that version of herself a little taste of happiness was... nice. In theory. Unfortunately, it seemed that they couldn't have nice things. "And she might not be real, but the guns in this world pose a real danger to us. You may be content posing like an edgy, disaffected teenager forever... but we actually care about moving forward from here."

"Then why'd you come here, genius?"

Why. That was the question, hm. The demon asked her the same thing earlier, she'd even asked herself that question quite a few times now. Clara tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, subdued and thoughtful. "Fine. I'll be honest. After we met Lizzie, I did some research. All news of her and the other kids who disappeared with us is non-existent. Doesn't that sound awfully suspicious to you?" Her brow furrowed as she prepared to delve into her theories and deductions. "Thea and I lost all of our memories, too. Even if it's hard, I want to remember what happened to us. I want to remember everyone who died... otherwise, I'm pretty sure our kidnappers are going to paint it like we never existed at all. And we deserve better than that. You deserve better than that." Her face flushed a bit with her honesty and she pursed her lips. "We're here to help you. That's why I faced this hot mess to score you booze." She gestured unceremoniously to the trailer. "So, you're welcome. Ungrateful punk."

Clara swiveled on her heels, then, unable to face either Thea or Ian in the aftermath. Ugh. Why did she have to experience emotions, anyway? So embarrassing! (And unbeknownst to her, in that moment, the place right over her heart glimmered with a faint flickering of light...) "I guess I'll just... wash up in the stream or something."

 

[Syntra]

Hahaha, man, kids were such suckers! Not that Thea would reserve any other judgment for a group that collectively believed in shit like, say, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and people having their best interests at heart, but still-- this incident reaffirmed it, in the most eloquent way possible. A good thing, really, that mini-Clara’s prefrontal cortex was probably peanut-sized at this point! That meant that she a) wouldn’t ask unpleasant questions, b) wouldn’t stop to think too hard about, well, pretty much anything. (And, honestly? In cases such as this one, ignorance truly was bliss. Once, Thea had kind of considered that saying to be a variation on the usual religious ‘hurr durr, thinking is bad’ spiel, and hey, maybe that was exactly what it was! That didn’t mean, though, that there weren’t things that pretty much nobody wanted to be aware of-- kind of like, uhhh, the fact that you were dependent on a joke of a guy who couldn’t be trusted to keep a fucking Tamagotchi alive, and the CPS didn’t give a shit because kids were their parents’ property, obviously. Yup, an occasional suppression could go a long way!) “Sure, sure,” the brunette nodded, “we’ll play whatever the hell you want. Hide and seek, you say? A little old-fashioned, but serviceable, I guess. A 7/10 choice, if I were to rate it. Like, at least it isn’t chess? Let me give you a piece of advice for when you’re older, young lady: don’t ever trust anyone who says that their favorite board game is chess. No, I mean it. When a fucker claims something like that, chances are that they’re either trying to look smarter than they actually are, or that they’re an alien spy who has no idea how humans actually have fun. Wanna risk dealing with either of those, huh? Right, I didn’t think so.”

‘Awww, how moving,’ the demon smirked. ‘Little crow has finally found someone on her level of maturity. What’s next, are you going to challenge her to a Pokémon battle?’

‘…no, I actually left my cards at home, fuckface. How do you know about these things, though?’

There was no face attached to the entity, obviously, but with her mind’s eye, Thea could still see him frown. ‘How many times do I have to repeat that I’m not a fossil, crow? Without TV, getting stuck in this dreadful dimension would have been even more terrible than it actually is.’ …wait, wait, wait. ‘Getting stuck?’ That was a peculiar phrase, wasn’t it? One that he had never used before, and also one that sounded suspiciously like Classified InformationTM. (If he was stuck in here, just like they were sorta stuck with him… well, Thea had no fucking idea what to do with that discovery yet, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t become relevant later! Kind of like those seemingly random items in the old school adventure games that you could pick up for no reason at all, only to find out that they’d be vital for your progression later. Note to self: share Forbidden KnowledgeTM with Clara! Clara was good at discerning patterns, you see, and with her relentlessly results-oriented brain, they were sure to…)

“Ah, fuck off, Ian,” the brunette rolled her eyes at the theatrics, folding her arms on her chest. “C’mon, Bea, are you really going to trust an eyeless fuck over a model citizen like myself? Obviously, he’s just taking the--” too fucking late, though, because Beatrice wasn’t in the mood for joking. Sigh. Well, at least it deleted their little shotgun conundrum out of existence? No thanks to Ian, mostly because she could have snapped and gone Rambo on their sorry asses, but yeah, problem solved. Too bad that about a million of them were still fucking pending, though!

“Do you feel superior when you bully imaginary little girls, Ian?” Thea pursed her lips, full of… uh, probably not righteous fury, but its closest, less serious equivalent. Justified annoyance? Something like that, probably. “’Cause that’s not fucking healthy. If I were you, I’d seek help for your mental health issues. Are there therapists who specialize in working with ghosts, what do you think?”

“Oh my god, not this shit again,” Ian leaned on the counter. “Are you going to tell me now that I’m a good guy underneath all of that, and that I should work on my issues?”

“No, actually. I wanted to make you realize that, no, such therapists don’t exist, and so it’s on you to fix your shitty behavior, asshole. Like, I’m not even anyone’s mother,” thank god, “and you make me want to fucking ground you!” (…hmmm. Maybe grounding was an evolutionary response developed in the humankind throughout the history in order to prevent them from, you know, murdering their offspring in a fit of rage? An interesting theory, but not one that she wanted to explore now-- not when Clara saw it necessary to go for the strategic retreat. As in, that meant she had to be upset, right? Thea to the rescue, then! This ‘being empathetic’ shit had never been something she was particularly good at, but hey, everyone had to start somewhere.) “Wait here,” she recommended to Ian, who only turned around and scoffed.

“Hey. Hey, Clara!” she ran after her friend, unwilling to leave her alone. “Wanna, I don’t know, talk about what happened? Or about anything, really? If you’re mad, I can help you make an effigy of Ian so that we can burn it alive. Very therapeutic, I have to say. That, or we can… hey, did you happen to apply some glitter?”

 

[ellarose]

"I'm not mad." Clara assured with an incensed sigh that may or may not have implied otherwise. What if she was half-mad and half-- well. No. It wasn't even that. Whatever she felt couldn't be cleaved into two simple halves. So many emotions swirled in the vortex within her chest that she would have to divide them into even smaller fractions to encapsulate what she felt in that moment. Parts frustration, distress, heartbreak, fright, confusion, embarrassment. (She was flustered, too. Thea knows what she did!) In other words, it was complicated. Too complicated to articulate. This sort of thing would take months of therapeutic journalling and painting to process, no doubt. The soft crunches of their footsteps on the autumn grass supplied sound for a few beats in the silence before she concluded her answer. "And I don't want to talk about it."

One fleeting caress from Thea had the capacity to topple her composure like a house of straw and Clara drew the decisive conclusion that her friend had seen her vulnerable enough over the past two days. Her cheeks glowed pinker than a sunrise sky when Thea’s touch introduced a jarring crescendo to the quiet song of her heart. Clara spoke more in the past forty-eight hours than she has in the last two years! It's fair, isn't it, to finally opt for silence when given the option? Unless their lives depend on it, she didn’t intend to... huh. Apply glitter? When on earth would she have time to-- ugh. What is she talking about?

"Glitter?" Clara repeated, her face bunching up with incredulousness. Stepping into the shallow stream at the end of the park, she leaned forward and peered into the water to catch a glimpse of her reflection. Noticing the flicker of light just before it dimmed and vanished altogether, she perplexedly placed her hand over where it had been. Over her heart. Right. Okay. "More of this magic heart nonsense? Don't tell me I have a useless shield in here too."

The sparkle had the lifespan of a shooting star streaking across the night sky, already dimming. And her chest didn’t hurt like last time, so it oughtn’t distract her from her objective. Brushing it off, she promptly began washing the blood from her hands in the cold stream. Curiously, the water gradually became warmer and... redder? Clara immediately stepped away and shook her hands off. Blood.

“Yuck!” She gulped and peered at the winding path of the stream which was... now a stream of blood, apparently. “Seriously? That’s very... unsanitary.” She frowned at her hands, shoulders slumping with defeat. This whole scenario resembled a stress dream, one where no matter what effort she made, she couldn’t complete a seemingly simple task with ease.

‘You’ll never wash the blood from your hands, dove.’ The demon cackled. ‘We’re really not that different, when you think about it.’

'The wolf howls at the moon.' The voice added, unrelatedly.

“...The wolf?” Clara suspected that tidbit was far more deserving of her attention than the demon’s taunts. “Ah, sorry. My voices just warned me about a wolf.” She supplied context for Thea. In the woods beyond the stream, she noticed two sharp eyes glowing in the darkness between the trees. A growl resembling the one she’d heard behind the curtain in the ringleader’s tent shook the earth and her eyes flashed with understanding. Understanding and urgency. “Oh. The Devourer.” Yikes. She just assumed that part of the nightmare was behind them, but evidently not! Then again, the ringleader was under strict orders from his ‘master’ to bring him her head. If she was to gauge his intent, she guessed that he pursued her in the shadows. Naturally, the voices warned her about the shadows for a reason. All these ends tied together eventually, didn’t they? So he hadn’t given up after all. No, he was just waiting for the perfect moment to strike!

“The... the ringleader’s pet. He implied he was going to, ah, feed me to it if I didn’t—“ Clara instinctually grabbed Thea’s hand, inching backwards. Running might prompt it to give chase and, uh, it was undoubtedly faster than them. Suggesting that it may not have seen them yet sounded like an excellent way to jinx them, so she refrained from giving any comment of that sort. “If we back away quietly, maybe...”

Too late. The bushes rustled and the wolf lunged towards them!

 

[Syntra]

“Yeah, I’m sure that you aren’t.” ‘Not mad’ was a code for ‘everything’s fine,’ after all, and you know what that was? A fucking trap! An innocuous-looking one, certainly, with a little pink bow on top of it, but that cutesy detail only served to hide the fuck out of the chainsaw underneath. Like!!! Did literally anyone with a working brain consider that to be anything but a large, flashing light? To Thea, it said ‘alert, alert, more attention needed!’ (Yeah, more attention, though not really prying. Those two weren’t the same, you know? It was like the difference between slipping your gf a little ‘I hope you have a nice day’ note into the lunch you’d packed for her, and, uhhh… forcing her to have one at gunpoint? Something like that, at least.)

“But fine, fine, if you don’t wanna talk about it, then we’re not going to do that. I’m zipping my lips closed!” the brunette shrugged, mimicking the gesture with her hand. Although, come to think of it… no, no, that just wouldn’t do. Unlike some people, Thea took her promises seriously, and what did her vow imply? That she wasn’t going to talk, period! Which, of course, would be a problem. Everyone knew that unused body parts had a tendency to grow weak, after all, and Thea wasn’t at all interested in letting her vocal cords atrophy. Just, miss her with that shit. Without her witty comments, the world would become a much more boring, dreary place, and that would directly lead to Clara’s not-depression getting deeper! (…presumably. Don’t get her wrong, she was aware of the people who considered her annoying more than witty, but those guys generally had a track record of being horribly, dramatically wrong. Clara, on the other hand? So far, it looked as if she approved of her, which meant her thought processes had to be sound!) “Okay, okay, okay,” she raised her hands defensively. “I’m not taking it back, don’t worry. Can we say that it’s an intelligent zipper, though? Sorta like those locks that you can control with your voice-- they will open to you, but not to your friendly neighborhood robber. Yeah, it will be kind of like that, except that it will filter stuff according to the topic. I will just add That Thing That Did Not Happen to my List of Forbidden TopicsTM, and we can forget all about it.” Ah, sweet, sweet repression! Better than an army of therapists, really, when it came to handling the realities of your day-to-day life.

“Still, Ian is being a brat. How do you even give closure to someone who doesn’t seem to fucking want it?” In comparison, Lizzie’s case had seemed almost simple-- deep inside, the girl had just wanted some friends and, you know, not being slaughtered like a pig. They couldn’t have helped with the latter, but the former absolutely had been in their reach, so just like that, the problem had been solved! Ian, though… Well, Ian’s mere fucking existence provided her with a reason never to have children, number 565431564. (Why did people find that prospect appealing, again? Even when you got over the dreadful ‘just crying and shitting’ stage, there only were worse things waiting for you! Dealing with a know-it-all teenager did not sound like reaping the fruits of parental efforts to her, and those who unironically thought so must have been brainwashed by the society.) “I guess we will need to straighten him up,” Thea shrugged. “I mean, he’s welcome to his teenage angst, but only to the extent where it concerns just him. And, if I’m understanding this right? The whole thing will collapse like a house of cards,” haha, cards, “if we leave out just one component. Hey, Clara, you have a bro, don’t you? What worked on him when he was…?” ‘in his insufferable phase,’ she meant to ask, but the appearance of the fucking wolf shut her up for sure.

“Great, just great,” Thea sighed. Couldn’t they have, like, five seconds of peace? Pretty, pretty please? No? Okay, she hadn’t expected anything else, anyway. “Isn’t this shit a little redundant at this point? Like, I dunno if anyone was paying attention, but a few minutes ago, I killed a motherfucking dragon. I have to say, oversized dogs don’t really scare me anymore.” Pfft, Devourer. Wasn’t it a little dramatic, considering the circumstances? With a name this pompous, Thea would have expected a leviathan, or maybe a kraken, or literally anything else that wasn’t just an inch away from being called Rex and taught collar discipline. Just, hahaha, what could this doggo possibly do to them? Thea would just grab her fancy heart sword and--

--and do nothing, as it turned out, because the wolf had a trick up its metaphorical sleeve. It opened its mouth, only for it to… uh, become way larger? With a disturbing crack, its jaws dislocated, and before she could even remotely realize what was happening, the two of them were swallowed whole! (…wow. Okay, either all of those biology lessons had been just a part of large conspiracy designed to hide the TruthTM from everyone, or something was seriously wrong with this wolf-- generally, you see, you didn’t really expect there to be a fleshy-looking tower in a living creature’s stomach. Why not, though! It made about as much sense as everything else in her life did, really.) “Gross,” Thea wiped what she presumed to be saliva away from her face, and looked up towards the construction. “Honestly, I’m not even gonna pretend that I’m shocked. This is normal. This is fine. I’m sure we will find out what we are supposed to do here before the stomach acid gets us. If nothing else, I guess we can try to cut our way out?”

‘Climb, climb, climb!’ her voices sang. ‘All towers exist to be climbed.’

“See?” she smirked. “My voices just said that we should climb. Wanna race to the top, Clara?”

 

[ellarose]

This was it. The end. Staring into a gaping mouth rife with deadly fangs, Clara squeezed her eyes shut and ducked-- knowing it was useless-- and also folded her arms over her head to shield it-- which, she also awknowledged, was completely useless. That ominous expiration date carved into her back meant something after all. She told Thea, didn't she, that this is the fate she always expected? So why should she be surprised? The clock ticking down, down, down towards her early demise was a milisecond away from striking zero. Death truly was inevitable.

Hm? Clara anticipated pain before that happened, fangs tearing through flesh and bone and all... when Thea commented, however, she cracked her eyes open halfway and realized that death decided to delay once again.

Fate played with them like a cat played with a mouse before killing it. Clara wrinkled her nose and shook off the saliva, which stuck to her like globs of liquid glue. "...Gross." She echoed in agreement with Thea. There really was no other way to put it than that. Her insides, all tangled up and nauseous and heavy, sunk even lower when she confronted the fact that she didn't even know where or when her next shower was going to be. There was no home to go back to, nowhere to let her guard down, or recharge. That was assuming they lived through this. While she understood she ought to think about their present dilemma before she lamented on her desire to clean up-- ugh, it really was hard to focus on anything else in this state. Drenched in blood and other bodily fluids, aching from the gashes in her back, not to mention mentally exhausted from the trauma this place dug up. Engaged in a violent tug-of-war with her urge to vomit, all she could do was shake her head when Thea suggested racing with a grin on her face. How was this girl even real?

"Can't. Tired." Knowing her own limits, Clara switched into her power-saving mode, supplying monosyllabic answers. I don't know how much further I can go. The thought made her sicker. Confessing that to Thea, who could still maintain such a bright demeanor, seemed like a betrayal. Especially after what she just said to Ian, that they cared about moving forward. And don't get her wrong, she does care. But there's also grace in admitting when you're beat.

Another tower, hm? It seemed that no matter how many towers they confronted in this place, they could never seem to climb them. The scenery kept changing on them, throwing random obstacles in their path. This was like the cycle with the ringleader, repeating that scene with Thea on the harness. The sisyphean task. Maybe they were related? Come to think of it, Greek mythology had some running theme in these places, too.

"Climb might be a metaphor for something else." Clara offered numbly, "This place keeps changing shape. We've been exhausting ourselves, running towards these towers. They always disappear once we reach them." She shook her head. "I can't do it again." I can't.

Little did she realize, the ground beneath their feet was sinking slowly, surreptituously swallowing them like quicksand.

 

[Syntra]

Oh, come the fuck on!!! Like, it wasn't that Thea didn't understand Clara's sentiments here-- shit sucked, to put it mildly, and it didn't seem like it would stop sucking any time soon. The suckage forecast really didn't seem to favor them, in other words, so why not give up? Why not be like 'fuck all of this' and show the middle finger to everyone involved? That would have been both a) stylish af, b) the path of the least resistance, which were both things that Thea usually favored. Better to go out with a bang than a whimper, right? Except that, you see, maybe the brunette didn't want to go out at all-- maybe, maybe she was actually sort of looking forward to the future, for once in her miserable life. (Before, you see, everything had been just... just a sea of grey, really. A monochromatic kind of boredom, punctuated with orders and bans and all the things she had learned to hate, with her entire soul. And, to be honest? To an extent, Thea, too, had thought that she was going to die, before even reaching her twenties. What had there been to live for, anyway? Her family, for whom she'd always been the black sheep? The weirdo with a large-ass target on her back? Yeah, no, surely you could forgive Thea for not being too enthusiastic about that! ...or about anything, really. It was easier to bury your worries under a devil-may-care attitude-- easier than facing them, only to discover that there just wasn't anything worth fighting for. Like, nobody liked that existential dread shit, y'know? Not even Thea, who basically had denial as her fucking superpower.)

Except that then, then!!! Then the dark clouds above her head had dissolved, and the silvery moon illuminated her path. (Where would it lead her, exactly? Somewhere dangerous, no doubt, but it would also be new-- new and shiny and exciting, and maybe not even unpleasant, ultimately. Certainly not with Clara! ...with Clara, who looked at her like that and made her heart race. Clara, who actually took her seriously. Clara, whose response to finding out that the cops were after her had been to throw her future away. Surely, that fucking had to mean something...? But, hahaha, nope, it turned out that her not-gf had just been suicidal all along!)

"I'm tired, too, but so fucking what?" Thea put her hands on her hips. "This isn't a vacation. Like, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that-- there's a severe lack of a sea, beach volleyball, and... uh, fashionable bikini? Yeah, I can't see any of that here." And man, would Clara look good in a bikini! Good enough to make her... nope, nope, nope, not falling for that trap, alright. Fantasizing was nice and dandy, of course, though not when they were about to get swallowed by quicksand! So, yeah, shoving that one under the rug till daydreaming wouldn't cost her her actual life. "Anyway, fuck metaphors. That tower is there, you see? It looks very... uh, tower-y. Realer than real. 100% organic, from recyclable materials, without added glutamate," Thea rambled, unashamed of the fact that she made about 0% sense. "You know, alllll the fucking buzzwords! It's the bestest tower of all towers, and you say you're going to give up? Really? You're gonna let the bastards win, just like that?"

They were sinking, deeper and deeper, but Thea couldn't even begin to care about that. Nope, not getting distracted by reality here! This shit was too important for such things, my dude. "Fine," she scoffed. "Fine, if that's what you want, then we can do this, too. No problem here." Instead of doing literally anything else, the brunette plopped down on the ground, welcoming her death with open arms. It... actually felt kinda freeing? In the same way that it was freeing to finally give in to the voices in your head that compelled you to murder all of your friends in cold blood, anyway. "If you think that I'm gonna abandon you, Clara Loveless, then you are sorely mistaken. It's me and you, till the bitter end. Like, yeah, I did expect a Disney ending more than I expected this.... uh, whatever this is... but yeah, my momma raised no quitter. I don't think she raised anyone at all, actually, considering that I kinda did that for myself, but that's beside the point! The point is, I'm not going anywhere. Like, I guess dying together will be memorable, too? That's the whole idea behind Romeo and Juliet, after all." Buuut, yeah, Thea also had to admit that this Last ConversationTM was growing kind of awkward. Quick, her inner voice screamed, say something! Something else!

"Have you picked a song for your funeral already?" she blurted out. "I haven't. Just fucking goes to show that you can never be too ready, man. Now I'm gonna be stuck with something cheesy, no doubt." ...yeah, maybe it still wasn't registering to her mind that they were actually going to die, but like, give her a break, okay?

 

[ellarose]

“Looking for metaphors isn’t the same as giving up, Thea.” Clara declared as firmly as she could, even as her certainty began to sink like the ground beneath their feet. But she was on the verge of grasping an idea, she could almost taste a notion of it on the air. While Lizzie had wanted them to follow the rules of her games, maybe Ian wanted them broken instead. If his behavior was any indicator at all, she'd be willing to wager she wasn't too far off the mark with this one. He resented them for growing up. That had to mean something, at the core of this place, teeming with new scenes and nonsensical foes. For all his sneering, all his contempt at the very suggestion of becoming an adult... his wish had been to try booze of all things. Something told her that Ian was a little more attached to the life he could've had than he let on. Putting up a front must've been easier than confronting the cold reality of his fate. Had he spent all of these years here, averting his eyes and latching onto any little thing that could captivate his attention? "Now, what did he say about the..." Clara mumbled the rest to herself, incomprehensible, the sounds more a suggestion of words than words themselves. The Devourer ate those who couldn't perform? Or those who didn't meet expectations? She tried to remember what the ringleader's precise words had been, but her memories were a whirlwind of nausea and fear.

Clara had a plan almost everything. When she moved in with Raoul at fourteen, her bedroom resembled the bunker of conspiracy theorist, hunkering down to weather an alien invasion. Or, perhaps, an amateur sleuth attempting to solve an overcomplicated whodunnit. An array of charcoal drawings, lists, post-it notes, article clippings and maps were all pinned up on her bulletin board. Phrases given to her by the voices, premonitions she had seen in dreams and taken as warnings. She had even gone as far as to create an overcomplicated cipher that only she and her brother could understand in the event that catastrophe struck their lives twice. The paranoia fluttering beneath her silence gradually stilled over the years... but that hasn't stopped her from occasionally lying awake at night, reciting her step-by-step process of what she would do if an intruder suddenly burst down her door.

Now it was time to fess up. Clara didn’t have a plan for this. She landed softly on the ground across from Thea, eyes lowered. The world was falling around them and neither of them were panicking. That was probably a testament to how much this messed up world had messed them both up.

"I never really cared. When I'm dead I won't be around to care about anything anymore, least of all my funeral.” Clara stared at her bloodied cuticles. She waited for her heart to react as the slow sink of their surroundings tipped towards a plunge. It didn’t. “Let’s see. My brother would be in charge of the proceedings. Knowing him, he’d probably play the same song they played at my mother’s funeral.” Not that she remembered what it was. Some instrumental piece? She’d been too small and unfamiliar with death to commit it to memory, held no sentimental attachment to it. Raoul, however, had lived a full thirteen years with their mother before she had even been born. They had been close.

Geez. Sounded like a real downer there, didn't she? Although it wasn't Clara's intention to darken the mood Thea was trying to lighten-- not in the slightest. But, yeah, talking about her dead mother right after her friend witnessed the-- ah-- rather fucked up life she used to have, for lack of a better term? Right. Maybe not the right way to go about this one! Time to deflect. “...Or he’ll play Jingle Bells specifically to spite me.” She thought of the mall, smells a blend of greasy soft pretzels and department store perfume, light streaming down in beams from the atrium. And, of course, the chaos only a bunch of dogs, cats, frenzied shoppers and Jingle Bells on repeat could create. There were also the ridiculous elf ears and equally ridiculous costume... which perfectly juxtaposed her resting bitch face. Her brother had snorted with laughter seeing that. He was the one who had gotten her into that mess! It was, for all extents and purposes, terrible. A bad time. But her eyes might have glimmered just a little as she retraced the memory. Her eyes and her heart. She snorted. "It's a long story. Wouldn't want to steal your thunder."

Clara could have sworn she heard thunder sounding in the distance. Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe it was the rumbling belly of the beast.

...Yikes.

'The wolf howls at the moon.' The voices repeated sternly. Clara sighed. Good to know. Very helpful indeed.

"Geez." Clara exhaled. "What's wrong with us?" Her eyes bore into Thea's. She was surprised at how genuine the question sounded, how innocuous. Did she really just doom them both with her indecision? With her bafflingly stubborn laziness in the face of adversity? She wondered why Thea went along with it without putting up more of a fight. Seriously. Why didn't she fight her on this one!? Was she really content to sink into obscurity with her? With some sullen, boring girl she had only just met? They were chatting in the belly of a wolf, for goodness sake! "You said you wanted more from life, didn't you? So why would you stay here when..." She shook her head, tried to busy her mind with another solution. "You still have your wish. Maybe you can--"

Oh. And there it was again. The distinct taste of something, like possibility, like lightning on her tongue. Climb, climb, climb. Thousands climbed mountains for the breathtaking views. Others climbed for clout, success, or personal growth. Leaving the gate standing before her own tower slightly ajar had provided the key to that sword locked up in her chest. But she'd only done so halfheartedly and it withered away. Flailing internally, she still doesn't know how to coax it out of herself, this magical 'heart power' she supposedly possessed. Alongside the feeling, however, the thunderous rumbling rose to a roar and began to resemble... a voice? 'The wolf howls at the moon.'

"...Wait. Did you hear that?" Clara asked, transfixed. Like whatever made her who she was only hanging on by a single thread. Then, as if someone had turned on a light switch, she noticed shadows strewn all around them. Like leaky snakes of ink. Those... definitely weren't there before. Perhaps they had been there all along and only decided to show themselves now? Pretty creepy. Several voices joined the first and the back of her neck throbbed painfully. "I think it's asking us to go deeper. Or is it asking us to sleep?" She was tired, wasn't she? And her eyelids felt so heavy.

 

[Syntra]

“It basically is!” Thea argued. “I mean, it’s like admitting that none of this makes any fucking sense. Resorting to shitty literary devices is, like, the equivalent of betting all of your money on that one horse that nobody expects to win because you just know it’s going to work out somehow.” And, spoiler alert? Those half-baked “””plans””” only ever worked in your head. Reality wasn’t quite as forgiving as the Lalaland, though, and while this may not have been reality per se, it was the very opposite of a warm, fluffy, cotton candy-flavored paradise. Nightmare-land, maybe? Anyway, yup, if this wasn’t waving the proverbial white flag, then the brunette didn’t know what was! “Oh man, I would have thought you’d approach your own funeral more responsibly than that,” the brunette frowned. “I will let you know that I picked my funeral song when I was around thirteen. Yeah, yeah, definitely my edgy phase, and it kinda shows, though you know what? My teenage self knew where it was at, Clara. The choice still holds up! It was…” Thea paused for a few seconds, to lend her words more of an oomph, “…Lost Carol from Silent Hill 3. Yup, not even kidding. It’s like, the Eldorado of funeral songs! Beautiful, majestic, but simple. Appropriately sad, though without being too much of a tearjerker. Nobody’s make-up would get ruined, that’s for sure, and yet it would make them think of the terrible loss they’ve suffered, and… and shit.” Provided that anyone would come, of course, which wasn’t something Thea was all that convinced of, but you know what death was notorious for? Why, for straight up obliterating your ability to give fucks! In her fantasies, the funeral hall would be full of weeping family/friends/exes, and ultimately, that was all that mattered.

“I did want more,” she said, uncharacteristically serious. “This is it, though. The finish line. What else should I want, hmm? A cushy job in some fucking office? I wanted to escape from all of that, from the whirlwind of pointless grinding so that you can buy pointless stuff, and it doesn’t get better than this. I mean, at least the stuff we do here matters? In some arcane way that I don’t really understand, but I can tell that it does.” Wow, honest much? Thea couldn’t recall the last time she’d been this open with anyone, including herself-- burying those feelings deep, deep inside of her, to the point that they may not have existed at all, had just been infinitely easier. Less messy, at least. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like doing anything. Why the fuck should I? I’m okay here, thank you very much.” For how much longer would that be true, though? The brunette didn’t know, and cared even less-- her and long-term planning went together about as well as whipped cream and steaks, which… yeah, not the most delicious combination under the sun. Some would call it unholy, even! Better not to tempt fate, then, and not even attempt to make such a union happen. (Maybe death wouldn’t even be that bad, all things considered. It was the final stage-- the place where all of them were heading, inevitably, and no, dragging your fucking feet would not fucking help. When viewed from a certain angle, would dying not be akin to… uh, akin to leveling up to the max level? Cheating your way to the glorious victory, and in the most dramatic manner, too!)

“Did I hear… what?” That answer was self-explanatory for sure, along with the super confused look she gave her. (Like, what the hell? Was this some ghost that only Clara heard, or a hallucination? At this point, both options seemed 50:50, so Thea didn’t dare to guess. Going deeper, though…) “That’s more low effort than going higher,” she didn’t fail to note. “Just my style, really! Do nothing, get something out of it, rinse and repeat forever. Fine, okay, let’s see where this rabbit hole ends.” Thea grabbed Clara’s hand, meaning to drag her downward, but it seemed that her consent… uh, triggered something? Because the ground underneath them collapsed all of a sudden, and then they were falling down, down, down! Instinctively, Thea’s arms wrapped around Clara, only for both of them to--

--only for both of them to land in a bed, soft and silky and fucking enormous, as far as the eye could see. “Wow,” Thea looked around. “That’s, um, quite a change of scenery, don’t you think?” She wasn’t complaining, of course, but at this point… well, at this point, it sorta felt like receiving a box of chocolates from your mortal fucking enemy. Were they hoping to poison you, or was this some clumsy attempt at negotiating peace? It was a coin toss, more or less, which didn’t exactly fill her with a sense of security. “I dunno. Maybe we are supposed to sleep?” The presence of the bed would definitely suggest so, but maybe that interpretation was a little too straightforward-- it made sense, in other words, and so far, that hadn’t really been the case here. Hmm, hmm! (Okay, but what if they were approaching this from a wrong viewpoint? One too tied to themselves? This was Ian’s inner world, after all, and when it came to beds, teenagers would probably focus on things other than sleeping. Like, just saying.)

Before Thea could even bring that idea up, though? The blanket underneath them began swirl, like gentle sea waves. ‘As above, so below,’ the voices bellowed. ‘Up is down, down is up. That is the nature of change.’ It seemed for a moment that the blanket was truly made of water, because Ian’s limp body floated to its surface, god knew from where-- his eyes were open and not missing at all, and in his hands, he clutched… an empty beer can. (What the fuck? What the fucking fuck?) “You think that, if we touch him, it’s gonna be another trip down the memory lane?” Thea tilted her head to the side.

 

[ellarose]

While Thea examined their new surroundings, Clara fixedly watched the shadows. Even wresting sleep, she was as absorbed as a cat tracking her favorite toy with her eyes. The tendrils of darkness tailed close behind as they took the plunge down below. Now they stood out in contrast against the creamy white of the fresh linens that softened their fall, resembling locks of long raven hair gathering on the floor of a salon. Swirling about like elegant paint strokes on a canvas, they spun a circular, pretty but predatory barrier around them. Huh. Much like that voice in the wolf's belly, she suspected that Thea's lack of reaction meant that she couldn't see them either. Strange. The back of her neck ached again and she instinctively pressed a hand over it. Closed her eyes and reopened them just in time to notice Ian's body floating up to the surface.

"It's a different brand." Clara observed immediately, appreciating the artwork on the can. "This Ian and the other..." They're not the same. Except that's on par with stating the obvious, considering this Ian's eyes remained inside of his skull. Another obvious fact? Thea had eyes as well and she could clearly see that for herself. Hm. Eyes. "Yes, probably." Another trip down memory lane, hm. Was she ready for that? Clara's neck throbbed again. Her skin felt like a stovetop. Too hot and then too cold. She sweat and shivered all at once. Maybe she didn't dry herself fast enough and was catching a fever. Maybe she'd left her wounds unchecked for far too long. Maybe-- maybe-- "Wait." She intended to reach for Thea's hand, before her friend could reach out for Ian's. She needed a minute. A few heaping, steadying breaths of air before the motion sickness of changing scenery took her out. Especially if this next scene had anything to do with open water.

But the shadows moved again. They twisted and rose, like a gnarled tower straight out of a dark fairytale. They were angling themselves towards Thea.

Pushing back on her heels, Clara sprung forward and tackled Thea onto the bed-- fortunately landing them where it acted more as a shore than water.

"I..." Clara hesitantly lifted her face out of the crook of Thea's neck to find that the shadows melted back into the ground. Were they retreating, or... were they playing games with her? Maybe so, because turning her attention back to Thea brought her nose-to-nose with her. And all Clara could do was stare as an entire rose garden's worth of red dusted her nose and cheeks. Say something! Say anything! "What? You're so impulsive, so I had to..." Her tone was defensive, but the blush on her face burned to the point of emulating pinpricks on her skin. There's no way she can paint this where she's not the fool. "Had to..." She swallowed stickily. Thea was showing her all these new depths. There's so much more to her than the impulsiveness she's come to associate her with. And the idea that there might not be enough time in this world for them to understand each other better was heartbreaking. What happened to all the other kids rounded up in this mess was heartbreaking. And Ian...

Without her permission, Clara's chest did that concerning sparkling thing again. At the same time, a claw stroked the back of her neck.

'You're so difficult, dove. Why don't you give in?' The demon broke his silence and her heart sank. And what he was doing became abundantly clear. If Thea was on the verge of unlocking whatever 'potential' she had locked up in her heart, the demon would be a fool to leave them alone to do whatever they wanted. 'You've found such a nice, warm bed to sleep in. Aren't you tired?' Yes, she was. So tired she felt as if she was inhabiting a dream, where none of her actions had consequences. But that didn't mean...

Clara wanted to explore that arcane potential that Thea spoke about, for as long as she could. And maybe she also wanted to remind her that there were little things about life worth appreciating if you stopped to look for them, in spite of all the mundane, boring parts that might follow. Looking into the deep, endless brown of Thea's eyes, she sparked with want.

"S-short circuiting here, sorry." Clara also wanted to slap herself. If Thea didn't suspect she was a robot before, she might now. Good grief. But no, that didn't matter! Determinedly, forgetting her embarrassment from the urgency, she nearly touches her nose to Thea's. "...My eyes, Thea. What color are my eyes?" She faltered a little. If they were clouding up like she feared, if she was losing herself to him, then she had to get something off her conscious. "I... I'm sorry I called you a bitch before. I wasn't trying to call you a bitch. I was talking to the demon." Her blush extended to the tips of her ears. "And you're not impulsive." Her heart was pounding. Was she rambling? Was Clara Loveless rambling? What was this girl doing to her? "Well, you are impulsive. But you weren't just now. I'm not just hearing things, I'm seeing things. Shadows."

Amidst all of this, the glittering over her chest became almost blinding.

Clara pushed weakly on her overtired arms to extract herself from Thea, to put a safe distance between them. "The demon wants whatever this is. I can feel it." When Thea insisted that it was them till the bitter end back there... he must have seen a golden opportunity. Because he can win like that. Take out two birds with one stone, so to speak. "I get that I'm already acting strange. But if I start suggesting anything even stranger or... or outright suicidal, then don't take me seriously. Thea, I want to solve this too. And if we both die, he wins. We can't let him win."

 

[Syntra]

Wait? For what, though? For the demon to get bored and be like ‘hey, girls, this isn’t working out, sorry for being such an ass?’ Because, spoiler alert, Thea didn’t think that was actually going to happen. That would have been one of top ten anime betrayals to be sure, and-- oof. Okay. Okay, okay, okay! Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. This isn’t a fucking drill, so get your breathing under control before you pass the fuck out! And, the reason that she was suddenly so worried about her supply of oxygen? Uhh, let’s just say that Clara had must have gotten a hold of her ‘private fantasies’ stash, solely because the similarities to some of her favorite scenarios were staggering. (Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck! What was she supposed to do, even?! Thea may have spent hours dreaming up elaborate plotlines where exactly this happened, but that didn’t mean she knew what to do now that they had somehow leaked into the outside world-- like, this just wasn’t supposed to be a thing. Nope, not at all. You know how, when people won a lottery, they usually went fucking bankrupt within a year? A known phenomenon, really, ‘cause no amount of day dreams could prepare you for the reality of being loaded irl. Now, where was she going with this analogy? Well, the whole Clara affair was kinda like that, except that Thea seemingly pushed the flash forward button re: spiraling into insanity!)

Perhaps for the first time in her life, the brunette didn’t know what to say. Gone were the scathing remarks, sarcastic observations, space cadet shit, and everything that made Thea Thea-- she just stared at Clara, wondering what kind of game this was. Weren’t they supposed to have Wholesome RomanceTM first? Like, come the fuck on, Clara wasn’t the type who changed her opinions faster than most people changed their socks. Not that she was complaining per se, especially with a view so nice, but still! Was this a trap? Some kind of ‘haha, see, your soul isn’t pure enough’ kind of trial? It was a good ol’ tradition that dashing heroines had to conquer temptations before they were finally rewarded with True Love, so it wouldn’t shock Thea if Clara resorted to it. As in, it certainly wouldn’t come out of nowhere! …still, what if she actually meant it? That, too, wouldn’t be too shocking. Thea was Thea, after all, and remaining 100% chaste with her around had to be quite the task-- the brunette hadn’t exactly checked, but she assumed it must have been against the Geneva convention for sure. The treaty did forbid cruel and unusual punishment, didn’t it? Which that essentially would have been, considering just how attractive she was. The mental torture had to be worse than… uhh, worse than watching your favorite ice-cream go on sale while you struggled to pay your fucking electricity bills! So, both options seemed equally likely here, and Thea found herself standing at the edge of the abyss. To act or not act, huh? Her heart was beating so damn fast, which wasn’t exactly helping, and, and, and!!! (Fuck, was Clara pretty. She’d known even before this incident, of course, but the closeness only accentuated it-- the way her eyes sparkled, the curvature of her… ah, well, it wasn’t a smile, but it certainly was something, and that something made her breath hitch. …would it be bad if she touched her now? Technically, Clara had made the first step, so the ball was in her court!)

“Impulsive,” she breathed out, “me? Never fucking heard of that one before. I’m always prim and proper, Clara. Can’t you see?” Beneath her, she couldn’t have looked like that-- especially with the way her eyes were drawn to her lips, inevitably. (Were they as soft as they looked? As pleasant to touch? There was only one way to discover that, Thea supposed, and oh, was she ever the daring explorer!)

…except that Clara didn’t really want to cooperate with that artistic vision of hers. For some reason, she pulled away and, uh, decided to turn this into an impromptu demonology lesson? That, and an apology? Allllright, now she had really seen everything. “A bitch?” she asked, breathless despite the lack of exercise. “You called me a bitch?” Laughter bubbled up in her throat, no longer reined in by the pitiful remains of self-restraint that had, against all odds, managed to survive somewhere within her-- they had been braver than the marines, honestly. Just, man, wasn’t that absurd? This entire fucking situation, that was.

“Okay, fine, noted. It’s all forgiven, I guess. Not that there was a large psychological wound or anything, but if you want your absolution, there it is. Also, your eyes are as pretty as always-- you get Thea’s seal of approval, no demons detected.” That being said, though… did Clara just expect her to ignore all of that? Like, hellooooo, her second name wasn’t ‘doormat,’ thank you very much. “What was that about, though? Were we having a moment or not?” she narrowed her eyes, placing her hands on her hips. Normally, Thea ‘Denial’ Holloway defo wouldn’t have brought it up, but the whiplash was so fucking intense that she felt… uh, she didn’t know how she felt about it, actually. (That was probably a factor as well.) “I guess I’m trying to see where I stand with you before I unearth like 225 new traumas. Nothing to see here, just some desire for transparency!”

 

[ellarose]

Clara bit her lower lip in anticipation before Thea acknowledged her admission and… laughed? Her genuine laugh was a pleasant sound, dulcifying and light, like a zephyr blowing through a sun-speckled woodland. It loosened the tightness that seized Clara's chest. Freed from those invisible bindings, she sank with a noiseless sigh of relief. (Coincidentally, the last time she dared to call a girl a bitch she actually meant it. And that moment successfully shaped her ice queen reputation as well as the rest of her high school experience.) Well, good. Then everything was fine and dandy between them. Sunshine and rainbows, if you will. Seconds later, her hushed sigh morphed into a yawn behind her hand. Hmm. The bed was soft, wasn’t it? A fluffy cloud that she wouldn't mind snuggling up against. Oh, it'd really be fine and dandy if she could drift off now. Thea’s voice supplied everything she searched for in the playlists she chose as lullabies, after all, and— no! How could she even entertain the thought of sleeping here of all places? Then it occurred to her that this overwhelming desire to sleep might have been a symptom of the demon's influence. Presumably he couldn’t control her by force— thank goodness— unless she let her guard down, or willingly took his hand in her own? She made that mistake a few times yesterday and resolved that she wouldn’t make it again. Not after he donned Thea's body like a disguise back in the circus tent. Ugh. How violating it was, possession! Absolutely sickening.

If Clara was the moon, the same way Lizzie was the fool, Ian the tower and Thea the sun... maybe she had to deal with this on her own. The drowsiness, the strange dreams and illusions. The moon tarot, she had researched, was a symbol for dreams and illusions. So perhaps their demon-issued abilities branched off into a bunch of sub-categories? Like that giant hand of light before. The one she thought of like a brilliant goddess, saving her from drowning. What was that? Come to think of it, that happened right before the demon took control of Thea. Well, duh. Of course. Because that was Thea! She... must have agreed to one of his offers. To save Clara from drowning as 'Icarus'. Ah. She really should have put two and two together right then and there, but-- she nearly drowned to death, all right? Better late than never! Still. On top of her going all Lizzie Borden on her papa back there, Thea might think she cracked under the pressure if she tried explaining the hallucinations now.

Pretty? Ha. Haha, just Thea being Thea again, right? No biggie. Throwing one of the most common compliments in the book at her, no less! Was this a game? Was she testing her, to see just how pink in the face she could get? She'd never heard that from anyone before, that her eyes were pretty. A common compliment it might be, but the idea that she genuinely thought that was-- Clara averted her eyes shyly. And her mind betrayed her as she thought about the way Thea's eyes had, um, gravitated towards her lips back there. (...Why was she cursed with these skills of observation? Why couldn't she have just ignored it?) Then Thea goes on, because of course she does, and brings up the notion of them sharing a moment. Alarm bells sounded in her mind when the heart she tried so hard to hold still lurched, like a wild horse on it's reins.

Clara made a vault of herself to keep her spectacularly messy emotions hidden, sealed away behind closed lips and disinterested expressions. Thea joked about zipping her lips and lasted only about three seconds. Clara, though? She'd kept it up for years. But like wisteria, her feelings grew vibrant and heavy, with vines that worked their way into any little crevice they could find. Maybe this was bound to happen, after suppressing them for so long. Now they were slipping, spilling over to an embarrassing extent, exposing the person beneath the cool, low-effort sarcasm she had tried to pass off as her personality.

"A... moment?" Clara asked, delivering her calm tones rather well considering the circumstances. Transparency? Transparency on what? They had a bond, sure, one that probably went deeper than they realized. That was unmistakable. But for present Clara and Thea, it's only been two days. Too fast for anything more than friends. For Clara, the fact that she already considered her a friend was a pretty big deal in itself. Anyway, how could Thea expect her to know how to define what this was any better than she did? "You already think I'm boring," She challenged, peering up at her through her eyelashes, playing it coy to shake off her nerves, "I've got to keep some of my secrets, otherwise I'll lose my air of mystery."

Now what was Clara on about? Air of mystery? That was so stupid!

"We're friends, dork." Clara offered thoughtfully, attempting to recover. (Except wasn't she the real dork? Like, that sort of phrase might have been cool to read in a comic book. But coming from her own mouth? Ah, she wanted to die! Thea would have to be a total dork herself to think that was even remotely cute.) Fortunately-- or unfortunately-- Ian's body started to sink, providing her with an excellent reason to opt out of this mess. She scrambled to the edge, where the mattress blended into water, and anxiously reached her hand out. This is it. As her fingers slipped through the surface, drifting as if in slow motion towards Ian, she felt positively lightheaded. It wasn't too long ago that she crashed into a pool of water. Wasn't too long ago that she nearly drowned. Gulp. But Thea saved her. And they were facing this part together. For whatever reason, they were stronger in this world when they were together. "If we're going to go, we need to go now. You ready?" She held her other hand open, inviting Thea to take it. "Don't let go of my hand."

 

[Syntra]

Friends. Friends! Never before had Thea thought that a single syllable could be this fucking painful, but it also made sense, she supposed-- scalpels also weren’t building-sized, and yet they managed to cut you up just fine. (Partially, that might have been the reason behind its effectiveness. Like, a hammer to the face hurt, but you’d also know that it would hurt, okay? Meaning that you could kinda sorta prepare yourself, ‘cause you fucking saw it approaching. A scalpel, on the other hand? A scalpel was more of a surprise mugging in a dark alley than it was a wrecking ball, and nope, the fact that the former usually did less damage did not help. Thea had wanted no damage at all, dammit! …well, that, and the fact that this particular scalpel had targeted her heart hadn’t made things better, either. This is fine, she told herself. You wanted an answer, now you have it. A happy fucking ending, woo hoo!) “Ah. Um. Okay, I guess,” she looked away, unwilling to face Clara any longer. “Thanks for the heads-up. It would have been pretty stupid of me had I gotten any ideas, so this works out just great.” No, she wasn’t upset, why do you ask? Only losers ever got upset about ending up in the “””friendzone,””” and Thea Holloway wasn’t a goddamn loser. “No, really, this is just peachy. At least I know I can update my status on my favorite dating site? I mean, not that I have one, but if I did, I could.” And, hey, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea! Looking for a gf online had always struck her as a little desperate, but desperation seemed to be her new normal, with the police hot on her trail and everything. “Man, just imagine my profile! It would read something like: Thea, 25. Taurus. Do not interact if you’ve never punched a police officer. If you can handle a shotgun, we’d make a great team. I’d get like 25 responses per second, I can see it already!” Hahahaha, yeah, a lot of fun to be had here. It totally proved that Thea wasn’t salty, or hurt, or anything even remotely close to that, and that meant that everything was A L R I G H T, with capital letters and spaces between letters and shit!

This is your own damn fault, the brunette reminded herself, while doing her absolute best to maintain her poker face. Why would you think that literally anyone would take you seriously? Statistically speaking, that just seemed unlikely-- the patterns so far painted a very different picture, so arriving to a different conclusion was on her and her only. Really, her companion couldn’t be blamed here! That other people were capable of seeing her as anything else than a short term diversion was a misconception that she was responsible for, not Clara or Santa Claus or, uhh, Superman. Personal accountability, ladies and gentlemen! All those self-help book authors would have been fucking proud of her. “I should probably join a site like that, once I have more time,” Thea concluded. “Could be fun.” Yeah, fun, and it would probably also help her bury certain Unwanted ThoughtsTM-- mostly the ones that spawned in her head re: her friend, with a frequency that seemed downright alarming. Like, she hadn’t signed up for this shit, you see? And, more importantly, Clara hadn’t, either. (Despite everything, somehow. Like, hadn’t she more or less spelled it out for her a day ago that they could be more than friends? That there was some sort of spark? Thea was good at reading signals, and her inner radar had been going all beep, beep, beep basically from the moment they’d met! …yeah, except that a spark wasn’t a fire, in that that it could die faster than a hdd whose fucking warranty had expired. Had she done something to upset Clara, then? Something that revealed that she’d been a clingy weirdo all along?)

Fortunately, they had a ghost to banish, and so Thea couldn’t exactly spend the rest of her day dissecting all those ways in which she might have fucked up. “No, but I don’t think you can ever be ready for this shit,” the brunette shrugged. “Let’s go, then.”

The world around them began to spin, spin, spin, with colors blending into one another, and when she finally opened her eyes? They found themselves in a forest, with trees that were both ancient and twisted. (Something about them resembled an old person’s back, to her at least-- age had bent these giants, too, and if Thea squinted a bit, she could swear that she could see faces on its trunk, frozen in a silent scream.) “Wow, another horror movie scenery,” she looked around, fighting the desire to let go of Clara’s hand and hug herself instead. “If nothing else, those creepy-ass cultists really had a good sense of aesthetics. Couldn’t they have, like, painted spooky pictures instead? Tim Burton and the like would have loved to cooperate with them, I’m sure. But, like, what’s the point of this? Seems pretty abandoned around here.”

Of course, the second the remark left her lips, steps could be heard in the distance-- multiple people, if she had to guess, and Ian had to be one of them. Now, how did she know? Because he was crying, in that annoying, nasal voice of his. “L-let me go,” he begged. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Oh?” an older man chuckled, before pushing the guy forward. The entire group was coming into their field of vision now, and so they could see that Ian’s hands were tied-- they were leading him on a leash, as if he was a disobedient dog or some shit. (There were no other kids, Thea realized. Just a bunch of adults, with their faces covered by masks, and the little shit from before. Somehow, that… struck her as bad news? Not that those fuckers were ever good news, of course! In that, they had a lot in common with, say, ebola.) “Are you saying that the can made you steal it, Ian? Did it whisper into your ear, perhaps?”

“No, I just--”

“You just lied,” he shut him up. “I don’t think you realize the magnitude of your crime here, Ian. It isn’t even about stealing and lying-- for our lord, you were supposed to keep yourself pure. Don’t you understand that alcohol is the root of all sin? As one of His messengers, you cannot act up like that. What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

 

[ellarose]

It would have been stupid if she had gotten any ideas? Ideas about... what? Clara bit her lower lip, slowly gauging just how tempted she was to ask for elaboration. It'd only been two days. Hence, friends. What about that answer threw Thea off? What was so odd about it? When Thea averted her eyes and brought dating sites into the conversation, though, she could only stare. So does that mean she really...? The end of that sentence crept dangerously close to her heart and then it was Clara's turn to avert her eyes. Then and there, she decided that she didn't want to know after all. Nope, she wasn't doing this. Not now. Better to tear the wings off of the butterflies in her heart before they could take flight and leave some world-altering chaos in their wake. Mutual attraction wasn't nearly enough foundation for a healthy relationship! She and Thea would be relying solely on each other, in these absurd realms and in the real world for the foreseeable future. Better that they focus clearly on their objectives, on surviving rather than... fawning over each other, hastily kickstarting some whirlwind romance that'd no doubt be doomed from the start! Why complicate an already complicated situation? A turbulent relationship could severely impair the trajectory of the rest of their lives.

It was too much, too fast. While it felt like a lifetime ago, Clara only left home that morning. Her safe place to land was gone forever and she was going to break her brother's heart all over again. Now she had to cope with the fact that they were being hunted down by cold-blooded killers, that their only lead was to investigate these murders and dangerous ghostly planes. Not to mention she was still coping with the emotional trampling she endured earlier. Seeing her papa again was...

"The last thing either of us needs right now is a presence on social media." Clara supplied matter-of-factly. Then she stared awkwardly at her feet, considering that that may not have been the most sensitive thing to say. But it was also a valid point and it needed to be said! Posting any personal information up online was like deliberately sending their kidnappers a friendly text with step-by-step directions leading to their exact location. They clearly have an in with the police and who knows how many other powerful figures? She shrugged. "Not trying to burst your bubble. Just... saying." Not that she was jealous of any potential matches Thea could make out there in the world. No way! Anyway. Personally, she stayed far away from it to begin with. Never made a profile and opted out of group photos. The only time she ever used a computer was for research, to find answers to those random questions that popped into her head at four in the morning, or to scan her drawings onto the computer in Beth's office. Sometimes to look up videos of cute animals. Because cute animals made everything infinitely better.

"...Mhm." Feeling rather drained from everything, Clara braced herself for vertigo as they went and the world shifted around them. Another forest? The refreshing woodsy smell she breathed in was quickly soured by ominous undertones of blood hanging in the air. Even worse, though, was the torture scene unfolding before them. Ian was a grade a jerk, but...

No one deserved this. Clara's stomach turned another somersault. One more time and she might just lose her sandwich. She tried to steel her insides, resisting the urge hide her face against Thea. After... whatever the conversation they just had was, she got the inclination that such an intrusive gesture wouldn't be appreciated. Pure, the cultist toted, and the memory of her papa's voice rang in her ears again. Unwittingly, she clenched Thea's hand tightly in a futile attempt to find stability. The shadows swam around Ian. They also swam dizzyingly around her own feet.

What could they do about this? Clara flinched when one of the hooded figures fished a jar of writhing spiders out of their robes. As if acting out of mild curiosity, they began dropping them on Ian, one by one. He rolled around on the ground, desperate to shake them off. "Speak!" But he couldn't speak. His sobs were choking him. Much like that collar around his neck, which they occasionally yanked in a way that made Clara's own throat ache with sympathy when he didn't give an answer. This was all horrendously relatable, though it was never to this extreme with papa.

How could they help him? With Lizzie, they had been involved in the narrative. It had seemed back then as if they kept the teenagers and younger children apart. So what role did they play in all of this? How could they help Ian rest? Unable to watch the gut-wrenching scene for any longer, Clara's gaze wandered about the trees. She paused when she noticed something... curious. "Peaches?"

There was one peach tree, standing out rather jarringly among the spooky ones. "Thea, look. Maybe those are the--" Clara didn't have much time to puzzle over it, though. As if taking advantage of her distraction, the shadows at her feet expanded into the form of a wolf and tore her away from Thea before she could so much as blink with realization. The greens and browns of trees whooshed by in a blur, twigs snagged against her clothes and cut her skin. Dragged roughly against the forest floor, she had to press her eyes shut to avoid getting any dirt in them. (Was this it? The anticlimactic death waiting for her, in the maw of some wolf?) She couldn't see then that it was taking her to a tower standing off in the distance. While she made an effort to squirm free, she quickly fell limp with exhaustion. Felt about as empty as her hands did, without Thea's hand in hers. It's because of this place, she reasoned. Because we possess some type of power when we're together. And, um, not because she's in over her head emotionally, or anything like that. No sirree.

"Pssst! Thea! Thea! Over here." Meanwhile, an urgent and familiar voice cut through the trees. The golden wish fish from before was flipping and flopping about in a nearby stream, performing some kind of aquatic gymnastics to get her attention. Then she waved her fins about frustratedly. "I told you, didn't I? I was trying to protect the boy, and now look at what you've done! You troublemakers brought it all back." Those empty fish eyes nearly portrayed a hint of emotion. Then she sighed, resigned. "You have one more wish, so you best use it wisely. What will it be?"

 

[Syntra]

Just for the record, Thea wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t! Fear was a pretty outdated survival mechanism, so she’d rate it 3/10 at best-- yeah, yeah, it could act as a good deterrent, but it didn’t exactly help when the dreaded situation couldn’t be skipped anymore. Like, what the fuck??? Thank you, Mother Nature, for paralyzing people when they should have been running for the hills! Thea couldn’t speak for everyone else, obviously, but she didn’t like the idea of becoming some monster’s snack, or another notch on a serial murderer’s belt. So, for that reason, she had decided to boycott the feeling. Easy enough to pull off, right? Besides, this was a memory, and memories were called memories because they couldn’t be altered. They were just… just snapshots of reality, no longer capable of being altered! Being afraid of one would have been like dreading an exam that you’d already fucking passed, no matter how you looked at it. It’s a movie, the brunette said to herself. A highly personalized movie that portrays my trauma specifically, in other words. Hahaha! Nothing scary about that. Holding hands with Clara might have been something to be excited about, sure, and her alternative selves inhabiting various alternative dimensions probably did feel that way, but after the convo they’d had? Well, let’s just say that the development had put a damper on that for her, at least a little bit. You’re just friends doing friend things, Thea reminded herself, in the friendliest fucking way. If they were giving out awards for friendship, you would have had ten of them by now. Now, she wouldn’t hold hands with a friend, but who was to say that Clara didn’t have different standards? They were two different people, and what might have been a ‘potential love interest territory’ in her book could easily register as ‘no big deal’ to her friend. Which, you know what? It was fine. Again, Thea wasn’t lonely or even desperate for company, why do you ask? Her social life wasn’t a dumpster fire at all, no sireee! She was the most well-adjusted adult to ever adult, in the whole-ass recorded history.

Meanwhile, the scene that unfolded in front of their eyes told her absolutely nothing. “You think that they, like, collect villainy points? Maybe they can be redeemed at your local Wallmart, and exchanged for cheap booze. I’ve always thought that the chain was evil, so that would check out.”

‘A lovely theory, crow’, the demon in her head smirked. ‘Why haven’t I thought of it before? Your kind is so pathetic that they’d go for it, I’m sure. I was thinking to myself that there has got to be a more effective way of recruiting followers, so thanks for the inspiration! Once I end the two of you, I will offer them a contract.’

‘You, offer a contract to them? Their lawyers would rip you to shreds, you fucking dumbass.’

It turned out that debating with your literal inner demon wasn’t always the best idea, though-- at least not when it distracted you from what really mattered. “Clara?” she gasped, but it was late, late, late, way too late! A motherfucking wolf managed to carry her off, like in some twisted rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. (Worry tightened her chest, worry as heavy as a box full of bricks, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to breathe with that. Still, it didn’t fucking matter how she felt, you know? ‘Cause Clara wasn’t going to save herself, dammit! Or maybe she was, because she was hardly some archetypal damsel in distress, but that didn’t mean Thea was comfy just sitting on her ass and waiting for it to happen. Like, no. So what if she was suffering from a chronic busybody disease? Many people had accused her of that in the past, but they could take their nasty opinions and shove them right where they belonged, ie. in equally nasty places.) “What are you talking about?” Thea rolled her eyes. “We didn’t make anything happen, pal. This has happened already, so this is basically the equivalent of blaming me for WWII. Have I fucking caused that via learning about it as well, hmm?” The thing about her wish was a good point, though, and the brunette bit her lip. (Did the same weird-ass rules still apply? You know, the ones that could fuck them over in wildly unpredictable ways? The fish hadn’t said anything about it, so she immediately went with the worst case scenario. Hmm, hmm. ‘Save Clara’ was a no-go, obviously, but what was she supposed to say? Knowing what was a bad idea didn’t fucking help with finding the one (1) good solution out there! …maybe there wasn’t one, though, and that meant that going with her instincts was as valid as anything else.) “Okay,” she lifted her chin defiantly, “I dunno about it being wise, but listen: give me superpowers. Something that would help me find Clara.”

Meanwhile, Clara was being locked in… well, in what had to be a kitchen, considering that there were stoves and pots and liquids of questionable origins. (Strangely enough, the smells evoked McDonald’s, most of all? Okay, Ian’s mind was a peculiar place, indeed.) “Alright, I know what’s going to happen, you know what’s going to happen, so there’s no point to prolonging this,” the wolf said, in this a low, husky voice. (Was it weird that it could speak? No, not here.) “I will have to devour you. It’s my job, so I can’t really offer any alternatives here. The thing is, only barbarians eat just meat on its own, with nothing else added. It’s not healthy, if you ask me. This is going to be awkward, but can you prepare some side dishes that would taste good alongside you? I will off you painlessly in return.”

 

[ellarose]

"Hm." The fish mused. She considered the wish with an agonizingly slow tilt of her head before at last nodding sagely and waving her fins about in the air with a flourish. The whole forest pulsed with light at her command and with a grand whoosh, resembling the deep breath of an ancient god, the branches overhead rustled. A dozen peaches tumbled down from the tree and landed in an eerily perfect circle around Thea. Well, that was until a thirteenth peach fell belatedly, nearly hitting her on the head as if imbued with the unlucky superstition of that number. That reckless peach fell outside of the circle. And strangely, it was as black as an onyx? Upon closer inspection, she would discover that these weren't ordinary peaches by any means. They gleamed like enchanted orbs in the grass, each one exhibiting a unique color and texture. Magical. Dangerous. The air around them shimmered and warped, the way scenery will fold and sway in the fabric of swirling smoke.

"There you are. Eat one of these peaches and you will obtain the powers you desire." The fish granted, gazing proudly at her handiwork. "Keep in mind that each color corresponds to a different ability. I'm not going to tell you what they are, though... Why? Because that'd ruin the surprise, of course! Think of it like getting one of those, uh, fun mystery boxes." Yeah. That or the fish was simply to lazy to spell it all out for her. There were so many peaches to choose from, after all. Colors ranging from a fine gold to a worryingly radioactive shade of blue. "Some are lame, some are pretty cool I guess. With that, your fate is out of my fins and up to the luck of the draw. Have fun with that!" After turning an impressive backflip in the air, just because she could, the fish disappeared under the water, presumably eager to retire for the day. But then her eyes poked above the surface to impart one final warning. "Oh. And before you get any clever ideas miss Thea, don't be greedy! If you try to cheat the system by eating more than one, there will be serious consequences."

And with that, the fish disappeared in a burst of bubbles.

In the kitchen, Clara glared at the wolf. Prepare side dishes for him to eat alongside her? What a ludicrous proposition! When a long, awkward silence stretched between them she realized that she was unintentionally waiting for Thea's spunky comeback to fill it. Except... well, obviously Thea wasn't present to grace them with her commentary. While her anecdotes could often be random and nonsensical, her words and the confidence she brandished them with worked miracles in the art of calming Clara's nerves. She could grin that ever so charming grin and make a joke of their peril. Condense it down into something small, a mere hurdle to jump over on their turbulent road. Alone... she felt her friend's absence physically. It was the equivalent of taking a punch to the gut and so much more apparent when they were apart. Huh. Were her fears always this consuming? Because right now, they loomed high and threatened to devour her whole. Like the wolf.

Eat just meat on its own. The word 'it' twisted sharply in Clara's stomach. The implication that he was already referring to her body-- her future corpse-- as an 'it', like nothing more than a lifeless object, was simply...

"Sure. Nothing would make me happier." Clara mumbled dispassionately, brushing the dirt from her bloodied knees as she rose to her feet. Sucked for the wolf, because she couldn't cook to save her life. (...Um. On second thought, maybe that wasn't the best choice of words. Didn't do much to instill confidence in her, you know? ) Of course, she wasn't about to let him in on that fact. This arrangement would buy her time, if anything. An apt opportunity to scope out her surroundings and potential escape routes. Either way, what was the relationship between these ghostly realms and kitchens? Would Ian's impatient expression be waiting for her in one of those strange pots, like Lizzie's was? Now wasn't the time to figure that out, though. For now, she had to think of something before the wolf became impatient and ate her.

Clara took a deep breath and gave herself a pep-talk in Thea's voice. (Don't judge her! These are trying times.) She outsmarted the demon earlier! She murdered that strange nightmare monster that resembled her papa. Right? Right! She was capable of so much more than cowering in the corner, at the very least. And there were plenty of reasons to survive. Saving Ian, seeing Spooks and Thea again, as well as the prospect of their future adventures together...

Thea was sort of like glue, Clara was beginning to realize. Always getting stuck in her head. Oh, good grief. That sounded like a crappy pick-up line, didn't it? Stop it, Clara! Focus.

Clara hugged herself, gazing around helplessly. Where to start? Well, there were plenty of potential weapons housed in the kitchen. A steak knife, for instance. Except she wasn't sure if she could actually go through with outright killing the wolf. Even with her life on the chopping block, the idea of holding him at knifepoint made part of her soul wither in despair. Wolves were related far too closely to dogs, all right? Her heart wasn't nearly strong enough to endure that. What about poison, then? Unfortunately, none of the liquids bore the indicative image of a skull and crossbones. In fact, none of them had proper labels at all. Who was responsible for this!? Their colors looked like food coloring, like they belonged in a crayon box instead of a kitchen cabinet. She crinkled her nose, confused. At last, she noticed the liquor cabinet hanging wide open. It looked as if it'd been ransacked recently and it instantly occurred to her that this might be where Ian had stolen the beer from. Oh. What about wine? If she used enough, perhaps she could get the wolf drunk enough to... convince him not to eat her? Or, ah, impair his judgement enough to make an unscathed escape!

Attempting to emulate an actress on stage, Clara approached the stove as if she knew precisely what she was doing. Inspecting the materials at her disposal, she decided to bring a pot of water to boil. Okay. So far so good. What next? Pasta might be the safest option. All it required was time and minimal stirring, right? "I'm thinking pasta with a white wine sauce. My specialty." No. It was nothing of the sort! Still, she began digging through the cabinets for a box. The sauce was what was going to give her trouble... and it was also what she was depending on. Yikes. What if it wasn't nearly enough to get him drunk? What if it was so disgusting that he simply spat it out? (A viable possibility, considering she had no clue what she was doing.) Hm. The wolf didn't want to appear 'barbaric', so... maybe appealing to his classier side would work? "...Do you want to sample the wine first, Mr. Devourer? If this is the last dish I ever make, I want to make sure it's up to your standards."

 

[Syntra]

Ugh. Would it have been that hard for one (1) entity in this shit-ass pseudo dimension to be helpful? Like, genuinely helpful, instead of basically forcing her to play the Russian roulette with superpowers? A bizarrely specific concern, Thea was sure, and also not a sentence she'd ever expected to say, but here they fucking were. "Awesome. Can I get, like, three hints? In fairytales, heroes always get hints so that they can overcome the obstacles with the power of their intellect."

"With the power of their intellect?" the fish raised its non-existent eyebrow. "No, they do that with plot armor, Miss Thea. Can't kill the Prince Charming, you see? No money to be made from that, and let me tell you, Disney guards their profits with the fervor of a hungry dog. They almost didn't let me show up because, quote unquote, 'a talking fish is a trademarked concept.' I had to hire three lawyers to convince them they had appeared in tales older than their actual country! As you can imagine, it did disrupt the time-space continuum a little bit-- the trial took ages, and I had to appear the second you entered Ian's domain." ...uh, excuse her, but what the fucking fuck? Okay, nope, not even trying to make this make sense! The world was just begging her to fall into that trap, but Thea was too smart to not see it for what it was, complete with spikes and shit. Like, no. Nox100! Rolling with the dreamlike logic had always yielded better fucking results, so that was what she was going with.

"Fine," the brunette rolled her eyes, "I get it, no advantages for me. Thanks for something, I guess. Why peaches, though? I think you should have gone with apples, for extra symbolism points. Could have gone for Biblical parallels and shit."

"Do you have to criticize everything?" the fish bristled. "There's a parallel in there, too, if you actually bothered to look fot it. It just isn't as... as surface level! Now choose a peach before I change my mind." ...was that what gambling felt like? Gambling with someone else forcing you to make your bet, and probably at gunpoint-- the metaphor was getting a little overwrought, Thea felt, but nothing better was coming to her mind. Like!!! Why the hell was everyone setting her up for failure, hmmm? It wasn't her fault that she didn't think like the fish thought, and thus couldn't follow the same dream-like thread of """logic""" that would tell her what color would be good here. (Color symbolism? That was a fucking scam, as far as she was concerned. Like, red could be blood, but it could also stand for love; white could be innocence, but in some other cultures, it apparently signified death. How the hell was she supposed to pick the right paradigm here? Stupid-ass people, with their stupid-ass randomness! Objectively, there was no actual meaning to attached to colors, so why had they felt the need to seek for one in them? Worse yet, why couldn't they have standardized them? Probably to screw over her specifically, that was why, because normally, people loved pointless standardization. It was all 'hurrr durrr, no creativity allowed' till it was inexplicably required! Gotta love her life, really.) "Fine," she repeated, all the unfairness of the world concentrated in that single world. "No point in thinking about this, I guess. Anything can mean literally anything, so why bother?" Only silence responded to her, though-- the fish had been adamant about not slipping her any hints, as it turned out. The black one seems like bad news, and the red one... oh, fuck this. Again, Thea was starting to unironically think about it! The approach might have worked for Clara, sort of, but never for her. You know what? I'm gonna choose the one I like most. Her Gut FeelingTM had never failed her, if you didn't count the moments when it had, and so it felt like an accurate barometer. Hmm, hmm. Which shade was the most pleasing one, then? And, ah, there it was! A shiny blue peach, cyan-like, that resembled neon lights. (Something just told her licking it would feel good, okay? The true forbidden fruit.) Without wasting another second, the brunette bit into it, enjoying... uh, nothing at all, actually. It just tasted like nothing? Her mouth sure did feel full, but full of air, if that made sense. The air was more condensed than usual, sure, but still air-y enough? Look, the sensation just couldn't be described.

Half-expecting nothing to happen, Thea looked around, and... oh, okay. The world was getting bigger! Or she was shrinking, as it turned out, along with some other changes. She didn't remember her nose being good enough to see smells, for example, and yet, yet Clara's trail was visible now, like a golden ribbon hanging in the air. Cool, cool! Just what she needed. Now, the paws that signified that the peach had probably turned into some kind of rodent? A complication, but one that would surely sort itself out in time. Meanwhile, Thea to the rescue!

"Ah, pasta!" the wolf's eyes glazed over in a way that looked dreamy, almost. "A great choice. I'm so sick of steaks, you see? They are good, of course, but sometimes, a wolf craves variety. That is the true spice of life. Say, Clara, why did you have to anger the ring leader so? We could have made a fine team, you and I. It's hard to find a decent cook in this realm, I have to say. Blast that boy! With him, it's all about fun, fun, fun, and no responsibility. One gets tired of that rather easily. Anyway, my dear, is flaying alive painful for you guys? I've forgotten, shameful as it is. I can slice and dice you, or decapitate you, or, oooh, turn your entrails out while you're still alive! That tends to be fairly effective, and audience-friendly as well. I mean, it's super memorable. Although, perhaps you'd prefer some kind of pills? Once, I researched human suicide statistics for fun," yeah, what fun that must have been, "and medicaments seem to be a surprisingly common choice. Is that just the convenience of having them around, or do you pick them because it isn't painful?"

When Clara mentioned wine, though? The Devourer's face scrunched up in a strange grimace, and it... actually felt as if she could see the cultist in it? The one who had lectured Ian before. "Alcohol is the devil, young miss. Don't you know? Why would you add it into my meal, hmm? I demand an explanation."

 

[ellarose]

Clara let the wolf ramble on without comment, only offering her input with a series of halfhearted hums and shrugs… and the occasional, suppressed shudder when he wasn't looking. The mental image of entrails spilling out just does that a person, okay? Because gross. And maybe it's her, but she wasn't particularly thrilled to contribute to a conversation revolving around her own death. Why waste her breath finding the right words to say, anyway, when a plan needed to be cooked up— and fast? Ideally, faster than pasta could cook. And she knew enough to realize that wasn't long. The concept of any of those gruesome deaths becoming her fate quickly became incentive to focus on her task. She searched the kitchen from one end to the other with the collected gait of a girl detective, occasionally plucking up ingredients that looked right while peering surreptitiously into every nook and cranny, as if some passage hiding in plain sight might graciously reveal itself to her. But it wouldn't be that easy. No, nothing. She'd have to be a mouse to squeeze through any of the cracks she'd found. For now, she had to accept that she was trapped with the creepiest wolf she'd ever laid eyes on and his excessive talk of entrails and their entertainment value. Great.

Eventually, she accumulated an armful of vegetables, olive oil, and variety of spices. Hm… what else? She was, in fact, clueless. (Thea could cook. She would have known. Except she visualized her friend taking a different route in this situation. She'd probably find one of those shiny kitchen knives, skip the pretense, and barrel headfirst into action.) Meanwhile, Clara's only saving grace was that she had just enough energy to pretend, to fake it till she made it. She really deserved to win an oscar for acting under duress. (Yeah, right. Everyone knew those award shows were rigged as heck. The likes of her would never win one. Not even after jumping through flaming hoops or growing wings on her back.) Alcohol is the-- what? Oh... shoot. It took a painstaking effort on her part not to reflect his grimace when he tore her little idea to insignificant pieces. The weight of her life, hanging perilously in the balance, crashed down upon her and she nearly buckled beneath it.

“…Is it? I’m sorry, I had no idea.” Clara apologized under her breath. Would an impressionable air alleviate the weight of his gaze on her? She hoped so, as she stared up at him like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. (...She told herself she was acting then, but deep down she may have been slightly terrified. Her pulse thrashed in her ears, her neck, even in the pads of her fingers.) “Where I come from, it’s common to cook with wine. Why else would it be there?” She tipped her hand towards the open cabinet. “If it's as dangerous as you say it is, you ought to consult with the owner of the kitchen about that.” Odd, though, wasn’t it? If wine was the devil, what was murder in his eyes? To think that she had to stand here and put up with his staggering hypocrisy! (Ah. This was reminiscent the man who sold his soul to drink chastising his daughter for sketching girls holding hands in her sketchbook, wasn't it? Who truly resembled a demon, though; the man, bright red in the face, screaming and burning pages... or the frightened girl trembling in the corner? Wasn’t much of a brainteaser, hm. Ha. Hahaha. She found she burned with hatred for the wolf more and more with every passing second, for dredging that visual back into her mind. Hadn’t she already endured quite enough?) Her restraint against violent measures crumbled the more he resembled a cultist. This was no wolf.

...And Clara quite liked wolves, you see. They were often misrepresented in the media. Wolves weren't nearly as ferocious and villainous as the fairytales made them out to be, creating an image that incited all sorts of needless violence against them! Sure, you'd sorely regret poking one with a stick, but... should you really be out in the woods poking wild animals with sticks in the first place? No, obviously. In fact, most wolves would rather avoid aggressive encounters altogether. So long as nothing was done to court their wrath, the likelihood was that you'd be just fine. Statistically, only two people sustained fatal wounds from such an attack in the last century. But she digresses.

Good thing, then, that her captor was actually some lowlife wearing a wolf's skin. It was a plot twist for the ages, really, because it was usually the wolf who wore disguises in the stories. Masquerading as grandmothers, sheep, you name it. But here they were! In a way, it was a relief. Because a deplorable man deserving of her ire would be much, much easier to strike down than a wolf. Depending on whether or not she could pull off the 'striking down' part, that was. Which was debatable at best. Tackling her inebriated papa was one thing. This monstrosity dragged her here within the blink of an eye, with a strength she didn't possess herself. Still, she reached slowly behind her back, trying to find the knife she'd set on the counter to cut the vegetables with. She tried to instill herself with the same sort of confidence Thea emanated in these moments.

"Pills." She blurted out, attempting to stall when her hand only found air. Come on, come on. Where was it?

"What?" The wolf-- the man-- showed his teeth. They were sickeningly sharp. Am I really going to pull this off?

"I've decided that I want the pills. Why don't you go get some while I figure out an alternative for the sauce?"

He turned. Clara finally closed her fingers around the knife. Her heart pounded as she sprang forward, inexpertly plunging it into his shoulder. Blood spilled, but... obviously, it wasn't a killing blow. That was her mistake, she quickly realized. The knife clattered to the ground. Her head fit in his alarmingly big hand... and he effortlessly lifted her from the ground. With a howl of rage, he tossed her like a ragdoll into the cabinets. Her ears rang, she slumped and her head lolled to the side. Miraculously, her consciousness remained. Or perhaps it wasn't so miraculous. He was going to kill her.

That was when she noticed a very small shadow, darting around at the edges of her vision. Her captor seemed to notice this as well. Only not with his eyes, as it turned out. His nose twitched.

"I smell a rat." He grumbled, distracted. He turned to her, then, smiling disgustingly. "It'll make a nice appetizer. I'll come back for you later."

"Come out, come out wherever you are!" The wolf-disguised-man sang out, prowling about with only a limp to show for her efforts, noisily overturning furniture and fallen pots as he searched. "You can't hide from me forever."

 

[Syntra]

A mouse. A fucking mouse, of all things. Like??? Don't get her wrong, Thea had dreamed of badass transformations before, but most of the time, her new selves had been... well, less scrawny. More badass, as the cool kids would say. Just, what was the fucking point in turning into a creature even more pathetic than she usually was?! That would be like... like Cinderella wishing for a new dress, only to be presented with a literal potato sack. Haute earthapple, right? Except that, nope, ladies and gentlemen-- appearances fucking mattered, regardless of the propaganda to the contrary. You know what mattered even more, though? Why, not having to worry about getting eaten by the neighborhood cats! Not the point, Thea reminded herself. You'll find Clara, save the day once again, and everything will solve itself in the end. Woo hoo! And no, before you ask, Thea didn't know how that would happen-- plans were for suckers, so wasting her brainpower on things like that struck her as incredibly foolish. Like, would you try to build a house on quicksand? No? Then you understood the fucking principle here, thank you very much!

Onwards, Thea crawled, never letting go of... uhhh, Clara's scent? Technically, that was exactly what it was, but technicalities had never made things not creepy. Just, there were certain boundaries, okay? Praising your not-gf's perfume was one thing, but salivating over her ~natural scent~ was a one-way ticket to the fucking court room. (Was there a faster way to get a restraining order? The speed runners of the judicial world may have discovered a better method, but Thea sure as hell didn't have access to that sort of knowledge. C'mon, she said to herself, this doesn't count. It's not like you signed up for this bullshit. Falling for the fish's tricks doesn't make you a creepazoid! If anyone was to be blamed here, it was Ian, with his teenage-ass, edgy fantasies. In fact, they should probably be glad that they weren't forced to pose in bikini and giggle like schoolgirls and speak in innuendos too embarrassing for actual adults to say without...

...aw, shit. Did the wolf have to notice her? As in, was it contractually obliged to do so? She was but one (1) totally normal mouse, doing totally normal mousey things. The average wolf wouldn't even bother noticing her, and yet, yet there they were, with the fucker deciding to end her right then and there! Had a mouse murdered his beloved granny, or something? Because, logically speaking, there just wasn't enough meat on her tiny bones in order to feed a beast such as him. Great, just great, Thea rolled her eyes as the wolf approached. What now, do I play an obedient victim? Since, you see, that had never been her forte-- if only because those things had an unpleasant habit of leaking into reality.

"Why are you hiding from me, little one?" the wolf chuckled. "You came all this way just to find me, and you won't even look me in the eye? Don't be like that, girl." Blah blah blah, words, words, words. Was it just her, or did every single VillainTM love the sound of their own voice around here? Not that Thea couldn't sympathize, but her voice actually was super pretty, bitches. (Anyway, one didn't have to be a genius to see where this was going. A big bad wolf, a helpless girl-- stories portrayed this kind of dynamic with a disturbing frequency, and most of them agreed that the girl's role in the story was to fucking die. Ah, what a lovely, lovely thing to store in one's brain!) ...anyway, if the wolf expected her to play by the rules, it was sorely mistaken. Sooo, you're thinking I'm gonna be an easy prey, right? Which, consequently, also meant that he had probably let his guard down. Ah ha! A chance.

Maybe the chance wasn't even there-- maybe she'd dreamt it up, in the same way an addict might hope against hope for another dosage. You know what, though? That didn't fucking matter! As long as you weren't a goddamn coward, chances could be created. (No, she indeed couldn't hide from him forever! Except that, surprise, surprise, hiding had never been her intention. Not 100%, anyway. She was Thea Awesome Holloway, and doing that for reason other than creating an opportunity to sink a knife into her enemy's chest would have been a sacrilege!)

It would have been cooler if a kickass soundtrack was playing in the background, but the brunette couldn't exactly afford to be picky there. Nope, not at all. So, when the wolf passed her by? Utterly fearless, she jumped out of her hiding place, and... uhhh, bit him in the leg. (Look, it seemed like a good idea at the time, okay? Well, that, and perhaps Thea was also hoping that Clara would join her.)

 

[ellarose]

Immobilized against the cabinets, Clara watched the proceeding events in a haze. A painful knocking persisted at the back of her skull and she could infer the places on her skin, namely on her hips and legs, where she would undoubtedly discover bruises the next morning. Though in retrospect, bruises which would be nothing compared to straight up getting eaten. You need to get up. Easier said than done! She wasn't Hercules, for goodness sake. To be thrown across the room and brush herself off the next second, she'd have to be nothing short of a god. But the least she could do was try. She curled her toes and fingers first, working a little movement back into them. And while she did that, she squinted through her daze to watch her surroundings with a catlike intentness, for knowing what to do once she got up was equally-- if not more-- important. The ringing in her ears still absorbed a majority of noise the wolf made in his clamorous pursuit of the poor mouse. But it did occur to her, watching the mouse continuously scurry past the cracks she'd noticed in the wall, that the tiny creature could have easily escaped by now. No matter how much a mouse desired food, they typically had the sense to know when to hide. Especially when an unsubtle predator with sharp teeth was on their trail. Mice could bite, yes, but usually when they were cornered and there was no other option. This mouse, however? This mouse purposefully flung out of hiding with a blazing, righteous fury unbefitting of a mouse and outright bit the wolf.

The wolf represented a cultist. Did the fiesty little mouse represent someone, too? Whoever it was, it certainly seemed like they were acting as her guardian angel. However, this wasn't going to serve either of them in the long term. They couldn't just brute force their way past an opponent this burly! That pitiful stab wound she'd left in his shoulder was the only result her strength could muster back there. Unlike Thea, who could cut through a dragon with a sword while simultaneously giving a pep-talk... She had a feeling her friend would appreciate this mouse's moxie. The wolf shook his leg and cursed. Hang on, little mouse. I'll think of something.

'Find the gateway, find the answers.' The voices supplied a hint. Clara latched onto whatever she could grab hold of at this point, desperate to make something out of this hopeless situation.

Gateway. A door, then? But the door to this room was locked shut. Clara didn't see it, but she'd heard the distinct click behind them when they entered. No doubt the wolf had the key. What else could act as a gateway? There were no windows in this stuffy, smoky kitchen! No exits, if her thorough investigation earlier said anything at all. 'You're supposed to be smart, Beatrice!' Lizzie's voice, impatient and distinctive from the rest, cut through her mind as sharp as a knife. Then she leveled with her calmly. Ah, growth. You love to see it. 'Clara. It was just yesterday. You know this.'

Clara's brow arched. Yesterday? She took herself back to the the night before, the school's kitchen and Lizzie's face in the water. Now, what could have served as a gateway, then? Oh. Oh! That's right! Thea's silver bracelet. After she dropped it into the water, it disappeared. Because... the water here acted as a portal of sorts, between the different planes.

Naturally, Clara's eyes followed the cloud-like steam billowing out of the pot she'd left to boil on the stove. Ah ha. Slowly, she crept across the floor on all fours with the stealth neither of these animals seemed to possess, as not to draw any attention to herself. The wolf was still having a hard time trying to shake that blessedly dedicated mouse from his leg. She pressed her hands against the counter behind her to keep her balance as she rose to her feet. Then she grabbed the handle.

It took quite a bit of effort to heft the pot off the stove and maneuver it. Clara readied herself, measuring the distance it would take to splash the scalding water all over the wolf.

"Let go, mouse! It's okay now." Clara felt a little silly, warning the creature when it hadn't exactly proven it could speak. But it had helped her back there and she didn't want it to get caught up in this. When the wolf turned to look at her, she was ready for him. "...What? You're hungry, aren't you Mr. Devourer? Eat this." She braced the pot back and then forward, splashing the boiling water over him. With a howl of rage, he tried to move towards her... only to find that his legs were rapidly turning to a puddly sludge. Blue streaks of electricity crackled to life around him. The triangle ears on his head flattened out and red hair fanned out around the ears that popped out on either side of his head. His disguise was rapidly fading along with his body. She stared coldly at the cultist's distinctly human eyes, wide and warring with terror and hate as he was reduced to an icky slop on the floor. Ding dong, the cultist was dead. She wondered if his counterpart in reality felt anything from that. Some deep, dark part of her sorely hoped so.

Clara crumpled onto the floor, shivering in the aftermath. The gashes in her back still burned when she moved and the fresh bruises blooming all over her body weren't helping. She was exhausted, separated from Thea, and they still had no idea how to help Ian. But, even so. She overcame this, against all odds. It wasn't over yet. With a sharp inhale, she willed herself back into the present as she scanned the floor for her mouse friend. Ah, there. How cute!

"...Thank you for helping me." Clara said with the rare softness she reserved for animals, opening her hand a safe distance away as an invitation. Respecting the creature's boundaries, she left it up to the mouse whether it ran to her palm or scurried off. And, um, she felt a little awkward. Every creature they encountered in this world so far could talk, so... it wasn't that weird to ask, was it? "Do you know how to talk?"