Rockette

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Campus Grounds - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.031: The Price of Mercy.

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_{Interaction(s): sierra. - @Qia}

Previously: rosemary & pecking order.

Leaving the Lnyx House was different from when she had arrived. She had been greeted in much the same silence, impenetrable beyond the intensity of her glare, but there was a faint whisper, a name she knew and a name she had spun in a similar whisper deepened by passion and desire. Speculation was found there in the utterances, the gazes that flicked up and down, those that fell upon her and her mussed hair before she quickly wove it into a plait over her shoulder upon her exit. The way they stared and spoke, Amma is quickly reminded of a night not unlike the circumstances found here, with her chin held high and her gaze unwavering in the coming day. When she returned from the forest clearing: met with hate, distrust, and figures ready to stand against the display of power she had given when her name had been traded through the night; the challenges marked then and there. There was none to stand in her way now, but the hushed speculations followed her still, and she could not help but compare Lorcán to Gil in that instance. The former was so deeply disturbed by the trailing gossip, and the latter possibly accustomed to such conjectures, but would he be bothered by such mindless musings with her name attached? Infamy cantered eagerly after her likeness, bisected by the reputation she adhered to on her first year here, the shedding of the defiler liken to a snake amid a sacred garden. She was aware of Gil’s star-born history, but the depth and wealth of such was lost upon her. Amma had never seen any of his films and knew nothing of his past just as he was unaware of most of hers.

Well, some of it, perhaps. The Trials had exposed fragments that she had kept hidden, but not all had been revealed. For that, she is glad, grateful even, because if they found out – if Blackjack knew of all that she had done. She wonders if Haven would try so hard to understand her. She wonders if Katja would have agreed to be her friend. She wonders if Aurora would still deny that she was a monster. She wonders if Lorcán would still claim that there was nothing ugly about her.

She wonders if Gil would ever touch her again.

Amma stills, close to the Gulo dorms, gaze cast upon the path before her as eyes follow after her figure donned in the touches of daylight. It does not take much to put two and two together and the resulting additions leave her contemplative until her phone suddenly demands her attention with a vibrating call. She carefully studies the number, the one she knows but never had saved, the same one that had rang her the night before Gil had needed her (she still marvels at that, to be needed) the same number that called her every so often over a time she cannot place. Amma hovers over the notion to accept it before it rolls over to her inbox, a sigh feathered from her tender pout before a familiar presence washes over her. The world reigned to her ebb and flow, the first churning whorls of scarlet looping thrice around her wrists as she turned, regarding the shade of red hair not unlike the crimson manifest that feathers at her lashes and hums away betwixt flesh and bone.

She doesn’t say anything, not for a while until Amma regards Sierra Baxter fully, and with phone in hand, she almost laughs:

“How’d you get here?”

Sierra’s smile is faint, more of a flicker that vanishes before it has a chance to form fully. She feels the corners of her lips twitch, a brief rebellion against the stoic mask she usually wears. The daylight filters through the trees, casting dappled shadows on the path near the Gulo dorms, and she steps lightly, almost as if she’s part of the shadows they provide. “You left the door open,” she says, her voice soft but carrying a hint of amusement, as if she’s teasing Amma for not noticing her approach.

Sierra steps closer, each step bringing her into the soft glow of the sun, her shadow stretching long behind her. Her gaze flicks to Amma’s phone, the screen still lit with the missed call, a silent indication of the unanswered connection. She meets Amma’s eyes again, the spark of frustration in her chest flaring briefly, a familiar feeling that she masks with the same teasing tone from before. “Maybe if you answered your damn phone once in a while, you’d know when someone’s coming,” she says, her voice carrying a blend of exasperation and light….affection. Trust that she rarely gives, a fragile bond garnered over time, now woven into the fabric of their interactions.

“Yes, well,” Amma’s voice lapses off into a wistful sort of reproach done in the finest touches of camaraderie, a delicate grin that slid through her lips, edged into a bite of something feral and more true to the nature of the insatiable woman lain within. “I’ve been busy.”

It was an understatement to the true severity of what they had all endured, to what she had been subjected to herself, a shadow of the pain each member of Blackjack had been forced unto with little consent afforded. So much had happened in so little time, and here stood the epicenter of her latest demise, the one she had spared, the one she was punished for in the final leagues of Hell before H.E.L.P had finally gotten her out. A reason, a purpose, she still did not know; a role she still had to play, a role she still adhered to even in the spun discoveries of her doubt. Amma could proffer many excuses as to why she had been ignoring her calls, but Sierra would likely see through them all, a trait given to all Baxter women that could glean the nature of everyone around them, even if they could not look into themselves in the same light.

“Not so much as how you got here, but maybe I should be asking why. Have you seen Harper yet? Does she know you’re here?”

“Yeah, I actually just left her,”Sierra says, her voice carrying a casual nonchalance. She waves her hands about, the gesture dismissive, as if brushing away the significance of the situation. The slightly cool air whispers against the skin not covered by her jacket, and she feels a slight chill, but it doesn’t deter her. “She had some kind of movie night with Aurora yesterday,” she adds, her tone light, almost playful, as if the mention of such an event is the most mundane thing in the world. Which, given the setting and recent occurrences within it, it is.

“She’s always had this weird way of coping with things so…kinda had to be here for more than just you, I’m afraid,” Sierra continues, her voice dropping slightly, the casual tone giving way to something more serious. It’s a confession, a frustration, she dare not voice to her sister but feels comfortable saying aloud here. She figures Amma would understand, a part of their prior agreement being to look out for the little rat, to begin with.

“Which is such a shame. I do enjoy our little tête-à-têtes.”

“How quaint,” Amma muses, kinship easily found there, a sort of luxury she realizes cannot be afforded to many of them. Perhaps though it was just the same, despite all that had been undone, the two found time to entertain the normalcies of life and friendship, the simplicity of it carries through her eyes, a similar glint discovered as she rolled her weight away from one leg and onto the other. Arms crossed and head canted down, Amma’s eyes spun away from the casualness carried through their exchange, the looming reveal of their intertwined past carefully coming to light.

“Harper is…” Her admissions feather off into nothing, the past year has not proffered much to her, their exchanges little to none, her observations carefully done through the fringes of conversation and interactions kept at a distance. Amma does not bring up what had nearly occurred to her after the trials, where she had attempted to lay blame at her feet, to spin the connection between the two sisters that loosely bound her to them. “She’s trying.”

“As anyone can, as everyone is.” It’s not so much defending her, or Blackjack, as she is unaware of what Harper had undergone, as she is unsure of what many saw during the trials and all that it had exposed. She knows partially of what it had revealed for Haven, Gil, and Aurora too. Amma doesn’t want to think of what it had left vulnerable within herself, the humanity shattered that slowly formed into a shell of a girl thought lost and forsaken.

“It has been maybe a year though. Things are happening here now that have happened once before. Do you know anything of the name Dae– “ She almost can’t say it, it chokes through her chest, punctures through her lungs, shatters through the rungs of her ribs, and rings suddenly through her ears where darkness threatens to descend. Amma clutches at her head, nails against her temple and lashes fluttering against the onslaught of unbidden terror that catches her breath.

“I don’t know. I just –” She lances her scarred fingers through her hair, tugs back through the chaotically compiled braid, and sighs. “I can’t remember. Someone was kidnapped, we saved her, but I don’t know if it’s connected to anything. I know people went missing once before, and it’s likely happening again.”

As Amma speaks about Harper, Sierra senses the hidden meaning of the other woman’s struggle and hesitation, each word carrying a burden that’s almost palpable. She reads the unspoken pain and fatigue in her words, the way her voice falters slightly, betraying the brave front she tries to maintain. It’s clear she’s been through a lot, more than she’s willing to admit out loud. That much Sierra had figured out when they’d first met and along the way, piecing together the fragments that make up the guarded person called Amma. The raven-haired woman is trying to put on a brave face, but there’s something more there, something she’s not saying.

But does Sierra care enough to try and find out? She hasn’t even asked Harper about her experience, after all. Or about any of the events that may have led to hazel eyes turning to white, grasping at the air around her in ugly desperation to find her way. The guilt sits heavy in her chest, a weight she’s not sure how to lift, and it makes her wonder if she’s been too detached, too wrapped up in her own world to notice the pain of those around her.

Or, at least, the pain of the only person that truly matters to her anymore.

The redhead tilts her head to the side, brown eyes regarding the equally pained figure before her. She studies Amma’s face, searching for any sign of what she’s feeling, any clue to the turmoil beneath the surface. “Dae?” she questions aloud, the word slipping from her lips almost unconsciously but in a softness that’s foreign to her voice. Her offering of a fragile olive branch comes in the form of an outstretched hand, one that pauses in its motion with the other’s last couple of words.

“Kidnapped? Here?” Sierra says, shaking her head. Her disbelief lingers in the air, her hand still hesitantly outstretched, caught between offering comfort and pulling back. She eventually drops it slowly, the guilt—her stray companion in the moment—tightening its grip on her chest. She can see the raw emotion in Amma’s face, the kind of pain that’s all too familiar. What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Harper? Because the redhead is certain that her trouble magnet is involved somehow.

“There is - was maybe, I don’t know now - someone here.” Amma carefully shakes out the remnants of her powers bound through her wrists, linking into pale scars aligned there, the sluggish crawl of scarlet threads cresting over each shoulder before it plummets down her spine and bids to the earth below. “Someone, who I think is responsible for the things I can’t remember. Responsible for…” She carries off into a whisper before all goes silent, the world stills and a breeze carries through the black tresses spilled over her shoulder, lifts them as if gestures dancing through her mane of hair before her eyes snap and pin Sierra to where she stood. There, it happens again, that single line of crimson that shimmers through her gaze ringed around her pupil as a sliver of hellfire unbound, unnamed, and unchecked.

“You found something. That’s why you’re here. Harper may have called you, but…” Amma takes a step forward, it had not gone unnoticed that she had reached out to her, another hand to mark in her waking world, within and without, to the many faces that strayed through her life undone. “What did you find, Sierra?”

Sierra’s gaze shifts to the pocket of her jean jacket, feeling the weight of the letters pressing against her like a physical burden. She pulls them out with deliberate slowness, each movement measured and careful, as if the letters might shatter if handled too roughly. The letters are still sealed, their edges crisp and untouched. The only certainty Sierra has about them is their author and who it is meant for. They represent a key to understanding the past—a bridge to the secrets buried deep within their intertwined histories. As she holds them, the gravity of what they might reveal presses on her, a potential to unravel the mysteries that have haunted both her and, she imagines, Amma for so long.

“These,” Sierra begins, her voice steadier now, “might be the answers you’ve been looking for.” She extends the letters towards Amma, her hand shaking slightly as she does so. “They were sent to your mother before...well, you know what,” she continues, her gaze dropping briefly in reflection, the memories of that time flooding back before she forces herself to look up again. “And could be connected to what’s happening now.”

She doesn’t want them. Her body refuses. Every delicacy of calm and grace she had obtained that morning suddenly spooled away on a phantom gale of unforeseen fate and circumstance, the weighted reality of those letters so carefully proffered to her as sacred relics of a past heralded within and without. Amma doesn’t want them.

No, but she needs them.

“She was right then.” The Beloved that was her, the could-have-been had she not been given to The Foundation, though, she had to wonder if it even mattered; for they had come for her still. The arm revealed that was lain with scars much like her own –

Maybe you should ask our father.

“I remember her sometimes, though it’s all unclear. I remember her often just sitting there, staring off into space.” Amma whispers, reaching forward, the trembling in her hands through every splayed finger as she reaches for the letters, the weight of their delicate bindings profoundly felt as she takes them from Sierra and holds each in her hands. The scars on her palms suddenly burn and it takes everything she is, and every ounce of control she can spare, to not destroy them and the contents within. She wants to ask how she obtained them, she wants to ask if she had any other leads, she almost doesn’t want to know, for she cannot help but wonder if it would matter in the end. If Charlotte was ever found…

“The Foundation is here, on the island, if they find out that you’re here too, I don’t think I can spin it again to get you out alive.”

Staring off into space, huh? Is that where you came in…mom? The image Amma’s words depict is a painful one—a reminder of the way she once watched her own mother, Anna, stare off into the void. It was as if Anna had been trying to decipher the mysteries of the world or, perhaps, the secrets from her research she could never share. Sierra remembers the countless nights spent in silent observation, wanting to pry into that very intelligent mind, to understand the thoughts that kept her mother so in her own head at times. The memory stirs a deep ache within her, a longing for answers that never came, and she wonders if Amma feels the same way now, caught in the web of unspoken questions and elusive truths.

Sierra’s shrug is meant to be dismissive, a casual gesture to mask the emotion welling up inside her. She tries to play it off, to make it seem like she’s unaffected, but the tightness in her throat betrays her. The way her heart clenches at the thought of what could have been different—if only she’d known more at the time, if only she’d been able to bridge that gap before it was too late—makes it hard to maintain the facade. Her mind races with the possibilities, the what-ifs that haunt her every thought. She swallows hard, forcing herself to push the emotions down, to keep them from spilling over, but the effort leaves her feeling raw and exposed.

It is a good thing for the both of them that facades have never been her thing, anyway. At least when not in a practical sense.

“I knew the risk in coming here and wouldn’t have if it wasn’t worth it. A deal’s a deal, right?” Sierra says then. As she watches Amma carefully holding the letters in those scarred hands of hers, a contemplative expression crosses her face.

“You know…it’s almost like it’s all come full circle. It’s like everything that’s happened has led us to this point.” Her tone is earnest here, each word chosen with care, as she pauses and then continues after a beat.
“I know we’ve reached the end of this particular arrangement, but if I come across anything more, which something tells me I will, I’ll make sure you get it. That’s my promise to you.”

“Perhaps,” Amma rejoins in a whisper, careful in her admissions, not wanting to burden Sierra with the truth: for the life she spared in her, and the punishment she endured for. The price she had to pay, the promises woven through her life; each formed into a chain link wed to her heart. They were two women bound and woven unto the falsehood of their mothers, unable to shake the fragments of half-truths and endless lies; never knowing where they began, never knowing where it would end. “Another test I failed: in being sent to kill you.” She glances down at the letters within her grasp. “I don’t know if what you’re looking for is related to what’s happening here but know that if I find your answers within my own, I will ensure it gets to you.”

“And our arrangement still stands, Sierra. She may not need it,” the girl who stood and looked upon her and the monster within, and refused to allow her friend to become just like her. “But I’ll keep an eye on Harper. That’s my promise to you.”

There’s a pause, a shared understanding passing between them, as Sierra absorbs Amma’s words, her demeanor shifting back to the determined, relentless woman she’s become over the years. The role she has played for some time now knowingly and without regret. She turns to leave, but before she does, she glances back at Amma, her voice softened by an undercurrent of genuine care.

“Whatever’s in there…don’t lose whatever you have of yourself to it. You’ve been through too much to turn into what the world wants you to be.”

And with that, Sierra walks away, her mind already spinning with the next steps demanded by her roles, both given and taken up.

She remains silent at that, watching as Sierra leaves, unable to still the quaking in her shoulders, the dappling of sunlight over her shoulders and hair suddenly a weight she struggles to bear, liken to the question that coils through her mind, beholden to her words: if only Amma she knew who - what - she was.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Lynx Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.019: rosemary.

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_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman}

Previously: My Heart's A Ghost Limb Reaching.

He kissed her back and set her world ablaze.

It was a hesitant shift, something subtle and barely felt before he moved, her mouth yielding beneath him, lips slanted and breath in a whispering exhale of need that banked low within her core, threatening to overwhelm her center of gravity that pitched forward; helplessly drawn to him. Whatever it was that existed between them, that tension that threaded each in a fated string of red, it pulsated through Amma and Gil as he plied her lips apart on a deft movement and drank deep. Unable to restrain himself at that moment, drawn helplessly by the pull of something unknown that bound himself to her in a kiss that answered so many unspoken things, but sired even more questions about what they were.

Amma decides on the first sweep of his tongue that she doesn’t even really care and blissfully succumbs to the rhythm of his kiss, his name simmering on the precipice of a whisper whilst he threads his fingers through her braided hair, tilts her head back and captures every breath and sound she has to give.

It’s as far as they go, burning kisses and caressing tongues, something that stokes an endless and eternal fire suddenly lit betwixt their figures drawn close, but not quite meshed together. A line is drawn carefully then, a silent promise of potential that neither is prepared to cross, for even with the weight of labels flitting around them, neither can be bothered to acknowledge them beyond the comfort they find in each other, in that moment. They lock eyes, heated and heavy breaths fanned together and shared in soft pants of desire and there she smiles: something soft, delicate, and he smiles too and asks:

What’s your favorite color?

From there it’s light-hearted conversation, simplistic admissions of things they prefer, small musings of their studies, and a joke or two that Gil makes in an effort to get her to laugh. It’s a peculiar sensation, but laugh she does, tired eyes soon following, the blankets barely kept between them as they talk until Amma quiets and eventually falls asleep, a peaceful glow beholden to her figure as the shimmering tension falls away.

They never talk about their pasts.

For now, it is enough.

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There is no alarm to disturb her, there is no feigning sleep whilst he moves and goes about his day, there is no pressing need to leave before he even wakes; it is simply a slow draw of her lashes in the feathering glow of the day through his window where there are no nightmares or dreams to sift through on the warming touching of dawn. It is a void, a comfort of nothingness, to be as she is in the intimacy of sleep with her cheek pillowed on her arms, body curled inward, seeking solace and warmth in the middle of the night. His frame formed around her without touching though there was a delicate line where their fingers barely caressed and Amma studied what little space remained between them in that moment before she tacked her nails against the lines of his hand; the hand she had held, the hand that was tangled into the mass of her hair to undo her braid. Strands of black slid over the glimmer of her eyes as she studied his features next, lax and lulled into sleep before a glow not far behind him withdrew her studious gaze.

She had shed her jacket at some point in the night, leaving her phone on his bedside table that was lit with the receiving texts coming her way, Amma sat up carefully, mindful of Gil lying next to her, and rose to her knees, deftly reaching him over with her palm holding her weight aloft, shifting against the mattress as the blanket falls away from her figure. She hesitates, glancing down through her lashes before she retrieves her phone and sits back to study the series of numbers pinging away on her dimly lit screen. Some from House Gulo about the upcoming dance (oh, that’s right, she thinks, they were going to buy dresses before Haven’s kidnapping) and for once the group chat is silent - no impending deaths or missing members. For now, she almost scoffs at that. With her thumb she scrolls away the notifications until another text pings away, coming through with a slow tilt of her head, the number only recently saved: Haven.

It’s an invite for shopping, meeting up at the ferry, that also extends into getting ready at –

Amma’s gaze sharpens, blue hardening to ice floes lost unto a tumultuous sea, and for only a moment, a barely felt coil of pressure immediately thrums away through her arms. Aurora’s. A lingering question echoes away through her mind: did she know? She had saved Lorcán, and Aiden had been there to witness, but she had doubts the elder Roth would be inclined to share what had occurred, for there was no real explanation for what she had done. Even now, situated on Gil’s bed, fingers curled around her phone and the light casting a soft shade of blue to her features, she couldn’t even figure out where to begin in explaining such an occurrence. Much less how it had been done; for it was the eternal perplexity of her powers undone and all that she was capable of in terms of unfettered destruction that saw her to his bedside where she had to try something at least, even if it had amounted to nothing at all. The shaking in her hands begins anew and she is helpless against the quake through her multitude of scars, a simple confirmation sent towards Haven that she would be there- nothing more, nothing less before she drops her phone at the sensation of being watched.

Amma’s eyes pull away from her phone, meeting the steelish-azure of Gil’s observations deepened by the lingering draws of sleep, a tenderness that released all the emotional strain they heralded in their waking worlds. It’s the first time they have woken up together and it’s in that revelation that some would take for granted that Amma’s lingering stare softens, but there are no words to spare: no soft-spoken ‘good mornings’ or sweet nothings to exchange, there is only so much to offer and it breaks into uncharted territories that she cannot name or face.

“Hey,” she mutters quietly and tucks a few wayward strands of black behind her ears, head canted slowly to one side to study every line of his profile to note certain details and nuances to Gil that she would’ve never noticed before.

Gil rubs his eyes, pushing off the last of lingering sleep, and smiles.
“Hey.” He replies, his voice low and soft and rested. He sits up, sidling back to lean against the wall; the blanket slips from his torso and he folds his arms across his chest, bracing against the morning chill.
“You look pretty with bed-head,” he says, offering early-morning flirtation and hoping the ease of conversation from the night before hadn’t lifted with the morning sun like the darkness had.

For the first time in many years, Amma Cahors blushes, a quaint pinch of pink spreads across her pale face, pronounced by the sudden flash of brightness in her eyes. There's playfulness in his words, the simplicity in their shared musings washing over her once more and spun from her mouth in a delicate laugh: bell-like, graceful, almost flush with embarrassment as her eyes dance with the memory of the night before.

“So do you,” she quips back easily, voice quieted into a husk from disuse, and motions off-handedly with her phone before she sets it aside to work through her mass of hair, delicately working through the tangled tresses.

“I'm meeting the girls today.” Amma offers next as she shakes out her mass of hair that falls down her back. The movement is intimate, a vulnerability in fragments that Amma has never spared before but she finds refuge in the coming day that paints daylight across her gestures as she continues to work.

“I think-” Gil replies, leaning across Amma to fetch his own discarded phone from where it had bounced across the bed the night before and lodged itself down the side of the mattress, “I’m supposed to be meeting Lorcán and Rory as well.”
He sits back up, side-to-side with Amma again, and they take a long look at each other. Gil’s eyes trace her lips, and then slightly lower down, where the gathered blanket moves softly against her curves.

Gil sports his own blush as he clears his throat and returns his eyes to the screen. Mostly Rory, nothing from Lorcán, a text from Artie he ignores.
“I’m to head there, apparently. Both Canis and all that.”

Amma hums quietly in response, listening but distracted entirely by the sensation that coiled down her body from the weight of his stare on her lips; she thinks back to the way he had kissed her, the way he had melded against her and captured her breath in a heated whorl of tongue, and the way he simply looked at her now- she can’t decide who would eat who alive first.

But.

“Gil,” Amma whispers, tempting his eyes back to her, the question unspoken there, and with her face darkened further by the boldness of her next words, she says: “I want you to kiss me again.”

“Okay.” Gil says, quickly; the short syllables are still not short enough to avoid being cut off by the meeting of lips and hot breath. They push and pull against each other, morning sun cascading over their bodies, matching their caresses and wandering hands. Amma is everywhere; her scent invades Gil, her heat matching his and propelling both to new combined heights, the taste of her in his mouth. Something silver and metallic and electric sparks through Gil as he grips above her waist in one hand and her pelvis in the other - he can feel it in the back of his teeth before it streaks cold down his neck and sends a shiver through the course of his entire body.

Amma is lifted onto a new plane of simply being as she is, where the pain and rage is exchanged for this christening desire and need, it sluices away across her skin, scars emblazoned and betwixt flesh and bone silver tendrils pulse and coil and posture through her nerves and sends her blood singing: his name, taste, and touch the conductor that harmonizes beside the red that slides down every link of her arched spine.

Finally, they break; their breath is hot and hasty and heavy, the passion laden in it practically fogging in the morning air of the bedroom. Gil puts his forehead to hers again, keeping the connection point they’d forged the night before.

He takes a few deep breaths, and licks his lips, Amma lingering on his tongue, before he manages to speak.
“I think I need a cold shower.” He remarks, laughing at himself and his bad joke. “You’re welcome to stay, or you’re welcome to…”
He clears his throat.
“Well. You’re welcome.”

She feels something that flits across the chasm lain within her heart and soul, something that banks away into swirls and electric streaks of scarlet that bloom as fire in her veins. Amma tastes Gil in every quivering draw of breath that punches through her chest, her lashes panned down low in that moment as she smiles, a feral and edged grin that stalks across her face and lifts her bright eyes to his; forehead against forehead and her hands greedily woven through his hair, marveling at the feel of it.

“As tempting as that is,” Amma rejoins quietly, her fingers slipping from his hair to cradle against his neck then, feeling his pulse beneath her scarred palms. “I should get going.”

It takes a momentous effort for her to slide off the bed, a tremble through her body now hyper-sensitive and aware of him, but she manages with a delicate settling of her clothes into something proper, smoothing her blouse and shorts carefully before she reaches for her jacket and lazily pulls her arms through the sleeves. All the while she keeps her eyes fastened onto Gil, never once breaking her gaze. Amma reaches for her phone, leaning forward onto the bed where she moves in close to him once more and breathes a quiet, heated farewell against his mouth with a subtle wink.

“I'll see you later.”

Gil marvels in awed silence, enraptured by Amma’s subtle display, and nods slowly at the whispered promise. He watches her leave, sliding quietly through the gap in the doorway, and then - still, for some reason, bunching the blanket deliberately over his pelvis - makes for his bathroom.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Lynx Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.011: My Heart's A Ghost Limb Reaching.

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_{Interaction(s):-}

Previously: it's so hard to be. & dread wolf.

The twilight hour is kind to her likeness, bathed in reds and eclipsing oranges with striking hues of violet that lance through the clouds above, her gaze pulled to the canvas heralded there as the figments of her past hazed in and out with the insistent ringing that came and went with her shuddering breath. Amma had loosely plaited her hair, still damp through some of the strands and donned a large black jacket hinted with muted ochre edges that signified House Gulo with a small shield and wolverine emblazoned there over her heart. She’d never even been to the Lynx building, not that it is difficult for her to locate with the structures being as close as they were, but even so she hesitated, rings twirled around her scarred fingers as she studied brick and sky and grass to better distract herself from the inevitability that someone would report that they had seen Amma Cahors looming yonder the doors as if a specter lost to the setting sun.

She asks herself if she cares.

It takes her maybe a minute to decide, every second spared with a sigh through her nasal and lips until the evening descends and the first herald of stars ignite the sky above, she enters House Lynx as if she owned the property with her glare locked ahead and braided hair tossed over her shoulder. Amma walks through the spacious common room without acknowledging those present before she pauses there, her head canted and that blue gaze sliding through her fanning lashes as she inquires aloud about Gil’s room. Silence rejoins her demands until someone answers in a whisper, gesturing above their heads that pulls a delicate simper from Amma’s full mouth, a blush and stutter her response before she disappears around the corner. Up a floor or two and another right until she hesitates, this time outside his dorm.

Before, she had entered his hospital room without so much as an announcement, had easily slid through the doors with little reservation that now fixed her to the spot with a hand poised to knock. Amma is a creature that does not hesitate, she knows this, and yet here she raps knuckles against wood, opposite gesture clenched around the doorknob, preparing to enter on her wants should he fail to answer.

He’s at the door quickly, not even pretending to distract himself from the wait after their brief call. His mind was a whirl, anxious and excited and wondering just what the hell he was thinking, with that call to this person, after sun-down and following such a volatile series of days. Gods, what must she think herself? What were her own expectations? What were his?

He opens the door. She announces herself with almost a whisper, her voice sliding through the minuscule crack as it yawns open just so, a sliver of darkness therein.

“Gil.”

“Amma.”

And he lets her in.

Striding into his room is surreal and unbeknownst to her, it crosses an unspoken boundary as she steps over that threshold easily, sliding by with little to no reservation with her eyes flickering to him in a brief assessment before flitting away. His dorm is similarly furnished to her own, perhaps inverted with facing a different way with the building’s structure, however, Amma is more curious about the personal touches and nuances of his room, if anything, to distract herself. For the hour is late and the cloak of night descends, the delicacy of the shadows meant entirely for them.

For whatever this was.

Standing in the middle of his room, she smooths her plaited hair over her shoulder and turns about to regard him entirely, she realizes that they have not spoken since the first night they spent together, where she offered comfort in sleep and nothing more, his text that followed thereafter and the following night where she joined him and then left before he awoke. The events that followed twisted through her mind, so much that had happened in so little time. Her head slowly falls to one side, studying him through her dropped lashes before she says:

“I assume you’ve heard about what happened with Haven,” her breath flutters out in a sigh, edged in something she cannot place. “And Lorcán.”

Gil pauses a little too long before responding, standing by the window and watching the shadowed lights - half silver-moon, half lamplight-white - play dappled over Amma’s figure. Her hands, delicate and graceful, play with her hair.

He held his phone up between thumb and forefinger, shaking it back and forth.
“I’ve been kept informed, yeah.” He said, sure that Amma had been audience to the very same texts and frantic messages he had. He tossed the phone to his side where it bounced across his mattress. “I can’t parse everything that’s happened. Keeps happening. Seems every new corner is another strike against us.”

Even in the waning twilight dark, he knew he looked tired. He could feel the bags under his eyes and the buzzing behind them.
“I haven’t slept better since the Trials than when I’ve slept beside you. I didn’t…don’t want to presume. But whatever this is, it’s not just me, is it?”

She could feign ignorance, she could deny and flutter her fingers one by one to dismiss the tension that, even now, coiled betwixt them, she could laugh and spell it to a passing fancy and nothing more. Her mind falls back to the words Aurora championed through her own despair, and the warmth and ease Haven and Rory found themselves in the gardens; Amma has always been wanted, she was the unexpected, the always desired.

She’s never been needed though, and that in itself means something. Right?

“No,” she begins slowly, twisting the ends of her braid around her index finger, tugging and pulling to still the trembling in her hands. “It’s… not just you.” The words are a struggle to reveal, but she manages just the same, lashes fluttering within silver-lined shadows at the admission; she feels emboldened under the fall of the night and takes a step closer.

“Is that why I’m here, Gil?”

A sense of relief washes over him - the tension of a hanging question unraveling with the provision of an answer. A good answer, no less. But it led to new territory - it was out in the open now, an agreement of something undefined but undeniably present. The weight of labels began to settle in around them. It was easy in the infirmary - silent shared slumber. Out here, it threatened to become real, and if it was real, it required tending to. Why was she here?

He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking up at Amma, her frame seeming to tower over him.
“I…don’t know. I could ask you the same. You’re here because I asked and because you said yes. I asked because you’re the only one who can pull me out of my own head. Why did you say yes?”

“Maybe it’s the same.” She muses aloud, looking down at him through a curtain of wayward black strands and lashes, a glow bidden to her gaze that falls as she moves, not quite coming closer but shifting her weight away from her ankle, free from its brace.

“I almost didn’t answer, I still don’t know if I should have. There is so much -” Amma pauses, voice lost to a brief trill of laughter that comes away almost lost and without, unbidden but free nonetheless. “So much that keeps happening. Maybe it’s just that simple; we don’t know.”

“Both so caught up in our heads we can’t figure out where to begin.” She delicately taps against her temple before her hand drops, the quaking of her palms and fingers caressed against the scar at her chest that steadily hums beneath her gestures.

“With each other.”Gil said after a pause. “We can’t go on forever as…moonlight bedfellows, and unspoken tension. We figure this out and maybe we get our heads straight in the sunlight, too.”

Amma supposed it was accurate, though she refused to utter so aloud, the utterance of ‘we’ so simplistic, it bore a weighted acknowledgment to what lingered there on the edges of moonlight. Instead, she closed the distance from where she stood and sat down next to him on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder as they had been a few nights ago. He had asked her here to drag him from the depths of his tumultuous thoughts, and hers were no less spun through with leagues of chaos and unknown emotions; things she may have felt years ago but had long since perished under the might of life undone. How the others made it look so easy, so natural, is lost upon her but her body turned into his almost naturally, angled in such a way she could almost decipher the uncertainty banked there in his steel-blue gaze.

Her hands tremble, as they have off and on for hours now, but she knows this: her touch was one of reaping destruction and pain, but they had also saved others and she remembers holding his hand through the night before the rising sun had chased her away as if a dream. Here she recalls words spoken to her. To mend. Instead of sunder. Could she? And if so, where could she even begin? Inquires looping through her mind on repeat over and over again -

Amma carefully reaches forward, hesitating, fingers arched and with a softness bidden over her features, she takes ahold of Gil’s hand and liken to that night, she enmeshes her fingers with his entirely and holds there; the cogs of her mind blissfully stilled.

Gil doesn’t say anything; he accepts Amma’s touch, and a slight chuckle escapes him. Amma only offers a raised eyebrow, missing the humour of the moment, and Gil can only say:
“I didn’t expect you to be so warm.”

His foggy mind clears but his heart rate spikes; he breathes her in, smelling the faint clove cigarettes, and the night air still lingering in her hair, and the remnants of perfume about her neck. He leans forward, and ever-so-gently, their foreheads touch, and Gil closes his eyes, just feeling her rising breaths against his.

Amma has never known peace; would not even be able to recognize the freedom of it, so dissociated from the concept that it takes her a moment to simply be. Deep down, she is, as she once was: a girl, no more, no less. One that had been cast alone in the dark for too long, one that had shed away innocence to herald the creature of rage within, to protect the frailties of her heart and soul spent and broken. A flush, sudden and perplexing, immediately coils away through her lithe frame, her breath drops, and deepens, and the shimmering veil of intensity that often eclipses her suddenly spools away into nothing. Her eyes close and the trembling in her hands spells away with it on the flutter of her lashes, with their foreheads touching and their hands entwined, Amma leans into Gil, lulled by the moment, the world silent and beholden to her grace for once. She doesn’t know how she even manages to move closer, but she does and a shuddering breath falls from her lips at that moment, her touch against his tightening just a fraction that ignites a shiver up the length of her arm.

They lock eyes, their breath mingling, circling around them and in and out of a shared pair of lungs.

“Hey there, supernova.”

“Hey there, casanova.”

The words are easy, no longer burdened by uncertainty, unknowing where they originate, but it all phases away into the backdrop with the weight of his eyes locked onto her- the way he looks at her stirs a heat, a fire lain dormant within as if eternally shimmering coals of yearning that immediately seize her. Amma studies the planes of his face, flickering up and side to side before descending onto his mouth leaning in close to her:

If you know what you want, reach out and take it.

Words given by the man before her, words that flitted through her mind, words that spun purpose through her body as she did just that. Amma compelled herself to be selfish much like the creature she was, she closed that distance between them with a shuddering breath and caressed her lips against his own, eyes falling shut on the sensation that dipped away into nothing the moment she kissed Gil.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Gulo Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.006: dread wolf.

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_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: the undone. & rare birds.

Amma Cahors is tired.

It goes beyond the leagues of physical fatigue and ventures into the unknown chasm of a hungering void reminiscent of a famished creature, a well of yearning that situates betwixt flesh and bone and weighted her body liken to stone. Rigid and unyielding and rapt with obsidian inlays of that once resolute willpower that personified the woman of cruelty many assumed her to be. The unknown, the in-between, the All that was Made, the –

– who was she? What was she?

Was she Amma, was she Tiamat, was she Ammar —-
Was she The Foundation, The Dragon, The Beloved

Was she the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged.
Was she rage, pain.
Was she –

Did Amma ever exist, whoever it was that gazed on back through silver and glass with eyes of the void wrought with crystalline blue and power that clung to her dilated pupils constricted in a hellish ring of scarlet. Liken to twine, chains maybe, that defiled her glare the more she looked on with darkened circles blemished upon the hollows of her eyes. The return to the Gulo Dorms had been met with silence and trepidation, heralded by the figure as she that loomed through the doors. Her chin lifted and eyes narrowed, a dominating impression, the mystery that often shrouded her likeness now lesser by the realization that Amma could be wounded, hurt– that she was indeed, human.

Did that now make her a student of P.R.C.U, was she a true member of Blackjack? Did she deserve to be? Did she want to be?

Her mind wonders, gestures knotting through damp locks of ebony that twisted over raised ink and scars. No matter the answers to her inquiries, she would always be one thing above all: a monster. And though the world had enough to reign true in the nightmares of their reality, she remained as one of a forsaken beast that had nowhere to call home. Neither here on the island, nor there among pyramids in an ocean so tranquil and deceiving, and though she may return there (she pauses then, fingers stilled before the shaking begins anew) it did not mean she would be welcomed back or even belong. If she ever did. Suppose she could ever be free. She made it no secret how she felt in the last year, refusing to entertain conversation and better acclimated herself to remain garbed in shadow and distrust, playing well into the role she had to perform and adhere to. A once ensured sanction of purpose that now gave pause and hesitation to the finality of her words whenever spoken aloud. She smooths her thumb against the pout of her lip, swollen still with her bite, a bruise of violet christened to the pink of her full mouth from where the fear of the dark unknown had almost seen her undone.

The last few hours at the infirmary had been taxing upon her mortal frailties and mental constitution, her emotional aptitude fairing even less as she considered the name unspoken, the name that heralded more power over her spirit than all the epitaphs carved onto the wall of obsidian fortified to her heart and soul. He knew her mother. He knew Charlotte Cahors and somewhere within she yearned for the answers a child of barely ten had been asking for the last ten years and more: where did she go? And above all else: why? Deeper still than those fated inquires too she wondered if she had the will, the constitution, to receive those answers. Would any of it matter? The past would remain as it was: ill-bound and fated to the cruelty of many this world yearned for, the power of humanity spent and lost to the depravity of man’s ever-persistent inclination to pillage the different; the misunderstood; and not being as they should.

She dropped her towel, left bare and vulnerable, water clung to her modesty heavily endowed in scars and ink, and palmed over the crisscrossing of pale, silvered malice wrought through her flesh and heralded with the likeness of a netherworld she was owed. With a held breath Amma returned to the adjacent bedroom, gaze immediately snapped and drawn to the bouquet that sat upon the edge of her academic desk where books and papers were aligned, beset with spiral-bound notebooks and a plethora of miscellaneous objects afforded to a student.

Earlier in the day she awoke and waited for her discharge paperwork, but there had been something off in the first encroaches of dawn, pale light chased by the peculiar sensation that she had missed something vital, her room awash in the dregs of her powers that sparked and fizzled out on the cusp of her fretted emotions then and there. The delicate effect of Aiden Roth’s gratitude weighted through her body and the realization and lingering toils of emotion that came to when she had saved Lorcán’s life. Death then, the reaper more so, had come to her that fated hour and wrent asunder her nightmarish world, to exact the toll stolen from their influence in illustrations of fiendish black that shattered through her body. A creature she knew naught of that screamed and shrieked at the beast within that bellowed with the might of life undone, fissures that formed unto blue eyes of her likeness beset on a face of perfect nihilism that roared in defiance and possessive qualms to the life that she had saved; again.

Not for the first time, and not for the last. The many lives she spared and saved and touched, and barely there were words of gratitude spun from one who affected her more than most, but refused to even meet her gaze. Even so, Blackjack (well, maybe only some, she thinks) would dub her the malicious and be done with it. To become nothing like her, as one had sworn.

Would they know; would they care?

But then she had noticed the flowers, their arrangement is done with purpose albeit with an amateur’s grace by the uneven heights of many different blooms. Their presence gave her pause and Amma wondered who would’ve visited her in the night, coming to her after the realizations of her own heart, and thus she reached forward –

Only for her powers to respond immediately, arcs of red shearing through the ebony petals of a rose, eyes rounded and lifted in surprise as words slithered against her mind:

Objective.
Mission.
A different breed.
A task; a challenge.

Oh, Amma. Tiamat. You’ve done it. We’ve done it. A prize possession. I’ve found it now- through you, I will finally — there is so much we can do.

So now, let us begin.

She had balked, the shaking in her hands beginning, and for hours they would not stop, they would quake and even in the garden beyond where she had basked in the sun with a winged girl who now understood her and the horrors endured, they would continue to tremble. Her hands would shake for a time unseen and unknown, the world beholden to the delicacy of Amma Cahors’ fear.

Oh, what beautiful flowers! We’ll make sure they get back to your dorm with your things, now before you go, we just want to…

The arrangement stood there as a representative of something unnamed, but she could not ignore the spooling words through her mind eternal, words she had heard in another place, another time that now swept through her tenfold as she studied each blossom and pondered their meaning. Whispered words undone through the dead of night as she trembled with the exhaustion of her powers shuddering through every link of bone and nerve.

And it was there the ringing began, something unseen that began small, a slowly building crescendo of a delicate, peeling sound before it crested ever higher with that dreaded noise. Betwixt her ears it lanced back and forth and to and fro, a hollow resonation and a droning echo that speared through her lobe with a terrifying sunder of darkness eternal and shadows without. Amma sunk nails through her tangled hair and scoured over her scalp to cease the noises toiling through her shattering mind, a silent scream peeling through her lips as the ringing continued evermore. It rose and then fell, a wave of sharp and intense sound as images flitted on through her mind’s eye, the third and all-seeing globe bisected with black and red– of shadow and blood and phosphorescent blue. Numbers ran by there, names and labels and metal in chains that looped over her body, brought her to her knees almost as fated blooms of scarlet power summoned themselves upon the stillness of the world beholden to her sudden weaknesses.

Helpless to her rage and pain, helpless against the creature within that would seek the revenge owed to her. Helpless to her might that shimmered in crimson cords that snapped and pulled and linked through her flesh as a cage of powerful intention. Splayed gestures fell over the glow of her eyes, peering through the fringes of her shaking hands as she pulled in shuddering breaths and speared nails against her temples to reign in the loose confines of her control.

Control, she pleaded, control. Even still as the ringing climbed higher and higher, accompanied by the buzzing of something else and the slithering trio of serpents she could still feel bunched over her skin. As if still bound and knotted over her shoulders to flick black tongues against her skin to feed upon her agony. That now clamored with want to feast upon the lingering figments of death and poison she had destroyed the night before to save the life of another. Her palms still recalled the sensations of her power sluicing through his body and the heat of his manifest banked and stifled before it answered to the callings of life. Her arms still bore the weight of power as she descended into the hated dark and the gates of hell that was nothing more than a shattered door and depths beyond a room she could not enter. Her past was shackled and bound as she was with a sliver of pain that vibrated down her entire body and wound her spine tight in tumultuous ache. Skeletal links through her back, the scars emblazoned anew as weariness swept through her and listed through her steps as she finally peeled her eyes away from the flowers and dressed on repetitive motions. Black on black, cotton materials and white accents lined through the shorts she donned, small comforts afforded to be without roommates to complicate her musings as she worked through her mass of damp hair.

Her phone rings, vibrating across her desk. She ignores it, just as she has ignored the others, the texts illuminated back and forth, the news revealed of Haven’s rescue and Lorcán’s recovery. Amma knows these because she had been there, but even so, reading them had done something to her and she had wanted nothing more than just to sleep. At that, she recalls the one text she could not bring herself to answer but had confirmed her return to his bedside, no words to be spared because she simply had none to give. The soothing of her erratic mind, placating her demons alongside his own, melding into one another in simplistic comfort and understanding. He had admitted things to her, and she to him, but Amma could not fathom the complexity of admitting more than what ailed her upon the surface of her soul. Muted thoughts and feelings, she contemplated, allowing her ebonette strands to dry unbound. Her phone rings again, and still she does not answer, but this time she looks at least, to screen her persistent caller.

And there, she freezes. A number unsaved but one that had called her many nights ago on the beach, where the start of all of this had begun and where she allowed herself to forget. If only for a moment.

It rings again. And again. And again.
Missed calls stacking up and up and up.

Her phone skitters in place and she slams her palm over the glass of it, lines of red wrought through the surface of her desk as it vibrates against her palm; demanding to be heard, demanding to be seen. Demanding to be answered as it rang again and again.

Amma’s fingers curl in and surround the fortified casing, intending to shatter it entirely, to destroy this simple and damning connection until it finally rings once more, and the name illuminated there in the descending sun that casts her room aglow in striking lines of vermillion, the herald of twilight where she wavered for a few seconds, debating on the answer.

Before it falls to her inbox (that she has not set up) she accepts the call with a whisper, his name spun from her mouth in a perplexed utterance, laced heavily with anticipation and punctuated by her breath.

“Gil?”

The following timbre that sweeps through her is damning in the implications they had chosen to ignore, the comforts spared in the ward now slowly bleeding out onto something more. His uncertainty gives her pause, if only for a moment before she sighs, a wealth of sound edging into soft breaths before she whispers a single word that could potentially seal her fate unknown:

“Okay.”

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Sub-Basement - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Take On Me #3.063: the undone.

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_{Interaction(s): the fist & jim. - @Lord Wraith}

Previously: survival.

First Katja, then Rory, and then Harper next. Amma witnessed as they braved the unknown, tendrils of ivy mocking at her presence as it meshed and wove over crumbled brick and forgotten remains. A breeze swept through the tumble of curls tossed over her spine, smoothed against the planes of her back where a sphere of unholy terror bunched and swelled, feathering anxiety through her limbs and corded through her belly that seized at the turmoil of the dark lain before her. She could not catch her breath, harsh as it was through her nasal with every attempt to breathe, the weight fell to her chest an excruciating pressure that cinched her throat and pinged through her ribs with trembling exhales as panic maliciously held her fast and immobile. Her lips parted around a choked sound that fell away into nothing, stolen by the exclamations coming from the corridor that taunted her, not unlike the simulation that had shown her the truth of all that she could have been and was not, the oppressed halls and the depths of Hell where she reigned true.

Amma may not have been a stranger to pain, but horror, the minute and silent kind that sheered through her body as frigid claws of a lamented creature of dread, was an entirely new concept she could scarcely even begin to decipher.

That sphere of influence she commanded swelled with the awareness of others, figments of sounds and pinging eyes that swept down her spine wound tight and bound. Chains of fears, chains of the past that writhed against her as demented vipers of the hated dark she refused to venture into. Electric fragments of red slid through every splayed gesture, nails arched through the fabric of reality, threatening to maim at the dominating presence looming through the shadows of forgotten, overgrown shrubbery. Scarlet coils manifested upon the fringes of the world beholden to her hesitating fears, risen high over her lithesome shoulders as she said:

“Who is there.” Not a question, but a demand, one drenched in a silver glow that fell through her glare.

The steady hum of the motorcycle was the first to answer Amma's question, her eyes drawn to the gleaming black vehicle before it came to a sudden halt. Its rider dismounted in one smooth motion, his helmet retracting within his collar as the long coat he wore splayed behind him in the September breeze. His eyes locked onto her own, meeting briefly, holding as they each studied the other. Colour drained from his face as he looked upon the girl he knew so much about but had yet to see. Amma wore the face of a ghost, the past embodied in her form.

"Charl-"

Thundering hooves broke the moment and colour rapidly reappeared in Shiv's face before he turned to greet Jim who quickly jumped to the ground before approaching Amma.

"Cahors, did you open that door?"

Was that – No. No. Amma’s eyes rounded out, the crimson powers churning away at her palms immediately snuffed out into plumes of obsidian smog that slid betwixt her lungs with the sharp inhale that whistled over the pout of her lip. Taint writhed through the chasm of her heart, sired by the name unspoken, the first curl of an annunciation that would’ve shattered her world stalled by the arrival of Jim. If it had been anyone else, she might’ve had more to say- to demand. To finish that name that listed through her hellish memories as both god and the ultimate betrayer.

“I - no.” She uttered, regarding them both with a shuddered breath. “Katja did… Harper and Rory are in there with her. We followed a trail here.”

Her glare of blue once more landed on the first arrival: the man on the bike whom she did not know, but familiarity still bloomed there, his likeness spoken to her once whilst in attendance at The Foundation.

“Haven was kidnapped.”

"Haven too?" Jim replied looking towards Shiv, "Boy, ain't y'all just fine and dandy for bringing your screwed pooch over to my island."

"Then we must hurry, though if the building is compromised Daedalus would have already fled. Pray your student is both still inside and alive."

"Amma," Jim turned back to the girl, "I can push the water back and give us a fighting chance, but can you ease the process by destroying it?"

"You'll need to ensure you don't take any thing along with the water," Shiv added, his keen eyes looking down the narrow corridor. "That building is one misfire away from being gone completely along with those inside."

“Yes…” Amma answered, a peculiar haze filtered over her gaze, a sheen of silver courtesy of her powers now posturing over her arms, careless whorls of scarlet that threaded down ridges of scars and raised ink. Betwixt her ears there laid a voice, a terrible and guttural fury that sheered against her mind, fixated labels and darling phrases to her temple, dug deep into the recesses of memory gone shadowed and dead and forlorn. A name that pinged away through the wall of obsidian and scoured thick lines against the fortress of her soul, spelling out the herald of all her pain and her rage, a cruel sire that haunted her dreams now given new life.

Daedalus.

Her entire body seized on a phantom tremor, unease spindling out onto the ground in fissures of red that she struggled to contain, the world at her reckoning trembling with the influx of her power unbidden and yet foretold. Amma carefully sunk her nails into her awaiting palms, her only method for control, knowing not what that name meant to her, but knowing it nonetheless as an eternal reaper through her life undone. Within and without, she pleaded and turned at the approach of others, noting Calliope and Banjo next that stumbled upon the scene. She spared them little acknowledgment, fixating the intensity of her gaze back onto the dark, unable to vocalize so much as a demand or response before she finally stepped into the corridor- mindless of the screaming child within long thought dead that cried and wept as she vanished into the shadows.

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She tells herself that she’s fine, that she doesn’t care. She tells herself that she’s okay- over and over and over again. She convinces herself long enough to at least make way further within, erratic pulses of red danced over her lithe frame in tandem to her heart with that ebb and flow that struggles to maintain the composure she’s fighting for. The walls are groaning, breathing, a tomb that she is willingly wading into, down and down, that oppressed feeling crushing her ribs and puncturing her lungs over and over again. Her breath comes out in quick gasps that tumbled over the pout of her lip impaled by a ridge of bone, so hard she tasted copper on her tongue and welcomed the distraction of pain with it. She can hear the others, but dare not call out, wary of the screams that bunched and wedded to the confines of her chest that rose and fell on shuddering exhales. The water touches her first and Amma is taken back to the endless depths of the ocean that pulsated beyond slivers of glass and sterile panels. They dragged her down into the dark so often that she knew the way through every line of her heart and soul, down and down.

Downdowndowndown –

– down within the confines of the ocean, no one can hear you scream.

I’ll lock you down here so they can’t find you.
So they can’t have you.
You said yes, you gave yourself to me.
You can’t take it back.

This cannot be undone.

The water rushes ever higher and for a split second Amma contemplates surrendering herself to the depths below, if only to silence that voice in her head. The roars, the wails, the eternal bellows of esoteric nightmares and fiendish replicas of what lay dormant and hidden within. The monster that swore vengeance and demanded it be paid in blood.

And death.

“Amma!” His voice cleaves through her mind, enough to sunder her from her awakening panic, eyes gone wide, lashes fluttering in the dark as the structure quakes and lists to the side. Concrete fell, chunks of it plummeting into the rising waters that stole warmth from her entire body, it felt like ice floes in her veins, chips of death that threatened to drag her under as metal snapped, groaned, the entire structure weighted under the rushing waters that surged and parted around her hips. It pulled against her entire frame, pushing her farther back until she braced her weight forward, her ankle protested against the adjustment, tender still in its brace, but Amma pushed through it. She would not be undone, no matter how encompassing and overwhelming her fears.

Violet energy spun through the spring water, the power immense as it was suddenly forced and manipulated back, a shield of psionic capacity that did as commanded and pressed the water farther away until walls of frothing depths shimmering in purple hues yielded around them. Amma carefully glanced back towards Jim, the other man who she could only acknowledge as The Fist, and yonder where Calliope and Banjo made up the end of their group, her eyes carefully swept over each of them as Jim came up at her side, a subtle nod all that was spared as the building shuddered and quaked once more. Katja and Harper were somewhere up ahead, Rory too and Haven somewhere lost within the confines as this freshly marked hell that had lurked below for a time unknown.

“Stay back.” Amma advised with a commanding ease, knowing time was not in their favor, not as the entire structure groaned, as if wary of her approach as she strides forward and suddenly fell to her knees, palms upon the ground and nails against the concrete as sudden swells of scarlet manifest razed through the world on a roar of power. A droning resonation shattered through metal and the fortifications that blocked some of their way, a radius of thirty-three feet all that could be spared until she stood and walked forward, palms thrust out to carry the angry tendrils of scarlet that snapped and struck and wrent through the violet barriers holding the waters at bay. She surrendered it all into the void at her eternal beck and call, the feathering lines of silver that slid through her lashes and alighted her eyes, the barriers falling away as she thrust out her arms and willed her might to reap and destroy. Amma commanded and manipulated the depths to vaporize, waves shuddering and hissing with her hellish manipulation, slowly whisked away into nothing, molecules all for naught and helpless and yielded to the nihilism of her waking world. She walked through the corridors, into the depths of her own hell, Jim mindful at her side as he continued to spell out violet barriers to maintain her path of destruction until they caught up with Katja and Harper, a door splintered and cracked that too fell away at the mercy of her power that wrought through the wood and willed it into nothing.

She knew it would not last long as she gasped and turned her splayed gestures into fists, immediately sundering that connection to the world that wailed at her manifest. Amma nearly fell, the amount of HZEs toiled about her person abundant and tangible, pulsating black and crimson in her wake as she struggled to breathe. An opening had been made, one of limited means, but one none the less that cost her precious resources, all of her time spent healing affording her just enough ability to allow them to finally reach Haven- if she still lived.

“Hurry...” She bid them, gaze aglow in silver and blue, locked ahead and within as shadows amalgamated and swarmed through her vision, tendrils of black that speared through her mind that suddenly screamed. An unknown barrier that prevented her from going any further into the dark unknown, memories lain there that would have wrought her spirit asunder- a block. One carefully constructed so that she may never venture unto the hell of her true past. Amma’s lashes fluttered, a seizing tremble that shook her lithe body until she suddenly fell back, lids shuttered over the veil of her intense eyes as she suddenly fainted with a final swirl of scarlet energy that shot off into the darkness as the entire building shook once more.

Shiv’s arms came around her immediately, catching the body of Amma Cahors as she fell, the might of her power undone spent through the traumatic experiences he knew she had endured for so long. He lifted and held her with ease, unable to shake the phantoms of the past that illuminated her face with the likeness of a woman that haunted him to this day.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Infirmary : Campus Grounds : Canis Dorms. - P.R.C.U. Campus.}

Take On Me #3.049: survival.

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_{Interaction(s): katja. - @Zoldyck & rory. - @webboysurf & harper. -@Qia}

Previously: sugar.

They don’t question where she has been, not that she would have any answers to give.

Her guard resumes, only the one, as her state of mind was still under suspicion, and now inquiries had turned towards what she had endured, gleaned from the Trial’s foundation and the evidence spelled out in her simulated tortures: the injections, the experiments, the Hell she had proclaimed as her eternal rest. Amma denies it all, refuses to spare the tale of her fears and the memories she cannot repeat, many clipped and hazed, many burdened by terrible pain and a ringing in her ears she cannot diminish. Every time she tries, a terrible roar sounds, a bellow of a netherworld creature, the screech of a beast - a monster - that pleads for an end that will never come.

Though still encouraged that she attend therapy regularly, Amma had been discharged temporarily under a probational period courtesy of Jim's direction that she was permitted to participate in classes and the excursion planned by various members of Blackjack. Further suggestion had been given that she return to the infirmary for a final observation- there was more talk of her blood, something uttered about anomalies that Amma had heard before, but could not recall where such admissions had been stated under a blanket of cold fog. She had sent a text to Katja, her first attempt at their agreed friendship, inquiring if she would accompany her to the mainland to shop. There are many notifications gone unanswered on her phone, the group message and numbers left unsaved, and another that loomed over her heart, where she had read it the day before over and over again, failing to recognize the hitch in her breath and the boiling panic of life rent asunder. That lingering fact that they were not allowed to see him siring anger and want. A desire she could not label, a horrid circumstance of fate too in knowing she was close and yet incredibly far away. Amma couldn’t spare her thoughts then, and she could not do so now, especially with another text left open-ended with gratitude spun heavily in a digital font. She had stared at the message for so long it was permanently inlaid through her mind, and whilst she did not answer him back at all for the entire day -

Amma had returned to his room under the whisper of midnight.
She had woken up before him the following morning, before his alarms, and noted the peace upon his brow, the lax features allowed with a moment of simplicity, the mask of many and all slid away under the ethereal glow of moonlight. His hand clutched against her scarred fingers, the canvas of her past and her pain somehow lesser with the way he held onto her through the night. An anchor to dispel the nightmares she had found him swept under once more, only this time he had not woken up and she could bring herself to do so again.

Now she clenched said mobile betwixt her fingers, the smooth casing warm beneath her cinched gestures tucked away into her pockets, black pants belted over her inked hips, a snug and fitted blouse of grey with long sleeves to ward off the Autumn chill with her mane of black hair pinned half up, the remainder left to smooth against the curve of her back. Katja had met her outside the infirmary where she later confirmed everyone would be meeting up at the ferry that would transport them to the mainland.

"I've never been allowed on the mainland before, this is a first." Amma provided, her attempts at conversation relaxed, courtesy of the actual rest she had been able to achieve the last couple of nights.

"Well, shame your first experience with the mainland happens to be this shithole." Katja chuckles softly to herself. "But I guess it does have its charms. How you feeling about that though? To finally be let off the leash, so to say?"

"It's not complete freedom, watch list and all that, I have to be back later today for a final evaluation. But, it's something..." She uttered, a lock of hair twirled around her index finger as they walked.

"I fear complete freedom isn't in the cards for any of us in the immediate future. Guess that just means we gotta make the most of the moments we're given and enjoy them to the fullest."

“I suppose,” Amma rejoined softly, unable to deny the truth of her words, the moments given with the midnight hours where something she could not name had bloomed upon whispers and clashing blues. The sudden vibration of her phone pulled her attention elsewhere, rapid-fire messages scrolling across her screen where her brows plummeted, confusion laced through her features as she stopped, sudden whorls of scarlet bidden to the fringes of reality that lanced through the ground. Quakes from the depths below, bathed in a writhing silver as she read the texts over and over and over again.

Kidnapped.Kidnapped.Kidnapped.

"Haven..." Katja stared at her phone for a moment, its screen cracked under the sudden pressure exerted upon it. She only looked up when she felt that familiar sensation next to her, those crimson tendrils of wicked energy. She hesitated for one, two seconds, looking at Amma like a startled animal who knew it was about to be punished.

But that feeling was fleeting, quickly overtaken by concern for Haven, and for Amma.

Katja dropped her phone and reached for Amma's shoulders, braving the energy that coiled around the smaller girl. She shook her once, twice, thrice.

"Snap out of it Am! Valkie needs saving, and she needs all the help she can get!"

Amma snatched her palm around Katja’s wrist, a sudden swell of energy bidden around her shoulders, silver flames alighted in her blue eyes as crimson cords snaked and snapped over her arms, unable to dispel the tremor that ran through her very bones.

“I made a promise once,” she whispered, lashes fluttering against an onslaught of memories unbidden, of a time and place where she fell through the ashes of the damned, where she had screamed and cried for all the wrongs of the world and the cruelty of power and life unbound. Where she begged and pleaded, for the hand in the dark that reached out to her, for the one who asked her what her name was, that dubbed her as precious and lost and forsaken- the one she –

The one she had -

“I know.” Was all she said, releasing the manacle grip she had, slowly plying her fingers away as she looked down at her phone once more. “Canis dorms, right.”

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

In hindsight, Amma doesn’t know what she expected, much less what could be done. Students had gone missing before and perhaps it was this that inspired her actions, back then there was little to be done, helpless as she was suspended in the dreaded dark upon the chasm of her agony. Those darling phrases lent to her waking world where the eternal pain remained as the tether to her lamented soul spent and drenched in red. The fury though was much the same, kinship to the vengeance she sought, to the redemption promised, to the malice that slid through her veins and churned over her flesh. The world once more held breath on the fringes of Amma’s intentions, her posture taut and rigid, arms crossed as scarlet threads of power warped over her shoulders as writhing serpents of ill intent and promise, the steps up to the dormitories looming before her.

When Rory stepped out, with Harper not far behind, she could not prevent the way her eyes dropped and landed upon his arms, the marks there sliced over muscles, angry slivers partially faded but still feathered in red, memory served of how she clung to him with the desperation of a wild animal. She would never admit it aloud, but she felt still the weight of the chains cinched tight around her throat and arms, still felt the needles pricking her skin and the way she stood now with her weight rolled away from her braced ankle, the scar on her chest an aching reminder that Amma knew she’d forever be damned with.

“If they have taken her,” Amma began carefully, mindful of Katja standing next to her- mindful of the distrust she knew would be marked in his gaze. “It’ll be near impossible to find her. I know you don’t trust me.” She shook out the weight of her powers, red sparks flung from her scarred palms, attempting to dispel the unease pinging down her spine.

“And I don’t care. But, I do know that many went missing while I was at The Foundation, and none were ever found. None were reported. But we noticed.”

And were helpless to stop it.

“If it’s…” Amma paused, a subtle tick in her arms, an anxious habit that bid her inked fingers to flex and crack, her rings adorned through her quivering gestures, gleaming with one in particular beset with a precious red jewel. “They used to take me down, through the dark, the lowest rooms imaginable, where no light could reach.” The same room where Rory had found her in the simulation, the fissures in the walls churning with the endless sea beyond, the deepest recess beyond even hell where only cold emptiness remained. She did not say so aloud but kept the intensity of her stare locked onto him, willing him to understand what went unsaid.

“That’s where they’ll have taken her. If they’ll even let her go, if they –” A ringing peal of agony sheered through her lobe, a horrid and anxious sound that bid her eyes shut, plumes of red and black whisked through her hair and down her back before it fell to her feet and churned away at stone and dirt, eating away at the world that was helpless against her might.

“A name. No, names. Many given and many taken. My name.” Names, she thinks, the countless monikers fitted to her past, the many now that burdened her heart and mind, the monster within lain dormant at her struggles, curiously soothed and complacent despite the shudder of her breath as she fought through the haze of her fiendish memories. Amma did not know if she could revisit those tortures once more; but if she could offer figments of her power to save those without; if she could offer the last of her strength to save those who owed her nothing; if she could soothe and placate another of their demons and fears; if she could accept friendship from another who she had harmed. If Amma could face all the wrongs the world had done to her and stand in defiance to the hated dark she would never admit that she feared.

Then maybe she could help to save the girl who refused to leave her behind, who offered to watch her back even when she openly mocked her hope.

Hope that she found alighted there in eyes of blue and hazel, but hope could only take one so far, and Amma knew she had none left to spare or give, as hope died long ago with the heart of a ten-year-old girl.

“I don’t know the campus like most, and I can’t go far without being with one of you, and they don’t want me gone long from the infirmary, but I will offer my power to you to help find her.”

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Flashback. Infirmary Gardens . - P.R.C.U. Campus.}

Take On Me #3.048: sugar.

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_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman}

Previously: Won't Be A Thing To Become.

She awoke with a subtle start; vibrations of awareness swept through her entire body, down the length of her spine curved and flush against the warmth at her back, cheek pillowed on the crook of her arm and opposite fingers nestled against the pout of her lip where a shuddering breath brushed over the delicate touches of her gestures- the same hand that had been entangled with his the night before. It was the coming dawn and the feathering light chasing away the comforting shadows that Amma realized she did not suffer any sort of nightmare or terror, she had slept, such simplistic sleep and comfort afforded to her waking world. Her lashes fanned against her cheeks, blue eyes still wreathed with catches of exhaustion, illustrating her usual intensity with softer features that beheld a sort of glow. She felt Gil move and became just that more aware of his presence and the quiet exhales of sleep before he stirred and came to at the sounds of his phone’s alarm. Amma’s breath stills, her eyes falling shut, not prepared to acknowledge that she had slept in his room, that she had pursued the comfort of night and companionship here, the slight tranquility that fell over the two of them with cords of tension that spindled through and down to her core that hummed with appetence. She felt him: felt the wealth of his stare, the weight of his body as he moved, her breath heightened to catch up on the cage of her ribs before she smothered that slip of a whisper against her arm and curled inward, preserving the warmth sought and given through the night.

He didn’t disturb her, and she was grateful, for she did not know if she could withstand the depths of those steel-blue eyes witnessing her in such vulnerability.

Implications donned the day, the touches of sunlight luring her further away from her feigned sleep whilst Gil assumed his morning, content to let her remain, the intimacy is not lost upon her, but Amma can hardly discern what it even was that had swept betwixt them by just the grace of touches alone. When he departed, her eyes immediately snapped open, and an uneven slip of a sigh fell over her pout before she arose, blanket pooling around her waist whilst she studied the cold space left behind. Her gaze lingers, lids panned down low, an unnamed emotion woven into a medley over her heart eerily calm where she palmed her scar and smoothed away at the ache bundling there. A phantom slice of pain and power that bled red and silver, the remnants of pleading mercy woven through her mind, a scream and a cry of fear of death given by her kiss. A declaration to the monster that had won and the undeserving spoils of a life she had taken.

Amma spared one final glance to where Gil had lain beside her all night, where he had not moved to touch her, where they had simply been, where the physical temptations had been replaced by something that dwelled within the mystery of an emotional connection under the disguise of moonlight and shadow.

She sighs, one hand sliding through the waves of her hair, nails clutched against the crown of her head where wistful trills ebb and flow, a laugh that hummed with all the hopeless wonder of the world.

The timing could not be worse.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

An afternoon breeze found Amma lying beneath a dogwood tree, sunlight filtered through gaps of leaves and branches, delicate catches of wind slid through waves of midnight hair draped over the stone bench she reclined on, eyes fixated on her phone trembling in her grasp. Darling rays of light suspended over her frame dressed casually in lace and an oversized jacket hued olive and trimmed in black. Her thumbs continuously pressed and slid over the fortified glass of her mobile, twitching fingers caressing the case as she continuously typed and deleted message after message, unable to acknowledge the wealth of emotion that sunk betwixt her ribs and tormented her spirit postured over the unknown.

Lorcán was hurt.

The group text she had begrudgingly accepted filtered with some numbers saved and others not, the simplicity of words lost to the truth of what had occurred. He was here in the infirmary like she was, like Gil was, and no further news had been proffered and who was she to demand otherwise? None had visited her whilst she remained locked in solitary, none had inquired about her affairs or state of release or healing. There were no messages from Blackjack as the days carried on and the only text she had revealed in her recent recipients gave her eternal pause every time she clicked back to it.

Gone to physical therapy. No dreams. Drop by again if you want to talk more about mending.

Thank you.

She had no method with which to reply, fingers hovering over digital keys, lashes fanned against her cheeks as she memorized each letter and clicked out of it once more. She allowed her phone to relax within her grasp as one arm draped across her brow and the opposite left to hang off to the side, the grass brushing across her knuckles whilst she glared at the swaying tree above. It was not often, if ever, that Amma was left out of sorts, spiraling into the uncertainty of where she belonged and questioning the beat of her very heart that seemed spliced through and through with hate, desire, and a comforting wealth of emotion found next to a man she had hardly spoken to before. Did the path of vengeance afford her minuscule doses of comfort? Did revenge owe it to her for the yearning wealth of companionship that ventured beyond the physical? Amma’s mind listed back to the forest clearing and the intensity of heat that had fanned away at her core, their powers that had forged into a singular unit of raw, unfiltered energy and having felt the entirety of him through the sluicing manifest spiraling through her even now.

A whispering voice, one that was seeded deeply with malice and doubt, the face of a demented creature looming on high that spun through her a hated voice that fed upon her ambivalence like a glutton.

The unexpected and the always desired.
But never chosen.

Amma laughed, a rueful sound spun from her risen chest as she breathed, punching out the ironic humor of her life undone. For she was a creature of life unforgiving and uncaring, she carved her path through the world without regret, spun hated words of truth that none wanted to hear, tore her hands through the shuddering veil of reality to take what she wanted, a woman of vanity and hubris, the sins of humanity compounded through her for all the oppression she had endured under the hellish dark of her past.

Yet here she lay, undone by a simple text. Undone by the reveal of helplessness. Undone by the very in-between in which she dominated and lived her life. Her faults within and without and a question that hazed through her half-lidded stare.

What did she want?
Everything.

But, now, lingered the exact quantity of what everything entailed. Did she want to visit Gil again? Did she even want to be friends with Katja, Haven, or even Aurora? Did she like Lorcán? Did she want to visit him too? Could she even bring herself to do so?

Amma won’t find the answers now, but as the day continues and the breeze sweeping through her fringe turns cold and the sun banks yonder the clouds of twilight, she finds the answer to at least one weighted inquiry as the hour tolls midnight once more.

Down the hall, alone, no guard to hasten after her haunting steps unhurried and unbound, a sweeping gesture down a familiar door that yields to her touch as if awaiting her very arrival by the heralding of the shadows soft and delicate along her profile. Gil is once more tossed within the throes of a nightmare, beaded sweat and laden groans at whatever stalked his dreams, the revelations the trial had revealed to him about his very self always known but ignored. Amma is beholden to his figure under the disguise of the night, a time now belonging to them, a moment she cannot place or name, and perhaps she did not want to. Perhaps he didn’t want to.

But then, what did Gil want? Did she care?

Carefully, Amma approaches, silent, as if unreal, hair tumbled down to her waist as she studies his features and commits such to memory. With their inevitable discharges from the ward, she wonders if they could even continue meeting, and if so, would he come to her dorm? Would she dare venture to his? If neither could sleep alone, what did such even entail? Did it have to mean anything, she wondered, tucking wayward strands of black behind her pierced ear. As if feeling her there, but unable to acknowledge her presence by the vice his nightmares maintained, his grip suddenly turned lethal and clutched at the space where she had lain the night before. Amma hesitated, a fluttering gaze bidden to the line of his arm before sweeping down where his cast had been traded for a boot to allow further mobility. She considered leaving, if only for a moment before she rested her hand on his, entangled her fingers with his own, and marveled at the immediate tension that unspooled through him and quieted the hellish sire of his terrors. She knows then that she cannot leave.

Slowly Amma entered the bed to lie down beside him, facing him this time instead of offering her back, the line of their bound gestures not allowing for another position, thus she told herself, the blanket provided creating another barrier between them. For maybe an hour she lay there, counting her breaths and his own, cheek pillowed on her arm, eyelids fell halfway through her gaze aglow in the shadows of the moon, silver framed on her lashes before sleep finally claimed her.

For the second night in a row, Amma Cahors does not dream.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Infirmary Gardens . - P.R.C.U. Campus.}

Take On Me #3.027: aqua regia.

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_{Interaction(s): katja. - @Zoldyck}

Previously: away & mirror, mirror.

She felt her before she saw her.

Her sphere of influence and perception is magnified, from every rustle and prick of grass impaled and torn by her nails, every scar of her usually graceful gestures pulsating with the vice she maintained to the earth below. It was anchoring her to this reality, as shadows oozed and spread through the fringes of her vision, her glare burdened by shapes of devilish creatures and profiles of malice that clicked and hummed with cruel grins wreathed in jagged bone. Awareness sires through her limbs as electric impulses of red dance through her pores, flashes of power gilded to every flicker of muscle as Amma lanced her gaze from the proffered hand she witnessed in her most recent nightmares, often beheld of blood and a broken heart, and ticked every passing glance through her lashes bidden on high in the first dawning touches of apprehension not befitting to her usual disposition. She cannot help with the way her eyes flicker, brightening just so in recognition, framed in glistening silver as she pins that intensity upon her shoulders- shoulders she had maimed, shoulders she had touched and broken and made bleed. The manifestation of her chaotic maladies that had impaled through imposing musculature and rent apart flesh and nearly bone. The hand before her was now bathed in red sorrow, the illusion of crimson pooling over the delicate motion hoisted above her crown where she was helpless against the rightful vengeance that would see to her demise.

Amma’s entire body goes rigid, a slight tension that corded through her lithesome shoulders that curled inward, pressing herself flush against the stone bench that ground against her aching back. Her lashes pan down low with a sliver of teeth edged onto the pout of her lip, liken to a feral animal retreating in on itself, her guards take one step, recognizing the signals almost immediately until she speaks.

“I’m fine.” She claims once more, louder enough for them to hear, and shifts her body enough to reach back, palm braced against stone, the entire length of her arm at such a disadvantage as she attempts to lift herself- the prideful of the fallen given here, as she rejoins on a whisper.

“I don’t need help. I don’t need anyone.”

Katja took in a deep, shaky breath as she could feel that horribly beautiful power of Amma. Her shoulders, despite supposedly being treated for any pain, started intensely throbbing as she was reminded of the painful sensation of being touched by that crimson lightning. Her hand twitched slightly as all of it came back to her. Though it only lasted for a split second, to Katja it felt like she was experiencing that night in the tent all over again: The confusion, the anger, the confrontation, the pain and the promise. All of it played out in front of her again.

Seeing Amma on the ground in that almost bestial pose of hers almost made Katja wish she would lash out at her again. At least then it would be over. All the pain, all the doubt, all the sorrow. The loneliness. Scattered with the wind as she was turned into dust by that incredible malicious energy.

But then she heard Amma utter those words. Words that echoed her very own when Harper and Rory had offered their help to her right before the Trials. Words that she now deeply regretted as she now understood how they must have felt when she told them off, much like Amma was doing to her right now. Despite everything, it pained Katja to see the pale girl like this. It was only a little over a week ago when they had both enjoyed their time on the beach. Where she could still embrace Amma and, despite the other’s rejections of the concept, treat her as a friend. She wanted that back. She would do anything to have that back.

But Katja knew that, if it were even possible, that would take time. She knew that she couldn’t force things through. One glance at her current state was enough argument against that course of action.

So instead she swallowed and spoke with trembling hands.

“I know.” Katja uttered meekly as she took a step back and slowly pulled her hand away after the rejection, needing no reminder of what would happen if she insisted on helping Amma. “Just felt like I should offer you the option regardless.” Her voice grew softer as her confidence seemed to wane by the second until finally only a barely audible whisper escaped from under her breath.

“To show that I care.”

“Hah! That’s laughable,” a bitterly seeded trill spooled from her lips, slithering through her gritted teeth as her arm strained to withhold her weight, every nerve wailing in pain, every muscle locked tight and taut and incredibly worn. She could feel the trio of serpents still clamored over her skin, writhing and coiling, bunched and feathering those forked tongues at the horrid scar she suddenly felt obligated to conceal. Her fingers clutched at the slope of her sweater, the sin of vanity wrought through her being as she laughed.

“I forget, teammates and all that. Blackjack is drenched in it.”

Though she hesitated, for just a second, her opposite gesture relinquished its hold at her breast and clung to the stone bench, hoisting herself up as best she was physically able. She shook her head once, twice, a terrible buzzing lancing through her lobe, stricken upon her thoughts and woes, and clung to every quivering muscle that refused to obey.

“Dammit!” Her legs gave out and slid out from beneath her, one arm spread aloft where her fingers clutched and dragged against the stone, and the other spearing her nails into the dirt where grass gave way to her self-inflicted wrath and pity. Amma cursed, head canted down low where a hardly interceptable nod followed, her critical gaze aglow in frigid blue oblique through her sweeping lashes and fringe of black hair.

Katja ignored the jibe towards Blackjack. Amma had made herself very clear about her feelings towards the team, so it didn’t come as a surprise to Katja to hear the derision in her voice. Instead, she looked on in subdued silence at Amma as she tried to hoist herself back up on the stone bench. Seeing her fail, Katja had to repress her instinctual urges to rush in to catch the other girl before she hit the ground. An urge betrayed by the flaring of her nostrils and a slight twitch of the tall girl’s fingers.

She wanted to look away, to spare at least some of the pride of the injured girl. But right as Katja was about to shift her gaze, she caught the blue eyed stare of Amma. Those eyes that had mocked her so cruelly mere days ago. Those very same eyes that had, if only for a fraction of a second, shown remorse at the harm she had done to her. Now however, there was a different look in those eyes, one that Katja couldn’t quite place. And with it came a barely noticeable nod of acquiescence.

The first step Katja took towards the downed girl was clearly a hesitant one, as she wasn’t quite sure she interpreted Amma’s nod correctly. With no reprisal forthcoming, the second step became more confident, while the third was a full on stride that was enough for her to cover whatever distance had been between the two girls. Squatting down, Katja put one arm under Amma’s legs while using her other arm to support the girl’s back. She locked eyes for just a moment, as if to ask whether the raven haired girl was ready. As no objections were uttered, Katja perceived this as her go signal.

“One, two…” The large South African said before she easily rose back to her full height, the slim shape of Amma in her arms. Katja didn’t activate her powers for the task, as the effort didn’t require it and she was afraid that she might accidentally injure Amma more by a reflexive action due to being exposed again to the pale girl’s HZEs.

“You still okay Am-” Katja interrupted herself as she looked down at Amma cradled in her arms, an embarrassed blush wasting no time to appear on the blonde’s cheeks. Looking away, Katja hastily, but gently, put Amma down on the stone bench before taking another step back to create some respective distance between the two again.

She can’t help it, she doesn’t want to, but Amma is reminded of another instance when someone picked her up in such a similar fashion- a time so distanced from now, another world, another girl that took kindness and melded it into something more, and a boy that just wanted to show her what fun actually was. There was no comparison to be had, the two vastly different, but she was human; of limited means perhaps; a multifaceted creature of cruelty and malice, but a human nonetheless that clasped her palm briefly over Katja’s shoulder- and promptly took it away.

It lasts for maybe a second, a small glimpse into the soul within, but Amma is uncertain if what she feels is what many would compare to the emotion of guilt.

“Always am.” She utters, the bench utterly frigid against her gestures, she could not explain why she felt so entirely weak, her body spent and drained, all the rest she had accrued in the last few days did little to assuage the exhaustion of her mortal frailties. HZEs were restored instantly, the world once more at her beck and call and ebb and flow, so why did she feel so frail? Amma lifted one scarred palm up to her inspection, fingers splayed and arched as she slowly curled each nail against her scars, tacking to each line smothered with the whorls of heart and fate. She lifted such up to the filtered dapples of sunlight through the dogwood tree, attempting to decipher why her body felt weighted, liken to a stone within a pit of darkness.

Her penetrating glare falls upon Katja once more, finding it within herself to inquire, a mutter of gratitude failing to find itself betwixt them.

“Why are you even here?”

Katja cast her eyes down the moment she felt Amma’s piercing stare at her, like a schoolgirl caught by their teacher doing something they shouldn’t. The brief flush in her cheeks almost immediately disappeared, as the sense of embarrassment evaporated in an instant. Being replaced by anxiety, a feeling she had grown very accustomed to over these last few days.

“I came here because I…” She paused once, clicking her tongue in frustration as she couldn’t seem to utter the last few words. “Because I…”She said a second time, softer than before. “I…” Katja said meekly now, before finally clearing her throat and trying again after taking a deep breath to regain her composure. When next she spoke, it was with more volume and confidence, as was more befitting of her. “Because I need help.”

She nodded over in the direction of the infirmary, obstructed by well maintained brushes, trees and flowerbeds, but looming in the distance all the same. “I wanted to schedule an appointment, or maybe have a walk-in therapy session if that were possible. I’ve never really gone to any of the therapists here, even if it was mandatory. They’re not really sending people after you if you don’t go, and I always found that the gym was a better place to deal with my issues than by talking to someone.”

“But this time, that just didn’t seem to help.” She looked up, her ice blue eyes meeting the cerulean of Amma’s gaze. A melancholic smile curled up her lips as she continued. “So I figured I’d try this out for once. See if they can help me deal with whatever it is I’m struggling with. To deal with the loneliness.” Katja lowered herself down to sit on her haunches, a shaky breath ushering in a short pause.
“To deal with the pain.”

It was then, with her focus being on the word pain, that Katja noticed that the pulsing in her shoulders was gone for the first time since she laid her eyes on Amma. She reached out with one hand to the one that Amma had only briefly grasped. But apparently, that gesture had been enough to soothe the hurting feeling. She clutched her shoulder firmly, whether for confirmation or as a sign of appreciation she did not know, but clutch it she did. And as she did, she imagined that some of the cloudiness in her eyes dissipated, as she could have sworn that her picture of Amma became clearer in front of her.

“They just ask a lot of questions,” she states, a matter of fact, unleashing her gaze and casting them heavenward, a breeze teasing through the branches above and the longest strands of black curled against her nape and spine. “Loneliness and pain go hand in hand, side by side. I think.”

Pain was an eternal friend, pain was familiar, pain made one aware of life and gave meaning to it- to existence. The agony of the living could hardly be spared for the woe of the dead, and if her desire of life to live everything to the fullest capacity, to be as unforgiving and sown deep with that ambition, meant to be burned by agony for eternity- then so be it. Loneliness, however, was more of the unknown, for she did not understand the discrepancy of its meaning and defilement, betwixt those who wanted to be alone and those who could not harbor that monochromatic shade of personal ailment.

“Sometimes,” Amma breathed a sigh, unable to still the confession that whisked away in a whisper. “It is better to be alone.”

Katja cast her eyes down as she let Amma’s words sink in. She had to admit that there was a grain of truth in them. Afterall, she wouldn’t have felt this sense of betrayal if she had just stuck on her own and never signed up with Orcinus to begin with. She balled her fists at the thought of being so easily sacrificed, but mostly because she realized that she was not blameless in this respect either. If her now former allegiance came to light Katja was sure that all in Blackjack would be hurt the same way Katja was hurt now. If she had continued being alone, none of this would have been a concern.

“Perhaps you are right.” Katja said as she wrapped her arms around her legs before resting her chin on her knees. She remained quiet for a moment, staring out to nowhere in particular as Katja seemed lost in thought. “Perhaps,” She admitted softly, almost inaudible to all but her. “It is better to be alone.”

Yet as those words left her lips, Katja could feel the small girl she had once been scream out in rejection of this line of thinking. She was reminded of how dark the world seemed when she had been alone, shunned and persecuted by a world that didn’t understand her, or any of her kind. And then she recalled how happy she became when first entering PRCU, being accepted for who she was rather than being judged for what she was. How overjoyed she was when someone called her a friend for the first time. And how grateful she was to know that she had them in her corner.

“On the other hand,” Her eyes flicked back up towards Amma, the sadness from earlier giving way to a more uplifting gaze. “Sometimes it helps to be able to air your heart to someone who truly listens.” An embarrassed half smile cautiously curled up on her lips as her eyes remained locked on Amma, making sure that the implication would be obvious to the other girl.

“Because sometimes, it’s nice to know that someone has your back, no matter what.”

In that moment, she is reminded of Haven, those eyes of moss and bark that had sparked in defiance to her truth, that had refused to to submit to her glare and refused to believe that the world was as hopeless and lost as Amma knew it to be. Her lips curled into a delicate smile there, a sort of spun mirth that was suspended in disbelief at the toils of friendship given here, to the same words that had been spoken in stubborn whispers:

Don’t you want someone to have your back?

Haven and Aurora had refused to leave her behind but did one such act of kindness and understanding equate to the forgiveness of life undone and cruel and forsaken? Did that allow her heart to yawn forth on the hinges of yearning and want of kinship, despite all she had done, despite all that she had yet to do? Amma’s expression hardened with a glacier mask of porcelain donned over the dejected glimpse of her inner thoughts, the creature suspended betwixt a cage of bone uncoiling from rest and reared forth the crown of blood and hate that she clung to all the more.

“No matter what. Does that account for what I did to you? Does that account for what I did to-” Her voice drops away, face contorted at the lapse of sound that came out in a wince, the buzzing betwixt her ears returning tenfold.

“Where does the line of Teammates truly end, where does it begin, tell me, Katja. How far does it really go? How much can it withstand?”

“No matter what, to me, means no matter what.” Katja said with a shrug before glancing over at the shoulder Amma had touched earlier. “Fights happen, and with some of us the effects are just more violent than with others.” She gently rubbed a hand over the same spot before forming her hand into a fist and giving two knocks on the wound. “That doesn’t mean we can’t move past that.” A smile formed on her lips, the first one since before the trials. Katja just uttered the words she herself needed to hear the most. If the people in Blackjack were truly her friends, which she thought they were, they would eventually find it in their hearts to forgive her for breaking their trust.

“Afterall,” She said softly, almost in a mumbling way. “That’s what friends are for.”

Katja looked up from her shoulder to meet Amma’s harsh stare with a soft gaze of her own before she clearly proclaimed. “Not Teammates. Friends.”

Katja quickly raised both of her hands before Amma could interject, ushering her to pause any sort of retort with a calming gesture.

“I know what you think about friends. Trust me, I am very well aware of your stance on that.” Her lips curved into a rueful grin before continuing. “And I am by no means trying to force you to accept all of us, or even just one of us, as your buddies or mates. Not at all.” Katja shook her head wildly from side to side before pausing and taking a deep, shaky breath.

“I’m just saying that, even if you don’t like to think of others as friends, I would like to be the next best thing to you. Just like with Rory, Haven or Harper, I will do whatever I can to help you through whatever hardships you may face. But only if you let me.” Katja bites down on her lower lip as she finally averts her eyes from those fierce orbs of Amma’s. Still seated on the ground, her shoulders slumped slightly as only a weak muttering escaped her lips, for she realized she might have pushed too far again like last time. “And, more importantly, only if you’d want me to.”

Amma scoffs: “Is there some kind of script you guys pull that from? Haven said something similar before -”

“Well, before.”

It was such a strange feeling, fleeting and barely there, but peculiar all the same: how Katja was able to express herself, how Haven was able to convey her defiance in the face of the damned, how Aurora’s emotions were so easily and carelessly illustrated with that hopeless desperation of life and love. How even individuals like Lorcán were able to glimpse beyond the beast and find the girl within that yearned to love and be loved in return. Amma’s gaze fell away, lashes swept low liken to a moth’s wing upon her cheeks that fanned and narrowed, thoughts unbound. She barely discussed the Trials endured, even with her therapist, unable to speak aloud of The Beloved she encountered, the likeness of happiness and the witness of those delicate arms embraced and linked to broad shoulders, the lips of bitten red and blossoms of a rose that swelled with the euphoric grin and bliss and completion known by the heart to be whole. She could not acknowledge the needles that had penetrated beneath her skin over and over, the numerous injections she had been forced to live through, the last decade rent asunder through her being to break her again and again.

“You are far too forgiving, Katja.” Wisdom flitted to her voice, clinging to her whispers, something aged and lost. “I asked for someone to kill me, and he refused, for all that I have yet to do. For all that I am meant for, the role I have to play.” Slowly, her head cants to one side, rolling her neck with a cascade of black spilling over her shoulder. The intensity of her stare pierced deep, shattering through the glacier barriers that had once brimmed with life, hope, and affection that she had broken.

“If I asked you to kill me, as my friend, would you? That’s what friends are for, right? To help those in need.”

“That’s what you just said.”

Katja’s expression noticeably changed as Amma spoke. Her brow furrowed slightly as her eyes narrowed, her smile waned while her shoulders stiffened and her back straightened. The reply caught her off guard. She had expected the scoff, perhaps even a lashing out like last time. What she didn’t expect was this question Amma queried at the end.

Running a hand through her long blonde locks, Katja remained quiet for a moment as she mulled over her answer. She took one more deep breath before finally looking back up again, meeting that fierce gaze with a determined one of her own. “It depends, I guess.”

“I would try to talk you out of it at first, because that is what friends are for too. For giving you their advice, even if you don’t want it.” Katja replied with a smirk, a melancholic sight more than a reassuring one, which disappeared again as soon as it came. Her voice, for the first time today, seemed unshakable and resolute. Her entire being radiated a serious determination. As if she was resolved to go through with whatever she was going to answer, no matter what. So, with her eyes locked to the cerulean gaze of Amma, Katja replied with full, unwavering sincerity. “But, if that doesn’t work, if you are truly adamant about it, then I guess dying by the caring hand of a friend is the way I would want to go too.”

“So, if you really wanted me to, then yes. Yes, I would." A smile, a thing of sorrow, formed on her lips as she kept looking into Amma’s eyes. “And, if that day eventually comes, I would expect my friends to do the same for me.”

“I just-”

I can’t stop it.

Remember the rewards given.
The lives you took.
The lives you take.

Her lashes fluttered closed on a trembling sigh, something akin to relief spreading thin through her body, a release of tension subtly dispelling from her shoulders. Many faces flit on through her mind, names branded there, similar to the one branded onto her neck. Amma slowly palms the pulse at her throat gone quiet and still, her nail scraping slowly over the ‘I’ - and ‘M’ and then pauses, looping through the rest of the raised ink until her tracing stills across to her nape where she clasps her fingers to roll her neck. Her stare begins anew with the sudden silence, opening to lock with Katja’s determination.

“Then I guess this makes us friends.”

Hearing Amma utter those words, Katja felt her entire body relax, punctuated with one long, drawn out breath. The tension that she had felt all this time seemed to dissipate entirely, melting away like snow in the sun. The expression in her eyes, locked with those of Amma, remained determined. Yet there was a hint of softness now in them, a sense of joy radiating through her gaze. One that was also mirrored by her smile which noticeably grew broader, almost running from ear to ear. Despite the promise made, one with severe implications, Katja’s entire demeanor seemed to have shifted, the fog which had covered her eyes ever since the Trials, ever since that night in the tent, seemed to be lifting away. For a brief moment the sun pierced the clouds of Katja’s mind.

“I guess we are…” The tall girl said as she stood back up to her full height, towering over all those currently going about their day in the garden. After taking a moment to stretch herself out, Katja took a small step towards Amma, eyes still locked on those of the other girl. “And you have no idea how much you saying that means to me.”

“I’m gonna be honest, I would really like to give you an embrace right now, Am.” She defaulted back to Am without even realizing. Signifying the return of confidence within her when dealing with the Raven haired girl. “But I guess that would be pushing it?” Katja said with a grin as she looked down at Amma, rubbing the back of her neck in a slightly embarrassed fashion.

“Don’t push your luck, Katja.” She rejoined on a soft laugh, accompanied by a shake of her head, disbelief coloring her mutterings, the easy acceptance and joy that she exemplified by the mutual agreement despite the severity of their drawn promise. Amma carefully rises to her feet, her guards moving in close, though without as much concern by the trudging of their steps with a loose smile softening her often intense features.

“I’ll see you around, friend.” Amma steps around her, arms crossed and gaze dropped and as she moves to be escorted out from the gardens, she pauses long enough to brush her hand over Katja’s shoulder, a soft and delicate clasp that illustrates the closest to an apology that Amma can give her before she leaves. The buzzing follows her, as do the shadows and the soft hissing that she now feels upon every prick of her spine, the weight of a serpent unseen coiling over her shoulders.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Infirmary Wing: Solitary Confinement . Infirmary Gardens . - P.R.C.U. Campus.}

Take On Me #3.015: away.

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_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: reflection.

They’ve taken so much from her already - she counts it down, writes it in hated slashes across her soul, tallies everything, remembers it all. With a finger dragged through ash and blood her signature blooms bright and edged in vengeance, the looping scrawl of a harsh delicacy that spells the name given, the name chosen, and the name both lost and forsaken —

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

By the fifth vial of blood taken, Amma’s voice rasps through her throat, dragged over shards of bone as she tries to reign in that quaking violence of self-preservation to keep her wrath in check. She feels the needle beneath her skin, in the crook of her arm that trembles over the cushion of a slight medical cart rolled in with her sudden guardians stationed at either wall, both equipped with powers she does not know. Still, she could feel them there by the lazily churning scarlet whorls that slither beneath her bed and clamor over her ankles, focusing more so on the one that had been broken and now was set with a simple brace strapped painfully tight against her sensitive skin. It was a peculiar situation when she had been sedated and taken from the Trial’s conclusion, her bones had already begun to mend, a medical anomaly that had her wounds setting incorrectly, which introduced the necessity of breaking her ankle once again for a healer to mend marrow, tendons, and tissue to grant her mobility.

“Why the blood draw?” A simple inquiry, her usual cadence dragged into exhaustion, psychological detriment weighing heavy on her spirit.

“Torres requested we run a panel,” her assigned nurse had been quiet and calm, her presence one typically accustomed to patients like Amma, to her she saw a young woman battered and worn, whereas many others saw a spy or a furious creature that had attempted to defy their orders since she had woken up from her sedation. Reproach alighted blue eyes framed heavily in lashes, lids surrendered over the breadth of her stare, a sort of melancholic unveiling that took her intense features and softened them into something delicate- something not quite there. She takes one more, the needle sliding out from her vein a surreal sensation that she feels down to her bones, and lets loose a shuddered breath as the nurse presses gauze to her skin and seals it with medical tape.

“There,” she stepped back, her guardians stepped in close, a whispering trepidation that coiled through the room with a spool of crimson poised over the embellished skin of her arm, linked to the scars that crossed over one another, carefully betwixt the bodies of snakes that wreathed her arms with skull laden birds in flight. “I would advise more rest, you have a therapy session scheduled later this evening, though I will reschedule them for tomorrow if you’re too tired.”

Her brow lowered, just how many more did she have to participate in to be released? It was the same inquiries over and over, questions about her mental state, questions about what happened in the simulation, questions that probed too deep into a mind chained and bound- there were so many things she could not remember. Many things she did not want to remember.

“I’d like to go outside,” Amma uttered, a restless kindling of silver banked within her stare. “You don’t need permission for that, do you?” A quiet challenge, her nurse quietly disposed of needles and plastic and gathered the vials carefully with a whistling sigh.

“...It’d be my professional medical opinion that you are allowed fresh air. Just don’t make me regret it, Ms. Cahors.” She made to wheel her medical cart out from her room, holding the door ajar to retrieve a duffel bag just outside.

“Your house representative, Ms. Clarke, retrieved some things from your room.”

Left alone, Amma carefully rummaged through what Ryan had deemed appropriate through her earlier request after she had been denied passage on the ferry. Blouses in various shades of grey and black; a couple of her sweaters of cable knit stitching; and another that was cropped to fit slightly above her navel; cut-offs, and fitted leggings; all things afforded to comfort along with a pack of her clove cigarettes tucked carefully into an adjacent pocket and a lighter to accompany it. Amma dressed carefully, every muscle taut and protesting against her movements whilst she changed, fresh bandages fitted where proper, her anxious habits traded for shredding them without her rings to adorn her fingers. She felt exposed by the scar defiling her body, the peak of the ruined flesh and moth bisected by it revealed through the drape of the pullover as it settled over her lithesome shoulders and scooped low at her front. She threaded her arachnid gestures through her mass of hair, settling the strands into a high-strung tail that displayed the lines of her neck and the unique name scrawled at her throat in black ink.

Once long nails traced over the letting, the phantom sensation of a burn coiling through the ‘I’, her index finger edging out over an ‘M’ before she stilled, settling her palm against the pulse hammering away at her throat. Amma inhales, sharp and whistling over the pout of her lip, at least the simulation hadn’t shown her them.

She knows she would not be alive if it had.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

There’s a slight commotion elsewhere whilst Amma is escorted outside, the entrance to the infirmary is temporarily warded off and it’s down another series of hallways that they take around to the gardens. Such a term is lost in the reality that it’s a few trees scattered to the edges of intersecting walkways that conjoin the myriad of medical wings through an outdoor option where patients are permitted to linger. It’s quiet, save for a few students flitting to the shade, their whispers growing hushed when they notice her. The discarding of the standard uniform is taken to well enough, by the observation she proffers with a cant of her head, raking eyes up and down until she dismisses them with a flicked wrist and settles at a stone bench given to the shadow of a dogwood tree. Her guards station themselves far enough but she is kept within their line of sight, the familiarity of such an entourage not lost upon her as she plucks a stick of clove from her pack and nestles the filter against her pout, striking her lighter with a flourish and palms the flame close to her. Embers reflect in her eyes, the hypnotizing twirl of fire warming against her scars, the igniting of the cherry, and that tantalizing spice wafting up upon her visage as she inhales sharp and heavy and exhales upon a plume of vanilla and sweet herbs.

The conclusion of her continuation to attend P.R.C.U is anti-climatic at best, she’s already requested an audience with Torres upon her return to the island, amended with her request for what personal clothing she had. Returning to those damned pyramids out amongst the sea unsettles her, but at least there she knows her purpose, at least there she can resume her preparations for joining The Foundation Force under the appellation of Tiamat. Amma recalls the first time she slid into latex and lace, delicate latches of silver, gossamer finery slid over hips and bisected through the gaping slivers that plunged low and teased at the most intricate of tattoos that curled over her midriff- the shawl that had been granted, handed over by them, a face that–

Her recollections are interrupted in such a delicate manner that Amma’s motions are stilled carefully, the telltale sensation of being watched beyond the station of her guards coiling through her bones and pinging down her spine in whispers of awareness. There, in a breathing sigh of her name –

Tiamat.

A caress against her mind, a shuddering claim that slides betwixt her ears and buzzes away at her lobe, it crawls through every sheered nerve ending and sires through her blood. Her name - her name - that breezes through her soul.

Amma.

She feels it against her back first, a sudden weight that slides up yonder her sweater, pulling away at the thread of her clothes before it crests over her shoulder. A triangle head, a slightly upturned snout, black scales rippling through dappled sunlight, a hiss that slides against the shell of her pierced ear as a viper bunches against the curve of her clavicle.

Ammar –

“Don’t,” she breathes, head tilted up, the sudden presence of a secondary serpent coiling and sliding against the juncture of her throat, forked tongue against her flesh as a trilling sound rises against the sensitive plans of her body. The dogwood sways above, a perpetual shade of darkness rising to her stare as a third snake settles across her lap, bunched over her thighs, causing her to still even her rising chest that crumbles away at the breath that stutters from her swollen mouth. Eyes of red, eyes of blue liken to her own, eyes of steelish azure, eyes of vermillion, eyes of the sky that shatter again and again, and then the soft flutterings of skull-faced moths that hover just yonder her rigid figure. Wings of ashen black and red, with smudges of demented yellow, twittering birds constructed of frail bone that perch above her crown, lost among skeletal branches that pierce the heavens.

Twisted shadows malformed in the distance, the decaying brown hue of bone smudged in black as a myriad of hellish hounds leap forward, tooth and claw poised to tear her very throat out as the serpents hiss and agitate themselves against the hideous scar rent over her heart and cinch tight around her limbs, curved fangs against her breast, a piercing flare of pain that tears through her skin, shorn to the bone – and there, she sees it, the siring of a reaper that looms over her very soul, a threaded line of scarlet stricken to her chest, invading through her being – it tugs, her spine curved inward, wound so tight she can hear and feel her bones breaking –

And then, nothing.

It stops so suddenly Amma falls to her knees, fallen away from the stone bench rigid against her spine tense with pain. Her two guards snap to attention, shuffling forward to assist where she lifts her trembling palm, brows plunged low over her glare as she commands:

“Don’t, I’m fine. Stay away from me.” A hiss writhes against her mind, her captors exchanging glances and inching closer, situating themselves at an immediate distance as Amma struggles to retain her composure, her breath heaved from her ribs that ache – everything ached. She deigns to remain sitting on the grass, comforted at the moment by the sensations against the scars laden through her gestures, nails sunk deep into the dirt, anchoring her to reality. She cannot, however, ignore the telltale awareness that she is still being watched, from beyond somewhere in the trees above where a buzzing continues to ebb and flow.

Be it in the distance yonder, or perhaps still in her mind, a screech so terrible and so haunting explodes through her waking world, a roar that demanded nothing but death and hungered for it - like nothing she has ever heard before.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

Charlotte Cahors is young and she is afraid, afraid of a world that will never accept or forgive, afraid of the sleepless nights, afraid of the world that shudders and churns upon the wailing cries of her only daughter. The child barely eight years of age, spun of her likeness with those subtle reminders of her father that Charlotte still yearned for. On whispered promises, he made to return to her, when things were safe, when things made sense, when a mission had been fulfilled and a purpose had been given. Bound to an innate desire better fitted to demented chains that held him to obligations he had long sworn to before she. It is in the arch of her delicate brow, the intensity a child of her years should not have been capable of, and yet when Charlotte looked upon her, she felt everything shift as if the universe bid itself to her chaotic whims of youth. Bright eyes laden in crystalline blue banked with an innocence the world would later seek to destroy.

A child she adored, a child she feared, a child she wanted to save.

She would later cry and weep and scream, cursing a sky where an Almighty reigned, pleading to the heavens for redemption to lay upon her daughter, to spare her for the wrongs the world would do unto her. If only Charlotte knew that a netherworld would instead heed her woes, the darkness of an eternal void already marked upon Amma's soul. All that was, and all that would be, done upon the elegant scripts of two very different letters that would decide the ultimate fate of the harbinger of destruction, the elegant reaper that could've been Beloved and was traded instead for the Unknown.

A monster. A beast. A spawn of circumstances and manipulated chance laden in ash, the crown of bone impaled so deep upon her scalp she would know not where it ended and she began.

The first time such a christening is foretold is in the spires of Rouen: a cathedral that punctures the clouds above, spearing into the gardens of an Eden where once mankind reigned, sanctioned from such a beauty by the mutterings of an ill creature. Under the designated hour of twilight, Charlotte held a child with hair liken to a raven's wing, clung to her for all the hopelessness that bedeviled her life since those pulsating coils of hated scarlet first wreathed her daughter's bearings; eyes aglow, becoming brighter and brighter, almost laden in silver for all the strength that spun from delicate hands suddenly there and then not.

Ushered within, hushed mutterings of prayer and thankfulness as the vestibule yawned forth into eternal darkness speckled in small flames of lit candelabras encumbered by wax, almost skeletal and perverse and lain upon iron wrought in peculiar patterns. She mutters her worries in French, her accent reminiscent of a delicate hope that dubbed her as both Mother and Protector and Darling. Among the ivory of her skirts, Amma Cahors peers eyes wide and high, the arched ceiling giving way to bell tolls that mark the hour, gilded pillars tarnished by time, the interior a herald of the lost age when many gathered in prayer and worship. Led by a man donned in ebony robes they came upon a dias, the structure inlaid with obsidian and stone, plaster conformed to the lustre of volcanic glass to depict plunging angels that heralded many wings and eyes, the flickering fires abound cast them aglow.

Words are interchanged in hushed, panicked lapses, the manic fluttering of once simplistic gestures now as if wounded fletchings, a peculiar ring flashing there, twisted bronze and golds, the child that was Amma often looked upon its malformed design, noting that such was an all-seeing globe that was set with a precious jewel of red. Here her mother was strained and taut, the ridge of her stare a tumultuous breadth of fated nature raked over the world, peculiar starbursts lain in those eyes, wreathed in the cosmos of an all-seeing being.

Stars rose and fell in the encompassing stare of Charlotte Cahors, perhaps more unsettling than the wealth of power in her daughter's crippling gaze. She had stars in her eyes and the world in her hands, as once whispered to her by a philosophical man that saw both beginning and end in her damning gaze.

And lo, before them, anchored into the dias was a pool of rippling sapphire that lapped away at edges of gold, the slight depths bisected by a sliver of cerulean. Bidden closer, both mother and daughter looked unto those churning blues, and there in the flash of color, a marring whorl of black, something almost unseen and indiscernible if not for the eyes beholden to Charlotte to see and know All. In rushed whispers, she asks:

What is this?

A purposeful pause, a hidden signal, a wreath of black as more robed figures gather - a hush of a hymn vibrated down to her bones.

A cure, a means to see your child saved.
In the world we reign; in the world we live.
There is no room for false gods.
There is no room for a defiler --
you want to save her, do you not?

Charlotte stills, head panned down low, a glare that her daughter knew as both stern and wrathful. She quickly claims they were mistaken, that her daughter was no foretold wretch of this life. She was merely a child, and she was a mother only wanting to keep her safe, to seek the means to allow her the gift of happiness owed to her. They simply laugh.
It happens too quickly, it happens too fast. A mother torn away from her daughter, screams of horrid pain impaled upon this hour of hellish twilight, a trembling hand reaching and seeking and clawing for her precious babe. A child that wails, hands manacled and bruised upon her delicate arms, pale skin bloomed with fresh violets as she is dragged forward. Nails splinter, bones break, a terrifying cry that rings through the cavernous spires looming above. Above her crown, windows lain with stained glass, a myriad of colors blooming red and then silver, as the hour betwixt dawn and dusk reigned true. The glass splinters, cracks, it falls plink by plink by plink until --

Cherub bearings turned demented with rage, a screech of defiance and fury, tiny hands turning inward, slicing scarlet smiles into her palms, mouths gaped wide on the feral screams that tore asunder through her body beholden to fear. Amma screams and she screams and the world answers on drones of terrifying manifest, it explodes, the belfry of this cathedral shudders and trembles, wood and stone bellow and crack, flesh peels upon the herald of crimson whips of power that challenges the very heavens above. Fissures of silver reap and tear and pillage through bone and blood and eyes turn yonder in prayer as Charlotte grabs her child and runs.

She runs for what seems like eternity, she runs and weeps and falls to the earth, she laments over her daughter and the cruelty of the world that would don her the unworthy and the forsaken.

Chaos is many things. It is an awakening of disorder that existed long before the mundane, it is the reign and herald of something that the world has never forgotten but also refused to acknowledge. It is the unknown and the in-between, the void of life and death, the void of total disorder that gleams red upon pale skin that would later be defiled by many, many scars.

At the feet of Amma Cahors, where her hands weep blood, flowers of pulsating ruby cores suddenly bloom.

It's only a couple of years later that Charlotte Cahors loses her daughter to all the fears and woe she tried so desperately to save her from.

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_{Location: Infirmary Wing: Solitary Confinement - P.R.C.U. Campus.}

Take On Me #3.007: reflection.

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_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: devour.

A flower. But not a flower. The grass wet beneath her palms, dirt on her nails, and the sky above bearing down upon her.
Was it real?
Did all of that happen?

The simulation ends and Amma Cahors falls to her knees, once, twice -- again and again, breath caught betwixt her bruised and battered lungs. Every cinch of bone turned inward to impale against her erratic heart. Harsh pants rip away from her bloodied lips, slivers of bone impaling into her pout as she struggles to summon control into her waking world. Manic eyes of a horrid blue flash back and forth, upon every member of Blackjack -- she tacks each of them, rakes her intense glare through every pass of flesh and bruise and blood. Alive. Real. Maybe.

Or she was just dead.

"Who."

It was a declaration of malice, hate, of an untamed nature that simmered long and cold betwixt broken ribs, it was a bidden christening of the demented monarch, the coronation of the damned beast that rose with a crown laden of bone and blood and hate.

"Was it you." She hisses, eyes fell upon Calli, and then Harper, her lashes fluttering on erratic pulses as whorls of red pulsated against her quivering hands.

"No.. No. Who did this. Who --"

Sparks of dreaded carmine pulsated in threatening strikes upon her arms and hands, nails sunk deep into soil and rock, fingers arched and chest heaved with her quickening breath, eyes of a netherworld peeled wide on tides of a storm, a hellacious act of nature that burned and writhed and punctuated through every twitch of wailing muscle as Amma roared. She needed to get it out- she had to get it out. Needles from long ago pricked her skin, laying upon her flesh, and drove down to the sinew and marrow until burning hate was pumped directly into her soul.

"Get It Out!" Amma snaps, teeth bared, a wild animal stricken in blood loss and panic, her strength ebbing into disarrayed cords that slid around her throat, choking her cries, writhing against her tongue and stricken upon her teeth as fangs that pried her lips agape with each screech that peeled away from her heaving chest. A manic peel of laughter sundered from those bloodied lips capped in violets and sapphires and black, the grin that curled over her wounded cheeks split wide liken to a fiendish cheshire.

"They wanted to punish me for the life I spared. She said she could help me find her if I let her go! She said she had a sister. Baxter. I know I asked for it, I know I wanted it. Instead - they gave me to Hell! I didn't ask for this."

Somewhere she hears the call for sedatives and within the bedlam of her shattered spirit, Amma's heart splinters and crumbles away into dread, a choked gasp sputters from her lips, lashes peeling wide before her body suddenly goes limp, her entire frame broken and bleeding, wounds freshly irritated and exposing the lining of scars over the entirety of her body; the horrors of her past on a sickening display.

Upon the earth, she lays as a fractured doll, porcelain defiled by death and blood; a begone weapon forsaken in this life, and then the next, the means and her purpose warped and shredded.

Discarded and broken.

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Amma Cahors was condemned to solitary confinement under the disguise of demanding to allow her wounds to heal; treatments were sparse and erratic, attention for critical medical applications spared for others, she thought she heard the staff mention Gil at one interval -- punctured, broken, bleeding. Dying. However, she phases in and out of reality, arms free from restraint after twenty-four hours of powerful sedatives to quell the compelling summon of HZEs that had continued to crawl across her skin in fiendish lines of black. After a series of various psychological evaluations, she was scheduled for release in the coming days, pending that she no longer attempted to flee. The first night had been a testament to the incredible power lain within, the walls of her room still held the scars of her wrath, the ceiling eternally marred and the floor splintered and jagged. A message had been left for her by Torres not long after, a cryptic missive and subtle demand that she comply with the school and rest well in preparations for the sparring matches to come. A reputation was to be held, and nothing less would be accepted.

They still demanded Tiamat- Amma promised she would receive it.

She rested now, as much as her body would allow, carefully plucking away at the bandages coiled of her wrists and arms, bruises fading into bisque edges, deeply seeded hues of purple and blue heralding over her flesh, beset by intense blemishes of red where the most powerful of blows had fallen. And there, upon her chest, the most devastating of wounds to behold where healers had attempted to still the remnants of death that had corroded muscle and tissue, where once a moth had been inked over her heart, wings displayed and proud and bright and beautiful. The testament of art that had been commissioned to regain a sense of self, to one day seek light and life in the dark, to hold over her own life as her own, which was now torn and jagged with a hideous scar. Amma studied it often and carefully, pulling away at the shirt given to her in exchange for a traditional gown, it pulsed and throbbed with her heart, an eternal reminder of the trials endured.

To the simulated life she had taken.

She had made a simplistic request to board the ferry at a later time, to purchase new clothing and certain supplies, which had been hastily delivered, and then answered with denial, claiming that Amma required a chaperone or guard until she completed a series of delegated therapy sessions. Such assignments had been seamlessly blended into her newly given curriculum, of such Amma could not be bothered with, not as she thought and pondered about her place here. P.R.C.U tried, it did, it attempted to welcome her as a normal girl, one burdened with power, one given a critical label, one that the faculty deemed themselves wary of but still a girl.

If only they knew.

Amma breathed in deep, ribs protesting against the stress of her actions, every follicle of nerve shorn and sensitive, firing signals of warning down every plane of skin exposed as she pulled away at her bindings. Pain was not new to her and neither was the aching sluggishness of healing, she grew up upon the finer knowledge of pain and the breadth of life that saw every scar anew with the summon of her powers that often linked into her back or postured over her arms. Though her many embellishments hid their truth, it could not entirely distract away from the simple nature that Amma was subjected to torture and experimentation for over an entire decade. A truth that had been revealed during their manipulated trial and the realization that even the most sterile of domiciles contained the most heinous of sins. Amma knew of the cruelty of this individual dubbed Hyperion and the remaining disciples that had bid themselves under the rule of this rumored Harbinger that had trapped them within that hellish realm from her nightmares. A group she knew nothing of besides the whispering of the healers and nurses that bustled outside her fortified door that she knew was guarded carefully not by just one, but two individuals.

The phone call she had received only just a few nights before resurfaces as a vague memory.

She carefully rips away one bandage, then another, gauze peeled and shredded, congealed lines of red against her trembling arms, the unbidden tremors coiling away into her scarred palms.

Did she even belong here anymore?
If she ever did.

Amma stares down upon the lines of fate and heart, disfigured by the myriad of scars crossing over one another in silver slivers of a horrid tale, one she refused to share. She splayed her fingers wide, listening to the grinding pop of her bones, her nails broken, her quivering gestures unable to be quelled as she stared and stared. Hands of the reaper, hands of the woeful, hands of a beast that had attacked two of her teammates. She still feels the flayed skin of her beneath her touch, she still feels the softness of feathers sweeping through her palms, she still feels the thread of power that she had given to another, she still feels the clutch of a clove cigarette shared before a quiet and innocent flame, she still feels the bloodied skin of him as she begged and pleaded to be slain.

She feels everything and wishes she could forget.

She knows, without a flicker of doubt, that she does not belong here. Amma knows this and clenches those hands tight, palms them through her hair, and shields them over her eyes as the hopeless dregs of reality tug and pull upon her limbs and the threaded strings woven within a hellish medley over her heart. She once denied Torres that she would return, that she would not go back, it was her Will, her Truth, her Conviction, and now it remained shredded and bloodied at her feet liken to pools of crimson hate that followed Amma through her waking world -- within and without.

She tells herself that she doesn't care. She tells herself that it doesn't matter. For she is selfish, she knows she is vain and stricken with sins of wrath and greed and lust. She whispers unto herself over and over and over again: I am the monster you all want, the answer to all the wrongs and all the things lost, I am the creature you fear and the one you envy - I am me. I am The Foundation.

Amma Cahors knows that freedom is often lost and fleeting, and hers was slowly coming to an end.