#THE SECOND ONE IS FOR THE RESTLESS REVERIES MULTI-CHAPTER THING!!!!!!!!

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

Tommy sighs, and some of his anger is blown out through his nose and into the salty breeze. He’s quiet for about a minute before he says, “Do you want me to go in with you?”

~~~

Ghostbur stares at the list, and then looks up. He can see structures at the end of the path, behind some leafy trees. Wooden structures. Houses. A little village.

Ghostbur doesn't visit many villages—he doesn't remember any from Alivebur, either—mostly because they tend to be far away from the main parts of a server, and it takes a while to get to them.

~~~

Even so, Tommy’s heart pulses in his head, and his feathers are raised all over him, and he feels cold instead of hot even though his hair feels sticky.

~~~

When Philza saw Ghostbur for the first time, he gasped.

~~~

Wilbur wonders if Techno ever feels like this, around Tommy. This warm bursting inside his chest, like his heart is expanding past his ribs and slowly tearing through his skin. This explosion in slow-motion, a cacophony of colors and heatwaves and emotions, collecting in a storm cloud inside Wilbur’s brain. This feeling that’s so loud, and yet so quiet at the same time.

~~~

Wilbur loves her.

~~~

Tommy exhales softly. "Why aren't you saying much? You're all closed-off and stuff. That's bad, y'know. It represses trauma and locks up all your thoughts with a teeny tiny key and throws it out the window. Stuff like that." He waits. "Puffy says that's bad for you. Did she tell you that? About repressing things? Wil?"

~~~

Tommy presses his lips together. “Hey, if you- if you’re tired or anything, we can sit down. We don’t have to keep walking if you’re feeling bad.”

~~~

He wonders now, as he holds a tiny glass in both hands, walking from the kitchen to the den. It's the smallest glass he owns, he's sure; he'd spent way too much time looking for it earlier, opening cupboards and peering behind dishes and even checking underneath the sink. It's the only glass that'll fit the contents made for it—which, of course, is a flower. A very small, very tattered, very weak blue flower, all but one petal torn off.

~~~

Techno flicks his eyes to Ghostbur’s face, watching the ghost’s nostrils flare gently every time he breathes. Blanket covered chest rising up and down. Ghostbur doesn’t look like he’s in pain. That’s good.

Even so, Techno drops one hand from his chin and lets one elbow slide off his knee, reaching his arm forwards in order to lay his palm across Ghostbur’s forehead. A bit cold.

[fakeyellow]

Anya and Kamilah finally meet. 

Summary: Kamilah and co. win the war against Gaius but at great personal cost. Fifty years have passed since their pyrrhic victory when a stranger, looking exactly like the woman they lost, enters their lives.  Part 1. Part 2. Part 4.

“Kamilah’s expecting you. Don’t worry. She liked you enough to offer you a job without so much as an interview and she’s a woman of her word. She’ll just want to make sure you’re as impressive as your resume says you are,” Gabriel said reassuringly before he left and Anya took a moment to compose herself before she pushed the door and stepped into the office.

Normally, Anya would have been drawn to the myriad of seemingly authentic Egyptian artefacts and weapons decorating the room: the curved khopesh of the New Kingdom sitting innocently on a shelf next to a golden mask of Bast, the ornate fan-axe mounted on the wall… It was a collection that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a museum.

But she took one step into the office, making eye contact with the woman sitting at the head of the desk, and Anya was simultaneously lost and found in a single, breathless moment.

When she’d landed in New York, she had been consumed with a sense of complete rightness that had quieted the restlessness she’d carried with her for the past five years. 

Her chest thrummed with that feeling now amplified, as if things had finally fallen into their right place, as if at long last, she was finally where she was supposed to be. 

And then the moment passed and Anya was left to make her way to the desk, still shaken by the intensity of her emotions. There was no mistaking it: this was the woman she’d seen on the streets of London a week ago but why had she evoked such a visceral response?

“Ms. Sayeed,” Anya said with a smile, holding her hand out with a confidence she didn’t feel, “I wanted to thank you for giving me this opportunity to work for you. 

The woman stared at her offered hand and after a second during which Anya feared she had been too forward, she shook it.

“Ms. Altomare,” she spoke, her voice elegant and husky.  

“Please, call me Anya,” Anya quickly said, causing Kamilah’s eyes to flicker up to hers and then all Anya could see and hear was Kamilah, Kamilah, Kamilah. 

She snapped out of her brief reverie, dropping the woman’s hand and Anya tried to ignore how her heart clenched at the loss of their contact, the warm, velvety feel of her skin. She settled into the chair and tried to regain her composure, appreciating the vast window across her that let her feel the familiar warmth of the sun’s rays on her face.

It surely had only been a few seconds but it felt like an eternity before Kamilah finally broke the silence, each word spoken with precision.

“Anya, I am a private woman,” she said and Anya nodded (she hadn’t been able to find a single picture of the CEO online), “And my collection is of great personal value to me. I was very impressed by your resume and references but I want to be sure of your skills before I give you access to my collection.”

“Of course,” Anya said emphatically and she leaned forward with excitement as Kamilah displayed three artefacts on her desk: a jewel-encrusted scarab, a golden ankh, and a wooden horse.

“I’ve brought some items from my collection and I’d like to hear your ideas if you were to create an exhibit centred on these,” Kamilah said, her eyes focused intensely on Anya. 

But Anya was blind to the attention, overwhelmed with awe as she took in the sight of the precious items in front of her, her head moving around to see all of their angles. She was visibly bubbling with excitement as she restrained her hands from reaching out to touch them

“Oh wow. Ptolemaic Dynasty... and they’re all in such exquisite condition,” she breathed and then as if a switch had been turned off in her, Anya straightened in her seat, “Well, it depends on your purpose. What are you trying to convey, who is your target audience?”

“Let’s say it’s only for me. What would an exhibit catered solely to me look like?” 

Anya furrowed her brows in thought before answering. 

“Well, I would center the exhibit around this ankh. As the symbol of life and the natural force that interconnects all living things, it would serve as the centrepiece and multi-faceted theme of the exhibit. And the scarab would be one of the focal points of the exhibit. It’s beautiful, it’s opulent, it’s dripping in jewels. While it was used primarily as a fashion statement, it’s also a symbol of rebirth and I’d surround it with other such objects. Now, this horse would serve as the counterpoint to the scarab, not a symbol of rebirth but of life as it is in the moment, moments that become precious memories later on. It’s wooden, much simpler than the jewelled scarab, but it’s been extremely well preserved and it’s no less precious. This horse is filled with the joy of the children who played with it, their love, their happiness…” Anya’s eyes turned starry as she envisioned the exhibit, “The displays could be in rooms that are connected via intertwining hallways to embody the nature Ankh, and there could be warm-toned lights…”

“Of course, I just came up with this and if you were to give me more time and information, I’d be able to come up with a more well-developed plan,” Anya finished, trying not to be nervous at the strange look on Kamilah’s face.

“No, I liked it,” Kamilah reassured Anya but there remained something off about her, as if she was shaken and unable to recover.

“Yes, that’ll be fine. I’ll set up your access to my collection soon,” Kamilah dismissed her distractedly and Anya made her way to the door when Kamilah suddenly called out again.

“Anya?”

She turned around, trying to quell her uneasiness- surely she wouldn’t be fired. Not when she hadn’t even had a proper first day of work. But Kamilah only scanned over her with those intense, brown eyes of hers.

“Never mind.”

—-

Anya closed the door behind her, letting out a sigh as if she was trying to expel all of her tension and anxiety. She hadn’t known what to expect from her first meeting with her new boss in New York but she certainly hadn’t expected the maelstrom of emotions that currently swirled inside her. 

Kamilah Sayeed…

She wanted to know so much more about her.

Still deep in thought, Anya continued on her way to the elevators when suddenly, she bumped into a solid wall of muscle. She stepped back, more alarmed than anything.

“Sorry-” “I- Laia?!”

“Excuse me?” Anya asked at the man’s exclamation. He was dressed professionally in a well-tailored suit but he stared at her with unabashed shock. He seemed to notice her growing discomfort when he shook his head and offered her a lopsided smile.

“I’m sorry. You reminded me of someone I knew,” he said and Anya smiled back at him.

“I get that a lot. I guess I just have one of those faces,” she joked and he laughed, even as he didn’t take his eyes off of her.

“Adrian Raines,” he offered his hand and Anya shook it.

“Anya Altomare.”

“Well, it was nice bumping into you Anya,” he said and Anya politely nodded before hurrying away into the elevator as he stared after her. 

—-

Could she truly not be Laia?

Kamilah had watched the woman closely, had picked the three items specifically because of Laia’s connection to them. But there hadn’t been a single sign of recognition in Anya’s face, only a reverential awe at the old artefacts. 

And yet if she weren’t Laia, how could she have so keenly discerned the value of the items, their meanings to her? How could she have reached so deeply to Kamilah’s core?

Kamilah sighed deeply, rubbing her temples in frustration when Adrian burst into the room.

“Who is she?” he exclaimed but Kamilah merely gestured at him to sit across her.  

“I-she said her name was Anya but she looked and sounded exactly like Laia,” he said agitatedly, running a hand through his hair. 

“Did Laia somehow Turn?” Adrian asked before he finally seemed to see Kamilah’s face, see how she was only barely keeping herself together, “I’m sorry. I know this must be difficult for you.”

Kamilah pulled out a decanter of gin and two glasses, pouring him a generous amount of liquor and herself an even more generous amount. She took a slow sip of the liquid, half-wishing that vampires weren’t so immune to the effects of alcohol.

“She’s not a vampire,” she declared definitively and Adrian made to interrupt her when she continued, “I turned off the window shade so she sat with the sun directly on her for fifteen minutes. She wasn’t affected at all. Even Gaius would have shown some sign of irritation after that much exposure.” 

Adrian slumped down in his chair, “I just don’t understand. Is it possible that a random woman could look so much like her?”

Perhaps, if they had still been close like they’d been 50 years ago, Kamilah might have mentioned the empty casket, the doubts and suspicions and questions that incessantly plagued her mind. She might have mentioned how it was killing her to be so close to a woman who looked, talked, smelled like Laia, how her heart couldn’t help but hope against hope that the gods had somehow brought Laia back to her, how she couldn’t bear to entertain these thoughts because if she ended up not being Laia, she’d fall apart...

But they had grown distant from each other after her desperate ploy with Gaius and so Kamilah merely said, 

“I don’t know.”

—-

A/N: Thanks for all of the support! I hope you’ll continue to read although this was a bit of a slow chapter. There’ll be 2 more parts and I’m excited for the upcoming revelations. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a short Kamilah x MC drabble that takes place during the 50 years to tide you over.

I ended up doing a lot of unnecessary research for the weapons in Kamilah’s office. If you’re interested: the khopesh was out of use by Kamilah’s time period but I don’t know what else the curved sword in her office could be. The fan axe has only been seen in hieroglyphics, and they’ve never unearthed an actual axe, but PB decided to put it in her office so whatever. And I wasn’t sure what the golden mask was so I just said it was a mask of Bast. For the exhibit, I had no idea what I was doing so lol my bad.

I’m saying Kamilah has high tech shade thingies on her window that she can control so they either block the sun or let the sun in. She turned it off for Anya, got distracted, had Anya turn around so she could confirm Anya wasn’t affected by the sun, and then turned it on so Adrian wouldn’t be affected when he came in.