#nothingbutthenight

[etruatcaelum]

[ @nothingbutthenight \\ for cinder]

Cinder isn’t altogether sure what brought her back to the convoluted ramble of Mistral’s lowest slums. Maybe a vague impulse to recapture the clear, burning sense of purpose she’d felt the last time she found herself stranded here, alone. It had been raining then; it’s sleet now, pelting down in miserable formless globs of slush.

Prowling through the deluge with nowhere to go and nothing to do is not how Cinder imagined this would go.

She’d planned to run.

Salem would come after her, and the unsettling mask of magnanimity would end. There would be pain enough to make what happened on the whale seem like a kindness, and Cinder would endure it all. No more pretending. No more games. Just the unvarnished truth Salem thinks she’s too stupid to realize, that Cinder is nothing more to her than a pawn, dredged up and laid bare.

Exactly none of that has happened. The dark glint of connection through her arm has lain quiet and still for eighteen days. Cinder made it to Forever-Fall like she’d planned—and there had been no chase, no hunt, no vindicating struggle against her fate.

Nothing.

Several tense, sleepless, uneventful nights led her to conclude that Salem believes she’s bluffing, and even worse was the uncomfortable realization that she might be. Alone in the wild dark of that forest, Cinder found that she could think of nothing she wanted that wouldn’t lead her right back to Salem. In pursuit of a new world…

Fuck her.

Cinder scowls, kicking disconsolately at a loose paving stone. Slush splatters everywhere. She’s not going to give Salem the satisfaction of crawling back empty-handed. She won’t.

She can’t. She won’t.

The problem is that Salem has the lamp and the staff, Cinder can’t retrieve the crown for her without first going back to Beacon, and with the whole world forewarned and rallying to Vacuo’s defense, she doesn’t like her odds there alone. And all Salem cares about, the only thing she wants, is those damned relics.

Snarling under her breath, Cinder whips around a corner. There has to be something–

Cinder never gets cold, but few other people are willing to brave the slum’s tangled byways in such foul weather; so her eye narrows when she sees another person coming her way, bent against the driving wind.

No one down here is worth robbing, and the stranger doesn’t have the bearing of a huntress. Still, Cinder draws an obsidian knife out of thin air to hold in her palm as they pass. Talons on the one hand, a blade in the other: if the woman recognizes her, she won’t have time to scream for help.

[raurquiz]

#remembering #shelaghfraser #actress #AuntBeru #starwars #anewhope #AFamilyatWar #MasterofBankdam #TheSonofRobinHood #TheWitches #TillDeathUsDoPart #TheBodyStealers #ATouchofLove #Staircase #TwoGentlemenSharing #Doomwatch #NothingButtheNight #Persecution #HopeandGlory

[itshouseofwarpeddesire]

#nothingbutthenight #filmposter

[quevoisje]

#nothingbutthenight #saintmalointramuros #saintmalo #ruecornedecerf #illeetvilaine #cotedemeraude #bretagnenord #igbretagne #igbreizh #igerbreizh #igerbretagne

[raurquiz]

#remembering #shelaghfraser #actress #AuntBeru #starwars #anewhope #AFamilyatWar #MasterofBankdam #TheSonofRobinHood #TheWitches #TillDeathUsDoPart #TheBodyStealers #ATouchofLove #Staircase #TwoGentlemenSharing #Doomwatch #NothingButtheNight #Persecution #HopeandGlory

[yourbluffpunk]

The band are excited to go! So excited for tonight!! #gig #nothingbutthenight #band #cantwait

[etruatcaelum]

Would Cinder stick around? Tough to say. Summer meant to… have a talk with her, later. Before she took off, the tension in the air had been thick enough to cut with a knife, and Cinder hadn’t said a single word to her since she and Salem arrived from Atlas.

She wasn’t stupid enough to think Cinder felt ashamed of what she’d done to Summer’s daughters. But Salem had been distraught when she told Summer they were gone—fallen through the staff, possibly dead—and talked circles around it for almost half an hour before Summer got her to even acknowledge that Cinder had been there when it happened.

I can’t lose Cinder. Desolate. Pleading.

Like she thought the care Summer herself felt for Cinder would go out the window. (Like she’d forgotten, or else never realized, that Summer dragged Cinder off Beacon Tower and left Ruby lying unconscious in the rubble. That no matter how it tore her up inside for things to work out this way, Summer’d made her choice a long time ago, and walked into all this with her eyes open, and never, ever did anything by half.)

She’d bet a relic on Cinder having picked up on how terrified Salem was of how Summer would react. And—well.

Ruby did have her eyes.

Maybe if Summer were a different kind of person, Cinder would have to worry. It would, Summer knew, be horribly easy to exact revenge, and she knew Cinder knew that; and the thing was, it wasn’t like Summer could just shrug it off like no big deal, that Cinder tried to kill—maybe did kill—her daughters. Part of her wanted to grab Cinder by the neck and scream and shake her until something fell out that resembled actual concern or compassion for someone other than herself. Part of her didn’t feel capable of having a civil conversation with her for the foreseeable future.

But one of them had to be the fucking adult in this situation, and it sure wasn’t going to be Cinder. So. They would be having a civil conversation tomorrow whether Cinder liked it or not. Summer just—she’d already taken the deep breath and pushed through and made the decision not to retaliate, and she hated the thought of Cinder taking off again because she feared Summer would stab her in the back.

“I’ll uh, run interference,” she offers. “If you can pull off polite indifference, that’s really the best way to handle her.”

Come to that, she’d ask Cinder to leave Kiara alone, if she found a chance to do it in a way that might make Cinder actually listen instead of doing the opposite just to be contrary. With a bit of luck, the combined shock of Summer being civil with her and the distraction of five dimensional chess she was playing against Salem would do the trick.

Her gaze fell on the scars slashed across Kiara’s torso for a moment before she looked away. It felt pointless to ask what happened to her, and rude to ask what in the world she wanted so badly from Salem, to swallow her obvious and pretty fucking justified terror. So instead she thumped her heel twice against the bookcase and said, “Y’know, um. Grimm killed my parents… I was eight. I don’t really remember anything before that night.”

She paused.

“Dunno if you’ve heard the stories, about—silver-eyed warriors, grimm flee before them, blah blah. There’s some truth to it; a… light we can channel that can turn grimm to ash, or stone. Only if it isn’t done right it fucks us up too. Mine lit up the first time when the grimm swarmed. I was in a coma for a while, after.”

With her leg taken care of, it was time for Kiara to remove her arm. Using hand sanitizer on her stumps without applying any kind of moisturizer afterwards was bound to dry the skin out, but better that than fungus or some other kind of infection.   She listened to Summer as she struggled with her zipper and then shrugged off her jacket, reaching up under her shirt to undo the chest strap of her harness.   She slowly calmed and the shaking petered out, as Summer spoke about Cinder. It was reassuring to hear that Summer held the same opinions about the girl as Kiara did, even with her much greater understanding of her character. It was a lost cause right from the start, Kiara was fine. She really wouldn’t have cared so much about keeping peace with Cinder if she wasn’t so frightened of incurring Salem’s wrath or being found bad natured. But as it was, she’d felt it a personal failure every time she’d managed to provoke the girl. Now it seemed perhaps that wasn’t the case. Egg shells. Indeed. If she had failed, that was it. That seemed right, didn’t it?    She pulled her unfastened prosthetic, harness and all, out through the sleeve of her shirt and laid it across her lap to wipe out and disinfect the socket.   As for Salem . . . did Kiara wish her well? Yes, she supposed for all intents and purposes she did, she certainly didn’t wish her ill. She yawned widely, tears leaking out both eye corners and sliding down her face.   “Thank you.” She said in response to Summer’s offer.    She would just have to . . . were egg shells good for Salem though? Careful seemed advised. Danger. Even if she didn’t mean to be. But Cinder . . . Summer had offered much advice, as if . . .  “Will Cinder . . . I mean, she lives here with you guys, right? Will I see her again? Should I . . . prepared? Be uh, prepared? For that?”   She reached the towel up under her shirt to dry her shoulder stump, rucking up the front and exposing some of the scars along her abdomen to the air. It wasn’t chilly here, but the air felt cold against her freshly uncovered skin and she shivered. All the scar tissue felt knotted and tense, like a strap wound through her muscle and pulled tight, making her rigid. She wished she had some of her ointment with her to soothe the ache. It never did much for her limbs, but it did help for her torso. Summer had brought some kind of pills for her to take so, maybe those would help.

[etruatcaelum]

“Ungrateful…?”

Well. No. But right now felt like an inopportune moment to say that Salem’s little outburst had been provoked by… some sort of perceived insult to Summer, and for once even Summer couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on in Salem’s head. Kiara was clearly uncomfortable and wigging out, sure. On the brink of maybe becoming hysterical, even, but people were never at their best when they were scared and tired, and the woman had made a valiant effort to hold a conversation.

It was kind of—almost—sweet of Salem to be indignant on her behalf. But. Come on.

The Cinder problem, though, that was easier to handle. “Cinder… look. I love Cinder, I do—but. She’s not a person you can please, alright? The only way to win with her is to not play into her fucked up little mind games. Don’t try for her approval, don’t walk on eggshells, really don’t assume she’s acting in good faith. Been seven years and I still don’t know what the fuck happened to make her like this, but she treats every conversation like it’s a war.”

Knives out, claws out. Venom in her teeth. Summer had figured the girl out years ago, though, and stymied her conniving bullshit by the simple expedient of responding with pleasant, bland indifference every time. Cinder had gone from honey-sweet ploys for Summer’s favor to verbal jabs and outright hostility, then when that failed to provoke a reaction spent a solid few years passive aggressively raging out, tried a couple times to slice her to ribbons under the guise of sparring practice, and then just… stopped.

Started listening when Summer talked. Cut it out with the head games. The wariness in her eyes never quite faded, but the girl seemed to tentatively accept that Summer wasn’t a threat, and they’d got along well enough after that.

But she wasn’t under any illusions about what kind of person Cinder was. Cruel, spiteful, duplicitous—and distrustful—and very angry. Someone like Kiara would bring out the worst in her. Blood in the water.

“She’s mean,” Summer said bluntly, “and the most manipulative person I have ever met. You didn’t do anything except for, I’d guess, somehow getting roped into her ongoing—I mean, you must have noticed the way she treats Salem? Things’ve been getting close to a boiling point with them for a while now. You just got hit with the shrapnel.”

Sighing, she continued, “But Salem’s—literally, I don’t think it would even cross her mind to think you’re ‘ungrateful.’” That would, for one, require Salem having self-esteem. “She’s… I don’t want to say she’s kind, because she often isn’t. Or good. She isn’t. But when people just give her a chance—” A helpless, grasping gesture. “She can be incredibly, incredibly ruthless, if she feels cornered. I just… I’ll tell her you wished her well. She’ll appreciate it.”

Kiara nodded slowly, careful not to move her head too fast, and opted to really try and focus on what Summer had said, rather than the act of peeling off her liner, and then, one by one, the three socks beneath it. But the smell reached her the moment the liner came off, her sweat having soaked through all three layers. She dropped each sock on the floor at the end of the bed absently, separate from each other so they could dry out. They needed to be washed, desperately, but she wasn’t about to ask Summer to do that. It was disgusting enough to see to it when it was your own mess, but someone else's? They would be a bit crusty tomorrow, but Kiara would survive. She wouldn’t need them much longer anyway. 

The skin of her stump was red and angry and somewhat pruny from being trapped in moisture for so long. It felt good to have air on it again, but it really did hurt like fucking hell. She picked up the towel and began to dab it very gently, sucking air in through her teeth the first couple times. 

Kiara never ever took her prosthetics off in front of anyone. It was a deeply private thing. But today, she somehow found she simply didn’t care. Nothing seemed very real right now, it was all a bit distant.  

When the pain of touching her stump stopped coming as such a shock, she mustered a verbal reply. 

“That . . . makes sense.” She said, voice tight as she continued to pat dry.  

“I know she’s as old as the hills.”  

Who could say exactly how long she’d been alone for? Or how many times it had happened in her life? And while Kiara couldn’t say she’d ever suffered solitary confinement, she did think she understood, in a way, at least a little. When she’d first moved to Mistral, she was suddenly utterly alone. Not literally – there were people all around her, it was a city after all, but she knew no one, had no one, and she didn’t really speak to anyone outside of the man that would eventually become her manager when she went for her job interview. It was isolating, and miserable.  

She grabbed her liner with her pincer and stuffed the towel inside it, twisting it around to wipe out the condensation.   

“When you return to her . . . could you – I don’t - I . . .” She trailed off, struggling to form a coherent sentence again. What exactly did she want Summer to say? 

“She’s been very generous to me. But she – she . . . must think I’m awfully ungrateful. Could you just tell her that’s not true? That I’m sor – I already told her that.” She sighed in frustration, with herself more than anything, then pumped a small amount of hand sanitizer on her towel and began wiping out the liner again.  

“It’s just, I can’t talk to her, every time I open my mouth, I say the wrong thing and you - you don’t understand, it’s not just that she’s tired, I do it with Cinder too -” She felt herself getting angry now, which was really quite stupid, it was a stupid thing to get so worked up over, but she found that suddenly she couldn’t help it. Was she normally so emotional? 

“You aren’t getting upset with me because you’re too nice, but they – and now I know that – I mean, I assumed, even at the time, but – Cinder, any time I made her cranky I’m sure that just made things worse -” 

Finished with the liner, Kiara began to rub hand sanitizer on her stump. In her state of aggravation, she was a bit too vigorous and stifled a yelp. She clenched her hand, the smear of sanitizer squelching in her fist, and glowered at it. 

“I don’t mean to be a problem, I don’t want to be I just . . . can’t seem to help myself . . .”  

She let out a shaky sigh and returned to rubbing her stump, much more carefully this time. She was vaguely aware that she was overreacting. Summer had told her not to let it get to her, hadn’t she? But Kiara was convinced that she’d been awful to Salem somehow and she didn’t want her to think – she was afraid she would think – Kiara wasn’t that kind of person! With everything she’d lost, she had to hold onto the things she’d gained, and being humble, being respectful, that was part of who she was now. Cinder might not believe that, but it was true. She just wanted Salem to know, and not be angry with her anymore, and . . . and . . . She was shaking again, and her headache had returned in full force in a split second. She just needed to finish this and go to bed. 

[etruatcaelum]

The window creaked as she slid it open, letting in a warm breeze. And then, because Kiara seemed to want to talk now and Summer had never been great at using furniture the way it was meant to be used, she hopped onto the low bookshelf sitting in front of the window to sit and listen.

Kiara’s first question prompted a raised eyebrow. Medical condition was a new one, as far as weird conclusions people jumped to about Salem’s occasionally weird behavior, but one that did raise Summer’s estimation of her a bit. At least it bespoke an inkling of concern for the witch’s well-being.

Still, the idea of Salem having a stroke was—kind of, vaguely, funny. In theory, maybe not impossible. But Summer had seen Salem lunge across a clearing to snap a soldier’s neck with half her head missing, brain pulped by a shotgun blast; she didn’t think a stroke would even slow Salem down.

As she got to her feet and ambled into the bathroom to grab the softest-looking towel and hand sanitizer—and aspirin from the mirrored cabinet too, while she was at it—Summer said slowly, “Not anything like that. It’s–”

She sighed. Set the towel and bottle of sanitizer down on the bed beside Kiara, popped the safety cap off the aspirin and put that on the end table within the woman’s reach, then ducked into the bathroom again to fill a glass of water.

“—Salem was alone for a really long time,” she said. “I… don’t know if you know anything about what that does to people, but I—and Salem doesn’t like talking about it, so—I’ve just read stuff, you know, about solitary confinement, and that kind of thing. It really fucks with people’s heads. It’s disgusting that we do that—”

(She couldn’t think too hard about the oversized coffins that passed for holding cells aboard Atlesian warships, or she’d start thinking crazy thoughts like maybe Atlas deserved to fall. Maybe it did, but the hundreds of thousands of refugees stranded in Vacuo now didn’t. It was just…

Even before she met Salem, it made her uncomfortable. Right after they left Beacon, she and her team had gone to Mistral to bolster the flailing counter-insurgency—made her cringe to think about now—and she’d spent way too much time aboard one of those warships. It was creepy, standing on the observation deck and seeing those cells lined up on the bulwarks like teeth; wondering how many of them had people inside.

Things like that, she thought, shouldn’t be allowed to happen.)

The water, too, went to the end table, and then Summer returned to her perch on the book case. “So she like—it’s a mental thing.”

Not a lot of delicate ways to put it. Not that Salem cared about that; the one time she’d cracked herself open enough to divulge any of it, she’d been… pretty fucking blunt. You say I’m two hundred million years old. You don’t expect me to still be sane, after all that time?

“…Um. The other thing is, Salem… isn’t… normal about pain. Y’know like—your leg hurts,” she said, gesturing, “you want to sit down and take the damn thing off and rest, yeah? Salem just powers through until she drops. It’s—I mean, she’ll seem fine and seem fine and then fall off a fuckin’ cliff. If she quarreled with Cinder then, yeah, that’d do it. But… she’ll be okay. I’d bet you’re feeling pretty loopy right now after the day you’ve had? It’s the same thing, just—you know, ‘loopy’ for her is a lot... loopier.”

Being picked up off the bench was akin to being plunged into freezing cold water on a warm summer day; unwelcome, unpleasant, a shock to the entire system, hard to breathe through. But when the air is warm, despite how cold the water may be, the body adjusts quickly, and so too did Kiara. It wasn’t so bad really. Summer was strong and sure, Kiara felt in no danger of being dropped or otherwise hurt, and the warmth of her body was . . . comforting. It was something Kiara hadn’t experienced in a long time. 

Once upon a time, she hadn’t been opposed to hugging people on the regular. Her father, her mother, her friends, family friends, even a stranger or two now and then, if they initiated it. But that had all changed after she lost her limbs. And her father. And herself. She had retreated within and shut out the world, the only touch she’d accepted was from Firnen, who had been the one to look after her during that awful in-between year, and even then, only when it was medically necessary. After moving to Mistral, she softened up a bit, became more normal about touch again as she settled into the new person she’d become, but even with Misty, the one she was closest to, the most that was shared was a hand on the arm or the back, a gentle pat now and then. Neither of them were huggers really. Not anymore.  

Kiara hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this – close contact, the heat of another body. Stray memories from her childhood drifted through her mind as she gently bumped along to the rhythm of Summer footfalls. She’d been such a wanderer, carefree, fearless. It was not an uncommon occurrence for her to fall asleep somewhere in the great outdoors. And on most of those nights, her father would find her, and she’d wake halfway to the comforting sensation of being lifted into his arms, and fall back asleep as she was carried home. 

A single tear slid down her cheek and she sighed softly, head listing slightly to one side. 

Away from Salem and the other grimm, carrying her and chattering at her reassuringly all the while, Summer didn’t seem so threatening anymore. Maybe whatever reasons she had for this operation were good ones. Maybe she hadn’t hurt Salem after all, maybe the grimm woman just agreed with her cause, found it something worth fighting for. 

Summer was saying something about first impressions, promising Kiara that Salem was not usually so unpredictable as she’d been today. Kiara was also vaguely aware that she’d been saying something about Cinder, about her being the cause of Salem’s bad mood. Well, that tracked. It had all started after the girl had had her own outburst and smashed that teacup before she violently exited the shack. Kiara had wondered about their relationship, been confused by it, along with everything else. It made sense to learn that Cinder was seemingly more than just a soldier. She wondered where the girl was now. Now that Kiara knew they had made it to Beacon . . . she wasn’t sure if she’d see her again. The trip was over, Cinder had no reason not to run off and do her own thing. But that was neither here nor there. 

When Summer set her down, Kiara leaned heavily into the wall beside the door, her legs nearly giving out beneath her. She started shaking again, but this time it was due to the strain placed on her overtaxed body rather than fear. She still felt a bit wary, but her exhaustion, her gratitude, and Summer’s easygoing nature had finally managed to override that. Mostly. 

She struggled through the doorway at Summer’s behest, and over to the bed, feeling a massive flood of relief sweep through her as she sank down upon it. She lay her cane across it’s foot and looked around. She didn’t know who Arthur was, but she appreciated his cleanly nature. It would serve her well now. 

When Summer asked about the window, Kiara nodded absently. She felt extremely dazed. Her headache had receded somewhat, but it was still there, compounding the difficulty she was already having in processing things. Questions skittered across her mind like little lizards over hot desert sand, tickling her thoughts but nearly impossible to catch. Still, most of them were about Salem and the other grimm, or things Salem had told her – half remembered and very jumbled, as well as things she hadn’t told her, and a few about Cinder, and Summer herself. With so many thoughts centering on Salem, one of those eventually settled, allowing Kiara to close in around it. She wanted so desperately to understand Salem even just a little better, and she’d decided that Summer was actually rather fond of the woman, and would not use anything Kiara might bring up against her. 

“Does the stress that Cinder . . . Does Salem have some sort of – is she sensitive to it? I mean, medically.” She seemed perfectly unable to order the words coming out of her mouth so that they might make any kind of sense. She tried again, with a different approach this time.  

“When I first met Salem, she was very calm and reasonable and – and. And then I uh. Fell asleep. And while I was asleep, I think . . . I think she and Cinder fought. And after that, she seemed, well, not just agitated but actually unwell and. I think she had a stroke. It was very concerning.”  

Kiara’s brows scrunched. She was quite unsure if she was making sense. She decided that she didn’t much care. It was nice to be able to talk and not feel petrified.  

And, finally at a distance from Salem and speaking of their meeting, she was again able to feel something other than fear and respect towards her. Kiara was grateful to Salem, and she really had been concerned. She thought about how poorly she had looked when Summer left her side to bring Kiara here, and frowned. She probably shouldn’t be left alone for long. What if she had another stroke . . . or something? 

Kiara began gingerly peeling down the sleeve of her false leg and grit her teeth. It hurt to do, despite the fact that she wasn’t even touching skin yet, and she winced as it came all the way off. Her stumps were mostly numb now, but this one was beginning to throb again, now that some of the pressure on it had been released. She was both dying to, and dreading, removing the liner and socks still encasing the end of her leg. She heaved her metal and carbon fiber contraption onto the foot of the bed alongside her cane. Summer had offered help, she thought. Hopefully she’d heard right. 

“Could you grab me some hand sanitizer please? And maybe a towel?” 

[etruatcaelum]

It could not be more obvious that Kiara hated the idea of being carried, but Summer wasn’t about to stand around fretting about it. Carefully, she scooped the woman off the bench and strode for the exit.

“It’s fine,” she said, “really.”

And then, once she’d knocked open the door with one foot and gotten outside—with a judicious few twitches of her semblance to make sure she went through without banging Kiara on anything—she continued, “And, look, don’t worry about Salem, alright? She’s… tch. I’m sure you picked up on this, but she’s kind of insane about Cinder–”

To put it lightly.

“–like, overprotective, kind of thing. Freaks out every time Cinder gets hurt. Anyway, so, long story short, Cinder’s been MIA, this is the first we’ve heard from her in two weeks. Salem has been, like I said, freaking out.” Summer snorted. “The point is. You’re catching Salem on a really bad day. Like I have never seen her this bad, and I’ve been with her fourteen years.”

She hung a left around the cafeteria building and lengthened her stride as she crossed the quad. Whether Kiara could actually process anything Summer was saying or not, she hoped the sound of her voice would at least provide a distraction.

“…I’m not gonna say ‘cut her some slack’ because I do get that she’s—you know, a lot, and it’s easy for me to say she’s just misfiring ’cause she’s stressed out and tired when I’ve known her for so long. First impressions, not great, I get that. But! Try not to let it get to ya. She’s not… snappy like that, usually. She’ll be fine again tomorrow—just needs to get some food in her and sleep and she’ll calm the fuck down.”

Not that Salem was going to make it that easy, Summer thought, vexed. Coddling.

They came up on the dorms, and Summer paused the chatter to focus on manipulating the door handle without dropping Kiara. Inside, it was stuffy—airflow in these old buildings always sucked, and no one had vacuumed in more than a year now—but the rooms would be better, and she hurried down the hall to the block of rooms she’d cleared out and made up, somewhat optimistically, to have space for everyone.

Hazel, Arthur, Emerald—two dead, one defected. Tyrian and Mercury were in Vacuo. It added up to a handful of empty, but habitable, rooms.

“…and, uh, here we are. I’m gonna put you down, now—”

She was already lowering Kiara to the ground as she spoke, close to the wall so the woman could lean if she needed to take some weight off her knees.

Then, as she unlocked the door, Summer said brightly, “I’ll leave the key with you when I go. You can, um, I dunno what kind of maintenance you’ve gotta do, how involved it is, but I’d be happy to help if you want. This is—was supposed to be Arthur’s room, so there’s already all the disinfectant stuff you could want in the bathroom—man was kind of a neat freak. If he hadn’t…”

Died. Grimacing, Summer pushed open the door and waved Kiara inside. She’s been about to say that Arthur might’ve been able to put together some nicer prosthetics, but, well. He was dead. Seemed insensitive to bring it up when it wasn’t an actual possibility.

“Anyway,” she said. “You want me to open the window? Air out the room a bit?”

Summer’s demeanor hadn’t changed. She was still being friendly and accommodating and while Kiara hadn’t caught everything that had just been said between her and Salem, she got the impression that Summer was excusing Kiara’s . . . whatever she’d done to upset Salem. So it would seem Kiara had been mistaken, and it was only Salem who was angry with her. What with Summer being human and all, and also not . . . ill in any way, it was probably a lot harder to accidentally upset her, which was good, and Kiara concluded she would have a much better chance of staying on her good side than Salem’s. And as long as she did, she was likely quite safe. And yet. That conclusion didn’t stop her body from starting to shake when Summer offered to carry her.  

It was really very kind of her to offer such a thing, something in Kiara still knew that despite her current state. But visions of being thrown over Cinder’s shoulder grabbed her mind and turned her stomach. She knew Summer would carry her much more nicely, but – but . . . But she hadn’t been carried like that since she was a little girl. How could she bear to let someone else carry her the way her father used to? Someone she didn’t know, didn’t trust, someone who was tearing down the whole world? 

Reluctance and uncertainty glued her mouth shut as she used the very last bit of energy she had left to wage a war within her own mind. She wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t stay. She didn’t want to be carried. She didn’t want to be rude. She wanted to go to sleep. She had to answer. She needed to be grateful. She needed to try. She didn’t have the energy to try. She had to have the energy to try. She wanted the wheelchair but she didn’t really want the wheelchair either she wanted to be able to walk there herself but she couldn’t -  

She forced her mind to go in the right order. She couldn’t stay here with Salem and the snake, that absolutely wasn’t an option, especially with Salem in her current state, so the wheelchair was out. She couldn’t walk there herself, so . . . so she would have to let Summer carry her. She almost thought she’d rather be dragged behind her by her leg than face the intimacy of such close contact, and the memories it would bring. And then there was the shame and apprehension about being such an inconvenience. Nevertheless, it was decided.  

She ceased the flexing of her prosthetic and tried to still her shaking, to only moderate success.  

“Yes, th-thank you. I’m s-so sorry for the inconvenience, really, if-if there’s - when I’m rested, tomorrow, I can maybe h-help you out with something around here?” 

It was really awful, this whole situation. Someone taking a guest into their . . . headquarters, feeding them, being all sorts of politeness and hospitality, having to carry them to their room for the night; and the guest being nothing but a confused, shivery mess, unable to even offer up polite conversation in return, barely able to string a sentence together. Whatever Summer was, Kiara still felt as wretched as an uninvited house pest now, on top of everything else. She watched Summer guiltily, and braced herself for her touch, picking up her cane and holding it tightly, fear still swimming in her gut like rancid lake water. 

[etruatcaelum]

Summer couldn’t have said how she knew Salem left, exactly. Maybe the atmosphere of the campus shifted—maybe she’d just become so adept at reading the grimm by now that a minute change in their movements slipped under her conscious notice to touch something deeper—maybe those fifteen months alone at Beacon had attuned her to the sensation of solitude. Whatever the cause, she’d jolted up from her contemplation of the maps Salem had spent the last few days cross-referencing and strode through the halls to find the door.

That was about an hour ago.

Once—years ago—Summer’d asked what the grimm thought of the people living in Evernight, and Salem had offered her an exquisitely awkward look before admitting, with tangible reluctance, that as far as the horde cared her associates were domesticated.

(“Like… pets,” Summer had said, not sure whether to find that offensive or hilarious.

Salem, blank-faced, had answered, “Well. In principle, that is… not… inaccurate, no.”

“What am I, your guard dog?”

By then she knew Salem too well to miss the tiny, swiftly-hidden flicker of amusement before the witch said innocently, “If you’d like.”)

Pacing and fretting in the corridor outside that door until Salem got back wasn’t—a great way to beat the anxious house pet allegations, so after the first quarter hour, Summer had hauled a chair out of a nearby classroom and settled in to read the evening news on her scroll, doing her level best to banish the mental image of sad-eyed labradors languishing in foyers until their person came home.

It wasn’t like she still felt… a little bit clingy after flying solo for fifteen months, or anything.

No force on Remnant could’ve stopped her from leaping out of her chair like an idiot when she heard the quiet scrape of the door opening, though, and the minute she saw the look on Salem’s face, any embarrassment she might’ve felt about that reaction vanished. The expressionless mask had turned brittle, strain visible through a dozen hairline fractures in her composure, and her eyes had the same fire-blasted emptiness that haunted her after Atlas.

“…Hey,” Summer said, shoving down her worry to make her voice as gentle as she knew how. Salem’s shoulders still tensed when Summer touched her wrist, alarm flickering in the burnt-out hollows of her eyes, but she allowed it. Didn’t pull away when Summer clasped her hand and drew her away from the entrance. “What happened?”

Salem made a twitching gesture behind herself, as if Cinder sauntering through the doorway after her required no further explanation. (And maybe it didn’t, with the haughty meant-to-do-that-all-along glance Cinder gave her as she brushed past Salem.)

“Welcome back,” Summer said dryly, earning herself a poisonous glare before Cinder stalked away. “And…?”

The third person emerging from the door looked like death warmed over, waxen and gaunt, sitting astride a tongie with an expression that said plainly she’d rather be anywhere else in the world right about now. For just a second, Summer thought she might have silver eyes—but then the newcomer shuddered, and no: the early-afternoon sunlight illuminated her irises instead of glancing off of them like glass. They were steel-grey, not silver.

“…Kiara,” Salem murmured, off Summer’s inquiring look. The black tendrils lashing the woman to the grimm’s back abruptly slithered loose, the tongie shook itself with an unimpressed grinding sound, and Summer jumped forward on reflex to catch Kiara before she could slide over and crack her head on the floor. The tongie, relieved of its passenger, bolted without a backward glance.

She weighed just north of nothing, all skin and bones; Summer raised her eyebrows as she carefully set Kiara on her feet. “Name’s Summer Rose,” she said, striving to sound reassuring and like she had a single clue what was happening. “Uh, welcome. Salem–”

This time, Salem did flinch when Summer made a grab for her hand, before going utterly still. Razor-sharp lines of tension cut across her face; something close to panic flared in her eyes. (More than anything, Summer thought, she looked like she needed a hug; but she knew Salem would never accept that in front of anyone else, so she just gave the witch’s hand a comforting squeeze.)

“—I think that roast I started this morning should be about done now,” she said, because food was the only reliable way she knew to get Salem to relax and Kiara seemed in desperate need of some solid meals. Undeterred by the politely uncomprehending look Salem gave her in answer, she tugged the cane—which had to be Kiara’s—out of Salem’s unresisting grip, handed it over, and added firmly, “Come on.”

Kiara’s efforts to construct a set of rules for herself to follow only kept her mind occupied for a short while. The more she tried, the more the only real answer seemed to be to just keep quiet and say nothing, which was a solution she’d already attempted and failed at. It had become clear that inevitably, she’d need to say something to one of them at some point, and that problem would continue to repeat itself. Simply not ever talking to either of them wasn’t a feasible solution. Her frustration with the issue drove her mind elsewhere, she was too tired to keep fighting with the problem. Her last thoughts on the matter were to wonder if when they got to Beacon, Cinder would disappear somewhere, and she would in fact not have to talk to her after all. Maybe they’d run into some of Salem’s other soldiers and Kiara would be stuck with them instead. This thought exhausted her perhaps even more than her unsolvable problem because after all, better the evil you know than the one you don’t.

Salem had been leading their little party down some sort of sloping ramp, one which Kiara could not see the bottom of. It spiraled down for what looked like ever. It was as if they were descending into the very bowls of the earth, and yet, there were telltale signs that that was not really the case, for nothing in this place made any sense. Kiara observed everything from beneath hooded eyes, feeling overheated and listless. The – the horse beneath her was . . . not so hot that it would have been uncomfortable in a chilly environment, but the air in this place felt stifling and oppressive. It was unpleasant, but not enough to negate the effect that heat generally has on an already tired body, and Kiara slowly began to slump. The fear and revulsion she’d been suffering was slowly dissipating, replaced instead by the lurking unease and sense of quiet helplessness one feels in fever dream.

The horse plodded on, smooth and steady, and once her body fully relaxed, she found that her restraints supported her completely. So, perhaps that’s what they’d been for all along. After all, she’d no doubt have slipped off her mount by now if they hadn’t been there. 

She stared ahead languidly to Salem’s form pressing ever onwards. She was so . . . graceful. She moved so smoothly, almost as if she were floating over the ground and not really walking at all. It was uncanny, but not more so than anything else here. Kiara wondered if – no, hoped – that once they made it to Beacon, Salem’s mood would be improved, that she would be calm and easy to talk to again. That being back in the place where she could continue on with her tasks would help . . . help what exactly? To make her easier to understand? Less prone to seemingly random shifts in her mental state? More level? She was already fairly calm again now, as far as Kiara could tell. Maybe leaving off her search to come pick her and Cinder up did make her irritable, but somehow Kiara doubted it was so simple, and to get her hopes up that Beacon would protect her from how Salem was seemed ill advised. She was an enigma, and Kiara trying to mentally worm her way around that was not going to do her any good. 

She heaved a weary sigh, wondering just how long they would descend and what, exactly, this place was. The shapes and faces in the stone at the center of the spiral peered at her, lifelike, as though they had been real things, caught there, trapped forever in the rock, and Kiara thought she could hear their cries distantly, and sometimes the cries sounded like words. If they were, they were words she could not make out, and perhaps wouldn't understand even if she could. She wondered if a regular person stayed here too long it would drive them insane. She found it likely. 

Just when she was beginning to feel like she was losing her mind a little, they reached the bottom of the spiral and began trekking over flat ground again, through a marshy wasteland. Everything was swamp here in one way or another it seemed. There was beauty to be found in swamps, even if most people didn’t appreciate them much, but Kiara thought she would be quite pleased to go the rest of her life without ever seeing another one. The way was uneven and weaving, but her mount was steady and sure of foot, and the two of them never fell behind. Kiara was glad not to be walking here herself. There were dead things in the stagnant water, trees and beasts alike, and she was sure if she were to fall, she would become one of their number. A dread began to creep over her, different from the fear she’d felt earlier, more akin to what one feels in a nightmare, the kind where nothing appears to be wrong, but the dreamer knows that there will be soon. She stared at her strange and desolate surroundings, and the more corpses they passed, the worse that dread became. Instinctively, she clutched at the horse’s mane with a tremor in her wrist, ignoring how disgusting it felt, and willed it to hurry through this place. To her surprise, it’s strides lengthened.  

They were at a brisk walk and much closer to Salem and Cinder when the door finally came into view, and Kiara began to breathe easier.  

“I hope you don’t shy at going through doorways the way ordinary horses do.” She muttered to her steed, which was a stupid thing to say, because grimm feared nothing. In fact, Kiara wasn't sure they could feel anything at all. She wondered where the door would let out, and how much farther they would have to go. Surely they were far out into the wilds now, perhaps another one of Salem’s bolt holes? And how, when it came to it, would they cross the sea? More grimm? Kiara hoped not. 

When Cinder briefly glanced back at Kiara, her malevolent smirk did not seem to promise anything good, and Kiara gripped the horse beneath her and braced herself as best she could for whatever may come next. At least they’d be out of this place. 

[etruatcaelum]

Well, this was going just fantastic.

“No,” Summer said, trying to sound consoling, “hey, it’s not—”

–a big deal, she meant to say, but the sudden weight on her arm chased the words right out of her head. Blinking, she looked down: Salem had keeled sideways until her head rested against Summer’s shoulder, the expression on her face one of such acute misery that for a second Summer half-expected her to admit something crazy, like oh, and Ozma was there, or that Cinder had gotten hurt again or…

But instead the witch muttered tightly: “She shouldn’t—be afraid—of you.”

Oh.

…What?

“Salem–”

Her every instinct jangled at her to freak out, because Salem felt like she was burning up and Summer could count on one hand the number of times she’d ever seen Salem in this bad of a shape—but, Summer reminded herself sternly, what felt like fever to her was normal for a grimm, and Salem didn’t get sick in any case, and she had a pretty damn good idea of what was fucking her up now.

(I can’t—lose… Cinder, Salem had choked out, the night she came to Beacon.

It had been a long time coming, Summer thought; she remembered the day Cinder turned up, a rawboned scrap of a girl not quite old enough for the academies with fire in her eyes and venom in her teeth, remembered the way Salem’s face went tight with something ancient and sad for an instant before she smoothed it over and asked if the girl was hungry. Cinder had always been—important—to Salem, in ways that coexisted uneasily with Cinder’s part in the plan.

She suspected, though Salem never said, that the sudden hurry to get to Atlas came down to Cinder being there.

And then Cinder had taken off two weeks ago, and Salem had demolished the grimm studies building about it but done nothing to make Cinder come back.)

Carefully, she smoothed her hand back and forth along Salem’s shoulders, and said, “It’s okay. It doesn’t–”

“She shouldn’t—”

“–Kiara’s had a long day,” she murmured, “and this is a lot, and it’s fine. It’s really fine, Salem. Just… you just stay and finish eating, and I’m gonna take her to the dorms ‘n’ help her out, and then I’ll come back here, okay?”

“I don’t,” Salem said, glacial tone undercut by the fact that she was beginning to shiver the way she always did when Summer touched her for any length of time, “need—coddling.”

That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me, Summer thought, but instead she deadpanned, “Humor me.”

Salem frowned, but didn’t protest, and slowly sat upright again to scowl down into her (barely touched, for fuck’s sake—) dinner, which, Summer would take it. Giving the witch a final pat on the back, she returned briskly to Kiara and said:

“So. Um. Like I said the dorms are a bit of a walk and uh, if I go for a wheelchair from the medical office that’s gonna be like, ten minutes or so if I really book it—and I don’t mind if you’d prefer that!—but. It would be a lot faster if I just. Carried you. If that’s okay?” God, the woman looked rough. “…The rooms have baths in-suite so you can—y’know, do everything there.”

Kiara froze when Salem’s command sounded behind her, shock and fear ripping through her. She ceased to think, nothing in her body seemed to really be functioning quite right anymore, mind included. She turned around woodenly, feeling as though she were moving in slow motion. With her eyes fixed upon the bench she’d just left, she made her way back the six or so paces she’d managed to move away from it, her head throbbing to the rapid beat of her heart the whole way. 

When she reached it – which took entirely too long – she carefully lay her cane upon it, determined not to drop it this time, then tried her damndest to sit down in a semi dignified manner, but failed at the end, her limbs giving out a little over two thirds of the way down again, backside hitting the wood gracelessly. She folded her hand over her pincer upon the tabletop, lips pressed in a thin line, brows drawn against the pain, and held perfectly still. Her mind was still nearly blank. Salem sat back down too.  

For a prolonged moment, the world was odd and fuzzy, the ringing creeping back again. Finally, one thought parted the haze and sat there by itself in the gloom, echoing in the empty space; I won’t make it. I’m not going to make it. Make it where, or in adversity to what, Kiara wasn’t sure in that moment, but she knew she was utterly spent. 

Then Summer’s voice drew her out, distracting her from the certainty of that thought, and she looked at her, focusing on her lips as she spoke, brows scrunching further. She was silent after Summer finished, trying to process what had just been said but drawing a blank. do you think you're gonna make it? No. No. 

“No.” 

It came out as a whisper. Then, gradually, the meaning of the rest of Summer’s words trickled in and Kiara sighed, almost inaudibly, looking down at the hooks of her pincer. 

“You’re right.” he said, a little louder, looking vaguely in Summer’s direction, feeling numb but somehow still able to taste the fear that was shutting her down. 

“If I take them off . . . I won’t be able to put them back on. Not tonight.” They wouldn’t go back on over the swelling. Not reasonably anyway. The pain would be too great.  

“And without my leg . . . I can’t walk.” 

Normally she could use her cane as her other leg and hop, but that would certainly be impossible in her current state. She couldn’t take her prosthetics off here, or in a bathroom; she would make it impossible for herself to go anywhere afterwards if she did. But she supposed it didn’t matter in the end because either way, she wouldn’t make it to the dorms. She knew she wouldn’t. I won’t make it. 

“I’m sorry.” She said helplessly.  

They were already angry with her as it was, and she wasn’t sure why. There were so many possible reasons, and she didn’t have the brainpower to even attempt to figure out which one it might be, so all she could do was apologize for . . . anything and everything and hope they could both hear the sincerity in her voice.  

“I’m . . . sorry.” Barely more than a whisper this time. She hid both hands – real and fake – under the table and stared down at it’s top, the woodgrain warping weirdly in her vision, and began flexing her pincer open and shut despite the pain. Open and shut. Open and shut. 

[etruatcaelum]

Cinder kept her mouth shut and the witch in the corner of her eye as Salem led the way out of the henge and then down the helical plunge of an earthen ramp. The rebuke stung more than she cared to admit, a prickling vexation contrary to the cold scorn that gusted through her each time she glanced down to see Kiara’s cane held lightly in Salem’s hand.

One thing to show courtesy to someone like Watts or Hazel, who at least brought useful skills to the table; another to be courteous to a miserable wretch she was keeping around for no other purpose, as far as Cinder could discern, than academic interest. So the hound was an old friend—undying, Salem had said, and trying to fix him up. So what? It wasn’t an explanation Cinder would have guessed, but the essential facts of his situation were unchanged. An experiment.

I am inclined to give her what she asks for… It remains to be seen whether that is what she wants. The results will be interesting, either way.

It occurred to her, for the first time, to wonder what exactly Salem hoped to learn from all this. The witch had been unsettled after Beacon (Cinder clenched her fists, reflexive)—she’d given a convincing performance in front of the others, but in private…

I thought, Cinder had scrawled once on the pad of paper she’d used whenever Salem didn’t want Emerald around, silver eyes only harmed grimm.

She’d watched the shifts in Salem’s expression like a hawk, alert for any flicker of insincerity or dishonesty, but the witch had only frowned and stared blankly at nothing for a moment before admitting in an undertone, “As did I.”

The arm she helped Cinder grow, that was an experiment too. Salem had been forthcoming enough about her theories, and the advice she’d given Cinder to protect herself from the glare had worked, in Atlas; everything she’d said about the arm itself proved truthful, too, though often in convoluted ways.

Cinder… trusted her not to outright lie, at least. Not about this. Old friend though the hound might be, Salem hadn’t begun her experiment with him until after Cinder had begun to master her own arm, and the arm had been Cinder’s idea, not hers.

It raised the uncomfortable question of whether she hadn’t—given Salem the idea, somehow.

She didn’t know how to feel about that.

This place, whatever and wherever it was, seemed stranger the deeper they went. Reason dictated that the tarry black sky should have given way to the roof of whatever cavern lurked beneath the swamp, but it followed them down instead; there was no sign now of any land above their heads. The path spiraled down and down, an improbable strip of marshy ground knit together by those serpentine trees and clinging to a vast pillar of black stone carved in intricate, nonsensical patterns—it hurt Cinder’s eye to look at them too long, but now and then the writhing lines cohered into the shapes of monstrous grimm, burning forests, grasping hands, screaming mouths, snakes and spiders and wolves.

Mist churned beyond the outer rim of the path, too opaque to really know, but some quiet instinct in the back of Cinder’s mind kept insisting that the lip of the earth gave way to a vast grey abyss. The sound of rain lashing against glass thrummed at the edge of hearing, or maybe a distant trickle of laughter, or crackling fire, or–

For all she knew it could be all three, braided together into a single noise.

The path leveled out at last, and by then Cinder felt unsurprised to see yet more swamp—less wild than the jungle surrounding the henge, but the same peculiar trees, the same jewel-bright bracken. Somewhere beyond the rain, the hush of surf upon sand; and ahead, an expanse of still, greenish water choked with fallen trees and dark hulks of animal carcasses, criss-crossed by muddy footpaths. A ninth door stood at the far end of those pools, wreathed in silvery haze, and the tempo of Salem’s stride increased as she hurried toward it.

Cinder—as much to comfort herself as anything—glanced over her shoulder for the first time since their descent began to smirk at Kiara before she followed Salem across the final stretch.

Cinder’s unpredictability continued to be her most consistent trait. In the moment the girl’s head whipped towards her, Kiara nearly rolled her eyes. Not at Cinder, but rather, at herself for saying what was most certainly the wrong thing to her. Again. But what the right thing was continued to elude her.   As Cinder began to spit whatever venomous retort she had at the ready, Kiara’s gaze snapped back to the grimm in alarm, eyes wide, her whole body going stiff. She did not like the fact that it was clearly becoming agitated while she was stuck on top of it – and then Salem intervened. It was something akin to a fuse being lit and then snuffed out before the spark could reach its destination. Kiara’s eyes tracked the motion of her cane as it arced up into Salem’s hand, and stared. This intervention from Salem caught her off guard in a way that Cinder’s unexpected ire never could. Cinder she could at least grasp, but this woman . . . this woman she couldn’t possibly begin to understand. Distantly, she felt the fragments of some reasoning trying to assert itself, a probable cause for Salem’s behavior, but she was too tired to reach for it. All she could see was what was right before her; a woman who she had presumed to be supremely displeased with her at the very least, stepping in to rescue her from the repercussions of her own actions, and also opting to carry her cane for her when her underling would not. If Kiara couldn’t even figure out what to say to Cinder, surely Salem was going to be even more of a pitfall. She had been so relieved when she and Salem had first been discussing the details of Kiara’s request - and surprised – that Salem was so calm and reasonable, so much easier to get along with than Cinder, generous even. However, though generous she may be, Kiara no longer felt any ease or relief in her presence. In fact, as awful as it was, she found she would rather be bodily slung around, talked down to, snapped at, and threatened by a girl who was possibly young enough to be her daughter, than risk being faced again with bone chilling, too wide, black eyes and a palpable fury so thick it laced her heart with poison and sucked the air from her lungs.   This stance solidified when Salem approached Kiara’s mount and . . . and . . . altered it somehow. Awful, sinewy ropes of grim burst out of the creature’s back and slithered over Kiara, twining around her and then tightening. Not painfully so, but enough that she was most definitely trapped. She held perfectly still, the only movement that of her eyes and the accelerating rise and fall of her chest, buoyed by the breathing that she tried to keep quiet. Why? Why was Salem . . . fusing her to the grimm? This was horrible, this was dreadful, this was -  But the thought of fusion brought into sharp focus the end goal of this whole ordeal. This was what was going to happen to her when the time came to grant her request, only on a much more extreme scale. Or . . . no, Salem had said it would come from within . . . but still, this was – she had to be able to handle this, she had to.    Salem’s quiet advice drew Kiara’s attention back to her emotional state. Right. She was supposed to be focusing on being a small, insignificant thing, unworthy of the Grimm’s attention, not panicking. The tendrils weren’t hurting her, whatever their purpose was, and she was fine. She was fine.   As Salem breezed past them, Kiara tried to picture once more that she was on an ordinary horse, tried to focus on her breathing, and tried to formulate some kind of plan in her head, some kind of road map, about what she would and would not do, and would and would not say, both in the presence of Cinder and Salem, based upon all prior experiences she had had with them. It was no doubt an exercise in futility, most certainly where Salem was concerned, but it would keep her mind occupied, and help her be a stable, quiet passenger.  

[etruatcaelum]

Nothing pleasant, Salem thought, would come of Kiara’s request. She latched onto that certainty with pitiful desperation, needing anything to distract herself from the formless chaos opening up before her where Cinder was concerned. Even the stinging throb of revulsion that sharpened to a nest of razor wire when Kiara clambered onto the grimm was less… unbearable. Bracing, in a way.

Disgust, at least, she understood—and fear.

Still, she glanced away before Cinder did, and felt Cinder’s inexplicably contented gaze like a burning coal upon her cheek for a moment more before Kiara spoke, timidly cautious. The atmosphere shifted with jarring speed; Cinder snapped her head around, anger blazing across her face and crackling in her soul as the tongie pinned back her ears, hissing.

Expression cooling into scorn, Cinder said poisonously, “I don’t take–”

“Cinder.”

It was almost a relief for that amber eye to snap back toward her, bright with rage. Salem stepped forward, slid her toes under the cane, and flicked it lightly up into her hands. (Kiara, she hoped, had only asked Cinder out of fear that to ask Salem would be worse, and not for any particular aversion to Salem touching the cane; given Cinder’s present mood, Salem doubted that even she could not have compelled Cinder to carry something on another’s behalf.)

“There is,” she said delicately, “no need for such… malevolence.”

Cinder gave her a flat look, of the same kind she had used now and then to intimate that Salem had chosen to act with restraint for no reason other than to vex her; whether Salem counted that a hopeful sign or not, she couldn’t decide. This ire, so diminished from the infernal rage a few minutes ago, was a warning as much as a reprieve. Still: Cinder only scoffed under her breath as she turned away, and Salem filled her lungs and exhaled a long, slow sigh.

This—she could manage this. If Cinder remained calm, and Kiara did not panic—the pools simmering far below no longer felt like she might boil over at any moment, the fog piled thick and heavy as a scab over every laceration, the fanged venomous things locked safely away. She could hold all her broken pieces together long enough to deliver the situation into Summer’s steadier hands, before she slipped away to… lance the wound.

Salem took another deep breath. Hand on the tongie’s neck, she released a pulse of aura, which sluiced down through the the body and spindled out tendrils, to coil around Kiara’s waist and legs—the young woman undoubtedly lacked the strength to keep her seat without support when the grimm began to move—and with that…

She stroked the grainy hide once more, fortifying herself, and with a glance at Kiara, thought to murmur, “If you quell your distress, she will be… calmer.”

Then, not wanting to waste any more time, she strode briskly out of the henge, Cinder falling into step beside her (utterly ignoring the swift, hopeful glance Salem gives her when she does) and the grimm pacing behind.

Well, that certainly made things much easier. Kiara glanced at Salem who’s gaze was fixed on Cinder. Cinder had said that Salem didn’t control the grimm, yet, with a mere flick of her wrist . . . oh but it didn’t matter, if anything, Salem having control over this monster horse was a comforting thought. And whatever the real reason; the grimm was doing as Salem commanded and it was friendly to Cinder. If Kiara did nothing to provoke it and it remained content in the company of it’s kin, perhaps all would be well.   

With a sideways grimace in Cinder’s general direction, she did as prompted and stepped up to the grimm’s side. She was so tired, that just the thought of having a place to sit helped ease the deep apprehension strung through the very core of her, though part of her mind still couldn’t quite believe that this grimm wouldn’t just take off with her the moment she was on it, spirit her out into the strange, swampy jungle and throw her off and rip her to shreds. Kiara imagined shrinking away inside, imagined her soul itself becoming smaller, and tried to diminish her very existence if such a thing were possible. Like I’m not even here. Just focus on your friends. 

Carefully, cautiously, she reached her cane over the beast’s back to rest its tip on the ground on the far side of the creature. It was so awful, to be so near the thing. Gripping her cane firmly, she pressed down, transferring her weight to the wood, and closing her eyes, she slowly let all her breath seep from her lungs, trying not to shudder. Be small. Be nothing. Quickly, she sucked in a new, fortifying breath, and slung her prosthetic over the grimm’s back, bringing herself to straddle it. The moment she made contact with the it's back, she flinched. It was hot. Why was it hot?  The initial shock that shot through her promised that it would burn her it was so warm, but it wasn’t quite a dangerous temperature, and her body adjusted to it in a matter of seconds. 

No sooner had she laid her cane across the creature’s withers then it’s front half lurched upwards, and she was forced to grab a fistful of it’s mane and clamp her legs around it’s girth to keep her seat, but once standing, it held mercifully still. It’s mane felt as awful as it looked – like seaweed coated in algae; the bright green stuff that clung and stretched and webbed, or maybe like angel hair pasta coated in oil. It was disgusting, and Kiara let go of it as soon as she felt stable. But when her hand came away, there was no residue left behind, in fact, it’s whole hide felt oddly slippery like that, but there was no stain, no gunk that came off it. 

Hot, slimy and unearthly, everything about grimm was horrid and Kiara wished she could stop feeling sensation altogether, stop experiencing any of this. It was surreal and awful, and she just wanted to crawl away somewhere and go to sleep. Nobody rode grimm. She could easily believe all this had just been a nightmare when she woke. But she was here by her own doing and however nightmarish her reality was at the moment it was real, and she was just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.  Somehow. At least she didn’t have to walk anymore. She just needed to pretend it was a real horse. From up on it’s back, she couldn’t really see any of the features that made it obviously grimm, other than the unnatural blackness, so if she just set her eyes between it’s ears, maybe . . .  

It was then that Kiara belatedly noticed she’d dropped her cane when the grimm stood.  

“Ah . . .” She looked down at it forlornly. It lay right beside Cinder’s feet, but she hesitated to ask for anymore favors from the girl, even one so simple as picking up a piece of wood off the ground. But she certainly couldn’t reach it now, nor could she dismount to retrieve it. She extended her pincer slightly and flexed it open, meeting Cinder’s gaze warily.  She opened her mouth slightly to speak, then reordered her thoughts and shut it, withdrawing her prosthetic and resting it on her thigh instead, beginning again.   

“I would be happy to carry that of course, if you could perhaps hand it to me Cinder, but really, if you wouldn’t mind . . . it’s probably best if you hang onto it while I’m on . . . this.”  

She looked down at the shiny back withers beneath her and forced down the revulsion like swallowing bile. No, it’s just an ordinary horse. Just. Ordinary. Horse.   

Her glance flicked back to Cinder. She didn’t want Cinder to have her cane, didn’t like the thought of it in her hands one bit, but if Kiara held it, she was at risk of dropping it again and, well. Maybe it would amuse Cinder to have it. In fact, Kiara hoped it would amuse her, because she greatly suspected that keeping Cinder amused was best for everyone's health. 

[etruatcaelum]

Salem did feel better. Maybe. Just a little. Beacon Academy wasn’t home, but her grimm had been here long enough to make it familiar, and the food did help, and Summer—the flood of gratitude she felt toward Summer at present was scalding. She couldn’t even touch it, lest it burn.

What she could not account for was the fear pouring off of Kiara now: directed not only at the taijitu and Salem herself in jagged lines, which was only to be expected, but somehow radiating with even greater intensity toward Summer, perhaps the least frightening person in the world–

There had been—only the once—the night a little while after Summer came to stay with her, that altercation with a silver-eyes huntsman in the south. He had hurt her quite badly, and she’d dragged herself home wanting nothing more than to curl up in the darkest depths of the nest below the house and… wait for it to be over, as she always did; but she’d collapsed, the corrupted flesh of her leg unspooling beneath her. No sooner had she clawed it back together and slumped over to catch her breath than Summer appeared, flickering into existence.

Her eyes had darkened after she decided to stay, tarnished to lightless charcoal; that night, when she looked down at Salem, the black scrim had burnt away before a white brighter than moonlight, and—yes, Salem had felt terror rake through chest for a moment.

But only a moment.

Summer was—kind. Honest. Unflinching in her convictions but always scrupulously fair.

She’d given Kiara no reason to be afraid.

Indignant, Salem pushed herself upright as Kiara marched, with difficulty, away from the table. She glanced at Summer, who looked merely bemused.

Her bench screeched against the linoleum when she stood up; the grimm stirred and hissed, drawing away from the table to twine around herself in the empty space. “Sit,” Salem said glacially, “down.”

“Salem–” Summer began, in the same consoling tone she’d used before, and half-rose from her seat before the look Salem sent her put an end to that.

She had half a mind to drag Kiara back to the table to demand an explanation for her rudeness toward Summer; a more pragmatic murmur of thought suggested that she was—perhaps—still exhausted and raw from the evening’s strange courses and overreacting, just a bit, which did nothing to quell the outrage but did keep her rooted to the spot. Salem took a deep breath.

(There was… no especial reason Kiara shouldn’t be shown to a room at this juncture, allowed to perform whatever maintenance her limbs required and then sleep. Certainly she needed the rest. But–)

“Sit down,” she repeated tightly.

A hand on her arm. Summer. Whether she’d used her semblance to thread herself under Salem’s noticed or the world had simply begun to stutter again, Salem couldn’t have said; but she looked concerned. After a moment, Salem became aware of shivering violently.

“It’s okay,” Summer said, low, gentle. “It’s fine, Salem.” And then, so quietly that Kiara undoubtedly couldn’t hear, “You’re tired.”

“I am,” Salem retorted stiffly, “aware. Of that.”

But she sank back onto the bench when Summer nudged her, inhaling deeply, and didn’t protest the warm hand that settles between her shoulders. She was—tired.

(She wanted to go home.)

“You look dead on your feet,” Summer said, voice mild. “Can you—I mean, not to be rude, but if you sit down and start taking stuff off, d’you think you’re gonna make it? Might help to—you know. Chat while you do your thing. And it’s kind of a walk from here to the dorms…”

Kiara jolted at Summer’s snort and stared at her as the woman laughed – or tried not to – and then attempted to compose herself. Apprehension raced through her. What had been funny? Had Kiara inadvertently revealed something she shouldn’t have? Had she put herself in a compromising position? She glanced nervously at the snake again, at Salem, then back to Summer, swallowing.

She settled a little as Summer explained herself. Or, sort of explained herself anyway. Looking back to the snake once more, Kiara gave up on eating. She was sure she was still hungry, but it no longer appealed to her. 

She did have to agree that Summer was quite right about the world’s lack of knowledge, because nothing she’d ever been taught, nothing her father or anyone back home had known could explain anything she had witnessed of grimm since starting on this journey. She’d found the behavior of the grimm in Salem’s shack extremely strange, but perhaps it was normal after all. And now there was this giant grimm in the cafeteria with them, snuggling with Salem more or less, so what was that about? Did grimm feel fondness towards each other? And that awful horse thing had let Kiara ride it, and maybe Salem really hadn’t been controlling it, maybe there was some other reason it had been so complacent, some reason Kiara would have understood if she’d known anything about grimm. Or figured out by now if she’d been paying attention to anything Summer had been saying before. But then again, Salem did literally . . . grow shit out of that grimm’s back, so the claim that she wasn’t controlling it seemed to ring a bit false. 

Nothing made sense. She wanted to ask Summer to tell her everything she knew about grimm. Not that she would be able to retain any of it, or even focus for the time it took to give what would undoubtedly be a lengthy explanation. 

Then Summer was addressing Salem and Salem seemed so unwell all of the sudden, what was wrong with her?? Her behavior no longer seemed within the realm of strangeness or shifts in temperament, was she truly ill? Because back in the shack Kiara had thought – right, that was right, she’d had a stroke or something. Likely a minor one, but it was clearly having side effects, she should probably tell Summer about it, maybe she would know what to do for Salem. But Salem could have mentioned it herself and she hadn’t. Maybe she didn’t want Summer to know, maybe Summer would take advantage of such a weakness. But surely it was obvious, surely Summer could already see that Salem was in a poor way . . . 

None of that was Kiara’s concern. Her head hurt. She felt off kilter. She tried to focus.  

The stuttering sentences Salem managed in response to Summer’s prompts jogged Kiara’s hazy memory as she tried to keep abreast of things. Right, the Brothers. How they had wronged her. The mandate though, what mandate? That sounded concerning. Was it some decree Summer had made that all her followers needed to conform to? And Oz. Oz . . . pin? That was a name. He was a person. Who had existed. Must have been famous if Kiara could recall him. No, no, there was another name, one Salem had mentioned, one that evaded her. That must be the one, and – No! Panic clawed at Kiara’s chest, sudden and violent, and she shook her head involuntarily, staring at Salem, eyes wide, silently begging her to understand; Don’t tell Summer about my request, don’t say anything about that, she can’t know, don’t -  But the word “grimm” was all Salem said on the matter. And Summer . . . started telling Kiara about how she used to be a huntress? She’d gone to this very school she said, so perhaps – perhaps something had happened here that had caused her to hate the huntsman academies, set her on this path – and silver eyes, yes, they were silver weren’t they, not grey, not really. Kiara wasn’t sure if she actually knew anythi – but headmaster Ozpin, yes! That was it, that’s why she knew that name, maybe Summer had been referring to him after all when she’d asked Salem – Summer had tried to kill Salem. That’s how they’d met. 

It came to Kiara then, like reading a page out of a textbook, knowledge that she’d learned somewhere and had clearly held for a long time, despite being so uncertain only moments before whether she’d known anything at all on the subject. Silver eyed warriors are a rare subset of humans who, if legend is to be believed, can kill grimm with their eyes alone. They are invulnerable to grimm, unstoppable, children of Light, blessed by him with this special gift to guard Remnant against the darkness. Is that what Summer had done to Salem?? That’s why she was afraid of her, why she did her bidding! The light didn’t kill Salem, sure, nothing could, but the experience had probably sucked ass all the same. Maybe that’s why Salem suffered strokes now. Maybe it had permanently damaged her. 

Yes, Kiara was sure Summer had learned a lot since her change of profession, she’d probably forced Salem to share all her secrets.   

And so here they were indeed. 

Everything made sense now.  

Didn’t it?  

Did it??   

Kiara’s head was pounding, her stumps were numb, everything else hurt like hell and she couldn’t. Think. Straight. She grabbed her glass of water and gulped down the whole thing in one take, hoping desperately that it would ease the pain in her head and help to clear it somewhat.  

“Yes. Very fucked. Maybe if I had known anything I wouldn’t have gotten my father killed.” She said morbidly, expression pained.  

Did Summer know about that already or not? Had she told her? No that’s right, Summer couldn’t know anything about that, because that may lead to revealing why Kiara was here. She shouldn't have said that, but her head –  

“My head hurts.” She was saying her thoughts out loud now it would seem.  

“Is there a bathroom somewhere . . . with disinfectant, I need to – to clean my prosthetics and. And maybe a bed.” 

Manners. 

“Thanks for dinner, it was great.”  

She wasn’t even sure if Summer had made it. Seems like she would have lackeys to do that sort of thing.  

“And explaining. Stuff. You're really good at it.”  

Was she? Kiara thought she probably was, and that she would grasp many things now if her head just – if she wasn’t so. Yes. That was true. 

She attempted to stand. She failed. Twice. Finally, she remembered she needed her cane, which was under the table. She retrieved it, awkwardly and painfully, and finally managed to stand, shakily. 

“Goodnight Salem, I hope you feel better.” 

She said and turned decidedly in the opposite direction of the snake to set out, before she realized she hadn’t waited for – or hadn’t heard – an answer from Summer and had no idea where she was going. 

[etruatcaelum]

Summer nodded absently through Kiara’s slow digestion of all the—everything. It could be overwhelming at the best of times, and this woman seemed both dead tired and scared halfway out of her mind. But at her hapless assertion that she’d not been taught how grimm really are, Summer couldn’t hold back an undignified snort that came awfully close to flinging bits of chewed-up beef everywhere.

“Sorry–!” One hand clamped over her mouth, still snickering, Summer wiggled her fingers in Kiara’s direction and managed to splutter out, “Sorry, not laughing at you—’s just–”

Chew, chew, swallow. She washed it down with a huge gulp of water and then sat with her eyes closed for a minute, composing herself. That was funny. Imagine normal people getting taught anything useful about grimm!

“Yeah, you uh—you wouldn’t have,” Summer said, clearing her throat. “’cause nobody fucking knows anything about grimm. It’s a whole… you know. Thing.” And, although she hated to put Salem on the spot: there was a lot to cover. Summer swung around. The only thing she could see of Salem was the top of her head, still leaning on the grimm. “How much did you tell her?”

Salem tilted her head with glacial slowness until a single eye became visible over the bony crest of the taijitu’s snout. She blinked once—twice—like the question confounded her. At last she said, in a quiet, gritty voice: “I… we… talked–”

“Yeah?”

I don’t know. Summer could see it shining at the bottom of that crimson well: the answer Salem always fell back on when she felt overwhelmed or tired or unmoored. And yet: “I– I… the Brothers—”

“Okay,” Summer said gently, because Salem sounded like she was talking through a mouthful of broken glass. “The mandate?”

“No,” Salem whispered.

“Oz?”

“…N–no. Grimm.”

“Okay.” Cryptic; but probably the best Salem could do right now, and maybe Kiara could do without the whole everything getting dumped on her Right Now in any case. Better to start small. Grimm 101.

Turning back to Kiara, Summer propped her chin in her hand and said, “Yeah. I didn’t learn any of this here, I can tell you that much…”

(Right. She could maybe. Explain that part.)

“I mean,” she said dryly, “I was a huntress. Raised into it. Went to Beacon. Silver eyes–” She rolled hers. “—if you know those old legends. Worked for Headmaster Ozpin for a while. That’s how I met Salem—I, uhh.”

Salem, still in that raggedly careworn tone, deadpanned, “You came to kill me.”

“—yeah. That. Obviously that did not…” Summer gestured expansively around the cafeteria again. “…go as planned. Long story. Point is, almost everything I learnt about grimm as a huntress was junk. For civilians it’s even worse. A lot of people die or get hurt every year because nobody knows anything about grimm. It’s… fucked. So here we are.”

Unfortunately for Kiara, she’d been wrong, again. Summer Rose was, in fact, not normal. She was considerate, seemed fairly friendly and best of all, was straight forward and made sense when she talked, and that should have been - no, it was great, wonderful even. But. No one could be so cavalier about the things Summer was talking about unless they were a little off their rocker, or . . . Or they really and truly had no reason fear any of it. And Kiara was pretty sure now that she knew which of those things it was.

After Kiara spoke her question about Beacon, despite her headache starting to interfere with her appetite, she'd resumed eating as Summer talked.  

As little sense as it had made, it was a huge relief to learn that they were at Beacon, that they’d made it, and the journey was over, even if it was strange to think that this might be her new home for the next year at least. When it had come to the topic of Salem losing her mind over something however, Kiara felt she was missing the context she needed to extrapolate Summer’s meaning. Yet, she got the distinct impression that it was of no consequence whether she understood it or not, because the comment hadn’t been meant for her so much as it was meant to – to tease Salem, she supposed? And the way Summer shut her down – the way she talked to the grimm woman in general, Kiara began to wonder if there wasn’t some sort of intrigue at work here. 

And it was at that moment that, all at once, a thought – more than a though; an explanation had occurred to her.  

Was it possible that Salem was . . . a front? 

What she was couldn’t be faked, for certain, but what she wanted could. Kiara was not about to change her mind about Salem being terrifying or dangerous or incredibly powerful, those things were simply fact, but just because a being was such things didn’t necessarily mean that they also had any grand ambitions or cared to start wars or head terrorist organizations or do anything in particular really. And as much as that was true, so was the reverse. A person with no power and nothing frightening about them may be the one who wanted to rule the world, so to speak. Salem was frightening, Salem was grimm and the grimm were her allies, Salem was ancient and held untold might at her very core, the world would fear Salem the way it would never fear Summer Rose. She was a perfect mask to hide behind, and the best ally one could ask for, surely. She had all the means and the presence. Within her shadow, Summer could persecute the huntsman academies and even the kingdoms of Remnant to whatever end. 

But Salem couldn’t be controlled, could she? Summer would have to have something to offer her in return. What that might be Kiara couldn’t fathom but she would be the first to admit she didn’t understand Salem in the slightest – it could be anything. 

Despite the scrambled racing of her mind, Kiara still heard Summer go on and managed to absorb at least some of what she said. Something about Salem’s weird grimm world – which meant that it was real and Kiara hadn’t dreamt it, or totally lost her mind, which on the one hand was reassuring and on the other, not, because it meant that such a place really existed – and a lesson about grimm. 

Upon Summer’s promise of safety, Kiara’s mind stilled and she scrutinized the other woman out of the corner of her eye as she came to the meat portion of her meal. She seemed very sincere.  

At length, Kiara hummed. Then; “I . . . appreciate the sentiment.”  She said, hoping she didn’t sound rude. But she didn’t believe Summer one bit. Cinder, for one, would be more than happy to harm her, she had already demonstrated as much. Salem may not be premeditating upon it, but one wrong move and Kiara was certain she could incur enough wrath from the grimm to summon death. As for Summer herself, well, at the moment at least, she had no reason to hold any ill will towards Kiara, so perhaps for her part, she was truthful. All the same, Kiara resisted the urge to scoot farther down the bench from her, now feeling a distinct unease in her presence. How long would Summer tolerate Salem mucking about with Kiara after they’d begun their . . . project? What if she felt it was too much of a distraction and demanded Salem abort right when Kiara was at her most helpless? She had allowed it for Cinder, but Cinder was useful. Cinder was possibly even hand picked by Summer herself, she probably had a vested interest in her being in peak condition. Hadn’t she just been wishing that Summer was the queen on the throne? The one that Kiara had to bargain with? Somehow the idea didn’t seem quite so appealing anymore. 

Kiara had been struggling with her cutlery as she brooded, but gave up in the end because while she was normally skilled enough with her pincer to use a fork and a knife when necessary, today was not that day. She was too shaky and too weak. She gave up and used her hand, taking a bite out of the roast like it was corn on the cob.  

Her head was throbbing. 

She was dimly aware that whatever Summer had said about grimm was information she should probably hold onto, something about the way they reflected emotions, but she’d barely been listening. 

“Is that really how it is with grimm?” She said, in an effort to further the conversation, and hopefully prompt Summer to say something that would fill her in on what she’d missed, since she couldn’t exactly just say ‘sorry, could you repeat that? I wasn’t listening because I was too busy realizing you’re the mastermind behind the fall of Atlas’. Considering that everyone had been lying to her and keeping her in the dark, she couldn’t let on that she knew at all, as it was clearly not something Summer wanted her to know. She’d promised no teeth, but that sentiment might change if Kiara became a liability.  

“I . . . I . . . was never taught that.” She said vaguely.  

Whatever Summer had said, that at least was sure to be true. She certainly knew much more about those beasts than the people of Kiara’s hometown – her father included – could have ever hoped to know.