#person: serissa

[sabinabrutus]

who: @serxssa where: Lupercalia

Shaking the mud off her from the capture the flag event, she was pissed from losing. Life had been frustrating lately and she could really use a win. The beers that were being served tasted like aerosol and gasoline, she had already had six. Spotting another half-blood in the crowd, she notices the half angels rarely visit the half-blood house despite how they knew what it was like to stand in between realms. A hand reaches out to ghost over Serissa's shoulder, warmth of a proud aunt and words just for the shell of the Nephilim's ear. "Keep fighting" Sabina caught up with Serissa "Want to get some nuts to go with our piss-poor beer?"

[averykentx]

who: @serxssa where: Dahlia house

It seemed the world had changed on its axis once again, at one moment he was escaping into New Dis dream landscapes and fussing over a corpse in the tower of evil and the next everything had fallen sideways, the lake of rot was a thing and Daddae Oz had rewritten the game as the book's new dungeon master. He wasn't in bad standing with the dragon but he did certainly do a lot better when Python was running the circus. It was no matter, he had sacrificed enough souls to fall at least on tier four. It seemed as if things were rosy with the Dahlia coven with his new promotion into watcher and marshal and he didn't intend to lose his wig anytime soon. Walking into the kitchen, he spotted Serissa at the table and grabbed an apple for his breakfast. "Morning, how did you sleep?"

[averykentx]

It's all a dream and yet it blurs the line into a dangerous reality, depending on Serissa's reaction, he could play it off as a nightmare but there is a soft joy that blooms within when she doesn't pull away but instead seems to take the lead into the dreamscape of New Dis. There was a unique few that had his heart within the Dahlia coven, Marco and his mother -- he dreamt of resurrecting her, she acted with more affection towards him than his parents ever did. He hears her words and he understands and so with silent agreement, he brushes his thumb against the back of her hand. If she is to be by his side as they ascend in power, he wants it to be by her design.

Rivers of Magma flow around them and spectral creatures fly overhead, archdemons guard their throne in their cathedrals and they took a walk through the barbed and thorned gardens of New Dis. Nothing will be demanded of her when she is here, it is enough for them to simply be together. "Witch Hunters came for me.. it was either die or call upon a being more powerful than me to help in a desperate moment. When I returned home, it didn't matter to my parents that I almost died that night.. all they saw was my bloody palm and so they cast me out. If I was to be in the gutters than I had nothing to lose and so I grew in power until I found this land. Some call it evil but they don't know what it's like to have to rebuilt anew from nothing." His confession was bold enough, he didn't answer what the future held as there was many moving pieces and players and he wasn't egotistical enough to assume he'd rule, even as he served as the Asphodel watcher.

It feels like some awful parallel to the world she knows. A world that she has constantly been told is too dangerous for someone like her. Hunted to the death by the Blessed, for blood - for a vessel. It's everything she's been told versus the world as she could see for herself. And still, with Avery's hand in her own, she finds uncertainty in it all. "I'm so tired of people telling me what I should see..." It's murmured beneath her breath, almost to herself, but she's close enough to him now that she knows it can't go unnoticed. Despite the fact that there are aspects of everything laid before her that feel off, look off - she doesn't blind herself from the beauty of it. It's there, within the spindles of iron and creatures she's never seen before. How did she decide what was a lie, and what might have been a very real aspect of a world better than the one they knew? She knew what an existence feeling like an outcast was like, it was all she'd ever really known. Neither part of the Dahlia nor obscured from it's welcoming family structure. Serissa was only ever loved for being present - not for who, and what she was. "How did you find this place? What brought you here?" What took you from us? She bit her tongue, despite stepping through this new world, towing Avery along with her as if she already knew the way. "What's your future here?"

[howlinglucas]

Time: Daytime Location: Outide the Dahlia House Characters: @serxssa & @howlinglucas Notes: Exes say hello after the apocalypse

Lucas didn't trust witches. He hated them, hated them more personally than he hated vampires. The fact that Serissa had been trapped among them so long had been one reason Lucas had been so keen to know her, to help her when he'd found the troublesome little nephilim sneaking about. But he had long since learned that her situation was far different than his had been. It didn't change his dislike or his mistrust of any of the witches that she grew up with. However, he learned to trust her instead almost 3 year ago. And if any of the witches would never meet the lycan's grudge against their kind it would be the Dahlia witches because of her.

They'd broken up years back but Lucas figured that the nephilim would remember the way that he'd fling two stones on each sides of her window. With lycan strength, they made it all the way. (He remembered only accidentally breaking her window once.) Lucas than waited for her to come out. "Been a while, Isa." He greeted. There was something solemn and tired in his expression, the grief of losing his mother taking a toll on him after all that had happened. The memories of the rest of the apocalypse had faded away; they would have been spotty in the state he'd been in regardless. So much loss and change had made him wonder what had become of his past. Serissa had been a part of that past.

[blairswynford]

Person: @mercenaryjonah Location: The Last Bean, window seat After everything, there were a few people she needed to make time to see between all of the training she'd taken up. Kickboxing had always been part of the workout, but everything had ended and she'd thrown herself into other local classes. It was probably a terrible way to cope, made her feel paranoid at the end of the day. And she hadn't wanted the memories to fade, they were a reminder that she had to get better, stronger. But she made time for Jonah anyways. Jonah, Serissa, and Viktor and the staff down at Dante's. "Cambion senator is kind of a big deal. Didn't think I'd ever see that."

[stellevatum]

V: Marey'ad

Timeline :   5 ABY - 28 ABY (48 - 71 Years Old)

Post-Rebellion life as she hops between her two homes. Her base of operations for her network. In this galaxy and verse is Tanalorr, but she is prone to wander.

Cal recruits Kar to help him instruct and guide on Tanalorr. As Master Cordova conferred the title of Master up on her, her "path" is unorthodox.  It is her perspective on the Force and her non traditional training he wishes to impart. She politely declines a full time position, but agrees to be involved more as an occasional lecturer and an outside opinion with the new Council.

Despite her intense personality, her frank, irreverent lectures on the Force often peppered with obscenities are well received among students. But she’s no less a hardass as a training instructor than she was with the clones on Kamino.  However, her lessons are interspersed with wisdom from asari Matriarchs, Justicar, krogan shamans and battlemasters, and anecdotes from her biotic friends she gained along the way. Students of Master Alor'ade are as likely to study the meditations of Serissa Theris as much as Master Yaddle.

In between lecturing the new order of Force Users, and her duties in the Milky Way, Kar once again picks up the thread of the mystery of her existence. It leads her to long-forgotten ruins of Mortis– and the truth...

[likeswallowstosea]

"I make no plans and none can be broken." ( Casey )

“Casey, just answer the question. Are you free tonight, yes or no?” Serissa bites back a sigh, looking the man up and down again as she debates if this is actually as good of an idea as she thought it was. “My dad wants to meet the guy I’m spending all this time with, but I really don’t want to tell him I’m fucking his best friend this week. So if you just pretend we’re dating for like two hours, he won’t punch Ches’s dad in the face and Eddy-boy pays my rent this month so I can go shopping. Name your price.” Maybe it was stupid going to Casey of all people, he’d probably blab to Ches the first second he got to if he didn’t tell his entire live stream. But, her dad would probably find him to be a breath of fresh air and be excited she was hanging out with someone that was not only her own age, but actually was fun, so it was worth a try. “You’re the funniest person in the friend group and I thought he’d like you so if it helps, I’d really rather not have to ask my second choice so…”

[likeswallowstosea]

“You’re the one who’s talking too much. We’d have gotten it and gone our separate ways already if you'd shut your mouth.” Serissa rolls her eyes. The next time anyone told her she never went out of her way to help others, she might actually scream. How did Balo stand Alfie more then a minute? He was insufferable. “I think you ought to listen to them, the traffic accidents would be worth it. Especially if they crash into you.” She smirks, looking him up and down again. “I think you should consider it, you’ve got a pretty enough face. You just ruin everything the moment you open your mouth.”

It wasn’t as if it was entirely ungenuine, but Alfie suffered the same problem she thought the majority of men did. At least he didn’t delude himself into thinking she found him endearing, that was a redeeming trait.

Quite possibly his only one, considering how quickly he protested her opinion on Pikachu. She raises an eyebrow at him, a brief hint of amusement crossing her features as he dramatically holds up his hand and voiced his disapproval. “I think he’s more popular with people who don’t engage with Pokemon solely because he’s pushed to an excessive amount, and if you ask a room full of people who actually like the franchise who their favorite Pokemon is, you and my brother would be the only people who’d answer Pikachu. You might not like it, but I do think he’s overrated and some of the resources Game Freak spends shoving him down our throats every five seconds could be used to highlight Pokemon that don’t get merchandising or attention.” Serissa sighs. Was she revealing she paid more attention to her brother’s interests then she’d ever cared to publicly admit with this conversation? Yes. Maybe she’d called Pikachu overrated just to piss Alfie off, but now she had to back up her point. “Anyway, Hello Kitty isn’t overrated - although personally I think Mimmy is the better White twin, I love Kitty too. Cinnamoroll though… I don’t understand your cousin sometimes, love her to death, but really?”

It was strange to think, that despite the fact that they were definitely arguing, this was probably amongst the most engaging conversations she’d ever had with Alfie. Sure, he was completely and utterly incorrect, but she actually wanted to continue bantering with him for once instead of hoping he’d shut up. For a moment, as he shuts his mouth for a couple of moments, there’s a slight twinge of disappointment. But then he grumbles at her at for her comment about him flirting with her, and she smirks. “What I’m hearing is you’re definitely trying to win me over, why else would you threaten me with flirting?” She said. Maybe helping Alfie wouldn’t be too bad, she just had to keep poking his buttons. “Maybe, but he’s what you’d expect from me, correct? Piplup, though, that’s actually kind of sweet.” Although it certainly made her stomach churn to honestly admit that. Vulnerability, in front of Alfie? Maybe she should ask him to put her out of her misery as payment for this. “You’re just mad because I’m right.” She winks at him, “but fine. We can finish this discussion after we win your Pikachu. Just hit play already.”

“Well, good,” Alfie retaliates, simply so she doesn’t get the last word in. “I called you over for help, anyway. Not for chit-chat.” Though he’s wondering if they’ll ever get to playing the game, with how hell-bent Serissa seems on bothering him. Maybe he should have just played it all by himself and prayed for the best, that might have been more productive. “Yeah, actually. Plenty of people.” Alfie shrugs his shoulders. “But honestly? I don’t give a shit. I think I’m attractive enough as it is. Like, imagine the catastrophes that would occur if I shut up and got hotter? People would crash their cars to try and catch a glimpse of me.” He flashes her a smile that’s a lot more forced than he would like to admit. “That would be a safety hazard. I’d feel bad.”

If her previous words have been only slightly annoying, her next are downright blasphemous and offensive. “Okay, woah, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone be so wrong in my entire fucking life.” Alfie holds up his hand, shaking his head in disapproval. “Pikachu is not overrated. He’s popular, yeah, as he fucking should be. I mean, look at this guy, he’s adorable. And he’s a main character. He’s appropriately-rated so don’t ever speak on him again.” He huffs, still peeved that Serissa would even say that. “Ridiculous. What’s next? You think Hello Kitty is overrated?” Surprisingly, he goes quiet for a couple of moments, maybe enough to fool anyone who hasn’t spent more than an hour around him into thinking that he was possibly following along Seri’s previous advice. He’s not, of course. He's just processing all the shit she’s talking. “Stop it,” he grumbles out, waving a warning finger at her, his mouth settling into a frown. “I’ll start saying flirty things back and it’s going to get weird as shit.” Alfie toys with the button of the machine for a couple of seconds before turning towards her again, clearly not ready to put the topic to rest. “Meowth is certainly… a choice. If I wanted to ask someone out, I’d get them a Piplup. And—you’re supposed to be helping me out! Stop distracting me with your controversial takes.”

[tiafrye]

Tol & Smol

[averykentx]

who: @serxssa where: Hakan's xmas party

She looks beautiful and he feels such a swell of affection within his chest when she sees her make an entrance into the gothic castle that he doesn't know how to handle it, feeling suddenly shy he turns away continuing his conversation with the person opposite him cheeks stained red that had nothing to do with the cold. He takes a big swig of his festive drink and she stays in the back of his mind until he finds her in the garden later. Words fled him and so quietly without notice, he formed a snowball and threw it at the back of her head. A shock of a laughter with the impact. "Tag you're it!"

[howlinglucas]

Time: Morning Location: Outside the Dahlia House Characters: @serxssa & @howlinglucas Notes: <3

Lucas didn't trust witches. He hated them, hated them more personally than he hated vampires. The fact that Serissa had been trapped among them so long had been one reason Lucas had been so keen to know her, to help her when he'd found the troublesome little nephilim sneaking about. But he had long since learned that her situation was far different than his had been. It didn't change his dislike or his mistrust of any of the witches that she grew up with. However, he learned to trust her instead almost 3 year ago. And if any of the witches would never meet the lycan's grudge against their kind it would be the Dahlia witches because of her.

When the plague fell and Lucas finally managed to get himself out of bed from his symptoms he knew the first place he would go to look was outside the Forest, to find just one person. They'd broken up years back but Lucas figured that she'd remember the way that he'd fling two stones on each sides of her window. With lycan strength, they made it all the way. (He remembered only accidentally breaking her window once.) Lucas than waited for her to come out. "Been a while, Isa." He greeted. Casual and distant as first, if only out of respect. It had been almost a year since he'd seen her with the chaos that had befallen the city and the lycans and now their new home far in the Forest. He waited; any hint of warmth or joy from the nephilim and he'd beam with relief.

[blairswynford]

Person: @serxssa Location: Outside A Lotto Gelato It's stupid, trivial even to be going out and shopping or doing anything not relating to the war effort, but Blair has people to take care of, steam to let off. The worst part of her own abilities is that what she could do caused a lot of fatigue if she didn't pace herself properly and with tensions so high, it got hard to do that every day. A snack break is ideal, and she can kill two birds with one stone and see how Serissa is holding up. "Have you heard anything?" About her brother, the witch was one of the few that had seemed to just up and disappear.

[likeswallowstosea]

OPEN TO: Anyone CONNECTION IDEAS: Significant Other, Friend, acquaintance, etc etc MUSE: Serissa Branwell MADE WITH: Beta Editor

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?” Serissa asks, her blue eyes wide as she takes in their state of dress. Had they forgotten there was a party tonight? And the blonde steps around them to enter their front door. She had to fix this. There was absolutely no way she was letting them leave the house with her looking like that. In that outfit? She’d just have to dress them herself, and she doesn’t wait for permission before she marches towards their wardrobe. Her heels clicked on the floor with every step. “We’ll fix this, okay? At least being late is fashionable.” She sorts through their clothing, considering how she was going to salvage this disaster of an outfit. Was it too late to drag them shopping? Probably. She’d just have to make do without buying them a new wardrobe. “By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be the second hottest person at the party.” After herself, of course.

[mnemememory]

better to scream

yasha is too tired for this shit.

pacific rim fusion au part 2 of 2 (part 1)

.

Yasha doesn’t hear about it until later. Much later.

She wakes up in the infirmary with Jester’s anxious hands fluttering between Yasha’s collarbone and her temple. She looks far worse for ware than the last time Yasha had seen her, with bruises running down the side of her face and along her throat. She’s hidden as much of it as she can with long sleeves and blue-tinged concealer, but it doesn’t really help.

“Yasha,” Jester says, when Yasha opens her eyes. “You’re awake!”

Everything hurts.

“How – how much do you remember?”

Everything hurts.

This is what Yasha remembers: Beau panicking on the coms. “There’s something wrong with Jester and Fjord!” she’s saying, but it’s far away and fuzzy. Yasha blinks. Molly is next to her, out of his harness and shaking her arm, but he can’t be real. Yasha is dreaming.

“Yasha is –” he’s saying, and then. Nothing.

Yasha’s tongue feels thick and dry in her mouth. She tries to swallow down her spit, but her throat screams in protest and starts coughing instead.

“Oh, Yasha! Here is some water – I should go and get a nurse –”

Yasha accepts the straw with exhausted gratefulness. She tries to sit up, but her ribs buckle at the sudden movement and she falls back to the bed with a silent scream. The water sloshes out of the cup and across her shirt, and she somehow manages to stab herself with the straw.

Yasha tries to speak, but she has to clear her throat a few times to get the words out. Despite looking around nervously for a medical professional, Jester doesn’t seem too inclined to actually leave the room, but Yasha anchors her to the bed with a hand to her wrist anyway.

“Molly,” she spits out, and starts coughing again.

Jester blanches grey.

“Where,” Yasha says.

Jester rips her hand away. There are red welts against her skin from where Yasha has pressed her nails in a little too deeply. They’re going to bruise. Yasha feels sick.

“I need to get Beau,” Jester says, rushing unsteadily to her feet and tripping drunkenly to the door. From the look of it, she isn’t in much state to walk, let along run anywhere.

Yasha rolls onto her side, heedless of the pain, and vomits noisily onto the floor.

.

“I changed my mind,” Yasha says, walking as briskly as the ghost-ache in her ribs will let her. “I’m not doing this.”

Caduceus follows her at a more sedate pace, looking not the least bit perturbed at the thought of her going. This only fuels Yasha’s greater desire to just up and leave. That’s the only thing she’s proven consistently good at, so why mess with a thing that works? Yasha is going to leave, and the world is going to burn, and it won’t matter anymore because even without getting back into Necrotic Shroud Yasha is as good as dead anyway.

“You chased the RABIT,” Caduceus says. “But it won’t happen again. You’re trained against it.”

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place!” Yasha says. She doesn’t really know where she’s going, only that she needs to get as far away from Caduceus Clay as she possibly can. She feels gross. There’s a layer of grime under her skin that she can’t scrub away no matter how hard she tries. Everything about Yasha is rotten.

“I don’t think –”

“No, I obviously haven’t been thinking,” Yasha says. “This is a terrible idea. I’m not nearly emotionally stable enough for this shit –”

Someone clears their throat from behind her.

Yasha turns around, teeth bared, growl building low in her throat. “What?”

The person she confronts barely reaches up to her waist, with dyed-green hair bright enough to match with Jester and chipped, uneven teeth. She gives a small squeak and jumps back when Yasha turns to look at her, behind a taller man with a scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes. There is a tattoo of a Bengal cat done prominently across his throat.

“Good afternoon,” he says through heavy Zemnian accent. The small woman bares her teeth.

Yasha jerks back, caught between here-and-now and there-and-then. She forces her breathing to even out.

“You knew Molly.”

The man blinks, slowly. “Caleb Widogast,” he says, giving a small bow. “Science and Research Division. This is my co-worker, Veth.”

“Nott,” the woman corrects. At Yasha’s blank look, Nott-not-Veth rolls her eyes. “Only Caleb calls me Veth. My name is Nott.”

“Okay,” Yasha says. Her eyes keep flickering back to Caleb. There is something horribly familiar about his face.

He takes pity on her. “Mollymauk and I were roommates, the first year in the Academy,” he says. “I…dropped out to pursue knowledge, but he continued on to be a pilot.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Yasha says. She can’t quite see straight. Her voice sounds distant, muted.

“I know enough,” Caleb says, and doesn’t clarify.

Nott clears her throat. “If you’ll excuse us, we have to go and give the Marshall our reports –”

“Of course.” Caleb shakes his head. He gives Yasha a polite smile, and then turns to Caduceus to give him a broader one. “I’m sure you two will work out your differences.”

I wouldn’t bet on it, Yasha doesn’t say. She’s very good at holding her tongue.

Caleb re-straightens his armful of papers. “If you ever feel like talking about him –”

He leaves the sentence open-ended. Yasha’s stomach squirms uncomfortably.

Nott does her a favour and whacks Caleb in the arm. “We’re understaffed and out of budget,” she says. “If you want to come down to help, feel free, but if it’s just to lie around drinking you’re going to have to find another person. Caleb here is too important to take too much time off work –”

“Yes, thank you, Nott,” Caleb says, hurrying them both past. There’s an embarrassed tinge of red to his cheeks that has Yasha, despite herself, suppressing a smile.

Caduceus is nice enough to be silent on their walk back to her room. It’s when he doesn’t leave that Yasha starts feeling the first real prickles of panic start to set in.

“Go away,” she says. “I think we’ve established that this isn’t going to work.”

Caduceus takes two deliberate steps out into the hallway and then sits down on the ground, leaning his back against the wall. Yasha stares at him in disbelief. It’s cold enough that her joints are aching, the lack of electricity and functional air-conditioning only further hampered by the fact that the whole building is made out of cold metal.

“You can’t be serious,” she says.

Caduceus shrugs and takes a small thermos out of one of his absurdly large pockets. He takes a small sip and sighs appreciatively.

“Would you like some tea?” he says.

Yasha slams the door closed.

.

Jester is alone, which is why Yasha goes to her.

She’s sitting curled tight in a corner, as out of the way as possible while still technically being in the main building. She’s shaking. Her fingers are clenched hard into her forearms, nails digging deep enough to leave bruises. Yasha doesn’t know where Fjord or Beau are, but she hasn’t seen them since yesterday. She doesn’t even know where they sleep. She used to know, once upon a time.

“Hey,” she says, leaning heavily against the wall and dropping to the ground next to her. Jester gives a hiccupping laugh and leans into her shoulder.

“Please don’t ask me why I’m upset,” she says.

“Okay,” Yasha says.

Jester manages a smile. Then she presses her face against Yasha’s jacket and starts to cry.

.

The alarm, when it sounds, is loud and familiar.

Yasha is up out of her bed and reaching for a uniform that doesn’t exist before she even processes it. She stumbles, cursing, out into the hallway and almost trips on Caduceus.

“What’s going on?” she says.

Caduceus just grabs onto her wrist and starts running.

The control room is a study in chaos. Yasha and Caduceus are collectively too large to dodge the people swarming around like rats in a sewer, so they carve out a path straight to where Shakaste and a tall, thinly androgynous figure is sitting in front of three screens. Every reflective surface is blaring red-and-white, doing nothing to dampen the impending panic.

“Bryce,” Yasha says, when she gets close enough.

Bryce looks up with a brief, strained smile. “Yasha. It would be good to see you, under different circumstances.”

Shakaste is talking to the gathered crowd. “Two signatures,” he says, and Yasha’s world goes white.

She barely hears the rest of the briefing. “Both Category 4’s. Codenames: Serissa and Catagan. They’ll reach the coast within the hour.”

Yasha looks out the window, into the hanger bay. Necrotic Shroud sits like a dead thing to the side, limbs limp and useless.

“We need to evacuate the cities. Shut down the bridges. We’ve sent out a general alert, so every civilian should be making their way into refuges right now.”

Beau is in the room. Yasha looks up and sees her, flanked by Jester and Fjord. They look grim and grey, all in uniform. Yasha’s cotton shirt and leggings suddenly feel far too light.

“Dragon Slayer,” Shakaste says. “Converging Fury. You two need to frontline this. Mighty Nein, stay back to the coastline and don’t engage until there is no other option.” He flashes a bright, savage smile. “We can’t afford to lose you right now.”

Four strangers salute from the crowd. Yasha barely has time to tattoo their faces into her memory before they’re gone, just as swiftly as they had first appeared. These are the pilots, she thinks. She’s seen them on television, working on the Wall – there hadn’t been much entertainment out there save for drinking and listening to bad radio, so television was treated as a luxury commodity. Her co-workers had enjoyed shouting rude things at the screen whenever a Jaeger pilot came into view.

They look so much smaller in person.

Shakaste turns to face Yasha and Caduceus. “You two will stay put.”

Yasha’s jaw clenches, but Caduceus nods for her.

One of the new pilots hesitates – Keg, her brain produces, and she doesn’t know whether it’s her own knowledge or Caduceus’s – eyes narrowed into stubborn slits. She looks like she wants to say something to Yasha, but her partner – Nila, taller than Caduceus but somehow less intimidating – nudges her away.

Someone grabs onto Yasha’s forearm and drags her down the hall. It takes her a few seconds to realise that it’s Beau, and then she starts internally panicking.

“If we don’t make it back,” Beau says.

Yasha glares at her.

“If we don’t make it back,” Beau barrels through. “Then I’m – I’m sorry for being such a…” her teeth grit.

Yasha pats her on the shoulder. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“God you’re the worst,” Beau says. “I’m trying to apologise.”

“Are you still taking lessons from Fjord?” Yasha says. “Because it shows.”

Beau turns on her heel and starts to stalk away. Yasha races after her and pulls her back by the wrist.

“What…?”

Yasha kisses her on the cheek. It’s fast and it’s soft and means a lot less than Yasha wants it to say, but there isn’t really much time and the alarm is still blaring around them.

“You’re going to make it back,” she says.

Beau blinks for a second, like she’s been stunned, and then shakes her head and rushes off. Yasha watches her go and tries not to think about how the last time they had kissed, Molly had died.

.

Caduceus finds her in her room, praying.

She hasn’t done this since she got to the Shatterdome, and the guilt of it slicks hot through her gut. There’s a part of Yasha that wonders if this is punishment – she knows the stories, knows the tests of devotion that plague the world before the world like poison. It’s so hard not to take the world ending personally. She’s got her holy symbol in her hand and her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

“I didn’t know you were religious,” Caduceus says, sitting on the floor in her doorframe.

“He saved me,” Yasha says. Her voice is a small, strained thing. Her fingers are cramping around the metal, skin white on contact. “I’d be – dead, without Him.”

“I understand,” Caduceus says calmly. He unhooks something from inside his shirt and pulls it out to show her a small stone with a swirl carved into it. If Yasha squints, she can see the outline of a crashing wave.

Yasha can’t manage a smile. She just bows her head over her effigy of the Stormlord and whispers impossible things under her breath.

Caduceus doesn’t say anything else, just sits there and lets Yasha breathe.

.

Dragon Slayer dies the way all giants do.

Loudly.

.

“Do you know how he died?” Yasha says.

Her spine plate clicks into place, the sharp bite of needles piercing down her back causing her to momentarily cut off and hiss.

Caduceus stands next to her, seemingly unaffected, as technicians swarm through their last-minute check-ups.

“I’ve heard the stories,” he says, eyes straight forward.

Yasha smiles as two people fit her chest-plate over her collarbones. “His name was Lorenzo,” she says. “And he thought he was a monster.”

“I’ve heard that story, too,” Caduceus says.

“He got past all the background checks that this place needed back in my time,” Yasha says. “And he smiled every time someone came back for seconds. He was a very good cook.”

She can still see him standing in the cafeteria. She’s seen him smiling every time she closes her eyes.

They give her the helmet. Yasha checks the inside and then starts walking forward into Necrotic Shroud’s head. Caduceus follows her. An outsider wouldn’t have noticed the way his feet hesitate at the entrance, the way his fingers linger on the harness. Yasha can feel it like an ache in her bones.

“How much of it did you see?”

“Enough,” Caduceus says.

Yasha lets herself have one short burst of laughter. It isn’t much, but it makes her feel better, somehow. “The morning of Shepherd, he drugged the food. Molly and Beau were sleeping in, but Jester and Fjord and I…”

Yasha’s throat closes over as she straps herself into the harness, fingers numb. This time, no one tries to help her.

“I passed out in the cockpit in the middle of the fight,” Yasha says, voice thick and eyes unblinking. “Beau was piloting a three-person Jaeger by herself. She managed to kill it, but not in time for –”

“Prepare for neural handshake,” Shakaste’s cool voice comes over the comms.

“That won’t happen this time,” Caduceus says. “I’ve seen the photos. I’m a lot larger than Mollymauk. I think either of those monsters would have a lot harder of a time swallowing me than him. He was very skinny.”

Yasha turns and gapes at him.

“Four, three, two –”

“What?”

“One.”

The Drift is silence.

Yasha feels Caduceus’ presence like a warm pulse, green and growing. She barely has time to hold her breath before she’s dragged under and drowning.

Someone asked Yasha, once, what Drifting felt like. It was probably in an early interview – before questions like that had been blacklisted. Yasha hadn’t managed to find the right words.

Here’s the best that fits:

A white room spattered in blood.

“I find that I don’t quite agree with you, Miss Yasha,” Caduceus says, and the world unfurls into something bigger and brighter than Yasha could have ever dreamed of.

Yasha comes back to her body with a gasp, jerking forward. Necrotic Shroud groans under her.

“Neural handshake holding steady,” Bryce says.

“Are you ready?” Caduceus says, sounding totally unperturbed. She can feel him shaking in her bones.

We’re about to get dropped into an active warzone, Yasha thinks. I haven’t piloted in years. You’ve never piloted at all. This is the first double event ever, and the only reason we’re being allowed to do this is because of our nuclear core.

The thought of Beau and Jester and Fjord trapped in the lifeless corpse of their Jaeger as the monsters swarm around makes something cold lurch in Yasha’s stomach.

“Sure,” she says, and apparently that’s good enough, because they’re dropping down.

.

Someone told Yasha once, “You fight angry.”

(A lot of people have told her that).

The monster looms out of the water, and Yasha laughs.

.

“It’s not over,” Caleb says, because of course it isn’t. Something like this will never be over.

Yasha is exhausted all the way down to her bones. She leans against the wall and closes her eyes, listening with only half an ear. Caduceus is little better. Drift-hangover is never fun, especially after your first ride. Usually it’s something that should be mediated out over a long period of time with copious amounts of mineral-water, and that’s just for simulations. The real thing is a thousand times more intense.

They don’t have the luxury of waiting around, though. Yasha can feel Caduceus in her head, twisting and churning. There are thoughts that don’t make much sense, prayers to the wrong god rattling around her skull.

“I predicted this double event,” Caleb says. “But this definitely isn’t he end. It’s just going to get worse from here on out.”

Behind the couch, huddled between Beau and Fjord, Jester gives a ragged cheer. They all look exhausted, wound as tight around each other as their shaking limbs would allow. Jester has a bruise along her cheek, and Beau’s left eye is patched over. Yasha had managed to get a peek at it in the infirmary: it was bright red, all the blood vessels burst.

“You’re such a ray of sunshine,” Beau says. “Every time you enter the room, the place brightens.”

Fjord sighs. His lip is split rather dramatically, but other than that he looks fairly stable – especially compared to the train wreck that his partners are presenting. “Go on, Caleb.”

Caleb gives a melodramatic flare of his hands, and holograms burst to life across the table. Jester oohs and aahs appreciatively. Despite herself, Yasha opens one eye to look.

“Here, we have the Breach,” Caleb says, pointing to the narrow point on his diagram. “Here we have the trench, and here is wherever the hell these things come from.”

“Probably a dimension incredibly dissimilar to our own,” Nott-not-Veth says. “Their physiology isn’t like anything on this planet, and I’ve been cross-testing whatever samples I can get my hands on over all the databases I have access to. Nothing.”

“Now, we’ve been getting these creatures coming in at increasingly smaller intervals. First it was every few months, which shortened to every few weeks – now, it’s every few days. The time between gets cut in half. In two days, we’re going to have another event.”

Yasha closes her eye. Around her, whispers break out.

“Our original plan was to send Mighty Nein with the thermonuclear warhead so we could drop it into the Breach,” Caleb says. “But that isn’t going to work anymore thanks to that last attack.”

“They’re learning,” Jester says, shivering. Beau hugs her tighter.

Caleb sighs. “It’s not just that they’re learning – they’re learning faster than we are. There are only so many adjustments we can make before we have to start building from the bones out again. That takes money that we don’t have.”

Yasha can imagine Molly sitting next to her and toasting his beer high: “Thanks for fucking us all, world government!” Next to her, Caduceus has to disguise his laugh as a cough.

Caleb’s face is fish-belly white as he stares around at them, dirt smudging along his cheeks like bruises. Yasha so badly wants to just go to sleep and never wake up. She’s so tired of this.

“We can’t switch out the power sources,” he says. “That would require entirely new Jaegers. At the moment, the only one who can reliably get to the Breach is Necrotic Shroud. Everything else will get taken out by that electromagnetic pulse.”

“If they can disable the Jaegers that far underwater, we’re sitting ducks,” Beau agrees. “It won’t matter that we’ve got the warhead if we can’t get it there.”

“Look at it this way,” Nott-not-Veth says. “If one of them pokes you too hard, you can just detonate yourselves and half the ocean with you.”

Yasha can feel eyes turning their way.

“You can’t be serious,” she says.

Shakaste flashes them a smooth grin. “You’re the best shot we have ate getting it there intact.”

“We’re down two Jaegers and the third is pretty badly damaged,” Yasha says. “And haven’t we tried bombing the Breach before? It didn’t exactly work out well the first time.”

“We’re running out of options,” Shakaste says.

“So we’re trying something that didn’t work before again because – what? Second time’s the charm?”

Caleb clears his throat. “The increased traffic should – if my predictions are correct –”

“Which they are,” Nott-not-Veth helpfully puts in.

Caleb ducks his head a little. “The increased traffic should force the Breach to stabilise and remain open long enough to get the warhead through far enough to collapse it’s structure. They’ve been coming through fairly regularly. The first time we tried – it was only months after the second attack, back when we didn’t know much about things. We were still learning.”

“That hasn’t changed,” Yasha says.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb says, eyes icy. “I didn’t realise that you were the one with a Masters in biochemistry –”

“Nothing’s ever even managed to get through it, though,” Fjord says, putting out his arms placatingly. Yasha leans back into the couch with a scowl, not entirely willing to let things go, but also not wanting to start a fight she doesn’t know she can win. Not now. Not when her head feels like she’s been used

Nott-not-Veth grins. “Actually, that’s where I come in.”

.

“This isn’t going to work,” Yasha says, staring at the blue, jelly-like substance that is being rubbed across every square inch of Necrotic Shroud’s metal body. Across the hanger bay, Mighty Nein and Converging Fury are being given the same treatment by some techs fitted out in hazmat suits.

The whole area had been evacuated on the grounds that interacting with biohazardous material would probably kill somebody. Yasha doesn’t quite know how to feel about this whole thing.

“It should certainly be interesting, though,” Caduceus says.

Yasha gives an unattractive snort. “That’s one word for it.”

“How did they even get this stuff?” Yasha says. “Aren’t we supposed to be – broke?”

“Oh, that’s a whole story,” Caduceus says. “It happened just a little bit after you left, I think – so apparently, Jester has a mob boss for a father –”

“Jester has a what?”

Nott-not-Veth is down on the ground, hazmat suit noticeably smaller than everyone else’s, bossing people around. As Yasha looks, she gives one of the technicians a whack on the back of the calf and grabs the hose from them, yelling profanities.

“I don’t want to know what that’s about,” Yasha says, when she’s recovered from the sudden shock of Jester – small, sweet, strong Jester – being related to one of the biggest crime bosses in the Dwendalian Empire. Yasha’s heart isn’t good enough for this.

“Nott isn’t so bad, once you get used to her,” Caduceus says. “And she’s a genius as well.”

“I don’t usually do well with geniuses,” Yasha says. People had called Molly a genius. Yasha had been good – had been better than good, sometimes – but it was always within the expected parameters of her personality. Yasha is big and can hit things. When Yasha is in Necrotic Shroud, she is bigger, and can hit bigger things.  Molly had been the one to aim for the throat.

Caduceus hmms next to her but doesn’t speak up. They’re standing side-by-side over the hanger bay, feet dangling off the edge. Yasha can smell the potent mix of chemicals even from up here. She tries not to think about how proud Nott-not-Veth had been when she had announced the plan, but it’s a lost cause.

“My husband is a chemist,” she had said, chest puffed out. “He usually just stays at home and takes care of our son, especially since we moved out here for my job, but I asked him to come in and help with this. Edith is taking care of Luc at the moment, and –”

Yasha keeps nodding and smiling. She doesn’t understand half of the words that have started coming out of Nott’s mouth, and she’s frankly too scared to ask for some more clarification. Caduceus nods in time with Nott’s tone of voice and keeps smiling, long after Yasha can keep up the pretence of being interested in the process of deconstructing and mass-manufacturing monster DNA.

“Do you want to see photos?”

Yasha blanches, thinking of her brief (if singularly traumatising) foray into the deep, dark vestiges of the Shatterdome R&D department. She still hasn’t managed to scrub the image of monster parts, hacked to pieces, lying strewn out across the ground in some kind of disturbing parody of a children’s abstract painting. Nott had been in the middle of it all, elbow-length gloves covered in metallic blue muck and humming cheerfully to herself. Even Caleb was giving her a wide birth, which was saying something.

“We’d love to,” Caduceus says, showing – once again – that he had the self-preservation instincts of a blind lemming. Yasha starts to elbow him in the stomach, but she’s cut off as Nott shoves her phone underneath Yasha’s nose. Visible even underneath the layer of congealing blue slime is a small boy smiling happily at the camera, held tight by his short father.

“Oh,” Yasha says, softly. “He’s lovely.”

Nott’s smile is a thousand degrees hot and a world wide. “Isn’t he?”

.

“I need to talk with you.”

Yasha feels ambushed.

She had thought – well, she had hoped that there would be some lead up to this conversation. Some kind of warning. Instead, Beau is leaning with her hip against Yasha’s door, blocking the only entrance into her room. Caduceus is nowhere to be seen, the coward. Considering how he’s been camping out in that exact same spot for the past few days, he’s either been bribed or blackmailed to move. Traitor.

Beau doesn’t look good. None of them do, really, but there’s something extra than exhaustion hiding underneath her dark skin. She manages a grin when Yasha glares at her, opening the door and sweeping her arm out in invitation.

Yasha thinks about it.

“Okay,” she says, shoulders slumping in defeat. She walks inside.

She hasn’t had time to make the room as nice as things had once been – it’s too small and too empty at the same time. Molly exists in every corner.

Beau surveys the room with an arched eyebrow, and then leans back against the bed with a wry grin.

“Hey.”

Yasha crosses her arms across her chest and doesn’t say anything.

“So, I’ve been avoiding you,” Beau says.

Yasha gives her a Look.

“Yeah, I know,” Beau says. “But things have been pretty crazy lately, you’ve got to admit. There’s all these events, and very big monsters, and hey you’ve got a new Drift partner –”

“I’m not sorry for leaving,” Yasha interrupts.

Beau’s lips thin, and she cuts off with a sharp sigh.

“I had to go,” Yasha says. She feels desperate in a way she can’t fully express. She’s got three layers of skin between the air and her muscles, the shapes all stretched out to an awkward fit. Molly’s grin aches in the lines of her jaw. She can taste Caduceus’ favourite blend of tea in the back of her throat. Yasha doesn’t exist anymore except as a vessel for ghosts. “Beau, I had to go. I was dying.”

“You think we weren’t?” Beau says. Her fists are clenched at her sides, knuckles wrapped. The skin around the wrappings is scraped and bruised – she had obviously been working out her aggression before coming here.

Yasha leans back against the wall, abruptly drained. She doesn’t want a fight. For once in her life, Yasha doesn’t want to fight.

“I’m not sorry I left,” she says. “But I’m sorry that I left you.”

Beau’s head jerks to the side, cheeks flaring up. Her fists clench down harder, until there are going to be half-moon bruises on her palms later from her fingernails. Yasha has the absurd urge to reach out and curl her fingers between Beau’s, to kiss her knuckles. Without even meaning to, Yasha’s hand begins to reach out.

“Do you know what’s been going on?” Beau says. Her voice sounds clogged, raw. Yasha’s hand freezes. “Do you know what’s been happening these past few years? There are so many dead bodies out there. Every time we go out to fight, we’re walking over corpses.”

“The world is made of bones,” Yasha says.

Beau’s laugh is bitter. She throws her whole head into it, smile sharp enough to cut. “I can’t let them down,” she says. Yasha can tell from the tone of her voice that she is talking about Jester and Fjord. “I can’t let them die. I can live with anything else, but I can’t live without them.”

Yasha reaches out to take Beau’s knotted hand. It feels fevered in her cooler fingers, wounded. She gently flattens out her palms and leans forward to kiss her right index finger.

Beau watches her in a daze. The covering for her eye is still there, but the sticky-tape that’s been holding it to her skin is breaking away to reveal the horror underneath. Her eyelid is swelling into a blackened lump, the eye itself underneath red.

“When Molly died,” Yasha says. “The world kept spinning.”

“But you didn’t.”

Yasha smiles. Molly smiles with her.

“I wonder, sometimes,” she says. “If he even existed. I have – holes, in my memory. A lot of holes. Have I – have I ever told you that? I wake up, and I can’t remember my name. I have to think really hard about it. But I can always remember his.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” Beau says, and starts crying.

.

“Did you have a good talk?”

Yasha glares at Caduceus as they leisurely walk towards the kitchen. Caduceus has his ever-present flask of tea in hand. Every time she tries some of it, it’s a different blend. Tea is almost impossible to get around here, even if it’s home-grown. Even drifting, Caduceus hadn’t been willing to share that little secret.

“It was for your own good,” Caduceus says, smile serene. He doesn’t appear to be noticing the dark clouds that are beginning to swarm over Yasha’s face, but the other people in the surrounding area certainly are. They begin to back away. Caduceus breezes on: “Things were complicated between you. Hopefully, they’re now less complicated.”

“They’re still complicated,” Yasha says, arms folded across her chest.

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “But having sex is a different kind of complicated to wanting to have sex.”

Yasha turns and walks away.

.

“Here’s what we need to do,” Caleb says.

The image is a little ridiculous. Caleb is standing in front of an old-fashioned blackboard, a piece of chalk in one hand and a laser-pointer in the other. Yasha keeps getting distracted by the bright light, which probably isn’t exactly the point of this exercise. She wishes that Caduceus would stop snickering at her from behind his tea.

There is a crudely drawn diagram on the blackboard. It looks nothing like Caleb’s usual shorthand scrawl – rather, suspiciously like it was done by a small child…

Nott notices Yasha’s look and puts a finger to her lips. “Children aren’t allowed in the Shatterdome,” she mouths.

“Here,” Caleb says, pointing. “Is the entry point.”

“Are you sure?” Fjord says.

Caleb gives him a bland look. “I’m sure,” he says. “And here” – this time, he uses the laser-pointed to wriggle around the top-left side – “is where Necrotic Shroud is going to push forward. You’re all going at different angles to hopefully catch the double event before they can disrupt our plans too much.”

“So we won’t have backup?” Keg says. Nila is sitting next to her, serene and calm. Yasha wishes that she didn’t know that Nila has a husband and child. She wishes that Caduceus hadn’t ever told her.

“No,” Caleb says.

“This plan definitely won’t fail,” Keg says.

“We only have until tomorrow to prepare,” Caleb says, ignoring her. “But we’ve already fitted all of your Jaegers with trace amounts of alien DNA – according to Veth’s predictions, they have a kind of lock on what can and cannot enter. Since you’ve all been coated –”

“You’ll all be able to go through!” Nott says, beaming. “Have fun falling into another world. I’m going to be safe and sound here, drinking my worries away.”

“If we fail, you’re not going to be very safe,” Fjord points out.

“If you fail, I’ll drink myself into a coma and not have to worry about it,” Nott says.

Shakaste clears his throat, hiding a smile behind his hand. “If you wouldn’t mind continuing?”

“Mighty Nein is going to enter the water first and get to the far side – then Converging Fury will go to the right, and Necrotic Shroud to the left. Necrotic Shroud is the one that absolutely must get through. They’re holding the payload.”

“And let me just say, I’m thrilled to be working so closely with nuclear explosives,” Caduceus says. “This definitely isn’t going to pollute the water around the rift for hundreds of years to come.”

Nott rolls her eyes. “The water around it is already polluted,” she says. “What, you think the monster aliens are going to care about taking care of the planet?”

Caduceus shrugs. Yasha leans over to give his shoulder a conciliatory pat.

“We have predicted the next event to happen sometime early tomorrow, so you’re going to be deployed at around 3AM in order to get to the Breach in time. I suggest” – Caleb…hesitates. Yasha closes her eyes and leans her head against the back of the couch. Caleb clears his throat and continues. “I suggest you get your affairs in order.”

Beau snorts. “The only family I care about is sitting right here.”

Jester runs an anxious hand across her scalp. “I need to call my Mama.”

Yasha feels like she’s been sucker-punched in the gut.

There had been a time – long ago. So long ago. A lifetime and a world away, when Yasha had smiled and the sea hadn’t been full of blue slime: Zuala had wanted children, and Yasha had wanted Zuala to be happy more than anything.

She wonders what it would have been like if things had been different. If she and Zuala – if they had –

“C’mon, let’s head off,” Fjord says, gently taking Jester by the shoulders and leading her away. Beau slumps against the couch, exhaustion written into the slump of her spine. “We can call her together, okay? She loves hearing from you.”

The rest of the group watches them go in silence. Then Nila breaks away and hurries off, face tight and ashen. Keg watches her go and lets out a loud sigh.

“This is fucked,” she says. No one says: this is a suicide run, but no one needs to. It’s written clear as day in the childish chalk-lines of Nott’s son. Yasha doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. She doesn’t think it makes things anything, really.

“We knew what we were getting into,” Beau snaps.

“Maybe you did,” Keg says. “I sure as fuck didn’t.”

“Now, now – no need to –” Shakaste starts to say.

“Calianna and Twiggy are dead,” Keg says. “And we’re about to be next.”

“We signed up for this,” Beau says, folding her arms across her chest and clenching down hard on her jaw.

Keg laughs. Yasha flinches away from the bitter sound, fingers balling to fists on her lap.

“Of course you would say that,” Keg says.

Beau’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious? You’d much rather go down in a blaze of glory than –”

Beau explodes off from the couch and grabs at Keg’s throat. Keg doesn’t flinch, the wide – slightly manic – grin stretched too-large across her small face.

“Shut it,” she says.

“We’re all as good as dead,” Keg says. “You’re just a little further along than the rest of us.”

“What the fuck,” Yasha says.

Beau doesn’t look away from Keg. “Ignore her. She’s talking bullshit.”

“Beauregard,” Shakaste sighs.

Beau abruptly breaks away from Keg, letting her back to the ground. Keg coughs in a breath. She’s shaking. They’re all shaking, Yasha realises. She’s so cold.

Beau turns on her heel and strides towards the door. On the way, she catches Yasha’s hand and drags her along.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

Yasha follows.

.

If Molly was good at anything, it was keeping secrets.

Yasha can’t tell a lie to save her life. There’s a blunt straightforwardness to her that doesn’t do well under subterfuge. If someone is telling an untruth, Yasha is the last person in the room to know.

Molly, though. Molly could say the sky was green with such conviction that people would believe him.

“Don’t listen to her,” Beau says, tugging her further down the hall. Her knuckles are white under the pressure that she’s putting into holding onto Yasha’s hand. Yasha follows, quietly, and thinks of what Molly would say.

In the end, she’s not good with ghosts anymore than she’s good with lies. She says, “Okay”, and doesn’t say anything else.

.

“Are you sure about this?” Caduceus says.

Yasha just looks at him.

Caduceus grins, wide and sharp in a way that Yasha would have never pegged for him. There’s something so unassuming about his tall, rail thin appearance; the pink hair is a distraction. Camouflage. Nobody cruel could ever have pink hair.

“I’m not going to let them die,” she says.

Caduceus laughs to himself. Yasha wonders if they’re made of the same kind of steel, or if she’s just wishing things were different. Would she do this with Molly? Or is Molly the one suggesting it?

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

.

Stealing a Jaeger is – surprisingly easy, once Yasha realises Caduceus’s older sister has terrorised her workers into submission. She has yet to meet the elder Clay, and at this point she’s a little bit too terrified to say: “Hi! Nice to meet you! Sorry I’m about to kill your little brother!”

It probably wouldn’t even come out that coherently, either. Yasha has so many problems with words.

Walking in the Drift is always a challenge. Fighting is smooth – punching, slashing: all easy. It’s walking that always tripped (Yasha snorts to herself, much to Caduceus’ amusement) her and Molly up. Neither of them had been very grounded people. Learning to run had come before their baby steps had even been an afterthought.

With Caduceus, walking – there’s an eerie feel of weightlessness to it. Yasha has always felt too heavy for the ground to properly hold her. Left, right, left, right. The further out to sea they go, the further away from gravity Yasha feels. Paradoxically, the heavier the controls become. Yasha is used to taking all the weight, but Caduceus – Caduceus holds his own. Better than Molly in some aspects, certainly. As Caduceus had pointed out: Molly had been very thin, and very small. Not much muscle in the end of it.

In her head – in Caduceus’ head – in their head, Molly makes an amused sound of outrage.

“I’m not short,” he says. He doesn’t even bother to refute his slimness.

“You’re shorter than both of us,” Yasha says. Outside, water swells around the reinforced glass of the cockpit. Left, right, left right: walking onward and forward and away from everything. Yasha’s floaty feeling does not dissipate.

“You’re both giants,” Molly says. His voice echoes around the otherwise empty cockpit, Caduceus and Yasha both beginning to sweat in their harnesses. No matter how many times Yasha has done this, she always starts to sweat the moment the first plate of armour goes on. Caduceus murmurs a small sound of agreement from over on his side. Together, they’re riding the Drift.

Three hours later, the intercom crackles to life.

“Well,” Caduceus says serenely as he listens to the babble of expletives that is being rained down upon both of them. “It looks like they figured out what we did.”

“A little early,” Yasha says, frowning.

Inside of her skin, Caduceus forms her shoulders into a shrug. Clarabelle is scary, but the night before the last big push was bound to attract some attention. It could have been as simple as one of the pilots not being able to go to sleep and wandering into the hanger, lost and lonely.

Yasha doesn’t want to think about that. Caduceus is kind enough to drag the thought away and smother it.

Beau’s voice abruptly cuts off from the intercom, and then Shakaste’s smooth tone comes through. There isn’t a hint of nerves in it, no matter that enough nuclear weapons to raze a small country has just disappeared into the abyss. Clarabelle had very helpfully disabled their GPS coordinates, though it probably wasn’t too much of a guess as to where they were going.

“What do you think you two are doing?”

Caduceus answers for them, when Yasha’s tongue gets knotted at the back of her throat.

“Completing the mission,” he says. He grins, sharp. Yasha has loved so many sharp people. “Sir.”

“Half at once,” Shakaste says. “Wait for the other Jaegers to get there. You need to stick to the plan.”

Yasha wants to laugh, so Caduceus does that for her, too.

“We’ll be waiting at the Breach,” he says, and cuts off the coms.

The silence gouges deeply into the space between them. Yasha is breathing heavily, and she hasn’t even said a single word. Next to her, Molly is laughing, because Molly is a dick.

“Beau sounded mad,” Yasha eventually says.

“Just a bit,” Caduceus says.

“I’m never going to get to apologise.”

“Probably not, no.”

Yasha thinks about that. Left, right, left right.

“Oh, well,” she thinks. Molly pats her shoulder. Caduceus says nothing.

They keep walking.

.

[serxssa]

"No concern of mine?" The half-blood snaps, no longer feeling the same sheepish, uncertain air of nerves surrounding her as she looked upon one of the blessed. "This concerns all of us. This started with you. You and your siblings and at the beginning of the end, you are all we can find?" Perhaps she's out of line - there are many things she doesn't know, and will never claim to be an expert in - but she does know that Leviathan was not always without defeat. "Chose? What choice does any of us have in this? Look around you!" A rough gesture to the damage that surrounded them lingered without apology. "What choice should any of you have over our lives?" Undoubtedly, she asks the wrong person - the wrong seraphim. He is here, after all. His choice, far different from his fallen brethren. "No. - no, I can't stay there." It didn't feel right, and even now she's angrier than ever

Certainly, she is no warrier. Serissa has never done anything beyond keeping to herself - following directions from above that deemed the world far too dangerous for her. "I might not be much, but I'm not human and that alone means I should be doing more." The crackle of lightning that lit up the sky above them a telltale sign of her newfound determination. Perhaps, she knew in the very moment she asked. It may have gone entirely unnoticed, had the fleet of seraphim not already been mentioned - her mind spinning a million miles an hour fixating itself on this.. stranger before her. "..-- you." it's all Serissa can really manage, as she considers what this means. Already - she and Vivianne worked out the truth of her parentage, but putting a face to the name... a feeling that she'd not noticed before in meeting him one lone night in an alleyway, feels oddly strange. "You're.. you had no idea about me, did you?"

Azrael did not have time for this. He needed to find Uriel, to force his brother to devise a plan that would find their siblings freed. That would see them within Necromanteoin and with a blade to Leviathan's throat. He did not have time to console this nephilim, nor to give her the information that she had been searching for. To put at ease all the what ifs, and anything else that seemed to slip across her mind that related to him. "Where Michael is, is of no concern to you," he stated with a quality that dared her to argue with him. His gaze had narrowed upon her, watched as she rattled off more questions to him. "The fallen? They chose their placement in this world, they chose to defy orders that would have seen you protected. You and every other human that is now on this battlefield." Azrael would rather gouge his own eyes from his skull than to fight alongside his fallen brethren. "Then remain within the medic tent, and leave the fighting to the warriors."

That should have been the end of their conversation. She should have gone back to the medic tent, and he should have gone off to find Uriel. To establish that plan they needed for their family. It was the unexpected question that caught him by surprise, that left him rooted to the spot. Azrael could see it in her eyes, the knowledge that each of his siblings had been named. All of the blessed, except for him. His eyes narrowed once again, briefly, before her next question brought forth a sigh of defeat. While he would have rather not done this, he knew that denying her now would present further issues. "I'm the second born, the horseman of War," he watched her acutely, as the words fell from his tongue. "Azrael, the one you claim to be your father."

[xsmilelikeacheshire]

( katherine mcnamara + 21+ muse #19 ) isn’t that hailey “ches” elswood over there? i heard she joined faction #2 after they got back to west ham. it’s funny, ‘cause they were only on the service trip because they wanted to get away from their siblings for a bit. hopefully they fit in there – they’re compassionate, but also impulsive. oh, i’m sure they’ll be fine. ( katie, she/hers, 21, est )

I’m sorry guys, this got freaking long.

Quick Facts:

- Name: Hailey Cheshire Elswood

- Preferred Name: Ches, she won’t respond to Hailey usually - and if she does it’s not nice.

- Birthday: July 19th

- Ches is one of seven children

- Ches speaks English and French fluently, her mother was born and raised in Paris.

- She’s taking all her pre-requisites at West Ham U before she transfers somewhere else because she wants to keep an eye on her younger sisters and the Logan

- She’s the mom friend if your mom friend also goes “I HAVE THE BEST IDEA” and drags you into trouble.

- Also archery is her version of therapy, if you try to take her bow you better take it out of her cold, dead hands.

- She also plays piano, it’s also a form of therapy but not as much as her archery is.

-- There’s going to be TWs for drugs use/addiction (not Ches’s), eating disorders (also not Ches’s), murder/armed robbery (how her mother died) below! --

Wanted Connections: Friends - all the friends, she loves friends. Friends to do girly stuff with, friends to play video games with. Friends who eat her food is always appreciate too, she loves feeding people. It’s something that brings her joy for some reason.

Enemies - Ches doesn’t think before she talks... most of the time. If she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t tend to hide it. Enemies are definitely more than welcome.

Romance - Ches kinda has a thing for.... arrogant boys, if that makes sense. If you don’t think you’re the hottest thing the second you walk into a room, she’s already bored of you. That being said, Ches also likes girls and that’s not at all a requirement there at all. She actually likes sex a lot so hookups are welcome. Just, if you’re in a committed relationship with her she gets very jealous, she doesn’t share if it’s hers.

Others - Ches knows where Logan’s stash of drugs is, and she’s not against bartering them for stuff she’ll actually use. So if any of your muses like cocaine or heroin especially, hmu if you want a dealer!

Family:

Edward Elswood - Father, owns a multi-billion dollar company. Workaholic and Ches only sees him to take care of bodily functions before he locks himself back in his study. (Unless it’s a holiday, that’s the only time he takes off to spend with his children) - Never ask me parent ages?

Julia Elswood - Mother, Ches’s idol. - Deceased.

Logan Elswood - Oldest brother, pretty much raised all his siblings. Drug addict but still Ches would do anything for him. - 27 years old

Jamie Elswood - Older brother. Ches and him don’t see eye to eye and dislike each other a lot. But if anyone says shit about him, she’ll go after him. Off at Yale becoming a lawyer. - 25 years old

Emmett Elswood - One of Ches’s closest friends, moved to Australia to get out of West Ham and away from how complicated his family can get. - 23 years old

Jonah Elswood - Her twin brother, he’s a good guy. Ever watch Thomas Sanders vines? That’s pretty much a good summary of Jonah. He loves dogs more than anything else in the world. - 21 years old // TWIN

Eiffel “Effie” Elswood - Ches’s younger sister, has a flemmish giant and wants to become a doctor when she grows up. She has an eating disorder and Ches worries about her constantly. - 17 years old

Ella Elswood - The baby of the bunch. Ella is trying to figure out what she wants from life, does she want to party? Does she want to be smart? Does she want to be on 16 and pregnant to jumpstart an Instagram career. She doesn’t know and she wants to try it all which freaks Ches the fuck out. - 14 years old

Full Bio:

Growing up as an Elswood means two things, you have a lot of a sibling and a lot of money. Ches didn’t spend her earlier childhood years in West Ham, her parents liked to be located in New York City where they could closely watch their multi-billion dollar company with a very close eye. You didn’t earn billions of dollars by letting things rest after all.

Ches liked the city, she liked going to Central Park with her mother and hanging out with her best friends Carrie and Serissa. She could have spent her entire life there, living a fairy tale.

But there’s no such thing as a perfect fairy tale in real life. Everything changed on her eighth birthday when her mother took her out shopping to get a present for twin brother Jonah at the mall. A man came up with a gun and asked for all of their money, Julia Elswood agreed, telling her daughter to run in French as she handed the man her purse.

Ches got out of the situation alive, her mother did not.

Things changed after that, her father moved their family to where he grew up. He would close himself in his study to do his work but his children were safe. Her oldest brother stepped up as a parental figure and he took care of his youngest siblings to the best of his ability. As he grew older, he found a way to cope with his stress.

When you had billions, drugs were easy to obtain. Logan would get high constantly and Ches always feared she’d lose him. It wasn’t until his first overdose he would agree to rehab and it only last so long.

Not that her other siblings were much better. Jamie grew up to be a dick and would constantly lash out at her when he missed their mother. Emmett hopped on a plane to Australia, and while she missed him a lot - the only time she would see him in person is when she could make the time to fly to him because he wanted to avoid his family. Jonah.. her twin brother was actually the best, the worst thing he did was pet dogs constantly. Effie was trying to hide an eating disorder, and Ella? Ella was starting to become a piece of work.

When the service trip was announced, she volunteered quickly. She couldn’t wait for a trip without her sibling where she could just get a break from everything and focus on her own self.