( prp ) where art thou (America & Jeremiah)

[lizbot]

"He's stuck right now, in a dark ball of awful," America explained his current situation further. "It draws you in but then it's all tiny grasping hands and awful when Sonny went close. She could only just get away from it, and then it turned into a bubble of sorts. We found him inside the cliff, in that secret spot. When you say you were waiting for him to be ready, what sort of ready do you mean, Miss Viv?"

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

Vivien shrugged. "In my day it was common for married couples to pool their magic," she said. "It could be the teenagers who built that cage knew of the possibility and decided to seal them both up. I wouldn't know; like I said, I'm from before all of that."

She paused then, chewing on her thumbnail as she thought. The hand with the ring on it stayed in her pocket, almost protectively. "Emotionally, I mean," she said. "As closure. I knew he wouldn't understand what I'd done, and I wanted there to be a way for him to hear my side of the story without seeing me as weak and afraid of the end. I wasn't ever afraid of that; I was afraid people would remember me the way I would have been. A brain tumor... it would've stripped me of everything that made me who I was. It was already starting to, when I ended it."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

Another piece of knowledge filed away for later. The way she was protective of the ring, the way her hand stayed in her pocket ...

"What did you do?" asked Jeremiah. "What story are you waiting to tell him?"

shibrogane

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

"The sorta death that turns you into a Before and an After, and maybe not much of a person at all," America gave a sympathetic grimace and tried not to think of Prudie's last month. "But you were able to keep a good bit of yourself intact, it seems, even if it's..." she gestured, "like this. Ghost doesn't seem to describe it." After a moment's thought, America ventured, "Life adjacent?"

azuredreams

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Why I killed myself instead of staying behind with him," said Vivien slowly, as if Jeremiah were stupid. "She gets it." She gestured to America.

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

"A living memory," offered Jeremiah, though America put the outcome of such an illness in a far more eloquent manner than he could. He was staring a moment later at Vivien (because he did understand but this was neither the time or the place).

"As my lovely friend said: you kept a part of yourself intact. You continue to wait, know things outside if your cycle, and surely there is something to that." That is what he meant by what did she do or was it something that she didn't. Though it was bittersweet to think of her constantly waiting for Liam and him ... never coming.

shibrogane

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Turning her gaze again to the sculpture, America, "It's a long time to wait for a fellow, I hope you get the chance. Would you free him from the cycles if you could?"

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

"This was never what I would've done to handle the problem," said Vivien. "Honestly, I'm not sure Renard was wrong. He just didn't work fast enough." She shrugged. "I told you what I was, what I intended. There's really nothing more complicated than that."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

"If we could, would you want him brought here to see you?" Jeremiah was not sure that they could but- "Or would perhaps take a message to him for when ... he can hear it?"

Something like she was still waiting, that she would wait for him still. Then, as the thought came to him.

shibrogane

 

[lizbot]

"What would you have done? I understand enough of your book to see some big things they did wrong and we did wrong too, following the same path. But it still feels like blind reaching, trying to figure out what's right. Or at least better."

Eye flickering up to the dying flowers, America reached for one to inspect a little closer. Were they going to be replaced, or could they a timer of sorts?

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

"I would have let Renard finish," said Vivien firmly. "Once this whole cycle was started, there was no longer any way to win. There's only ways to minimize pain, and not many of them."

She pulled her hand out of her pocket. "Going forward? I would start disassembling the sigils. You'd need to reverse-engineer them..." Vivien fiddled with her ring again. "The destruction of the anchor-points would work to clear out the dead spell bindings from the first one, if you could find out what they all were."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah was quiet, some part of him wondering what the world would have been like if that work had been completed. Still, what Vivien just said ...

"I traded for knowledge of pieces of the Enemy," said Jeremiah. "A ring of with a garnet," the one she fiddled with, "Ashdown, Ascencion, a flock of birds- The rest I am not sure about, it was too much." In fact there was something about the proximity that made his head swim more so than it normally did in memory of these things. "There was a book as well, I think."

Yet how would they go about destroying them?

shibrogane

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

America's expression turned mulish at Ascension.

Like. Hell.

azuredreams

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Vivien clenched her hand, covered her ring protectively with the other. "Well there's a problem already," she said. "I waited for this ring. I'm not giving it over without a damn good reason."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

"Even if it would help us to free Liam? That he would no longer be caged? It'd be helping us to help him." Jeremiah meant it as well, thinking of conversations with Liam about walking into the dawn of day after the cycle was suppose to reset.

A glance to America given. He would, of course, talk to her about part of what he said.

shibrogane