21 February, 2017 C.E.
It may not have been an actual cemetery, but it may as well have been. Larkin wandered onto the spell-protected property, not quite sure what to expect -- not entirely sure what had Mallory housebound in the first place. All in all, there was a lot of risk in this mission, but she didn't particularly care anymore. She had work to do. And a bag filled with brownies and other assorted goodies tucked under her arm. Her left hand was busy typing on her phone: Here.
The grand old house that Mallory lived in, across the street from a massive Old Temple cathedral and within sight of another, seemed to escape Larkin's notice until the witch stepped outside and made eye contact. One moment there were row houses and a corner shop to either side, and the next there it was, with Mallory standing beside the door, arms folded inside her roomy Miskatonic University sweatshirt. "Over here," she said, and smiled in warm greeting to Larkin, made that much warmer by the fact she'd been seeing no one but the same handful of people for the last week. She looked a little pale, and her progress from the front door to the top step was slow.
Like the witch herself, the house had seen better days, but it had seen worse, too.
It occurred to Larkin that she didn't know Mallory all that well -- for all she knew, she could be walking right into a witch's boiling pot. But something about Mal didn't strike her as the evil kind of witch, so she trotted up after her. "Thanks for meeting with me, hon. I brought you all sorts of sugary goodness in order to keep you fat and happy to see me." She handed over her paper bag, which had a few store-bought brownies as well as some homemade pot brownies from her own kitchen. She noted her looking a little paler than usual, but she didn't want to pry -- not yet, anyway.
Mallory laughed at that, and unfurled the bag to take a whiff. She knew that smell. "Mother of God, you're a lifesaver. Come inside, and don't try to pet the cat -- we named his grumpy ass Lucifer for a good reason." She touched the doorframe, and something iridescent shimmered in the air, and the strange scratchings up in the corners looked a little more distinct; the lock clicked, and the door swung open. "Keeps out burglars, cultists, and the odd zombie horde," she added with a glance over her shoulder at Larkin as she shuffled inside. She'd put some effort into cleaning up, but was comfortable in a sweatshirt and (black widow-patterned) pajama bottoms, and not too keen on trekking all the way up to her room. She cut a path through the front hallway toward the living room; on the other side of the hall, the sound of her housemates' voices and music echoed down the tall, narrow stairwell.
"I get that... we'd have to worry about similar **** back in Brooklyn. I mean, mostly burglars and homeless dudes, but they have a certain zombie smell to them, too." Larkin kept her head on a swivel for whatever the heck may be in a witch's... den? apartment? She didn't know the technical term. She also did a curious, sweeping survey over Mal herself. "So what happened to you? You got caught up in all that crazy human nutcase bullshit?"
"Mm-hm," Mal said, and held onto the armchair of a sofa with both hands, eyes shut as she eased herself into a seat. The living room wasn't particularly witchy: a young girl's homework, plus a crayon drawing of herself holding hands with two men; some promotional materials for a racing league in Stars End; a plastic bag filled with spraypaint cans; the remains of Chinese takeout. The only things that were clearly Mallory's were an empty jar with what appeared to be a paper prayer tag hanging off of it, a zippo she'd painted black and red in a fit of gothic ennui a few years ago, and a beat-up old composition journal that had 'Divination and Conjuring' hand-written on the front cover. "If someone ever asks you to go toe-to-toe with an archfey and a bunch of mad priests, don't. Not unless you're bringing backup."
"I have no idea what an archfey is, but I'll trust your word on that." Larkin noted all the familiar touches to the apartment, including the leftover Chinese food, and trusted the place enough to get comfortable. That meant stripping off her sweater, leaving her in a cotton tee and jeans, and sitting down next to her on the couch. Oddly enough, this place felt more home to her than the inn room she had been staying at. "I appreciate you doing this, by the way. But we don't have to contact him tonight. I don't even know if I'm ready for it. This guy... the one I mean to talk to... it's kinda fresh. The death part." She felt being as vague as possible would help her keep her emotions in check.
Mallory studied Larkin's expression, her own turning to a soft frown as her gaze slid over to the prayer tag, the name on its other side currently facing away from either of them. "We don't have to," she replied softly. "You can leave the materials with me, and take some more time... or we can do something else, like a general reading... or I can hex your landlord or something," as the edge of a smile returned. "Just because I'd hate for you to leave empty-handed, after you've already paid," and the smile grew into a grin as she looked aside at the bag of treats. "Whatever you decide to do... it's okay," she added, looking up from her spell components to Larkin's face again.
"Yeah, I... I dunno..." Larkin felt flustered by the possibility already, even if this was something she really wanted. She bit her lip, debating. "I brought like -- some of his song recordings and... a letter." Motioning to the contents of the bag, underneath the brownie goodness. She knew she'd have to give up some more information to make this work, so she soldiered on. "He was a musician. Really, really ****ing brilliant. And he started to do well commercially -- which he hated. And liked. But hated. That's part of the reason he ... ya know." She didn't know, presumably. But Larkin helped out with a simple gesture of sliding her hand over her wrists.
It was familiar territory. The witch felt her throat grow thick, and suppressed a shudder as she nodded in reply. "How did you know him?" she pressed gently. Maybe the ongoing aches slowing her down, the shock of high-fiving death twice over, were doing something for her usually irreverent behavior, because she withdrew his letter solemnly, tucking it just underneath the edge of the jar. The recordings formed a triangle around it.
Larkin found herself tearing up some, but she batted away those budding tears before they become a problem. "Boyfriend. Or... fiancé. We'd alternate between those two designations every few weeks, depending on the mood." She smirked lightly at that, which helped her mood. Changing the topic would help as well. "What about you? With these roommates, I mean. Is it like a communal love sort of situation?"
The witch's attempt at reverence was short-lived. She barked out a laugh at the implication. "No, no. God, no one here." She shook her head. "More like an adoptive family kind of situation. Most of us just kind of..." She shrugged slowly, and poked at the tapes, arranging them into a neater shape. "...fell in together, and we made this place our own. I'm the oldest, not counting Rob, who's more like your run-of-the-mill roommate. His kid sister's really sweet, though."
"Okay, yeah... I didn't get that vibe." Larkin helped herself to some of her own brownies -- opting for a clump of the pot-version. Not only were they homemade by her own unskilled hands, but they had pot, obviously. "But then again, I didn't realize you were a legit witch. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between actual witch and 'girl who's masturbated to The Craft one too many times.' " Maybe that wasn't the best reference, since it wasn't the most popular movie in the world -- even in her specific world. But who knows, maybe it trickles through the multiverse?
"Holy ****," Mallory said through laughter muffled behind her fist, and shook with it until it hurt. She coughed, winced, and shook her head as she adjusted back into a more comfortable slouch. "I mean, goth-Fairuza Balk was probably a wake-up call to a lot of angsty queer girls," she added (with the confidence of experience), "but I've been casting spells for a long time. Before I was giving much thought to boys and girls."
"Hear hear." Score one for Fairuza Balk fans. Larkin snickered quietly and continued to eat a clump of pot brownie without much self-consciousness. "That's crazy, though. Because I figure even if girls had the ability to be witches, they wouldn't even realize it. Or train in it. So did your schooling come to you, or did you seek out the training? I mean, hell -- becoming an adult is hard enough without the extra pressure of the undead."
"I kind of... found out by accident," Mallory confessed, picking apart two pot brownies to nibble on one. She made an approving noise. "I'd dropped something near a drainage pipe, I'd been saying a children's rhyme, a rat-monster scared the **** out of me -- it happened pretty fast. But, no training. Just cantrips I've swapped or dug up through research," knocking a fist against her journal, "and some light instruction from the very rare mage who gives a ****."
"****ing mages, right." She had no experience with them, but she assumed by the title designation alone that they must be pompous douchebags. All the talk of mages and Balk had her even more relaxed and not even thinking about the reason she had been there in the first place. But then -- it came back to her. "Okay so, look, let's work up to the whole Beckett thing slowly. But either way, I don't want you to think I'm using you for your spellbook. You seem like a cool chick -- slightly ****ed up, but damaged in all the appropriate ways that anyone worth their salt is. So regardless of whether the spells work or not, it'd be rad if we could be friends, too." Nodding, as if she just made that an executive order on her own.
It was very frank. It had Mallory blinking several times, before she nodded, too, and found another grin for Larkin. "Friends, blemishes and all." She toasted her with the brownie. "You'd make a very cool witch, by the way," she added, as an aside, and gestured. "The green hair? The overall vibe?" She laughed, and her gaze drifted to the neglected spell components on the table. "You could totally make it work."
Beckett could wait for a better day.
((Adapted from a live scene with Larkin's player!))
The Invitation
Moderators: Patrick, Mallory, Eri Maeda
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Mallory
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Re: The Invitation
5 April, 2017 C.E.
The end of winter finally gave way to spring in RhyDin, bringing with it warmer weather, a livelier city, and a witch who took the renewal of life as a sign that her healing was done.
There was tender flesh that still ached when stressed, and the terror of facing down a cult of conjurers and an unhinged sidhe, and the horror of bringing pain and death to other beings with her magic; but, she reasoned, she had earned the right to pretend that everything was fine, for a while. And worrying over someone else's troubles instead was a familiar habit for Mallory, almost the perfect distraction.
She waited by the front door of Wayside Manor, leaning on the doorframe, cradling a pocket-sized Bible in one hand. The cover was soft and worn, many pages were fox-eared, and bookmarks and ribbons spilled out of the top to drape over the back of her hand. Her eyes were bright and alert, but only for the contents of the book: clues to power and snippets of dark bargains peppered this and other religious works. It was no coincidence that the inversion of many Christian rites was foundational to medieval cantrip magic.
The air was a little cool, but not enough to dissuade her from enjoying the air in a v-neck tanktop and threadbare jeans while she waited for Larkin. She wore several rings, bands of glass and ebony and copper, and several baubles dangled from a black cord necklace: a pair of fox claws; a spider encased in a cat's-eye marble; a raven's feather wound into a small circle; and the icon of a woman saint stamped twice into the same pendant, facing each other so they appeared to kiss.
She was content to be ignored by the many passerby who could not even see Wayside Manor if they did, but glanced up every so often for the approach of a familiar face that could.
For her part, Larkin knew nothing about magic, or the history, or the dangers -- which was all probably for the best. She wanted to utilize Mallory's skills, but not soak up them up like a sponge for herself. It was like getting your taxes done by a CPA -- she didn't need to know how an IRA worked, she just wanted as much return back as possible. Larkin didn't need to know how the rituals worked, she just wanted her dead man to return as soon as possible.
She thought she did, anyway. She did worry about the potential impact on her and her fragile psyche to talk to him -- which is why she may have been hesitant in the first place. "Moving on" would be hard enough even if the person "moved on" themselves. Just imagining trying to forget about someone, when they could chat in your ear any moment, scared and intrigued and enthralled her all at once. Needless to say, she was conflicted.
A cigarette or two had been burnt by the time she got there, a good way to reduce those nerves and that anxiety. She showed up wearing a bomber jacket and jeans, layering that indicated that she actually showered and didn't simply roll out of bed casually. She thought long and hard about this visit, even if she hadn't come to the conclusion yet.
The sight of Mallory waiting around caused an immediate uptick of a smile on the corner of her lips. Although the sight of something else slowed her down... "A Bible?"
She couldn't help but note it, tucked in her hand. Again, in her ignorance, she didn't realize the connection between witchcraft and old religion, so it struck her as odd. "Holy ****. This is all a big con, huh?" Larkin offered it as a joke, but there was a layer of genuine confusion to it. "You rope in wayward souls, and then strap them down and tell them how sinful they are and how they shouldn't be touching themselves at night. Tricksy bitch."
A surprised laugh escaped the witch, and she lowered the book as Larkin closed the distance. "Bondage and denial? That sounds less like a missionary and more like a dominatrix." She tapped the book twice before tucking it under her arm: "I dare you to find a better resource on angels and demons. I pinky promise there's no straps waiting inside, ecclesiastical or otherwise. C'mon," she jerked her head, and leaned her shoulder into the front door. As it admitted her, symbols inscribed in the wood gleamed red, then blue.
She held it open, so the threshold wouldn't zap Larkin on her way through.
"No...? Shame. Could have been a whole new side gig for you." Larkin smirked as she passed through the threshold. The sex/dominatrix joke was an instinct, but she realized in split second hindsight that it may have been more loaded than that. She found that new friendships always came layered with some of that feeling out process. What was appropriate? What wasn't? She was never very good at that.
All thoughts about straps came to a halt once she passed under the eerie light of Mallory's warding glyphs, and into a house she now knew to be filled with black magic. Prayer tags, ancient symbols, menacing totems... Shit is about to get real, my friends. Now that she had gotten slightly more used to the house and the concept of it, the thrill of impending magic had started to appeal to her. It was about time to see what Mal could do.
Mallory led her a short way down a hall and into a side room they'd passed by on Larkin's last visit. There were books stacked in the corner, at least dozens, and many of them in Greek and Latin; a few black trash bags and old liquor boxes packed with clothes that she and her younger housemates had outgrown in the last few years; a broken old radio that Ed had started tinkering with, before finding it better to cannibalize for other projects; and a small circular rug, deep red, with two faded blue pillows set along the edge.
The rug had an occupant, an unfriendly feline, but the cat named Lucifer quickly slunk past the pair of unwelcome intruders, making a low warning sound as he went. "Asshole," Mallory huffed, but stopped short of the rug. She folded her arms, turned, and looked at Larkin.
"I talked to... someone a lot older, someone I trust, about memory modification. I'm not doing it. It's way too fucking dangerous. I am," she added, her expression softening, "still more than willing to contact... him. Or whoever you need to. I can even channel some random spirit if you just wanna see what it's like, first." One fox claw on her necklace slid off of the other, clacking against the cat's-eye spider. "Easy stuff," she added. "Trust me. Done it a hundred times before."
The idea of Mal actually contacting Beckett sent a jolt of nervous energy through her spine. "Let's do it." Said with surprising confidence. At the very least, Larkin didn't want to talk to some random dead person, who may prattle on and on about their high cholesterol and ask when they'd visit again. In general, dead people had to be boring old souls. Beckett, on the other hand, maybe had some things to say. Primarily, Larkin wanted to know how much their constant fighting contributed to his ultimate suicide, and whether or not she could continue to beat herself up about it for all of eternity.
Although she was steadfast and sober about the idea of it, that didn't stop her nerves from showing. "But seriously, Mal..." A hint of that shakiness, coming out in a broken syllable here and there. "I love you for helping me with this. But if this is all some gimmick, and you're just like some dimestore psychic who's going to bullshit me with parlor tricks... I will -- swear to god -- beat the shit out of you with a lead pipe. I'm not fucking around." From her tone, she meant it. Maybe not the part of the lead pipe, necessarily, but she felt more than capable of delivering on the violence.
A wave of anger ran through the witch -- at the unexpected threat, at the audacity of it in her own home, at the skepticism her craft faced despite the dangers she faced in its pursuit -- especially today. Mallory clenched her jaw, and her gaze turned to the middle of the room as she worked through the feelings. Eyes ticking back and forth. Then she took a deep breath, seemed to come to a decision, and swept her gaze back towards Larkin, taking in her shaky nerves and her violent resolve. She snatched her backpack from the wall next to Larkin's feet, and gestured to the pillows near the rug:
"Sit. I'll get started."
Apparently, the risk of a lead pipe to the skull didn't deter Mallory, which actually gave Larkin some more confidence in the process. Or at least, confidence in Mal's confidence. Given that, she slipped off her jacket -- casually and carelessly tossing it on the floor -- before she sat Indian-style on those pillows.
She was tense, but also curious, never having seen this performed before. Some lower lip biting followed. "Wait -- before we start -- warn me. Is his voice going to talk to us? Or talk through you? Or is there going to be a whole... specter version of him floating around? Because if it's the latter, I swear to god I'm going to freak the **** out." It was her second "swear to god" moment, which showed that the devout atheist in her was started to become frazzled beyond her normal limits.
"We're going to start with object manipulation," Mallory explained as she dropped her unzipped backpack next to the other pillow, "and use it for call and response," because that's all I've ever done before. But she buried the warning flag waved by whatever sense of caution she possessed, and kept that thought to herself. "Then... I'm going to give him my voice."
She realized she was setting things down with too much force, the jar and the tapes leaving her bag with a clatter, and she forced herself to slow down. Took a breath. Cut a grin aside at Larkin: "No specters. They couldn't manifest in this house if they wanted to. The Ghostbusters can eat their fucking hearts out."
Then she set Beckett's letter to Larkin, open but face down, on the center of the rug. The jar with the prayer tag was set on top of it. The tapes formed a triangle around it.
"Ready?" Mallory asked as she sank into the pillow across from Larkin. Her thumb traced the top of the zippo lighter she clutched, eager to flip it open and get started. Her green eyes gleamed, hungry for that connection to the Veil and all the secrets that lay behind it.
Even the letter -- which she had given Mallory in the first place -- felt like a surprise to her. A shock to the system that maybe, just maybe (okay -- definitely) that she may be too raw to handle this with casual cool. "No -- definitely not ready."
But then again, she wasn't bolting, either. "But what the ****, right?" She looked back up to Mallory, with a softer, pained smile. Vulnerable. She tried to settle her own nerves with a half-smirk and half-joke. "Do I look okay? I'd hate for him to check me out and talk about how I let myself go." It wasn't entirely a joke, though, as illustrated by the fact that she ran her hand through her hair to prep herself.
"Yeah," Mallory said, and gave her a quiet laugh. "You look ****ing great, so if he says that..." Her gaze slid off of Larkin as she leaned forward to the jar, tugging the prayer tag loose. "...then clearly the spell ****ed up and we need to start over." She lit the end of the tag, dropped it in the jar, and clapped the lid shut.
The fire that rapidly consumed the curling paper was extinguished, billowing out into thick gray smoke that filled the jar. It moved turbulently, like a windstorm contained, but Mallory was still waiting for something, murmuring to the jar as she ran the cat's-eye marble on her necklace between her fingers.
Inside the marble, the dead spider twitched. One foreleg drew in over and over, as if beckoning Larkin, but Mallory didn't seem to pay it any mind. Her eyes were on the jar, which was rapidly frosting over. She frowned and waved her hand around the top of the jar... then pressed a knuckle next to its base, feeling the unnatural chill somehow rising through the floor.
"Contact," she whispered, and gave an excited smile to Larkin, tip of her tongue held between parted teeth. "The ferryman has taken my offering. Now, we just have to find your boyfriend."
Larkin's eyes locked in on every detail, taking mental notes in her head. The jar, the smoke, the marble, the *** spider. God, she hated spiders normally, especially dead ones who happened to flail. Clearly she felt something going on, even if she couldn't pinpoint exactly what. When Mallory mentioned "contact," she got chills.
She wasn't smiling in the same way that Mal was. She was freaked the *** out. Her eyes were wide, and welling with tears. Watering with anticipation and fear and every other emotion that she'd managed to stifle with alcohol and chemicals.
She didn't say anything more -- she couldn't. Her tongue had retreated deep in her throat and hidden away. But those expressive doe eyes said more than enough -- she was scared. But she wanted to keep going. "How?" Voice trembling. "How do we find him?"
Mallory glanced at Larkin with worry, but it was a fleeting thing. She was working, swaying forward and back, running her fingers through the threads of the Veil, which was now paper-thin in a roughly two-foot prism inside of this room. Spectral remnants, the feral leftovers of a soul's earthly desires, nipped at her fingertips with icy fangs when she got too close.
"Call out to him," she hissed. "You have to call out to him, by name. Beg him. Plead. Threaten him. Whatever you need to do."
That wouldn't be so easy for Larkin. With her nerves frayed and her voice trembling, the best she could offer up was a soft-spoken: "Beckett...?"
She did lean forward some, hoping that may offer better audio quality the same way it would if she talked closer into her phone. "Beckett? It's me." After a swat at the tears in her eyes, she realized she'd have to be bolder than that for this to work. 'Threatening' may be hard to pull off, but begging and pleading was an easier ask. "It's Lark. Talk to me. Please --" She stopped there, wiping at her eyes again. Hopefully the spirits could realize that what she lacked in volume she made up for in sincerity.
Mallory's fingers tensed in the air as if clutching the reins of a powerful beast... and held her breath. The room was quiet, save for the faint crackling of the jar growing ever colder. "Beckett Fisher," she said, as her eyes searched the room. "I know you've got a long way to go, but Larkin's here for you. Your words for her are here, too. Don't you have any more? Give us a sign."
Knock. Knock-knock. Knock. Knock-knock. A beat began playing out on the floor. Mallory's lips curved into a smile, even as her teeth began to chatter. The chill of the Veil was spreading.
But she wasn't done. She wasn't quite convinced. Her eyes narrowed on the smoke-filled jar. Her hands curled into fists, pressed hard into her thighs. "As a conjured being, as a guest, and I as the master of the house, you are bound to the laws of my domain; know that liars will be banished to Hell, and interlopers who waste my time will be banished to the Void. Now... name yourself."
There immediately came the sharp sound of a nail scratching on glass, and Mallory's eyes widened in wonder, then narrowed in satisfaction as Beckett's looping signature was inscribed on the frosted jar by unseen fingers.
After 'calling' as best as she could, Larkin retreated into a ball, tugging her knees close to her chest as though it provided some sense of protection. She still didn't know if this was Beckett, or any ghost, or just some crazy ass parlor trick on Mal's part. But if it was, it was a hell of a trick. And it freaked her out. She rocked back and forth in that ball, until --
The signature. She could recognize it well enough. And that was more than enough to set her off. She gasped, quickly, before sucking all the air back into her lungs. Breathing staggered breaths that stopped her from being able to control her emotions. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her lip quivered. She only had enough strength to look up to Mallory, to see her reaction. Was this normal? Would this be okay?
It was Beckett's name that was dominating this space -- his memory, his presence, his literal signature -- until Mallory spoke another: "Larkin." The signature continued to glisten, emblazoned on the smoky jar. The chill of the dead realm persisted. But the witch's eyes were on the living woman a few feet away from her. "We don't have to do this right now. I can ask him back another time. Or, you can ask him your questions right now -- a yes-or-no, to start. It's up to you. Either way... it's okay," she added, with an encouraging nod.
Larkin wasn't comfortable with this, as illustrated by the fact that her knees got closer and closer to her chest and her head tucked down on top of them, as though she was a turtle trying to climb back in her shell. Still, despite the pain of it, she knew that this was her moment of truth. She didn't know if she could reach Beckett again, or whether she'd have the strength to try this again.
Looking to Mallory helped, because it grounded her to the real world and away from the intensity of the moment. "Can you... can you tell him... I love him? And..." Okay so maybe this wasn't helping too much, because she was turning into a babbling bawling mess. "I'm sorry?" Swat swat at her eyes again. "I'm sorry for being such a bitch and a bad girlfriend and..." She stopped there, choked up again. That was as much as she could articulate at the moment. It wasn't a proper question, or maybe even a help, but she couldn't help herself from spouting the first words on her mind.
Mallory nodded slowly. This wasn't the first time she had been asked to relay information to the dead during a communion, instead of the other way. She leaned forward, and whispered to the space just above the jar, loud enough for Larkin to hear: "Beckett, can you do something for me? Knock three times for yes, and two for no. Do you understand?"
Knock-knock-knock.
"Larkin wanted to tell you that she loves you... and that she's sorry. Did you hear her?" Knock-knock. The witch frowned. "But you understood me?" Knock-knock-knock.
Mallory licked her lips to wet them, and pitched her low voice over to Larkin: "Sometimes, when the dead have been gone for a long time, it's hard for them to sense the living... so they focus their attention on the sensitive." As the words left her lips, the weight of an unseen, spectral gaze on her grew that much heavier. "That... seems to be what's happening here."
"Or maybe he's pissed." Larkin offered, as a side explanation. The thought gave her a more somber expression. It wasn't too farfetched. He hadn't killed himself as a direct result of an argument, but there were plenty of those in their day. Sometimes it felt like yelling and screaming and makeup sex made up the majority of their relationship toward the end.
Larkin brushed her hair back, trying to control her own emotions. Her whiny tears weren't helping this connection, and she desperately wanted to connect right now. More steadfast, she looked to Mallory with a stone cold stare. "What should we do to make it work? Should I..." Pausing, briefly, but offering with all sincerity. "I'm open to killing myself, if I have to." There were no tears in her eyes with that. She meant it. She didn't want to die, but she didn't exactly care about living either. Maybe the bizarre netherworld that he occupied would be the best option left.
Mallory could hear her heart pounding in her ears, when the words left Larkin's lips. Suicide. Cane had told her that seeking memory modification was an act of desperation, and desperation meant danger -- in this case, to Larkin herself.
"I can give him my voice," she said; it tumbled out before she was finished thinking it through. Her eyes stopped ticking back and forth over the middle of the room, and locked onto Larkin's doe-eyed gaze. "My voice, my senses... He'll hear you. He'll speak to you. I just have to invite him in."
Larkin nodded -- "Okay." She left it at that, content with that compromise. She had no friggin' clue about the dangers of memory modification, or allowing someone to speak through you, or talking to the dead in the first place. But hey, it couldn't be worse than driving a knife through her own belly, right?
She kept her attention weaving back between the center of the room and Mallory, unsure when exactly this change would happen or how it would manifest. If seeing the signature freaked her out, seeing him inside of Mal would be much, much worse.
"I offer a bargain to the spirit of Beckett Fisher," Mallory said, as she curled one ring-clad hand around the jar. She paused only for the shortest of breaths, because the terms of the deal had to be unmistakably clear. "I offer use of my senses for only one purpose: to communicate with the woman named Larkin, the same who sits with me now. I offer to share my voice with you for the same solitary purpose. In exchange, you will listen to the woman named Larkin, the same who sits with me now, and answer her questions honestly. Our deal is done, and my senses are no longer to be shared with you, as soon as you are dismissed from this realm. I, Mallory St. Martin, agree to this bargain. Do you, Beckett Fisher?"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The witch looked up from the jar, giving a slow nod to Larkin. Then she popped open the lid and took a deep breath. The roiling gray smoke within seemed to hesitate, then streamed into Mallory through her nostrils and her parted lips. Her long inhale became a shaky, rattling breath; her hands braced against the floor, she arched her back, her now cloudy eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.
Then she relaxed, her head lolled forward, and her gaze slid slowly up -- almost sly -- to meet Larkin's. Her lips curled into a familiar smile. "Larkin," she breathed in wonder. "In the freakin' flesh." The vocal cords being used, the body, those were all Mallory's, but different aspects of the way that Beckett Fisher had spoken in life still broke through in death: a slightly nasal quality, a counterpoint to the low tone and the tendency to pitch lower, almost bashful, when he ended a phrase; the way he relished words like flesh, juice, meat. The head straightened. The smile softened.
"It's been a while."
Larkin's eyebrows knitted with concern -- and then confusion -- when the transition happened. She didn't know what to expect; but from movies and TV, she thought that perhaps her eyes may change colors. The cloudiness of them at first gave her pause, as though she may have accidentally stumbled upon a demon.
When the spirit spoke, Larkin leaned up, leaned closer, leaned in and out, and in again, trying to inspect every inch of her expressions to see if they matched as well. She'd be skeptical, still, as any rational person would be. "If that's you... tell me. What's my sister's name. What's your sister's name? And..." Trying, desperately, to think of more questions that some spirit/poseur couldn't get by googling; Beckett had some fame by the time of his death so she had to get deeper and more personal. "What Halloween costume did I wear in L.A. that one time at Aleister's? The one we got on that weird store on Melrose right before the party?" Take that, conman-slash-ghost; there was no getting off easy here.
Remembering was different for a ghost. The spirit of Beckett wanted to use the brain he now had some access to, on reflex, but had to rely instead on the echoes that had parted his body and traveled with his spirit when he died. The pupils were clouded, nearly impossible to detect, but Larkin could surmise that Mallory was looking at the ceiling right now, the way her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth -- the goofy face Beckett made when he looked away to think. "Your sister's name." She looked at Larkin. "Like I could forget Caitlyn. And mine's Alice. The one who kept calling you, chewed you the **** out about being patient with my ass, even though you never told me. Took too freakin' long telling her to knock that off. Sorry about that, too. And that's a real, real clever third question. The tabloids showed you running around in that stupid ****ing sumo suit, but that was after you got drunk off your ass. Pirate outfit, inflatable parrot, we did not get it at Melrose but we started there and wound up on Santa Monica... and I still think you looked ****in' sexy in that beard."
She curled her hands into fists, dropped her face onto them, and stared across the rug at Larkin. "You look good."
Larkin considered his answers with some hesitation, although there was no good reason why she should. No one else could know things with that specificity -- at least, not the Halloween story part. In the future, she may need better security questions than 'your sister's name.' She'd make a mental note of that.
But for now, Larkin knee-walked over to him, careful to avoid the jars and other witch-related items, and stared at him, an inch from his/her face. She ran a hand along Mallory's cheek, trying to study other signs (other than the voice and memory) that could remind her of him.
And of course, that belief triggered those emotions again. The doe-eyed tears. But this time, they were less freaked out and more overwhelmed. "It is you. Right? Right. And you don't... like... hate me?"
"I don't hate you, Lark." The whisper came from Mallory's lips, cloudy white eyes staring back at her as she leaned into her hand. "I hate me. I hate my stupid ****ing brain, for taking me away from this. From you." She held Larkin's other hand in her own, studying her fingers. Refreshing his memory. "From us."
A soft smile reappeared on Mallory's lips. "I've missed you."
For the first time since the whole procedure started, Larkin flashed a grin -- just like old times. "Me, too. So. So. Much." For a split second, it felt like they were together, and not a ghost being inhabiting Mallory's body.
Of course, that realization occurred to her soon enough. She tilted her head, considering Mallory's form and its responsiveness. "Mal, are you there, too?" Wave of a hand across the face. She wanted to experiment with this world. Poke. Poke. "Beck, can you feel that?" Just to test the limit, she'd pinch Mal's wrist with her nails, trying to get a reaction out of somebody.
"This is she," Mallory said, releasing Larkin's hand to cough into an arm. "Ow, by the way. And yeah, he can feel that too. Shared senses while you two talk -- and no longer," she added with a glance up at empty air, as if Beckett's spectral form were hovering above her.
Then she rolled her neck, sighed, and steadied her gaze on Larkin again. "This is pretty ****ing weird," she said, in Beckett's familiar cadence. "You hired a psychic? I didn't think that worked..."
Larkin felt... confused. She didn't know who she was talking to at any one time, but she was definitely convinced that she was indeed talking to Beckett -- in some version -- as well as Mallory. Group chat, she supposed. Of course, that made the conversation a little more delicate. "She's a... mystic." 'Witch' may be loaded. "And my friend."
"Mal?" Larkin even pinched her wrist again, figuring that was the best way to get her attention. Maybe? I mean, it did work before... "Is there any way to separate yourself from your body for a minute or two? 'Cause I really want to... kiss him. With your permission." She almost said 'i want to ***,' but that may be a little impolite. The two of them had company, after all.
"Fucking -- I can hear my name," Mal snapped. At least that tone shift was fairly blatant. "And I... can't really do that. If I fully left my body, I..." Visions of her journey down the thread towards whatever awaited her soul in death, her struggle against the corrupt healer who had tried to enslave her body, flooded back to her, and she shook her head. "I couldn't guarantee that I'd come back. I'm not willing to do that."
The witch hesitated. This was her body. But it was only a kiss, and these two had been parted by death. "... I can let him steer, and just, you know... focus on something else."
There were a few slow, deep breaths. A heavy-lidded look from Mallory. A crooked grin. "Even fucking weirder, huh?" she rumbled, with Beckett's voice. "I've thought about this for a long, long time."
Larkin bit her lower lip again, debating. As a woman, she felt protective over Mal's body. She had been inappropriately touched in her life and couldn't handle that thought or experience on anyone else. Permission wasn't all that mattered -- she needed even more. "Mal..." Rather than pinch this time, she ran a hand along her wrist. "I don't want to make you feel weird about this. After the fact. So don't say yes if it makes you uncomfortable. But I mean... honestly? We were probably a few drinks or joints from making out anyway."
Larkin noted, at that moment, that confession may have made Beckett uncomfortable. These were confusing times, all over. But Larkin didn't run from that; she kept running her hand along her wrist, and up her arm. She needed to kiss someone, damn it, and if that meant a two-for-one seduction special, she was up to that task. She leaned in with that intention, ready to kiss should they accept.
"We're here for this," Mallory decided, quietly; then met Larkin's gaze with her own. "Both of us." Her ringed fingers clacked together as they curled delicately beneath her chin... then opened, guiding Larkin closer with a firmer grasp.
Everything about her was both familiar and strange: the softness of her small cupid's-bow lips, the smell of her shampoo, the feeling of her skin; the firmness of his grasp, the hunger of his kisses, the moment he always chose to move in closer.
It was Beckett, but not Beckett alone, as Mallory finally gave in to her yearning and met Larkin's lips with her own.
((Adapted from live RP with Larkin's player!))
The end of winter finally gave way to spring in RhyDin, bringing with it warmer weather, a livelier city, and a witch who took the renewal of life as a sign that her healing was done.
There was tender flesh that still ached when stressed, and the terror of facing down a cult of conjurers and an unhinged sidhe, and the horror of bringing pain and death to other beings with her magic; but, she reasoned, she had earned the right to pretend that everything was fine, for a while. And worrying over someone else's troubles instead was a familiar habit for Mallory, almost the perfect distraction.
She waited by the front door of Wayside Manor, leaning on the doorframe, cradling a pocket-sized Bible in one hand. The cover was soft and worn, many pages were fox-eared, and bookmarks and ribbons spilled out of the top to drape over the back of her hand. Her eyes were bright and alert, but only for the contents of the book: clues to power and snippets of dark bargains peppered this and other religious works. It was no coincidence that the inversion of many Christian rites was foundational to medieval cantrip magic.
The air was a little cool, but not enough to dissuade her from enjoying the air in a v-neck tanktop and threadbare jeans while she waited for Larkin. She wore several rings, bands of glass and ebony and copper, and several baubles dangled from a black cord necklace: a pair of fox claws; a spider encased in a cat's-eye marble; a raven's feather wound into a small circle; and the icon of a woman saint stamped twice into the same pendant, facing each other so they appeared to kiss.
She was content to be ignored by the many passerby who could not even see Wayside Manor if they did, but glanced up every so often for the approach of a familiar face that could.
For her part, Larkin knew nothing about magic, or the history, or the dangers -- which was all probably for the best. She wanted to utilize Mallory's skills, but not soak up them up like a sponge for herself. It was like getting your taxes done by a CPA -- she didn't need to know how an IRA worked, she just wanted as much return back as possible. Larkin didn't need to know how the rituals worked, she just wanted her dead man to return as soon as possible.
She thought she did, anyway. She did worry about the potential impact on her and her fragile psyche to talk to him -- which is why she may have been hesitant in the first place. "Moving on" would be hard enough even if the person "moved on" themselves. Just imagining trying to forget about someone, when they could chat in your ear any moment, scared and intrigued and enthralled her all at once. Needless to say, she was conflicted.
A cigarette or two had been burnt by the time she got there, a good way to reduce those nerves and that anxiety. She showed up wearing a bomber jacket and jeans, layering that indicated that she actually showered and didn't simply roll out of bed casually. She thought long and hard about this visit, even if she hadn't come to the conclusion yet.
The sight of Mallory waiting around caused an immediate uptick of a smile on the corner of her lips. Although the sight of something else slowed her down... "A Bible?"
She couldn't help but note it, tucked in her hand. Again, in her ignorance, she didn't realize the connection between witchcraft and old religion, so it struck her as odd. "Holy ****. This is all a big con, huh?" Larkin offered it as a joke, but there was a layer of genuine confusion to it. "You rope in wayward souls, and then strap them down and tell them how sinful they are and how they shouldn't be touching themselves at night. Tricksy bitch."
A surprised laugh escaped the witch, and she lowered the book as Larkin closed the distance. "Bondage and denial? That sounds less like a missionary and more like a dominatrix." She tapped the book twice before tucking it under her arm: "I dare you to find a better resource on angels and demons. I pinky promise there's no straps waiting inside, ecclesiastical or otherwise. C'mon," she jerked her head, and leaned her shoulder into the front door. As it admitted her, symbols inscribed in the wood gleamed red, then blue.
She held it open, so the threshold wouldn't zap Larkin on her way through.
"No...? Shame. Could have been a whole new side gig for you." Larkin smirked as she passed through the threshold. The sex/dominatrix joke was an instinct, but she realized in split second hindsight that it may have been more loaded than that. She found that new friendships always came layered with some of that feeling out process. What was appropriate? What wasn't? She was never very good at that.
All thoughts about straps came to a halt once she passed under the eerie light of Mallory's warding glyphs, and into a house she now knew to be filled with black magic. Prayer tags, ancient symbols, menacing totems... Shit is about to get real, my friends. Now that she had gotten slightly more used to the house and the concept of it, the thrill of impending magic had started to appeal to her. It was about time to see what Mal could do.
Mallory led her a short way down a hall and into a side room they'd passed by on Larkin's last visit. There were books stacked in the corner, at least dozens, and many of them in Greek and Latin; a few black trash bags and old liquor boxes packed with clothes that she and her younger housemates had outgrown in the last few years; a broken old radio that Ed had started tinkering with, before finding it better to cannibalize for other projects; and a small circular rug, deep red, with two faded blue pillows set along the edge.
The rug had an occupant, an unfriendly feline, but the cat named Lucifer quickly slunk past the pair of unwelcome intruders, making a low warning sound as he went. "Asshole," Mallory huffed, but stopped short of the rug. She folded her arms, turned, and looked at Larkin.
"I talked to... someone a lot older, someone I trust, about memory modification. I'm not doing it. It's way too fucking dangerous. I am," she added, her expression softening, "still more than willing to contact... him. Or whoever you need to. I can even channel some random spirit if you just wanna see what it's like, first." One fox claw on her necklace slid off of the other, clacking against the cat's-eye spider. "Easy stuff," she added. "Trust me. Done it a hundred times before."
The idea of Mal actually contacting Beckett sent a jolt of nervous energy through her spine. "Let's do it." Said with surprising confidence. At the very least, Larkin didn't want to talk to some random dead person, who may prattle on and on about their high cholesterol and ask when they'd visit again. In general, dead people had to be boring old souls. Beckett, on the other hand, maybe had some things to say. Primarily, Larkin wanted to know how much their constant fighting contributed to his ultimate suicide, and whether or not she could continue to beat herself up about it for all of eternity.
Although she was steadfast and sober about the idea of it, that didn't stop her nerves from showing. "But seriously, Mal..." A hint of that shakiness, coming out in a broken syllable here and there. "I love you for helping me with this. But if this is all some gimmick, and you're just like some dimestore psychic who's going to bullshit me with parlor tricks... I will -- swear to god -- beat the shit out of you with a lead pipe. I'm not fucking around." From her tone, she meant it. Maybe not the part of the lead pipe, necessarily, but she felt more than capable of delivering on the violence.
A wave of anger ran through the witch -- at the unexpected threat, at the audacity of it in her own home, at the skepticism her craft faced despite the dangers she faced in its pursuit -- especially today. Mallory clenched her jaw, and her gaze turned to the middle of the room as she worked through the feelings. Eyes ticking back and forth. Then she took a deep breath, seemed to come to a decision, and swept her gaze back towards Larkin, taking in her shaky nerves and her violent resolve. She snatched her backpack from the wall next to Larkin's feet, and gestured to the pillows near the rug:
"Sit. I'll get started."
Apparently, the risk of a lead pipe to the skull didn't deter Mallory, which actually gave Larkin some more confidence in the process. Or at least, confidence in Mal's confidence. Given that, she slipped off her jacket -- casually and carelessly tossing it on the floor -- before she sat Indian-style on those pillows.
She was tense, but also curious, never having seen this performed before. Some lower lip biting followed. "Wait -- before we start -- warn me. Is his voice going to talk to us? Or talk through you? Or is there going to be a whole... specter version of him floating around? Because if it's the latter, I swear to god I'm going to freak the **** out." It was her second "swear to god" moment, which showed that the devout atheist in her was started to become frazzled beyond her normal limits.
"We're going to start with object manipulation," Mallory explained as she dropped her unzipped backpack next to the other pillow, "and use it for call and response," because that's all I've ever done before. But she buried the warning flag waved by whatever sense of caution she possessed, and kept that thought to herself. "Then... I'm going to give him my voice."
She realized she was setting things down with too much force, the jar and the tapes leaving her bag with a clatter, and she forced herself to slow down. Took a breath. Cut a grin aside at Larkin: "No specters. They couldn't manifest in this house if they wanted to. The Ghostbusters can eat their fucking hearts out."
Then she set Beckett's letter to Larkin, open but face down, on the center of the rug. The jar with the prayer tag was set on top of it. The tapes formed a triangle around it.
"Ready?" Mallory asked as she sank into the pillow across from Larkin. Her thumb traced the top of the zippo lighter she clutched, eager to flip it open and get started. Her green eyes gleamed, hungry for that connection to the Veil and all the secrets that lay behind it.
Even the letter -- which she had given Mallory in the first place -- felt like a surprise to her. A shock to the system that maybe, just maybe (okay -- definitely) that she may be too raw to handle this with casual cool. "No -- definitely not ready."
But then again, she wasn't bolting, either. "But what the ****, right?" She looked back up to Mallory, with a softer, pained smile. Vulnerable. She tried to settle her own nerves with a half-smirk and half-joke. "Do I look okay? I'd hate for him to check me out and talk about how I let myself go." It wasn't entirely a joke, though, as illustrated by the fact that she ran her hand through her hair to prep herself.
"Yeah," Mallory said, and gave her a quiet laugh. "You look ****ing great, so if he says that..." Her gaze slid off of Larkin as she leaned forward to the jar, tugging the prayer tag loose. "...then clearly the spell ****ed up and we need to start over." She lit the end of the tag, dropped it in the jar, and clapped the lid shut.
The fire that rapidly consumed the curling paper was extinguished, billowing out into thick gray smoke that filled the jar. It moved turbulently, like a windstorm contained, but Mallory was still waiting for something, murmuring to the jar as she ran the cat's-eye marble on her necklace between her fingers.
Inside the marble, the dead spider twitched. One foreleg drew in over and over, as if beckoning Larkin, but Mallory didn't seem to pay it any mind. Her eyes were on the jar, which was rapidly frosting over. She frowned and waved her hand around the top of the jar... then pressed a knuckle next to its base, feeling the unnatural chill somehow rising through the floor.
"Contact," she whispered, and gave an excited smile to Larkin, tip of her tongue held between parted teeth. "The ferryman has taken my offering. Now, we just have to find your boyfriend."
Larkin's eyes locked in on every detail, taking mental notes in her head. The jar, the smoke, the marble, the *** spider. God, she hated spiders normally, especially dead ones who happened to flail. Clearly she felt something going on, even if she couldn't pinpoint exactly what. When Mallory mentioned "contact," she got chills.
She wasn't smiling in the same way that Mal was. She was freaked the *** out. Her eyes were wide, and welling with tears. Watering with anticipation and fear and every other emotion that she'd managed to stifle with alcohol and chemicals.
She didn't say anything more -- she couldn't. Her tongue had retreated deep in her throat and hidden away. But those expressive doe eyes said more than enough -- she was scared. But she wanted to keep going. "How?" Voice trembling. "How do we find him?"
Mallory glanced at Larkin with worry, but it was a fleeting thing. She was working, swaying forward and back, running her fingers through the threads of the Veil, which was now paper-thin in a roughly two-foot prism inside of this room. Spectral remnants, the feral leftovers of a soul's earthly desires, nipped at her fingertips with icy fangs when she got too close.
"Call out to him," she hissed. "You have to call out to him, by name. Beg him. Plead. Threaten him. Whatever you need to do."
That wouldn't be so easy for Larkin. With her nerves frayed and her voice trembling, the best she could offer up was a soft-spoken: "Beckett...?"
She did lean forward some, hoping that may offer better audio quality the same way it would if she talked closer into her phone. "Beckett? It's me." After a swat at the tears in her eyes, she realized she'd have to be bolder than that for this to work. 'Threatening' may be hard to pull off, but begging and pleading was an easier ask. "It's Lark. Talk to me. Please --" She stopped there, wiping at her eyes again. Hopefully the spirits could realize that what she lacked in volume she made up for in sincerity.
Mallory's fingers tensed in the air as if clutching the reins of a powerful beast... and held her breath. The room was quiet, save for the faint crackling of the jar growing ever colder. "Beckett Fisher," she said, as her eyes searched the room. "I know you've got a long way to go, but Larkin's here for you. Your words for her are here, too. Don't you have any more? Give us a sign."
Knock. Knock-knock. Knock. Knock-knock. A beat began playing out on the floor. Mallory's lips curved into a smile, even as her teeth began to chatter. The chill of the Veil was spreading.
But she wasn't done. She wasn't quite convinced. Her eyes narrowed on the smoke-filled jar. Her hands curled into fists, pressed hard into her thighs. "As a conjured being, as a guest, and I as the master of the house, you are bound to the laws of my domain; know that liars will be banished to Hell, and interlopers who waste my time will be banished to the Void. Now... name yourself."
There immediately came the sharp sound of a nail scratching on glass, and Mallory's eyes widened in wonder, then narrowed in satisfaction as Beckett's looping signature was inscribed on the frosted jar by unseen fingers.
After 'calling' as best as she could, Larkin retreated into a ball, tugging her knees close to her chest as though it provided some sense of protection. She still didn't know if this was Beckett, or any ghost, or just some crazy ass parlor trick on Mal's part. But if it was, it was a hell of a trick. And it freaked her out. She rocked back and forth in that ball, until --
The signature. She could recognize it well enough. And that was more than enough to set her off. She gasped, quickly, before sucking all the air back into her lungs. Breathing staggered breaths that stopped her from being able to control her emotions. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her lip quivered. She only had enough strength to look up to Mallory, to see her reaction. Was this normal? Would this be okay?
It was Beckett's name that was dominating this space -- his memory, his presence, his literal signature -- until Mallory spoke another: "Larkin." The signature continued to glisten, emblazoned on the smoky jar. The chill of the dead realm persisted. But the witch's eyes were on the living woman a few feet away from her. "We don't have to do this right now. I can ask him back another time. Or, you can ask him your questions right now -- a yes-or-no, to start. It's up to you. Either way... it's okay," she added, with an encouraging nod.
Larkin wasn't comfortable with this, as illustrated by the fact that her knees got closer and closer to her chest and her head tucked down on top of them, as though she was a turtle trying to climb back in her shell. Still, despite the pain of it, she knew that this was her moment of truth. She didn't know if she could reach Beckett again, or whether she'd have the strength to try this again.
Looking to Mallory helped, because it grounded her to the real world and away from the intensity of the moment. "Can you... can you tell him... I love him? And..." Okay so maybe this wasn't helping too much, because she was turning into a babbling bawling mess. "I'm sorry?" Swat swat at her eyes again. "I'm sorry for being such a bitch and a bad girlfriend and..." She stopped there, choked up again. That was as much as she could articulate at the moment. It wasn't a proper question, or maybe even a help, but she couldn't help herself from spouting the first words on her mind.
Mallory nodded slowly. This wasn't the first time she had been asked to relay information to the dead during a communion, instead of the other way. She leaned forward, and whispered to the space just above the jar, loud enough for Larkin to hear: "Beckett, can you do something for me? Knock three times for yes, and two for no. Do you understand?"
Knock-knock-knock.
"Larkin wanted to tell you that she loves you... and that she's sorry. Did you hear her?" Knock-knock. The witch frowned. "But you understood me?" Knock-knock-knock.
Mallory licked her lips to wet them, and pitched her low voice over to Larkin: "Sometimes, when the dead have been gone for a long time, it's hard for them to sense the living... so they focus their attention on the sensitive." As the words left her lips, the weight of an unseen, spectral gaze on her grew that much heavier. "That... seems to be what's happening here."
"Or maybe he's pissed." Larkin offered, as a side explanation. The thought gave her a more somber expression. It wasn't too farfetched. He hadn't killed himself as a direct result of an argument, but there were plenty of those in their day. Sometimes it felt like yelling and screaming and makeup sex made up the majority of their relationship toward the end.
Larkin brushed her hair back, trying to control her own emotions. Her whiny tears weren't helping this connection, and she desperately wanted to connect right now. More steadfast, she looked to Mallory with a stone cold stare. "What should we do to make it work? Should I..." Pausing, briefly, but offering with all sincerity. "I'm open to killing myself, if I have to." There were no tears in her eyes with that. She meant it. She didn't want to die, but she didn't exactly care about living either. Maybe the bizarre netherworld that he occupied would be the best option left.
Mallory could hear her heart pounding in her ears, when the words left Larkin's lips. Suicide. Cane had told her that seeking memory modification was an act of desperation, and desperation meant danger -- in this case, to Larkin herself.
"I can give him my voice," she said; it tumbled out before she was finished thinking it through. Her eyes stopped ticking back and forth over the middle of the room, and locked onto Larkin's doe-eyed gaze. "My voice, my senses... He'll hear you. He'll speak to you. I just have to invite him in."
Larkin nodded -- "Okay." She left it at that, content with that compromise. She had no friggin' clue about the dangers of memory modification, or allowing someone to speak through you, or talking to the dead in the first place. But hey, it couldn't be worse than driving a knife through her own belly, right?
She kept her attention weaving back between the center of the room and Mallory, unsure when exactly this change would happen or how it would manifest. If seeing the signature freaked her out, seeing him inside of Mal would be much, much worse.
"I offer a bargain to the spirit of Beckett Fisher," Mallory said, as she curled one ring-clad hand around the jar. She paused only for the shortest of breaths, because the terms of the deal had to be unmistakably clear. "I offer use of my senses for only one purpose: to communicate with the woman named Larkin, the same who sits with me now. I offer to share my voice with you for the same solitary purpose. In exchange, you will listen to the woman named Larkin, the same who sits with me now, and answer her questions honestly. Our deal is done, and my senses are no longer to be shared with you, as soon as you are dismissed from this realm. I, Mallory St. Martin, agree to this bargain. Do you, Beckett Fisher?"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The witch looked up from the jar, giving a slow nod to Larkin. Then she popped open the lid and took a deep breath. The roiling gray smoke within seemed to hesitate, then streamed into Mallory through her nostrils and her parted lips. Her long inhale became a shaky, rattling breath; her hands braced against the floor, she arched her back, her now cloudy eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.
Then she relaxed, her head lolled forward, and her gaze slid slowly up -- almost sly -- to meet Larkin's. Her lips curled into a familiar smile. "Larkin," she breathed in wonder. "In the freakin' flesh." The vocal cords being used, the body, those were all Mallory's, but different aspects of the way that Beckett Fisher had spoken in life still broke through in death: a slightly nasal quality, a counterpoint to the low tone and the tendency to pitch lower, almost bashful, when he ended a phrase; the way he relished words like flesh, juice, meat. The head straightened. The smile softened.
"It's been a while."
Larkin's eyebrows knitted with concern -- and then confusion -- when the transition happened. She didn't know what to expect; but from movies and TV, she thought that perhaps her eyes may change colors. The cloudiness of them at first gave her pause, as though she may have accidentally stumbled upon a demon.
When the spirit spoke, Larkin leaned up, leaned closer, leaned in and out, and in again, trying to inspect every inch of her expressions to see if they matched as well. She'd be skeptical, still, as any rational person would be. "If that's you... tell me. What's my sister's name. What's your sister's name? And..." Trying, desperately, to think of more questions that some spirit/poseur couldn't get by googling; Beckett had some fame by the time of his death so she had to get deeper and more personal. "What Halloween costume did I wear in L.A. that one time at Aleister's? The one we got on that weird store on Melrose right before the party?" Take that, conman-slash-ghost; there was no getting off easy here.
Remembering was different for a ghost. The spirit of Beckett wanted to use the brain he now had some access to, on reflex, but had to rely instead on the echoes that had parted his body and traveled with his spirit when he died. The pupils were clouded, nearly impossible to detect, but Larkin could surmise that Mallory was looking at the ceiling right now, the way her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth -- the goofy face Beckett made when he looked away to think. "Your sister's name." She looked at Larkin. "Like I could forget Caitlyn. And mine's Alice. The one who kept calling you, chewed you the **** out about being patient with my ass, even though you never told me. Took too freakin' long telling her to knock that off. Sorry about that, too. And that's a real, real clever third question. The tabloids showed you running around in that stupid ****ing sumo suit, but that was after you got drunk off your ass. Pirate outfit, inflatable parrot, we did not get it at Melrose but we started there and wound up on Santa Monica... and I still think you looked ****in' sexy in that beard."
She curled her hands into fists, dropped her face onto them, and stared across the rug at Larkin. "You look good."
Larkin considered his answers with some hesitation, although there was no good reason why she should. No one else could know things with that specificity -- at least, not the Halloween story part. In the future, she may need better security questions than 'your sister's name.' She'd make a mental note of that.
But for now, Larkin knee-walked over to him, careful to avoid the jars and other witch-related items, and stared at him, an inch from his/her face. She ran a hand along Mallory's cheek, trying to study other signs (other than the voice and memory) that could remind her of him.
And of course, that belief triggered those emotions again. The doe-eyed tears. But this time, they were less freaked out and more overwhelmed. "It is you. Right? Right. And you don't... like... hate me?"
"I don't hate you, Lark." The whisper came from Mallory's lips, cloudy white eyes staring back at her as she leaned into her hand. "I hate me. I hate my stupid ****ing brain, for taking me away from this. From you." She held Larkin's other hand in her own, studying her fingers. Refreshing his memory. "From us."
A soft smile reappeared on Mallory's lips. "I've missed you."
For the first time since the whole procedure started, Larkin flashed a grin -- just like old times. "Me, too. So. So. Much." For a split second, it felt like they were together, and not a ghost being inhabiting Mallory's body.
Of course, that realization occurred to her soon enough. She tilted her head, considering Mallory's form and its responsiveness. "Mal, are you there, too?" Wave of a hand across the face. She wanted to experiment with this world. Poke. Poke. "Beck, can you feel that?" Just to test the limit, she'd pinch Mal's wrist with her nails, trying to get a reaction out of somebody.
"This is she," Mallory said, releasing Larkin's hand to cough into an arm. "Ow, by the way. And yeah, he can feel that too. Shared senses while you two talk -- and no longer," she added with a glance up at empty air, as if Beckett's spectral form were hovering above her.
Then she rolled her neck, sighed, and steadied her gaze on Larkin again. "This is pretty ****ing weird," she said, in Beckett's familiar cadence. "You hired a psychic? I didn't think that worked..."
Larkin felt... confused. She didn't know who she was talking to at any one time, but she was definitely convinced that she was indeed talking to Beckett -- in some version -- as well as Mallory. Group chat, she supposed. Of course, that made the conversation a little more delicate. "She's a... mystic." 'Witch' may be loaded. "And my friend."
"Mal?" Larkin even pinched her wrist again, figuring that was the best way to get her attention. Maybe? I mean, it did work before... "Is there any way to separate yourself from your body for a minute or two? 'Cause I really want to... kiss him. With your permission." She almost said 'i want to ***,' but that may be a little impolite. The two of them had company, after all.
"Fucking -- I can hear my name," Mal snapped. At least that tone shift was fairly blatant. "And I... can't really do that. If I fully left my body, I..." Visions of her journey down the thread towards whatever awaited her soul in death, her struggle against the corrupt healer who had tried to enslave her body, flooded back to her, and she shook her head. "I couldn't guarantee that I'd come back. I'm not willing to do that."
The witch hesitated. This was her body. But it was only a kiss, and these two had been parted by death. "... I can let him steer, and just, you know... focus on something else."
There were a few slow, deep breaths. A heavy-lidded look from Mallory. A crooked grin. "Even fucking weirder, huh?" she rumbled, with Beckett's voice. "I've thought about this for a long, long time."
Larkin bit her lower lip again, debating. As a woman, she felt protective over Mal's body. She had been inappropriately touched in her life and couldn't handle that thought or experience on anyone else. Permission wasn't all that mattered -- she needed even more. "Mal..." Rather than pinch this time, she ran a hand along her wrist. "I don't want to make you feel weird about this. After the fact. So don't say yes if it makes you uncomfortable. But I mean... honestly? We were probably a few drinks or joints from making out anyway."
Larkin noted, at that moment, that confession may have made Beckett uncomfortable. These were confusing times, all over. But Larkin didn't run from that; she kept running her hand along her wrist, and up her arm. She needed to kiss someone, damn it, and if that meant a two-for-one seduction special, she was up to that task. She leaned in with that intention, ready to kiss should they accept.
"We're here for this," Mallory decided, quietly; then met Larkin's gaze with her own. "Both of us." Her ringed fingers clacked together as they curled delicately beneath her chin... then opened, guiding Larkin closer with a firmer grasp.
Everything about her was both familiar and strange: the softness of her small cupid's-bow lips, the smell of her shampoo, the feeling of her skin; the firmness of his grasp, the hunger of his kisses, the moment he always chose to move in closer.
It was Beckett, but not Beckett alone, as Mallory finally gave in to her yearning and met Larkin's lips with her own.
((Adapted from live RP with Larkin's player!))
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Mallory
- RoH Admin
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:25 pm
- Location: The Lyceum or Kabuki Street, most of the time
Re: The Invitation
April 15th, 2017 C.E.
Early afternoon...
The further the year moved on from Valentine’s Day, the more Mallory felt her life had resumed a normal rhythm. She was finding her place at Panacea -- her coworkers seemed comfortable with the witch, for the most part, and the regular stream of customers into her basement lair reminded her of her old hustle as a street mystic. She’d resumed her coursework at RCC, too -- though less than impressed with her spotty attendance, her Folklore and Hebrew professors were more impressed with her research essays, and would allow her to sit for her final exam. There was even dating drama, too -- so there was a ghost in her maybe-love-triangle, but other than that, normal!
She sat on a table in the community college’s cozy retro cafe, foregoing the outdated dish chairs and bean bags for a flat surface where she could spread out her reading materials, and worked on her Hebrew lessons while she waited for Larkin. Tap. Tappa-tappa-tap. Tap-tap. Tappa-tappa-tap. Tap, tap. She rattled out a beat on the crook of her thumb with her mechanical pencil, while her eyes picked over the string of ancient letters, right to left.
Larkin hurried through the campus, checking her phone to confirm that she was in fact, late. She had given a lot of thought about whether to go meet Mal or whether to take some pills and doze off for the rest of the afternoon; when she realized what a twat move that would have been, she rushed over to be responsible and face the potential awkwardness.
She didn’t know how to react to the situation -- being her first seance and all -- and still didn’t know how to process it. How Mal was processing it. Personally, her conflicted emotions showed in her appearance -- she showered and brushed her hair, but also wrapped herself in a long-sleeved black t-shirt that didn’t show much skin. Meeting in public felt safe as well. They were just buds, hanging out. Right? Right. Something like that.
When Larkin entered the cafe and saw Mal, the rush of emotion and anxiety confirmed that: no, no this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t buds, hanging out. She approached with that written all over her face. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. Today and -- like -- in general. Still trying to wrap my head around all that ****, ya know?” She sat down next to her as Mal cleared space from the low table, giving credence to the obvious with her words: “It was heavy.”
“Yeah, well,” Mallory said, trying and failing to be flippant as she shuffled her gathered notes into a pile -- her nervous laughter died quickly, and she was left taking in Larkin with a much quieter expression. “It was. Is, I guess,” she said, and scooted around to face her.
The witch had been similarly conflicted when she’d picked out what to wear this morning: a loose-fitting mauve tank top patterned with faded black stars of varying size, it hung loose on her shoulders and showed off plenty of her chest tattoo; her boyfriend jeans were loose and comfortable, and she bunched her ring-clad hands into the hems to fidget while she and Larkin talked.
“It’s not, you know,” Mallory started, and then stopped. Huffed a breath of frustration at her own struggle with her words. “It’s not usually like that. I mean, I’ve talked to people’s loved ones, and you know, that’s… heavy. But, um.” She unwound a few of her fingers from her jeans, and wound them together instead, and looked between them and Larkin. Looking down was easier. “This was different.”
Larkin appreciated that Mal appeared uneasy; in a sense, it helped her. It made her feel like the swirling feelings in the pit of her stomach didn’t feel unusual to her alone. It wasn’t Mal’s normal day at the office, either. In fact, she felt comfortable enough to crack a wry smile. “You mean -- you don’t make out with all your clients? I hope not.”
A short huff of a chuckle escaped her, relieving some of the tension she felt. But then the fact that they were still in that cafe -- surrounded by people -- made her feel less safe and more exposed. She glanced around, feeling eyes on her that most likely weren’t actually there. “Wanna go for a smoke or something? We can talk about it. About… what the *** we’re going to do about it.”
“Yeah,” Mallory said at once; it was only another moment’s work to stow her stacked books and notes into her backpack, and she swung it over her shoulder as soon as she dropped from the table.
In fact, there were a few eyes on them: as an academic institution founded by humans from one of the many modern Earth planes connected to RhyDin, the college had no classes for magical practice, and very few active practitioners. But Mallory had quickly grown to pay the attention little mind, other than to wiggle her fingers oh-so-spookily at a young man in a rugby shirt who studied her too closely.
“There’s a frankly pretty freaking shocking number of places in this city,” she said as she pushed the door open ahead of Larkin, “where waving my arms and screaming ‘abra cadabra!’ could incite a riot.” She wound her way around a gaggle of gossiping students, and perched on the edge of a fountain with a statue of Merlin in the center. She looked over her shoulder at the old cast-bronze wizard, then shrugged her shoulders at Larkin: “Go figure.”
Larkin should have scoffed at the idea that people could demonize magic, but instead she let slip a: “I get it.” She brushed a hand through her hair as she glanced back to the statue. “It’s not so much that humans are scared of what they don’t understand, but they’re scared of what they can’t control.”
She dug into her pockets to find a cigarette -- she had one loose one left, outside of the pack. Hopefully Mal would trust her enough to share that. “I mean, honestly, that whole thing with Beckett really ****ed me up. I loved it. I did. I appreciate you so much for helping me have that moment. But…”
This is where she needed to spark up the cigarette. After a puff, she studied Mal’s face, trying to gauge any hidden reactions. She didn’t have any magical powers, but she liked to believe she had some intuitive ability -- or at least empathy. “The next day. I felt weird about it. I felt weird -- for you. ‘Cause I didn’t know how much you were in control, or how much he was in control.”
Mallory nodded, and frowned, and ran her fingers back through her hair. If anything could be gauged from studying her face, it was that she was conflicted -- twisted up inside. She hummed a thoughtful sound and ducked a look at Larkin: “I wish we could’ve stuck to weed and vinyls… you know?”
Then she shook her head. “That’s not fair. That’s ****ed up of me to say. But I couldn’t… Larkin, you were sounding… The things you were willing to try? to put yourself through? That scared me. I thought, you know… talking to him would help.
“Listen… don’t feel weird for me. This is how I operate. Seeing the future? I do that by lending my eyes to a blind spirit, for hours. I’ve been doing that for a while. I strike bargains with spirits, I dictate the terms… I decide what I’m willing to give them.
“Beckett… I let him share my senses and my voice. Part of feeling what he wanted to say was feeling what he wanted. How he wanted to move. And I decided to act on them… or not. I was calling the shots, Larkin.” She lifted her head, watching her smoke, and bit her lip, frowning. “Does that… make it any better?”
Larkin winced when Mallory said she wish she had never started down this rabbit hole. Luckily, the expression could be buried with a long drag of the cigarette. Clearly, she had different feelings. It was though she was a wayward teen trying a first taste of heroin -- you knew it would only lead to trouble, but… damn, what a high. Your life would never be the same again.
She took another puff and step over to the Merlin statue to stare at it -- almost expecting to move or wink or shoot fireworks -- as Mal explained that she had indeed been in control. “That does make me feel better. But not necessarily less confused.”
She glanced back over her shoulder to Mal. “I think part of it is that we never really figured out our dynamic beforehand.” She held up the cigarette, finally offering it. Rude of her to wait a few puffs in, but she had needed them. “I mean… don’t get me wrong, I got the sense that you wanted to **** me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Half my friends want to **** me, but we’re still friends and nothing else. FILF, they call that.” They did not call it that. But Larkin would hurry home and go to the patent office to make those t-shirts.
Mallory shook her head at the offered smoke. Cigarettes were for summoning and scrying and little else. “Same. Like, I wish we could’ve hung out longer first… figure out how much we like each other, and what we want to do about it. Instead, it’s all coming out at once,” she said, pushing her palms against her knees. Kicking her heels against the edge of the fountain. She’d been reddening since Larkin’s latest string of f-bombs, and grinned over at her: “I was that easy to read, huh. That part came first for me -- pretty quickly, too,” she admitted with a bashful laugh. “But… you’re curious, and you’re real as hell, and you’re so goddamn much fun and kind of sad and not afraid to be both. I like all of that about you.”
Her gaze slid away, to the small pavilion around them. Another gaggle of students passed by, trailed at a leisurely pace by two of their friends, hand in hand, bumping their hips together as they strolled. “I’ve spent a while wondering if you’re, you know… into girls at all, and then if you’re into me that way, or you just wanted to hang. I was just waiting for a sign, one way or another, up until the, um… communion.”
Sweet -- more smoke for me. Larkin needed to release that tension, and keep her froggy voice up to snuff, so she kept puffing away as she trailed around the campus herself. “Don’t feel bad -- everyone wants to *** me.” She said it with a brief flash of a cocky and sly grin; she was half-kidding, but the ability to joke made her realize that this awkward situation wasn’t irreparable. They were back to joking around as friends, or FILFs, or whatever.
“I’m not gay. Not really. I’ve fooled around with girls, but I’ve never dated a girl or…” Smoke puff as she tried to figure out how to phrase it. “Been one on one, face to face with the V.” She actually thought about it, and came up with that. Yikes. “But I’ve been so focused on Beckett these last few years, and mourning him these last few months, and pitying myself, and being a general trainwreck that I haven’t thought about anyone like that lately. So. It came up and surprised me.”
Mallory laughed, red in the face again. “Face to face with the… ****ing Christ, Larkin.” She laughed until she coughed, and took a few moments to compose herself. “That’s… yeah, that’s understandable. I guess that begs the question, though…”
She’d trailed off for only a moment, when she looked Larkin in the eye to add: “Listen. I figured out I was bi a long time ago, but not everyone’s got the same comfort level across the board… and if dating a girl’s outside your comfort zone, I get it. And if you just don’t feel that way about me… I get that, too. It’s cool.” She huffed a laugh, kneading her knees with her palms again, and cast another look at the pavilion. “I mean, you know what I’m hoping for. But I just want to… you know… know.”
The eye contact felt a little intense and gave Larkin some goosebumps -- that had to be a sign… maybe. Who the F knows. She didn’t trust anything about her senses, anymore. “It’s not… it’s not totally about that. You’re foxy. And I like spending time around you. I feel comfortable with you. I’m attracted to you.”
She stopped smoking for the duration of the comment, not shying away from the moment or from her truth. “But I’m still in love with Beckett. And ****… I just talked to him! That didn’t help with closure. That just… opened the door again. It’s wide open and inviting and.”
She took another drag and looked away, shying away for real this time. There was only so much intensity one human gal could take. “I had to hide my phone. That’s why I didn’t text right away. I kept it in a cabinet in the closet at night. ‘Cause I had to stop myself from texting you to come over. With Beckett. And a strap on.”
“Oh my God,” Mallory said, turning an even deeper shade of red at the image that conjured. It took a few moments until her next admission: “I don’t think I would’ve said no. Other than for not owning the right toys. And… I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
She took a deep breath, and then tried to reason through it: “Communing with the dead, ideally, is a contract. Unless you’re a fucking idiot, you dictate the terms and hold the other party to them. A relationship’s a… much different kind of contract. I guess. I haven’t been in many. But I know the terms change, the parameters change, and so do the people involved. And that’s what Beckett wants.” She turned to stare at Larkin again, this time with a frown. “I could feel it. I’ve had contact with spirits with unfinished business before, and I felt it from him so much, I can’t even remember when I felt him leave. For good or ill, when he saw you again, he wanted to pick up right where he left off. And… I don’t think he can. I don’t know that he should.”
Her gaze fell to her hands in her lap, and her frown darkened further. “I only wanted -- want to, help. But I don’t know what helps you now, or… or if I’ve only made things worse.”
“It’s differently a bad idea to monkey around with this…” Larkin replied. She flicked the cigarette down and stomped it with her shoe. “But I never claimed to be responsible.”
Although Mallory didn’t know Beckett aside from that conversation, Larkin felt as though she may have some insight from Beckett inhabiting her. Then, and maybe some residual spirit now. She locked her eyes on her, on the guise of a warning but with a hint of invitation in the sparkling blue. “I never claimed we were some great love match. Or good for each other. I remember one time… I chunked a wine bottle at his head and it shattered on the wall. He grabbed me -- threw me down -- and fucked me straight. It wasn’t until later -- hours later -- that we even realized our bodies were all cut up from the shards of glass on the floor.”
She tilted her head, keeping her gaze on her. “So being in that intense -- destructive -- possibly unhealthy relationship is a bad idea. I know that. But I’m not strong enough to say no to that. If you are, then we can put it to bed. But… I mean… that type of intensity can be a fucking blast.”
Mallory saw it: Larkin’s bleeding body writhing on the floor underneath her and shaking with each thrust, thin muscular arms braced to either side of her and covered in full sleeves of unfamiliar tattoos, heady with the taste of her lips and his own sweat.
She blinked slowly, three times, before she refocused on Larkin, and found her answer rising through her own yearning and fear of heartbreak and someone else’s desperation. Don’t do this to us. Please. The words she had chosen hadn’t even left her lips when she heard Beckett’s plea against them.
“I don’t think it’s a… No, we both know it’s a bad idea. It’s not about that. And it’s not about not wanting it. But it’s… I can’t,” Mallory shook her head. “We’d burn each other up, the three of us together, and… I can’t. I can’t take that risk.” Her eyes fell; her hands bunched together on one strap of her backpack, shifting it on her shoulder like she was ready to bolt. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re right. It’s fine. Whatever,” Larkin replied, with all the social grace and maturity of a pouting teenager. She looked away, trying to collect her disappointment and brood in a way that all angsty teens would. What Mallory said made perfect sense. It was the smart decision. But that didn’t stop Larkin from feeling crappy about it. She was used to getting what she wanted -- so she didn’t always handle it well when she didn’t, even reverting back to her brattier younger self.
She clenched her jaw, stiffening up and trying not to overreact or get overly emotional. She’d allow Mallory to go if she wanted, knowing in her hear that this decision wouldn’t be put to bed yet. In fact, she glanced back over to her one more time. “But don’t blame me if you get a text in the middle of the night.”
Whatever wisdom Mallory possessed was always at war with the fact that she still was that angsty teenager, at least for a few more weeks. Her jaw set in a similar line, and she took a few quiet breaths in a futile effort to steady her temper. “Fucking…” Whatever she wanted to say only stopped because she set herself in motion, away from the fountain, away from her, to somewhere she could think about this and the voice in her head that insistently pressed, Don’t do this.
Larkin’s parting shot stopped her in her tracks. Her head turned to her shoulder, giving the other girl only a sliver of her conflicted expression: confusion, anger, lust at war with one another. “I’ll see you around,” she managed, and left.
Early afternoon...
The further the year moved on from Valentine’s Day, the more Mallory felt her life had resumed a normal rhythm. She was finding her place at Panacea -- her coworkers seemed comfortable with the witch, for the most part, and the regular stream of customers into her basement lair reminded her of her old hustle as a street mystic. She’d resumed her coursework at RCC, too -- though less than impressed with her spotty attendance, her Folklore and Hebrew professors were more impressed with her research essays, and would allow her to sit for her final exam. There was even dating drama, too -- so there was a ghost in her maybe-love-triangle, but other than that, normal!
She sat on a table in the community college’s cozy retro cafe, foregoing the outdated dish chairs and bean bags for a flat surface where she could spread out her reading materials, and worked on her Hebrew lessons while she waited for Larkin. Tap. Tappa-tappa-tap. Tap-tap. Tappa-tappa-tap. Tap, tap. She rattled out a beat on the crook of her thumb with her mechanical pencil, while her eyes picked over the string of ancient letters, right to left.
Larkin hurried through the campus, checking her phone to confirm that she was in fact, late. She had given a lot of thought about whether to go meet Mal or whether to take some pills and doze off for the rest of the afternoon; when she realized what a twat move that would have been, she rushed over to be responsible and face the potential awkwardness.
She didn’t know how to react to the situation -- being her first seance and all -- and still didn’t know how to process it. How Mal was processing it. Personally, her conflicted emotions showed in her appearance -- she showered and brushed her hair, but also wrapped herself in a long-sleeved black t-shirt that didn’t show much skin. Meeting in public felt safe as well. They were just buds, hanging out. Right? Right. Something like that.
When Larkin entered the cafe and saw Mal, the rush of emotion and anxiety confirmed that: no, no this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t buds, hanging out. She approached with that written all over her face. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. Today and -- like -- in general. Still trying to wrap my head around all that ****, ya know?” She sat down next to her as Mal cleared space from the low table, giving credence to the obvious with her words: “It was heavy.”
“Yeah, well,” Mallory said, trying and failing to be flippant as she shuffled her gathered notes into a pile -- her nervous laughter died quickly, and she was left taking in Larkin with a much quieter expression. “It was. Is, I guess,” she said, and scooted around to face her.
The witch had been similarly conflicted when she’d picked out what to wear this morning: a loose-fitting mauve tank top patterned with faded black stars of varying size, it hung loose on her shoulders and showed off plenty of her chest tattoo; her boyfriend jeans were loose and comfortable, and she bunched her ring-clad hands into the hems to fidget while she and Larkin talked.
“It’s not, you know,” Mallory started, and then stopped. Huffed a breath of frustration at her own struggle with her words. “It’s not usually like that. I mean, I’ve talked to people’s loved ones, and you know, that’s… heavy. But, um.” She unwound a few of her fingers from her jeans, and wound them together instead, and looked between them and Larkin. Looking down was easier. “This was different.”
Larkin appreciated that Mal appeared uneasy; in a sense, it helped her. It made her feel like the swirling feelings in the pit of her stomach didn’t feel unusual to her alone. It wasn’t Mal’s normal day at the office, either. In fact, she felt comfortable enough to crack a wry smile. “You mean -- you don’t make out with all your clients? I hope not.”
A short huff of a chuckle escaped her, relieving some of the tension she felt. But then the fact that they were still in that cafe -- surrounded by people -- made her feel less safe and more exposed. She glanced around, feeling eyes on her that most likely weren’t actually there. “Wanna go for a smoke or something? We can talk about it. About… what the *** we’re going to do about it.”
“Yeah,” Mallory said at once; it was only another moment’s work to stow her stacked books and notes into her backpack, and she swung it over her shoulder as soon as she dropped from the table.
In fact, there were a few eyes on them: as an academic institution founded by humans from one of the many modern Earth planes connected to RhyDin, the college had no classes for magical practice, and very few active practitioners. But Mallory had quickly grown to pay the attention little mind, other than to wiggle her fingers oh-so-spookily at a young man in a rugby shirt who studied her too closely.
“There’s a frankly pretty freaking shocking number of places in this city,” she said as she pushed the door open ahead of Larkin, “where waving my arms and screaming ‘abra cadabra!’ could incite a riot.” She wound her way around a gaggle of gossiping students, and perched on the edge of a fountain with a statue of Merlin in the center. She looked over her shoulder at the old cast-bronze wizard, then shrugged her shoulders at Larkin: “Go figure.”
Larkin should have scoffed at the idea that people could demonize magic, but instead she let slip a: “I get it.” She brushed a hand through her hair as she glanced back to the statue. “It’s not so much that humans are scared of what they don’t understand, but they’re scared of what they can’t control.”
She dug into her pockets to find a cigarette -- she had one loose one left, outside of the pack. Hopefully Mal would trust her enough to share that. “I mean, honestly, that whole thing with Beckett really ****ed me up. I loved it. I did. I appreciate you so much for helping me have that moment. But…”
This is where she needed to spark up the cigarette. After a puff, she studied Mal’s face, trying to gauge any hidden reactions. She didn’t have any magical powers, but she liked to believe she had some intuitive ability -- or at least empathy. “The next day. I felt weird about it. I felt weird -- for you. ‘Cause I didn’t know how much you were in control, or how much he was in control.”
Mallory nodded, and frowned, and ran her fingers back through her hair. If anything could be gauged from studying her face, it was that she was conflicted -- twisted up inside. She hummed a thoughtful sound and ducked a look at Larkin: “I wish we could’ve stuck to weed and vinyls… you know?”
Then she shook her head. “That’s not fair. That’s ****ed up of me to say. But I couldn’t… Larkin, you were sounding… The things you were willing to try? to put yourself through? That scared me. I thought, you know… talking to him would help.
“Listen… don’t feel weird for me. This is how I operate. Seeing the future? I do that by lending my eyes to a blind spirit, for hours. I’ve been doing that for a while. I strike bargains with spirits, I dictate the terms… I decide what I’m willing to give them.
“Beckett… I let him share my senses and my voice. Part of feeling what he wanted to say was feeling what he wanted. How he wanted to move. And I decided to act on them… or not. I was calling the shots, Larkin.” She lifted her head, watching her smoke, and bit her lip, frowning. “Does that… make it any better?”
Larkin winced when Mallory said she wish she had never started down this rabbit hole. Luckily, the expression could be buried with a long drag of the cigarette. Clearly, she had different feelings. It was though she was a wayward teen trying a first taste of heroin -- you knew it would only lead to trouble, but… damn, what a high. Your life would never be the same again.
She took another puff and step over to the Merlin statue to stare at it -- almost expecting to move or wink or shoot fireworks -- as Mal explained that she had indeed been in control. “That does make me feel better. But not necessarily less confused.”
She glanced back over her shoulder to Mal. “I think part of it is that we never really figured out our dynamic beforehand.” She held up the cigarette, finally offering it. Rude of her to wait a few puffs in, but she had needed them. “I mean… don’t get me wrong, I got the sense that you wanted to **** me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Half my friends want to **** me, but we’re still friends and nothing else. FILF, they call that.” They did not call it that. But Larkin would hurry home and go to the patent office to make those t-shirts.
Mallory shook her head at the offered smoke. Cigarettes were for summoning and scrying and little else. “Same. Like, I wish we could’ve hung out longer first… figure out how much we like each other, and what we want to do about it. Instead, it’s all coming out at once,” she said, pushing her palms against her knees. Kicking her heels against the edge of the fountain. She’d been reddening since Larkin’s latest string of f-bombs, and grinned over at her: “I was that easy to read, huh. That part came first for me -- pretty quickly, too,” she admitted with a bashful laugh. “But… you’re curious, and you’re real as hell, and you’re so goddamn much fun and kind of sad and not afraid to be both. I like all of that about you.”
Her gaze slid away, to the small pavilion around them. Another gaggle of students passed by, trailed at a leisurely pace by two of their friends, hand in hand, bumping their hips together as they strolled. “I’ve spent a while wondering if you’re, you know… into girls at all, and then if you’re into me that way, or you just wanted to hang. I was just waiting for a sign, one way or another, up until the, um… communion.”
Sweet -- more smoke for me. Larkin needed to release that tension, and keep her froggy voice up to snuff, so she kept puffing away as she trailed around the campus herself. “Don’t feel bad -- everyone wants to *** me.” She said it with a brief flash of a cocky and sly grin; she was half-kidding, but the ability to joke made her realize that this awkward situation wasn’t irreparable. They were back to joking around as friends, or FILFs, or whatever.
“I’m not gay. Not really. I’ve fooled around with girls, but I’ve never dated a girl or…” Smoke puff as she tried to figure out how to phrase it. “Been one on one, face to face with the V.” She actually thought about it, and came up with that. Yikes. “But I’ve been so focused on Beckett these last few years, and mourning him these last few months, and pitying myself, and being a general trainwreck that I haven’t thought about anyone like that lately. So. It came up and surprised me.”
Mallory laughed, red in the face again. “Face to face with the… ****ing Christ, Larkin.” She laughed until she coughed, and took a few moments to compose herself. “That’s… yeah, that’s understandable. I guess that begs the question, though…”
She’d trailed off for only a moment, when she looked Larkin in the eye to add: “Listen. I figured out I was bi a long time ago, but not everyone’s got the same comfort level across the board… and if dating a girl’s outside your comfort zone, I get it. And if you just don’t feel that way about me… I get that, too. It’s cool.” She huffed a laugh, kneading her knees with her palms again, and cast another look at the pavilion. “I mean, you know what I’m hoping for. But I just want to… you know… know.”
The eye contact felt a little intense and gave Larkin some goosebumps -- that had to be a sign… maybe. Who the F knows. She didn’t trust anything about her senses, anymore. “It’s not… it’s not totally about that. You’re foxy. And I like spending time around you. I feel comfortable with you. I’m attracted to you.”
She stopped smoking for the duration of the comment, not shying away from the moment or from her truth. “But I’m still in love with Beckett. And ****… I just talked to him! That didn’t help with closure. That just… opened the door again. It’s wide open and inviting and.”
She took another drag and looked away, shying away for real this time. There was only so much intensity one human gal could take. “I had to hide my phone. That’s why I didn’t text right away. I kept it in a cabinet in the closet at night. ‘Cause I had to stop myself from texting you to come over. With Beckett. And a strap on.”
“Oh my God,” Mallory said, turning an even deeper shade of red at the image that conjured. It took a few moments until her next admission: “I don’t think I would’ve said no. Other than for not owning the right toys. And… I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
She took a deep breath, and then tried to reason through it: “Communing with the dead, ideally, is a contract. Unless you’re a fucking idiot, you dictate the terms and hold the other party to them. A relationship’s a… much different kind of contract. I guess. I haven’t been in many. But I know the terms change, the parameters change, and so do the people involved. And that’s what Beckett wants.” She turned to stare at Larkin again, this time with a frown. “I could feel it. I’ve had contact with spirits with unfinished business before, and I felt it from him so much, I can’t even remember when I felt him leave. For good or ill, when he saw you again, he wanted to pick up right where he left off. And… I don’t think he can. I don’t know that he should.”
Her gaze fell to her hands in her lap, and her frown darkened further. “I only wanted -- want to, help. But I don’t know what helps you now, or… or if I’ve only made things worse.”
“It’s differently a bad idea to monkey around with this…” Larkin replied. She flicked the cigarette down and stomped it with her shoe. “But I never claimed to be responsible.”
Although Mallory didn’t know Beckett aside from that conversation, Larkin felt as though she may have some insight from Beckett inhabiting her. Then, and maybe some residual spirit now. She locked her eyes on her, on the guise of a warning but with a hint of invitation in the sparkling blue. “I never claimed we were some great love match. Or good for each other. I remember one time… I chunked a wine bottle at his head and it shattered on the wall. He grabbed me -- threw me down -- and fucked me straight. It wasn’t until later -- hours later -- that we even realized our bodies were all cut up from the shards of glass on the floor.”
She tilted her head, keeping her gaze on her. “So being in that intense -- destructive -- possibly unhealthy relationship is a bad idea. I know that. But I’m not strong enough to say no to that. If you are, then we can put it to bed. But… I mean… that type of intensity can be a fucking blast.”
Mallory saw it: Larkin’s bleeding body writhing on the floor underneath her and shaking with each thrust, thin muscular arms braced to either side of her and covered in full sleeves of unfamiliar tattoos, heady with the taste of her lips and his own sweat.
She blinked slowly, three times, before she refocused on Larkin, and found her answer rising through her own yearning and fear of heartbreak and someone else’s desperation. Don’t do this to us. Please. The words she had chosen hadn’t even left her lips when she heard Beckett’s plea against them.
“I don’t think it’s a… No, we both know it’s a bad idea. It’s not about that. And it’s not about not wanting it. But it’s… I can’t,” Mallory shook her head. “We’d burn each other up, the three of us together, and… I can’t. I can’t take that risk.” Her eyes fell; her hands bunched together on one strap of her backpack, shifting it on her shoulder like she was ready to bolt. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re right. It’s fine. Whatever,” Larkin replied, with all the social grace and maturity of a pouting teenager. She looked away, trying to collect her disappointment and brood in a way that all angsty teens would. What Mallory said made perfect sense. It was the smart decision. But that didn’t stop Larkin from feeling crappy about it. She was used to getting what she wanted -- so she didn’t always handle it well when she didn’t, even reverting back to her brattier younger self.
She clenched her jaw, stiffening up and trying not to overreact or get overly emotional. She’d allow Mallory to go if she wanted, knowing in her hear that this decision wouldn’t be put to bed yet. In fact, she glanced back over to her one more time. “But don’t blame me if you get a text in the middle of the night.”
Whatever wisdom Mallory possessed was always at war with the fact that she still was that angsty teenager, at least for a few more weeks. Her jaw set in a similar line, and she took a few quiet breaths in a futile effort to steady her temper. “Fucking…” Whatever she wanted to say only stopped because she set herself in motion, away from the fountain, away from her, to somewhere she could think about this and the voice in her head that insistently pressed, Don’t do this.
Larkin’s parting shot stopped her in her tracks. Her head turned to her shoulder, giving the other girl only a sliver of her conflicted expression: confusion, anger, lust at war with one another. “I’ll see you around,” she managed, and left.
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Mallory
- RoH Admin
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:25 pm
- Location: The Lyceum or Kabuki Street, most of the time
Re: The Invitation
15 April, 2017 C.E.
Later that afternoon...
Panacea. Had it not been for her impending shift, Mallory would have returned to Wayside Manor, cocooned safely within her layered wards, and ritually banished the remaining spirit of Beckett Fisher from a place of strength.
Instead she had four hours of a quiet weekday at the apothecary to consider the spectral bard's continued grasp on her senses, and to hold him to answer her questions. As she scurried up and down a ladder, inspecting and replacing the carnival show of bottled components that lined the store's shelves, she focused her thoughts on the essence she had first felt when she summoned him. The flair of his signature scratched into the frost. The faint sense of his face moving through the jar of smoke. The ease of his grins, expressed with her lips. Then, after hours of working, hours focusing on the feeling of him and his presence within her, hours weighing what to say to him and what to do about him, she finally reached out to him:
Beckett Fisher, we had a deal.
His answer was immediate, and desperate: You never dismissed me. Don't -- please. She felt his spectral memories of Larkin, of tearful fights and unspoken regrets, and felt his deeper yearning enveloping her own.
Then a memory of her own competed: what had happened to Jewell, at the hands of the Temple. What had nearly happened to her, at the hands of a sylvan healer. She grit her teeth as she answered: This is my body.
I don't want your body. I just want her. Please, you don't know how desperately I love her. It's only grown out there in the what-the-fuck-ever-after, just fucking floating around with a bunch of faded faces and quiet voices, trying not to lose myself. Trying not to lose her.
Mallory felt his heartache run its tightening tendrils through her chest like a knot of vines, and she winced with him. But you can't. You're dead, Beckett. And mortal. Sooner or later, we all fade.
Not yet. Not without another kiss, another night out, another night together, he pleaded, as a whirlwind of light and sound from a strange city, an apartment she had never seen before, and glimpses of Larkin's face -- laughing, smiling, making sultry eyes -- flashed through her mind. I don't want it to end how it did, desperate and sad and scared and alone, bleeding out on the floor. You know. You've been where I've been.
Don't, she warned, stopping at the bottom of the ladder with her head bowed, eyes clenched shut. Please, don't.
I can't help what we share from our past, but I can help our future... make it a little better, a little brighter, he said, weaving the warmth of his love into his words. Larkin, laying on her side, naked body curled under a duvet, staring into his eyes with a slow warm smile. Another memory, a different kind of smile, as she prowled across the room at him. The feeling of her hands grasping at his shirt; the sound of buttons popping free and skittering across the floor.
Mallory pressed her palm against her brow, trying to clear her head, while she felt heat rising in her cheeks. It was hard to think of anything other than her own lust, when her head was so filled with his.
She's so worth it -- you've seen it -- she's bright and beautiful and sad, like a songbird. And there's so much more you don't know. But you could.
Mallory lifted her head. Her watch ticked closer to six -- only minutes until the end of her shift. Then she looked at the door, where the sun's last rays spilled through the glass.
Go to her, Mallory. Let's go to her.
* * *
Later that evening...
It was a few hours after work when Mallory's steps finally led her up to Larkin's apartment. She hadn't called ahead. Either Beckett was full of misplaced confidence (or bull****), or he could sense Larkin there.
She'd broken out her red leather jacket, and bought a few more things on her way from home to here. The studded handbag that dangled from her black-painted fingertips was one of them; the men's black shirt that fit comfortably over her binding was another. Her belt had a round silver buckle, a Celtic triple spiral, cinched over boyfriend-cut jeans that hung over a pair of thick-soled combat boots. Her eyeshadow was dark and heavy, a sharp contrast to restless and hungry green eyes.
She knocked on Larkin's door with the back of her fist, three times, and waited for an answer.
It'd be great to say that Larkin was doing something awesome -- listening to old records on vinyl, while smoking an ancient aztec peace pipe and sculpting some masterpiece out of clay. The truth of the matter was: she was in bed, scribbling in a sudoku book. When she heard a knock on the door, she stiffened up. Intruders. Maybe. Either way, she'd keep a hand clenched on that pen in case she needed to stab someone in the jugular.
She climbed out of her bed, wearing only an oversized "Muppets" t-shirt and some panties, as she stalked closer to the door. She peered through the peephole because she wasn't totally irresponsible, where she saw Mallory. More or less. A few short breaths later, she managed to control her nerves and swing open the door with an air of casual cool.
She crossed her arms as she studied her. Him? Them? Almost challenging in tone. "You better not be here to talk."
The hungry gleam in Mallory's eyes was not entirely her own. There was too much that was comfortable and confident, possessive in a familiar way, when the witch should have been either too bold or too shy from the newness of this.
She stepped into the threshold, close enough that she could angle her head to look down at her, a long lock of hair falling into her eyes when she did. She studied Larkin and the anger in his eyes. She had a little of her own still, a simmer that grew hotter at the other woman's challenge, but lust was stronger. Between hers and Beckett's, no other feeling stood a chance.
"Shut the door," she said. "And turn on some music. Loud."
"No," Larkin replied sharply, rejecting the demand offhand. Whether it was Beckett, or Mal, or Malbeck or whatever combination, she wouldn't simply obey the spirits here and be told what to do. "I'm not turning on anything."
There was a forcefulness in Larkin's voice, but not a rejecting one. A calling one. She grabbed a fistful of Mal's men's shirt by the collar and tugged her closer. "Let 'em hear. Let 'em call the cops on us." With that, she converged upon Mal with a passionate and familiar kiss that betrayed the prior awkwardness of their situation. Whenever she had kissed or fooled around with women before, it had been cautious and playful and shy, but this wasn't the case here. She felt like she would with Beckett; familiar, comfortable, and ready to light the spark that could blow them both up in the flames of lust.
Mallory fell into Larkin once their lips met, hungry and angry and in desperate need, walking her back to the nearest wall she could find. You can stop this, said a part of her that had felt smaller every day since this started. The door is still open.
She stretched one foot back and booted it shut.
((Adapted from a scene with Larkin's player!))
Later that afternoon...
Panacea. Had it not been for her impending shift, Mallory would have returned to Wayside Manor, cocooned safely within her layered wards, and ritually banished the remaining spirit of Beckett Fisher from a place of strength.
Instead she had four hours of a quiet weekday at the apothecary to consider the spectral bard's continued grasp on her senses, and to hold him to answer her questions. As she scurried up and down a ladder, inspecting and replacing the carnival show of bottled components that lined the store's shelves, she focused her thoughts on the essence she had first felt when she summoned him. The flair of his signature scratched into the frost. The faint sense of his face moving through the jar of smoke. The ease of his grins, expressed with her lips. Then, after hours of working, hours focusing on the feeling of him and his presence within her, hours weighing what to say to him and what to do about him, she finally reached out to him:
Beckett Fisher, we had a deal.
His answer was immediate, and desperate: You never dismissed me. Don't -- please. She felt his spectral memories of Larkin, of tearful fights and unspoken regrets, and felt his deeper yearning enveloping her own.
Then a memory of her own competed: what had happened to Jewell, at the hands of the Temple. What had nearly happened to her, at the hands of a sylvan healer. She grit her teeth as she answered: This is my body.
I don't want your body. I just want her. Please, you don't know how desperately I love her. It's only grown out there in the what-the-fuck-ever-after, just fucking floating around with a bunch of faded faces and quiet voices, trying not to lose myself. Trying not to lose her.
Mallory felt his heartache run its tightening tendrils through her chest like a knot of vines, and she winced with him. But you can't. You're dead, Beckett. And mortal. Sooner or later, we all fade.
Not yet. Not without another kiss, another night out, another night together, he pleaded, as a whirlwind of light and sound from a strange city, an apartment she had never seen before, and glimpses of Larkin's face -- laughing, smiling, making sultry eyes -- flashed through her mind. I don't want it to end how it did, desperate and sad and scared and alone, bleeding out on the floor. You know. You've been where I've been.
Don't, she warned, stopping at the bottom of the ladder with her head bowed, eyes clenched shut. Please, don't.
I can't help what we share from our past, but I can help our future... make it a little better, a little brighter, he said, weaving the warmth of his love into his words. Larkin, laying on her side, naked body curled under a duvet, staring into his eyes with a slow warm smile. Another memory, a different kind of smile, as she prowled across the room at him. The feeling of her hands grasping at his shirt; the sound of buttons popping free and skittering across the floor.
Mallory pressed her palm against her brow, trying to clear her head, while she felt heat rising in her cheeks. It was hard to think of anything other than her own lust, when her head was so filled with his.
She's so worth it -- you've seen it -- she's bright and beautiful and sad, like a songbird. And there's so much more you don't know. But you could.
Mallory lifted her head. Her watch ticked closer to six -- only minutes until the end of her shift. Then she looked at the door, where the sun's last rays spilled through the glass.
Go to her, Mallory. Let's go to her.
* * *
Later that evening...
It was a few hours after work when Mallory's steps finally led her up to Larkin's apartment. She hadn't called ahead. Either Beckett was full of misplaced confidence (or bull****), or he could sense Larkin there.
She'd broken out her red leather jacket, and bought a few more things on her way from home to here. The studded handbag that dangled from her black-painted fingertips was one of them; the men's black shirt that fit comfortably over her binding was another. Her belt had a round silver buckle, a Celtic triple spiral, cinched over boyfriend-cut jeans that hung over a pair of thick-soled combat boots. Her eyeshadow was dark and heavy, a sharp contrast to restless and hungry green eyes.
She knocked on Larkin's door with the back of her fist, three times, and waited for an answer.
It'd be great to say that Larkin was doing something awesome -- listening to old records on vinyl, while smoking an ancient aztec peace pipe and sculpting some masterpiece out of clay. The truth of the matter was: she was in bed, scribbling in a sudoku book. When she heard a knock on the door, she stiffened up. Intruders. Maybe. Either way, she'd keep a hand clenched on that pen in case she needed to stab someone in the jugular.
She climbed out of her bed, wearing only an oversized "Muppets" t-shirt and some panties, as she stalked closer to the door. She peered through the peephole because she wasn't totally irresponsible, where she saw Mallory. More or less. A few short breaths later, she managed to control her nerves and swing open the door with an air of casual cool.
She crossed her arms as she studied her. Him? Them? Almost challenging in tone. "You better not be here to talk."
The hungry gleam in Mallory's eyes was not entirely her own. There was too much that was comfortable and confident, possessive in a familiar way, when the witch should have been either too bold or too shy from the newness of this.
She stepped into the threshold, close enough that she could angle her head to look down at her, a long lock of hair falling into her eyes when she did. She studied Larkin and the anger in his eyes. She had a little of her own still, a simmer that grew hotter at the other woman's challenge, but lust was stronger. Between hers and Beckett's, no other feeling stood a chance.
"Shut the door," she said. "And turn on some music. Loud."
"No," Larkin replied sharply, rejecting the demand offhand. Whether it was Beckett, or Mal, or Malbeck or whatever combination, she wouldn't simply obey the spirits here and be told what to do. "I'm not turning on anything."
There was a forcefulness in Larkin's voice, but not a rejecting one. A calling one. She grabbed a fistful of Mal's men's shirt by the collar and tugged her closer. "Let 'em hear. Let 'em call the cops on us." With that, she converged upon Mal with a passionate and familiar kiss that betrayed the prior awkwardness of their situation. Whenever she had kissed or fooled around with women before, it had been cautious and playful and shy, but this wasn't the case here. She felt like she would with Beckett; familiar, comfortable, and ready to light the spark that could blow them both up in the flames of lust.
Mallory fell into Larkin once their lips met, hungry and angry and in desperate need, walking her back to the nearest wall she could find. You can stop this, said a part of her that had felt smaller every day since this started. The door is still open.
She stretched one foot back and booted it shut.
((Adapted from a scene with Larkin's player!))
-
Mallory
- RoH Admin
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:25 pm
- Location: The Lyceum or Kabuki Street, most of the time
Re: The Invitation
((Content Warning: Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts))
15 May, 2017 C.E.
Don’t do this.
Beckett Fisher had been quiet since Mallory’s misadventure in the netherworld, burrowing deep within her mind out of fear of the vast blackness he had escaped all too recently… but over the course of Beltane, a celebration of the renewal of life, the witch’s thoughts had turned back to the relationship between herself, Larkin, and her boyfriend’s ghost. Mallory’s feelings of anger and frustration, self-hatred, and a growing resolve to set things right roused Beckett to speak again.
Don’t. You can’t. You can’t take this away from me.
Beckett ****ing Fisher, you took this from yourself.
“Mallory, are you alright?”
The fae knight’s words reminded Mallory that she was not alone, and had spent the last several moments in front of him, clenching her eyes shut and kneading her brow with her fists. “I’m fine,” she said, and hurried away from the mouth of the alley where Ishmerai lingered, her component-laden backpack rattling as she slid her arms through the straps. She cut a path down the dim lamplit street, feet carrying her steadily towards Larkin’s apartment, ignoring the growing volume of Beckett’s entreaties.
Please…!
* * *
Knock-knock-knock. Mallory waited on the other side of the door to Larkin’s apartment. She was dressed plainly, in a black hoodie, paint-flecked purple tank top, shredded jeans, and old chucks. Her expression was grim.
Mallory had to wait for a few minutes, because Larkin wasn’t actually at home at this hour. In her discomfort and anxiety, she had taken up even more smoking, which caused her to make a quick pit stop at a local 24-7 convenience store. She returned to the apartment with a baggie of cigarettes and a few other items, dressed down in a sweatshirt advertising the Swamp Dragons; some team that never actually existed but had amused Beckett to buy for that very reason.
She saw Mal at the door, and debated veering in the other direction. She had been annoyed with the woman based on her texts, and didn’t expect a pleasant conversation. “Jesus ****ing Christ,” she muttered. Loudly. But she approached, against her better judgment.
She stopped, well short of Mallory, and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you don’t want to hang out, that’s fine. I get it. You picked a hell of a time to get high and mighty with this ***. Right after you got me in bed. How convenient.”
“I wanted to take this a hell of a lot slower until you and your ****ing boyfriend escalated this ****,” Mallory said, ending her words with a wince. Something was making her ears ring. She shook it off. “Yeah, it’s no coincidence I wanna stop after we started, because letting him in, letting him wear me down, getting into bed with the two of you after I told myself no, it’s too stupid, too dangerous, really made me hate myself.”
The ringing started up again, sharper, and the sound of her own voice, of Larkin shifting her feet, came through muffled like they were traveling through water. “I ****ed up. I get it. I shouldn’t have kept going down this road just because I ****ing liked you. But now it’s time to make a choice -- ”
The light outside Larkin’s apartment shouldn’t have been that bright, bright enough to ache, to make her lower her gaze and shut her eyes. She opened them again, refocusing, shaking her head and muttering, “God ****ing dammit...”
“Bull. Shit.” Larkin responded. She was too steamed and angry to notice Mal’s intense physical discomfort. She’d continue to rant and get out her own emotions, which had been building up over the last week. “You didn’t want to ‘take it slow.’ You wanted to fuck me. And this was a GREAT way to do that, huh.”
Larkin didn’t really think that Mal scammed her way into her pants, but it was a fear that had crossed through her head over the long sleepless nights. She had to get it out, if only to hear it dismissed. “You should go. I bet there’s some cute young piece of ass out there, bummed that her mom just died. You can ‘help’ her. And hey, if it means lapping up her pussy to do that, then by all means. That’s just part of the job, huh?”
“Jesus ****ing Christ, it wasn’t about the sex. Can you get that out of your head for, like, a second?” Mallory’s eyes were clenched shut again. She didn’t open them this time. “I was ****ing scared for you, Larkin. Everyone talks to the dead, even if they don’t talk back, but -- altering your memories? Killing yourself to reach him? It terrified me. It made me desperate to try anything, including letting in a ghost who won’t ****ing leave.”
She stepped backwards until her back hit the wall next to her door, and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You know what’s a great way to fuck someone, Larkin? Realize you both like weed and mysticism and help her brush out her dreadlocks over a long weekend. Find someone who wants to commiserate over your crappy boss and the death of punk. Not this fucking bullshit. Fuck!” the last swear came out louder, as the spirit of Beckett -- just as desperate and scared as Mallory and Larkin -- moved on to antagonizing her sense of touch.
Larkin hadn’t ever complained about a crappy boss -- she hadn’t ever had a real office job, come to think of it -- or pined for someone with dreadlocks, but she got the point. Still, admitting as much would be conceding defeat and apologizing and she wasn’t at that place either. She was still pissed. She stomped over, the anger and emotions apparent in her eyes. “So that was your solution?”
She waved her arm to the street, indicating a hypothetical junkie that wasn’t actually there. “Hey look, Mal! That guy over there has a huge crack problem. He’s struggling to get over it. You know what you should do? Give him heroin! That’ll fix it!” That’s how she felt; like she’d be given a hit on something more powerful than she’d have before, only to see it yanked out of her hands. No wonder she was pissed.
There was no verbal response from Mallory to Larkin’s words. They were coming through muffled again, warbling through water, and she caught only a blurry glimpse of her waving her arm in anger before another flash of light forced her eyes shut again.
Please just leave. Please. I hate doing this. I have to do this.
“So this is what you want? Just more, more, more, with my body in the middle…?” The witch’s teeth were grit together. She wasn’t looking at anyone right now, but it was easy to assume she was talking to Larkin. At another surge of pain through her tingling nerves, she slapped her hand against the wall behind her three times, either frustration or a plea for mercy.
“I --” Larkin couldn’t finish the thought. For the first time, she could see physical struggle of Mallory, slapping the door. This wasn’t pining away emotional turmoil -- this looked real. This looked painful. Larkin stepped toward her, suddenly shedding her ego in the name of her empathy. “Mal?” She reached out to grab her by the arm with a tender touch, hoping that may shake some sense into her. Snap her out of her convulsions. But then again, she didn’t know much about the spirit world -- perhaps it’d have the opposite effect.
Mallory was neither helped nor harmed by Larkin’s touch, her senses too overwhelmed to make sense of what she was feeling. She fell quiet, and still… until she slid a hand on top of Larkin’s, and raised her eyes to meet hers, greeting her with a familiar smile. “Babe. I’m back.” Beckett’s words sounded incredulous at his own success.
Larkin immediately could recognize the voice -- or more specifically, the cadence and verbiage. On one hand, she was delighted. On the other hand, it was strange and scary to see Mal vanish like that. “Bex?” She clutched onto his wrist, trying to study the face and the eyes to see who else may be there. “Is that you? ONLY you?”
Something about that felt even stranger to her. Oddly enough, she had gotten used to the idea of Beckett and Mallory sharing a body -- and conversely sharing her body -- but the idea of Mallory not being anything more than a shell freaked her out. As a result, she didn’t immediately jump on him or celebrate. She had to find out what the fuck was going on.
“Yeah Lark, it’s me… it’s me,” he said with a familiar laugh, trying to tip his brow closer to her. His brow, his body now, in his view. “Just me. I think she’s, like… still hanging on… but I’m in control now. I had to,” he pressed. “She was going to get rid of me -- that means no more us.”
He turned his head away, frowning out at the street from Larkin’s landing. “Let’s get inside. She’s got someone out there waiting for her to come back.”
“Fucking Hell…” Larkin didn’t understand how deep down the rabbit hole she may have gotten with this, but she was starting to. Or at the very least, starting to realize how far over her head she may be. She took Beckett’s advice and tugged him inside the apartment, shutting the door and even locking it for good measure.
Once they were inside, Larkin chucked her bag on a chair and started to clean up, distracting herself from the strange situation with some semblance of normalcy. She had a guy (sort of?) over at her apartment, so she had to pick up a few loose bras and clean out a used ashtray; the place did smell of all the smoke she had been burning through lately. As she continued her busy work, she glanced back to him, confused. “What’s your end game, here, Bex? We can’t … get rid of Mallory, either. Regardless of the fact that she’s my friend, it’d be the same as killing someone. Maybe we can use her to help find you another body. Preferably one that’s not as… occupied.” She bit down on her lip and waited for his reply; hoping that he had actually thought this through in a rational way. Clearly... she had not.
“That definitely wasn’t her fucking plan tonight.” Beckett pressed his palms into the edge of her kitchen counter, scowling down at the ring-clad fingers of a stranger, trying to tune out the sounds of Larkin cleaning up and clamp down on his rising panic. “I’ve been… watching through her eyes, trying to be quiet about it…? I don’t think she always realizes, or she’s just been ignoring me. But I’ve been reading over her shoulder -- like her notes, her spellbooks and stuff.” With a grunt he hoisted her backpack onto the counter, and started spilling the contents, a trio of heavily worn composition journals sliding out among the strange collection of components.
“Her soul has been cut off from her body before. Some asshole did it to her a few months ago, and she came back from it. She even went back in for someone else, and took me along for the ****ing ride as well. She wanted to banish me back to the netherworld the same way.”
He looked up at Larkin, eyes wide, desperate. “Look… it’s… I know it’s an awful thing to do to someone… but it’s what she was gonna do to me! And, like… she’s wicked powerful, alright? She can probably find her way back and, like... rematerialize somehow? Or maybe she’d be happy and powerful there, ‘stead of sad and lost like me. But here,” slapping his hands down on her notes, “we’ve got a way to cut her loose, leave me in this body, and then get the **** out of here. Together. Baby,” he said, reaching for her hand, his expression pleading. “This is our chance.”
There was no amount of cleaning up that could make Larkin think this was just a normal day. The concept of Beckett banishing Mallory -- or Mallory banishing Beckett -- felt like a dagger to her. Whatever the hell kind of dynamic they’d work out had been appealing to her, but obviously wasn’t sustainable. Fucking reality, right. “We can’t do that…”
Larkin finally looked over to him, with budding tears in her eyes. More than anything, that was the reason she started doing chores -- she couldn’t face him, even in this body, without getting emotional and losing her sense of reason. “Beckett… you can’t kill someone else just to be with me. Kill me. Go take a knife, and gut me. And then we can be together in wherever the fuck you were. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” Yes, yes it does. Larkin didn’t actually want that, which may explain the tears that started to rush down her cheeks. She wiped them with her sleeve, but she wasn’t even going to pretend to be okay with this situation. It had gotten too fucked up, even for her.
Beckett’s eyes widened at Larkin’s plea, the first time he had heard it, though not the first time Mallory had. And in the back of his mind, though still reeling from the battery of pain he had inflicted on her in a desperate panic, the witch spoke.
Take the knife.
“No… no, baby, I… no, I won’t hurt you,” he said, taking one step away from her. “I… I’ve already hurt you too much… too much… and I’m just so sorry…” He shook his head as tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks, and he took another step back.
His hip struck the counter, jostling a drawer of cutlery, startling him.
Do it. Take the knife, and I promise you’ll be together.
“Together…?” Beckett seemed to ask the question of the drawer he’d jostled, but his gaze soon snapped to Larkin, terrified and searching for any sign of reassurance.
“Just… fucking… do it.” Larkin was pleading as well, but more as an act of pain than any rational thought. She’d open the drawer herself and grab a knife -- wielding it with a tight grip, and gesturing to her own gut. “Do it! Just ****ing kill me already! I can’t take this. I can't.”
Of course, she didn’t actually stab herself, which probably meant she didn’t want to die. Or maybe she did, but didn’t have the courage to physically do it herself. Who the hell knew? Certainly not her. She was sobbing, uncontrollably, and losing sight of her reason and even a handle on her emotions. Pain, desperation, anger, all swirling into one. “You did it. You slashed yourself. And you left me. So kill me, Bex. If you love me soooo fucking much.” She jammed the knife toward his hand -- immediately realizing that may have been a mistake.
Beckett nearly stumbled back at the gesture and reached for the knife on impulse, but it was Mallory that closed his fingers around the blade, letting it bite into his palm and open a thin slit along his thumb. He had not felt pain like this, or any pain at all, since that fateful day.
He screamed, and when he did, Mallory reclaimed control.
“Motherfucker,” she hissed through her teeth, cradling her wounded hand as she stumbled away from Larkin, back to the counter. She couldn’t worry about her right now, nor the knife. Like that night in Sanctuary, she knew she had to act fast before someone else made the pain worse.
She slapped a bloody hand on the counter, leaving a thick red inkwell ready for her inscription. Then she dug into her satchel and dropped a sparkly black compact beside it, clattering open to the mirror within. “Hope you like glitter,” she said through gritted teeth, unclear who she was speaking to. She swept her hair back from her face with her bleeding hand, matting it against her brow, and used her other hand -- still shaky, from the lingering shock of the pain Beckett had inflicted on her -- to begin inscribing a crimson circle around the compact.
“What. The. Fuck.” Larkin didn’t anticipate Beckett grabbing hold of the knife -- and for a moment she thought she must have accidentally cut him with her clumsy handoff. But the fact that he/she snapped right to some sort of ritual afterwards suggested to her that it may be intentional. And most likely, not Beckett’s intention at all. She could only draw the conclusion: “Mallory…?”
She stepped forward, checking on the hand, and on her, but also mindful of the fact that Beckett was still floating around here somewhere. “Don’t hurt him.” In her mind, Mallory may have been banishing him to some netherworld hell forever. As pained and distraught as this all made her, she couldn’t live with that, either. “It’s not his fault.” Implying, of course, that it was her own for pushing her to open this whole damn pandora’s box to begin with.
“I’m not hurting him.” Mallory shook her head as she traced bloody symbols along the circle’s interior -- Greek letters. Alpha. Omega. Alpha. Beta. Rho. Alpha. Chi. Alpha. Omega. Alpha. “But it is his fault.” Then she started another circle. “And yours. And mine, for my stupid plans and piss-poor fucking judgment. I should have stayed away from you, for both our sakes… but I didn’t.”
There was another surge of pain, pins and needles running up and down her arm, and she clenched her eyes shut and counted to three before she could finish the third and final circle. Beckett wasn’t going quietly. When she caught her breath, she continued: “So I’m kicking him out of my body and putting him in a mirror.”
She looked up from her gruesome work at Larkin. The witch’s expression was too many things at once, making everything but her intensity inscrutable. “I don’t know how long it’ll last. No longer than the compact itself. But it’s… something.”
Larkin stared at that mirror, unsure what to make of it. That was her love in there. Sort of. Maybe the process of dying had made him more desperate, but that was understandable. Romantic, in a way. How many people would effectively kill for you, anyway? Still, her frayed nerves showed more than anything else, as she couldn’t make eye contact with Mal.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to do all this. Especially after I saw him in you the last time and we…” A wave of her hand, dismissing the need for an explanation. “I can understand if you don’t want to see me again. I’m… I’m just fucked up. Even more than I realized.” Her head bowed, she clearly needed some work on herself to cope. Or maybe stronger meds.
Mallory had closed her eyes, murmuring the words of an incantation, her body tense, her soul reacting as it filled the small space once occupied by what was left of Beckett Fisher. I send thee to Abraxas; rest well in his care. The mirror gleamed a brighter shade of silver as it filled with his spirit, revealed for only a moment before she clicked the compact shut.
The witch was silent for a few moments longer, processing the strange feeling left by Beckett’s absence as much as Larkin’s words, before she spoke again, her voice quiet. “I’m gonna… need a lot of space,” she admitted. She bound her bleeding hand with clean linen from her bag, and it gave her something to do while she worked on her words. “That… hurt, a whole lot. I made some pretty fucking rash decisions. I could’ve died, or worse, and I can’t. There’s Trick and Spence, and they need me.”
She swallowed hard. Her voice was quavering, held together with effort, and she too kept her gaze on the middle distance as she packed her bag one-handed. “But… please… don’t be alone. I want you to…” She sucked in a breath. “...I don’t know. Talk to someone, or listen to someone, or something other than being alone with all of this awful bullshit. Please?” she looked up, pleadingly, one hand curled tightly around her satchel strap.
Larkin stood back, ashamed of allowing this to get this far. Mallory was right, and reasonable. She needed help. “I know. I think that’s why I’ve been taking sleeping pills and overdoing the anxiety pills and antidepressants and blah blah blah.” She shrugged a shoulder, admitting an obvious truth out loud. “So I won’t sit around thinking too much and -- ya know. Go find him.”
The idea of suicide had been floated by her quite a bit lately, but it had been buzzing around her head for much longer than that. She felt less like she was getting better and more like she was delaying the inevitable. The sight of Mallory grabbing her satchel on a presumptive path out only made that more dangerous. “Can you stay with me?” Looking up with her watery eyes. “Just like… on the couch? Or I’ll be on the couch? I just… don’t want to sit here, alone.”
Mallory looked back at her satchel for a long moment, long enough to take a breath and think, This is the right thing to do.
“Yeah,” she said at last, sliding her little flip-phone out of her bag, maneuvering it one-handed so she could send a text. "For a little while." Clumsily tapping out the message allowed her to avoid eye contact with Larkin as she approached her.
Text to Ishmerai (burner): it’s done. I’m ok. will you wait for me?
Text from Ishmerai (burner): I will wait.
Then she looked up at Larkin, and gestured with her linen-wrapped hand: “First aid kit first, so I don’t bleed all over your couch...” Her expression softened. “But, yeah. Yeah, I’ll stay here for a while.”
* * *
It was past midnight when Mallory slipped out of the apartment. Larkin was either asleep, or pretending to sleep, and Mallory wasn't going to let herself break down and show her pain in a place that was already filled with so much of it.
She cleaned her blood from the counter. She thought about leaving a note, but when she stopped to think about the words, all she felt was a dull ache as an unfocused haze descended over her thoughts.
She left like the Devil was on her heels, turning the deadbolt after her with a twist of arcane power, and took the stairs as fast as she could without bounding down to the sidewalk below.
She strode away with purpose and held her chin high, setting a course past the alley where Ishmerai's shadowy figure now stirred from his meditative vigil.
"Mallory...?"
Her eyes shot to him, but his features were blurry and indiscernible through her welling tears. She shook her head wordlessly, and felt herself unable to stop the rising sobs.
There was a hand on her shoulder, tentative, careful the way the knight often seemed to be around others. She didn't shrug it off.
"Jesus... ****," she managed, wiping her unbandaged hand across her eyes. "I need a bourbon vanilla milkshake -- stat -- or I'm gonna ****ing kill someone."
((Adapted from a scene with Larkin's player, with thanks! Ishmerai used with permission!))
15 May, 2017 C.E.
Don’t do this.
Beckett Fisher had been quiet since Mallory’s misadventure in the netherworld, burrowing deep within her mind out of fear of the vast blackness he had escaped all too recently… but over the course of Beltane, a celebration of the renewal of life, the witch’s thoughts had turned back to the relationship between herself, Larkin, and her boyfriend’s ghost. Mallory’s feelings of anger and frustration, self-hatred, and a growing resolve to set things right roused Beckett to speak again.
Don’t. You can’t. You can’t take this away from me.
Beckett ****ing Fisher, you took this from yourself.
“Mallory, are you alright?”
The fae knight’s words reminded Mallory that she was not alone, and had spent the last several moments in front of him, clenching her eyes shut and kneading her brow with her fists. “I’m fine,” she said, and hurried away from the mouth of the alley where Ishmerai lingered, her component-laden backpack rattling as she slid her arms through the straps. She cut a path down the dim lamplit street, feet carrying her steadily towards Larkin’s apartment, ignoring the growing volume of Beckett’s entreaties.
Please…!
* * *
Knock-knock-knock. Mallory waited on the other side of the door to Larkin’s apartment. She was dressed plainly, in a black hoodie, paint-flecked purple tank top, shredded jeans, and old chucks. Her expression was grim.
Mallory had to wait for a few minutes, because Larkin wasn’t actually at home at this hour. In her discomfort and anxiety, she had taken up even more smoking, which caused her to make a quick pit stop at a local 24-7 convenience store. She returned to the apartment with a baggie of cigarettes and a few other items, dressed down in a sweatshirt advertising the Swamp Dragons; some team that never actually existed but had amused Beckett to buy for that very reason.
She saw Mal at the door, and debated veering in the other direction. She had been annoyed with the woman based on her texts, and didn’t expect a pleasant conversation. “Jesus ****ing Christ,” she muttered. Loudly. But she approached, against her better judgment.
She stopped, well short of Mallory, and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you don’t want to hang out, that’s fine. I get it. You picked a hell of a time to get high and mighty with this ***. Right after you got me in bed. How convenient.”
“I wanted to take this a hell of a lot slower until you and your ****ing boyfriend escalated this ****,” Mallory said, ending her words with a wince. Something was making her ears ring. She shook it off. “Yeah, it’s no coincidence I wanna stop after we started, because letting him in, letting him wear me down, getting into bed with the two of you after I told myself no, it’s too stupid, too dangerous, really made me hate myself.”
The ringing started up again, sharper, and the sound of her own voice, of Larkin shifting her feet, came through muffled like they were traveling through water. “I ****ed up. I get it. I shouldn’t have kept going down this road just because I ****ing liked you. But now it’s time to make a choice -- ”
The light outside Larkin’s apartment shouldn’t have been that bright, bright enough to ache, to make her lower her gaze and shut her eyes. She opened them again, refocusing, shaking her head and muttering, “God ****ing dammit...”
“Bull. Shit.” Larkin responded. She was too steamed and angry to notice Mal’s intense physical discomfort. She’d continue to rant and get out her own emotions, which had been building up over the last week. “You didn’t want to ‘take it slow.’ You wanted to fuck me. And this was a GREAT way to do that, huh.”
Larkin didn’t really think that Mal scammed her way into her pants, but it was a fear that had crossed through her head over the long sleepless nights. She had to get it out, if only to hear it dismissed. “You should go. I bet there’s some cute young piece of ass out there, bummed that her mom just died. You can ‘help’ her. And hey, if it means lapping up her pussy to do that, then by all means. That’s just part of the job, huh?”
“Jesus ****ing Christ, it wasn’t about the sex. Can you get that out of your head for, like, a second?” Mallory’s eyes were clenched shut again. She didn’t open them this time. “I was ****ing scared for you, Larkin. Everyone talks to the dead, even if they don’t talk back, but -- altering your memories? Killing yourself to reach him? It terrified me. It made me desperate to try anything, including letting in a ghost who won’t ****ing leave.”
She stepped backwards until her back hit the wall next to her door, and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You know what’s a great way to fuck someone, Larkin? Realize you both like weed and mysticism and help her brush out her dreadlocks over a long weekend. Find someone who wants to commiserate over your crappy boss and the death of punk. Not this fucking bullshit. Fuck!” the last swear came out louder, as the spirit of Beckett -- just as desperate and scared as Mallory and Larkin -- moved on to antagonizing her sense of touch.
Larkin hadn’t ever complained about a crappy boss -- she hadn’t ever had a real office job, come to think of it -- or pined for someone with dreadlocks, but she got the point. Still, admitting as much would be conceding defeat and apologizing and she wasn’t at that place either. She was still pissed. She stomped over, the anger and emotions apparent in her eyes. “So that was your solution?”
She waved her arm to the street, indicating a hypothetical junkie that wasn’t actually there. “Hey look, Mal! That guy over there has a huge crack problem. He’s struggling to get over it. You know what you should do? Give him heroin! That’ll fix it!” That’s how she felt; like she’d be given a hit on something more powerful than she’d have before, only to see it yanked out of her hands. No wonder she was pissed.
There was no verbal response from Mallory to Larkin’s words. They were coming through muffled again, warbling through water, and she caught only a blurry glimpse of her waving her arm in anger before another flash of light forced her eyes shut again.
Please just leave. Please. I hate doing this. I have to do this.
“So this is what you want? Just more, more, more, with my body in the middle…?” The witch’s teeth were grit together. She wasn’t looking at anyone right now, but it was easy to assume she was talking to Larkin. At another surge of pain through her tingling nerves, she slapped her hand against the wall behind her three times, either frustration or a plea for mercy.
“I --” Larkin couldn’t finish the thought. For the first time, she could see physical struggle of Mallory, slapping the door. This wasn’t pining away emotional turmoil -- this looked real. This looked painful. Larkin stepped toward her, suddenly shedding her ego in the name of her empathy. “Mal?” She reached out to grab her by the arm with a tender touch, hoping that may shake some sense into her. Snap her out of her convulsions. But then again, she didn’t know much about the spirit world -- perhaps it’d have the opposite effect.
Mallory was neither helped nor harmed by Larkin’s touch, her senses too overwhelmed to make sense of what she was feeling. She fell quiet, and still… until she slid a hand on top of Larkin’s, and raised her eyes to meet hers, greeting her with a familiar smile. “Babe. I’m back.” Beckett’s words sounded incredulous at his own success.
Larkin immediately could recognize the voice -- or more specifically, the cadence and verbiage. On one hand, she was delighted. On the other hand, it was strange and scary to see Mal vanish like that. “Bex?” She clutched onto his wrist, trying to study the face and the eyes to see who else may be there. “Is that you? ONLY you?”
Something about that felt even stranger to her. Oddly enough, she had gotten used to the idea of Beckett and Mallory sharing a body -- and conversely sharing her body -- but the idea of Mallory not being anything more than a shell freaked her out. As a result, she didn’t immediately jump on him or celebrate. She had to find out what the fuck was going on.
“Yeah Lark, it’s me… it’s me,” he said with a familiar laugh, trying to tip his brow closer to her. His brow, his body now, in his view. “Just me. I think she’s, like… still hanging on… but I’m in control now. I had to,” he pressed. “She was going to get rid of me -- that means no more us.”
He turned his head away, frowning out at the street from Larkin’s landing. “Let’s get inside. She’s got someone out there waiting for her to come back.”
“Fucking Hell…” Larkin didn’t understand how deep down the rabbit hole she may have gotten with this, but she was starting to. Or at the very least, starting to realize how far over her head she may be. She took Beckett’s advice and tugged him inside the apartment, shutting the door and even locking it for good measure.
Once they were inside, Larkin chucked her bag on a chair and started to clean up, distracting herself from the strange situation with some semblance of normalcy. She had a guy (sort of?) over at her apartment, so she had to pick up a few loose bras and clean out a used ashtray; the place did smell of all the smoke she had been burning through lately. As she continued her busy work, she glanced back to him, confused. “What’s your end game, here, Bex? We can’t … get rid of Mallory, either. Regardless of the fact that she’s my friend, it’d be the same as killing someone. Maybe we can use her to help find you another body. Preferably one that’s not as… occupied.” She bit down on her lip and waited for his reply; hoping that he had actually thought this through in a rational way. Clearly... she had not.
“That definitely wasn’t her fucking plan tonight.” Beckett pressed his palms into the edge of her kitchen counter, scowling down at the ring-clad fingers of a stranger, trying to tune out the sounds of Larkin cleaning up and clamp down on his rising panic. “I’ve been… watching through her eyes, trying to be quiet about it…? I don’t think she always realizes, or she’s just been ignoring me. But I’ve been reading over her shoulder -- like her notes, her spellbooks and stuff.” With a grunt he hoisted her backpack onto the counter, and started spilling the contents, a trio of heavily worn composition journals sliding out among the strange collection of components.
“Her soul has been cut off from her body before. Some asshole did it to her a few months ago, and she came back from it. She even went back in for someone else, and took me along for the ****ing ride as well. She wanted to banish me back to the netherworld the same way.”
He looked up at Larkin, eyes wide, desperate. “Look… it’s… I know it’s an awful thing to do to someone… but it’s what she was gonna do to me! And, like… she’s wicked powerful, alright? She can probably find her way back and, like... rematerialize somehow? Or maybe she’d be happy and powerful there, ‘stead of sad and lost like me. But here,” slapping his hands down on her notes, “we’ve got a way to cut her loose, leave me in this body, and then get the **** out of here. Together. Baby,” he said, reaching for her hand, his expression pleading. “This is our chance.”
There was no amount of cleaning up that could make Larkin think this was just a normal day. The concept of Beckett banishing Mallory -- or Mallory banishing Beckett -- felt like a dagger to her. Whatever the hell kind of dynamic they’d work out had been appealing to her, but obviously wasn’t sustainable. Fucking reality, right. “We can’t do that…”
Larkin finally looked over to him, with budding tears in her eyes. More than anything, that was the reason she started doing chores -- she couldn’t face him, even in this body, without getting emotional and losing her sense of reason. “Beckett… you can’t kill someone else just to be with me. Kill me. Go take a knife, and gut me. And then we can be together in wherever the fuck you were. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” Yes, yes it does. Larkin didn’t actually want that, which may explain the tears that started to rush down her cheeks. She wiped them with her sleeve, but she wasn’t even going to pretend to be okay with this situation. It had gotten too fucked up, even for her.
Beckett’s eyes widened at Larkin’s plea, the first time he had heard it, though not the first time Mallory had. And in the back of his mind, though still reeling from the battery of pain he had inflicted on her in a desperate panic, the witch spoke.
Take the knife.
“No… no, baby, I… no, I won’t hurt you,” he said, taking one step away from her. “I… I’ve already hurt you too much… too much… and I’m just so sorry…” He shook his head as tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks, and he took another step back.
His hip struck the counter, jostling a drawer of cutlery, startling him.
Do it. Take the knife, and I promise you’ll be together.
“Together…?” Beckett seemed to ask the question of the drawer he’d jostled, but his gaze soon snapped to Larkin, terrified and searching for any sign of reassurance.
“Just… fucking… do it.” Larkin was pleading as well, but more as an act of pain than any rational thought. She’d open the drawer herself and grab a knife -- wielding it with a tight grip, and gesturing to her own gut. “Do it! Just ****ing kill me already! I can’t take this. I can't.”
Of course, she didn’t actually stab herself, which probably meant she didn’t want to die. Or maybe she did, but didn’t have the courage to physically do it herself. Who the hell knew? Certainly not her. She was sobbing, uncontrollably, and losing sight of her reason and even a handle on her emotions. Pain, desperation, anger, all swirling into one. “You did it. You slashed yourself. And you left me. So kill me, Bex. If you love me soooo fucking much.” She jammed the knife toward his hand -- immediately realizing that may have been a mistake.
Beckett nearly stumbled back at the gesture and reached for the knife on impulse, but it was Mallory that closed his fingers around the blade, letting it bite into his palm and open a thin slit along his thumb. He had not felt pain like this, or any pain at all, since that fateful day.
He screamed, and when he did, Mallory reclaimed control.
“Motherfucker,” she hissed through her teeth, cradling her wounded hand as she stumbled away from Larkin, back to the counter. She couldn’t worry about her right now, nor the knife. Like that night in Sanctuary, she knew she had to act fast before someone else made the pain worse.
She slapped a bloody hand on the counter, leaving a thick red inkwell ready for her inscription. Then she dug into her satchel and dropped a sparkly black compact beside it, clattering open to the mirror within. “Hope you like glitter,” she said through gritted teeth, unclear who she was speaking to. She swept her hair back from her face with her bleeding hand, matting it against her brow, and used her other hand -- still shaky, from the lingering shock of the pain Beckett had inflicted on her -- to begin inscribing a crimson circle around the compact.
“What. The. Fuck.” Larkin didn’t anticipate Beckett grabbing hold of the knife -- and for a moment she thought she must have accidentally cut him with her clumsy handoff. But the fact that he/she snapped right to some sort of ritual afterwards suggested to her that it may be intentional. And most likely, not Beckett’s intention at all. She could only draw the conclusion: “Mallory…?”
She stepped forward, checking on the hand, and on her, but also mindful of the fact that Beckett was still floating around here somewhere. “Don’t hurt him.” In her mind, Mallory may have been banishing him to some netherworld hell forever. As pained and distraught as this all made her, she couldn’t live with that, either. “It’s not his fault.” Implying, of course, that it was her own for pushing her to open this whole damn pandora’s box to begin with.
“I’m not hurting him.” Mallory shook her head as she traced bloody symbols along the circle’s interior -- Greek letters. Alpha. Omega. Alpha. Beta. Rho. Alpha. Chi. Alpha. Omega. Alpha. “But it is his fault.” Then she started another circle. “And yours. And mine, for my stupid plans and piss-poor fucking judgment. I should have stayed away from you, for both our sakes… but I didn’t.”
There was another surge of pain, pins and needles running up and down her arm, and she clenched her eyes shut and counted to three before she could finish the third and final circle. Beckett wasn’t going quietly. When she caught her breath, she continued: “So I’m kicking him out of my body and putting him in a mirror.”
She looked up from her gruesome work at Larkin. The witch’s expression was too many things at once, making everything but her intensity inscrutable. “I don’t know how long it’ll last. No longer than the compact itself. But it’s… something.”
Larkin stared at that mirror, unsure what to make of it. That was her love in there. Sort of. Maybe the process of dying had made him more desperate, but that was understandable. Romantic, in a way. How many people would effectively kill for you, anyway? Still, her frayed nerves showed more than anything else, as she couldn’t make eye contact with Mal.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to do all this. Especially after I saw him in you the last time and we…” A wave of her hand, dismissing the need for an explanation. “I can understand if you don’t want to see me again. I’m… I’m just fucked up. Even more than I realized.” Her head bowed, she clearly needed some work on herself to cope. Or maybe stronger meds.
Mallory had closed her eyes, murmuring the words of an incantation, her body tense, her soul reacting as it filled the small space once occupied by what was left of Beckett Fisher. I send thee to Abraxas; rest well in his care. The mirror gleamed a brighter shade of silver as it filled with his spirit, revealed for only a moment before she clicked the compact shut.
The witch was silent for a few moments longer, processing the strange feeling left by Beckett’s absence as much as Larkin’s words, before she spoke again, her voice quiet. “I’m gonna… need a lot of space,” she admitted. She bound her bleeding hand with clean linen from her bag, and it gave her something to do while she worked on her words. “That… hurt, a whole lot. I made some pretty fucking rash decisions. I could’ve died, or worse, and I can’t. There’s Trick and Spence, and they need me.”
She swallowed hard. Her voice was quavering, held together with effort, and she too kept her gaze on the middle distance as she packed her bag one-handed. “But… please… don’t be alone. I want you to…” She sucked in a breath. “...I don’t know. Talk to someone, or listen to someone, or something other than being alone with all of this awful bullshit. Please?” she looked up, pleadingly, one hand curled tightly around her satchel strap.
Larkin stood back, ashamed of allowing this to get this far. Mallory was right, and reasonable. She needed help. “I know. I think that’s why I’ve been taking sleeping pills and overdoing the anxiety pills and antidepressants and blah blah blah.” She shrugged a shoulder, admitting an obvious truth out loud. “So I won’t sit around thinking too much and -- ya know. Go find him.”
The idea of suicide had been floated by her quite a bit lately, but it had been buzzing around her head for much longer than that. She felt less like she was getting better and more like she was delaying the inevitable. The sight of Mallory grabbing her satchel on a presumptive path out only made that more dangerous. “Can you stay with me?” Looking up with her watery eyes. “Just like… on the couch? Or I’ll be on the couch? I just… don’t want to sit here, alone.”
Mallory looked back at her satchel for a long moment, long enough to take a breath and think, This is the right thing to do.
“Yeah,” she said at last, sliding her little flip-phone out of her bag, maneuvering it one-handed so she could send a text. "For a little while." Clumsily tapping out the message allowed her to avoid eye contact with Larkin as she approached her.
Text to Ishmerai (burner): it’s done. I’m ok. will you wait for me?
Text from Ishmerai (burner): I will wait.
Then she looked up at Larkin, and gestured with her linen-wrapped hand: “First aid kit first, so I don’t bleed all over your couch...” Her expression softened. “But, yeah. Yeah, I’ll stay here for a while.”
* * *
It was past midnight when Mallory slipped out of the apartment. Larkin was either asleep, or pretending to sleep, and Mallory wasn't going to let herself break down and show her pain in a place that was already filled with so much of it.
She cleaned her blood from the counter. She thought about leaving a note, but when she stopped to think about the words, all she felt was a dull ache as an unfocused haze descended over her thoughts.
She left like the Devil was on her heels, turning the deadbolt after her with a twist of arcane power, and took the stairs as fast as she could without bounding down to the sidewalk below.
She strode away with purpose and held her chin high, setting a course past the alley where Ishmerai's shadowy figure now stirred from his meditative vigil.
"Mallory...?"
Her eyes shot to him, but his features were blurry and indiscernible through her welling tears. She shook her head wordlessly, and felt herself unable to stop the rising sobs.
There was a hand on her shoulder, tentative, careful the way the knight often seemed to be around others. She didn't shrug it off.
"Jesus... ****," she managed, wiping her unbandaged hand across her eyes. "I need a bourbon vanilla milkshake -- stat -- or I'm gonna ****ing kill someone."
((Adapted from a scene with Larkin's player, with thanks! Ishmerai used with permission!))
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