Come the war
Come the avarice
Come the war
Come hell
If our lives are series of scenes set in scripts, then these are mine.
“Do you think I desire you?” The hot winds of the proximal burning season blew around our feet. Auto peered at me through red/blue lenses, shoulders thrown back in challenge.
“I assume everyone does.” I shrugged. It was the truth.
“And you’d be wrong.” He smiled, not unkindly. “Now that you know that, does that change how you view this scene? That is what a spoiler is.”
It was almost a year ago.
A Beginning. Prologue.
A Guide. A Catalyst.
“Everyone needs a Fairy Godmother.” Connie Charming smiled shyly at me, the October wind fluttering her blue dress and blonde curls. She tugged at our clasped hands and pulled me into a hug.
“Welcome to the Telling Visionists.”
“Took you long enough.” Jed drawled from where he lounged against a nearby tree. “This is a Church of Secrets. You, of all people, belong here more than anywhere.”
I trusted him. My best friend. He knew me better than anyone. If he said I belonged here, then I did.
The Cast Assembles.
“I want to cash in this Clintymas token.” The Director was back, motorcycle vest slung across his shoulders. Auto pressed the shiny paper into my hand, my own face stared back at me from it.
“One free date, right?” There was a finality in the act, as though he was going through the last motions of a script. “I’ll make the preparations.”
We parted then, cordial, and the thought slipped away almost immediately. Replaced with Council Business. With Tes and his big mouth. With the shifting alliance with the Desperados. With the repercussions of Liberty Hollow’s destruction and Robb encroaching on the town.
I hovered at the edges of TV church, a secret member for as long as I held the Council Seat. “A Church of Secrets” Jed had said. It seemed fitting that I should be their newest unseen convert.
The scene pans in.
Auto refilled our glasses of punch. The Winchester brothers quipped their way across the screen, met with sudden violence. In the world on the screen death was permanent, Demons tangible, true connections elusive. The script changed. There was the story of the Breaker of Chains, she who was once a slave but became a queen. “She reminds me of you,” The Accensorite placed a small box on the table. “perhaps this will remind you of me.”
A glowing screen. A slowly chiming music box. An unexpected connection.
Come attrition
Come the reek of bones
Come attrition
Come hell
An ending.
That night I died.
My best friend died the next.
We remember his many names. Jed. McBride. The Mad Hatter. He had another name too. One I didn’t know until later. A secret that wasn’t meant to be one. A secret of omission. A secret everyone else knew but me.
I mourned his death. I mourned my own. I missed our tea times. Our snark over filth milk. The memories glazed and frosted in my mind – like his eyes had been at the end. Seeing only his own story, and his own ending.
The town felt empty without him.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know. I only know who I think I once was. That ambitious girl. The one who clawed her way up from nothing. But I’m not her now. I’m not sure I can ever be.”
Auto touched my hand, soothing. I felt more myself at his touch. “I won’t fix you. Can’t fix you if you don’t want it. Take this time. Figure out who you want to be.”
I drifted then. A dark veil had fallen over my sight. To Hayven and back. Away from politics. Away from a changing Bravo. There was a finality to it all.
It was Ynk who brought me back, cleared the webs from my mind. It was Tes who reminded me what it was to speak of the unspeakable. It was Rahn who taught me what it was to seek story in the whole, his voice ringing out above the peanut gallery at Church. “The stories we tell are best when combined.”
This is why
Why we fight
Why we lie awake
And this is why
This is why we fight
The Living.
It was February now. Queen of Hearts Day. I had extricated myself from politics, and just in time. I had found a protagonist. She was slowly becoming who she was meant to be, and I was her foil at a distance now. I had crept through her tent, taking back that which I felt was mine. A playing card fell from my bodice, Lady Luck disappointed that I was willingly setting myself up for failure. An omen that she would punish me later. She did not like when Her people flaunted their Luck.
Pockets stuffed with the Mayor’s brass, I strutted around town. It was my holiday after all.
“What do you feel?” I demanded of my date. We were on number three now.
“I feel proud. I feel excited. Saturday Morning Cartoons went well.”
“Good. Feelings tie us to memories. You Accensorites are too lofty.” I grinned. “You forget what it is like to be tied to the flesh, to feeling.” This was my gift to him. “I’m going to ask you that question many, many times today.”
“Well, now I feel nervous.” Auto laughed.
“Remember that feeling. Remember this moment.” I pushed my fingertips against his sternum. “Be alive.”
The Loving.
“I don’t want to marry you.”
I glanced at him bemused. “I wasn’t going to ask you to.” We were sitting in the cold outside the TV Church, resting from our morning of chasing raiders, defusing bombs, capturing War Supplies. A morning of adventures. Of living.
“Ok, good. Because I don’t want to define this.” his hands curled around mine. “I just want to have talks like we do. To share things. To be companions as it suits us. To ask nothing more of each other than that.”
“I… have secrets.” I spoke slowly, thinking it through. “Just so you know. Things I can’t tell you.” The bag of the Mayor’s brass dug into my hips.
“Secrets are fine.” he smiled. “I want more talks like this one. I want more dates. I want to enjoy this story as long as we’re allowed to.”
“Alright.” I agreed. “But are we in a Comedy or a Tragedy?”
Somewhere, Lady Luck threw her head back and laughed.
When we die
We will die
With our arms unbound
The Lying.
“It’s time.” Greyson murmured into my ear behind the Saloon. “We’re going to read the documents to the Judge at noon.”
I nodded. Good. Since Liberty Hollow last year I was finished with Lady de Lux and her particular brand of power. I admired her even as I hated her.
The clock hands raised upwards in prayer and I slid along the back wall of the Saloon. The MC was a tight knot of coiled muscle and questionable decisions. They were joined by the looser Rams Guard, mirroring their bravado but not their convictions. In their center, she stood. Eyes wide and nervous. But her hands were calm. Her blood-soaked hands.
Greyson climbed onto a chair, his voice ringing out truths. The actors were assembled, the mob was entranced, and the show was beginning. The opening act was strong, but already a counter-rumbling had begun.
“Is her name on the papers?” the Judge questioned. “How do we know it was her?” a man yelled. “Maybe she’s changed?” Kaz said brightly. “You of all people should definitely know she hasn’t.” I hissed at them, remembering a night when we both told lies under the full moon.
I watched Lady’s face as these challenges swelled. She must love this chaos, knowing what she did. Knowing who she was. It was time for the second act.
“What are we doing here, Rajah?” Galahad had appeared at my elbow.
“We are taking down Lady, and if the Judge stops us, it will show his corruption.” I said truthfully. “And then we will take him down too.”
The Iron nodded, it was the explanation he’d needed. He stepped forward and added his voice to the fray. “You sent us to do horrible things!” he stomped up to the Judge, fists clenched at his sides. “You sent us to murder!”
“Maybe she’s not really a slaver!” someone over to my right said, and the statement was so ridiculous I had to turn my head and stare.
“How many of you were there for Liberty Hollow?” I called out, “You know what she is.”
My eyes flickered to hers, that half-smile perpetually plastered on the Lady’s face. Then to Hammers standing behind her. “Look who you sold yourself to.”
“What did you say?!” the tall Iron growled.
“You heard me.” I turned back to the room-at-large. “Can’t you see it’s the right hand and the left?” My hands gestured at the taciturn Judge and the smirking Lady, “So long as they both exist we are puppets dancing on their strings.”
The voices raised loud and angry in the packed Saloon, the Lady and her escort bunched closer together. Finally the Judge felt the sway of public opinion. “Let’s go for a walk.” he said.
“What? No!” Lady protested. “You can’t do this to me, I have plans that can help against Rob. I have intel. Just wait!”
“Let’s go.” The Judge repeated, and slowly, the funeral procession curled out of the saloon and down to the Hanging Cliffs.
The Desperados clumped together in the middle of the path to the bandit gate. I edged closer to hear their conversation but Outside’s keen eyes recognized me in the crowd.
“Are you a psion, Rajah?” Lady taunted as she passed by. I shook it off with a laugh, and turned back to the MC. “Ok, I know you didn’t ask for it but here’s what I think. You guys are my friends, and you know I don’t use that word lightly. But from where I’m standing it looks like you’ve sold yourselves to a slaver.”
“We don’t have a choice.” Hammers snapped.
“Yes, we do.” Slink said softly.
“Only slaves don’t have choices.” I stared at Hammers. “That’s the difference between being free and being owned, so which one are you?”
“We’re not doing this.” Chloe announced.
“I am.” Hammers stalked off, with Woni and Ash. They formed a wall preventing the town from following the Judge down to the Hanging Cliffs. Cries went up for an impartial witness to the death. I laughed when the Judge tried to vouch for Keegan. “He’s a councilman elected by public vote. You don’t trust him?”
“I was a councilwoman for two years. Fuck no I don’t!”
Through it all the Lady stood, watching her death approach by inches. Resolve was on her face, battling with desperation.
“Lady de Lux,” I called out to her softly from the side of the road. “It’s been a pleasure learning from you.”
A small smile twisted the corner of her mouth, a nod and a tip of the hat. The last lesson from a master.
A few moments later she was on the ground, the foam on her lips and her twitching limbs belying the poison that had taken her life. Her last moments spent on her own terms.
Lady Luck willing, we should all be so lucky.
And this is why
This is why
Why we fight
Come hell
The Law.
“How long have you been working with Rob?” Nike’s knife dug into my ankle, separating the tendon from bone. The pain was excruciating and my first answer was a rasping gasp.
Near my head, Centex watched with fascination and revulsion on her beautiful face.
“Since I joined the UIH. Up to Liberty Hollow.”
“Describe the work you did for Rob in the past.” the questions continued, on and on. Others entered the room, my sister, perching hungry and ambivalent on a bed nearby. Godmoneys had a strong constitution for this kind of thing. Amaroq stared impassively. Ynk’s fingers twitched against my own. The Lords and Ladies were assembled.
“Are you enjoying the show?” I asked the Pureblood who had demanded this, along with my life. Centex’s mouth turned downwards as she regarded me. “I think it’s important we know the truth.”
I made a small sound of laughter – which shifted into a shriek as Nike’s knife twisted a bit deeper. I could feel the bones in my ankle shifting against each other, metal on bone.
“Tell me of the night you burned the Washbornes.”
Tes’s fingers cut into my wrist as the story spilled from my lips. The trickery of Rob. The determination of Sal. The fear of Rudy and Tes. The screams and the fire of that fateful night.
“Do you regret it?” Centex interrupted.
This question was easy to answer honestly. “No. And Tes hates me for it.” I could see him from the corner of my eye, his face contorted in inner pain. “He woke up screaming every night after for weeks.”
“Are you working with him now?”
“With Robb? No. I don’t know anyone in this town who is anymore.” That had been my promise to Lady after I had destroyed her business. And I don’t think she ever realized that I had kept it.
Slowly Nike withdrew his tools, wiped off the blood and put them away.
“Are you happy now?” I asked Centex. Of all the stories told in this room, hers was the one that really mattered. The whole reason we had reached this agreement. The reason I had wanted her to know. I needed to see what she would do. She was my protagonist.
“No. Not happy. But it is done.”
“Rajah.” Nike was standing there, watching as the Iron Rosie helped me to my feet painfully. “Next month we take a walk.” The words were a promise and a threat.
The Dying.
Violence was in the night. General Sharkface and his men swept around the corner from Tent City to the crossroads. In Hopes’ Edge, I slid into the shadows of the Iron Rosie cabin and waited for them to move on.
“Well, well. Who have we here?” They had found someone. Someones.
“Is that Auto? It’s Auto! Get him!”
I flinched, startled, as the sound of weapons falling on flesh filled the night. It was dark. I pressed towards the knot of bodies, arms rising and falling at bodies on the ground. Too far. Too far.
“Who’s that in the shadows!” I was spotted as I crept forward from the treeline. “It’s Rajah!” The knives cut into me then, already slick with blood. I dropped to my knees, fell over dramatically and willed them to accept the feint.
“I KILLED RAJAH!” the soldier crowed, turning away to attack the next defender. I rolled into the shadows, darted into the underbrush.
“My name is Tumbleweed. Help!” and another voice was silenced.
Shaking, I slipped away.
Bride of quiet
Bride of all unquiet things
Bride of quiet
Bride of hell
Pathos.
The eerie light of the Sunless Garden filtered down through aqua waves of time. Beside me stood my brothers and sisters in the Church. Connie, Rahn, Chelsea, Godric, and one more not of the Faith. Scuttle. A cadre to pull out a priest.
In stillness, our bodies decayed and disintegrated, so much dust on the winds of the Mortis Amaranthine. The Scene shifted, reset. An idyllic cabin in a clearing. Cherry pies on the window sill. A man waiting, a bit more weary, but at peace.
“Rajah. What are you doing here?” he seemed genuinely surprised to see me, and his next words illuminated why. “I left you, long ago. You were better off without me. You all were.”
“No, Auto.” I pressed my hand into his. “You haven’t left.” The unspoken Yet. hung in the air but I shrugged it off with a smile.
“The Church needs you too.” Connie stepped in smoothly to fill the gap.
“No, Connie. You have been a better Director without me. I know this.”
The others surrounding him with their memories and love. They gave pieces of themselves, patches of memory to cover the gaps in his. Strength to cover weakness. Gentle corrections and edits to a flawed and warped script.
The walls of this place-that-was-not-a-place folded in around us. We were once again standing at Boot Hill and he was there with us in the flesh. The Church enfolded him in its embrace, this lost son. They smiled and laughed and chattered as we drifted back down the path.
Passion.
“Rajah, a word.”
Nervous, I stepped to the side. If the death scene was what his heart desired, then I had no place in it. I braced for the words we hadn’t spoken. The ones where he said I was better off without him.
“I once told you I didn’t desire you.” A few church members paused to listen.
I snorted. “I remember. Distinctly.” He paused to smile but continued seriously, words spilling into the night around us.
“When we met you were iconic, distant, an archetype to me. Something to experience, in my Dean Winchester phase, but nothing more. Then we started spending time together, I grew to respect you and I wanted to get to know you better.” A stillness had fallen over the group, clearly eavesdropping. “Then I worried my feelings for you would be too strong and you would never return my affection. I thought my only option would be to let you go. But seeing you there in the Sunless Garden, the last person I expected to help me… It made me want to experience things with you. I guess I’m saying, there was a time when I didn’t desire you the way I do now but…”
He rambled on a bit longer then paused.
“Auto, are you saying you want to fuck me?” I blurted. “Because I thought you were going to break up with me just now.”
That ol’ Vegasian subtlety. I thought as more than one Church member choked awkwardly and suddenly found another place to be.
“Yeah basically.” he grinned. “I mean, there are a few more nice things I wanted to say, but yeah. I want to do that too.”
“Finally.” I grinned back.
We continued up the path a ways, the stars a dark pathway in the split of the trees above our own. I stopped, grabbed his hands, a thought gnawing at me. “If you once wanted me, then didn’t, and now do again. What is to stop you from leaving again? Because, I don’t think I could stand that.” I was startled at the desperation in my own words, and at the pinpricks of tears in the corners of my eyes. “There are words I don’t say because they’re unlucky. Not more than once anyways. We have rules about it actually.” I was the one rambling now. “But I need this to be a Comedy, not a Tragedy, because I l-l-lo-…” the word was still hard to say, after so many years.
I spit it out finally and there it shone, hanging in the air between us, lighting up his face, surprise on his features – trepidation on mine.
Auto paused for a moment, examining the distant lights of Hopes Edge. He squinted, took off his glasses, and tucked them into a pocket before meeting my gaze in the starlight.
“Our faith makes me willing to die for you, but I’ve decided I want to live for you.”
And then he said the unlucky words back, witnessed by stars and shadow, as the best secrets should be.
Come the archers
Come the infantry
Come the archers
Of hell
Plans.
The day dawned bright and balmy and I spent most of it avoiding the Council meeting. Which proved more difficult than I expected considering every few minutes in my march across town, someone stopped me to ask what had happened at the Council meeting and I had to tell them how much I couldn’t fucking care less.
That was SO Bravo.
Eventually I wound up seated on a rock outside the TV church. All the snakes were assembled in this sunning spot. Laika and Paris and myself, eating candy and pretending we were all fine, as Vegasians are wont to do.
“So I was thinking.” Auto perched next to me on the rock, he seemed at peace. “I want to live more in my moment.”
“You sound like a Hedon.” I smiled at him.
“I was actually thinking I might pick a new script, and I was wondering if you wanted to study with me.”
“Study? Or Study?”
“The first part. I’m serious. I’ve been following the Winchesters for a long time, but I think it might be fun to pick something we can both work on, learn from.”
I was oddly touched.
“I’d love that.”
Later we sat side by side with books from the library on our laps, flipping through the records of the Telling Visions. An odd looking group of people stared back at me in black and white. I squinted at the page.
“They were an interesting script, meant to be a subversive commentary on this older one. The parody of the perfect Nielson Family.”
“They kind of look like us.”
“They really do.”
“Were they a comedy or a tragedy?” I asked.
Auto considered. “A bit of both really.”
I stared into the eyes of the dark haired woman on the page. What secrets did she have?, I wondered. And the man with her, the one holding her hand so lovingly.
What happened to him?
“I figured out what’s wrong with my eyes.” Auto was saying, “Why I don’t need my glasses anymore.”
“Oh?” I murmured, half listening.
“Since I died, they’ve been different.”
“The Gravemind fixed your sight like it fixed Willow’s voice?”
“No. My sight changed as I ascended, the further I got from the material world. But now that I’m on my last legs, I’m closer to the physical world than I used to be. Everything is in focus again.”
Closer to death. I thought, and shuddered. I didn’t need this constant reminder when I met his eyes that all these plans might be for nothing in a very short time. I had danced with Death before, but now he was coming to dance with all of Bravo, and there were so, so many who wouldn’t survive. Was Auto one of them?
Comedies end in happily ever after. Tragedies end in Death.
This is why
Why we fight
Why we lie awake
This is why
This is why we fight
Pain.
“Rajah I have something I need to tell you.” Connie stood silhouetted in her bathrobe, looking less Fairy Godmother and more concerned roommate.
It was the eve of Boothill, and for the first time I was going. For the first time I had someone I wanted to see.
“Jed…” She sighed, twisted her fingers together. “He was the Mad Hatter, but he was also Pumpkin Sam.”
I laughed, “That’s ridiculous. I saw Pumpkin Sam when I died. He was with that pack of Nemesis that murdered me.” I shook my head and then met her gaze with a start.
She nodded.
“Connie.” there was no laughter now. “You’re telling me my best friend helped murder me, right after he got you to baptize me into the church.”
“He was devastated.” she whispered. “He almost lost his faith over it. Stopped being a Nemesis.”
My blood was ringing in my ears.
“I just figured you should know before you went there to see him.”
And when we die
We will die
With our arms unbound
And this is why
This is why we fight
Pretense.
Tallulah was a hollow shell in my arms. I stepped back, let those who knew her better sweep in. I didn’t know why the feeling crushed me but it did. Around me, the eerie atmosphere of Boot Hill was charged and electric. The Church sat on the ground, waiting for the Graverobber to announce the Dead.
“First time, Rajah?” Connie asked kindly and I nodded, throat tight with sorrow.
“What are you thinking?” Auto leaned close.
“About what a contradiction I am.” I groaned. “I’m a felon who is obsessed with law and politics. I am an artificer who is offended that the spirits that appear here are shades of the real thing.”
“You get from it what you need.” he shook his head, “That doesn’t make it bad.”
“Yeah, but who am I to be so obsessed with authenticity.” I sprawled on the pavement in a state of existentialism. “I’ve worn false faces my whole life. It’s absurd.”
And then it was time, time to head in to meet the dead. My dead friend, and murderer. I wasn’t ready.
Perdition.
In the Sunless Garden a tea party was laid out. Bea at one end and the Mad Hatter at the other. Even here, he was smiling.
“You came! You were a bit late though…”
This time pushing against the Gravemind felt physically difficult. Our wills heaving and struggling to impose our reality over his madness. Dart and Rahn each heaving to find footing in this chaotic space. Libby and Godric lending their support.
“I can’t be dead.” Jed laughed, “I know you Accensorites would never let that happen.” I watched as Auto and Connie flinched at the words.
In the end Connie pulled her memories out into the air, a moment of heartbreak and the garden collapsed around us and we were once again in the dark woods of Bravo.
Jed embraced me, his dead eyes smiling.
“You will always be my best friend.”
He handed me a necktie covered in pumpkins. A gift from the grave.
“Remember Rajah, the best stories are the sad ones. And tragedies are the most important stories of all.”
And this is why
This is why we fight
Come hell
Come hell
Always A Good Bet: A Dystopia Rising Fanfiction Blog 