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[June 1980.]
Gertrude does not realize it's her birthday until after the burning is complete. She begins the ritual at sunset, the last specks of orange light casting her in a golden glow, and she wakes in a burnt-out circle of forest with the first lights of dawn.
She thinks, half-hysterically, of fairy circles. The perfect shape of the charred ground that surrounds her. The nature of being tied to something, being trapped, eating pomegranate seeds from a waiting hand, tying yourself to something, which is altogether different than being a captive and more akin to being in love.
She thinks of birthday candles. Blown out. Hazy smoke in the distance.
On her thirtieth birthday, Gertrude Robinson begins the long trek back to the nearest town. She leaves a trail of ashen footsteps in her wake.
[February 1978.]
The statement is utterly forgettable — a burnt building, something almost-arson but for the wax-melted figures that had emerged from it — but it comes to her in dreams as they all do. Gertrude has always been good at the dreams. Being an observer comes as second nature to her; the statement givers' fear echoes through her bones, but she has grown talented at drowning it out, using the echoed events as a chance to analyze and plan her next moves.
Here she is in the burnt house. She stands beside the man who'd sat in her office earlier, who'd trembled as his fear fed a god beyond his comprehension, but she doesn't look at him. She doesn't look at the waxy figures circled in the living room, or the fast-burning curtains, the dining room chairs already reduced to ash, the warping window frames.
Gertrude's eyes land on the woman in the center of the circle instead. Analytical, sharp. The woman's eyes are closed, and Gertrude can't quite tell if she's glowing or if it's just the fire around them. It's oppressively warm, even in the dream — not the loveliness of a bonfire but the kind that directly precedes pain. Burning.
The woman's eyes open.
She is looking directly, sharply at Gertrude. The point of the dreams is that Gertrude observes, cannot affect anything, is seen as a shadow with too many eyes (so she's been told, though it isn't as if she can see herself outside of herself), an ominous ever-present watcher, still and allknowing and uncaring. The point is that she is not there in any way that matters. The dreamer can shout at her to help them, plead with her, tears streaking down their faces — and all Gertrude can do is watch. Even if she moves to help, the dreamer stares as if she has not lifted a finger. She has stopped trying to help, if she ever did in the first place.
Even now, the dreamer — James or Jeremy or Johann something or other — is frozen in the doorway, watching her watch his childhood home crumble around him, watching her watch the cult standing in his living room. Their glee at the burning family photos on the wall. He sees Gertrude without seeing her, sees the impression of her overlaid with the Beholding's presence. The woman in the circle, looking out over the laugh-trembling shoulders of her followers, she sees Gertrude. Gertrude is struck with that knowledge even as she jolts awake.
Sweat clings to her as she rises from her bed. She can see the woman's eyes in her mind, clear as day: orange in the firelight. Shining. Far more alert than they had any right to be.
Hungry.
Gertrude splashes water on her face, tries and fails to forget about those eyes as she returns to bed.
[December 1982.]
It is impossible to ignore the heating of her own veins, as if someone has lit a match underneath Gertrude's skin. She knows, by now, what it means.
Unfortunately, she's also a bit distracted — an agent of the Slaughter has gotten it into their head to take down the Archives, didn't much like the research team poking around their hideaway after a few too many statements came in. Gertrude's more concerned with the big picture. She couldn't care much less about small, individual deaths; the pattern is her concern, the possibility of a ritual, and as there isn't currently a war vast enough to merit the Slaughter's presence, she hasn't put much concern to that.
Well. Perhaps she should have, as an avatar with what seems to be a flute stands in the Archives' entryway and plays Gertrude's coworkers into a frenzy. Pity. She thinks she sees Marianne from HR slumped by the wall, losing quite a bit of blood.
Gertrude has shut down the part of her that used to be afraid of such things: violence, death, fear itself. She has replaced it with a firm resolve, cemented over the decade spent at the Archives, and it is this resolve that has her pulling the switchblade from her pocket and swiping at the man coming towards her — Greg, she thinks his name is, one of the newer researchers. Won't kill him, she doesn't think, but it stops him from killing her in his flute-driven craze.
She's not sure why she doesn't seem to be affected by it. Perhaps avatars can only do so much to others of their ilk — the same way her persuasive power seems not to function properly on those with enough force of their own, regardless of which entity has provided their strength. She makes a mental note, amidst the chaos, to research this further.
All at once, behind the blood-filthied figure with their horrible instrument, another appears.
Something in Gertrude heats up further. She feels as if she's cooking from the inside out, though it's hardly as violent as that would imply, hardly as intrusive. It feels right, in some way. Lovely, in another.
And there's Agnes. Burning hands pressed to either side of the flute-players head until his lips could not possibly push air into his instrument.
Until there is no menacing figure left standing between Agnes and Gertrude, nothing to block their gazes from each other.
"Thank you," Gertrude says. Dry. Like the words aren't suited to her lips, even when Agnes has just, she's certain, saved her life. Her coworkers must be getting their wits back around her, climbing to their feet, but Gertrude's vision has tunneled and she sees only Agnes. As if Agnes is the only person who has ever existed, and the only person who ever will. It isn't the first time Gertrude has had this thought. It won't be the last.
She doesn't ask how Agnes knew there was danger. Sometimes things are simply Known. Sometimes Gertrude finds herself setting pieces of paper aflame just to watch them burn. These are things they give each other.
Gifts, perhaps.
"Don't thank me." Agnes, almost disappointed in tone. "Learn to defend yourself."
Gertrude, flicking her knife, sending a spatter of blood across the wall that she will certainly need to clean later as recompense for her theatrics: "From you?"
"They're still trying to sort out how to kill you without killing me, you know."
"They can't." Gertrude makes herself sound more sure than she is. The mechanics of what she's done are unknown to her, much as she hates that mystery, hates the way it's claimed her despite its vagueness.
"Maybe. But when the time comes… No one else gets to kill you."
Agnes is putting on a show. Agnes has always been quiet, an unwilling symbol of a violence she keeps buried deep. She's got a temper, certainly; the fire sits in her as comfortably as it ever has in any human-ish being, but Gertrude can see the doubt in her. Gertrude's felt that doubt. No way of knowing which of them it belongs to, sometimes.
Still: Gertrude smiles. "Of course." The echoed sentiment clear: if only Agnes can kill Gertrude, Gertrude will not allow Agnes to die by any hands but Gertrude's own.
These are things they give each other.
[October 1980.]
The leaves have turned and fallen by the time Agnes tracks Gertrude down. Gertrude isn't sure if there's a purposeful delay or if Agnes simply hadn't been able to find her, hadn't felt where she was as strongly as Gertrude feels Agnes. If Agnes' lack of knowledge of the ritual taking place means she hadn't felt the shift.
Gertrude can't imagine that. She was not certain the soul existed before hers was set alight as it was tied to Agnes'.
"Archivist," Agnes says. Her voice is softer than Gertrude expected, but she's close enough, leaning down to eye-level where Gertrude is sitting on a bench taking her lunch, that her breath is almost painfully hot against Gertrude's skin. There's a rage there. Gertrude is struck by a need to see it erupt
"Miss Montague," she says, all polite and proper despite a hawklike glint in her eyes. Gestures next to her: take a seat.
Agnes singes the wooden bench as her hands fall on it, as she sits gingerly on its edge. Gertrude takes note of the way Agnes' hands tremble — with rage, or nerves?
"You will regret this," Agnes says. Still soft.
"No," Gertrude says, lighting a cigarette and delighting in the way Agnes' eyes track in the flame. "I don't think I will."
[July 1981.]
The first time she touches Gertrude, Agnes jolts back as if she has been burned. The irony is not lost on either of them.
They've been circling each other: predator and prey, roles interchangeable, each thinking themselves more in control. Each incorrect. The ritual, if nothing else, has put them on even footing — neither can surpass the other, and as Gertrude feels herself growing more powerful under the Eye's gaze, she knows Agnes' connection to the flame grows with it. It's a dangerous prospect. The Lightless Flame cannot succeed in their ritual so long as she and Agnes are bound, Gertrude knows, but nothing in the webs between them stops Agnes from, say, burning buildings to a crisp.
Gertrude pays special attention to the newspaper lately, on the lookout for arson.
It's not the first time Gertrude has caught glimpses of long hair and bright eyes as she makes her walk to or from the Institute, but it is the first time either of them acknowledge one another. Agnes, lit up by a streetlight, hiding that internal glow she carries with her, makes her way across the street. Her proximity carries a warmth: Gertrude takes a note of this, the way the sensation spreads through her chest. Something like hatred or love made manifest, turned physical.
"Have you been following me?" Agnes the sharpest Gertrude has ever heard her, though she can count the times she's heard Agnes' voice on one hand, so perhaps that doesn't mean as much as she thinks it does.
"Why would I be?" Gertrude's voice dry as kindling.
"I keep — keep seeing you, everywhere, since you… Since last year. You're everywhere."
Gertrude could point out that she's seen Agnes around as well — that she can tell, by that pinprick of flame within her and the direction the wind points it, how close Agnes is — that the number of statements Agnes has sent her way means that the woman is taking starring roles in Gertrude's nightmares more frequently than not. Sometimes, in the dreams, Agnes meets her eyes, seems all too aware of what is happening. More often, she's as still and silent as a statue. Gertrude hasn't decided which version she prefers.
She stays quiet instead, tilts her head. Smiles.
"Take it back."
"Take what back?"
"Your — your ritual, your spell, whatever you did — I had a purpose, Archivist. I had… I had something, and now I have nothing, and it is all your fault."
"You know the Web wouldn't allow its strands to be snipped so easily," Gertrude says. No real remorse in it, though she phrases it as if she would change it if she could. She's not sure if there's truth to that. Probably not. "It isn't as if you liked your purpose, anyways."
"You don't know that." Gertrude Knows the words Agnes isn't saying: You can't know that. As if anything is beyond Gertrude's reach. As if Agnes, especially, could hide such a large part of herself from Gertrude.
Gertrude hums in response, considering, and Agnes' fists clench in frustration. They are getting nowhere. They both know that, but while Gertrude is having what one may generously call fun, Agnes is burning up. She pushes past Gertrude to leave, and —
They realize at the same time: Agnes' hand has brushed Gertrude's arm, and it did not burn.
Agnes stares, body gone entirely still. Her gaze locked on Gertrude's skin, tanned from the summer heat, lightly freckled, unburnt. Gertrude follows her eyes and she Knows all at once what is remarkable about this: that Agnes has never touched another person without them burning up, that Agnes wants to touch someone without it hurting either of them, that Agnes wants…
Gertrude turns on her heel and walks away. She can feel Agnes' eyes on the back of her neck, on the skin of her arm.
[August 1981.]
Three statements regarding Agnes in the last week, so Gertrude knows exactly who she will see when she closes her eyes tonight.
She hardly even notices the people screaming in these dreams anymore; they have long since faded into the background, the only things that really matter the firey woman in front of her and the unblinking eye covering the sky. Even the latter she can forget about sometimes.
The dreams begin in usual form: a recollected statement, glow of firelight, everyone's eyes on a spot in the center of a room. Gertrude against the wall, Gertrude in the doorway, Gertrude observing from some far-off perch and still the eyes move to her, beseeching, seeking an assistance she cannot and will not give. Her curiosity winning out over her horror.
This one is different.
The building blocks remain the same, the figures and the fire and the eyes and the watching, the sickening smell of burnt hair pervading the air, but Gertrude has memorized every position like it is a choreographed dance and knows that Agnes is not where she is meant to be. That Agnes is not here at all. An empty space where she should be, though the players surrounding her act as if she remains. Only Gertrude sees the truth.
The truth: the space isn't entirely empty. Gertrude moves closer and she sees the burnt edges of tissue paper, charred petals. A bouquet.
A single rose springs back to life as she plucks it from the ground, and Gertrude pretends there are not petals on her pillow when she wakes up.
[December 1981.]
"Happy new year," Agnes says. Gertrude isn't sure how Agnes had gotten here — Gertrude is on the roof of her flat, smoking and taking in the distant fireworks more out of a lack of anything better to do than any genuine festive spirit. The new year has never meant much to her. Just a way of marking the time.
"Would have thought you'd be taking part in the festivities." Gertrude doesn't look up. She doesn't need to. If she focuses even a shred of attention on the effort, she can see Agnes just as well, superimposed over her view of the fireworks. "The fireworks, the year being reborn, the inevitable accidents that come with so many unregulated explosives… It all seems very Desolation, doesn't it?"
"I suppose."
Agnes is quiet. Gertrude can hear her breathing, in time with her own. "And yet…"
"It didn't feel right. They've — we've — made our way into some big party, filled with people, and… I'm sure they'll panic when they realize I've left, but I… I couldn't do it."
"Couldn't burn them all?" Gertrude can only guess how the Flame intends the night to end: all those resolutions, all that hope, would make excellent kindling to their god. They'll likely keep going without Agnes there. Gertrude should be moving to stop it — to save people, is that not what she does, is that not the point of her — but her eyes meet Agnes', and she can't quite imagine leaving. The world won't end if she doesn't leave. Gertrude's put a stop to any hope the Desolation has of changing the face of the planet. She can let them have their fun.
"Couldn't be around so many normal people. They're all so ordinary. They have nothing more to worry about than their resolutions or who they'll kiss at midnight." Agnes' voice is just left of wistful. "They don't have a destiny."
"You'd rather be like them?" Gertrude is, to be frank, unsure whether she's more like Agnes or like those ordinary people at the party. She has no destiny. If she does, it is one she has made herself — saving the world, such a simple phrase for something with impossible numbers of moving variables. The Archivist's destiny is to observe, but Gertrude cannot and will not take such a passive role in her own destruction. She supposes that makes her more like Agnes; destined and unwilling to follow through. Yearning for something else.
"For a little while, at least. I don't think I've ever known what it's like. You… you were normal, before you became the Archivist. You had that. I was born this. I've never known anything else."
Well. "If this is some elaborate way to get my guard down so your Cult can attack me," Gertrude starts, though she Knows it isn't the case.
"No." There's a level of genuine emotion in Agnes' voice that Gertrude doesn't quite know what to do with. Something like… disappointment. Hurt. By Gertrude even suggesting it.
"Why seek me out, then?" That tingle to Gertrude's voice. She doesn't enjoy using the compulsion, but she needs truth, and is willing to deal with her own discomfort if it gets her answers.
"I don't know. I… I left the party, and I just walked, and… I ended up here. The bond. Pulling me. I thought…" And Agnes trails off, scowling.
"You thought…" Distantly: the sound of a hundred parties, all over London, beginning their countdown to midnight.
"I could pretend to be normal. For a moment."
"How?"
Ten. Nine. Eight. And Agnes, impatient, takes Gertrude's face in her hands. She pauses a moment, ensuring no smell of singed flesh drifts forth, allowing Gertrude to put her cigarette out on the nearest wall, and then dives forward. She kisses the way she smiles, too many teeth, too sharp, trying and failing to pass for normal.
Gertrude doesn't mind. Agnes' lips are too warm against her own, nearly scorching, and she doesn't mind that, either. She pulls Agnes close, stands on tiptoes for a better angle, scrapes her teeth against Agnes' lip and revels in the smoke-hot gasp it brings from her, the knowledge of it feeding her in a way her god cannot touch.
[May 1983.]
"You shouldn't be here." Gertrude sits behind her desk, reading glasses perched atop her head, and doesn't look up as Agnes walks into the room. She doesn't need to.
"Shouldn't I, Archivist? What if I have a statement to give? Would you deny me that?"
"You don't." Matter-of-fact.
"I don't," Agnes confirms, smiling. "You know it all, already."
"You shouldn't be here," Gertrude repeats, finally looking up from her research. Follow-up on the possibility of a ritual by the Dark. Poring through book after book about the connotations of darkness in worldwide mythology, various explorations of a somewhat childlike fear, and gaining absolutely nothing from the pages. Agnes is more interesting. Agnes, at least, is a puzzle Gertrude thinks she can solve.
Gertrude has all the pieces: Agnes as a would-be martyr to her cause, Agnes as an unwilling messiah. Their kiss — just the one — in a desperate clawing attempt for normalcy. Agnes doesn't want her fate. Agnes thinks, somewhere deep inside, that being tied to Gertrude might be the best thing that's ever happened to her, much as she keeps with her Cult's air of general disgust and hatred for the webs that bind them. She acts as if she still hates Gertrude, if she ever truly had, but Gertrude Knows something deeper.
She can't name the feeling, but she feels its white-hot echoes within herself.
Agnes doesn't speak. She pulls a chair over, winces at its squealing against the uneven wooden floors, and sits herself next to Gertrude. Gertrude's almost returned to her work by the time Agnes finally speaks.
"I'm not here for any purpose. Not on… official business."
"Then why?"
"Can't I just be here?" Something almost angry about the words. "I don't need a reason."
"I suppose not," Gertrude says slowly. More puzzle pieces. She'd thought she was approaching a full picture of Agnes, but she knows not what to do with this.
"I'm going to sit here. And then I'm going to leave. If you try to stop either of these things, I'll burn your books."
And, well, Gertrude doesn't have much choice in the matter. She looks at Agnes, takes note of that doe-wide look in her eyes, the bags that lay under them. It doesn't look like she's been sleeping well. Gertrude hasn't seen her in nightmares recently — has seen the facsimile of her, but not the real thing, not that alertness in her dream-self's eyes. So Gertrude nods.
Gertrude returns to work, and within twenty minutes Agnes has drifted to sleep in the chair beside her. She looks impossibly tender when Gertrude's eyes land on her. Gertrude lays some extra mental shields around her office; she doesn't need Wright looking in on this.
Agnes leaves silently when she wakes a few hours later. Gertrude pretends not to notice how much colder the room is without her.
[March 1982.]
It takes three months after their kiss for Agnes to appear in Gertrude's dreams again. Gertrude has been looking; watching the dreams the other Fears have gifted to her unimpressed, taking herself to the same burnt-out houses and searching for life in the eyes of the woman she knows will be there.
She tells herself that it isn't that she wants to see Agnes. She needs to know what the Lightless Flame is up to. They must be doing something, if she's thinking of Agnes so much. It must be Beholding giving her a push in the right direction.
It has nothing to do with the way Gertrude had spent the first of the year running her fingers absentmindedly over her own lips, feeling the way they stung at the touch, slightly burnt. Thrilling in the pain.
"Archivist," Agnes says when Gertrude walks into the correct building. The one still on fire. The one that will be burning in Gertrude's mind forever; she's never seen it before the flames, and will never see its aftermath, only this. Only this, eternally.
Agnes is smiling. Gertrude smiles back. "I was beginning to think you had vanished," she says, as if she wouldn't have sensed if such a thing had happened. There is the logical truth, that she would know anything happening to Agnes instantly through their bond and her Sight, and then there is the illogical shred of concern she has tried to stamp out, the one that is quietly relieved at Agnes' reappearance, if not in flesh then at least here.
"I needed some time to think."
"About?"
Agnes shrugs. Gestures to the room around them, the doorknobs going red with heat, the fireplace billowing smoke into the air. If this were not a dream, Gertrude would be choking, unable to see nor breathe; as it is, she can see Agnes perfectly through the haze. "Being with you… It makes all of this feel far away. Like I'm not just fire. I needed to figure out if that was a good thing."
Gertrude's fingers itch to reach out and touch Agnes, to take her hand. She holds back. "And what have you decided?"
"I haven't."
The dream shifts, then, turns to a graveyard and a chess game and the Eye watching Gertrude from its perch in the sky, something judgmental in the way it does. Agnes nowhere to be seen. She looks back at the Eye, and she sighs.
[November 1981.]
Gertrude arrives home and finds her doorknob crimson-hot and warped from its hinges. She reaches for it, pulls back at the last moment, and pushes the door open with her foot instead. It swings forth easily.
She'll have to come up with an excuse for the repairman later, how only her doorknob wound up so damaged. A very unusual break-in is not far from the truth.
The culprit sits on Gertrude's sofa, as Gertrude was expecting her to: Agnes, sharp-eyed and leaking smoke from her lips. No cigarette in sight. Pages turned to ash in front of her. Gertrude had been researching past accounts of the Desolation, more personal curiosity about the woman she's bound to than a remaining need to save humanity at large from their efforts.
It seems Agnes had known. How, Gertrude cannot say — she has theories, has made guesses about what kind of exchange may go along with this bond of theirs, the way their entities may find themselves more entwined than they had bargained for. Gertrude'd never had a love for candles before last summer, and she assumes Agnes is finding herself with similar quirks. Knowledge coming from nowhere. Perhaps especially when it pertains to herself.
"I was reading those, you know," Gertrude says, already gathering up a broom and dustpan to clear away the ash on her coffee table. Agnes doesn't frighten her. There is nothing she can truly do to Gertrude, aside from threaten endlessly and halfheartedly.
"I could burn you." Agnes is thoughtful, voice far away. "Could burn your apartment. Feed my god, get rid of you."
"It would destroy you as well," Gertrude reminds her. They've been over this.
"So be it. I'll be reborn. My essence, anyway. My purpose given to some other girl, some girl who will succeed."
"You wouldn't." Gertrude sets aside the dustpan, sits herself on the coffee table across from Agnes, knees almost touching.
Agnes desperate, angry, only proving Gertrude right: "You don't know that."
"Agnes," Gertrude sighs. "You aren't going to kill me."
"Why not?"
Gertrude doesn't need words, just one slight movement of her hand, reaching forth and resting it on Agnes'. Holding it there. Making a point with the lack of sizzling in the contact.
Agnes pulls back first, in the end. "Right," she says, more to herself than to Gertrude. "I can still destroy whatever else it is you care about. I know Diego burned your flat down, when you were first Archivist. When you were still new. It would be easy. I'm already here."
"Is that what you want, or what your Cult wants from you?"
"Why does there have to be a difference?" Sparks fly off Agnes for a moment, though she reigns in her temper quickly. It's almost funny: she says she's so eager to burn Gertrude, but the moment a hint of flame lights up, she extinguishes it.
"What do you want, Agnes?" Gertrude, leaning forward, a knowing glint in her eye: she already knows the answer to this. The Cult has fueled a fantasy of revenge within Agnes, but Gertrude can see past it. It's only surface-level. Agnes has so much more to her.
"I don't know," Agnes says, voice small in a moment of brutal honesty. A moment passes before she realizes what she's admitted to, and she flies to her feet, is out of the apartment by the time Gertrude has a chance to turn around.
[July 1983.]
It's late. Gertrude's office is lit dimly, candles around the room supporting the failing lightbulb on the ceiling, and it must be approaching midnight, though she hasn't thought to look up at a clock for hours.
There's a knock on the door.
"Come in, Elias," she says. She doesn't have to look up. The prickling sensation of eyes on the back of her neck, the annoyance radiating off both of them in equal measure — these are more than enough for her to know who stands beyond the door. Once upon a time, she would have considered Elias a friend, but transformations come for them all.
(It is easier, she's found, to keep thinking of the thing in the doorway as Elias Bouchard. She will go along with his little charade if need be. They both know she knows the truth of him, has known it since his appointment as head of the Institute, has known it since the first time her eyes met his icy blue stare.)
"Gertrude." All cheerful, which is how she knows he's about to find something or other to reprimand her for. "Do you know how dangerous it is to have open flames in an archive?"
As if Elias truly cares. "I wasn't aware," she lies. Her shields are good. She knows he cannot see how the flame lights up some buried part of her; Gertrude is far from jumping ship and turning to the Lightless Flame, but she cannot deny the draw of a bond, the warmth that comes with her connection to a certain symbol of the Desolation. Gertrude's no longer sure how much of that is the Web's influence over them and how much is… something she dares not put a name to.
"Of course," Elias says, walking around her office and making a point of blowing out each candle, one by one by one. "And I'm sure you also weren't aware of a certain firestarter's visits to the Archives?"
"Is there a point to this, Elias?"
"Only making sure nothing will get in the way of your job."
(She imagines, for a moment, a world in which Elias was still Elias. Someone she may have trusted. Someone she could have spoken to candidly about what she is feeling — the damned confusion Agnes causes in her. The wish to reach out and touch and hold, the fireworks at midnight that had had nothing to do with explosives.
But Gertrude is quick to shake herself out of that particular flight of fancy. Nobody here is to be trusted, certainly not the man calling himself Elias. Gertrude is alone, and she is satisfied with that.)
"Right. At the moment, the only one getting in the way of my job is you."
Elias nods, satisfied, and shuts the door behind him.
[June 1985.]
The nightmare again. More accurately, The Nightmare, for Gertrude thinks after nearly a decade it has earned the title; though she feels no remnants of horror upon realizing which dream she's found herself in, it is still somebody's nightmare.
It's become something else for her.
Gertrude stands in the burning room, locks eyes with Agnes, and it is Gertrude who throws a match into the flame. Gertrude who fuels it. She is skilled at drowning out the cries of the people who's lives are burning at her pyre, every sense focused only on Agnes.
When did she turn from observer to active participant? When did she stop trying to aid the dreamer and instead take the side of the Desolation — though she supposes she would be on whatever side Agnes found herself on, because Gertrude has long since abandoned any illusion she would resist following Agnes anywhere. Not the way her Cult follows her, worshipping something divine, but in a more mundane sense. The way Agnes looks at her sparks something within Gertrude.
At least here, at least in dreams, she knows she would do anything Agnes asked. In the real world, they each have their own gods to please, their own destinies to perform, but here?
Here, she sings louder than any of Agnes' Cult. She thinks in another life she would have become one of them. In a world where she was less stubborn, less attached to this world; where she was not already claimed. Perhaps that's foolish. Gertrude cannot imagine a world in which she is not deadset on stopping every Power that is from succeeding in their plots, but here, it is easy to pretend.
Here, she walks through the circle of flame and her skirt does not catch fire, though by all rights it should. She takes Agnes' hand and leads her out onto the street. There is snow on the ground in the dream, but Agnes is warm enough to bring a shine of sweat to Gertrude's skin.
She doesn't let go of Agnes' hand as they sit on the sidewalk, side by side.
"Been a while since this particular dream," Gertrude says. They come and go. Enough statements involve Agnes and her people by now that dreaming of her is not unusual, and meeting her in dreams has been more frequent than not as of late, but this one is an echo of the first. That statement had come long before she'd met Agnes face to face, years before they'd been connected in this way.
"Feeling nostalgic?"
"For a man's life going to smoke? Hardly." Gertrude laughs as if she wasn't an active participant in the fire this time. It's not as if the dreamer knows any different.
"For me, then," Agnes counters.
"Maybe for you," Gertrude says. Agnes smiles with the victory, and that makes giving in worth it.
"I much prefer seeing you in person." Quietly, like Agnes is admitting to something that should remain secret. Perhaps it should. It isn't as if it would have been secret from Gertrude, though. They're beyond that sort of thing.
"I know."
"Would you like to…" Agnes trails off, and Gertrude gives her a look, a continue or I'll drag the question out of you kind of look, though fond, too, in its severity. "Have dinner with me."
"Aren't we past that?" Gertrude looks at the burning building behind them.
"Gertrude Robinson, I want to go on a date with you. Like real people. Like… like we met at a library, or at a flower shop, and I asked you on a date, and you said yes."
"Need I remind you how many times you and your Cult have threatened to set me on fire?"
Agnes sighs. "You're missing the point."
"The point is?"
Agnes' hand reaches out and covers Gertrude's. "I feel human with you. I like you. I want to be with you, in the real world, not only here."
Gertrude doesn't know what to say. (The Archivist, speechless, some part of her mocks; what a feat!) She leans in to kiss Agnes, and is close enough to feel that intense warmth on her lips when she wakes up.
[March 2015.]
Later, as Gertrude lights a match and prepares to set the Archives aflame, she'll think of Agnes. She'll think of the warm spark that came with her presence, the rightness of fire while they had been bonded.
Perhaps, in another world, Agnes would be there. Agnes would be the one to light the match, sparks falling off a fingertip. Agnes and Gertrude, hand in hand, would end this godforsaken place once and for all. They'd escape.
In this one, Gertrude will feel no warmth in her hand as she does what needs to be done.
[July 1985.]
They do have dinner, in the end. A quiet restaurant, a table in the back, where no eyes will seek them out. A candle on the table between them something of an inside joke, both well aware of how easily it could knock over and burn the place down.
Maybe it will. The night is still young.
Gertrude takes Agnes' hand across the table as they talk. It's a simple gesture. It's not even as if it's new to them — they've done more than simply hold hands by now, and the shock of unburnt skin has long since worn off. Even so: Agnes smiles down at their joined hands, and she looks so filled with joy that something in Gertrude's heart softens.
She is allowed to see this — Agnes smiling, Agnes in the candlelight, Agnes as a human and not a god. It isn't, Gertrude thinks, that they feel more human around one another, that they can forget about each of their destinies and entities and duties; rather, it is a reminder that that doesn't need to be as terrible as it seems. Doesn't need to be something monstrous.
Gertrude doesn't say the word love aloud, but she thinks it often enough that she's certain Agnes Knows.