Work Text:
Oscar jerked awake with a yelp of shock. He was
flying falling plummeting
lying back in a comfortable chair with his feet up on a stool, and a
spar broken spar sharp wood metal pierced through right through impaled
blanket laid over his stomach. He squeezed his eyes tight against the two realities warring for his senses, and gradually the echoes of the cold and the pain receded. He could hear a crackling fire and feel the warmth of it on his legs. There was a smell of something cooking, and the sounds of someone moving about a large room. He knew what this was, what this must be, but it was too much right now. He just needed a moment, just a moment.
Whoever was moving about approached the chair as he sat, hands over his face, focusing on breathing slowly. There was the distinct sound of a mug being set down nearby. He took another deep breath and opened his eyes. Apparently he had to engage with this now.
There was a woman standing in front of him with a careful smile on her face, and, yes, there was a mug of tea on a table by his chair and another in her hand. She was… she made his eyes water. It was as if she was in sharper focus than everything else, and she left faint after-images in the air as she moved. She drew up a stool next to his legs, and sat, and waited. He got the distinct impression that she had done this many times before. He tried to concentrate, looking for any clue as to which god had finally thrown up their hands and agreed to take him.
His first guess, which made no sense at all, was Hestia. This was a kitchen, large and scrubbed and well-used. The fireplace was a huge brick affair with a heap of rugs in front of it and chairs of all kinds grouped about it, all empty, all well out of the way of anyone who might be cooking. Sides of cured meat, strings of onions and bundles of drying herbs hung from the ceiling, along with more pots and pans than anyone could possibly need. Shelves full of jars lined the walls, and golden late-afternoon light poured in through a large window hung with yellow curtains.
His companion continued to watch him, sipping quietly from her mug. If she was Hestia, she wasn’t quite what he would have expected. She was in her sixties, maybe, with bluntly-cut grey hair and a weatherbeaten face. She wore a shirt, trousers and waist-apron in faded greens and browns, all loose, comfortable, well-worn and lived in. She was still somehow difficult to look at, more intense than her surroundings despite her muted colours.
She shifted a little in her seat and for a second Oscar caught an after-image of darker hair, black clothes. He blinked and suddenly realised that he wasn’t just looking at a face that had seen a lifetime of sun and wind. There was scar tissue over most of one of her cheeks, along her jaw and down into her collar. It, too, looked old and lived-in, but it was definitely a burn scar. A familiar burn scar.
“Sasha?” Oscar could feel his head starting to spin. She smiled again, only a little sadly.
“Haven’t been Sasha for a long time, Wilde. Ava, that’s me.”
“Ah.” Oscar found himself, for once, speechless, and reached for his mug to cover it. The tea was good, strong and hot, and as he drank he noticed that his own hands seemed perfectly normal. No after-images, no eye-watering intensity. He looked back to… Ava, who nodded gently as if she could read his mind.
“Yeah. Um. Welcome to… to What Comes Next. We’re uh, we’re still working on the name.” Her voice caught slightly. “It’s good to see you. Or, well. Not - you know what I mean.”
Oscar couldn’t help smiling. “You too. Long time, no see.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there - are - am I the only… new… arrival?”
“None of the others are here yet,” was the careful reply, “but if they went somewhere else instead, I wouldn’t know.”
“So you don’t know what happened? Whether they’re…?” She shook her head.
“I’m no god, Oscar. People arrive here, and I greet them, and I send them on their way,” she nodded to the single door out of the room. It stood by the window, and the same golden light filtered in around its edges. “I know who’s come through and who hasn’t, that’s all I can tell you.”
“What’s through there?”
“Like I said, What Comes Next. Whatever it was that there was going to be for you, when the work was done.”
Oscar snorted. “My work was never going to be done.”
Ava shook her head again, and put a hand gently on his knee.
“That’s why this place exists, Oscar. That’s why you’re here.”
He covered the beginning of a sob with a deep gulp of tea. He couldn’t shake the feeling of needing to get back, of being suspended in time while the world moved on and struggled and fought and he couldn’t help. How could he possibly - he stared at the door. What could possibly be beyond this that he could want? How could he rest, how could he exist in - in a heaven, knowing that the work wasn’t finished?
Ava finished her tea, and stood.
“You stay as long as you need to. I know it’s a lot. Take your time. I’ll give you some space.”
She moved away to a countertop where a chopping board and a pile of vegetables were waiting. Oscar watched her handle the knife, watched the echoes of other knives that danced around her hands. Sat, and stared at his tea that never seemed to grow cold, and tried to wrap his head around everything.
It took him some time to notice that, while his clothes were still
the clothes he died in
his, his shackles were gone. His legs felt oddly light without them. He conjured himself a rose and sat for a long time more, staring at it, aware that he was crying and not giving a damn.
“What’s beyond here for you?”
Ava was rolling out dough, now. He’d been sat in silence for hours at least.
“It doesn’t work like that for me,” she replied, not turning around. “Never was one for afterlifes, you know? Couldn’t settle to it. Rather have something to do. So I’m here,” she gestured to the kitchen at large with her rolling pin, “and I welcome people, and I send them on.”
Oscar nodded, and went back to his thoughts.
Some time later, Ava was scrubbing potatoes at the sink and became aware of Oscar starting on one of his illusions. The shape of his magic was familiar, although she couldn’t have sensed it like this the last time she’d seen it. He was taking his time about it, trying things out, experimenting. She made sure not to stare, and left him to it.
After a while, he got up and joined her at the counter, taking over a bowl of peas by her elbow that needed podding. She stepped aside to let him, and took in his new look.
She recognised the outfit, almost. It was the red velvet suit he’d been wearing the very first time they’d met, but he’d changed the fit. It wasn’t a suit jacket any more, it was an aviator’s coat with a leather harness and belt, much like the one he’d been wearing when he arrived. Better quality leather, though, and elaborate silver buckles. He’d replaced his battered sailor’s boots with gleaming, polished ones with slight heels. Officer’s boots.
He’d left his new scar alone, and it pulled at his mouth a little as he smiled at her. And more striking than the red velvet was what he’d done to his hair. The floppy brown bob was gone, replaced by an almost brutally short head of white. He ran his hand through it, as if for comfort.
“I think I’d like to wait here for now, rather than go on,” he said. “Could you use another pair of hands?”