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After so many decades alone, sometimes Laudna needed an interventionist between her and the monsters before she became one.
Pâté, bless his long-departed soul, had helped right up until he hadn't. A pillar right up until he was a pickaxe. Funny how these things worked out; for Laudna to create Pâté, for Pâté to maintain Laudna, who in turn had maintained him, until the sinister realisation began to follow her around that it had come a strange sort of full circle. Pâté was now creating Laudna.
Alone too long, leaning on his tiny floppy body like a crutch and somehow still surprised when it hadn't been able to support her. In the mean time, she had been sidling ever deeper not into madness, but into the acceptance that would carry her there.
She accepted she was alone, she accepted she was reviled, she accepted she was powerless against the sanctimonious bitch in her head to do anything about it. She accepted that Pâté was enough. It wasn't odd until that first afternoon she caught herself accepting that Imogen was mesmerisingly technicolour against the drab cloud of acceptance she was just barely outrunning. It wasn't until she spent the rest of the day and well into the night talking about magic and the universe with someone she had just met, whom she barely knew, that something twigged.
It couldn't be both.
Imogen, wonderful as she was, shouldn't light the insides of her little cabin up like a kaleidoscope, shouldn't make her want to ask every stupid question that popped into her mind just to keep her talking and her accent curling around the hard edges of the day until they were soft. Not if Pâté were enough. And if Pâté wasn't enough, was else wasn't true?
All of it, actually.
Imogen had stayed, adored her from the get-go, silenced the thoughts in her mind both hers and not-hers alike, and she was not a dead rat. Laudna hadn't imagined while she was alive that she would ever have shortlisted 'not a dead rat' on the list of pros for a relationship but again, it was funny how these things worked out.
She kept him, though, of course. Imogen hadn't batted an eye at it, didn't seem to mind at all that the rodent corpse almost responsible for Laudna's departure from good sense now dangled from her belt like a marcarbe Winter Crest bauble on a very sickly tree. But she hadn't had the heart to leave him behind. After all, she likely would have gone mad long before if it hadn't been for him, the fact he had almost been an enabler for it years later was hardly condemnable when he had coasted her long enough to get to Imogen, long enough for an intervention that would save her. He was a good rat, mostly, and Laudna forgave him.
Sometimes though, Laudna wondered if Imogen knew how close she had come in the weeks before they had met. Sometimes, she resigned herself to the fact that by now, she must. Imogen couldn't help it. It wasn't fully under her control. She saw into Laudna's head most days and the warlock didn't mind it one bit- but surely, it did mean Imogen knew. If she did, she had never brought it up and Laudna was thankful for the tact. She hadn't a clue what she would say were the woman to ask, and even if she tried to keep an explanation simple, the fact was that it was scary, and there was a reason Laudna preferred fun-scary over scary-scary.
Scary-scary she reserved only for when it was necessary, only for people who made her girl feel uncomfortable, or talked down to her, or tried to murder and rob them both.
Imogen wasn't a pushover, though. Her softness and her compassion could crumble away to reveal a well curated cunning, a smile, a steel-nerved sort of level to her gaze. She wasn't a psychopath about it- she knew when she was in a bad situation. But it was true that, when push came to shove, Imogen would sooner rage hell than speak softly. Laudna liked it. Their sharks swam in the same waters.
"Ohhh noooo-"
Fearne started to rock the cable car and Imogen folded into herself, caught somewhere between horror and self-conscious amusement. Laudna wrapped one arm around her middle, pulling her flush against her side.
Her eyes darted up, face flushed from the good-natured shaming, and she nestled comfortably against Laudna's shoulder.
I really do hate these things.
She didn't need to say it, not even non verbally.
I know, darling.
The car lurched with a hash clunk and Laudna felt Imogen's anxiety skitter along the connection between them.
FCG leaned forward. "Imogen, Imogen, hey, Imogen- close your eyes, close you eyes-"
Laudna felt a petty kind of feeling come over her and Imogen was already battling to keep the smirk from her mouth as she felt Laudna's jealousy settle over her too.
It's not funny.
"Just tell me what your happy place is."
Imogen bit her lip to keep her face straight and elbowed Laudna out of sight.
They're not competition, Laud. They're a l'il robit.
Laudna whined, in her own head, in Imogen's. Between the two.
Something about another person talking to Imogen in such a way struck Laudna like a bolt up under the dragon wing, even though she never acted on it. The way her heart rate picked up from lowest to low, the tumbly feeling in her stomach and the compulsion to move closer to Imogen on the occasions it did happen never failed to catch Imogen as sweet. Of all the people to get wound up about, that she might be the one. She thought Laudna was crazy.
"That way, you won't, you won't think about what's around! Just say it out loud- what's, what's your... Where do you think of when you think of like... A happy place?"
Laudna bit deeper into her own lip. For a long time, these had been her questions to ask, Imogen had been hers to comfort, and the feeling of losing that, of becoming just one option of many, made Pâté spring to life on her lap.
'Looks like the tables have turned, hmmm?' He was always so accusatory. 'How do you like it?'
How do I like what?
'It.'
But what is 'it'?
'Always having someone come to you, them being yours to comfort, only to be cast aside as just some other option?'
Oh come on, Pâté. That's hardly what happened. You tried to make me go mad, I didn't forget that.
But Laudna felt guilt spread through her even as she put the defense together and Imogen's brow twitched, hearing Laudna's half of the conversation only.
"Uhmm..." Imogen's brain split in half trying to track her own conversation and Laudna's surface responses to what she guessed must be much deeper thoughts.
Pâté was relentless. 'Face it, what goes around comes around. Now it's your turn to go from the centerpiece to a decoration. Maybe she'll hang you somewhere, too.'
Laudna's inner argument shrank a little. That's not true.
The southern accent was gentle compared to the rat when Imogen's voice transitioned smoothly from verbal to non-verbal. 'What is goin' on in there?'
But there were other eyes on her.
"A big field... Full of flowers... And... And my horse standin' next to me." It was uninspired and distracted.
'Laudna are you okay?'
Pâté balked, but was undeterred. 'Oof. Replaced by a horse. See, Laudna, you're not in her happy place. Now you know how I felt.'
I know this is just you making me feel bad. I'm not listening, Pâté.
Oblivious, Fresh Cut Grass pressed on. "What's the horse's name?"
"Uh... Flora." Imogen was wholly consumed with Laudna's sudden onset of depression.
'Replaced by Flora.'
I'm not replaced.
'By a horse.'
No.
'She can't even remember if it's a mare or a fillie and it's still more important to her than you.'
Laudna lost track of what Imogen and Letters were saying after that. Pâté went quiet, point made.
"And look, we're there!"
Laudna jolted back to life just as the doors opened, slinking out into the daylight with Imogen close behind her.
"Hey,"
"Mm?"
Imogen's eyes were rounded with concern. "What's this about you making yourself feel bad? Is that rat bein' a bitch again?"
Some of the lavender wrath Laudna was so fond of threatened to simmer over in Pâté's direction.
"No. No, he just thinks... he thinks I cut him out of his role in my life for someone better and that now karma's going to be a bitch. Please don't fasten me to your belt, though, you'd trip."
They fell in next to one another at the back of the group.
"Laudna I'm not gonna hang you from my belt, and that rat is bein' a bitch again."
You're an option now. Pâté's voice echoed.
"But you have all these guys now, Letters is just as good as I am at-"
"No, no- I see where you're goin' with this, I'm not gonna let you. What happened last time you made me feel better?"
"I-" Laudna looked around pointedly. 'We're in public' that look said. Imogen's eyebrows rose. "We-"
'That's right, we had sex, Laudna- I just told Letters I had a mare-fillie called Flora in a flower field like I had never seen a damned horse in my life. You and them are not the same.'
Laudna receded into her mind again.
"We're not?"
"A flower field. With a mare-fillie. Called Flora."
The smallest smile.
"There. Just keep thinking about my skills as a liar and you'll feel better in no time. And here-"
She leaned up and kissed the corner of Laudna's mouth while Ashton kept the rest interested in conversation.
"You can keep that, too."
A bigger smile, the stupid kind that had no permission to be there, that had jumped the security fence and run screaming onto her face naked and waving it's idiot arms.
"I'm not sure about that, felt like a wild thing."
"Don't."
"Bucking across some field full of flowers."
"Maybe think less about it on second thoughts."
"Is is a mare or a fillie, I can't tell-"
Imogen smacked her arm and the two of them snickered childishly through the streets to Lord Eshteross's home. Pâté dangled limply at laudna's waist. Even after so long, Imogen was still her interventionist.