Work Text:
Secelia stood up. Never a good sign. Rouji craned his head to follow her trajectory, unwilling, himself, to move from the couch that was as much talisman as furniture. Rouji wasn’t given to superstition normally - after all, he was an engineer. But he did have a tendency to anthropomorphize familiar objects - after all, he was an engineer. Normally that habit was reserved for his Haro, his favorite scooter, or Secelia’s ever-present handheld, but in his tenure on the Asticassia Dueling Committee, he’d come to think of The Couch - and it was absolutely a proper noun - as a semi-autonomous being. Some minor spirit or divinity that, if you behaved according to its preferences (no tracking dirt on it, always wear clean and well-pressed clothes, and absolutely no rough housing or physical intimacy while atop it) it would reward you with its favor and protection.
The Couch was a creature of habit and routine, like Rouji himself, and whether its displeasure resulted in a rescinding of extant protections or in active malefaction, everything bad that happened recently seemed to be preceded by its beloved routine being disrupted. Earth House and the Holder had commandeered the room, and with it The Couch, and not a week later the Plant Quetta incident had occurred. The Squabbling Mavens of Jeturk House had crowded in on The Couch with not so much as a by your leave, and within the hour the Rumble Ring had ended in multiple deaths and the abduction of the head of the Grassley House. And those were just the worst of the bunch; there were untold other incidents, irritants, and disruptions to what was already proving to be his very tumultuous first year, and all of those began with Secelia, whom Rouji privately thought of as a kind of priestess or oracle of The Couch, standing up from her downy throne, leaving a Secelia-shaped impression in the cushion and a sinking feeling in Rouji’s stomach.
“Read that last part again, Rouji!” Secelia demanded, and he realized that she’d just suddenly - catastrophically - stood up in response to something that he had said. His Haro, sensing that his distress was deepening into full-blown panic, shielded him as best it could, but Secelia only brushed it aside.
“Which part?” Rouji said, looking down at the pile of documents splayed out like debris across the long table before them.
They were damage reports, cost-benefit analytics, and work orders upon work orders that needed approval of the Dueling Committee. Which, with the absence of Shaddiq and a good portion of Rouji’s entire cohort, meant they needed his approval. He had no idea how the Dueling Committee had even been saddled with this sort of work - maybe all of the other committees had left - but it made him extremely nervous. Everything, these days, made him extremely nervous. He squeezed the couch, and the feel of soft fabric with just enough give was a balm to his bruised sense of wellbeing.
“The last part! About the Church!” Secelia said.
“Huh? Oh. Okay. It just said that one of the terrorist’s stray beams hit the northernmost side and cored a hole through a couple of the confessionals. We just need to sign off on the construction to put the wall back up between them.”
A grin spread across Secelia’s face as some malign inspiration took root. Her smile was as terrifying and beautiful as a shark’s whenever malign inspirations took root, but right now it seemed more lovely than scary. Perhaps it was because this was the first time she’d grinned in that horrible, perfectly Secelia sort of way since the attack, and seeing it made him feel safer than he had felt in weeks. Whatever trouble was coming, that smile told him it wouldn’t be coming for him.
“No,” Secelia said slowly, taking the work order from him with the deliberate gentleness of a caress. “I have a better idea.”
—------
From his perch on The Couch, Rouji watched through the window as the Earth House boy, Martin, staggered away from the distant church. It was impossible to see his expression from so far away, but Rouji didn’t dare abandon The Couch for a better look. He had his own suspicions anyway. A vision, perhaps, afforded to the Hierophant of The Couch in anticipation of the High Priestess’s return. Sure enough, Secelia was all brassy smirk and swaying hips as she entered the room a few moments later, her Envy-Green eyes glittering with pleasure.
“It worked perfectly,” she said, triumphant. “You would not believe what Mister Bowl Cut just copped to.”
“Did you do the reveal?” he asked.
She puffed up as she sat next to him, her usual spot on The Couch embracing the familiar weight. “I did.”
“With the…”
“With the arcade machine sound effects, yes. The ones you called ‘indulgent’.”
“And?”
Secelia laughed, kicking her legs a little in the air. A little show of exuberance that was reserved just for him and The Couch. “I’ll show you the footage. The noise he made!”
Rouji nodded, happy that she was happy, even if the whole affair was incomprehensible to him. She was rarely given to explanations, but he decided to try his luck. She seemed to be in a good mood.
“So,” he asked, “was this what you were doing all of this for? Is the information really that important?”
She shrugged. “It might be. We’ll need to follow up a bit. But no, there’s no way I could’ve planned for that. I just kind of… wanted to do it, and I realized that since everyone else just dumped the actual work of running this place onto us while they play out their little dramas, there’s really no reason for us not to do whatever we want. Call it…”
“Inspiration?” Rouji offered.
Secelia winked and assumed a beatific posture, looking very much like a high priestess in truth. Our Lady of The Couch. And she proclaimed, “Revelation.”