Work Text:
There is a gleaming object on a small piece of dead world, it picks up the starlight every now and then and an inscription can be seen, if there were eyes to see it, written on the inside when the light illuminates it just so....
Earth 8675309, 1988, NYC, Apocalypse Event Imminent, No Survivors
Luanne Milian had made it, two years ago as the head costumer for Metropolitan Opera she had realized her dream of costuming the greatest artists in the world. Seeing her creations on the stage at The Met gave her a frisson of joy, sometimes there were even gasps from the audience that made the sleepless nights and diva demands all worth it. She wasn't supposed to have this career, the middle child from a resolutely blue collar family from Queens, their people didn't go into the arts, they went into solid, practical jobs that required solid, practical skills like becoming a superintendent like her father or an office manager at a small typing business like her mother. The first outfit she made was for her first baby doll, the horrendous ribboned schmatte that it came with looked uncomfortable and unwieldy. Four year old Luanne ripped it apart and pulled off the offending satin ribbon and used the longest piece to tie the remaining fabric, a lovely heathered yellow piece of smooth cotton, into a kinder, softer wrap for her doll. She ran it into the living room, where her mother was having a Saturday afternoon coffee klatch with her friends and yelled, "Mami! Mirar! I made it nice for the baby!". All of her mother's friends seemed impressed, Vicky, Luanne's favorite, picked up the doll and exclaimed that it was a marked improvement and said "Mija, you have have something here, don't lose it.". At the time Luanne thought she meant the doll, which she did lose on a family trip to Amish Country, you try remembering to take everything with you after a meal at Good N' Plenty. Many years later while sitting in a class at FIT, that breathless moment came back to her and propelled her forward despite her designs always coming back as "too much". Don't lose it was her reason to keep going, even when everyone around her told her to stop.
At The Metropolitan Opera, the costuming consumed her and she rose quickly due to her all encompassing work ethic, no time for a life as her family was prone to telling her when she had spare moments to visit. "You'll never find a man in all that thread and lace", her sister was fond of saying. Luanne wasn't sure a man or anyone was in the cards but there was one thing she did want, she wanted to make one crown. The accessories were outsourced, the costumers focusing only on the garments worn by the performers. Luanne knew that her talents did not lie in solid objects but she wanted to get one small crown on someone's head, she didn't expect it to be worn by a lead, just a background supernumerary, so she could say "I crowned someone once". It was a silly pipe dream but it had taken hold and there was no getting rid of it. She sketched it, it was front facing, worn on the forehead and in good old tradition of the Norse Ring Saga, it had two small horns. She gleefully took the design to a smelter in Red Hook who did small jobs for the opera when they were in a pinch, walking into the extreme heat of the workshop, she called out for Deanna "Girl. I got a job for you!". A sweaty pile of limbs came out from under a work table and Luanne gleefully handed her the plans for her petite dream crown. "How are they going to use this?" asked Deanna, "this doesn't seem very Met Opera appropriate.". "It's fine, I'm paying." Luanne answered, barely concealing her excitement, "It's for me.". Deanna shrugged and asked for the color specs and Luanne pointed to a golden brass block on the floor, "that's perfect, it looks like it's been through some shit and it's still here.". Two weeks later, Luanne had a small brass crown with twin curved horns that ended in enough of a point to hurt. The night before she picked up the horn, Luanne had a dream, it was vivid in the moment but when she woke there was little she remembered outside of a violet sky and the feeling that something monumental, something that could change the entirety of the universe, rewriting the laws of time itself happened. If she could have written it down in the moment, it would be bigger than La Traviata but it had slipped away, yet it left enough behind that she had a small request for Deanna when she picked up the crown. "You sure you want that there? It's kind of gooey, don't you think?". Luanne grinned, "I'm going for gooey, inscribe it.".
The crown did not go over well, she tried slipping it on the tiniest supernumerary but she was caught. Luanne knew the rules, no personal flourishes allowed and she dutifully packed her station and left. The only surprise was how not sad she felt, she'd had everything she ever wanted and lost it but there were no regrets. There was a feeling in her now that nothing really mattered, there was an ending incoming and no one was going to be able to care about much of anything soon so why get worked up about her career? The crown went with her, the only piece of work she did, albeit off the books, at The Met she cared about at this point. She ended up at a little black box theater in the East Village, her crown on a shelf as she tried to make twenty bucks worth of material work for five cast member portraying fifteen different characters. It was challenging and everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives or at least the drugs they were all on made them seem to exist in a blissful state of exultation. One day they hit the dive bar early and Luanna saw her, a rangy brunette masquerading, poorly, as a blonde with a messy bob. She had a leather armored breastplate which made Luanne wonder what theater she had walked out of while in costume and which director would be spitting bullets at her shortly. Luanne made her way over to the not blonde and set a beer in front of her, "Who's gonna be flipping out? By the looks of it I'm guessing it's Louis Dunn, he's always putting women in armor, he's got some sort of kink about it.". The lady warrior blinked a few times and smiled, it was a sad smile one that seemed to hold knowledge that she didn't want to have and Luanne felt a twinge of recognition and blurted out, "You look like your costume is missing something, follow me! By the way, do you have a name?". "I'm Sylvie..now", was the reply. "Well Sylvie Now, let's go before those theater kids actually expect me to pay for everything", Luanne reached for her new companion's hand and noticed a flash of metal at Sylvie's hip, it looked great, heavy and sharp, almost too good for the type of prop weapon that got wielded below 34th Street.
Luanne led Sylvie into the cramped backstage area and fumbled for the light switch, as she flicked it on, she got a better look at her guest and noted that the her cloak and pants appeared to be made from the same material, a hallmark of a small theater company trying to stretch everything as far as it could feasibly go. "Is that the whole costume, or did you leave something at the theater?", Luanne said over her shoulder. "This is all of it", Sylvie shot back. "Then you need this and I won't hear the word 'no'. No director would look a gift accessory horse in the mouth.". Luanne spun around and landed the crown perfectly on Sylvie's head and then pulled her toward the skinny mirror on the side of the shelving unit. "You look smashing dear!" Luanne said in a mock British accent, "whatever performance you are giving, you can end it with a flourish by tossing this at whoever plays your adversary! Stunt choreo be damned, shows are truly made during those small moments of improv.". Sylvie's hands went up to the horns, she touched a finger to the tip of the left horn, with a frown she wrenched it off and handed it to Luanne. "Now it's mine. This part though, is yours. You made this and part of it belongs to you, always.". Luanne felt a tear forming, she couldn't say how she knew but that end was creeping closer and this glorious woman in front of her knew that. Luanne had a flurry of questions clogging her throat but only one felt kosher in this moment, "Are you running from or towards someone?". The echo of all the boots of The TVA agents stomped at once in Sylvie's head but a chaser had formed, in that instant, maybe there were the footfalls of someone else, someone with sad eyes and some softness....the fantasy was quickly dispensed with and she looked at Luanne with a wry smile, determined not to leave this person with nothing, "Maybe a bit of both". "That really is your crown then, I'm relieved it found its true owner, I was only ever holding it for you", Luanne sighed. There was a crack of thunder, no something louder, a sound that used to power through this planet in earlier, primordial times. The theater violently lurched sideways and the front of the house was suddenly gone from view. When Luanne looked back Sylvie was disappearing into a glowing door and right before the end fell Luanne wondered if she had mentioned the schmoopy inscription, in Spanish just to make it extra flowery and how it was a last minute add on and...
Lamentis-1
Sylvie peels off her crown with relish, in the heat of a battle she had never tossed it at anyone directly but a sad eyed fool decided to serenade her and had gotten them caught and in the moment it felt right. "Soft gets you killed" was her mantra, the softness of a song being sung to her....how can anyone be that cavalier in a time like this? How had he lived so differently that a world could be crashing down around them and he could look at her as if she was the only person who mattered? The part she couldn't say to herself was that the reason she had flung her crown for the first and only time was to save someone else. To save the only person who had looked at her as if she was a miracle. If time and space tilted toward kindness, a theatrical costumer somewhere smiled.
Now and Forever
There is a gleaming object on a small piece of dead world, somehow the train it had been on had been destroyed in such a way that this metallic trinket got launched out and ended up on one of many pieces of Lamentis-1 that now floated as a soundless memorial. The object picks up the starlight every now and again, the illumination allows an inscription to be read, if there were eyes around to read it:
Un mundo condenado todavía puede retener tu corazón. No lo pierdas.