Work Text:
She still dances; her body remade and made to move, threaded through her muscles and sinew, a longer lasting mark than any Malvado left on her.
No one watches her now, turning and twisting her body to the thundering beat, pounding up through her feet, shaking under her ribs; she finds the rhythm easy, second nature when music fills her ears—but now her body is just one among many, another in the crowd, the scent of blood and sweat in the air going to her head.
(it’s like being alive—almost, feeding off the breaths of others, the heat warming up her skin like the sun, their heartbeats becoming her, if only for the dance)
She finds her way to another club, in another city, comes to shake off her demons—stretch and twist until her new skin feels right.
She sits in one of her shrines along the southwestern coast, listens to late-night mass, watches the parishioners pray to idols dressed up in her likeness; she keeps to the back, covers her eyes, hangs her head low–this a parting gift from her Carlos, indoctrinated and embedded and unending, a cycle of worship she’ll never escape;
sainthood never came easy, not when she spent so many years damned, an unwilling martyr.
(they call her, gentle mother, precious goddess; she thinks of Paloma with her amulet, clutched in her hands, thinks of the culebra that turned to dust at her feet)
She listens to their prayers, the least she can do, until he can figure out how to do more.
She tries out different names, tells the barista in New York her name is Alejandra, checks into a hotel in Atlanta with the name Rosa—tries on Leticia, Ana, Teresa like she tries on new clothes, but nothing fits like cotton and leather and she falls back on Santanico like a comfortable sweater, feels it roll off her tongue easy; Santanico Pandemonium was her name for far longer than she was anything else.
(sometimes Kisa slips out, like a mistake, tripping off her tongue, awkward, clipped–a name that’s hers and not;
she says Kisa with a smile, teeth bared; my name is kisa my name is kisa my name is kisa, she thinks, tries to feel it in her gut the same way she did when she had Malvado on his knees, begging–tries to remember how to be that girl, the one who took flight instead of fought, who couldn’t stand blood on her skin, the taste of death in her mouth, but Santanico keeps getting in the way, sharp and bitter and angry)
Men flirt with her, grab onto her in clubs, in bars, in restaurants, until she twists their arms and snaps their wrists—until she lures them outside and sucks them dry, leaving their corpses in dumpsters, in back alleys, meat sacks she leaves in her wake.
(she thinks of Richard, asking her to stay with faraway eyes, the weight of his bracelet around her wrist, the necklace she left in the palm of his hand; thinks of the sting of Carlos’ slap, still burning on her cheek, of Malvado under more than her skin–and thinks, no more, no more)
She takes women back to the hotel rooms when she’s craving something more than blood, craving contact and touch, kissing them down onto the mattress, women named all kinds of names, looking all sorts of ways, gasping her names or the names she gave them into her mouth until she takes them apart, makes them fall limp and breathless into her sheets, boneless enough to wind around, with her arms and legs, face pressed to their throats, falling asleep to the steady thump of their pulses.
(she thinks of her ladies, the ones who gave their lives for hers, who curled around her after Malvado left, of Paloma who would have had her if she offered, of Sonja’s hungry eyes)
Sometimes she calls Seth, just to hear him talk, through the distance and the crackling reception, just to listen to his voice in the dark.
He tells her, sometimes the aftermath is not all it’s cracked up to be, sweetheart; you just gotta keep moving.
So she does.