Chapter Text
On Osteon’s return, her office is awash with student after student, rumours and bandits and chaos left in their absence. Days of work beckon their attention. There are miles of students with hatred dripping on their tongues, with novel-length retellings of flaws and abscesses crawling in the weeds of the Summer Realm. And, at some point in the many moon rises and sun falls of his eternal suffering, rushing around madly and breathlessly, he sees Drift. It’s purely accidental, as fate so often cruelly decries; wrong place, wrong time. Drift doesn’t even see her. That’s all it can take it ruin a life sometimes; AJ knows the game very well.
Osteon does not inform AJ he knows of her complications until a few hours later, when she receives a stern letter in the mail to ‘meet me in my office now’. They’re smart, far smarter than her, and aware of how to play their cards right. AJ would like to pretend the hesitancy was an act of kindness, like giving your pet chocolate before you put it down. Deep down, she knows that the more likely reality is that Osteon was simply preparing to salvage through the wreckage and find a solution that keeps the more valuable asset alive.
That’s what good rebels do. In the end, it’s survival of the fittest. Osteon is dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s. AJ is a loose cannon who acts impulsively. He has matters far bigger to contend with than mages awaiting the chopping block.
The meeting feels more funeral pyre than catch up. Osteon spends most of their discussion just staring at her, some combination of disdain and horrifying, palpable pity. She feels more lamb than a weapon of war and mass destruction, looking up at the shepherd as they walk her slowly but surely to the slaughterhouse.
“I thought I had made it clear from my suggestion that you should not act without a level head and a clear and effective plan. This situation is delicate and far bigger than both of us; we have to be cautious if we want to avoid the worst outcome.”
AJ scowls. “I had a plan.”
“It was not a very effective one, evidently.”
Hatred seethes beneath her skin. She thinks of black hair buried deep and silent beneath her boots. Osteon sighs.
“I… was concerned. About you. I wanted you to know… what this information and its conflicts would result in for Drift, and for you.” Her voice is mellow, strained. A desire to be gentle, yet all the same stern. “Receiving vague words from you after our discussion… I feared you had done something reckless.”
“You don’t have to be ‘concerned’ about me—"
“Yes I do," Osteon interrupts. "Especially when you continue to prove my fears right. Don’t play stupid, AJ. I am worried about you. You don’t wear a look of detachment and control nearly as well as you think.”
She bristles. Feels the steady beat of decay across her skin. Feels the mellowing bruise on her eye, the scratch of her lips.
“Moreover… Our mutual allies are in the midst of precarious discussions, ones your actions could influence. Need I remind you that there are eyes and ears everywhere these days,” Osteon recites, head held low in her hands, eyes like daggers piercing through their fingers. “The location of the lost Princess is valuable information when not everyone is in agreement on her recruitment, given her... sudden and unexpected departure and its potential repercussions on our cause. Especially if said location is right where she was discovered in the first place.”
There are so many things AJ wants to say. Wants to air her own grievances, her own abscesses in the shape of the note passed around the student body of her deed. Her tongue feels like lead. The air is stagnant and cold. For one of the first times in her life, she finds herself speechless. Stunned in the abject horror of losing any ground.
AJ is so utterly fucked it makes her head spin.
“So… what happens now?” She dares to ask, flashing a toothy grin. Osteon raises a brow, and straightens in his chair.
“I… will work something out. Stay safe, AJ. I cannot guarantee that I will be the only person with… issues to discuss in regard to this matter. There are rumours circulating about rushed rebel attacks on bandits. I fear that they are looking for information on current student whereabouts.”
Wonderfully vague, once again. AJ gets to leave and conjure up the most gruesome images of her upcoming demotion and subsequent execution, the kind that stick to her skin like a gross film. She shivers as she wanders aimlessly across the halls, dodging and weaving through pillars and bookshelves, a dead man walking. She would go to her room, but then she’d have to be lame and sit with her thoughts rather than do something really fun and really, really stupid instead.
For example — there’s someone she wants to see. Needs to see, actually. It burns at her insides like the visage of the rebels burning her alive, or tossing her in the volcano at the dragon’s crypt. It pumps the blood in her legs that could be chopped off sooner rather than later. Someone is out of there, waiting for her. Waiting to bear the brunt of her colossal failure, her growing mania.
Her name is Drift. AJ likes her very much. She just signed her death warrant with her eye-catching presence, but that’s alright. AJ forgives her. How could she have known AJ was trying her hardest to do the noble thing for once? It’s not like AJ gave her pretty direct advice to get the fuck away forever, please and thank you. But no, she came back. Crawling back to her brand new favourite cesspit, favourite corner of Dante’s Inferno, instead of away from her, from danger, into a new life, into anywhere else. She stayed to do the hard stuff that AJ can never do, like talk and heal and grow and change and stay and stay and stay and stay. Be surrounded by people who adore her every molecule. Including her own, foolish self.
AJ has a lot of people she enjoys to rile up, but she’s a poet and a sentimental soul at heart, and Drift has always been her special little project. Especially now, since she’s ruined everything for naught and Drift well and truly hates her guts. Now, when they fight there is venom, ugly and vibrant. Drift hates her, hates her with every morsel of her being. All that sickly saccharine love has ossified into something dark and repugnant, and Drift can castigate her with all her teeth. Rip into her flesh like fresh fruit, tear at all her innards and gnaw at her weary bones until she is nothing more than a stupid dreamer who tried really, very hard to be good and was completely atrocious at it. It’s just not in her nature. She was just born bad. It seeps from her skin and erodes at everything it can get its dirty little hands on.
Well, no use in crying over unchanging facts. AJ is a terrible plague on the world, and terrible plague she shall be.
Finding Drift is easy. AJ swears she can sense her presence from afar. It’s like being so drunk you can barely see, yet showing up on your own doorstep regardless. Some things just whisper your name and nudge you in the right direction. Today, the poison inside her drags her to the garden. Drift sits tall and pretty with Magpie and Amber, a peal of regal laughter filling the fragrant air. Score, more people to disappoint.
AJ waltzes over like a crashing storm. The mood stifles instantly. God, she’s so good at this!
“Hey, Princess~,” her new sobriquet of choice slithers out of her throat, sword already drawn. “Guess what I’m up to?”
Drift stiffens, then sighs. “Besides ruining my day?”
AJ laughs. It makes her feel a little more dizzy, a little intoxicated despite being surprisingly sober. She gulps down all her horrible feelings like cheap booze, savouring the sharpness searing down her throat. Steadies herself for the next attack, the next step in their dance.
“Well, that’s a given. Guess what else I’m up to?”
Drift groans and massages her temples. At her side, Magpie and Amber sit already uncomfortable, nervous eyes shooting back and forth between the tango of hatred in front of them. (Well, one-sided hatred. AJ is going to be wiped off the face of the earth soon, so she is allowing herself a little bit of honesty. AJ doesn’t hate Drift. Sentimental soul and all. She’s always a bit more softer than she wants to be. It makes her do crazy things like fall in love.
Besides, it’s a secret she’ll never tell a soul. There are rules to the art of trading in vulnerabilities and honesties, and AJ always barters with her fingers crossed behind her back. It makes her shoulder ache, and sometimes she’s spilling out like a fountain and her fingers are unfurling, but she grits her teeth and bares with it all the same. Turns to the auditorium with a nod and a wink. Look, I’m doing this on purpose. One cannot afford to go around pressing into skin and ripping out innards all the time to any rose that will entertain a passing fancy. Please, take her to dinner first).
“I’m really not interested in trying to pry information out of you anymore, AJ. Speak normally or leave us alone.”
“Tch, Open book, so rude. You love puzzles! You spent our entire relationship trying to solve one!” Oh, that was very mean. Point AJ.
“Oh, wow. You call that a puzzle? I call it bullshit— God, no. Stop it. I’m not doing this with you anymore. Just say what you want to say.”
Boo. Minus points to old Princess. Drift is not being as a good of a sparring partner as usual. AJ must be losing her touch. Or maybe she’s well and truly messed it up all, and Drift hates her so much she cannot stand the slight of her, let alone their old song and dance.
But AJ needs a good, honest fight. Blood pumping through her veins, words she will regret so badly she’ll need to go get blackout drunk to forget saying them. She needs to be stupid right now. Stupider than she’s ever been, stupid enough to trigger some sort of conflict in Drift’s caged demeanour. They can’t just end solemn and cold. It’s them! Her and Drift! She loves her so much it makes her feel sick and she just wants to feel a little better, a little more in control of all her mistakes.
She wants to be cruel. To Drift. To herself. Mostly herself. Fuck it, completely to herself. She’s a horrible monster who needs to be tortured as punishment for her misdeeds of being alive.
“God, you’re being so boring! Can’t you let me have a little fun before everything goes to shit?” That last part she mumbles, purposefully. Can’t give it all away in one fell swoop, right? She needs to make a show of it. Put some pizazz into it.
Drift does not bite back. She stills, eyes widening.
“What did you say?”
“That you’re boring?”
“No, no you said something else. Something about… before something? Before what, AJ?” Drift questions, her voice emanating with sickly concern and fear.
“Hmm… before what… well, before the end of the day, that could be part of it.”
Drift bristles. Tension rises in the air. Magpie and Amber are exchanging more glances, silent messages, a mixture of fear and concern.
“Part of it— what— what are you talking about? Stop being cryptic!”
“Me? Cryptic? Never. I’m a bastion of half-truths, Princess, you know that about me.”
“Stop calling me that— no, no, I am not falling for your stupid side steps, tell me what the fuck are you talking about!” Drift is fighting with her. Ding! Point AJ. She grins big and wide, and spins on her heels. What a recovery from such looming defeat.
“AJ.” A name once spoken with desire, now with such vitrol and derision. This is it. This is what she needs. A beautiful conclusion to the endlessly push-and-pull of her existence. Spat upon by the most important person in her whole life.
“Drift.”
“AJ.”
“Drift~”
“AJ!”
“Buuuut, I guess if you insist. I’m in a tiny bit of trouble. Maybe.”
AJ swears she hears a crack of thunder up above, but it might just be the sound of three heads swivelling in her direction.
“What do you mean trouble?” Drift questions. But she doesn’t sound mean or even at bare minimum annoyed; there’s a concern to her voice that makes AJ’s skin crawl. They aren’t together any more, and Drift has made her views on her very clear — why is Drift trying to play the role of dotting girlfriend?
(Shoulders ache and fingers unfurl. The line between tactical and desperate is marks in the sand at high tide. She knows why, really. She’s spilling and spilling just a little more than necessary and it’s a bad smell in the room, a pulse beneath the floorboards. She looks back to the auditorium and finds it empty. The only person listening is her fellow cast members.
Such a bad habit. Worse than her drinking problem, if you ask her. She’s bordering on earnest. Like she needs help.
Trades like that do nothing about disappoint).
“You know what, you’re all clearly busy. Have a good evening.”
Drift damn near leaps from her chair. She moves so fast the poor table shakes, and poor Magpie and Amber startle like deer.
“No no no, we are not doing this. Sit down and talk.”
AJ waves and skips towards the door to the foyer. Holds her breath and hopes upon hope that Drift won’t follow her, will at least take this hint and stay with her nice friends and leave AJ to her lonesome.
The sound of chairs scrapping and footsteps; God, why does she have to be so stubborn all of the time.
Drift is calling her name, following behind her like a lost little puppy, like a shadow. AJ does not turn around; she knows better than Orpheus. If she turns around, she’ll start running her mouth off, loose her cool like before and the game will end with her once again squarely in the losing position. Her Eurydice is too tied to a dark fate, one Drift will fight like hell against if she ever learns about — and AJ doesn’t want that. She wants Drift far, far away, out of sight and out of mind from the dregs of the world. Safe in some pretty snow globe life, some stained glass, some portrait where she’s always caught smiling. No longer hers, but then again, she never really could be.
She doesn’t turn around. She pulls the door open wide.
Gracie is stood outside the door to the garden. Upon AJ’s grand entrance, she shrieks and almost tumbles right into the guard stood nearby. Huh, AJ hadn’t spotted them when she walked in.
Wait, is Osteon having her watched? Is her punishment for being ‘reckless’ and ‘a concern’ being surveilled like a child all the time now? Oh God, she’d rather they just kill her. Give her some dignity, at the very least.
AJ should apologise for terrorising poor Gracie, but she can hear Drift and company approaching rapidly, and she can feel the guard’s gaze hanging onto her. She moves to walk towards the main hall, but decides against it; wandering outside would be an easier way of losing several annoying tails all at once. As she turns to the main door, something catches her wrist and drags her round.
Drift bares into her flesh with eyes warm and desperate. She’s angry, but her eyebrows contort and reflect her panic.
“Let go of me, Drift.” She snarls, twisting and grunting.
“Not a chance. Come back to the garden and talk about what you clearly want to talk about.”
AJ grunts. She tries to pull from Drift’s grip, but she hasn’t eaten all day and she’s slept about a grand total of thirty minutes since her days long drunk blackouts and depression comas. She feels feeble, trapped like a caged animal, and she wants to bite.
“Get off of me before I really bury you this time.”
It’s dirty, it’s cheating, below the bar. It’s low, low even for her. Her words feel hot and itch at her throat.
It works, of course.
Drift stutters, eyes wide. Anger bleeds into a shock of fear and confusion. Her grip loosens just enough for AJ to weasel her way out and make her great escape for the door. She just needs to get outside, run off to some shady corner of the woods and wait it out. Just needs to wait out.
She’s so close.
Someone grabs her shoulders, whips her around and slams her against the door. It whines and groans with the harsh contact.
“What. Is Wrong. With you, AJ. Tell me.”
Wow, she didn’t even fall for the bait for a minute. Drift really is incredible at tormenting her.
AJ’s back hurts. She giggles in spite of her self. Jokes on her.
“Well, I guess it started in my childhood—“
Drift stomps on her foot, her heel digging in deep. Fuck, okay. She deserves that.
The guard shifts in her periphery. Subtle, yet for some reason she finds her eyes were already lurching towards their direction, so she spots the slight of their hands with ease. Lord, they’re probably taking notes to report back to Osteon on her behaviour or some bullshit. Like she’s some troublesome school kid and not being trained to become one of Terraventus' most beloved killing machines.
Well, maybe she should give them something really fun to write about.
“… Okay, okay fine. You reeeeally want to know.”
“Yes.”
“Well okay… Don’t say I didn’t warn you…”
AJ sighs, and Drift pulls back. Really? That’s stupid. AJ could just turn and run.
(She won’t. Her coffee has run out so she won’t get far).
For some reason, she finds her gaze fastening back onto the guard again. It’s like the lights seem obnoxiously keen to glint brightly off the metal of their armour, a small star flickering in the mise-en-scène that sings for her attention. AJ’s guess about them recording her seems off; no book and quill sits in their gauntlets. Instead, their hand seem to just twitch, squirm.
Maybe they’re thinking about intervening in their little spat? Maybe Osteon gave them discretion to drag her by the neck and beat her to a pulp if she starts acting erratic and impulsive on matters?
She could really use a good old-fashioned punch right now.
“Open book… I just had a great chat with Dusky. We talked about a loooot of things. Things related to you! Good things, all good things, you being here and… alive…” Drift’s brow twitches. Something stirs in her gaze. A puzzle piece shifting around to find its place.
AJ looks back at the guard. They’ve stilled.
“And you know, Open book, chatting with dear Dusky was illuminating. Because she made me realise I fucked up something. I fucked up, and now some, uh, old pals are really mad at me, and they’re probably going to ruin my life forever about it.”
“What are you talking about?” It’s Magpie that asks. Right, right, she forgot about their little crowd. Drift opens her mouth, then closes it. Puzzle pieces, puzzle pieces. Clicking slowly into place.
“Oh, Drift, you’re catching on a little, right? You see how fucked I am, Princess?”
“…But. That. They wouldn’t… No. No. AJ, I…,” She pauses, squeezed her eyes closed tight. Then: “Say it.”
No. That’s not how this works. That’s too far.
“Drift.” She tries to keep her voice still, but there’s an undeniable quiver, a shiver that rolls down her spine.
“I need you to say it.”
AJ really likes Drift. Likes her hair, her face, the way she rises to every bite, spits at her with matching vitriol, smashes her lips into her own with the kind of velocity that makes her feel lightheaded. She likes Drift and she can’t kill her. It’s her Achilles’ heal, her Eurydice.
“Say what.”
“Say it.” Drifts bites.
“Say. What.” She bites back.
“Just say it!”
“Maybe I don’t want to give you the satisfaction, Open book.” But the bark has no bite, and she sounds more scared than suave, grasping at straws to not say the words she wants to say. Should say.
Should have said a long time ago.
“AJ.”
There’s something there, stubborn and bright and beautiful, something in the way she can feel Drift’s breath on her face, puffs of anger and grief from soft, pink lips. It pulls like doubt pulls on Orpheus, whispers at her to turn, turn around, spill like a fountain, wax sorrowful poetry at the cruelty of fate and the hanging of the guillotine. Tugging at her, chewing at her innards, right to the core of her mana, of rot and decay.
Something in the way Drift’s phrases her name in the tense air at the end of the world, likens her to gospel, delicate and beautiful. Calling out into the darkness, gripping desperately in the abyss. Two letters she’s said a hundred, a thousand, a million times. Two letters, and AJ is unravelling.
AJ is softer than she wants to be. Stupid, and soft.
“Say what? Say I fucked up because I couldn’t bring myself to face it? Say I fucked my whole life up because of you? Because congrats Drift, you’re right! I fucked up literally everything, for you! I fucked up because I didn’t really want you to die! Happy now?”
All the air leaves the room. Drift pales. AJ wants the ground to swallow her whole again. She wants—
The guard has moved. Forward, a step.
In their arms, a bow and arrow has emerged. The string is tense, ready to release.
It’s aimed at Drift.
Oh.
Oh.
That was fast. She thought she had more time to perhaps muster the outline of a new escape plan.
There are rumours circulating about rushed rebel attacks on bandits.
Oh right, the bandits. Yeah, the one’s parading around with the stolen guard armour.
A cheap mimicry of past events carried on the grape vine, nasty gossip from loud students and the sharp smell of blood from lives lost to targets and quick cash. She’s not surprised the Forgotten have turned their eyes to the work of their more unorganised brethren in treachery, she’s just a little disappointed to be facing a last minute copy rather than something more respectable, like an ambush or a complex scheme. Rushed and spat out for the sake of tying up loose ends, her death will be at the hands of a rearrangement of all things. It must have been a hassle to organise such decisive and explosive actions at dear old Drift’s beseech, though. At least she has the pleasure of still being a nuisance in her fleeting moments.
God, they must really be sick of her.
End of the line, AJ. You tried your best to make this work, but everyone knows that it would come down to this.
Drift won’t die today. Not on her watch. All of this, the deception, the betrayal — in the end, every puzzle piece comes together to give Drift a soft place to land, wherever that may be. By her side or a million miles away.
Or, perhaps, against her dying chest.
AJ is moving to grab at Drift before her brain can even begin to reconcile with it all.
It doesn’t surprise AJ much that she’s staring down the business end of the Reaper’s scythe once again. After all, she’s been waiting for it all day. She’s abrasive, rude. She’s a soldier, a rebel. Death flows through her veins, a thick and vicious kind of poison, one that cause you to grit your teeth and make crazy, reckless decisions.
Kind of like the poison dripping on the arrow pointed at Drift’s back. Obnoxiously green and sprinkling corrosive raindrops on the foyer’s carpet.
Honestly, she’s fairly surprised death took so long to seek out her company again. She’s risky, hunger pangs and bar fights littering her body, reminders of her finality. Such easy pickings. The method, however? Not all that shocking. Assassination has always seemed in the cards for her, given her, well, everything.
Taking the bullet for someone else, though! That is new. She didn’t know she had it in her! Well, you know what they say about massive, horrifyingly traumatic events; very exposing. In the shining lights of this stupid academy, AJ moves and moves, ripping through the air as she bares her blushing affection in the most humbling and finalising manner. To die for your former lover; what better confession of eternal devotion is there?
As she pulls Drift forward and shoves her to side, she can see her murderer in better light. It’s only fair, really, that she gets to see the person about to slaughter her in broad daylight. Death is so very intimate, after all. The delicate, brutal act of destroying someone, smothering the flickering vermillion flame of their very existence with your own bare hands. Oh, it’s a rather romantic act, to kill someone; you hold their very life in your grip, balance it lightly in your palm, then crush it until it sputters and crumbles into nothingness. Raw and bloody, murder is above all else human. Human, the animal. A savage act of animal behaviour. Survival of the fittest. The I’s and T’s of being an apex predator.
AJ knows why the poets and the playwrights are so obsessed with death. They know, too, a fidelity for its strange and intoxicating magic.
Her boots scratch against the wooden floor. She steels her core, holds her gaze true; she will die on her feet, die looking her attacker down the barrel. Her last death was too demeaning. She won’t succumb looking up at someone’s feet this time.
The arrow leaves its bow. She looks for a hint of shock, maybe even remorse if she is to be so lucky. Armour morphs any reaction. Bummer. Soaring through the air, the arrowhead calls her name, over and over like a spell luring her into accepting its promised embrace. Emerald catches the light, glittering in all its awaiting agony. Everything seems to be in slow motion. Someone is screaming in the background, but she can’t tell who. It’s like she’s underwater, or buried deep underground. Some selfish part of her prays it’s Drift. Maybe it’s herself.
Before the arrow meets skin, a sharp and overwhelming thought enters her mind with a fury. It’s screaming at her like the fool she is. She doesn’t want to die. There are things she wants, yearns for like a dog yearns for a bone. There are dreams she wants to steal a chance at, reach out and scramble for. Liquors she has yet to savour on her tongue, places her feet have not yet left footprints in. Beaches, parks, forests, lakes, cities, markets, museums, galleries, theatres, the whole goddamn world. There are so many books to read, plays to see. There is so much more, more she can do, she can be. There’s a person to become, bloom into, leisurely and steady.
But it’s more than that. Something that wriggles in the back of her head. A dream roars like a lion. In her mind, there’s a person who looks like AJ. They’re older, more refined, filled out and streamlined in the parts of her body that are rough and famished, the parts she finds herself staring at with a strange sense of melancholy and discomfort. They hold the hand of another, dressed in tones of the earth and a mess of chestnut curls. A person looking back at her, with pity and sadness and love, the genuine kind, in their eyes. They mouth something, but all AJ can hear is static. This person, this dream; AJ wants it.
She doesn’t want to die without tasting a world where she’s exactly who she wants to be.
The arrow hits its target, and rips through her chest.