#brynessa

“It’s a travesty, Essa!”  Chroi paused for a moment, but the habitual correction on name use didn’t come. Inanna only grinned up at her while leaning back against a bookshelf.  

 The Council of Venice had opened its doors two days ago.  The Library was both literally and figuratively abuzz with Bees seeking permission to enter Tokyo. Languages curled around each other and echoed off the marble halls. Chroi could only keep up with half of them, and had regulated even those to background noise when the current issue had reared its ugly head.

 “I think,” Inanna began in a sleepy drawl, “that a certain someone is bored, if she has time to complain.” The smile slapped on her face grew as Chroi made small distressed noises.

 “The books are getting wet! Wet, Essa! They’re going to be ruined at this rate! Centuries, maybe even millennia of knowledge lost because the Council can’t move them somewhere dry? I know Venice is sinking, but this is still- I mean, there has to be enchantments that-“

 “Ooooh my god, if you don’t stop I’ll get you wet!”

 Chroi did stop. So did a few of the Bees milling about nearby, heads turning to watch the two.  It wasn’t the worst thought to have ever crossed her mind, and it had crossed her mind several times before. An impish smile took root.

 “Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind. But dinner first, all right?”

 It took almost a minute before Inanna’s skin darkened in- well, not embarrassment, exactly. She looked rather small before, leaned against the massive server. She looked even smaller now, shrinking in on herself with wide eyes. Chroi couldn’t recall Inanna getting flustered before, but it was too adorable to not store away for later teasing.

 “Wait, are you fucking with me?” Inanna’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth turned down in a particularly huffy pout. “Weren’t you going apeshit over that white-haired guy’s dick a week ago?”

 “…I’ve had girlfriends before. I thought you knew?” Chroi paused to take a deep breath. “I was teasing you a little, but if you want to-“

 “Hey Bryn, Alessa, who’s pushing the button today?” A male voice interrupted from the entrance of the room. Chroi managed a quick ruffle of the sitting woman’s hair before looking over to Arcadius, earning her a dirty glare.

They’d managed to get the lights back on, though Inanna would be hard pressed to say it was an improvement. Sometimes the things the light revealed were worse than the imaginings of the dark. It had been a necessary step in opening the door to the Nursery. At least, the Council’s agent had said so. Chroi had been side-eyeing the woman hard, so Inanna had followed suite. The Buzzing certainly weren’t murmuring anything that put her mind at ease.

 They had moved from room to room with caution. Yes, Emma Smith was here and waiting, and in Inanna’s mind she could afford to wait a little longer. The two women trailing behind her were more fragile, more mortal. Chroi had oddly been compliant with the order to walk in the middle of the trio, not raising a single complaint about being ‘coddled’. She’d been less thrilled when, upon entering a room filled with small bodies under blood-stained white sheets, Inanna had bullied her into staying out.

 The Council’s agent was not similarly spared.

They had encountered only mild resistance through the facility: werewolves, Filth infected fungi, one of the strangely bent Shades. The signs of a larger struggle painted the halls red, parts of a song or poem repeated in blood and entrails. It didn’t feel right. Where had the majority of the monsters gone?

 Chroi collected information as Inanna kept the stragglers at bay. The agreement to share all data when somewhere safe was understood, though unspoken. They’d argue details and theories later. Chroi relayed what she found that could prove immediately important as they moved through the rooms- most of it, at least. The way she paled as she flipped through certain lab reports convinced Inanna she was being spared the worst of it.

 The Council agent also flipped through things, but far more haphazardly. It twisted Inanna’s instincts but failed to set off specific alarms. The agent turned to Inanna as they entered a room that was larger than the others. Computers ran quietly at abandoned desks. Inanna hefted her sword and fixed the woman with a dead-eyed stare perfected through the many woeful monologues endured since becoming one of Gaia’s chosen. The agent promptly turned to Chroi, chittering away about something. Chroi shot a glare over her shoulder when the agent wasn’t looking, earning Inanna’s most innocent smile.

 The moment ended with the screech of alarms. Inanna winced, bringing a hand to cover her left ear.

 “Fuck! What did you do?”

 “I didn’t do anything!” Chroi sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. She bent back over the keyboard of the computer she had been combing through. “Keep them off me?”

The Owl and Eagle in Harbaburesti was quiet this late. The usual patrons, the ones still alive and capable of getting themselves around, had left at least an hour ago. No one wanted to be out at night alone. Not now, with the vampires quite literally scratching on the walls. The occasional sound of gunfire in the distance broke the still of the night. Regardless, it was easy to pretend the horrors outside were just bad dreams. It was easy to pretend that the village was sleepily alive in the silence.

Chroi wanted nothing more than to be a part of that silence. She wanted to lay down on the soft mattress and be dead to the world for at least the next six hours. That would require convincing Inanna to sleep, if only because the feel of another person awake in the room would continue to jerk Chroi out of slumber at the slightest movement.

She sighed and rolled over in the narrow bed to face Inanna again. When had Chroi last seen her sleep? Had she ever seen Inanna sleep? The Illuminati was propped up in the chair at the small desk nestled against the wall, a hand laid over the worn cover of a blood focus. Her shoulders were tight, her jaw clenched, her hair still a little damp where they’d had to wash out a bit of viscera. Her eyes were trained on the door. Chroi sighed, pushing herself up to a sitting position.

“Go back to sleep, you fuck. I’m not going to kill you while you do. “

Chroi rolled her eyes, swinging around so her legs dangled off the side of the bed. The night air was cool on her skin. Inanna wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon without an intervention. Even Bees needed to sleep, right?

“Essa, come to b-“

“No names in the field. I still have family I’d like to go back to.”

“Inanna,” Chroi restarted, a little mollified at the reminder. “Come to bed. We’re safe here. You can relax.” To emphasize her point, she patted the bed beside her. “There’s nothing more to do tonight. We’ll start again in the morning, first thing after getting something to eat. We’ll even go check around that old church again.”

Inanna’s eyes never left the door. Instead, she grabbed her cellphone from the desk and by muscle memory pulled up a recording of Samuel L. Jackson reading Go the Fuck to Sleep. She sat the phone back down on the desk. Chroi snorted, unable to stop a smile.

She pushed up from the bed, aware of Inanna’s eyes finally resting on her as she walked over to her bag. Even with the candle it was still too dark to see properly, but Chroi knew what she was looking for simply by feel. She fished up a wrapped package and brought it over to Inanna, to deposit it in the woman’s lap. Honey eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Something something beware Fae with gifts something something.” Inanna’s tone was teasing, even though the mistrust in her eyes was very real. It almost hurt, almost. “What is this? Why does it look like a twelve-year-old’s birthday party vomited on it?”

“Because it’s a birthday present. Well, it was supposed to be. Yours is coming up in another week, right?”

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Somehow, Chroi had coaxed Inanna into Seoul. It may have been intentional- neutral ground for the two of them, green everywhere with nary a shred of blue or red to be seen.  Inanna had found Chroi hunched over on one of the black leather couches in the lobby of the Kumiho Hotel. Her clothes were remarkably dry considering the eternal rain. The fact made Inanna’s teeth grind, her own clothes uncomfortable in their damp clinging mess.

Fucking show off bitch.

Still, Chroi had called and Inanna had come. She flopped down on the couch, arms draped along the back and legs sprawled open to claim whatever space she could.  A moment of silence passed between them, uncomfortable and itching under Inanna’s skin.

“You look like shit,” Inanna started, if only to break the silence. “Not even fucking shit. The shit no one wants to fuck.”  Chroi lifted her head enough to manage at least a half-hearted glare. There, that was normal. That was familiar territory. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s not my fault you look like shit. Uh, it’s not, right?”

Chroi sighed, running her hand down her face. “No. I just… I’ve been thinking about something lately.” Here Inanna groaned, letting her head fall back. Every time Chroi started thinking things had a tendency to go to hell. Chroi powered on despite the little tantrum. “The more I dig into my ancestry, my abilities, the more I worry. I know the legends and the old folklore. The SIdhe were… well.”

Inanna lifted her head from the couch’s back. A frown twisted her features. Her nose wrinkled. She could sense the stupid about to happen, but couldn’t bring herself to shut it down yet. Not when Chroi looked so small, curled into herself with distant eyes. Inanna felt her stomach churn in disgust. Yes, disgust. It had to be.

“What if I become a monster? What if I hurt people? I could-”

There it was, the stupid made manifest. Inanna didn’t wait for her to continue, instead leaning over to wrap her arms around Chroi and force the other to deal with her weight. It was satisfactorily effective in both shutting the Scott up and getting her clothes wet.

“You’re a stupid fucking bitch, you know that? Is that really what you called me all the way here for? Jesus fucking wept, woman.” Chroi stiffened in her hold. Maybe she was hurt or angry. That suited Inanna fine, so long as it was directed at Inanna and not herself. “Look, I’m the last person to ask about morals and right and wrong and whatever. Maybe you are a monster, or maybe you will be. I don’t fucking care, Chroi. I don’t care at all. You’re my friend. You’re one of the few people in this fucked up mess to have ever even tried with me. And in the end, to me, that’s all that matters. That you’re Chroi, whatever you choose for that to mean.”

There was another silence. Inanna felt a hand wrap itself around hers. The small squeeze it gave made her stomach flip oddly.