#consequntial

pearl  is  not  sure  when  clara  became  her  first  visit.  it  doesn’t  much  MATTER  now;  in  this  moment,  all  that  is  real  and  true  and  certain  is  clara’s  arms  wrapped  around  her.  it  only  takes  a  moment  for  pearl  to  return  the  motion,  embracing  clara  and  letting  go  of  a  breath  she  did  not  realize  she  had  been  holding.  it’s  like  HOME,  or  as  near  she  has  to  it,  being  with  clara.  they  are  not  the  same  thing,  not  like  others,  but  they  are  KINDRED.  there  is  something  so  wonderful  about  not  feeling  alone  that  had  been  most  alien  to  pearl  until  their  first  meeting.  it  settles  over  her,  now,  like  a  well - loved  blanket,  or  a  song  remembered  on  someone  else’s  lips.

i know what this is.

clara is asking for permission for hope springing up through the cracks, like it does. like i've discussed before. despair is easier. it's a fall from a railway bridge into the dark water below, with the voice telling you to jump, again and again, incessant, every single ledge an opportunity. i've found that it is, in fact, lazy, as often as i fell into it myself. it was why i chose what i did. i couldn't keep holding onto my despair. it weighed me down. it kept me from managing to fly out of my body.

when i choose something, i've decided, it'll be because i have no choice.

❝ hey, ❞ i say delicately. my voice must sound outright rotten like this.

then again, i feel rotten. it's raining here in london. the rain still inevitably reminds me of eskew, and there is a piece of me that is always terrified that it will never, ever stop. that i'll turn another corner and black umbrellas will greet me, the fashionable accessory of every eskew inhabitant, and that maybe the umbrellas will close as they see me, and that ring of people i saw every so often in their black coats will surround me and begin to beat me down with the umbrella, hissing curses and spitting as my legs give way under the crack of their makeshift weapons against my knees.

the things they would call me, i'm sure, with their pale faces and empty black eyes. outsider. interloper. can i fault them? no. they are technically correct. i was an outsider. i was an interloper. i resisted, and look at what i finally did.

to distract myself, i take a breath. ❝ chin up a little. come on. i don't think that's true.  i mean that... it's not going to turn out alright. it might not turn out quite happily. things often don't turn out happily, at least not around me. so maybe that'll be on me somehow. but i just don't think it's absolute anymore. not if you refuse to give in. hope always springs up. good things... even when i was in eskew, and things were bad, sometimes there were still wonders. in between all the horror, and all the very, very bad things... there were still wonders. ❞

what am i? some kind of new age preacher? i don't mean to sound like it, or even like a psychiatrist. i had two of them once, so i know the speech patterns well, and i don't think i sound like one of those. the first had a voice with more ups and downs than my general monotone, and the second chittered far too much, its mandibles scraping against each other like rusty hinges.

a pause. ❝ i don't believe in aimless suffering for no reason, i guess. i think it'll turn out alright, but only because if there was suffering, there's usually some reason behind it. even a vague one. like god, or a higher power. there is always a use for suffering. sometimes it's just letting other people watch yours. ❞

perhaps i shouldn't have said that last part. how very eskew of me. suffering for someone else to observe, like it was a commodity that you could sell and trade for the scraps of whatever kindness the city had left. maybe it was. maybe when i was praying to the city to listen to me, not knowing just how much it was listening to me already, i was saying that: hurt me now so i can be alright later. it sounds depraved if i say it like that.

here is how vanya shows love       :       there is a concert hall with a darkened stage and twenty - odd people waiting in the audience,       waiting,       waiting for a performance.       they have been waiting for some time now.       they have been wasting away.       a woman steps onto the stage       —       small,       but with a presence angelic in its all - consuming nature,       as if her light shone to encompass the theater,       as if she were everywhere.       she begins       :       a single,       long note.       it is at once melancholy       &       excited for what is to come.       it is a love song,       first and foremost.

by the time she lights the match,       the audience is far too busy clawing at each other       (       such brutality entirely inhuman,       blood that would be staining these seats for ages if the auditorium were still standing at night’s end       )       to take note of the smoke.       vanya has had her fill.       the song continues even as she walks off the stage,       even as the fire rises into the air,       even as she slips from the entrance and meets a gaze she knew she would find there.       clara.       it has been some time since they had met       —       destruction flocks to destruction,       after all,       even if it is of a different sort,       even if blood and fire do not sing quite the same way       —       but this is the first gesture of this kind vanya has made.       a type of wooing,       she might say.       a monstrous equivalent to a bouquet of roses;       lives in flame,       history turned to ash,       vanya’s music leaving the trademark unmistakeable.

clara introduces darlene to a whole new world of television that is just absurd british comedy. game shows, tv shows, films, whatever. clara probably forced darlene to watch the IT crowd as a joke and once they finished that, darlene sat down and watched every episode of the big fat quiz she could find.

darlene bullying clara ( in the nicest way possible ) into making ridiculous tiktoks?? darlene bullying clara ( in the nicest way possible ) into making ridiculous tiktoks.

i do think darlene’s initial reaction to clara was also “oh i like this one” but, as darlene does, there was a period following that where she did her damndest to push clara away, because you can’t get hurt when people leave if you leave them first, and people will always leave you.

there was a time vanya was concerned with things such as monstrousness.      it’s far-away and fogged through-and-through by now:      she can’t tell if it’s an effect of her near-loss to the lonely or if it’s simply the way memory goes,      there and then gone,      hazied by time.      she can’t tell if she cares.

she had worried about being a monster long before she’d ever truly fallen under the label.      as a child.      her siblings had all that unsurmountable distance to them,      held lofty above her reach,      set to be martyrs for the good of the world at such a young age,      and she      ...      well,      she wasn’t.      she was alone.      she’d wondered a lot if it meant something was wrong with her:      the only explanation that version of vanya could see was that something within her was rotten,      that they were right to exclude her,      leave her all on her lonesome.      long before any capital-l Lonely entered her life,      she was alone.      long before she became a Monster,      she was convinced of the fact.

(      a while back,      she’d sat on the ground in the archivist’s office reading,      tapping her foot against the dirt-scuffed tile,      and she’d broken the silence:      you worry about being a monster,      don’t you?      and he’d looked shocked but hadn’t denied it,      had stammered out something about how anyone would in his circumstance,      and that simply wasn’t true,      so she’d laughed.      she’d said it’s a lot easier if you don’t.

it was meant as something approaching genuine advice.      she doesn’t think he took it as such,      if the way he’d snapped something about i’m not taking advice from — from unrepentant murderers,      thank-you was any indication.

she’d recorded a concert on one of his tape recorders as a sort of apology.      tested it,      first,      to make sure it wouldn’t kill him,      but.      maybe it’d help with some of that research he’s always buried under.      monsters can still be kind,      after all.      )

the point,      she supposes,      is that she’s not worried about it anymore.      people live and people die and vanya is content playing her music,      the soundtrack to so much humanity.      everything a crescendo she has not yet come down from.      all music contains monsters if you only know where to look:      a pop-up orchestra that never existed,      a soloist with a terrible shine to her eyes,      a repeating record of blood and violence and,      somewhere in the distance,      laughter.

            ‘      am i wrong?      ’            she’s smiling,      as she so often does around clara.      a stack of paper flutters in her hands:      vanya has never cared much for information,      not really,      but she’s spent long enough in the temple of the eye that some of that curiosity has worn off,      and she’s      ...      well,      she wonders how many of the archivist’s statements are about her,      or clara,      or elliot.      some people always escape the concerts,      after all.      when she waves the statement-stack it’s a soft percussion in her ears.