𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋, 𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐂 .

@violints​   liked  for a  starter. 

      “  ok,   ok  …  hold  on.   i’m  sorry.  “   a  wince  is on his  own  face  :  indeed,  he’s  wincing  along with  her  as  if  her  pain  flows  through  him as  well !  and  yet  it’s  not  any serious  injury  like the  ones  he sustained sometimes when he came  home  :    she  sat  on the  floor  in front of  him,  cross - legged,   while  he  took  a  brush  and  attempted  to  work through  all  the  tangles that  took place   within  her  long  locks.   yet  sometimes  a particularly  ferocious  one  caused  tears  to  spring  into  one’s  eyes  or  teeth to  be  sucked  in  abruptly.   it  was  giving  noir  anxiety,   the  thought  of  hurting her  even a little!

   “  you  know,   squirt  –  “    teeth  grit  while  he  attempts  again,  one  hand  holding  the  long  locks  tight  while  he  focused  on the  ends,    “  –  maybe  we  oughta  just  chop  all  this  off.   you’re  costing  me a fortune  in  hair  ties.  “  a  hand  playfully  laid  atop  her  head,  giving  her  a  playful little  shake.   “  little  freeloader. “

oh,      how her eyes sparkle at the mere suggestion of it!      vanya’s hair has been the same since she can remember      —      all tangle-pulling      &      hairtie-headaches,      all in-her-face and in-the-way.      (      she’d asked,      in the mansion of years’ past,      why her brothers got to have their hair short      &      hers was always the same,      and was murmured nothings about being ladylike.      )      she turns,      wincing a bit at the sudden motion’s pull on her hair but smiling nonetheless,      a hopeful expression she has only taught herself to make since she began living with noir.

it’s strange to hear another voice    —    not remarkably so  ,    it’s sort of hard to find something genuinely surprising here    ;     as with much sensation   ,    it all comes as if muffled by heavy cloth    …     the pleasant knock of a stranger on a neighbours door   ,     the sounds of people coming from behind a wall   ,     from somewhere down the hall     …

it’d been his own voice then  ,    intoning before he’d had to think about it any further  ,   ‘ i like it here ,    it’s quiet. ’     but didn’t she know  ?     didn’t she feel it too  ?     the relief that came with the quiet   ,     with the giving up hope and the knowing that at least  ,     if it was all it was going to be forever  ,     at least it would be peaceful  ?    lonely  ,     yes   ;    oh so very lonely  ,     but quiet.    gentle.    swathing  ,   not smothering.  

martin couldn’t really say how long he’d been walking before now   ,     day and night are difficult to parse here.        though he does know he’d been looking for something.     perhaps the Eye was getting restless  ,    with nothing more to Know in the fog than martin’s own mind and his old   ,     same fears      —    some compulsion making him walk through the quiet sand and ever-distant horizon to any other it could find.

perhaps thats why he’s clinging to it now  ,     even through the haze  ,   the distance of her voice getting lesser the more he thinks about how nice it is to hear someone else’s words on the static breeze.    despite his dismissive first instinct  ,    caught as he is here  —   martin finds himself grasping for the threads her question leaves in the cool air  ,    reaching before he can slip back into the fog  ,   as if to tether himself to them  …    shakes off the impulse to suggest she just leave him alone  ,    digs a little deeper for the part of him which feels warmer than it has in god knows how long just to hear the sound of a voice. 

“    i don’t.   ”   he finally says ,   the words coming out in a rush  ,  something like the memory of embarrassment at being too earnest almost choking the phrase before it can rise    (  isolation is hardly conductive to communication skills    —   but from the way this stranger retreats into herself ,  martin can guess she knows it too  )   ;   “   like it ,  i mean.    i don’t know why i–     you’re right.     sorry   ;  it’s been   …    a while.   ”

it is difficult to see him      :      silhouetted by the fog,      each of them turned ghostly.      she’d never really thought there were others here.      alone,      alone,      alone,      the word left ringing in her ears for longer than she can recall.      (      it’s difficult to grasp onto a time she was not in this far - off place,      not surrounded by dense fog and the distant hum of unseen waves.      )

but she pushes closer,      despite the weight of coarse air attempting to hold her back,      until his features emerge from the haze,      an impressionist painting brought into the light      :      something solid,      just as alone as she,      though that is a paradox if neither is truly alone,      a misconception,      an untruth.      god,      what a relief.      she thinks the words though the emotion of relief remains distant.      thinking them is enough,      for now      :      she prefers to have a name without the feeling to a feeling without a name,      if given the choice.

‘      it’s      —      it’s alright,      ’            still so quiet,      muffled further by the constant smothering sound of the wind here,      of the ocean.      i understand,      she wants to say,      but that feels like too much.      feels like knowing another person that way would shatter both of them at once,      like trying to understand anything here is foolhardy at best.      like she’s unable to understand or to be understood.      that,      at least,      is hardly a new feeling      :      how long has she carried the same emotions alongside her,      before this place had made her its own?

too long.      she can’t quite place when this had begun,      how long she’s been here,      but she remembers the isolation of childhood      &      the haze of her escape from that too - empty mansion      (      so many rooms for so few children,      all of them entirely alone even among the ranks of six others      ),      recalls countless nights spent alone in her apartment,      clinging to books and music and films as an escape and finding all of the above lacking in some undefinable way.      characters feeling a bit too fake,      notes sounding flat no matter how many times she insures her instrument is in tune.

‘      it has.      ’            been a while.      been her whole life,      maybe.      though if that was the case,      if she’s known nothing else,      why would she cling to the idea of escape so firmly,      holding tight to the notion through this horrible blankness?      she tries for politeness,      tries to plaster a smile on,      but it falters within a fraction of a moment,      even as the moments are drawn into eternity here.            ‘      i      . . .      didn’t think anyone else was here.      not that i      —      i’m      —      i’m glad,      i think,      that you are.      as glad as anyone can be here.      the memory of gladness.      ’            the words come slow and trembling,      falling from her lips like frozen rain      :      she doesn’t remember the last time she’s said so much,      but she’s terrified to stop.      the moment she stops,      the silence will return.      she doesn’t want that.      vanya’s never been comfortable in the quiet.

                 mini starter call !         (  accepting.  )          @violints​​

‘ onion ’ for an angsty starter *

the brick of a phone vibrated persistently against his thigh,  shoved forgotten in his pocket while wandering aimlessly through the streets.   the sky was turning the pink tinged honey of sunset  &  he knew eventually that it was either return to danny   or   risk his wrath.   dismaying  —  how easy it was for knox to fall back into this routine  :  trust someone only to find out they were violent or cruel.   the half of him that craved for someone’s approval was at war with the other that knew something was    wrong.    so he wandered,  mulling the idea of actually running.   however farfetched it seemed,   knox felt a flutter of hope in his chest   &   found himself quickly stamping it out like the embers of a campfire.

it wasn’t until he caught the glimpse of her,   against an alley wall with an expression he’d never seen before that every thought in his mind ceased at once.   he’d take another black eye for not answering the calls.   worry clenching at his chest,  the air held a chill of late winter   &   with the sun slowly falling it was only going to get colder.   a wispy cloud left his lips with the words  :   ❛    vanya ?   are you okay ?    ❜

here is an order of events       :            three weeks ago,      ben’d died.      vanya hadn’t been there,      has long since stopped trying to follow her siblings on missions in some vain attempt at being useful,      but she had seen the aftermath      —      and she had thought losing five had been terrible,      had been the worst thing she would ever experience,      but at least there was some facsimile of hope to be had that five would return.      even if she does not truly believe it anymore,      she can cling to the thought.      ben,      though.      ben is not coming back.

two days ago,           vanya’d taken the kitchen scissors to her hair,      cut it all off and let it rain out her bedroom window.      it looks awful,      if she’s being honest,      but she’d needed to do something just to feel that she could do anything      :      proof positive that she could have some affect on the world,      even in something so small.      (      some semblance of control.      )      she hadn’t thought her father had even noticed until he declared today to be target training            —            vanya in front of a bullseye as diego’s knives flew toward her,      vanya subject to allison’s rumors,      vanya set to spar against luther in a fight she had never had any chance at winning.      a punishment.      the message had been sent loud      &      clear.

HIS VISITS TO THE INSTITUTE ARE MOSTLY PURPOSELESS. that is to say that they are often purposeful, but in ways that only make sense to him and the other people he lives with, the other selves that rattle around in his mind like marbles rolling on a slanted floor. collision is inevitable. mr. robot, for example, favors harassing the archivist especially. sam likes to watch elias sometimes with something strangely appraising in his gaze. and elliot just hangs around because he finds it interesting.

and he’s met some people through it. 

vanya is one of them, one of the few that he regularly visits outside of random run-ins at the institute itself. the distortion shifts to meet his whims, and he thinks that those whims have gotten stranger since everything. but it seems to have changed him less than other productions of the spiral. perhaps his self was already so fractured that there was less work to do. less to replace.

so he has purpose, and he tells it where to go. and then the labyrinth tells him back where to go, four lefts and the third door, and right when he’s at the end of the hallway comes a few taps. not knocks – the rapping of the tip of a bow on wood. if he were more of a bourgeois pig he’d charge for it, but he doesn’t give a shit about money. he did get the time right. it can be difficult. time moves differently in the distortion.

either way, elliot opens the door. there’s a hum in the air with vanya, like notes caught and extended across too much space. ❝ hi, ❞ he says, smiling a little in return. happy to see her happy. recursive. feelings reflecting around off of glass. ❝ i didn’t keep you waiting, right? ❞ he doesn’t think so. vanya looks sated and happy and that sound still very distant rather than like it’s about to spill out of her.

he very much likes her. if he didn’t, he would have trapped her in the distortion with her own song bouncing back at her from inside the mirrors the first time she walked in.

there is a certain melody the spiral carries      :      twisting and discordant and lovely,      in its own way.      one of the composers she’d studied in college had spread out instruments across the city,      each playing their own bit of a symphony,      only audible in full through screens      —      but there was a bit of lag in the recordings,      glitchy cameras,      and the result was something nearly inhuman,      just - slightly - off,      intangibly wrong.      something like it - is - not - what - it - is.      it did not sound like they were playing in the wrong time,      but that the time they were playing on had shifted,      that they were no longer aligned with the rest of humanity and would remain so for eternity,      a step behind or ahead of the rest of the world until they were in their graves,      decomposing at uneven rates.

the distortion sounds like that.      she thinks she could play along with it,      if she wanted,      but she has her own purpose to fulfill.

‘      no,      you’re just on time.      ’            she enters the doorway without hesitation,      smiling still,      as she has done each time he has welcomed her past their thresholds.      if elliot wanted to trap her,      he would have done so long ago      —      and she needs only a pluck of a bowstring to tear him and his endless hallways apart,      if the need arises.      (      she hopes it doesn’t,      for all that’s worth.      he’s a good friend.      but his death would make such a beautiful song.      )      each believes themselves more powerful than the other.      neither wishes to test that theory.      and in this way things work      :      a truce,      a friendship,      between two beings once - human and now something else entirely.

she turns on her heel once she’s inside the spiral’s space;      waiting for him to lead the way.      her bow taps out a rhythm against the mirrored walls.      there is still that frenzied hum of all that blood within her      :      she is a melody waiting to be let out,      she is satiated but still singing,      somewhere within,      something that does not stop simply when her hunger is gone.

she feels it like fresh olive oil coating the inside of her throat.     it’s warm and sharp and beautiful. it’s an urge she can’t resist, a little too much like a siren’s song  (how  fitting  given her current companion) ,  that tells her to turn up the heat. burn further, burn hotter, burn faster, bring the building down to nothing but   ash.   make the very bricks the angel is leaning on turn into a ripping halo worthy of she and only she.

clara’s  more  than a little impressed when the angel remains.

her head tilts, a curious little smile settling into her face, one that could easily be marked as confusion even when she truly isn’t confused. she’s intrigued by her angel,   the woman so eager to burn both for and with her.  it’s nice to have a partner in the burning. it’s nice to not have to think about moving closer, only a few inches away from  her angel.

“ came for the music, stayed for the meal, honestly. ” the curious smile turns into an intrigued grin, eyes glued to the force of nature in front of her as she draws herself closer.  “ both were amazing. last one still is, can’t remember the last time i’ve been treated like this. ”

another tilt of the head, the grin growing and her brows furrowing the lightest bit. a bit closer.      the heat grows.     “ vanya, right? ”

one weaker,      one untouched by this holy violence,      would have been burnt terribly by the warmth at vanya’s back      &      by the heat emanating from clara’s skin as she moves closer and closer still.      vanya basks in it.      like a flower ever - reaching toward the sun,      that which is deadly also sustaining life;      vanya glows with the satisfaction of freshly shed blood      &      something in her sings.

vanya’s blood,      clara’s flame      :      there is such overlap between the two violences,      and vanya thinks she can see the appeal of the lightless one here under clara’s gaze,      as her own veins seem to light up with sparking heat,      as she feels a fire entirely unrelated to the desolation blaze through her body.      if clara is a wildfire,      vanya will be a forest.      she will be anything.      is that not what love is?      the corner of destruction and beauty      —      and yes,      clara is so beautiful,      lit in the glow of a match vanya had set.

the music in the air shifts its pitch with a hum of affirmation from vanya.      she has never quite been able to tell if others can hear it,      too,      if only they grow close enough      :      she can reach out and brush melodies against minds,      but that has catastrophic ends,      and vanya does not wish to hurt clara.      all destruction to the contrary.      still      :      the song in her ears is so sweet,      she hopes clara can catch a few notes of it amidst the crackling of burnt things.            ‘      and you’re clara.      ’            not a question.      she’d pried the answer from the archivist the first time she’d seen clara retreating from his office,      him left to frantically spray his desk with a fire extinguisher      (      and vanya had laughed up a melody at the sight      )      and she had fallen a little bit in love with the woman in that moment,      the same as if clara’d set fire to the heart in vanya’s chest.      vanya’d sparked up like firewood.

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.

she has taken to hanging around the institute like a stray cat      :       the kind always bringing gruesome gifts,       small bloodied bodies laid at your doorway an act of cruel affection.       there’s something to being there,       though she cannot tell if it is some sense of belonging among the monsters that make up its staff       (       so different,       but so alike her!       perhaps not quite as bloody,       perhaps not smiling so sharply       —       but she has craved a family for as long as she can remember,       long before lonely or slaughter had any meaning to her       )       or simply gloating       (       you cannot stop this violence,       she has told the archivist with a laugh.       it will play its melody forever.       that is the way the world works,       this song the beginning       &       end of all of us.       )

vanya has grown too comfortable in london.      the siren - song of her violent melodies makes everything sharper but not clearer      —      it puts everything into focus but stains it all crimson,      makes it difficult to truly think about consequence or danger or anything but the ecstasy of blood singing in veins.      not her blood.      not her veins.

but she sees now.      rewind,      statement      :      an hour ago she had been playing her violin on a side - street and watching as passers - by were captivated by it      —      first watching,      then consumed by the music,      then consumed by their own rage.      she hadn’t timed it right.      she’d been distracted,      consuming,      joyful,      and hadn’t noticed the police car approaching.      vanya had run into an open door in a nearby alley      —      and she’d emerged here,      in the archivist’s office,      something not shaped quite right introducing itself as helen declaring that a favor was owed with a not - right laugh.      vanya’s not sure who owes who,      or how it will be collected.

she smiles at jon.      she’s a little blood - stained,      still has a tight hold on her violin,      and she would not judge him for flinching at that smile      :      it’s a little too sharp around the edges,      but so is she,      isn’t she?      she’s aiming for kindness,      but strikes too vicious.      ‘      hi,      archivist.      ’            he’d given his name when she’d given her statement,      but it feels more right to refer to him by title.      she doesn’t really question why.      vanya sets her instrument down slowly      :      i mean you no harm,      she is saying,      though she’s still half - bloodthirsty.      something tells her jon wouldn’t be a good meal,      wouldn’t give in to the sway of her song like the rest.            ‘      i could use a place to lie low for a bit.      ’

@kerflooey​            :            ❛  i am not in the habit of taking home stray cats.  ❜      jon and yes he is            *