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( closed ) épigraphe pour un livre condamné

WHO: Angela (

worldexecute) & (most of) her librarians
WHAT: Realizations at the pseudo-realization
WHERE: The garden, where only bad things happen
WHEN: Sometime early-ish October, but not like, beginning of the month
WARNINGS: Body horror, violence, broken trust... typical Projmoon bullshit

( It was only a cup of tea.

(an indulgent bit of writing)

She'd been alone then, wandering through the garden—compared to some of the areas of the city, both here and in her world, it was pleasant. Lively, despite the lack of animals. And, coming upon a tea party in the woods (ha), she had felt suspicious. Naturally, she had—

and then she had felt like having a cup of tea, and it'd been downhill from there. Green tea had seemed like an interesting new choice; she'd liked the ones she's had in the city so far, and the color had been appetizing. The flavor was nice and clean too, and Angela had savored it and the quiet. A moment of peace, of respite, from her busy head, busy hands, increasingly busy life.

It was only a cup of tea, but the moment she set it down and gazed into its empty cup, she'd seen— black, iridescent feathers begin to sprout from her skin. She felt them, tearing through flesh and bunching her librarian's clothing until the seams split open, the bones of her legs cracking and reshaping into a bird's, fair human skin turning an ugly bright orange.

Angela heaves, squeezing her eyes shut, the table shaking with the force; her feathers grow and grow, sprouting from her brooch to cover her chest, fanning out behind her in Black Swan's familiar clawed cloak, and when she can focus her gaze again, she can barely see.

So she stumbles instead, unsteady on her legs, wishing she were made of metal again instead of flesh, or that she hadn't taken that tea—

Blood and dark feathers follow in Angela's wake; she's easy to track, and the feathers probably aren't unfamiliar to her fellow librarians, given they all worked in the same company, knew the same Abnormalities. The one who faced the swan isn't here, but it's alright! It'll be fine. It'll be fine in the greenhouse where she's stumbled her way to, mind scrambled between her own and Black Swan's mournful song, where the blood is worse as if vomited out, down the path of BEAUTIFUL DEADLIES...

The flowers' whispering is a fine indicator of someone being here, too. "I don’t want to wake up... I’m afraid of facing that reality." )

Shut up, ( Angela replies in a voice only half her own, tired—and at the first sound aside from the flowers, she turns and raises a shovel she's filched from the greenhouse. ) Who's there? Stay away. Please, don't come near me.

( "I'll tear you to shreds. It isn't hard. I've done it countless times before." )

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Angela-?

[it shouldn't be a surprise, to see her like this. not after what he'd experienced not long ago with his own tea incident. still, it catches him off-guard; before, they'd always had a little warning. something else had always prompted this.

but this city is nothing if not eager to remind them, is it? especially with the things those flowers whisper. 'you're afraid too,' they quietly remind him, as he pauses and keeps an eye on the shovel she's brandishing.]

[ The newer park's gardens have sections left to document, beyond the abandoned tea table and the wooden shelf not far from it. Like the other park's graveyard and statues, the greenhouse here seems out of place in an otherwise clean city — these locations, overgrown and weathered, preserve varying states of disrepair. The trail of blood and feathers is fresh, however, and the sight plucks at some memory. A flicker of foreboding and recognition combined prickles in a corner of Yesod's mind.

He seizes the nearest gardening tool — a rake — and follows that trail, deeper into the greenhouse, towards the whispers and familiar voices before long.

Netzach is there, fortunately unharmed, but that is Angela, transformed as though something in this place shares similarities with the Library once again, interacting with her emotions, causing aspects of them to manifest outwardly, intertwined with the Abnormalities there. Here, this dimension might draw upon Angela's memories, a recognizable pattern.

If it began with a cup of tea, it's unlikely that Angela would willingly accept any help while the transformation has her in its grip. ]

Do you recognize us, Angela?

[ Gebura strides in at some point, tire iron at the ready because she is not fond of babbling flowers and her heart had lowered somewhat dismally when she'd seen the trail. It doesn't mean it has to be what she thinks it is, but it likely isn't what she doesn't think it is, either. And apparently she isn't the only one who finds it problematic, given that Netzach and a rake-wielding Yesod are already there, as is...

Oh, boy. ]

Angela, seriously?

[ She says it casually, but she's already moving in front of the other two. ]

( ...Yes. Naturally, it'd be the three people she'd want to see the least. "Why does it have to be you?" Angela peaks from beneath her mask, knuckles white around her shovel; she doesn't lower it, despite who it is in front of her. )

...I just drank some tea. ( "I couldn't help myself. I can't ever help myself, can I?" ) And it hurt.

( Her voice is small. She knows she sounds more like the Angela who had stood in that dark, long hallway of the mall with Roland, rather than a more firm, unshakeable director—but the pain has been getting to her, wearing her down. The flowers, swaying back and forth gently, peacefully, still fill the air with whispers.

"And just like then, I'll have to beg for my life."

"Once they know, it's over."

"I thought things would work themselves out if I worked harder..." )

...You three should leave. ( A little firmer, as she pushes herself up to standing, using her shovel more as a support than as a weapon—for now. While her mind is still intact, still more hers than swan's. It's tenuous, but she's making effort. ) Before you hear something we're all going to regret.

( She's been listening. She knows what this garden is about. She isn't ready, she isn't ready— "I'm not ready, where's Roland, why isn't he here, he'd be able to help, he wouldn't just leave me—right? He wouldn't just see what's going on and decide it's my business to deal with on my own, would he?" )

...Would he?

( A question to herself, to the flowers. Would he? )

[it's reassuring, at least, to have yesod and gebura here. they've all seen something similar, although this time, it's...

this isn't the same. the things the flowers whisper-

'you're afraid to know too, aren't you?' one murmurs, and he gives his head a quick shake.]

We all have plenty of regrets, anyway. It's not like we can't handle a little more.

[ Imperceptibly, Gebura's entrance eases some of the tension in Yesod's posture. While Angela is lucid, if that changes and she lashes out, if the transformation borrows the familiar once more, a flimsy implement won't withstand the attack, and he doubts that his body has retained anything of the books collected in the Library or some muscle memory of the clashes with its victims. He is quite aware that if he were to shield Netzach then, it would achieve little. Gebura, on the other hand, possesses her own strength and experience.

But for now, they may have enough time to reason with Angela, to address whatever it is that she intends to conceal, and to reverse this without incident. Yesod lowers the rake, holding it with its head pointed downward at the ground. Though the intermingled murmuring around them is disorienting, he tries to listen closely, to separate fears from reflections on the past. ]

Precisely. What has prompted these thoughts?

What they said.

[ Gebura's shrug is casual, even though she hasn't moved away from her position in front of the other two. Angela is still in control of herself, but there's no saying how long that's going to remain a constant. She's also doing her utmost to ignore the flowers right now. There's a little too much talking right now. ]

Come on, we've seen a hell of a lot out of you by now. What are you so afraid of, at this point?

It's different. ( "It's different," the flowers echo.

"It isn't really," one on the side of the path whispers very informatively, the doublethink of Angela's thoughts. "You lot stood against me once before then. You just didn't make it the second time around."

Angela's eyes widen, and she raises a hand to her mouth again—nothing comes out, not words or otherwise, but she moves quicker than she usually can to stab the offending flower. She's focused on trying to cut the flower's head off, stabbing at it to silence it, not entirely herself. They can't be killed though, and even if she has some of the Abnormality's power, it isn't all of it. )

Shut up— ( shut up! shut up! shut up! ) I won't let you take this away from me— I won't— I'll tell them eventually—

( "I lied to Roland," the flower next to Gebura starts up, repeating the phrase. One by Yesod starts a chant, too: "I'm never going to tell them I killed them in the end." )

I... ( She shakes. Feathers shudder off of her, and she turns to face them again. Closer, they'll be able to see the way her eyes slip between being focused and unfocused—it would be easier to give in, but she's trying not to. She has to explain. She has to say something. She...

...She loses the battle, and she swings her shovel at them. Heads up, Geb. )

Angela, you-

[...it comes out almost breathless, as if the air's been pulled right from his lungs by the whispers of those flowers. you just didn't make it. i lied. i killed them.

he wanted to hope for better. he did. she's changed since he last saw her, she's become more human, and so he thought that maybe... maybe between that and what vergilius had said, that meant this would somehow all turn out decently in the end.

but no. she's more human because of what she did to them... isn't she? because if they're dead, and the light belongs solely to her...

angela swings her shovel, but he's frozen in place.]

[ A repeat of the same ending, only final. Angela herself asked all of them to confirm their memories prior to arriving here, yet she withheld the truth. Somewhere between the moments they recall and the puzzle of the Outskirts, this is the future that awaits them, then. Perhaps that finally explains those different points in time.

It's difficult to connect each thought, past the flowers' voices and the truncated gasp that Netzach utters; Angela's shovel hasn't struck them, but every revelation acts as a blow to leave them winded. And it's difficult to reach for wisps of hope that it must mean something to exist here, alive, now in possession of experiences that might rewrite the future, if nothing before this stayed Angela's hand.

Here, Angela is human. Yesod remembers contemplating the implications of that, briefly, early on. Would she have said anything as she claims, without the forceful push of today's encounter?

He doesn't ask it aloud, his voice caught in his throat. He and Netzach will become a hindrance if they don't move, too close to Angela and the reach of her shovel; Gebura has been poised to handle it. Stepping towards Netzach to stand directly in front of him, Yesod attempts that much, at least. ]

[ Gebura has acquired much more patience than she'd once possessed. Her blade had been more dangerous to her than anyone else, sharpened with rage but unable to cut what she couldn't perceive as the true target of her anger.

But now, that warmth beneath her skin is almost comforting, even as something darkens in the one gold eye she has remaining.

Angela had killed them. All this time, she'd known and kept it from them. She'd lived with her and she hadn't said a word about it, even though she'd known--what? That even if they went back, everything they did was going to be ultimately meaningless?

She'd changed, or so Gebura had thought. But no. Maybe she'd just become more cowardly, more like the human she'd so desperately wanted to be.

She catches the shovel against the tire iron near-instinctively, because whether or not that's how it is, like hell she's going to let anyone hurt her colleagues any more. ]

Move, you two!! [ She snaps this tersely, disengaging the block as she spins to slam a foot at Angela's midsection, aiming to drive her back and away from the two behind her. She's furious, but she can channel that productively now. Angela's not laying a hand (or shovel) on either Netzach or Yesod while she's standing. ]

So that's it, huh? In the end, you just couldn't let us have a say in our lives again? I'm sick of this.

( Angela feels much like a person watching her own life.

This isn't new to her: she oftentimes felt the same way during their loops, repeating the same machinations over and over until the script was perfectly played out. The horrors she had witnessed. The horrors she had stopped trying to prevent. None of that had been her fault. Her decision to live, to find her own path, had been a reasonable, sound one. An AI given a heart, who had found something she desired after years and years and years and years of tolerating the agony of being alive.

She just closed her eyes then, until the moment was right.

She can't do that now. Her midsection hurts where Gebura's foot connects with it and Black Swan (Angela) (her but not her) staggers backwards, but it doesn't drop her weapon; she screams, frustrated and sad and angry and agonized, and while ear-splitting they aren't as damaging as they used to be. It finds something to target in the Red Mist, even though Angela knows there's no beating Gebura.

Should I learn how to defend myself, or can I still leave that up to you lot?

"There's no point in explaining." Even as Black Swan gears up for another strike, charging forward, the flowers echo Angela's thoughts. "There's no point in fighting. Should I beg for my life again? Will that work?" )

Betrayed... I... ( The words are in sharp, little gasps, like the calls of a bird instead of a young woman. ) Afraid. Lonely.

( Half her, half the swan. )

Edited 2023-10-10 13:54 (UTC)

If you're so lonely, then you could at least try talking to us-- didn't we see some of those parts of you already?

[didn't they experience it once? angela, her emotions twisting her and resonating with the abnormalities, just like this-- and didn't they overcome it? weren't things getting better? why did she end up taking things so far in the end, despite all of it?

gebura has the fight handled. yesod is between him and angela, regardless (and that's a bit of a surprise, though it's something he doesn't linger on.) he steps forward slightly himself, a little more even with yesod; he handled this before, too. he doesn't need any more protection than yesod does. (he isn't useless, despite the flowers' whispers.)]

Wasn't there some way all of us could have lived...?

[ Intentionally or not, Yesod's half-instinctive gesture is rejected with no time to explain it — this is not the place for it — and it can't hope to convey the intent behind it, that he wanted to see Netzach's freedom safeguarded at least here. The flowers jeer at that, too, but anything else that they might lay bare is drowned out by the cacophony of their jumbled commentary, the forced confessions wrung from Angela's heart, the anguished swan's shrieking tearing its way out of her.

Yes, isn't this all too familiar? Yet those efforts to understand were evidently in vain, as if they had no meaning in the end, trampled underfoot as Angela made her choice to dash everything to pieces. What drove her to do it, after they believed in the possibility of another outcome...? ]

Tell us the truth, Angela. All of it!

[ Now Yesod's voice breaches the tightness locked around his throat, but once it has broken free, he seals more than that in behind his teeth, the weight of its bitter taste on his tongue. He isn't thinking clearly. His fingers squeeze around the rake's handle, pushing its tines against the ground.

Angela won't be able to comply, if she doesn't come to her senses; the emerging truth is either limited to these disjointed fragments, or the flowers will continue to speak in her stead. ]

[ Now isn't the time, is Gebura's thought, and she'd point that out, but she's a little too busy meeting Angela/the Swan's next strike and going for a leg sweep to try to topple her. This isn't the Library. She has full confidence she'll be able to subdue her, but then what? It's not like it's likely this will be resolved with that alone. ]

If you guys aren't going to try and find those damn seeds that probably can do something about this, at least give me less to focus on here...

[ Well, if it distracts Angela, it's fine. But there's a whole lot going on here between Angela and the Abnormality warring for supremacy and the hurt voices of her coworkers and the flowers--

"So in the end, you couldn't protect them again? You failed, after so many chances..." ]

( Angela isn't a fighter, but she is desperate, so when she goes down she rolls away and tries to find her legs again. Or, no, the Swan does, motions jerky as if Angela's fighting against its attempts to stand, to fight, to hurt, to defend.

She doesn't want to talk--they won't like her answers any more than they like the truth coming out in bits and pieces and flowers--wasn't there some way we could have all lived? Ha, didn't he ask something like that before he was cut down? Before she did-- before relentlessly, heartlessly, she...

"I should have never kept any of you," the flowers sing. "I should have done it sooner. I shouldn't have made a deal. This heartache, this sorrow, I'd--" )

What truth? ( It parrots back to Yesod, swaying as it breaks free from Angela's control again. ) The truth is-- killed Roland! Killed you!

( And then it rushes Gebura again--still no fighter, but frenzied. )

I killed my best friend because-- ( Angela's voice more clearly now, hoarse but there. She falters, not able to say it, and continues with the rest of the story: ) You lot didn't like it and attacked me-- I killed you, I killed you, I--

( ...and just before the Swan gets to Gebura, it stops itself by driving the shovel against one of its own legs and stumbling to the ground with a pained shriek--she tears at the feathers in its arms, the pain compounding and keeping her hands occupied from attacking more.

She doesn't want to talk, but she doesn't want to hurt them either. Not really. Not again.

...They did try to understand her once upon a time, after all. Even if that lucidity is only for a moment, it's there. )

[ The truth, unearthed in bits and pieces and flowers to land before them in a haphazard arrangement, begins to form an incomplete picture that nonetheless gives Yesod pause. Killed Roland — when and why? And if that was the trigger for what followed, unbearable betrayal to Angela, and retaliation, then...

Angela's regrets slot into a few more gaps. So does her display of resistance, restraining herself. Even now, that holds some significance; recognizing it for what it is cuts through the tangle of too much all at once. ]

...I do not trust those seeds, but I'll return with them shortly.

[ No alternative exists, not for the tea that causes these transformations. The seeds are too convenient, like those documents at the university, and the flowers have more to interject, admissions of mounting despair. Guinea pigs in an enclosure, scurrying around blindly. Such a long road behind them, only to reach a dead end.

Yesod turns to keep his word — it might be quieter in here for a time, allowing Gebura to concentrate while Angela is marginally more herself. Perhaps Netzach's approach could even reach Angela then. ]

[ Killing them she could have understood (angrily) better than she could understand killing Roland. Roland was perhaps Angela's first friend, someone uninvolved in the whole Lobcorp mess, who could have gotten to know Angela for who she was outside of a secretary-turned-script fulfiller. She'd seen Angela's past and her resulting breakdowns while she'd been asleep and she'd seen Roland's for herself. They needed the support. They needed to vent.

And she knew Angela had trusted him more than she trusted any of the Patron Librarians, so why--

It's in the gap she doesn't have, between the Ensemble breaking in and what comes after that, she's sure of it. But that doesn't truly matter right now. Angela tries to sabotage her own actions and Yesod moves to give them an additional option, so Gebura responds in kind, aiming her next strike not at Angela herself but at the shovel. Might as well try to get the weapon away from her before she then has to disarm her from... well, herself. ]

Don't worry. I'm not exactly planning to let you kill us again. And apparently, you don't want that either, do you?

( And the flowers still get there before Angela does, though it's nothing she wouldn't have said, this time: "It'd be easier."

...if she did want to kill them, it would be easier. A lot of things would be if she weren't human. What had she even yearned so strongly for? What worth was there in this? But she'd experienced so much here— felt so much— and every time she'd wonder, she'd wonder, was it worth it? Was this worth what she'd done?

It was so, so difficult to put it out of mind, to have to creep up in the lulls of their conversations, the quiet turning of pages and the shelving of books and pencil on paper, sketching away. Angela's shovel doesn't go easy—a hand slams onto it to try and keep it from moving, her body jerking with it. Fingers curl around the handle and the Swan raises it again. )

You...'ll kill me. ( The only way to make sure Angela doesn't kill them first, never mind the fact the only way she'd been able to, been strong enough to, had been because of her library. Here, she's useless. Powerless. No one knows that better than her, staring at Roland in a dark mall. No one knows that better than the Swan, staring up at Gebura and gripping the shovel, its mind moving over Angela's again. ) I don't want t... I deserve t... I don't want to die!

( It thrusts up, shrieking again, a little of the Abnormality's soundwaves behind it. )

I won't! I won't! I can't! I don't! All for... nothing if I do! I won't!

Nobody has to die here!

[gebura has swangela handled. yesod is fetching the seeds. so netzach--

netzach is left to continue trying. if there's any way to get through, or even if she just remembers this later...

he feels like he at least has to try, a little desperate.]

You're alive. We all are. Don't you think that means things could change-?

[at the point she's from, they're dead at her own hands. at the points they're from, they're still alive and well, and here in this city, all of these things can be true at once. she has killed them and hasn't. they've died but never experienced that moment. what if it doesn't have to stay that way?]

[ Yesod casts a glance over his shoulder before he sprints off. Angela's war with herself and Netzach's counterargument are things not to forget. Then the voices fade into the background, muffled behind walls and doors and foliage; Yesod makes for the wooden shelf near the tea table.

Transformations are the green tea's doing. Taking one of the green seed packets from the shelf, he hurries back. ]

[ She'll let Netzach do most of the talking, reeling back a little with a wince because the soundwaves aren't exactly pleasant on her very human ears and the shovel's landing a hit on her shoulder. But it's not for long; she's surging forward again, this time to try and seize Swangela by the arm and bodily flip her.

If she gets walloped by the shovel again, it's fine. ]

( Without hesitation the shovel comes down again on Gebura, but in return she does get to flip the Swan: it rattles out a breath, the wind knocked out of it, and her eyes sting.

...Nobody has to die, and that includes her. We're all alive. Don't you think that means things could change? ...Does she? Won't she just end up going home to an empty Library, unimaginable power at her fingertips, and its roots digging through the City? No, but that doesn't happen in the future as foretold by Vergilius and Don Quixote: the Library is nothing more than a passing story, exiled to the Outskirts. Whether that's just her, or if it's everyone altogether... )

...Do you think you— you lot can change things? ( Her voice is choked, both by needing air and the thickness in her throat that comes with the onset of tears. She hates crying; she wishes she could stop fucking doing it here. ) That if you go back knowing about any of this, you can change the future I have?

( .......... )

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( closed ) épigraphe pour un livre condamné

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