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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 6:34:14 GMT
 She doesn't wear a slinky dress, because Valkyrie has an image to maintain, but she lets the stylist blow out her hair and dust highlighter over her cheekbones. She swirls around the party with champagne flute in her left hand and doesn't read the guest list and dances through all the voices that echo in her head, fragmented. The stray thoughts aren't glittering shards, but dull arrows, and she can almost make a game out of avoiding them until one voice pierces through, moments before she hears it in physical reality.
You look beautiful tonight, but then, you always do.
Her ears catch the shade of it being uttered, but it's in her mind that it shines like a beacon. She's heard that line a thousand times, that voice: baritone, smart, the kind of voice men wish they had. Her flute slips half an inch through her nerveless fingers and she freezes it in place without thought. She swallows. Her fingers shake until she makes them stop, and then she turns around.
"Mrs. Velos!" she exclaims, coming up behind the other woman as if she's the only light she sees; God, how she wishes it were true. Her blonde hair glints burnt gold under the lights. Thalia wants to smother herself in it. She wants to smother them both. Death would be more merciful than this, more kind.
She knows.
"I haven't seen you since the cat cafe--"
A hand on her arm. The pressure of three fingers. She falls into silence like a well-trained dog called to heel. He squeezes once, gently, pulling her off-kilter towards him, and then lets go. Broad smile. Wrinkles around his eyes that she doesn't remember. Everything comes in impressions, flashes, snapshots. She is not here. She is not here. She is not here.
He engulfs her in a brief hug and she does down under the black wave. She is 27, the Valkyrie, she can throw this man halfway across the city. She is 13, broken piece by piece under his hand; she has never stopped being 13, she knows. She died aged 13. This is just a piloted corpse.
"It's been so long," he says. "You've done so well for yourself."
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 14:52:43 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 14:52:43 GMT
 She's usually more careful about her alcohol intake. Now she doesn't have a shadow to hide behind. Sophia no longer knows her own shape.
She has no illusions about who she is at this gathering: a rich widow who was more opportunist than star-crossed lover. Her reputation had not yet recovered from the stories of Arkham and the corpse that she had dragged out of it.
When the man talks to her, Sophia thinks that she could be solid matter again, if only for a few minutes.
She nods and accepts his compliments. I didn't expect to be reconized here. Thank you for the welcome - it is appreciated. She might have had an empty platitude for him five drinks ago. Instead, Sophia smiles for him. It feels less practiced than usual. If the people at the party are circling vultures, so be it. So long as they pick the bones clean. So long as she will live in fragments no longer. New York is such a large city, I thought that I could slip past the radar.
And then the city gets a little smaller.
So, he knows Valkyrie. Sophia flushes, which is all the more pronounced from the wine. She feels like an interloper.
(She can't disappear. If she does, she may never return.)
"I think" Except she isn't at all. "That there should be introductions."
VALKYRIE
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Jul 25, 2016 17:21:58 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 17:21:58 GMT
Her world narrows to two points, each of them outlined in gleaming fire: the hand on the small of her back, and Sophia's face. Thalia tries to focus on the other woman; the shadow of her eyelashes against her cheek, the thick line of her bangs, the bags beneath her eyes that make-up can't cover entirely. She looks distant, a swan on the wing, and if it's obvious to Thalia, she knows it must be obvious to him. She tries not to shiver. She thinks she fails, but she isn't sure.
"...I had the honor of being Thalia's foster father for two years," she hears, turning her gaze away from Sophia to stare at the tiled floor of the banquet hall. It looks like marble. It probably is marble. "We wanted to adopt her but--those were difficult years for her. It fell through, unfortunately. The two of you know each other already? I had no idea that Thalia ran in such high company these days, but I'm not surprised. She was always a precocious girl..."
His wife still sends Thalia letters sometimes. Family newsletters at Christmas. Sometimes a small present, a care package, especially when Thalia's made the news for something outrageous. Megan had been a kind-hearted woman, generous and forgiving of the withdrawn, sullen girl she had taken into her home, whose fits of temper had only grown worse and worse over the two years she spent with them; had pushed and pushed for the adoption with genuine affection and a desire to help.
Thalia hated her. The hate bit like acid, corroded her bones, but she did, and she couldn't help it. She didn't want to help it. She wanted to hate her. For two years, she was sure that hate was the only reason she knew she was alive at all.
"What brings you to New York, Sophia?" she cuts in, interrupting him in mid-speech. His grip flexes on her back for a moment, tense and disgruntled, and she's sure the move will cost her, but she wants to listen to something beside his voice. "Just this event, or are you relocating?"
Thalia wouldn't blame her if she wanted to leave Kingsport. She's read the papers.
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 18:19:58 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 18:19:58 GMT
Thalia was wanted before she became Valkyrie. It made Sophia a little happy to hear it, even if human patience ultimately had its limits.
"You're surprised?" Sophia allows herself to sound a little bemused. "I don't know, I would think that I occupy a lower position than the fire turkey in Texas" Sophia smiles at her. "I'm not sure why the Initiative would choose to placate us over the end of the world, but thank you." She lowers her head for a half-bow. Sophia means it. Physis can do nothing while Valkyrie can save them from certain slavery. The gulf between them starts to seem nigh-unbridgeable.
"I wanted a change in air. Away from the fussing, you understand. I expect to be back in Kingsport in a few days." It was only half a lie. Her doctor was the one who had insisted. You're unraveling, Sophia - you have to heal, or your entire body is going to come apart.
(What is a ghost without a house to possess?)
She had known for years. She's a parasite who robs time from other people. A plague: the knowledge makes it harder to remember that the world is still capable of making her into a girl.
Perhaps she will make new friends. Perhaps she will make new friends and choke them underneath the water. Except that would kill her as surely as it kills them.
She misses Physis already.
VALKYRIE |
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Jul 25, 2016 19:20:31 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 19:20:31 GMT
Thalia deflates a little at the mention of Phoenix, her hand tightening around her champagne flute. The skin stretching over muscle and bone is smooth and unscarred, devoid of any betraying mark that might prove she grappled with Phoenix's avatar and lost miserably, but the memory is etched in her head, along with its promise: I WILL HAVE VICTORY.
"People will never stop living their lives just because something is trying to destroy them," she says, a little unsteady and reserved. "Especially the rich. The rich are very good at ignoring what's happening in favor of drinking Krug Grande Cuvée and eating caviar."
She's braced for the admonishment she knows will follow, and it comes quickly on her heels, sharpness sliding into his voice with the ease of long practice.
"Don't be rude, Thalia," he says, as if she still lives under his roof and sleeps in his bed, as if he has any right to rebuke her. "You're at this party, aren't you? Besides, we all know what the Initiative pays its heroes. You're hardly working-class. I'm sorry if she's offended, Mrs. Velos."
She keeps quiet, cuts a glance Sophia's way with hooded eyes. There's a barely discernible crack in the champagne flute.
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 19:55:46 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 19:55:46 GMT
"I don't know." Sophia thinks back to happier times. A time when she still had a home to possess. "The world still needs people who remember how to move forward." Even if it meant that she would be left behind in the remnants of a history that doesn't have any right to exist.
Sophia looks over to the same slab of marble and hopes that Afia Brand could be happy.
She thinks that she can relate to those who want to be drinking and making merry forever. Then she remembers the helmet sitting in her truck. It's not true. If it was, then she would still have a husband. She wouldn't have gone back.
Sophia is seized with an insane desire to take her hand. She resists. There's no point, Thalia can't know that there is a part of Sophia that aches for her pain like an infested wound. That they have both tried the fruit from the tree of good and evil and found wisdom to be lacking.
She holds up a gloved hand. "I am not offended. It is as you say - there is no need to take offense among equals."
VALKYRIE |
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Jul 25, 2016 20:32:19 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 20:32:19 GMT
Whatever thoughts she can have about how they are equals here vanish into the ether when a child, maybe eight, maybe thirteen, appears at his side. Except he's not a child, really, she can tell that from one look at him; slender, with curly blonde hair, and dull eyes. He's dressed in all black, formal, and the bowtie at his neck is crooked. All the air goes out of her lungs.
"Who is this?" she asks sharply, abandoning all pretense at politeness. He smiles at her.
"The house was empty after you left, with Matthew and Danielle at college. Surely you didn't think you were the only child Megan wanted to foster?"
She should have read the newsletters that Megan sent her instead of throwing them away unopened. She should have--she would have known. She could have done something. Used her goddamn power for something useful for once in her life instead of running and hiding and carving out a new life and leaving him behind and alive and this--
The boy looks at her with marked apathy. Her head is buzzing beyond understanding as he introduces his foster-son to Sophia. She wonders if he ever talked about her, if he knows. She was the first child they'd ever fostered. She'd assumed, after the way she left them, that she would be the last.
Thalia is going to vomit if she stays here any longer, but there's nowhere to go. There has never been anywhere to go. His hand is still on her back like a leash. She settles a little into herself long enough to realize that he's laughing.
"--I think she's jealous of you, Andrew."
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 21:28:58 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 21:28:58 GMT
She doesn't know her way around children, but Sophia tries not to let it show. He's not very responsive. Maybe it should have been more unnerving to Sophia, but the suit and bowtie fool her.
"Is he ill?" She asks, resisting the urge to feel his forehead. A side effect of being married to a workaholic. "Should I ask one of the servers to bring a lemonade?"
Her stomach feels like a pit as the scene unfolds. Sophia will trust her gut instinct before she trusts the intricacies of a smile. Handmaiden knows a bait when she hears it. After all, she is also a mutant.
"I apologize, Mr. Langdon. I hope you don't mind if I borrowed her for a moment."
"Valkyrie." She hopes that the name brings Thalia as much strength as Physis brings to Sophia. "Will you accompany me to the restroom?" Her face is red enough for the need of an escort to seem plausible. One of the few good things about Sophia's newfound alcoholism.
VALKYRIE |
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Jul 25, 2016 21:36:39 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 21:36:39 GMT
"I'm fine," the boy spits. Hellfire sparks in his eyes for a moment and God, it's like looking in a mirror a decade ago.
(God, but there is none, or this wouldn't be happening, not again.)
Tearing herself out of his grasp is welcome; walking away to leave the child behind is not. Every step feels like a condemnation of them both. If they're not there when they came back out of the bathroom--
But they will be, she knows. Him and his new toy. He's not done with their game yet.
The interior of the bathroom looks exactly like you would expect it to look: soft red handtowels, soap with gold flakes, marble basins shaped like shells. Thalia turns on her heel and looks at Sophia, searching for the iron mask of the Valkyrie to wear.
If she fails, she isn't sure what else she expected. Valkyrie came long after the Langdons. Valkyrie doesn't know how to suffer their sort of trial. That's always been Thalia's job.
"Are you alright?" she asks, putting her champagne flute down on the counter. The next questions that rise to the tip of her tongue cant' be asked: How much did you drink? Did he give you anything? Did you always watch what he was handing you?
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 22:13:05 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 22:13:05 GMT
Sophia is more steady on her feet than her inebriated state might suggest.
"Yes." If she feels like puking, then she'll say so. Though if she had two more, she might. She washes her face at the sink. Her makeup is waterproof enough to survive. "Are you?"
VALKYRIE |
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Jul 25, 2016 22:17:56 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 22:17:56 GMT
Thalia resists the urge to reach for her champagne flute and down the rest of it in one gulp. That would definitely put a lie to the studied faux-casualness she tries to assume as Sophia asks the wrong question.
"Should I not be?" she asks, aiming for lightness. "This is only my first glass."
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 22:19:32 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 22:19:32 GMT
Sophia ignores her bravado.
"You shouldn't go back there."
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Jul 25, 2016 22:22:07 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 22:22:07 GMT
This time she does reach for the champagne flute, but stops with the glass an inch from her lips.
"It would be odd to disappear halfway through the party."
physis
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Jul 25, 2016 22:24:17 GMT
Post by physis on Jul 25, 2016 22:24:17 GMT
She doesn't take the gambit.
"Heroes get sick too."
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Jul 25, 2016 22:34:50 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 22:34:50 GMT
"That excuse doesn't work when people know you have a healing factor," Thalia says dryly, and takes a sip.
She squares her shoulders and tells the same story she's always told.
"My foster years were difficult," she says. "You heard him. My...my real father was in a coma, I was in a brand new place." Watched over by a blind fool and him. "It doesn't fit the PR image I have now, but I was a terror. I don't like being reminded of those years. I wasn't anymore fun to raise than it was fun to be me. I'm sure now that he has a normal child--" The words are copper and blood in her throat. Her stomach turns. "--he's just having his petty revenge for the suffering I put them through."
physis
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