Chrysocolla is no one. Chrysocolla is nothing. Chrysocolla is empty and broken and useless - well, maybe, if she's looked at so individually, but that's not how the Negaverse works, is it? She's just a cog in the machine. She doesn't make claims to any knowledge or any leadership. She doesn't need to, and she wouldn't want to; those aren't meant for her, never were and never will be. Some people enjoy servitude.

(the dreams are so far between now. she doesn't dream anymore, not really; sleep is exhaustion made manifest, tiredness running her ragged, and she keeps up appearances and she sleeps when she has to. sometimes the same dream twice, maybe, maybe - they unravel when she tries to reach for them, tries to remember, because she was someone and something that Umber saw something worthwhile in and something of that is still here - still here - but - it's hard to focus, when those dreams are crackling static in her ears, sounds degraded by years of distance and an infinity of darkness. the girl she never stops dreaming about, whose face is a mass of nothing and whose voice is the shatter of glass, the rush of water over stone - that girl never holds her hand but she stands beside and guides, maybe, Poppy doesn't know anymore. these aren't her memories. not really. she's just the last person who can try to take care of them.)


It's easy to avoid any bad thoughts by throwing herself into her work, both scholarly and above the law - Poppy excels in her classes, still eternally quiet and meeting nobody's eyes, the ward with the perfect posture; and Chrysocolla finds that for how much she praises how clean the Negaverse can make a death, how often she extols that virtue, having someone's blood on her hands feels so much better. She just needs to find darker alleys for it, broken glass; it's easy to lure her enemies after her, if she turns tail and runs, because nobody ever questions it. Nobody ever ******** questions it.

(someone is dying. someone is always dying in every dream she has, and it's never anyone who matters; she feels their neck snap under her heel / their throat in her tightening hands and doesn't want to throw up anymore. it was silly that she ever did.

she used to be stupid, though, so it doesn't matter too much.

she is beautiful and she could be immortal, in this moment)


(i love you i love you i wish - )

(was that girl's hair purple or was it blonde? what color was her skin? what color were her eyes?

do these things really matter at all?)


Nothing anyone else says matters to her, anymore, outside of who she respects (and Kerberos, poor sweet Kerberos, who looks at her like she's broken his heart when he doesn't think she's watching. of course she's watching. if she's not, it's too easy to be harmed). Sometimes the words hurt, a little, and sometimes she's nothing like that at all and sometimes they still question her loyalty, her loyalty which is all she has left to fill her up - it's not acceptable to break your coworkers. So she doesn't, not really. If they're not good enough to get up all the way after, that's not her problem at all.

Sometimes all that means is that there's blood drying on her gloves, just red enough to stand out, and it makes her happier than most things can make her. She'll never be dangerous the way Generals are, with real weapons, but - that's okay, really. Chrysocolla understands things just well enough to improvise.

(this isn't what Warhol would have wanted but that's a dead girl's wants, and Chrysocolla would never know anyways.

she's happy to be a side character in someone else's legacy.)