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 Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:45 pm
Finally Free On the last day, Avacyn almost wanted to throw a party. It had been one week since she had come tot he hospital, and the doctors were finally comfortable releasing her. All the surgeries on her arm and leg were done, and they were set, casted, and ready to go. Now it was just a matter of getting her out.
The cast, at least, made things fun - she had spent a lot of time with a couple of permanent markers doodling things in Gallifreyan all over her arm and leg. It actually looked rather pretty, and she was fairly certain nobody but a Whovian would even realize what it was. She supposed that if there was a likelihood of her leaving the apartment much, it could be a conversation piece.
Basically, it had been a long week, full of way too much time spent stewing over how guilty she felt and how everything would've been different if she was more careful or less weak and less cowardly, and now there was only a little time left. Her doctor had insisted she leave in a wheelchair, not on crutches - having a compromised arm made those difficult - so Arilee was off getting her wheelchair and Ava had a few more minutes by herself before she was delivered to Lance and Ali's apartment and got to spend the rest of her time being fawned over and worried about.
She had a few more minutes to be afraid by herself, and to worry about all kinds of stupid things. But mostly, she had a few more minutes to think, on her own, about what she was going to do once she was better.
Mostly, she figured, she was going to never trust anyone outside the Court again. Secondarily - she was totally not going to patrol alone, at least not if she could help it. Maybe she could start taking Tantalus out with her, or drag Chariklo along, or Damocles - or just both boys, she could patrol with both of them. Or all of them. Groups were the best idea, right?
Still, there would be the problem of her broaching the subject to the people she wanted to work with. She was a little concerned about posing the possibility, but maybe they'd be amenable. She was pretty sure Arilee would be, at least, since keeping an eye on each other just sounded like a really, really good idea.
She heard the ding of the elevator, and a smile crossed her face. Finally, this was going to be over - even if only for her. Ali, she understood, had a few more days, since the doctors were concerned about the damage to his ribs and that it could lead, if they didn't heal properly, to dangerous internal injuries.
So she'd probably be in their apartment with just Arilee, which was a little bit of a weird prospect but not one she was all that opposed to.
Generally, she was just going to be glad to be going home.
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Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:03 am
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Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:04 am
 White Phoenix RisingAm massive group battle finally gives Amytis the chance to awaken her next form!
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Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 8:08 pm
What I've DoneAva meets Ari in the hospital, and learns a terrifying story.
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Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 2:42 pm
I May FallAmytis and Chariklo chat with a chibi senshi!
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 12:54 pm
Caged Bird Amytis hated being ambushed. It was terrifying and violent and left the Dark Mirror Super in a state of panic. Just when she had started maybe considering the Negaverse allies again -- here they were, ambushing her and dragging her to some strange half-built amusement park, to rot until someone came for her.
They wanted Chariklo. That was clear enough - and even potentially understandable, because Chari kept attacking their officers. Amytis was a little angry, though, or as angry as she got - because why did she have to end up in the middle of it? Couldn't they have just gone for their real target? Was all this luring and baiting and stalking necessary?
But mostly, mostly she was just scared, like she always was. Fear was her most constant and familiar companion, to the point that she had started ignoring her own discomfort with situations because surely it was just her being silly.
She was not being silly now. It was anything but silly to be afraid in the hands of the Negaverse - particularly in the hands of those who would kidnap a loved one, like out of some old comic serial, to lure out the golden shining hero in a battle he - she, in this case - just could not resist because saving the one she loves would always be more important than her own safety.
Amytis hoped, alternately, that she came as swiftly and as soon as possible, to sweep Amytis up and carry her out of this horrible prison, and that she never came at all, because if she did it might well spell her end.
There were so many officers - they alternated who was watching her, and that was the closest she had to keeping track of times. That, and when they fed her. The plan was to keep her alive, which was good for her, she supposed, because she very much did not want to die. She wanted, distinctly, to be rescued - and he she knew rescue asked too much. It put Chariklo in danger, it further strained relations...
Her deepest fear was that they would leave her. That Chari would not be allowed to come, because the lives of however many Dark Mirrors would be risked in saving her were worth more than her single one. And it would be a fair balance, because she was only one person, one girl in a Court of dozens with poor magic and no prospects to get stronger.
But Leto and Remarque - they were her friends. Surely they wouldn't abandon her. Surely the stretching out of days meant only that they were searching high and low, and she was just hidden particularly well.
They would come. They had to.
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:00 pm
Pathetic Rescue had come. All her fears had been proven unfounded, because Chariklo had descended upon the Negaverse like an angel of vengeance to come and carry her away - and it hadn't just been Chariklo. There had been so many others. All there to save her.
But it had not been perfect. Chari had been badly injured. So had she. So had...she didn't even know how many others. There was so much blood shed on that horrible roller coaster, and all of it was because she had been a fool and gotten herself captured. She had forced everyone to come save her, and in doing so had undoubtedly gotten people hurt.
Her worst fear was that she had gotten them killed, too, but as far as she knew no one had died there. That was a small consolation for her overall patheticness. At least no one's lifeblood was on her hands.
And why was it that that was the best she could say for herself? "Well, at least no one's dead because of me." She was the Senshi of Karma, of a powerful force that balanced the scales of the universe, that brought justice and fairness and ensured just rewards. And she was so weak and so pathetic. she was not in any way a fitting person to carry that mantle.
She was afraid, constantly, for herself and for everyone around her.
She was clingy and desperate.
She was too much, and not enough, and there was no balance.
And if she believed in her sphere, there was probably something terrible coming for her as a result of her abject failure. If she had only been smarter, or cannier, or more aware, she would never have been ambushed. If she had only been stronger, fought harder, had better magic, she would have been able to fight off the ambush.
If only she had been better, she would never have been captured, and Chari wouldn't be bruised and broken and she wouldn't be tending bloody, sliced-open feet.
If only she were better. But she wasn't. And she never would be. She was just too weak, and too frightened to even begin to improve. Learning how to fight was scary. Trusting her fear was even scarier, because it meant that she would almost undoubtedly be overwhelmed by it. It could swallow her up and consume her, and she would be left even more a wreck, even weaker and less useful.
She glanced over at Arilee, asleep and sleeping off her wounds.
If she was better, she wouldn't have to let the people she loved get hurt to save her.
But better was hard. Better was scary. And Amytis was so pathetic, she was too afraid to even try.
Instead she went into the bathroom, locked the door, and buried her face in her knees to cry.
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:33 pm
Alone Chariklo was purified.
Amytis wasn't sure if the news made her want to rejoice or cry. Could have been either, certainly. On the one hand, Chari was free. She no longer had Chaos in her soul, and she could finally get away from everything terrible about being under the Negaverse's grip.
But on the other, Chari was gone. Arilee was gone. She would have a whole new life, be a whole new person. And that broke Amytis's heart. They were engaged - didn't that mean they were supposed to spend their lives together? Weren't they supposed to make a commitment to each other?
But how could she begrudge Chariklo for following her heart, even if it took her far from Amytis's arms? She had no right to dictate that Chariklo had to stay in the Mirror with her, no right to say "wait for me." But oh, she wanted to. She wanted to tell Chariklo to come back, to wait until they could both go together, but it was far too late. The deed was already well and done.
Her greatest fear had always been being alone, abandoned by those she loved, and here it was, coming true. She was not important enough for Chariklo to stay in the Dark Mirror Court for; she wasn’t even worth being given a heads up when Chari was ready to leave.
It hurt, like a powerful, painful ache in her chest, that she was so utterly unvaluable. That there was something on the other side that Chariklo loved and wanted and needed so much that she would leave.
Leave and forget that Ava and Amytis were the same person, which made Amytis wonder what she thought, that she had loved two different people. Or was it more than two?
Was there someone else? Chari had seemed so happy to see her, but maybe...maybe the thing that was better over there was a person. One of those beautiful shining lights of Order, so glorious that Chariklo just needed to be by their side.
Maybe...maybe if Amytis made herself into that, she would be good enough. Maybe if she found a way to purify, to become a shining light instead of a sad pathetic weak creature, she would be good enough for Chariklo again. Good enough to be worth remembering and worth loving and worth waiting for.
She would just...have to find a way. That was all. There had to be something she could do, some way to make herself pure and clean and free. If she could, she would do whatever she had to in order to make it happen.
She needed to be with the woman she loved. Damn everything else.
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 10:48 pm
Hurt Amytis did not like powering up, but she had little other choice. She had to keep trying to help her Court, however little her heart was in it, because they needed her to do so. There were so few of them, and Mirrorspace needed as much energy as it could get, and so she wandered like a quiet ghost, draining people of a little snippet and then moving on, because what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t dare not drain, not give energy to her Court.
She couldn’t hurt the people that kept holding her up, even with Chariklo gone. They still cared about her, and wanted her to be okay, and she had to repay them somehow, even if it was just with the sweat of her brow and the energy she could skim.
But she couldn’t make herself work harder, put herself out there. Even the slightest feel of another aura - especially an Order aura, especially an Order Eternal’s aura, was enough to send her bolting in the other direction.
It meant a lot of ping-ponging around the city, avoiding any contact with any other powered people, because she was so afraid of seeing Chari, or someone who knew Chari, that she would rather patrol alone in the dark and the quiet.
But July 25th was not the night to be patrolling alone in the dark and the quiet, because that night, there was a radiating, agonizing pain in her starseed. It shocked her back to Earth when she had been drifting, but not in the way she wanted to be.
It hurt. She ached. And she was now even more afraid. What had happened to make her hurt that way?
There was only one place she could go - and so she took off like a shot for Alistair and Lance’s townhouse. As much as she wanted to be alone, being around them was comforting and safe, and she would be able to hide there for a while while she figured things out.
And besides, :ance was brave and strong, and Alistair was so clever, and surely between the two of them they would be able to figure out what had made her chest hurt like something was squeezing and pulling at her soul, her starseed. There had to be a reason, that sort of thing didn’t just happen. And she needed to know why.
That it was possible no one knew, that it was all in her head, was a possibility she considered briefly and refused to consider further, because it was terrifying. (Burt she couldn’t help but consider it. What if her disloyalty, her desire to purify, had somehow caused her to hurt?)
There was no time to think. All she could do was go to her friends and hole they had answers.
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Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 12:16 am
Lost When she had gone to Lance and Alistair’s, Lance had some terrible, terrible news.
Alistair was missing. That was a terrifying thought - and she knew Lance had some suspicions, but nothing even vaguely related to a willing disappearance made sense to her. Not Alistair, who had never so much as looked at anyone but Damocles with interest. At least, not that she had ever seen. Alistair didn’t seem the type to leave willingly, and the thought that he had purified - no, out of the question, at least in her mind. Even though she was considering it herself, and seeing everyone so worried and heartbroken over their missing loved ones made her feel guilty for having thought about it. She would be leaving them like this, too, just disappearing into the night.
Just like Chariklo had.
Just like Alistair surely never would.
So something had to be wrong, and she had bolted to start searching the city, because even if she had been avoidant, there were people she cared about and wanted to see safe. So she searched for Ida’s so-pure aura, for Order Eternals, for anything that might be Ida or Chariklo.
She wasn’t nearly as aggressive in her searching as Damocles, or as Mintaka, but she was still out there searching, because she needed to see them and know they were okay.
As the days ticked on, she realized that they probably were not. Her searching picked up, but there was neither hide nor hair of Chariklo or Ida, and she felt her heart sinking lower and lower each day.
Just like Tantalus, like Mintaka’s beloved Aurostbite, they were gone, lost to whatever was taking people off the streets. And she had no idea if they would ever come back. That was, she thought, the worst part of all - that maybe she had lost her chance, and they were gone forever, and she would never be able to spin in front of Chariklo in a new shining white fuku and prove to her fiancee how much she loved her.
But she held out hope. It was hard - she wanted so badly to give up and curl up on Lance’s couch and cry - but she kept forcing herself to hope. It was a big city, surely they were somewhere, she couldn’t check everywhere. Maybe they had gone to Ida, or to Chariklo, to explore, and they were just fine and having an adventure in outer space. Maybe they both weren’t powering up, for one reason or another.
Amytis was willing to tell herself anything at all, any silly little lie, other than “they’re gone forever.”
She just had to keep believing there was a chance for them to come home, and surely, surely one day they would.
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Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 12:51 am
Failure Once she got away from the park where she had met Snowball and Polaris - where Polaris had tried and failed to cleanse her of whatever terrible corruption had taken hold over her - Amytis collapsed in an alleyway and, even though she thought she had cried herself out there with the Princess she had dragged into her desperate scheme, she started crying all over again. It was like a second wind of horrible, terrible misery and guilt.
Nothing she did was working. She was trapped - doomed to stay in the mirror forever, separated from Chariklo and from all the wonderful friends she had made on the other side. Ida would come to hate her, surely, because she was a Chaos-tainted creature and she could be no better than a monster. Someday she would fall too far, and she would be just as bad as all those people in the Negaverse who had attacked her Court twice - once with her friends as bait and once with her.
It hurt. It hurt in ways beyond just the strange ache she had felt in her chest, the pain that wasn’t really pain and was certainly nothing like a cleansing of her soul. It hurt to know that she was condemned to be alone, all because of a choice she had made years ago without really knowing what she had gotten into.
When she had followed Remarque to the Black Mirror, she hadn’t ever thought she would want to get out. She certainly hadn’t thought that she might want to, because it had all seemed like such an amazing adventure, something wonderful and exciting and magical and new for her to explore. And it had been, at first.
But it hadn’t stayed magical for long.
And now all she wanted, more than anything, was to go back in time - to find an Order cat instead, to start free.
(But that wasn’t fair, if she had started Order she and Chariklo might never have met, never fallen in love. So she couldn’t say that she didn’t want any of it, because Chariklo was the reason she wanted so desperately to be free.)
She wondered if there was another way. Maybe if she got an officer to pull her starseed out of her chest and offer it to Polaris directly, it would work, because maybe there was something wrong with her that was preventing her from being purified. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation, because it was obviously possible.
Because it had happened to Chariklo.
So clearly it was her, she was the problem, not Polaris. She would have to figure out how to fix it.
And then she would find the Princess of Magnetism, and they would try again, and she would be free.
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Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 11:46 pm
Choices Avacyn went up to her guest room in Lance and Alistair’s beautful townhouse, shut the door, and, a little guiltily because this wasn’t really her space but she needed the quiet, locked it. She felt a dull ache in her chest, and for a moment, she wondered if it was related to her weeks-ago attempt at purification, but that didn’t make sense at all. No, it was probably her own guilt that made her hurt, because here she was, hiding in a house belonging to two other members of the Court, when she had just tried to leave it.
It felt horrible, to think about it. Because as much as she wanted to be with Chariklo, she also had her entire Court around her, and they didn’t deserve for her to run off and abandon them. Was it really what she wanted? Lance had advised against it, Fangite had too…
And it was true that if she made the choice to purify, she wouldn’t be Avacyn anymore. That was slightly frightening, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to give up everything she was. There was so much she would lose - her Court, her friends, her family. People that loved her, that relied on her.
That she relied on.
What would she do if she no longer had Lance’s solid reassurances, Alistair’s playful flirtation, Quinn’s snark, Jett’s incredible certainty and courage? How could she ever leave all that behind?
But how could she live without Arilee’s warmth, her gentle kisses, her love? Arilee had been the center of her world for so long that it felt so strange and empty to have her gone.
Even if -- well, whatever she chose, Arilee was gone. Chariklo still had her memories, but she would be a new person, with a new name, and maybe new friends and a new place and...so much that Avacyn would be trying to catch up to.
But surely she could make it work, couldn’t she? They could be together again, and it would be just like before, and everything would be okay.
Except it wouldn’t because no more Lance or Alistair or Mama or Shira or any of them. She would be all alone with no one but Chari and Ida and maybe Hugbell to guide her and help her become a whole new person. That was, truly, a terrifying thought. How was shew supposed to handle that? What was she supposed to do?
She had told Lance she would be down in a little bit to go back to hr place and collect some of her things, but that wasn’t true, because instead she curled into a ball and started sobbing all over again. It was all she could manage to do.
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Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:37 am
אני חושש לא רע Avacyn pushed open the gates of the tiny little cemetery, a pebble heavy in her pocket and gardening gloves tucked in her belt. The place was well-tended, but every time she visited, she brought gloves just in case, because she couldn’t bear the thought of weeds on her father’s grave.
This time, like always, it was clean, and there were two pebbles seated in front of the gravestone, which meant her mother and sister had likely been here recently. Avacyn exhaled, and sat down, placing her pebble next to the other two.
Eli Zak, it read.
“Oh, Papa, I don’t know what to do,” she said softly, reaching out to brush her fingers over the Star of David carefully engraved on the grave. “Arilee left me, but in...a strange way.” She swallowed. She had visited before, late at night with no one around, and spilled to the grave of her father the secret of her powered life, and it had felt uplifting and freeing because she had finally told some member of her family, even if it was only the one who was lost.
“She left the Court, too, which we thought no one could do.” Ava swallowed and sobbed, just a little. “And I don’t know what to do. I want to go after her, I want to find out how and then I can be with her again - but if I do, that means leaving everything else behind.” She swallowed. “I’d be...I’d be breaking my promise to you, Papa.” Because he had asked only one thing of her, and she had done everything she could for years to live up to it. “I wouldn’t be able to take care of Mama and Nissa anymore, because I’d have to be a whole new person. And I wouldn’t have my friends in the Court, because,” she sniffled, “they’ll...they’ll probably hate me for being a traitor.”
She curled up, and rested her chin on her knees. “I thought we were going to start a life together, you know? But...I thought that life would include the Court, and all our friends - our second family - in it. And now it...won’t.” Because, she realized, of Arilee’s choice, not hers.
Arilee or whoever she was now.
“I don’t even know what I’d call myself, Papa, I’m Avacyn, I’ve always been Avacyn - how could I pick a new name and give up great-grandma’s?” She sniffled, a little. “I wonder if I could just...keep it.” But that seemed like silly wishing. “I don’t know, Papa, I feel like there’s nothing I can do that will make me happy. If I stay, I lose Arilee...if I go, I lose everyone else.”
Balancing the scales, the choice seemed obvious, but her heart did not want to balance.
“I wish you were here, so I could talk to you.” She said, softly.
A light breeze ruffled her hair, and it felt - for a moment - comforting. She smiled, faintly, and then stood up.
“I’ll come back soon, Papa. And by then I’ll know.”
She would have to.
“Mizmor le-David. Adonai Ro'i, lo echsar
Bin'ot deshe yarbitzeini, 'al-mei menuchot yenahaleini
Nafshi yeshoveiv, yancheini ve-ma'gelei-tzedek le-ma'an shemo.
Gam ki-eilekh be-gei tzalmavet lo-'ira ra,
ki-attah immadi, shivtekha u-mish'antekha heimmah yenachamuni.
Ta'arokh lefanai shulchan neged tzorerai,
dishanta va-shemen roshi, kosi revayah.
Akh tov va-chesed yirdefuni kol-yemei chaiyai,
ve-shavti be-veit-Adonai le-orekh yamim.”
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Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:02 am
Hello, Friend Having gotten her things from the apartment she’d shared with Arilee made her little room in Alistair and Lance’s townhouse feel much more like home. It meant that she had everything she needed to curl up with a blanket and her laptop and chat away online while she continued to refuse to make a decision about whether to purify or not.
She had met the girl she was talking to - Namine, which was probably the most perfectly wonderfully accidentally nerdy name she had ever seen - through tumblr and fandom, and they had hit it off beautifully. It had become a regular occurrence to talk and text and chat all the time, and it was simply comforting to talk to a friend who had no involvement in her powered nonsense.
Namine had rushed to comfort her when she talked about her fiancee leaving, had been as good a friend as she ever could have asked for for someone who Avacyn had never met face to face.
(And if she was being totally honest, she’d seen a few pictures, and Namine was really, really cute. She’d never let the thoughts get very far, because she was with Arilee, and she wanted to be with only Arilee, but they were there.)
And now she had the best news possible - Namine had discovered that her half-brother was in Destiny City, and she wanted to come find him. Which meant that she was coming to DC, where Ava was, and they could finally meet in person. The thought delighted her, and she almost wanted to get up and dance with joy.
Having a normal friend, someone not touched by all of this, would be so much easier. She wouldn’t have to worry about if Namine would change sides and disappear, or if she was secretly an enemy, or any of that, because she was coming from somewhere else where this bullshit didn’t happen.
And the move sounded pretty permanent - she’d talked about enrolling in school, packing up all her things, what a big deal this was going to be for her. It all sounded so wonderfully, delightfully final - like she really meant to settle in DC, not just visit for a week or a few months even.
How could Ava be anything but excited? She had so few friends who weren’t in the Court - surely someone new would be good for her.
That was how it would work, right? They would meet face to face and it would be just as good as it had been online, and they would hit it off perfectly, and Namine would stay in Destiny City.
And everything would be just perfect.
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Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:59 pm
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