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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats

You find yourself at the theatre.

You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.

There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.

A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

Observer’s Overture

First Movement in E Minor

adagio, con dolore
PP

Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.

Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.

vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P

The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.

Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.

Opera Infernale

Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)

chorale concerto a tutti, con affetto

F

Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.

segue

Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.

segue

On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.

CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor

There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him.

Ensemble's Lament

Third Movement in G Minor

bocca chiusa
PPP

There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.

pesante

Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.

declamando, letando

There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.

The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…

freddo, pietoso

Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.

Reprise - Observer’s Overture

Fourth Movement in E Major

impetuoso
FF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.

presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.

Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.

Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.

The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.

Homeward Aria

Fifth and Final Movement in C Major

tiempo di fanfara, vittorioso
F

When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.

It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.

enfatico, mancando poco a poco

| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |

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The first tomahawk flies. The first Connecticut disappears. And yet CT staggers back, mouth ajar with silent agony that blooms across her ribcage like a stain that will never come out. (It feels just the way that she remembers.)

Tick.

She does not know if it's under her own power that a hand reaches out into the shadow-drowned space between them, as if pleading for mercy she knows won't come. One last indulgence in the idea of a world fairer than it is, of a dream she once had where she saw a way to survive and felt joy.

This is not that dream.

Tick.

The second tomahawk flies.

Tick.

Every well-worn regret flashes in front of her eyes all over again. Every flash of rage and hurt and longing and guilt. The authentic experience, drawn up from the deep maw of unhealed wounds back to the surface like spilling blood.

Tick.

The blade strikes. The clock stops. That it is not real does not make the pain any less tangible, does not make the way it settles into the cavernous old wound any less exact. The force throws her across the stage so hard she hits a set wall that she does not remember being there and collapses, pitifully, to her hands and knees where she chokes on the feel and taste of blood that is not really there.

You deserve this.

Tears blot out the bits of the world that aren't yet black and pool on the floor beneath her shaking form.

It doesn't feel like an act.

Connecticut hits the ground with a bodily thud, ribs yawned like double doors where she's struck. The wound isn't real, of course; it doesn't need to be.

In the absence of stage ribbon, Carolina's mind draws from memory. A solid splatter like red paint thrown against a wall. Unlike anything she's ever witnessed in combat. The smell of it is so immediate she's certain she'll be sick.

The audience draws collectively backward as the stage is drowned in red light. CT crumples. Carolina wants to rush for her and finds she cannot move a muscle. (Not until the lights come down and the actors have fulfilled their purpose). Dancer's grace is let like old blood from her foe's invisible wound. This doesn't feel dancing anymore. This is something else. Something cruel, ugly, grounded in reality.

She stands triumphantly above CT. She is Texas. She is Allison. She's the perfect agent and soldier and killer enveloped in midnight armor. She is their shared reckoning. A hero.

They're posed like this for sixty seconds. There's a moral here, maybe; a fight with Texas is a fight with Death. Something you'd see on an old Western poster.

Then the lights come down. Not the easing into death one wishes for, but an immediate, jarring and all-encompassing darkness. So complete that for a moment Carolina is blinded. Her body caves under the weight of exhaustion but she doesn't let herself fall.

There's no applause. Why would there be?

No one is here to drag her broken body from the ground and carry her off in a too-late attempt at escape, this time. Connie can only kneel there, arms shaking and every breath a painful ordeal, and wait. That's okay. It's no worse than lying in that escape pod, alone, bleeding out drop by drop until she was cold and numb, drowning in grief and crimson alike.

It's familiar. It could never have ended any other way.

The lights cut out. Darkness consumes the stage, the shadow swallowed up once more in the black tapestry from which it was cut and freeing CT from the strings that hold her in place. She collapses to the stage with a muted clatter, the costume too lacking to match the cacophony that of the real thing colliding against itself.

She can't find the strength to push herself back up.

There's a hustle of bodies behind the massive black curtain. Demon stage hands whose form takes no more complex a shape than silhouette. All that's needed are feet to walk upon and hands to move, pulling the prop wall back into a recess behind stage, clearing the light filters in time for the next performance. And of chief importance; banishing the dead act so that new players may be tormented. This isn't real. This isn't real. The blood scent in her nose isn't real and Connecticut is alive across stage.

She won't let herself fall.

The world sways.

She won't.

Carolina's knees buckle. She drops to one knee, hand pressed against the stage and forcing herself upright. Her limbs take on the weight of a Pelican. She teeters the way an old building does before it comes down in a cloud of dust and debris. Her brain is torpid, functioning far beneath its usual standard.

Cold, disembodied hands latch under her arms and begin to force her off-stage.

The same hands grope CT senselessly, dragging her.

A savage growl tears through Carolina's throat. They don't know her. They have no grace in the way they slip fingers under false armor, in the way they yank. This isn't real. Connecticut is alive and this isn't real and no matter how many times she tells herself this she can't swallow down the panic. Carolina shoulders furiously out of the collective's grip and staggers her way toward Connecticut.

"Get the hell away from her—"

Cold, disembodied hands dig like points of pure pressure against her skin through the flimsy undersuit, painful in the way that only unwanted touch ever can be. The illusory agony of the show's climax has faded to a dull, almost-ignorable thrum but those *hands*—

CT winces, hisses, but struggles to find the strength to pull herself out of their grip. Scrambles, clumsily, to get her feet under her as they pull her up from the ground to take her away.

Her head lifts at the sound of the anger in Carolina's voice. Wet eyes and blood-stained upper lip and brow furrowed as much in confusion as in pain.

Present bleeds into the past.

Get the—

—hell—

—are you doing?!

Connecticut is her responsibility.

Her teammate, friend. Her responsibility. No one else's. Not the demon's, not Texas's, not her father's. Her efforts to bring Connecticut in alive were squandered by no one's faults but her own. And for days York trailed piteously behind her, the caretaker to some haphazardly pieced-together thing, keeping himself awake while she trained herself to exhaustion. Not your fault, he'd say. You did what you could.

It is my fault.

I couldn't beat her to—

These things don't always have to be a competition, Carolina.

She punched him in the face for that.

It wasn't the competition that mattered. Why did everyone think it was the fucking competition that kept her on the training floor all night?

One last snarl sends demon hands scattering. They place themselves elsewhere, fussing with stage dressings and pulling curtains, leaving Carolina to the task. She tucks both hands beneath CT's arms and lifts her, mustering every bit of strength she can to carry her backstage. Someone points, says something she can't hear. Through a door labeled Green Room.

Part of her thinks she should fight this just as much as she had wanted to fight the spectral hands. After what just happened—after everything that happened—she should struggle and squirm and strike out, demand to be be allowed to move under her own power no matter how little of it she feels like she has to spare for it.

She doesn't do that. She accepts the help, no matter how begrudgingly. She lets herself be hauled through another set of doors to another space—not quiet like the pod, bustling with activity as the next acts as prepared.

Somebody else is hustled out onto the stage. A new song tailored to their troubles will start soon, she's sure.

The thread of compulsion feels weaker, now, though not absent. This place is not done with her yet, but there may be a brief reprieve. Time to try and get herself under control. Time to get out of this damn costume—

Carolina hasn't even let her go by the time she's trying to strip the damn thing off, frustrated sounds spilling into frustrated tears she's trying so desperately not to be seen crying.

A demon's insatiable appetite for suffering draws new players from the Green Room. Plenty remain, half in costume with faces in tear-streaked makeup, knowing what's to come and unable to do anything to stop it. They pay no attention to the dead act. Carolina supposes she should be thankful for this. She isn't.

She breathes in double-time, trying and failing to get a hold of herself. But her skin feels wrong against her counterfeit kevlar and her eyes don't work right and she longs for the simple pleasure of hurling her fist into something hard and cruel and why, why do they have to be living this moment again? Was one time not enough? Is death not a satisfactory punishment?

Carolina settles with knees on either side of her, focus bordering on freneticism. She probes fingers under the bulky chassis of CT's armor to free her of it, clips coming away with individual snaps. The cheap abdominal shell separates and clatters onto the floor.

Her chest heaves like she's run a marathon, but the suit beneath the plating is unblemished and intact where once upon a time it would've been split and slick with red. The ache is still there, more phantom pain now than even straightforward illusion born of this place's magic. Doesn't matter how long she's lived since that day, she'll always remember how it hurt.

She yanks off her own gauntlets and pauldrons without fanfare—sharp, serviceable yanks that throw them aside no less noisily.

Then she pushes, almost pitifully, at Carolina to clear her own space, to give herself room to breathe, to rein it in, stop fucking crying goddammit it wasn't real and you are better than this—

"Fuck this—" comes out aimlessly, scattershot bitterness. Her voice is raw like she's only now remembering how it works. "F-Fuck all of this—"

Carolina doesn't object. She knows how important space can be and is no stranger to demanding it herself; 'leave me alone' a common, often strained exhalation she'd wield at York's throat. Sometimes all it took was a look. She slept a little better, those nights.

Falling back onto her shins, she gets to work. Rips the flimsy gloves from her hands first so that she can dig her nails under the little plastic notches keeping the thing together. CT curses. Makes a valiant attempt to stifle her crying into something more akin to involuntary straining. A physical response as opposed an upheaval of emotion. It might have worked on someone, but not her.

"Is this—" her nail scrabbles against a plastic notch, "—Is this what you people get up to every month?—"

It doesn't unlatch.

Unbelievable.

Useless.

She can't run fast enough. Can't fight efficiently enough. Can't save her teammate— her one job as an Officer and now she can't even fit her nail under a little plastic flap. She'll be stuck in this godawful costume forever. Proof of her inadequacy, like an animal with its head stuck in a jar.

Rage spill out from every pore, through every fiber in every muscle and in one swift motion Carolina slams the heel of her hand against her side. Her costume armor cracks.

Absurdly, it's Washington's voice that echoes in her mind, asking without any genuine sense of genuine inquisition: are we even sure Texas can take her armour off?

It almost makes her laugh, hysteric and humourless, but the sound doesn't make it past the back of her throat before morphing into a bitter sob that she swallows just as quickly.

(CT never did find out for certain, one way or another.)

"W-Welcome to living in a bubble overseen by demons," she says, grabbing at her own codpiece until the clasps pop. "Sometimes— they kidnap us into a second bubble to s-screw with us even more."

Toes against heel, she kicks at the back of one of the boots until it starts coming apart.

Heaving, Carolina throws open her chest-piece and flings it across the Green Room. It splices through a stagehand demon on the way, who rematerializes as if nothing's happened. The mere sight of it sends her over the edge. Floating stupidly with costume in hand, an accomplices to the torture they're all being put up to. No better, no smarter, no stronger-willed than the most basic military drones. The sort who follows... orders... to a fault.

"Shut up." She demands. It hasn't spoken a word.

Her vambraces go flying. A dull, unsatisfying fwoosh as they cut through the phantom a second and third time.

The bitter, strangled sob from Connecticut gives her pause. She looks at her, mid-wrestle. Looks away. Looks at her again and feels the skin across her back ripple with chill. There's something awful about this— not the noise but hearing the noise. Her being here in the first place.

Anger's easier. Say the right words, rest hand on shoulder. Camaraderie, applied like a balm. Anger like South's requires a heavy hand. No bullshit. Others, like York's— rarer but one she's nevertheless experience, a gentler means.

She's never been much use with crying. Recalls, like a photo-flash, the handful of times she's walked in on ballet mates, their faces red, their throats ran-ragged, their feet bleeding in little shoes. And her, never knowing what to say. Staring, like an idiot.

"Great. That's just the kind of—" another grunt as shin guards come undone. "—vacation I was looking for." She can't quite fashion her voice into the flatness she requires from herself. It breaks often, panic and indignant rage licking up her throat, sour. "We're— getting the hell out of this room. I can't stand those things—"

CT has no argument against that, no more desire to stay in this space than Carolina does. Resents the omnipresence of the demonic things that push and prod and pull at their next victims. Can't bare to look at those victims, doesn't want to know who'll be on stage soon, who's worst days are due to be put on display for everyone to see.

(Doesn't want to think about how many people may have seen her own. Doesn't want to imagine the eyes on her, watching the twisted version of her final moments play out for what feels like the thousandth time.)

"Stopping this shit h-happening is kind of the goal, Carolina," she does snap as she kicks off the remains of the first boot and then twists her leg up so she can grab the other and yank it off. Throwing the pieces aside, she moves to the shin then thigh guards and pushes herself up to her knees as soon as they're gone. "It's just— taking a while."

(Though, distantly, beneath the exhaustion and horror, she feels that today is going to lunge them ahead another step—just not on their terms. Aster's plan must be in motion, if Efrain has them sequestered like this...)

She tries to stand. Her legs shake and she catches herself back on her knees.

They must look ridiculous, fighting their stage armor like ungrateful children pulling off itchy sweaters, hurling each piece across the room in their umbrage. She can hardly think for how desperately she needs it gone, anxiety swept to the wayside and replaced by gunfire-rhythm: off off off off off off off—

If this is what it means to fill the dearth her mother left behind— by reprising Texas's bad deeds— she doesn't want it.

Black doesn't suit her, anyway.

It caves her chest in like an old tomb.

Guilt's black shadow clinging to her limbs, fettering her.

Carolina shakes off the last few pieces and makes her way toward Connecticut. Wonders again (lied awake night after night, playing and re-playing the scene, this isn't new, not in the slightest. She could recall that bunker like the back of her hand. Every move, every reaction) what might have happened if only she'd made it in time. She'd shoulder any punishment the Director or Counselor hurled her way for interrupting Texas. Likes to think so, at least.

"Taking a while," Carolina repeats, doesn't argue. Not the time. She nears Connecticut and rests one hand on her back, slips another under her armpit and heaves her to standing. Her own knees wobble. You will not fall. You will not fall.

She doesn't fall.

"You have an offense, then? A plan?"

She stumbles a little even after Carolina drags her up to her feet, but she steadies herself as she steps away and rolls her shoulders like she's shaking something off.

"We have ideas."

Not the same thing as an actual plan, not even close. They still don't have enough information for that, nor enough power behind them to push a plan ahead even if they did. They have ideas, theories, next steps to lead into next steps, and the most concrete of those are things she holds in confidence. Things she couldn't tell Carolina if she wanted to.

Doesn't want to keep talking about it here, either. Not with the eyes of the stagehands and the performers still too close. For now, their limbs and minds are their own, and whilst CT doesn't trust that to last she'll take what they can get. Time to get the hell out of this room.

Her legs still don't really want to cooperate and the fake undersuit is uncomfortable, but good enough to keep her decent for now without having to figure out what the hell happened to the clothes she arrived in.

Move. Out the doors. Assume Carolina will follow her.

Ideas, she's come to learn, mean absolutely nothing. Ideas are the wet kindling to an unsuccessful fire. Ideas are words to put on paper then neglect in practice. A state of the art scientific endeavor, with one goal in mind: to ensure the security of humanity in a harsh and violent galaxy; the idea on paper. In execution; a poor attempt to Frankenstein a dead woman.

Ideas are the meaningless blather her Sim Soldiers toss around over canned meals.

She's hardly confident in her own idea-making. (Maybe those idiots killed a few of her braincells.) Find the Director, easy in theory. Kill the Director, easy in practice. She can kill anyone— maybe not Texas, but she could kill him. Soft, pliable, no defense training. A sitting duck.

Did her fellow Freelancers have any of their own ideas after deserting? And how quickly did they fall apart?

Ideas are worthless. Action is what they should be relying on.

"That's promising."

She follows Connecticut out through the doors, holding her own a little better than her companion (then again she isn't the one who'd died on stage, now is she?) She prepares to catch CT should she fall, and otherwise focuses on scanning the dark and narrow channels they pass through.

Her voice probes over CT's shoulder. "You know where you're going?"

CT huffs dismissively. "Not at all."

Like so many of the demons' tricks, the space they've been transported into is nowhere they've ever been before and she lacks any frame of reference for a theatre like this. Resol wasn't without performance spaces, the human inclination toward creativity can never be entirely washed away, but they could never be so large, so extravagant. And so CT just walks, without a destination in mind except away from the stage.

Every few steps, her hand goes to the wall for support.

"One of the demons— was already killed," she explains, gesturing loosely with her other hand. Her voice is hushed. "It happened months ago, after another big display. I wouldn't be surprised if this ends the same way."

Hell, she'd be surprised if it didn't. Aster has to be ready for this. Based on everything he told Valdis, he's not going to get a better window to make his move against Efrain.

"B-But until something happens— most of us are stuck as playthings. Not everyone was on stage, so— there must be other roles. Somewhere."

"That's fine. I'm happy with any amount of distance we put between ourselves and that stupid room." Carolina throws a look over her shoulder, not entirely convinced she won't be pulled back in for another performance. Made to dance in garish costume for strangers' eyes while her pride is strangled to death.

No, she won't have it. She'll be ready this time. She'll swallow down song and stiffen limbs to kill the dance— easy. Anything can be made easy if she's the one doing it.

CT stops. So does Carolina. Never let a wounded or otherwise incapacitated teammate straggle at the rear.

"We're a diversion." She says disdainfully. Sconce light whips orange across her features, vanishes. "All this killing is in the best interest of who, exactly?"

"Not quite." She breathes, heavy, through gritted teeth. It's psychosomatic, it has to be—her stupid brain latching onto the magical recreations of the feelings from so long ago and refusing to let go. Trauma response. Inconvenient. "Efrain— he would've done this anyway. The Princes love big displays of power like this, it feeds their domains, but— it does distract them."

Mendel with his grand display at the gala, throwing everyone into madness and disarray, not expecting the attack from Jean as he sat ugly waiting and swallowing up everyone's suffering. Now Efrain, conductor of his own miserable opera, drowning in sorrow just the way he likes, not expecting Nimona to come for his throat.

She starts walking again.

"Aster— wants his brothers dead, it's some... right of ascension thing. The others probably want him dead, too, he's just—" wince, groan, "he's just been the most proactive about it. I-In the short-term, less demons is probably better for us, long-term— long-term I don't know."

Aster has his plans. Plans she can't share because they were, again, told to her in confidence by Valdis. If they want to avoid being stuck in a hell run by Aster alone, they need to get the barrier down.

"Just like our alien friends back home," Carolina grunts, splicing a stretch of cobweb that would have veiled her face. She isn't in the mood to be a bride right now. "We get swept up into their game without any clue what the hell is actually going on. Not until we're staring it in the face. Or dead." Or both. Does this count as both? No; they're walking and that's all the proof-of-life she needs.

Still, shaking off the black tendrils of their performance is... difficult. The original memory not easily shunted in her mind— unsurprising. She continues forward and watches CT sway, hunch, catch herself on the wall. Struggle to shape herself into the sturdy soldier she'd like to be in this and every moment. Not a soldier, but a bag of bones and blood and stunted breath smacking loudly against the wall.

And her, the shadow who would have chased CT even after she'd dealt the killing blow. Carolina looks down and is dizzied at the sight of herself, black faux-kevlar taking on new meaning.

Her stomach tosses. Dread, the rare kind where she knows a mission will fail before their boots touch soil. "I don't like the sound of him. Whatever he's aiming for, he won't stop once he has it. They never do. And you can't go making alliances without considering the consequences when the enemy's gone—" Careful, a quiet voice. You're scolding again. "—If what he's promised turns out to be a sham, who's going to stop him? There'll be no one left. Anyone that proactive about power is bad news."

Their stuffy corridor branches out venously, darker and darker the further they move from the stage, and deliberately so. The building— wherever, whatever it is— seems fitted to deter restless audiences back into their seats.

One door leads into a rehearsal room, mirrors constituting the walls from floor to ceiling.

Another draws wanderers up a metal spiral staircase to a catwalk.

Some doors lead nowhere. Others lead everywhere, their insides incomprehensible to non-demon eyes, causing terrible nausea.

Sharply, sharper than she means to: "I haven't made any alliances with demons, Carolina. These are— observations. Information. I-I couldn't stop him or anyone who decides to take his deals if I tried."

Even Valdis considering making a deal with him that would, in theory, buy them time sets her teeth on edge, nerves assuaged only by Valdis's honestly about the whole affair. Cerrit having made a deal with Aster long before she even arrived in town was enough to shatter her faith in him entirely, once he was finally able to admit he'd done it.

She cannot stop people making deals with the devil. Sometimes, it may even be genuinely useful. But she doesn't like it.

Another heavy breath. She leans against the wall again and watches Carolina pull open another door, a bitter laugh at the back of her throat. Of course this place isn't any easier to navigate than the damn gala was.

"But the demons— they know everything. A-And I mean everything. We still haven't found a blindspot."

"All I'm trying to say is—" She stops, finds the right words (if there's any to be had), "—one person's decision affects everyone. You're involved with the police here, right? So you have some kind of say in how they conduct business."

A beat.

"I know you have no problem questioning authority, CT." There isn't a hint of malice in her voice. She's perfectly mild— mostly. It'll take a good day or two to shake the tremor from her throat. "If your team decides it's time to start shaking hands with demons, bail. I doubt they'll find that blindspot anytime soon."

She clasps her fingers around a doorknob and swings it open, met by racks upon racks of garish costumes. Dust scent wafts in the air. Half the selection is moth-eaten. She fights a sneeze.

"Come on— there's a door through here."

"I know what I'm doing, boss," the word comes with the precision sharpness of a stiletto blade angled up beneath the xiphoid process, thrust with all the force she can muster. "I know the situation a damn sight better than you do. I-I'm just struggling to articulate myself because I just died in front of an entire fucking audience of people."

Maybe not really. Maybe her lungs never stopped drawing air and her heart kept pounding in her chest. Maybe it was just a show. But that doesn't feel like it matters, right now. The feeling is the same.

Deep breath in. She pushes herself up from the wall again and her nose wrinkles against the dust creeping past the doorway.

"How many costumes do they need..."

Carolina's face hardens. Her lips part in a retort her brain hasn't pieced together yet— something like watch your tone or you think I don't realize that? or I'm not enjoying this either— but in the end she falters and says nothing.

Difficult to come by, that silence. It's the pot of gold at the end of South's rainbow. The weakness Leonard Church feasts upon. Silences from Agent Carolina are typically followed by stiff kicks to the groin that'll land you in the ICU. If you're spared that torture, expect a verbal burn to the second or third degree. Silence, the atmospheric tremor as a bomb plummets toward the ground.

Silences like these are of the rarest sort. The sort that ends in nothing.

Shame stirs deep and repressed in Carolina's stomach. She wants to empty it like an old canteen. Toss it aside and forget it entirely. Leave it half caked in dirt. Chin and sternum touch as she shoulders her way into the room.

"Lotta costumes for a lotta people. This stuff is filthy..."

Tawdry coats make up tawdry battalions at either side, three dozen rows thick. They stand in wait. Wait. Wait. With slack arms ready to animate at the slightest disturbance. Somewhere, a moth prattles. She tries not to touch anything.

Carolina squeezes between cotton rows, taking the lead. "Careful."

It's just clothes, CT almost says, but the words hang unspoken at the back of her throat instead, like saying them will invite the room to prove her wrong. Nothing in a demon's domain has to be what it seems.

She's used to treading light. Even in her state, head spinning and body aching like she's shaking off old injuries, she knows how to make as little noise, disturb as little of her environment, as possible. Stay steady. Don't touch anything.

"I just wish I knew how long this is going to go on before— whatever happens happens."

The playbill was impossibly long, so many performances to come—but how many will get to happen, before the true final act takes place? How long do they have to wait for something to give, for this to end?

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