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It was easier to run. Laudna was well practiced at it. Twenty eight years fleeing torches and pitchforks taught her to anticipate all the signs of danger and turn tail before the flames could ever lick her heels. And with years of practicing its opposite, she let her courage atrophy. Oh sure, she had a false type of courage when it came to Imogen or the rest of the Bells Hells. She could summon something very like courage when it was in service of others. But now Imogen didn’t want her or need her, and Laudna was scared.
She wanted to run. She thought briefly on the bow of the ship that she might just leap off and cast feather fall before splatting on the ground. Start walking until she found a caravan and scavenge off their leavings. But two years of happiness with Imogen made the prospect far drearier than she remembered it being. And happiness had given her a slight bit more courage than that feral need to survive.
She gathered scraps of courage while Imogen slept in their bed. Every trace of kindness she’d been shown, every moment that might be interpreted as love. She wove it together and wrapped it around herself, a gauze thin shawl to armor against the sword of Imogen’s hate, and when they next had a moment together, she begged the question
“So—?”
“No.”
That courage evaporated. She miscalculated. She equated proximity to forgiveness, as if her falsehoods could be forgiven once exposed. False life. False control. False promise.
It did not matter that she was not the one who broke Imogen’s pretty rock. It was her hand, and the evil that dwelled inside her. So she would run. She promised to run if she was ever a danger to Imogen. It was a promise Delilah would find difficult to break. Just as soon as she was certain the Bells Hells wouldn’t bother Imogen about her disappearance and further injure the girl with their prying.
She took the floor of their room when they laid down at the Raha Den, same as she took the floor last night in the sky ship. She wasn’t sleeping. Certainly, she’d slept in worse places than the dry floor of a warm and comfortable room. But she was cold without Imogen. She was cold at her core, and she pitied the living girl for dealing with her frigid corpse for two years.
Laudna stroked Pâté on his beak, thought good night and sweet dreams to him as she tucked him into the little house Chetney built, took a scratchy and ill-fitting cloak off its hook on the door, and then ventured out. She was in dire need of a drink. And perhaps, if she drank enough, it would get Delilah drunk as well. If that wretched bitch lived in her brain, a loose tongue would affect them both. Get her talking and find a way to drive her out. If she could find some answers, maybe she wouldn’t have to run after all.
Or maybe, if the answers were bad enough, she’d just ask the rest of the Hells to kill her. If she could be puppeted so easily, manipulated into hurting her oldest, dearest friend, she did not deserve this second life.
Laudna growled at the thought and got a growl returned from a musclebound katari wearing a coat made more of knives than leather.
“Fuck off, try-hard!” drawled Ashton from a low lit corner of the bar she’d wandered into. Still in the same place the Bells Hells had left him after he directed them to the Raha Den. Ashton raised their beer to her and grinned madly at the katari. “She’s scarier than ten of you.”
Laudna brightened at their compliment, then turned her gaze to the katari. She tugged the hood of her cloak down and slipped into an unsettling presence, felt her teeth grow long and splinter down to the gums, then waggle like living needles from her wide smile. The katari paled under their short fur and quickened their pace to find some other target. Ashton laughed and she glided across the room to sit amongst the cushions at the table they’d claimed.
“Drink?” he asked.
“Oh yes. Several.”
Ashton barked an order for a few rounds of shots to be brought over, and Laudna placed a gold piece in the attending palm. The waiter, a dark eyed human woman, small enough to suspect some halfling ancestry, nodded curtly and spirited away.
“What’d I tell you about flashing gold in Bassuras?” he chided.
“Maybe I wouldn’t mind a fight,” Laudna mused before throwing back the first shot. The liquor, warm and brown and syrupy, coated her throat on the way down. It tasted of fried banana and rum, and it burned with a marvelous warmth when it reached her gut. She held up the second shot and eyed it with gleeful suspicion. “One could be quite irresponsible with something so delicious.” She downed the second shot, then reached for a third. Ashton stopped her hand, took two to keep up, then held his third out to clink their glasses together.
“Bad night?”
“Oh yes,” she grumbled as she polished off the glass. “Several.”
They grunted in sympathy.
“Same?”
“Fuckin’ hate this town.”
She hmmed and accepted a taller glass of something cool and light green as the waiter came back by. “You were impaled, earlier.” An entire harpoon had gone through their shoulder when their skyship jumped into the air. She remembered laughing at it, then a twinge of shame at seeing everyone else’s concern for him and she remembered to fear for Ashton’s life. The liquor was already creeping its way around her brain. It was supposed to be a relief from the day, but it settled heavily into sorrow and weighed her to it, replaying her own laughter as something vile and malicious. Yet another fucked-up misstep from her fucked-up brain.
“Yeah, thanks.” Their sarcasm was wicked tonight. They rubbed at the spot FCG had healed beneath their jacket and winced. “I almost forgot.”
“I didn’t mean to imply I wanted you to bleed out. I was only curious. I’ve never seen anyone die that way.” She took a sip of the new drink and found it strangely grassy, in a refreshing sort of way. It kicked on the back end, and Ashton thwacked her across the back as she coughed through it. She crumpled forward. They cussed and caught her and apologized, and she righted herself, slotting the bones of her spine back together as quickly as they’d tumbled apart.
“You okay?”
“Only as wrong as I’ve ever been,” she said with a wry grin. “I tend to get my reactions wrong when it comes to mortal peril.”
Ashton scoffed. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Ashton. I like you, and you’ve been… not angrier here. But you’ve been putting on an angrier face. Playing up that side of yourself. I want you to know that I care about you.” She smiled and hoped it looked sincere, but the liquor knocked her confidence and she could feel how disjointed she must look. Jerky movements, strange smile. No matter how she held herself, she always looked a little dead.
They huffed. “I’m not playing up anything. I’m as Bassuras as they come. Wretched hive of scum and villainy; all of that.”
Laudna rolled her eyes. “You can’t fool me with the scary act. I’ve been at longer than you’ve been alive.”
Ashton’s lip curled in distaste. “How long have we known each other? Weeks? This isn’t a mask. This is the mask slipping.”
She narrowed her eyes at the beautiful genasi and counted her argument against them. “You checked in on me after that terrible fight with the slug mother. Do you know how many people asked if I was alright before that day?” She waggled two long fingers at him. “Imogen, and Pâté. It might not have been much to you, but people don’t check on me unless they come with pitchforks. You are never going to convince me you’re a bad person, because you were good to me.”
They glared down into their cup, and a flash of red glinted deep beneath the glass in their head. “Sounds like you’re easy to manipulate.”
The word gripped her heart. Manipulated like a puppet, to hurt her only friend. Laudna darkened and ice gathered at the tips of her fingers. She dispelled it furiously, before she could fling it at Ashton’s head. “So I’m a puppet, then. Fine! You were kind to a puppet, and it doesn’t fucking matter what a puppet thinks of you.”
Ashton stiffened and held up his hands. “Woah! That is not what I said. I just…” He glared hard at Laudna with his good eye, then flicked to a place beyond her shoulder, clocking the missing violet haired shadow. “You and Imogen are fighting.”
“I could never fight her.” She pulled at her hair, lifted it high and let it fall in a curtain over her face. A place to hide. “I… I fucked up. I let that evil woman living in my head hurt her.”
They grunted and took a long pull off their drink. Laudna felt her heart stutter as she waited for Ashton to decide the evil in her was too much to deal with, but he only asked, “did you apologize?”
“Profusely.”
“Well, what more can you do?”
“I could leave,” she whispered, and brushed a black tear away before it had the chance to fall. “I can’t be a danger to her.”
Ashton sucked his teeth. “Naw.” They reached out for her, mouth open like they needed to say more, then hung there, hand hovering over her long fingers. “Look, I’m not good with people shit. Letters is better at this. Do you want me to get Letters?”
She bared her teeth in a false smile and fell further into the cushions.
“What’s wrong with Letters?”
“Nothing. Nothing! I love FCG, but they… they seem put a lot of stock into souls? And the status of mine is rather suspect.” She chewed a sharp nail to keep herself distracted. She hadn’t felt so empty since Imogen came into her life. And all it took was a day without the warm light of Imogen to make her confront the darkness and void at her core. “I don’t think I could bear it if FCG looked in my head and found nothing but a dead rat and an evil old necromancer.”
“I think there’s more to you than that.” They grasped her hand, sturdy stone fingers warmer than she expected in the cool night air. He didn’t look at her, focused instead on the dim lights overhead, twinkling against a dusty mosaic. In a soft voice, as if they were afraid to speak it aloud, Ashton said “I’d miss you if you left.”
Laudna squeezed his hand with all her feeble strength and leaned a little into them. “I don’t want to. I’m just so scared of hurting her.”
“Doesn’t sound like an evil necromancer to me.”
“Or a dead rat?”
They laughed. “Maybe the dead rat. But he’d be hornier about it.” Ashton looked her over, and found Pâté missing. “You’re alone tonight.”
She nodded and the motion sent her head swimming. “I was hoping to confront only one voice in my head tonight.” She looked down at the glass. “Someone drank all my green stuff.”
Ashton took the glass from her and found her something else. She peered down into the cool clear liquid as if it might hold the secret to driving Delilah out of her head. “I thought I could get the bitch drunk and find out what she’s planning. What she wanted with Imogen’s rock.”
“Well, one of you is drunk.”
“Hm?” she looked up from the glass. “This is delicious.”
“It’s water.”
“Lovely.” She held out the glass like she was going to give its eulogy, then forgot what she was doing and set it back down. She settled for a moment and searched her mind. Sifted through cobwebby corners and found it empty of Delilah. She wondered how much of herself was only an extension of the woman. If a poor farmgirl from Whitestone would speak so archingly. If her magic never should have gone beyond those simple and shadowy repairs. Ashton waved his hand in front of her eyes, and she woke again to his presence. “I think my plan has gone to pot.”
“Your necromancer isn’t talking?”
“I’m starting to wonder if I’m actually a person, and not just a shade of her.”
“That sounds like alcohol talking.”
Laudna bared her teeth and let them grow a little longer, let her eyes sink deeper into her skull. “Who could say, Ashton?” Shadows gathered around her and split her voice into slithery cackling laughter. “Maybe this isn’t even my real voice!”
“Alright.” He pressed the glass back into her hand and prompted her to drink.
She did so obligingly and thanked them for the direction. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this pickled,” she said in wonderment at the array of empty drinks before them.
“Well, you’re about as sturdy as a wet kleenex.”
She tossed back the last of her water then frosted the glass for good measure. “Fuck you, I’m unkillable!”
Ashton flagged the waiter back to bring them more water, a pitcher, and a bite to eat.
“Not hungry,” soused Laudna.
“You will be.”
She pressed another two gold into the waiter’s palm and pretended not to see the way the woman flinched when she smiled.
“Again, don’t show gold in Basuras,” Ashton grumbled, low.
“I can take care of myself, Ashton.”
He scoffed. “I don’t know if you can stand right now.”
She did so, majestically, to prove him wrong, and only slightly stumbled into a skinny tiefling who immediately drew a knife. She shushed the little horned fellow and patted him assuredly as she lowered herself probably gracefully back to sitting at the table with Ashton. “See? Fine as silk.”
A hand, hot, with a wiry strength to it, clenched hard on her shoulder and did not relinquish when the joint popped from its place. “I seen you flashing gold around, miss. Dangerous to do that around these parts. Let me help you out and take it off your hand.”
Ashton moved slightly forward, their hand on the glass hammer, their eyes half lidded, feigning boredom. Laudna glared up at the tiefling who backed by some muscley goons who seemed to swim amongst the drink that clouded her eyes. Four, eight? Well, they’d scatter soon enough. Laudna stood and assumed her form of dread to tower over the slight little man. She pulled a black skeletal hand up from beneath the table. It skittered up his front and wrapped long fingers tight around his neck. She loomed close enough for the deathly veil to scrape against his face and frost his eyelashes.
“I think it’s safe enough in my hands,” she growled.
The shadowy hand pulsed with necrosis. His veins darkened and strained against his skin. He whimpered as it released, shrunk into himself, then turn to run out of the bar. His goons followed after, not willing to test her further, or engage with the crystal haired punk who was lifting their hammer behind her. Laudna grinned back at Ashton, but her victory was short.
“Get out.” The cook had come out from the kitchen. The human man brandished a studded club and he held himself like he knew how to use it. Laudna slipped out of her form of dread and finally noticed all the eyes in the place were solidly trained on her. Some had their hands on weapons. Some looked more fearful than that; ready to run if she were to move near them.
“I paid for food,” she argued softly, but the human shook his head.
“We don’t want trouble in this place.” He let the club fall to his side, but his knuckles were still white where he gripped it. He moved toward her, shielding the rest of the place from her. “I’m asking nicely.”
Laudna saw the loss and left.
The waiter followed. Her timid voice called out to Laudna on the street. Her hand stretched up with a paper bag, oily and fragrant with something fried and beautifully savory. The waiter snatched her hand away as Laudna grasped the bag, as if something vile in her would catch the woman and pull her into the dark. Laudna backed away, thanked her softly, held another gold piece outstretched.
The woman shook her head.
“You already paid. Twice over, if I’m honest. People don’t tip like that less they’re hiding something.”
“I’m really very sorry,” she whispered.
The woman nodded, acknowledged, but would not meet Laudna’s eyes. “Don’t come back.” Her voice was pained, apologetic, but firm. She fled back to the bar before Laudna could apologize again.
Ashton held her cloak out to her. He snuck out behind her in the commotion, a tall glass of something he definitely swiped from someone else’s table in one hand. They leaned heavy on their hammer, eyebrow cocked. “I told you not to go flashing gold around.”
Laudna pulled on her cloak, ill fitting and baggy at the shoulders, and hid under the hood. She always overpaid. There was a tax to being undead. A little extra coin bought a little favor. A few more days of tolerance before she was tossed out again. She couldn’t admit it to Ashton. He was only trying to help, and she ignored his good advice. She put on a brave smile that she did not feel in the slightest. “Silly me. I didn’t think to bring silver.”
Ashton clapped a hand over her shoulder, the same one the tiefling dislodged moments ago. His hand rested softly, acknowledging her fragile nature, but not calling attention to it. “Don’t run. I don’t want to be the only poor kid in the group.” It wasn’t his real reason. She knew that. And she loved him for it.
She laughed. “Am I that obvious?”
“You’re about as subtle as the matron of ravens herself.” He chuckled and shook his head. “It’s one fight, Laudna. Have you seriously never had a fight with your girlfriend before?”
“She’s not...” Laudna’s stomach flipped. She bared her teeth at Ashton and growled “What?”
They cocked their head, a wry smile crept across his lips, and Laudna felt a slow flush spread beneath her icy skin. “Oh gods, do you all think—"
Ashton began to laugh in earnest. “You two are inseparable! Of course we do!”
Laudna waved her hands as if to disperse the very idea. “Ashton! I am too old and too undead for that girl.”
Ashton settled back and raised a glass to her. “The way she looks at you, I don’t think either of those is a deal breaker.”
Laudna shook her head. No. No no no, such a thing was impossible. She was a thing. A half living horror, and Imogen—Imogen was so beautiful and vibrant and alive with endless possibility.
“Unless you’re not into that kind of relationship? It’s totally fine, but you might want to let her know…”
She’d put such kinds of relationships far from her mind after crawling out of a pile of corpses. All those years being run out of every home she built, inciting fear with every friendly smile… Who could ever think of her that way? She could barely think of herself that way until… until friends. Until now, until Delilah shattered Imogen’s crystal and ruined absolutely everything…
“FUCK!”
Several faces swung to stare at her. A busker broke a string.
“Minor crisis,” shouted Ashton in a non-explanation for her disturbance. “As you were.”
And the small crowd who’d stopped to stare were quite suddenly uninterested in the world ending revelation that Ashton had so kindly plonked down on her head. She pulled her hood over her hair, smashed the fabric down to the cuffs over her ears, and groaned. “Why am I finding this out now? After it’s over, when she hates me! I’m fucking cursed!”
Ashton knocked her gently with a fist and she fell back against a warm stone wall, thoroughly defeated. Dead at last.
“Alright. Come on, you love her too much to give up this quick.”
“I do,” she whined as she sunk to the ground. Ashton caught her before she could meet it, and hoisted her to standing, dusted her off, and set her straight back to the hotel.
“So you’ll stick around. And you’ll talk it out, which will keep your girlfriend from going pure evil, and that’s a win for all of us because she is fuckin’ terrifying.”
Laudna pouted. “I’m the scary one.”
“You both have your moments.”
Laudna tried on a grin and found it catching. The alcohol had turned slightly with Ashton’s help, and drove her into sunnier thoughts. It didn’t matter that her smile was strange, or that her teeth were too many. Ashton still liked her, and they were gorgeous and kind and strong as a tarrasque. “You have your moments, too, our fearless leader. You had a dream and then tore through space to smash a creature from half a league away!”
“Not that far.” He chewed his lip for a moment, then looked askance to her. “That dream. Yeah. I think I died.”
Laudna gasped behind her hands, then fluttered them about her face. “Are we undead buddies?!”
“No, I don’t—”
Maybe Ashton wasn’t undead the way she was, but still, she’d never met anyone else with similar experience to her own. It was special. Ashton was very special. “We have to form a club!”
“No.”
“The Two Life Crew.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’ll make us patches.”
“I’m in.”
Laudna squealed with delight and pulled Ashton into a tight hug, which he only fought for a moment before leaning his head into hers. The crystal growing from their skull scuffed lightly at her skin, and she reveled in the solidity of their presence. She had that lovely skirath hide curing on the air ship which would make a wonderful patch, and she even had some embroidery thread that matched the red of his jacket. The hide might be a little stiff for her clothes, but she could certainly sew one to her bag.
She’d have to get back to the airship to make it. And it would be a few days sewing after she gathered the materials. So she couldn’t run just yet. Not for a week at least. And maybe, in that time, Imogen might find a way to forgive her.
Maybe she could find a way to ask in what way does Imogen love her.
Maybe it could be more, or different, than what they had as friends.
Ashton bumped her arm with his shoulder and steered her off an unfamiliar street, back to the path she’d taken from the hotel. Laudna wrapped her long arms around him, both to hug and to keep her legs from wobbling. He flinched slightly, but it wasn’t her touch. It was touch in general, and she whispered sorry in their ear. “Thank you for drinking with me.”
“You’re a good time,” they responded with a grin. “Thanks for the fight!”
She felt a blush creep up her neck and she pulled her hair forward to hide it. “I think I’ll ask FCG to look in my head. Soon.” Not tonight. Not completely blotto, while all the many lights in Bassuras swam together in a warm and syrupy glow. “Will you stay with me?” She couldn’t ask Imogen. Not yet.
Ashton reached up and took her skinny arm in hand, squeezed it gently, something like a hug. “Yeah. You know, it’s not just Imogen anymore. You got people. Plural.”
She nodded as they found the Raha Den and all the sleep she’d missed, all the drink she drank, seemed to come at her like a wave. Ashton caught her as she leaned heavy on them and helped her up the steps. “I’m your people, too, Ashton.” She grinned at her fearless leader, remembering the last thing he smiled at as they entered Bassuras. “Can’t wait for Deathwish. Whatever it is.”
He laughed darkly and rubbed his hands together. “You’re going to love it.”
“Do you think I’m overqualified, having already experienced death?” She whispered at the door of her room, careful not to wake Imogen as she carefully turned the key. She was tired enough now that the floor would be comfort. And if it was not, if Imogen still needed her space in the coming days, maybe she would find another bed. Fearne was endlessly accommodating. And Ashton… Ashton was a very good friend.
Ashton took her into an extremely awkward half hug, and left her for their room with FCG. “You’re going to have to wait and see.”