What Happened That Night

SHANNA

LoneCameraman: Anyone else get taken recently? Kellamity: not that I've seen, no. Asra hasn't mentioned anything either. Kellamity: I'm going to the Cathedral tonight to rescue Iskandar. They're all gonna be at the Golden Door, it'll give me a great opportunity to get in and out before I'm seen. LoneCameraman: And you're telling me this now? Who even GAVE you that intel Kellamity: Who do you think? Moirah told me. LoneCameraman: Due to personal reasons I'd rather not hear anything about Moirah. Kellamity: ...What happened?

As if on cue, there was a sharp, yet hesitant, knock on the door. Timothée jumped to his feet.

LoneCameraman: Nothing. Don't focus on that. Remember how I said I could get us Shanna?

At the door was Shanna Averil, cold and shaking. There was a look of panic in her eyes, like a wounded prey animal. He opened the door, gesturing for her to come in and sit down.

"What's mine is yours," he said, offering a hand. "I know it's not much, but it's what we've got."

She took his hand, walking with him to the couch. "Has my aunt talked to you?"

"She sent me this long message when she heard you were coming over… Seems like she's pretty pissed off at herself for pushing you away the way she did." Timothée shrugged, sitting down beside Shanna.

"Yeah, well, I don't wanna hear her apology. Not yet," Shanna grunted. "And after what I did, I doubt she'll want to hear mine."

LoneCameraman: Just happened… a little sooner than I expected.

A pang of guilt came over him. I am a horrible, horrible person, he thought to himself. He repeated to himself that he didn't know what would happen when he showed Shanna that post-- he was trying to be a good person, and after living in a world of lies the way they had, who wouldn’t want to know the truth?

"You have a right not to," he soothed, holding out a hand for her to take. Awkwardly and hesitantly, she placed her hand in his. “It was an accident, I don’t hold it against you.”

She leaned against him. Timothée was a safe person. He wouldn’t hurt her or sell her out, he knew exactly what she’d gone through and how it affected her. “I used my… My thing I can do. I promised I never would again. But it just happened,” she muttered. “How do you move on from that? How do you deal with the fact that your power makes you a danger to others?”

The silence that followed seemed to hang in the air like a thick fog.

"Maybe I shouldn't have asked," she sighed.

LoneCameraman: I think we might need a couple of days. Kellamity: Take your time.

He wrapped one arm around her in a loose hug. "It's fine," he said. "My advice is to put it out of your mind for now. You're… you're not just your power, okay? And you're not the person who hurt you."

Hesitantly, Shanna settled down, her head on his shoulder. His words rattled around in her mind for a while– You're not the person who hurt you. Coming from someone who'd been hurt in similar ways, that meant a lot more than it otherwise would. She believed it, at least for a moment, in a way she wouldn't believe it otherwise.

LoneCameraman: Thanks for understanding. She's been through a lot today.

"Who are you texting?" Shanna asked.

Timothée, the lovable idiot, merely responded thusly: "You'll meet them soon."

KELLAN

The city was quiet. Only the soft hum of electricity and the distant sounds of feral animals prowling the streets disturbed the silence as a lone hoverbike sped through the deserted cityscape. On this hoverbike was a man with a mission. His name was Kellan Dehara, and he was a member of a certain clandestine organization– a resistance cell, covertly fighting against the actions of the Society of the Purple Rose.

"Are you sure about this, Kellan?"

The man on the hoverbike laughed. "I've never been sure of anything in my life," he answered with more confidence than such a statement warranted.

Asra paused. "Come again?" Their voice had a nervous edge to it. "Because we need you to be sure. We've never done a retrieval mission this risky before."

"More sure," Kellan corrected. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life. Let's do this."

"Right, right, let's get on with it, then." A few shuffling noises could be heard over the earpatch as Asra looked around for the mission plans. "Okay. You should be nearing the entrance point soon… again, are you absolutely certain you want to do this?"

Kellan sighed. "I just said so."

"Roger that."

"Four times, Asra."

"Roger that," Asra said, clearing their throat. "Let's just get this over with."

For a long time, there was silence. Silence enough for Kellan to bring the hoverbike to a stop behind a certain purple and silver building in the Entertainment District.

With Marchosias and his attendants on some sort of mock pilgrimage to the great golden door, to touch it and stand beside it and pat themselves on the back for supposedly bringing such a divine sign into the world, Kellan was free to enter the Cathedral without fear of being found and indoctrinated. Every single corridor was so intimately familiar to him from his own time spent walking these halls, every room an echo from within his own mind. It was maze-like. Intentionally so.

And only by accepting His love can we find our way to the center. To the Heart, Kellan recited to himself, not even realizing he was doing it. No. No, no, stop. I don't want to find my way to you. I want to find my way to Iskandar, I need to make sure he's okay, I need to get him out of here. Nothing else matters right now, not even you, 'Master.' In his own internal monologue, he said the last word mockingly, disdainfully. The version of himself that existed in his mind was every bit as cruel to Marchosias as Marchosias used to be to him.

He continued his exploration. The hallway he was in looked to be a dorm hallway, with gray, undecorated walls. Much of the Cathedral was richly decorated, but the dorms, save for the temporary rooms designed to impress new members and the luxury suites inhabited by Marchosias's favorites, were sparse and cold. Ostensibly, this was to encourage "contemplation," but it had an effect more similar to sensory deprivation if a person spent too long in one of the tiny gray rooms. A few of them had windows. He peeked inside one– yep, it was definitely a dorm, and it was every bit as bleak as his own when he was a member. Gray walls. Gray carpet. Gray furniture. The only color in the room was a skinny purple vase, holding one long-stemmed, deep purple rose. The bed was inhabited by a woman who had to have been at least eighteen, as only adults lived in the main building, but looked sixteen. She tossed and turned fitfully in her sleep.

Demetra, he realized. Oh, Hethe, that's Demetra. She had been a member of his cell for a few months before returning to the Society without so much as a goodbye. Many suspected she'd been kidnapped, Kellan included. He pulled on the door, trying to see if it would open. It didn't. Fuck, he swore silently.

The voice that interrupted him was soft and anxious and so familiar. Turning around, Kellan saw a man in a white silk robe, with dark skin, short braided hair, and eyes that had once been a deep, rich shade of brown. "She's being punished," he said as if talking about a teenager who’d been forbidden from going out on dates rather than a grown woman locked in a colorless room. "You'll be punished too if they find out you came back. But it's okay. We'll get to be together afterwards."

Paying no mind to the creepy things that the other man was saying, Kellan ran to embrace him. "Oh, Iskandar, mirthali Hethe. I was so worried I'd never see you again."

"All you had to do was come back to His embrace, Kellan Dehara. You know this." Iskandar stood motionless, not returning the hug, just continuing to speak in the same soft yet unnerving tones. "We could have been together this whole time, had you only accepted your place under His guiding hand. But it's no matter. You're here now. Here with me, and with our Most Divine Ruler."

Kellan shook him gently, trying to snap him out of it. "Hey, stop, this isn't you. Remember in college when the two of us went on that bar crawl and you got so plastered that you ended up belly-dancing on a table and singing karaoke to The Sisters Wander? Because I do. And let me tell you, that is not belly-dancing music." He wondered briefly if it was like those Ersis fairy tales, and a kiss would be all it took to awaken Iskandar, however, he wasn't keen on the idea of kissing someone who didn't explicitly make it clear that they wanted it. Instead, he just sighed. "Do you even remember anything before this place? Anything about us?"

"He took all of that from me so I could serve Him without distraction," Iskandar said, again, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "I missed you so much when you left us. He eased my pain– isn't our God-Emperor wonderful?"

He forgot about me? Kellan thought. He wanted to forget about me?

This was too much for him to bear. "I'm sorry," he whispered to his former lover. With a quick, precise nerve pinch, he rendered Iskandar unconscious in a pile on the floor. "I'll come back for you. Just… not tonight."

And out he ran, away from the maze-like Cathedral, away from the former lover with the dead-eyed stare, onto his hoverbike and towards the last person in the world who he was certain still loved him.