Waffle House, Tuesday Morning

[deathsmajesty]

"Why won't they just leave?" Liliana demanded of the alien beside her as they hunkered down in a booth, trying to subtly keep an eye on the TV-headed creeps milling about outside the restaurant. They seemed loathe to actually come into the restaurant, quite likely due to the staff's absolute unwillingness to tolerate nonsense, but they weren't leaving, either. Just standing there, holding up various reward offers towards the glass like that might entice either person to come out.

Of all the places Liliana had intended to visit today, this Waffle Hut wasn't one of them, and of all the people she intended to see, Stark was most definitely not one, either. But they'd both ended up getting menaced by an ever-growing crowd of TV heads and had ducked into the one place that had offered sanctuary and, well...now here they were. Sharing a sticky booth, getting stared at by the crowd outside and utterly ignored by the staff within.

[For said glowy alien, please]

Comments

[stykera]

"I never do until the end," Stark said gently.

Well, he'd known where Zhaan would go. Zhaan had known where she would go.

"There are different destinations. But you weren't...it was all wrong. They were interfering and that isn't meant to happen!"

[deathsmajesty]

"Wait." Her head snapped up. "They? What they?"

She sounded very surprised by the plural.

[stykera]

"I don't know who they were. They were in your memories. Although...they weren't. They were...I don't know. I could feel them."

Stark's hand went to his throat involuntarily.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana surged to her feet and the server, coming back with their drinks, glared at her. "You're gonna wanna sit back down, sugar," they said, setting the coffee down. "We don't play here."

Liliana sat, but only because she wanted to. Honest.

"What memories?" she demanded, very clearly rattled. "What do you mean you could feel them? What--what happened?"

[stykera]

Stark flinched when she stood, looking longingly at the door again.

"I...I see things. When I'm attending to the dying. Memories. And yours were...very vivid. He was hurting me. And he had hurt you? And there was so much pain and so much death and..."

He shivered a little, hunching his shoulders as he wrapped his hands around his coffee cup.

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana's hand jerked, knocking over her coffee. "What did you see?" She wanted to sound terrifying, furious, dangerous, but her voice betrayed her, leaving her sounding...small. Vulnerable.

Heartbroken.

[stykera]

Stark flinched again, jerking away from both Liliana and the rapidly spreading coffee.

"Nothing on purpose!"

He started blotting ineffectively at the spill with a handful of napkins before their server arrived with a long-suffering sigh, a towel, and a pot of coffee to refill the cup.

"I don't know what they were but they were all dying, horribly, and then there was a man and he was choking me and I couldn't breathe..."

[deathsmajesty]

What did it say that the 'they were all dying, horribly' honestly did nothing to narrow down what he might have seen? You know what, never mind, don't answer that. Listen, not all of those deaths were even hers, some massacres she just witnessed.

The choking...okay, it did narrow it down, but only to a handful of options, not a single one.

"Describe it," she said through clenched teeth. And then paused, breathing heavily, closing her eyes and counting backwards from ten. "I mean," she said speaking slowly and carefully, "I would greatly appreciate it if you'd tell me, in as much detail as possible, what it was you saw."

[stykera]

"Which thing?" Stark asked. "The man choking me? He was large and terrifying. The creatures dying? They were like nothing I'd ever seen and they were...ill. All of them. Struck down by something."

[deathsmajesty]

Yeah, that still was not narrowing anything down, Stark. Description was not your gift.

She just watched him for a moment with wide eyes that seemed almost bruised - emotionally, not physically. And then she sighed and sipped her coffee. "I honestly have no idea what you saw," she said.

[stykera]

"Neither do I!"

Stark sighed. He'd gone back to clutching his coffee cup like it was a talisman to protect him.

"Onakke," he said finally. "The ones who were dying."

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana spilled her coffee again. The server behind the counter made an impatient noise.

"The onakke?" Liliana repeated. "You saw--but--how?! How do you even know that name? What did you see?"

[stykera]

"One of them said it and they were all dying but he said I couldn't have you but I wasn't trying to take you!"

Stark was almost desperate to have her believe that. "I wouldn't. That's not what I do. Not unless I'm forced to."

[deathsmajesty]

"But how?!" she sputtered, momentarily mentally caught up in the mystery over the heartfelt emotional plea. "I don't remember the onakke! How could I? They died thousands of years before I was born!"

[stykera]

"I don't know but I saw them and I watched them dying horribly and therewas nothing i could do and one of them spoke to me and that isn't meant to happen!"

Not to mention the other people Stark had seen.

[deathsmajesty]

Surely nobody of importance!

Again Liliana just looked at him, completely confused. "Of course it's not supposed to happen! You're not supposed to be in my head! And neither is that!"

She delivered a withering, nasty frown, but not to him. It was directed downwards. At the booth, perhaps?

Or possibly, just possibly, to the delicate veil on her hip, made from numerous thin metal chains.

[stykera]

Surely not.

"What about the others?" Stark asked. "There were others and there shouldn't have been anyone there it was all wrong! I wasn't trying to harm you in any way I was just trying to make it easier for you."

[deathsmajesty]

"I don't want easier!" Liliana snapped. "I am the Mistress of Death, not its servant, and I will never, ever bow to it! I am immortal."

Which was not the same as undying, mind. Not that she was interested in splitting hairs that finely.

Their server was back, wiping up the spilled coffee and looking vastly unimpressed with the declaration as well. Once the spill was cleaned up, a third cup was left, along with the towel - and an unsaid message Clean it up yourself next time.

"...Wait, what others?"

[stykera]

"You didn't feel immortal! You were most of the way dead already and all I did was be there to assist you, not any of those others! Not to be shown horrors from your mind, not to be threatened, not to be used!"

He'd get back to the other men in a minute. Probably.

[deathsmajesty]

There was that fine hair she hadn't been splitting. Liliana was immortal in the same way (though not the same mechanics) that a vampire was immortal: ageless and unaffected by natural causes. But she could absolutely still be killed. Even at their strongest, Planeswalkers were not in general indestructible or undying and she was still less than what she'd been.

But she had no compunctions just eliding right over that!

"I didn't threaten you!" Liliana said, offended. "I couldn't even speak! And I certainly didn't invite you into my mind!"

[stykera]

"You didn't threaten me," Stark agreed. "They threatened me. The man with the shadows and then the other one..."

He looked at her, shoulders hunching again. He was very good at making himself small when the situation called for it.

"He was more frightening than the first one who was choking me. You. Both of us? And you. You...you did something else."

[deathsmajesty]

"The man with the shadows? Choking--?"

Sorry, Stark. You really needed to stop pairing the things you wanted to focus on with the things that carried a lot of emotional weight for Liliana. Because she barely heard the last few sentences.

"I--I don't--" Her hand crept up to her throat and she looked...small. Young. Devastated.

[stykera]

"I felt it," Stark said miserably. "Choking on the shadows. I'm sorry you felt it first."

[deathsmajesty]

The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both.

"He--" She stumbled over her words. "I--."

This time, she didn't spill her coffee, just clutched at it with trembling hands. Nor did she look at him, feeling vulnerable and exposed, almost naked. "I do not wish to speak of it."

Honestly, it was all she could do not to crawl across the table and drag the memory from his head with clawed fingers. She wasn't as adept at lethemancy as she was with other aspects of necromancy, but she was good enough to make sure it stuck. But she didn't understand Stark, wasn't sure if she could make it happen.

For the first time in awhile, she missed Jace. Missed Jace terribly.

It was fine. He could keep it. He didn't know what he'd seen. Who he'd seen. Didn't know the details, couldn't understand. Couldn't possibly understand the depths of her fear and guilt and shame.

Join me, Lili. All the torment of the Void will be ours to share forever."

[stykera]

Stark was not inclined to give up memories readily. Liliana could try but it likely wouldn't end well for either of them.

"Then don't speak," he said, still curling in on himself as much as possible. "But the other one... he was more frightening. He didn't do anything but he was worse. And then he was gone and you were... pulling. At me."