Happy Holidays, vulgarweed!
Dec. 13th, 2021 05:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeRecipient: Vulgarweed
Title: More Than Ghost, Less Than Gods
Rated: Teen and Up (content warnings for brief major character death (mentioned in past tense, she got better!), and some body horror involving monsters that only look like they were meant to be human at some point)
Summary: Anathema wakes up dead. She's pretty sure she's not supposed to do that, but a year down the line after the world was supposed to end, anything's possible. Even so, she's not prepared for the figure of fire-and-iron that has wrapped around her soul like wine-barrel hoops.
Pairing: Anathema/Newt
Canon: Book-TV mixture, more Book than TV (fusion with White Wolf's Geist: The Sin-Eaters)
Words: 10,867
Anathema woke with a groan and a startling realization that waking up was the last thing she ought to be doing. She distinctly remembered dying, in fact. Her head throbbed and her dress stuck to her skin as she moved to pull herself up from the muddy earth. She was no stranger to weird happenstance and odd, supernatural scenarios; so she treated it as she must, with firm steps of logic bound together with leaps of faith in the magic around her.
Anathema knew four things.
1. She had come out to take a look at the ley lines on the outermost limits of Tadfield and found a blockage in one of the lines. A great, tangled mess akin to a ball of poorly spun yarn which she had the displeasure of untangling. Once she had unblocked it, there was a sudden influx of energy.
2. Normally, while this would be a blessing and a boon to the land around it, this blockage in particular was at the edge of the chalky cliff face, and it destabilized.
3. She had been caught in the resulting landslide.
4. She died.
It was an interesting thing to know, and surprisingly didn't send her into a panic. Or, perhaps, it wasn't all that surprising after all. She'd always known that she would die, that was just the way of things, and her family line, all the way back to Agnes (and beyond some would say) were riddled with those who knew things and saw things they had no right to know or see. For Anathema's part it was relatively benign, didn't send her into panics like it did some of her cousins who were burdened with the sights of the dead or heard hellish whispers at all times of the day, she just... knew when things were safe.
As a child, she'd always secretly thought of it as her 'spidey sense' like her favorite superhero. She could feel if places held malevolent energies, if they were pure or purified, and she always seemed to know the best route to take to get around traffic. (After all, malevolent energies weren't only a ghostly thing, humans could build it up as well, and any sudden spike of it usually meant there were a lot of angry and frustrated humans on a stretch of road.) However, sometimes these impressions and knowings were too little too late. Such was the case when she untangled the ley line, it always felt like trying to take an extra step that wasn't there, the brief confusion followed quickly by a stomach-dropping jolt and only realizing what had happened afterwards; the line exploded with energy. It was good for the area around it, less so for Anathema herself who had been caught up in the resulting landslide.
She'd been trapped. Suffocated in white chalk and buried underwater, clawing for breath that wouldn't come and beat down by every new wave of cliff following the rest. Then her memory got a bit fuzzy...
Something had happened, someone had happened to her.
A voice that was half the wet, wheezing sound of punctured lungs freely bleeding out and the gravelly crack of burning tinder resounded through her head like the flat clang of the Liberty Bell. It gripped her tight and felt like searing iron bands choking her soul. Anathema screamed, or at least she thought she did, if it was physically or spiritually though, she didn't know. It would haunt her dreams, she knew it.
Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ? it asked. Anathema couldn't answer, but she wanted. She wanted so hard it tore a split in her soul just large enough for that cracking kindling to slip in and brand her.
Vᴇʀʏ ᴡᴇʟʟ. It surged into her, in turns wet and dripping viscous blood and sharp sparks off crumbling embers. It caught her soul aflame and warmed her from the inside, at the same time those red-hot iron bands wrapped around her like some unbreakable promise. Anathema knew better than to accept deals—especially deals she didn't know what they entailed—but she was dying, drowning, dead already, and there wasn't much she could do about the wanting. Anathema very well couldn't turn off her desperate desire to survive.
So, that left her here, face-down on top of the dirt of the landslide, a few meters away from the actual shoreline and a possible way to get back up top. Metaphoric iron bands around her soul, hot and wet and uncomfortable, and the impression that something ought to be beside her or just behind her shoulder.
Slowly Anathema pushed herself up, hair dripping, disgusting with saltwater and gritty chalk-mud, and flopped over to catch her breath. She screamed, hoarse and not nearly loud enough for anyone to come looking to help, and tried to jerk back and away from the gristly hand grasping for her. It looked like the voice sounded, and very unlike a proper human.
It had the shape of a woman, perhaps, but one that had desiccated, not unlike an unwrapped mummy with legs and arms far too long and reaching. (Anathema could only guess it was woman-shaped in the ragged clothes draped off it that looked like a dress or skirt ripped to all hell.) The skin—what was probably skin—was black and sucked in against ribs and pelvis and limbs like there wasn't anything held inside it any more except for the bones. Its skull grinned with missing lips, peeled back over charred teeth and instead of hair there were short flames falling down behind its head like lines of kerosene lit up in blues and yellows. The blackened skin cracked with each and every movement it made, flaking off and disintegrating in some unfelt wind like ash. It was also riddled with holes, some small and almost neat looking punctures, others massive and ragged; in those holes and rips Anathema could see burning embers, cracking and sparking and the glow of heated metal, hundreds of little bars with a flat top on one end and a sharp point at the other. After a few moments to let her panic dissipate, she realized they were nails.
Old, thick, metal nails.
Yᴏᴜ sᴇᴇ ᴍᴇ. It wasn't a question. Anathema was a little relieved that the burning iron bands around her soul feeling didn't return, and even if the voice licked up the back of her spine like flame it... it didn't hurt again, at least.
"Yes." She replied softly, a little disoriented still, but she'd made do with worse before.
Gᴏᴏᴅ, it said. Anathema didn't know if she thought the same, but at least it wasn't trying to touch her anymore.
"What a– who are you?" Anathema asked, bordering on demanding.
I ᴀᴍ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ, It said simply, the truth of it resonated in Anathema's soul, right where that rip in it was, stitched together and packed full of kindling and burning nails like a doctor might pack a wound with gauze. I ᴀᴍ ɴᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ɴᴏʀ ɢᴏᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ.
"We?" Anathema repeated, shoving herself up to sit, and then to stand; only wobbling once as the chalky dirt under her feet shifted until she stamped it down again. "I'm not a ghost... am I?"
The not-a-ghost-or-god seemed to sigh, but in the sockets of its skull two coals appeared to take the place of eyes. They moved up and down, bits of ash falling to join the ash of its skin like they were tear tracks down its face, until finally settling on Anathema's face again. It reached out, quick as a knife in the dark, and grasped Anathema's wrist. She had been about to yell at the creature for it, except right where she'd been about to put her foot, the ground sloughed off from the rest of the mound of former-cliff face and was swallowed by the sea.
Wᴇ, it emphasized this, sounding wetter than its normal speaking voice, felt like something oozing down Anathema's skull like a cracked egg, ᴀʀᴇ ɴᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ɴᴏʀ ɢᴏᴅ. Wᴇ ᴀʀᴇ... sᴏᴍᴇᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ɪɴ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ. I ᴀᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴇɪsᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅ. Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀ sɪɴ-ᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ.
Anathema shivered. It felt like resentment.
She made it home again, back to Jasmine cottage, still wet and cold and warm and covered in flaking coal-like soot. The pendant around her neck hung heavy—a keystone, the geist, her geist, called it—a small bag of oiled cloth filled with gunpowder perpetually wet with something dark that Anathema had no desire to look into further. It was tied shut by knotted catgut string—far too tangled to ever hope of unraveling it to see inside properly—she only knew what was inside it because th– her geist told her, but that was alright, she wasn't keen to confirm it was telling her the truth.
It had been an interesting time biking back to the cottage, the geist hovering behind her as if it were pulled forward by some invisible rope tethering them together and dragging it along up hill and down dale all the way back home. While the dying part of this wasn't so surprising—everyone died at some point—the coming back from it more or less unscathed was unexpected. She had a solid hour on her bike home to think about it, the geist ever following like some portent of doom she was heralding. It didn't speak again. Not until she set her bike to lean against the picket fence inside the garden and she was moments from opening the front door.
Tʜᴇ ʜᴏʀsᴇsʜᴏᴇ ɪs ᴡʀᴏɴɢ, the creature rasped. Anathema shivered, the feeling of fire up her spine never went away when the creature spoke, not like the feeling of iron bands around her chest, but she was slowly becoming used to it. Or so she desperately hoped.
"It's not wrong," Anathema shot back before looking up at the curve of old iron nailed to the lintel. It was nearly black and looked like the wood underneath it was burnt. Reaching up to stand on her tip-toes, she could just barely brush the iron with her fingertips; they came away with sooty hammerscale and the charred carbon left a black smear on her fingers.
There was, as the geist had said, something wrong with the horseshoe. It was unsettling to know that something had happened to it and she hadn't even noticed, that perhaps the magic of it had burnt out and her home wasn't as well-warded as she'd thought it was. Passing through the front door and firmly shutting it behind her (the geist could simply pass through walls, of course, it wasn't truly corporeal), Anathema sighed and clicked on the electric kettle in the kitchen. Newt would need some tea to handle the news, probably.
"I'm going to–" Anathema sighed and pulled her glasses off her face, tossing them to the counter, and shoved the balls of her palms into her eyes as if she could relieve the headache this had all turned into by doing so. "Never mind, I don't even know how far away you can go from me. I'm going to shower, you... stay here or something. Don't scare Newt."
The geist tilted its head at her, the grin of the skull pulled further and it leaned back. I ᴄᴀɴ ɢᴏ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇᴠᴇʀ I ᴡɪsʜ, it said, that fire-licking feeling shot up Anathema's spine again with every word. Pᴀʀᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴘʟᴜᴍʙɪɴɢ, I ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʜᴇʀᴇ.
Anathema might have thought it was a threat if she wasn't so sure she was irrevocably bound to the creature, so that their souls were intertwined and stitched together with fire and iron. She turned on the shower and got in, muddy, sea-salty clothes and all. They'd have to be washed anyway.
Fire and iron, Anathema's thoughts swirled around her head in that familiar whirlpool. She'd grown up learning about fire and iron, her ancestor went out with a purposeful, spiteful bang, and as much as a part of Anathema approved and cheered like the five-year-old she was when she first heard the story at bedtime... a grown up part of her—a part of her that had been willingly tempered by Newt's earnest, resolute softness—thought it wasn't something worth cheering about. That part of her finally started to understand that vengeance wasn't justice and a certain scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame would softly flit through her memories. People would be people, they could be wonderful and kind and terrible all at once, they could love their neighbors with joy overflowing only to be scared of those who were othered because they never learned any better. It was something she'd wrestled with and, even still, didn't think those facets of humanity would ever be something she could reconcile within herself.
As quickly as she could, after taking a few moments for herself as she watched the chalky sand wash off her, swirling down the drain like a metaphor, Anathema washed off all the accumulated grit and grime and returned to the kitchen where she'd left the geist. Showers, Anathema thought, were sacred. It was where all her best ideas came from, all the meandering half-thoughts circled and stewed in the back of her mind until they coalesced in the steam to fully form into solid ideas she could take and inspect as they were, to pick out all the little flaws and note them down to build them up bigger and better.
Nothing had coalesced this time, but the meat of her morning would surely be broken down and combined soon enough, just waiting for the next shower to draw them out to the forefront. She walked through the day again, slowly and carefully, as she scrubbed her hair with sudsing shampoo. Each step of it important, if only she could figure out why, what pattern she'd interrupted or perhaps even become a catalyst for. Something had happened with the ley lines, when she unblocked them, she knew that for certain, but anything past that until she met this geist bound to her... all that was up in the air.
Luckily for her, Anathema thought smugly, crossing the tiled room to wrap her arms around Newt standing at the stove and shoving her face into the space between his shoulder blades, she had one hell of a witchfinder on her side. And he could find quite a bit more than just witches.
The geist stood in the kitchen too, just off to the side and right in the corner of Anathema's eye, even though she tried to hide them in Newt's back. There was no way around it. She squeezed him tight and leaned more of her weight on him and Newt, her ever-steady, lovely Newt, just went on doing whatever he was doing and waited patiently for her to speak up. She'd always liked that about him, that he'd pat her hand or make her tea or hot chocolate (with whipped cream if she seemed sad) and wouldn't pressure her at all to share what she was dealing with because maybe it's in the book like she hadn't read it a hundred thousand times before already and–
She sighed a heavy, shuddering sigh, the kind that started down on your toes and tore through your chest and lungs like a tornado, squeezing your lungs until there wasn't anything else left and then squeezed some more.
"Want whipped cream?" Newt asked, just as gentle and profoundly casual as he always was, and one of his warm, dry hands came up to cover the back of hers. Anathema breathed in.
"Yes." She said, and Newt nodded. The geist off to the side tilted its head and looked hard at Newt. It grumbled, but didn't say anything, not until Anathema and Newt were sitting at the table with mugs of hot chocolate.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, Aɴᴀᴛʜᴇᴍᴀ, her geist said. She shuddered, and frowned into her mug of chocolate and sipped slowly. Newt just pulled out a little pocket novel he'd taken to carrying around most recently—it was amusingly called Tips for The Trainee Tinkerer by T. Tritten—placed his hand on her knee, and leaned back in his seat, only removing his hand to drink his own hot chocolate once it cooled to a more manageable temperature.
Anathema didn't say anything until she was good and ready, and in this case that meant until her hot chocolate was gone and her cup was cold.
"Why do you say that?" She asked, doing her best to approach stern and shan't-be-walked-over without toeing the line of rude and demanding. Newt hummed in question and looked at her, she saw him frown from the corner of her eyes, but kept her attention on the geist. She shivered again when it spoke, and wondered miserably if she'd ever get used to it.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴘʟᴇɴᴛʏ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ I ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢ. Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ɴᴏᴛ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʜᴏᴡ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴀᴍᴇ? it asked slowly.
"No, not really. I already assume you know my name cause we're bound together." She hedged a proper look at Newt, who was sitting with a straight back now rather than his lazy slump of before, and was staring at her with wide, vaguely befuddled and worried eyes. His hand on her knee squeezed comfortingly, and she put the still-warm palm of her hand over the back of his to squeeze back.
Tʜᴇɴ... it asked hesitantly, almost as if it would be afraid of her answer. Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴍɪɴᴇ?
"No." Anathema's frown deepened, and she didn't really want to admit that, seeing as it cut a rather large hole in her assumptions. "I don't."
The geist nodded slowly, like it had assumed that would be the answer, but it had hoped otherwise.
"Natha..." Newt started, then paused, his eyes darted over to the direction Anathema had been looking then back to her and over again to the corner of the kitchen occupied by a not-a-ghost-nor-a-god; and Anathema's heart ached with how much she loved him and how ruthlessly, carelessly kind he was even now, deliberately waiting to make sure he wasn't going to interrupt something he couldn't see nor hear himself. "Are you alright?"
She giggled, perhaps a little hysterically but no one but her and Newt and the geist had to know that. "Yes? Probably. Maybe!"
Newt only sighed back and smiled that small, tired way he had some days and she smiled back, just a little brittle around the edges, and slipped into a short, unadorned story of what happened earlier that day. She'd handled a ley line that was newer, hadn't been thickened up yet with the energies running through it enough to untangle itself, or not get tangled in the first place. All that had gone according to plan, it was just the... after that hadn't.
But it was always the after that didn't go to plan, wasn't it? Even when she'd had the first book, lived nigh on religiously according to what Agnes Nutter, certified witch, had penned down, it was the after that wasn't accounted for. The prophecies themselves, of course, all came to fruition... but they never quite mentioned what the fruit borne of it would become, in the end. She'd never quite grown out of her love-and-hate relationship with the prophecies. And there was always some sort of dread that threaded around her heart of what if I made the wrong choice regarding the burning of the second volume.
She'd been reliably told that's what life was all about, the not knowing, the uncertainty, and making decisions despite that, or because of it. It was so very, very human to not know and not see the patterns... but were witches wholly human? She thought perhaps they weren't, not when she had always seen bits and pieces of the patterns woven into the tapestry. She was no seer herself, and certainly nothing like her ancestor, but there was something to be said about being able to see the patterns in the past, to make sense of what had happened, to see the way energies and magic flowed around passive people about as absorbent of it as pumice... the patterns meant something, they always did, it was just always a bitch to find out what.
It took some time to explain things to Newt. He asked a few questions, some of them directed at the geist even, and the geist was... kind, Anathema supposed, to answer back even though it required Anathema to translate it to a degree. They talked until the moon was high in the sky and it was nearing midnight, of how Anathema had died and bound her soul to something else in exchange for her life... though now she was made for different things. Some of her own questions had been answered before she thought to ask them in so many words, had formulated them and excavated her thoughts' widths and breadths so that she might present it for resolution.
Like, what now? And why?
Nᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴠᴇ. Aɴᴅ ɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴅᴜʀᴇ, the geist said to the first, giving Anathema a queer look she wasn't sure at all how to interpret. The geist's head tilted at a painful angle like there was nothing but sharp shards of something cracked in its neck, and its lips turned up in an unsettling grin around teeth of sharp metal. Nᴏᴡ... ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴠᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇᴍ.
It sounded like a threat. To the second question it shrugged ungracefully. Fɪɴᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ. Iғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ.
And Anathema did, want that is. She wanted so much with all of what parts of her soul were still hers alone and perhaps with the parts that weren't as well; she felt she could burst with the wanting and the need to know why.
She always had. Why do we have the book? Why must we follow it? If it will happen anyways, why must I ensure it, live by it?
Some whys never had answers, but deep inside her bones and the way they resonated with fire and metal, she knew there was an answer here somewhere.
She fell asleep with thoughts sloshing in her head like an overfull bucket until it finally tipped over and spilled out into her dreams. Anathema didn't remember what they were about, but she knew there was fire and soot and metal nails bending in the heat, and there were screams. But that was all.
She woke up tired.
Anathema and Newt were back to back, papers and news clippings and all sorts of printed-off-the-internet information was spread around them on the floor where they sat. The geist was always standing, looming in some corner and lighting it up with that eerie charcoal-embers glow radiating from its torso that only Anathema could see. She'd gotten used to the way the geist made her shiver, at least a little bit, over the last few days, and sometimes it even knew relevant things, enough to point out hauntings—or things that were likely hauntings at least.
It taught her a little bit of the codes it remembered of the Twilight Network—and in turn Anathema passed them along to Newt, he'd always been better at sussing those things out than her—that tended to be used in the area, not so far off from London. It seemed, though, like there weren't any other Sin Eaters around Tadfield to talk with, so a trip to London it was. She'd placed an inelegant ad in the classifieds of a London newspaper for someone who might help with embalming that wasn't affiliated with a mortician nearby, one that would go along with some perhaps outlandish familial traditions.
In Newt's small three-wheeled chariot, they trundled up to London to find someone to meet in St James' Park, but first, a detour.
The angel they'd met not too long ago—god was it only a year ago? When Adam stopped being the antichrist, when the world had gone off the rails and no one remembered? Had it really only been a year? It felt like so much longer these days—was found in a bookshop. Anathema wrinkled her nose at the dusty, musty, old smell she might delight in if she found it in a graveyard or a proper museum that took care of old things instead of an overcrowded bookshop that looked like it deserved all the "single star because it wouldn't let me mark a negative" Yelp reviews it had; but she persevered!
They'd crossed the threshold and into the shop itself, and between one blink and the next, the man-who-was-really-an-angel appeared before them, looking everything and nothing like she'd remembered from the end of the world. His eyes thundered, and his shoulders were broad enough to give the impression that it was unsafe to be around for whatever reason her brain decided to conjure such an unsettling feeling, and she suddenly remembered all the angels in the first books of the Bible and Torah. Angels were not humans with a bit more power... they were something else, like her geist was something else, outside of the whole life-death-rebirth cycle entirely.
"Ah, customers." He—it? Angels didn't have genders she thought with what little was left after her instinctive, lizard-brain gained control of her—he said with a deep sort of voice that held only overtures of cheer while simultaneously pulling his lips down in a delicate grimace that felt sharp as swords.
Anathema trembled, her knees pressed together to keep them from bowing at the pressure of the magic she felt in the bookshop suddenly, the feeling of thousands of eyes suddenly focusing on her and all that encompassed, of Seeing her in a piercing way that ripped her to shreds so that light might shine through the holes left behind. A thought reared up in the back of her head, another one left alone by the lizard-brain, a teasing wisp of an idea that poked up and curled like smoke, like new growth, like a lick of flame–
"Hello, Mr Aziraphale. Long time no see." Newt greeted amiably, grasping Anathema's hand in that sturdy, warm, reliable way of his, and she fell impossibly more in love with him again at the way he was there and grounding and present in ways that eluded her. Sometimes, she'd thought before, on occasion through the last year, and especially the last week, Newt was the most real, solid thing she'd ever known.
And all of a sudden, that dreadful, awful pressure and feeling of eyes all around her but unable to be seen, disappeared into absolutely nothing at all, like it had never been there in the first place. The angel smiled and seemed like every cherub in any classical painting, rosy cheeked and rounded face of innocence with a knowing sparkle in his eyes, looking for all of England like the perfect timelessly middle-aged man in out of fashion clothing in the middle of an old, cozily cluttered bookshop in Soho...
"Ah! Mr. Newton, Newt was it?" He asked amiably and waved casually for the two of them to follow—his eyes darted up to where her geist was—for all three of them to follow him around a bookshelf behind the pointedly dusty till (was that a spiderweb on the keys? Must be) to a low little table beside a roll-top desk and a couch covered in mussed blankets. Anathema breathed. The dusty smell wasn't moldy anymore, and felt a lot more like that good, old feeling of inhaling floating motes in sunshine. The kind of thing that Anathema always imagined people meaning by "smells like adventure," because adventures, in her opinion, always started off by unearthing an old book.
"Yes, it's nice to meet you again without all the, er..." Newt gestured with his hands a bit upwards and a bit downwards and the angel in human form nodded seriously as if he'd said something profound. What would Anathema know, maybe it was.
"Yes, yes, indeed." He– it– they– Aziraphale clapped his hands gently and smiled like sunshine hiding a thundercloud. "How about I get us some tea, and you can let me know why you dropped by? I can't imagine it was particularly easy, or difficult I suppose, to find me."
Newt gestured to Anathema with the whole of his face, tapping his nose and smiling, "Always follow the witch. She usually knows best." That sort of sap was usually what Anathema would smack his shoulder for (and then kiss it better) but this time she just smiled, wary of doing anything that might un-endear her to the angel.
Aziraphale gestured to the couch and after turning to make sure she was sitting on something alright, Anathema startled a little to see a whole tea service with a gently steaming pot sitting on the table. She hadn't even felt the magic circling lazily around the shop pull or twist at all to get it there...
The angel sat in a chair across from the couch and table, reaching out to graciously pour them all a cup of tea, and plonked exactly two sugar cubes into his cup and swirled it lazily with a spoon, carefully enough that the edges of it didn't even make that tinking noise of metal hitting ceramic. That was some archaic manners there, wasn't it? Anathema ignored the fact that she knew that in the first place as a misspent youth in cotillion.
"Does the reason why you've dropped by have anything to do with that rather surprising spirit following you, my dear?" the angel said, and it was difficult to keep from flinching back at it, the parts that were the geist in her didn't bother to help; it wanted to flinch too.
"I... yes, I suppose it does." Anathema said quietly, holding the teacup like a mug to warm her hands with, and running the pad of her thumb over the gilded rim. "It's a geist... it, isn't really human anymore, for all it used to be, and isn't a proper ghost that can be exorcised from what I've gathered."
Aziraphale looked aghast at that, free hand coming up to clutch at nonexistent pearls and the whole shebang. "Oh dear. Please tell me you haven't tried to exorcise it, it's a part of your soul." He looked so bewilderedly upset at the very thought of it that Anathema had to stifle her laughter for how much it looked like her grandmother watching one of her younger cousins eating a beetle on a dare, right there in her kitchen!
"No! No." Anathema rushed to reassure the angel, "I haven't tried to get rid of it! It's bound to me..." She shot a look at the geist to her left and pressed the side of her leg into Newt's on her right.
Aziraphale tsked his tongue and pursed his lips, looking over at the geist as well and looked. There was an intensity behind it that made Anathema's skin crawl and the room felt like it was filled with eyes once again... but this time it wasn't on her, it was on the geist. She watched carefully as the embers and charcoal bones filled with iron-nail organs glowed eerily, like a banked fire being breathed to life, it hissed and sputtered the way a dying fire does, and there was a certain amount of dread that curled and caressed up her spine like tendrils of smoke and nestled in those places in her soul the geist wrapped around. She didn't like this, whatever the angel was doing she didn't like it, and the longer the silence between them lasted, the more on edge she became, certain something would. go horribly, horrifically wrong.
Sometimes, Anathema hated being right.
At first, there was nothing, in the corner, and then there was something. A grotesque creature that was only vaguely humanoid in the way that individual parts of a person are humanoid. It had two torsos standing on thin, twisting legs, the first was slumped with a distended belly where skin pulled and stretched like it was deep into starvation, pinned into place with ugly, blood-rusted railroad spikes. It had arms where shoulders would go and atop that one, where a head might normally be found, there was the other sickly looking torso with every rib clear through waxy, yellowed skin and emaciated so that she could almost see the spine through it from the front—more like mummified, rather than only emaciated, though like no mummy Anathema had ever seen. There it had a head with vague facial features like someone screaming through a white sheet—horror smoothed away only to intensify it—ten feet up and slouching to loom over the humans and geist and angel, so it would fit within the physical confines of the bookshop.
Anathema strangled the scream in her throat and even Newt shook a little as he grimaced, seeing this monster even if he couldn't see her geist. Aziraphale stood faster than either of them could see and flung out his wings like a shield, a white warmed with golden light, dust motes falling from them with every shift and flex of them, adding another layer of dust all over even the well-used items and places. No dust fell on the geist, even as it quickly pulled itself over to Anathema's back, a harsh grip on her shoulder, pinpricks of pain from its nails ripped through Anathema's dress and she thought she might possibly be bleeding, just a little.
"Kerberos." Aziraphale intoned dangerously. She might not be able to see his face from here, but she remembered what he looked like at the air force base a year ago, with the blazing sword in hand and firm knowledge he might fight Satan. Secretly, Anathema would be a little surprised if he wasn't Michael the archangel with that sort of war-willingness, after all they'd only seen Gabriel and what sort of other angel would be allowed to stand up to and call off the Apocalypse to kick the whole second coming if not a capital-A-Archangel?
Aɴɢᴇʟ, the Keberos hissed, sounding all at once like a gas leak and a snake prepared to spit venom. Its presence pressed down on them all, and Anathema was sure that if she wasn't already sitting she'd have collapsed from it. Humans were not made to deal with these sorts of powers, she shrieked in her mind, and cursed the hubris it took to think she could cheat death, even with a soul-bound monster.
"This is not your realm," the angel said calmly, voice like cold lightning, sharp and cutting. "Leave." A command that resonated in the room, in the ground below, through the buildings, to the core of the earth. Or maybe just through Anathema, it was hard to tell.
Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs, ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ Oʟᴅ Lᴀᴡs ᴅᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴏɴ-ɪɴᴛᴇʀғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ, ᴀɴɢᴇʟ. It said angel like a curse. Tᴏ ʀᴇᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴀ Sɪɴ-Eᴀᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴀɢᴀɪɴsᴛ ɪᴛ. Iғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴇᴅᴅʟᴇ ғᴜʀᴛʜᴇʀ, ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴡᴀʀʀᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇᴠᴇɴ Lᴏʀᴅ Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄʜᴏᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴀʙsᴏʟᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪs. It hissed a disgusting, shuddering laugh that sent shivers of repulsion up Anathema's spine, strangling her gag reflex.
"I... yes. Yes, alright." The angel conceded grumpily, his back flexed and so did his wings, just a little, and oh—Anathema had do stifle another giggle at how he looked exactly like her abuelito crossing his arms disapprovingly when he was wrangling her cousins up and they showed up to the porch covered in dirt just in time for dinner. It was... hard not to humanise the angel, no matter how eerie he could be, he was also unfailingly human in all the little ways that made Anathema think of her own family. It made it all the harder to be scared of the angel and what he could do, might be inclined to do... but humanizing inhuman entities and anthropomorphizing animals were both dangerous, for similar reasons.
So, she repeated in her head like a charm against forgetting what her mami had always told her "if they walk like a human, talk like a human, but don't sing like one, they're not human." It was important to remember.
Newt's hand reached out to grab hers, enveloping her fingers in a gentle, somewhat rough warmth, little callouses on the sides of fingers from the scissors he wielded as a witch-find-for these days—as in, he found interesting things going on for one resident witch, Anathema Device, and pieced together places that might need a bit of her touch to get rebalanced. Newt was nothing short of a godsend in that regard. And in others as well, Anathema squeezed his fingers lightly and hid a smile that came automatically when he squeezed back.
Then, all of a sudden, the creature—the kerberos—vanished like it had appeared, between one blink of the eye and another, taking with it the feeling of all those eyes and its putrid, grotesque aura. Anathema took a deep breath, not realizing until then she hadn't been breathing much at all.
"So..." She started, unsure what would come next but refusing to let herself sound like it.
"That–" the angel pursed his lips as he spoke, words sharply cut off at the end, "was a kerberos. Kerberoi guard the Underworld and enforce the Old Laws that apply there."
"Angels don't do that already?" Newt asked, politely, genuinely inquisitive as always.
Aziraphale pursed his lips further, and she'd almost call it pouting if he hadn't mentioned off-hand a year ago he was the damn angel in the gates of Eden casting out the humans however long ago that was. "Yes, well... not quite. You see, Heaven and Hell are– hmm, they're organizations that take care of certain types of bureaucratic work. They don't, that is to say, we don't reap human souls when the bodies die and take them up or down, we just draft up the paperwork. Tally things up, really. And then send them on to the Underworld ruled and governed by Death and his kerberoi."
Anathema let out a shaky breath. That was... so much. But she had to know– "If it's not just a heaven-hell two-for-one combo, then is reincarnation real?"
Aziraphale's eyes darted up like he was checking no one was looking down from the ceiling—which made sense, sort of—and said, "Yes, sometimes... if people ask for it or naturally sort themselves out in those branches for processing, usually the afterlife or Underworld ends up being for the individual what they believed in life. Turns out," he chuckled a little disparagingly, at what exactly Anathema wasn't sure, but Heaven, maybe. Ot just paperwork in general, "If you base an entire system of magic with rules of use more-or-less on the faith of humans, or what She had left over in the fluff of the firmament for us to process, you end up getting these pre-made ruts in it that get shaped along human belief."
The angel waved his hand in the air, one of his arms still crossed and hand caught in the crook of the other, and the wings he'd had out before suddenly ceased to be in any way Anathema could perceive—mostly—and he sat back down like nothing had interrupted them in the first place.
"Now, my dear," he said, and there was a jovial sort of look on his face Anathema was most used to imagining on good ol' Saint Nick in stories, twinkle in his eye and all, "Would you perhaps care to tell me how all... this came to be."
"You just gestured at all of it." Anathema muttered dryly. Newt couldn't cover the laugh entirely, the man simply loved his Pixar and Anathema was never one to disappoint. She smiled a little, and settled back down on the couch, casting a glance over her shoulder at the geist—who was looking at the angel more than it was at Anathema now— and began to explain.
If nothing else, Aziraphale was a good listener. Hummed and asked soft questions at the right time, asked for certain details that Anathema hadn't even really realized she'd remembered from the events, and helped her put things in order if she ever got off track without making her feel like a child for it. She could... she could understand why people liked him (presumably, at least, she hadn't really asked around, but that demon guy seemed ok with him) if he was always this understanding and genial... if they couldn't feel his aura that is. Though it was far worse a feeling of being watched in here than it had been even in the car ride or on the tarmac of the US air force base.
By the end of her story, Aziraphale was nodding along like he'd heard it before and once she'd finished, he clapped his hands on the tops of his thighs and stood up. Anathema had since learned this was a rather British way of asking everyone else to stand too... possibly to escort them out? (She wasn't quite there on all the intricate details of it, but following where someone led after they'd stood up rarely worked out poorly for her. Newt stood too, ready at her side, and he'd know, right?)
"I think I've got something," Aziraphale said, leading them on further and further into the maze of shelving and books until it felt quite a bit more like a library than a corner bookshop. The wood floors changed, the styles of rugs laid about shifted, and even the shelving changed subtly. No matter how far they went, even when they reached a wall or obstacle and turned to go around it, they never seemed to really get to the end of it all. In the background, unseen and behind shelves or perhaps across rooms, there were sometimes people speaking with odd accents she'd never heard, and considerably heated discussions on types of magic Anathema had never experienced before. She even thought at one point, there was a soft ook of an orangutan somewhere amongst the books...
Whatever was happening with this strange bookshop on a street corner on South Houston street, Anathema couldn't make heads or tails of, but their guiding angel here seemed to know what he was doing at the very least. Eventually—was it eventually? How long had they been here?—Aziraphale stopped in a section and searched for a specific book on a shelf just below eye height. His fingers skimmed across dusty old titles without leaving any clean trails behind, as if they'd never been touched at all. Anathema grimaced at the lack of any trace left at all by the angel-in-man-form, but held her tongue.
"Ah!" Aziraphale said after a few moments, wriggling his shoulders and looking rather childishly proud of himself. "Here it is, just what we're looking for."
"What is it?" Newt ask curiously.
Aziraphale's smile turned a little wicked, "A book!"
Anathema snrked and coughed behind a hand to hide it poorly. "A book on what?"
Aziraphale tossed a glance up at the face of the geist behind Anathema's shoulders and tilted the spine of the book at it. "We're going to figure out who this is, if they've got any of themselves left, that is. This is a grimoire from the Unseen University, and it's got a quick little ritual for finding out who's who and what's what."
"Technical terms, I'll assume." Anathema muttered with a wry humor to her voice.
"Why yes, how did you know?" the angel smiled back, the twinkle back in his eyes and a jolly sort of flush to his cheeks, and Anathema had to forcibly remind herself again that the angel wasn't family, no matter the feeling of closeness and camaraderie he naturally exuded. Newt snickered a little laugh under his breath.
Without any further ado, Aziraphale turned them around the corner of a bookcase and then back to the couch and chair and low table they'd been at before, as if he'd only stepped to the other side of one of the bookcases before to borrow the book. Anathema and Newt blinked at each other owlishly for a moment, and this was perhaps the most ruffled she'd seen Newt for some time, even while telling him her death story the first time. Surreptitiously he leaned back and took a look at the other side of the bookcase only to see the till and the door that opened to the street. Everything just as it was when they'd come in, with absolutely nothing to say of that secret... space with all sorts of books that very well could have gone on forever, he wouldn't be surprised. Anathema grimaced again for a half-moment when he shrugged at her, and he squeezed her hand gently again before pulling away, lacing their pinkies instead of holding hands (palm sweat was the bane of their hand-holding existence and truly one of the worst parts of being in love, if you asked Anathema).
Aziraphale muttered to himself, little half-moon glasses perched delicately on his nose, and flipped through pages seemingly haphazardly. Sooner rather than later, he exclaimed in delight again, even if it was a muted sort of delight, and pointed somewhat dramatically at a page, holding the book up so they could see the title of the ritual: "So, You Want To Know About Your Geist; 5 Easy Steps To Find Out Yourself!"
Well, that was certainly... something. Straightforward, at least, it seemed.
"And you're sure that'll work?" Newt asked agreeably.
"Rather sure, yes." Aziraphale nodded regally. "The Unseen University does a brisk business with spells and rituals, generally. And once they instituted the new naming policy, things became much easier to find, the Librarian was certainly helpful for that one."
Anathema shrugged, there wasn't much to lose, probably, if they went ahead with it. In her experience, the rituals and spells with such straightforward names were often no-nonsense, simplistic things that found their results with a certain bull-in-a-china-shop determination—that is not to say, of course, that they couldn't be dangerous. They certainly could, but they were more likely to drain you of your magic, life force, and bits of your soul to power them rather than have any surprise nastiness you had to scour the fine print of it beforehand to find.
"Alright then. What do we need?" she asked. Aziraphale grinned.
An hour or so later with a circular rug removed and a large oval of magic words drawn directly onto the floorboards with a cheery yellow chalk—the yellow chalk had to be cheery, the ritualist writing the grimoire insisted on it, and while Anathema knew quite a bit of spells and spell crafting, rituals were its own beast entirely with horrible things like math. So while it didn't sound quite right, she couldn't say she knew enough about arithmancy or numerology to dispute it—and carefully fanned so that any excess dust would blow away without smudging the lines. Then, candles were lit even though it was still nearer to the middle of the day than to nightfall, and Aziraphale spoke some rather uninspiring words.
"Geist, tell us your Name," he said.
I ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ, Agnes replied. Then thought about it for a second, drifting a little like flotsam on a lazy tide, back and forth along the longer part of the oval.
"Do you not?" Aziraphale asked, just to be sure.
Cᴇʀᴛᴀɪɴʟʏ. She paused again, and thought harder. Wᴇʟʟ, ᴍᴀʏʙᴇ...
Anathema just blinked at one of the most underwhelming magical experiences of her life, and was a little put out that there hadn't even been cool sparks coming off the candle flames or an interesting breeze blotting out the sun with a cloud for even a moment.
"Well, perhaps this was all for naught," the angel said, and Anathema gave him a bit of a look in which she attempted to convey how very unenthused she was about having spent a whole hour carefully drawing bits and pieces of a magic circle in languages she'd never seen before, and here he was just giving up.
Nᴏ, ᴡᴀɪᴛ! Agnes said, Jᴜsᴛ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴍᴏᴍᴇɴᴛ, I ᴀᴍ sᴜʀᴇ I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɪᴛ. The voice was less and less like a terrible fire licking up her spine the longer she stayed within the confines of the magic ellipse, and more and more like a human. It itched at Anathema's heart in a way that made her feel a bit sorry for the geist, and herself, for having gotten tied together like this.
So, they waited, and waited... and waited a bit more until Newt was checking his watch every minute or so, seemingly hoping time would speed up and suddenly come a bit faster. Which was, Anathema thought crossly to herself, a mood.
"I'm sorry, dear," Aziraphale sighed finally, shutting the book in his hands with a rather final fwumph and set it on the cash register's counter nearby. "But I do think if you haven't remembered it by now, you very well might just never."
"Great!" Anathema threw up her hands, knowing very well she was hangry by this point—the breakfast sandwich, while good, didn't hold up very well in the face of magical rituals, a surprise dip into another realm (probably), and four hours wasted—and not quite willing to keep herself from snapping about it. "So we wasted all this time, and she can't even remember her name's Agnes! Just great!"
Anathema froze for a second when the geist grinned, showing off all those roofing nails like an angler fish's teeth, pointed and predatory, and the angel and Newt stared at her like she was a bit crazier than she thought. Her hands fell down to her sides and the corner of her lip twitched up into a not-quite-smile of nervousness.
"W– what are you looking at me like that for?"
"You just called her Agnes, Anathema." Newt said quietly. Anathema thought about it and nodded.
"Well, yes, that's her name, isnt it? She was the one who was supposed to remember..."
Aziraphale raised a hand to his chin and Looked At her that same way she'd felt when they first came in, like there were thousands of eyes on her and each of their stares pierced like swords, great and terrible. "Not a one of us knew its– her name before. You must have gotten it in the ritual, considering your souls are bound as they are..."
"O– oh... right. Well." Anathema shuffled from one foot to the other briefly, and sighed in relief once the feeling of being Looked At was gone. She looked over at the geist, at Agnes, and reached out a hand. There wasn't any fear in her left over for Agnes... it was hard to be so afraid of things you knew.
There was a moment of hesitation, and Agnes reached back out to her and made a movement like she was picking up large skirts to step over the delineation of the egg-shaped magic lines. She stepped over back into the rest of the world, and for a moment Anathema almost thought she could see the woman underneath all the fire and iron, the proud woman who took down a whole town with her, the woman who had done so much and lived beyond her years in the form of prophecy... the woman who had written out Anathema's life hundreds of years before she'd ever been born.
It was a hard thing to swallow, thinking of Agnes as human, as fallible, as someone who might have made a mistake after all when she had her devastating revenge on people she'd lived around her whole life.
"So..." Newt said after a few moments of silence that rang through the bookshop like an awkward bell.
"So?" Anathema prodded. Newt just shrugged and deflated a little bit, he wasn't sure what to say, but he'd tried, and Anathema loved him all the more for it. If nothing else was true about Newt, he tried to the best of his abilities in all things, and that had always been endearing to her.
Aziraphale coughed politely and held up a rolled piece of vellum sealed with a checkered ribbon in a terribly clashing purple and orange and a seal in a 'cheery' blue with a book atop a stereotype of a wizard's hat. She blinked for a moment before taking it, looking up at Agnes who shrugged in such a human way that it made Anathema's chest ache.
"What's this?"
"Er, well..." Aziraphale coughed into his hand again and looked almost embarrassed to say it, "It's the itemized receipt for your souls. Presumably."
"A receipt?" Newt chimed in, looking curious once more.
"Yes, it, er, is something like one at least. I can't think of a better word for it... report maybe. It'll tell you what the cause of death was, some facts about the person in the circle—which may also mean about you Anathema, dear, since your souls are twined—now that the ritual's wrapped up."
Anathema deadpanned at him as she broke the wax seal with her fingernail and removed the ribbon to unroll the paper. "You couldn't have said that before we waited for Agnes to remember anything for two hours?"
Aziraphale shrugged, looking like he was hiding a smile in his eyes, except this time Anathema wanted to claw them out in her irritation. She could have had lunch already!! Taking a deep, purposeful breath, she read the scroll.
Name: Agnes Nutter
Birth: 1600 AD
Death: 1656 AD
Occupation: Last True Witch in England; Seer
Cause of Death: Burned at the stake as a witch; fire, explosion, iron shrapnel
Name: Anathema Device
Birth: 1998 AD
Death: 2020 AD
Occupation: Witch; Descendant
Cause of Death: A restless spirit; landslide, drowning, suffocation
Well... that certainly was succinct. It was hard to read, a little bit, to see herself written down as just witch, descendant. Was that all she was? She'd joked before, and so had the rest of her family, about the fact they were all professional descendants. But seeing it put so plainly here, especially after the world hadn't ended after all and she'd burned the second book, all she was even still was whatever Agnes had left for her.
She grit her teeth until her temples throbbed with the pressure and her fingertips wrinkled the vellum until it was unsightly, near to tearing. There was more, but she didn't want to read it. Instead, she threw it to the ground, whirled around, and stomped out of the bookshop. Newt took a step towards her, but caught her eye and sighed, shoulders hanging heavy, and gave her a tired, knowing little smile and waved awkwardly. See you in a while, then, his smile said.
The geist– Agnes followed her, of course, because everything about Agnes fucking Nutter always followed her! Even when she died it was about Agnes! Oh, she'd give just about anything to tear up and burn all those pages of the second book again!
And then, after stomping down a handful of streets until she'd somehow made it to a park with a palace—Buckingham? That was the only English palace she knew about... was it even in London? She'd never thought to ask—framed picturesquely by verdant trees, it all just... left. All the fiery rage in her and all the righteous anger she'd stoked inside her with every step just vanished the second she'd made it near the lake and a handful of ducks looked over to her with beady, unknowing black eyes before dismissing her for lack of crumbs or peas.
Anathema slumped to the ground and kneeled on the grass across the path before flumping down with a half-hearted huff of indignation and laid on her back, arms underneath her head and she stared up at the branches of the tree above her. The leaves were beautifully green and they swayed gently in the wind. It had taken some getting used to, all the green. California hadn't been like that, all the green was carefully planned and planted and shaped, and most people didn't even keep much green around—well, so she heard, she'd generally only been to see people who knew her mother, which meant they could afford the lawns and non-palm trees.
The branches swayed and the leaves shimmered as they turned back and forth as the wind pressed and relented in turns. The gaps between the boughs swelled and diminished like breathing, and that's what really made her stop and stare, what brought her out of herself in the very particular way that she'd only felt before when staring up at the night sky, far away and up in the mountains where there was no light pollution and she felt irredeemably small and all of it seemed pointless.
Whatever that feeling was, her personal nihilism, it made everything alright. It put all the rest of it into perspective, because ultimately, it didn't really matter. Things matter because she made them matter, no one else. Everyone made their own choices, and even when her choices seemed to be wrenched away from her because her five-times-great grandmother had written cryptic words down on paper, she could take a special sort of pride in the fact that, really, she didn't matter either. Not unless Anathema chose it, no one could make something matter to Anathema unless she let them, and there was a power inherent in that.
"I hated you." Anathema said aloud, finally, far calmer than she thought she ever could on those days when her anger burned hot enough it felt like she was charring from inside her chest and she imagined all the things she'd yell at Agnes if there was ever a chance.
Tʜᴀᴛ ɪs ᴀʟʀɪɢʜᴛ, Agnes said back, hovering beside Anathema but not getting in the way of her view of the tree. Something relaxed in Anathema's gut, a twisting emotion that she hadn't even realized was there until it suddenly wasn't, when Agnes didn't act like her mother. She didn't want Agnes to act like her mother, to act so close to her and like she had any right to interrupt any part of her life.
"You ruined my life."
I'ᴍ sᴏʀʀʏ.
"No you're not." Anathema sighed heavily and closed her eyes before bringing her hands up to rub at them, pushing her glasses up to her hair and making the decision not to care that the nose pads would get tangled painfully in her hair.
Nᴏ. I ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ.
"Then why'd you say it?"
Iᴛ sᴇᴇᴍᴇᴅ ʟɪᴋᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʀ...
"I don't want you to ever say things I want to hear if they're not true."
'Tɪsɴ'ᴛ ᴛʀᴜᴇ.
"You could at least pretend it was, for a little. I... I want to be angry at you. And I just– can't. Ugh," Anathema grumbled into the heels of her palms before letting her arms fall to her sides, the backs of her hands flopping onto the grass with a hushed thump.
She sat up and looked at Agnes, at how she'd never be a human again, and how her body was permanently marred with fire and iron roofing nails and how her keystone that kept her tied to the mortal realm in any way was blood-wet gunpowder in a pouch. She wasn't angry anymore, not really, just... sad. She said so.
Agnes paused meaningfully, or perhaps just to figure out what to say. Anathema waited, she could wait with the best of them if she had to.
Sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs, Aɴᴀᴛʜᴇᴍᴀ Dᴇᴠɪᴄᴇ... ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʟɪɴᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴜᴛᴄᴏᴍᴇs ᴡᴇ ʀᴇᴄᴇɪᴠᴇ.
Anathema rolled her eyes and then closed them, breathing in deep in an effort not to shout. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It doesn't matter it's not what you meant, it's what happened." Anathema raged in her heart and felt like she was made of fire and anger just as much as Agnes was next to her.
Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs, Agnes said and the fire-and-iron woman-geist turned her face away from Anathema and looked out to the lake surrounded by iron fence and filled with ducks and other waterfowl.
"No," Anathema almost shouted, sitting up suddenly with a spine of tempered steel. "Not perhaps, Agnes. I won't let you run the rest of my life, I won't let you just shrug off the responsibility of what you've done just cause you're dead! You don't get to do that, you don't get to ruin my life even if it's not what you meant and then pretend like you've never had any part in it! What, couldn't you see when you were writing your prophecies all the generations of women in your family you made suffer?"
Agnes looked back at her and the way she stared made Anathema feel a little like she was back at the bookshop, eyes piercing and filling her full of holes until the truth of her leaked out from the gashes like viscera and blood. She didn't much like it.
Anathema stood and glared at Agnes, meeting her eyes and gritting her teeth tight until it gave her another throbbing headache. And then Agnes looked away.
Tʜᴇɴ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴇ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ? I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀɴ ᴀᴘᴏʟᴏɢʏ.
It was on the tip of her tongue to shoot back with a well, actually just to be contrary, but she bit it back with a loud, heavy sigh. "No, not really. Especially if you won't mean it. I... I don't know what I want."
Agnes looked back at her again and this time the stare was softer, still terrible and it banked the fire in her chest to something less like rage and more like irritation.
I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴅᴏɴᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀ ᴅɪssᴇʀᴠɪᴄᴇ. Fɪɴᴅ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ, ᴛᴇʟʟ ᴍᴇ ᴛʜᴇɴ.
Anathema had a feeling it was the closest to a sorry she'd ever get, and she was oddly ok with that... Something lifted off her shoulders, fell from her neck, like a millstone tied around it drowning her so slowly she'd been used to it and never quite realized it was still there. But now, now it was gone and Anathema felt free.
It didn't matter what Agnes said, what she thought, not really. Anathema's anger was for herself, to build herself up and to make sure no one else could drag her back down to where she didn't want to be. And that... that was enough. She'd figure out the rest as it came, and she'd figure out what she wanted, and she knew that Newt would help her, come hell or high water—which had been proven quite emphatically even just hours after they'd met for the first time.
So, it was alright. Anathema breathed and breathed and breathed and she let herself sit back down and fall again to lay with her fingers threaded together underneath her head and let herself fall into an almost-meditation where she timed the movements of her lungs with the movements of the breeze in the tree boughs above. She smiled as that final, little piece clicked fully into place after what felt like years agonizing over placing the last piece of the puzzle to finish it off.
"I won't say it's alright." Anathema started slowly, closing her eyes even though she felt Agnes watching her every movement. "But we're bound together now, and that means we'll need to work together, at least a little bit. So we can start by meeting up with whoever it is that shows up from the Twilight Network obituary ad, and you'll help me get rid of the spirit that caused the landslide I died in.
"After that... we'll see where it goes. But you don't get to tell me what to do, you can ask."
Yᴇs. I sᴜᴘᴘᴏsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ғᴀɪʀ-ᴍɪɴᴅᴇᴅ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ. Fᴏʀ ɴᴏᴡ.
Anathema nodded and that was it, wasn't it? After all this terror and feeling controlled and trying to drag her life back under her own command with clawed hands, this was it. She'd made her peace, as well as she could for the moment. Maybe there'd be more later, there always was, and recovery from any sort of thing was never linear. Maybe she'd be angrier about it tomorrow or in a week or sometime next year, maybe she'd rage about it or be surly and unhelpful for anything Agnes or Newt might ask of her. But for now, it was enough.
One foot in front of the other. One step then one step again. That's how you got through life, through afterlife, even, it seemed now. And... perhaps this wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. She was a Sin-Eater now. She had a whole new world to explore with wonders and terrible, awful things to find out and uncover for the rest of her unnatural life now.
She had a direction and all sorts of choices before her, she was sure, and even if she wasn't sure of them, she always had Newt... and now she had Agnes on her side, no matter how begrudgingly (or not) the geist was.
So, for now, it was all enough. And Anathema's soul was at peace.
Title: More Than Ghost, Less Than Gods
Rated: Teen and Up (content warnings for brief major character death (mentioned in past tense, she got better!), and some body horror involving monsters that only look like they were meant to be human at some point)
Summary: Anathema wakes up dead. She's pretty sure she's not supposed to do that, but a year down the line after the world was supposed to end, anything's possible. Even so, she's not prepared for the figure of fire-and-iron that has wrapped around her soul like wine-barrel hoops.
Pairing: Anathema/Newt
Canon: Book-TV mixture, more Book than TV (fusion with White Wolf's Geist: The Sin-Eaters)
Words: 10,867
Anathema woke with a groan and a startling realization that waking up was the last thing she ought to be doing. She distinctly remembered dying, in fact. Her head throbbed and her dress stuck to her skin as she moved to pull herself up from the muddy earth. She was no stranger to weird happenstance and odd, supernatural scenarios; so she treated it as she must, with firm steps of logic bound together with leaps of faith in the magic around her.
Anathema knew four things.
1. She had come out to take a look at the ley lines on the outermost limits of Tadfield and found a blockage in one of the lines. A great, tangled mess akin to a ball of poorly spun yarn which she had the displeasure of untangling. Once she had unblocked it, there was a sudden influx of energy.
2. Normally, while this would be a blessing and a boon to the land around it, this blockage in particular was at the edge of the chalky cliff face, and it destabilized.
3. She had been caught in the resulting landslide.
4. She died.
It was an interesting thing to know, and surprisingly didn't send her into a panic. Or, perhaps, it wasn't all that surprising after all. She'd always known that she would die, that was just the way of things, and her family line, all the way back to Agnes (and beyond some would say) were riddled with those who knew things and saw things they had no right to know or see. For Anathema's part it was relatively benign, didn't send her into panics like it did some of her cousins who were burdened with the sights of the dead or heard hellish whispers at all times of the day, she just... knew when things were safe.
As a child, she'd always secretly thought of it as her 'spidey sense' like her favorite superhero. She could feel if places held malevolent energies, if they were pure or purified, and she always seemed to know the best route to take to get around traffic. (After all, malevolent energies weren't only a ghostly thing, humans could build it up as well, and any sudden spike of it usually meant there were a lot of angry and frustrated humans on a stretch of road.) However, sometimes these impressions and knowings were too little too late. Such was the case when she untangled the ley line, it always felt like trying to take an extra step that wasn't there, the brief confusion followed quickly by a stomach-dropping jolt and only realizing what had happened afterwards; the line exploded with energy. It was good for the area around it, less so for Anathema herself who had been caught up in the resulting landslide.
She'd been trapped. Suffocated in white chalk and buried underwater, clawing for breath that wouldn't come and beat down by every new wave of cliff following the rest. Then her memory got a bit fuzzy...
Something had happened, someone had happened to her.
A voice that was half the wet, wheezing sound of punctured lungs freely bleeding out and the gravelly crack of burning tinder resounded through her head like the flat clang of the Liberty Bell. It gripped her tight and felt like searing iron bands choking her soul. Anathema screamed, or at least she thought she did, if it was physically or spiritually though, she didn't know. It would haunt her dreams, she knew it.
Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ? it asked. Anathema couldn't answer, but she wanted. She wanted so hard it tore a split in her soul just large enough for that cracking kindling to slip in and brand her.
Vᴇʀʏ ᴡᴇʟʟ. It surged into her, in turns wet and dripping viscous blood and sharp sparks off crumbling embers. It caught her soul aflame and warmed her from the inside, at the same time those red-hot iron bands wrapped around her like some unbreakable promise. Anathema knew better than to accept deals—especially deals she didn't know what they entailed—but she was dying, drowning, dead already, and there wasn't much she could do about the wanting. Anathema very well couldn't turn off her desperate desire to survive.
So, that left her here, face-down on top of the dirt of the landslide, a few meters away from the actual shoreline and a possible way to get back up top. Metaphoric iron bands around her soul, hot and wet and uncomfortable, and the impression that something ought to be beside her or just behind her shoulder.
Slowly Anathema pushed herself up, hair dripping, disgusting with saltwater and gritty chalk-mud, and flopped over to catch her breath. She screamed, hoarse and not nearly loud enough for anyone to come looking to help, and tried to jerk back and away from the gristly hand grasping for her. It looked like the voice sounded, and very unlike a proper human.
It had the shape of a woman, perhaps, but one that had desiccated, not unlike an unwrapped mummy with legs and arms far too long and reaching. (Anathema could only guess it was woman-shaped in the ragged clothes draped off it that looked like a dress or skirt ripped to all hell.) The skin—what was probably skin—was black and sucked in against ribs and pelvis and limbs like there wasn't anything held inside it any more except for the bones. Its skull grinned with missing lips, peeled back over charred teeth and instead of hair there were short flames falling down behind its head like lines of kerosene lit up in blues and yellows. The blackened skin cracked with each and every movement it made, flaking off and disintegrating in some unfelt wind like ash. It was also riddled with holes, some small and almost neat looking punctures, others massive and ragged; in those holes and rips Anathema could see burning embers, cracking and sparking and the glow of heated metal, hundreds of little bars with a flat top on one end and a sharp point at the other. After a few moments to let her panic dissipate, she realized they were nails.
Old, thick, metal nails.
Yᴏᴜ sᴇᴇ ᴍᴇ. It wasn't a question. Anathema was a little relieved that the burning iron bands around her soul feeling didn't return, and even if the voice licked up the back of her spine like flame it... it didn't hurt again, at least.
"Yes." She replied softly, a little disoriented still, but she'd made do with worse before.
Gᴏᴏᴅ, it said. Anathema didn't know if she thought the same, but at least it wasn't trying to touch her anymore.
"What a– who are you?" Anathema asked, bordering on demanding.
I ᴀᴍ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ, It said simply, the truth of it resonated in Anathema's soul, right where that rip in it was, stitched together and packed full of kindling and burning nails like a doctor might pack a wound with gauze. I ᴀᴍ ɴᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ɴᴏʀ ɢᴏᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ.
"We?" Anathema repeated, shoving herself up to sit, and then to stand; only wobbling once as the chalky dirt under her feet shifted until she stamped it down again. "I'm not a ghost... am I?"
The not-a-ghost-or-god seemed to sigh, but in the sockets of its skull two coals appeared to take the place of eyes. They moved up and down, bits of ash falling to join the ash of its skin like they were tear tracks down its face, until finally settling on Anathema's face again. It reached out, quick as a knife in the dark, and grasped Anathema's wrist. She had been about to yell at the creature for it, except right where she'd been about to put her foot, the ground sloughed off from the rest of the mound of former-cliff face and was swallowed by the sea.
Wᴇ, it emphasized this, sounding wetter than its normal speaking voice, felt like something oozing down Anathema's skull like a cracked egg, ᴀʀᴇ ɴᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ɴᴏʀ ɢᴏᴅ. Wᴇ ᴀʀᴇ... sᴏᴍᴇᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ɪɴ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ. I ᴀᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴇɪsᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅ. Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀ sɪɴ-ᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ.
Anathema shivered. It felt like resentment.
She made it home again, back to Jasmine cottage, still wet and cold and warm and covered in flaking coal-like soot. The pendant around her neck hung heavy—a keystone, the geist, her geist, called it—a small bag of oiled cloth filled with gunpowder perpetually wet with something dark that Anathema had no desire to look into further. It was tied shut by knotted catgut string—far too tangled to ever hope of unraveling it to see inside properly—she only knew what was inside it because th– her geist told her, but that was alright, she wasn't keen to confirm it was telling her the truth.
It had been an interesting time biking back to the cottage, the geist hovering behind her as if it were pulled forward by some invisible rope tethering them together and dragging it along up hill and down dale all the way back home. While the dying part of this wasn't so surprising—everyone died at some point—the coming back from it more or less unscathed was unexpected. She had a solid hour on her bike home to think about it, the geist ever following like some portent of doom she was heralding. It didn't speak again. Not until she set her bike to lean against the picket fence inside the garden and she was moments from opening the front door.
Tʜᴇ ʜᴏʀsᴇsʜᴏᴇ ɪs ᴡʀᴏɴɢ, the creature rasped. Anathema shivered, the feeling of fire up her spine never went away when the creature spoke, not like the feeling of iron bands around her chest, but she was slowly becoming used to it. Or so she desperately hoped.
"It's not wrong," Anathema shot back before looking up at the curve of old iron nailed to the lintel. It was nearly black and looked like the wood underneath it was burnt. Reaching up to stand on her tip-toes, she could just barely brush the iron with her fingertips; they came away with sooty hammerscale and the charred carbon left a black smear on her fingers.
There was, as the geist had said, something wrong with the horseshoe. It was unsettling to know that something had happened to it and she hadn't even noticed, that perhaps the magic of it had burnt out and her home wasn't as well-warded as she'd thought it was. Passing through the front door and firmly shutting it behind her (the geist could simply pass through walls, of course, it wasn't truly corporeal), Anathema sighed and clicked on the electric kettle in the kitchen. Newt would need some tea to handle the news, probably.
"I'm going to–" Anathema sighed and pulled her glasses off her face, tossing them to the counter, and shoved the balls of her palms into her eyes as if she could relieve the headache this had all turned into by doing so. "Never mind, I don't even know how far away you can go from me. I'm going to shower, you... stay here or something. Don't scare Newt."
The geist tilted its head at her, the grin of the skull pulled further and it leaned back. I ᴄᴀɴ ɢᴏ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇᴠᴇʀ I ᴡɪsʜ, it said, that fire-licking feeling shot up Anathema's spine again with every word. Pᴀʀᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴘʟᴜᴍʙɪɴɢ, I ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʜᴇʀᴇ.
Anathema might have thought it was a threat if she wasn't so sure she was irrevocably bound to the creature, so that their souls were intertwined and stitched together with fire and iron. She turned on the shower and got in, muddy, sea-salty clothes and all. They'd have to be washed anyway.
Fire and iron, Anathema's thoughts swirled around her head in that familiar whirlpool. She'd grown up learning about fire and iron, her ancestor went out with a purposeful, spiteful bang, and as much as a part of Anathema approved and cheered like the five-year-old she was when she first heard the story at bedtime... a grown up part of her—a part of her that had been willingly tempered by Newt's earnest, resolute softness—thought it wasn't something worth cheering about. That part of her finally started to understand that vengeance wasn't justice and a certain scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame would softly flit through her memories. People would be people, they could be wonderful and kind and terrible all at once, they could love their neighbors with joy overflowing only to be scared of those who were othered because they never learned any better. It was something she'd wrestled with and, even still, didn't think those facets of humanity would ever be something she could reconcile within herself.
As quickly as she could, after taking a few moments for herself as she watched the chalky sand wash off her, swirling down the drain like a metaphor, Anathema washed off all the accumulated grit and grime and returned to the kitchen where she'd left the geist. Showers, Anathema thought, were sacred. It was where all her best ideas came from, all the meandering half-thoughts circled and stewed in the back of her mind until they coalesced in the steam to fully form into solid ideas she could take and inspect as they were, to pick out all the little flaws and note them down to build them up bigger and better.
Nothing had coalesced this time, but the meat of her morning would surely be broken down and combined soon enough, just waiting for the next shower to draw them out to the forefront. She walked through the day again, slowly and carefully, as she scrubbed her hair with sudsing shampoo. Each step of it important, if only she could figure out why, what pattern she'd interrupted or perhaps even become a catalyst for. Something had happened with the ley lines, when she unblocked them, she knew that for certain, but anything past that until she met this geist bound to her... all that was up in the air.
Luckily for her, Anathema thought smugly, crossing the tiled room to wrap her arms around Newt standing at the stove and shoving her face into the space between his shoulder blades, she had one hell of a witchfinder on her side. And he could find quite a bit more than just witches.
The geist stood in the kitchen too, just off to the side and right in the corner of Anathema's eye, even though she tried to hide them in Newt's back. There was no way around it. She squeezed him tight and leaned more of her weight on him and Newt, her ever-steady, lovely Newt, just went on doing whatever he was doing and waited patiently for her to speak up. She'd always liked that about him, that he'd pat her hand or make her tea or hot chocolate (with whipped cream if she seemed sad) and wouldn't pressure her at all to share what she was dealing with because maybe it's in the book like she hadn't read it a hundred thousand times before already and–
She sighed a heavy, shuddering sigh, the kind that started down on your toes and tore through your chest and lungs like a tornado, squeezing your lungs until there wasn't anything else left and then squeezed some more.
"Want whipped cream?" Newt asked, just as gentle and profoundly casual as he always was, and one of his warm, dry hands came up to cover the back of hers. Anathema breathed in.
"Yes." She said, and Newt nodded. The geist off to the side tilted its head and looked hard at Newt. It grumbled, but didn't say anything, not until Anathema and Newt were sitting at the table with mugs of hot chocolate.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, Aɴᴀᴛʜᴇᴍᴀ, her geist said. She shuddered, and frowned into her mug of chocolate and sipped slowly. Newt just pulled out a little pocket novel he'd taken to carrying around most recently—it was amusingly called Tips for The Trainee Tinkerer by T. Tritten—placed his hand on her knee, and leaned back in his seat, only removing his hand to drink his own hot chocolate once it cooled to a more manageable temperature.
Anathema didn't say anything until she was good and ready, and in this case that meant until her hot chocolate was gone and her cup was cold.
"Why do you say that?" She asked, doing her best to approach stern and shan't-be-walked-over without toeing the line of rude and demanding. Newt hummed in question and looked at her, she saw him frown from the corner of her eyes, but kept her attention on the geist. She shivered again when it spoke, and wondered miserably if she'd ever get used to it.
Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴘʟᴇɴᴛʏ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ I ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢ. Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ɴᴏᴛ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʜᴏᴡ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴀᴍᴇ? it asked slowly.
"No, not really. I already assume you know my name cause we're bound together." She hedged a proper look at Newt, who was sitting with a straight back now rather than his lazy slump of before, and was staring at her with wide, vaguely befuddled and worried eyes. His hand on her knee squeezed comfortingly, and she put the still-warm palm of her hand over the back of his to squeeze back.
Tʜᴇɴ... it asked hesitantly, almost as if it would be afraid of her answer. Dᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴍɪɴᴇ?
"No." Anathema's frown deepened, and she didn't really want to admit that, seeing as it cut a rather large hole in her assumptions. "I don't."
The geist nodded slowly, like it had assumed that would be the answer, but it had hoped otherwise.
"Natha..." Newt started, then paused, his eyes darted over to the direction Anathema had been looking then back to her and over again to the corner of the kitchen occupied by a not-a-ghost-nor-a-god; and Anathema's heart ached with how much she loved him and how ruthlessly, carelessly kind he was even now, deliberately waiting to make sure he wasn't going to interrupt something he couldn't see nor hear himself. "Are you alright?"
She giggled, perhaps a little hysterically but no one but her and Newt and the geist had to know that. "Yes? Probably. Maybe!"
Newt only sighed back and smiled that small, tired way he had some days and she smiled back, just a little brittle around the edges, and slipped into a short, unadorned story of what happened earlier that day. She'd handled a ley line that was newer, hadn't been thickened up yet with the energies running through it enough to untangle itself, or not get tangled in the first place. All that had gone according to plan, it was just the... after that hadn't.
But it was always the after that didn't go to plan, wasn't it? Even when she'd had the first book, lived nigh on religiously according to what Agnes Nutter, certified witch, had penned down, it was the after that wasn't accounted for. The prophecies themselves, of course, all came to fruition... but they never quite mentioned what the fruit borne of it would become, in the end. She'd never quite grown out of her love-and-hate relationship with the prophecies. And there was always some sort of dread that threaded around her heart of what if I made the wrong choice regarding the burning of the second volume.
She'd been reliably told that's what life was all about, the not knowing, the uncertainty, and making decisions despite that, or because of it. It was so very, very human to not know and not see the patterns... but were witches wholly human? She thought perhaps they weren't, not when she had always seen bits and pieces of the patterns woven into the tapestry. She was no seer herself, and certainly nothing like her ancestor, but there was something to be said about being able to see the patterns in the past, to make sense of what had happened, to see the way energies and magic flowed around passive people about as absorbent of it as pumice... the patterns meant something, they always did, it was just always a bitch to find out what.
It took some time to explain things to Newt. He asked a few questions, some of them directed at the geist even, and the geist was... kind, Anathema supposed, to answer back even though it required Anathema to translate it to a degree. They talked until the moon was high in the sky and it was nearing midnight, of how Anathema had died and bound her soul to something else in exchange for her life... though now she was made for different things. Some of her own questions had been answered before she thought to ask them in so many words, had formulated them and excavated her thoughts' widths and breadths so that she might present it for resolution.
Like, what now? And why?
Nᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴠᴇ. Aɴᴅ ɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴅᴜʀᴇ, the geist said to the first, giving Anathema a queer look she wasn't sure at all how to interpret. The geist's head tilted at a painful angle like there was nothing but sharp shards of something cracked in its neck, and its lips turned up in an unsettling grin around teeth of sharp metal. Nᴏᴡ... ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴠᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇᴍ.
It sounded like a threat. To the second question it shrugged ungracefully. Fɪɴᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ. Iғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ.
And Anathema did, want that is. She wanted so much with all of what parts of her soul were still hers alone and perhaps with the parts that weren't as well; she felt she could burst with the wanting and the need to know why.
She always had. Why do we have the book? Why must we follow it? If it will happen anyways, why must I ensure it, live by it?
Some whys never had answers, but deep inside her bones and the way they resonated with fire and metal, she knew there was an answer here somewhere.
She fell asleep with thoughts sloshing in her head like an overfull bucket until it finally tipped over and spilled out into her dreams. Anathema didn't remember what they were about, but she knew there was fire and soot and metal nails bending in the heat, and there were screams. But that was all.
She woke up tired.
Anathema and Newt were back to back, papers and news clippings and all sorts of printed-off-the-internet information was spread around them on the floor where they sat. The geist was always standing, looming in some corner and lighting it up with that eerie charcoal-embers glow radiating from its torso that only Anathema could see. She'd gotten used to the way the geist made her shiver, at least a little bit, over the last few days, and sometimes it even knew relevant things, enough to point out hauntings—or things that were likely hauntings at least.
It taught her a little bit of the codes it remembered of the Twilight Network—and in turn Anathema passed them along to Newt, he'd always been better at sussing those things out than her—that tended to be used in the area, not so far off from London. It seemed, though, like there weren't any other Sin Eaters around Tadfield to talk with, so a trip to London it was. She'd placed an inelegant ad in the classifieds of a London newspaper for someone who might help with embalming that wasn't affiliated with a mortician nearby, one that would go along with some perhaps outlandish familial traditions.
In Newt's small three-wheeled chariot, they trundled up to London to find someone to meet in St James' Park, but first, a detour.
The angel they'd met not too long ago—god was it only a year ago? When Adam stopped being the antichrist, when the world had gone off the rails and no one remembered? Had it really only been a year? It felt like so much longer these days—was found in a bookshop. Anathema wrinkled her nose at the dusty, musty, old smell she might delight in if she found it in a graveyard or a proper museum that took care of old things instead of an overcrowded bookshop that looked like it deserved all the "single star because it wouldn't let me mark a negative" Yelp reviews it had; but she persevered!
They'd crossed the threshold and into the shop itself, and between one blink and the next, the man-who-was-really-an-angel appeared before them, looking everything and nothing like she'd remembered from the end of the world. His eyes thundered, and his shoulders were broad enough to give the impression that it was unsafe to be around for whatever reason her brain decided to conjure such an unsettling feeling, and she suddenly remembered all the angels in the first books of the Bible and Torah. Angels were not humans with a bit more power... they were something else, like her geist was something else, outside of the whole life-death-rebirth cycle entirely.
"Ah, customers." He—it? Angels didn't have genders she thought with what little was left after her instinctive, lizard-brain gained control of her—he said with a deep sort of voice that held only overtures of cheer while simultaneously pulling his lips down in a delicate grimace that felt sharp as swords.
Anathema trembled, her knees pressed together to keep them from bowing at the pressure of the magic she felt in the bookshop suddenly, the feeling of thousands of eyes suddenly focusing on her and all that encompassed, of Seeing her in a piercing way that ripped her to shreds so that light might shine through the holes left behind. A thought reared up in the back of her head, another one left alone by the lizard-brain, a teasing wisp of an idea that poked up and curled like smoke, like new growth, like a lick of flame–
"Hello, Mr Aziraphale. Long time no see." Newt greeted amiably, grasping Anathema's hand in that sturdy, warm, reliable way of his, and she fell impossibly more in love with him again at the way he was there and grounding and present in ways that eluded her. Sometimes, she'd thought before, on occasion through the last year, and especially the last week, Newt was the most real, solid thing she'd ever known.
And all of a sudden, that dreadful, awful pressure and feeling of eyes all around her but unable to be seen, disappeared into absolutely nothing at all, like it had never been there in the first place. The angel smiled and seemed like every cherub in any classical painting, rosy cheeked and rounded face of innocence with a knowing sparkle in his eyes, looking for all of England like the perfect timelessly middle-aged man in out of fashion clothing in the middle of an old, cozily cluttered bookshop in Soho...
"Ah! Mr. Newton, Newt was it?" He asked amiably and waved casually for the two of them to follow—his eyes darted up to where her geist was—for all three of them to follow him around a bookshelf behind the pointedly dusty till (was that a spiderweb on the keys? Must be) to a low little table beside a roll-top desk and a couch covered in mussed blankets. Anathema breathed. The dusty smell wasn't moldy anymore, and felt a lot more like that good, old feeling of inhaling floating motes in sunshine. The kind of thing that Anathema always imagined people meaning by "smells like adventure," because adventures, in her opinion, always started off by unearthing an old book.
"Yes, it's nice to meet you again without all the, er..." Newt gestured with his hands a bit upwards and a bit downwards and the angel in human form nodded seriously as if he'd said something profound. What would Anathema know, maybe it was.
"Yes, yes, indeed." He– it– they– Aziraphale clapped his hands gently and smiled like sunshine hiding a thundercloud. "How about I get us some tea, and you can let me know why you dropped by? I can't imagine it was particularly easy, or difficult I suppose, to find me."
Newt gestured to Anathema with the whole of his face, tapping his nose and smiling, "Always follow the witch. She usually knows best." That sort of sap was usually what Anathema would smack his shoulder for (and then kiss it better) but this time she just smiled, wary of doing anything that might un-endear her to the angel.
Aziraphale gestured to the couch and after turning to make sure she was sitting on something alright, Anathema startled a little to see a whole tea service with a gently steaming pot sitting on the table. She hadn't even felt the magic circling lazily around the shop pull or twist at all to get it there...
The angel sat in a chair across from the couch and table, reaching out to graciously pour them all a cup of tea, and plonked exactly two sugar cubes into his cup and swirled it lazily with a spoon, carefully enough that the edges of it didn't even make that tinking noise of metal hitting ceramic. That was some archaic manners there, wasn't it? Anathema ignored the fact that she knew that in the first place as a misspent youth in cotillion.
"Does the reason why you've dropped by have anything to do with that rather surprising spirit following you, my dear?" the angel said, and it was difficult to keep from flinching back at it, the parts that were the geist in her didn't bother to help; it wanted to flinch too.
"I... yes, I suppose it does." Anathema said quietly, holding the teacup like a mug to warm her hands with, and running the pad of her thumb over the gilded rim. "It's a geist... it, isn't really human anymore, for all it used to be, and isn't a proper ghost that can be exorcised from what I've gathered."
Aziraphale looked aghast at that, free hand coming up to clutch at nonexistent pearls and the whole shebang. "Oh dear. Please tell me you haven't tried to exorcise it, it's a part of your soul." He looked so bewilderedly upset at the very thought of it that Anathema had to stifle her laughter for how much it looked like her grandmother watching one of her younger cousins eating a beetle on a dare, right there in her kitchen!
"No! No." Anathema rushed to reassure the angel, "I haven't tried to get rid of it! It's bound to me..." She shot a look at the geist to her left and pressed the side of her leg into Newt's on her right.
Aziraphale tsked his tongue and pursed his lips, looking over at the geist as well and looked. There was an intensity behind it that made Anathema's skin crawl and the room felt like it was filled with eyes once again... but this time it wasn't on her, it was on the geist. She watched carefully as the embers and charcoal bones filled with iron-nail organs glowed eerily, like a banked fire being breathed to life, it hissed and sputtered the way a dying fire does, and there was a certain amount of dread that curled and caressed up her spine like tendrils of smoke and nestled in those places in her soul the geist wrapped around. She didn't like this, whatever the angel was doing she didn't like it, and the longer the silence between them lasted, the more on edge she became, certain something would. go horribly, horrifically wrong.
Sometimes, Anathema hated being right.
At first, there was nothing, in the corner, and then there was something. A grotesque creature that was only vaguely humanoid in the way that individual parts of a person are humanoid. It had two torsos standing on thin, twisting legs, the first was slumped with a distended belly where skin pulled and stretched like it was deep into starvation, pinned into place with ugly, blood-rusted railroad spikes. It had arms where shoulders would go and atop that one, where a head might normally be found, there was the other sickly looking torso with every rib clear through waxy, yellowed skin and emaciated so that she could almost see the spine through it from the front—more like mummified, rather than only emaciated, though like no mummy Anathema had ever seen. There it had a head with vague facial features like someone screaming through a white sheet—horror smoothed away only to intensify it—ten feet up and slouching to loom over the humans and geist and angel, so it would fit within the physical confines of the bookshop.
Anathema strangled the scream in her throat and even Newt shook a little as he grimaced, seeing this monster even if he couldn't see her geist. Aziraphale stood faster than either of them could see and flung out his wings like a shield, a white warmed with golden light, dust motes falling from them with every shift and flex of them, adding another layer of dust all over even the well-used items and places. No dust fell on the geist, even as it quickly pulled itself over to Anathema's back, a harsh grip on her shoulder, pinpricks of pain from its nails ripped through Anathema's dress and she thought she might possibly be bleeding, just a little.
"Kerberos." Aziraphale intoned dangerously. She might not be able to see his face from here, but she remembered what he looked like at the air force base a year ago, with the blazing sword in hand and firm knowledge he might fight Satan. Secretly, Anathema would be a little surprised if he wasn't Michael the archangel with that sort of war-willingness, after all they'd only seen Gabriel and what sort of other angel would be allowed to stand up to and call off the Apocalypse to kick the whole second coming if not a capital-A-Archangel?
Aɴɢᴇʟ, the Keberos hissed, sounding all at once like a gas leak and a snake prepared to spit venom. Its presence pressed down on them all, and Anathema was sure that if she wasn't already sitting she'd have collapsed from it. Humans were not made to deal with these sorts of powers, she shrieked in her mind, and cursed the hubris it took to think she could cheat death, even with a soul-bound monster.
"This is not your realm," the angel said calmly, voice like cold lightning, sharp and cutting. "Leave." A command that resonated in the room, in the ground below, through the buildings, to the core of the earth. Or maybe just through Anathema, it was hard to tell.
Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs, ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ Oʟᴅ Lᴀᴡs ᴅᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴏɴ-ɪɴᴛᴇʀғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ, ᴀɴɢᴇʟ. It said angel like a curse. Tᴏ ʀᴇᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴀ Sɪɴ-Eᴀᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴀɢᴀɪɴsᴛ ɪᴛ. Iғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴇᴅᴅʟᴇ ғᴜʀᴛʜᴇʀ, ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴡᴀʀʀᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇᴠᴇɴ Lᴏʀᴅ Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄʜᴏᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴀʙsᴏʟᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪs. It hissed a disgusting, shuddering laugh that sent shivers of repulsion up Anathema's spine, strangling her gag reflex.
"I... yes. Yes, alright." The angel conceded grumpily, his back flexed and so did his wings, just a little, and oh—Anathema had do stifle another giggle at how he looked exactly like her abuelito crossing his arms disapprovingly when he was wrangling her cousins up and they showed up to the porch covered in dirt just in time for dinner. It was... hard not to humanise the angel, no matter how eerie he could be, he was also unfailingly human in all the little ways that made Anathema think of her own family. It made it all the harder to be scared of the angel and what he could do, might be inclined to do... but humanizing inhuman entities and anthropomorphizing animals were both dangerous, for similar reasons.
So, she repeated in her head like a charm against forgetting what her mami had always told her "if they walk like a human, talk like a human, but don't sing like one, they're not human." It was important to remember.
Newt's hand reached out to grab hers, enveloping her fingers in a gentle, somewhat rough warmth, little callouses on the sides of fingers from the scissors he wielded as a witch-find-for these days—as in, he found interesting things going on for one resident witch, Anathema Device, and pieced together places that might need a bit of her touch to get rebalanced. Newt was nothing short of a godsend in that regard. And in others as well, Anathema squeezed his fingers lightly and hid a smile that came automatically when he squeezed back.
Then, all of a sudden, the creature—the kerberos—vanished like it had appeared, between one blink of the eye and another, taking with it the feeling of all those eyes and its putrid, grotesque aura. Anathema took a deep breath, not realizing until then she hadn't been breathing much at all.
"So..." She started, unsure what would come next but refusing to let herself sound like it.
"That–" the angel pursed his lips as he spoke, words sharply cut off at the end, "was a kerberos. Kerberoi guard the Underworld and enforce the Old Laws that apply there."
"Angels don't do that already?" Newt asked, politely, genuinely inquisitive as always.
Aziraphale pursed his lips further, and she'd almost call it pouting if he hadn't mentioned off-hand a year ago he was the damn angel in the gates of Eden casting out the humans however long ago that was. "Yes, well... not quite. You see, Heaven and Hell are– hmm, they're organizations that take care of certain types of bureaucratic work. They don't, that is to say, we don't reap human souls when the bodies die and take them up or down, we just draft up the paperwork. Tally things up, really. And then send them on to the Underworld ruled and governed by Death and his kerberoi."
Anathema let out a shaky breath. That was... so much. But she had to know– "If it's not just a heaven-hell two-for-one combo, then is reincarnation real?"
Aziraphale's eyes darted up like he was checking no one was looking down from the ceiling—which made sense, sort of—and said, "Yes, sometimes... if people ask for it or naturally sort themselves out in those branches for processing, usually the afterlife or Underworld ends up being for the individual what they believed in life. Turns out," he chuckled a little disparagingly, at what exactly Anathema wasn't sure, but Heaven, maybe. Ot just paperwork in general, "If you base an entire system of magic with rules of use more-or-less on the faith of humans, or what She had left over in the fluff of the firmament for us to process, you end up getting these pre-made ruts in it that get shaped along human belief."
The angel waved his hand in the air, one of his arms still crossed and hand caught in the crook of the other, and the wings he'd had out before suddenly ceased to be in any way Anathema could perceive—mostly—and he sat back down like nothing had interrupted them in the first place.
"Now, my dear," he said, and there was a jovial sort of look on his face Anathema was most used to imagining on good ol' Saint Nick in stories, twinkle in his eye and all, "Would you perhaps care to tell me how all... this came to be."
"You just gestured at all of it." Anathema muttered dryly. Newt couldn't cover the laugh entirely, the man simply loved his Pixar and Anathema was never one to disappoint. She smiled a little, and settled back down on the couch, casting a glance over her shoulder at the geist—who was looking at the angel more than it was at Anathema now— and began to explain.
If nothing else, Aziraphale was a good listener. Hummed and asked soft questions at the right time, asked for certain details that Anathema hadn't even really realized she'd remembered from the events, and helped her put things in order if she ever got off track without making her feel like a child for it. She could... she could understand why people liked him (presumably, at least, she hadn't really asked around, but that demon guy seemed ok with him) if he was always this understanding and genial... if they couldn't feel his aura that is. Though it was far worse a feeling of being watched in here than it had been even in the car ride or on the tarmac of the US air force base.
By the end of her story, Aziraphale was nodding along like he'd heard it before and once she'd finished, he clapped his hands on the tops of his thighs and stood up. Anathema had since learned this was a rather British way of asking everyone else to stand too... possibly to escort them out? (She wasn't quite there on all the intricate details of it, but following where someone led after they'd stood up rarely worked out poorly for her. Newt stood too, ready at her side, and he'd know, right?)
"I think I've got something," Aziraphale said, leading them on further and further into the maze of shelving and books until it felt quite a bit more like a library than a corner bookshop. The wood floors changed, the styles of rugs laid about shifted, and even the shelving changed subtly. No matter how far they went, even when they reached a wall or obstacle and turned to go around it, they never seemed to really get to the end of it all. In the background, unseen and behind shelves or perhaps across rooms, there were sometimes people speaking with odd accents she'd never heard, and considerably heated discussions on types of magic Anathema had never experienced before. She even thought at one point, there was a soft ook of an orangutan somewhere amongst the books...
Whatever was happening with this strange bookshop on a street corner on South Houston street, Anathema couldn't make heads or tails of, but their guiding angel here seemed to know what he was doing at the very least. Eventually—was it eventually? How long had they been here?—Aziraphale stopped in a section and searched for a specific book on a shelf just below eye height. His fingers skimmed across dusty old titles without leaving any clean trails behind, as if they'd never been touched at all. Anathema grimaced at the lack of any trace left at all by the angel-in-man-form, but held her tongue.
"Ah!" Aziraphale said after a few moments, wriggling his shoulders and looking rather childishly proud of himself. "Here it is, just what we're looking for."
"What is it?" Newt ask curiously.
Aziraphale's smile turned a little wicked, "A book!"
Anathema snrked and coughed behind a hand to hide it poorly. "A book on what?"
Aziraphale tossed a glance up at the face of the geist behind Anathema's shoulders and tilted the spine of the book at it. "We're going to figure out who this is, if they've got any of themselves left, that is. This is a grimoire from the Unseen University, and it's got a quick little ritual for finding out who's who and what's what."
"Technical terms, I'll assume." Anathema muttered with a wry humor to her voice.
"Why yes, how did you know?" the angel smiled back, the twinkle back in his eyes and a jolly sort of flush to his cheeks, and Anathema had to forcibly remind herself again that the angel wasn't family, no matter the feeling of closeness and camaraderie he naturally exuded. Newt snickered a little laugh under his breath.
Without any further ado, Aziraphale turned them around the corner of a bookcase and then back to the couch and chair and low table they'd been at before, as if he'd only stepped to the other side of one of the bookcases before to borrow the book. Anathema and Newt blinked at each other owlishly for a moment, and this was perhaps the most ruffled she'd seen Newt for some time, even while telling him her death story the first time. Surreptitiously he leaned back and took a look at the other side of the bookcase only to see the till and the door that opened to the street. Everything just as it was when they'd come in, with absolutely nothing to say of that secret... space with all sorts of books that very well could have gone on forever, he wouldn't be surprised. Anathema grimaced again for a half-moment when he shrugged at her, and he squeezed her hand gently again before pulling away, lacing their pinkies instead of holding hands (palm sweat was the bane of their hand-holding existence and truly one of the worst parts of being in love, if you asked Anathema).
Aziraphale muttered to himself, little half-moon glasses perched delicately on his nose, and flipped through pages seemingly haphazardly. Sooner rather than later, he exclaimed in delight again, even if it was a muted sort of delight, and pointed somewhat dramatically at a page, holding the book up so they could see the title of the ritual: "So, You Want To Know About Your Geist; 5 Easy Steps To Find Out Yourself!"
Well, that was certainly... something. Straightforward, at least, it seemed.
"And you're sure that'll work?" Newt asked agreeably.
"Rather sure, yes." Aziraphale nodded regally. "The Unseen University does a brisk business with spells and rituals, generally. And once they instituted the new naming policy, things became much easier to find, the Librarian was certainly helpful for that one."
Anathema shrugged, there wasn't much to lose, probably, if they went ahead with it. In her experience, the rituals and spells with such straightforward names were often no-nonsense, simplistic things that found their results with a certain bull-in-a-china-shop determination—that is not to say, of course, that they couldn't be dangerous. They certainly could, but they were more likely to drain you of your magic, life force, and bits of your soul to power them rather than have any surprise nastiness you had to scour the fine print of it beforehand to find.
"Alright then. What do we need?" she asked. Aziraphale grinned.
An hour or so later with a circular rug removed and a large oval of magic words drawn directly onto the floorboards with a cheery yellow chalk—the yellow chalk had to be cheery, the ritualist writing the grimoire insisted on it, and while Anathema knew quite a bit of spells and spell crafting, rituals were its own beast entirely with horrible things like math. So while it didn't sound quite right, she couldn't say she knew enough about arithmancy or numerology to dispute it—and carefully fanned so that any excess dust would blow away without smudging the lines. Then, candles were lit even though it was still nearer to the middle of the day than to nightfall, and Aziraphale spoke some rather uninspiring words.
"Geist, tell us your Name," he said.
I ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ, Agnes replied. Then thought about it for a second, drifting a little like flotsam on a lazy tide, back and forth along the longer part of the oval.
"Do you not?" Aziraphale asked, just to be sure.
Cᴇʀᴛᴀɪɴʟʏ. She paused again, and thought harder. Wᴇʟʟ, ᴍᴀʏʙᴇ...
Anathema just blinked at one of the most underwhelming magical experiences of her life, and was a little put out that there hadn't even been cool sparks coming off the candle flames or an interesting breeze blotting out the sun with a cloud for even a moment.
"Well, perhaps this was all for naught," the angel said, and Anathema gave him a bit of a look in which she attempted to convey how very unenthused she was about having spent a whole hour carefully drawing bits and pieces of a magic circle in languages she'd never seen before, and here he was just giving up.
Nᴏ, ᴡᴀɪᴛ! Agnes said, Jᴜsᴛ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴍᴏᴍᴇɴᴛ, I ᴀᴍ sᴜʀᴇ I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɪᴛ. The voice was less and less like a terrible fire licking up her spine the longer she stayed within the confines of the magic ellipse, and more and more like a human. It itched at Anathema's heart in a way that made her feel a bit sorry for the geist, and herself, for having gotten tied together like this.
So, they waited, and waited... and waited a bit more until Newt was checking his watch every minute or so, seemingly hoping time would speed up and suddenly come a bit faster. Which was, Anathema thought crossly to herself, a mood.
"I'm sorry, dear," Aziraphale sighed finally, shutting the book in his hands with a rather final fwumph and set it on the cash register's counter nearby. "But I do think if you haven't remembered it by now, you very well might just never."
"Great!" Anathema threw up her hands, knowing very well she was hangry by this point—the breakfast sandwich, while good, didn't hold up very well in the face of magical rituals, a surprise dip into another realm (probably), and four hours wasted—and not quite willing to keep herself from snapping about it. "So we wasted all this time, and she can't even remember her name's Agnes! Just great!"
Anathema froze for a second when the geist grinned, showing off all those roofing nails like an angler fish's teeth, pointed and predatory, and the angel and Newt stared at her like she was a bit crazier than she thought. Her hands fell down to her sides and the corner of her lip twitched up into a not-quite-smile of nervousness.
"W– what are you looking at me like that for?"
"You just called her Agnes, Anathema." Newt said quietly. Anathema thought about it and nodded.
"Well, yes, that's her name, isnt it? She was the one who was supposed to remember..."
Aziraphale raised a hand to his chin and Looked At her that same way she'd felt when they first came in, like there were thousands of eyes on her and each of their stares pierced like swords, great and terrible. "Not a one of us knew its– her name before. You must have gotten it in the ritual, considering your souls are bound as they are..."
"O– oh... right. Well." Anathema shuffled from one foot to the other briefly, and sighed in relief once the feeling of being Looked At was gone. She looked over at the geist, at Agnes, and reached out a hand. There wasn't any fear in her left over for Agnes... it was hard to be so afraid of things you knew.
There was a moment of hesitation, and Agnes reached back out to her and made a movement like she was picking up large skirts to step over the delineation of the egg-shaped magic lines. She stepped over back into the rest of the world, and for a moment Anathema almost thought she could see the woman underneath all the fire and iron, the proud woman who took down a whole town with her, the woman who had done so much and lived beyond her years in the form of prophecy... the woman who had written out Anathema's life hundreds of years before she'd ever been born.
It was a hard thing to swallow, thinking of Agnes as human, as fallible, as someone who might have made a mistake after all when she had her devastating revenge on people she'd lived around her whole life.
"So..." Newt said after a few moments of silence that rang through the bookshop like an awkward bell.
"So?" Anathema prodded. Newt just shrugged and deflated a little bit, he wasn't sure what to say, but he'd tried, and Anathema loved him all the more for it. If nothing else was true about Newt, he tried to the best of his abilities in all things, and that had always been endearing to her.
Aziraphale coughed politely and held up a rolled piece of vellum sealed with a checkered ribbon in a terribly clashing purple and orange and a seal in a 'cheery' blue with a book atop a stereotype of a wizard's hat. She blinked for a moment before taking it, looking up at Agnes who shrugged in such a human way that it made Anathema's chest ache.
"What's this?"
"Er, well..." Aziraphale coughed into his hand again and looked almost embarrassed to say it, "It's the itemized receipt for your souls. Presumably."
"A receipt?" Newt chimed in, looking curious once more.
"Yes, it, er, is something like one at least. I can't think of a better word for it... report maybe. It'll tell you what the cause of death was, some facts about the person in the circle—which may also mean about you Anathema, dear, since your souls are twined—now that the ritual's wrapped up."
Anathema deadpanned at him as she broke the wax seal with her fingernail and removed the ribbon to unroll the paper. "You couldn't have said that before we waited for Agnes to remember anything for two hours?"
Aziraphale shrugged, looking like he was hiding a smile in his eyes, except this time Anathema wanted to claw them out in her irritation. She could have had lunch already!! Taking a deep, purposeful breath, she read the scroll.
Name: Agnes Nutter
Birth: 1600 AD
Death: 1656 AD
Occupation: Last True Witch in England; Seer
Cause of Death: Burned at the stake as a witch; fire, explosion, iron shrapnel
Name: Anathema Device
Birth: 1998 AD
Death: 2020 AD
Occupation: Witch; Descendant
Cause of Death: A restless spirit; landslide, drowning, suffocation
Well... that certainly was succinct. It was hard to read, a little bit, to see herself written down as just witch, descendant. Was that all she was? She'd joked before, and so had the rest of her family, about the fact they were all professional descendants. But seeing it put so plainly here, especially after the world hadn't ended after all and she'd burned the second book, all she was even still was whatever Agnes had left for her.
She grit her teeth until her temples throbbed with the pressure and her fingertips wrinkled the vellum until it was unsightly, near to tearing. There was more, but she didn't want to read it. Instead, she threw it to the ground, whirled around, and stomped out of the bookshop. Newt took a step towards her, but caught her eye and sighed, shoulders hanging heavy, and gave her a tired, knowing little smile and waved awkwardly. See you in a while, then, his smile said.
The geist– Agnes followed her, of course, because everything about Agnes fucking Nutter always followed her! Even when she died it was about Agnes! Oh, she'd give just about anything to tear up and burn all those pages of the second book again!
And then, after stomping down a handful of streets until she'd somehow made it to a park with a palace—Buckingham? That was the only English palace she knew about... was it even in London? She'd never thought to ask—framed picturesquely by verdant trees, it all just... left. All the fiery rage in her and all the righteous anger she'd stoked inside her with every step just vanished the second she'd made it near the lake and a handful of ducks looked over to her with beady, unknowing black eyes before dismissing her for lack of crumbs or peas.
Anathema slumped to the ground and kneeled on the grass across the path before flumping down with a half-hearted huff of indignation and laid on her back, arms underneath her head and she stared up at the branches of the tree above her. The leaves were beautifully green and they swayed gently in the wind. It had taken some getting used to, all the green. California hadn't been like that, all the green was carefully planned and planted and shaped, and most people didn't even keep much green around—well, so she heard, she'd generally only been to see people who knew her mother, which meant they could afford the lawns and non-palm trees.
The branches swayed and the leaves shimmered as they turned back and forth as the wind pressed and relented in turns. The gaps between the boughs swelled and diminished like breathing, and that's what really made her stop and stare, what brought her out of herself in the very particular way that she'd only felt before when staring up at the night sky, far away and up in the mountains where there was no light pollution and she felt irredeemably small and all of it seemed pointless.
Whatever that feeling was, her personal nihilism, it made everything alright. It put all the rest of it into perspective, because ultimately, it didn't really matter. Things matter because she made them matter, no one else. Everyone made their own choices, and even when her choices seemed to be wrenched away from her because her five-times-great grandmother had written cryptic words down on paper, she could take a special sort of pride in the fact that, really, she didn't matter either. Not unless Anathema chose it, no one could make something matter to Anathema unless she let them, and there was a power inherent in that.
"I hated you." Anathema said aloud, finally, far calmer than she thought she ever could on those days when her anger burned hot enough it felt like she was charring from inside her chest and she imagined all the things she'd yell at Agnes if there was ever a chance.
Tʜᴀᴛ ɪs ᴀʟʀɪɢʜᴛ, Agnes said back, hovering beside Anathema but not getting in the way of her view of the tree. Something relaxed in Anathema's gut, a twisting emotion that she hadn't even realized was there until it suddenly wasn't, when Agnes didn't act like her mother. She didn't want Agnes to act like her mother, to act so close to her and like she had any right to interrupt any part of her life.
"You ruined my life."
I'ᴍ sᴏʀʀʏ.
"No you're not." Anathema sighed heavily and closed her eyes before bringing her hands up to rub at them, pushing her glasses up to her hair and making the decision not to care that the nose pads would get tangled painfully in her hair.
Nᴏ. I ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ.
"Then why'd you say it?"
Iᴛ sᴇᴇᴍᴇᴅ ʟɪᴋᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʀ...
"I don't want you to ever say things I want to hear if they're not true."
'Tɪsɴ'ᴛ ᴛʀᴜᴇ.
"You could at least pretend it was, for a little. I... I want to be angry at you. And I just– can't. Ugh," Anathema grumbled into the heels of her palms before letting her arms fall to her sides, the backs of her hands flopping onto the grass with a hushed thump.
She sat up and looked at Agnes, at how she'd never be a human again, and how her body was permanently marred with fire and iron roofing nails and how her keystone that kept her tied to the mortal realm in any way was blood-wet gunpowder in a pouch. She wasn't angry anymore, not really, just... sad. She said so.
Agnes paused meaningfully, or perhaps just to figure out what to say. Anathema waited, she could wait with the best of them if she had to.
Sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs, Aɴᴀᴛʜᴇᴍᴀ Dᴇᴠɪᴄᴇ... ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʟɪɴᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴜᴛᴄᴏᴍᴇs ᴡᴇ ʀᴇᴄᴇɪᴠᴇ.
Anathema rolled her eyes and then closed them, breathing in deep in an effort not to shout. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It doesn't matter it's not what you meant, it's what happened." Anathema raged in her heart and felt like she was made of fire and anger just as much as Agnes was next to her.
Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs, Agnes said and the fire-and-iron woman-geist turned her face away from Anathema and looked out to the lake surrounded by iron fence and filled with ducks and other waterfowl.
"No," Anathema almost shouted, sitting up suddenly with a spine of tempered steel. "Not perhaps, Agnes. I won't let you run the rest of my life, I won't let you just shrug off the responsibility of what you've done just cause you're dead! You don't get to do that, you don't get to ruin my life even if it's not what you meant and then pretend like you've never had any part in it! What, couldn't you see when you were writing your prophecies all the generations of women in your family you made suffer?"
Agnes looked back at her and the way she stared made Anathema feel a little like she was back at the bookshop, eyes piercing and filling her full of holes until the truth of her leaked out from the gashes like viscera and blood. She didn't much like it.
Anathema stood and glared at Agnes, meeting her eyes and gritting her teeth tight until it gave her another throbbing headache. And then Agnes looked away.
Tʜᴇɴ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴇ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ? I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀɴ ᴀᴘᴏʟᴏɢʏ.
It was on the tip of her tongue to shoot back with a well, actually just to be contrary, but she bit it back with a loud, heavy sigh. "No, not really. Especially if you won't mean it. I... I don't know what I want."
Agnes looked back at her again and this time the stare was softer, still terrible and it banked the fire in her chest to something less like rage and more like irritation.
I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴅᴏɴᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀ ᴅɪssᴇʀᴠɪᴄᴇ. Fɪɴᴅ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ, ᴛᴇʟʟ ᴍᴇ ᴛʜᴇɴ.
Anathema had a feeling it was the closest to a sorry she'd ever get, and she was oddly ok with that... Something lifted off her shoulders, fell from her neck, like a millstone tied around it drowning her so slowly she'd been used to it and never quite realized it was still there. But now, now it was gone and Anathema felt free.
It didn't matter what Agnes said, what she thought, not really. Anathema's anger was for herself, to build herself up and to make sure no one else could drag her back down to where she didn't want to be. And that... that was enough. She'd figure out the rest as it came, and she'd figure out what she wanted, and she knew that Newt would help her, come hell or high water—which had been proven quite emphatically even just hours after they'd met for the first time.
So, it was alright. Anathema breathed and breathed and breathed and she let herself sit back down and fall again to lay with her fingers threaded together underneath her head and let herself fall into an almost-meditation where she timed the movements of her lungs with the movements of the breeze in the tree boughs above. She smiled as that final, little piece clicked fully into place after what felt like years agonizing over placing the last piece of the puzzle to finish it off.
"I won't say it's alright." Anathema started slowly, closing her eyes even though she felt Agnes watching her every movement. "But we're bound together now, and that means we'll need to work together, at least a little bit. So we can start by meeting up with whoever it is that shows up from the Twilight Network obituary ad, and you'll help me get rid of the spirit that caused the landslide I died in.
"After that... we'll see where it goes. But you don't get to tell me what to do, you can ask."
Yᴇs. I sᴜᴘᴘᴏsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ғᴀɪʀ-ᴍɪɴᴅᴇᴅ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ. Fᴏʀ ɴᴏᴡ.
Anathema nodded and that was it, wasn't it? After all this terror and feeling controlled and trying to drag her life back under her own command with clawed hands, this was it. She'd made her peace, as well as she could for the moment. Maybe there'd be more later, there always was, and recovery from any sort of thing was never linear. Maybe she'd be angrier about it tomorrow or in a week or sometime next year, maybe she'd rage about it or be surly and unhelpful for anything Agnes or Newt might ask of her. But for now, it was enough.
One foot in front of the other. One step then one step again. That's how you got through life, through afterlife, even, it seemed now. And... perhaps this wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. She was a Sin-Eater now. She had a whole new world to explore with wonders and terrible, awful things to find out and uncover for the rest of her unnatural life now.
She had a direction and all sorts of choices before her, she was sure, and even if she wasn't sure of them, she always had Newt... and now she had Agnes on her side, no matter how begrudgingly (or not) the geist was.
So, for now, it was all enough. And Anathema's soul was at peace.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-14 07:22 am (UTC)I love your Newt in this, btw.
Thank you thank you thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-14 05:38 pm (UTC)And I made an Anathema character sheet all specced out and ready to play if you're interested in what I was mostly working off of! (Even tho Aziraphale's ritual made things a bit different by the end than what would have happened if it was purely Anathema and Newt in a Geist game lol)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-18 02:53 pm (UTC)Interesting resonance between the geist and Agnes' last stand.
Woot, L-Space!
Oh. Well, I guess that explains the resonance!
Still not sure what a sin-eater actually is, but very nice Anathema you've written.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-28 04:02 am (UTC)I haven’t played the game this is a crossover with, so I don’t know anything about the world, but the description of the Geist is VERY cool!
Partake of your plumbing XD
I love Newt just not being daunted by Aziraphale at all. And this: “Newt was the most real, solid thing she'd ever known.”
And this! : “that good, old feeling of inhaling floating motes in sunshine. The kind of thing that Anathema always imagined people meaning by "smells like adventure," because adventures, in her opinion, always started off by unearthing an old book.”
Ook!
Love the references and memes throughout this, too, lol
Agnes!!!! There were literally nails in her….don’t know why I didn’t get that….but it was fun as a surprise anyway haha!
The ending is so cathartic! This was a really cool story, and your descriptive writing is so fun to read! Newt and Anathema’s relationship is so sweet, too :)