fandomtownies | Selkie Cove, Tuesday Afternoon

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Selkie Cove, Tuesday Afternoon

Sometimes, being in town got to feeling claustrophobic. Too many people with too many loyalties, all crowded together, dancing on eggshells while they pretended one thing and felt another...It all got so tiresome after awhile. After awhile, Karla felt on edge, jumpy; and needed to retreat somewhere to gather herself again. The park in town was a bad idea; it was part of the rounds of several of the regular patrollers. And the Preserve was also out. Not only was it in the heart of Umbrage's territory, it was also where Karla had her secret vegetable garden. Which meant she limited her visits there as strictly as possible; the last thing she needed was to attract the wrong kind of attention by sneaking in there too often.

So instead of the obvious places, when Karla escaped the town, it was usually to somewhere on the edge of the island, where she could look at the sea and dream of home or, at least, happier times. Back where there had been happier times, anyway, like brief flashes in the dark.

Usually, Karla was silent when she snuck away to center herself. Today, however, Fandom intervened. As it occasionally did.

Dammit, Fandom.

"Without you, the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows.
Without you, the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play.
The stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you.
The earth turns, the sun burns, but I die, without you...

The impulse to sing left her and she stood there, wrinkling her nose. "That's bullshit," she announced to no one in particular. "I'm not about to die for a lack of anyone."

[For one in particular, but open for anyone else wandering by, Resistance or Loyalist! Also, you saw nothing a moment before. *Waggles fingers*]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I used to be punished because I disobeyed," Raven said, circling around Karla like a predator. "Just like you will be. Nothing so crude as needles forced under your nails and heated to red hot." (Where the hell had that specific an example come from?) "Though the feel of your pain would be exquisite. No, you get to be mine to play with."

"Let me guess," Karla said, sounding bored, "And then I'll scream and beg and cry and whimper and any other countless synonyms for the same. And you'll laugh and turn to your mistress, hoping she's pleased with your work."

She sneered. "That's pathetic, Raven. Even for you."

"I do not even need to touch you to make you suffer," Raven sneered, refusing to let any of Karla's taunts hit their mark. "Just lock you up, away from the land. Soon you will be going as insane as that other girl from your world...Cassidy, that is her name, correct? You would barely recognize her now. She is a gibbering mess. Now that is pathetic."

Karla's hands clenched by her sides; she could only imagine what being locked away from the land was doing to her Sister-Queen. "You don't need to touch me, but then, I don't need to touch you, either. Even if my little parlor tricks can't kill you, they can hurt. And while you're on the ground writhing from what I've done, all my friends will come out of the shadows and end you. Where are your friends, little carrion-eater? Where's your backup?"

"I need no back-up," Raven said. She could see her words had had an affect on Karla and tried to squirm her way beneath her shields.

"Even if there were someone here close enough to come to your aid, I could merely teleport away. Not that I would need to. I am Trigon's daughter, and I am eternal." That arrogance she'd tasted earlier thrummed through her.

"You're nothing, just a shadow of your old self and a puppet to the stupid old bat that pulls your strings," Karla snapped, finding one or two of Raven's incursions and ruthlessly stomping on them. She sent the sensation of fire up the tendrils, hoping that would make Raven back down. "Trigon would be ashamed to see you brought so low."

Raven hissed, flinching back before thrusting a sharp stab of pain back at Karla. "I am not a puppet!" she snarled.

Karla gasped, hands flying to her side as her body tried to make sense of a pain felt only in her mind. "You dance to her tune merrily enough!"

"I do as I please!" Raven said, stabbing harder now. She was hungry for Karla's fears, to twist and turn against her. That would stop her taunts.

"That's a lie and we both know it!" Karla snapped, creating phantom hands to slash at Raven's face with invisible claws. "You're a slave to her will and some part of you knows it!"

"I do what I want!" Raven ~~Loki'd~~ howled. She reeled back from the claws to her face, the red lines they'd left behind healing within seconds.

"We share a purpose," she growled. "To keep the disobedient in line. To make them bow before me."

Not her. Umbridge.

"Ah ah ah," Karla said, waving a chastising finger in front of Raven's face. "No one bows to you. In fact, you bow, too. To her."

She wanted to scream another denial, but Karla was right. "It does not matter," she said. Liar. The demon fought against its bonds.

"It does not matter," she said again. "In the end, you will submit as well."

"You've been promising me that for how long now, Raven?" Karla asked, stretching. "And yet, here I stand, free and independent and very much in charge of my own faculties. You're what...zero for three of those? For shame. Maybe you aren't as powerful after all."

"You are stubborn. You are a challenge," Raven admitted. "I was so close when Warren fell. Your despair was delicious then. But you persevered. I would admire you if you were not so bothersome."

~~OMG! Evilness modder!~~

~~YOU LOVE IT WHEN I MOD YOU. LOOOOVE IT.~~

"I'm so sorry to have replaced all that despair with complete indifference," Karla said, striving to sound bored. "But once I found out he wasn't dead, only turned traitor, it was hard to keep caring."

~~IT GETS ME ALL HOT AND BOTHERED.~~

Raven threw back her head and laughed. "Indifference?" she said. "I think not. You may throw yourself in desperation at another, hoping the feel of flesh against yours will erase the yearning, but it does not, does it? You still want him, despite everything."

~~OF COURSE IT DOES. I MODDED YOU THAT WAY!~~

Ooooh, that bitch. Karla would have loved to yell something cruel, something hurtful, something about how she could never want some blue-skinned, razor-winged freak, but Raven would know she was lying. And knowing she was lying just made it worse. If she owned it, at least she could pretend not to be bothered by it anymore.

But deflection was even better.

"So interested in my sex life, Raven?" Karla asked. "Jealous much? Is it worse that I get to enjoy sex and you don't? Or that I am enjoying it--and just not with you?"

Raven twitched. She did have yearnings for the forbidden, stirrings put there when she'd begun to pick up the sensations from couples flouting Umbridge's dictates, but the Imperio spell that kept her obedient made her obey those rules as well. Of course, her powers allowed her to have some leeway with that.

"You think I am unable to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh?" she said. "You should know better than that. There are ways to bend the rules."

"Of course there are," Karla purred. And she even knew some of the ways Raven bent them. Not that she cared, of course. "But, it must be difficult, never knowing if they're not touching you because of the rules..." She sent a flare of desire Raven's way, phantom hands to run over her body.

"Or not touching you because you sicken them." And then it was all gone, replaced by the sensation of utter revulsion.

Raven let out a soft moan at the touch of the phantom hands, hungrily breathing in the desire that accompanied it. It turned to a growl as Karla changed tactics.

"Bitch," she said. "You forget, I know their hearts. I know what they wish. And that is for more."

"Because you manipulate them," Karla returned. "Because you force them to feel what you want. You build the hunger and choose then to slake it or not, but the fact of the matter is that you can't tell if someone wants you because of who you are--or just what you can do."

"I know the difference, I just do not care," Raven said. That...wasn't quite the truth. Love had remained some sort of elusive prize. Some part of her craved it, even secondhand like she'd tried to pry out of Sookie and Bobby. It was hard to find in this place.

"Emotions are all tools. Means to an end. And so is pleasure."

"So are you, my darling, broken, empath. So are you." Karla looked at Raven and shook her head. "I fear what will happen to you when you're brought back to yourself. I truly do. But...I can't deny...some part of my relishes it, too. Because then you'll know what it's like to suffer."

"I already know," Raven said. All that time in detention, unshielded, surrounded by all that pain and rage and grief. Begging to be allowed to heal them, to ease their suffering. Made to write "obey" over and over again with the magic quill that carved the words in the back of her hands, and not allowed to heal that either.

"And I relish in it!" she snapped, taking all that remembered pain and flinging it at Karla.

Selkie Cove, Tuesday Afternoon

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