Note: First of all, Planescape Torment is one of my favorite games of all times, and always will be. It made a very deep impression on me, back in 1999. When I heard that the spiritual successor kickstarted, I re-played the game, and this short dabble being the product it. You won't have much fun reading this if you don't know the game.

I have my yuri goggles on writing this, I admit that. But I always found that Annah held a sort of fascination for Fall-from-Grace. And while Annah practically hates all about the Tanar'ri, I think it's mainly her underlying general distrust in people, jealousy and her insecurity that caused this animosity. As for Grace, a natural empath, I think she can relate to a lot in Annah.

And I always wondered that, after the loss of the Nameless One they both harbored feelings for to a more or lesser degree, if they wouldn't maybe deal with that loss together.

I actually have an idea about how to make this eventually an Annah-Grace pairing of sorts, but not sure if I should or if I can stick to it. But anyway, let me know your thoughts. :-)
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Sigil
Fall-from-Grace

The five of us arrived in Sigil together, but our party soon dissolved after HE was gone. Dak'kon and Nordom took their leave almost immediately. Dak'kon would return to his people in Limbo. His faith had been re-forged by his own hands, even if HE had guided him, and while Dak'kon knew, there were no chains holding him down now but those of all lawful.

Nordom had wandered off, eager to explore the Planes and himself, and I watched him wander down the busy streets, crossbows clicking happily and reminding me of a child, open to all around him. The Sensate in me smiled.

That left Morte, Annah and me.

Morte was all too happy to take quarters in the Civic Festhall, and Annah stayed as well, which surprised me at first. But soon I realized that her reason was utter apathy rather than interest in the Sensate order or in our company. She would sit in her room and stare at nothing, not speak, barely eat. I felt her pain. Morte and I grieved deeply for HIM, but both of us felt that our grief did no compare to hers. Emotion had always burned in the tiefling with almost unmatched intensity, and there had been so many moments during our journey with HIM to see them burn bright so that even her deep animosity towards me held a fascination for me, triggering an echo of something long gone, twisted and transformed.

I was almost relieved when she started crying three days later. I had never seen Morte act so tactful, much less to Annah. I had been witness to their endless insult-hurling of which neither seemed to grow tired. And I had witnessed, in many a battle, how they'd guarded each other's backs. Only to resume their quarreling moments later. I can't tell if they know – that their arguments became the only acceptable way for them to show they cared.

Morte joined the revelry of the main halls, acting his usual self, talking to everyone and telling a hundred different tales of our journey. He himself had a lot to think about, a lot of pain and regret, even as he joked and flirted (with as much success as a floating skull can achieve) and would soon become the latest attraction at the festhall. HIS departure had affected him deeply as well.

A few days later, I was alerted by the sounds of breaking furniture from Annah's room. I tried the door, but it was locked. I knocked anyway, hoping that she'd hear me.

"Annah?" I spoke, and she must've heard me because the room grew silent, and it was deafening.

"Pike off, Tanar'ri," I heard her voice finally, quiet and tired, devoid of the usual venom when she addressed me.

Foolishly, at the start I had believed that she and I could become…not friends, but at least companions during our journey across the planes; had we not travelled with HIM, I would have moved heaven and earth to make her join my Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts. She was an unfiltered being through and through, wearing her heart on her sleeve; so distrustful, clever, hurt and angry at everyone and everything, a survivor, unruly and prickly and fearful in an almost superstitious way. And she had been the first to lay down her life for HIM without a moment's thought.

I found the simple genuineness of her being, her free-spirit and the depth of her *feeling* not only endearing. I admit that in a way I was jealous of them. And yet, she was in chains as all of us who accompanied him were, still are, in a way.

She often reminded me of a wild animal cornered, growling and snapping at anyone approaching too much. The more I learned of her and the longer we travelled, the more her spite hurt me, though gods know I can control my emotions, what to show. When did this become my nature rather than the way to freedom from Baatezu slavery?

It had to become my nature. That simple.

My shield was composure as much as her sharp tongue was hers. That she couldn't elicit a reaction from me irritated her to no end, and again I took a secret form of pleasure in watching her, even as it increased the rift between us.

HE had intrigued me in a way that I was not able to grasp in its entirety at first. That alone would have been the reason for a true Sensate to join him, learn more about the whys of this attraction. Then I could name another reason. HIS torment drawing those who suffered, in one way or another, to him. How that reason exposed me to myself as nothing had in a very long time.

HIS countless lives had shaped, twisted and mangled his being, outside matching inside so it was so easy to see. I felt compassion, affection, and a deep connection to this man who had been once been human.

And yet, I know that even as I first talked to him that I noticed Annah.

I knew it was Tanar'ri blood that made her a tiefling, so driven by feeling rather than thought, by her nature rather than law, seemingly free as is the illusion of those who do not know chaos. Her intense dislike amused me. Then, it saddened me.

I caught myself looking at her, wondering if I'd turned out to be as intense as her, consumed and driven by the nature of one's being, had I not been enslaved before my own nature had really unfolded. Had I been like her maybe, once, so long ago?

It was still inside me. Sometimes stirring as if a memory, a shadow of something that had to die so I could be free. Only to sink back into the deepest depths of me. Had it surfaced, even once, I wouldn't have broken free.

But I'd still been true to myself. Not something that sometimes, in brooding moments, feels just like a stale echo of a sound that only lingers, but is gone.

I am broken, just as HE was. Through the millennia I have mended, shaped myself into a form that would receive the being that eventually left Baator. And yet…I don't *feel* intensively, despite my achievements, despite the pride I take in the me that I have shaped. I am what I wanted to become to be at peace with myself, to the extent that was possible.

And yet.

And yet, I cannot help but feel a form of envy, even as I hear the grief in Annah's voice, an envy that so often makes me want to reach out and touch what I am no longer.