[This chapter contains depictions of self-injurious behavior.]
Cold.
That's all Ifrit can feel, but she knows it's the cold air of a cell. Still dark, still stifled with stagnant air- well she did still have the bag over her head. The plus side was that her hallucinations were only in her head now.
The downside was that the hallucinations were in her head now.
"You're a danger to them. They will put you down." A voice that sounds a lot like whispers on the wind, but there's no moving air here, "They'll find out. Adelle will tell them what you've done. All the people you've killed-"
She wants to tell it to shut up, but the gag on her mouth keeps her from exorcising the demonic voice with her own defiance. All Ifrit can do is rock back and forth, try and make that discomforting hardness of the concrete floor on her ass distract her thoughts further.
Wasn't really working too well, so far. There was no sense of time either, no telling when the meds would wear off and the fun really began. Maybe she really would burn this whole place down, and maybe she'd take herself along with it. One can dream, can't they?
Except Ifrit can't dream.
Her dreams only come as nightmares. Horrors of things she's done, of had done to her. The best thing she could ever get was just a restful night's sleep. No dreams, no images, just cold, inky, peaceful black.
The demon came loose that day, and no matter how hard Ifrit tried, she just couldn't cage it again.
A roar, ghastly and echoing, one that shakes the very earth beneath her. And it was the earth that shook beneath her; not the rumble of a dying landship breathing its last.
'Kill them. BURN them. They hurt your family.' The demon whispered into her ears, and with no one to tell Ifrit otherwise, she listened.
No Olivia to calm her- she died in the first broadside salvo trying to save those that hadn't evacuated the medical bay.
No Saria to hold her back- she had been overwhelmed by the steam knights, calcified body cracked and punctured countless times and thrown off the deck for the treads below.
No Doctor to temper her- they had been killed along with the rest of Rhodes Island's leadership by those red-beret'd Victorian soldiers that had boarded under the guise of a truce.
Not a single soul left that could stop it from telling her what to do. She felt every cell in her body ignite. Not just the Originium in her blood and bones, every bit of her existence screamed the same agonizingly furious note as the one that tore at her throat. A line of concentrated heat so powerful that the very air caught fire.
Metal melted like ice. Anyone unfortunate enough to be behind the armor of that battleship would cease to exist- this Ifrit was sure of. This… Ifrit WANTED. She was a weaponized Catastrophe! She was the doom of this whole miserable heap of a world!
Another surge of Arts through her- like feeling the sun itself through her veins! The euphoria of power, the rage of a god rampaging through her, the exhaustion of release…
The… the feeling of falling.
Because she was falling, her superheated body had melted through the already structurally weakened floor, until she slammed down one whole deck.
And then another.
And another.
And another…
Until she was falling into that darkness. That blissful, merciful grasp of unconsciousness.
She is there in the past, and she feels her body heat up. It makes her thrash and scream- as struggling and muted as she is in her confies. No Adelle, she must exorcise herself of the demons…
Ifrit manages to crawl onto all fours and slam her head into the concrete. Sharp pain, the mind's self-preservation telling her not to, but for everyone's survival, she must. Her head collides again, rattling her brain, making her head swim.
She was… a hero! Heroes didn't hurt people! Heroes… kept their powers in check!
Her head collides into the concrete, and she swear she hears a crack, though her ears are ringing with a high-pitched keening.
But it's still trying to take hold of her. The concrete isn't cold anymore, the air of her cell heating to an uncomfortable simmer.
'Olivia.' Ifrit chants in her mind, trying to hold back the welling she feels in her eyes before cracking her head off the ground.
'Saria.' *thud*
'Ptilopsis.' *thud*
'Amiya.' *thud*
'Kal'tsit.' *thud*
'Doctor-'
Someone yanks her back by the collar as she winds her head back before putting her into a hold. Apparently they didn't give a shit about their life, considering how ready to combust Ifrit is. Words spoken, but deafened, desperate… familiar. She can feel that familiar warmth nearby, not like the sweltering heat Ifrit gives off.
Adelle?
'Adelle?'
"Ah-ell!?" Ifrit manages to grunt from beneath her gag, "Ah-dwell!"
She struggles against the hold, tries to make her intentions felt without incinerating whoever was trying to hold her still. She feels the prick into her neck, but the jerking makes the thing slip before she could feel whatever is within flow into her.
"Ah-dwell! Whaare… Ah-dwell!?"
Even with arms locked behind her back and hands clasped and bound together, Ifrit is able to break from the hold. She tumbles, rolling away with a lashing kick before instinctively leaping to her feet.
More muffled words, more movement she can feel. They have her like a caged animal, and at least these animal handlers understand that she is dangerous enough to warrant some caution, so they don't try and pile on her immediately.
Movement. Fearless steps, the warmth that Ifrit knows reaching for her.
The hood comes off, Adelle's concerned face filling Ifrit's nearly-blinded vision. Her normally peaceful friend is yelling, furious in a way that Ifrit only saw in her nightmares as she yanks the head-piece that deafened Ifrit.
"What did you do to her!?" is the first thing Ifrit hears in… well she has no clue how long.
"She did that to herself. We only were-"
"You told me that she was in holding-"
"Until she calmed. She never calmed."
"Adelle." Ifrit croaks. Her voice is shakier than she'd like to admit, but right now hiding it didn't matter. Adelle may be blind, but their connection ran deep enough that she can feel the desperation in Ifrit's voice.
"I'm here, Iffy. Gods… I didn't think… they…"
"...pills. It's... in my head."
'Why do you turn to her? She's the one who gave you up to them, isn't she? She's the one who brought you here in the first place!' The demon says. That was worrying… it was louder… clearer than ever before.
Adelle spins, screaming something at the Gendarmerie that hovers nearby with a wand drawn. It takes the man aback. Ifrit wishes she knew what kind of choice words Adelle had to make the man's face drop flat like it had, but right now all she can hear is that keening from deep within. High pitched, enough that it makes her eyes tremble, makes the world come in and out of focus every microsecond that passes.
"It'll be okay, Iffy. Just fight it back. I'm here, and when we're together nothing can stop us, right?"
"Nothing… can stop us…"
'She's just as bloody as you, you know. Why'd you stop her from killing too? Why did you have to take all the burden?'
"Because… Addie isn't… like me." Ifrit grunts, curling into a ball at Adelle's feet. "Addie isn't… Addie isn't-"
"Ifrit?"
'Is it because you think she's more pure, huh? You were made to be a weapon, but she's a brainy scholar, right?' The demon 'spits' on the ground, manifesting itself looming over Adelle. The burning beast, a swirl of grey smoke and flame made solid. Its bulk fills the solitary cell, but only Ifrit can see it. 'She's going to die soon and there's nothing you can do about it. Clock's been ticking on her longer than you… funny how that works, huh Those white-coats wouldn't make a weapon that destroyed itself so easily.' The demon grins wide and toothy, hellish fire leaping from the sides of its mouth. It reaches down, gently caressing Adelle's face as if she is the most precious thing in the world.
"Don't… you dare touch her." Ifrit growls low and full of a beastial anger. The approaching Gendarme suddenly leaps back, unable to know that Ifrit wasn't talking to him. A jingle of keys hitting the floor beside Adelle before he retreats.
"Ifrit. It's not real. It's just you and me." Adelle coos, trying to rest a hand upon Ifrit's now scalding head. She must be ignoring the pain, but gods is her touch soothing. This was real.
'Oh I am very real. I'm you, after all.' The demon chuckles.
"Where is her jacket!?" Adelle snaps.
"Miss Naumann, the… her possessions are still being processed-"
"I don't care! " Adelle screams, and apparently a small, blind Caprinae woman is enough to put some pep to a soldier's step, because the guard is gone in an instant. Ifrit would laugh, if she wasn't fighting the urge to burn the fu-
"Iffy. You're the hero and I'm your sidekick, right?" Adelle… Eyjafjalla asks. She's undoing the bindings that hold Ifrit. Even Ifrit think's that's unwise, but she can't spend the precious breath to question her friend.
"Heroes… save people…" Ifrit manages to rasp, feeling her hands come free.
"Mmhm! Heroes… save people. So there's no reason to lock them up." The click of the handcuffs, the pinching steel of them finally relieving. Adelle's voice… is soothing.
"Heroes… save… people…" Ifrit tries to repeat the words that saved her countless times before, but they feel increasingly hollow as the demon looms above her. It urges her to say the words she's bit back for so long.
"But what about… everyone I've killed?"
Adelle is silent, how can someone even think to answer such a question? Only the gods could answer that, and given how much Ifrit… was suffering as of late, the gods certainly wanted nothing to do with this broken Sarkaz. The demon laughs at that bit of Ifrit's despair. It's deep and crackling, like if someone threw a wet log into the fire.
"You did what you had to, to keep us safe." Adelle whispers.
'Placation.'
"Otherwise we would have been killed."
'Excuses.'
"I… didn't try and stop you that time, because I… didn't want them to live, either."
'Oho?' The demon delights, licking its non-existent lips. 'Looks like your precious savior isn't as stain-free as you want to believe. Shouldn't it all just burn then?'
"Shut up." Ifrit groans, pushing herself away from Adelle. Her words aren't meant for the demon this time.
"I should have stopped you. I should have known better than let you-"
"Shut up!" Ifrit screams, slamming her head against the concrete wall one final time, leaving a wet, red splotch behind when she manages to pull herself from it. Dizzying clarity, the smoke and fire gone if only for a precious second.
"Adelle. I can't stay here. I… you stay… and be safe. I can't." Ifrit's words swim as much as her head does.
The Gendarme returns, Ifrit's Rhodes Island jacket sealed away in a clear biohazard bag. Adelle… Eyjafjalla takes the coat and tears its confines open. The black and blue… the thing that had given meaning to Ifrit's meaningless life, even if only for a few fleeting years.
And she wraps Ifrit with it, shielding her from the demon's return. She also has the presence of mind to shoo the guard out, before the witless fool did anything to agitate Ifrit further.
"Pills… my pills…" Ifrit mumbles. This episode's… tangibility... called for the meds, and Ifrit's hand dives into the pocket… only to come up empty. They took her pills!? They took from her too!?
"Iffy, look at me." Adelle spins her around, pressing her forehead to Ifrit's, the blood that drips down from the open and raw wound now staining hers. Ifrit tries to jerk away, but Eyjafjalla is stronger right now, forcing the Sarkaz to confront what she wants to run from.
The person staring back at Ifrit through Adelle's milky-whites was ghastly. A black-eyed, orange pupiled beast, face bloody and gaunt, jaw set tight, lips pulled back to bare pointed fangs.
Who… was this? This wasn't Ifrit.
This wasn't Ifrit.
The heat slowly fades as the smoke dissipates, the air clean but stiflingly cold once again.
Ifrit was a stick of a young woman, but she was scrappy and confident. Blue and blacks of a Rhodes Island elite's jacket that fluttered in the wind. Entrusted Saria's shield, passed down to the next generation of protector, her wand held over her shoulder. She was firmly in control, and that control made her a hero...
But behind her imagination looms it.
'Hide yourself in delusions all you want. I'll still be here.' A voice whispers from somewhere behind Ifrit, but she knows there's only the wall there.
Arms thrown around Adelle's thin frame, Ifrit's muscles quiver and give out. Despite their similar stature, Ifrit nearly topples her friend. What an absolute mess, a puny, whimpering, sobbing mess that babbles platitudes and apologies as she clings desperately to her very weakness. Something deep within stirs again but Ifrit is, however, mercifully spent. The previous fit having coursed so thoroughly through her entire body and mind leaves her muscles tired and her nerves ravaged, and in its wake only pain and ache remained.
Who knows how long it will be for this time though?
Who cares. All Ifrit can think about is how just how hard it is to think with the throbbing pain of her forehead and just how
"I'm sorry Iffy. If I knew that they'd put you here I'd have come sooner."
Ifrit denies the apology with a weak shove before she melts down onto the concrete once more, but her head falls upon Adelle's lap. Her Caprinae friend was not so easily dismissed. If anything, after this, Ifrit doubts she'd be able to get any time alone with Eyja constantly hovering.
"When you were gone for the first day, I thought it… it was a good thing." Adelle timidly admits, wiping a fresh dribble of blood from Ifrit's forehead. It's still a shiny crimson, not black and minerally like she thought it'd turn out at this point. A brief moment of clarity while staring at the fresh stain of red on Eyja's dress.
"How long was I gone?"
"Two days."
Two days? She hadn't eaten anything in two days. Drank anything in two days. Pissed or sh-
"Iffy?"
"Ngh." Ifrit grunts. Now that she is suddenly aware of just how deprived her body is, she can feel just how her stomach is rumbling and squirming. Not like she was a stranger to starving, though…
"We have a home. You and me." Adelle tentatively says, her other hand stroking through Ifrit's tangle of dirty, wiry ash-grey hair.
"Sounds nice." Ifrit says flatly.
"We can go to Speaker Ambrus, he can clear this all up-"
"All things considered… I…"
'-just don't care anymore.'
"-just want to eat something and sleep this headache away." Ifrit exhales, using that dull throb in her brain to bat away the extra voice. Adelle gives a pained, empathetic smile as she tries to stand and pull Ifrit to her feet.
"They're really just going to let me walk out of here?" Ifrit lays still, just a bunch of dead-weight as her friend tries in vain to lift her. Eventually Adelle stops and sighs, knowing what Ifrit needs.
"Your imprisonment was… against what both I and Speaker Ambrus told them to do for you. I tried to explain that cells make you more... anxious... and for their safety they should have detained you somewhere more open, but the Gendarmerie is their own entity, however."
"Officer Cherry-boy okay?" Ifrit mumbles into the concrete. Less empathy and concern, more thinking about the negative consequences if he wasn't.
"...Cherry-boy…? Adelle is rightfully confused, at least until she quickly puts the bits together. "Officer Farkas... was diagnosed with early-onset Oripathy. Originium from his wand got into his bloodstream."
"That explains why they left me here to rot." Ifrit grunts as she pulls herself to her feet. Shaky and achy, but she can move- physically she'd been through worse. Emotionally though-
She'd have to apologize to Cherry… Officer Farkas, though how can you really apologize for destroying someone's life? 'Hey, yeah, sorry I gave you a terminal condition because I was having a tantrum.'
'Tantrum? That is how you see your survival instinct?' Someone whispers, but is silenced when Ifrit growls. Adelle had to have heard, but says nothing as they move from the holding hall. An officer in full hazard-kit follows them, mercifully with his wand holstered for now. They had kept Ifrit in an isolation ward in the very back of their little station. A wise decision, still wouldn't have saved them if Ifrit decided to turn up the heat here. There was a funny thing Ifrit learned back during her "tactics lessons" from the Defense Department goon about ratcheting up the heat in a concrete building; something about making a home into an oven? She suddenly remembers why she purposefully tried to forget some of those lessons. The Doctor's... the Doctor's were far more kind, far more useful.
'Remember, Ifrit. You can burn, you can incinerate, you can destroy with the ease of brushing aside some loose dirt, but when you make that decision, it is final. What is turned to ash can never return. You will have to make those calls, and they will be hard calls- but always look for another way first.'
The Doctor's voice in her head is sudden and startling, making Ifrit trip over her own feet.
"Speaker Ambrus pushed for your release." Eyja says, helping hold Ifrit up when she stumbles, "He understands that your... reaction was justified given everything we've been through. I told him about Kazimierz-"
"Gettin' chummy with the big-guy here? Smart."
"It's… more complicated than that. You need to talk to him, Ifrit."
"Everything's always more complicated for me." The Sarkaz darkly jokes.
"I mean it, Ifrit. Ambrus is sponsoring our stay here."
"Great, another person I can let down."
Ifrit is yanked to a halt by the arm. Normally she'd snap or swing, she'd lash and gnash, but it's obvious who's holding her back. Eyja is frowning deep enough that it makes the drying blood on her forehead crack and fall away.
"Iffy, I'm not asking much. Just talk to him."
Ifrit grumbles. She doesn't need words for Eyja to understand- she'd do it, but only because of Eyja. It also meant that Eyja needed to be there, just in case.
"My pills?"
Eyja shakes her head and shrugs. "You can have mine-"
"No." Ifrit's flat refusal makes Eyja frown even deeper than before. The struggle is there on her friend's face, playing out the battle in her mind to determine if it really was worth arguing over. Ifrit pulls Eyja out of her seriousness with a gentle tug. It's Ifrit's turn to lead them out now, pace picking up as her thoughts hammer away a terrible series of conclusions.
There's no way Eyja could know the maths that were playing out in Ifrit's head. The grim, gross, despicable quantification of life that made her hate white-coats who saw the world that way. Even back in Rhodes Island where the white-coats were actually trying to help, even with Olivia.
She may be horrible at numbers, but she has a good instinct of life and death. Ifrit doesn't need her pills, as long as Eyja was around between her episodes, and Eyja got more mileage out of the suppression meds than Ifrit did; therefore she can conclude that the best way to keep herself in-check was Eyja to remain... alive. After all Ifrit only got the quieting of the voices, the stabilization of her Oripathy-ravaged mind, and if they grew more frequent again, she'd only drain their life-prolonging resources. Eyja needs those pills to keep her blood from crystalizing.
All Ifrit needs is Eyja.
All she needs is to keep Eyja alive, to be her personal hero.
She's thought it through, and she always comes to the same conclusion despite hearing the calm logic of the Doctor's criticism whispering from the back of her mind.
The rest of the world could burn for all Ifrit cares, after all what has the world done for Ifrit?