Ch15 likely won’t be updated on Thursday BUT I’m hoping I won’t make you guys wait another week. I’m so excited for this part of the story and I want to make sure it doesn’t disappoint 😭❤️
Btw I will tag any rambling with “RL” so you can mute.
I’ve been mentally so strung out :( got some bad news about landlord related shit (parasites the lot of them) and it’s a huge point of paralysis and dread for thanks to dealing with neighbours who were the family of the landlord (they own the whole building). And it was. Psychotic.
More landlord family members (unclear if the same horrible trolls) are moving back in in a few months.)
The thought of having that level of sleep disturbance again fills me with. Levels of dread and hopelessness I haven’t felt since I was actively S**cidal.
I know everyone deals with rented / landlord / shitty neighbour stuff and I tell myself that every day to try feel less “cursed”. I mostly feel so inept and immature and stupid that I have this much stress over smth that is sadly part of every day life I just. The dread. I wish I was more like everyone else I know who just “deal with it when it happens”. I feel really deficient.
new tomodachi life has been fun
it's mostly dispatch nobody's surprised
i feel like i need to acknowledge that when i was making robert's mii i tried giving him eyeshines but the second i added light to his eyes he stopped looking like robert so i had to get rid of them
+all my miis so far:
Here in the Hereafter Chapter 2: Reunion Hurts as Much as Goodbye
Content warning: Injury, implied past SA
Previous
Between one breath and the next, Bridget found herself in a dense, dark forest. The cold, dry air sapped the moisture from Bridget’s skin and replaced it with a bone-deep chill that shook her to her core and shocked her into alertness. She had grown to hate being cold. Going from the dulled feeling of being in the Crone’s presence to whatever godforsaken neck of the woods she ended up in so quickly was almost too drastic a change for her to process. She darted her gaze to and fro, taking in her surroundings with the urgency of a fox in the throes of a hunt.
No path was in sight, no landmark nor clear way through the trees that surrounded her. The trees themselves were dead, cracked with decay and reaching for the sky with gnarled, rotted fingers. The sky itself was painted black and cloudclung, but lit from behind by a dim, dismal sun. Bridget hugged her arms close to her chest, both for warmth and to try and still her nerves. Rubbing her palms up and down her shoulders she could feel the sting of wounds still fresh. Witch was right, Death couldn’t do shit for me.
As if by divine punishment, she could feel the cry of each of her wounds, the sharp song of cuts that were still blood-wet to the touch, the swollen sting of burns not yet soothed. Bridget fell to her knees in a slow, sore descent that ended with a final, thudding drop to the soil below. Her body was wracked with ragged breaths that raced from her chest. As the pain faded to its baseline throb, one thought raced through her mind. She was alone. Alone was good. Alone was safe.
But she definitely was not safe here, at least not in her current state and certainly not for much longer, it occurred to her as she eyed her surroundings. What was moments ago a comfort quickly soured, warping itself into a suffocating, stifling condemnation. She was alone. Oh, gods, she was alone.
No one’s coming to save you, whispered Harper’s voice in her head. Bridget’s eyes burned as the beginning of a sob formed in the back of her throat. She fought it back, clutching her head so hard her fingernails left indents on her head. Her scalp was freezing cold- it was in this moment that she truly felt the absense of the mane of hair she’d had before. There’s nothing left of you. The second the dam was breached the flood couldn’t be stopped.
The edges of her vision started to blur, the horizon ahead of her looked like pins-and-needles in her sight. She rapidly breathed in and out, but her lungs couldn’t draw any oxygen in, grasping for air that would not come. She could swear the trees were stalking their way towards her, approaching with a sickening crackle. Notrealnotrealnotrealnotrealnotreal, Bridget pleaded in her mind, hiding behind her hands.
The crackling grew louder, deafening in its toll as the forest walled Bridget in, drawing closer and closer until she could feel the rough bark on her skin, until she was pinned between the trunks of a dozen trees, reaching for the heavens above. In her mind, she could hear her voice and Harper’s, together in a sick harmony-
Here, you’re nothing.
The anguished scream that left her was a spark landing in gasoline. The trees surrounding her shattered outward in a shower of bark as the air around her ignited and flame blossomed forth. Her great yell devolved into a fit of racking, gasping, screaming sobs that threw her forward to brace herself against the ground.
In her paralyzing horror Bridget could feel herself rising into the air, ascending off the ground inch after inch with each second. She couldn’t stop her ascent now, as the flame that exuded from her bore her upwards of its own volition. She hugged her knees to her chest, curling into a fetal position as roaring inferno raged around her, swirling like a hurricane she was the eye of.
Bridget could see the flames surrounding her had grown fiercer and fiercer every moment. Strangely, she didn’t feel any pain- not a single new burn marked her skin as the conflagration enveloped her. She finally felt warm, like even though the sky overhead was black and cold, she was basking in her own personal sunbeam. It was the best she felt in ages.
That is, until a hand grabbed hold of her ankle, pulling hard- hard enough to crack the joint painfully, casting her back down towards the ground. Even plummeting head over foot towards the ground, Bridget didn’t fall as fast as she expected to. She fell roughly half the speed she expected to, which still put her at terminal velocity under normal circumstances. She slammed into the ground, momentum propelling her across the dirt and halting the inferno that she was the epicenter of.
“Do not fear, spirit. I will lay you to rest!” commanded a woman’s voice as Bridget rolled across the cold ground painfully, groaning with each bump of the earth. She scrambled onto her side, crying out as she pulled herself onto her elbows, a spear embedding itself into the space she had occupied but a moment ago. “Wait!” she rasped. “Wait, please!” Her heart raced as she raised her hands- either in self-defense or in surrender, whichever would get her out of here. “Please stop!” Don’t cower. FIGHT BACK, dammit!
She heard the twinkle of a bell from several paces behind her accompanied by the falling of footsteps on the dry earth. Keys? The hair stood up on the back of her neck. She froze for a brief second before shocking herself to her feet as the spearwoman landed beside her weapon now, in a crouch.
The woman was a blur of black of as she rose to face Bridget, and at least a foot taller than she. She had a narrowed, determined expression in her amber eyes, fortified with black eyeliner drawn on way too thick.
“Diana, wait! That one’s alive!” The footsteps from behind drew closer, gait staggering as if winded from sprinting. “I can feel, they’re not a spirit! They’re just- by Death, what did you do to them? Hold back a little, Di!”
Bridget stared into Diana’s eyes, her own narrowing with confusion and surprise. Why could she recognize the voice approaching? As she turned to face the newcomer she could see a glint of verdant green-
“Dear god… Bridget?”
She almost flinched at the sound of her own name.
⧫
Neither of them were as one another remembered. The last time Bridget saw Magdalena, she was saying goodbye to her before fleeing the country. One last time together, as friends, the night before she left for Europe. Bridget remembers how she looked in her doorway- tears in her eyes, a messy bun falling apart over her shoulders, how she collapsed into her with the last hug they may ever share. She remembers holding it together until she shut the door one final time, pressing her back to the hard, dense wood and sliding down it to collapse in a pile on the floor, where she stayed for an hour. A night of pressing down her emotions like a surfboard under the surface of the water, singing with potential energy, before Mags left and the board flew to punch her in the face.
The woman before her now hardly resembled the girl she had been when she left. Her brown hair was pulled into an intricate fishtail braid, with strands of golden blonde interlaced throughout. Where she had left sobbing, mascara running in a messy sweatshirt, Magdalena now radiated before her- her posture straighter, her eyes determined and focused, a stunning green dress cascaded down to just below her knees, where sleek combat boots met and mingled with the hem of her dress. Around her flowed a ruby red coat with long sleeves that covered her wrists and a hem that flowed down to her ankles- a gift Bridget had given her just before she had fled to Europe. Strangely, she was also carrying a dark, oaken staff with a blood red jewel set in a gnarled wooden cage, which Bridget gave a quizzical glance. Nevertheless her heart swelled with a sense of hope, fuelling an ember she long thought extinguished.
“Mags!” she rasped, with a quiet, delighted awe in her voice.
So why did Magdalena look like someone shot a dog in front of her?
Oh, right. I’m pretty fucked up right now. Absent-mindedly, Bridget tried to cover herself. “Bridge- wait, no. Let me see your wounds.” Magdalena quickly closed the gap between the two and drove her staff into the dirt, freeing her hands to inspect the…everything wrong with her. Bridget ran hot with a shame that almost brought her to tears anew- that she had been left in such a state, that she couldn’t stop it, she was far too tired to figure out. As Mags’s eyes swept over her, all of her, Magdalena’s brow furrowed into something resembling a scowl. Is she mad at me? Did I do something? Why won’t she tell me? Bridget could feel static crackling at the edges of her vision again.
Diana surveyed the crackling at the edge of the horizon. “Magdalena, she’s destabilizing reality. We have to get her back around others or this entire forest could regress back into chaos. She already destroyed the forest.” It was dead when I got here, Bridget wanted to say, but held her tongue. She wasn’t sure of the dynamic between Magdalena and this Diana lady, and couldn’t deduce if she was still a threat to her. Not to mention she barely had the strength to speak.
Instead of shepherding Bridget towards wherever Diana wanted to go, Mags held her by the arms, lowering her onto her knees, as she knelt down with her. “The forest was dead anyway,” Magdalena said gently, causing Bridget to quietly cheer in her head. Mags looked past her at Diana, who was eyeing the borders of reality. “I can’t move her. I have to tend to her wounds here. To that end, give us some space so my magic can work better.”
“Are you sure you can control her? We can always put her to sleep and bring her to the Oasis. It’s not like she’ll die.”
Call it a bad first impression, but Bridget could feel that her and this woman weren’t fated to get along. Perhaps Mags felt Bridget tense in her grip, or more likely she had maintained her sense of empathy since the end of the world, but she shook her head. “No, here’ll do. Go! I’ll be fine,” she said, shooing her hand at Diana. Bridget could hear the woman with the eyeliner of an owl pull her spear from the dirt, wordlessly shooing off.
Bridget breathed a sigh of relief. “Mags, I…” Wait, magic? She furrowed her brow, taken aback. “Wait, magic?!” Then recognition flashed across her face. Oh right, I blew up a forest.
“Yeah, uh,” Mags sucked air through her teeth, shaking her head slightly. “There’s kind of a lot to fill you in on. More than I can really explain, but the long-and-short of it being, don’t freak out- reality depends on it.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Bridget might not have hidden her expression well, because even with a fat left eye Magdalena could tell she was a little more than irritated by that. Now she couldn’t even be safe from her own emotions? Mags took a deep breath. “Yeah, it’s…not ideal. But at the very least because of it I can help you. Speaking of which, this won’t hurt- I promise you.”
Magdalena brought her hands from Bridget’s forearms up to her head, each lovingly grasping the base of her skull. Bridget relished the feeling of a friendly touch, of someone she trusted- a feeling she had long ago stopped bothering to long for. “Gods, Bridge. Your hair…"
Bridget wished she hadn’t mentioned her hair. That was the last thing that she wanted to think about right now. Dejectedly she buried her head into Mag’s shoulder, heaving small, dry sobs that shook her weakened frame.
Magdalena gritted her teeth. It had been a year and a half before the bombs fell that she had gotten news of Bridget’s death. A year and a half of grieving, of loathing, of fighting alongside Bridget’s mother to get her body, to get anything from the authorities while abroad. This was so much worse than she could ever have expected. Sure, there were points early on where she had suspected that Bridget’s death was a lie, but as time went on and on, she settled for fighting for her corpse to lay to rest.
Magdalena pulled her in closer, wrapping her arm around Bridget and pressing her into the crook of her shoulder. A warm and radiant light enveloped the pair, bathing their embrace in a rich, dandelion-gold hue.
Bridget felt every molecule of her body sing and every nerve join in the chorus- she felt alive. Warmth spread from her heart to her extremities, the warmth of the sun that shines through a cool breeze on the first warm day of spring. The fresh cuts across Bridget’s chest and up her back hummed and scarred over with an itching haste. She could feel the pain leave the ankle Diana threw her by; her broken wrist that had healed wrong realigning itself, the ache and swelling leave her eye, her shoulder sliding into place. She inhaled a deep, rasping breath that rejuvenated her down to her very marrow. Better than all, she could feel her hair growing, spiralling into curls that sprouted through the cracks in Mags’s fingers and bloomed down Bridget’s shoulder. She could feel Magdalena’s magic babble through her as a creek flows down a hill, gently ambling before gently flowing back into Magdalena. Bridget pulled back from Magdalena’s embrace, smiling, to see with amazement that grass had sprouted up around them, peeking between them and brushing against their legs.
CRACK!
Bridget flinched, bracing for pain but felt none. She looked to Magdalena who, to her horror, had begun to form the wounds she had just healed, including a massive, swollen and bloodied left eye. “Mags!” Bridget grabbed her by the shoulders. “Mags, tell me how I can help!”
“Bridge, hah…” she gasped through a sudden pain, which was no great joy to watch. “It’s okay. This is normal. The pain’s gotta go somewhere. I can take it.” I deserve it, she corrected herself in her head. Pain shot through her again, causing her to cry out.
Magdalena covered her mouth with her hand, her wrist half cocked at an odd angle. “Oh, Bridget…” she said, with pleading eyes. A silent realization sparked between the two as they met each others’ gaze. Magdalena felt gruesome, cruel wounds internally that brought horror to her face.
Bridget dropped her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry you had to feel that. Have to feel this. I’m so sor-””
“No, Bridget. Don’t apologize. I-” I’m sorry. You should have never had to feel that. I should have never left you to get abducted by a shadowy government agency and tortured for a year and half and it’s all my fault that you got r- “I’m here for you.”
For a moment, neither said anything. The two locked eyes as if they were reading each others’ thoughts. They had been friends when they were once children named David and Ethan, two names that were bygone relics but of a shared past. To say that the two were friends after that was an understatement- they were brothers, sisters, rivals and mentors, everything but lovers. Now almost a decade later, Bridget and Magdalena were together once more on the far side of a shattered reality.
For now, that was enough.
Bridget pulled Mags into her embrace, holding her close as she possibly could.
After a time, Magdalena patted Bridget’s arm. “Go on ahead and find Diana. I need to be alone to heal through this.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave y-”
“You’ll be safe with her. Now that she knows you’re not a malevolent spirit.” Magdalena cut her off, redirecting.
“I, okay. I’ll see you soon?”
“Oh wait, take this!” Magdalena pulled her coat, the coat Bridget had given her, off and threw it over Bridget’s shoulders.
Magdalena gave a warm nod, the two sharing a loving glance as Bridget rose to shuffle off. She knew her magic would act with its full potency without others nearby extending their influence on reality, but in actuality she needed a second alone to process the weight of what she’d just learned. The cuts across her stomach seared her nerves as they began to mend themselves on their own, the sensation causing her to grit her teeth. After all this time, she was still a baby in the face of pain. It doesn’t matter. You deserve this.
The edges of reality blurred around her like TV static. With her head in her hands, she sobbed into her palms unabashedly.
“You left me to die, now look at me. Look at what you did to me.”
Magdalena looked up to see Bridget in front of her, wreathed in iridescent black mist. She was covered in the same cuts, bruises, and burns Magdalena was currently trying to heal through, tears streaking through the blood and ash on her face, her scalp buzzed and cut into.
“It was so much worse than you thought,” Bridget said. “And it’s all your fault.”
“I’m sorry Bridge, I’m so sorry,” Magdalena wept, “I never should’ve left. I should’v-” She yelped through a sickening crack as her wrist realigned itself in the same moment her shoulder relocated. She threw her head back in an anguished cry as she watched the malformed specter of her friend as it limped towards her, closing the distance clumsily to bring a hand to cup Magdalena’s chin.
‘Bridget’ stared at her with stilled, pleading eyes. “You felt what they did to me. You know that was only a fraction of what I suffered.” A cold tear dripped down ‘Bridget’s’ face, falling below onto Magdalena’s hand like a drop of dew.
“You can’t fix this,” her greatest regret whispered, dissolving into the same glowing black mist she arrived in, which came to wash over her like a passing fog, dewy and chilling. Once it passed, all she was left with was the still silence of the dead forest around her, crackling with the static of warped reality, like the universe was scrunching in on it.
Magdalena took a deep breath, exhaling as she rose to her feet. She snatched her staff out of the dirt and started in the direction Bridget and Diana had left in. I can still try to fix what I can.
⧫
“Diana? Are you there?” Bridget’s shout was lost in the forest ahead of her, where each tree was almost identical within a dense thicket almost featureless in its repetition. “Dian-”
A dark blur materialized beside her, solidifying into Diana’s form. “Don’t shout. You’ll attract spirits.” Bridget almost leapt out of her skin as time slowed down to an instant, her racing even in that briefest of moments. A cry escaped her as she recoiled from Diana’s sudden appearance.
Diana, sensing her mistake, cast her spear aside and held her palms out in a non-threatening gesture. “I’m sorry! It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” The threatening aura dropped from her face like a sheet falling to the ground.
“By the gods, do you have any fucking subtlety?” Bridget lashed out.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have startled you. That’s my bad.” Diana adopted the tone of a zookeeper trying to stop a polar bear from eating an errant child fallen into its exhibit. Her gaze softened ever so slightly. “Your hair looks beautiful, by the way.”
Bridget ran a hand through the long, heavy mane that now poured out from her scalp into a mess of brown curls. For the first time in months, someone warm ignited in her heart. “I…thank you.”
Diana offered an assuring smile, looking down at the woolen coat she was wrapped in. She tried not to think about how the emaciated girl before her swam in the embrace of the scratchy red fabric. “You’re Bridget, huh. Maggie talks about you a lot. She never forgot you.”
For a brief moment, Bridget’s heart stopped pumping blood, instead driving out a thick emulsification of sorrow, grief, and relief that made tears well in her eyes. “I…”
Bridget stumbled forward, reaching out for a tree trunk well out of reach as her vision swam before her, Diana, rushed to her, driving her body into the crook underneath her shoulder and pulling her into herself. “It’s okay, the adrenaline’s just wearing off!”
A wave of exhaustion hit Bridget like her soul was being torn out through the bottom of her feet and in the barest of instants everything faded into darkness. She ragdolled into Diana’s arms, as the warrior deftly caught her with a steady hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve gotcha.”
A beat passed before Diana noticed Magdalena approaching her, staff in hand.
Please tell us about Douglas. What does he like? Dislikes? Hobbies? Does he serve the same lord as Willow? Do they serve any lords? Are they just out and about knights who are really into each other? Are they really into each other? What does Diuglas do all day?
Oof, so many questions! And some are so hard to answer. But I will try my best.
Douglas is a simple guy, he likes a warm hearth and good company. He dislikes courtlife in general, the hoops one has to jump through, the way people behave. But he does not have to deal with it a lot. He is blunt and open and never learned or cared for picking his words carefully.
Douglas is usually busy so he does not have a lot of spare time to spend on hobbies. He tends to whittle, but he's not good at it, he mostly does it to keep his hands busy. He also does not attempt to learn to get better at it which is something that infuriates Willow.
Willow is part of and later head of the kings guard. Douglas is not from the same place, so they don't serve under the same lord. It is a bit complicated for me to explain because of limited english skills and me not having bothered to ever write it down, but Douglas is a clan chief in his own country, so a leading figure himself. Again something that infuriates Willow bcs Douglas does not act the part. The country he comes from also does not follow a monarchy in comparison to Willows own homecountry.
They are into each other but their relationship is also a complicated matter since they are not a couple or lovers or anything of the sort. At least not in the traditional sense. There are some rivalries and later a war between their countries. They are both emotionally constipated though and Willow, being a noble born, has certain duties as well.
And what does he do all day? That is a really hard question, it depends on where he is. I think what we'll see a lot in the beginning is him doing contracts while travelling and annoying Willow while being at court. Else he's training as well as helping out with physical labor in his hometown.
Having some Ambulon feels up in this house tonight!
I'm thinking about how hard he works to try and be better, and how much he has against him. Like, he's a MTO, made from cheap parts and the bare minimum of everything. I'm speculating here but his entry into existence must have been rough and he probably wasn't expected to survive beyond his mission.
The fact that he's also a failed combiner experiment who'd been reformatted arguably against his will into a (useless) leg. And THEN he gets dumped on Delphi (I have my own headcanons about how he arrived and in what conditions, and it's not nice because I love angst & h/c) and has to put up with Pharma of all mechs.
I can't imagine putting up with all the workplace harassment and verbal abuse from Pharma, let alone being acutely aware that the DJD are local. Ambulon deserves a vacation. (Moon vacation?????)
