aeons_crackshot

The Annabelle Newfield that stumbles into Milliways is not the Annabelle the patrons are used to. This Annabelle is 18 years old and has just, barely, survived having her brain highjacked by a no good bastard of a psychic in Cuba.

Calling her psyche a mess at this point is an understatement. Metaphysically speaking, she's crisscrossed with open, bleeding wounds. (That tends to happen when you battle mind to mind with a psychic employing brute force to puppeteer your body that doesn't particularly care if you're even alive after they're finished with you.)

But this is not the main problem. The REAL problem is that Milliways does not allow two versions of the same person to exist in the Bar at the same time. Reality shuffles itself like a deck of cards and the 'new' Annabelle gets slammed with a whole different set of 28 years worth of memories as the 'old' Annabelle ceases to exist.

Memories that don't settle properly thanks to the mess her psyche is at the moment. Oh, they're probably in there to be found.....somewhere, eventually.......maybe. Damn it.

Annabelle looks around the Bar, too shocked and disoriented to even swear for the moment.

There have been many bad days in the course of Ann Abel's (usually parsed by non Khajiit as Annabelle) life.

The day when she came home from trapping rabbits at age 12 to find her entire family murdered by bandits, the days not too many moons later when she nearly died in the badlands of Elsweyr before she was found and adopted by a band of Khajiit.

Today....today is shaping up to be in a high position on that list of bad days. Her "partner" of these many months, someone she truly believed was trustworthy, proved otherwise. Why else would he drug her, strip her of literally everything that she had to her name, and leave her in a Divines damned CRYPT? She is NEVER working with an Argonian again! Even the worst sugar-tooth among the Khajitt would have had the decency to slit her throat rather than leaving her here to die of deprivation or being eaten alive by the crypt's inhabitants.

Bastard's probably well on his way to Cyrodiil by now.

But she's never been the kind to give in to despair, even if she is naked and unarmed in the midst of the enemy. Well, she WAS unarmed. Turns out you can, with difficulty, bludgeon a draugr to death with a funeral urn. That kill netted her a bow and a quiver full of arrows. The clothes on the draugr, alas, fell to pieces as soon as she tried to get them off. (Fabric doesn't hold up too well over the centuries, it seems.)

She'd experiment with spider webs as clothing, but they might cause a fatal delay in her reactions thank to their stickiness....

Annabelle will firmly deny that she's been anxious since she and Tanya parted.

(Trying not to think about losing Tanya. Losing her best friend. Trying not to think of all the ways that things could go horribly, horribly wrong.)


It's gotten bad enough that she's been pacing the floor of her room for the last hour like an animal trapped in a cage.....

What do you do when you realize you're in love with your best friend? Your female best friend, to make things worse.

Annabelle sighs, staring up at the dark ceiling above her bed. She's never felt this way about a woman before, the warm and tingly feeling of desire tagging along with what she knows is love. Tanya Adams is an exception to all the rules, and she doesn't know why.

Sexual attraction doesn't work like that, does it? Annabelle thought people were built to prefer one side or the other, no exceptions. Hell, she's not even sure how sex works when both partners are female. Perpetually waking up aching and frustrated, longing for things she's never known would be bad enough...

....but it's not just sex she wants. She wants to be with Tanya through good and bad, to be her PARTNER in every possible sense of the word. She doesn't know how to say it and make Tanya believe it. (She's afraid that Tanya doesn't really want her that way, that this will wreck everything between them.)

Annabelle ruthlessly attempts to squash those feelings down, to try and hide her nerves and desire as much as possible. Tonight is their night. (Can you have a date night when you're not dating?) Time to curl up together on Annabelle's couch, get a slight alcohol buzz, and "watch" an action movie. (Mostly they take them apart, rolling eyes and making smart-ass comments at Hollywood stupidity. Or topping whatever is happening on screen with stuff they've actually done.)

Annabelle is making a valiant attempt at organization, if only for distraction's sake. Connor's been gone and, well, she misses him a LOT.

Her closet had turned up with weird stuff in it again, but it is at least stuff she's mostly familiar with this time. She's going through the pile when she sees a familiar pair of worn bamboo canes. "Heh. I haven't thought of these in years," she says with a chuckle.

Once upon a time, the Æon Society found a culture that appeared to be based on the Amazons from ancient mythology. As you might expect, Annabelle got on with the female warriors quite well indeed.

She starts moving through the motions her body still remembers of one of their sword dances, the short bamboo sticks serving in place of swords.

Things have changed a LOT since the FreakAngels last celebrated their birthday. For a start, they're in a different universe entirely. (A better universe in oh so many ways, but different.)

Sirkka has seemed more smug than usual the last few days, for who knows what reason. (If tradition holds, she and Jack will probably spend most of the day in bed.) The others are doing their own things too, even the often sulking Luke. Which means Connor has time to visit his girlfriend, if he was so inclined.

Anybody who's done much cleaning has experienced a moment of 'Where the hell did that come from?' when excavating a closet, attic, or trunk. An item whose provenance is unknown and seems to have appeared there as if by magic. (Possibly, they come from the same dimension that socks lost in the wash go to.)

Annabelle is staring at such an item right now. She knows she didn't buy it and she's 99.999% certain Connor didn't either.

It is a mystery.

Her hands are going through the motions of taking apart and cleaning a Vickers Martini Mk. 1 Target Rifle when the dream begins.

She hasn't used one since she was 14, but dream logic can be strange.

"I should have known I'd find you working on a gun," says a very familiar voice, tinged with laughter. Annabelle's head snaps up in shock, face going pale as her eyes confirm who's talking to her.

"Mom?" she asks quietly, voice cracking. The pain and loss of an orphaned child is in her voice even now.

"Were you expecting the Easter Bunny?" her mother replies with a raised eyebrow. Her tone is dry, but there is laughter sparkling in her eyes.

Annabelle's mind is reeling so much that she actually says the first thing that crosses her mind, "But you're so small!"

Marie Lee Newfield laughs at that. "Oh my sweet, silly girl," she says with a shake of her head. "You've just gotten taller, that's all."

Annabelle doesn't remember crossing the intervening space, just wrapping her mother in a nearly bone crushing hug. "I've missed you so much, she says with a sniffle, head buried in her mother's shoulder.

"I've missed you too, sweetheart. So very, very much. I've missed so much of your life...."

Annabelle can't quite manage to speak around the lump in her throat, so she just nods.

"But I've taken advantage of a certain loophole, tonight," she says with a mischievous grin, holding her daughter tight. "So I want to hear about all the things I've missed..."

"Loophole?" Annabelle asks, confused.

"All Hallow's Eve," Marie explains. The walls between the living and the dead are a bit more...permeable than usual, tonight."

There is time enough for the telling of tales. Tales of her life as a hero, her death, her loves and her losses. Her new life and love at the Bar at the End of The Universe. At the end of the tale, her mother hugs her even tighter, and whispers, "I'm so proud of you, Annabelle. Prouder than I could ever say."

If they both cry a little then, well, there's no one to see. Both of them can feel the loophole closing, feel the sand slipping through the hourglass. "I can't stay," Annabelle says to her mother. "Not yet."

Marie nods. "No, not yet. You've got too much living left to do," she says with a fond smile. She reaches for something in her hip pocket, and presses it into Annabelle's hand. "Your Connor had best get around to making an honest woman of you, if he knows what's good for him," she says with a grin.

"MOM!!!"

"What? I'm not allowed to want grandchildren?" Marie teases. She hugs Annabelle tightly one last time, kissing her on the forehead. "Be happy, Annabelle. That's all I've ever wanted for you."

Annabelle wakes, then, curled up next to Connor in bed. There's something in her hand....

She unclenches her fist and looks at what lies within. It's not, monetarily speaking, terribly valuable. The brooch is only a thin layer of gold over brass, with a blue agate mosaic of forget-me-nots. The gold has worn off around the edges, and a few of the stones are chipped or missing. That sort of thing tends to happen to jewelry after it's been worn for a generation or two.

Her grandmother's brooch, the one that served as Grandma's wedding ring, and, later, Marie's. She doesn't know what to make of this evidence of a dream that wasn't a dream. Not yet.

What is it with evil geniuses and their tendency to paint skulls on things? At the moment, a fierce battle is afoot on the decks of a particularly large black zeppelin with a skull painted on it.

No one is shooting (bullets + hydrogen gas = BOOM), but the melee is intense....

There's no way to tell time, here. Hours, days? She can't even hear the beat of her own heart to mark the time.

There is nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, or touch, or taste. She's hurled herself against the glass of the inside of the Mirror, for, well, she's not sure how long. She should be spattered in her own blood, would be, if she was anywhere but here.

The human mind doesn't cope well with prolonged sensory deprivation. People hallucinate, become anxious and paranoid. That's why Annabelle's not sure if the whispers and the things at the edges of her vision are real or not. That doesn't bring back pleasant memories.

Things are pretty bad when you can't trust your own mind.

She can feel something cold, hungry, and malevolent poking at her psychic shields. Stalking around the edges of them like a starving predator. It hasn't broken through....yet.

She's completely and utterly alone. There is no life here. But those we love are always with us, in a way. There are many people who are close to her heart. Friends, and more than friends, but all precious.

Those memories are her anchor, holding her up against the terrible tide of fear and despair. She will hold fast. She must.

This will not last forever. Someone will notice that thing wearing her body, and she will be rescued. She won't allow herself to believe otherwise....