“Maybe we should go somewhere more private,” Dys wondered aloud as her gaze passed over the empty courtyard.
None of Aelius’ limited serving staff was in view, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t come along at an awkward moment. Jadis wanted to have an earnest discussion with Maeve, so it was important that they weren’t interrupted. She wasn’t sure where they could go, though, since her room was currently occupied by her other selves and her companions.
“We should,” the Fetch agreed without argument. “I know a spot. Follow me.”
As she walked behind the shapeshifter, Jadis considered what she was going to say to Maeve. She wasn’t mad at her, not anymore. Her temper had cooled significantly since the unfortunate mistake made during their flight into Glanum. When she thought about it, Jadis likely wouldn’t have done anything differently if she had known from the start it was Maeve who had been pulled over the edge rather than thinking it was Eir. So far as she knew, the Fetch couldn’t fly. She probably didn’t have any skills or spells that would save her from a fall, either. Maybe she could have transformed into something with wings and glided down, but still. Jadis would have done everything in her power to save Maeve, just like she would have done for any of her other companions. Whether it had been Eir or Humbert, she would have dove over that edge to catch them. That was just her way.
The problem was the fact that Maeve had been pretending to be Eir. She shouldn’t have been. There was no reason to. None that Jadis could see, anyway. All that Maeve’s transformation had done was make Jadis think that someone she loved, a far more vulnerable individual at that, had been put in danger. That was where their discussion had to start. Why.
It didn’t take long for Maeve to lead Dys down a flight of stairs to what was obviously a storage cellar. While the space was full, the room was orderly and clean and was also well lit by what were probably enchanted lanterns. An extravagant expense, but one Jadis had grown used to seeing in the homes of the wealthy. Aside from all the shelves and crates, large casks of wine lined one wall, which was where the Fetch led her. There was a decently sized space in the far corner of the room between the wall and a cask where someone had set up a small table and a couple of stools. Jadis imagined it was a spot where guards or servants went to rest when they were off duty.
Eying a blanket that had been left in a rumpled heap on the floor in the corner, Dys put a hand on her hip before directing a question at Maeve.
“You haven’t been sleeping down here, have you?”
“No,” the other woman replied instantly. After a second or two, she further explained. “I haven’t been sleeping.”
“Alright, I’m not here to berate you about bad sleeping habits. But you know Aelius would give you a room, right? I’m surprised he hasn’t already.”
“He did,” Maeve said as she settled onto one of the stools. “I just don’t want to be in there. I don’t like it when he knows where I am. He sees me too well.”
Jadis wasn’t quite sure she fully understood Maeve’s perspective, but she guessed that someone with the power to see other people’s status sheets was someone a shapeshifting Fetch would be naturally uncomfortable around.
“Fair enough,” Dys shrugged, deciding not to make any further comment on that subject.
She let the silence linger for a moment between them as she sat down on the floor across from the shape changer. Sometimes silence was a more effective tool than direct questions, so Jadis gave Maeve just enough time to feel as though she might need to fill that silence. Barely any time passed at all before Jadis’ tactic bore fruit.
“Did anyone talk to you… about me?”
“Why would anyone do that?” Dys asked.
“Because of what I did. The other night, I mean.”
Dys tilted her head to one side, carefully considering Maeve’s words. They were vague. Purposefully so, though the Fetch was doing a good job of hiding her intent via her tone. Casual and calm, though not to the point of seeming unconcerned. Jadis guessed she was being ambiguous not about who might have spoken to her, but about what actions the shapeshifter had taken. So far as Jadis knew, the only thing Maeve had done wrong during the battle was pretend to be Eir at a poorly timed moment. With her wording, Jadis had to wonder if there was something else to question the Fetch about.
“No one has talked to me about you,” Dys answered honestly. “Other than Aelius, who mentioned that you used to go by a different name. Galene, I think he said.”
“That was a while ago,” Maeve replied, her tense posture relaxing almost imperceptibly. “I haven’t been in this part of the empire for years. Needed a change.”
As Maeve’s tone turned more casual, Jadis almost regretted that she would have to push the topic to the whole reason they were having a private conversation in the first place. Still, putting the discussion off wasn’t a good idea. Jadis needed to understand why Maeve had done what she had done so she could work with her to not let it happen again. If they couldn’t work something out, then Maeve wasn’t going to be a good addition to the team. She would be too much of a liability to keep around if she was going to cause distractions in critical moments.
“Speaking of change,” Dys said, well aware that it wasn’t her most subtle of segues, “I need to ask. Why did you change into Eir while we were on the airship?”
The tension that had previously left the Fetch’s posture came back immediately. Jadis watched as a confusing jumble of emotions washed over Maeve’s face. Her expression eventually settled on something akin to embarrassment mixed with contriteness. When she responded, Jadis could feel the effort Maeve was putting into her words to convey her sincerity.
“I am truly sorry about doing that. I… I didn’t mean to be Eir. Or trick you or anyone else into thinking I was her. I was just—I was already wearing the robes I had made to match hers. It was instinctive. I usually avoid combat. So, I did what I always try to do, and I blended in.”
“That’s reasonable,” Dys nodded along to Maeve’s explanation. “I don’t know what it’s like being able to change shape, but I imagine it has a lot to do with your instincts.”
“Yes, it does,” Maeve agreed with a mildly frustrated sigh. “Sometimes painfully so.”
“Now, tell me the reason you’re hiding from me.”
Maeve froze, her face and body going so still she looked like a statue. The illusion only enhanced by the fact that she had shifted to look like Jadis and thus had marble white skin and hair. After a heartbeat, the Fetch recovered and gave Jadis a convincing, wide-eyed look.
“What do you mean? I just told you the truth. It was an accident.”
“And I believe you,” Dys said without hesitation. She punctuated her next statement by tapping two fingers against the wooden table between them. “But you’re not telling me the whole truth. A lie of omission is still a lie. I know, because I’ve done it way too much myself.”
“You can’t know that I’m hiding anything,” Maeve said, her expression a mix of doubt and offense. “I’m trying to be honest with you. Really. I don’t want to lie to you about anything.”
Dys sighed as her head hung low against her chest. Jadis was glad that she had upgraded her Refracted Mind passive skill. Holding multiple conversations at once hadn’t been difficult before, but she could get distracted at times. Now that her ability to multitask had improved, Jadis had no worries about having such a serious conversation with Maeve while her other selves were busy talking to her lovers about their next steps in Glanum. The ability allowed her to fully focus on Maeve, which she felt was very much needed. The approaching conversation deserved her concentrated attention.
“Look. I know I’m not the smartest person in any given room. But I’m not stupid, either. One mental faculty that I know I excel at beyond most people is perception. Not physical perception. Emotional perception. I’m good at reading people. It’s why I always trust my instincts about others. I’m not always right, but I’m right a lot more often than I’m wrong.”
Maeve stared at Dys, her expression showing clear doubt. Making a snap judgement, Jadis decided that she would need to share with the other woman, if she wanted her to open up.
“You want to know why I can always see through your disguises?”
“Yes,” the shapeshifter answered immediately.
“It’s your eyes.”
“My eyes?” Maeve echoed. “I transform my eyes, the same as the rest of me.”
“Yes, you do,” Dys readily agreed. “And you’re good at it, too. Not just the outward appearance, but the way you mimic expressions. You blend in perfectly.”
Dys’ words seemed to bolster Maeve’s confidence. Her posture straightened, almost puffing up as she took obvious pride in her talent. However, as Dys continued her explanation, Maeve’s whole expression broke apart as that confidence shattered by just a few softly spoken syllables.
“Except when you look at me. If I had a lower Agility score, maybe I wouldn’t notice. But my Agility is hundreds of points high, so I do notice. I see the hunger. That shift to aggressive desire. It’s only for a split second, but you can’t seem to help it. When you look at me, you covet me.”
Jadis paused for a moment, letting her reveal sink in. She knew she was potentially giving up her trump card, her one surefire method of distinguishing Maeve from anyone she pretended to be. But her emotional perception of the Fetch was also a major part of what was causing the most friction between them. Jadis could read Maeve just as well as anyone else she spent any length of time around. However, at the same time, she couldn’t read her at all. She was hot one second, cold the next. Her temper would flare, then it would disappear a moment later to be replaced with another reaction that had no business being there. There were so many mixed signals and strange emotions playing through the woman that Jadis’ sixth sense was frequently at odds with her common sense when it came to Maeve. She didn’t truly understand the Fetch, and it frustrated her.
“I can see that emotion when you look at me,” Dys pressed on. “Just as I can see that you’re hiding something from me. Do you really think I can’t tell when someone is skirting an answer? Everything you just said in response to my accusation was an evasion, not a denial. ‘You can’t know that I’m hiding anything. I’m trying to be honest with you. I don’t want to lie to you.’ None of those statements mean that you aren’t lying. Just that you don’t want to.”
Leaning forward, Dys forced Maeve to meet her gaze. Speaking with her true, earnest intent, she made sure her words were heard by the Fetch.
“Please. Tell me why you disguised yourself as Eir during that battle. I need to know that I can trust you. If you can’t be honest with me, then I don’t know where else we can go from here but away from each other.”
A visible shudder rippled through Maeve, her body becoming more fluid than flesh for just an instant. Then, her jaw clenched as she became as solid as stone. Her face became a mirror of Dys’ own earnest expression, yet something far darker and desperate crept into her eyes. Undisguised, open for Jadis to freely see. Completely exposed.
“I need you to love me.”
Dys blinked, a frown forming on her face. She didn’t draw away from Maeve, but her tone made it clear how strongly she felt about the statement.
“You can’t make me love you—”
“I know.”
Maeve cut Dys off before she could quite finish her sentence. The Fetch shook slightly, that worrying swirl of emotions playing behind her eyes as she struggled to find the right words.
“You can’t make a person love you. I know that. I’m not trying to force you or trick you. I don’t want that. But that night, in that moment, I… I knew you would protect Eir, because you love her. So, I became Eir. I wasn’t thinking about it. If I had, I wouldn’t have been so stupid and done that. But it’s how I reacted. Because I need you to love me.”
There were a lot of different ways Jadis could react to such a reveal. Putting most of her instinctual responses aside, she decided to focus on a more analytical part of her thoughts. If being in a relationship with Alex had taught Jadis anything, it was the importance of communication. Not just that communication existed between two people, but that they also made an effort to see things from each other’s perspectives. Otherwise, there was a good chance that the concepts that they thought they were conveying to each other weren’t being received as intended. And in that moment, Jadis was fairly certain that she wasn’t fully understanding what Maeve was trying to tell her.
“What do you mean by need? Why do you need me to love you? Shouldn’t it be want?”
The woman wearing Jadis’ appearance shook her head, white hair growing tousled. Opening her mouth to speak, Dys could see how hard it was for Maeve to get the next words out. It was like breaking down a dam with a single shovel. Laborious to the point of pain, with little short term result, yet in the end the result was expansive. Once the first word came out, a tumble of more words followed, to the point where there was no stopping them.
“It isn’t want. I do want. I want you so very badly. But I need you to love me. Or use me. Or hate me. Or just anything that you want, just so long as you are focusing on me. I need you to do that. Something. Anything! I just need you.
“You want to know why you don’t see Fetch around much? It’s not because we hide or pretend to be other people all the time. We don’t have some secret enclave where we all hide. There is no Fetch city, or town, or even a gods damned farmstead. It’s not that you don’t see Fetch because we’re masters of blending in. You don’t see Fetch because there are hardly any Fetch at all.”
Both of Maeve’s hands were on the table, clenched into fists that were so tight they looked like they had turned into solid balls of rock. As she spoke, her voice grew heated, clear anger and frustration welling up inside of her. A deluge of pent-up emotion was pouring out of her, and she was going to keep pouring all of her hidden thoughts and frustrations out even if it hurt her to do so.
“I’m over fifty years old. Fifty years. That’s nothing compared to a Seraphim or a Dryad or even an elf. Fuck, even humans and goblins and all the rest of the mortals live for eighty or ninety years. But a Fetch making it past fifty? That’s an achievement. I’m old for a Fetch. I can’t even tell you how many of my kind I’ve outlived.”
“I know a Fetch,” Dys interrupted. “He’s been around for hundreds of years. You can’t tell me your kind have short lifespans when you can live for hundreds of years.”
“Oh, yes I can,” Maeve spat out, the vitriol palpable in her tone. “Sure, some live a long time. Some are fucking lucky. Not most of us. Not half of us. Barely any at all get as old as me. Because we’re chaos.”
Upon seeing the confused expression on Dys’ face, Maeve leaned forward. Her whole demeanor became desperate as she looked up at the Nephilim, her body as tense as a spring about to snap. When she spoke, Jadis could barely recognize the face Maeve was wearing as her own, the emotions were so thick.
“Don’t you get it? You’re his champion, aren’t you? Destarious is the God of Chaos! Madness, secrets, fortune and misfortune. He is Chaos and we are his avatars! What are we but pieces of him? What are we but made in his image? You’ve seen him, haven’t you? Spoken to him? Heard his voice scratching at your mind like a broken piece of clay? He is Chaos and we are his Children, so we are exactly what he wants us to be, and it is fucking torture!”
Maeve’s body shook as she continued, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she pressed on with her explanation.
“Our souls are unmoored, drifting in a sea of chaos, tossed about by the fickle winds of manic emotions! We do not have one emotion at a time; we have all of the emotions all of the time! We are sad, we are happy, we are afraid, we are horny, we are depressed, we are spiteful, we are envious, we are apathetic, we are fucking everything all at once! And all we can do is try to pick one emotion that we think might be best and try to sail these terrible seas as best we can without crashing against the rocks.
“Oh, and there are rocks. So many ways to be lost, to be consumed. Have you ever hated something? Truly, completely hated something? I have, and it’s terrifying. To lose yourself so completely to that one emotion, to go down that path to the point where you can’t even think to turn back, to center yourself. To follow a feeling all the way to its most extreme end, where nothing else matters but that end. Not even your life matters at that point.
“That’s why you don’t see any Fetch. We kill ourselves. We’re blown about by that storm until we drown in the waves. Some feeling, some emotion, some thing, whatever it might be, and we lose ourselves to it. We kill ourselves by being too sad, or too scared, or too angry, or too apathetic, or whatever and we just get fucked. Or maybe we just can’t take being in the storm anymore. I never know how willingly any of us throw ourselves into the chaos. I’ve tried, I swear, I’ve tried so many times to stop it from happening but—”
Meave’s words cut off as she let out a choked sob. Her face fell as tears began streaming down her face, a torrent of bitterness that soaked her clenched fists and the table beneath them.
“But who am I to stop them? I’m not better. I’m just as lost. Just as tossed on the sea by the storm. I’m no better than any of them and I can feel my mind slipping every gods damned day.”
Still crying, Maeve turned her gaze up to meet Dys’ eyes.
“That’s why I need you to love me. I need an anchor. I tried with Destarious. I tried to be his faithful servant. I tried to serve him and make him laugh and do what would make him happy but he’s sand in my hands! I can’t hold onto him, and he doesn’t even try to hold onto me! I need an anchor, I need someone who will hold onto me, so I can hold onto them! So I can weather the storm and be connected to someone, anyone! That’s why he has lived so long. Madoc has his anchor, he has someone he’s connected to and cares about, and who cares about him, and that’s why the bastard will never die! He’ll never drown because he’s anchored, and that’s why I need you!”
Maeve’s tone, torn and ragged by her gasping sobs, turned manic as she reached forward. Her hands turned to claws as she scratched deep grooves into the wooden table with her nails, while tears still streamed down her face.
“You don’t have to love me. You can just lust after me! I can be whoever you want, whoever catches your eye! Anyone! I can be them, and you can fuck me and I’ll pleasure you in any way you want, any time you want, just so long as you want me to be with you! Let me slake your lust!
“Or you can just use me! I’ll be your tool, your spy, your servant, your thrall! I’ll carry out your every command! I’ll serve your every plan and scheme, I’ll make you a success, or rich, or whatever you want! Vengeance against those who wronged you? Power and prestige? I can make it happen if only you’ll just say you want me to be yours and yours alone!
“Even if you don’t want me, even if you hate me, just hate me like you hate no one else! Loathe me! Despise me! Let me be your enemy, your rival, your one and only antagonist! If you need me to be evil, I’ll be evil! If you need me to kill, I’ll kill! Whatever horrible thing that I need to do to make you hate me, just so your thoughts are on me! Just so you’ll look at me! Just look at—”
Maeve’s outburst collapsed completely as her head hit the table. Her tears devolved into an uncontained sobbing mess as she let out a piteous cry of misery. Amidst the weeping and panting breaths, Dys could make out a few mumbled words, disjointed as they were.
“I didn’t—please don’t hate me! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to go—I don’t want that! That’s the wrong path—the wrong path! I didn’t mean it!”
Dys stared at the wretched being who had just poured out all she was at her behest. Her own mix of emotions was flooding through her, a confusing tumult that made it difficult for her to know what to say or do next. Horror was there, at the revelation of just what exactly it meant to be a Fetch. Anger at D for being so cruel as to make his children this way. Pity for Meave and the life she had been forced into. Helplessness at the thought of what exactly she was supposed to do to help the poor woman.
The emotion Jadis finally settled on was the one she found she had centered herself on more often than not in recent days. Determination to make a change. How she was going to effect that change, she didn’t know. However, Jadis knew that she had to. Because, whether or not love or hate or any other emotion ever existed or ever would exist between her and the Fetch who had laid her unmoored soul bare before her, one thing was absolutely certain to Jadis. Maeve deserved better. No one deserved to live in pain.
All she needed to do was figure out how she was going to help Maeve.
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