The screams faded into her ears like a distant dream, and Queenie woke from her trance of despair. Like a nightmare that suddenly melted away in the morning hours, her heart thumped wildly in her chest as she stewed within the pools of her adrenaline. It wasn't helping her throbbing right foot, dripping evidence along the ground.

She must...

Lifting her head, it felt like a ton of bricks as she tried to see what was going on. Adelais soothed her mind in saying it was all over, and they were escaping to safety.

Ah... Okay.

The safehouse doors opened and while the mediwitches brought Erin inside first, Queenie took her time. She didn't want to go in yet. From inside the safehouse, they'd only see her back. Most of her weight was on her good leg, the spirit mask finally was able to be ripped off her face and abandoned right on the ground by her feet.

This was probably the longest she has hugged him. Her face was hidden again, pressed directly against Adelais's scarred muzzle. A low purr vibrated from the lion--like a quiet engine--as his wordless consolation... something Queenie would never hear from her own flesh and blood.

She did fine. For all things considered, she did the best she could.

Eventually the wound on her ankle was growing too much to for her to bear, and reluctantly, Queenie let go of her familiar. After exchanging one last glance, he turned and stepped back into the ripples of the other realm, leaving Queenie to quickly wipe the corner of her eyes. Confidently free of tears, she limped into the safehouse.

"... Coniunctim," she mumbled, still staggering along to where Erin sat and dropped down beside her. Her foot at this point felt like it was on fire. Isn't that a funny thought? It's almost poetic.

A deep sigh heaved out of Queenie's lips. The tension had melted away and only left behind exhaustion. For once, her expression was stony, but she still had it in her to look over to Erin and see the reality of her injuries. Queenie should count her lucky stars for only coming out of this with a slashed foot, honestly.

"Are you okay?" The question was utterly unhelpful. But what else could she say to her?

[attr="class","erin"]If Erin felt like giving in to Morpheus' embrace before, the scene that unleashes before her eyes takes all of her exhaustion and dumps it into a bigger cauldron of shock and fascination and horror and frustration and despair. There's no acceptance in any recipe for failure, only this whirlpool of non-statements. She feels a violent twist in her stomach, a feeling she still remembers from the very first time she witnessed death.

She doesn't vomit, not this time. What exits her stomach is a window of red. She coughs, a half-choking breath that threatens to unbind the carefully crafted layers wrapped around her ego. And, with them, the cloth being tightened around her skin.

Dying is easy. Surviving is not. No words ring truer in the dark minutes following the young women's escape. Because the torture of feeling the soft tissue around your heart pierced by a cold blade is not enough. Because your executioner could just as easily undo you as the napkin on your dinner table, and no one would know. No one but you and the bastard and the child who is also you but forty years younger and just as desperate to die.

The soft words of a mediwitch pull her back to the present. They, the collective of witch and sentence, are regarded with a nod. "And we will survive." Erin returns a weak, thankful smile. As if she cared about the pain, as if she wasn't already suffering from wounds as deep-reaching as her very core, as if she wasn't still shaking from one revelation after the other.

When Asura—Queenie, she corrects—approaches her, she only has a bitter laugh to offer. Not at her, or perhaps a little bit at her, but mostly at the irony of their predicament.

"'Been better."

Erin is not one for small talk. Doesn't even pretend to be. She is a woman of actions and, right now, her action lies in inaction. She remains immobile, sitting on the makeshift emergency bed, neither inviting conversation nor rejecting it, as she turns to the healer with a request. "Could you help her with her ankle too?"

In the short moment of peace she is afforded, Erin grabs hold of her interface and writes in slow, single-handed motions, I am fine. She is not. She has a hole in her arm and a thousand doubts bombarding her senses. Go to your date.

A finger hovers over the back arrow at the top left corner of the screen, reluctant. A second later, a knot forms in her throat at the until then unread message from The Leviathan, stating what she assumes is their current location. The delirious screams of a spellsinger reverberate in her ears. She clutches the device in her hand tighter.

Quynh Le

[attr="class","erin"]She thinks that this is it; this is when the disappointed superior comes to judge her, specifically, for their failures. This is when all the turmoil brewing inside her is given voice and made real. But then the three-word sentence is laid out, and it's nothing she is prepared for. It strikes her as odd, that all this time the go-to question hasn't been centered on their failure, but on their equally crumbling well-being. It strikes her as—dangerous.

While Queenie lets out her bottled up feelings, Erin watches the short woman curiously, or perhaps cautiously is a better term, only interrupting her study to offer the alchemist a side glance at the colorful description of the Cerberus boy. These are very informative news.

"Depends on who's asking. Are you The Leviathan?"

Despite it all, Erin manages to retain every inch of her irreverence.

Before filling in the blanks.

"The documents were protected by sentinel-level enchantments. We managed to get them undone, towards the end, but the wolves took them. They—" The twist in her stomach, again. "They are alive, which means they are worse off than dead."

Erin doubts a rescue mission could be launched to whichever high security dungeon the old women may be sent to pass the last of their days, but she wants to tempt fate and be lied to. Selfishly, she wants to believe their fate won't predetermine her own. She wants to—no, she is trained to focus on the what now?

"Has this happened before?"

Admin Quynh Le

It just sounded like white noise to her, the conversations between Erin and Farah that is. The Leviathan... sounded familiar. The frown on her face only tightened; series of dim images and sensations flickering underneath her eyelids, like dark clawed hands desperately prying open the shut doors from inside her subconsciousness.

'You don't remember?'

Adelais... do you? Were you even there?

'I'm always here.'

The cool feel of the jade pendant warming up in her hands. Her eyes squinting up at the shadow in front of the sun. She struggled to hold up the heavy bronze statuette given in return. A hand fell over her forehead and eyes until finally:

Her eyes snapped open and Queenie picked her head up from the wall, hunching slightly over with a hand pressed tight over her chest. Her heart thumped a wild beat, like a rude awakening. She shuddered a breath and leaned back in her seat, glancing over to Erin and then Farah.

"Sorry. I wasn't listening. Addy can fill me in later."

Now she could finally look upon the person that joined them for the first time. It was rude of her to just speak without looking at the recipient, but let's chalk it up to her being exhausted. That should do, wouldn't it?

Queenie stared at Farah blankly, feeling the same sense of familiarity drape over again. Her eyes fell down to the glint of deep green around her neck, and it struck her like lightning. The scrap of the chair legs screeched offensively in their ears and Queenie had reflexively had the back of her hand hovering almost defensively in front of her face.

"Geh! A-Auntie...?!"