Work Text:
(this is a kind of grief)
…
…
Here is an attempt to pin down something transient, unknowable, sacred: I need to leave, she says, and it burns.
She walks until her feet are raw. Her leather boots, well-worn and solid, ache with blood. The sun beats a rhythm along her back, hair a singular heavy knot. She keeps walking, and walking, and walking.
Alongside her, the caravans creak slowly. The horses are tired enough to be foaming at the mouth, eyes wild as they plod steadily forward. Someone comes up to whisper in their ears: Just a little more, please, just a little more. Magic hums and sparkles in the thick air, and then dies down as exhaustion once again takes hold. She blinks, and they walk ten miles. She doesn’t know how far they’ve gone, but it’s not enough, it’s never enough.
“Yasha!”
Yasha turns, blinking stupidly into the light. Mollymauk leans out the side of the caravan, ridiculous clothing an eyesore of reflective surfaces. He is grinning, teeth as sharp as his swords.
“What do you want?” Yasha says. She breaks the rigid hold she has on her spine and leans back, clenching and unclenching her fists. Her body is full of dust. It creaks, bone snapping back into place, head clearing behind its previous repetition of keep walking, keep walking, keep walking.
“You should take a turn sitting in the caravan,” Mollymauk says. “You’ve been walking all day.”
If Yasha sits down, she will die.
She shakes her head, unable to crease her face into a smile. She gives up halfway through. “I’ll keep walking,” she says. Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking.
Mollymauk’s eyes are sly, but he doesn’t say anything, not really. He gives a shrug and leans back into the caravan, resettling his clothing around him. “Suit yourself,” he says, and closes the window.
Yasha looks down at the road. It is baked hard and cracking, the grass to either side a mass of clear glass spikes. She wriggles her toes in her boots and hisses. Her skin itches. She looks out across the plains and wonders how far she could travel, how long it would take her to leave the trail of caravans and see mountains. The line of vehicles feels like an anchor around her neck, pulling her back, choking her.
She wonders why she can never seem to stay in one place.
…
…
They go from town to town – slowly. So slowly. Yasha’s feet ache and itch and burn.
“Stop glaring,” Mollymauk says, waving to a passing group of children who eye their circus tents with undisguised glee. “You’ll scare people away.”
Yasha crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against one of the posts, chin tilted back. “You pay me to scare people away,” she says.
Mollymauk laughs. It’s his showman laugh, loud and boisterous and inclusive. People stop and wave. “I’m not rich enough to pay you,” he says. His grin is soft in a way it shouldn’t be, in a way it only is around other people. Yasha eyes him warily. When they had first taken her on, there had been an implicit agreement that she wouldn’t have to be a part of the show: You’ll make an excellent bouncer, Gustav had said, patting her shoulder. Yasha had nearly taken off his arm, but he hadn’t seemed to mind overmuch.
Yasha can’t lie to save her life.
Mollymauk, it seems, cannot stop to save his.
“See anyone suspicious?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Yasha says. “You.”
Mollymauk rolls his eyes. The sun is dead, the air a chilly weight against Yasha’s skin. Torches simultaneously burst into flame, casting oddly across Mollymauk’s face. His eyes glow. Another group of people – slightly older than the first, though not by much – visibly hesitate towards them amidst an ocean of applause.
“Go inside,” Yasha says. “You need better light to work.”
Mollymauk’s sharp teeth flash in the fire, and then he’s gone inside the tent, leaving Yasha to glare in peace.
…
…
“I would advise against it,” Mollymauk says.
Yasha doesn’t look up from where she is lying on the ground, head tipped to the sun. She’s on break, and they don’t start the show until tomorrow, so she doesn’t need to rush the stage-building. The grass is nice and soft under her armour, and she lets out a small sigh of contentment. If only Mollymauk would –
“Yuli,” Mollymauk says. “I would advise against it.”
Yasha cracks one eye open. “Any particular reason for that?”
“Mona will kill you,” Mollymauk says, and he looks absolutely serious. “If you’re going to sleep with someone, best not do it with the people you’re travelling with.”
“I wasn’t going to sleep with her,” Yasha says with a yawn.
“Good,” Mollymauk says. “Make sure she understands that.”
Then he grins, lethal. “If you’re in the mood, though, I’m sure we could go and find someone for you.”
…
…
They find her like this: dead. As good as.
Yasha is being thrown out of another bar, alcohol thick in her veins, unwashed skin a mess of welts and bruising. Her clothing is layers of shredded fabric. She can’t see out of one eye.
Someone catches her – or tries to. They overestimate her size, and they both go tumbling to the ground. Yasha curls onto her side and dry-heaves, alcohol and stomach fluid running out of the corner of her mouth. She hasn’t eaten anything in three days.
“Good evening,” a stranger says.
Yasha tries to straighten, but everything is blurry. Her alcohol tolerance is better than this – should be better than this – but she can’t seem to see straight. There are nails in her feet, in her knees, in her wrists. Her fingers won’t work. She tries to talk, but it comes out in an ugly snarl.
A face appears in her peripheral, and she wildly turns her head, fingers scrabbling for a sword that isn’t there. The face is smiling, eyes glowing, purple horns pulling back a wealth of hair. The clothing glitters with stones and trinkets and baubles, sharp against Yasha’s sore eyes.
“I’m Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he says, giving a small bow. “If you would please get off our ringleader, that would be greatly appreciated.”
Ah. The pain under Yasha’s back is not from alcohol or uneven cobblestones, but from a person. Yasha drunkenly pulls herself forward. Her head spins.
“Oh, thank you, Molly,” someone says, and then Yasha lurches forward into darkness.
…
…
The first time Yasha kills someone, she is small.
She keeps growing. She keeps killing people.
…
…
The first time Yasha kills someone for Gustav (and Mollymauk and Bo and Toya and…) she is taller than anyone she knows. He is tall, too, but not enough to stop the way her blade (borrowed) slides down his collarbone and into his torso. It is a messy death. She gets blood everywhere.
“See,” Gustav tells her later. “I told you you’d make an excellent bouncer.”
…
…
There is a slow process of decay in the way Yasha burns her place into the circus. She can feel it eating away at her muscles – an atrophy, a calcification. She freezes, slowly. So slowly.
“Yasha,” Toya says, dragging a piece of tent behind her. “Could you –”
Kylre is there before Yasha can move, but she can feel the way her body tenses up in preparation to help, can feel the phantom step she never took, and she feels sick.
Every night, before she goes to sleep (rather: when she manages to sleep. “Every night” is a gross over-exaggeration, no matter how tired she is), Yasha promises herself she will leave in the morning.
It would be startlingly easy. Just wake up, grab her bag, and go. The open road is a siren song, winding its way into Yasha’s mind and tugging, tugging, tugging. She breathes dust and she needs more, needs it different, needs it alone. The circus cloys. There are so many people, so many names, so many things she needs to do and remember and think-think-think. There is an allure to a numbness, to alcohol. Yasha’s lips burn with the memory.
The first day, Gustav had said: Drink as much as you want, so long as you do your job properly. It had almost been an insult, the careless wave of his hand. Yasha had read between the lines, between the daggers in Ornna’s eyes: Drink on the job, and I’ll kill you.
Mollymauk laughs at her, dagger-smile exposed and raw. They get drunk together on their nights off and complain about Gustav.
…
…
They stop at a town with red bricks and white cobblestones. The trees loom menacingly on the horizon, leaves brazen and bloody. Yasha is sweating in her armour by the time all the stages are set up, twitchy from looking over her shoulder every five minutes. Mollymauk disappeared some time ago (as per usual), slipping out of the heavy work to charm some of the local townspeople into attending tonight’s show.
It isn’t a large town, so they don’t set up everything. Enough to dazzle. They aren’t going to stay too long, either, not with an open road and silhouetted trees and old things buried deep. They’re carnival folk. (Yasha is carnival folk now). They don’t look too hard.
Yasha’s skin crawls as she walks down the street, scanning the crowds of bunched-up people for any sign of lavender hair. Mollymauk is the most ostentatious person she has ever met, and even still, she cannot seem to find him.
“Hey!” someone calls. It doesn’t occur that they would be talking to her, until a small figure hops out in front of her. “Hey, hey, you.”
Yasha peers down at her uncertainly. There is a brief pause. “Yes?” she finally says.
The woman barely reaches up to Yasha’s collarbone, but she grins with the weight of a full sky of stars. Her dark skin gleams with sweat, a crossbow belted to her hip. “Are you one of the performers?”
“No,” Yasha says.
The woman rolls her eyes, loud and expressive. “Are you with the circus?” she says, like it’s the same thing.
“Yes,” Yasha says.
“Oh, good,” the woman says, reaching out and grabbing Yasha’s wrist. “Come with me, my friends want to know all about it.”
…
…
(The town is not on any map. No matter how hard Yasha tries to remember how they got there, her brain flinches away from the memory. What she gets is this: soft hands, softer lips, and a smile a world away from sad.)
…
…
Yasha leaves twice.
(Three times).
The first time is after a big show, after they’ve stayed in the same place for two weeks and everything hurts. Yasha takes a shuddering breath and doesn’t go to sleep. When the sun bleeds out into the clouds the next morning, she takes her bag and she goes.
Yasha hits the road, and everything is amplified to an almost absurd degree. The trees around her are cold and hard and dead, sticking straight up like metal poles in the dirt. The wind echoes across the path, spitting metal dust in its wake and leaving Yasha’s eyes burning.
The silence is a fist to the gut.
The second time Yasha leaves, she comes back an hour later and punches Mollymauk when he gives her a smug, knowing look.
…
…
“Bo, I need you to cover security while we set up the tents,” Gustav says.
Bo nods. “Understood.”
Yasha’s eyes narrow. “Wait…”
“Yasha,” Gustav says, cheerfully talking over her. They’re all sitting next to the caravan, parcelling out jobs and scratching out schedules in the dirt. Ornna is standing behind Gustav, looking put out and unhappy. “I need you to go with Mollymauk while he distributes flyers. You should be branching out more! It’ll be fun.”
“I’ll show you fun –”
Mollymauk grabs her shoulder and pulls her outside the tent. “Understood!” he calls over his shoulder.
“I can’t believe this,” Yasha grumbles, resettling her new (new, so shiny and big and sharp) sword along her shoulders. She likes the weight of it. “Why do I have to work with you?”
Mollymauk ignores her. “Come along,” he says. “Let’s start at the tavern. There are bound to be lots of people, there.”
…
…
(this morning, Yasha wakes up and forgets to want to leave).
…
…
Beau is bright, and sharp, and angry.
They all are, in some way. Mollymauk falls in with them like a missing puzzle piece: Yasha could have heard the click from halfway across the room. He’s good at integrating himself into groups, but not like this. Yasha pulls back a little, blind.
“Um, miss?” the barmaid says, craning her neck to look at Yasha’s face. She’s pretty, and sweet-looking. “Can I get you a drink?”
Yasha needs alcohol. When she gets it, it burns in a satisfying way down the back of her throat.
On the way out, she stumbles: “Yes, nice to meet you all. You’re all so…wonderful.”
Mollymauk snickers at her. “Charm,” he says, and there’s something harrowingly affectionate about the way he says it. “Pure charm. See you tonight!”
They leave. Outside, Mollymauk tries to pat her on the back, but she shakes him away. “Leave it alone, Molly.”
“She’s just your type,” Mollymauk says, because he is an awful person.
“Leave it.”
…
…
“How about this,” Yasha says, with zero sense of self control. “I’ll take it, and I can just carry you to your seat.”
Mollymauk huffs out a knowing laugh, and Yasha discretely steps on his toes. Her stare is flat as she locks eyes with Beau, with her gaunt face and slapstick makeup and strong forearms. She tries to project I hate you to Mollymauk as loud as she possibly can, beside he’s right about Beau being just her type, and it’s infuriating.
After a long, tense second, Beau shrugs and hands over her staff. It’s a good weight in Yasha’s hands, and she hefts it appreciatively. “Alright,” she says, grin lazy.
Mollymauk is never going to let Yasha live this down.
…
…
“I think I know who might know what has happened here.”
…
…
Running bleeds.
Yasha doesn’t look back, but she feels the pull all the same. It’s a strange tug-of-war in her body, towards the road and towards the tent. She spits nails in her mind, tightens her fists into metal balls and steels her heart. She thinks of phantom steps and tries not to laugh.
I need to leave, she says, and it’s something stamped onto her skin.