§ sarah, storms are brewin' in her eyes. (nopoweroverme) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-06-15 23:49:00 |
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There were times Sarah envied Anya's former abilities as a vengeance demon, knowing her friend had been able to look at all permutations of all realities ever made and know the one she needed in a moment. She could find them, countless numbers, but locking on to the one she wanted – it was a problem that had plagued her for each day Faith had been taken. Lately, even humanity, that thing Sarah held on to in order to stay just Sarah in the majority and not lose herself to the magic as Jareth had, had seemed a small price to pay to be able to find everyone. To harness that kind of finesse with power, however, would have required experience Sarah didn't have with her magic. She was still a novice and still had so much to learn, but her training was an amalgamation of learning techniques meant for another's magic and what little she had only begun to understand in books in the castle library – none of it was a course in 'how to'. She was far, far from understanding just all of what she could do. But it was what she could offer to this situation, with or without experience, and so she had pressed on. Harnessing that envied finesse would have also required that she work from within the Underground, where her power was infinitely more. But she couldn't, because the power in the Underground came, this time, with something that was more cost that boon, as from her realm Sarah could look everywhere, not just the dimensions of Faith's world, but all versions of anyone's that she could feasibly reach, anywhere that people could summon her to with a few words – a true infinity of places and times. It was too many places to search even with time in her realm to bend to her will, which was why she sat in Los Angeles, hampered by the power constraints visited on anyone from another world, so she could tune herself to the alternate dimensions of this world among the chaos. It still wasn't helping. Others had dealt with seeing Faith's human face on the boards, knowing it wasn't her, or seeing that face twisted into a vampire's visage, still knowing it wasn't her, but Sarah had seen Faith's face over and over again and didn't always know right away that is wasn't her. In the realities in which Faith still lived, sometimes the woman was far from the friend she was seeking, sometimes the woman was close that it could almost be her, and thus the crash down from 'not her' was painfully far – but in the end it always the wrong one. Until tonight. Dismissing another reality as wrong, Sarah moved on to the next, locking first on the world. Though it became quickly apparent that it was at least close to the one she sought – lacking multiple individuals, missing the presence of the Senior Partners, violence-torn in multiple cities in the dark of the night – it would be Faith that would be the key. She wasn't certain how long she searched, it could have been seconds and it could have been hours, but at last Faith's face moved into view within the crystal Sarah held. Something stilled within her, a recognition that was more than just visual, connecting at levels that were situated around dimensional signature concepts that likely had terms Sarah simply didn't know. Whatever was responsible, the fact remained that before three seconds had passed, there was recognition there. With rapt attention she inspected the crouched woman. Battered, afraid, but alive. Clearly hiding, the presence of other nearby offering a possible explanation. The similarities were obvious, which was why Sarah looked for the differences as the second ticked by – scars that were unique, clothing or weapons that had been missing from Faith's room, jewelry that would have been given only in this world. There. It was the fang hanging from the necklace around the woman's neck that told Sarah what she needed to know, proof to match the instinctive certainty of the preceding seconds. "Faith." There was no chance for anything more that the one soft whisper, as barely ten seconds after Sarah found Faith, the image in the crystal was gone with the feeling of having a window blind snapped shut in her face. She didn't need to question what had just happened, she knew the feeling of that power from tangling with levels of it before. The Senior Partners of this dimension had interfered and Sarah was sure it was some form of warning. With them, it always was. This whole disaster had been a warning, after all. It was the last straw for her. She'd buried the resentment and hostility toward both higher powers under insistences of having hope, building up the idea that they could all find a way to fix this without outright provoking either the Senior Partners or the Powers That Be. She was done restraining herself, so screw both sides. And doubly screw the Senior Partners. They could block her, but she'd still found Faith, she'd still seen and felt that alternate dimension. She and the others would find a way to get to Faith now, and from there get back the rest. If it meant another coma, so be it. |