Who: Lina & Zee What: Discussing the aftermath of their failed spell sealing, girl talk, feels When: Recent! This past week, or so Where: The Agency Rating/Warnings: Language, mostly Status: Complete!
Lina was...sort of desperate for normalcy. There wasn’t much of a reason not to throw herself back into the grind of things. Nothing about what happened physically impaired her; she was fully functional and fully capable. But she felt the weight of her own absence, the eccentric consciousness of knowing that time lapsed. Ever since she’d been spat out by the void (her terms), flashes and things had been coming back. Dialogue between her and it. There was a notebook she had filled all sorts of information from magic to races, and now it was a wrinkled bent mess filled with scribbles on the edges, sticky notes and colored tabs.
A chaotic train of thoughts. And someone else looking in would get a migraine trying to decipher what it was all about, but she always had a method to her madness. Some of it in written in runes, others in dragon, goblin - languages she was fluent in over there, and she tried to practice it here, too. Circles, sigils, formulas for lower spells, the language of magic from the elements to the darkness that dwelled within.
She’d gotten to the office early. All because she woke up too early. Too restless to get some proper sleep, but it gave her that extra time to do some bullshit girl things. Hair straightened smooth, a cute sweater dress that strayed away from the ‘casual but hipster sort of cute’ fashion she tended to stick with. Her desk didn’t seem all that touched. Sure, her scissors were missing but all the personalized touches where there; an old picture of Guess as a kitten, a framed photo her and Pete from Scotland, some old mementos of the road trip across the states with Neal (the Christmas penguin with the guitar tattoo had been pinned up, for example).
And her sling shot, the one she used to fling skittles across the room at Loki. Lina was prepared this morning, equipped with a yellow piece of candy, aimed at the door. Gonna get you right in the nuts, buddy.
Unfortunately, the rancid yellow Skittle would miss its mark because it wasn’t Loki who appeared in the door - instead, it was Zatanna, with her secretive smile that spoke volumes about a love for mischief, her scent of spice, smoke, and funerary incense (frankincense, myrrh, musk) and her black business suit, expertly tailored. And her fishnets. She wore them to work sometimes. Her office work, that is, though never in a million years did Zee ever think she’d have an actual office.
“He pined for your Skittle-tossing, I think,” she said, moving into the office to perch on the edge of the desk. It was pleasant, in many ways, to have Lina back - because it simply rubbed the wrong way without her, and the way magic spilled from her pores like radiation made everything feel whole again in this particular section of the building. They all lived with magic sunk into their bones - the balance was offset, if one was missing. “Well? Settling back in alright?”
“Awww, well, I can’t be too disappointed if it’s you,” Lina chuckled, lowering the slingshot and just tossing the skittle back into the little jar it belonged. Really, she only ate the red and purple ones. Citrus ones sucked. They were ammo and usually Loki had his mouth open wide for an incoming piece of candy when she’d shoot one over. Both of them were clearly sterling examples of office professionalism. How anything got done was a miracle.
Oh, well. There was always later. Tiny toy weapon back in its little designated corner of her desk, she leaned back against the chair-on-wheels and crossed her knees. “I’m settling in alright,” she smirked, though it seemed worn around the edges. “It’s just kind of--kind of weird, since the last time you and I were around each other…”
It’d been dreary. Dangerous. They tried to seal the spell and their efforts were met with a kind of backlash neither of them could anticipate - the presence of it, a creator of an entirely different universe taking root in her own skin. Bloodied chalk, Zee’s blue lips, the smell of blood in her nose. When she thought about it, it all felt like it had just happened. Lina could almost feel that foreign tickle in her throat, the echo of a voice that wasn’t even hers.
A deep breath was sucked in. “I’m sorry. You are okay, right?”
Zatanna waved a hand, dismissing any apologies. There was no blame on her end, and she’d done her best to make peace with what happened - a turn of the cards, an assessment of the dregs of tea left in a ceramic cup, she’d make new decisions and forge new paths based on what was presented to her. Looking toward the future, you see. Because living in the past didn’t do anyone any good, not at all.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she insisted. “What happened...it is the way of things, Lina. Magic, powerful magic, is never free.” No, it was costly - and obviously Lina had paid her price. They all had. And not only was magic costly, but it could be fickle - as comforting as the feel of silk over skin, or it could cut you where you stood. It was sweat and blood, payment in earthly things - appeasement, negotiation, a hard set of rules that could often be plucked loose and twisted like threads and then sometimes it could not be; they learned the hard way.
And there was much to catch Lina up on too. But in a moment. “Do you still want your old job back?” she asked curiously. “I took on another assistant while you were gone, but the Guild is only growing and there’s plenty for you to do.”
“Lord of Nightmares has a capricious nature,” she said thoughtfully, a click of her tongue. Words that weren’t originally hers, actually - she borrowed them from Xelloss, the full-blown demon on the other side that never had a shred of humanity. It was the best way to really explain what that kind of magic was like; chaos incarnate. And what can you expect, when you ask oblivion a favor? There was nothing Lina could have done differently, and she knew this. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. On both sides.
It was just another bygone to add to her pile, where every decision she made as a criminal, as someone who had once loved a monster, as someone who had once lost her shit and stabbed someone to death with an office product remained. All things that were part of her, but none of them mattered now. Simply, they were everything that brought her to this very moment, where she was back home to the people she loved.
Lina blew a sigh, lips fluttering dramatically, and she spun around in her chair to kind of just shake that lingering feeling of uuuugh. “Of course I do, I’m broke. I gave away all my money!” A grin now, the wide stretch of her mouth across that impish face. Aggressive, good with numbers, business was sort of her thing if she didn’t have her magic to study. It had made her an ambitious felon once upon a time. “I can hustle with the shows, book you right up. I need to save and take my favorite gardening tool to nice places anyway.”
Ah, good. Getting right back into the mystery of the stage and being beneath the harsh glow of those pretty lights, adorned with sequins. Zatanna was looking forward to Lina hustling up some of those shows (which featured real magic, mostly - sort of a mixture, never dipping too much into what could not be believed).
“Right, your gardening tool,” she chuckled with husky amusement. One fishnet-clad knee shifted, slinky legs crossed toward each other on the desk. Zatanna’s own makeshift chair. “How is that going, by the way? Now that you’ve returned?” It was not easy for any of them, but naturally the dutiful partner took it the worst - being there, images forever burned into his brain, was not a simple thing to get past. Honestly, Zee was not certain what she would do in that situation.
She felt for him. A sense of commiseration was partly the reason why the attempt to reach the other side had been made in the first place. And also that Zee simply wanted to do something, anything to ease the pain even in little ways. “I used your talismans - well, Regina and myself did. We tried to reach you. Just to give him some peace of mind. I think it helped, a little.” At least there was that.
“It’s...good, actually. Still kind of rough on his end, I think,” she said, a chuckle of her own, though hers held that little bit of melancholy. No one knew what those moments were like, right before the Lord of Nightmares took her. Thinking that everything they had, everything they built together, would be tossed down the shitter because of this stupid place. And for awhile, all of it was ripped from them, and Pete suffered the consequences more than anyone. Even more than her. “Sometimes it’s like I wasn’t even gone at all, and it’s nice to sometimes pretend it didn’t happen.”
Fingers idly played with the bangle bracelets on her wrists, the metal hitting together sounded like wind chimes. “And he told me, about the attempt. So thank you. For trying to make it easier for him. All I ever wanted is for people to be there for him, if I wasn’t able to.” Lina had heard of the intervention too, how badly he needed it, and was just glad he had other people to hold him up - at least until she was able to find her way back. His dreams didn’t end the happiest of ways; he was lonely, bitter, but it wasn’t going to end that way here. Their stories would be re-written, on their own terms.
“I say whatever helps you work through it. You acknowledge that it happened, but dwelling on it is not healthy,” Zatanna said, and she would have to take a little bit of that advice with a spoonful of sugar for her own self too. She tended to dwell a lot, to think of what she could have done differently and how. But it was so easy for thoughts to get lost in dark places sometimes - she knew that all too well. “And you’re welcome, for the attempt. He had his good friends there for him, people who cared and did not want to see him fall down too deep of a rabbit hole. Loss is...never an easy thing to accept.”
She’d spent what felt like forever chasing after her missing father, in dreams - going to the ends of the Earth, literally walking through and over the flames of Hell to find him. All because she refused to accept that he was out of her life, that she was no longer anyone’s little one, any longer.
Here, it was a little different. She’d watched her parents perish in an accidental stage fire during her young circus days. And drifted apart from her sister, but she had Raven now, who reminded Zatanna so much of Kat. She did what she could to tell her niece all about the mother she never knew. “But life carries on, as we see,” she canted her head a bit in acknowledgment. “We always find a way.”
“Weeeeeeell, lucky for us, this armpit of hell has laws so bendy we can sometimes cheat death,” she smirked, shoulders rolled into a shrug. Some of the many pros and cons about it all, but Zee was right. Death wasn’t easy, and Lina herself wasn’t ever the type to really cope with the even the idea of losing someone like that well. Pete handled the same way she would have if roles were reversed - destruction and bad decisions, a fuckton of it, until everything around them burned.
Still, things had a way of working themselves out. They’d move on with their lives, the way they wanted to, with their fire-starting middle fingers raised high in the air. “Anyway, tossing the conversation to your life and how it all carried on, what’s been up with you and your dude? It’s still a thing? ...Right?”
If not this was just about to get really awkward.
Not so awkward; Zatanna simply smiled, though it turned a little melancholy and blue, a bit of regret gathering like stormclouds in her bright eyes. “I ended things with Dick soon after the...incident, when we tried to seal the spell,” she said. “Losing my voice terrified me and then what happened with you, how I couldn’t even stop it...it just stirred up a lot of dirt and debris that had festered in my own head and I felt it was best if we parted ways. I do miss him, but it’s probably for the best.”
She hadn’t been in a good place then. Not really. And she was healing, as she said she would. Space was necessary for that to happen.
“There is a man from my past who just arrived, if we’re talking about life events for me,” she went on, looking more thoughtful than downtrodden. “We met when we were both traveling, involved in our own magic acts way back when, but I also ended up dreaming of him quite a bit. Now he’s here, and I have all this knowledge of the past that he doesn’t remember yet because he only started dreaming. And it will be...interesting, I think.”
Oh. Oh. Lina’s lips parted, her brain to mouth filter about to fail like it often did, because she really wanted to ask Zee if her dream bullshit was responsible for ending her relationship, but she refrained. It seemed personal baggage had played a role, and the woman seemed at peace with her decision. If she said it was for the best, then the redhead would believe her.
Now, for this new man... “Interesting, in a complicated way?” Like, ‘complicated feels’ sort of way, which the tiny sorceress attempted to imply by the devious waggle of auburn eyebrows. “Are you glad to see him, or was it one of those things where you felt the overwhelming urge to beat the shit out of him?” Speaking from experience, because when someone from the past shows up and you also happen to dream of them, it always went a little beyond just ‘interesting.’
“We were lovers, for quite some time,” Zatanna had to laugh at the eyebrow waggle. Well, Lina wasn’t incorrect. “We met when we were studying magic, with a mage friend of his whom I happened to be dating at the time - I was young, just barely an adult, and I wanted rebellious fun and adventure and I got swept off my feet by him. British chainsmoker, you know the type,” she winked. “It angered Nick, and he wanted his revenge but John...sent him to Hell.” Literally, that was what he did - demons were powerful, they wielded powerful magic too, and it had always been John who dealt with that. Always been John who paid the price for it too, in the form of dead friends and enough loss and devastation to turn his heart black.
It was a little strange now, to have John in the flesh and not so worn down. He looked his age, sort of, and not weathered from all he had sacrificed and been through. “In a sense, I am glad he’s around. I’ll wait to beat the shit out of him, not until later.” She paused, another laugh bubbling up from her throat. “To see someone you practiced tantric sex with in the here and now, and he’s different but not? I suppose that falls under interesting in a complicated way.”
Rawr, British chainsmokers. Yeah, yeah, she knew the appeal - Lina didn’t even know she had a thing for the type until Pete so graciously declined her a refund, in the kind of ‘no, you cannot get your bloody money back but let me put a hole in my pocket by taking you to dinner’ way. “Yeowch,” she winced, quirking a sheepish smile. “That’s some serious dream-baggage you two are gonna be dealing with there. But hey, you always have that…tantric sex thing to look back at fondly together, yeah?”
Okay, she had to kind of laugh at that one. Only Zee, really. Knees crossed, she stopped rocking in her desk chair and leaned forward some. “This place has a thing where it throws you all kinds of personal curveballs that make you want to shit bricks, but…” A couple seconds of pause, to gather the right words. “It gives you exactly what you can handle, even if you don’t think you can. And this new guy has you, to kind of guide him through all of the crap about to get thrown his way. Think he’ll stick around for it?”
Sometimes people were masochistic enough to stay and endure it. Sometimes people left before they got in it too deep. Whether that made them smart or cowards, she couldn’t tell you.
“He is a stubborn, hard-headed fully grown man who consistently acts like a child.” Flattering praise from the Mistress of Magic, but also true - she didn’t speak the words with any venom, more like warmth and amusement. But oh, sometimes John made her want to throttle him. She’d cared for him there, yet their relationship was a roller coaster on its best days - and he’d felt the same way, though there were his demons to contend with. The and him walking his own path alone, a damaged and conflicted soul. Sometimes she felt like they really could never win, but that was the consequence for the power they wielded.
Would he stick around though? Zee hoped so, but she wouldn’t hold her breath. “I will do the best I can,” she promised out loud. “And I think he’d want to stay to see how it all turns out - he’s stubborn, like I said. Having gaps in a story wouldn’t suit him.” A consultation to the cards was required - to have that form of input, that backup she knew best.
Yeah, special kind of (complicated) feelings needed to be involved to say all that affectionately. “Well, whatever happens, you’ve got friends that’ll cheer you on or help lay a smackdown, depending what this loveable asshat of yours deserves,” giggled the sorceress, winking. If he decided to stick around and join their rag-tag group of masochists, him and Lady Magician would be in for one hell of a ride. “British men are crankly. And stubborn. Don’t let that accent distract you.”
Damn grocery list reading sirens.
Lina rose from the chair, pulling the dress down some. In a minute she was about to go retrieve some coffee to keep her wired through the day - she wasn’t normally an early bird. “It’ll probably prompt some girl’s nights or something - you’ll probably have stories to share and things to bitch about. We can even bring Leliana along?” The other redhead, though the two were exact opposites. Literally. One was short and loud and explosive, the other was tall and quiet and sneaky. Besides, she owed the ‘Nightingale’ lady something for not letting Pete’s diet be the death of him.
Zatanna uncrossed her legs fluidly, standing as well. She supposed she had to get back to work, since she actually enjoyed her job and wanted to keep it. Much different than the stage shows, all the glitz and glamour - office life was so quiet and subdued, especially here. “A girls night,” she repeated, nodding. “I think I’d like that. I’m sure Leliana would too.” There was always lady-talk to be had, wasn’t there? Always something to say (or gossip about)?
Then she leaned in and gave Lina’s shoulder a squeeze, but when she further closed the distance it was more like a hug. “It’s good to have you back,” she spoke fondly. Now Lina could go and get her coffee - easing into normalcy would come quicker than she thought, and they would face the next hardship all together too.
Sometimes Lina thought she needed the hugs more than she’d let on, and it wasn’t something she’d readily admit. She preferred channeling whatever ugh feelings that lingered into something else. Productivity, sometimes violence, or focusing on someone else entirely. At night, things still lingered fresh. The darkness beyond the night, where the air felt like hundreds of icy needles into her skin. It wouldn’t always let her sleep, but Pete’s heat kept her grounded - a constant presence at during the darkest hours that reminded her she wasn’t elsewhere in limbo.
“You know,” she laughed, squeeze returned, and she went up to squish Zee’s cheeks, nose wrinkled. “You remind me of my sister sometimes, when she’s not being a massive cunt.” The soothing pearls of wisdom she often brought, the calm and collected air. It made her think of Luna when her softness shined through, past those sharp edges and hardened face. “Thanks. For being my backup when I needed you.”
When was the last time Zee had her cheeks squished? Probably never. Or perhaps when she was a small child. It made her chuckle, since she supposed that was a compliment, yes? Due to the disclaimer ‘when she’s not being a massive cunt’ slapped on there. “I’m flattered,” she teased. “And I will always be your backup. Or stand beside you, whenever you need me.”
The Mistresses of Magic had to stick together, after all.