Fab^2 And the Mystery of the Feels Forest

[Fable Merrill]

They'd fled the Oasis, and it's million reaching, stretching, hateful hands trying to... well, grab them. From the skies, from the sand, all over. Fable had been near the limit of her capabilities long before that, and that wasn't helped by the fact that she was carrying/helping her mother as best she could - a woman with a bad case of useless ankle. Fable could only do so much, even while doing the best she could WHILE believing in herself.

So when she stumbled and landed face-first, she expected to not ever get up again. She'd been running for so long, trying to evade everything, going in a full panic through the nightmare that had become her world, that Fable didn't expect to be able to get up again. She was just going to lay here, whimper an apology to her mother, and wait for the hands or lunatics to catch up and put her out of her misery. End of the line, CA-5. That's all she wrote. A long life of failure, punctuated by one last, big failure. Completely appropriate, nobody is surprised. Useless, stupid girl.

"I'm... s-sorry." Fable sighed, her breath unsteady and heavy. How long had she been running full-bore from the Oasis, pulling from that deep reserve of animal panic that usually demolished her higher brain functions and turned her into a raging beast? It was impossible to say, but she'd never felt so empty in life. Not when she'd found out that Missus Merrill died while she was away, not the time she'd accidentally broken something valuable of mother's while doing sloppy katas, not the nightmares she'd had about being cast out of her family. Those had all felt like punches to the gut, sure, but this was like somebody had gone in there and just started ripping bits out all willy-nilly. Her lungs burned, her throat was searing fire, her legs and shoulders were agony, and her head was pounding.

She was just going to lay here and close her eyes, lay here with her cheek in the damp, cool soil, and dream of all the places she'd never gotten to see with her own eyes. Fertile beaches basking in a perfect sun, ancient Jedi temples where wisdom was nearly palpable in the air, the towering spires of Kashyyk, the non-stop thrill ride that Zeltron and Nar Shadda were said to be. She was a small person leading a small life, and she'd die here under the light of the moon a small woman missed by two people in the entire universe. Fable couldn't even muster up the energy to cry, She was used up.

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Hell was just that. Fabula had known it for years - centuries, even - and never once had it been so painful as it was now. There wasn't a part of her that wouldn't gladly have given up her life for another eternity of lonely death and violence in order to keep Fable from feeling anything like it. These endless fields of raining blood and bone walkways weren't nearly as dangerous as the world she had come from, but watching her daughter, child of her own flesh, deal with them was beyond torture. This was far worse than centuries of agony.

When Fable tripped and stumbled to the ground, entirely out of energy, Fabula hit the ground with a grunt of her own. Bloody face, torn leg, and general pain prevented her from doing any more for longer than she had conscious awareness of her surroundings. She was vaguely present to return the younger clone's apology, but her mind drifted away not long after that. An eternity lying here, watching Fable go through any kind of pain, was far more daunting than she could describe.

And that's why she couldn't let it happen.

Somehow, through some impossible measure of sheer stubbornness, Fabula got up. She stood on her own, pushing her heavy body off of the scalding blood-wet stone ground, and grunted in the unadulterated agony that was standing on her sliced hamstring. How was she even doing that? The Force had abandoned her in this world. It made no sense. Chalk it up to highly improbable willpower...or maybe something a little less mundane, for when Fabula bent to pick up her precious Fable, there were more than ten fingers reaching down.

If she had had a thought, Fabula would have vaguely acknowledged that the ghostly hands from the Oasis had come back to get them. She did not have a thought, however, because the only concept that comprised her entire being was getting Fable to safety. When she walked, there was pain beyond measure, but the fact that she could walk at all seemed impossible. She held her daughter with reserves of strength that she should have by no rights had, and yet the two of them slogged their slow way through the blood for as long as Fabula could keep moving.

Eventually, the rain let up. Instead of blood and bone, the errant witchknight was walking through a dark tunnel. Pitch black, covered in sharp scraps of metal that could easily have tripped Fabula if she hadn't seen them. She did see them, though, because of...something. Some kind of light seemed to be following her. Always behind her, which was the one place Fabula simply didn't care about. In order to save Fable, she'd need to go forward. Backward held no meaning for her.

So forward she went.
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

She was lifted up. Carried. Fable was barely clinging to awareness, so the dim sense of being moved was just that - a feeling of being lifted, and one she could barely open her eyes to acknowledge. When she managed the incredible effort it took just to look up, she realized she was being carried in the arms of an angel. It'd be alright.

Somehow.

Maybe.

Stupid girl. You're dead, and being lifted off to whatever life awaits after this one for fake souls the Galaxy and the Force had to be tricked into finding a place for. You've failed, and this is the end of the line.

Body limp, Fable croaked out a wordless protest at the force carrying her away but could not muster the energy to resist past that complaint. She hadn't the strength. Her mother needed her, and she'd failed. With a rattling breath, Fable let her head roll back and was carried to whatever fate lay ahead of her.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

[media]https://soundcloud.com/little0boy/fma-ost-brothers-kyoudai[/media]

She was tired. She was just so tired. It was amazing how Fabula could even keep herself moving. A mother's love was powerful, but was it really that powerful? How could she possibly keep moving now, after facing so much pain? After being drained by constant violence, by running like a coward for so long? How could she possibly continue without the Force guiding her? You never knew just how much you needed something until you had felt its absence, and Fabula was receiving a very pointed lesson on need at the moment.

But despite all of this - the weakness, the pain, the hopelessness - she continued. She soldiered on with a barely-conscious Fable in her hands, pushing through the forest of pain that had become her world. The din of battles long past was far behind her, the stink of blood had not followed her into what might have seemed a sanctuary if not for the trappings of wickedness coating every surface. She could feel her severed muscle catch fire with the light of a hundred suns with every step, and not a single part of that mattered. All that mattered was keeping her daughter safe, getting her someplace she could rest. Even if it meant a day or a decade or a thousand decades in this horrid place for her, her life was of little consequence next to the prospect of Fable's safety.

The light behind Fabula was getting brighter with each step, and a comparative light existed at the end of the tunnel. She pushed on towards it, refusing to slow even for a moment. She could catch her breath when she found shelter for her baby girl. She could lament the pain of her existence when the light of her life was safe. That drive, unthinking and motivated, carried her through what would easily have been pitch blackness if not for her own companion torchlight. Just a few more meters and they'd be free. So close to the light, there would surely be a place to stay in this horrid world.

Or so she'd hoped.

When she emerged from the tunnel to an utterly desolate wasteland, Fabula's spirit sank. Had she really done all of that for nothing? Was there really no place to let her daughter sleep and recover in this hellscape? Every new step brought disappointment, and no small helping of fear. It began to dawn on her that struggling on simply for the sake of Fable might not magically create this perfect, idealistic sanctuary within which to secret her baby girl away. It might very well have been truly hopeless...and in that moment of hopelessness, beyond the capacity for any light or goodness to find them and whisk them away, Fabula still refused. She refused to stop trudging through broken streets, shattered buildings, and stray steel beams until she had delivered her daughter from this wicked place.

And the light behind her shined all the brighter. This time, however, it was not without a source. Speaking in a voice that might well have been plucked from Fabula's own lips, had those lips been crafted by the Celestials themselves, the light moved itself around Fabula's body to stand in front of her. "Few things in this galaxy are more powerful than a mother's love," the light said. Only it wasn't a light.

It was a woman with dark, wavy hair and an everpresent smile...

For the first time since she picked her child up in her arms, Fabula stopped moving and stood in stunned silence. "...Mom?"
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

White walls. Tiled ceilings. Sterile beds with scratchy sheets and restraints, and tiny scrabbling sounds in the everything. Blue doors and red doors where broken little clones were taken when they finally broke or simply fell apart of tumors, cancers, defects and madness. Hundreds of them, just like CA-5 in every way, down to the smallest detail, until they broke in their unique, tragic ways. She'd watched them all go, one by one, until she was the last one left, and now those halls and walls were springing up out of the landscape of the Sinner's Despair - reflecting the nightmares Fable could never evade, as though someone had taken Rave's laboratory, crunched it up like soup crackers, and scattered the components everywhere around them.

Ordinarily, Fable would have been losing her mind at the sight of those bits and pieces of her earliest year, but they could not come close enough to harm her. This was a place of safety, but that didn't mean that it was a place free from pain or strife. On the contrary, every movement was agony, and every breath a fight - a test of how badly she wanted to keep going. Nothing in life was easy, although some lives were easier than others, and even love was a fight. A person who kept you away from the pain and hardship was no shelter. A person who helped you through it and endured it with you? That was family.

Something had happened. They'd stopped. There was a light, a presence - a woman who was there but did not exist, someone Fable did not know. But she was responsible. She was family. She was the shelter. And with them looking over her, Fable could rest at last and let the pain slip away. It was not gone, and neither was she, but for now, she did not have to struggle through it alone. That was better a gift than she could ever ask for.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

A landscape of terror and evil would have been a step up from Fabula's life before this moment. Endless sand and sun and death, followed by endless blood and screams, and now every life she had taken in a hundred years splayed out in front of her. A thousand ghostly images of a top-heavy amazon gleefully slaughtering soldiers with families and warriors with legacies danced around the three of them. And yet here stood the one woman in this place who she hadn't killed, like the eye of the storm. Around the presence of Anna Sachae, there was naught but calm.

And when she spoke in that warm tone that Fabula remembered from a time before all of this evil, the shade before them made the poor clone's soul quake. If she hadn't been convinced of it in life, this moment would surely have been all that she needed to declare her mother a saint. "You've faced so much pain, Fabs. So much of it was of your own making...I can't bear to think about what kind of horrors you're seeing in this place."

As if the tiny little Witchling needed more reason to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks more freely than water down a stream. The stream. The same stream she had sat beside to watch sunsets with this woman in years long since past. "...I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry. I couldn't protect Kristin. I couldn't protect you. I couldn't protect anyone." Fabula's tiny voice cracked with every word. Her heart had all but followed.

And yet in a single movement, Anna Sachae quieted all of that. Her fingers, ghostly and insubstantial and yet comprised of so much more than flesh, pressed softly against Fabula's lips. "You did all that you could, dearheart. You don't need to ask my forgiveness for a crime you didn't commit." Her finger moved from her daughter's mouth, and was shortly replaced by the soft touch of her lips on Fabula's forehead. "The only one who needs to forgive you is you."

Fabula's tears had been stunned for a few moments as her mother's spirit touched her, forgave her, loved her even after death. They quickly returned the moment the woman moved away. Like a flood gate had burst, the grown woman, loving mother, and powerful warrior Fabula Cavataio was reduced to a bawling little girl. After all she had been through, after all she had done, she still wasn't beyond her mother's love. She still wasn't too far gone to find absolution in the words of a woman whose kindness knew the same limits as her daughter's anger.

As the elder clone descended into emotionally-overwhelmed tears, Anna turned her attention to her younger copy. The ghostly woman bent down just enough to stroke Fable's hair in her fingers, her smile unchanged, warm and inviting. "Hello Fable," she began without lifting her touch from the girl's face. "I've been waiting a long time to meet you."
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

Yep. She was dead. That was... a pretty good indicator that she'd hit the end of the line and needed to start evaluating how things would go next.

Fable, instead, leaned her head into the fingertips and smiled weakly, her eyes closed against the stream of silent tears going nowhere. "Hi." Was all she could croak out in response, unsure of exactly who this angel was or why she was sullying her luminous hands with the filthy mudblood-caked mess that was her hair and filthy synthetic hodgepode that was her self. It didn't seem right, it didn't seem fair. She was perfect, so she should be not-here, where everything was awful and horrible and painful. But not horrible and painful enough, it seemed, because Fable still hadn't managed to dredge up the determination she needed to haul her useless body into action and help her most cherished person escape from it. She'd failed to protect Rave Merrill, and she was failing to help her mom, so what good was she?

If anything, she was hurting their chances at survival by being a deadweight. A millstone around the neck of the Warrior-Goddess Cavataio.

But the angel didn't care about that, Fable knew before she could even apologize for it. A being that had such a capacity for love that she radiated it didn't care that Fable was filthy, exhausted, and entirely unequal to the task of saving a life. She simply was, and she accepted. Fable STILL wanted to apologize for it, but there was a considerable lump in her throat keeping her from managing the two words she'd lived her life by - sorry for this, sorry for that, sorry for living, and so on. She wanted to apologize for it, but she wanted to choke back the urge to do so, and the conflict was tearing her apart. The clone's face screwed up in frustration at her own powerlessness, in embarrassment and misery, humiliation at her position and failure to go any further. That such a luminous, perfect thing simply wanted to meet her was a a shock to Fable's system, for who'd ever want to meet such a miserable thing like her - alive only as a quirk of statistics, a hapless survivor of hundreds of identical failures?

Fable wasn't able to reply in words. So she just cried in relief.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Two clones of the same woman, at least one of which had her memories, stood crying amid the wastes of one of the foulest reaches of the Netherworld. There was no way out. Surrounded by their failures and their evils, they were forced to confront whatever trial stood before them. That trial was the one woman who not only forgave them, but loved them as if they were the very daughter who she had brought into this world. A whirlwind ballet of malice and destruction whipped around them like a tempest made of pure, vile regret, but there was shelter. There was finally a lull.

After a moment, Fabula looked down at her baby girl, her daughter, her younger self. The tears that had fallen down her face threatened to drip onto Fable, but threatening apparently wasn't good enough for Fabs. She pulled the girl closer, into a tight hug despite the pain she really should have been feeling right now. A criminal who could not accept her own clemency. A sinner whose salvation wracked her with more regret than the acts themselves. All she could do was weep.

None of this seemed to affect Anna terribly much. The immaterial woman leaned forward to embrace both of them in the softest and most enveloping embrace that she had likely ever given. "Shhh..." Like shushing a baby. One of her hands stroked through Fabula's hair, the other scratched gently at Fable's scalp. "This place is doing neither of you any favors. It was important that you saw this, but there's so much more to you than your mistakes."

Taking a step back, the Force ghost touched one finger to both clones' chests, still refusing to stop smiling. "There's a strong heart in there. A heart capable of love, and passion, and belief. I'd know. I put it there." Finally, her expression changed...into a wink of all things. "All you have to do is let it out every once in a while. If you can forgive your own mistakes, forgive yourselves, then you'll feel truly alive."

The whirling sins around them had stopped being important at some point. The harsh light from the green sun didn't seem to beat down any more. All that surrounded them was a soft, warm glow, a soundless hum that seemed to want to put them to sleep. The subconscious pressure of it was actually quite difficult to resist, and it was unlikely that these two women in particular were going to manage any kind of fight to mental persuasion. Fabula threatened to drift off into a sleep that grew ever more attractive, but there was a curiosity in her that refused to let go just yet. She needed to know...

"...Mom. This place...mistakes. Evils. But you've never...what are you seeing in here?" An utterly absurd question in her mind. Fabula refused to consider a world in which Anna could do wrong. But judging by her mother's reaction to that question, her assumption might not have been founded as flawlessly as she believed. Without even intending to do so, Fabula had found the answer to the unasked question of 'can ghosts cry?'

The last thing Fabula saw before she drifted into a warm, comfortable sleep was a shimmering, ethereal tear sliding down Anna Sachae's cheek.
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

Wet.

Warm, yes. Not completely warm, but mostly warm. There was a warm thing here.

But the wetness was pretty much complete. Wherever they were, it was raining there. Wet ground, wet air - humidity.

What -literal- fresh hell was this?

Fable opened one eye in spite of her considerable urge to remain asleep for the rest of eternity, noticing a couple things in fairly rapid succession. First, to her considerable relief, it was raining actual rain and not blood or orphan viscera. So that was a plus. The second was that she was laying in soil, surrounded by normal looking trees, and the sky was a lovely shade of lavender that bespoke of oncoming dawn. She had to view this over the mighty obstacle of her mother's cleavage, considering she was curled up against the other woman like a child. Fabula Cavataio could rip a star destroyer into component parts with her bare hands, there wasn't much chance of her daughter escaping after the spiritual experience they'd just had - not that Fable was trying too terribly hard.

Even though she'd rested, everything still hurt like hell. Fable ached all over, but it was the deep, pounding soreness of the day after horrible labors, not the immediate agony of being at the physical edge of your capabilities. How long had they been sleeping there? How long had....

Fable blinked, then burst into tears. Deep, sorrowful, helpless sobs - not genuine, but the sudden misery that pushed itself on her like a wet blanket smothering a fire was no less complete for being forced upon her.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

As Fabula returned to consciousness, there were a great many things for her to mourn. That tiny, far too brief encounter with her mother had left her with the pang of loss. The unbridled mercy that she had been shown in the face of so much carnage (of her own design, no less) refused to make itself simple to digest. The idea that every moment Fable had spent in that awful place had been a moment that Fabula had failed to rescue her from filled her with disgust at herself, which was not aided in the least by the sudden realization that she hadn't even been the one to save them in the end. But beyond all of that, when Fabula opened her eyes, inhaled the air of the world she was on through her nose, saw the sunrise, she realized something far worse. She was on Dathomir.

Her tears were lost to the falling rain.

Whatever kind of supernatural compulsion might have been forcing her into the depression that she would have easily and naturally felt given her situation could sit down, shut up, and wait, though. Fable was crying in her arms, and that was far more important. Pulling her little girl close, Fabula's newly awakened mommy reflexes kicked in and she let out a quiet sound that was all too familiar to the clones. "Shhh..." Her fingers stroked through the young woman's hair, sorting out blood-knots with the assistance of a rainstorm even as she spoke. "We're alright, Fable. We're alright."
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

Hair. Words. Rain. Too much things going on, too many things that'd happened. Fable's mind was a fairly well-oiled machine, much like a locomotive, and it worked very well towards a single purpose. This was not it's purpose, none of this was within the scope of her self control, and she'd been in the process of teetering off the rails for what felt like the weeks they'd been in the Nether. Now, after meeting a lovely ghost/angel and waking up in a rainstorm to a million little burns, cuts and every muscle screaming in pain while some kind of smothering emotional response was force on her, Fable had well and good jumped the rails and become a chaotic wreck.

"I cuh-can't...!" Fable stammered uselessly, burying her face in soft, warm skin. "Th-thought... if... but no!" She sobbed. "Thuh-there were so muh-muh many of them, why me!? Why was it me? Why duh-do I guh-get to live and none of them did? I d-don't deserve - don't deserve it!" She broke down as she went, wracked with sobs. "Yuh-yuh you deserve... suh-so much better an', an', I can't!"

Pretty much gibberish, you useless copy. Way to go. Nobody else is out here, sitting in the mud and losing their shit, are they? What makes you think you deserve to? Pick yourself up and get over your... self. It's embarrassing. Stupid girl.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Process your response. Think carefully, mongrel, because this is the moment you prove to the galaxy (and yourself) that you have what it takes to be a parent to the most perfect daughter in all of the worlds. No small part of Fabula's brain was telling her to lament her life, and worse yet, that part was supernaturally imposed on her. Her mental blocks would crumble like wet sandstone, so instead she kissed the top of Fable's head and did what felt natural.

"Sweetie, I've killed...so many people. Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. It would be impossible for me to keep count of how many lives I've taken, how many children I've orphaned. Great individuals who could have given so much to the galaxy, children who did their parents proud...it's never mattered a moment." She shook her head and pulled her daughter closer, somehow keeping herself from heaving with sobs. For the moment. "What right have I to a child of my own? I've taken too many from others. Why do I get to have the most incredible little girl that the universe has ever seen?"

Item one. Fable. Fabula's composure started to crack, just a little. She sniffled quietly in the patter of the rain as it poured down over them. Holding her own clone-daughter after falling out of a hell portal created by her departed mother on her homeworld was probably the last thing Fabula expected to be doing while having this conversation. "I don't deserve you, Fable. I don't deserve to be happy with a gorgeous, perfect family. I've destroyed so many happy families. What measures have I taken to earn any paltry kind of redemption to merit holding you in my arms?"

Despairing while consoling her crying babe. Never let it be said Fabula couldn't multitask.
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

Fable tried to formulate some kind of response, a comfort - an assurance that she loved her mother regardless, but words were beyond her at this point in her life. It wasn't all that uncommon of an occurrence, honestly - Fable spent most of her functioning hours struggling over her tongue, and speech was the first thing to abandon her in times of stress. That she was articulate enough to sob wordlessly was something of an accomplishment, in the grand scheme of things.

So, wordless as she was, Fable replied with her incoherent sobbing and clung to the slightly larger woman like she was in danger of being flung off of this blissfully un-hellish landscape they'd found themselves on by the east wind. There'd be time for reassurances and comfort and recovery later, the angel had seen to that. They'd been brought home, together, in a healthy amount of pieces, and that was more than she could have hoped for an hour before.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Item two. Anna. Fabula's words started to fail her. Her voice creaked with the force of the grief that really didn't need any help heaping itself onto her mind. "...That was the first time I've seen her in six hundred years. Heard her voice...felt her touch." An extremely undignified hiccup cut her off in the middle of her whinging, and the torrent that followed was anything but graceful and ladylike. Not even the best manners in the galaxy could have saved her persona now.

An eternity alone with death and carnage, and Fabula hadn't seen anyone she had known or loved. Kristin was nowhere to be found. Anna didn't belong in that place. Petra...conflicted feelings. But now after so long, so very long, Fabula had seen her mother again. She'd held her close and felt her kiss and known her warmth. And now- "She's gone...she's just...gone." Fabula would very likely never see the elemental essence of kindness again. At least, not until she died.

A feeling of intense loneliness swept over her. No, not loneliness. "You two are all I have left." Yes. Two. Sort through your thoughts, Fabula. This new set that you get Fable from also remembers someone else. Lynn. Two important people in her life who she would be nothing without. A weapon that had transcended its purpose and design by way of family. "Please don't leave me alone. " A moment of weakness? Well, no. More like an hour of weakness, with more to come. Welcome to Dathomir.

Speaking of which...
[member="Fable Merrill"]

 

[Fable Merrill]

[member="Fabula Cavataio"]

"Never." Fable promised in a cracking, unsteady voice. Her limbs felt about the same when she sealed the vow with the tightest hug she felt they could both manage to endure. As hugs go, not a record setter, but she needed to at least make the effort. The clouds were passing, metaphorically, and they were so close to being in the clear. Hopefully, they'd look back on this situation from the comfort of the Bloody Pilgrim someday and feel acutely uncomfortable with the whole experience. And then not discuss it or think about it too much ever again.

Then again, we all know better.

Dangerously close to being cognizant, Fable shook her head/nuzzled her mother and tried to clear out the tear-filled cobwebs gumming up her higher thought processes. She was doing alright, aside from feeling like she'd nearly died. She could move, barely. Mom's ankle was still a useless mess of flesh wound and agony. That was enough to get Fable's mind back on the rails and moving forward - even at such a reduced pace. Safety first. "We should go, mom." She whispered quietly. "We need to find a huh-hospital."

'No' wasn't an option. Somehow, her mother had managed to drag herself standing and carry Fable for Force-knows how long with her severed tendon, albeit with the support of an angel for some or all of it. If mom could manage that for her, Fable would finish the job for her. She had to. Moving her legs into a crouch felt like opening the rusty hatch of a long-sunken ship - creaks of protest and weakness all around - but they nevertheless worked. Her arms shrieked in protest as she shifted their hug into a side-carry so Fabula could use her good leg and keep the bad one off the ground - they could shriek all they want so long as they worked. Wherever they were, they needed to get someplace better. Safer. With doctors. And a phone.

Fable, regardless of what Fabula wanted, hauled them both upright and set off in whatever direction the Force told her was right - so, in a completely random direction.