You're Not Getting Out Alive

[archiveofarethusa]

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Life inside your head has come undone / your slow descent to madness has just begun / but this is real life, oh no / you can’t fight it, oh no.
LADYHAWKE | Black, White, and Blue

It was Jaida's ninth birthday, and her parents were dead. In the main room, her mother was partially wrapped beside her father's body. Her best friend was there, a goblin from the forests beyond her backyard, and he was laughing like her parents' corpses were the funniest joke he'd ever seen. His teeth glinted in the orange sunrise, his maw coated in red. In the light of dawn, he looked exactly like the demon everyone had told Jaida he was. Something ignited in Jaida's blood at the sight of his happy, smug face, surrounded in her misery. She thought only that he must pay, he must regret, he must scream himself raw and bloodless and empty as he truly was.

Lightning flickered to life in Jaida's smile, and it was lightning that struck Ifans dead. He died crying and burned to ashes, scattering at Jaida's feet. It wasn't enough.

The morning that I was born again / I was made into a beast / Am I free now, am I at peace?
AUSTRA | The Beast

When the rage fled and the blood seemed merely ornamental, Jaida wondered if all goblins were so dumb. She was the heiress of arcane strength, more monster than human by monsters' estimation. It was never Jaida who was to die today. Even without the advent of her magic, she was wild and vengeful, and the damn fool had taught her all he knew of knife work; but Ifans had taken her parents, and no wild, vengeful thing could take them back. She bit her lip until it bled, the copper stark against the taste of ash, but the tears came hot and fat and disgusting anyway.

"What good is a storm if it strikes down what it loves, too?" Jaida said, later that week.

"My, what silly notions have you been entertaining? You're a little girl, not a storm," Ling said. From her grandmother's tone, Jaida guessed it was meant to comfort her in some way. All it did was tighten the set of her jaw, her teeth on edge.

"You're right, I'm not a storm. I don't want to be a storm," Jaida said, surprised to hear her voice so full of that strange blend of soft and hard that heralded absolute rage. She had never felt more like ice in all her short life. "Anyone can brave a storm."

Don't put me in your little world, I'm doing fine right here / check the driver's side mirror, it's closer than it might appear.
THAT HANDSOME DEVIL | Damn Door

Tears were for drinking, not shedding, so Jaida banished the past from her mind. Nobody worth knowing liked a sob story and nobody at all liked living a sob story, and Jaida wasn't any sort of nobody. What her peers whispered about survivor's guilt and unnatural lineage was groundless blubbering. Their attempts at shaming her into submission were adorable, though, really. As if her monstrous grandfather wasn't her most bearable living relative. As if she wasn't the only one in that worthless backwater whose life would someday matter. As if she couldn't break them with one small sentence and watch as their pride bled and bled and bled as if it was a physical thing to be pricked. What did they know? Jaida's name was becoming known and respected in multiple provinces for her deeds as a slayer while her peers were still preoccupied with the strange, half child grotesquities that passed as their bodies. She was meant for greatness beyond this backwater. Amlaine had once been the capital of a great empire, but as things stood it was already dwarfed by her shadow. She'd cut a path out of town if she had to.

Keep up your eyes / see what I'll do / Oh, anything / just to get to you.
THE ETTES | Red in Tooth and Claw

Jaida had allowed the wicked to escape her wrath for a night of fleeting, let it be said again, so very fleeting joy, and he had butchered her neighbors, rent children and drank of their life, and it occured to her she must make retribution. There was but one thing to do for mistakes, and Jaida would not rest until Mashiro had been reft of what tied his putrid body to this world. She would pull upon the tatters of his mortality and pull away his flesh to quash his red and inhuman heart. She would bring him down to the despair she had fallen to and expose his wretched blackened soul to the night he walked so boldly in, and she would remind him of its terrors. The infinite and undying, not gone but waiting and undying night would take him and see her desires and vengeance done, oh, and how it would be done! The blood he had sucked from the living would rise from his useless heart and possessed of its former masters would choke him dry and mad and withered. She would tear away the rotting gray from his skull and write his epitaph upon its filthy strands, and he would plot no more deceptions, for those who were reft of life were reft of thought. She would suffer him a thousand torments and cast him down into the deepest fires of the black seas of the Nethers. It was, after all, her only chance for the guilt to wash away from her heart and at last know peace.

Instrumental
THE GLITCH MOB | Warrior Concerto

When she was still very, very green, Jaida tried to make rules for herself regarding fighting. Don't let them see your back, she told herself, but one day she bared her back to her advantage, tricking a redcap into thinking she was unaware of him. She tried disallowing herself from backing down, but backing down was all she could do when she met Mashiro. Later still, she recognized how stupid a rule it was. Retreat was bitter, almost bitterer than she could swallow, but she had plenty of pride to sacrifice and one life. She had to keep on fighting. This was how she was going to get out. This was how she was going to avenge herself. This was the only thing in the world that meant more to her than herself. It didn't matter how low she was knocked down; if she survived, she could deal with any witnesses to her fall. She could make amends, and it wasn't worth killing herself over fun.

This was the law: keep breathing. Everything else was just a guideline.

Now won't you run and tell your boyfriend / tell him don't hold his breath for me / I've got some money I was saving / got some hearts that I'll be breaking.
SANTIGOLD | I'm a Lady

Sex was always hilarious, but after puberty hit it became useful, too. A suggestion of affection, a slow, red smirk and some boys would do anything. It would have been easy to feel bad for the hearts she strung along. Sad little boys who had nothing yet made her everything; Jaida made that mistake herself more than once. How lucky for her, though, that so many of those sad little boys weren't boys at all, but mad dogs who bit what hands didn't feed them. She at least knew what to do with an ungrateful hound.

They say I'm gifted / well, I'm a certified prodigy / I'm gonna own you / I'm gonna bring you to your knees.
THE DOLLYROTS | Because I'm Awesome

"I have paid slayers to deal with Chomu," said Ling one day before work. She spoke the old language these days not because it was simply what she did, but because she'd been getting forgetful of the common tongue of late. She was brushing her hair, and she was taking far too long. Ling had been sluggish more and more of late, her hands shaking where they had once been still as knives. It was like watching her grandmother slowly unlearn the motions of being alive. Jaida didn't like to dwell on it.

"Oh, wow. I've heard old age makes you stupid, but even I couldn't foresee this level of dumb," Jaida said. "You have me. I'm the best slayer in more miles than even you could possibly have walked. What do you want with anyone else?"

"I don't like to encourage you," Ling sniffed. "Their leader looked reliable enough. Another mystic, if you can believe it. His hair was the most ridiculous shade of pink I've ever seen."

Jaida wrinkled her nose. "Oh, grandma, really? Them?" She stood up. "I won't be coming to work today. I'm going to pick up the corpses granddad has undoubtedly made, and then I'm dealing with him. No need to thank me, really."

"You really think you stand a chance, little girl? They are three, and you are one overconfident brat!"

"Sure, they are or were three people," Jaida said. "But I'm me."

I'm sick of social graces / show your sharp-tipped teeth / lose your cool in public / dig that illegal meat.
THE KILLS | Cheap and Cheerful

There were three of them, after Jaida saved them twice, and they were delightful. Cyprian, the mystic, loved death as dearly as Jaida did, and would be rewarded as richly as she. He coated his words in nitroglycerine, he drank as if he had spent years lost in a desert, he cringed away from affection as if it was lava waiting to make him stone, and yet he was unabashedly disdainful and distrustful of her. It was in his phrasing, it was in the glorified frown that was his face; he disliked how dangerous she was. The youngest, Cliff, was more naive at eighteen than Jaida had been at twelve. He spoke of slaying like it was a romance, and he looked at Kristen like his world would shatter should she disappear. He regarded Cyprian with a sort of blind respect that made Jaida wonder all sorts of sordid things. He was young and stupid, and loud; Jaida wondered if he was what Ling saw when she looked at her. Mostly, she just wondered what would happen to his fragile young brain once he realized what fighting really was.

And Kristen was just as aware of it all as she was, Jaida could tell. The woman was full of wonder at the world despite being smart enough to see all that was wrong with it, and she seemed to love Cliff with the same blind, eyes-open sense of awe. Jaida liked her anyway. Kristen was terribly likable. Hell, Jaida found herself watching her tongue around her. And she was a diplomat, the one thing that could keep Cyprian from happy hour and probably the closest thing to a spirit of tactfulness Cliff would ever have. She was all these things, but she had no warrior's soul. She was tough as any of them and more experienced than Cliff, but confrontation made her uneasy. It would be fascinating to see who broke first, and they were such a lovely assortment of broken things already. She would keep them, Jaida decided.

I'd love to kill you by a stream / where no one can hear my baby scream / and then I'd run away and be free / the sweetest victory.
KATIE MELUA | I'd Love to Kill You

Elesaid Loy had almost been a friend. Their brains twisted along nearly the same sinister paths that they might have understood one another, and to Jaida she was like stars. She didn't lift the darkness, but Jaida had enough to go by with her to understand the shape of the world as others saw it. Nearly, but not enough. She'd always wanted to kill her, a little bit. She still did, but the shape of the bloodlust had changed, blurred irksomely at the edges. She had been the one to sever their connection. Jaida would never be coming back, but if she did she hoped she'd have the edges back. This softness was anathema. It was inexcusable, unforgivable. She would have nothing like a second chance ever again.

And I'll try to spare you the pain of my jaws / but it's just in my nature to rip and to shred.
VERMILLION LIES | Shark Serenade

Jaida didn't have friends for the same reason she didn't have nice things; she broke them. Some hated the constant worrying, others couldn't stand her brusqueness. One asshole stuck out through everything but couldn't bear her coming home painted dark with her own blood. She hadn't been as through with her. Friendship happened to other people. But she looked at Kristen, even Cliff and Cyprian, and thought maybe this time it would stick. She refused to die alone, like Chomu did. She wouldn't allow them to die, and she expected the same in return. That was what friendship was, right?

Instrumental
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD | The Gravel Road

Chomu Bai was dead. Jaida's responsibilities were all finished in Amlaine, and today was the day she would not stop herself. The highroad stretched on for longer than even a hawk's eye could see; the low road went on for even longer than that. Both roads and all their wonders and perils were open to her. Giddily, she considered running until she ran out of ground to run on. The world was at her feet, had always been at her feet, but today she was ready.

"What's your rush?" Cyprian grumped from behind. "Am I the only one not convinced the world is going to disappear one day? Did I just miss a vital lesson growing up?"

Jaida ignored him. Whatever he'd end up being, Cyprian didn't matter yet. She wanted to remember this place perfectly so that the long, dewy-eyed stare of nostalgia could never reel her back in to Amlaine's borders. When she walked out of the shadow of her hometown, she never looked back.

Rattle, what's that rattle? / What a charming sound my tail makes wrapped around your neck.
SPLASHDOWN | Beguiled (Mark II)

Wraybrook brought vampires to hunt down, and Jaida had never faced better quarry. It was fascinating how like humanity they were, in spite of being monsters. They had death in their hearts, but so did she, and she loved what death made her and what that change in her made others do. These vampires were pretenders to the cause of the hand in the shadows. Jaida, on the other hand, knew all the secret ways. She had learned to see a body's soul when she stared into their eyes with a dagger at their pulse, and there were none yet who could tell her a lie. They belonged to her in ways more intimate than mother and child, more inexorable than lovers or friends. She had them to the ends of their lives, had their pain to the end of hers. And she made these pretenders confess all, made them plead their criminal averageness and beg for their punishment. She devoured their fear as if it were a fine meal, as if it alone could sustain her. So she understood why her grandmother didn't want her doing this. The trouble was she had been too late for years, too late since the day Jaida was nine. She wasn't going to stop for her grandmother or the gods or the world, now that she knew was it felt like to have an intelligent monster by the throat with a giggle caught in her own.

I wait all my life just for the rush / the passing of fire into my blood.
CARINA ROUND | Into My Blood

Lightning was fire, and it was a sweet heat upon her fingertips as her blood burned cold in her veins. It was electric, a shock, a shiver down to her toes. It was a chorus of screams in the night as she burned a path of black ashes to wherever she wished. It was pain, but a good pain, like people said love often was. It was light and heat and jagged, cutting fire and summer rain and death, and it burned in her blood like mediocrity burned in everyone else's.

What use had she of anything else?

Rejoice despite the fact this world will kill you / rejoice despite the fact this world will tear you to shreds / rejoice, because you're trying your hardest.
ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD | Rejoice

No one seemed to peg Jaida as the fanatical type, but that wasn't so. Jaida loved her god with a fervor that was nearly ecstatic, for he was the Hand in the Dark, the Longest Shadow, and all that was amazing was his domain. His was the power of chaos and shadow and mischief and night. Adanvari was the best god, clearly, but he was seldom mentioned in any of the Buillaisian sermons. Folk often forgot about the darker gods. Jaida supposed they must have liked it that way. But Adanvari did not forget them. He certainly mustn't have forgotten Jaida. When she fought tooth and nail and blade, he was the hilt she gripped and the thrill of lightning that commanded and served her. When she killed, he was the shiver down her spine. When she waited and waited for guilt that never found her, he was the tear in her soul. When she bled, he was the break in her skin, and she rejoiced in the pain as much as the blood, for the lord of shadows was with her in all of it. One day she would die; it was the price one paid for living, after all. She only prayed it was a good death, bloody and vicious and swift. With the zeal and faith and devotion she had served her god with, she knew it was coming, one way or another. She almost looked forward to it.