Chapter 2
She’s been gone for four months now, long enough for her rescue to be reclassified as a ‘recovery’ mission. They don’t expect to find her alive, they probably never did, but that doesn’t mean Tally has to agree with them.
She’s not surprised when Anacostia comes by the house with a single cardboard box filled with things from her office. It sits in the hallway for a week, a mocking, haunting presence, a piece of her flung into the house where it was never meant to be. Finally, after days of staring she pops open a beer, carries the box into the living room, and shuffles through the contents inside.
Various odds and ends are scattered in the box, a stack of letters they’d written to each other on Tally’s last deployment, wrapped neatly in twine; a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice ; a soft Army t-shirt that still smells like Sarah as if her petrichor and sandalwood fragrance has melted into the cotton; the Biddies’ favorite chess set; and a stack of records. All little pieces of her, the woman she loved, no loves , Tally loves her, she’s not gone, not yet.
Tally flips through the records, recognizing each one. They’re all ones she and Alder used to listen to, as if Anacostia knew which ones to pick—as if the two of them had talked about it. The thought warms something in her, that she was important enough for the General to discuss with her daughter, that the time they spent together might have meant as much to her as it meant to Tally.
She plucks one of the vinyls from its sleeve and walks over to the player she has at the side of the room—it’s not nearly as nice as the antique victrola in the General’s office, but it will do. The familiar snap crackle of white noise starts as the needle meets the spinning disc before the soothing melody whispers out into the room.
“Do you like civilian music? I enjoy it immensely.”
A breath stutters in her chest, as she whips around and finds Sarah standing a few feet behind her in a pair of camel color slacks and a soft cream sweater, hair loose and wild spilling over her shoulders as if she’s just come in form a brisk walk and not appeared out thin air.
“I didn’t think this would work, but Ana was convinced,” she sounds impressed and proud, the motherly affection she has for her daughter's idea clear in the admission.
“Hello General.”
“Oh, we’re back to General. Am I in trouble?”
“Don’t be glib.”
“I’m surprised you went with the Lucille Bogan. I remember that was a rather charged evening,” Alder’s eye flick pointedly to Tally’s lips then back up.
“It wasn’t that kind of charged, Sarah, and you know it. Stop trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?” She grins, that soft little half-lipped smile that always turns Tally’s core into molten slag, and takes two steps closer. Tally hates that even when she’s not really here Sarah doesn't need to do anything other than exist in her presence to be overwhelmingly disarming.
“No,” she squeaks, swallowing thickly before trying again. “No,” she repeats, voice solid and firm.
“Hmm, pity,” Sarah continues her slow movement across the room until she’s crowded into Tally’s space. With one hand she plucks the empty vinyl sleeve from Tally’s fingers and sets it aside, then runs the fingers of her other hand along her jaw, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You are so lovely when you’re distracted.”
And for a moment Tally is so sure she’s going to be kissed she forgets to breathe. Somewhere in the back of her mind she notices the sickening yellow green of a bruise along Sarah’s temple, a slash of blood from a split lip, the bloom of a mark on her neck peeking out from the neck of her sweater before the glamor flickers and they’re scrubbed away again.
“Time to wake up, Talia,” the words are whispered against her lips in the ghost of a kiss, the sound of an alarm playing through the music on the record player.
“What?” Tally manages to stutter out, catching one last glimpse of Sarah’s satisfied smile, before she’s startled awake.
“Goddess dammit that—” Tally fizzles out into a sound of frustrated rage as she wakes in the necropolis, Lucille Bogan still filtering through the speakers from the wired sound system.
“Well I take it that worked?” Anacostia asks, reaching over to help Tally sit up.
“Yeah, a bit too well. She was even more evasive than usual, and I barely had two minutes with her.” She runs a frustrated hand through her hair, body still wired and anxious from her time with Alder—from all the pieces that don’t make sense, the questions they can’t answer. “Could you turn off that goddess’ cursed song?” She yells toward the other room where she assumes Izadora is waiting, controlling the sound system. The music halts instantly and Tally feels like she can finally unclench. A little.
“Hey, Craven. Take a minute,” Anacostia soothes, one hand warmly on her shoulder, while the other squeezes her hand, the pressure grounding.
“We don’t have a minute!” She snaps, but immediately deflates when she sees the wounded look on Anacostia’s face. From the corner of her eye she sees Izadora walking properly into the room, so she takes a moment to breathe, to push down the anger and the fear so she can say the next bit as calmly as possible.
“They're hurting her, Costia. She tries to hide it, but once I know to look through the illusion I can't unsee them—the bruises, the cuts, the marks— the things she doesn't bother to fix or doesn't have the strength left to. We don’t have time.” Tally squeezes the hand still holding hers. Their eyes meet for a moment, both swirling in a tide of too many feelings for the woman whose absence is so present in the room it threatens to pull them under until they drown.
“We should debrief,” Izadora’s calm rationality breaks through the moment.
The weariness must show on Tally’s face before she can school it away, because Izadora’s eyes soften. “It's late, we'll sit in my office instead of the war room. I'll make us some tea.”
Once they’re settled in the cozy quiet of Izadora’s office with their drinks, Tally decides it’s time to address the elephant in the room.
“She doesn't want to be found.”
“Of all the noble Alder-shaped bullshit—” Anacostia sasses, glaring down at her tea like she wishes it was something stronger.
“She's your mother.”
“Oh I'm aware. Did you at least get anything useful out of this meeting?”
“She was distracting.” Tally taps a finger on the side of her mug, refusing to make eye contact with either of her superiors.
“Distracting how?” Anacostia asks, lifting one perfect eyebrow in question.
“Her hair was down and she was avoiding questions—”
“Wait, go back. Her hair was down ? What does the state of the general's hair have to do with your ability to focus on the task at hand?” There is a teasing glint to Izadora’s eyes, and Tally can feel her face heat under the scrutiny.
“We should have picked a different record to try this with. That one is attached to too many memories for Sa— General Alder and I. She was able to use that to her advantage.” She’s rambling excuses around the blush she knows is now creeping down her neck as Izadora grins at her knowingly over the rim of her mug.
“We could always try it again with a different record?” Anacostia suggests.
“I don’t know. I think we might be better off going back to what we were doing before. I felt like I had more control, like I had a better chance of breaking through with enough time to at least get some answer or some clues—” Tally tries to argue before being cut off.
“Maybe what we need to do is take a step back entirely and see what commonalities we have that we may have overlooked. See if those can help us think of another path forward.” Izadora, ever the scientist suggests instead.
“Like what?” Tally asks.
“We never meet her in the same place twice. And once she knows we’ve picked up on something it’s never repeated.” Anacostia suggests.
“Exactly,” Izadora confirms, setting her mug aside to grab a pad and pen to create a list.
“She never calls any of us by our full names, or even by the names she usually refers to us by,” Tally adds, waiting as Izadora frantically scribbles each suggestion.
“She never uses our ranks.” Anacostia adds.
“She didn’t like it when I mentioned I was a knower, and stopped me entirely before I could mention the remnant of the Biddy bond. Has anything like that come up with either of you?”
“Now that you mention it, she doesn’t mention specialties at all, even when it would make sense to.”
“But why? Why would she go to all that effort to avoid our names, our ranks, our specialties? Those are things the Camarilla already know about us surely?” Tally asks.
“Not necessarily, and not if they were after something or someone in particular.” Izadora answers, a far off look in her eyes.
“I know that look Iza, what are you not saying?” Anacostia presses after a moment of silence.
“She’s not just trying to stop us from finding her—she’s trying to stop them from finding us.”