tenth slay ❊ ⊰ voice ⊱ ❊ every single night the same arrangement

[stakes]

Anybody else ever wake up with a crazy headache and a whole yikesitude of shiny, new memories? 'Cause I just got mega-slammed with like a year and a half of my life. And I feel --... Different. I feel different. Stronger. And? Totally commandery. Army of Teenage Girls, ahoy.

Seriously, though -- do the Gods think it's funny to just randomly grasp at straws and shove stuff into our brains while we're sleeping? Thor, I'm talking to you. Is this your idea of fun?

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[beforethewar]

No, I can't say that such a thing has happened to me. Then again, I've never had the most reliable memory to begin with...

[stakes]

Well, they say too much alcohol can do that to a person. [ She's joking. Really. ] I think it's just a thing that happens here.

[beforethewar]

[He gives her a wry grin.]

More like too many blows to the head, but yes.

I wasn't aware that such a thing was part of what happens around here. I thought we either go home or go grey.

[stakes]

Why so much concussionism? [ Yeah, she's going to make up words, Doctor. Sorry. ] Nope. Cinemax dreams are a thing, too.

[beforethewar]

[He almost corrects her, then stops himself when he realizes it's as good a way of describing it as any.]

It is something of an occupational hazard. Sometimes it seems like it's a requirement that I get knocked out and dragged to a prison cell before I once again break out and save the day.

[He's so modest.]

That's odd. Then again, I suppose after two months I still don't know everything.

Did you...get anything interesting out of your dream?

[stakes]

Boy, have I been there. I feel your pain. [ And she means it, really and truly. ] Nice to meet fellow heroes sometimes. This place seems pretty packed with them.

[ Uh. Well. She shrugs and grins. ]

World's ending again, this time it means business, blah blah blah... Aside from some closure on some things and added burden bonus on others, not really. I feel older.

[beforethewar]

Well, who better to save all of existence than people who make it their jobs to save people?

[Eight chuckles just a bit at the 'blah blah blah'.]

Yes, Earth does seem to be a rather large magnet for all kinds of world-ending trouble.

Closure is always good, though. Burden...not so much.

[stakes]

I never made it my job. It was a destiny handed down to me through generations of women. [ Okay, well, she made it her job after she couldn't quit it. But that's beside the point. ]

I got over my mopey self-loathing stage and moved onto leading an army of undertrained, weak girls to take on the very first, very strongest, very evilest of evils.

[beforethewar]

Hm, never been a fan of destiny. [Says the Time Lord who knows that there are points in time that can't be altered, and thus are technically "destined" to happen.]

Still, there's always that knowledge that, if not you, who else? I understand how lonely that can be, with or without the moping. I've found the self-loathing comes in waves. Or maybe that's just unique to my kind, where we have to go through these cycles in each incarnation. I honestly don't know.

[He looks quite impressed. Almost awestruck, even. Building or even leading an army isn't his strong suit, and that's with soldiers. So this woman taking a bunch of girls who'd never seen battle and turning them into an army is astonishing.]

That's incredible! And I take it you succeeded?

[stakes]

It's a little bit of a bitch, yeah. [ And by a little she means a lot. ]

If I die, another Slayer is called. She'd eventually learn what I've learned. She might not live to put it to use, but... They never do. I'm one of the oldest Slayers in generations. They don't usually make it past their teens. But I'm not really... incarnated. I get their memories, sort of, and I have visions, but I don't remember their lives in detail or anything. I don't know them. I'm not them. I'm... me. With a little slice of their knowledge and history, I guess.

[ She snorts. ] The self-loathing came after a very unexpected resurrection. It was hard to want to live on -- wait. Why am I telling you this? You probably don't care. And I barely know you.

[ Then she shrugs. ]

Don't know. Didn't get far enough ahead of myself to actually see what happens next.

[beforethewar]

[He nods, understanding. That bit about them dying in their teens does makes him frown.]

Teenagers? But...children are asked to fight and die for their world? And it isn't your choice? That's just--

[He can't think of a word big enough for how awful that is. At least he chose this life, as an adult, and he doesn't exactly die. Not like human girls with their all-to-brief lives.]

What? Of course I care! Your story is just as important as mine. Moreso, really, considering how utterly remarkable it is that you've survived and lived with all you've gone through. I'm a Time Lord. I have several lives to lose. There's only one you. Resurrected or not.

And...yes, I suppose you're right, but you've got to at least have hope that it worked.

[stakes]

No. It's not a choice. But we still have to do it. Someone does. It's a calling. A destiny. Girls born with the potential to be Slayers don't know when their time will come. Most of them are raised to be prepared for it, in some way or another. I -- guess I was a freak accident. I never had a Watcher, not until after I actually became the Slayer. I got a crash course in world-saving. Most of the other girls have had their entire lives to prepare, and study, and know what their destiny might bring them some day. It's just... It's life, for us. It's what we have to do.

[ She speaks matter-of-factly, but there is a deep sadness in her tone, written all over her face... The burden of the world has been on her shoulders for so long now, she's forgotten what it feels to be light. Not entirely, of course; she had the brief reprieve in Heaven, before her friends tore her out. But she's put that behind her now, as much as she can. Rather, in her vivid life-remembering dream, she did. She's trying to mix these memories into her Asgard-centric memories in a way that makes sense. But there's a world to take care of; she can't spend her life being bitter that she's not dead anymore. ]

Survived. Kinda relative. I've died twice. [ The humor returns, though it's not as prevalent as it was previously. ] Explain this whole several lives thing. Is it something I can sign up for? 'Cause I'm not sure the world can handle itself without me around. [ She would like to think it could, but her friends' desperation to return her to life after the second time she died suggests otherwise. ] - I --... [ She's touched. Seriously, seriously touched. There's only one her. ] Thank you. That really -- You... You get it, don't you? And that means one hell of a lot. Several lives or not, isn't there only one you, too? It's not like you go all amoeba and make more yous. Is it?

[ Hope. Hope in herself, in her girls... ] I think we have the advantage. Think. But only time will tell.

[beforethewar]

[He listens thoughtfully to her story, keeping the anger he has for whoever it was that set up this system to himself. Him raging about people who are probably long dead wouldn't do her any good.]

You are...quite a remarkable young woman, you know that?

[Her question gets a chuckle out of him. A sad one, but a chuckle nonetheless.]

Yes, it sounds like it, though you have that army of girls now, don't you?

And I'm afraid not. Regeneration is genetic. [He laughs a little.] No, I'm not an amoeba, or a worm. You don't cut me to pieces and make an army of me. We're all the same man, but not at the same time. When a Time Lord is mortally wounded, ill, or if our current body just gets too old, our cells renew themselves by changing completely.

A whole new body, a bit of an alteration in personality, but essentially the same man in here [He taps his head.] and in here [He then taps his chest twice, one on either side.]

[He grins at that turn of phrase.] Time always does.