taxonomites | 01 | holo | location: sanctuary

Death felt hot, and dark, and loud and silent all at the same time. And it kind of tickled.

It wasn’t over like all the storybooks said it would be. There was no warm wash of air, or pretty clouds or glowing white light and the smiling face of her dead grandfather. It wasn’t even close to falling asleep. It was too bright for that. It was too much pain, too much pain to go gently into that good night. Electricity snaked through the sky, jagged scars ripped through the air and lit her up like a goddamn Christmas tree. So many metaphors, so little time. It was all of these things and more, and Gwen Raiden didn’t have the time to reflect. She didn’t even have time to be dead, apparently.

All of that—betraying Angel and Connor and Nina and Spike (well...okay, she didn't really care about Spike) and the rest, fighting the dragon Cordelia (which just might have been more forthcoming than the real Cordelia), her decision to die the way she always imagined it—all that was snuffed out with her life and now it rushed back. Here she was, in all her glory, surrounded by metal walls and a strange ceiling. She surveyed the close space, breathing hard from that whole noble sacrifice thing which tended to take a lot out of a girl. "Okay,” she said, and the word escaped her wrapped in a big, exhaled breath. “Not gonna lie. I thought heaven would be a little more…Feng Shui.”

And as death faded away like a dream, her body felt real and solid again. There was the hard steel floor underneath her boots, the silken feel of her gloves on her fingers, and finally, the dull pain in every muscle of her body that had been electrified just moments ago. Gritting her teeth and shoving it down and away, where she did not have to dwell on it, she noticed the pedestal in front of her holding a fancy little gadget on it. It looked like something once upon a time she would have been paid billions to steal. She looked at it now with uninterest and unease. “Or…not heaven. Mars, huh? Interesting choice.”

There was no door, no way out and no cool breeze she’d felt just moments ago on the rooftop...

Connor, she thought, struck suddenly with a pang of sadness and guilt that gutted her.

“Okay, I get it!” Her call echoed out to empty walls. This was Wolfram and Hart's doing. And if she had to claw her way out of here, literally striking down every cheap suit in this place to do it, she would. “And not to be dramatic, but I had a thing I was doing with...the dying. Don’t you people have better things to do than stick me in a box? Filing briefs, or something? Not a big, brooding vampire here. Just a normal, law-abiding citizen."

A fib, and not even a subtle one, but she was getting testy. She scratched at her gloved wrist, absentmindedly, and felt something like a bracelet under the fabric. “Sorry I killed your dragons?”

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Kind of like a robot, thought Gwen, but she decided not to tease him. And she was still kind of taking everything in. Hatches, aliens, hamsters, libraries and super gadget phones. She had her own little personal manual to work with here, and she was not going to complain.

As for questions, there was one. It was weighing in her mind a little more than she wished it to, but there it was. Among those she'd met was the undead, for one, and it was backing her theory.

"You don't think this is some kind of..." she pauses, because it sounded plain stupid. "Purgatory?" Well, she was dying when Taxon scooped her up.

Long looked startled at the question, eyes briefly widening, brows arching. And then he laughed again, sounding very amused this time.

"I don't think so! By the most common numbering scheme used in Buddhism, there are sixteen hells, or purgatories-- the Sanskrit word is translated both ways into English-- and I have studied the writings pertaining to them fairly extensively.

"In no sutra nor text is there any mention of hamsters." He grins just a little, his eyes dancing, but then sobers up and shrugs.

"No, I do not think it is Purgatory, Miss Raiden. I spent twenty-two years once as the unwilling captive of a fellow named Morningstar, and I will say this: Taxon has much better food."

She smiles just a little. Yeah, it was pretty stupid. "I only ask because I was, well, kind of...dying at the time." A statement that should be serious is delivered instead with casual offhandedness, almost embarrassed. Turns out, saying it out loud didn't make it any less awkward or easy to figure out in her head.

"Twenty-two years," she repeats, deflated. "That's...That's a long time." Was she going to be here for twenty-two years? There is a dread on Gwen's face as she considers this. "So you've...done this whole captive thing before. Now I see why you've done your homework."

"Everyone mortal is dying," is Long's equally off-hand response to this revelation. "Some of us faster than others, that is all. But I think you are not the only person to be snatched here from the jaws of a terrible fate."

He sighs, thinking of Fred (and having no inkling this woman is from the same reality as her). Sweet, hopeful Fred-- gone, and to a horrific end if the man Angel had been to be believed. And nothing to be done about it.

Gwen's further words drag his attention back to matters at hand, and he notices the slump of her shoulders.

" 'Be ye of good cheer'," he quotes. "One of the morals of the story is that neither was that captivity forever. I was freed. All prison sentences are finite eventually.

"But it is possible that my experience does lead me to accept Taxon with a bit more equanimity than I should, yes."

01 | holo | location: sanctuary | ARRIVAL

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