Ess, Why, Dee

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⚠️ Content warning: This article contains gore.

rating: +38+–x

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Sara Yarkoni gave one last glance over her bucket list.

"I mean, obviously kill Cuomo." Cheap scotch went down so much better with friends. Shame Lyanna grew up around prudes. "Jenkins… Jenkins sounds fun, so fuck him… fuck, do I really gotta marry Morrissey?"

"I don't make the rules, dear." Now that wasn't exactly fair, given Izzy had set that round, but Lyanna supposed she'd get revenge soon enough. That's if the coin landed on heads, which it subsequently failed to do, but Lyanna was raised a stabber, not a quitter. "That's Jack, I believe."

Jack looked up from his phone. "Huh?"

"Your turn, casanova. Fuck, marry, kill…" Shit, Lyanna had only really planned for getting Izzy. Now that she had to plan for Jack of all people, she needed to get creative fast without spilling that she'd been hustling. "… right. Fuck, marry, kill… Kurt Cobain, Vinnie Paul, Roger Wa-"

The front door slammed open, and muscle memory moved Lyanna's flask out of sight. "Holy shit. Y'all didn't tell me there's a whole city."

Ah, Sara.

Izzy didn't even look up. "Afternoon, Jackrabbit. Find anything fun?"

Sara chuckled. "Oh shut up, Izzy." Sara's purse was thrown haphazardly onto an understuffed sofa chair as she plopped herself into the trio's circle. "No, yeah. You know the Sar-fuck, no, that's the slur, right?"

"I don't fuckin'…" Lyanna never quite realized how good pita chips were until she got properly drunk. "… yeah, nah, it's Nalka. I get my pills from them."

"Nalka, right." Sara's flask was already out. "What're we playing?"

"Uh… marry, kill, and, uh, fuck. I think."

"Isn't it Fuck, Marry, Kill?"

"Uh… yeah." Hopefully Jack was getting used to the increased company. "But… that's also my answer." One of Jack's fake nails went to scratch his cheek. "To Lyanna's prompt."

"Man, fuck." Just a little more scotch and Lyanna's last two braincells would condemn themselves to a murder-suicide. "I was sure Paul would trip you up." Lyanna flicked the coin towards Jack, or what she thought would resolve as 'towards Jack' but really just fell onto the floor. "But yeah, Sara, you want in? If you don't know who one of them is, you gotta take a shot."

"Good thing I'm dumb as hell." Unprompted, Sara took a swig of her flask. "I'm in-"

"-a complete wonderland, huh?"

Brad tipped the… the doorman? Or was "doorman" capitalized? Eh, wasn't so much a door as it was a concrete wall, so that was probably his name, "Doorman". Come to think of it, Sara wasn't so sure on the "man" part, either.

"No, that's down in Boston." Yeah, nope, wasn't a man in the strictly taxonomic sense. Indeed, so much so Not A Human that it took several seconds for Sara to process his words. "If you came here looking for Wondertainment, I can direct you to the nearest toy store. Otherwise, well, that's a few Ways away."

Sara still wasn't used to the tingling in the back of her head that came with hearing audibly capitalized words, but that was part of the charm, wasn't it? "Right, that's…" … wait. "Toy store?"

"Toy store."

Toy store! … toy store?

"Toy store?"

"Toys, yes. That you play with."

"You as in me, or a theoretical kid sister?"

The Doorman shot a nervous glance at the empty spot of road Brad should have been, and wasn't. "… Wondertainment is a very… kid friendly brand. Is this your first time behind the Veil?"

"Was that supposed to be capitalized?"

"I'll take that as a yes, then." Taking a few steps aside thin-air-turned-mini-carriage, the Doorman gestured to Sara.

BackDoor SoHo was governed by the FBI, in the same sense that the perpetually half-empty pizza shop twenty minutes from Sara's apartment, in which hardened men in expensive suits occasionally congregated, was governed by its employees. Sara wasn't a pig, though; she knew where not to stick her nose.

The street names were a blur, honestly. Most of it was numbers, or some nonsense word that might've been Finnish if Sara squinted. Sara was more interested in the people walking them.

People actually lived here. In fact, if this whole magic thing was less of a closely guarded in-joke and more of a legally enforceable trashfire, some of these people probably had to. Five minutes into the Doorman's tour, Sara spotted a couple Hasidics shepherding around a large, dripping, and still-moving butcher bag, too big for a mob hit. Not long after that one of the graffiti figures actually moved; Sara almost didn't notice the cyborg(?) taking a smoke break against the offending wall. It wasn't all weirdos, not visibly anyways, but she couldn't imagine living here and not being a weirdo. It couldn't not run off.

As it turns out, weirdos live like not-weirdos. There were laundromats, apartments, the occasional townhouse, bodegas, and, unfortunately, enough restaurants and storefronts to suggest BackDoor rents weren't any better off than NYC proper. Sara briefly wondered what a magic gentrifier looked like, then drowned that thought in her flask.

The Doorman cleared his throat. "You religious?"

"Kinda? Weird thing to ask a girl. Why, do I gotta say a prayer to pass, like, a gate?"

"No, but public consumption of alcohol is still illegal if your god doesn't vouch for it."

Oh great, gentrification but no alcohol. FBI really knew how to suck the joy out of magic. "Chill, man. It's grape juice. Hashem's got a whole-ass prayer over that stuff."

"Right." The Doorman said nothing else in response. Sara thought better than to ask if they had the decency to at least legalize weed.

It was about three minutes of silence before the Doorman pulled over to a bus stop and announced the tour over. Honestly, finally; she worked better on her feet. Tipping the Doorman $5 (whether or not USD worked here was a problem for another hangover), Sara went on her way.

Alright, well, "her way" wasn't so much a way as it was a meandering, half dazed walk through what might as well have been another planet. Sara couldn't help it, she supposed; none of the maps were built for tourists, and even the words she understood meant little in their present context.

Sara wasn't one for maps, anyway.

The sheer depths of depravity capitalism had to have stooped to sully the BackDoor was almost impressive, really.

Yes, there were toy stores, ones filled with all kinds of odds and ends Sara would never consider gifting her purely theoretical child, manned by far-too-happy stuffed mascot costumes. There were also the other kind of toy stores, not under the "Wondertainment" brand but occasionally manned by an equally creepy proprietor. The ones that weren't so generic as to call themselves "The Factory" were prohibitively expensive; Sara wondered if that was a bug or a feature.

There were, in fact, many such stores. A metric fuckton of stores peddling clothes or antiques or furniture or anything under the fucking sun. Well, maybe not too many grocery stores, fewer still that stood up to the polish of even SoHo's bordellos.

Oh, did Sara's internal narration forget the bordellos? Certainly not. She liked to think she had a better memory than the pigs walking past (and occasionally into) the various "massage parlors". But at least they weren't harassing the working women, and to Sara that was a step up.

There were also bistros. Pizza parlors. Delis. Lots of delis. Lots of meat. A metric shitload of meat, like they were playing to the stereotype of the cartoon reuben. Sara had asked one of the cooks (an androgynous, vaguely Jewish fellow) for a vegetarian option in-between the walk, and they just looked at her funny.

At least one of the alleys saw someone getting mugged; dude didn't even call for help, not that Sara qualified for a concealed carry license in the first place. Didn't even panic, like all of this was routine. Expected. Should Sara have been surprised, given the dilapidation of everything non-commercial?

So with all this in mind, what, then, was the purpose of the white stone building that Sara presently ogled?

Untouched by the BackDoor's glossy grime it stood, silent, sandwiched between pristine brick edifices of an almost practiced boredom. No signs, but it bore flags on a front-faced banner, most of them unrecognizable to the woman who'd forgotten what Eastern European country went where after high school. Moreover, the people milling about its street? Not the same people she'd seen around town, manning the storefronts or alleys or bodegas.

And Sara would've loved to have spent the rest of the day people-watching, to be sure, but people here watched back. The building, though? Nobody blames you for looking at the sore thumb off the side of the street.

Fuck Sara running, whatever went on in there had to be pinnacle grade-A Shady Shit. You couldn't just have a mob-infested pocket dimension and not center the horrors in the unmarked embassy-looking thing. But unless she had business in there (and she almost certainly didn't), Sara was-

knocked onto her ass by a man exiting the same door she'd been unconsciously walking towards.

Sara didn't get a lot of time to look at him before he started either cursing her out or apologizing in Farsi, but from wait a minute, alright, verb tense went there and "Shit, watch where you're going? Imagine if I'd been-" was all he said before he transitioned back to an English "A-apologies, ma'am."

The two of them got to their feet, and Sara gave him another, hopefully more comprehensive look.

Before Sara was the very picture of the kind of person she'd expect out of this building. The first thing she noticed was the brownish-red button-up, a bit too tight around the chest, as well as the black suspenders that went over them. He wasn't exactly tall, no, so much as taller-than-average; if the shape of his arms were indication, he didn't need to be much taller for whatever sus shit they had him pulling. Still, hired muscle rarely needed the kind of neat trim that went into his facial hair.

"Wait, do I have something on my face?"

Aaaaand she'd been staring too long. "Oh, no man, you're good, it's just, uh…" Right, it'd been too long since she talked to her parents. That word was… "… I just don't meet too many others who speak Farsi, you know?"

There was a brief second where the man's face flashed with something indistinct, before he suddenly grinned. "Oh thank god. I've been asking administration for another pair of hands for a whole Black Moon."

Only polite to grin back. "Rest assured, I have no… g-ddamn clue what that means."

The shift in the man to an almost too-easy amicability was palpable enough to notice, but Sara was bored and a little drunk. "Well, I can't promise I'll be too good of a teacher. But, hey, the job's in English and you seem pretty good with that. Don't worry about it."

"What job? Oh, do you think I work here?"

"What else is there to do around here, eh?"

"Fuck around in abject confusion?" So easy to fall into his groove. It was honestly infectious. "Oh, sorry. Hi, I'm Sara, and it's my first day in… the BackDoor." Sara extended a hand.

"It's still the BackDoor in Farsi, don't worry. Proper noun and all that." It took a while for the man to process the hand, but he nodded and shook all the same. "Name's Bijhan. I was just about to go on a lunch break, so unless you wanna tag along for so-so Chinese, I think now's about the time we exchange numbers and head off."

This was a bad idea, which was probably why it looked so appealing right now. "So-so Chinese is the best kinda Chinese. Lead the way, man."

The Chinese food itself was so-so. The place was a shithole, and Sara couldn't imagine a more appealing introduction to the BackDoor.

First off, half of the food was literally inedible. Oh, sure, people ordered it, but Sara wasn't built to process iron flakes and machine lubricant broths. That brought Sara to the second thing her narration wanted to mention: the patrons. A good many of them were cyborgs, which might've been cool if the place had advertised itself as a haven for such, rather than hosting an inexplicable concentration. Third: it was fucking hot, even for summer. Much as she loved her dì sān xiān spicy, Sara tolerated certain heats as well as certain roommates.

All in all, more questions. More to explore. At least Bijhan enjoyed his beef noodle.

Sara tapped her chopsticks against the side of her bowl, a habit she must've picked up from Lyanna. "Long way from the… embassy. That tired of the delis?"

Bijhan looked up from his food. "More that they're tired of me."

"Oh, those poor Ashkies and their underseasoned meats." Sara grinned. "They don't know what they're missing out on."

When Bijhan grinned, it was always the same grin: cocky, self-assured, like he'd just caught a baby chick in his mouth as part of a magic trick. A red flag for a trap Sara was more than happy to fall into. "I suppose they don't."

Sara's gaze settled onto his shirt. She could tell herself it was some kind of fine detail analysis, how despite his carefree facade he'd eaten with a clean precision, how its color looked suspiciously like that of spilled blood, how, though ostensibly a public sector worker, no ID was displayed; otherwise she could admit that the tight fit looked good on him. Normally he'd have to pry such a confession out of her, though he wouldn't need to expend too much effort.

"… nice shirt." But Sara was still a little drunk, on alcohol or wonderment.

Hardly a fluster. "Thanks. Most people, they like the suspenders."

"They def enhance the look, man. But people never give shirts the credit in, uh, outfits."

That smile might even have been genuine. Time for Sara to press.

"You work at that building, right? White stone?" An elbow on the table and her chin on her fist. "Must be interesting work."

"I haven't even told you what my job is."

"Well, now's good, if you want."

Bijhan delicately rested his utensils in his bowl, moving it aside. "Fair, fair. Well… you can call me a diplomat, of sorts. You heard of the Office for the Reclamation of Islamic Artifacts?"

"Nah. Month ago I didn't even know we had a Veil."

Bijhan leaned forward, smiling through his words. "Yeah, interesting workplace. Not entirely Islamic, strictly, but we keep the name for brand recognition."

Almost like a cartoon, Sara glanced around the establishment before leaning forward in turn. "'Brand recognition.' The implication of it all. You'll have to clue me into this complicated web of factions, cause I feel like I just stepped out of a cave. I wanna see it all."

"Welcome to life beyond the Veil. I can offer some pointers if you're looking for where to start."

Sara grinned like a bobcat.

"I'm looking for someone to run me into the ground like a piece of chalk. To burn. So if your question's-"

"-what's your secret?"

Oh, for the love of… "Freak cosmic accident."

Was it, though? Isabella Kawajiri wasn't quite sure she cared after almost 23 years. Becoming tentacles had surprisingly little applicability and the why of it less so. Maybe to her mother, but if she couldn't take lesbianism well, the tentacles wouldn't exactly win her over.

All this was irrelevant, of course, half a blunt into an impromptu smoke sesh with the weird guitar chick she'd known for a month and a half, tops.

It's not that she didn't like her, no. Isabella had established that much fairly quickly, during their jam sessions and occasionally after. Sara was the first person she'd invited to her apartment since breaking it in, even. But matters of the soul transcended "like", stood firm against quiet rooms and the dim sunbeams that lit them.

At least she thought this was a matter of the soul.

Sara didn't immediately say anything, tilting her head back for one last hit before releasing her breath into the filter. "How's a freak cosmic accident do that?"

An errant tendril snagged the blunt as soon as it was offered. "I don't know. I'm not a metaphysicist, and I'm not about to push the universe to reveal its deepest secrets."

The blunt itself wasn't exactly large, but it was quality enough. Isabella could blame that on Cousin Bradley's penchant for thoroughness, even if he wouldn't sell it to her and she had to go through Jack. Worth the strain on her lungs, even if her powers hadn't screwed her physiology to the point where it didn't matter.

Isabella adjusted her position on the bed, from sitting at the edge to lying on it. Easier on her back, and less chance of a fire with Sara there. "… it's not important. The… magic."

"Hrm." Sara, still sitting on the floor, scooted forwards, fingers ghosting over the blunt. The pleading eyes, the lighting, Sara on her knees, all made for a sinful mental image Isabella wasn't about to re-indulge during a conversation about her powers. Isabella turned her gaze towards the Arcade Fire poster on the opposite wall as she passed the blunt.

"I don't know. It's… it's one giant smokescreen, mate. You think you know how that goes on. You don't." Isabella closed her eyes. "You only know the motions. And it works, because you think the motions are special. They're not, and your misplaced attention blinds you to where the motions have actually taken you."

There's a pause, before Sara chuckles. "… do you always get this, like… wordy, when you're high?"

"Am I wrong?"

"Eh… nah." From the sound and feel of it, Sara had just crashed onto the bed. "Just, uh, just a dork."

Isabella smiled. "That's not a very nice thing to call your host."

"You've called me worse."

"You've asked me to call you worse."

Isabella felt a mostly-smoked blunt shoved into her left hand. "I bet Jack wouldn't, uh, treat me like this. Or Bijhan. He wouldn't."

The weed must've been taking effect, because Isabella didn't snort like that unless she was high. "God, are you still talking to that man? Don't… don't tell me you're trying to score with a Jailer." Either way, she took another hit.

Sara at least waited for Isabella to finish her hit before playfully shoving her. "Is not… it's not the Jailers." Another giggle. "It's like, fuckin'… guh, it's not Jailers! You really think I'd fuck a cop?"

Isabella sat up, opening her eyes to Sara sprawled at the foot of the bed, so loose she looked to be coming apart. "You clearly have no problem with… tentacles. And what else even-"

"-is the ORIA?"

"It's… one second." Bijhan put a hand in the air and took yet another glance down the alleyways, before point to and taking the one to the left. "Well, in theory we're an anti-imperialist NGO. In practice, it's a ragtag paramilitary family lead by IRG rejects who learned too much."

"Shit, does the IRG kill people who stumble behind the Veil?"

"No," and Bijhan smirked like he was about to tell a joke. "But it does kill 'apostates'."

"G-d, that's what they tried getting my dad on."

If the streets of SoHo were figuratively "winding" and "grimy", such a metaphor was cemented in the literal by its alleys. Here, much of the expectation set forth by MC&D and everyone else was unnecessary under the shadow of a knife in the back. Sara might have even been a bit more suspicious of Bijhan taking her here if she hadn't drowned her anxieties in forties.

This man would inevitably burn her, they always did; but then, her favorite alcohols were the sweet ones that burned on the way down, and Sara coped through mixing metaphors like drinks.

… yet another thing to bring up with her psychiatrist.

"But, again, ORIA's a colorful bunch." Bijhan went back to looking forward. "So in addition to little-old heathenous me, you're looking at a lot of Baháʼí, leftists, even a few Kurdish nationalists." When they got to the next intersection, Bijhan repeated his previous motion, albeit to the right path. "That's just the humans."

"No shit." This alleyway had some signage, leading to the entrance to a shuttered noodle shop. Judging by the graffiti, the 'Veil Stead' or whatever you called them weren't fans. "You dealing with jinn or something?"

"Yes, actually." Bijhan smirked again,

and Sara matched it. "Shoulda guessed. My dad — wait, aren't they an Islamic thing?"

"Well, there's muslim jinn, if that's what you're asking, but it's not as if Allah put 'em on Earth the moment the Quran was penned. One of my best friends is a rastafarian." Beat. "He's a jinn."

"Yeah, no, that's… that's wild, that they're just like… I dunno, human-adjacent? However that's said in Farsi."

"There is no 'human-adjacent', Sara. It's all humans."

It was ten minutes before Bijhan stopped in front of a featureless expanse of brick wall. "… so. You're not a cop, are you?"

Sara had already stopped in her tracks with Bijhan, so his comment only really earned a confused blink and a thoughtless "What the hell are you talking about?"

Bijhan sighed. "You. Cop. Are you, or are you not, a cop?" Sara might've been impressed with his ability to seamlessly shift back to English if the question hadn't punched her gut like a burst appendix.

"… no? Do I look like NYPD material?"

"I mean I get that, Sara, and I guess it doesn't matter given I'm basically a diplomat, but I'm about to do something very illegal and I need to be one hundred percent before I show you this, alright?" It was at that point Bijhan began fishing through his pack, and a reptilian portion of Sara's mind screamed through the alcohol to run.

But g-d dammit, "I'm not a fucking cop!"

"Got that, got that. Still, it's… ah, there we go. Here, catch." And before Sara got a chance to look at whatever Bijhan had just pulled out of the bag, he'd already tossed it here way.

Somehow, Sara caught the black canister before it hit the ground. It didn't take too long to figure out: she hadn't done too much (or really, any) tagging in her life, but this was 100% a bottle of spray paint.

"You really looking to burn, Sara?" Bijhan smiled. Like this was funny to him. "I can keep you burning, but you need to start the fire."

Turning it over, the text was plain English; definitely American-made. "… you a cop? This is… textbook entrapment."

"'Textbook entrapment'. And yeah, so you're 100% safe, and so am I. But… trust me, alright? Just draw something, whatever you want."

Whatever she wanted… well, she wasn't the artist in the family, that was Ana. But, before her was a blank edifice and a license to draw whatever the hell she wanted. And hey, when in the BackDoor, act like you belong, right?

Shrugging off her cardigan and tying it around her mouth, Sara began.

No thoughts. No fear, no worry, no frustration. Nothing. Just messy lines on brick, black on red, specks of dust in the shape of nothing. Something. Fire, messy from… from fear, worry of getting caught. Of being melded into the tapestry of horror of the BackDoor. Burning with fear. Burning with excitement. Pride. Liveliness, for the first time since Jason stole that away from her. Perverse glee.

When Sara finally stepped back, a nest of flames practically crackled before her on the wall.

The high wore off a few moments later, and Sara froze like a deer in headlights. Why did she have to be so stupid? This was obviously some ploy to-

Bijhan cleared his throat. "Does she draw like a cop, bouncer?"

"Not at all." spoke the flames on the wall.

Wait.

Before Sara had time to process the situation, Bijhan knocked three times with his right hand and once with his left, and disappeared into the smoky hole that was once a painted fire.

"You gonna follow him or not?" said the wall where the fire was.

Right, veil shit. Sara closed her eyes, exhaled, and entered the hole.

For a burning hole in the wall, the building Sara emerged into was rather fancy. High ceilings, lighting befitting more a museum than a speakeasy, actual… actual art pieces, affixed to the walls or displayed in glass boxes.

Still, it probably wasn't a museum. Much as it made sense for a museum to have a central stage, the tables dotting the floor were built for people rather than pottery. Sara also wasn't certain how many museums served alcohol, or allowed smoking; come to think, Sara wasn't certain how many buildings period allowed smoking.

Sara glanced around; most of the people looked… normal? A few cyborgs, a disproportionate amount of East Asian and well-to-do White patrons for something outside the Chinatown, but certainly not a menagerie of beasts as she'd been lead to believe.

"Over here!"

Bijhan's voice was coming from a booth table in the corner of the establishment, wherein sat Bijhan and three others. Looked like Bijhan and one other were the only ones with a drink; given the looks of his friends, covered in more clothes than a summer was worth, not too surprising.

Bijhan had saved a seat right next to him, which Sara took without too much pomp and circumstance. "These your friends?"

"Are they my friends? I like to think they're my friends. Salman, what do you think?"

"Salman", assuming the man who'd just put down his joint and smiled was Salman, held himself far differently from Bijhan. More formal. More respectful. Less guarded. "Peace be upon you, Sara. My friend has told me about you. Good things, I assure you."

"Shit, and here I thought he kept me around outta pity." Sara extended a hand, to which Salman blinked and looked away, leaving her hanging long enough to remember key facts about Islam. "… right, sorry."

Before she could retract it, another hand, slightly larger and better manicured, took it in a vigorous shake. "Peace, Sara! Name's Leyli," and Leyli's next sentence was a bit too heavy on the vernacular to properly parse but it probably ended on a "be 'thank you', usually."

"… yeah, thank you."

"Makes you feel any better," began the only other man with a drink. "I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Probably Iranian injokes." A beat. "Hi, I'm Jafri, and I drum for these people whenever they're in town."

"You're in a band, too? Tight." Sara grinned, turning back to Bijhan. "You're holding out on me, azizam. Hanging with ORIA and a band? So full of surprises."

Bijhan shot back with a conspicuously evasive smile. "My friends are my friends, what can I say?"

Sara exhaled; now or never. "Well, I like it when you say things. Why don't you buy me a drink and you can tell me more?"

Sara knew by the 1st song of their set that Ziggurat Aflame was definitely her thing, even if the songs were a bit too dense for her rusty tongue. Or she was a bit crossfaded. That might also have been a factor.

Sara gently nudged Bijhan with her elbow, or (more accurately) ghosted over his side in her own personal haze. "They're hella tight. Is the… are all your military friends this cool?"

"Eh, you just got lucky, today."

"I'm fuckin' lucky alright." Salman was taking this time to do some between-song commentary, in English, with about the competence of Sara's Farsi. Nothing too interesting. "Shit, like… I don't know. I hear 'Office for the', uh… I hear ORIA, I think like, boring wahhabists or some shit."

Bijhan hadn't finished his first drink yet; the almost guarded sips he did take suggested he was making a show of otherwise, but for Sara it merely cemented some basal desire to unravel the whole of him, one figure of speech or another. "They're a few countries over."

"I don't know, man. You're looking at a New Yorker."

Ziggurat Aflame was starting their next song. Whatever the hell you called their genre (which you'd know to be correct if they furiously denied it), Sara was more than content to melt into it until she had something else to say.

Which, of course, she did. "Yo, wait. They're like… they're Muslims, right?"

"Jafri's not."

"No, like… yeah, he's not. But like… the I in ORIA, and I know you ain't a Muslim, but Salman and Leyli, they're Muslim, right?"

Bijhan smiled. "Far as I know."

"So… so what the hell are they doin' here?"

"Playing music."

"Obviously yeah, but like- FUCK!" Despite her unconscious gesticulating, Sara caught her drink in time to avoid too much of a mess, though she was definitely changing these leggings when she got home. "Sorry, sorry." Sara reached over the table for the napkins, and ended up knocking her glass over again.

At least Bijhan was kind enough to help her with the mess. "You should be more careful. I paid for that one."

"Ah hell, it ain't no thing. I'll find some way to make it up to you." If he noticed her wink, he either hid it well or it was too dark for Sara to see his face. Vice versa, maybe. "But yeah, like… you got these practicing Muslims, paramilitary types, playing for a speakeasy. Doesn't that seem… I unno, weird? Outta place? Or is this, like, some 'Only in New York' shindig?"

"Well," and unlike her wink, Bijhan's grin was very conspicuous. "One, pays really well. Soulless parasites who run this city pay top dollar for commodified counter-culture. Two, they're playing the same message they've always played, and this time different people are listening." Bijhan opened his mouth to speak again, but paused, ultimately settling back into his grin.

No better time to press it. "You… you look like you had something to say, there."

"I have my secrets."

Sara busted out the doe eyes. "Secrets you can't tell moi?"

At the very least, the doe eyes earned a soft snort and a brief sideways glance from Bijhan. Sara would call that a success. "A man's entitled to his secrets, isn't he?"

"Oh, of course, of course. I just… really, like your friends. They're cool." Sara scooted forward. "I'd love to have my band open for them, next show they have."

"Yeah? All you need to do is ask."

"Of course, dear, of course. Just be sure to tell me," and if he didn't catch on before, the hand on his knee should've brought him up to speed. "If I'm asking for…"

Sara trailed off.

"… fuck, that was gonna sound so sexy but I fuckin' flubbed it. Fuckin'… what's 'too much' in Farsi?"

"It's 'too much', for the record. But…" Bijhan rested his own hand atop Sara's. "I definitely get the hint. Let's talk about it after the show, yeah? Just-"

"-not right now."

Natan Krump could pretend he didn't hear Alonso, and his internal narration might as well have ended at the first clause because that's exactly what he did. Frankly, he was a little too drunk to listen to reason; it followed, then, that there was little reason to listening to Alonso's reason, as, no offense to the man, his reason was seldom reasonable.

"Seriously, man, this isn't RAC." Alonso tried, and failed, to pull down Natan's right arm, his own tapering off into a blur of lights and color. "Too many eyes, dude. You gotta maintain frame."

Natan's words were preceded by the sort of guffaw that only came with two (three?) and a half bottles of ale. "Relax, Al. It's just an off show, no big deal, no big deal."

"Dude, power level. You're gonna-"

"You're making this a bigger scene than it needs to be, Al! Enjoy the show."

"No really, you're-"

"Hey!"

By the time the music stopped, Alonso was already gone, taking the crowd's cheers with him. In his place was apparently the lead vocalist of this band, who Natan had earlier mistaken for a stage assistant.

The girl cleared her throat. "Christ, can't get through more than two songs before… yo, you," punctuated by a finger in Natan's direction. "You enjoying the show?"

"You know, I was enjoying it more when you were playing, but…" Natan smiled, and laughed to himself. He didn't really have much else to say.

"Good, cool. So stop sieg heiling, you fucking creep. We're not those kinds of Aryans."

The bitch turned back to the microphone, adjusting her guitar as she started some tangent about Ween or something. This was normally where Natan either slunk off or waited until less people were present to see him resolve such an insult; Natan, however, was normally not emboldened by a fuckton of ale. So that's probably why he found himself muscling through the crowd towards the stage.

"Alright, alright, this one's-" The bitch stopped as soon as she spotted Natan at the edge of the platform. "Charmed." That was all Natan got before she turned back to the mic. "Anyways, let's close out the opening act with a song called… damn, I don't even remember. Lye?"

Natan was a bit too focused on the bitch to hear whatever her squeaking drummer said, but it was enough to start the song proper. He might've liked it, before the ale and the insult, but he wasn't about to be put in a corner.

The bitch stood close enough to the stage that Natan could reach her ankles. He didn't know what he was supposed to do next exactly, but vigorously shaking them was enough.

Already she was missing notes and words. Certainly, she was putting up a good fight, but not good enough. Hell, Natan could even hear the bassline interrupting itself in the chaos.

And that's when-

"-she beans him with the bass!"

Bijhan chuckled; in the privacy of his (and two others Sara hadn't mets') townhouse, he was less guarded, more genuine in smile and laughter. Granted, Sara had gotten quite a bit closer since their first meeting. That might've affected things. Definitely. Probably.

"Man, what a good show." Leyli sat across from Sara, treating diet energy drinks like Sara treated alcohol. "Took us outta the tabloids and everything, and dammit, thank you for that. You have a bandcamp?"

Sara grinned, scooping more polo from the rice pot onto her paper plate. "We're still working on the… EP, however you say it. Give us time, and we'll fulfill every single dumb indie ~kweer~ stereotype you can think of. You know-"

Sara was cut off by an abnormally loud… groan? In some manner of word, to be sure, but the subsequent groan from Bijhan didn't quite sound the same. "Damn it. Excuse me, I need to check on something."

With that, Bijhan disappeared into the hallway.

Silence, for a while. While he wasn't exactly the life of the party, Bijhan was both Sara's bridge to his friends and the only set of bones she felt like jumping tonight.

Sara coughed, glancing back towards Salman. "So, uh, what brings y'all stateside? New York is, uh, not exactly the best place for Persian militiamen."

He chuckled, softly, and smiled; though Salman's expression was just as guarded as Bijhan, he was far worse at hiding it. "It's a bit of a boring subject, no? The ins and outs of travel. I would've thought you'd be more interested in our work back home, where we don't have to worry about the FBI breathing down our necks."

"Shit, man, I deal with NYPD's bullshit on the reg and I still find time to hang out with y'all." Sara took a swig of her drink, some Turkish beer that was probably less an "import" and more of a "smuggle". "What are you doing here?"

"Bijhan's our friend!" Leyli's smile, in contrast, was 100% genuine; Sara wouldn't expect anything less. "America's not got a death warrant, literal, and they haven't even found the Library, so what's to worry?"

"Huh? What's a library gotta do with that?"

Leyli started to say something, only to look back to Salman.

"Shit, man, it's something new every day, huh?"

Bijhan's room was peculiar. There were about three different locks on the door, but no window. There were symbols painted onto the walls, no doubt occult in significance, but no photographs. Finally, there were tools scattered about the floor, hammers and screwdrivers and even a pack of industrial glue, but no projects. At least he had a bed frame.

Bijhan took his hit like a champ, exhaling into his filter before passing the blunt to Sara. "You didn't know about the Library? You're making me feel like a tour guide."

"That was your friends who did all the work, dear, but I'd go on way more tours if the guides were as hot as you." Sara, in contrast, nearly fumbled the blunt onto his bed. "Shit, fuck, sorry."

"It's cool, it's cool."

The sheets weren't even soft enough to qualify for "sinking" into them, but that's what it felt like taking her hit. "… you're cute. But you're a terrible tour guide."

"Mmm, how so?"

Sara giggled, not quite accounting for the smoke still in her lungs, but she had enough experience to play it off as ~endearing~ like every other fuck-up. "G-d, I mean… I don't even know what you fucking do, man. Aside from like, refreshing me on Farsi and hopefully fucking my brains out in a little bit, but like… job-wise? Nada."

Bijhan stopped smiling, but only briefly. "Want me to put in a good word for you, eh?"

Sara sat up. "No shit?"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding." Bijhan looked to her hand, reminding Sara to actually pass the blunt like a good guest. "Why don't you guess what I do? You have to have some idea."

Sara mocked putting her hand to her chin in contemplation, or at least tried and overshot the mark. "Let's see… you're an Iranian James Bond, stealing intel in broad daylight and shagging chicks who should know better."

He actually laughed at that. "I hope the first part's high praise, but are you implying you should know better?"

"I do know better." Sara sat up, bracing herself on Bijhan's thigh. "I'm a dead woman walking. I got no talent and nobody's gonna miss me once I'm gone." Bijhan barely reacted when she squeezed. "Might as well have fun while I'm still walking, you know?"

A pause. Bijhan attempted to say something, before the house groaned again.

"Man, your house is creaky. What's-"

Bijhan's mouth tasted like smoke.

The night passed-

"… shit, azizam. That was something."

Sara rolled off of Bijhan, collapsing into a tired heap on the other side of the bed. Between work and… more work (and my g-d, was her life defined by varying shades of that?), getting pounded within an inch of her life was honestly somewhat refreshing.

Bijhan wasn't quite so winded, but he was also half a foot and dozens of pounds over Sara. "Back home, the word for this is 'one hundred lashes' unless we're married. The lesson you take from that is to make it count." He cracked a grin. "Or English dirty talk just does something to me."

"Too distracted to do it in any other language. Plus, you kill it in Farsi. Are second languages just inherently hotter or something?"

"I don't sleep with enough foreigners to test that. I suppose you just respond incredibly well, my-"

The house groaned again. Bijhan got that one constipated look he put on every time the house interrupted a moment, but he was barely able to shift off the bed before Sara got a hand on his thigh. "Stay? I wanna cuddle."

Bijhan paused, looking between her, the floor, back to her, the door, and finally back to her. "Stay here, alright? I need to… make arrangements, with my coworkers, before they head back to Turkey."

Oh fuck. Leave it to Sara to lose a man to his own housing. "G-d, that's an excuse and you know it."

"Yep. Stay here, alright? Trust me." Bijhan grinned, and for once it didn't look endearing.

Sara felt some inner switch flip.

"At least tell me what's going on!" Bijhan ignored her, going for his clothes. "I, I know nothing about you, I want to know more about you, and it feels like, that every time I ask, you evade!" Bijhan continued to ignore her. "I can't, you know I can't even travel there, you know, Iran or the Middle East or whatever, the place where my parents grew up, and come back here clean? I'm a fucking psycho on record, put away for a psychotic break and-" Sara winced, like her soul had coughed up a tonsil stone, yet Bijhan still ignored her. "You know what, fine, ignore me like everyone-"

Bijhan was gone; in his place dawned the reality of her situation.

He was almost certainly going to abandon Sara. You didn't come back from the kind of thing she'd just shouted; you didn't even get an amusing story out of them. What you always got was vindication of the thing of what Sara already knew: that she was unlovable.

… fuck. She needed to salvage this before it became something she'd be forced to bring up with her psychiatrist.

Despite its looks (and groans), Bijhan's house was pretty soundproofed. Anything said in one room was generally heard only in that room and maybe directly outside of it with your ear to the door. Sara had read somewhere that abstract art was popular with (ex-)muslims, but now that she thought about it, some of the "decorative" sound dampeners were placed in oddly specific formations.

So, wherever Bijhan was, he probably wouldn't hear Sara call out to him. Probably didn't want to hear her from the other side of the house, anyways. Certainly wasn't upstairs; he wasn't in the bathroom or the office, and the only other rooms belonged to his (inexplicably cyborg) roommates.

The house groaned again. If Sara could squeeze a next time out of Bijhan, she'd definitely be taking it to her apartment.

The stairs to the townhouse were narrow and a little steep, befitting something squashed to make room for other buildings. Halfway down, one came into the living room; as the central hub for the rest of the first floor, the soundproofing was less prevalent for the kitchen and hallway. So anything that happened-

Halfway down the stairs, Sara heard a sudden cracking of wood, followed by a scream. The distraction cost her a step, sending her tumbling down to the foot of the stairs.

Seven and a half years later, Sara would suddenly and viscerally remember what happened:

Another scream preceded another crack, far louder than the one before. Then two more. Once more, finally. Silence. An opportunity to and a warning against standing up, compounded by a sudden pain in her leg.

Sara stood up regardless.

Bijhan stood in the middle of the living room, splattered with rancid fluids and wearing a face of herefore-unseen urgency. In his hands was a pistol, pointed at something on the floor, some…

… a human. A human dressed in a dirtied and ripped suit, mangled and bloodied and spilling with a pinkish-brown viscera, the back of their head a slurry, leaking entrails from a stump in their arm that weakly twitched in what Sara could only hope were death throes and not the struggles of a man that yet lived.

Bijhan said something, but it was lost in the panicking haze of Sara's brain. She tried, unsuccessfully, tearing her eyes away; just a bit longer, that I may process it.

A voice from down the hallway interrupted them both. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I thought the bonds were secure but-"

The voice's words, Sara's train of thought, and ultimately her gaze pulled towards a sudden scream.

Coming from the hallway was Leyli, sporting a black eye and nursing an injury to her side. Contrary to the easy-going skater girl Sara had come to be familiar with, Leyli's expression was caught in abject terror, as if Sara was as horrific a prospect as the abomination upon the floor. As if, should Leyli have taken her eyes off Sara, something important would break.

Sara remembered that she wasn't ORIA, just in time for her legs and neck to declare mutiny against her body.

Leyli broke into an incoherent panic, pacing around the room and muttering to herself even as she kept eye contact. Sara could pick out some of the words: "too much, killed, murderer, deported, stupid, problem, but, snitch". The last came up distressingly frequently.

Bijhan cleared his throat. "I… can explain this."

If Sara had anything to say (and she did), her throat translated it into audible shudders, wind panicking through her throat.

"He was… alright, the thing on the floor that you see, he's… he's a Zwi Migdal, or however…" Bijhan took another step forward, eliciting a sudden scream from Sara. "He was a bad man, Sara. A monster who trafficked his own kind. And… and we didn't want to kill him, just hold him, but…"

"Bijhan, we need to deal with her, we need to deal with her before she tells everyone and we get deported to Iran. They're going to fucking kill us. We'll die, Bijhan, we'll-"

Bijhan held up a hand. The disappointment on his face was genuine, and more terrifying than any anger or panic.

She was going to die.

Sara's voice came to her in a whisper. "I won't tell anyone. I don't talk to cops, I promise I won't turn you in, I-"

"Listen, Sara, we're not the bad guys." Another step forward, another squeak from Sara. "It's… we're an organization like any other, and we need… we need money. Resources. To do good. And sometimes that means we… do things for… others."

Sara's legs wouldn't move, no matter how hard she willed them, and she suddenly realized she hadn't been able to blink since locking eyes with Leyli. Her next words were muddied by a tearful whimper.

Bijhan looked down. "I'm sorry. We… wish we could take your word."

Opening his bag, Bijhan removed a small metal case, opening it and retrieving something with a practiced precision.

A needle, filled with a greyish liquid.

"For what it's worth, Sara, I did enjoy our time together."

Sara screamed as Bijhan stuck the needle in her throat.

But for now, nauseous darkness.

"And again, it's not you, it's me. Alright?"

Sara wearily nodded, still working off the blackout hangover and the nebulous consequences of whatever the hell happened last night. The inexplicable chill of the Denny's didn't help things.

"Good. I'm sorry." Bijhan grinned, kissing her one last time before heading out of the Denny's and out of her life.

Sara allowed herself a second to retain her dignity, before breaking into a quiet sob the moment she wasn't being watched. She didn't know if she needed a drink or a shower. For now, Sara needed a moment to herself.

… fuck, she really needed to get home and lie down.

Lyanna's burgundy pick-up truck was beat-up, badly in-need of a wash, and might as well have been a valkyrie's chariot the way its presence lifted Sara's spirits.

"Holy shit, Sara." Lyanna greeted her with the doofiest of grins, nakedly amused and completely genuine. Sara could've kissed her. "You look like a rough night and a half. Some music to cheer you up? Your pick, fucking hell."

Sara slunk into the seat, muttering a half-hearted "thanks" as her fingers idly brushed against the CD case. Lyanna's taste in music implied… well, Sara didn't quite care as she inserted Songs for the Deaf into the slot.

"Tight. Let's roll."

According to the jury-rig GPS, Sara had somehow ended up in Queens. This was… gonna be a drive.

"… sorry about like, whatever the fuck happened. You wanna talk about it? Don't have to, hell, I got bad dates I wouldn't make stories."

"Lye?"

"L… nah, you're good. Yeah?"

Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, don't "Am I just a burden?"

Lyanna spared an incredulous glance to Sara before looking back to the road. "Did that piece of shit tell you that? I'll kick his fucking ass, you give me an address and I'm there with a-"

"No, no, it's…" Sara sighed. "What if I can't do anything right? I can't… can't keep a man, have to call you to pick me up, I… I don't know."

Lyanna opened her mouth, then paused and clicked her tongue. "It's… shit, man, it's what it is. Life. We all got ups and downs, and yeah, this a down, but like… plenty of fish in the sea. And shit, like, that sentinel you're programming is some space age shit."

"But you're the one doing the actual work."

"Yeah, if you call port A to slot A 'actual work'." Lyanna grinned. "Maybe it didn't work out this time, but like, that's relationships. G-d knows I've had my share of shitty men."

Sara shrugged, weakly smiling despite herself. "I guess."

"Trust me, he's not worth your time. You're smarter and funnier and way out of his league. And if he or anyone else tells you otherwise, they're a fucking liar and they can take it up with me."

"Come oooon, I'm not that cool."

"I fucking mean it, Sara. You're a shining star and more than that, you're my friend, and I'll pick you up from a million bad dates if I gotta."