To Love a Snake With Blue Eyes - SCP Foundation

Be careful of who you celebrate retirement with.

xexnoncores

Content Warning: Contains mentions of suicide, and cannibalism, along with mildly suggestive material.

To Love a Snake With Blue Eyes by xexnoncores

⚠️ content warning

«Pierce the Velvet | To Love A Snake With Blue Eyes | TBA »

August 21st, 2004

Selena Ruiz Montgomery Cortez thought she had it all: after the long, arduous review, there was only this one vote and she would be named the new O5-07.

But O5-12 mentions something named Ocudiere Hydra and her breathing stops. In the silence, there is only the sound of porcelain fingers scraping across the table as a Global Occult Coalition file pushes forward, in full, plain, unadulterated view, underneath the light of a sterile fluorescent lamp illuminating a dark, featureless room.

"As you must know, there is currently an open investigation into the catastrophic failure of a certain Coalition operation,” O5-12 begins, her voice a low drone. “One which primarily targeted the PoI known as Percival Darke, the CEO of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd., along with Iris Darke, his newly adopted daughter. From our data, preparations began in 1973, and it was supposed to have concluded in 1998.”

O5-12’s face is little more than a cold screen. She moves around her titanium body with precise, calculated movements, devoid of empathy or skin-based virtue.

“Our central conundrum is this—a one Agent Watt’s body—or, what remained of it—was not recovered until May 28th, 1999. The Coalition only managed to identify her by the microchip drilled into the back of her skull, which was barely functional due to severe blunt force trauma.”

Selena wonders if her glasses are thick enough to hide whatever panic was shaking in her eyes.

No—O5-12 would see right through them.

"Though you are not named as a target in this investigation, the Coalition has expressed heavy concern about the possibility of Foundation involvement in the death of Agent Watts, as she was the one tasked to carry out the final stage of Ocudiere Hydra. They say a Foundation mission—your mission, on the night of which she was suspected to have been murdered, of which you were tasked with terminating a traitor of Site-106 defecting during a Marshall, Carter and Dark auction—such a thing is too much of a coincidence."

O5-12 leans forward, and Selena can feel her nonexistent eyes boring into her skull. "The Coalition has bled us as a result of these suspicions. They have cut off our access to their surveillance networks, and Site-61 and Site-82 were rendered inoperable due to attacks by the Serpent's Hand their intel could have prevented. Al Fine has even gotten involved, and has been expecting a scapegoat from us for some time.”

Selena swallows nothing, wanting to kill her throat with fire.

"With all of that laid out…"

The drumming of O5-12's fingers beats a nerve-rattling rhythm. The world perches on the edge of its seat as Selena’s heart beats like a chainsaw beneath her ribs.

“You must certainly know what I am about to ask you.”

The image of Agent Watts' splattered head spilling into the ground flashes writhing in Selena’s mind. Just forty seconds before, she’d been boasting over Percival's crumpled body, as it was two shots to the spine to paralyze, and then a machete to the aorta for the final, ritualistically correct bleed-out.

What an embarrassingly mundane way for someone of his power and authority to be downed. One would have thought, with how he was feared by every GoI worth half a damn, that it would have taken nothing short of a thousand nukes to put his rotten body into the earth.

But it wasn’t Percival Selena cared about, nor the still alive Watts. No, she cared for the small girl she had seen earlier that night, wandering the halls of her father’s auction, barely old enough to reach up and grab his hand. She cared for the one whom they called Iris, because she saw something in that bubbly face prancing amidst a sea of drinking, smoking and business transactions that reminded her too much of what life had taken away from her.

What was her innocence doing there? What was going to happen to her if her father died? Would she be tortured if the agent managed to get her hands on her?

The irony of Selena considering all of that, knowing who Iris’s father was—it was lost on her in the moment as she found her hand on her gun, pulling her arm upwards.

Slowly, slowly, so achingly slowly that time stopped for fifteen seconds just to let the moment imprint itself onto her so violently—she was taking aim not just at that gray suit, but at something boiling deeper inside. Something turned over, gasping for air, choking with aborted dreams.

Once you had advanced far enough into Internal Affairs, there was no going back. No starting a family, no having your cake and eating it too. Kinship had shown itself to be a consistently thorny conflict of interest, one that bred resentment, poor job performance, and the inability to reduce others down to the data points they needed to be as far as the Foundation was concerned. All of this was a scientific fact—a whole battery of studies had been performed the '70s to prove it, and IA was nothing if not scientific.

She shouldn't have been there—she should have been dead. No, she shouldn’t have been dead; she should have eliminated the target and gotten out before Percival figured out someone had killed the Foundation defector about to dump information into his lap worth fifty million dollars. Him chasing her down the halls with the thaumic force of several warheads was why Agent Watts had to break from her intended stealth mission and rush him head-on instead.

And yet all she could see in sights of her gun, despite what he did to her, was Iris’s eyes.

Maybe they were the eyes of the one she would never be able to love or protect from the world’s horrors. Like she so desperately planned, so meticulously daydreamed about in her off time, so relentlessly prayed to both the gods she knew existed and ones she took others' words for. Adding a life instead of always subtracting them, maybe then her mother would be proud of her. Maybe if she knew her unwanted Selena raised a girl without regretting motherhood like her she did, she’d be proud of her and finally call her back after a decade of silence.

“Alpha-IA Agent Selena,” O5-12 says, interrupting her train of thought. “The council must know this now—did you interfere with Agent Watts’ mission?”

A heavy breath as that body slumps to the floor. Back then, she could feel Percival’s shock so thickly it nearly snapped her in two; she could feel the silence of the act rend the air and tear apart all notions of fate, as if a contract had been forged between them that Heaven, Hell, and every other plane of existence was objecting against.

“…No,” she replies, as the recollection of those glowing blue eyes worms its way into her brain for one last gut punch. He had choked something out as she was leaving, but she didn’t hear because she slammed the emergency door so loudly it could have been another gunshot.

July 7th, 2024

For the first time in twenty years, Selena can hear her own thoughts.

Up, down, left, and right—forwards, backwards, vertically, and horizontally. They run every which way, making no sense but still dying all the same.

Shuddering, her palms sweat as she bites her lip. Looking up to the empty Floridian sky, she lets first the sin of agreeing to come complete itself, notching another tally in the long list of unforgivable mistakes she’s made, until she moves onto the next one by the force of a cacophonous will, that classic cognitive dissonance that is mostly resolved by ignoring the problem and focusing on the outcome.

There is no way to know the outcome here. What kind of get-together did she agree to?

Percival was rather sparse on the details. There was no second call to clarify, not after Selena spent the day so light-headed she nearly fell face-first coming back from her pottery class. The private island was a given in terms of the obvious expense she had put out, but what she thought necessary for a pair as compared to the usual crowds she entertained…that was something Selena didn’t know the scope of.

It is something very few in the world know.

But worrying cannot save her now, as it’s never saved her before. She looks upward, driven purely by instinct.

An alabaster house sits perched on the tallest hill. Percival smokes on the patio, pale face waning in the ruthless sun. She is framed against the walls like a painted shadow, the cigar smoke from her lips curling the exact same way Selena remembers it.

That soot twists in her direction, as if beckoning her. For a second, all she does is stare, even though she knows she will have plenty of time to do it there.

But that mouth finishes its pleasure quickly, another lit in slick haste, so slowly Selena begins the trip up. She must ignore her the blood rushing to her ears and the tightness coiling in her chest—she must ignore the way an impressing image of unattainable nostalgia forms halfway in her head, drenched with cologne, chandelier lights, and bleeding ink.

“I see you made it,” Percival chimes, smiling wide, as white shoes step onto the shaded porch. “I hope the way here didn’t lend itself to misdirection.”

Selena stops, feet rooted into the wood. Not out of fear, but anticipation. Percival swings her head her way, continuing to drill that dead cigar into a platinum ashtray.

“…Playing the quiet game with me again?” she asks after an amount of silence not enough for the two of them. “Please, I asked you to be cordial.”

Selena shakes her head, leaning up against the wall.

“I didn’t have to come here,” she replies, looking into those eyes with her own so black they could drown millions. It’s verbosity games as usual with that starched suit and…oh, she doesn’t wear a tie anymore. “You insist that we are something more than maliciously aligned allies, but we aren’t. We never will be.”

“What would that make us then?” Percival tuts, with a glass-knifed tone. “Do pray tell, since need I remind you, your little self came crawling here to me.”

Selena grits her teeth, but Percival’s jewelry blares glimmers against her, silencing any and all reaction. Purple earrings hang in faceted want, mirroring and extracting every inch of body, flesh and fabric between the two. Her bracelets follow suit as she puts her head into her hand, their dim clattering akin to gold coins being shuffled around.

Great, of course you look like that, Selena thinks, trying not to flush over her own more casual wear in comparison, which consisted of a white top and boot-cut jeans.

“…Let’s go inside,” she mutters. “I need to get out of the sun.”

“Will the shade of this porch not suffice? It’s such a beautiful extension to the house.” Percival quips. Selena notices as she sits up how smooth her makeup is, how sharp her obsidian eyeliner is.

“Percival, it’s triple digits out here and seventy percent humidity.”

“Exactly why I had high-powered AC units installed into the ceiling boards. What do you take me for, a useless pillock who’s never experienced Florida?”

A jet-hued fingernail points up. Almost clawlike, but it tapers into practical edges. It matches perfectly the shade of matte lipstick she’s wearing along with her eyeshadow that refuses to run in this clamminess.

Did she do all of this for her? How expensive was all of that, anyway? How much time did it take?

Percival’s eyes extract the difference in their version of each other’s visions to look at Selena the way another woman would. She looks at her with a mouth opening to white fangs, shining and quickly lascivious.

“…I didn’t take you for the kind to wear long nails, actually,” Selena says to distract her. To distract herself. “Not with Ruprecht complaining about how tacky they were on women.”

Percival laughs, putting a hand to her mouth to hold the cigar in it. “Hahaha! You’ve still got it Ms. Panopticon. I wonder which one of your little chicks eavesdropped that…”

Selena blinks, wringing a hand into the sleeve of her shirt. Ms. Panopticon is a new one. Who does she take me for, O5-06?

Percival continues, her voice fluctuating in rapidly oscillating tones. “You know, he’s recently acquiesced to a more modern sense of manners, if you can believe it.”

For a second, Selena wonders if the conversion of ideals was a natural process, or if Percival had employed her old-fashioned sense of theatrical brutality to get what she wanted. What MC&D intel the Foundation gathered had led them to believe the balance of power was unequal among the three senior stakeholders in favor of her.

“…God, you still sound terrible trying to force a falsetto, Percival.”

Those broad shoulders shrug. “I’m not trying to force anything. It’s not like I’ve possessed this body for that long.”

Selena knows that’s an uncaring farce. “That’s not what I mean. You sounded terrible even back then trying that…”

She’s not sure what she wants to say. Her mind is still stuck on the Ms. Panopticon comment, but nothing comes out properly on her defense.

Percival puts on a really fake high note now. “Hmph! Insulting my voice now, are we?”

Selena cocks her head and sighs. That statement seemed to strike deeper than she intended, dekiltering some kind of kinetic rhythm. She can tell from the way her brow twitches from her normally controlled, stoic face.

A pause. “I never said that.”

Percival changes her tone as quickly as her mouth could carve a corpse. “…Then what do you think of my new appearance, perchance?”

At first, Selena thinks God, you must be desperate, with an almost-laugh she hides in her hand. But the cherry-cheer tone dripping from that tar-colored tongue warms her unexpectedly, and thus a smiled response falls out.

“…I think it suits you the same way it always has. You look a bit more dramatic than professional, though.”

“Tch,” Percival tsks, leaning back as smoke seethes through her teeth. She pouts fakely, and Selena can’t help but find it even more amusing.

She’s lying, by the way—with second half of her statement anyway. Selena actually thinks this new looks suits Percival more than anything else she’s ever had; her clothes look more comfortable now that she’s no longer boxed into the meager options for male formalwear, her face more relaxed now that it’s been contoured with several square centimeters of surgery.

Selena finds herself comparing the two images of Percival she has formed in her mind, not realizing that her eyes are falling to her legs, her waist and her bust, unaware that Percival notices this with a wicked, eager-to-bite smile.

“I’ll have you know that I don’t do much business in person these days,” she says casually, flauntingly, almost pretentiously. “So I have no more need to manicure airs for others. ‘Tis the benefits of the type of seniority I’ve accumulated over my lifetime.”

“I suppose,” Selena replies, trying to somber down to square one now that her looking was done. “How lucky you are then. That would mean all of this is simply for the summer heat, right? I should have worn something fancier, since you’re so intent on outshining me.”

“Wrong.”

The word is said loud and clear, as if Percival knows it was made for her. Selena blinks, tense fingers digging into her palms.

“You’re just ravishing as you were when I first laid eyes on you.”

…Oh.

Selena lets the statement lie, stripped of its pretenses and her own slipping will. Another look at Percival, and her heart pounding louder from how torn apart she feels she is becoming. Her own shoulders strain like rocks, her mouth furrowing like deep valleys.

…The same as…? No. I’m not…I’m…

That’s all she can think to that. She knows she shouldn’t want to find out what that means, even after all this time, but…

It’s now when she realizes the full extent of the setup Percival put up for just the two of them. All of it is simple, but still elegant, composed of two white chairs flanked by decorate griffin statues and a vase full of purple flowers on the small glass table. Also, there’s alcohol, along with her other necessary amenities.

Fuck, she really is losing her touch if took her this long to…

“Is something still clouding your mind?”

Selena shakes her head as she watches Percival’s eyes trace her up and down with a smooth haste.

“You’re still not sitting down. Come, don’t be shy.”

“Something’s always on my mind,” Selena replies curtly, turning her back to her. “And I…”

“Yes, well, such is expected when you still possess a mind puppeteered by the flesh. Don’t be shy now—either spit it out or stop standing, because I can’t imagine either is good for your knees.”

“…Something is always happening to me,” Selena mutters, like a shamed employee repeating the instructions their stick-in-the-mud manager barked at them. She knows the repetition of her statements is hesitant, unprofessional, but she still does it, because swallowing the idea the playing field is leveling out of her control feels like swallowing rocks. There’s no one else who could possibly be out here to witness such a thing—the lack of eyes conjures a vulnerability similar to being naked.

“Well, then, who are you afraid of? It’s just us, the earth, and my house.”

She says nothing. Percival sighs, getting up, approaching her.

Leaning in, Selena is hit with her cologne like a diamond drill. “I know of their satellites,” Percival continues. “It’s dreadful how much they’ve choked the upper atmosphere. I hate to see someone like you so trapped by modern technology.”

How close is she now?

“And I hate how much they insist on roping a noose around your neck just to live the way you do. Retirement should be fun. It should be jovial, and freeing. Not rife with checks and balances like we’re in a bloody legislature…”

Ah, Selena had forgotten the height difference between them. Being eye-level with Percival’s chest used to be a simple fact of life, but now it was different with the transition.

This is intentional. You are getting your brand new…close to my…Percival…!

Selena grits her teeth as she digs her heels into the ground, trying not to scream. Despite Percival’s modesty, she still has plenty of ways to draw attention to her assets: a drooping necklace hanging off her chest, a pair of pants snug at her waist.

Both jut themselves into plain view as Percival towers over her, with only the wind kissing air between the two where skin wants to be.

“…Oh, was it that secretary? I hope her tinnitus-inducing voice didn’t spoil the rest of your month. I know mine would be disastrously ruiniated if I had to hear that forsaken banshee yell at me over the phone.”

“Wha—?!“

Selena jerks quickly, nearly giving herself whiplash and falling down at the door. Her hands shake while Percival leans back up with her mouth posed into a fake pout, set by facetiously wide eyes.

“You heard me,” she iterates, flatly and almost with…was that disdain, or disappointment? “I said what I said. That oaf’s secretary is such a pain to put through the ears.”

“Percival, are you talking about—”

No, no, no. You’re telling me you can track my phone calls even now—your magic can’t possibly extend that—

“What else do you think I could possibly be talking about, hm?” She clicks her tongue with a cheeky tilt of her head. “Please, don’t feign surprise like that—you did ask me to ensure your safety, so I did what I had to make sure your tracks were covered.”

Selena forced herself to stand again. “How the hell did you manage to get a bug in on…?! In on…?!”

She slips as she tries to stand again, but when she finds herself falling, Percival grabs her hand to pick her up.

“…Do you think I’d really reveal my secrets after all this time?” Percival asks flatly, her cigar cindering with the same cadence.

Selena forces a reply against her shock. “I think you overestimate your power like you always do.”

“And despite your bristling, it still gets results, doth it not? You really ought to understand this world will keep turning even if you keep miring yourself into ruts like you’re always in.”

Selena shakes her head. “What I am stuck in is something you could never hope to understand Percival.”

“Dare me then. I’ve eaten far more unwilling souls than what I see here now on display.”

Nothing is said again. Selena does not go deeper into Percival’s good night; she does not take the venom that is now so boiling it is is taking on new powers, new ways to kill.

She looks up to her with wide eyes, brown eyes so dark they are dripping with want for desire, even under layers of silt and loam.

Again, and again, and again. This is how they’ve done it for the past…she doesn’t know how long it’s been since they’ve become like this, and she doesn’t want to. The closest she can manage to pin down the time is twenty years ago, the sensation…well, it was akin to voyuerism , but how true was that if it excited her? If it excited her so thoroughly it made her suicidal, afraid for her own life and her own lonely future? Afraid she would die alone without the feeling of someone else at her back again, waiting for her in the shadows for as much as that could be worth?

Those blue eyes have always bored themselves into her back with no restraint or reserve—and all of that was an appropriate exchange in her mind, because she was never going to have anything nice without a catch. It was passionate, it was more than anyone else did for her, it was the life she wanted, the life she foolishly wished for when she first signed the Internal Affairs transfer forms.

Again Percival cleaves her out of her own miring thoughts. “Come,” she says, and Selena aching runs her palm into hers. “You’ve been standing for too long.”

Unable to right her mental compass, she gets up, but does not follow. Resisting is her way of assertion, her way of dragging brown tides out against azure plains eager to swallow her whole.

“Ugh, you’re still so stiff. Tell me you’re taking care of yourself now that you’re out of your stuffy little office.”

“Stiffness is supposed to be polite,” Selena says, inching closer to her without actually giving in.

“Well, it’s not. It’s nearly insulting. Someone like you, with your accomplishments and tenacity, ought to deserve a respite.”

“Insulting to who? You?”

Selena watches her carefully, eye-to-eye as she pulls her closer in again. She stops herself just inches away from that point of hot return, reminding herself that the devil took the form of a snake, and that temptation was best when it was pushed away, not even entertained.

“…It would be insulting to anyone. But yes, especially me.”

Selena can hear her slow heartbeat from here. “Ha, is it hard not being able to buy someone with your money?”

She’s almost laughing, asking something so stupidly obvious. But subtlety sometimes was a roadblock to meaningfulness, and with someone like Percival who breathed business like it was going out of style, it could be just something else for her to use as a snare.

“It’s hard watching someone with such potential waste away like you do,” she replies solemnly, more-so than Selena expected her capable of. But loud enough as if she wants her to hear, as if she wants the world to know.

She follows it up with nothing else. Before she breaks into too deep of a somberness, she lights another cigar casually.

Selena’s face softens with an undercurrent of annoyance, unsure of if this was some kind of fucked-up pity party. Pity was fine, pity was understandable, she had no more semblance of pride or ego to pretend she held onto—but watching someone with the potential to change it all…

Did it scare Percival? Was it frustrating her?

…Time for a non-sequitor before things get too serious again. It was one of the more riskier tactics to pull during an interrogation, but she was falling behind. Her skin was yelling the longer she stayed on this porch, the longer her hand was clasped with hers, quickly running in sweat.

“…I liked you better when you wore hats, you know,” she replies pulling her palm away.

Percival blinks, balking at the sudden change in subject. Selena snickers.

“W…Excuse me?”

“I said,” Selena replies, taking the lead and snapping it over her knee, “I liked you better when you wore hats. They covered up your big mouth like nothing else.”

Percival turns her nose up at her with a humph until she realizes Selena is really smiling. She’s really smiling, running over thoughts in her mind unencumbered.

She wore a bowler hat in ‘98, and a fedora in ‘06. There was nothing in 2013, but her hair was noticeably longer then. And curlier—Selena couldn’t remember if it looked like a perm or a wig.

The hats never actually looked good on her. Percival had a big forehead, accented by a round face and a blunted chin, so even with her high cheekbones, there was only so much a tailor-made crown could do to sit on her head properly. This led to said hats either being lopsided by a few imperfect centimeters, or their overcompensating brim taking them closer into cowboy territory than she probably intended.

“Well, lucky for you that you get to witness me in all of my glory. The only hats I ever truly enjoyed wearing came from the Victorian era—but it’s so indelible these days to display one’s status with such foppish symbols.”

“Go to a fashion show then. It’ll fit in there.”

“That’s Chyrsophilius’s preoccupation, not mine. I’m much too old to be messing around with such fandangle, anyway.”

Selena finally has enough and sits down in the chair. She sighs as she watches Percival gawk from the sudden change in attitude, but she was right. She was standing too much. Being fifty-three wasn’t easy, especially with the suitcases under her eyes and the carry-on baggage she had coursing through her veins like garbage.

“…Odd.”

“Oh, what now?” Percival snaps, her voice scraping like concrete. Selena appreciates how she sounds like a vase breaking when she’s hungry for an answer.

No response. Selena points to a silver pitcher she didn’t notice before.

“Is this alcohol?”

There’s others too. Two glasses, shining through the white with all the thin rainbows crystal can offer. They shimmer like luxury Selena only ever saw at dinners on the rare nights the Overseers went out for business somewhere. Safety demanded a price, after all, and that price was secrecy smothered in mundanity and granite inside rigid, passionless daily schedules.

Percival purses her lips. “…It’s gin.”

There’s that sharp tone again, but it’s smoothed over when Selena reaches for the handle and her wrist is grabbed instead. She gasps sharply, but Percival simply pulls it back gently.

“Let me.”

“I can serve myself, Perciv—”

“You will let me do this.”

Selena stops completely, looking up at her again. Her brows are furrowed darkly, cigar breaking between her teeth.

…What the hell?

She sits back to unnervingly let her finish. She takes the glass quietly into her hands, not realizing she’s smiling as she realizes she’s made Percival Darke of all people serve her.

“Did you not bring your staff this time?” Selena asks with a hint of ripping velvet in her voice.

“I’m not paying them to enjoy the view,” Percival replies pouring her own self a glass and sitting down. “Besides, I phased those out a while ago.”

“You what?”

“Do you really think every rich British person has an army of maids at their beck and call? Please.”

She throws her drink back quickly, huffing smoke as soon as she does. He’s face is drowning, frowning in etched frustration that wears itself along wrinkled lines parallel to her mouth.

“…Yes, actually,” Selena replies bluntly. “Why clean your house when money can do it for you?”

“You say such platitudes like you’re jealous of what I can do for myself.”

Selena sighs, deflating into her seat. Groaning, Percival serves herself another glass, not drinking it, even though Selena downs her own quickly and gets another. When it’s full, she holds up the clear liquid to the bright sky.

“…You know I’m a whiskey person,” she announces with the same cadence as if she was ordering a site director around. If Percival was going to insist on whatever this tantrum-throwing display of pouring drinks was, she could have at least bothered with what Selena liked.

“Do I?”

“…You do. I was hopi—”

“Were you hoping I remembered?”

Selena pulls the glass down and takes a sip. The condensation sticks to her lips coldly.

“…You’re not the kind to forget anything. Ever.”

Percival smiles again. “Correct. Thank you for the compliment. And well, see—here is my conundrum…”

Her voice shrills back into approaching that falsetto, but with a velvety richness that came from practice, not talent.

Selena perks up at it.

“…It’s always perplexed me how you, of all women, could ever stoop to preferring such a petrol-tongued spirit to something smoother. We’re not two miners emerging from the soot, so do you just hate yourself?”

Pompous ass—

“Whiskey is often the most expensive drink at the bar,” Selena reminds her. “You should know, with the fact you dropped five grand on a glass for me in Vegas when the bottle of Mont Blanc behind the bar was half that.”

What is she doing? That was a bit much. All of this was a bit much—was Percival right? Did she really prefer whiskey because she hated herself? It was easier to get numb to, easier to conceal on an orange wood counter. None of that meant anything, did it?

Did it?

Percival scowls, sighing. She can hold her liquor well, everyone knew that, although whether it was for the same reason she could chain-smoke with zero repercussions was a mystery.

Selena swallows ice this time, unsure of where she is now. This went much differently than she expected. Was it going south? North? East? What the hell was the last direction?

She was a fool for thinking this would just be them spinning their gears, but the idea she’s able to keep up the act for this long…amuses her. It amuses her as she watches Percival try over and over again for what she wants here…honestly, like this, Selena could begin to see enjoyment on the horizon. There was something to be said for the aroma of a bruised apple, watching it slowly rot into the earth.

“…Is this the mixer that can pour anything?” she asks, casually slipping away from her war-like tone.

“No, I gave that to Iris for her twentieth birthday.”

“Surprised you don’t have multiple copies.”

“Well, I’ve never been heavy enough of a drinker to keep around an artifact like that. Besides, it makes a better impression on company to keep a fully stocked cellar.”

“There’s no way—I refuse to believe your clients are idiots like that.”

Percival shrugs. “Old habits die hard. It’s easier for them to surmise luxury from a wall of century vintages than a stainless pitcher barely the length of their forearm.”

“Despite the fact the pitcher probably costs five times everything they can see. Double if you count whatever’s in the cellar, yeah?”

Percival pulls out another cigar and lights it. What number is she on now?

Fuck, she really knows how to work her mouth…

“…Unless that’s the plan,” Selena continues. “The clueless ones taste better to you, don’t they? All wined up and unaware that there’s a reason they’re not paying a tab.”

A flat smile slowly spreads across those black lips. The lipstick’s smeared, but her teeth are still white. Her fangs are still as sharp, as trim and fit as they’ve always been.

In a world of monsters, atrocities and anomalies, Selena shouldn’t find those enticing but…she was always at her best when she was in pain. When she was in immense pain, be it from terminating underperforming MTFs or slitting her own wrists just to feel something.

“Miss Heptad Autocrat does it again, flattering me in that wonderfully simple sense of hers.” She takes the smoke from her cigar and blows it all over Selena’s face. “Good to see your mouth finally matching the opulence of your face.”

Selena coughs, waving her hand frantically while Percival just laughs again. She expects it to be followed up with some kind of quip, but there’s nothing but just wordless amusement between the two.

Fuck, she really did just let her do that, huh?

At least Percival had good taste in how she pleasured herself. The smoke smells like ash, but also cedarwood and cloves.

…Maybe she can just enjoy this.

Maybe she can just…

…

Once she finds herself again, she exhales, looking out at the sky. Its blue does not come close to how much her heart desires the same hue of the viper next to her, but it will do for a few seconds.

Another glass down her burning throat.

Percival finally picks her tone up again. “Ah, you’re finally having fun.”

“It tastes like brain fog,” Selena replies.

“No, it’s making you glow. Here, let me—”

Oh no you don’t.

Percival swiftly grabs the pitcher, but not before Selena can. Their hands slam against against each other’s with a surprising force, knocking several ice cubes out all over the concrete.

Selena gasps and pulls away, shell-shocked. Percival finishes what she started and pours her yet another drink.

No more. Selena refuses by doing nothing, because she will not inebriate herself into stupidity. Not here, not here.

Percival raises an eyebrow and grabs her hand again.

“Aww, trying to run away from me again? I won’t let your lovely self slip away from me this time…”

Selena freezes stiffer than she ever has before. Percival does nothing in response except run her thumb over razor-scarred knuckles.

“The deepest of shames that I did not adore your hands earlier as I should have, truly—the sun ought to see to it these are adorned with the best jewels. It would be its pleasure to shine down upon you and turn your fingers into a rainbow.”

That nail graces itself with a single contact upon wanting nerves. Percival’s eyes trace Selena’s body as her mouth hangs open, shaking, shuddering, wanting to pull away except that she doesn’t want that, actually. She doesn’t have the restraint anymore.

“…Y-You…”

“Yes?”

Her hands are smooth. Warm too, albeit in a sickly way. Only where veins peeked through the skin was Selena able to extract any semblance of mortal comfort.

She lets her head fall, mumbling. “…You certainly pull from a fancy vocabulary for someone running on borrowed time.”

“Borrowed time? You mean your age? Never.”

“You keep saying that, but it’s not true. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Percival nods, letting her other hand take Selena’s arm. “I’m aware. Must you always assume my lips are loose enough to allow vermin to experience what you have? There are things in this world which can be appreciated no matter what stage in their processes they’re living in, I hope you know.”

The world shakes. Selena whimpers, arms tensing. She had more toned ones back when she was an agent.

When she tries to pull away, it’s not for a show of power. It’s not for a game of wits, for anything they’ve been doing over the past…however long they’ve been here.

What is it for?

She keeps asking that question not wanting an answer.

“…”

Nothing comes out. She fails to loose herself from a noose not even tied that tightly. She tries so hard, unsure why now of all times she’s acting like she’s been pierced—this is no different than what they’ve done before, no different from who they used to be.

This is supposed to be no different.

“…I look fit for a funeral,” Selena finally forces herself to say. She can’t hear herself over the drumming of her heart in her ears.

“And fit for a retirement too,” Percival half-way cheers. She grins, but her face eventually falls as one normally does seeing another on the precipice of sorrow.

Without a word, Percival takes her other hand, and, so, so carefully, wraps it in her own.

She wraps it it in her own smoking from one chair to the other, entwining Selena’s fingers between grooves of peak, winding touch. Both of theirs slide into the other’s perfectly, so perfectly, so utterly perfectly. The darkest of umbers curled around seashell white, a needy flame to an eager, devouring snake, with fangs not merely extracting her pleasure—no, they are the source of it.

“…Did you invite me here to make a fool out of me?” Selena asks, thinking about what comes next. What she knows is to come next, even though she doesn’t deserve it. She says the words so plainly that she could cry, and she hasn’t done that in the last ten years, not even when her mother died.

Percival says nothing, freeing one of her hands to pull their waists together.

Selena bristles when she smiles and again those sharp canines come out. They are capable of piercing velvet, digesting it in smooth, lush pieces.

“Is that why you wanted me here alone? So you could finally have the upper hand you’ve wanted so badly all this time?”

“…Define upper hand,” Percival purrs. Her smile curls further inward, as congenial heat floods Selena’s face. “Do you mean what we’ve…always had?”

She still has the cigar in her mouth. Its sizzling is no longer of status, but a campfire comfort.

There’s no time to react before a heavy hand begins running itself up Selena’s sides, up, and down, up, and down. Taking in its contour, the faded bullet wound scars barely able and wanting to be felt. The softness still allowed to exist from the aging process, wrapped in hints of cellulite on the hips and arms.

Before she can think, she finds herself falling—falling as Percival pulls her back and holds her close to her chest.

“…I know you,” she whispers in her ear, adjusting herself every few seconds to find a new angle of indulgence. A tingling sensation shoots up Selena’s spine. “I know you kept all of the letters I wrote to you…I know you so lovingly bit your nails over them in that little corner of your office you thought nobody else could see…”

If she saw it there, then that must have meant the other O5s never did. She never would have given them the chance.

That would be a horrible mistake between anyone but them. Selena was watched every day of her life, for her nutritional needs, her breaks between meetings, her steps in that temporally displaced office she also called her bed, domicile and cold comfort, roughly nine hundred square feet, more than half of that dedicated to reality-bending computational mechanisms.

How she knew when Percival was watching her…maybe it was just instinct. Maybe it was magic.

Maybe it was what was driving her now squirm as Percival pushes her unbuttoned chest up against hers, in an act of intentional, full-bodied sensuality.

When did that slip out…?

“I enjoyed that,” she continues. “I enjoyed watching you fluster, seeing your fingertips brush over every cursive word I wrote. How were they? Which one was your favorite…?”

Selena hooks a leg into her, trying to keep her walls up fruitlessly despite the fact this was…magical. Magnificent even. Percival’s weight was ethereal; her tall frame cradles hers so shockingly they might as well have been puzzle pieces fitting together.

“Did you like it when I wrote of your eyes? Of their splendor that shines like fertile earth?”

Her hands squeeze her hips. But not too tightly—only to savor her.

“When I compared your hands to that of a Roman statue? They would be jealous of you, you know. Aphrodite herself would love to place her mouth upon your own.”

Smoky intimacy wafts between their synchronizing heartbeats now. Selena blanks, letting Percival’s hand, soon hands, feel her up, wandering wherever they want to. The gate’s been unlocked, pierced through.

“Oh, oh, P-Percival…”

She can’t think. She can’t remember who she is. Her body refuses to listen to her mind, drinking in the touch and desire like sand desperate for water.

Percival heaves her up on her lap now. Selena rolls her head back, twitching minutely as her hands wrap around her waist hesitantly. The gesture is returned with a smooth palm craning her head to look into the most cavernous of lapis hues.

“…You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined, you know? I love the way the sky makes your body look.”

Her voice is spilling like milk. She pulls Selena in for the deepest of embraces, her hands crawling quickly up her back. Her nails tickle.

“A-Ah…”

“Look at you. Look at you…..”

She pulls out a husky tone for that one. Selena squeezes her legs tightly around hers, ignoring how thick the starched fabric is.

She wants to say please, look at me. Please, look at me, gaze upon me in a way no one has ever cared for me before. See me as a canvas not of papers, ink and authority, but of skin, sinew and want. See my want that’s been so aching it’s bruised, my passion so diluted it’s practically bled out.

After all, who did she have? Who was going to look upon an O5 and see someone worth being vulnerable with, someone worth risking it all for? Who was going to ever consider her as someone more than a colleague to do battle with or a boss to be appeased lest your head be lopped off?

Percival presses her face to her neck. Selena’s heart screams for more.

“…What a lovely cologne you have on today… Did you perchance douse yourself in this…for me?”

No response except a whine dripping with decades of repression, of tear-yelling silence. Everything else has completely slipped her mind.

She must have this. Whatever this is, she will have it. Fuck the world and everything in it.

Right?

The cigar finally drops to the ground. Percival’s mouth is hot, and heavy. Her lipstick is a thick matte, so it doesn’t smudge, but her fangs are practically pulsating to come out. Selena knows that will hurt, because Percival did not suck blood, no, her mouth was made for devouring—but she says nothing. She says nothing, because she wants to see where this goes, how Percival will crawl up and admire her.

First neck, then jaw. Around in circles, mouth closed, but still on the prowl.

She’s tasting for the major arteries, isn’t she?

“…I’ve always loved the way your blood moved,” she whispers in her ear, squeezing her close. “It wants to be released from your body so gloriously with a vigor so unlike any other…”

Something shifts between them. Plunging deep into the red, into something burning not just their faces, but their bodies too.

Selena balks, pulling away to look down at Percival. Her heart pounds in a way that’s so deliciously attractive to those hungry eyes.

“…Please,” is all she can squeak out. Her eyes after all this time prick with diamond tears.

“…Please…what?”

She’s waiting for an answer. She’s waiting for an answer with pupils fully dilated, with her breath loading itself with glutting weight the longer the seconds crawl by.

What does Selena want to say?

What does she want to ask?

What can she do?

…No.

What does she want?

What does she really, truly, honestly, genuinely want?

…

Selena thinks back to her daily routine as an O5. She never wore makeup, because she was always looking down upon others from the dark. A few others tried, but it was a signaling amidst themselves. A game of tag and office politics of who could spend their salaries in whatever outlandish way made them feel alive outside of their duties.

She never participated, because what was the point of being presentable when handing down death sentences? Who cared about how perfect your mascara was when you were delivering news an entire site was going to be decommissioned, and that there would be no severance packages? Who was going to compliment your lipstick when you were giving out battle orders, sending MTFs to their deaths like cattle to a slaughterhouse?

Do something, Selena yells at herself internally, but she doesn’t. She can’t.

There is a single hook still linking her mind to her heart, and it is chained with the wires of cameras.

She tenses again, holding her breath, trying to fight the fact her senses are full of electricity and her brain is unraveling. It’s all so simple, so basic and banally mundane, yet if that’s the case, why can’t she just get up? Why can’t she just say no, and walk away?

Maybe kicking Percival in the face would get the point across. Maybe grabbing the pitcher and splashing her would help her understand how dangerous the situation is becoming. Those hands so gently caress her after all—that’s grounds for death. The way her lips are looking for a place to land—that too means death. The way her eyes hook onto her jugular—

She doesn’t notice she’s been pulled down until Percival presses her noses to hers. There is ash on her teeth.

No words. Selena blinks, snapped out of her ecstasy by the reprieve in her thoughts until—

Percival’s lips slam into her with the force of a speeding train. Selena whines, moaning and quivering, unable to fight against the strength those hands quickly summon to pin her down against the chair.

She tastes like death. She tastes like a snake burnt along lead poles. When they part, a black tongue unfurls itself, long and glittering with faint Sarkic runes, so eager it could kill.

The switch has been flipped. Selena gasps as Percival’s hair drapes her and she snickers, beginning to undo her blouse.

“Wh—Please—”

“I’ll do anything you want,” Percival trills. “I promise this won’t hurt.”

“No—”

She stops, halfway down. Her nails hook into the buttons as if she was working a needle.

“…What?”

For the first time, that voice breaks. She adjusts herself for a single gravitational moment, wide eyes darting over Selena’s body.

“What…What do you mean no?“

“…No,” Selena says again, saying it loud enough for the imaginary camera in the back of her head to hear. “Don’t…Don’t do that. Whatever you’re planning. Get off of me.”

Never before this moment had she wished she was dead so badly. She avoids looking at Percival’s face, which is contorting in ways only found during business deals going south.

Percival glowers at her. “You…You were enjoying yourself!”

“Don’t s-say that,” Selena stutters, readjusting her glasses. “I wasn’t—I would never.”

“Liar. Liar! Is that the kind of bollocks you were expected to spew at work every day?!”

Percival shakes. Selena slips out from underneath her to steady herself against a pillar some distance away. She breathes, breathes in deep, for the first time she can remember since earlier. Already Percival’s hands have written invisible fingerprints into her skin that her body is begging for, but she must shut that jar. She must look away from this devil, for the temptation has come too close to for the tantalization to stay fun.

Or was it more accurate to say riskless?

“…I’m no liar,” Selena says with a heavy exhale, shuddering. “You convinced yourself of something we never had.”

“Shut your god-forsaken mouth, you two-faced cunt. I saw what I saw. I saw what I saw!”

She jolts to full height, nearly a foot taller than her. The shadow she casts over Selena’s body is not domineering, but furious. Furious at every edge, at every grit of her teeth and her wild eyes narrowing themselves back into knifepoint slits.

“You wanted me! You wanted me, me! Your arrogance with this pussy-footing delusion of yours knows no bounds!”

The arrogance of someone like Percival calling her out for that particular vice… Selena backs up into the light, but it burns too much. She hobbles back, her chest tightening and constricting her thoughts.

The ending of Percival’s words clues her into something. It illuminates what she slowly determines to be a double-sided ego, fitting in with submission being used to dominate, and domination being used as a means to overpower.

…Does she think she’s insulting her? Does she think reasonable denial is a continually failing transaction? To doubt someone like her was to live normally, for there was nothing she wouldn’t sell out to save her soul, her money, her power, or anything she desired.

To doubt one who saw herself as an inheritor of the world and all that was in it was not just practice wisdom, but sanity too.

And yet…

Selena bites her lip, wishing she was doing that instead. “I’m right, you know. You tricked yourself into thinking a former Foundation O5 would ever have a good reason to fall for your wiles. You convinced yourself my…”

Lie, lie, lie. Percival is in a vulnerable position now. She can still salvage this.

“…Fear was something deeper. Like I was never scared of you.”

What is she salvaging though, exactly?

Percival sputters, and Selena stands up straight. It’s no longer enjoyable prodding this generous hand, playing hot coals with something that probably would have led somewhere.

But it shouldn’t have. It never should have. She’s already enough of a fool for coming here, for aiming at a target looking to swallow her whole.

It takes a while for Percival to find her words. Normally, Selena would feel proud at stunning her into wordlessness, but the two can only stare at each other in depressive, numbing shock.

“…You’ve always wanted me,” she finally says. “You’ve always wanted me.”

“You’re lying to yourself, Percy—”

A slip of the tongue. Nicknames are for friends.

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.

The air runs cold in her direction. Selena eyes widen at the sudden energy in her voice and her own mistake.

“…Ah?”

“You heard me,” she spits. “Do not refer to me by that name.”

“Oh?” Selena raises an eyebrow. “Who’s the one clamming up now? You’re really going to let a little nickname get under your skin?”

It’s now her turn to spin something that something doesn’t exist. Percival narrows her eyes and Selena doesn’t react, instead clutching her hands so deeply into the pillar she threatens to break its foundation.

The art of looking your adversary in the eyes is a necessary one if you ever hoped to go anywhere in the world.

“…Clever. Wonderful. Good to know you’re finally enjoying yourself at my expense,” she spits curtly. Her voice is flaring with a tide of trawling bitterness.

Selena sighs with a netter’s anxiety, trying to convince herself she can pull this stunt up out of the water and leave here with her pride in one piece.

“I didn’t get to where I am now without knowing how to provoke. Did you really doubt that part of me?”

“I expected no less. But you O5s…well, you’ve never been known for your spoken eloquence, have you?”

“Depends on who you ask. You sound ten years behind the times, so I’m assuming you asked the G.O.C., and that D.C. Al Fine gave whatever backstabber you paid an earful about how blunt we like to be with their ambassadors.”

Ha, those guys again. Selena wonders to herself how they managed to survive after courting the fury of Percival so thoroughly. Maybe she too has a chance then?

Percival leers into her, stomping her foot. Her teeth grit hard enough to shatter. “Assuming I’d pay even a rat to get near that sophomoric bottom-feeder—”

Selena knows the perfect thing to say next. It’s time to fully close this book and move on, so she can go back to normalcy, to her station, to the purpose she took retirement for in the first place.

“Oh? Really? Do tell me how you deal with them then. They’ve tightened their administrative channels a considerable amount since that pathetic dumbass in ‘98 tried murking you.”

She smirks, the words hanging in the air with steel-coated interfaces until Percival’s hand impales it completely. Or, to be more accurate—throws it.

The pitcher whizzes past Selena’s head. Twitch-reflexes don’t save her in time, and Percival rushes her down with a lunging fist before she can even register the change in position.

“…Good to know your mouth just doesn’t stop once it’s been opened, Ms. Seven. Is this what you used to do everyday? Hm? Digging your spade into fresh earth without consideration for what lurks beneath? Amounting to nothing more than a mere annoyance, despite all you’ve been given?”

Oh no.

Percival’s hand balls her collar, slamming her against the pillar and lifting her up off the ground. Selena gasps, grimacing as she kicks her feet trying to free herself. She was already a foot shorter than Percival, so this really wasn’t helping.

That haughty voice banshee-laughs as it plunges a fist at her throat now, nails fully sheathed into claws. Selena spits, retaliating by clamping her own hands over Percival’s wrist with the correct angles and force to break it counterclockwise before she can squeeze too tightly.

The remnants of her Internal Affairs training. Being pinned wasn’t a death sentence if your enemy was an idiot and didn’t immobilize your hands first. All she has to do is keep this up for long enough. Long enough that those fingers will slip, long enough that the pain overwhelms her.

Percival tries to squeeze tighter, but Selena’s grunting efforts stop that quickly. She winces, just the tiniest bit, trying to press her claws into skin now. Trying to draw blood, most likely, because she’s dangerously close to her jugular veins.

“…Did you perhaps get too comfortable here?”

Beads of sweat fall down Selena’s brow like rain. She sucks in moist air, gagging at how it beads in her trachea, but she has no other option to keep resisting.

All she has to do is keep up this stance, no matter how long it takes. This will keep her entertained, keep her from striking her in a more aggressive manner. It was the most humiliating defensive position, ever, in the history of anything she’d ever done, but today was already full of new lows. What was another one?

Age takes its toll, though. A minute of tension and already her legs are burning, her arms searing with a kind of pain once reserved for choking insubordination out in the most literal sense. Lactic acid eats at the muscles in her wrist, the tension in her face worming its way down her neck.

Her kicking slows as Percival’s smile widens. Her smile widens into something unlike anything Selena has seen today—it’s an open-mouth grin, revealing from the background of her dark throat fangs that are longer than a cobra’s, translucent on the ends. They glitter against the faint pulsing of Sarkic runes that run like branches of worms, writhing in pure, spasmodic agony.

…This is the same strength she sought to kill her with once, isn’t it? The strength she chased her down with until the G.O.C agent intervened.

An all-rushing, fox-hunting tenacity reserved for prey, for the disrespectful, for the ants mucking up her ideals of beauty. For the vagrants, the unfortunate, the inconsolable. A deeply rooted, old-school sense of violence that buoyed the bloody rituals she performed behind closed doors, likely extracted from the experiences of not just colonial-era London, but feudal savagery as a whole.

Such gave her the courage to use her teeth like forks and her tongue like a spoon, her mouth like a plate and her throat as Hell.

That must have been why she was even eager to chase Selena down in the first place, unlike her more reserved and hands-off colleagues. Percival had, quite literally, thousands of arrest warrants on her head from the G.O.C for “profane violations of the human body” and cannibalism, a record the O5 council sometimes joked about giving her a medal for. Better that crazy Europhile than us, O5-01 once said.

Ten seconds. Selena sucks in air, her glasses wobbling.

Twenty. Percival’s eyes narrow as she begins craning her hand against Selena’s slowly slipping grip.

Thirty, and her hands finally loosen. She whimpers and slumps her head back as the sweat from her palms smears across black rayon. Exertional fatigue takes over, foaming everywhere it possibly can.

Finally, just when she thinks she’s just about to pass out, a blush gathers slowly on Percival’s face, no longer struggling against the weight of her foundation. A bead of sweat falls, dragging small clumps of almost pearlescent white, revealing blue paper-thin veins.

Selena’s disbelief at such bloodlust forces her to look up. It forces her to look into Percival’s eyes with a clarity no longer choking with rose hues or her own self-hatred.

There you are, she thinks, a horror setting in her stomach that breeds like a rabbit knowing of its slaughter.

There’s the Percival Darke that tried to kill me.