Love Across a Nonbinary Spectrum - SCP Foundation

"You are… Inanna….right?"

"One name among many. The oldest that men can remember of course. Notoriously short memories. Sit Isaac. Have a pastry."

⚠️ content warning

Site-17

Isaac holds his hands out in front of him. He looks around. He's standing, alone in a square metal room that looks like the hallways of Site-17, but it's just a room. A room with a single door before him.

He steps forward, hesitantly, and places his hand on the door. Focusing. Reality fails to bend to his will. Swallowing, and with no other conceivable option in sight, he pushes the door inwards and steps inside.

Warm light washes across his bronze skin.

Artwork hangs from stucco paneling, a fireplace gently crackles, a coffee table, laid out with a wide selection of pastries and sweets, perches between the fireplace, a couch, and multiple chairs.

It almost looks like the room he'd talked to Medea and Artemis in.

And there is someone already here. Someone he didn't know about, and yet instantly knew of.

A woman with deeply olive-toned skin and mahogany eyes watches him. A pair of aviator sunglasses perch atop the brown strands of hair. Jeans and chunky sneakers, standing out from the formal wear he's grown used to on Foundation researchers.

He hears the door softly click shut behind him, eyes completely focused on this stranger. No not a stranger he decides A beast, gorgeous to the eyes with sharp angled jaws and cheeks that surely had to be the result of a sculptor. She's a thing of power so great that even as he grasps for the strings of reality around her, he realizes his power has been shut off, hemmed in and contained.

She watches. Waits. But for what?

"Are… who are you?" He asks, somehow already knowing the answer in his soul.

"Oh, poor thing. Your heart rate's through the roof." He flinches as she moves, uncrossing her leg. A ripple spreading through reality. His eyes dart to her arms, as light congeals along exposed skin, dancing into shapes, slithering and writhing tattoos of designs that draw familiar memories to the forefront.

Somehow, that little motion, that ripple makes her seem more real.

More real than anything else he's experienced in millennia.

"There we go. Sorry about all that. Foundation Sites, SRAs and conceptual defenses, pains in the ass. You ok? All in one piece?"

Tightness in his chest loosens. He reaches out with ontokinetic fingers, trying to grapple with threads of reality. A step back in surprise, the stuffy congestion blocking him moments ago suddenly gone, overwhelmed by the sudden flood of information. "Who… what?"

"That's probably a yes. Take your time to think about it. You'll figure it out in a minute." She leans forward, grabs a pastry and stuffs it in her face, not taking her eyes off of Isaac.

Isaac turns his attention to the greater sphere, and wrestles with the bombardment of complex conceptual entanglements that greet his probing mind. He recoils, audibly gasping at the enormity of the web before him. A million concepts, a thousand different names spread across more than triple the length of his existence.

The familiar stranger recrosses her legs, gently rocking one foot as she waits.

He gently grabs a thread, pulls on it and examines the title, the connection, endless and expansive. "You are… Inanna….right?" The thread vibrates in his hand, in turn something tugs on one of his strings, snapping his attention back to his own sphere.

"One name among many." She leans slightly forward, and for a moment, he watches the reality around her waver, features that are and aren't swimming to the forefront of her concept. A tail, horns, claws and wings. A blink and they are gone again. "The oldest that men can remember of course. Notoriously short memories." She wraps her tongue around the pastry, sensually dragging along the surface as she scoops icing and cream off the surface with the tip of her tongue; provoking a storm of lewd thoughts. Then she smiles in a way that makes his spine crawl and gestures. "Please sit, Isaac. Have a sweet."

Isaac starts to take a step forward, charmed by the slight melody of her voice, and then stops himself. The dream, for this is what it felt like, rubber banding as he comes back to earth. Damn she's good. She's really fucking good. "No, what?" He shakes his head, stamping his foot to stir sensation, shaking off the remnants of her spell. "What the fuck. What did you do? You just take away— No fucking way. Tell me what you did to the site!" With every word an inferno rises in his chest. Rage. Hot and boiling.

That's right, he was on the way to eat breakfast! Then the headache and now—

This Inanna, this creature that briefly stripped his power, again she watches him. Unperturbed. Infuriatingly amused. She rests her chin in the palm of her hand. "You're pretty cute when you're mad." A flush rises in his cheeks, mixing with the broiling heat in his chest. Abruptly, she uncrosses her legs, sits up, and stretches, totally unbothered at his distress, at his rage.

The firestorm intensifies. I have to get control of the situation. My, my fucking friends might depend on it! "Hey! Don't distract me, answer the questions dick-wipe. What'd you do with all my fucking friends, the Site?"

She snorts. She fucking snorts. "Nothing. They're still exactly where they are supposed to be."

Isaac blinks, rage wavering in his chest. "What?"

"Let's see, how to best explain this. On earth, Site-17 is still in Canada where all your friends and re—"

"Smartass, I got that!" He cuts her off, vision shifting this way and that, looking for something to throw at her.

"Ohhhhhh, you want to know what's going on."

"Gods, we've only just met and you're insufferable." Isaac clenches his fist, crosses his arms and presses them to his abdomen, glaring her down. "No duh, asshole! You didn't think I was just standing here, eye fucking you because you're tits out gorgeous, did you?" He looks down, biting something more lewd back, before looking up. "I mean I definitely was, cause hot damn but…"

He meets Inanna's gaze, her eyes simmering, and she grins with malicious light dancing across her face.

Shit. "Wait."

"No, no, go on. You're not the first or the last person to objectify me. What's one more to the pile?"

Isaac presses his hand to his forehead, rubbing his temples as he takes his eyes off her. "Look I… what do you want?"

"I know apologies are hard, and I know it's hard to move past bad habits, so I forgive you." He looks up, her legs now uncrossed as she leans forward, amber gaze boring into his soul. "I want to talk. Get to know you."

"You clearly already know me. So, what the fuck? What could you want that you don't already know?"

"I know of you. I don't know you." She picks up another pastry, his eyes tracking her tongue as she sensually licks the icing off the top.

"Look I— if you wanted to talk you could have just done, I don't know, the normal thing and walked through the front door with a visitors pass." He looks away, trying not to think about the overt act of cupcake-a-lingus she is taunting him with.

"Would you walk through the front door, fill out thirty forms, and screw around for a month while some pissant behind a desk stamped your forms in triplicate?" she asks pointedly. He looks back, finding her smirking smugly. The instinct to punch her in the face and run increases by the moment.

"Well… I… no. Probably not if I really wanted to," the words fumble out of his mouth.

"I considered walking in the front door with a badge and everything buuuuuuuuuuuuuut," she draws the word out, wagging a finger that he tracks back and forth. "There's a layer of intimacy that's lost in the presence of the Foundation with all their recordings and interviews." His eyes track the finger as it drops to the chair arm, drags along the orb-shaped leather divots in the chair, weaving in figure eights. Her voice drops half an octave into a husky tone, before bouncing right back up into its normal register. "Besides, it would have been less of a challenge than figuring out all their little defense mechanisms."

Isaac shakes his head, crossing his arms again to stop them from doing something crude in response to her ongoing provocations. She's trying to get to you. "Freak."

"And proud of it." Inanna grins, pulls her hand away from the chair arm sensually, clasps her hands together, and places them, innocently, in her lap. "Obviously you can say no, walk right back out that door to that schedule they have you on. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, you're a big boy, you can make your own choices."

Tightness rises in Isaac's stomach as he frowns. What the hell does she actually want? A blowjob? Jerk and work? A date? "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

He shifts in place, looking away from her to the stucco paneling to garner his thoughts away from her, and towards Agent Calendar and his friends. I… what if… "Why?" He looks at her again.

"We're doing a favor for some friends, reaching out like this. If you want to knock away that hand, then fair enough." Inanna flicks a finger. He watches another pastry rise from the table, float lazily across the distance, and land perfectly in the curve of her tongue.

Isaac's eyes go to the door, trace back to Inanna, and then the door again. He hesitates for several long seconds, and then wills his legs to move forward and then around the chair opposite to hers. He never lets Inanna out of his sight, waiting for some trap to spring.

When nothing happens, he finally sits. Then she smiles.

"We?" he asks, reaching out to take a pastry. He almost drops it, the wrapper smooth and pleasantly textured in a way he isn't expecting. He brings it up to his face, and sniffs, blinking in surprise when it doesn't explode into something horribly vile in his face.

"Look at me." He looks back up, to see her leaning forward, chin perched on one hand, tone commanding yet smooth. "Focus entirely on me."

Isaac stuffs the pastry in his mouth, melting at the otherworldly flavors that seep into his tongue. "Kind of hard to do anything other than look at you." He chews, swallows and then smirks. "Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven, Inanna?"

"Who said I ever fell hmm?" She laughs, an ecstatic noise that almost disarms him. Almost. "I take it then, you're interested? In talking that is."

"I'm sitting here aren't I?" He rolls his eyes, licking his lips and then his fingers slowly and sensually in a replying barrage, leaning into her game. "What, you want me to pull out my dick and start beating off to you, moaning 'Oh oh oh Inanna!'"

His chest tightens as her lips purse, curling down as her eyes narrow. For a moment, not more than a few seconds, the pupils seem to narrow into reptillian slits, burning and burrowing into his skull. "Wow. Just wow." He watches her pick up another pastry, her tactics changing, rougher, less sensual and intimate in the way she handles it. He shifts in place, closing his legs when she crushes it in her teeth.

"What? Don't tell me the great and powerful Sumerian goddess of love is squeamish about sex talk."

"Please, I was developing whole new techniques before you even ascended." Inanna rolls her eyes, licking her lips, and then fingers. "Do me a favor, call me Abigail. It is to me, what Isaac is to you."

"Right. Well, I'm here, I'm sitting in your chair, eating your pastries, which, bravo on mouth fucking each and every one. It's impressive." He takes another pastry, not taking his eyes off her, and licks at it sensually, tastebuds caressing the dough. "Are you going to serenade me too Abigail?" Isaac watches her as she shifts and decides to abandon sitting in the chair like a normal person.

"As if this entire conversation hasn't been a serenade and dance already? Maybe at some point I'll actually serenade you. But no, right now I just want to talk."

"Yeah you've said that several times, again, all while you've been treating the pastries like a juicy cunt and fingering your chair. Are you just going to repeat that ad-infinitum, while masking that you just want to bang? Might as well get me a chalice of wine cause you're booooooooring me. C'mon, lets get on with the show!"

"Yeah, I see why you're fun at parties." She smirks at him. Then she sits up, all the foreplay falling away. "In all seriousness, I want to talk about your experience as a God of Love."

Isaac's chest tightens, ribcage abruptly, impossibly, tight, licks of fire worming back up from his stomach. "Why?" he bristles. "So you can judge me for eschewing the role that was forced on me? The image of who I should have been?"

"No. Not at all." He watches her relax sideways in the chair, leaning her chin on a propped-up arm.

"Then why? It's been nothing but pain and family being assholes. There's nothing else to talk about." Cold facial muscles tensing in what must be a snarl, fists clenching on the armchair, legs shaking, ready to get up and walk out.

"Yeah, I get it." Abigail looks away from him, at a painting on the wall. He watches one of her hands play with a belt loop on her jeans.

"What?"

"Pain, and family being assholes, and why you wouldn't be willing to talk about it." He tries, and fails, to puzzle out her game. Watches as she rolls onto her back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling, tapping one foot against the air. "Can't exactly blame you."

The flaring embers bundle with tight desire, curiosity, wanting to pull on her threads, unravel what she's after. Gradually it floods out the urge to be insolent, to clamp his mouth shut until she puts him back in his cell. "Why are you talking like you understand me?"

"Of course." Her voice twinges with a breathiness, exasperation or exhaustion. Mocking him. "I expected that you of all people would get it." Spots of red flicker in the corners of his eyes, head tilting slightly as he tries to follow her slow and infuriating slide into an inverted sitting position. "Sorry it was presumptive of me to assume you would."

She's been screwing with me this entire time. She doesn't care. She's just pushing fucking buttons! Isaac's eye twitches, as the rage bursts the dam. "You're fucking with me. Have you been twisting me about like a limp dick this whole time? I don't understand? It's been my entire shitty damn life."

"Yeah, I get it." Abigail replies simply. The corners of her mouth twitch at the edges in his visions, clearly trying not to smile.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Do you think you know all of the assholery and bullshit I've been through?" Isaac snaps and sits forward snarling.

"Of course I couldn't, you haven't told me your story yet."

"What? What fucking story is there? How 20,000 fucking years ago I was born to a father and mother who, from the moment I could talk, told me I was the prettiest damn girl in the world? They paraded me, naked, from the time I could first bear children in front of all the other pantheons. I was their pride, their prize, I wasn't allowed to hide my body, it was shameful to shield it." He waves his arms in distress.

"They saw what they wanted to see," Abigail offers in a much gentler tone than she'd been using before. Isaac looks down from the ceiling, to find her sitting upright now, and leaning forward, listening attentively.

"It was more than just wanting to see. It was using me to be a mother, produce strong lines of children, set a golden example for the rest of the gods! So, they married me off, as a gods damned teenager. They lied about how faithful my husband was. Coaxed those lies into an inferno of fast spreading rumors, all when he was the one chasing the skirts of every other shitty goddess who'd give him the time of day. They made me unfaithful, not him. To the world, I was some fucking whore who was always flirting and loving on Aries. Aries! A smug arrogant prick who I couldn't stand!" He pulls on his hair, taking his eyes off Abigail.

"And it just kept getting worse, and spiraling further and further." He snaps his vision back in her direction. Her eyes are closed, chin perched on the palm of her hand, listening.

"Everything had to be corrected, I had to always live up to their image, their expectations. The dumb bimbo who was expected to suck it up, do whatever Mommy and Daddy dearest wanted to fulfill their stupid, fucknuggetry, nut-sucking power fantasies. They had me ruin so many lives, make people fall in love with them and have their bastards, hurt so many people, alienate members of the family to keep me compliant. Disliked. Vapid and airheaded! All the while they tiptoed behind each other's back, boned anything that could damn well move, and were fucking celebrated for it no matter how horrible the terror they inflicted onto mortals and me was!" Isaac slams his hand on the chair, the sting of salty tears worming down his cheeks. He watches the ripples spread through reality, arcing out along the floor as it momentarily flickers into swarming beetles.

"And when you tried to change, when you tried to evolve, burn their cults to the ground, what did they do?" Her voice waxes against his ears as he stares at her through the tears.

"They—They…" He takes deep breaths, a cinch in his chest agonizing him as he relives the moments. Unable to finish the thought.

He looks up at Abigail, noticing her glancing at the door through which he was supposedly allowed to leave. "The door is always there," she says with surprising softness. He rocks his head back and forth, tears dripping down his face.

"No! You fucking asked for my story. So I'm going to tell you my story." Crimson creeps in at the edges of his vision again. "They spat in my face; said I was betraying the family. Built new cults when I burned them to the fucking ground, gave me new names in new cultures so no matter what I did, no matter where I went, I was always worshipped as this mother, this goddess of love and beauty. No one cared about what I wanted. No one cared that I was humiliated, constantly degraded and mischaracterized because their precious shithouse religion and pantheon kept growing."

"Every time you tried to start again, they snuffed it out. Smote down any worshippers who tried to follow, because it went against their natural order." Isaac meets Abigail's gaze as her eyes open, watching sun fire burn in her amber with a twisting twinge in his belly. His head spins, registering. Wait, does she understand? Or is she playing with me, flicking her bean to my pain?

"You can't be a man, it's not natural. It doesn't fit our butt-munching natural order; it doesn't fit our image. We need you to be a Mother, a goddess, a perfect model of a woman's beauty! No one cared what I wanted. No one cared what I wanted to be. It didn't matter how hollow, and empty I felt inside. It didn't matter that every ounce of that shitty name brought me anguish, I justified their opinions and images with my behavior. With my attempts to drown out their abuse and manipulation with oceans of wine and psychedelics." Isaac presses his face into his hands, black filling his vision as his muscles shudder, letting out thousands of years of grief. "I've got a new name, a new damn life, and this patriarchal, thunder-cunting, prick still haunts me! He was apparently dead, and now he's back, not even fucking death can stop him."

Abigail lets the words hang in the air, as Isaac cries into his hands, letting the hot anger and rage flow out.

Seconds tick past. He closes his eyes.

Then a minute.

Then several minutes, as the flames begin to cool in his chest, but the constricting ache in his ribcage doesn't go away.

He reopens his eyes, for a moment thinking reality will reassert itself. This will all be a dream.

But no, she is still there. He still has to deal with her.

"I appreciate you sharing." He looks up as she speaks, taking in the color of the raging firestorm dancing behind her eyes. Again, he considers that maybe she does understand. But if she understood, she would never have made him relive it like this. Abigail flicks a finger, a small ripple of light and a flash of gold appear in the corner of Isaac's vision. A chalice of wine sits on a little end table next to his chair. "I get the pain. Maybe not to the same degree in all avenues, but I get most of it."

His vision traces to the chalice, then back to her, and then back to it. Strands of molten fury rocket through his chest, fists clenching. She doesn't fucking get it at all! "Stop fucking saying that!" He rockets to his feet, roaring at her. "How could you possibly understand? None of you ever do! You always roll in, sympathetic assholes, claiming you can help, and you just make me relive the pain over and over again," the words whip off his tongue, biting and full of venom.

She sits back in the chair, cool. Maddeningly calm in a way that brings his blood to boil. The words hang in the air as he glares at her.

Seconds ticks by as he watches her eyes glaze over, drifting.

"You shared, so I think it's only fair that I do too." Abigail snaps a finger, not quite returning to the conversation in a conscious way, as if driven on autopilot. Quite abruptly, light and reality cuts, spinning for a moment before they are streaming through the stars. Lights, no whole star clusters ripple and spread out before both god and goddess, dancing into new shapes.

"What do you think you're doing? This, it's not going to change anything, these fancy light-tricks. You don't get it and you never will!" He spits at her indignantly, determined to dismiss her.

He stumbles back, falling into the chair as her eyes refocus, and the whole space seems to brighten, nearly blinding him as she gleams in a new and terrible light. The roar of starfire burns against his eardrums, presence swarming every inch of his mind with a sudden tempest of fury. It rages behind her, spreading into an ancient and terrible shape. Words almost seem to burn in a stream of meaning, not spoken, but conveyed all the same through the web of threads. 'I am the Queen of Heaven, and I will not be disrespected!'

And then he watches her breathe in and out, the phantasm fading away into the gentler dancing rays of starlight. "I almost lost my cool, sorry. Look… you told me your story. Let me tell mine. I know you think I don't understand, and there's really only one way to convey that I do, and that's to show you." She taps her fingers on the chair. "I'm not going to ask for anything else… just for you to listen to my story. So, will you please let me weave it?"

He turns the request over in his mind, stunned, cowed and well— for lack of a better term, quite suddenly and unexpectedly aroused by her ability to crank things up to ten and immediately brake hard. It's familiar in many ways. "Ok. Ok I'll hear… I'll hear you out."

She lets the mood settle, taking a drink from her chalice of wine.

Then she begins.

"When I was born, I had a brother and an older sister. For a time, our family was happy, until we began to ascend beneath Tiamat's influence." He looks upon constellations as they form into a great and mighty dragon of water, thumping beneath an open sunny sky, and then swirl into the shapes of a family. His jaw hangs slightly open.

"My sister, eldest of Anu's children, was my father's favorite. He showered her with favor and attention. Then he wept when she ascended, for the Earth took her arm, and pressed her deep into the depths." A pause as she takes another long sip, and a deep breath, as if preparing herself. Isaac could see the twitch of her fingers, the tremble of her lip.

"In his grief, he neglected us, and in the throes of pre-ascension my sibling and I took knives and plunged them into our hearts. We ascended but it didn't change what our Father felt. When all of us had risen, Father formed the first of his courts and gave us roles. At first they were nothing more than titles, but as our sphere grew, as more people came to know of us, stories spurned against the sky, tales were woven, and expectations were placed." A pang rises in his chest as he watches the complicated wash of expressions move across Abigail's face, and he bites his lip.

The stars swirl again as Isaac watches in fascination. Abigail laughs drily and mirthlessly, drawing his attention back to her. "So, then with the roles came expectations. He granted me, though it wasn't really fucking granting cause it's just what I always had command of, domains over Love and War, ignoring my capacity for Light and Justice. And my brother, my sibling was given the domains of the Sun/Light and Justice, ignoring their capacity for Love and War." She pauses, taking a difficult breath.

"Hey I… you don't have to keep going," Isaac winces, fingers rubbing at the back of his head. The knife twists further in his chest as he sees the pain in her eyes. "If it's too much."

"I need you to understand, this isn't for me. I've long moved past it." The aching firelight wavering in her eyes told Isaac the truth of what Abigail was hiding. She was not, in fact, over it. "My father portrayed himself to the people as a caring patriarch who looked out for the whole of his family with one hand and spread rumors and stories about me with the other. All while ignoring my sibling near entirely. To him, and thus to our worshippers, I was a petulant, capricious, destructive and far too ambitious child. A bimbo, worshipped for her blessings in love and war, who abused and mistreated her lovers because she saw no value in them. Of course, there was also all the objectifying that comes with the territory, disgusting acts in my name." He watches stars dance against her tale, weaving acts of storytelling, destruction, love and neglect, journeys into the underworld in swirling skies. He raises an arm, as if to reach out towards her, but stops, and pulls it back down.

She pauses and takes another long draught of wine, setting it down again, and staring at it. Her eyes don't meet his as he watches on, a pit forming in his belly.

"How do you deal with it? People worshiping you in that way, the expectations."

"Back then? I acted out." She looks up and meets his gaze. "Fucked with people, played the role and the part because what else could I fucking do? My father was the one spreading all the mistruth, encouraging the cults, slanting who I was and what I stood for. Sure, I did some of the things, but never for the shitty reasons they were painted as. The most egregious tales were complete twists of what might have once been truths." He watches her pick up the chalice, and hold it to her lips, tilting it back for far too long.

"And now?" Isaac asks, hesitantly.

Abigail smiles at him softly and sadly. "We had the last laugh. When Sumer was in its beginning I burnt it all down. I scorched my father's precious cults, took new names, new guises, seized control of my fucking destiny.” She jabs her finger into her own chest, light brightening behind her, terrible wings of Sunfire spreading out around a brilliant and burning Draconic frame. As the light reached a crescendo, aspects of her physique changed, scales arose where previously none sat, glorious sweeping horns and a glimmering tail.

“Sure, the texts remain, modern scholars propagate the lies and slander, but I redefined myself." His eyes move off her in an act of self-preservation, to the stars as they swirl, a modern thoroughfare, a club, pounding music, dancing, people loving and moving to burning lights. "My father's cult lies dead in the old places of the world, while I grow and thrive with every passing hour. As does my sister. As does my sibling." Her voice rises to a roaring boom, filling all the space around him. His eyes flick back to her as she leans back in the chair, closing her eyes. Here she was, this glorious and ancient thing of power. Here, in this moment, in spite of everything else, he felt very small. Not in the way that his family made him feel, but in the kind of smallness that one feels in the embrace of familiarity and safety. "That's why I opened the door to talk with you today. You've taken that first step towards making your own future and redefining yourself."

Isaac looks down at his hands. "It's hard though." He bites his lip. The swirl of uncertainty burning in his chest. Can he ever truly escape?

"It was always going to be hard Isaac. Harder when you were alone. Harder when there was no one who truly understood you. Not to the depths that you understand your own pain, who you want to be." He looks up again as Abigail uncrosses her legs and stands up slowly, chalice in hand. He glances around as the room resets to that cozy little affair, her features purely human once more. "That's why, there's someone else who you should talk to. The real person I brought you here to see."

"Who?" Isaac sits up, stiffening. Ribcage squeezing down, threatening to constrict his lungs and the beat of his heart with anxious angry heat. Was this all a game? An excuse to get me in the room? Now she wants to reignite the pain with another person? "I really don't want to talk to another person about any of this."

"I get why you would say that. I hope you'll take the leap and trust me when I say, you'll want to talk to her. I think she'll understand you better than anyone else." Abigail looks away and back. Isaac traces her gaze, following it to the back of the room where a door has appeared. The door opens, and another person steps through.

He blinks, rubs his eyes, and then his jaw drops. Standing before his gaze is a doppleganger, a near identical being to Abigail, but with fewer lines on their face, and a denser build. His eyes scan them, the skirt, the lace top and wedge boots. They give a quiet wave to Isaac.

He awkwardly waves back. "Isaac, this is my sibling, Ishtar."

Isaac stands up slowly, room tilting as his abstract hands probe the new, overwhelming web, eyes slowly widening, blinking in confusion. "I thought you said—"

"I did." His gaze darts back to Abigail as she moves across the room, pausing to give her twin a kiss on the cheek, and lingering long enough to say something in their ear. Something passes between them that makes Isaac blush in concert with the twin. They stare into each other's eyes, a strange intimacy simmering between them, before Abigail looks back and meets Isaac's slack jawed gaze. "It was nice meeting you Isaac. If you ever need me, just call that number." She smirks.

The feel of paper between his fingers prompts Isaac to look down, blinking at the business card perched between his fingers in confusion. He looks up again rapidly as the click of a door fills the air. Abigail is gone, and now his eyes go to the identical, younger-looking twin.

The newcomer takes slow steps, approaching the chair their sister abandoned moments ago.

Silence sits heavy between them. Isaac's curiosity growing larger by the moment, confusion and muddled perspective flickering in the constriction of his chest.

"You're Ishtar… but aren't you and Abigail supposed to be the same person."

"You can call me Ishtar if you want, but I really prefer Aleah." Aleah smiles at him softly. "Are you ok? Abi can be intense."

"It's like a demon climbed from hell and sat its ass in my lap, hotter than the sun itself, and more than a bit of a douchecanoe." The words slip out and the heat washes over his cheeks.

Aleah's cheeks flush in response, only barely tangible beneath the deep tones of her skin. "Yeah, that's Abi." They sit in the chair across from Isaac, fidgeting with their hands.

Isaac sits back down, the soft fabric brushing across his skin. He watches… them? Her? He's not sure. He watches the radiant figure before him nonetheless. Mentally turning over how similar but wildly different their personalities and auras are. "You're… Abigail said she had a brother. Are— I— uh."

Aleah looks up, meeting his gaze, then her eyes wander, taking him in. Much like her sister, the mahogany of her irises burns amber in the frame of fluorescent and fire light. "Had."

"Are— were you a guy? A man?" The direct and crudeness of the question carrying the uncertainty of how he should approach the topic. It was only really in the last few months that he had begun to learn about these issues.

Aleah winces, and his ribcage aches at the misstep. "That's not easy to talk about."

"Right, shit, sorry. I— I'm getting used to—" Aleah holds up a hand, cutting off the stream of regret starting to tumble from his lips.

"It's ok. I get it. Learning, starting again, finding yourself and how it works for others. It's hard." Aleah crosses her legs. She bites her lip, fingers absently lacing together. "My dead name was Utu. Shamash."

A mirror. Isaac looks upon her, staring down his inverse, where he spent millennia dreaming of being a man, Aleah, this… woman? Close enough, he thinks. This woman dreamed of being someone, something different for gods knows how long. She is living his dream.

It wasn't just therapy. It wasn't just talk and promises of a future. She did it.

"You're… you're a woman. I mean, you did it. You became what you wanted, a woman?" His voice lifts in pitch, in excitement.

Then his heart drops at the look on her face, a cringe, the slightest bit of pain in the tightening of her lips and wince. "No, no I'm not a woman."

"Oh. Oh, crap I didn't mean to—" Strands of anxious panic burrowing into his chest, threatening to snap his ribcage.

"No, no it's ok. I'm nonbinary. Feminine nonbinary, Femmeby," Her slightly deeper voice is countered by the softness with which she speaks, caressing his ears. "Woman is closer than the other end."

"Non-binary?"

"It means my gender identity doesn't fall into the classic binary; I exist on a feminine scale that's not woman-aligned." He tracks the contours of her lips, the way she speaks. "I still use she/her though."

"I'm… I'm not sure I understand."

"Ok, in more simple terms… it means I don't identify as a man, or as a woman, but I feel euphoria from 'feminine' concepts in terms of clothing and behavior."

Isaac thinks about it for a long moment. "Oh. I think I understand. You— that's an option?"

"Sure. One of Abi and I's domains is gender, and gender non-conformity. The gender binary is oppressive, and crushing, and expectations are…" She trails off, looking away from Isaac's gaze.

"Yeah. Heavy." Isaac says, looking down at his own hands.

They fall quiet for a long time.

"You— I can't believe there's someone else. I can't believe you're real. You are real right? Not one of your sister's petty games?"

He looks up to meet her gaze again, as Aleah laughs softly. "I'm very real, I promise."

"Good, because it would be a crying shame for any person as gorgeous as you to be imaginary." Isaac smiles.

Aleah flushes pink. "Flatterer."

"I try my best." He leans back in the chair. "I, this is going to be rude as hell, but how did you stop being a man. I mean, how did you— what did you do to escape? The cults. Your parents enforced expectations. I've tried… so many different things, and they always drag me back."

Aleah shifts, eyes glazing over and growing distant. "For a long time, I didn't. I knew something was wrong with me. It didn't feel right, the name, the role— who I was never fit. I thought something was broken in me. Anu, father pushed me into the background, in stories, and myths. I always thought that if I played by their rules, did what they asked they'd love me more. Maybe they'd eventually pay attention to me, realize something was going on. Breaking their expectations would have hurt, would have been hard. I just didn't complain because just being what they wanted was easier. So, I just… pushed them aside and carried on."

Isaac listens, frown deepening, chest constricting, tight and hot. "Fuck— Fuck Aleah that blows. That freaking sucks. They let you feel shitty, broken and neglected you."

"It's not like they actively discouraged me, at least not at first. I just didn't know what was wrong, and they were too consumed in their own issues."

She pauses for a moment, looking away, anywhere but Isaac, and then at the pastries as he watches. She shovels one into her mouth. Eyes visibly watering. "But I guess that distress got so bad, that when Abigail came to me in a fit of despair about our sister, I didn't see any other path forward. So, we— well, we wanted to die." Isaac's heart drops right out of his rib cage and shatters on the floor as Aleah laughs softly and sadly, a few tears tracing down her cheeks. "But that obviously didn't work out. What a cruel joke, depriving us of peace. But when the lights faded, and I came too, I was… I looked like this. And for the first time in my life? I felt like me?"

Isaac sniffles, wiping his face, and realizes he's crying. Crap.

He's crying.

It is one thing to see regular people, humans, feel like he does, be like he is.

This is new.

Parallel experiences

"But the moment Ningal laid eyes on me, she flew into a rage and reshaped me back." Aleah looks away sniffling. "Because I couldn't be that shape. It wasn't what I was born as, it was wrong, a disgrace to women, a violation of Anu's will."

"They tried to make me go back too! Zeus showed up, told me this was a damn phase. Left me bruised and beaten. Fuck!" Isaac stands up, chest exploding with a lancing firestorm, blood boiling. He's got to do something, say something. Punch someone. "What the hell! How can— what the fuck! What the hell is it with parents, with family trying to dictate what we are or aren't! Fuck that. Fuck them. Cum guzzling fuckheads! You don't deserve that. Nobody deserves that." He paces, angrily, Aleah almost totally forgotten in the moment of hot embers smoldering in his chest. He needs to do something. So, he throws a pastry at the wall, because there was nothing else. He watches it splatter against the stucco, and then wall shatters beneath the force of his rage, a million fragments of wood and drywall bursting out at the seams, only to reassemble seconds later, thwarting his efforts as reality always had. "Zeus and my son and my mother, forcing me to endure 20,000 years of being something I'm not, your shitty family. What's wrong with them!? Just let people be who they want to be! Change your shitty damn religions! Stop being selfish." Another pastry, another shattering and reassembly. "Dick driven." Another. "Shitlicking!" Another bursts the seams of reality, ever thwarting him. "Bastards!"

He rages, and fumes. Again, and again the pastries fly, mashing into the paneling, dribbling down the surface and staining it where they cannot fully shatter it. A metaphor for the abuse, for all the pain, how it taints his soul, and his inability to escape.

On and on it goes, Aleah only tangentially remembered, her heavy hard breathing barely audible above the smashing of icing, dough, and drywall.

Grasping a bun shaped like a person, he stops. Like a lightning bolt, the realization hits him, mental processes grinding his rage to a halt as he looks back towards her, the tears thick in her eyes, framed by the withered flames of a dying star. Finally remembering she's there.

He stops, the pastry falling from his fingers, to splat on the floor.

His rapid breathing tightens, desperately trying to cool down, slowing his lungs, dousing the strands of fury.

"Fuck. Damn. BITCH. FUCK. Fuck Aleah, I'm— I barely know you but I'm so gods damn sorry." He presses his hands to his face, hot tears burning against his cheeks as he sobs. "I know what that's like. I know what it's like to be shoved down, shut out, forced to play a part. Can—" His whole body shudders as he sucks in a deep breath. He wipes his eyes, sniffling, but the tears keep coming. Fighting to claw back composure, if not for his own sake, for her. "Can I hug you? Do you need a hug?"

His heart shatters against the hollow emptiness of Aleah's quiet laugh, the pain seeping into her breath. "Please, I'd like a hug." She sniffles, wiping her nose on her arm. "I think you could use one too." He watches her stand up shakily, and then he moves around the table to meet her.

He hugs her, a bit awkwardly at first, but eventually he finds the right position after a second of shuffling, and then she finds hers. He stands there, sniffling in her arms, and in turn, she in his. Kindred spirits, inverted mirrors of each other’s struggles.

"Thank you," Aleah says in his ear, after an eternity of rocking back and forth.

"Don't thank me, this isn't enough. It'll never be enough." He sniffles, slowly disentangling from her.

He steps away, lingering in relative proximity, in case one or the other begins to break down again.

A lifetime passes, the two of them wiping their eyes in silence.

Isaac breaks it first. "So… what did you do… after that?"

Aleah gazes into his eyes, scarlett with the irritation of tears and crying, before looking down at the floor, rubbing her arm. "I just… bore it. I moved on, because how could I push back against them? Against what they wanted? Did it matter that I wasn't who I… that I didn't feel like me? The first time I ever felt validated, and they crushed me right away." She sniffles. "But Abi, Abi was pissed. She didn't forget." Isaac tracks her as she looks up again, their eyes meeting. She smiles softly through the tears, as she wipes them from her eyes.

Isaac's heart falls freely, swimming through the open air, drowning in an inferno lapping at his rib cage and belly. "And then she burned it all to the fucking ground?"

"Yeah. She likes to say she did it solely for herself." Aleah laughs softly, the sound chiming in Isaac's ear like a lovely trill. "Because Dad kept putting her into that role… but I don't believe her." Sniffle. "She did it for me. She helped me reclaim my true shape and made it so Ningal could never do what she did again… and then we burnt the cults and everything to the ground. It wasn't just Abi though. Emily helped too. She smuggled us out of there, to a new place where we could thrive." He watches her wipe her eyes again, but then she draws in a shuddering breaking breath, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Here, here, you need another hug?" Isaac steps in again, offers his arms, tears blurring his vision. Aleah steps into it and they embrace again. In the heat of the moment, the realization hits him, just how powerful her muscles are. How much like Calendar her strength must be. "My family… they built shrines and entire cults and religions to my dead name, to a body that wasn't fucking mine. We shouldn't have to deal with this. We shouldn't have to have ever dealt with this. I'm so gods damned glad you got out. I'm so glad you found yourself."

Aleah shudders in his grasp, inhaling, and then she tries to speak, her voice breaks, and she tries again through a light sob. "You shouldn't have had to face that either. We barely know each other, but I'm so proud of you for finally taking the first steps on your own. It's so hard." Her voice cracks in his ear. "You shouldn't have to do this alone. No one should."

"Yeah but I've been alone for so long now." He says sniffling. "Nobody fucking understood."

His eyes track to the side, as she pulls back, still within the grasp of his arms, and looks him in the eyes. Intensity burns behind the amber, startlingly ferocious and determined compared to the timid light behind them before. For a moment, they too seem to narrow into reptilian Sclera, before he blinks and they are normal again. "I understand. I understand, and you're no longer alone. You don't have to be alone in this anymore."

Isaac's lip wobbles, his heart wells, and his eyes tear up. "Crap. You're going to make me bawl."

"It's ok to cry. It's ok to cry about what you've lost, who you've lost, what you've missed, and what you'll have going forward." Aleah smiles gently through tears, and reaches, wiping the corner of Isaac's eye.

His composure breaks, and he pulls her back in and cries into her shoulder, shuddering.

He stands, face pressed into her shoulder, crying for a long, long time.

Basking in finally finding understanding, another who gets the depths of pain. Somehow, it felt like he'd been waiting all his life for this moment, for this meeting. And felt much worse about the way he acted just a few minutes before, but banished it in the face of validation and understanding.

In a perfect world, he would never leave.

But this is not a perfect world.

So eventually he has to part.

He wipes his eyes as Aleah wipes her own, standing close, not far apart, but no longer in each other’s arms. Together, sucking in slow and steady breaths.

"Shit. Shit I really needed that." Isaac says with a laugh, an agonizing and eternal weight lightened if not fully lifted off his shoulders.

He looks at her; takes in the gentleness of her smile. "I know. That's why we answered our friend's call." She wipes her eyes with the hem of her shirt. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah." Isaac says with a long snort of mucus that he wipes on his shirt. "Yeah I— Crap, fuck, this is the best I've felt in centuries." He laughs, but never stops looking at her. "I just, I was a bit of a cockburger to your sister. To be fair she was a thundercunt to me. But I appreciate this. I'm really, really glad we met." He sniffs again.

"I'm glad we did too," Aleah says.

"Do you want to get a coffee sometime? In person, not in whatever the fuck this is?" Sniffle.

"I'm not opposed." He watches her smile get a little bigger. "Abi might wanna come."

"I wouldn't be opposed to picking up both a lovely lady and a lovely… femmeby?"

"Femmeby," Aleah says with a soft laugh.

A moment of quiet settles over them as they try to recompose themselves. An oppressive sense of destination gently rests over them, like a couple laying in bed on a morning workday, not wanting to move, but knowing both need to go. The cloying desire to never let go tightening its noose around his ribcage.

"I get the feeling you have to go?" Isaac asks, his heart sinking, and voice quavering in disappointment.

"The Foundation's probably getting pretty antsy, and we have a club to run." He can see the reluctance pitting the sun fire in her eyes, in the small lines and contours around her bittersweet smile. Aleah reaches into a pocket and pulls out a card. "This has my number on it, and what to do in the event you can't reach a phone. If you need anything though, I'll pick up or be there right away." Sniffle.

"Right, yeah." Isaac wipes his face again.

"Yeah," Aleah says. "Until next time?"

"Yeah." He watches her turn to go. "Hey?"

"Yeah?" Aleah turns her head.

"Thanks. I mean it, really. Thanks for just… being here."

Aleah smiles again, and Isaac's heart flutters. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world." She turns and walks through the door.

Then reality shifts into static.

Cat Got Your Tongue?

Seas of Orcadia Hub

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