leetoltreatex | every room is a soul

babylon 5, anna sheridan, M, be dropped into a maze/be consumed by nature, self-harm TW

for fiachairecht

We will give you, the creatures tell her, one more chance.

Use it wisely.

Anna Sheridan knows many things, like:

1) Before she was here, she was in a cave. It is possible that there were many caves, all splattered across the surface of the planet like stars led astray, or perhaps there was one cave like a treasure map X marking her downfall. Regardless: there was a cave, and now there is not.

2) Now: there are plants. Well. There were plants. Where she stands now, she sees what was once a vibrant garden, one with green vines twisting around every wall to form a thick, woven maze in the middle. The green has since been drained away; the leaves withered, the roots dead. A corpse of a plant. A husk of an existence. Is this supposed to be threatening?

3) She is intelligent, skilled. She does her job and she does it well. She soars to every end of the universe, she goes back in time to dig a planet's grave out in reverse. She returns the pieces to their original form, and frankensteins a culture back into being. She does what she is told to do, she has to get by. The artifacts she excavates go to museums. They go to museums, or research facilities, or auctions, or private collections, that's it. That's it. You're lying to yourself, girl. You know what happens.

To the useful ones, anyway.

Not even you are safe from being weaponized.

4) The dead plants are slowly rising back to life, resurrected. The color is flooding back into the stems, infecting the leaves. The flow of it all makes the color seem almost too green, too vibrant to be natural.

5) The walls of the maze are getting closer. They're closing in on her, a slow slither forward. Her hand flies to her throat, like she's being suffocated by some invisible internal force, her legs wobbling as she tries to run.

6) It is futile to run.

Her entire understanding of the universe melts away when a vine slides down from its coiled state on the wall and wraps around her leg. Its small thorns dig right into the flesh of her ankles. Anna is, at her core, a tiny, fleshy thing, pink and weak. No---no one is weak. Are you sure? Look at where you ended up.

She fights, her hands digging into the dirt as it drags her in. Red nail polish chips as her fingernails embed into the ground, holding her in place - for now - just in front of the starving plant.

Is it starving? Or are we?

The vines, in contrast, are not weak. They continue to pull on her ankle, but she keeps herself steady, her muscles tight as she holds her leg firmly in place beneath her. See? See? Anna Sheridan isn't weak.

She's trying to prove something to herself. To some harrowing voice in her mind that won't go away, that is just as hungry as the breathing green holding her captive now.

She kicks her ankle back, dislodging it slightly as she goes for the last resort and digs the sharpness of her heel into the vines.

Hm. She wasn't wearing these in the cave. That would have been highly impractical.

She doesn't get a chance to question it; the vines recoil for a moment, and Anna slips her leg out of its grasp. It keeps her heel in its thorned claw, and she leaves the other one behind, like a divine offering, before she jumps right for one of the walls. She climbs to the top, and it shouldn't be---

It isn't that easy. When she gets to the top of the wall, the movement freezes, and her head pokes up into a dark, terrible void. Within the void she sees an utter madness, existence inverted, every dimension flattened out. There may be a race out there that can comprehend the twisting darkness she sees now, the lack of a lack, an utter nothingness like a galaxy that has swallowed itself, but if there is, they'd have to be ancient, and lonely. It's so lonely.

Cold.

Clinical.

Her attention is drawn back to her ankle, and as she looks down she notices that her ankle has deep, thorn-sized gashes forming an uneven halo around her leg. Blood trickles down onto the leaves, and seems to be absorbed into the hue, the redness of it dissipating on impact.

She also notices that the maze has stopped moving. The lights are dimmer now. There used to be a sun above her, or something intended to resemble it, but now the sky has fallen into a deep orange: a sunset from beyond.

It makes her feel even sicker; this isn't Earth. This isn't anything at all.

She tests it, dangling one leg down over the wall. When it doesn't latch onto her, she climbs down. Careful steps, careful steps. She continues into the maze with her arms folded in front of her, as if trying to feign indifference.

"Okay," she says, stepping forward. The maze now forks out into two different paths, each presented plainly in front of her. She's supposed to be tempted, she assumes, she's supposed to play along. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not going to work."

Anna doesn't play along. She did, sometimes, for IPX, but no longer.

Choose one, says something inside of her, and she feels, for one flash of a second, the sensation of icy hands running over her cheek and grasping hard around her neck. Keep going.

"Or what?" she asks it. She isn't going anywhere. She won't join them. Anna is stubborn beyond belief, her shining star trait.

…

A darkness hits. It slams right into her like a transport crash, her body scattered across the depths of space along with ship debris and parts that will later become cheap scrap metal. She realizes, too late, that something has forced her eyes closed, but there isn't the scratching sensation of a blindfold, or any kind of cover. Her eyes have simply closed, outside of her own volition.

And then they open.

Her eyes open to a full-body mirror, bright yellow frame, resting where the walls separate out into the two paths.

Look, says the voice.

She looks.

She doesn't want to, doesn't mean to; it's like an enchantment as her eyes are pulled to her reflection. She sees herself warped: half of her face has decayed into rot, replaced by voidblack goo that drips down over her green dress. Her hands now have no flesh, only skeleton—a charred black skeleton with dark thorns poking out of the side of each bone. She turns her head to the side, takes in this false appearance, and sees that the back of her neck has been shaved down to reveal freshly-sewn incisions. Black circuit-shaped strands branch out from each thread keeping the skin together, spreading darkness across the skin.

Anna shrieks.

"No," she says. "I'm not going."

Anna approaches the middle of the wall, works some of the vines out of the frame. She places a long strand around her neck, ties it tight, and walks away as fast as she can until she feels it choke her.

You think you're so clever? asks the voice. So be it.