//------------------------------// // Part Four // Story: Taking on a New Life // by AmethystMare //------------------------------// Taking on a New Life Part Four Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare) Commissioned by Kittenrose232 Not so long after Adagio had brushed off Donnie’s admirers while she was set on acquiring his attention completely, things were going so very well that she almost had to pinch herself to realise that two whole weeks had passed. Coming him from a night off and a night out on the town with the girlfriends she’d collected living as Adagio rather than night, she huffed and sighed as she dumped her bag on the narrow table by the door of her apartment. It was small and it was a little stuffy with all the new possessions that she’d collected and crammed into it as the tips kept right on rolling in but it was hers and that was all she cared about. The siren inside her shivered, swimming back and forth as if Adagio’s innards had been turned into a fishbowl of sorts. She could feel the siren, the siren Adagio, moving, shifting, yet it was not something that the siren had moved forward with though, perhaps not even knowing what she could do still as her powers were yet to grow in that world. It disconcerted her slightly even as she sent a silent warning to the hippocampus-type creature that had turned her life upside-down to behave. Snorting bubbles, the siren turned away. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get any conversation out of her at such a late hour. Her phone lit up with a message as she tugged it from her handbag and she flipped it open with delicate fingers to read that the owner of the bar, where she worked, was in the hospital. Well, that was a bit concerning. Was the place still going to be open? Of course, it was, considering that she was the manager there, the owner in all but name, though she read on to make a sympathetic noise in the dim light of her entrance hall. A roofing accident? Who would be doing something like that in the city? She’d forgotten where he lived out in the suburbs but that wasn’t something that she had to worry too much about, sending a quick reply that was just about toeing the line of polite. Adagio was just lucky that she’d managed to get something in there about him getting better soon at the very least. “Huh? He wants to talk to us?” Shrugging it off, she yawned and made her way to bed, not giving it much more thought than that, though she was not so sure at all how he was going to meet with them if he was stuck in the hospital. Maybe she’d have to read the message again in the morning, she could have missed something. Yet the siren was wakeful. You can have the bar. Adagio frowned. Sometimes, the siren was insistent. “Oh, yes? And how is that?” Take it for your own. He’s ill. He won’t need it. She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but he will when he’s out of the hospital, he’s earned it. You know, like I work at the bar to earn money? He’s earned enough to buy or rent the bar, I don’t know what he does – so it’s his. Does that make sense to you?” She was duly shorter and snappier than usual after such a long night, even though it had hardly been a bad one at all, and the siren retreating with a grumble that would linger with Adagio. That grumble stayed with her as she tossed and turned in the arms of a less than sweet sleep, wondering just what was to come of the bar and her position in it, whether the hands of change were turning, even then, tossing her from the life that she’d come to love after her transformation with the siren’s call, were at play. There was no way for her to know and no way for her to make things right, yet the sweetness of unconsciousness in sleep would not come either, a traitor to her kind. The night would prove to be longer than any she’d had before. * Adagio was not looking her best when she turned up at the city hospital with the address scrawled on a scrap of paper in messy handwriting that was not because she had bad handwriting but because she had not cared enough to make it neat and pretty. Stalking by an old woman with a walking stick, she almost forced the other lady off the sidewalk onto the road, although she was merely single-minded in her focus to get in and get out, not thinking of anything else, a little more of the siren’s influence and spirit seeping into her every day. The siren liked that and twisted within her, wanting her to go back to see if the older woman had anything to give her, but that was not something that Adagio could understand as yet, how sirens fed off chaos and distrust, with her life, strangely, becoming more settled than ever after becoming a woman. Yet what she uncovered in the hospital, feeling oddly uncomfortable as if she was back in her army days as a man, was a man rather energetic in a hospital bed while doctors and disapproving nurses tried to usher his staff from his room. Of course, the owner was not to be dissuaded, speaking through his moustache, eyes animated and even flinging his arms around, though the pain that he was in with the cast on his leg, pending operations for more, was evident in the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He told them many things but the crux of it, what she thought was important, was that he wanted to hold a competition (very unorthodox) to see who could run the bar “the best”. Sure that was an arbitrary thing, considering that takings differed on different nights of the week, although the lure of a competition did have her attention, as much as the siren sulked within her. Whatever her problem was, however, was none of Adagio’s concern as she only had to consider what was right and needed for her, her position in the world, when the siren, truly, did not have a say in it. She just lived in Adagio’s head and, at the end of the day, she would have to keep her mouth quiet on more than a few things that did not affect her! Ah, but the lure of running the whole show at the bar, not just being a manager, was too much for her to pass up, although the details would be hashed out in a message later that day when the owner was dosed up more adequately on pain medication. He wanted to stay in good standing with the clientele, of course, and the actual manager was too busy to take over ownership duties in addition to his own, which was why it had been deferred over to the rest of the staff, those hungry souls waiting and wanting to step up and see what could be in store for them. She was barely out on the sidewalk again, ignoring the ambulance screaming past to the emergency entrance, wrapped up in her own little world that not even the siren could get into, when she had her phone in her hand, dialling the one number that she could always call. And that was her dialling, not the siren, the twist and turn of intertwined souls more and more confusing by the day as she didn’t know what was her, Knight-Adagio, and what was the siren, the influence of such sinuous and insidious, creeping more and more into her heart day by day. Of course, Donnie was more than happy to help, ideas spilling from his lips as if he may have been considering the day that they could run their very own bar for themselves, judging by just how many thoughts he had. The gist was it that they would swap who entertained and who managed, for Adagio surely could not do both, the siren simmering down inside her, seething and hissing, though she did not have Adagio’s attention at that time. Smirking, she looked up at the sky, the fluffy, white clouds scudding away to reveal the afternoon sunshine. She didn’t notice people around her but, truly, it was not as if they mattered to her, the siren having more influence over her and her personality than she knew and understood at that point. “Maybe things are looking even better...” * The siren, however, did not think so, snarling and snapping and trying to throw Adagio off her game at any time. Never before had Adagio been so clumsy that she’d spilt drinks but she’d managed to, somehow, jostle the vessel of her body enough that she’d sent two full trays pouring over patrons who, of course, were just the kind of people to throw their hands in the air and proclaim that they were “never coming back”. Oh, they’d be back when they needed their next fix of alcohol on a night out, for there was no bar like Adagio’s in the city and she knew that too, so could not be too worried. But the other wait staff whispered, her competition, everyone more conniving and catty than she had ever given them credit for. If she wasn’t trying to make things the best they could be on the nights she was running the show completely, she would have been just a little impressed. However, the siren did not make it easy for her, shouting in her head, making her fumble her words while she was on stage to the point that even a kind, older regular asked if she was feeling okay. It was humiliating, however, and it was even worse when eyes followed her when someone else was “in charge” for the purposes of the competition, days going by while she was both in the spotlight and out of it with Donnie doing his best to help her out even though it seemed that there was not so much that he would at all be able to do to help her out there. It was the siren, all the siren, the “man” Knight growling and stomping a petulant foot that would not have flown in his former life. Were they a man or a woman? Oh, Adagio didn’t know anymore, every last one of the lines that she’d never thought would be crossed blurred and fuzzed-up around the edges, things coming to light that were perplexing to need to address. Who was she and what did the siren actually want with her? She’d been so wrapped up in trying to live her life after the big upheaval that she had not paused to consider the why of it and, well...all that entailed. She had to talk to the siren. Making sure that Donnie wasn’t around to wonder at just why she was talking to herself (technically, she was), she sat down on her sofa, cross-legged, the old fabric sinking lightly under her. “So...” She said, starting with difficulty. “What gives here? I mean, come on!” It was short and it was snappy and it was not her, Adagio exhaling hard, puffing out her cheeks, trying to come back to herself. Adagio and Knight, Adagio and Knight. The new version of her was as much “her” as Knight was and she had to remember that – regardless of how the siren tried to split her up in the aspect and more. Yes? The siren rose slowly as if she didn’t want to have the conversation that, really, had to be done. Even she knew it as she clenched her jaw, something tightening in Adagio’s gut at the same time. Even though she did not want to acknowledge that there was something else, someone else, living inside her, changing her, the facts of the matter were impossible to deny when she locked in and looked at it with a more observant eye. Adagio shook her head slowly. “Why are you here?” The siren considered the question, seeming ethereal and ghost-like as if she had no substance at all. Yet Adagio could feel her there as if the shape of her was inside the cavity of her chest, her ribs splayed and laid bare to expose her beating heart and the siren who would always be there until the end of her days. I did not choose to be here. “That’s not answering the question.” Knight had been clear-cut and direct in his army days: there was no room for confusion there. Yet that was not something that the siren was used to, a master of chaos and twisting truths to suit her own sordid means, flitting back and forth, her rippling shape sending erratic currents and bubbles through Adagio. Adagio grimaced, pressing her hand to her stomach, but waited it out. It was all she could do. “Well?” I drain people, feeding on chaos, their energy, turning love to hate. You already know this, so why are you asking me again? “Surely there has to be more reason to it than that? Are you feeding off the chaos you’re causing at the bar?” The siren shook her head at that but did not elaborate, the twist and knot of frustration in Adagio’s chest growing, throbbing tightly with each beat of her heart. “That’s not helpful. So, I’ll take it that you cannot feed off me. I’ll forget that then, because there are more important things at stake here.” Important things? She sensed the siren licking her lips as if hunkering down for a beast, fangs sharp and bared. Yes? “I need to run that bar. It’ll set me up wherever in the city I want to go and it works for me, works for us. This is something that we must continue doing or else you won’t even have a body or a mind to live in. What happens to you if I’m sick or even if I die? Have you thought about that?” It was something that the Knight part of her had had to, unfortunately, think about years back on entering the forces, going out into some of the most dangerous parts of the world for the good of his country. It had not been something for him to progress up the ranks in, however, his demeanour not completely suited to the line of work, though she, as Adagio, could not have said that office work had been any better in the long run. The siren knew that too, catching and picking up on her thoughts even as they flitted through her head so swiftly that Adagio herself was almost unable to keep up with herself. But she had to, had to keep going, had to get to the bottom of the changes that had come over her life, his life – whatever life it was – once and for all. The siren was quiet and still, floating, drifting, her eyes half-closed. For a moment, Adagio wondered if she had gone to sleep. You were always meant to change. Adagio’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know that I never wanted this! How could you even suggest that?” I’m not suggesting it but I feel you. In Equestria, where I come from, there are forces at work beyond you and me, things that we cannot control. Sometimes you have to let those things that you can’t control happen as they will, even when they seem to be working against you. Adagio shook her head. “And don’t you think that those forces were working against you in locking you up in a sword? They probably had good reason to, considering the chaos and unrest you cause.” For a moment, sadness tickled at the back of Adagio’s mind – but it was gone before she could even pay it the attention that she wanted to. Yes, I cause trouble, to put it mildly. Yet things will happen to me too if I do not feed, even though I cannot feed on you. It enhances my power, yes, but it’s something too that keeps me alive...putting it simply. Adagio pressed her lips together. She hadn’t realised too that it was that dire. Yet the siren had found enough to feed on during the course of Adagio’s daily life to sustain herself and grow more powerful, so it wasn’t something that she was going to spend too much time worrying about. Only a little. She didn’t want to be the cause of pain, regardless of how much discourse there was in the very nature of their relationship. Tell me this. Do you truly not enjoy having power over people? The siren asked, quietly waiting on an answer, which was unusual enough in itself for her. Do you not enjoy seeing them run to do your bidding, hustling and tripping over themselves just to please you? Adagio shook her head, but did not reply, even if the siren already knew the answer. The siren already knew that Adagio felt as if everything was right with the world when she was the one in charge, snapping her fingers and hustling those around her with her lips, words spilling forth with the sharpest of directions. She flushed with settling heat inside when she was short-tempered, a sense of being simply as she was flowing through her, and even strutting down the street with heads turning her way was empowering, though not in the usual way that it could have been for a woman so inclined to draw such attention deliberately. “Yes...” It came with a rush of reluctant breath and Adagio sank back on the sofa, rocking her pelvis back. The siren nodded but did not need to press for information that she already knew. “I’m not Knight anymore, am I?” She said as more of a statement than an actual question. “I’m someone else... Adagio... Yes. I remember bits of how I used to be but it feels like watching an old life playing out on a screen, as if I was never really part of it. But that’s part of the change, everything that’s happened. It feels more natural to be Adagio than it ever was to be Knight and I never could get anyone to do what I wanted before.” Intoxicating, isn’t it? Adagio gulped. She didn’t need to answer that one. “Your life and my life were not compatible... And yet here we are. I like the business of all this but I had more than enough of that before too, that’s why I had a quieter job, a slower life. I’m not used to all of this and you can’t say that it’s not you that pushed me into it like some sort of pawn, forcing me to find a way to keep you alive, to sustain you. Was it all because you could feed off people in the bar?” The siren nodded, though there was no shame in her agreement. There must be change and unrest for chaos to occur, though we are not strictly restricted on what we can feed on. That’s why I can survive here. She made no mention of others surviving but Adagio noted the “we” there, filing away the thought for later perusal. “But you know that I don’t want this. If you can survive and feed with me working at the bar – why are you hindering me so? Why are you forcing me to fail?” I am not in control. Adagio blinked. “Excuse me.” You can move your body, speak, communicate, do. I cannot. Except through you and, even then, only to some extent. You do not know how fortunate you are. “Well, forgive me for being so blunt about it, but you are kind of evil, you know,” Adagio said with a roll of her eyes, only resisting a toss of her hair, that felt both unnatural and natural at the same time, at the last moment. “This isn’t where you’re meant to live, if what you’ve told me is true and there’s not much I can do about you being inside me like this. Heck – you chose it!” Adagio shook her head, slowing her breath, taking slower, deeper breaths to calm the pounding of her heart. The siren made it too easy to get worked up but she supposed that that was one of the things that she was best at. “Look... We need to agree on some ground rules, find some middle ground. We need to make this work, otherwise, neither of us is going to have a good time and I’ll be damned if I know where either of us will end up.” That sounded more like her, the old Knight, and she pushed on, buoyed up by her words. “I am Adagio but I’m Knight too. I never wanted too much responsibility but half of me wants that now – like running the bar. It keeps me going, gives me something to focus on.” Gives you people to control. Adagio did not deny it. What was the point? “But I can’t let go of the past either, who I was and what that was all about. I am me and you are part of me now too... I guess we’re both, like, a part of each other.” Ah, there was Adagio’s voice again but her and Knight were interchangeable voices and personalities, blending together softly and smoothly into one being as time went by. She could not do anything about that and, at the bare minimum, Adagio could not say that she wanted to find a way to separate back out all the parts of her that had, somehow, become smooshed and crushed together into one hodgepodge of a person. It was as it was, in that regard, and being as she was naturally, right then, was just something that she took for granted, because it did not seem possible to change back to a man and she didn’t even think it was something that she wanted. Maybe she should have. Maybe that was the right way to go about things. But she just didn’t think about it in that way and that was okay too. Very okay, in fact. Let’s move on. Of course, not a single thought was her own anymore with the siren living inside her, constantly in her head, inspecting and looking over every last aspect of her being. She needed more though, which was why they were talking. “You take over sometimes though,” she said, acknowledging something that, perhaps, they would have done well to look at earlier. “You’re rude and short with people, speaking from my lips. You want to get everywhere in a hurry and you get frustrated when things don’t go your way, even when that’s me. But you’ve backed off in some cases too, haven’t you?” If anything could have drawn the siren up short, that was it, hissing and shaking her head. Certainly not! You would be a fool to think such! Yet Adagio knew that that was different for she knew more about the siren too than she had ever known about another person in her life. There was so much to learn and know there, memories that did not belong to her, and an image of Donnie floated before her face, the siren hesitating then, something pulling inside. “You may not care for him like I do, like I do now, but you’ve changed too, perhaps even more than me. A spirit like you could have surely just taken me over completely and controlled my body right from the get-go...and yet you didn’t.” She let that hang there, lingering in the space between them that wasn’t even any space at all. The torrent of thoughts and confusing emotion, whipping and whirling, had to be addressed sometime but not everything could possibly be laid bare in a single night, not allowing them to come to terms with everything at once. That was okay too but there was still more that they would have to discuss as Adagio took a breath, pulling out one last arrow from her quiver. Yet her quiver, unlike the siren’s, was not one from which she would ever harm another being from. “Is it so bad to feel for others, to empathise with them?” She said more gently, knowing that that was something that she would have to leave out there for the siren to mull over, to consider over a longer period of time. “Isn’t it...nicer to be adored for who you are? People can look at you, look at us, like they love us too, not just with anger and worry and fear. There is more to emotion than what you have fed on and maybe you could even take something more positive to sustain yourself, if you tried.” The siren shuddered within her but had no answer to that, yet it was not something that Adagio was going to be able to work through in one sitting with her. The fact that she was not snarling and snapping and hurling her words back at Adagio was, at least, something that could have been considered a positive. Sometimes that was all she could hope for in the tiniest of wins. “Look, this is probably as difficult for you as it is for me. But if we’re going to live together, like this, we need to live together too. This isn’t easy. It isn’t simple.” It was never meant to be. “Exactly. At least we can agree on that, right?” Adagio gave a thin, watery smile and hoped the siren would reply in kind, though was afraid to look too deeply into that. Exhaustion clawed at her, dragging her down, the quiet of her apartment seeping through the cracks in her defences. Knight may have been strong in some regards but she was softer in his current life, the hard edges leaving gaps in her defences into which people like Donnie had wormed deep. There was more to uncover and yet standing on the very edge of that precipice was something that she needed to come to in her own time, fear twisting through her of what more lay in wait that she did not even know existed. But Donnie would be waiting for her the next day, even though she had not been all that keen on a day off work when there was still so much left to do there. The bar was busy and her life was busier, but the Knight in her knew that she had to take some time, however little it was, to relax and recharge, though she wished that the day out with Donnie would be a little less about discussing strategies after the disastrous days that had preceded it and a little more about...well... She swallowed hard, shoving the thought away, and the siren snickered. I could show you how to win him over, to twist him around your finger... But you won’t, will you? Adagio nodded and the siren sighed. So, I see. But that is your way of doing things and not mine. Maybe you can learn a little more from me than you think. “And you can learn from me too.” Adagio left that as a sense of finality ringing in the air between them, though there was loudness in the siren’s silence, leaving them much to consider. Yet quiet time begged her attention, the cookbook that she’d brought home from work (something old that a co-worker had said they didn’t need any more) and a recipe that, one day, she thought she might just be able to share with Donnie, to see if it was something that he could like. She didn’t even know if he liked cakes. She’d have to suggest picking something sweet up from a bakery when they were “hanging out”, be a little on the sly side and take him there, just to see what he went for. Was he a savoury or a sweet kind of guy? It may have been easier to be direct, her natural inclination, but, oh...she couldn’t do that! That’s more like it. Adagio smiled. Was that the kind of manipulation that the siren meant? Finding out what someone liked so that she could surprise them with it later? “Not so bad.” Not so bad at all... She was hardly sure that she could get on board with what the siren was offering but she took a deep breath, all the same, setting up the cookbook and flipping the old, worn pages to a simple sponge cake. It was the best thing to start with and the quiet and the peace that she sought could be found in the mixing of batter even at such an hour, the siren lifting her head curiously as if she had never made a cake too and wanted to see just how it was done. I haven’t. “I figured.” Yet that was still something that they could learn together, the siren murmuring suggestions even though some of the ingredients that she had in mind for a “better” cake were simply not things that Adagio could find in their world. Still, it was a manner of lighter conversation after a long day of work (day shift: ugh) that was much needed, feeling quite as if there was a friend inside her at long last rather than an enemy. Maybe that was one way that they could be, even if it would turn out that that manner of the relationship too would have to be fostered and cared for, just like any other relationship. But maybe the rest of her life would be better for taking that on, if only she could find a way to make things work. “So, I will allow you to fully control...the body,” Adagio said slowly, thickly, forcing the words out even though she knew they were the right ones to say, the cake shimmering before her as strained moisture pricked at her eyes. “Sometimes. You can take over, as long as you don’t do anything untoward. And I promise I shall not do anything untoward in turn to you.” She felt the siren’s eyes glittering within her, snaking back and forth with a softer sort of hum, lulled to softness deep down inside. Agreed. Maybe it would work or maybe it wouldn’t but she had to try, had to work with the cards that had been dealt to her. Yet it wasn’t all down to her, Adagio thought as her hand tightened on the wooden mixing spoon, trembling as much as she tried to steady it. They’d both have to find a way to make things work. It wasn’t all down to her. But, right then and there, all they had to do was to bake a cake, the swirl of the spoon hypnotic as she mixed in flour, beat in eggs. Even the siren was quiet. Sometimes that was all things had to be.