Chapter Text
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Penance wasn’t normally the type of person to follow strange women with habits of screaming and falling to the ground, but this day had already been established as “abnormal”. She hadn’t really had any sort of plan before Miss True found her. She had been walking in no particular direction, and all she had was the shattered remains of the blasted shining device that had gotten here in the first place.
How could she have let this happen? She’d always kept herself in check. She’d had a few instances of time getting away from her, and it had even lost her a job when she was sixteen. But she had gotten better at it. Shoved down her curiosity. Kept herself in check.
She didn’t enjoy it, but it was just what people like her had to do to fit in. And now all of a sudden, she can’t control herself. She loved the feeling that came with her tinkering, but she just…couldn’t let herself. She had to find another way to push it down. To…fix herself somehow.
These thoughts– among many others, the usual fluttering anxieties and disjointed questions– were swimming in her head as she walked down the street.
When she heard a voice call out for her, she was shocked, and thought it may be someone sent by the Wentworths to come track her down. For what reason, she had no idea. Perhaps to bring her back, apologize for what happened? Or maybe just so they could arrest her and commit her to an insane asylum or some other dreadful place where she’d drive herself mad.
She was not expecting a woman she’d never seen before. She had dark hair and hard features, with tired, yet focused eyes. She was beautiful, and though she was slightly shorter than Penance, her shoulders looked wider and she had a certain…density to her, as if her dress was concealing well-built muscle.
Penance whipped her head around and met the stranger’s eyes as she placed a hand onto Penance’s shoulder, asking her something as she did. Penance was just about to ask her to repeat her question (she had been much too lost in thought to properly process it) when the dark haired woman jerked her hand back and let loose a scream of strangled agony, falling to the ground.
What was that?! Was that another part of Penance’s Turn? Did she horrify people by merely touching them? Her mind raced, trying to think if she had actually touched anyone in the past few weeks, but the stress of the situation left her mind blank.
Worried, she leaned down and asked the woman, “Miss?! Miss, are you alright?”
The dark haired woman gained control back over herself all of a sudden, and murmured out a small assurance that she was alright.
“You’re quite sure? That seemed like…well, I’m not quite sure what it seemed like”, Penance said, trying to find the words that would be most assuring to both herself and the strange woman who had just fallen down in front of her. The woman gave a half-hearted excuse, something about her heart condition or something, and then peered at Penance with a peculiar glint in her eye before asking,
“Are you, by chance, Miss Penance Adair?”
Now Penance was truly confused. How had this woman known her name? Had she been seeking her out? Maybe she really was under orders from the Wentworths to track her down.
“Who’s asking?”, she said warily.
The dark haired woman straightened herself before saying, “Amalia True. I was told by one Miss Bidlow to find Penance Adair, an Irish girl whose Turn seemed to be inventing things. Judging by the accent, the hair, and your fiddling with something in your pockets, you seem to fit that description”.
The woman spoke with a sense of objectivity and clarity, as if she already knew everything there was to know about the situation, and that it was Penance who was the one struggling to grasp the obviously logical exchange that they were having.
Penance was off put by this answer, but she recognized the name of Miss Bidlow.
“Miss Bidlow? She’s a friend of my employers”. Ah. But she was no longer employed by the Wentworths, now was she? Stupid, Penance. Stupid stupid stupid.
“Er, my former employers that is”, she rushed to correct herself. But there was still the matter of what this woman was actually here for. She’d dodged the question quite well.
“What is it exactly you want, Miss True?”
Miss True seemed to take a moment to formulate the answer before speaking, once again in the intellectual, yet slightly rushed and annoyed tone that she had used previously.
“I want to give you an invitation. An invitation for you to be around other people like you. Like us. Free to be ourselves without judgment or persecution. And, perhaps, a way for you to use your gift to help people, Touched and un-Touched alike.”
Ah.
“You’re Touched as well, Miss True?”
True noticeably hesitated for a moment, clearly remembering something that she felt unable to say, and instead gave Penance a swift nod and said, ““I am, yes. I experience…premonitions of the future. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.”
How specific. And ominous.
Still, the offer of a place where there would be other Touched? And she could actually explore her newfound passion? She still wasn’t entirely sure that was the path she had wanted to take, but the alternative was to just…continue wandering the streets until a better option accosted her and fell to the ground screaming.
And besides. If she could use this…whatever it was to help people, then she couldn’t turn it down. Her decision was made, whether she liked it or not.
As she shifted her eyes to look Miss True back in the eyes, her gaze caught on something on her chest that she hadn’t noticed before. There, in the center of Amalia’s chest, was a gently pulsing blue-white light. A single strand extended from it, towards Penance, and met with an orange-white strand extending from her own chest.
The two strands did not fade into one another, nor did they join in any knot or tie. They simply…intertwined. Orange was blue and blue was orange, they wrapped around each other and flowed back and forth and existed in a perfect balance there in the middle space between Amalia and her.
Between their hearts.
If Penance had not made up her mind before, whoever this woman was, and whatever was happening with their energies was enough to convince her. She felt a smile spread across her lips as she realized maybe this day wasn’t so shite after all.
“Well, I don’t suppose I have a great deal of options. Go ahead and lead on, Miss True. I’ll be a part of your little plan. It’s certainly daring, so at the very least it will be fun to watch”