Xaviers!

The last couple weeks had been...relaxing.

Living in a luxury hotel had it's benefits. Room service every day, access to the gym and sauna, premium cable. And Miriam didn't even have to spend it alone.


Will's upbeat demeanor and positive attitude could be grating at times, but there were far worse people to spend some time with. Someone to take clubbing at night, to go out and run errands during the day. A room to sleep in and be protected from the elements. Someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of; Miriam would even find Will had some surprising depths, having more experience than your average person.

And, when that positive attitude got too much to handle, it was easy enough to send her out for a task. Or just, you know, shut her up for an hour or two.


The one...catch, as it were, was Will's ongoing belief that Xaviers was working on a solution for her condition. This meant, with all the best will in the world, she kept reminding Miriam to keep her head up, that everyone back home was rooting for her, that things would be alright and back to normal if she just held on a little longer.

This was not a topic of conversation Miriam was particularly fond of, and as the days went by, it seemed to come up more and more often. Even more worrisome, Will occasionally tried to contact the outside world, which required some quick work by Miriam to nip that in the bud. In fact, was that her going for the phone? Again? That was the third time today...

Miriam hadn't touched Will's conviction that they were working on a cure in part because she was worried it was too much of a basis for her staying. If she tried to change that it might make everything crumble and she'd have to start from scratch or worse, follow Mel's advice. But it was quickly becoming obvious that she'd become focused, maybe even obsessed with it. Everything Will did for her was reinforcing the wrong thing and was a painful reminder that Will was only helping her to cure her. She was okay being here but didn't really want to, even after Miriam's meddling.

"Stop that." she says, accompanied by a mental command that's beginning to feel rote. "I told you they'll contact us if they made any progress."

"I know, I know. I don't mean to hover over their shoulders, it's just..." she trailed off.

"I get antsy sometimes, you know that. It's hard when you're faced with a problem you can't punch in the face."

"That's most problems." she comments dryly.

This wasn't good. Sooner rather than later this restlessness would boil over. Had she inadvertently given Will the wrong kind of drive by playing into this cure thing? How had it worked before? Will had been stable for decades, because... there'd been a different purpose. Was that really it? She'd tried to recreate that kind of happy satisfaction but it was forced, the cracks clearly showing already. Could she just change that focus? It was hard to keep track of what she'd done to Will's mind and how it all played off of each other, but the underlieing idea was still to help her. She didn't want help though... She wanted... a distraction? Company? A connection. Something real.

"Will, I don't believe they're working on a cure. I don't believe there is one."

"Don't talk like that, Miriam. Your friends are working day and night, I'm sure of it. They've got some of the best supernatural boffins in the world over there, and they'll get you right as rain in no time.

C'mon, you trust me, right? Would I lead you astray?" he smiled.

"I don't doubt that you're holding out hope. But what if they're not. I have to at least consider the possibility. As nice as this room is, I can't stay here forever."

"Alright, if you want to worst-case scenario, what were you thinking about? I don't suppose you find living in the Arctic Circle to be particularly appealing?"

"I can handle only having regular nights if it means not having to live in a frozen wasteland. I'm more concerned about you. If this can't be fixed... are you going to stay with me?"

"...

Let's not go there right now, Miriam. There's no reason to think negatively like that right off the bat," he dodged. "You won't be alone no matter what happens; you have friends and people who care for you. It's not like I'd be a stranger."

"That's answer enough, isn't it?" she sighs. "You're willing to help a friend but that's all this is."

"Of course I'm willing to help, Miriam. I've put everything on hold to keep you in as good spirits as I can. But I can't do that forever; you'll have to walk on your own two feet eventually. When they get a cure, everything will be back to normal.

I should give them a call and see how things are going..." he mused.

This wasn't working. She'd thought she could lay down enough of a foundation, incentives, to make Will come to the conclusion he wanted to stay with her. It had felt... less intrusive, in a way. But the simple truth is that even with all that he doesn't want to be with her. Like everything else he's just going to leave eventually. It's just not fair. That's what she got for trying to treat him like a person. He ended up acting like everybody else, looking for ways to get away from her. When really, she was the only reason he even existed. He's like her own version of Will and the only reason he even resembles the one she send to Sam is because she lets him. In a way, letting that go on is cruel. Letting him have hope for something he can't go back to anyway. He's not even a copy, he's a piece of hardware that she neglected to delete the previous owner's files from.

It's the loneliness and the sinking fear of losing something, anything. The thought of standing in an empty hotel-room for days, weeks, months, years. An eternity of nothing that she's been cursed with. And she just can't stand the thought of it. She didn't ask for any of this and she deserves to have something. The empty thoughts roll off of her in waves as she grabs the phone and tears it off the cable tethering it to the wall and in the same motion hurls it across the room and into the wall, shattering it into a dozen pieces. "No!" she screams at Will. "You're mine! This is the new normal now!" Her thoughts are less meticulous and more frantically clawing as they touch Will's mind, driving the message into the clay of his mindscape, a statue of herself made of black obsidian coming down on the existing one and flattening the gold-covered chocolate underneath it. The impact sends out ripples int he clay that swallow up huge chunks as the shadow of the new statue settle over everything.

Tears are streaming down her face as she looks at Will. "You belong to me. You're nothing but an ambitious chunk of clay..."

Will gasped as the breath was sucked out of him, and he fell to one knee as the impact shook his mental landscape, the core of his being. Like a fish out of water, his mouth flapped over as he tried to fill his lungs, as his colors faded and became less saturated. His hands flew out to catch him as he fell to the floor, resting on hands and knees as he shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

"M...Miriam," he manged to choke out.

"No." she says coldly, blinking the tears from her eyes. "You need to earn the right to use that name back. From now on you'll call me Mnemosyne."

"Y...yes. Yes, Mnemosyne.

...Why? Why Mnemoysne?" he said, beginning to try to rise to his feet.

"Because Sam's not the only one who can style herself after a goddess."

"It's not...I mean she isn't just..." he struggled against the mental rejiggering.


"...Yes, Mnemoysne."

"What's the difference!? That I don't have your seal of approval? That she somehow got blessed to be divine while I was cursed to be profane?"

"It's...

I've been touched. By Her grace. It's...ineffable, Mnemoysne. She brought me back."

"Well then it's only fitting for me to do the opposite, no? Goddess of Memory and Mind, in the land of the dead. Go ahead and drink from the waters that make you forget your previous life as you're reborn." While she's talking her mind slips into Will's and the clay begins to roil and bubble as buildings slowly begin to sink. Except, of course, for the newly erected statue.

"What....what are you...what are you doing to me, Mnemoysne?" Will asked, frantically looking around.

"I can't....no, this isn't...I...what are you..." he stammered, trying (and failing) to rise to his feet. "What...who am...how did I get....what?"

There was a long pause, as the buildings sank into the depths of the clay.

"M...Mnemoysne?" he asked, confused, looking up at her.

"You're Will. And you belong to me..." she says softly. "We've been taking care of each other." None of this trying to kill her, believing in false cures, revering Sam non-sense. No baggage. Fresh start. A chance to reinvent everything... Yes, this was definitely how she'd planned this and not at all an emotional outburst of sweeping the gameboard off the table. She'd died, left the school and Wanda behind. It only made sense for Will to start over as well. She should have done this from the start but she'd been too terrified of Melpomene and her 'advice'. But she wasn't wiping out Will, she'd send Will off to be safe and this would be something else. Something for her.

"I'm...I'm Will. And we're...we're making sure each other is...is alright," he said slowly, tasting the words coming out of his mouth as he tried to get a grip on things.

"Where are we? And...how did I get here, Mnemoysne?"

"We're in a hotel because I had to take shelter from the sunlight. You're a sentient piece of clay of mine, a prized possession." she says, stepping closer and placing her hand on Will's cheek.

Will nodded. That made....sense. It felt right, at any rate, and that's what he had to go with at the moment. Miriam could feel the proverbial (and, knowing Will, possibly actual) cogs churning in his mind, assimilating this new information and trying to make sense of it all. It felt like it was really sinking in -- beginning to take it's shape as she worked the clay.


"OK. Alright. That makes...sense.

And...do all people who need protection from the sun have...clay? Or are you special?"

"I'm special. You used to belong to people at a school, but they didn't treat you right and I stole you..." she says, making it sound noble, which is easy enough when you're literally in somebody's head.

"Are they after you? Are they looking for us?" he asked, concerned.

"I don't believe so. At least not actively. But it doesn't hurt to be cautious."

"What were they using me for that was so bad you had to steal me?"

"Truthfully? Nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody really asked you for anything."

"Well that seems...


...pointless, then. I can do a lot more than nothing.

I can protect you, for example. That's useful...right?"

"Incredibly. And that's only a fraction of what you're capable of. It'd be a shame to let that go to waste, to deprive you of your potential."

"My...potential?" He asked, with a smile slowly spreading across his face. "I have potential?

I like the sound of that. Potential..."

At that some of the tension seems to go out of Miriam and she smiles at Will.

"I'm glad to see you in good spirits. Now, I think we'll have to make some plans to find a place that's less... temporary. And for that we need to retrieve something else I'm owed from some bad people."

"More clay?"

"Money. Quite a bit of it I assume. Reparation, if you will, for what they cursed me with."

"Will money help fix it? Or make you feel better?" he asked, tilting his head to the other side.

"It'll help me deal with it. And I won't lie, make me feel better. Maybe it's petty, but I don't care."

"It's OK to be petty. Alright, I understand," he said, nodding his head. "What do you need me to do?"

"How thin can you become?"