InsaneJournal

[QM] 81: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Athena never knows what the trigger is. A memory, a word, an action. Too much to drink. A nightmare. A chance encounter or a random paragraph in the newspaper.

An old, forgotten clue in a decades old unsolved case.

None of it registers, not on the conscious level. But in the unconscious, she waits and plots. Who to recruit, when it should happen, where the best place would be. She bides her time, guiding the conscious from point to point, the stage manager in this great unfolding opera. As Athena follows the path she doesn't realize she's on the scenes progress, each player coming and going as was unwittingly dictated to them. Acts begin and conclude, reaching their own micro-climaxes and resolutions before it all comes to the finale. The moment she's been waiting for. Her grand entrance.

It's an ironic sentiment, given that the setting is a dark alley that only drug dealers and prostitutes know. There is no audience, except the morbidly fascinated tenants in the apartments above who know better than to look out their windows. But her leading man is spot on. He doesn't miss his first cue, reacts perfectly to each line she delivers. She didn't think he could play terrified, but he does it with amazing skill.

And then the climax of Act V, the crucial moment. For a moment, as he stares up at her - or at least tries to through the one eye she's left him, although it's nearly swelled shut - she thinks he's going to ruin everything. But then his spluttering stops, and she smiles as she stoops to down to make sure it won't start again.

Exit Sadistic Lying Bastard, she thinks.

True to form, William Herald followed his cue to the letter. With one last desecration, she takes her final bow, leaving Athena with only the vague nightmare of a tour de force performance she can only dread to remember.

"And so everyone, according to his cue."
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