Supernova

Chapter Seventy Four - Cassanova the Spy Hero

A/N: Y'all ready for a fun one? 

Get out while you still can. That woman is a monster.

I will readily admit, I had often let Iliana's words fall to the wayside of my consciousness for no better reason than it was easier and I wanted to play pretend for just a little longer. However, after that conversation, those words were blaring on repeat, and they weren't easily banished. I let them. I wasn't scared. Of anything. I never had been, and I didn't want that to change. I figured maybe I should listen to them. Maybe I should be scared.

After I let them play a while like an alarm bell, they started to fade. It allowed one of her other phrases that I'd long since forgotten about slither in and take its place.

Look her up. Before she was Empress Claeson, her name was Insanity.

I wished I could talk to Iliana again.

The stacks of files in the student archive shelves were unwelcoming and, I'll admit, just between the two of us, intimidating. I hadn't wanted to come alone. It felt like something awful would jump out of the files and suffocate me, and I felt I should have an ally. Or a witness. Or whatever.

But who the hell could I have asked? Elias? Out of the question. Demon? I don't fucking think so. Needles? I pondered that for almost half a second before I told myself no, even that was a little too dicey.

So, I went alone.

It was awful. I had no idea how the files were organized or where to even start looking. Other than that time with Elias, I had never stepped foot in a file room. I'd never even stepped foot into a library of my own free will. If I'm being honest, I wasn't sure either of my American schools had even had libraries. Our academic education had basically been, here's the alphabet, how to do simple math, now off you go to learn to fight. I didn't even know anyone who read. To do so or even admit to it in front of others was social suicide. It was seen as a very lazy pass time.

I had felt the same way when I realized it was basically all Elias ever did, but now that I knew him better, I thought maybe there was something to it. Maybe I could have used the practice.

Going through the files and the library had been second nature to Elias. He'd pulled exactly what we'd needed and paraphrased everything to me. The shelves all looked the same to me, and I found myself getting lost in the stacks. More than that, I knew how to read in English, obviously, I'm not an idiot. But I didn't know that many words. I pulled out a few files just to see if I was heading in the right direction, but realized after five that I had absolutely no idea. I couldn't make sense of any of it. I started crying. I wondered if Iliana had been trying to mock me. Even if I'd found Insanity's file, I might have no fucking clue what it even said. I slid onto the floor and sobbed, making the random file in my hands soggy with my tears. I was glad that I was alone because I'd never felt so fucking stupid in my entire life.

But what I lacked in intelligence, I more than made up for in sheer willpower. And three hours after I'd first arrived to the library, I found the general student files. The Institution files were kept separate, and were sorted by entrance year, which was a pain in the ass because I had no idea how old Insanity was, and then by quirk name label, which was I word I both knew the definition of and how to spell. A half an hour later, I found her.

And my fear had been right. I didn't understand a lick of it. Cognition, proliferation, optic nerve, neurogenesis. Who the hell wrote these files with their big fancy words and long sentences that lasted multiple lines in a single paragraph? But fuck this. A bunch of words on paper weren't better than me. I shoved the file somewhere that would look inconspicuous but somewhere I'd be able to find it again easily, went upstairs, and spoke to the SHA librarian for the very first time so I could ask her for one of those books that explained what other words meant.