Bonesaw- Valkyrie's Flock

The people at the far table were hers.  Not hostile, but not necessarily talkers, either.  They wore uniforms with a fair degree of cohesiveness running through them, but they were more united by the masks they wore.

A woman with striking tattoos around the eyes, in black, red, and yellow, the colors too solid and bright for an actual tattoo.  She had been one of the heroes that had come after Valkyrie, back when Valkyrie had been Glaistig Uaine.  Glaistig Uaine had broken the woman until she was only barely on the cusp of life, and then pulled the woman’s soul from her body.

A skinny man with no hair on his skeletally gaunt head.  She remembered him having hair when she had watched him die.  A goon in the Birdcage who had made a mutinous bid for power and lost.  He had been turned away by each cell block leader in turn before venturing into the depths of the Birdcage, where prisoners too dangerous for a cell block had been put.  He hadn’t survived his first run-in.

A handsome black man had a mark on his face, akin to vitiligo, but not quite the albino white that came with vitiligo.  A loose representation of a skull, drawn on his face in a lighter brown.

There were others.  Some had more extreme touches than others.  A consequence of how information was stored.  Longer-term storage reduced things down more, put information such as what people wore on their skin into the same categories as the skin itself.

And there was no storage longer-term than death.

“Cleo, Naja Haje.  Voltrage, Third Execution.  Edgeless, Forward Facing.”

The capes in question stood.  Cleo’s eyes glistened with opaque teal-green moisture, the fluids leaking out and weeping regularly, the brilliant color a striking contrast against her olive brown skin.  Where she dabbed with the corner of her sleeve and napkins, the fabric was bleached or eaten away entirely.  She wore extra layers, including a scarf to keep her hair out of her face, a shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket, possibly just to have the extra fabric, and possibly because she had other physiological issues.

The sad fact was that they weren’t Valkyrie’s.  She didn’t know them, beyond what she’d seen the last time she’d had them.  She couldn’t know their needs.

Voltrage was a recent piece of work, pale, with paler, drier hair than he’d had in his first life, a perpetually angry expression marked with arched brows and a pointed beard.  He was skinny, his shoulders especially bony, collarbone sticking out a bit more than was natural.  He’d ripped the sleeves off of the sweatshirt he’d been given, but had later donned a white long-sleeved shirt.

Edgeless was older, unfortunately bearing more of a mask than a face, a consequence of a lack of personality in life- which was why she’d made him one of the first she experimented with.  Dull in many senses of the word, he was big, bearing a combination of muscle and fat, and he obeyed orders.
...

“These ones…” Valkyrie started, searching for the words.  “They died, and I brought them back, with some help.  In exchange for this life, they’ve agreed to provide me with assistance.  Some strangeness is to be expected.”

In another circumstance, they might have been the worst or most alarming words to say.
...

Valkyrie wasn’t there.  Two others were.  I belatedly connected to what Valkyrie had intended when she’d said she wanted Vista.  She was still arranging the meetings.

Dennis’s red hair didn’t move in the wind, and there was a faint lensing at the very edges of his face, like they might at the corner of a chandelier, except more dark than light.  He wore a coat over a gray costume with clock faces worked into it, Valkyrie’s ‘wings’ at the clock predominant at the chest.

Chris -Kid Win Chris- had hair that was more gold than blond, and definitely not brown.  There were more changes than I’d seen on either Aunt Sarah or Dennis, and I had no idea if he’d added cyborg parts or if he’d just come across that way.  The back of his neck, the ridges of his ears, and his eyes all looked more like technology than flesh.

Vista barely flinched.

“No shit?” Dennis asked.  “What’d you do, Missy?  Went and grew up on us.”

Vista snorted.  “You went and died on us.  Much ruder.”

- Ward, Gleaming Interlude 9, Sundown 17.2