We don’t actually see Scylla get arrested, we just meet the situation where she is being interrogated by Izadora and Anacostia.
It is only at the end of 1.6, Up in Down, that we see Izadora and Anacostia with Scylla. It seems clear that they are trying some sort of good cop / bad cop tactic with Scylla and it is not working. Izadora is not an obvious choice of an interrogation partner for Anacostia. But Scylla was her student, so she would have been one of the people who would know Scylla best.
Anacostia and Scylla clearly had an antagonistic history. We first see this in the opening episode 1.1 Say the Words, when Anacostia warns Scylla in the hospital to stay away from Raelle. At that point Scylla backs down and let’s things play out.
But the situation doesn’t stay there. As Scylla’s relationship with Raelle develops, Scylla becomes confident enough to stand her ground against Anacostia. Their altercation at the Bellweather wedding was classic.
When Anacostia reminds Scylla to stay away from Raelle, Scylla does not back down. The words are polite, but the body language oozes confidence. Even to the point where she tells Anacostia ‘don’t take this out on Raelle. I take full responsibility for disobeying your orders.’
She doesn’t say ‘I take full responsibility for my actions’ or ‘for our relationship’, she uses the one thing that Anacostia could pursue if she wanted to do so – disobeying orders. It is Scylla issuing a challenge – ‘If you want a piece of me, come and get me’.
This time it is Anacostia who backs off. Leaving Scylla with the last words ‘Yes Ma’am’. The raised chin, the smirk, this is Scylla’s way of showing that as long as she doesn’t cross the line, there is nothing that Anacostia can do about her.
This is personal. We never get to know the origin of their animosity. But Scylla has played a dangerous game, one that makes sense if she was intending to go away with Raelle. But by baiting Anacostia, she will just make Anacostia more determined to break her.
So, in the confusion of the balloon attack, she is arrested as a member of the Spree and set up for interrogation. Asking her about the planned attack on the Bellweather wedding was never going to get her to answer because she simply didn’t know. She will have seen the balloons, but would probably not know the attack on Charvel and Abigail had even happened. She can’t tell Anacostia what she doesn’t know.
But she doesn’t deny being part of the Spree. She even has the confidence of her convictions to berate Alder, who she sees as responsible for the ‘enslavement’ of witches into the army. She believes in the cause she is fighting for. It is her moral compass and her integrity.
Anacostia tries to link with her, to see her mind, but at this point Scylla is strong enough to block her out. Anacostia leaves her with one of the sound boxes, probably seed 14, the seed of interrogation. Clearly this is a distressing experience. No food, certainly no sleep, but when Anacostia tries again Scylla is still strong enough to resist, even trying to headbutt her. Now it is a clear battle of wills between the two of them.
Despite everything she has put Scylla through, Anacostia is not sure that she will win this battle. So she tries a different and less ethical strategy. She brings Raelle into this, without Raelle’s consent. This must be a gamble. If Scylla’s feelings for Raelle were genuine, this had a chance to work, but if Scylla was just using her then it was going to be a waste of time.
But we know that Scylla’s feelings were genuine and that when the soldiers removed Raelle from the room, Scylla’s distress finally allowed Anacostia to take advantage and join with her. Essentially this is mind rape. We see the memory of Baylord autos and Anacostia gets what she needs. Anacostia’s anger as she walks out is understandable, she knows Scylla is responsible for a major Spree attack with a lot of deaths. But what else did she see when she was in Scylla’s mind?
Anacostia did see more than the Baylord attack. There is no other plausible reason for her actions. Whatever Anacostia saw, makes her start to change her mind about Scylla. She makes the first approach to Alder to advocate for her, but Alder doesn’t want to know.
What happened to Scylla while Anacostia was on Citydrop? We know that Anacostia was responsible for leading her cadets into the execution (or murder) of Spree operatives and of their innocent civilian hostages. Anacostia killed people because of her orders, and her values, believing those people were the enemy and accepting the civilian casualties as collateral. Did she make the connection that what she had just done was exactly what Scylla had done? Just on a smaller scale.
I think she realised that a decision to kill is not a straightforward choice of good versus evil. Good people died at Citydrop. Good people killed them. Is Scylla’s integrity any different?
I think Anacostia questions her own moral actions and the actions of those giving her orders. Perhaps she has regrets about those deaths. But it means that she talks to Scylla, who might have some of the answers. She wants to know what it is like ending thousands of people.
Scylla has recovered some of her bravado, but now that the army have got what they wanted from her, her future is uncertain. Anacostia tells her that Alder to send her to a prison, which will be a death sentence. Why do such places exist in the Motherland Universe? Scylla knows that the only reason she is still there is because Anacostia still wants something from her. When she realises what it is, she has something to bargain with and asks to see Raelle again as her price for co-operation.
That meeting with Raelle does not go well, she feels betrayed by Scylla and the last thing Raelle says is that she wishes they had never met. As she never saw Scylla again, believing she never would, Raelle probably came to regret those last words.
Scylla’s defence was that ‘I chose you’. Powerful words, showing an even stronger decision. She had to make a choice – to deliver Raelle to the Spree or to defy her orders and to protect Raelle. She wanted to protect all witches and she decided that she wanted to do it with this woman by her side, whatever the consequences would be. She chose Raelle. In her mind this was not a betrayal of Raelle, but the choice of her over everything else.
Scylla is distraught. So is Raelle afterwards. Raelle advocates for Scylla as Anacostia had done with Alder, even asking her to get the prison to ‘go easy’ on Scylla, that ‘she’s not all bad’. All this adds to the unease that Anacostia is feeling, the idea of a simplistic good or evil just doesn’t work anymore.
Scylla and Anacostia finally have the talk with each other that they have probably never had with anyone else. Anacostia gives Scylla a picture of her dead parents and they trade stories of the death of their parents and how they both found family – Anacostia with the army and Scylla with the Spree. They see the humanity in each other and the way that each could so easily have stood in the other’s shoes.
The part that might have really gotten to Anacostia is when Scylla says that she had been kinder to her than she needed to be. Then she simply says ‘Thank you’. That level of maturity and forgiveness after everything she has been put through meant that Anacostia could no longer even pretend that she saw Scylla as evil and deserving to die. She had found an integrity and a goodness in her that could not be ignored. Perhaps Alder’s order to send Scylla to a death camp could be ignored or worked around.
Sometimes integrity means not carrying out orders that you know to be morally wrong. Sending Scylla to her death would have been one of those situations, so Anacostia helps Scylla to escape and return to the Spree. Had she gone to Petra to get the mission authorised? We don’t know.
We do know that after the hell they had both just been through, that they had turned their animosity into respect. They had set themselves on a path that would save both of them.
ReturntoFortSalem 