fandomhighdorms | Fourth Floor Common Room, Friday afternoon

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Fourth Floor Common Room, Friday afternoon

Joker sat on the couch with his foot propped up. Stress fractures like the ones he'd given himself yesterday weren't so big of a deal -- he had pills for that -- but it still hurt, dammit.

He was playing a match 3 game -- in other words, swiping with one hand at glowing objects floating in the air above his other wrist -- and he had the TV on in the background, for company. It was tuned to The Weather Channel, and he was starting to get a little sick of the Winter Storm Orion coverage. "You know what I hate?" he remarked, to no one in particular. "Weather. We don't really get that, where I'm from."

[Open like a common room!]

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To be fair, Joker was pretty perceptive.

"Your mother thought that... Your own mother did things to... Hang on. Your actual mother, or some evil overlord with the title of Mother? I'm trying to decide which would be more fucked up."

Some people seemed very attached to their mothers. She understood it, psychologically, even if she couldn't feel that same attachment.

"Biological," she said. "I was conceived in order to further her life's work. The greater good, the elimination of the self, all of her self-important philosophical ramblings in that horrid book of hers. She wanted me to be the Messiah."

And had gone to great lengths in the attempt.

"That's... a lot of pressure. Did she want you to die on a cross, too, or was she going for something a little less specific? And did she really expect you'd believe in her crap?"

"She wanted me make judgments for all of humanity," Eleanor said. "No death required, except that I'd lose all of my own self in the process. I'd be a vessel that could speak with many voices."

She lifted a shoulder. "It didn't matter that I didn't believe. She just sedated me and performed the experiments anyway."

What did you say to something like that? How did you respond?

"That-- that's some motherly love, right there," he told her. "I mean, most mothers are just content to assume their child is perfect. Not many would use sadistic medical experiments and torture in order to ensure it."

...She understood that that was sarcasm, right?

She did. It helped. Sarcasm was easier to deal with than pity.

"There's one thing you can say for Mother," she agreed. "She didn't lack for ambition."

She fidgeted slightly, then tucked the child back into the crook of her arm.

"She doesn't know I'm here," she said, which was a considerably nicer topic. "The Little Sisters sent me. A going-away present, for Big Sister. With luck, I'll never see her again."

"'Ambition' isn't really the word I'd use. 'Hubris', maybe. Or 'batshit'. And don't worry if you do see her again -- if she comes here, she'll have swaths of people to cut down before she gets to you."

Eleanor opened her mouth to protest, but ... no. This island did seem the sort of place to close ranks about one of its own. And she was most decidedly that.

If nothing else, Professor Jono would scowl at her. She found she rather liked that mental picture.

"Thank you," she said. "I'd rather no one get hurt just for my sake. Although, by herself, she's not physically dangerous. It's what she says, and how it poisons you."

Mother was a psychiatrist. She wielded vulnerabilities like weapons.

"Earlier," she began, falteringly. "I'm not ... good with people. I've never had friends. I don't always know ... how to say things properly."

"A battle of wits, to the death," Joker mused. "That could be intriguing." Her other comment, he shrugged off. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "I'm not so good with people, either. Just say whatever it was you were going say, and you'll learn the right ways to tweak it as you go along.

"All right," she said, nodding. "Then I want to say I wasn't exaggerating, earlier. What I said about ... misshapen freaks. I don't mean a child of mine might have a club foot or a cleft palate. The treatments I've undergone ... someone who had similar experiments done is now an amorphous blob. A completely mad one, at that."

"A blob. They could have turned you into a crazy blob-monster? Thank goodness you're all right!" He pulled off his hat so he could run his fingers through his hair, as if that might somehow help him process everything she was saying. "Well... I don't think you're a freak. The people who did this to you? They're the freaks."

Eleanor shook her head. "They're terrible people, but they're just people," she said. "I have this ... thing inside me. I don't even know if I'm human any more."

She stopped abruptly. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," she said. "You'll never look at me the same again."

"Oh, yes, because I just love abandoning friends after they've opened up to me," Joker answered. "As long as the 'thing' inside you isn't going to burst out of your chest and start killing people, I think we're good."

"I'm not saying you're going to suddenly abandon me," Eleanor said. "But it's going to be there, in the back of your mind. You can't look at me and not see it."

She still couldn't, most of the time.

"Well, obviously you can't," Joker pointed out. "But to be perfectly honest, I'm probably not going to think about it at all unless it's relevant."

Eleanor didn't meet his eyes. The baby had finally gone to sleep. At least his advice was helpful.

She had probably cured him of his unfailing urge to flirt with her. She tried telling herself that that was a relief. Not very successfully.

"All right," she said. "And while you're at it, don't think of a giant dog right now."

Psychiatrist's daughter. Making a point.

"You know, you think you're making a point, right now, but you're really proving the opposite," Joker replied. "I had completely forgotten all about Naga until you said that just now." He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it, and then opened his mouth again anyway. "There a joke there about pretty girls and their pets, but that would probably be really tasteless, wouldn't it?"

"And their pets?" Eleanor said, folding her arms. "You're right, it would be tasteless. How can you even --"

And he'd called her pretty again.

"You're completely mad."

"Hey, I'm not the one who thinks that being the victim of freaky-weird shit is going to make people scared of her." Joker shrugged. "Look, you obviously think that 'slug-thing living inside you' is too weird even for Fandom. It's fucked up, sure, but too weird? Are you kidding? Besides, I've seen it happen in fiction."

Eleanor was giving Joker quite the skeptical look here.

"So ... let me see if I'm following," she said. "You've read stories about people having sea-slugs implanted in them, so that they could drink blood out of corpses and generate ADAM, and therefore you don't find this strange at all."

"Corpses?!?!" Joker stared at her. "No, it's usually more of the 'alien parasite mind-controlling the host' variety, but... corpses? What the hell did they DO to you?!?! And how the hell did they get away with it?!?"

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Fourth Floor Common Room, Friday afternoon

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!

Re: NFB from here please!