The Roof, Saturday Evening

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

It was so sudden. One moment, Eleanor had been carving up a harpie, and the next -- it was gone. So were the zombie piranhas. And Eleanor was ... Eleanor, again. Finally. Somehow.

But the memories of it -- who she had been, what she had done -- were clawing at her. She'd been someone careless and dark, and before that, the Messiah her mother had tried to shape her into becoming. An utter absence of self.

She spent at least an hour in the shower, scrubbing, but she couldn't get that feeling out of her skin, the itch, the memory of other voices speaking through her. As her. In place of her, in the empty space where she used to be, where no one was ...

She gave up, finally, and pulled clothes on -- not the shift. Maybe she would burn the shift. Maybe that would be satisfying.

Maybe she would go up to the roof and scream and find something to break. Or maybe she could sit and watch the stars. Anything, so she didn't feel trapped under a roof right now.

(OPEN. WARNING: thread with Celia discusses suicide of an NPC and its aftermath, in some really harsh terms. (Also, Eleanor's views are her own, not mine.))

Comments

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

... Okay, well that wasn't good. Did he startle her, or did he misread things?

"Well, yeah, but if you want to say no, all you have to do is say it."

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"I don't," she said. Wait, that didn't help. "I don't ... want to say no. I'm not saying no."

Those were certainly words.

"Why are you asking me on a date?" she asked.

You know what? She still had yet to actually answer him.

"Yes," she said. "That is, yes, I would like to. I mean, I will. But I don't know how to go on a date and I might be bad at it."

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Well, I said I might get ideas, and this happens to be one of them," Joker told her. "There's no right way or wrong way to do it -- I'll swing by your room at 6, if we're not already hanging out, and then we'll go for a walk down to the steakhouse. For dinner. You do know how to eat dinner, right?"

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

And that was when the absurdity struck her. It didn't matter that she was in the deep freezing water, or that she was the third Eleanor she'd been this week, or that she'd been up here on the roof trying to decide if she wanted to scream or cry (or both).

She laughed. Not a light one, but a deep peal, rippling out from her, over and over again. It was like all of the madness wanted to come out at once.

When it finished she had her head in her hands and was shaking, but only a little.

"Of course," she said. "Of course I've forgotten how to eat dinner. I'm the Messiah, but I'm evil, but I'm me. Father never loved me, and you'd like to date me. It all makes such perfect sense, doesn't it?"

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

And Joker was giving her a very worried look and putting his arms back around her. "Okay, you know what? Maybe we revisit the whole thing later. Life is too weird right now, and you... Shaking things up, probably not the best idea."

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

She let herself be folded back in. It was nice, to be held, and he smelled like soap. Not the kind she used. A different bar. She'd have to go to the store and see if she could find it.

"You promised me dinner, and I'm holding you to it," she said simply.

And maybe they could sit here for a while, and she could smell his soap, and maybe the world would stop being so crazy.

The world was always crazy. The best you could do some days was just to hang on.

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

He held her tightly. "Dinner it is," he said. But for now, maybe it was best to just sit here and hold her for a while.