fandomhighdorms | The Roof, Saturday Evening

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The Roof, Saturday Evening

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.))

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Joker had been looking for Eleanor for some time. He just needed to see with his own eyes that she was herself again, that everything was fixed, and it was all magically all better. It took a while, but eventually he thought to check the roof.

"There you are," he sighed with relief, as he headed over to her. "I've been worried about you."

Eleanor glanced up from where she was sitting, hugging her knees. Joker. She was relieved to see him, especially as he seemed to be himself again, and yet -- and yet.

And yet, Wednesday (http://fandomtownies.livejournal.com/7195925.html?thread=267685141#t267685141). And before that, when she was some monstrous thing.

"If you've come to shout at me," she said, "have at it."

Celia could breathe, for the first time in weeks.

She had been out, flinging the flying fish in the air away at abandon, feeling powerful and reckless and then -- they were gone. And so was she.

Sort of.

She hadn't burst into tears then. That had waited until she was back in her room, under the shower head and washing the day off of her. Celia took comfort in not using a towel when she emerged, but in closing her eyes and visualizing every drop of water on her, and flicking it off with a whisper of magic.

When she emerged onto the roof, it was in her usual grays and blues, her hair pinned back perfectly. She hadn't expected company, but almost collapsed in on herself in relief when she found she wasn't alone.

"Are you back, too?"

"What, shout?" Joker frowned at her. "No, no I'm not gonna shout. Alternate universes. Not yourself. You were just... you with a goatee, that's all."

He sat down next to her, a little tentatively. "You're you again, right? That's all that matters. ...I mean, you are you again, right?"

Eleanor glanced up to see -- to see Celia. Had she been horrible to Celia, in the time since they'd been themselves? She couldn't remember much recently, but she had broken the awful news about --

"Your mother," she said, weakly. "I'm so sorry."

She'd been prepared to pat the seat next to her, to be awkward, but -- Celia had just lost her mother. Again.

She managed to get to her feet, somehow, her eyes blurry, and reached her arms out. She didn't exactly know much about hugs, but she knew that Celia needed one. And that she did, too.

Edited 2014-03-29 23:50 (UTC)

"A ... a goatee?" she asked, turning to him. "I think I'm me. I don't know if I ... would know the difference. But I ..."

She glanced down. "Your legs," she said. "I said horrible things. I didn't -- I wasn't --"

"You're you," Celia breathed, almost falling into Eleanor's arms and squeezing her friend tightly. She forgot about propriety and about control -- she could forget about control, now that every day wasn't a waking nightmare of fearing her own wrath -- and just allowed herself to be relieved.

And yes, her mother. Her mother was gone again, after implanting herself in Celia's memory more clearly, and for what? All she'd learned from this was that her father's pain had made her strong, and her mother had probably done what she had to escape a child no one but Hector could control.

She'd been happier the other way, probably. Without knowing that.

"You're Eleanor," she said softly, mumbling it into the other girl's shoulder. "And not -- what you were. And I'm me. I'll lose my mother a thousand times over to keep that true."

"A reference. To a TV show I haven't even actually seen. Don't worry about it." Joker shrugged. "I... it wasn't you you that said those things. It was other you. The bad you. The one from the Negaverse where everyone is evil."

"I w-was a monster," Eleanor managed, holding on rather breathlessly. "And y-y-you didn't know ... how strong you are. You're strong, Celia. You are."

Anyone who could lose her mother over and again had to be.

"I feel like I'll never be clean again."

Maybe a few more showers and she could scrub the Messiah right out of her pores. Or take a few layers of skin off, trying.

"The o-one where Father didn't love me," she said, simply. "It's f-frightening, to know that's all it took. That's the bare strand keeping me from being her. He taught me cruelty, and I ... I learned."

She'd learned it so well. She'd killed her mother, her Little Sisters, and she'd laughed.

"Were you ... you?" she asked. "You seemed very you. Just ... with a monkey, or legs, or ..."

"I'm terrifying. And I could've been useful if I hadn't known it quite so well," Celia acquiesced softly. "And -- and you...were terrifying. Not because of your strength, but -- Eleanor, in some version of the world, she won."

There was a universe where Sofia won, and Eleanor was that, and Celia didn't understand the point of life, or of making choices, if they didn't matter in every reality.

And that ... and that was when the dam burst. Because that was exactly what had been eating at Eleanor herself. That in some reality, she had failed. She had never been rescued. She had died, and her body had been made over into ...

"Sh-she was happy," she managed, thought it came out as a sob. "Mother. She ... she th-thought it was a great success. She ..."

How pitiful, to realize that some small ache in here was to know that her mother really didn't love her. Really would be okay with Eleanor disappearing, forever, if it meant heralding the New World Order. Would be delighted at her success.

"Oh, shit... That's... Okay, that might seem like a little thing to you, but that is huge. Of course you were completely different. You're not that person."

He gave her a weak smile, and a shrug. "I was... mostly me," he answered. "Just... with a pet my father had found running loose on the station, or if my parents had splurged on the stupid robopants instead of the hormone treatments. Minor things. The me without the disease, though... You want to talk a bare strand, that's probably the barest. A cosmic ray travelling through space, and a single strand of DNA inside a woman who doesn't even know she's pregnant yet. Do they collide?" He shrugged. "He was the most different than me, though. I mean, I may be crippled, but he was lame."

Edited 2014-03-30 00:16 (UTC)

"She's a monster," Celia said quietly, rubbing Eleanor's back. She'd never really comforted anyone before, but -- it came oddly naturally. And selfishly enough, it kept her mind off her own doubts about herself, and who she truly was.

That would wait until she tried to sleep, she was sure.

"She's a monster, and she made you the way she wanted, but that's not who you are, Eleanor," she continued. "You're not. I mean -- how can anything mean anything if we don't believe that?"

"It's not huge," Eleanor said, shuddering. "I killed my mother. I killed those girls. All because ..."

All because Father had shown her the way. Was her morality really so tenuous? Was she so close to being irredeemable, a monster who couldn't care for anyone or anything!?

"Why ..." She frowned. "You didn't like him. The ... the you with legs that worked." Ugh, that was tactless. He had to be used to that by now. "Why?"

"How can we know anything?" Eleanor continued, her voice shaking. "Am I the real me? Is she? Or the other one, the angry one who liked to hurt things? Is there even such a thing? I don't ..."

The world seemed adrift, tossed by the sea into a deep abyss. Like the trench that Persephone had fallen into, after Mother had set off those bombs.

"Do you ..." She cleared her throat, hesitantly. "Did you ... at least see her? Your mother. Do you know what she ..."

Looked like? She could hardly have taken a picture, but maybe the memory would stay fresh, somehow.

"You killed them because someone you loved and respected said you should," Joker countered. He put an arm around her shoulders, and beckoned her closer with the other hand. "You're worried you're not human; here's more proof that you are. It doesn't take much for normal ordinary people to do horrible, horrible things. I mean, shit, that's how you got Nazis."

He shrugged. the other question wasn't as important, but... "Leggy-me had no drive, no ambition. We were searching through the library for a way to save you -- to save everyone -- and he got bored. Hell, he even fell asleep. Giving up? So not my thing."

"Like a shadow, or a reflection," Celia mumbled. "I remember her more clearly than I did, but...she has flaws, now. She didn't before."

Celia's mother had been an angel, a hero, an idea before. She was human now. And humans have flaws.

"I -- I don't know. I don't know which one is right. I've never known, not since I changed. I just know that this me feels...right. Better, than I was. And you-as-you, too. For all the pain we've experienced in this life...maybe that's what makes it ours."

"I thought the Nazis were all anti-Semites," Eleanor frowned, letting herself be pulled over against him. It felt reassuring, to settle her head against his shoulder and breathe in. "It wasn't that he said I should. I just modeled him, I suppose. If no one cared about me ..."

Then why should she care about anyone else? Odd to think of how easily the human contract could be broken.

"You were ... trying to save me?" she asked. "I was in town, fighting monsters."

"Is that good?" Eleanor asked. "To know her, as a person? Everyone has flaws. If they were unpleasant ... it may not have been her. She may have been altered, the way we were."

So if she liked her mother, it may have been real, and if she didn't ... she could pretend it wasn't her at all.

"You're how I remember you," Eleanor said. "If you remember me, and I remember you, then we're probably all right. I ... I suppose I'm lucky, not to be either of those Eleanors."

"Nah, we're just all naturally xenophobic. The ability to get the fuck over it and make friends is what separates us from the animals."

Joker gave her a squeeze. "But people do care about you. And your father did. You're not that person. She was in town fighting monsters. I was in the library, trying to find any information, any idea, of anything we could use to save you."

"Then ... you're a hero," she said softly. "You were doing what you could to save all of us, while I ... she was off enjoying herself."

There was something odd there, to the way he kept stressing you. Nonsense. He was just reminding her that she mattered, that it was all right to care about others, in turn.

"Are you bitter?" she asked. "That that other you ... had it so easy."

"Me? A hero?" Joker asked, with deliberately feigned modesty. He deepened his voice to something appropriately superhero-y, and put his free hand on his hip. "Why, yes. Yes, I am." He snorted, and in his normal voice said, "No, the real hero was that girl that showed up, Elizabeth. She's the one that fixed things."

He sighed, and laid his hand gently on the side of her face. "Babe, babe, babe, you ask if I'm bitter like you think I wasn't, before."

Of course. How was that not clear to her? That was ... that was what lurked behind all of his caustic jokes. That was the chip sitting on his shoulder. He couldn't be Jeff, so he'd be Joker.

It was heartbreakingly clear in that instant. Her eyes held his -- where was the blue? She couldn't see it. Maybe it was too dark, up here -- and she felt something inside her snap.

This time, when she reeled back in, it was so that she could hold him.

It felt nice to be held, and comforted, after everything, and especially since she seemed to be trying to heal a lifetime's worth of pain in a single hug... but... well, there were more important things. After a little bit he pulled away. "Thank you. I mean that, thank you. But... I'm fine. As fine as I'll ever be. and I don't... This was about you, here, right now."

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The Roof, Saturday Evening

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