Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Papa theres a monster under my bed." She climbed into his lap and tucked herself into his chest. She rested on the rise of his round stomach and clung to her father's knit sweater.

"Principessa," he rumbled affectionately, removing his reading glasses and setting them with his crossword on the table, "there is no such thing as monsters."

"But I saw..." She tucked her head into his chin, staring at her hands tangled in the lage edging of her night gown. "It was shadowy and.."

He chuckled and scooped her into his arms like she was a babe. She giggled but turned to the warmth of him. He gave her a flurry of kisses to her cheeks and nose until she squirmed. "Papas protect their bambine from monsters. Until one day a principe comes to save her."

She didn't look happy with that, face wrinkling in distress under the perfectly brushed dark hair her mother had spent precious time on before tucking her in. She'd barely been in bed ten minutes before she ended up with father again.

"I don't need a principe."

And Papa laughed. "Well then, bella, you tell the monster to ahh..." Sometimes he still couldn't think of the right way to phrase things but at the same time, never really taught her italian because he wanted her to be a normal American. "You say to i monstri, 'BACK OFF!' and you punch him straight in the nose, yes?"

She was happier with that answer but somehow the fear was still there. She knew it was real and it was always waiting there.



The water streamed over her, hot and hard, stripping her body of the accumulated sweat and grime of the mission. Free of makeup and jewelry, of all the trappings that turned Concetta into Cee, she absorbed the heat and willed it shake from her the cold paranoia that still lingered in the back of her mind. So rarely had she felt true fear, true paranoia, and now there was a loss of control. That was possibly the worst of all, trapped in a body where you are merely a passenger. Finding your actions dictated by shifting voices or altered images. Cee prided herself on her control, over her self possessed power. Even the shared dreamings were easy, much more black and white, because in the end she could say 'that wasn't real'.

In waking life, when the world around you twists, could you really claim what is real and what isn't?

Cee blew water from her lips in a frustrated spray, running her aromatic bath poof over her skin, pink and vulnerable like some creature loose of the protection of it's shell. The water pounded on her back as she tried to shake the lightning strike she'd felt, right in her gut, when Harrison had struck her. She touched there and found no wound, no mark, nothing to even indicate it had happened. On the mission, there on the spot, she'd snapped out of it and put herself back together. She'd been able to continue as if nothing had happened.

You worry your thoughts were not so far from truth? Snap's gravelly voice trembled in her mind and Cee snarled in immediate reaction.
I would not choose you if I wanted to kill you. Your end is my end.

Cee didn't answer, some ineffective punishment, an eye for an eye. She could only fall silent in protest to the weapon who so often gave her the same treatment.

You are foolish. You are a girl. You need to be better.
"I KNOW!" She exploded, bath poof ending up being ripped in half. Poor bath poof.
Your enemy is everyone. Everything.
"I know." She said softer, conscious that because Snap spoke so little, that she hadn't mastered talking to her mentally yet.
Every comrade is a new enemy. Every bedfellow is a stepping stone. Nothing is real.
It was the first thing she'd ever said that made sense and Cee knew it would be the last she heard from Snap in a while.

She felt the weapon's presence encircling her like always. She was reminded of a man she used to be with, an older friend of her father who wanted to try all the kinks. He had beautiful black eyes and a shy smile. His wife was boring and plain and Concetta was daring and welcoming. It was play for her, but she liked him genuinely. Once he'd tried something with ropes from Japan, binding and immobilizing her but he hadn't got it right and they ended up collapsed in a mess of ropes and sweat and laughter. She smiled under the spray of water to remember him. She still had a watch he'd given her.

Snap's weight compressed as a reminder that she was not so frivolous a thing but to Cee it was the first time she'd ever thought anything of the weapon that wasn't negative. Still, the discomfort remained: the restraint that Snap represented, the control over the weapon that she lacked.

Concetta slapped the handle of the shower and the water stopped, leaving her to drip and collect her things before she stepped out and wrapped her self and her hair up in towels. She was scrubbed and naked and raw. She was the girl who knew she couldn't just punch the monsters in the face, but also knew there was no safety in Papa and that her principe would never come.

She stepped to the mirror and wiped the steam free. It was time for that little girl to go back to bed. Her makeup bag was opened, and the woman slowly and carefully applied every single layer of Cee.