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 Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 5:51 pm
Difference of Self She dreams about mirrors, and the face in the mirror isn’t plain old Ivy Sutors; it’s brave, powerful Sailor Warhol, tiara on her forehead and bows on her sleeves and a smile on her lips, because she’s strong, she’s everything Ivy can be. Warhol takes her hand and guides her into the mirror, and suddenly she looks out, and it’s the Senshi out there, not Ivy -- and she’s trapped in the mirror, trapped trapped trapped, and her not-quite reflection whispers ‘is this how it has to be?’ and puts her hand out, palm flat, eyes resigned -- and she turns to walk away, leaving Ivy reaching out hopelessly --
Ivy jerks awake, sweating and breathing heavy. At first she thinks about the way transforming makes her feel comfortable, like a warm hug; but then she thinks about the meaty thud of the white cat’s head hitting the pitcher, and the dull blankness in Buddingtonite’s eyes after she used her attack, and the bloodlust in Megiddo’s face - she staggers to the bathroom and throws up, noting only distantly that it’s five AM. She can’t go back to sleep now, can she? She can’t write about that dream, her parents read her journals, the first rule of any superhero team is that your alter ego keeps people safe and unknowing. Her mouth tastes like bile, and she brushes her teeth so hard her gums bleed; and when she spits, there’s blood in the sink. She doesn’t want to hurt people. But she keeps thinking about it.
That day, in Ceramics, she makes the symbol of Saturn on the pot she’s working on. The teacher asks, and Ivy passes it off as a passing thought about astrology, but the image won’t get out of her head. And she’s calm and quiet on the outside, but there’s a knot in the back of her throat, and her henshin pen sits in her backpack like a symbol of the grave and Ivy is ******** scared.
She sleeps badly, that night.
(The next morning, Ivy Sutors puts her henshin pen somewhere safe, and doesn’t touch it for a week. But she wears a bit of red and gold, and thinks of it as her personal struggle.
If Sailor Warhol isn’t her, because she’s not brave enough, why should Ivy stop trying? She can be brave. She wants to be brave. She wants, so very desperately, to be brave.)
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:14 pm
rearrange it Ivy asks her mother for self-defense classes, the morning after Leucite hurts her. (Nothing's broken. She makes up a cover story: she was mugged, they wouldn't believe she didn't have a wallet, left when she proved she didn't have one. Description? Oh, she was so scared, she didn't know at all.) Her mother eats it up. (Better to lie than to say 'I need to know how to save my own life because I'm a magical warrior', after all.) Whispers 'oh my poor baby', tells her 'don't go out at night', tells her 'you need to call me' - but eventually concedes to signing Ivy up for classes in a few weeks.
She doesn't go out at night and patrol for nearly a month. She doesn't go out at all. She goes home immediately, she works on her schoolwork, and Ivy stays up as late as she can and doesn't dream at all. Her journal is anything but empty - her parents worry about her, tell her 'if anything's going on you can talk to us' - she says ...no, dad, nothing's going on at all, and they believe her and Ivy doesn't think about being magical until she wakes up crying at four AM. Then she brushes her teeth until her gums are raw and brushes her hair out of a messy bedhead state, pulls a blanket over her head, and reads Animorphs and Harry Potter until either she falls back asleep and stops thinking or her parents wake her up for school.
She doesn't text Keren. She wakes up at 4 AM and gets halfway through a text and deletes it. She doesn't text Keren.
She thinks about a man's throat crunching under her throat and throws up, and she goes back to sleep.
Ivy doesn't think about her henshin pen, sitting in a little black jar (three years old, one of her first projects, not thrown - she hadn't been throwing yet - but still soft and even) at her nightstand, hidden amongst pens. She puts it in her closet. She goes to school, she smiles at her teachers, and gets told her grades are improving.
She tells her mother she isn't worried, she's rearranged her lifestyle, that was one time. She'll be ok. She doesn't need that. Her father clucks his tongue and asks if she's okay, really, she's not looking very alright as of late; and Ivy nods, says don't worry about me, it's fourth quarter, English is stressing me out. (It's not a lie. Not really.) It won't happen again, I'm sorry I made you worry, I'm not stupid enough to get hurt.
She doesn't text Keren.
She doesn't text anyone.
Her parents are happy.
(She picks up her henshin pen and walks out the door as soon as she gets home, and tries to remember how to jump.)
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:01 pm
it’s not cowardly to run away Ivy wakes up in a cold sweat.
She does this more and more often, nowadays; waking up with her hair plastered to her forehead and her hands knotted in the pillow. It’s just jitters, right? Nothing more. Her patrols have been successful and sparce - scared off a Lieutenant here and there, killed a youma or two (simple beasts, most of them; when their hunger is turned into fear, she can easily take care of them), and then she goes home and sleeps. It’s not enough. There are dark bags under her eyes that no amount of concealer can fix, and her hair is frizzing up.
Dear diary; this is written even though I haven’t touched you in a while, because I’m scared. I’m trying. I’m trying really hard. My history teacher, Mr. Bernard, is impressed with me. And I’m trying. But I’ve almost been late for school so many times, and there has to be a way to be both
both that and be me.
I don’t know. I don’t remember my dreams very much lately.
She closes the journal, slides it under her pillow; and faces the day with orange juice and waffles. Blueberry. Orange juice, with pulp in. The little details keep her grounded. She could write a goddamn thesis statement on how she stares at her food, lately.
Things, of course, begin to go downhill when she falls asleep in the middle of lunch, and Ivy wants to cry. There’s the scolding - she’s heard it before - by a lunch monitor, who wakes her up and says the next class hasn’t started yet, but she has to run run run - well. Warhol powers up less than five minutes after she leaves the doors of Meadowview, and she grabs her backpack and sulks in the park until the metaphysical color-signature of a Lieutenant begins to ping. This one is: brown, black, and gold, and it almost smells like incense. (Warhol takes out a notebook and a pen and notes the facts, and when the signature gets closer, she runs and doesn’t stop until she gets home because there is a time!! and a place!! for fights.) Ivy opens the door to her bedroom and pants for breath, and then she makes herself a bowl of salad and starts typing an essay.
If she doesn’t think too hard about it, it can almost seem like there’s nothing magical. And sometimes that helps. Warhol’s patrols are going well, yes; she won’t chase anything stronger than she is, and prefers to shy away from anything that is white - those are Senshi, swirled through with white that’s sweet like vanilla ice cream; the more powerful they are, maybe their auras are stronger? There’s no way to be sure. (Cybele felt like mint and lavender, both scent and color, and the feel of antlers and the hiss of air. Less vanilla than her own. She hasn’t seen Megiddo for a while, but the Knight’s is cold steel and the scent of water - well, if water had a scent - she thinks a little about encompassing walls. Knights don’t feel like white at all, she thinks, but Warhol - slash - Ivy has only met Megiddo and Glitnir so far: there’s never really a good time to check. Secrecy, privacy; the first rules of being a superhero.)
But, hey, it could be worse, Ivy Sutors thinks! She could be dead.
She could be dead.
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:02 pm
i didn’t do this to hurt you Warhol sinks down and whimpers behind a tree. She can feel the Senshi aura approaching - joyful, pastel - and she really isn’t in the mood to deal with anyone else right now who might scold her, not when there’s stupid things to worry about like grades and ‘if I get the flu do I still need to take my finals’. There’s no time. When the aura leaves - maybe it was two minutes, maybe it was twelve - she starts to walk and then there’s someone there, freckled, small, chubby. Warhol knows this girl. Warhol knows this girl as much as she doesn’t know her, which is about a 50/50 split either way; but more on the 75/25 split, she’ll reflect in time. Zinnia Something (well, it’s not something, but her last name might begin with S and that’s close enough) - friendly, shy, and far too compassionate to interact with right now, because Zinnia is from Knightside and she doesn’t think the girl has talked to Ivy more than once in her life. And that was part of a class-ordained survey.
It’s fortunate, then, isn’t it; that Warhol isn’t Ivy at all? A wave hello - “Hi! I’m Zinnia, but you can call me Zee - ” and she lets herself listen to the babbling of a middle schooler and smile. “...so, um, can you help me find my phone? I put it down and I swear it was right around here!” A nod of agreement, and the two are on a brief search; and then it’s been twenty minutes and Warhol notices a flicker of glass underneath her feet. (It makes the girl’s day; she beams bright and twirls her hair and does a cartwheel away. Hmph. Little monkey.)
She wants to leave. Warhol (and the Ivy underneath the fuku, too) is jealous, now. And then there’s a sound, a yell, someone else crying out; and she doesn’t care, she wants to care but she doesn’t care, because they’re adults! Whoever those two are, they can sort their own feelings out. Ivy wishes she was worried, and Warhol knows she has more to worry about; and the fastest way to make it home is in go-go boots and careful rooftop leaps. No, she’s not sorry. It didn’t sound serious. It didn’t sound serious. It didn’t.
Dear diary, Ivy starts out in red pen, and switches back to black.
Dear diary - There’s no need for me to be formal. I don’t like doing it. But I thought I heard someone getting hurt today, and I was scared, and I didn’t help them. And I helped a girl find her phone, but I was jealous, because she was happy.
I don’t think I’m happy. Well. Ivy’s trying. I’m Ivy, so I’m trying. But at least I’m not Ivy 24/7; I have a few hours where I’m something else entirely.
That’s satisfactory. If her parents read, they’ll think she’s talking about her dreams, even though dreamless sleep has become the norm nowadays (the coma epidemic was years ago and she wasn’t part of it, but Ivy still wonders!); but no - it’s an easy way to think about it. Warhol doesn’t equal Ivy; Warhol isn’t just a costume that poor little Ivy Sutors puts on. Warhol is brave, and Warhol is strong, and...
Ivy, then, finally realizes that there’s a reason the name Warhol sounds familiar. Andy Warhol - or Andrew Warhola. Maybe there’s a reason behind this. But she’s tired and her journal looks so inviting; and within five minutes she’s out, drooling, on the pages. Her parents are out - they come home, they tuck her into bed, and they never say a word to her about the journal. It’s better that way.
It’s better that way.
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Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 6:14 pm
the sound and the fury She's not angry. She's really not. It's just that she had been so angry, so angry, and her hands were covered in dirt - and she'd broken a pencil without thinking about it and then had to take a minute to think about when she'd gotten angry. December? It'd been after December, then, when she'd started patrolling so heavily. Maybe. Ivy isn't sure when things happen; lately she stays up late and loses track of time and works herself too hard on anything she can. The devotion and dedication is something Ivy wasn't sure she had, and it's not that she's complaining, it's just -- well. It's just that she isn't sure it's all that terribly good for her.
Being a defender of the peace is hard work, after all. But it's to keep people safe, and to keep her parents safe. And all the best superheroes (she thinks Superman, Batman, the like) have good public personas; so Ivy will try her hardest to be smart. She'll figure out her sophomore year course load when the time comes, figure out the best way to balance it and be as intelligent as she can try to be, but she has all of summer vacation and finals to realize - before Ivy thinks too hard about it, she's inside only as long as it takes to get her henshin pen and out the door, because maybe there's a youma. Maybe that will stop her being so angry.
Maybe.
Sailor Warhol climbs her way over the rooftops, fast and sloppy, and sits and stares at the dark blue afternoon sky. She's so sick of this. Maybe she'll tell her parents this summer when there's no school to worry about, but how do you phrase that? "Mom, dad, I'm a magical girl?" Who would believe that? She wouldn't have believed it back in November, at least; but things suddenly get a lot more reasonable when you're confronted with them straight to your face. It's silly, it's preposterous, but it's a normalized part of her life to jump around the rooftops now - and it's one that's a little more comfortable than being tired and lonely. The fuku is comfortable and fits like a second skin, like she was born to wear these clothes; and even if her magic isn't reliable, Sailor Warhol knows - she believes - this is what was meant to be and happen. This is good. This is how life should be, and god, she loves the excitement of it.
It's just that -- it's just that sometimes she feels like her entire life is strangling her. But that's probably okay, right? That's probably okay.
(There's an aura far off on her left, barely noticeable, but it just makes her so angry. So very angry. It's a Lieutenant - and without a moment's thought, she's springing up and away, to do what she's meant to do.)
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Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 7:30 pm
contra bonos mores
(warning: violence, death, warhol generally losing her s**t) There's nobody around when she gets there, panting and dusty from a missed step, but a Negaverse Lieutenant (in horror, Warhol realizes that this girl is her age, could even go to Meadowview, and she's suddenly very thankful for the things happening in her life) and -- well. Another girl, rounding out the mid-teenage trio; but there's a hand stuck right inside her chest and as Warhol watches in quiet horror it's extracted - painfully - slowly - the third slumps -
she tackles the Lieutenant to the ground, teeth bared in rage, and gets an elbow to the stomach to her trouble. "What the hell? You just killed her, you - you -" Warhol's lost for words, and she tries to sign; but her arms are crushed down and she's pushing the taller Lieutenant to the ground (her aura is overpowering this close, like the taste of iron and shitty lime gumballs; and Warhol just feels anger anger anger and she's lost control of her <******** MOODS) and there's that one little detached bit of her mind that whispers well, if i was a lesbian, i'd probably know now wouldn't i.
The Lieutenant spits in her face and tries to struggle out towards the starseed, sent flying to the ground - she knows she should use her magic, knows it certain, but she's too close. So instead Warhol recalls what she's looked up, the ways she's realized how to hold herself to not die, and punches the short blonde in the face - she gets another knee to the stomach for her trouble, knows her tights are running from skidding on the ground. "You're Chaos," she hisses out, "there's no hope for you, girl -" and to her credit, the blonde shrugs and mutters back "Join the winning team and fix up the people that hurt you" through a bruised lip.
The moment of hesitation Warhol suffers is all Lieutenant Assholeite needs; she pushes the shorter senshi off, knees up, but doesn't summon a weapon. But that's what Warhol wants, too; she stumbles up and backwards, grabs ahold of the wall for balance and whispers "Warhol Mood Reversal" like her life counts on it -
She plunges it into the Lieutenant's chest when the blonde's dusting herself off, watches as her expression changes to horror and her shoulders go up, and grabs the Negaverser's throat and squeezes, pushes, chokes - god, she's so angry, she's so ********> angry because she is JUSTIFIED in being so - the other's hands go up, pull at Warhol's, and she pushes her to the ground and stomps and pushes down.
...Something breaks.
...Warhol picks up the starseed and puts it back in the victim's chest, delicately and quickly...and then runs as fast as she can and doesn't start crying until she makes it at least three blocks away.
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Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2015 9:12 pm
big electric chair Dear diary;
...I’m sorry. I know I haven’t written down a lot lately. But it’s...really complicated. If my parents are reading this, they need to stop reading now; what I’m going to talk about is something I want to tell you guys but not yet. It’s not anything illegal I promise! But...if you’re mom or dad, stop reading.
I’m sorry.
This is also if anything ever happens to me, okay? Because if anything happens...this will probably be why I don’t come home. I don’t know when I’m going to tell you. Hopefully it will be before you ever read this, but I’m just
scared.
Really, really scared.
There’s...this whole thing about the gang wars, and the comas...magic is real. I’ve known that for six months. And I’m a God Damn superhero. I know. Anyone reading this who doesn’t understand...it sounds silly, but. It’s true. I have a magical transformation pen and stuff, and a lot of the time since December, when I say I’m busy or chilling out I’m patrolling the city. And I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of. I’m not going to talk about them...they’re nothing really bad, I promise, but if you’re not part of this whole Senshi roundabout thing you wouldn’t really understand.
My name is Ivy Sutors. I’m 15 years old. I’m a superhero: or, to put it in the right terms I guess, I’m a Senshi. It’s japanese for fighter or soldier, and I guess that’s what we are: as far as I can tell, all of us Senshi are fighting a force of chaos called the Negaverse. That’s all I really want to talk about right now, too.
I’m fifteen years old. I like pottery and art in general, and I like the color red, but not that much. I like sleeping but I don’t dream very much lately, and I am constantly scared out of my mind that someone’s going to find out. It’s June fifth today, June fifth of 2015, and I want to tell my parents within the month (and they better not be reading this!!) about what I do, now that school’s out. They’ll never see this journal, and I hope they don’t have to. This is just...I’m the only person who’s going to see this. And when I finish writing, I’m going to hide this page.
Stay inside, civilians. Please. Don’t get hurt. Don’t get changed. If I wasn’t lucky, I’d be dead, and I don’t want to think about it. If I don’t think about the fact I could die, I go out more, and I help people more. It’s what I have to do to help.
But I am very, very scared of what I’m doing and what I could do, okay?
It’s alright.
I have to stay strong, and I have to stay brave.
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Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:46 pm
Ivy goes home and sleeps and stops dreaming. She doesn’t touch her journals any more, much, she doesn’t really touch the interpretation books -- her dreams aren’t metaphors. Not any longer. Sometimes she closes her eyes and sees the dead Lieutenant, head at an angle, and startles awake and pushes her foot down down down -- and well, then, she tries to stop sleeping. Her parents don’t ask. They think it’s stress. They think pushing her too hard has hurt her. (It’s not that at all, but she’s tired, so tired, and she hurts. Sometimes it gets so bad that she can’t look at people, and she hides her face in a book or the pillow of her crossed arms until it goes away. Mostly she doesn’t think about it and - it’s not like - it’s not like the girl will stop being dead, anyways. That’s how she rationalizes it. That’s how she rationalizes it.
Maybe they were Saint Magdalena’s girls. Maybe they were Crystal. She never wants to see either of them again, alive or dead, ever ever ever in her life and it’s selfish she knows - but she doesn’t think she could deal with that. Not ever.)
When she dreams, then, she dreams deep, gets her mind stuck in the recesses she never wants to think about in the waking hours -- flowers of ash, caves of gems, broken paintings and halls of mirrors. She hates it all. She hates it all. Warhol doesn't want to think about any of that: she wants to think about helping people, as selfish as that is. And she knows it's so very, incredibly selfish. Superheroes aren't selfish, so she's not allowed to be. Mostly she is so incredibly goddamn scared when she's Ivy, not Warhol, and that's not worthwhile. Megrez - no, Luca - didn't judge her. But Luca is older, and it's okay to be as a senior. A freshman? Nothing is open to you. Nothing is given, and all Ivy wants to do is help people but she's so scared, she's so scared -
In her dream, the bridge collapses under her and she doesn't even have time to scream before the air rushes out of her lungs and her everything begins to hurt.
Ivy wakes up with the blankets tangled around her throat, eyes wide and terrified, and contemplates the virtue of putting off telling her parents by another few weeks or so. That sounds pretty appealing. Maybe she just...won't...go patrolling for a few days. A few weeks. Maybe she'll go out next weekend and just sit in the breeze, let it blow her hair, run from anything that isn't a youma because -- regardless of what people have said, regardless of what she knows she has to do -- the idea of killing needlessly makes her sick. So sick. And she hates
hates
hates it.
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 8:44 pm
Ivy Sutors was officially declared missing in late July of 2015. Anyone who knew her is encouraged to come forward.
Sailor Warhol has been corrupted into the Negaverse and has taken a new civilian identity, under the name of Poppy Anania-Sedgwick.
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Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 8:44 pm
i'll name this later whoops (backdated to very late july 2015) The first time -- the time Warhol doesn't remember, because she's only been out for half a day, sweating and shaking -- she wakes up and screams and clutches hands to her chest, shaking, feverish, and begins to cry harshly with huge, gulping breaths,. She's lost something. Something massive. She'll be damned if she knows what it is, but something huge is gone from her mind like it never was, and it feels like her lungs aren't working and she looks down to see her own hand in her chest, the tip of a crystal showing --
(She passes out, then, and her starseed is released from her own limp hand back into the hollow of her chest, pressed-black fingerprints quickly vanishing. Another thought gone, another thought vanished, another promise (I'd rather die than join them) evaporated into wherever things go when they are no longer true.)
The second time (or the first time, for all that she can remember); Warhol wakes up still shaking. She sits up and clutches her stomach, retches, but nothing comes up or out (it feels like there should be something -- but what? it feels like something dark should come out of her (gone, as soon as the thought is reached for, gone too quick) and not settle in her chest where she feels oddly light). There's a woman with hair paler than Warhol's own in the room, eyes like a river in spring and all in black, and as soon - even sooner - than Warhol sees her does she feel the aura - almost paralyzing. Warm, though. Comforting.
The woman talks. Says her name is Laurelite. Asks if Warhol remembers much of anything (nothing, but her name and her age, her birthday, the things you could learn off a form); doesn't seem particularly phased when the answer is a choked-out no. Tells her things that are oddly comforting in their formality. Says she'll get Warhol some books, says little but says a lot the same way.
She leaves, and Warhol sleeps. (Her dream that night - day? - time has no meaning, there, when there's no sky and the other beds are dusty with age and disuse - has a tall woman with purple hair, faceless, loud and guiding. Nothing more. Nothing else is clear. An orange uniform, maybe, glittering flashes of gemstones, of paint - but the rest is lost to time and to waking.) There's books when she wakes, art history, dream interpretation, and even a water bottle with a plastic bag of medicine for her stomach -- it's. It's calming. Warhol thinks she likes it.
She takes the first book, opens to page 1, and begins to read.
(She doesn't hit upon what will soon be her new names until page 192 and the first book, respectively, but that's not for a long time. Before she even hits either of those, Sailor Warhol begins to explore the citadel she currently resides in -- and oh, oh, what a place it is, melding black stone and crystal with hand-carved blocks, undamaged and unbowed by age. It's beautiful. She could fall asleep in it, and oh-so-often she does, drifting off with only her own hair as a pillow, and even though she doesn't have much it's nice, is what it is. It's just nice.)
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Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 8:18 am
rapture through misotheism What amount of time had passed, Poppy - no, no, Chrysocolla - she couldn't say. She slept most of the time; there were no windows in her cell, the only thing signifying the passing of time how absolutely goddamn raw her wrists were under the manacles (couldn't see to tell if there was any actual problem, no; maybe it was infected, maybe it was fine, maybe it was a scrape or two but who the hell knew) and when people might come in and see her. Once, twice. When she asked for Sylvite and got no answer, when she thought she heard Amphitrite's voice whisper into her ears from around the hallway --
Maybe she was going mad.
Maybe it was waking hallucinations.
Maybe it had just been a particularly realistic dream.
(Oh god, christ, poor Sylvite -- Sylvite didn't deserve this. Sylvite hadn't done anything wrong. Chrysocolla might have deserved it a little, a little bit, given how many starseeds she'd stolen - how often she'd put on a hoodie and hidden her cracks, her Rapunzel-legacy of seafoam hair, and she'd made idle conversation with schoolgirls and stolen energy from them -- it wasn't wrong it wasn't the negaverse was correct in all things -- but Alexa. Sylvite. A Lieutenant.
When they got out of here, Chrysocolla determined, Sylvite would find whoever had taken down her and Sylvite and snap their starseed between her teeth like so much dust. Chew it alive, chew it whole. They didn't deserve mercy.)
One Senshi, two Senshi, a Knight who felt like his aura might make her go mad with the ugly-sweet of it, over-spoiled and over-rancid with glitterglow leaking through to his skin: they didn't mean anything. (Not even when her cheek bruised, or the circumstances contrived for her nose to bleed so rapidly she felt light-headed.) She could pick them out of a lineup, wanted to reach out and rip --
Someone screamed. Someone laughing. Men, women, boys, girls; everything melded - it wasn't worth being awake. She went back to sleep again, until someone woke her up for interrogation (and wasn't that a hoot, wasn't that just so pleasant; the Negaverse would come for them, it had to, this had happened to Amphi oh god oh god oh God - ) her ears stung and dried blood stuck to her lips. Maybe this was what death felt like: much more like a waking nightmare than anything real.
Wake up, give an answer that's just vague enough for satisfaction, go back to sleep. And so the story goes for a week, on and on -- Chrysocolla never stops keeping an ear out. She'll know who's here. She'll know who's here, and she watches the people by her cell, scribing their faces into her mind like every other a*****e in this place - she'll kill them. She'll find them on patrol and she'll kill them. It's barely even a question.
At least she hasn't seen Kerberos. She already wants to rip him limb from limb. But he wouldn't be here, would he? Not his speed, kidnapping, torture.
At least there's that? Maybe?
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Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:55 pm
run, little rabbitheart Chrysocolla figured that -- well, she was definitely going mad by this point, really. What did it matter what she figured? She wasn't going to make it out.
Her lips were dry - spit only went so far when something awful was clawing itself up her neck and through her insides -- they'd undone her wrists, when it seemed she wouldn't be violent. Or maybe it was because someone felt bad for doing such things to a teenage girl. Twenty-somethings were alright, weren't they? That was the rule she generally lived by. They were old enough to know what they were doing: there would be no mercy for them.
Twenty minutes after they unchain her hands, leave her in an empty cell with her hair for a pillow, she vomits in the corner until her throat is raw and she swears she can taste blood running through her everything. She only gets a glass of water when she starts to cry, ugly, raw sobs making her eyes hurt -- she misses her sister. She's angry about Sylvite. She's mad as hell but she has no option BUT to take what she's given - because that's the only option she'll get to get out of here, right now.
So she smiles, she mops up her face, and - well. She's not sure how she gets out of there. The story she might tell is: it gets blurry, because after Celsus' visit, most of what she does is sleep over and over and over until real life feels more like a memory. Things tend to get a little blurry, when she does that: the next thing she knows, it's - it must be past midnight and she's being rustled awake, rushed out of her cell - her legs are weak. She teleports as far towards home as she can make it and drops her henshin - good. Her outfit's clean. (Why wouldn't it be?) Her phone is -- it's in her pocket, her wallet -- right there too.
She's too tired to walk home. That teleport took so much out of her - - and this --
She calls an Uber. She has cash.
This is Destiny City. It's half past midnight - nobody asks too many questions.
She - Poppy, not Chrysocolla (as if there's too much of a difference?) stumbles upstairs. Unlocks the door. Goes to her room - falls face-first flat on her bed without undressing and passes out -
School doesn't make much sense. It's a slideshow of unrelated images, unrelated noises - Poppy knows there's more going on than she's processing. But people keep talking, keep moving on up, and it -- hurts -- she wants them to leave her alone and - and - she almost breaks down crying at lunch. (Three cookies, a stock-supply sandwich, and a bottle of Mountain Dew is a legitimate lunch. Right? It's close? Close-ish.) When she goes home -- well. That's the time to cry right into Desdemona's arms, to hold her sister close, to hold her own arms close like they'll disappear.
She'll be stronger next time. (If there is one.)
(That whole rescue attempt? She knows none of it is true. It's a carefully-designed fiction she doesn't think too hard about, because if she thinks about what they did to her sister, her Amphitrite - it'll all fall apart. And she can't have that happen again.)
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Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2016 6:37 pm
You can't see it. But I do. Poppy is - - she's -- she hurts, so much, nowadays. She knows she's been pushing herself too hard, knows maybe she needs to take time off, but no no NO she won't let that happen - the thought of it is a knife in her back, a knee to the gut, rusty-red saws running down the inside of her throat - she picks at her skin until she bleeds.
Red, red, red in the bathtub - the tips of her fingers are ugly-raw. She keeps screwing up on the wheel, lately, her fingers are clumsy and she can't quite get the angle of the spin right. But every time she tries, every time she says "I'll try harder," her eyes burn and steam and rain without stop until she sits down and chokes the tears away to where they won't be a thing anymore. Her lips are shiny and raw and tender from the biting, from where she rips skin off without ever thinking - her nails are dirtied with pencil lead and white blotches -- she hurts all the time, now. She's had to recalibrate her normal.
Her new normal is how much her hands shake, when she thinks about closed-in spaces and her sister crying and - well. No-shaking isn't accessible anymore. She doesn't think it'll ever be again - Sylvite Sylvite Sylvite, god, she let her friend, just a girl (she's just a girl too, but Chrysocolla is her entire identity - Alexa has a family. Has parents. Has a life that isn't all about this, in the end, and she's NOT jealous she's NOT) suffer so bad, suffer, hurt - she'll kill them.. She will. She'll bring them in for corruption, to repay their debt -- or -- she doesn't know what. Stealing starseeds is one thing, to turn them in with quota. But breaking, crushing, for the glitter and the sparkle inbetween her knuckles and inbetween her teeth (her teeth aren't white enough anymore and it's the stupidest damn thing to be upset about but she still scratches at them with her ugly, ugly nails) - everything will be over, and what will take the place of what she's killed? She doesn't kill to eat. She's not like that.
Sometimes she's not human anymore, but hey, but alright - well. That's just the way it is, that's just the price she's paid. She's in too deep and she doesn't know what to do (do Warhol's parents look for her, look for their baby girl? Their troubled, dead baby girl?) except to keep going deeper. Her heart bleeds too much. Poppy knows this, has known this - she feels too much, feels too hard - but but but but but -
Her nails leave precise crescents in her palms, bleached of all color for that half-second of beauty, and it's what she can control. She's the one thing - nobody else is - they're important. And she loves them.
But she doesn't trust them, necessarily, is the thing. It doesn't mean she hates them, just that -- she wants to let all her feelings vomit out through her eyes and bury them in a pot deep, down, below where they can't hurt her, or anyone else, ever again.
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