008 - public, voice...word-vomit ahoy

[intofireforever]

I'm glad that's over. It was terrifying. I don't know why I thought it was the owls' doing. It felt nothing like that. That thing seriously messed with my head, and I've had more than enough of that for one lifetime...

...After-lifetime? I don't know. Whatever it should be called. I might have a pulse here, but I don't consider myself alive. No deal I could make here would bring me back in my world, and I think I prefer it that way. The White Lodge is peaceful, and there's no pain there. I've been tormented and abused since the time I was four or five years old. Death is better than that, even death at seventeen. So as terrible as this place can be, I'm grateful for it because it let me ascend to the White Lodge. I don't think I could ever completely hate it here, even after things like this.

Wanda? Are you feeling better now? I know I was screwed up at the time, too, but I still feel like I completely failed you. I miss Paddy, you know. He was a better father-figure to me than my real one. I feel so lost as a warden sometimes and I wish he could give me some advice. I think I'd do better by you if he was here to help, even though he made a big mistake with me that one time. He was mostly right on the mark and knew exactly what I needed.

I'm sorry I'm not as helpful to you as I feel I could be, but I really, really care about you. I'm doing my very best.

Comments

[bitteraftertaste]

I'm sorry, Laura.

[intofireforever]

Thanks. I appreciate that. It wasn't your fault, though. You didn't burn that thing.

I'm sorry I was such a shitty student in that breach flood. I wasn't that way back in my world. I got straight A's in everything.

[bitteraftertaste]

That wasn't your fault, either. I wish I understood what the point of exposing people to things like that.

[intofireforever]

I don't think there necessarily is a point. Some people just love to cause chaos.

[bitteraftertaste]

I don't find that very comforting.

[scarlet_discord]

I'm okay, I'm all right, kind of pissed off, but I'm trying to keep from thinking about wanting to kick the ass of whoever poisoned us all. Because I don't want to be like Magneto. That's where I was headed. Crazy, murderous and obsessed with revenge. It's true. If we hate hard enough we become the thing we hate.

Gaheris got me out. He's yet another one of those guys I wish I could come back for in a damn time machine after I drop all my baggage. There's like five of 'em here. Honey, you don't even know. Couple girls too. Not as much my thing but I'm cool with it. Did I tell you about that Flood where I fell out of, like, three closets at once?

Anyway, he got me out, but there was some danger because I thought he was Magneto and that he'd killed Rhade and I almost...except I didn't. I chose not to.

Have you ever thought of visiting Paddy? Because I want to visit lots of people here. Once I've, you know, healed up and stuff.

First I have to figure out where I'm going, though. I don't know what to do about that. I keep looking but I feel kinda lost.

[intofireforever]

I'm bisexual, too. It took me a long time to come to terms with it because BOB made me feel sick and wrong for liking women. I'm still kind of shy about it even though I know I shouldn't be.

I slept with some people here, but not any girls. Dorian Gray--he paid me with opium. Nathan, for letting me stay in his room. Paddy, too, but we were both inmates then. He paid me in cocaine. I don't think I've ever had sex with anyone here that wasn't prostitution.

I'm so proud of you for not killing Rhade when you thought he was Magneto. That puts you so much closer to graduation. You hate him, but you can control your desire to hurt him, and that's more important. You don't need to forgive him to get out of here. This is a big step for you.

Paddy deserves to spend his time with the daughter he brought back to life with his deal. And wherever you choose to go, don't pick Twin Peaks. It'll never be safe there.

[scarlet_discord]

[Her face darkens] Like that guy is in any position to judge anyone for anything ever. I think...and this is just out of my ass, so take it with a bigass boulder of salt if you want...I think that sometimes the best way to get back at people who hurt you is to figure out how to just shamelessly be whoever the fuck you are. It goes beyond "living well is the best revenge". People who hurt you keep winning if you carry the pain around. If you let it go, and just work on having a better life, you win.

Shy? That's cool, so am I. I mean, some people are overt about their sexuality, and it's cool that they can do that, but I'm still sorting myself out, so I'm just not that confident about it.

I mean, right now it's kind of a moot point because I don't date right now anyway. Nobody needs my baggage to that extent. Yeah, you and Steph and Gaheris and a bunch of my friends had to deal with it, and I gotta figure out a way to make it all up to you. But really what I want to do is get over...all this crap...so I can meet you guys again and be an actually good friend and stuff. Only then do I think I should be thinking about dating or being heavily social.

I just feel like I've got a million things to sort out in my life, and I can't figure out where to go to do it.

[She pauses at the admission of prostitution, and swallows a lump in her throat.] I can't judge. I just know I pushed myself into sex too soon because I was looking for protection, and that was hard enough to deal with.

I guess everybody's got memories that make them flinch when they think of them. Everybody interesting, anyway. But there's no damn point in being ashamed of yourself or beating yourself up. You just don't do those things anymore.

[She thinks about the incident with Gaheris.] I thought that he'd killed Gaheris. I've had the biggest crush on him ever since like two weeks after I met him, and...well, it was really vivid. I guess I got more of a dose than most people. But...

Murder is murder, even if the fucker deserves to die a hundred times. I didn't kill him not because he deserved to be spared, but because of who I am.

I don't forgive him. I forgive my brother for a lot of stuff, but I don't trust him, and I know he won't miss me. But even if I could somehow go home and make a life for myself, I'd have to heal first. I heard about that other Wanda Maximoff, you know. How she went crazy and hurt everyone. That can't be me.

Don't go to Twin Peaks? Okay. Sometimes I wonder if I should try for Middle Earth or something. You know, some place where high aspirations still count for something.

[intofireforever]

He's not a person. He's more like a force of nature. He's existed since the beginning of everything, and he's been taking hosts since humans have been around. He got into my father's body the first time they met. I don't blame myself anymore for becoming a prostitute, because the fact that I kept him out of my body is...something I can still hardly believe I managed to do.

I don't want you to make it up to me. There's nothing to make up for, really. Wardens are supposed to deal with their inmate's baggage. I dumped mine all over Paddy without a second thought, so I knew what I was signing up for when I made my deal. I'm thankful I get to help someone like you.

This is why it's such a big step for you. You restrained yourself from killing him even though you don't forgive him, even though you think he deserves to suffer. I think he deserves to suffer too, to tell you the truth. But that you can step back and say you won't have a hand in it is huge, really huge. You won't turn into that other Wanda as long as you can do that. You won't let a desire to make him pay consume you, I know you won't. You're strong.

[scarlet_discord]

Well...okay, I'm just saying. I would.

[She thinks about this.]

I think I've realized that it's not even him I hate, at the end of the day. He's not the start of the misery in my family, he's just a carrier. I can't forgive him, but...I can keep from becoming a carrier myself. Of...it. The family demon, I guess you could call it.

private

[fridgetothefire]

I'm a lot like him. All the ways you said - more than I've let you see. More than I wanted to think about, but I really am.

I'm so glad you're not going to be like that. It's awful.

private

[scarlet_discord]

You gotta get away from it. I'm serious. It's the same poison that lives in him and makes him such a monster. No matter what incarnation. Seriously, if I hadn't backed off on wanting to kill him I would have murdered the guy I have the biggest crush on on the Barge when I was tripping on that horrible smoke. That's the kinda stuff that happens. You can't change the past, but...I put it aside for the sake of a better future. I don't care if anybody understands.

I know that the one here isn't my father or your father but he's a Magneto and he can't be trusted. I don't care how huffy and offended he gets because I avoid him. Everything is not about his pride and his feelings. My sanity and yours, they come first.

private

[fridgetothefire]

Wanda...it's too late for me, okay? It has been for a long time.

[Her voice is fractured, full of raw edges.]

I killed my sister too. Years before Magneto, I never could have struck him without manipulating everyone around her death. She was the only person left who cared for me at all, but she still sided with them and I was trapped and I was so furious and betrayed and lost, I didn't know what else to do.

And you can't - you can't ever undo that, you can't ever not be the person who did that again.

I didn't escape it, but you can, you are. Don't ever let that go, please.

[love_slave]

It's better than where I was, too, but that's hard to say.

[Also, you're talking a lot too, Laura.] The White Lodge?

[intofireforever]

It's the opposite of the Black Lodge, where I was before I graduated. It's beautiful there. I guess it's like what most people would think of as 'heaven', though that's not quite right. It's hard to explain, because when I'm there I exist at a whole bunch of times and places at once. I died at 17 and turned 18 here but I can't even be sure how old I am anymore, especially because I was both 17 and 42 at the same time in the Black Lodge, since I existed there just before my death and 25 years after it.

My cousin Maddy is there, too. BOB killed her for looking almost exactly like me. I'm glad she isn't alone there anymore. We spend a lot of time together now, which is great because we can read each other's thoughts--almost like our brains are connected. We're both psychic, but her powers are a lot weaker than mine.

[love_slave]

[She has no idea how that all works, but she remembers her stories and picks up on the psychic bit.]

What is your deal for?

[intofireforever]

BOB took over Agent Cooper's body. He's the man who solved my murder, and now he's trapped in the Black Lodge. My deal is to save him.

[yeahscience]

It's good to get reminded not everyone hates it here. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be here for at least the next twenty years or so, so I guess it's, like... better to start looking at the positives now.

[intofireforever]

There are a lot worse places in the living world. A lot less safe places, too, which is kind of hard to swallow with all the dangerous floods and ports. I got strangled by a zombie in one port. It had a really long tongue and wrapped it around my neck and pulled me up the side of a building. But I haven't been abused here, so I'll take the potential zombies over my town...

[yeahscience]

A lot of your stories are seriously gross, just so you know.

...It's like the worst horror movie ever, 'cause first I'm grossed out by what you just said, or that time you turned into a freaky demon thing, and then I think about the fact that your life is that messed up and it gets me seriously down.

[intofireforever]

I'm sorry. I lived through a lot of gross things, so a lot of my stories are going to be disgusting.

I can't turn into a demon, but I'm not sure what you mean because you never told me. Sometimes the residue BOB left on my soul comes out and I look and act spooky. What did I look like?

[darknessb4me]

The living have no perspective anyway.

You worry me.

[intofireforever]

It's hard to have a perspective on something that doesn't make any sense. Death isn't anything like I was taught in church, that's for sure. I still sort of believe in God or something like him, but he's not the Sunday school kind.

Why do I worry you?

[darknessb4me]

I have a very vague idea of what Earth's religion is about, but it doesn't seem very useful if your priests can't heal people.

I don't want you to vanish before you can go back into the Light. I assume that's where the White Lodge is. We don't know where the people that get taken from here go.

[intofireforever]

There are many religions. And priests aren't doctors or anything.

I'd just go back to the White Lodge; I don't have anywhere else to go. But the point is moot because I'm not going anywhere until I've done everything I can for Wanda.