intofireforever: (can you feel it? can you feel it?)
[personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-01 05:12 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-02 07:11 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (lurk)
From: [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-07 05:49 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-08 06:01 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
I screwed up with Erik Lehnsherr here, Laura. I should have kept to my ideals that I tried to, but I was too messed up, you know? I'll have to figure out how to explain it to him.

Anyway, I don't want to carry around all that hate and vengefulness anymore. It clouds my judgment. Makes me into the kind of person I hate.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-09 05:43 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (darkthoughts)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
I didn't want to be that kind of person. I didn't think I was that kind of person. It just..snuck up on me. But just because your anger is justified doesn't mean your actions are.

It was such an easy trap to fall into.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-12 04:35 pm (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (Default)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
Well, it's accomplished, at least for now. The question is, now what the hell do I do?

private

Date: 2013-02-04 04:19 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (wibble)
From: [personal profile] 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

Date: 2013-02-04 10:59 pm (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] 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

Date: 2013-02-05 03:53 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (oh come *on*)
From: [personal profile] 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.

private

Date: 2013-02-07 05:32 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
[There is a long, long silence as she absorbs this, her face going sickly pale.]

You killed your sister. Your Wanda.

[She literally does not know what to say to this. She hides her face in her hands.]

...oh God, this family...

...is Shakespearean levels of fucked up no matter what world we're from.

[She swallows tears and lifts her chin.]

But you're wrong about it being too late.

private

Date: 2013-02-07 05:52 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (wish you were right)
From: [personal profile] fridgetothefire
We really are. [She laughs, a little bubbling broken sound.] I used to picture Titus looking like Dad.

And I didn't want to hurt her. Mostly. I'm sorry. God, I am.

[She gulps, shoves a hand through her hair.]

I don't understand how you can say that, think that, but. I think it's amazing that you can. You were always the best of us. And I don't know if it's worth anything, but I think Mama would have been really proud of you. I am, even though I don't have the right.

private

Date: 2013-02-08 05:47 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (lurk)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
Look, I believe that you're sorry, because you're not a fucking sociopath, and if there's a way to fix it I would help you find it. Because my Anya didn't even get the chance to live. You're not her, but you're connected to her. And the thing is, now I don't know if she'd have had any kind of a good life if she'd survived. It's forced me to think. About a lot of things.

You say I was the best of us, but there's a me out there who lost her mind one day and committed a horrible crime. And I bullied Pietro. Didn't kill him, but I start to understand why he stopped giving a damn, you know? I did it for information. To get to our father. And because I hated him for being more loyal to him than to me. The only thing that kept me from murdering my father was Pietro's rescuing him at the last moment.

Neither of us are really right in the head, I guess. But that can be fixed, and we both have to fix it somehow. Especially me. I can't become someone who flips out and uses my depowering ability against nearly every mutant on Earth. I don't want to kill my friends or any of that. And neither one of us wants to live mired in the past.

There's this thing, you know, this sort of...demon, almost, or family curse, that tries to infest everyone in the family, all across the multiverse. I spent my life blaming Erik Lehnsherr for it, but the truth is, that thing that lives in us didn't start with him. It started with what was done to our family.

It poisons us. Against each other and against the world. The hatred and bitterness and need for revenge. Erik Lehnsherr is just another carrier. Like me, like you.

I hate it. I don't forgive my father, but taking revenge on him just lets that...thing...dig in deeper. I'd rather reject it, and deal with my own pain. Because otherwise I might...do what that other me did. Or worse.

private

Date: 2013-02-10 07:26 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (ponder)
From: [personal profile] fridgetothefire
[She shakes her head.] If it could be fixed, then it's mine to do, my responsibility. That's - I just have to live with that. Actions have consequences.

Part of me hates that it's more important for you to be sane and healthy than me. I thought I was basically sane, you know, before this started happening. I thought I was in control of myself, and even if I was a terrible person I was at least a deliberate one. But now that I'm pouring my heart out there's all this blood on the floor spelling out that I'm contradictory and twisted and just - poisoned is a good word. I told myself I was driven to do what I did and I was, the circumstances were everything, but I'm still the shape I had to be to get shoved through that mold. I can't pretend that I wasn't made for it, by it, and I don't know how to unmake myself.

You - [she actually laughs, just a little, half a breath] - you sound like you used to be kind of like me. Not, I mean, not as bad, obviously, but willing to hurt people who were close to get to him. I'm kind of glad you were. It doesn't give me hope, exactly, but it makes me more impressed that you've escaped that mindset as much as you have. And you know, it was okay. Or, no, it wasn't, it was wrong and it was callous, but it makes sense. The world scrapes over your soul and you get calluses, that's what happens, they're a reaction and a defense and, and you can decide that you need to not have them to be good but you can't hate yourself fighting back when you had every right to just because you fought the wrong way. Jus in bello is hard as hell when you don't have the most tanks. And hating yourself is part of the poison too, I think.

I don't know what happens in that world, or whether you'd do it or not. I'd depower every mutant on every earth if I could, and I wouldn't even do it out of malice. I don't think people are really capable of maintaining a moral or stable civilization at all, and then you add in powers that abruptly escalate anything and can't neutralized or remotely prepared for without scaring everyone that has them into a paranoid and reactionary froth - I think mutants are going to tear the earth apart, eventually, inevitably.

But hatred will do it faster, and worse. I have to - I want to and I have to stop being this person, but I hate that in order to live with myself I have to metaphorically lay down arms, and none of you are even capable of not being dangerous. It's not even fear. It's just so fucking unfair. And that's pathetic, that's a child's objection and I know it, but there it is.

You don't have to forgive him. You shouldn't, not if you don't want to, forgiveness is grace, is a gift by definition undeserved. But you deserve to care more about your own joy than his punishment. You deserve for your life and your mind to just - just not be about him or the poison or any of it.

private

Date: 2013-02-11 03:48 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (darkthoughts)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
[Wanda swallows a huge lump in her throat, but nods.] There are ways if you choose to.

I...don't...know how close to completely rock solid sane and benevolent I can manage, but I have to manage it. It has to be my first priority. Because I don't want to tear the world apart. I want to be one who helps keep it from being torn. I want you to feel safer around me, not...at risk. I don't want to be a danger to myself and others. I want to be someone you can all count on to make things better, not worse.

When I first came here, they stripped my powers away and I was so vulnerable and scared I didn't know what to do. I hated that so many people were suddenly stronger and more dangerous than I. I was terrified. And bad things happened to me, you know? A lot of bad things.

All I could do was learn to survive without them. I drew a lot of inspiration from the badass normals around. Like Steph and James Bond and Batman. Some of those guys could kick my ass even when I had my powers. And so I found a couple, and asked them to teach me.

I was about thirty pounds underweight, with badly underdeveloped muscles, when I started training. It was not easy. But I stuck with it. It's been...maybe eighteen months. I'm no Sarah Connor, but I do okay.

My powers...I've had them all back about eight months, and for the most part nobody has realized it because I'm not dependent on them anymore. Outside of practice and sculpting, I don't actually use them more than a few times a day. I walk places. I make my pies by hand. I work out without cutting corners. When I get pissed off, I'm more likely to chew someone out or maybe kick them than throw hexes around. Yeah, I may Mary Poppins my chores, but that's only because I have so much to do.

I guess my point is, a lot of the time, I take more after my Mom's side of the family than my Dad's. I don't want to be this high and mighty capeswirling mutant--though capes are cool--except when it's really called for. These last six months, I've been trying to figure out how to use my powers to do stuff like build houses and fix furniture.

You talk about jealousy of my abilities, but...human beings can gain their own abilities in all sorts of ways. The witch who taught me? Human. Most of the wizards here, too. And most of the superheroes. Awesome science guys, cyborgs...put in enough work and you can learn to stand up to almost anything. And...well, it's not like we don't have to put in work ourselves. I sure do. Hours. Daily.

[She shakes her head, fisting away a tear impatiently.] I don't forgive him. I'm done with him forever. But I don't want to waste the energy on hating him. Better to spend it on not being like him.

private

Date: 2013-02-11 06:41 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (gathering storm)
From: [personal profile] fridgetothefire
Capes are not cool. Except for mine, but that's because mine is a trophy, not a garment.

[Anya, we need to talk about your truthvomit priorities.]

I've been scared and vulnerable almost as long as I can remember. The first thing that really happened to me here, Castiel killed me. And suddenly I feel safer than I have since I was four, because if I don't die then there's a limit to what everyone who's stronger and more dangerous can do to me. Because that's always going to be almost everyone. I can't be like Batman. He's teaching me what he can to defend myself, but there's only so much he can do. If I run for a sixty seconds, I see red and white spots and my body starts to shut down from insufficient oxygen. My lungs were damaged in the fire when I was little, so I can't - I couldn't even keep up with other humans if I'd known any, not even average ones.

[She laughs, and it's a raw, mean sort of giggling.]

At least I'm not a waste of very much air. I've heard that joke from seven different people. I hate it so much.

I don't even really want powers. If I got them and anything was better, it would just prove that all of you are racist assholes and a genetic accident made me a pariah and having lasers or paralytic hands was and always would be more important than who I am. And if I had them and nothing was better, then it would prove that I am so inherently and fundamentally flawed that even having actual superpowers can't stop me from being a miserable walking disaster, and I'm just always going to be evil and reviled.

I'm jealous because of everything that's bound up with power, I'm jealous of not having to be scared all the time and I'm jealous of being significant and of Dad caring at all and of things that probably didn't even happen to you, because I'm basing it on my own version of the family.

God. I wish I was a good enough person to just leave you alone. Because you're going to make it, you know? You've got it right, and the horrible things that happened don't rule you. I shouldn't put my poison back in front of you. But I don't want to back off. I want to be around you and I want you to pay attention to me and I want to watch you learn to be so responsible that I reconsider the inexorable doom of our species. I want to believe, but mostly I just want to feel like someone didn't cut me out, like I can still be part of the family even if it's an awful one.

private

Date: 2013-02-14 03:59 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (worried)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
They were? Oh God. I didn't know. [She had hoped that at least this Anya had dodged the fire altogether.] I'm sorry. Though...for the record...respiratory problems never stopped Raistlin.

[She blinks, then blushes.] I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Having powers or not doesn't put people above or below each other or anything like that. I was mostly talking about greater ability to defend yourself. Frankly...all the powers in the world won't make your life better or worse unless you use it in certain ways anyway.

And you're not evil. And I don't fucking revile you one bit even if you did kill a version of me.

[She blinks several times and then shakes her head.] I wasn't significant to my father. Only Pietro was. I was nothing but a problem to him. He threw me away at eight when he realized he couldn't control my powers, had me locked up...and when I got out he brainwashed me. He never cared one bit about me as a person. He cared only about my powers, and gaining control of them. I was nothing but a commodity to him.

[She goes silent for a long time.]

For the record, I would have helped you get away.

[At all the self-berating Wanda shakes her head and waves a hand.] No, no, look--no. It's fine. It's actually fine. When I got here I wouldn't have been able to handle it. But I can handle it now.

It's really screwed up that the first person in our weird, damaged, multiverse-spanning clan that I can actually relate to is someone from another world who pretty much did what I wanted to do, except worse. Even finding out these things, I don't plan to shut you out. Truth is, I'm worried about leaving and not being around for you. I want to be the kind of mutant who gives you hope that we're not all going to just turn our backs on humanity, especially our own families.

private

Date: 2013-02-14 05:55 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (wibble)
From: [personal profile] fridgetothefire
[Anya lets Wanda say her piece, waits quietly while she finds everything she wants to say. Quietly, with cold conviction and pushed out of her, she murmurs,]

I'd kill him for you. I know you don't want to and I'm glad you're not ruled by bitterness, but I would kill him for what he did to you. Slower than mine. It wouldn't accomplish much but I'd do it and like it.

[her mouth quirks after a moment, just a little]

There but for the grace of...someone, anyway? I don't think it's messed up. It's messed up that such awful similar things happened universes apart, but it's not messed up to relate when the parallels are there.

[she swallows, hard]

Even when I'm saying everything, I don't know how to say how much that means to me, that I'm still, that you don't even want to cut me off. But even if you leave tomorrow, I won't forget it.
Edited Date: 2013-02-15 04:20 am (UTC)

private

Date: 2013-02-17 11:31 pm (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (doorway)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
[Wanda swallows.]

You don't have to. But I don't think I have words for how much I appreciate your outrage. You get it. I think I know what to do about him, even though I have to wait until I'm healed to even think about carrying it out. Neither of us have to kill him, in the end.

Besides, if there's one thing I've learned it's that dying doesn't always stop people. Or...it.

[She smiles sadly.] Of course I don't want to cut you off. My reasons are kinda selfish in some ways--I don't have so many people in my life who understand me that I can afford to just throw you over.

...I'm glad. I just feel...I don't know.

Maybe staying on or coming back wouldn't be helpful for any of you anyway. I hate the way this place is run and if I stayed I'd lock horns with every other Warden because...we could do so much better.

private

Date: 2013-02-22 05:27 am (UTC)
fridgetothefire: (wish you were right)
From: [personal profile] fridgetothefire
[Anya grins. It's a little shaky, after everything, but it's there.]

I imagine the place could benefit from a belligerent reformation or two.

But don't - you hate it here, or you hate a lot of it, even if you've learned things. Don't stay just for me, okay? I've been trapped in a place I hate almost my whole life, I couldn't stand knowing I did that to you.

private

Date: 2013-02-26 04:19 am (UTC)
scarlet_discord: (curious)
From: [personal profile] scarlet_discord
Yeah, my only problem with it is that...well, in any violent situation about half the people who get hurt are the wrong ones.

[She smiles sadly.]

I wouldn't put it on you if I chose to stay or come back. It would be my choice. Either way, I'll find a way to catch up with you later.

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intofireforever: (Default)
Laura Palmer

September 2020

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