008 - public, voice...word-vomit ahoy
Jan. 31st, 2013 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intofireforeverI'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.
...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.
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Date: 2013-02-08 05:47 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-10 07:26 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-11 03:48 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-11 06:41 am (UTC)[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.
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Date: 2013-02-14 03:59 am (UTC)[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.
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Date: 2013-02-14 05:55 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-17 11:31 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-22 05:27 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2013-02-26 04:19 am (UTC)[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.