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Tally stands by the espresso machine in the cafe, nervously picking at her nails. She hasn't been this calmness-missing since she was an ugly, and looking into Shay's beautiful violet eyes is, for some reason, not calming her down like it used to. She'd suggested that Shay meet Gideon when she'd thought she'd be able to handle the situation. Tally had come up to Gideon with a sheepish smile, ready to moderate between the two of them if things had gone south, but Gideon had worn an expression Tally had never seen before, and given Tally some utterly bogus news.

Guiltily, horribly, Tally's kind of pissed Harrow is alive. She's always meant what she said about wanting to respect Gideon's feelings for Harrow, whatever they are, but she's also not thrilled that Gideon's suddenly shackled again in thrall to her Rusty-style indentured servitude. Could Harrow's visit not have, at least, waited?

Gideon had said something about getting Harrow fresh (non-bloodstained (???)) clothes, and they'd agreed to meet in the cafe, so Shay could have some bubbly-making coffee.

"It almost feels like old days, right?" Tally says to Shay, glancing nervously at the door. "Like maybe Peris is going to meet us for coffee, or something."

Tally's had a lot on her mind since the death and the wedding. Life, love, the fragility of those things--but, of course, she is who she is, so her mind comes back to what it always does: beauty.

As much as she'd judged that strange man for his disheveled robes, everyone else had looked gorgeous, and happier than she'd ever seen a room full of pretties look. Most notably, they'd all looked legitimately different from each other, in just about every way possible. That the effect was beautiful instead of overwhelming is a new experience for Tally.

Tally feels like she knows what Claudius might say about the wedding. He'd heap effusive praise on everyone, and tell her that of course he wanted everyone to be uniquely themselves. She thinks he understands the halo effect better than anyone else she knows here, but also, as a former pre-Rusty king, understands how to deal with a crowd of adult uglies. Galahad, though, has never been someone Tally could guess at the thoughts of. He'd clearly been too happily overwhelmed to really talk at the ceremony itself, so she goes to knock on his door a few days later.

It’s Tally’s birthday, probably, and she’s thought long and hard about what she wants to do for it. Her last birthday, in New Pretty Town, had involved a giant bash in her and Shay’s joint honor, and what had felt like liters of champagne and cake. She’d been thinking about throwing a party here, too, but with everything going on lately... the prospect feels exhausting, and selfish, and possibly dangerous. She can’t throw a party without alcohol, and drinking had gone terribly at the bachelor party.

Instead, Tally abandons her handwriting practice in favor of coaxing a hole in the wall in a remote lounge into giving her wire, wooden dowels, a small saw, pliers, jewelry findings, and charms. She raids the library for books with instructions, balancing them open to the right pages and wishing that she could just ask the wall to display what she needs.

Tally hadn’t had time to learn many skills at the Smoke before everything had exploded, but she’d definitely had time to learn the value of handmade objects. She wishes she had the gloves David gave her still, or the hand-knit sweater she bargained for. She knows that the mansion can conjure copies for her, but that’s exactly the opposite of the point.

She learns to wrap wire around the dowels, then saw through the coils to make little rings, each of which she pinches closes with pliers. The work is almost harder than using a vibrasaw to cut through the wild around the Smoke, since it’s so utterly fiddly. Still, she has to do it, even when the ends of the wires poke the pads of her fingers until they turn red. She wants to make charm bracelets, and if she can’t make the charms by hand, she has to make the chains. Tally wants everyone to know that she cares enough to make something with the telltale signs of human handicraft, asymmetrical rings and all.

The results are much uglier than she’d hoped they’d be, but it surprises her how good it still feels to have actually made something. When she’s done, she writes each recipient’s name on a piece of paper, then copies the same note out for each person:

This is for you! You totally don’t have to wear it, since these turned out a lot more symmetry-missing than I thought they would. I know it’s kind of crazy to give other people presents on my birthday, but I’m trying to make things less about me, lately. Narcissism is so bogus.

XOXO,
Tally

For Georgia, the chain is dark blue, and the charm is a Viking helmet, for their Viking bison inferno dance.

For Tress, the chain is green, and the charm is a C, for Charlie.

For Sagramore, the chain is silver, and the charm is a little pancake.

For Magnus, the chain is green, and the charm is a miniature swingset.

For Crowley, the chain is red, and the charm is a snake.

For Claudius, the chain is silver, and the charm is a bottle of laundry detergent.

For SecUnit, the chain is silver, and Tally decides not to use a charm. It doesn’t seem like its style.

For Mercutio, the chain is silver, and the charm is a knife.

She leaves each bracelet on the floor in front of each recipient’s door, and then, once she gets back to her room, spends the next few hours worrying about them being stepped on. It’s too late to go back and fix it without being caught, though, so she just hopes people look down.

At least Gideon sleeps in her room, so she can leave the bracelet on Gideon’s pillow while she’s out doing one thousand push-ups or fighting Lancelot or whatever it is she does to get so buff. The chain is gold to match her eyes, and the charm is a tiny ax. Gideon’s note also goes on: You have to tell me when YOUR birthday is, or else. Also, you’re my favorite.

Lastly, Tally makes a violet bracelet with a little hoverboard charm, and sticks it in the back of a drawer. “Happy birthday, Shay-la,” she whispers. “Wherever you are.”

Feel free to respond to this with a single-comment reaction, or a thread, or not at all depending on what you’re feeling!

Content warnings: self-harm, ableism

--

Tally’s hand is utterly cramping, so she takes a break to stretch it. She can’t believe that pre-Rusties used to write whole books like this--she’s seen a few of them in the library here, pages filled with spidery, beautiful handwriting. Hers, in comparison, looks like a total mess.

After struggling through her best attempt at writing down what had happened on the day when she’d been Special, she’s moved on to her new memories from before Other Tally was Special, but after when Real Tally had been spirited away to the mansion, which are marginally less trauma-triggering.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: weird

Tally's first clue that it hadn't been a dream was that she'd woken up alone in her room.

Nowadays, she and Gideon have been sharing a room, so that Tally can protect her from ever finding a body alone again--and maybe conspicuously leave out some clothes that fit Gideon but aren't, like, ratty black pants. That day, though, she'd woken in an empty room, gasping from something that felt like a nightmare, but somehow more vivid than real life.

Without even getting dressed, she'd run for the woods to confirm what had happened. Horror had flooded her when she found the knife-mark, exactly where she remembered throwing it yesterday. It was true. She'd been Special. She'd been awful. She'd seen and felt the world with more harsh clarity than she'd ever thought possible. She'd hit Gideon.

Tally had collapsed onto the stump, gripping her own arms to make sure her familiar, average body was still there.

Over the next few days, Tally doesn't sleep well, and people getting swapped out for a second time doesn't help. People might find her wandering the mansion like a zombie, or in one of the kitchens, contemplating getting drunk. She's not as put together as usual, either, but of course on her even bedhead and sweats look beautiful.

Tally waits until it’s dark, and most everyone else has gone to bed. The longer she’s been here, the more her day with Zane has felt like a hazy dream. She climbed a transmission tower? Really? And got a letter from herself that she didn’t remember writing? It all seems ridiculous, like a feed drama, but even drinking herself into a stupor most nights hasn’t stopped Tally from noticing that her new mansion-mates are more than just ugly in looks: they have ugly minds.

Despite being old, or responsible, or even almost pretty, they still fight and think like uglies. They never got the operation, and they really are different from every adult Tally’s ever known, besides the Smokies.

Tally’s been trying hard not to think about it, but the more time she spends around people who argue, and speak their mind, and seem to care about things besides conformity, the more she starts to wonder if her letter to herself was right, if Gideon was right. Tally had written that the pretty operation did something to people’s brains, not just their bodies. Maddy had said so, out in the Smoke. It’s hard to focus on, given that her memories of Maddy are so utterly tangled up with Tally’s memories of David, Maddy’s son, the boy she’d almost forgotten about.

The memories hurt. It feels trying to sprint through quicksand to try to access them, let alone focus on them. Shouldn’t she just go back to sleep? The mansion is in some ways even cushier than New Pretty Town. She still has as much food and champagne as she wants, and she doesn’t have to worry about the wardens. It’s been easy to be pretty-minded here. It would be so easy to just get a drink and sit by a fire, even find Tress or Georgia and spend the night chatting until they got too tired.

But, a little voice insists, Tally might have given herself the cure.

It’s come back to her in all her bubbly moments: in the cold at the party with Gideon, sledding down the hill, contemplating cutting her hand off. Her mind has tried to put a pretty veil over the truth of her last day at home, hiding from her until now, but the memory of taking the pill is slowly pressing through the fog in her mind.

Tally slips out of bed, throwing on a hoodie and stretchy pants and the grippiest shoes she can find. Her room in the mansion has a window, and it doesn’t take much work to push the screen out. The winter wind whips in, giving Tally goosebumps, but she knows what she has to do. She grits her teeth and levers herself outside.

Almost like at Valentino, the next window up is just within Tally’s reach, so she braces herself and begins to climb. At first, she’s not too high up, and it doesn’t feel that scary-making. But then Tally looks down, and realizes she’s several meters up, a totally bone-breaking distance. Her heart pounds. The unfamiliar stars in the sky suddenly glitter harshly. She knows her flash tattoo is spinning harder than it has since she’s gotten here.

She climbs higher.

By the time she makes it to the third floor, Tally’s shaking, her freezing hands struggling to grip the windowsills. Her thoughts are running as clear and fast as the river that separated Uglyville from New Pretty Town. She knows with absolute clarity that this is what Zane called bubbliness, the thing he’d been searching for by creating the Crims and doing heart-pounding tricks all the time.

When Tally makes to haul herself onto the roof, she slips a little, the snowy eaves proving frictionless. She falls for one icy moment, then manages to catch herself on a third-floor window, clinging for dear life.

When she looks up, the film has been lifted from the world again.

Tally laughs shakily. “Bubbly-making, huh, Zane?” she whispers to herself. She misses him so much it hurts. She misses David, too, and Shay, and the Smoke. She misses the feeling of her muscles hurting at the end of a long day of making hoverpaths in the wild, and the taste of homemade Smoky stew. The memories aren’t complete, but they’re suddenly obvious, like when she finds a lost outfit abandoned under a pile of other clothes. She stares out at the woods ringing the mansion, their almost-wild, and is stunned suddenly by its beauty. Not an operation-made, committee-designed beauty: real beauty.

When her arms finally start shaking too much to hold her up, she pulls herself into the nearest window, throwing the screen down onto the lawn and making a mental note to pick it up in the morning. She finds her way back to her room, heart still pounding even in the soothing warmth of the hallways. She changes back into her pajamas, but doesn’t close her window, letting the freezing wind keep her bubbly.

It’s undeniable, now. Tally’s taken the cure, or half of it. Zane had taken the other pill, swallowing it moments before Special Circumstances found them. It has to be why she’s been able to find moments of bubbliness. She wishes again for Zane, and wonders if the cure has worked for him, too. Is he keeping himself bubbly back in New Pretty Town?

Tally needs to get serious about bubbliness. She needs to feel the clarity she feels right now, the knife’s edge of adrenaline that only comes with really bubbly-making experiences, all the time.

Maybe Susan can show her how to kill a fish. Maybe the zombies will come back. Or maybe she can try kissing someone new.

She retrieves the bottle of champagne she’s been keeping by her bedside, and pours it out the window. It falls to the ground, then soaks into the snow. Finally, when she looks one last time, it's unrecognizable.

Current Mood: awake

Tally wakes up blurry.

The gray morning light seeps in through Tally's window, and she groans and turns over, her head pounding from the champagne she'd had the night before. She has a vague sense that she's supposed to go do something today, which is totally bogus. She's a pretty, and just because she lives in sense-missing Rusty world, that shouldn't mean she should suddenly have responsibilities or whatever.

Unwilling to leave the warmth of her blankets, Tally wraps them around her like a cape and rolls off the bed.

"This is bogus," she tells the room. "How am I supposed to pick an outfit by myself?" Gideon's been coming by every morning with coffee, but Tally remembers that she got really weird about seeing her change, so Tally's been making sure to get dressed before seeing anyone. The room doesn't say anything, because it's a stupid mind-reading room that isn't even polite enough to talk back.

With heroic effort, Tally finally decides on a sweater dress--cozy and cute--and then gets back in bed. She wishes she could ping Gideon to maybe just bring her some breakfast and then let her go back to sleep. What's so important about going to see Nina right now, anyways? It's not like anyone's in any rush around here.