closed post: in the eye of the beholder

[tallyyoungblood]

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.

Comments

[tallyyoungblood]

"Lowering your inhibitions," Tally says. "I guess I get that. It makes you kind of pretty-minded."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is that how your brain damage feels?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yes, like being high or drunk, but forever. Of course it kind of feels good, and you can talk to people more easily, but you can't think. For a long time I felt like being pretty-minded was like falling asleep, and I was always tired."

[onthewillowsthere]

It's an unpleasant thought. As much as he appreciated both the experiences of being medicated and being drunk, the idea of being that way all the time is viscerally unsettling. "What is it like now?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"I still feel that way sometimes right when I wake up," Tally says. "But, um... less." Much less, if Gideon's there to kiss her good morning. Sometimes even just the thought of Gideon banishes any remaining fuzziness, but that does not feel like something Galahad has to know. "Or, you know, if I get drunk. Or if I let too long go by without doing anything bubbly. But I'm mostly normal now. At least, I think. It's kind of hard to remember exactly what I used to be like before my operation. Like, I remember it, but memories aren't like pictures or videos, you know? They shift. Especially when someone's already been in there messing with them."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," quietly. "I know." He's thinking of Aornis, certainly, but also of being Damien and Laurel, of the incomparable frustration of knowing there was something missing. A speckled band. A kindness extended to him and perhaps no one else. He doesn't know whether that means it was a joke, the kind of trick from the nightmare she'd sent him (a cruelty disguised as a kindness, not unlike God's favor), or whether he was beneath her notice and only sometimes approached too close to the fight she was trying to have and was struck unintentionally. He can't even remember her face without looking at the picture in his sketchbook.

He's visited her graveside twice now to to try to sort through his thoughts, but they're still tangled, the threads unspooled and snarled together.

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess you all get to join my bogus memory-altered clique," she says, picking up on the serious vibe. "At least Aornis could do it without surgery. Brain surge was, like, so tiring."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It wasn't just Aornis," he says, fingerspelling her name out of habit. "What is brain surge?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh, just short for brain surgery. When they gave me the brain damage. What do you mean, not just Aornis? Was it god?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"No. Crowley. When I first came I asked him to take my memories."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Crowley can do that? And... why did you ask him?" Tally's been thinking of Crowley as a totally harmless guy, but she guesses he is actually a demon, at least sometimes.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Because I felt desire for Claudius, and I was afraid. I wanted to be someone other than myself."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's quiet for a little while, letting Galahad brush her face. "I did, too, when I was ugly," she says.

[onthewillowsthere]

It didn't make her happy to change, he thinks. It didn't fix everything for her. It just brought other troubles. "I came to regret it, and he tried to change me back, but he was unable. I became someone else again."

[tallyyoungblood]

"So you were like... three different people?" Tally clarifies. "And all of them were super into Claudius?"

[onthewillowsthere]

There's something pleasing about the way she says it. "Yes. Even when I didn't love him, I was always super into him."

[tallyyoungblood]

"It's nice to be so sure about something," Tally says. "But is this the you you like the best?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"This is the me I am," a touch blankly. "My other selves were other people."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess so," Tally says dubiously. "Magnus told me my Evil Twin was someone else, too..."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is that how you feel?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Only sort of. She's not that far off from me in time. Like, a few months? And she was only different because she got more brain surge. If that's not me, then am I even me? Compared to who I was as an ugly?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"What is meaningful to you?" he asks, thinking of his conversation with Claudius about people and patterns. "What matters?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Whoa, that's a big question, Galahad-wa. Like, what do I want?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Like, who are you? What about you is you?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess I care about the people I love," Tally says. "And, like, the wild. And doing... fun stuff?" All of this sounds totally pathetic to Tally's ears. "I don't know, you're making me feel totally existential, Galahad-wa."