open post: averageness

[tallyyoungblood]

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.

Comments

[tallyyoungblood]

"She was horrible," Tally says with feeling. "She had this bogus sense of superiority. Everyone was like... like bugs to me, not people." Tally wraps her arms around herself. "I don't know how that was me."

[summerdude]

"Was it you?" Magnus asks. "Like, from what I can tell, most of the Evil Twins were people you maybe could have become, at one point, but it's totally out of the question now."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I wasn't old, like you were," Tally protests. "It was only a few months from when I left my world. It was like... basically now, only an alternate now. I grabbed you!" She looks at Magnus with wide, guilty eyes. "I tore your shirt!"

[summerdude]

"Yeah, but I know how to fix that kind of thing," Magnus says, stretching so he can show her how he mended it carefully.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally takes a deep breath, staring at the stitching and trying to calm down. Subconsciously, she was expecting Magnus to snap at her the way Shay always does. Did. Tenses are getting utterly confusing.

"I'm still sorry," she says. "You're my friend. I never want to treat you like that."

[summerdude]

Magnus blinks, surprised. "I know that," he says. "She wasn't you. You and me, we're fine."

[tallyyoungblood]

A vicious part of Tally wishes that Magnus would get mad. She deserves for him to get mad.

"I know that," Tally says, her voice breaking a little. "I know we're fine. But I'm not fine."

[summerdude]

He looks at her with alarm. "Um," he says. "Do you, like, want a hug or something?" Outside of his mom and Annabeth, he's really only hugged like five or six people before, but he could definitely add a seventh to the list if Tally wants.

[tallyyoungblood]

"If that's okay. Please." Tally knows she's being missing, that uglies don't really hug like this without being best friends, but she wants physical contact that's normal badly.

[summerdude]

"You're so tall," Magnus observes, going in for the hug.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally hugs him back, grateful that he isn't making a big deal of it. She snorts out a little laugh. "I'm a normal height," she protests.

[summerdude]

"You're taller than me," Magnus says. "And Galahad. And Alex. And a lot of my friends back home." Besides Hearth, anyway. "Everyone else as tall as you that I hug has, like, dad vibes or whatever."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally lets go and steps back. She's remembering that people used to have much more height variation back in Rusty times. Despite living here so long, it's still weird seeing adults that don't fit into the pretty committee standard range of 185 to 200 centimeters. People who were taller used to get better jobs, she remembers.

"I was shorter than you as an ugly," she admits. She's calming down more now.

[summerdude]

"How tall were you?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally thinks. She remembers staring at herself in the mirror, counting her flaws--the squinty eyes, the frizzy hair, the squashed-down nose. "Like, 167 centimeters?" She'd still been growing a little up until the day she'd turned herself in to become pretty.

[summerdude]

It takes Magnus a good minute or two to convert that to reasonable measurements. "How did they stretch you out that much?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Uh. It's basically all-new skeleton." Tally holds out her arms, as if Magnus can see her bones. "It's like, what's even actually me anymore?" she jokes, but it hits home a little harder than usual.

[summerdude]

"Oh, I feel that," Magnus says, looking down at himself. "I got the post-death einherjar glow-up when I got to Valhalla. None of this is the original goods."

[tallyyoungblood]

"What did you look like before?" Tally keeps her thoughts on the einherjar glow-up not actually making him any prettier to herself.

[summerdude]

"Like, really scrawny. No muscles. I was this asthmatic street kid?" He gestures, vaguely, to indicate the total concaveness of his chest. "So, like, my only exercise was running and hiding from cops and I didn't have regularly reliable access to food. Do you know Captain America?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's eyes get big. "You lived on the street?" She can picture poor little ugly-aged Magnus, and it makes her equal parts sympathetic and angry at the Rusties. "Captain America? No. I lived in North America, though."

[summerdude]

"He's this comics superhero. You should look 'em up, there's a ton in the library. He gets this, like, serum, and it makes him super swole. I had that but, like, smaller."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I'm not sure I need to read a comic when I basically lived that," Tally points out.

[summerdude]

"Okay," says Magnus. "So we're both Captain America."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Did they ever give the serum to a girl?"