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.

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[tallyyoungblood]

Tally looks at her for a second longer, open-mouthed, before throwing her arms around her. "Did you know you're the craziest person I've ever met?" she asks. She's still sort of crying, but kind of laughing too. "Yeah, it was pretty fucking bad!"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon huffs, shocked, her hands going to Tally's waist, then her back, keeping her close. It's embarrassing how much it helps to have her this close and, like, not seven feet fall and trying to kill her. "Welcome back," she mutters into her hair, and her throat closes around missed you.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally breathes in the smell of her, so relieved that Gideon's touch doesn't repulse her any more that her legs kind of shake. She pulls back and kisses her, gently, then cups her cheek.

"Thanks," she says softly. "You were right, by the way. Shay did something horrible to her."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I was right that you were in there, somehere, too," says Gideon, tucking Tally's hair behind her ear. "Kind of, anyway. You and Shay—" She doesn't really know what she's asking.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally lets out a strangled noise. Those memories, the ones of Shay telling her to forget about Zane and kissing her, telling her that it had been them all along, make her feel both hot and cold to think about.

"Me and Shay. Um. I mean, she's my best friend. We never..." she trails off. "I didn't think it was romantic, but I guess it happened after I became Special. It's always been... complicated between us. We sort of ruined each other's lives." Tally laughs ruefully. "For all I bug you to talk about Harrow, I never really bring her up, huh?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon. "I think it might be your turn." She reaches out, though, turning Tally's arms over to look at them. She knows--she's touched them enough, between trying to get her cuff off, make-outs, and self-defense class--but she still wants to see. She runs the pads of her fingers over the unscarred skin.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally shivers, both at the touch and the memory. The skin is, of course, clean and unbroken, without even a tan line where her cuff used to be. Pretties don't tan unevenly.

"Shay came up with that," she says. "The cutting. She couldn't figure out how Zane and I were getting so bubbly while she was still so pretty-minded, so that was her solution." It's a hard memory to dredge up, but she can get flashes of it: Shay and her pretty Cutters standing in a circle at the park in the rain, knives in their hands. "It's partly my fault," she admits. "I didn't tell her Zane and I had the cure. Or thought we did."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Don't think that makes it your fault," says Gideon, but she tables it for now. "Let's go get something weird to drink and talk about it?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh. Yeah." Tally realizes they've been embracing in a hallway and totally blocking the way for anyone who walked by and saw them being all weepy and couple-y. She takes Gideon's hand and leads her into the kitchen, unwilling to lose contact for the moment.

"She did pack of a hell of a punch," she says, getting a fresh angle on Gideon's face. She gives Gideon a sideways glance. "You totally wanted her to hit you, didn't you?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"I wanted to piss her off," admits Gideon. "I was, like, 90% sure that would come with punching, but y'know. I love to hang out in that ten percent." She pulls open the fridge and surveys the options. "What do you think? Lemonade? Uh, something called Coca-Cola, looks like it's cherry flavored?" She steals the single beer in there for herself.

[tallyyoungblood]

"You sound totally old-fashioned," Tally giggles. The Rusties were obsessed with putting brand names on every kind of food, so they wouldn't forget about the corporations that ruled them. "Sure, I'll have cherry cola." She watches Gideon pull out the antique plastic bottles.

"Pissed off is putting it lightly," she says, after a moment. "Every time she got mad, it was like being lit on fire."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Old fashioned? I'm the modern-est of the modern, baby." She hands Tally the cola, then uses the edge of the counter to crack the cap off her beer one-handed so she doesn't have to untangle their fingers. "Maybe literally, since nobody else seems to be from times with like, space travel, or a dead sun. Anyway--anger wasn't even really the goal. I wanted her to, like. Remember she was you."

[tallyyoungblood]

"These bottles are totally Rusty, that's all. I'm utterly modern myself." Tally points at a table with a couple chairs in the corner. "Let's sit." She wants to tell Gideon that she's pretty sure her city could pull off space travel, but they don't need to since they didn't utterly fuck up the Earth, but that's not what they're discussing right now. She forces herself to stay on topic.

"She was me, Gideon-la, and I'm pretty stubborn. I'm kind of glad that you tried, though." It makes her heart race to think that Gideon believes in her enough to think that one conversation could rewire her again. "Except for the ouch-making part."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I'm glad I tried, too," says Gideon, sinking into one of the chairs. "Nearly left you there to stew. By the way, I have that knife and the sexy catsuit in my room for you." She smirks. "You know, for whenever."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally briefly lets go of Gideon's hand to unscrew her soda bottle, trying to cover her flustered reaction.

"I don't think I'll need the knife," she says. "Cutting seems bogus, actually. But the sneak suit..." She glances at Gideon, remembering all the times she'd hit on the other Tally. Did she mean it? "Um. It's not too trauma-triggering for you?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon chuckles. "If anything traumatized me about the encounter we had, it was not the catsuit.¹ And yeah, who needs a shitty little knife when you've got a sword?"

¹ Not how trauma works, but okay.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Maybe I'll wear it for you, then." Tally can imagine herself in the sneak suit with all its scales set to black, or maybe silver, to compliment her eyes. "Swords are definitely bubblier than knives. You are crazy, though, you know. I'm sure the pretty committee never thought someone would see a Special and react like you did."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, well. I got a kind of anti-respect for authority." Gideon messes with her hair. "The Marshal on the Ninth hated me so bad I thought his rotten old heart would explode every time he wasn't allowed to kill me where I stood." She laughs. "God, speaking of crumbly. Crux was so crumbly he had bits falling off."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally wishes she had a tablet to take notes on, or even a piece of paper to write in her wobbly new handwriting.

"Sounds like he had totally bogus taste in people," she says. "Was it because of, um... all the death and stuff? Or did he just suck majorly?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"He just sucked majorly," says Gideon. "But if I get into all the old people who sucked majorly on the Ninth, we'll be here all day, and you're supposed to talk to me about Shay."

[tallyyoungblood]

Gideon's as good at dodging questions as she is blows. Tally sighs.

"We met a few months before my sixteenth birthday," she starts. "Our sixteenth birthday, actually. It's the same. September ninth. Both of us were the youngest of our groups of friends, so we were alone after all our friends turned pretty and moved across the river."

[ninth_cavalier]

God, every detail of Tally's society Gideon gets just convinces her it's even more wack. "Alone for how long?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Um... like for the summer." Tally flushes faintly. It seems like a short amount of time now that she has oceans of time to swim in, but at the time it had seemed dire. "So, I met her on the way back from crashing a party in New Pretty Town. We started hanging out, and right away she was different. She didn't want to make face morphs, and she taught me how to hoverboard. We flew to the Rusty Ruins a lot. She was so..." Tally sighs dreamily. "Different. No one I ever met talked like she did. Eventually she told me she didn't want to be pretty, and she was going to run away before her birthday. We got into a huge fight because I thought that was totally brain-missing, but right before she did it, she asked me to come with her."

[ninth_cavalier]

Okay, the last thing Gideon had been expecting to feel is the urge to like Shay, despite the dreamy look in Tally's eyes. She keeps that shit to herself. It won't last. "Did you go?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally shakes her head, ashamed. "No. I was too scared. She left me coded directions in case I wanted to go, but I knew I wouldn't use them. I wanted to be pretty. But on my sixteenth birthday, they took me to Special Circumstances headquarters instead of the hospital to get my surge. Dr. Cable--she's the leader of the Specials--told me I had to go after Shay and find the Smoke or they wouldn't make me pretty. I had to betray Shay. And after a couple days I agreed to do it." Tally sighs. "I know it must seem utterly pathetic that that worked on me, when you were willing to die for Harrow, but..." All her excuses feel weak and pathetic.