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

[ninth_cavalier]

"What? That's not the same at all," says Gideon, surprised by the comparison.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally shifts uncomfortably. "I'm just saying, I'm not very good at not putting myself first."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts. "Babe, me dying for Harrow was putting myself first."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally remembers a lot of stuff about oaths and knowing each other intimately and being two people against the universe, et cetera, but okay.

"I forgot you were crazy for a minute," she says. She realizes she's smiling at babe, which is utterly inappropriate when they're talking about Gideon and maybe Harrow dying. The past few sleepless nights are totally doing a number on her. She tries to straighten her face. "My bad."

[ninth_cavalier]

"No, really," Gideon insists, flashing a smile at Tally's smile before she sobers again. "The other option was letting her do it, which wouldn't have done either of us any good, and would've been way less sexy--she was already bleeding out, we would've just had to wait, and then I'd be by myself." A profound by-herself-ness, worse than the regular kind. The kind of by herself that Camilla had been. "So instead I jumped the gun and did that to her. Totally selfish." She thinks about her conversation with Lancelot about God and puppets. "Plus, like--that whole thing, her becoming a Lyctor, that was what the Emperor wanted us to do. It was the point of the whole fucking thing. So it's actually more like you deciding to become a pretty than not."

[tallyyoungblood]

"What do you mean, a Lyctor?" They're getting utterly sidetracked, but what is she talking about? "This is the whole thing about her, um, eating you, right? And by the way, I still hate your god and think he's beyond bogus for allowing all that."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon rolls her shoulders. "Yeah, been thinking a lot about that. If I ever get an audience with the motherfucker¹, I will have some questions. But—yeah, the eating me thing. It was supposed to make us a Saint. So like—it's what He wanted, as well as what I wanted. The same way your society wanted you to be a pretty, and you wanted it, too. Point is, either neither of us are cowards or both of us are, which makes it all pretty null, right?"

¹ Blasphemous AND ironic!

[tallyyoungblood]

"I... guess, yeah," Tally accedes. She has to admit she might be tempted by a title like "Saint" if it weren't so religion-y. She also thinks of Andrew Simpson Smith, telling her about how hard it was for him to defy the gods. "It's not easy to be a rebel, when the way things are is all you've ever known. It was easier when I met David."

[ninth_cavalier]

"He's the one you met in the Smoke?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah. He was an ugly who was raised in the wild, since his parents found out about the brain lesions and ran away before the had him. They founded the Smoke, actually--Maddy and Az. David was sort of a legend in the city, because he would come recruit tricky uglies for the Smoke. Shay talked about him all the time, even before we all ended up there. She was sort of obsessed with him. Maybe you can see where this is going."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon smirks a little. "You got jealous, and stole your girl's man."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I wasn't jealous!" Tally protests. "Well, maybe a little, but David pursued me." A thousand old mental arguments with Shay rise up within her, but she squashes them down. "He told me I was beautiful, even though I was ugly. He gave me gloves to protect my hands, which was a big deal in the Smoke, since you had to barter for stuff there. Anyway, Shay got mad at me, partly because I told her that I had a crush back in the city to cover for my tracker, because it was a heart-shaped locket. She was like, how come you're stealing my boyfriend when you have another crush?" Tally laughs bitterly. "I told David that's what the tracker was, too, and threw it in the fire to show him that I wanted to be with him, not go back. And I meant it."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon sobers, her smirk fading. She likes Tally's normal laugh way better than this one. "What went wrong?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Turns out throwing a tracker into a fire is a great way to set it off. When I woke up the whole Smoke was crawling with Specials. Everyone but me and David got arrested." Tally closes her eyes, remembering how all the Smokies had left their shoes for her when they saw her escaping barefoot. "They killed some people, too. This crumbly guy called the Boss, and David's dad. Shay didn't get killed, but... they turned her pretty. After she'd been the first person I ever knew who liked her real face." Tally's voice wobbles."By the time David and I showed up to break her out, it was too late. She wasn't even mad at me, which was the worst part. They made her not care. She wasn't her any more. And it's my fault."

[ninth_cavalier]

"So, okay. You agreed to betray your friend, in exchange for some scientist bitch not withholding the only thing you'd been taught made life livable, and then when it came down to it you didn't even do the betrayal, and it only went wrong because they're constantly foisting technology on you without explaining how any of it works, because they, like, gatekeep the fuck out of all knowledge, including the part about giving everyone brain lesions."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally smiles weakly, both at "scientist bitch" and how generously Gideon is interpreting the story.

"Things would have been different if I'd asked Maddy and Az for help," she points out. "They were really smart--they were doctors and reversed their own operations--so they definitely would have known what to do with the bug. I doomed the Smoke because I was too ashamed to admit Dr. Cable manipulated me. That's part of why I volunteered to turn myself in to test the cure. I had to make it up to Maddy and David for getting Az killed. Plus, if the cure worked, I could get it to Shay."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blows out a breath. She feels a little guilty—maybe there is something to Tally's theories about big shiny eyes and evolutionary protection instincts or whatever, but she's kind of been thinking about Tally as a little naive. Definitely not dumb, or incapable, but she hadn't really grasped the breadth of what Tally had been through before she got here. Seeing it all laid out like this is... a lot. If they're comparing—which they're not—Gideon might've seen more blood, but Tally's been way more places and seen way more things and, arguably, done way more to change her own circumstances. "Been underestimating you, Whirlybird. I'm not the only one who's fucking crazy."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally surprises herself by laughing. Gideon actually looks impressed, and she's not a pretty member of the Crims, impressed because they would be impressed by anything, like littlies transfixed by safety fireworks. At once her mood lifts by several degrees.

"I may be pretty, but my past is totally ugly, Gideon-la." She gives her a real smile. "Anyways, this is the real newsfeed download, thanks to Shay-la. Get this: the Smokies did get me the cure, but since I split it Zane, it didn't do anything to me. He had the active pill--mine would have only stopped the medical nanos after they fixed the lesions. I'm curing myself."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blinks. "Gonna be honest with you, I totally forgot you took a pill at all." She raises her hands. "In my defense, you told me the day we swapped bodies around, and there was a shit-ton going on. But I also guess, like--you're the one figuring out all this shit about adrenaline, and cold, and coffee. Obviously you're curing yourself. Who else would be doing it?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally rolls her eyes. "Well, I thought it was the pill. I don't come from Bone Magic City, so I kind of took a scientist's word for it. But this explains why it didn't just cure me permanently, and I still wake up all pretty sometimes."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, that checks out. You have to totally retrain your brain--carve new neutral pathways or whatever, I dunno, I'm not a brain nerd." Gideon leans back in her chair. "That's super cool, though. And hey, Tally?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon smirks at her, as wide and ridiculous as she can. "I'll take you to Bone Magic City any time you like."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally bursts into laughter. "Gideon!" She grins back and smacks Gideon's arm. Her heart swells with fondness. Trust Gideon to break her out of being so utterly self-serious.

[ninth_cavalier]

"C'mere." Gideon hooks a leg around the leg of Tally's chair and pulls it closer to hers.