Who: Cecile Deveaux and Alek McGuinness What: Two deltas ride a ferris wheel. It's just as interesting as it sounds. When: It's one of those timey-wimey things where it's taking place today but ALSO refers to things that happened a month ago because we're the slowest. Just run with it. Where: Outside! Status: Complete!
Cecile didn’t think she was ever going to get used to go out without an escort. It felt strange, being completely untethered, and although she would never breathe a word about it (because it was weird, was it? not wanting to run for it?), she felt vulnerable and anxious, almost scared. She was pretty good at hiding it from her friends, but Alek was annoyingly perceptive, and she was pretty sure he had a decent idea of what was going on in her head.
Which was why the ferris wheel was a great idea. It was giving her a little bit of space from the endless amounts of people around. Because it was starting to get dark there were lights dotting the pier, creating reflections on the water, and she could focus on the pretty. There wasn’t a lot of that on the inside.
“Twice in two weeks,” she said. “It’s almost as if we’re actual, normal people.” Apart from the tag that told the whole world she could ‘butterfly’, that is.
---
If it were a drinking game to keep looking to see where the R.S. Agent had clearly fallen behind or to figure out where the surveillance is, then Alek and Cecile would probably both be paralytically drunk by now. With the increasing attacks from APEX, perhaps it wasn’t completely paranoid to feel overexposed Alek reminded himself that they were just another set of faces in a crowd without anything indicating them as anything else. Well, unless people got up close and saw Cecile’s butterfly tag. Alek had shoved his under his jacket. What? It was still technically a little visible. It was only breaking a stupid rule. Sometimes, that giddy little thrill pumped the adrenaline enough to forget the rest of it. He’d just have to remember to put it back before got home.
This was their final stop of the day, anyway. They’d have to head back or risk not making their check in. “Without summer classes, I think my fresh air quotient needed a little more topping up. Besides, last week was a special Linden occasion.” Linden had an incredible talent to disappear even within the ‘03. “One day, I’m going to take a vacation and see what it’s like when there aren’t so many people everywhere. Between Harper,” He frowned and just made a vague hand gesture, “Harping, people in the halls, security, agents, people at college, last week -- it’s like population overload. You know?” It wasn’t that he didn’t like the people but having only a wall (if that, surveillance wise) between him and every fucking other person wears thin on someone with natural tendencies to want some alone time. That was without bringing APEX and their shit into it.
---
“I know,” Cecile said, because honestly, she understood it a little too well. She was, as always, torn between her introvert tendencies and her fear of going outside on her own. At least she could do it without turning into butterflies these days. It hadn’t always been the case. “It always feels more, somehow, when we’re not in class. You can almost forget you have a babysitter when you sit in a lecture. You can’t really do that when you’re, you know, just going shopping or whatever.”
The ‘almost’ was key there, because if it hadn’t been, would being alone with Alek out here give her that slight twist of her stomach, the same one that her therapist said was normal, but that always made her feel a little as if she was watching herself from afar?
“Linden is so good at that, though. She even gets me to go to the club nights. And we all know how I feel about dancing.”
---
“You’re saying you don’t make silly faces at your babysitter in class?” Alek said, trying to sound scandalised at the idea. As always, it was difficult to be stuck between a rock and a hard place of trying to toe a line that didn’t get him locked away as a threat because he blew one raspberry too many. One Raspberry Too Far is a terrible name for a biographical movie. He gave her a small, closed mouth smile and bumped her arm as a way of indicating yes, he was joking because he had been told that his dedication to the deadpan could be an issue from time to time.
He took a long look over the view and sighed, “Yeah, Linden’s Linden. She could talk the devil into doing Michael a ‘sorry I fucked up’ fruit basket without breaking a sweat.” Maybe something about omnilingualism called for being particularly gifted in getting under people’s skins, but far be it for him to judge someone based on their power. Much. “Maybe you could make up a new move. The dancing butterfly. Some new guy has wings so you’d have winged company.”
---
“I try not to,” Cecile said, bumping him right back. “I like to quiz them on the way back, though.” Some agents, it turned out, were more receptive to this than others.
She had to laugh at the imagery of a fruit basket however, and did so as the ferris wheel came to a stop, letting them take a look at the view. Which, really, they’d seen a fair few times already, it not being the first time they did exactly this, but she didn’t mind. “Let’s not get more of me trampled to death than we have to. I know you can heal my bruises but sometimes…”
Well. Sometimes a killed butterfly resulted in a scrape or bruise in a place she didn’t particularly want him to see. She was pretty sure that other girls were confident enough to show a bit of skin if required, but Cecile was not. It was a bit annoying, really.
“Sometimes you’re busy. And,” she added quickly because really, the less you talked about this the better, “I’ve seen him around. Doesn’t seem overly happy to be here, though I honestly don’t know why being locked up in New York would be better than being locked up here.”
---
Alek snorted. “Do any of them pass?” He wondered how many RS Agents were essentially getting a free college education in several subjects at this point. He may not like their existence but as a job, he could see why it would weirdly appeal if you had eclectic tastes.
Grimacing, he had to admit she had a point though. Despite the fact he wouldn’t exactly call Cecile delicate for she was far too her for that, he did know that her body - bodies as they’re going butterfly here - were what a lot of kids liked to tear the wings off of. “I don’t mind so much with you,” he said, which was as close as he was likely to get to saying he was fine with helping something she had no real control over since people could be assholes. “But I think maybe it would be worse here if I didn’t know you guys. Or have family around. Or at least know agents enough that I know their voices if I can hear them coming.” He shrugged. “It’s already shit. It’d be really, really shit without you guys.”
---
“Some of my classes are probably pretty useful for them,” Cecile said. “I mean, it’s psychology. Not a bad thing to learn about with their jobs. Not all of them agree with that though.”
Some did seem to almost enjoy the lectures, but others? Yeah. Not so much.
She had to agree with Alek. Though she didn’t have her family around for more than a visit every week or so, not even having that would be rough. “Without you guys it would be awful,” she had to admit. “It’s weird, though, how normal it feels. I’m not sure where I’d even begin if I was told I could just move out and do whatever I wanted. Especially if I had to do it on my own.”
---
That was not a line of thought Alek wanted to follow. It had been a fear as a child, a fear for his sister now and both were ridiculous fears based in conditions they were raised in. If you don’t listen to the agent's, someone could die. If one isn’t with you, what are you supposed to do? Clearly these were the issues between a load of butterflies and a healer. Definitely a worrisome group who had to watch their every step.
With a clenched jaw, he moved on from that line of thought. Fucking DMS.
“Depends whether you think humans and metahumans have the same presence of mind,” Alek rolled his shoulders back, before slumping. It wasn’t the situation where that opinion was likely to be dismissed. If anything, someone who literally turns into an animal probably had more to say on the subject. “Though you groupthink, right? When you go winged fury?”
---
“I guess?” She shrugged. “I can’t really remember a lot of what I did or how I went about thinking and all that when I was butterflies. It’s basically impossible to retain my mind when I’m spread out in that many bodies.”
She could remember snatches, usually. A bit here and there. Abstract and spotty, a different way to look at the world. It was a way to hide, almost. When her brain was too loud and she couldn’t cope with her own anxieties, that’s when she butterflied spontaneously, and usually when she turned back she couldn’t quite sort out where she was or how she’d gotten there, but she was better at it now, than when she was younger. That was something, at least.
---
“There has to be some kind of thinking involved or you’d get hit by cars much more often.” Though that was one thing that was advantageous about living in an enclosed environment: less likely to end up a literal bug on a windshield. Then again, plenty of people seemed to walk around DMS with no brain to speak of so maybe it wouldn’t be that big a deal.
Alek slumped back to look out over everything, and made a face. He could see the reflection in the window. It was a ridiculous face and if he’d been with almost anyone else, he’d have been feeling like he should crawl into a hole in the ground never to see the light of day again from sheer embarrassment. Oh, speaking of disappearing into a hole…
“Better get a move on,” he said. He flooded his tone with enough fake pep to run a cheer squad. “Wouldn’t want to upset the delicate power balance by being five minutes late!” Cause clearly in those five minutes, they’d take over the world or something. The whole day was just a ruse. The real deal was those last five.
---
“Well, yeah. I’m just not sure what it is. I know it’s not fully human. It’s… smaller somehow. I don’t know.” It was impossible to describe, the way it felt, being spread out like that in thousands of bodies. She didn’t usually wonder much about it either. The good thing about butterflies was that she didn’t have to think so much. Not that she knew how to explain that.
She tried not to laugh at Alek’s face making. Truly, she did. She pulled one of her own as the cart started lowering itself to the ground, because that made laughing at his a little less mean. “You could obviously heal your way to world domination,” she said, quite seriously. “And I would flutter. Dangerous people, the two of us.”
---
Alek snorted; at least if he was going to look ridiculous, he would have some company. Human company, no less. Though he did wonder briefly if someone did end up getting shoved out that had a power like Cecile but was not her because he was an asshole but he wasn’t that much of an asshole, would they just butterfly it up and fly away? That would be a useful thing to know when it didn’t sound like he was about to test it out.
“Yeah, here comes -- a dog breed and something people do to an egg timer. Very threatening. Much fear.” It occurred to him suddenly that despite having walked around with the codename for years, he wasn’t entirely sure if she’d picked it. “Was your super evil overlord name your idea?”
---
“Papillon means butterfly in French,” she said, a little surprised that he hadn’t made the connection himself. “My French isn’t that great these days but it reminded me of home. Also, I was seven.”
The less her parents visited, the less she spoke it, and the more awkward she became speaking her own language. Well, one of them. It wasn’t a side effect of being locked up that she had anticipated, but there you go. Yet another thing she’d lost thanks to the butterflies.
---
“I’m not Linden, French is not my thing.” Alek grumbled, refusing to think of his high school education as relevant at all. “Besides, I bet most people think of the dogs with the--” he stopped to illustrate by making vague triangle shapes on either side of his head, “--ears.” At least, he thought it was the ones with the ears. He wasn’t living so depressing a life yet that he spent large portions of it watching dog shows or something.
His mouth curled as he thought, “I wonder if some people think you turn into a dog. There’s got to be people who haven’t seen you puff out yet.” That could make for an entertaining club night, but it might also mean some of her getting squashed. Maybe a new agent, but that could get her in trouble. Even the funny aspects of metahuman existence were a pain in the ass. “Besides, you’re not seven anymore.”
---
“I’m French Canadian,” Cecile reminded him. “Half, at least. And I’m not gonna change my code name just because people might think I’m named after a dog.”
She wasn’t really that attached to the French Canadian side, not having been able to visit her dad’s side of the family for more than half her life, but it was the principle.
“And I sincerely hope so. I occasionally feel like some sort of a special effect. No CGI needed. But at least I don’t swear and proposition random people on the network. That has to be worse.” Really, her power was all right. Except when it wasn’t.
---
“You do your thing,” Alek said, raising both hands in a position of surrender. He was not about to get into it about linguistics. It wouldn’t be as bad as having the conversation with Linden, but either way it was a battle he was pretty sure he couldn't win.
As far as powers went, Alek thought ‘butterflying’ wasn’t so bad. She could make a new verb with her power, she could fly, she gave new meaning to the term scatterbrained, if someone tried to stab her she could really minimise the damage. It looked pretty neat too. But then he frowned, processing what she said and shot her side-eye. “Who is trolling for fucks on the network and blaming in on their power? I don’t think we have any sex powered people in the lock.”
---
“That guy,” Cecile said vaguely. “The scary one. I mean, he’s scary when he’s himself and then there was a sonic scream and it flipped a switch and he became a whole other kind of scary. It was entertaining,” she had to admit, “but pretty embarrassing for him after.”
But wasn’t that the thing with all powers? It wasn’t as if she found her tendency to end up naked in random places following a butterfly adventure anything but.
“Come on,” she added as the cart came to a stop, “time to head home before we turn into pumpkins.” Or were considered rogue. Whichever.