Who: Clarice, Neena What: Serious girlfriend discussion teims. When: Recently. Where: A safehouse somewhere. Rating/Warnings: R. Guns, discussions of torture and memory loss, cursing, etc. Status: Complete!
The safehouse Neena'd selected was a run down old house next to a defunct trailer park, somewhere in California. The name on the mortgage had long since been forgotten, since it had been paid off years ago. And even then, it was a fake one. One of only half a dozen false identities Neena used when she needed to lay low.
The kitchen had been run down and it had taken a small act of congress to get running water and electricity to work. Now that all of that was in order and groceries had been taken care of, Neena had taken apart every single one of her guns.
They were lined up in neat little rows on the gigantic table in the kitchen, laid out on white cloths. This was the tenth time she'd cleaned them, and she hoped that when she was done putting the all back together, she wouldn't dismantle them an eleventh time.
Every time Clarice passed the table she'd nudge a piece out of place. On the one hand it drove Neena nuts, but more importantly it kept her lover distracted and focused on that rather than anything else. They'd gone grocery shopping and Neena had reorganized the entire cereal aisle before Clarice had talked her into leaving well enough alone. There was letting her girlfriend fidget and then there was going overboard.
This time though, she'd walked up to the table wearing nothing but a holster, and leaned over the weapons until she had Neena's attention. "Hanna is at the arcade, I think you've spent quite enough time in front of those guns. Maybe you could play with something else for awhile."
She grinned toothily.
Clarice definitely had Neena’s attention. It was hard to stare at anything else when a vast expanse of gorgeously pink skin was standing anywhere near her. She had been in the process of putting one of her pistols back together when her girlfriend walked up to her, and she continued the process quickly. Neena’s eyes never left Clarice. She didn’t need to see what she was doing; She’d put the guns together so many times at this point that it was rote.
Then she got up from the table, and grinned sheepishly at Clarice, “Are you getting bored here all by yourself with no one to play with?”
The other woman’s skin was soft and smooth to the touch; Neena loved running her hands over it, even when it wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Her hands sought it out now, running over Clarice’s stomach and around to her back, pulling her closer, “I guess it’s probably a bad idea to let you get bored. How long is Hanna going to be gone, do you figure?”
"An hour, maybe two," Clarice purred. "I gave her a lot of quarters."
Neena's fingers were an interesting mixture of smooth and rough. Calloused and experienced but still very much a woman's touch. And she loved it. She stroked her fingers along Neena's arms. She wanted to remind the woman that gentle touches still existed, and that she was in control.
It hadn't been that bad. Neena had been through experiences a lot worse, in any case, and weathered them without being that fucked up later on. Still, she shivered slightly as Clarice's fingers found a few scabbed over cuts.
Neena didn't care how her body reacted. She'd been mentally ready for some one-on-one time with Clarice for days now. There needed to be voluntary touching and life-affirming sex. Wonderful, wonderful, life-affirming sex, where she rode Clarice like a pony. Maybe even let her woman handcuff her to something for a while.
Okay, maybe not the handcuffing.
But still. Sex, and then love-making, and then more sex. Neena wanted a new stock of memories to overwrite the bad ones. She pulled away and took Clarice's hand in hers, then started tugging her woman towards the bedroom, "We're gonna need every single one of those hours."
Sex, then love making, then more sex, and then some. Clarice could keep up with anything that Neena wanted to do or wanted to throw at her. She didn't handcuff Neena, but she did let the woman handcuff her, which, actually, was a pretty big deal for her. Almost as big a deal as the other way around, really (she might have cried, here and there, but they were good tears).
And after all of that, there was the catching of breath, and the dizziness, and the feeling of coming down from euphoria. "God."
"Many have called me by this name in the past," Neena joked. Where Clarice had been the one grinning toothily before, it was now Neena's turn. She pulled Clarice against her and nuzzled her lips against the other woman's skin, still grinning, "I'm pretty sure the neighborhood knows we exist, now."
“Let them. I’ve got the marks to prove it.” Clarice played lightly with Neena’s hair, studying her face. There was so much hanging in the air and she knew she wouldn’t get it out of Neena easily. She’d been so worried. A little pissed off she couldn’t have been there beside her. Instead it had been that damned redhead, which pissed her off.
There wasn't much reason to focus on or talk about all of the stuff they'd recently been through. At least not where Neena was concerned. She'd been through far worse - at the hands of the woman she'd gone in there with, and those weren't the only times she'd ever been in a bad scrape like that.
She was completely willing to just pretend that week hadn't even happened. Neena grinned, tracing a finger against one of the claw marks she'd left there just moments earlier, "They're like little medals of honor. Or from where I'm sitting, little marks that say 'This is Neena's territory'. Which is kind of possessive, I know."
It worried Clarice how well Neena was taking it. She nuzzled her lightly in the chest. "I'm okay with possessive. But are you sure you're okay? I mean they did some pretty intense things to you." Fishing for information, she was.
"Natasha's done worse to me with chewing gum, Clarice. Really." Neena replied, her tone joking. That was actually a pretty traumatic event in her life, but it had been years ago and at least her hair had grown back.
"I mean sure, I probably won't go swimming anytime soon, but at least I have all of my hair this time."
“Just a few new scars. But eventually you’ll be nothing but scars.” Clarice smiled, rolling her eyes a little. “Still drop dead sexy though.” She shifted on the bed and pulled Neena on top of her. “What did they do to you there? You can tell me. I won’t judge.”
Eventually you'll be nothing but scars.
Neena looked down into Clarice's eyes, searching them a bit. It was hard to get a read on her sometimes, the glowing green irises there tended to pierce right through her instead. Sometimes she felt like she was already nothing but scars, and that Clarice had saved her from that in a way that Booker just couldn't.
Now they were here, and she didn't know how to respond, "You actually want to know every detail of what they did to me? Why? What would that accomplish?"
Slender pink fingers played with strands of black hair. Clarice's eyes were unreadable, at least in her irises. It was the way they widened or squinted that really betrayed anything she felt, but right now they were narrowed in a mixture of loving concern. "It would mean you have someone to share it with who's willing to listen and not sweep it under the rug." She didn't think that Natasha would talk about it with Neena, or anyone. "It's better than keeping it in."
"Maybe things like this are the kinds of things you sweep under the rug. I mean... I didn't want you there, I didn't want you to be hurt because of me, I didn't want to have to watch it and I didn't want you to have to watch them hurt me. It's harder. It's about eighteen times harder..." Neena cringed a bit. The truth was she didn't want to talk about it. It was easier to pretend it never happened or joke about it and then move on.
If Clarice had been there, that would have made it more real. Talking about it to Clarice made it more real. With Natasha, it was different. Even Booker would have understood it more.
But maybe that's why she was with Clarice and not Booker or Natasha.
The teleporter wet her lips, her eyes darting over Neena's face. "I wasn't hurt, and I didn't have to watch it, but that doesn't mean I can't hear it. Let me share the burden with you, Neena. I'm tougher than I look, but I know it was a lot easier on me when I finally broke down and told people about some of what I've been through." Not everything, no. Neena actually knew more than most. More than Cal ever had.
"No, I know you're tougher than you look. You put up with me after all..." Neena joked, and grinned a bit. Keeping the tone light was getting harder the longer this conversation lasted, though. She pulled her eyes away from Clarice's and tried to look anywhere else.
"There isn't really much to share... they beat us up a bit while they cuffed us, knocked us out. Then when we woke up they took turns questioning us. Me and Nat decided to play Star Wars, so I answered like I was Han Solo and she answered like she was Princess Leia. It really pissed our creepy spooky interrogator off, it was hysterical."
“They just questioned you?” Clarice’s fingers lingered over Neena’s hands. “You’re a lot more beat up than friendly questions would otherwise indicate. That’s pretty clever though. Did you betray the rebellion?”
"I may be a scroundrel, sister, but even I have a code," Neena replied, like she was pretending to be Han Solo again. She shook her head, though, and bit down on her lip for a bit before continuing, "It wasn't that friendly a conversation, though. There were fun motivational tools like knives under fingernails, electrocution, and waterboarding."
Because summing it up like that, all at once, made it seem like a casual happenstance instead of what it was. She wrinkled her nose a bit, and added, "And hey, when they got tired of that, they carted us off somewhere else and tried to drug us to trick us into saying the wrong thing. It must have really pissed them off that we still weren't talking, since they decided to get hands on again."
None of that sound particularly pleasant. And Clarice was glad they were all dead, because she wanted to go take care of that all over again, personally. She exhaled, a sharp, angry sound through her nostrils. "I guess surfing is out of the question." Hey look, she was being witty!
"Did they do anything more? Was that the worse of it?"
"Yeah, at least for a little while." Neena actually considered it a miracle that she'd been able to shower after she got home. And keep herself hydrated. Really, she wanted nothing to do with liquids in her mouth at all, but that was just crazy talk. Coffee was a liquid, and so was alcohol.
There had been something worse, but it hadn't been anything they'd done to her. Beating, cutting, even being electrocuted hadn't been new to Neena. The rest of it had been varying levels of tolerable. But there had been something... else. Something while she'd been drugged and strapped to a table. Memories. Disconnected ones that didn't seem to be dream related and made no sense. Like they were flashbacks.
She cringed and rolled off of Clarice, "Yeah."
The pink woman sat up, and put her hands on Neena’s shoulders. She didn’t say anything at first, merely rubbed at her shoulders as she searched for the words she needed to say. She needed Neena to understand that it was okay to talk to her about this. That she wouldn’t freak out any more than was strictly necessary. She wasn’t even going to beg her not to get into a situation like that again. For one thing that would only make Neena more reckless. And for the other she didn’t control her. She could just be there for her, and deal with her own hurting over it in her own way.
“So what is it? If you don’t want to share right now, it’s okay. But I’m going to pester you later.”
"This isn't how I deal with things. It's not how I do it. I'm not... I think I spoiled you with all that post-sex talking I did before." Neena complained. She didn't twitch away from Clarice, though. She remembered all the time dream-her had had to force Nate to talk about things. She'd been hurting for him or hurt that he wouldn't share. That was probably part of the reason they were off-again more than on-again.
Neena let out a long sigh, "I shout and flip it back around on people and then I run away. Or I have a lot of sex to break the tension and then I pretend it never happened. Or I busy myself with something else. And that's probably why the me in that other life is eighty times more messed up. And you are so annoying because you make me actually want to be a woman I never thought I could be."
A pause, then, "I saw stuff. They strapped us down to tables and drugged us and shined lights in our eyes, and I saw stuff. Like... memories. Memories that don't make any sense. The place suddenly felt familiar, Clarice..."
Neena's complaint only made Clarice smirk. If she knew what Neena was thinking about, she'd agree - she was hurting for Neena, and didn't want to hurt that she wouldn't share. But she could really understand not wanting to share.
"You do everything you can to avoid it," Clarice summed it up for Neena. She didn't snuggle up to the other woman. She didn't know if that's what she wanted or not. Right now she could just be an ear. A sounding wall.
"Familiar? Like you'd been there before? Or like you'd been in a place a lot like it?" Was it a Dream, or something buried from this life?
"There in that exact place, or somewhere really similar, yeah..." Neena replied, trailing off a bit. That was the kind of thing that terrified her the most. The idea that there was some part of her life that she'd lost or forgotten.
Everyone knew repressed memories like that weren't of anything good, "I can't piece them together. They were... floaty and disconnected and just really vague. Like I was drugged twice over and looking at the world through some kind of daze."
Clarice couldn’t imagine what Neena was remembering. What world, what events. She placed her hand on Neena’s leg and rubbed it there. “Is there any point of blank memories?”
"That's probably the most terrifying part. I don't. I don't have a gap in my memories. I don't have a place that I don't remember. Bad things happened in that asylum before I left it, but I remember most of it." Her body started to shake a bit as everything sank in, and Neena, who had previously turned her back to Clarice, rolled over to face her.
"Physical crap I can handle. I can. I'll get over all of it eventually because I'm too damn stubborn not to. But this stuff? Whose memories are these? Are they from the dreams? I've never dreamed while awake before. And if they're mine, then where was I when this shit was happening?"
“There’s no time that’s suspicious?” Clarice asked. She wasn’t trying to dismiss anything Neena was saying. If anything she was trying to force her memory to jog.
"Well..." No, there were plenty of times that were suspicious. Like when she'd blacked out in the desert after that last mission for Cerberus. Or the time that Milo's place had been attacked. Or half a dozen other merc jobs she'd run that had gone less than satisfactory. The time in russia with mini-nat.
Neena chewed on her lip again, "Christ."
"Relax. Don't let it get to you. We'll figure it out but I don't think it's something we can rush. That place was familiar, maybe there's something in the files we took that might tell you what they were doing there. Or if you'd been there before." Clarice rubbed at Neena's back. Some people felt better if they had answers, and others never wanted the answers at all, but she knew this would eat at Neena until she figured it out.
"Yeah. But it's going to get to me. It's going to get to me until I know what's going on for certain." Usually for Neena, whether she needed the answers or not had a lot to do with the situation. In this situation, she definitely wouldn't feel better until she had all the answers. Probably, she wouldn't feel better until she could remember everything for herself.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could just have normal for a few days? Just a few days where I'm not about ready to fall apart and you don't have to pick up the pieces..."
Clarice sighed. “Normal would be nice. I think we all deserve a little of that. In fact I think that’s exactly what we need. A week of normal, before anyone goes running off searching for answers that don’t want to be found.” She didn’t say it aloud, but Clarice’s expression said it enough. She’d pick up Neena’s pieces, and put them back together, and Neena would never need to ask her to.
The look also told Neena that when Clarice said 'before anyone goes running off searching' she meant 'before you go running off again'. And Clarice deserved that. She deserved as much peace as Neena could give her, while they could all get it. While she recovered.
Because she did need time to recover, "Alright. Why don't we do that? Let's go on vacation somewhere. A real vacation, you and me and... Hanna. Maybe even go somewhere with a beach. Warm sun and white sandy beaches seems like a great way to recover, and maybe you can even lure me out into that water. We can get a private beach, too, no one'll stare at you."
A part of Clarice ( a small part ) wanted to nail Neena down. Matrimony, promise rings, something to make her hers and hers alone. But as long as the question of Booker DeWitt was up in the air, and as long as she knew knew deep down in her gut that even bringing that up might make her loose Neena, Clarice had to keep quiet on it. She was wedding-shy herself, after all. She just wanted to feel more secure in their relationship.
"I've always wanted to go to Hawai'i..."
"Hawai'i... would you believe that's one I've never been to?" Neena wrapped her arms around Clarice and nuzzled her face in against the other woman's neck, "Sounds like a nice place to go heal and relax for a while. Decompress. Be together. And Hanna might find herself a vacation girlfriend. That'd be cute. Plus, I hear they have good food there."
“Then Honolulu it is,” Clarice murmured. “Or maybe one of the smaller islands.” She kissed the top of Neena’s head, stroking her fingers down the woman’s back, tracing her spine. “I think we both need that. And I really hope Hanna can get things out of her system. She might get heartbroken, but it’s an experience that’s good in the long run.”
"She's going to get her heart broken a few times, sure, and I'll hate to watch it, but we all had to learn somehow," Neena replied, nodding. She nuzzled at Clarice, "We'll make the arrangements. I can afford somewhere really nice now that we've liquidated the pawn shop stock. And I think it would do us all some good."
“Gay marriage is legal in hawaii,” Clarice said, with a straight face. Then she added. “We shouldn’t tell Hanna that, she might get hitched to her vacation love.”
Gay marriage. Those words turned Neena's insides to ice. Clarice's eyes, of course, were no more or less searchable than before. But she knew that it wasn't just for Hanna. It was a hint.
"Which still wouldn't be legal, because she's too young..." she gasped out. Then she wrinkled her brow and added, “It’s legal here too, you know.”
"Depends on the age of consent." Clarice bit her lip. Her brow furrowed. Her eyes took on a concerned, slightly sheepish expression. "I know it is, it was really just meant to be a joke." She worried at that lower lip, then added. "Mostly, anyway. I'm not trying to...hint anything."
She tried to ignore this sudden icy rock in the pit of her stomach.
"You're actually totally trying to hint at something." Neena chewed on her own lip a bit, suddenly unsure what ground they were on now. Did she want to marry Clarice? Was that even the kind of life she wanted to try again? She knew better than to follow her immediate instinct, at least, which was to get out of bed with her right then and there and run away.
“It wasn’t…” Clarice didn’t move. She knew if she did anything that seemed like she was trying to restrain Neena (even to just put a hand on her arm) it might be taken the wrong way. “Okay I’ve thought about it, a little. I just… really love you so much. And I just… I wish I… Neena, neither of us are in a place for that anyway, and we probably never will be. I don’t even know what I’m thinking.” The pink woman tugged at one pointed ear. “...I’m scared of losing you and I guess I just wanted some kind of symbolic… thing. Maybe a tattoo would be safer.”
"Maybe a tattoo would be safer? Hah!" Neena laughed at that one. She still had tattoos from the various merc bands she'd been in, and she pointed to the one on the underside of her wrist, "Because tattoos definitely keep the band together."
But really, why was this conversation so unexpected and terrifying? It shouldn't be. They'd practically been living together ever since things had gotten serious for them, and it wasn't like it had taken that long for things to get serious. And Hawai'i was supposed to be a romantic, magical place, and it wasn't that unreasonable to want to... lay claim. She took a deep breath while she told herself that, then let it out, "Are we in a place for this? I thought I was done with marriage at all after Milo, and that was 16 years ago. I mean... I know I harp on the old lady stuff but it's definitely hard to teach some old dogs new tricks. And you just got out of some kind of nightmare... But what do you really want? Is it the commitment you want? Or do you just need some kind of... token?"
It wasn’t as much to keep them together - Clarice had lost or pushed away too many people to ever believe that you could spend your life with someone again and unlike some people she hadn’t planned on trying again. But luck, and her heart, had made her want to try.
She did spend a large amount of time at Neena’s… “I think a token. I kind of wasn’t planning on another wedding, ever. Not after the way the last thing went. But I have...nothing of the people I loved the most. Nothing romantic anyway. Cal’s never been here, but I have his uniform. And Lena...the cancer took her too soon. So maybe that’s all I need. Something to...something to show for my feelings, if the dangerous things claim us.”
Some part of Neena wondered if they wouldn't eventually end up married, anyway, but she didn't want to jinx it. Mutants seemed kind of doomed when it came to long term relationships, especially when they got married. Things were working great the way they were. There was always the chance that changing something even in a good direction would just lead to tragedy.
But tokens, tokens didn't seem like that big a step. And probably, rings were the natural choice. Neena decided she'd give it some thought, at least, and nodded her head.
"I'll think about it. Maybe something will catch our eye in Hawai'i."
It didn’t even have to be a ring. A tattoo was probably a bad idea, but it could be something. Clarice would prefer something uniquely them. Maybe a second something they could include Hanna in, but first something for just them. “I just had too much time to think. You know, I bought my theatre? Even with doing all the paperwork. Lots of time to think.” She poked Neena in the ribs. “You should come see a show sometime.”
"I should." Neena nodded, and added, "I should do more things with you, in general. Out, in public. Like we're a thing. We should be a real thing, right? Dates, and girlfriend stuff, and... Jewelry. Girlfriends do the jewelry thing, don't they?"
"We should get jewelry. Maybe not rings? We're a little too active to wear them on our fingers. But... I'm yours, and you're mine, and you had a lot of time to think about this. If you didn't think that I thought about you while I was in there you're dead wrong."
“Never wanted to push you,” she replied. “But...I’d like that. Dates and girlfriend stuff. I really like when we go shopping together.” Neena got kind of cuddly and touchy when they went grocery shopping, and Clarice always looked forward to it. She leaned over and put a hand on Neena’s knee. “Could get those pendants that match.”
"Necklaces can be tucked away into uniforms and out of the way during adventure danger times, yeah," Neena agreed. She pulled Clarice in for a smooch, then rolled a bit and tugged her laptop onto the bed, "If we're going to go on vacation we might as well do it right. I'll book us somewhere awesome and private. We can check out the local artisans while we're there, maybe find something we like."
They probably needed to go shopping at least once for vacation wear, too. Neena wasn't sure what one wore on a tropical vacation to Hawaii, but she was almost certain she didn't own anything that worked.
Clarice settled in behind Neena, kissing her shoulder blades and then peering around her to watch her search on the internet. She felt this nervous, giddy excitement. She also felt like maybe everything was going to be okay. Neena needed to heal even if she couldn’t admit it in words. This would be a start.