Elizabeth doesn't know who she's becoming (manylighthouses) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-08-10 20:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, elizabeth comstock, lina inverse |
Who: Lina Inverse, Elizabeth Comstock
What: Girl Talk which turns somewhat philosophical.
When: Just after Elizabeth tornado'd her condo.
Where: Lina and Rogue's house!
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, mild discussions of violence, cussing, alcohol.
Status: Complete!
It was late when Lina came back home. Between the responsibilities of work, visiting Gwen at the hospital and all the other shit she’d managed to get herself into, she’d been filtering in and out of the house during weird hours. July had been a bitch and a half to deal with and she wanted a goddamn do-over.
Maybe next year.
Elizabeth had been couch surfing with them after her condo had been annihilated, which Lina didn’t mind the least. The only thing she did wish they’d gotten was a third bed to put in the vacant bedroom at the very least, or something of a blow up mattress. Not that she minded Elizabeth getting cozy in the living room, but having the luxury of a guest room would at least give her some privacy throughout this entire mess.
“Hey,” Lina spoke up, slowly - and mostly quietly - shutting the door behind her. The house held the mixed aroma of baked goods and something creole. Living with Rogue kept her amazingly well fed, and kept the perfect amount of sweet pastries to take comfort in readily available. “You awake?”
Though it lacked in privacy, Elizabeth wasn't sure she minded. It was nice, knowing that someone might wander in to keep her company at any moment, and the couch was close enough to the kitchen that she could hear Rogue cooking or get a good whiff of what was baking in the oven. Food smells like that were rare in her own condo, and they reminded her of when she used to spend time in the kitchens in France.
She was awake when Lina came in. Sleep didn't come too easily for her these days, and she feared what she might dream next. They'd only gotten worse since the torture dreams. The Elizabeth in that place knew what she had to do, but that didn't mean she'd completely accepted it yet.
"I'm awake," She whispered. In case Rogue was sleeping, "I've just been sitting here."
“You do know it’s safe to turn on the television,” she said with a half-smile and threw her keys onto the table by the door. The smells had her stomach growl with a vengeance, and the first destination Lina went was the kitchen. “Rogue’s sleep is damned for the next month or so, maybe even longer. Something about having someone else’s dreams.” Wet dreams were the best explanation, but that might be too much info for Elizabeth.
But Lina was glad someone was awake. Sleep didn’t seem like it’d come very soon for her and she’d been out so much that she barely had time to sit with her.
“Alright, late night snack! You in the mood for apple pie and icecream?”
"I just didn't want to disturb anyone," Elizabeth sounded a bit sheepish, though it was a bit too dark in the living room to see her face. She'd been moping in the dark, but now that Lina was home her mood brightened up a bit.
The mention of sharing a snack cheered her up even more, and she bounced up off the couch. Sweets were a go-to when it came to comfort food. She padded into the kitchen, looking somewhat raw and a little bit haunted, but her smile was genuine, "There's never a bad time for apple pie and ice cream!"
Lina’s smile grew at her sudden burst of energy, although she soon came to realize it was a forced gesture when she got a good look at Elizabeth. There was a strong and obnoxiously loud part of her that wanted to sit her down and tell her everything Aramis had told her, in secret.
But then she would be meddling in business that wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her dirty laundry to air out and she was running on good faith that Aramis would come clean on his own. Which he better, because her fist was itching to meet someone’s face otherwise.
“That’s what I thought!” She cut some slices and served them on a plate, and microwaved them for a handful of seconds to make it warm again. Nothing like food to ease a broken heart. “You know, when you’re more up to it, we need to take you shopping for some new clothes. Anything we got that was salvageable?”
"I found a few pairs of yoga pants and some comfortable tops to wear... which has become something like makeshift pajamas. And the tornado missed a few of my formal dresses in the back of the closet. It's kind of funny, actually." Elizabeth commented, while pulling the ice cream out of the freezer. Of course, nothing but vanilla would do when you were talking about pie a'la mode.
She fished around in various drawers for an ice cream scoop as she continued, "I can either dress very down or very over the top. All of my in-between clothes were sucked into Kansas."
Kind of funny. Well, it was somewhat relieving she found humor in the situation. The slices were quickly armed and Lina pulled them from the microwave. One had a regular person’s serving size. The other looked like it could feed at least three people, maybe four.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if they were literally in Kansas,” she commented, smiling crookedly. “Although let’s try to avoid another portal incident, unless we need a place to get rid of a nuclear bomb or send some asshole somewhere unpleasant.”
"I wish I could say that I had it under control." Elizabeth frowned and scooped out some ice cream for Lina's dinosaur slice of pie, then reached into the container for another one. One small scoop wasn't going to be enough to even put a dent in that pie's crust, really.
"But I think they really did end up in Kansas. Just... not any Kansas that anyone's familiar with outside of a fairy tale about a rainbow and yellow brick roads." And that was the truth. The portal she'd opened looked like it'd gone straight to that movie with Dorothy in it. Black and white, one monster tornado. For all she knew the house had been swirling around in it, too.
“Good thing you didn’t get sucked in it, either,” Lina pointed out and wagged a spoon in her general direction. “While Aramis is a dipwad, he’s not worth you losing control like that. No guy is. Next time there’s a heartbreak, the usual protocol is a copious amount of drinking and breaking stuff that isn’t yours. But speaking about him, any updates?”
"I was just so... angry." Elizabeth tried to explain. But Lina was right, if he was lying to her and being a 'dipwad' on purpose, he wasn't worth her anger. It just hurt, and now she understood why Booker tended to avoid these kinds of attachments, "But no, no updates. He still wants to take me to dinner, but I wanted to make sure I had it all... reigned in. Because I CAN, actually, or I have in the dreams, moved people from one dimension to another. But the only way to get back is... kind of iffy. And I don't want to do that to him, no matter how angry I am."
Was there even any liquor that went with apple pie and ice cream? Elizabeth pondered that while she dug her spoon into her own slice, "Liquor and ice cream sound like a better idea."
Her explanation on her ability to even move people from dimension to dimension earned a wince. All she could think about was what Booker had told her, and the last thing she wanted Elizabeth to become was a person that did bad things, even if she was good.
“Liquor can still come after this, so don’t worry.” It was blasphemous for Lina to go to bed without a drink, anyway. She stuffed a spoonful of ice cream and pie into her mouth, then contemplated while chewing. “But you’re doing a smart thing. Calming down before seeing him. I’ll let you know from experience, though; you can take all the time in the world and calm down, but when you finally see his face, there’s going to be that strong urge to still break it.”
Both of Elizabeth's eyebrows raised up, "I should have realised that was going to be a problem. I know it happens with Booker, even when I think I've calmed down. I still want to slap him sometimes over his suicidal tendencies."
But she wasn't sure it was ever safe to talk to Aramis, then. She was capable of a lot of things that she wasn't proud of, and it was too late to go back to the time where she could ignore that, "I don't know what to do, then. I get impulsive, and I do things. I used to think the worst thing was being related to Comstock because he was so... closed minded. But now I think having Booker for a father is worse because it comes with all of his vices."
This conversation wasn't very comforting. She stuck the whole spoon of ice cream and pie into her mouth to give herself a reason to shut up for the time being. And because it was good. It was in fact the best apple pie she'd ever tasted.
Maybe Lina wasn’t the best role model to go to when it came to responding to a broken heart. Or responding to someone who had broken it. She was prone to the violence, although all things considered she would never really do anything drastic to Xelloss despite their history. Unless he came after her, guns blazing to put her head on a platter, but even then…complicated.
“What you should do, and what you feel like doing, are always two different things,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she tried to explain it the best way she could. “He hurt you, and you have every right to be upset. And chances are you’re probably going to get even more upset when he does take you out. And he will probably also deserve a certain degree of violence. Just make sure you do something you know you won’t regret. Don’t let him be worth the guilt.” Instead of scarfing down more dessert, she ended up prodding it, the ice cream melting quickly on top of it. “You can be impulsive without doing something drastic.”
In a nutshell: it’s okay to break his nose, but don’t kill him.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but that's kind of ironic coming from you," Elizabeth said, after she removed the spoon from her mouth. She pointed at Lina and her ice cream with it, and arched a brow, "You're melting your ice cream instead of eating it. And you kind of do destroy things with your powers. But I suppose you're speaking from experience with that."
Lina not eating was a very strange phenomenon, however, and Elizabeth got worried. It was enough worry to pull her up out of her own funk, "Are you okay? Because you never just poke and prod a piece of pie."
“Ah, yeah,” Lina blinked a few times like she’d just woken up and then started scooping the entire mess in her plate into a giant spoonful of something. Elizabeth had a point that all that coming from her was, uh….a little weird. “Okay. Pretty much, do as I say, not as I do. I’ve been in your position. And I still...sort of...am? I guess. But!”
And to emphasis the but!, Lina wagged the spoon in her general direction after eating what was on it.
“I saw Xelloss. I let some of my aggression out. I could have done a lot worse. Part of me wanted to, because, whatever, hurt feelings and stuff. But if I did more than break his face - and car window - it’d be going too far, and I would have regretted it. And I’m a big believer in the ‘having no regrets’ philosophy, and I’m not going to ruin that for a guy. You shouldn’t either.”
"I'm not going to KILL him, Lina." Elizabeth had been about to pile another spoonload of delicious comfort food into her mouth, but instead she let it fall back to the plate, "He's not even worth it. Do you know how easy it is to fall into that? The first one isn't even hard, and it's all downhill from there. I don't want to become that. Not over something like this."
She could still remember the way it had felt to do that in her dreams, and how much she'd scared becoming Booker. Even before she'd known they were genetically related, "I just took it more seriously than he did, I was naive and stupid, and I won't make that mistake again. Not even if I let him talk me into seeing him again."
Lina didn’t think she’d kill Aramis. Send him off somewhere that just happened to have an active volcano? Yes, maybe. But not outright murder. Hopefully, never outright murder. Booker didn’t elaborate much on the Elizabeth he saw, though, so who knew.
“Just sayin’, killing’s bad, punching him in the face...not so bad.” Now she had a little grin of mischief. “Are you gonna tell Booker, though? About Aramis? He asked, but I just told him it was a girl thing.”
Well, there was that, too. Booker hadn't known much about Aramis up to now, mainly because Elizabeth hadn't been sure how to even broach the topic, or if it was safe. She chased some pie crust around her plate with her spoon, "I don't know. I'm scared of what he'll do."
“Probably hurt him for you,” Lina replied with a shrug. “Can’t really blame him.” Hell, she wanted to hurt Aramis for Elizabeth. “But I think he wants a chance to be there for you. And you know, do the whole dad thing.”
"It's just still so hard to think of him like that. In the dreams, he isn't. I mean... We don't figure it out... We STILL haven't quite. Not to where I'm up to, in any case."
This was frustrating to Elizabeth. She desperately wanted to admit to one person what it had been like in that world. How she'd felt about him. But it wasn't socially acceptable and was hard to deal with. Serious cognitive dissonance, "I can't talk about it. You like us too much. But maybe I can try to talk to him about Aramis. It was never my intent to cut him out. I don't really know what fathers and daughters, I don't know how that's supposed to work."
“Well, what, you’re his only kid, right? His only daughter? To dad’s, that’s kind of a big deal.” Lina had an older sister, but she was the baby - the little troublemaker - and very much the apple of her father’s eye. Until she became a disappointment, but even then, she knew her dad would take her back with open arms. Eventually. “I think it’s worth a shot, though. For him to know that….you can talk to him about that kind of thing. Baby steps, though.”
Lina didn’t get the whole ‘can’t talk about, you like us too much’ comment. Whatever it was seemed like a personal secret between the two, so she didn’t push. If she wanted to tell her, she’d tell her.
"I think I was a pretty big deal to him when I was a baby, yes. But now that we're here it's all different. He missed all of those years thinking I was gone or dead, that he'd never see me again, and I spent all of those years with... a completely different kind of father." Elizabeth took a few moments to finish off the remains of her pie. It was about to turn into apple pie vanilla soup, otherwise.
She nodded her head as she moved to put her plate in the sink, though, "Right... baby steps. But I'll have to tell him not to hurt Aramis. He might not hold back."
“The last thing we need to do is bail your dad out of jail,” she said, although considering how this summer had been going, it wouldn’t be surprising that they did. That would be the cherry on top of it all. Lina had finished her plate already, set it aside, and bounced over to the kitchen to open up the liquor cabinet. “Now, it’s time for some real dessert. Plus, it helps if you have trouble sleeping.”
"I try not to sleep," Elizabeth murmured. Now that the pie and ice cream were over, she settled back into her spot on the couch. From there, she watched Lina get the alcohol out. Part of her was dying to get so drunk that she forgot this entire mess, but she didn't want to turn into her father, "Nothing TOO strong, I'm still getting used to liquor. I didn't drink at all before I came here, but the dreams seem to change that part of you very quickly."
“You get a single, and I get a double. Shouldn’t be too bad.” Lina didn’t know what Elizabeth’s alcohol tolerance was like, but knowing Booker, she must at least have inherited the strength of his liver. After pouring their drinks in glasses, she walked over to hand it over to her. “You need to sleep sometime, you know.”
Instead of getting comfortable on the couch, she settled onto the floor, using the couch cushions as a rest for her elbow. “Unless your dreams have gotten worse?”
Elizabeth cradled the glass in her hands like it was a life raft, a gesture that was very much like her father, at least. She nodded her head, "They were never really that good, to be honest. Not horrible, either, but even in the dream world I grew up alone and locked away. Then Booker came to save me, but I found out he'd only been telling me what I wanted to hear so that I'd go with him. To pay off his gambling debts. But we managed to forget all of that and work together? He's still a thug, but at least he helped."
She shrugged a shoulder, "They took a turn for the worst recently. There was... a lot of darkness. And we confronted my 'father' there. It's going to get worse, even, I just have a very bad feeling. Me and Booker have been fighting over who would kill him. Comstock, I mean."
Lina honestly wondered what it was like to be a fly on a wall in their dream world. Come to think of it, she didn’t know if she’d ever heard anything good about that world from them. Hers had friends and hilarious moments, and the occasional shit got real factor, but she could list and ramble on and on about the silly adventures she remembered from them.
“Wish there was a magical tea I could suddenly make. To make all the bad dreams go away,” she sighed. Lina wished she could do something to help, but their journey through whatever the dreams brought them was theirs alone. “Guess the only silver lining I can tell you is that when you wake up, you’re not in that world anymore. And you’re not locked away. And you have your dad around, even if things are complicated. And you have friends to stuff your face full of food with.”
"That's all well and good, and it's important to remember. I'm glad that I have friends here to call on, and all of that, but at the same time..."
Elizabeth took a long sip off of her glass, then decided that she wished there was more in it, "We become who we are. He has the vigors from there. I have my portals. You have your powers. You can wake up and go back to your much sunnier life, but they haunt you anyway. The problem with remembering things is that you have to remember them. And those memories are just as much a prison as my tower used to be."
That way of explaining it made Lina empty her entire glass, all in one swallow.
“I’m not who I am in those dreams. Neither are you. Neither is Booker.” She stood, examining her empty glass before glancing over at Elizabeth. “Maybe, once upon a time, we were. Or we’re just seeing what could have happened in a different world. Of course, you’re gonna have those that are gonna bother the shit out of you. But don’t become a slave to them, either.”
"But you've got her powers. And Booker is a lot like he is in those dreams. Somehow he's become so world-weary, even though he hasn't done half of the horrible things that he did, there." And if Elizabeth was honest, she was picking up on his world weariness. Even though there hadn't been much that had ever happened to her here in this world to warrant it.
But she didn't want to think about that. She was scared of what she'd become, but dwelling on it did nothing for her or anyone else, "...You're right, though. Everyone keeps telling me I don't have to become anyone I don't want to be. I just need to believe it."
“I call the powers thing a perk. Or at least a reward for dealing with this dream crap. Gotta get something out of it besides re-living someone else’s life in your sleep, right?” It wouldn’t be a terrible thing for Lina to actually be who she was in the dreams. Saving the world sounded fun, even though those were situations she accidentally fell into and not something she went actively searching. She gathered the empty plates. “You should probably get some snooze tonight, though. For your own health,” she said with a small smile.
"I'm not sure how much of a perk mine really are," Elizabeth joked. She nodded her head at Lina, and handed her the empty glass she still had in her hand, too. She wished that the glass was full, but taking up heavy drinking was yet another concern of hers. It was probably better that Lina was cleaning things up and preparing for sleep.
"I'll try. I don't want you to worry. I think we all have enough to worry about without adding my health to the list."
“It’s nice to have someone look after you when shit gets rough.” She carried all the glass to the sink to be cleaned for tomorrow, and walked back to the living room, leaning over the couch to peek at Elizabeth. “So don’t you worry about it. Now get some sleep. Or at least try. I’m sure Rogue’s got an awesome and over-the-top breakfast for tomorrow morning.”
Elizabeth stretched out on the couch and tried to make herself more comfortable. It wasn't actually that hard to do. She'd read something before about ice cream making someone sleepy, and the alcohol helped. The couch was also extremely soft, and she felt like she was sinking into it.
She bit back a yawn as Lina peered down at her, and chuckled, "Maybe if I daydream about the breakfast as I'm falling asleep I'll just have wonderful dreams about pancakes and bacon. That would be nice, don't you think?"
“Keep thinking about it and it might just happen,” she smirked. But she did hope that she didn’t dream at all, or if she did, she dreamt of something nice for once. Lina pulled the blanket on her a little more. “Night, Elizabeth. Have awesome breakfast dreams.”