Ficlet: Electric Blue
Title: Electric blue
Spoilers: through 3x12 Our Father
Rating: PG-13 (for references to child abuse, references to sexual content, violence, and character death)
A/N: This has a bit of Elle's relationship with her father, Gabriel, and even a little HRG but it's mainly about her relationship with her power.
Title from The Cranberries' song "Electric Blue"
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Elle Bishop found her sparks at four years old.
She was so bright, strong, energetic, and full of life that the electricity vibrated right into her soul. They were the perfect match: her most prized possession and her never failing protector.
Her daddy pried the crackling blue light right out of her skin. After that, Elle and her sparks weren’t the same. They broke a little. Sometimes the electricity wouldn’t just tingle, sometimes it would burn. She didn’t blame it, though; it didn’t mean to hurt her, just like she didn’t blame her daddy.
Then her daddy died, the top of his head taken clean off. He did that to her. He wanted her to pay, to suffer for making him think she was a normal girl and he could be a normal boy.
And she did suffer. It all hurt so much that she couldn’t stand the sting of her own skin. She wanted to make her brilliant blue light go away so she could really be all alone with nothing to remind her of her daddy, or the boy who looked at her once like he might just love her, who killed her daddy.
When he had stepped into that cell, she killed him with her light, burned him up a dozen times and watched as he was reborn whole again. She envied that. She was never whole, at least, she couldn’t remember ever being whole. The Haitian had come and wiped that all away so long ago.
She begged then that he make it stop, take her most prized possession and leave her head half gone like her daddy. Taunted, when begging didn’t seem to work, but it didn’t work.
He didn’t kill her. He did something so much crueler. He forgave her.
She gave him her gift then. Willingly, she handed it over to him and smiled when the little fireworks jumped from his fingers. She showed him how to work it into a little ball, how to push all your strength and confidence into a steady current, and how to do precision work using the tip of his finger.
She teaches him how to be a real gunslinger.
She thinks: maybe, she might just be ok, even if she’ll never be normal.
There’s a mission. They have to get the cheerleader. It’s always the cheerleader.
They fail, of course. Discover they lost what makes them special. No more sparks for Elle.
Still, she manages to piss off Glasses by shooting his little girl. Give the girl a gold star.
After she drags herself up off the floor, she resets her partner’s shoulder. Rolls her eyes at his screams because pain is something she has long since learned to endure, embrace even. She’s not exactly sure how he’s made it this far in their world without learning the same thing.
Maybe he doesn’t have to learn now. No more powers means no more being hunted, no more being used and manipulated to do others bidding.
There’s a downside, she thinks. You can’t take what you want anymore.
He kisses her.
She figures out it all depends on what it is a person wants.
They can be normal now, as normal as any two killers can be anyway.
They make love on the wood floor of a dead man’s house. And for the first time since she can remember, she feels whole. She feels loved.
Then she’s shot. She wishes she could trade her gold star in for the chance to have stayed basking in the afterglow. She can’t. Life has never been fair.
He sacrifices himself, even though she begs him not to. He doesn’t seem to understand he’s all she’s got.
She knows the second the sun sets and their powers are back, she can feel it in the tingle under her skin. He gasps for air and they go for revenge and she knows they’ll never get to be normal again.
Bennet says it without the hesitation she wishes he would allow her. The man she wishes would have been her father delivers her downfall, with so few words, to the man she dreams could be her happy ending.
He kisses her one last kiss on the beach. She knows… and can’t seem to find it in her to fight. It’s coursing under her skin, waiting for release, but if she can’t have a happy ending, then she just wants an end.
She tells him he’s hurting her.
He says he knows.
She wonders, though, in those fleeting moments if he really did know, she didn’t mean the pain.
She made him who he is, loved him just enough break him.
And he’s a gunslinger now, lights her up and watches her burn.
Her Gabriel Gray, he can still feel her in the tingle beneath his skin, still see her in the bright blue lightening bolts his hands produce, and he thinks he hates it more than anything he’s ever hated.
It’s hers, even now: her best friend, her most prized possession, and her never failing protector.
It binds around his heart and burrows deep into his soul, avenges her, never letting him forget.
She’s the girl with the electric soul.
Spoilers: through 3x12 Our Father
Rating: PG-13 (for references to child abuse, references to sexual content, violence, and character death)
A/N: This has a bit of Elle's relationship with her father, Gabriel, and even a little HRG but it's mainly about her relationship with her power.
Title from The Cranberries' song "Electric Blue"
--------
Elle Bishop found her sparks at four years old.
She was so bright, strong, energetic, and full of life that the electricity vibrated right into her soul. They were the perfect match: her most prized possession and her never failing protector.
Her daddy pried the crackling blue light right out of her skin. After that, Elle and her sparks weren’t the same. They broke a little. Sometimes the electricity wouldn’t just tingle, sometimes it would burn. She didn’t blame it, though; it didn’t mean to hurt her, just like she didn’t blame her daddy.
Then her daddy died, the top of his head taken clean off. He did that to her. He wanted her to pay, to suffer for making him think she was a normal girl and he could be a normal boy.
And she did suffer. It all hurt so much that she couldn’t stand the sting of her own skin. She wanted to make her brilliant blue light go away so she could really be all alone with nothing to remind her of her daddy, or the boy who looked at her once like he might just love her, who killed her daddy.
When he had stepped into that cell, she killed him with her light, burned him up a dozen times and watched as he was reborn whole again. She envied that. She was never whole, at least, she couldn’t remember ever being whole. The Haitian had come and wiped that all away so long ago.
She begged then that he make it stop, take her most prized possession and leave her head half gone like her daddy. Taunted, when begging didn’t seem to work, but it didn’t work.
He didn’t kill her. He did something so much crueler. He forgave her.
She gave him her gift then. Willingly, she handed it over to him and smiled when the little fireworks jumped from his fingers. She showed him how to work it into a little ball, how to push all your strength and confidence into a steady current, and how to do precision work using the tip of his finger.
She teaches him how to be a real gunslinger.
She thinks: maybe, she might just be ok, even if she’ll never be normal.
There’s a mission. They have to get the cheerleader. It’s always the cheerleader.
They fail, of course. Discover they lost what makes them special. No more sparks for Elle.
Still, she manages to piss off Glasses by shooting his little girl. Give the girl a gold star.
After she drags herself up off the floor, she resets her partner’s shoulder. Rolls her eyes at his screams because pain is something she has long since learned to endure, embrace even. She’s not exactly sure how he’s made it this far in their world without learning the same thing.
Maybe he doesn’t have to learn now. No more powers means no more being hunted, no more being used and manipulated to do others bidding.
There’s a downside, she thinks. You can’t take what you want anymore.
He kisses her.
She figures out it all depends on what it is a person wants.
They can be normal now, as normal as any two killers can be anyway.
They make love on the wood floor of a dead man’s house. And for the first time since she can remember, she feels whole. She feels loved.
Then she’s shot. She wishes she could trade her gold star in for the chance to have stayed basking in the afterglow. She can’t. Life has never been fair.
He sacrifices himself, even though she begs him not to. He doesn’t seem to understand he’s all she’s got.
She knows the second the sun sets and their powers are back, she can feel it in the tingle under her skin. He gasps for air and they go for revenge and she knows they’ll never get to be normal again.
Bennet says it without the hesitation she wishes he would allow her. The man she wishes would have been her father delivers her downfall, with so few words, to the man she dreams could be her happy ending.
He kisses her one last kiss on the beach. She knows… and can’t seem to find it in her to fight. It’s coursing under her skin, waiting for release, but if she can’t have a happy ending, then she just wants an end.
She tells him he’s hurting her.
He says he knows.
She wonders, though, in those fleeting moments if he really did know, she didn’t mean the pain.
She made him who he is, loved him just enough break him.
And he’s a gunslinger now, lights her up and watches her burn.
Her Gabriel Gray, he can still feel her in the tingle beneath his skin, still see her in the bright blue lightening bolts his hands produce, and he thinks he hates it more than anything he’s ever hated.
It’s hers, even now: her best friend, her most prized possession, and her never failing protector.
It binds around his heart and burrows deep into his soul, avenges her, never letting him forget.
She’s the girl with the electric soul.