and then she'd say, 'it's okay, i got lost on the way, but i'm a supergirl and supergirls don't cry'

[lucked]

Up until now, everything's been easy. As strange as it might be for most people to imagine, Claire Bennet's leap off the Compound has been the best thing that's happened to her yet on Tabula Rasa. Maybe it isn't the healthiest- after all, where the leap from the Compound was supposed to help her shed that mask, come face to face with all that fate'

Comments

[lonewolflives]

"What the fuck, Claire?"

Arya had never made much pretence of being other than blunt.

She wasn't talking about the way Claire was prodding at the bandages, because that's an impulse she understood, or thought she did; testing the limits, reminding oneself of where the pain was, what it was like. She'd poked enough of her own bruises in her time, stretched against tired or damaged muscles.

No, she meant the leap itself, which as far as she could tell had no apparent purpose. And maybe that look in her eyes; Arya was fairly good at reading people, translating the way a face moved in all its unconscious ways into meaning, but she couldn't figure out the context in which that expression made sense.

[lucked]

Claire's eyes squeezed closed as soon as the words registered. Of course she was being scolded. Were Claire herself in Arya's shoes, she had the feeling that she would have been bouncing off the walls with concern, pacing around the room- all things considered, maybe Arya was already showing a great amount of restraint. Or maybe, a smaller voice in the back of Claire's head sounded, maybe she was able to see more of Claire than the teen ever intended. Maybe the lie was just growing thin, and it was really her own damn fault.

"Hey," she replied in a voice slightly hoarse from disuse, trying for a smile, one that didn't quite make it there. At the very least, she could wave for Arya to come closer, pull a hand out from under the covers and hold it out to the other teen, beckoning. "Sorry."

Whatever excuse for a smile there'd been, it faded away entirely as Claire tried for her next words. "I... I slipped?"

[lonewolflives]

Arya sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned in a little, squinting at Claire's face, frowning. Trying to decide how far she bought that particular explanation. It seemed viable, the sensible reason; what other logical cause could there be, after all? But somehow, she had her doubts.

"You slipped," she repeated, trying out the words. "You were on the compound roof and you just... slipped?"

[lucked]

The fact that Arya kept on leaning in with those watchful eyes of hers, as though trying to spot any change or giveaway, had Claire squirming in her bed. Because there had been a part of her which kept on remarking, every time that she made a friend, that Claire was being dishonest. That she was deliberately hiding part of herself from those friends, and that could only mean that she didn't trust them enough. Which wasn't fair. They'd given her every reason to think that they cared for her, that they would have been able to overcome just about any hurdle.

She was just afraid.

"I..." Claire blinked up at Arya, then looked down, then closed her eyes altogether as a hand rubbed over her forehead, her entire body still aching from the effort it took to move. "I've been slipping for some time, Arya, but it's not- it's not how it looks. I just needed to find something out, and I did, and now I'm done."

[lonewolflives]

"What did you need to find out? How not to fall off a roof?" Arya said, still sounding vaguely dubious, although less because she doubted the explanation, as such, and more because she wasn't sure what it meant. She didn't entirely understand it yet.

Part of it might have been something of a gentle gibe, too, or gentle for Arya. She didn't approve of recklessness with no end, or at least that she didn't think had a valid end.

[lucked]

"No," Claire shook her head, quickly realizing that she was only stepping further and further into the mud, that she needed to clear up the details somehow for Arya, who almost seemed to be pushing Claire constantly toward it. Claire could understand why. It was only natural for friends to want to know things about one another, for friends to be concerned when anyone was hurt. And it made Claire a hypocrite, one who was even fully aware, as she tried to sidestep all of it. "No, it's..."

She closed her eyes, resting more heavily against her pillows for a few seconds, before slowly opening them again.

"Do you think, if someone can't die, that they're ever really alive? I mean, bear with me here, I know it sounds really melodramatic. But living's supposed to be a choice, right?"

[lonewolflives]

Arya paused, the slightly stern, curious look fading into something more contemplative. Even now, death, dying, killing... they were things she thought about. The robe from the House of Black and White had no hope of fitting now, given she'd had it since she was 12, but it was still in her room, buried somewhere.

She didn't think that was her path, any more, but sometimes she still wished the kindly man was around to field her questions, to tell her things she didn't entirely understand.

"I think that death's a part of life," she said, releasing the lip she'd been gnawing on as she thought. "I think that everything that's alive has to die, otherwise... it isn't right, I guess."

[lucked]

Claire carefully monitored her own breathing while Arya talked, counting the seconds between each breath and pacing them. It gave her something to do that pushed past the immediate and gripping fear that held her, the twisting of Claire's gut into knots. Even if a part of her wanted Arya to gloss over it all and toss it aside, like it didn't matter at all, Claire knew that this was better. Honest and thoughtful. She nodded as Arya came to her conclusion, closing her eyes but turning them upward, as though seeking some kind of perfect response, one that she wasn't sure existed.

"No, it's really not," she replied, blinking her eyes open, expression weary, the shadows under her eyes more prominent than ever. "Because yeah, they go hand in hand, you know? Two necessary sides to a, a coin or something. One isn't really supposed to exist without the other. But for a long time, that wasn't... true for me."

Her lips parted, but held in silence, Claire's fingers trailing back and forth on her sheets. "I couldn't die, back home," she added

[lonewolflives]

Arya studied Claire's face again, looking for she didn't know what, this time. Some sign that something wasn't right, there, that something was missing. She remembered what Beric had looked like; Claire certainly seemed better off than he had, healthy and natural and sane.

Well, she had jumped off a building, but Arya wouldn't doubt her sanity because of that. She'd jump off a building if she had enough reason.

If she thought she'd survive.

"Not ever?" she said.

No, as much as she wanted the people she cared about to stick around, that wasn't how it was meant to be. She wanted them to stay, but not in defiance of how life was meant to work.

[lucked]

The question of immortality was one that Claire's wanted to avoid for a while. Because it's one that she couldn't be entirely sure of. After all, she had managed to age, over the years. It was impossible to know whether that was just something that didn't fall under the protection of rapid cellular regeneration, or if it had just taken a while for her ability to manifest. Maybe it was something that set in after puberty. So Claire's eyes closed tightly shut as she sighed.

"I don't... know, exactly," she admitted. "I stopped growing taller after a while, if that means anything? Though it's possible that's just because neither of my biological parents were really tall. All I know is that I tried, like, everything. Running a steel rod through my body, falling from forty feet up, running into a fire. And nothing stuck."

[lonewolflives]

"And you still felt okay, in your head?" Arya said, scooting upwards on the hospital bed so that she sit in the space next to Claire on one side, pulling her legs up and stretching them out. It wasn't like she wore shoes, after all.

She was thinking of Beric Dondarrion, again, how tormented he'd seemed, how he forgot things, burned away in the fire that brought him back, again and again.

[lucked]

"What do you mean by feeling okay in my head?" Claire grinned, a very faint expression as she pulled her arms over her chest, crossing them as well as she could. The look was more nervous than anything else; even if the main revelation had been revealed, all things took time to sink in, and sometimes opinions changed during the process. "Obviously, I was shaken, but... if you mean amnesia or things like that, nothing like that happened. That was the problem for me, actually. Everything always went back to the way it was before."

Claire shifted over slightly on the bed, before gradually lowering her head down to Arya's shoulder, taking a shallow breath.

[lonewolflives]

"Losing things," Arya confirmed, dropping her shoulder slightly to make way for Claire. "Becoming less you, I suppose, but I've met people like that, and you're nothing like them."

It made it harder to see the downside, but the idea of harm having no impact, of death being unable to approach someone still made her uncomfortable. Perhaps a little more: These things should have consequences, or what was the world?

"So every time, you just healed? All at once?"

[lucked]

"Sometimes it felt like that, though. Like I was becoming less me," Claire considered quietly, exhaling slowly. "Or more like I was becoming someone else. In some ways, it was okay, because being a cheerleader was getting kind of old. Always just dressing up and trying to be whoever my peers wanted me to be. But this was something that I couldn't hide from myself, and it just made me wonder if that was the person I wanted to be anymore. If there were more important things."

Nodding lightly, Claire brushed some stray strands of her hair out of the way.

"But yeah. Healed. Every time, always in a few seconds."

[lonewolflives]

Arya bit her lip, eyes on the bandages she could see.

"Syrio always said every bruise was a lesson," she said, lifting one leg slightly to display a reasonably-sized purple mark on one calf. She usually had bruises, somewhere or another. It just didn't seem like proper training unless she was pushing herself.

So maybe she had some understanding of the impulse, or a similar one, but she'd never landed herself in the clinic. Except that time a giant squid broke her arm, but she could hardly be held at fault for that.

"So if everything heals right away, I don't know if you learn the same thing. I dunno. I can think of times it would've come in handy, though."

[lucked]

"Syrio... sounds like a pretty wise guy," Claire replied in turn, tilting her head at the bruise, the sort of injury that Claire herself had never had to a meaningful degree- at least, not that she remembered. Sometimes, she wondered about whether or not she'd ever gotten into bumps and scrapes as a child, anything significant enough that the heightened rate of healing would have come off as suspicious. It was pointless to dwell on, however, without either parent around.

"But well, I guess there's a lot that I've learned by being what I was, too. Different lessons, of course, but you learn how to survive and get along and how to accept yourself as a freak, after a while," she added, a vague smile on her face as she shifted, leaning more heavily against her pillow. "And I mean freak in the best way. Though I still would have traded it all away to keep my family safe."