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[begot]

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AMY

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[scathe]

[oh. huh. she wants to play the back and forth. amy gets moody and he'll return it tenfold. this isn't an equal exchange and he isn't one of those guys to play nice, he will always take the low road.]

looks like we have that in common

[bubbles appear and he types and deletes, types and deletes. minutes go by and he swallows, his free hand gripping the doorknob. he has choices, 'a' or 'b', and a flash of outcomes speed through his mind so lightning-quick he has to pull his hand from the door. do not enter. do not involve yourself in someone else's bullshit when amy is in yours.]

what the fuck do you want Amy?

[begot]

[ There's something strange in the amount of time it takes for his response to come through and the text that actually appears on her phone. By her reading, what the fuck do you want, meant aggressively, is an instant response. To go through a few rough drafts, as indicated by the ellipses that come and go on her screen, isn't not aggressive, but it comes with the suggestion of a thornier thought process.

The question is what to make of it. ]

i wanted to make sure no one had caved your head in.

[ More mundane answers creep in to fill the void. Maybe he's just drunk, maybe he's stalking out of someone else's room. Not everything here is magic, after all. She squints at her phone, annoyance fizzling into something duller. ]

don't swear at me again.

[scathe]

[that's a funny thought: her concern, and leads him to another string of ideas– she's trying to get information out of him. an unconscious man can't text, obviously, but why would she want to know? they don't talk outside of his direction for her and his quick – haha, quick, he'll have to remember amy is never 'quick' – message was partial to the hope she'd be asleep and read it in the morning and he wouldn't have to deal with her.]

no one caved my damn head in

[fuck you. don't tell him what to do. his thumb drags across the screen so aggressively, so roughly, a few letters get sent by accident: ykjl.]

or what?

[begot]

[ She thinks, inevitably, of what Gwen had told her about their ill-fated text conversation. How touchy he'd been, how quickly he'd turned on a dime. And with that, even lacking full context, she decides that or what, that classic escalation, isn't the kind of bait she wants to take. Or what is a question asked in anticipation of a threat or consequence in response. She can think of plenty, if she's being honest, but she's had enough of being barked at. ]

don't.

[ In other words: she's not letting him pick more of a fight, which is what she presumes he wants, when he could just as easily be leaving her on read. ]

i'm going back to sleep.

[ And she puts her phone back, face down, on the nightstand. ]

[scathe]

[he'd been searching for a fight in amy even when they fight nearly every other day. elias blames her, she didn't have to respond and didn't have to tell him what to do. she chose this path, the one that crawls under his skin and pisses him off, the path called vulnerability.]

whatever

[he slouches forward and knocks his head against the wall gently. one, two, three. isolde is quiet. he's quieting, but refuses to reveal anything about himself or why he chooses to bare his fangs and puncture skin sooner than he would have a regular conversation.]

No you're not. You're gonna stare at that stupid ceiling til you can't take it and get some water and act like I didn't piss you off

[begot]

[ He's right, of course, that she doesn't immediately fall back asleep. But she closes her eyes, listens to the sound of Giles breathing (considers waking him, asking him to fuck her so hard she can't think about anything else, but that seems— not wrong, exactly, but something like it) as she tries to will herself into unconsciousness.

Half an hour passes, enough time to nearly doze off, enough time for her fingers to start itching with curiosity, before she answers. He wants to be right, she thinks. He wants a fight. But he doesn't want to be alone, either. Maybe he'd learn a lesson if she left him with his thoughts, waited until the morning to text anything back. (Even a half an hour is a long time, in the small hours of the night.)

But— ]

is that what you want? for me to be mad at you?

[scathe]

[minutes tick by and he's shifted through an uneasy half circle of motion: first with his back against the wall, then his shoulder to the door, and finally leaning on the countertop with his arms crossed waiting for the knob to turn. he doesn't know why he sent the text, but can sense amy somewhere, fidgeting. maybe for a brief moment she feels watched, too. maybe she feels nothing.]

I really don't care if you're mad at me

but

[and he doesn't care, but he does stall. but what?]

I'm not a good man. So if you wanna fight better you fight better mad
none of that bullshit about chilling out

you gotta be mad

[which sounds genuine, like he's curating a space just for her, like this was what it was about the entire time. not that he can't sleep, or that he's in a constant debate with himself about taking care of a stranger, or that he's lonely in this big new place– no, this is about making amy a better soldier. be mad at the guy who's not nice and everything will be smooth sailing from there.]

[begot]

[ He means it, maybe, but it's a turn in the conversation nevertheless, a kind of magnanimity that doesn't really scan, not from her vantage point. A jump from Point A to Point B that covers a little too much ground, at odds partially by virtue of the prickle at the back of her neck. But still, it's something. Not a bark, not a bite, and the worst men are the ones who don't think to say things like I'm not good. ]

if i don't have to be mad at you, you don't have to go out of your way to give me reasons to be.

[ She stops short of saying I have enough to be mad about, of typing if you think I'm not mad, then you don't know anything about women at all. Somewhere in the middle (given over because it's late, because he's already seen the edge to her when she fights): ]

i already know how to get angry.

[scathe]

sure we'll see about that.

[that's enough. he's too tired for the volatility of his own emotions, running on a switch burnt out two hours ago. his hackles remain raised, muscles taught, teeth grinding on teeth because where else is he supposed to put his tension quietly? not in amy's direction, apparently.]

Yeah so? There's room for improvement
what's with you

[for him, this is better. what's with you creates a misshapen olive branch. it's better than why the fuck are you awake and what the fuck do you want, an implication of curiosity brought on by fatigue.]

[begot]

[ The fuse goes out.

In bed, she pushes the tension out of her body, stretching her bare legs out over the sheets, letting out a steady stream of breath in tandem with the faint rustling of the duvet.

Okay. Good enough. ]

what do you want to know?

[scathe]

[roza saw him sweet as softened clay, a boy molded to his surroundings by everyone who stepped within ten feet of him. he had trouble with talking then, too, but for different reasons. elias didn't – couldn't – speak for himself and hid behind his brother. looking someone in the eyes had also been difficult, but being around her taught him how to see.

and boy, does he see. he likes to say how much and when. he catches the girls at the studio out his peripheral and keeps them there. he clocks isolde, amy, gwen, buffy, jem. roza is a permanence while the others stick out to him only because he's spoken to them. but day in and day out amy shows and turns a switch on or off like how his switch goes on or off and maybe it's her experience, and how tired he is and the world, but he senses similarity. familiarity.

roza might say something about that, and elias might say how he should have paid more attention in school when he was there.]

you don't look at me the same

why.

[what happened to you to make you see me differently?]

[begot]

[ What happened to you?

That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Maybe there's an answer, to do with Rand and Marybeth's merciless plundering of their only child's upbringing, or maybe there isn't.

Maybe a viper is born a viper.

But Amazing Amy doesn't see herself that way. So it takes her a moment to mull over the question (to decide if he means the same as you used to or the same as other people do) before typing out an answer, one that works, one that's given because it's nearly three in the morning and he's reaching a hand out through the darkness. ]

great expectations, maybe.
placed on me, i mean.

[ A stranger answer than a singular turning point. Tissue paper, in comparison with what he's been through, but a pinprick can change a story as much as a blade buried to the hilt. Then, more tellingly: ]

what about you?

[ Why don't you see what other people see, when they look at me? ]

cw allusions to abuse

[scathe]

[amy answers in a somewhat stereotypical manner. this perfect-seeming woman had too many expectations, too much attention, too much love, and that screwed her over. elias doesn't fill in the blanks very well for her or for himself.]

low expectations and really really high ones

[forced on me. he doesn't say he was killed in a hit and run as a teen and got such a bad head injury the world started to get blurry and he doesn't remember pieces, or that he was taken to a facility and experimented on by merciless hands.]

a lot of bullshit

[begot]

[ The thing is, better that he see her like that — even if she's spent most of her life balking at the label of spoiled rich girl — than— not the truth, exactly, but the parts of herself that could be called mean. And it matters less that he might think of her that way when he still answers her question, defying her expectations.

One good deed for another. ]

i'm sorry.

[ And she means it as much as she can mean it, when she doesn't yet have further context, when she's only known him for about a month. ]

at least it's not here.

[ The bullshit. The people behind it. The place. Or she'd know, she expects — he wouldn't be spending his time at the gym, at the very least. ]

[scathe]

don't give me your sorry

[as in, he has had enough of those already. 'sorry' doesn't fix the hatred brewing, the pain layered and layered, crafting him into someone else. sorry is another word that doesn't do any good or bad and he'd rather take silence.]

if it's not one thing it'll be another, Amy. Don't get your hopes up.

[begot]

[ A part of her wants to say too late, when she can't unsend the text, or even it's better than being given nothing at all, but he's practically allergic to both approaches, so she skips it entirely. Accommodation for accommodation, maybe, when he's stopped swearing at her. ]

i'll try.

[ Typed out with a dubiousness that gets lost over text, though she's never been an optimist to begin with (when don't let yours fall too far down isn't the next response she reaches for). ]

still not going to tell me why you're awake?

[scathe]

[in an act of unnecessary defiance:]

are you?

[begot]

[ Without even a moment's hesitation: ]

i'm awake because of you.

[scathe]

[blame filters in his direction, but it's the gentle kind that doesn't hurt. it's the kind that whispers, you mattered enough for me to stay awake. only, elias never knows whether that's a truth or a lie, so he has to ask:]

sure
why do you care that I'm awake?

[begot]

[ There are probably, she thinks, a right and wrong answer to this question. She mulls it over, less in any attempt to sidestep the truth than to figure out what won't be too open to misinterpretation over text. ]

because that's what knowing people is.

[ Not because we're friends, when they don't know each other that well, not really. Instead, you mattered, the answer he's suspected, in slightly different words. ]

going to keep answering my questions with questions?

[scathe]

[he stares at the screen for so long it goes dark and all that's left is the reminder of light in his skull. knowing people. elias doesn't let people know him, but he knows people.]

going to keep trying to know me?

[begot]

[ She's not sure what to make of that pause. Takes a shorter one, herself, to mentally summon and then dismiss a few kneejerk responses. ]

going to keep being annoying? 🫢

[scathe]

[immediately:] yep

[begot]

wow, finally a straight answer.

[scathe]

go to sleep Amy