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The Beach by Midnight Manor, Saturday Afternoon

Okay, so the stuff Dean had given her had tasted horrible but had worked wonders. She still wasn't up to snuff - she got tired and winded easily and she was still pretty pale and sore, but she was no longer alternating between chills and fever and that feeling of something off, something wrong had gone away, flushed out with the last of the bronze. She'd lost enough weight that it was noticeable and not in a good way, but she'd at least escaped looking gaunt. In short, she looked like someone who'd gone through some kind of dreadful wasting illness, but at least was now on the mend.

Which, you know, made sense. She wasn't exactly sure the difference between a severe poisoning and a severe illness in regards to toll on the body, but she guessed that they weren't too dissimilar?

Either way, she might look like she'd been dragged down a mile and a half of bad road, but that was still an improvement overall from looking like she'd been dragged down six miles of that very same road, and was celebrating by leaving the roof for a little while and heading down to the beach. She didn't get far before she had to stop and take a rest, but progress was still progress, dammit. She'd successfully made it here under her own power and she'd make it back up to her nest the same way.

...She might just be here for awhile resting up for that climb. Maybe she should let some folks know she was here since she was likely not going anywhere for a hot minute.

[Open!]

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Did you ever....want something to be true so bad...

Somehow, that knife that had slipped between Arden's ribs a moment ago managed to find its way between Eleanor's and she winced, letting out a faint near-whimper.

"I know," she said, "exactly what you mean, Arden." She shook her head. "More than you realize, more than I can...You're not an idiot."

As far as Eleanor could tell, at least Arden's naïveté didn't have a body count.

"You're just..." There was a small moment, which she took to summon up a little Kamala in her ear as she breathed out, "a good person, Arden, who wants to see the best in someone, even when they might not be worthy of that. Because you don't want to believe that anyone would ever be like that, even when the evidence is right in front of you, staring you in the face. Because it hurts too much thinking of what it means if you were wrong."

"I don't know that I'm so good as all that," Arden said. "I think it might be more that..." Oh goddess, this was gonna sound so pathetic. "...I just wanted some proof that I did have a home, that there was some little bit of her that did care about me...Like, I know she didn't love me. Coming here and seeing Kam's family, and Gray's, and Graham's and Charlie's and even the stories of Belle's dad, and the way Steven and Watts treated their future kids...I realized that's what love looked like and, like, how emotionally empty my childhood really was. But I thought maybe there was at least a little bit where she cared. Where she tried. But it was all bullshit from the beginning."

It was a good thing she'd ended up here, because she was so desperate for love and acceptance that she basically had 'Easy Mark' tattooed on her forehead for anyone who wanted to see it.

"You been here, too, it sounds like?" Not pressure to share. But an offering.

"Growing up wondering if you'd ever really be loved," Eleanor said, with a small, distant smile, "you just wanted to cling to the idea that someone actually might...

"Yeah," Eleanor then sighed heavily. "I've been there, too. When I was eight, I was sent away to boarding school, pretty much just to get rid of me. I didn't even speak to anyone in my family until eight years later, when I ran away and came back home because I didn't know where else to go. And then.....and then I was so desperate to make things right that I brought in the one thing that would try to destroy us. And she almost did, just because I...

"I'm explaining this terribly," she realized, miserably. "But I really do understand, Arden. And I really was stupid; people got hurt. My father died. And so many people tried to warn me, but I just wanted to believe that everything would be okay..."

"That was your grandmother, right?" Arden asked gently. "The French one? I remember you telling me about her. And didn't she spend a bunch of time, like, manipulating you?" Building on the fact that Eleanor's family's had abandoned her and she felt unloved?

This time, her hug was for Eleanor's benefit.

"Oh, good," Eleanor found herself melting a little bit into that hug with a big sigh of small relief for tiny graces, "I did tell you about her already. But yes. My grandmere. I thought should could help, and she did anything but and she used my own desperation against me. It made it so hard to trust anyone afterwards...." She let out a laugh, a small, interesting thing riding on a sob. "I still catch myself wondering what people are trying to get out of me when they're overly nice or complimentary...

"So if you're stupid for wanting to believe in Callista, then I'm just as stupid for wanting to believe in Grandmere, and I guess that means we can at least be stupid together."

"Hard not to wonder," Arden said. "When you get hurt so bad. And that's the problem, isn't it? When you have hard proof about what happens when you trust so easy, but thinking everyone has a secret agenda isn't healthy." She made a noise that might have been a laugh in another life. "That was why I was so intense about accepting anything from people without making sure that it was definitely one hundred percent free for me to have. Because I'd just escaped one person who'd tried to tie me into debt and she was the woman who'd raised me since I was seven. Why should I believe nobody else would do the same?"

She bit her bottom lip, then added in a halting voice, "I still don't really believe that people will be there for me when they say they will. That's not even all Callista's fault. Getting bounced around from place to place...promised that this was a family I could stay with for awhile only to be handed back a few weeks later...I thought something was wrong with me. Everyone thought there was something wrong with me. Constantly being asked what I did wrong because nobody wanted me to stay--" Her voice caught again, but she powered through. There had been too much crying already.

"Nobody wanted me. Nobody stuck around. It didn't matter how perfect I tried to be, how much I tried to please everybody, it wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough to keep. Until Callista. She showed up and said she wanted me. And then, even when she took me home, the first lesson was that if I was ever in trouble - serious, life-endangering trouble - then I was on my own. Don't call her. I'd gotten into that trouble, it was on me to get myself out. Or not." Her smile was bleak. "Even with Callista, even before I realized all that other stuff, I knew I couldn't trust her to be there for me when I needed her. So, again. Why should anyone else?"

And sure, she knew that not everyone was like Callista, that most people, especially here, were better, but she still didn't know how to make herself believe it.

"That's how she got me, last Friday. I was in the park, surrounded by people and I spotted her. I could have spoken up. I could have asked for help. And part of me was scared that if I asked for help, she'd hurt and kill people who tried. And would keep doing that. But mostly...mostly I think I didn't want to know. Who would help me and who wouldn't. Didn't wanna know for sure. Same for why I didn't yell when we were in the junkyard. Caught between not wanting to have somebody hurt on my behalf...and just not wanting to know."

Because it would have broken something inside of her if she'd called for help and no one had come. Broken it beyond fixing.

She showed up and said she wanted me.

Eleanor felt that knife again on that one.

She leaned a little on Arden.

"Do you still feel unsure?" she asked. "If anyone would have helped?"

That question was a low blow, Eleanor.

"I...." She was supposed to say yes. She should be able to say yes. Hadn't people basically proven it on Sunday? What more did she need?

But it was like when people asked if she was planning to go back to Callista after graduation. She knew the right answer. She even knew the answer she wanted to give! But things were more complicated than that.

"I'm pretty sure that people would have helped," she said. "And I'm pretty sure people would be mad at me if I said I hadn't been sure they wouldn't. Cal got grumpy at me once for being surprised that he'd stayed when the guys at the fry place tried to get me. So, yeah, I believe people would have? But it's still hard to believe they always will. Like maybe some day they'll decide that it's too dangerous or I've needed help too many times or they just...decided they didn't want me anymore. Do you...does that make sense?"

She tried not to hold her breath waiting for Eleanor's answer.

She truly hadn't meant it as one. She was just genuinely curious. And maybe wondering just how much she herself would have been able to trust it all in the aftermath of some big tragedy like this.

"It does makes sense," Eleanor assured her. "Even when you feel like you can trust people, it's hard to feel like it's a good idea that you should. Especially since things could change so quickly. Everything was fine when I was younger. Until, all of a sudden....it wasn't. I didn't even understand why that the time..."

And then there was Lucy, too, who was fine with Eleanor until she suddenly wasn't...

"So, yeah. It's definitely makes sense."

Arden exhaled out a long breath. Finally. Someone who got it.

"I don't know how to explain that to people without them thinking that it's because I don't trust them and not that...when you spend your whole life getting burned, it's hard to believe that not everybody has a book of matches on them." She gave Eleanor a sad smile. "It's why it doesn't bother me if sometimes you wonder what's behind my smile or why we're hanging out. Because as much as you don't wanna, sometimes your mind reminds you that I could be hiding matches. If your own kin did, why should you trust anybody else not to?"

Eleanor was quiet for a moment, wondering if she should also mention also when you yourself had a matchbox, too. She'd mentioned being worried about Callista hurting others who might try to help Arden. But what about Arden hurting them, too?

"It's not easy," she agreed. "Even when you do start to trust someone, instead of even getting to think of how nice it is to finally be able to do that, all you can think is 'oh, this one's going to really hurt when it all comes crumbling down'...."

Arden was simply planning on never using her powers! Easy-peasy! Just don't do the bad thing!

Wait, what do you mean that wasn't how it worked?

"Yeah," she agreed quietly. "I just keep thinking how stupid I am. To keep throwing my heart at things when it's only ever gotten me hurt. Having all of you as friends and wondering when it's going to end. Because it's gotta, right? Nothing can be this good forever. Wondering what I'm gonna do or say that'll make everybody realize that their lives are better without me and when it's gonna happen. Sometimes thinking that maybe I should just do it now and get it over with, so at least it's not hanging over my head..."

"I've been mostly just leaning into trying to soak up as much of it as I can while it lasts," Eleanor offered, and, despite herself, despite everything, she had to smile, thinking about half-meat-lovers pizzas and poetry in Urdu and her slowly building personal art gallery, "and just bracing myself. Like preparing for a storm. So far, it's been working out pretty well. I mean, if it's inevitably going to end, at least I'll have this, here and now."

"That's a good way to think of it," Arden said. "Me, I'm just so tired of hoping that this time it'll come out okay."

She swallowed and said, "Did you know? Kam's family offered to adopt me. Even though I'm over eighteen. And I should be over the moon. I mean, I am! But also, I'm so scared. Because what if they do and it all falls apart? What if there really is something wrong with me? I know they mean it. And I'm almost certain that it won't end bad. But there's that part of me that asks, But what if it does? And I don't know how to make it shut up."

"What if it does," Eleanor echoed, "and it's all your fault and it's even ten times worse than you could have ever imagined, and then they're not only disappointed in you, but they're also hurt, even though you tried so hard, you really did, but they don't understand, there's just something wrong with you and there always has been, and now that something wrong has tainted them too..."

She peeked over at Arden, so see if she was still hitting the mark.

"And it's especially hard, with someone like Kamala, and her parents, who just seem to have so much love to give..."

"...If you're secretly a mindreader you have to tell me now or it's entrapment," Arden joked in a very weak and faint voice. "Because I think you just said my whole internal narrative out loud."

"No," Eleanor smiled faintly back, shaking her head. "Not a mind reader. Not even a fortune teller, like my grandmother. But I am pretty good at reading people, which she always felt was actually all fortune telling really was. That, and it's pretty much my narrative all the time, too."

Was it entrapment still if there were other abilities remaining undisclosed? Maybe, but maybe she should still keep those that way for now. Heartbreaking as it was that this is what they could connect to on such a deep level, this was kind of nice, this camaraderie in understanding of shared misery, and she didn't want to ruin it by revealing to her just yet just how hurt people could be around her.

"Well, consider me read," Arden said with a laugh and a shake of her head. "Is this what Cal feels like when I read him for filth all the time?"

Not that this would stop her.

"Is it weird to say I'm glad we had this conversation?"

"Now who's the mind reader?" Eleanor accused. "I was just thinking the same thing. Not glad about where the conversation is coming from, but definitely glad we had it. It...makes me feel less alone, knowing that someone understands and has been there before. I hope it helps you feel better, too."

"Exactly that," Arden said. "It's rough, feeling alone because you feel this one way and nobody else can even really understand it, never mind relate to it." She gave Eleanor a soft smile. "Like I know everyone's fucked up - except maybe Kamala, she's the most well-adjusted person I know - but being fucked up doesn't mean you understand the ways somebody else is. Having someone be the same flavor as you...yeah like you said. It makes me feel not as alone. Which is one of the big things I've been fighting against my whole life anyway."

She gave Eleanor a squeeze. "We should form the Fucked Up Flavors Club and eat ice cream while we talk about being weirdos."

"It'd have to be ice cream, too," that squeeze and subsequent careful squeeze back seemed to get a faint chuckle out of Eleanor, "because we'll need ice cream after how depressing it all is, too."

"If we can't eat our feelings with big bowls of ice cream, what's even the point of having them?" Did she mean feelings or ice cream? The answer was yes. "Normally, we'd be talking about our romantic woes, but I'm not seeing anybody and you and Kams..." She offered Eleanor a soft, happy smile. "It sounds like you're both really, really happy."

She'd have 'romance is terrible' ice cream with Gray where she could make fun of him for taking advice from the crazy vampire doctor.

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The Beach by Midnight Manor, Saturday Afternoon

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