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31_days2010-01-18 07:09 pm
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2010-01-18 07:09 pm
[January 18] [Original] You Still Aren't A Therapist, Dear
Title: You Still Aren't A Therapist, Dear
Day / Theme: January 18: crooked things may be stiff and inflexible as straight
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: pre-Zei!Daisy & unknown
Rating: PG
Look at it this way, maybe.
"Okay," the one says cautiously, "but what if it changed? Could things work then, if everything changed?"
The other's back stiffens and her fingers curl into claws. (It hurts, still. Stupid reactions, she thinks, only she's too busy not believing she heard what she just did.) "You mean if I could go back if things went different."
"Yeah."
"That's not -- don't even joke about that."
A tilt of the head from the first speaker, who seems worried. "But if things changed back to the way they should be--"
"There is no way they should be!" she cries. "They maybe changed once but because the -- because the parents said so, and that's never, you don't even think about that, you can't, if things changed that would mean everything was being wrong and we'd all die, and they'd start fresh, maybe. And -- and it's not even a hope, it's something to pray it doesn't happen because I don't want us all to die."
"They're not you." The one person has a voice that's level and convinced and definite. The second fails to be leveled or convinced or defined.
"I'm still them, though," she says with a toss of her head.
"But the system's wrong."
She hisses in a breath through her teeth. "The system is not wrong." She speaks patiently, as words go, and in a voice of barely constrained fury that doesn't fit at all. "The system is never flawed. We are not. We cannot be. It is only if one of us is flawed that the system acts harshly to us." A desperate-seeming look, vaguely upwards: you have to understand, please understand this, I can't talk about it anymore are the kinds of phrases that work. "I -- I was wrong. If one follows the system never is."
Eventually, the first speaker will give up on trying to fix her.
(One of them is going to be dead at some point, and I think we all know who.)
Day / Theme: January 18: crooked things may be stiff and inflexible as straight
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: pre-Zei!Daisy & unknown
Rating: PG
Look at it this way, maybe.
"Okay," the one says cautiously, "but what if it changed? Could things work then, if everything changed?"
The other's back stiffens and her fingers curl into claws. (It hurts, still. Stupid reactions, she thinks, only she's too busy not believing she heard what she just did.) "You mean if I could go back if things went different."
"Yeah."
"That's not -- don't even joke about that."
A tilt of the head from the first speaker, who seems worried. "But if things changed back to the way they should be--"
"There is no way they should be!" she cries. "They maybe changed once but because the -- because the parents said so, and that's never, you don't even think about that, you can't, if things changed that would mean everything was being wrong and we'd all die, and they'd start fresh, maybe. And -- and it's not even a hope, it's something to pray it doesn't happen because I don't want us all to die."
"They're not you." The one person has a voice that's level and convinced and definite. The second fails to be leveled or convinced or defined.
"I'm still them, though," she says with a toss of her head.
"But the system's wrong."
She hisses in a breath through her teeth. "The system is not wrong." She speaks patiently, as words go, and in a voice of barely constrained fury that doesn't fit at all. "The system is never flawed. We are not. We cannot be. It is only if one of us is flawed that the system acts harshly to us." A desperate-seeming look, vaguely upwards: you have to understand, please understand this, I can't talk about it anymore are the kinds of phrases that work. "I -- I was wrong. If one follows the system never is."
Eventually, the first speaker will give up on trying to fix her.
(One of them is going to be dead at some point, and I think we all know who.)