notfaking_it | (no subject)

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eleanor

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She's taken over one of the smaller studios for the evening, dragged in one of the portable stereos they have lying around and rarely tend to use, especially this close to an actual show. Their artistic director prefers to have a pianist on hand almost always now, so Lily doesn't think anyone will miss it.

She's never taught before, never even really considered it, but it's something she wants to do for Eleanor. In all her years of dating, she's never actually bothered to try this hard either and she chooses to not think about that, pressing it back where it's less of a concern. As far as anyone knows, she's just taking some time out to teach some of the basics of ballet to a friend.

There are only three people who probably know it's more than just that; Delta, Eleanor and herself.

Still, she isn't nervous. She's excited, looking forward to having a chance to get to know Eleanor better and she's pleased that she's interested in ballet at all. There are plenty of people who aren't, which she's fine with, but when she finds someone who is interested, she's more than happy to share her love.

Once she has the studio ready, she heads back outside to wait for Eleanor, knowing how easy it is to get lost in the twists and turns of the halls inside.

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I don't think I've ever been so nervous, Father. It isn't that I'm worried of doing badly, or of making mistakes, I think it is because I'm worried of disappointing Lily, because she means so much to you. We haven't spoken about it much, but I know you care for her a great deal. And I want to like her, too. And her to like me.

Are we making a family? Is that what we're doing?

I hold the strap of my gym bag tightly as I approach the studio, looking out for Lily. Seeing her, I wave, keeping a hopeful smile on my face. I will do this, right, Father, I won't let you down.

"Hey," Lily says when she sees Eleanor, lifting her hand to wave back at her. It's getting cooler out now and she's not wearing a jacket, so she stands by the door and holds it open for Eleanor to come inside.

"Right on time. It'll be pretty quiet for us, most of the dancers are taking the night off." Most of them. Nina's probably somewhere in the studio, working herself to the bone as she usually does, but most of the others are grateful for the night off.

"Thank you again for taking your time like this." I enter quickly so that the draft doesn't get in. I don't really notice the cold very much, part of being what I am, I guess.

"I hope that you didn't have plans, I mean, if you needed the night off."

"No, it's fine," Lily answers with a smile. "Of everywhere I could be, the studio is one of my favourite places." She's at home in a lot of different locations, she can fit in almost anywhere without feeling uneasy, but there's nothing like the feeling of being in the studio.

"I grabbed us one of the smaller studios down here," she says, leading the way. "No one should bother us."

"That's good. I'd hate to have an audience when I fail miserably as this." I'm trying to make it a joke, but there is some truth to it. I've never done anything like this. I can run and fight and hide, but to have enough grace to dance as Lily does, well, that's going to be entirely new.

"Promise not to laugh at me?"

"No laughing, but you'll do fine," Lily insists and although she won't laugh at Eleanor while they're working, as promised, she's laughing a little now. "A lot of people think the most important thing about learning ballet is control. Control of your muscles, control of your movements and while that's important, the best dancers always understand the passion behind their story. They're not all about technique."

She pushes open the door of the studio, holding it open for Eleanor to follow her inside. "So you can learn all the steps in the world, but you have to feel them, too."

"Feel them? How?" I enter the studio and look around, as startled as I am sometimes at my own reflection. I've changed so much, Father, I'm sure you've noticed. I'm not as pale as I once was, not as malnourished, I smile easier. And it all shows in the very large mirror that covers the far wall.

Setting my bag down, I wait for Lily's instruction, not sure if I should remove my shoes or stand somewhere different or whatever this may entail.

"It's a little bit like acting," Lily explains, sinking down to her own bag so she can dig through her things and pull out two pairs of shoes. She goes past the pointe shoes and pulls out two simple pairs of slippers, offering one pair to Eleanor.

"I had to guess at your size, but I think these will fit," she says. "As for feeling it... you have a story and you have to tell that story all without saying a word. It all has to come through the dancing."

I sit down to change my shoes and I try to imagine what that might be like. To tell a story through a dance. I can't quite imagine myself doing something like that. What story could I possibly tell? "I've never acted before, is it difficult?"

"No," Lily says as she sits down as well, changing out of her shoes and into the slippers. "All you have to do is find something inside of you that might create the same emotion you want other people to feel. So if... if there's a reunion, for example, and your character has found someone they love very much and thought they'd lost, it's good to just try and remember a time in your life when you felt overwhelming love. When you dance with emotion, with real emotion, that's when you capture your audience."

"That sounds beautiful." I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that, but it sounds so powerful, to feel and to make others feel. I remember watching Lily dance and how it made me feel and I can see it again, here and now. She loves it so much, I can see that. It's magical.

I wiggle my feet in the slippers, they fit quite well in my estimation, but then I don't really know how they're supposed to feel. I stand up again and face her, determined to do this right. "Okay, what's first?"

"Alright, first you need to warm up," Lily tells her and there are specific ballet warm ups for them to do, but for now, all she wants is to make sure Eleanor stretches. Standing, she crosses to the barre and uses it to stretch her legs, her arms, her torso, going slow enough that Eleanor can follow her along.

"Once you learn the basic positions, there are stretches they are better suited to ballet, but these are good for us for now. Just so we don't end up pulling any muscles."

I almost tell her that I don't think it's possible for me to injure myself that way, but that would hardly help, would it. I'm doing this so that I might fit in more, spend some time doing normal things in a normal way. Little girls take dance lessons quite often from what I've heard, and Lily is so wonderful I just know this is the right thing to be doing.

I don't want to destroy it by being a freak.

So instead I mirror her movements, bending and reaching. It feels foreign, but I guess that's normal. "What are positions?"

Lily smiles a little, watching Eleanor and then she arranges her feet easily into first position, her heels together, toes turned out and fingertips meeting just above her waist.

"They're the basics," she says. "This is first position. A lot of resting positions and choreography are built on top of them. They're sort of... your foundation for everything else."

I match her pose, nodding as if I understand. I'm not certain I do, although I think I can make certain associations. "Like a chemical compound, individual chemicals that don't do much on their own, but when you combine them, or add heat, it becomes something else?"

I shake my head, a feeling a little ridiculous. "I'm sorry, that sounds terrible."

Lily laughs, shaking her head as well. "No, it doesn't. That actually sounds about right and if that's the way it makes sense to you, then use it. There's no wrong way to put emotion into dancing and if that's what works for you best, no one's going to tell you otherwise."

She slides her feet apart a little, raising her arms until they rest in a straight line from one hand to the other. "This is second."

"What if you don't know how to feel things right?" I move my hands and feet to match hers, trying to make myself remember the movements. They feel a bit awkward, almost as awkward as my question. But I'm not sure how to even put what I really want to know into words.

I spent most of my childhood in a happy daze, but the happiness wasn't real. I know happiness here. But there are other things, things I think I've seen in dance that I don't understand. Real beauty and wonder, desire and love. Those things... they weren't in Rapture. I have pieces. In the memories I absorbed from all the ADAM Mother gave me. But nothing whole, nothing real.

"There's no wrong way to feel," Lily answers carefully, moving from second back into first, waiting as Eleanor mimics the movements. She knows that Delta and Eleanor were together before coming to Darrow, that she was the little girl he protected for a long time, but she doesn't know the details. Sometimes she wants to, but she's never pressed for anything from Delta and it doesn't feel fair to press Eleanor for things that he might not want her to know.

"Things come to you as you live, that's all," she says. "As you grow. And people experience emotions in different ways. What rage feels like to you isn't what it feels like to me and that's all okay."

No, I don't imagine my rage is like anyone else's. If it weren't for you, Father, what kind of monster would I have been? It was your example of forgiveness that I try to follow, but it just as easily could have gone the other way. I could have indulged my anger, and rightly so, but I didn't. We didn't. And now I'm learning something beautiful, moving back and forth between the two positions like Lily showed me.

"We seem very strange to you don't we? Father and I."

Lily shifts into third position, sliding one foot in front of the other, keeping one arm out straight as she lifts the other over her head and she shakes her head, watching Eleanor. "I don't ask Delta a lot of questions," she admits, which isn't something she's often done for anyone. She likes to push and pull until all the little details come spilling out, no matter how uncomfortable it might make a person, but she hasn't done that to him. She's letting it come out with him.

"I know that what you and he went through is... very different from anything I've ever known," she says. "And painful for him in a lot of ways. But I also know he loves you and would do anything for you and there's nothing strange about that."

I can't help but laugh as I mirror the next position. Because that's the strange part, isn't it? Had the terrible things we've suffered never happened, there would never have been any love there. Real or otherwise. The fact that we remain together, despite everything, is the strangest part of all.

"You can ask me, you know." She is becoming family, isn't she? She should know more about us, or at least about me, what I can do. She's already seen part of it and I'm beginning to think perhaps we need more people to know. In case something happens.

"Whatever you and he are comfortable with telling me, I think that's all I can expect," she answers, which isn't something she's used to feeling. Lily's always enjoyed making people uncomfortable, just a little, but things have been changing for some time now. She can't drift in and out like she's used to. "I know he has a lot of scars and I have ideas where they've come from." But they've talked about it so little and she can understand that it's hard for him.

"When I was very young someone did something to me. Something very bad. They did bad things to Father, too. We were both changed. And now, we are different again, but by our own choice. You know I can do things, right? Things other people cannot?" I move through the steps again, as smoothly as I can, although I'm nervous as I'm sure you can imagine. Someone else should know what's inside me. Just in case, that's only prudent, isn't it?

Lily cocks her head slightly, watching Eleanor. "I have some ideas, but I meant what I said, I haven't asked many questions. I know Delta was responsible for protecting you while you collected something. But that's it." Eleanor is making it sound like there's much more, things Lily will never understand.

Or maybe she can. Given time.

"There was a substance, it's created by an animal. People discovered it could give them power, heal them and it was sold." I drop the form, looking down at my feet. It's hard talking about this. I didn't think it would be. But I stand by my thoughts, Father, someone else should know.

"But the creatures are fragile and they do not create much. The scientists discovered that if they were implanted in a human, they could control production and even... recycle the substance from the dead bodies of users. The ideal host was children. Girls. Little ones, like me." Taking a deep breath, I reach for Lily's hand, planning on placing it on my stomach so she could feel the slug inside me. "Father was bound to me to protect me from those that wanted the substance I could carry and create inside me."

It's so beyond anything Lily has ever really known, but she listens, really listens to what Eleanor is telling her, trying to understand it. She lets Eleanor take her hand, a frown crossing her features briefly. "They put something inside you? Inside all these little girls?"

She's always known what's been done to them is awful, but she doesn't know if she really understood. "Completely against your will. Against his. Jesus Christ."

I nod. "And they programmed Father to protect me. We'd never met until then. Once we were bonded, he was all I had. Then Mother took him away and we had to fight to get back together and now here we are." I know it's a simplification of what happened, Father, but I don't know how else to say it without going into all of it. The angels, the Sisters, Big and Little, Mother, Sinclair, your death and resurrection, there's just so much and I don't know that anyone who isn't us could ever understand it.

"I still have the animal inside of me, that's why I can do the things I can do. I don't get ill, I heal quickly, and by recycling all the ADAM I have, I've retained a number of what you'd call superpowers."

Delta hasn't mentioned anything like that to her and Lily's head tips slightly as she looks at Eleanor curiously. "What sorts of things?" she asks. The story she's told, it's difficult and not because she doesn't believe it, but because of what it means people have done to Eleanor and Delta. Lily, whose moral compass tends to swing on a rather wide range to begin with, has a hard time swallowing that.

It's not right. And it's not fair.

Instead of telling her, I decide to show her, disappearing in a haze and reappearing on the other side of the room. With the wave of a hand, I create a fireball and let it dissipate and I use my telekinesis to pull my gym bag to me. Once it settles at my feet I jump, high enough that I can brush the ceiling and I land where I started. "I can heal a broken bone in moments, which isn't always a good thing, but useful in a fight. And I can, fight I mean."

I can't look at her, Father, not yet, and so I just watch my feet for a moment. "And if I wanted, I could harvest the drug inside of me, give it to others. Or... it could be taken. But I can't get rid of the creature or I'll die."

Lily, who's lived on a strange island for two years before Darrow, has never seen anything like it and it takes her a very long moment to even register what Eleanor has done. "Jesus Christ," she breathes, amazed. She knows she should say something, she can see that Eleanor isn't looking at her, but she has no idea what to say or where to begin.

"That's incredible," she says finally. "The things you can do are incredible."

Edited 2013-11-18 16:17 (UTC)

I look up, worried. "You don't... you don't think I'm a freak? You're not frightened?" It's my worst nightmare, I think. To finally reveal what I am to someone so normal.... Others who had powers like me, or are different in some way, some of them know, but one one normal. I want to fit in so badly, and I don't want Lily to turn away from you because of me.

"Having power doesn't mean a person uses it to hurt others, right?" Lily asks in return. "You're no more likely to hurt me now than you were five minutes ago when I didn't know, so... no, I don't think you're a freak. And I'm not frightened." It's a lot of information to digest and she knows it hasn't all sunk in yet, that she's still processing it, but she is sure that she's not afraid.

"Do you remember what it was like to not be able to do these things?" she asks curiously. "Or was it all too long ago?"

"I remember being a little girl, the things Mother taught me. She was a very... powerful woman with very strong ideas. I was her experiment." Shrugging, I move back through the positions Lily showed me. More for something to do I think, rather than for the practice. This conversation is hard and having something to do is somehow making it easier. "Although I continued to be her experiment after, only it was a different kind. So I can't really say I had a normal childhood, but for the first years of my life I was just as human as you."

Lily isn't sure what she expected, but to hear that Eleanor's mother is responsible makes her pause, frowning deeply. Her own relationship with her parents is sound enough -- or was before she ended up on the island -- and although she's never felt any maternal instinct of her own, the idea of a mother turning her child into an experiment makes her feel ill.

"You're still human," she says. "There's just something else inside of you now."

"You really think I'm human?" It's been so long, Father, since I've seen myself as anything but a Sister, or a failed experiment, or a freak, that it takes me by surprise when someone who knows what's inside me, what I can do, still looks at me like I'm... normal. A regular girl. Like I've always wanted to be. Like you want me to be.

Lily frowns again before she says, "Of course." The idea that someone else out there might consider Eleanor something other than human is so strange to her and maybe that's partly due to having never really been exposed to anything like this, but she hopes that's not entirely it. "I know what you can do and what's happened to you is... exceptional, but there are so many people with so many things about them that don't fit some kind of mold. It doesn't make them less human."

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