permutates | video . 9th transformation

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video . 9th transformation

[ private to anya, earlier ]

I heard that you were Magneto's daughter.

I guess I think you should know that I know.

[ public, later ]

[ The camera shows the teaching annexe, swings past a few doors and settles on a stretch of wall where - well, there's a door. And beyond is a place where something should probably be. Should definitely be, for anyone who knows the location of the ice rink. Instead, there's a block of blank concrete, behind the open door. ]

The rink is gone.

[ She's heard the voices, over the speakers. She sounds shaky. ]

What's happening?

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Yeah. We've - like I said, we're close now. But I don't really think of it in the same terms.

[Except for when she does.]

I felt a little bit like an idiot when I found out. Alex didn't mean to let it slip, he was talking about something else. It's not his fault.

I mean, I felt like I'd wanted to trust someone and you hadn't wanted to trust me back.

[ It's not necessarily logical, or fair, but she wants to talk about it. That's why she's saying it, not that she wants to make Anya feel guilty. ]

I didn't trust you. I was scared of you.

[Plainly honest. This is what some measure of Anya's trust actually looks like: being willing to say the impolitic thing, things she knows aren't what people want to hear.]

I would have told you eventually anyway. I just...it was hard to find the words, at the time, and I wanted to hold things back until I knew you a little better, until I couild say it right. But then we got busy.

And...okay, this part sounds stupid. But I feel like, if I get to the point where I can define what Erik is to me. He should hear it first. And if it's just telling you about my Magneto, then it didn't matter, because you didn't know him and they're not actually much alike.

I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I just...I wasn't trying to dupe you, or anything. I overthink how to...present things. A lot.

Edited 2013-10-21 14:16 (UTC)

[ She rests her chin on her hands and listens. Tries not to, for once, fill in what she thinks the spaces between the words mean. And it takes some doing. She wants to believe that Anya would lie to her. She doesn't completely trust it. But she forces herself to believe, for now. ]

I understand. [ It makes sense. Lying makes sense too, and it's something that Raven expects from people, but this makes sense. ]

It's all... mixed up, here.

I don't want you to be afraid of me. Sometimes I want things like that, but most of the time I think I've had enough of it forever.

I'm not afraid of you as much, now. A little. Mostly because you're important to people who are important to me, and I still don't know you that well. Scared for things in general, not so much you. You seem alright.

I was really - really angry, when I found out you hadn't been locked up. It felt like you were mocking me, acting like it was the same.

I don't think that anymore.

Oh. I didn't - mean to do that.

It felt like being locked up.

It still does, sometimes. Not Charles, but just - being blue. Being locked in my own skin.

[ She is very tentative as she says this. Tense. ]

[Part of her wants to shout: you don't know what it feels like. But in this moment, it would be - cruel. A little wry, but as gently as she can,]

Raven, everyone is locked in their skin. Except, like...spiritwalkers, and you.

That's not - true.

When my parents first saw me, after I changed - my mother screamed. My father threw me out of the house. I barely remember it, because I didn't want to remember, and now I've lost it completely. I don't remember what they look like. But I remember that disgust, because I feel it every time I look in the mirror. No matter what I look like.

I can't just be anything. I can just lie about what I am better than anyone else. That doesn't help anything.

[Doesn't it, she thinks. She can't lie at all about having a body that doesn't breathe right, that's covered in scars and nerve damage, that in the very blood will never be good enough for the dead man she still aches for. She would like to be able to lie, for a little while, although she's been more at peace with her limitations since she got her tattoos. But - self-loathing is a curse she understands. Lying better doesn't help that.]

I used to hate myself a lot. My parents didn't make me feel disgusting, really, just - weak, and worthless.

[Parents, plural, because it was Magda too: she wasn't worth holding on for, eating for, living for. And the only other human she knew was as weak as everyone said.]

There was never - a distinction. Between who I was and what I was and what I looked like and everything I couldn't do. It was all just me, and I was...evolutionary refuse. Being able to change anything, any piece of that package, even if it's by lying - it sounds like a piece of freedom to me. Even though it's not.

I'm sorry for - projecting. And I'm sorry they made you feel that way. That shouldn't happen to anybody.

Edited 2013-10-23 15:21 (UTC)

Projecting happens to everyone. I know sometimes I hear what I think I'm going to hear, no matter what someone says.

[ So she's apologizing too, a little bit. ]

We're different, but - not that different. [ Maybe she's trying to convince herself, here. Humans aren't that bad...? ]

We aren't that different.

[There's a thoughtfulness, a weight, to her tone. They are different, Anya thinks, but she hasn't pinned down what the important differences are, exactly. They are none of the ones either of them normally worries about. And they are also, oddly but strikingly, alike.]

My first breach was - this weird suburban American town. I remember I wanted to be an airline stewardess. That seems so dumb, here. But I did, it was my dream, it had been for years. Walking away from that place and just - seeing the world, on my own terms. Be one of those liberated modern women.

[She can't help a little bit of a snort. She can't help sounding a little wistful, either. It would have been a good life, she thinks.]

Then you'd have it all. Freedom. You'd be self-sufficient. Admired, by other girls.

[ That's what Raven wants, too. Though her dream wasn't so specific. ]

[It's always plans, with Anya. Wherever and whoever she is, whatever she wants, there's a plan. The PanAm plan was good one; she would have had it all. Independence and wonder and a place to come home to. She hadn't realized while that life was her own, just how little of yearning to explore came from a need to get away. Things were - distant, between her and her father there. But still good, underneath.]

I don't really...think about what other girls think of me. It comes of never spending any time with people my own age until recently, I guess.

Do you worry about that a lot?

I... not exactly. I just want to be admired. Not - outcast.

[ She wants to be beautiful. Who doesn't? ]

[Her eyes fall and her voice goes soft, because it's too - resonant, to say loudly. Outcast, except they didn't send her away. She hated that most of all, that they didn't want her and kept her, so she had to live indefinitely surrounded by their contempt]

Just. To not be hated, or alone.

Yeah. When I was. Alive. That was all I wanted, at first.

[Before vengeance.]

What changed?

[ What more had she wanted? ]

I stopped...believing there was a chance that I'd ever not be alone.

[She usually thinks of it as one breaking point, the day Magneto told her to find Pietro or else. But really it was a double tap, that moment, and the one after, when Wanda chose someone who had already abandoned both of them over her.]

So I focused on other goals.

What about since you were here?

It took me awhile, to believe it. That people could care, that they could see me at all, that it wasn't just...a pleasant facade over the same callousness.

But it wasn't. I have friends now, and nobody hates me except for the people I've made hate me.

I'm happy.

Funny how something that says it's a prison can do that.

It never...felt like a prison, to me. It felt like being free of the one I was used to.

People react to it in a lot of different ways, me better than most.

I was so worried, before I got here...

[ That it was forcing Erik to be something he wasn't. ]

I guess that doesn't really matter anymore.

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video . 9th transformation

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