Chapter Text
Sophie was acting… weird. Well, Sophie always acted weird, but right now she was acting unlike herself. It wasn’t surprising, of course. She had just been tortured, and, as his dad had told him and Biana, she endured something elves aren’t built to handle.
So, all in all, Fitz wasn’t that surprised Sophie was acting weird.
I jerked awake, gasping as I stared at Fitz.
Fitz was staring at me with a white face. He reached up and touched his head lightly. “Did you…?” he asked, eyes wide.
“It was an accident,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry.” Was that how they really saw me? I knew what I was, and how I acted. But despite that all, I didn’t like being seen as weird. The reason I had been okay with what I was doing, despite my anxiety disorder, was that I had the ability to delude myself into thinking I wasn’t that weird.
Feeling that made me feel confident in what I was doing. It allowed me the confidence to keep doing it.
With a sigh, I made my way towards the bathroom. Sitting in the shower, I let the water beat mercilessly against my skin. I had turned it up to max heat, and my back burned. I tilted back and let the water soak into my hair. Carefully, I picked up a piece of soap and began to lather up.
As it ran over my burning body, I flinched in pain. But I needed this. I needed it.
I looked down at my hands and at the scars. I liked Scars. I thought they were beautiful as they patterned my skin. Sharp ridges, delicate cuts. A tear across my skin, a once pure body marred, or adorned really, with patterns of desired violence.
I loved them. I really did. I liked the scars, I asked for them.
But it was so odd. Like when I first became Sophie, it was something new. My body changed.
It was uncomfortable to see.
I turned off the shower and sank into the water, humming slightly. My whole body underwater, golden hair flowing around me. My nose just poked out of the water, as I continued breathing. I tilted back so I was floating on my back.
It was nice. To relax in steaming water. I watched the spiraling steam rise above me. I stuck out my tongue and took a deep breath. The scent of hot, steaming water was always nice to me. When I was young, our Dryer would release the hot steam outside past where we would walk to school. So, when I would go to school, especially on cold days, I could see the steam, and I would always lean in to smell it. It was so nice. I liked it.
I also ate my own period blood out of curiosity once. It was pretty cool. I also ate it when I would sometimes lean down and check the bleeding with my finger, then I would suck it off my finger. It was never sexual, being asexual, but I did it.
Wow, I was a really weird person.
I’d already known that, but sometimes, it hit me so much harder.
I sighed and shifted so that I was sitting back in a little ball, hugging my knees to my chest. I really didn’t get it. Was I pushing again? Did any of them want me there at all?
Did Dex really like the Foster-Dizznee Disney Movie Nights? Or was he just doing it to please me?
Rushing, I got out of the shower and drained it. Then I quickly dried off.
It was starting, and I needed to be in bed watching TV before it got too bad. Having both a depressive disorder and an anxiety disorder did not help me with what I needed to do. But having both my whole life meant I was good at dealing with it.
I changed into a t-shirt and a pair of pants. I quickly wrung out my hair, brushing it rapidly and braiding it down my side. Without even thinking, I grabbed a computer from the Nowhere and made my way back into my bedroom.
“Can you guys go?” I asked, moving to my bed. “I need to be alone right now.”
Dex and Fitz, who were both whispering before I had reentered the room, looked at me.
“Okay…” said Dex carefully.
“Are you okay?” Fitz asked.
“No.” I said matter of factly. “I’m not okay, but there is nothing you can do to help. I’ve been through this before, I can do it on my own.”
“If you’re sure,” said Fitz.
I nodded. “Ciao.” I said. “Italian for Goodbye.” I added, trying to be helpful.
As the two left my room, I opened the computer. I logged into my Netflix account, well, my whole family used it, but I did too. Luckily it worked, and I pulled up Elite. It was a TV show I was watching to help improve my Spanish. Not that I needed it, since I was now a polyglot, but it was still a good show.
With a sigh, I reached back and tied my hair up into a ponytail. A very low one, but it kept my hair out of my face.
I watched the show blankly. My eyes fluttered slightly, and I closed them, just listening to the words coming through the speakers.
I could only half understand them. In my sleepy state, I could not understand all the words, even being a polyglot. I wasn’t wrought by trauma from the kidnapping, like they assumed. I never was. I was just… so tired.
I stayed up late and woke up early. I wore myself out by watching TV and Youtube until late at night, and then I woke up early so I could take a long while waking up without actually losing any real time. I needed to sleep, and the excuse of ‘I’m recovering from being kidnapped’ was always a good one.
As the world around me drifted into blank darkness, I looked around myself. I was asleep, I could tell since the need to sleep was gone. But I seemed to be in a void, not dissimilar to the one I started this journey in.
It was quiet, so I leaned back. The world around me was black, but also not. It was colorless, as is the definition of black. But it was more than black. It was like staring into the space around a black hole. A complete lack of… anything.
As I moved forward, it was as if I stepped into a lake. So, I lifted my foot and stepped again. It was solid now, and I drifted easily across the lake of darkness in a boat of darkness in an entire void of darkness.
“Hello.” said a voice behind me. An eerily familiar voice in fact. One I had heard many times.
“Hello Sophie.” I said, continuing to drift. I didn’t bother turning around. We wouldn’t be able to see each other in this void either way.
“How are you?” Sophie asked. The Original. “Well, I presume.”
“I was kidnapped.” The boat wobbled a little bit, and I assumed that was the Original doing something.
“At your own leisure.”
I shot a glare in the direction her voice came from, even though I knew she couldn’t see it.
“It doesn’t matter if I chose it. I don’t handle pain well. An unfortunate roll over. And I was still harmed. It still hurts. Things can hurt even if you asked for it. Masochism is a sex thing.”
“True, but you didn’t do it for sex reasons.”
“No. I did it for aesthetics. For… I dunno. I wanted to seem powerful. Like I could do it.” I hadn’t really thought about the full reason before, not wanting to admit I thought of myself as weak. Which I did. “It’s not like either of us would be good at decision making or planning though, neither of us have fully developed prefrontal cortices. Not me before I arrived, and not in this body.”
Sophie hummed, shrugging. “Yeah. Fair enough.” She paused. “How do you know that off the top of your head?”
“My mom was a psychology major in college, I spent my entire childhood being told the psychological reason I was acting a certain way when I was mad.” I rolled my eyes. “She was right, but it was still annoying.”
“At least your mom believed in science. My mom was a total anti-vaxxer.”
“According to the books, that was actually why your mom was chosen, because she didn’t trust human doctors or whatever.”
“I know. Fucking douchebag. Anyway, I have access to most of our shared knowledge anyway, you haven’t managed to cut off mind readers from the inside.” She snarked.
“Well, most people reading my mind aren’t inside me.” I snarked right back. Then I paused. “Okay, that did not come out right.”
“No it did not.”