in the prison of the gifted [OPEN/JULY CATCHALL]

[girl_at_the_window]

Who: Susan Delgado and YOU
When: Before the July event
Where: The library; the dining hall; dungeons; gardens. Will probably add a roommates prompt once I figure out where she is.
What: Susan gets used to being out of prison, visits the dungeons, and generally enjoys having a little more freedom.
Notes: There will probably be discussion of pregnancy/pregnancy loss, and possibly of abuse. Will try to CW where these things occur.

Toplevels will be in the comments. If you want a closed toplevel, shoot me a PM or plurk me at jormandugr

Comments

[girl_at_the_window]

Susan opens her mouth, and then closes it. Perhaps the other girl isn't bitter, but for a moment, Susan sure is - aware of a sudden, petty wash of resentment at what feels to her like an accusation, and of a sharp defensiveness that makes her want to snap that she isn't some kind of spoiled rich girl, that she's been hungry before, too, that none of this is new. Her fists clench at her sides, then loosen, her lips pursing.

"Ye're too young to have been in prison," she says, at last, and there's more doubt in her tone than is maybe fair, more of a vicious desire to catch the younger girl out. "Ye're only a kid."

[not_caroline]

She might not recognise the specifics of Susan's anger but she recognises anger and part of her relishes it. She'll have to bother the girl more when she's low on Glamour.

Out loud, as it were, Coraline just shrugs. "What can I say, I have an amazing skin care routine." She looks at the taller girl with a defiant evenness, tilting her chin up slightly to meet the sharp gaze readily. "Not every cell has bars. Sometimes it's a person you can't run away from or they'll kill you."

[girl_at_the_window]

Susan looks at her for a long moment, her lips pinched tight. Again, under the anger, that sting of guilt, that knowledge that she's lashing out at the wrong person.

Not every cell has bars. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's a town. Sometimes it's the weight of an obligation, your aunt's sharp tongue reminding you what your duty is, the crack of arthritic knuckles and the smell of sour breath. Sometimes it's the knowledge that if you look in the mirror at your own face, you'd see the prison's guard looking back, sour-faced and thin-lipped. Aye, she's known a few different kinds of prison in her time, and she can't argue. Just feel that wash of shame, and that low resentment.

"Ye're too young," she repeats, but this time it sounds less like a challenge, and more like a desperate negation, like she can make it be true if she says it. Like kids aren't in prisons of obligation everywhere.

[not_caroline]

Coraline just looks away, and in her eyes there's an exhaustion well beyond her years. The battle-weary eyes of a soldier home from war, or a matron who's seen one too many of her children leave home and never return. Tired, and resigned, and old.

"I've been too young for a while," she says; her voice remains light and dismissive, but it almost seems distant. "It's not like people care, except when they use it as an excuse to lord it over me."

Then she blinks and that look in her eyes is gone as she shifts her shoulders slightly, like she can shrug that weight off. "I've been dealing with this sort of shit for as long as I can remember, anyway. It's not like it's new."

[girl_at_the_window]

"I guess it never is," Susan says quietly, and sighs, closing her eyes. She can taste the bitter backing of acid in her throat, and it strikes her, as if for the first time, that they were all too young. Herself, and Roland, and his friends, and even Sheemie. The girl in front of her probably isn't even all that much younger than Susan herself. She's done a good job, in her own life, of not letting herself see that she, too, is a kid.

"How old are ye?" she asks, after a moment, her eyes still closed. And then, because some deep part of her mind is nagging at her about the look in Coraline's eyes and the tone in her voice, the way she'd said a while: "I mean, truly?"

[not_caroline]

There's another long moment of quiet, before she gives a huff and resettles against the wall, hands in her pockets. "That's a good question, actually. I'm fourteen, but. I was fourteen for a really long time. I think for like, ten years? Something like that."

She says it so casually, like she's talking about the weather. "I was only away from home for like three years, though, so maybe I'm seventeen? Who even knows."

[girl_at_the_window]

Susan opens her eyes, looking at the other girl for a long moment, as if trying to gauge whether she's being mocked. At the same time, though, she can't really bring herself to doubt it. It doesn't seem like mockery, or like a lie. It seems real. And... really, is it the strangest thing to happen so far?

"Ye're older than me." That actually feels, in an odd kind of way, like the strangest thing of all. "Whichever way it falls, older than me."

[not_caroline]

"Well, it's not like I was home for those three years. I got taken in 2018, and now it's-- it was 2021." Here is not now is not then and there. Fucking time-space bullshit.

She looks back at Susan with an even curiosity. "How old're you? Can't be much more than me then, right?"

[girl_at_the_window]

The numbers don't mean much to Susan. If they ever counted by such a calendar in her world, it was long ago - back when the pumps in the oilfields still moved, mayhap, and before the world began to move on. She dwells on it a moment, anyway, not looking at the other girl.

"Sixteen," she says, at last. "Seventeen come Wide-Earth." If dead girls can still count age. She wonders if she can, or if she's the one who'll be stuck where she is, the way this girl is saying happened.