rules.

muses.

regina didn't want to let it take her love for the mall.

when the spinal halo had come off and her physical therapist cleared her for activities outside the house, regina's instinct was to seek solace in familiar, temperature controlled jungle. to be seen by people. but it was going to be weird without gretchen and karen. basically since they'd become friends, if one of them had to miss a shopping trip, pictures had to be sent to them for approval. outfits for important events? put on hold until they could all see it in person. she'd spent so long with her own made up rules that part of her craved an opinion. even just so she could ignore it.

so she had dragged shane along, but by the second store he'd become so annoying that she'd sent him to the food court in hopes he would get lost there. leaving regina alone in a dressing room, scrutinizing herself in the mirror. she wasn't indecisive-- if anything, her ability to make choices for everyone was why she'd been the queen of the plastics. but there was no one more critical of her than herself when she was alone with a mirror.

when she couldn't take it anymore, she scooped up everything that had looked remotely good on her, dumped it on a counter for someone to hold, and stalked out. they'd been working on her rage in therapy and she tried to remember that basically every bad thing that had happened in her life, like, ever was because of people's perceptions of her or something. but then, what was so wrong with wanting people to tell you that you're pretty?

the scents of a thousand soaps hit her and regina is suddenly aware of where she is in the mall. how many times had she walked by pretending like she didn't know janis worked there and wanting janis to notice?

she made another decision.

"can i borrow you for like, five minutes?"

on a scale of 1-10, how scared were you that i was gonna die? / @lethalghosts​.

oh, that is a shit-eating grin if she ever saw one.   it’s right on cue. ellie returns, a little worse for wear, caked in dirt and grit that sneaks under fingernails and never quite gets scraped out with the tip of any knife or brush that any of them can ever find. there’s a new scratch across her arm that carefully avoids the ink trailing up the limb — looks a little deep, a little coarse, but all in all, ellie looks fine. positively… unscathed.

(thank fuck for that. she won’t admit it — now, or ever — but when the light cracked through the door and two mile-weathered converse came bouncing through, there was a heavy sigh of relief in and amongst the dark. it’s a different game out here, so far from camp, so far from anything that isn’t threatening to take a bite out of you every time you turn. the weather’s changing for the worse, and there’s a heavy chill in the air that makes her reach for one of the tac blankets from the nearest duffle bag.)

     “— well, actually, i thought i finally got rid of you. you missed my celebration.”      she hands a blanket over, and reaches out for the newly-lacerated arm that’s now dried a river of dark red down her forearm. fucking chainlink fences. (the touch is gentle. cautious. she twists the arm as though anything her dad taught her sunk in further than aim for the head and the pad of her thumb brushes against the lip of the wound.)

     “— just don’t do anything that stupid next time, okay? you hurt anywhere else?”

“oh fuck you,” ellie’s mock offended, the smile staying on her face. she’d thought the cut was the worst of it and then abby kneecaps her as soon as she comes in the door. figures. everything about abby is a challenge and ellie concedes the point to a worthy opponent, a clear sign she’s off her game. as she plunks into a seat and holds her arm out for inspection she can feel the adrenaline of the outing but her very bones are weary. 

        “oh please, if i let every assassination attempt stop me from doing things, i’d never get anything done.”      it’s become a norm in her life. lex hounds her from every possible corner — prison, if you’d believe it — and active competitors are threatened by a CEO in a skirt and the will to get shit done. having supergirl there is a precaution, but not a necessity — if anything, she’d prefer to just talk without the facade of galas and overpriced drinks getting in the way.

(straight-backed, tight-jawed — there’s a smile that doesn’t sit right to her eyes when she talks to whichever forty-something man desperate to make it onto the forbes 50 under 50, and with the right chat, they presume that’s possible. there are wandering hands that sit just below her waistline for pictures, and a fake-laugh inducing sleazy comment that sits below the belt.)

“lena.” she repeats it like they’re old friends — like she knows anything more than supergirl standing before her. it’s different when one’s a superhero, she imagines, but it doesn’t change her stance. she’s going to stand right there and squeeze these heavy-handed bastards for every cent before the night’s over. there are worthy causes that need it.

            “thank you for coming, supergirl. i really do appreciate it. but i’m not going anywhere any time soon. you should stick around – i’ve heard the shrimp are to die for.”

the voice in her head that sounds a lot like alex’s says lena is being stubborn. alex said the same thing about kara focusing her energy on “being lena luthor’s guard dog”, torn as her sister was between mistrust and duty. kara doesn’t have the same reservations. she knows what it’s like to be underestimated, the way the men in the room are underestimating lena now. not that long ago she’d been fighting alex just for a chance to embrace the parts of herself she’d been hiding for so long. and she wasn’t sure she’d ever entirely forgive cat grant for branding her supergirl when she might have been superwoman.

lena deserves to have her superwoman moment. this... might not be it, kara notes, x-raying the next sweaty-palmed man hoping for lena’s attention, but lena clearly thought this was important. as flippant as she was trying to be, everything kara knew about lena suggested that she was smarter than risking her life without reason. so kara was trusting her— or trying to trust her in the face of knowing lena was very much human and therefore all too easily... unalived.

this couldn’t go sideways.

“i’m starting to think nothing fazes you.” supergirl intones just loud enough for the sound of her voice to carry to lena’s ear but not beyond. she’s standing where she has been since lena insisted the event proceed: at lena’s elbow, arms crossed over the symbol on her chest. supergirl is an approachable superhero by design and by nature but approachable is the last thing she wants to be after foiling another attempt on lena luthor’s life. the crossed arms make her look larger, more intimidating, and angling her body towards lena’s gives them a moment’s berth from handshakes and small talk. there’s a slight but honest awe in the way she says it; lena’s determination is admirable and it’s impressive the way she settles into character to present strength. kara knows a little about that herself. 

             heart almost skips a beat as she approaches beauregard, finding the feeling both odd and comforting at the same time. it’d been a while, romance hadn’t been part of her life, not even an afterthought, since… zuala. but moving is healthy, and beau, beau is good. beau is warm. 

               ❝ beau, ❞ she announces her presence with the girl’s name, not that her heavy footfalls couldn’t be easily heard. with one hand behind her back, yasha tells her,  ❝ i brought you something, ❞ and promptly produces a bouquet of assorted flowers she collected over time ( and with caleb’s magical help kept alive ). 

yasha says her name and beau’s body responds by immediately breaking out into a nervous sweat. it doesn’t take more than that for yasha to get her attention— she always has it, pinging in beau’s peripheral whenever she’s in her orbit. 

beau’s first thought when she lays eyes on the flowers is of zuala. and then she’s drowning in the enormity of the meaning in the gesture. it’s not an afterthought, either, that this is the first time someone has given her flowers. (or that she didn’t think she wanted them until yasha presented them to her). 

            ❝ remember what i said about carnival people and issues ? i think that rings doubly true for this whole adventuring thing. you don’t set off to kill monsters unless you’re at least a little fucked up. ❞

‘          i  think  it’s  exactly  as  bad  as  it  is  in  my  head  .          ’          the  corners  of  her  mouth  will  lift  up  in  (  an  attempt  at  )  a  smile  ,  but  she’s  not  really  joking  .  she’s  done  the  math  over  and  over  ,  knows  the  score  they  need  to  qualify  ,  to  podium  ,  to  win  gold  .  she’s  already  scrutinized  her  every  mistake  ,  calculating  potential  deductions  in  her  head  .  she  doesn’t  want  to  let  him  down  ,  she  can’t  let  him  down  ,  kat  will  think  to  herself  as  they  sit  there  in  the  kiss  &  cry  ,  hands  entwined  ,  waiting  for  their  scores  .  

he’s not a religious guy. not unless figure skating is a religion now. but there’s a certain amount of faith that comes with skating. at some point you have to trust that the endless hours of practice—jump after jump, spin after spin, lift after lift— have ingrained the movements into your body. trust in your partner, and that you’ve both left it all on the ice when it mattered. justin knows that kat has the ability trust in her somewhere... the sting of everything is still fresh. keeping such a big part of herself from him... (the anger at himself for not seeing the signs... or not listening to his instincts). but they have something, as a pair.

she’s beginning to feel like a prisoner of the longhouse. they all have their parts to play in the success of ravensthorpe, but it seems only her part involves being shackled to a table. she tries not to think of it that way. with sigurd and eivor away forging alliances, the day to day management of the settlement falls to her. but they have not grown so large in such a short time that the demands on her include more than settling the occasional dispute. she tells herself it’s sigurd’s will she executes, her husband and her jarl, but she wonders if that’s the truth. if she knows him well enough to be able to say one way or the other. randvi knows every one of the villagers by name, knows their feuds, their squabbles. her hand is in the stream that feeds the life of ravensthorpe and she can feel which way the current carries.

and it’s not sigurd she shares this information with. the notes she leaves are for eivor. every piece of potentially useful information gathered by her scouts made from her lips to eivor’s ear, even with the knowledge that it would carry eivor away again. to forge another alliance. (she wonders exactly how many alliances eivor has forged). she was not so naive, so stupid as to want the wolf-kissed bound to ravensthorpe as she was. eivor had a warrior’s heart, and randvi’s duty was to advise. but there was a part of her that she bound as tightly as odin had bound fenrir that wanted to go with her. 

“the skalds sing of your adventures, your glory, eivor, and you act as if i have nothing to be jealous of.”