𝟑𝟔𝟓 PARTY GIRLꜝ

every little twitch of the brow, stumble of the words and fault of usually well-kept tongue. all very telling, and precisely why his acting gigs had never truly taken off. youngest never had been very good at it, told by expressive features that often exposed what his words couldn't. still, he tried. even to susan every now and again. visuals stuck within the eye of the public began to crack, felicia was onto him way better than most. giveaways aside. he let her take his wrist.

PART ONE, BEFORES

❛ they see you closer than you are, but you’re further from reach than either you or they can imagine. ❜

❛ what are you thinking about today? ❜

❛ maybe tomorrow, everything would be different. ❜

❛ take me home, stranger. ❜

❛ maybe we should break up. ❜

❛ you’re one of those brainy fucks, right? ❜

❛ your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. ❜

❛ cigarettes are extremely out of fashion. and they’re bad for you. ❜

PART TWO, CONVERSATIONS

❛ you’re obviously a very good liar, ❜

❛ if i were a liar, wouldn’t my lies be extremely valuable currency to me? ❜

❛ i don’t think we’re really capable of loving the things our parents love. ❜

❛ can you make this less like an interview, please? ❜

❛ the point is, you’re observing me too closely. ❜

❛ i was formerly a thief. ❜

❛ did you get the lies you came for? ❜

❛ you want to puzzle me out like a math problem. ❜

❛ crime doesn’t make a person complex, everyone has a history. ❜

❛ do you want me to leave you alone? ❜

❛ i want to see what you see. ❜

❛ are you interested in me? ❜

❛ i’m not trying to predict you. i’m trying to understand you. ❜

❛ couldn’t you predict me if you understood me? ❜

❛ i like it, your brain. ❜

❛ right, one impossibility at a time. ❜

❛ i wasn’t really thinking about you, to be honest. ❜

❛ it’s very… austere, isn’t it? ❜

❛ i could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed. ❜

❛ don’t hold hands with anyone ever again. ❜ 

❛ there she is. queen of chaos. ❜  

❛ don’t worry, you’ll fit perfectly. don’t worry, there’s nothing here for you to break. ❜

❛ there, now it looks like somebody cares about you. ❜

❛ there is nothing worse than being predictable. nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. ❜

❛  so don’t speak. just stay here with me, just breathe. ❜

❛  haven’t you been paying enough attention to run? ❜

❛  don’t go, just stay. settle over me like the tide, cover me like a blanket, wrap around me like the sun.❜

❛ i think that, for someone to get close to you, you must have to give them one key at a time. and even then, only one level can be opened at once. ❜

❛ you know, it’s poor form to accuse a lady of lying all the time.❜

PART THREE, KEYS

❛ do you imagine things? Is your life a dream or a chart? ❜

❛ come closer, let’s see what happens, let’s see how the stars shine on your skin. ❜

❛ i know you’re not stupid. that’s the worst part. ❜

❛ all this time we’ve been talking and you’ve been syncopating your breath to mine and your pulse to mine and your thoughts to my thoughts, you’ve been learning how to love me, haven’t you? ❜

❛ if i am a lover of impossible problems then you will have loved me for my impossibilities. ❜

❛ what else matters but this, me, us? ❜

❛ am i imagining this? ❜

❛ i want to see your art. ❜

❛ this night is stolen, i want grand larceny and this is petty theft. ❜

❛ austere. it’s a cold word. ❜

❛ you have never understood beauty and all the worse for you, you never will. ❜

❛ i am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than i am to any other form of vice. ❜

❛ the thought of having you is more dangerous than any cocktail of drugs, the idea of belonging to you endlessly destructive. ❜

❛ it’s a fire. i used to burn out, now i just burn.❜

❛ his name is written on my skin, he scarred me. ❜

❛ you just seem like you’re looking for something to overwhelm you.❜

❛ you can’t fix me. ❜

❛ i don’t see anything to fix. ❜

❛ thank you for the shape you took in my life but it’s over now, it doesn’t fit. ❜

PART FOUR, FIRSTS

❛ something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. ❜

❛ empires have fallen like this. ❜

❛ my god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding you. ❜

❛ jesusfuckingchrist what have you done to me? ❜

❛ go on, ruin me. wreck me, please. ❜

❛ am i the girl who stays while others leave? ❜

❛ i love your brain.❜

❛ can you love my brain even when it is small? when it is malevolent? when it’s violent? can you love it when it doesn’t love me? ❜

❛ i’m going to tell you my secrets. ❜

❛ come home with me. ❜

❛ i want your future, i want it for me. ❜

❛ i’m going to replace those memories, i’m taking them back for me. ❜

❛ i want you to say everything, anything. i want to have your thoughts, i want to bottle them, i want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping. ❜

❛ jesus, we’re fucked, aren’t we? ❜

PART FIVE, VARIABLES

❛ come outside, come look at the stars. ❜

❛ i worry that if you try to keep up with her, you’ll burn out. ❜

❛ you’re wrong about her. ❜

❛ ether is what they called the air in the realm of the gods. a shining, fluid substance. ❜

❛ you poor thing, what a curse. i wonder which god you angered.❜

❛ you can’t just live in your past lives. ❜

❛ so this is what it is to love something you cannot control, it feels precisely like terror. ❜

❛ i thought you’d be sick of me by now. ❜

❛ every time you love, pieces of you break off and get replaced by something you steal from someone else. ❜

❛ yes, it is perilously wonderful to suffer so sweetly with you. ❜

❛ can’t you see how intangibly i exist, and how perilously? ❜

❛ will I always fear him as much as I love him? ❜

PART SIX, TURNS

❛ you really haven’t changed, have you? ❜

❛ you can always undream me, unbelieve me. ❜

❛ i’m strange, okay we’re both strange, nobody understands us except for us. ❜

❛ you think i don’t know that there’s something wrong with me? ❜

❛ i think you need me more than you want me. ❜

❛ there’s a difference between cravings and compulsions. ❜

❛ i love your brain even when i fear it. ❜

❛ have i already destroyed this little fledgling thing i tried to nurture? ❜

❛ whatever you are made of, i am made of it, too. ❜

❛ it isn’t pretty, it’s lonely, it’s desolate, it’s a chilling portrait of vastness. ❜

❛ she does burn me, she ignites me. ❜

❛ she is my hope and for that she is dangerous, unequivocally, but she is also alive, unreservedly. ❜

❛ it’s you and me right now, stranger ❜

❛ it’s you and me alone in the ether, and you don’t even know it yet. ❜

❛ this is what it looks like to love you; it looks like an abyss. ❜

❛ all falls come with danger, but not us. not us, we float. ❜

chandeliers drip light here like molten gold, catching on the lacquered floor as crystal winks in every direction. she has been swimming in it since childhood, and still the water manages to find itself up her nose. a placecard sits abandoned at the nearest table, and digits pluck it up, thumbs smoothing the cardstock once before folding a corner inward, then another, crane wings beginning to take shape between her thumb and forefinger.

@luckstole said, ❛ you don't look so good, sweetie. ❜

the voice purrs from behind her shoulder, and a clean brow arches at felicia, ❛ really? ❜ she reaches for her compact like a surgeon reaching for their scapel, clikcing it open, swarovski twinkling like twin haloes beside her jaw, ( where underneath a lavender bruise is blooming, mind scattering to place when she collected that; ) a chip in her tooth flashes as her lips part, nude liner smudged near the cupid's bow. her jaw works once. ❛ that's not gonna fall out, right? ❜

        out of everything and everyone in this room kate bishop is the least grating and because of that alone she is the sole recipient of a silent,   shapeless disdain.   an envy with no purpose nor reason   (   existing solely to fester beneath the skin and rot behind a tabloid ready smile   )   too much weight in such a tiny clutch,   she wears her grudge as an accessory.   priceless,   hard-one,   a prize the world cannot see.   ❛   shoulda told 'em there was an 80% chance of you not giving a fuck that evening,   bishop.   ❜   keeping it breathy,   the tapering off of vocal fry that was signature felicia hardy.   

        none of this is fair,   not the way she is acting and not where or who they were born to.   simply the luck of the draw and to no surprise hers is the shortest stick of the lot.   ❛   thought you had it covered.   since this is your whole scene,   isn't it ?   i'm just the girl who slipped in the backdoor when no one was looking.  ❜   an errant thumb might seem a well-meaning rescue attempt as it swipes away at the excess lipstick, but her touch is a tad too firm with it.

wayward daughters bore mantles with a special kind of vigor; jesse believed this to her core. the justice society of america was a failed thing, a spirit really, useless ideals fallen flat, the team she'd left years ago now fractured and no longer operating. their headquarters sat empty, save for the artifacts that filled the museum-like halls, the storage rooms and secret chambers housing dust and memory and books, valuables that didn't always belong to the figures that swiped them.

jesse walked (her footsteps shamelessly loud on the tile floors) down the empty hall with a brown sack full of framed photos. glass rubbing against glass, a shrieking sound. she'd come here looking for a particular photo of her and her father, only to find other pictures instead— infuriating ones. black and white depictions of not only johnny quick but liberty belle as well, their hands folded lovingly and their smiles and eyes starry. idealistic. happy marriage. jesse hadn't even been born when those pictures had been snapped; it bothered her to see them plastered on the jsa's walls. didn't they know her parents had parted in resentment? they weren't exemplars, it was all so phony. jesse hadn't thought twice; she'd snatched each frame from its place and shoved them into a sack destined for... what? the trash? no, that seemed harsh, a curse to the dead. whatever! for once, the speedster didn't dwell on the details; she'd figure out a proper disposal when she was outside, the cool night air a balm to her senses.

she talked to herself a bit, grumbling, turning a corner, heading for the back door exit; but she never reached it. there was a sound far behind her, coming from somewhere deeper within the building, a shift in the air that gave her pause. jesse made swift work of the walkways, zipping through the air, not lingering to ask herself questions— and came to a stumbling halt at the sight of @luckstole.

half-cloaked by shadow, half-touched by the moon that filtered down from the high window, jesse recognized her at once— understood at once. the weighty bag in her own hand was a reminder, wasn't it? legacy. she scowled, head tipping to the side in assessment, light brows furrowed contemplatively. there was a beat, then, as the two women simply breathed, regarding each other, a wind howling at the side of the building. and then jesse pursed her lips, gesturing with her free hand to the row of rooms that stretched ahead of felicia. she had to be here for the same reason she was. to gather remnants of kin. empathy stayed the speedster's hand, prevented her from chirping and making an unnecessary scene; they were both rifling through what could only be described as a graveyard. and any echoes of the original black cat belonged to felicia. not the jsa.

she dug through her memory, her analytic mind attuned to every inch of this place. there wasn't a listed figure— villainous, heroic, or murky— that she hadn't studied over the years, their respective archives forever ingrained in her mind. ❛ fourth door to your right. think you can make do without a keycard? ❜ a little smirk here, her mouth curving in a rare— but challenging— smile. she wasn't going to offer her own, of course, had to be at least a little fussy, but she knew that wouldn't be a problem; felicia had slipped into the building without breaking a sweat. what was this in comparison? her own could be missing from her pocket, at this rate.

        while it was not a spider-sense per se the cat had affinity for thievery.   the construction of a place as well as a keen ear that could pick up sound from through walls and then some.   upon entry there was the stirring of another body within the structure's depths.   one that she had not accounted for when she mapped out her course of action for the evening.   this job wouldn't be much fun if there was nothing to snag oneself on.   unpredictability is this only certainly in this life and a mantra for the bad omen herself.   despite what symbol these halls should have been there is a thin layer of dust that coats everything from cases to the carpets.   a relic to former glory,   if that pinnacle had ever been even reached.   vaguely the thief was aware of the hierarchy that existed amongst heroes   (   turns out being squeaky clean wasn't everything it was chalked up to be !   )   plenty of in-fighting and plenty of holier-than-though debates that sounded a lot more like a dick measuring contest from where she stood.   alas,   not her circus,   not her monkeys.   

        this was a simple extraction gig,   in then out.   what she wouldn't admit to was that it was pure sentimentality that drove her to this.   really it was a piece of junk at the end of the day,   an old grappling gun that was barely up to code but it had belonged to one,   walter hardy in his hey-day.   for that reason alone it was priceless to felicia and felicia alone.   the point of these monuments to justice and the like was not only to highlight good triumphing over evil but also to belittle everyone they had stepped on in order to become morally sound crusaders of liberty.   a bit gauche if you asked her.   

        sticky fingers would have it be that she leave the premises with more than simply what she came for.   it was only fair,   she had gone to all the effort of getting in may as well peel a few consolation prizes from the walls as well.   until she hits that god forsaken snag,   it was a time bomb and between the two of them time was on the speedster's side not the purloiner.   in these rarer instances getting caught was actually the best case scenario.   being seen didn't necessarily mean she wasn't going to get away but the heiress presented an intriguing proposition.   color her curious she halts in partial shadow,   only her hair and her teeth bright white in the moon's subtle glow.   jesse quick,   she'd seen the pictures. had a few in her files as well but she'd never seen her making off into the night with her spoils before.