#kataireo

GOOD  EVENING,  @kataireo.     The  riddler  is  somewhere  over  here,  if  she'd  peer  through  the  open  slit  in  her  door.  He's  made  himself  at  home,  legs  crossed  over    her   chair,  with  elbows  perched  over  those  to  rest  his  head  so,  so  naturally.     He  doesn't  seem  to  have  particularly  done  anything  with  the  place,     but  ...  well,  what  merit  does  that  have,  when  he's  here?

"Ah,  miss  page.  To  what  do  I  owe  the  pleasure?"  He's  behaving  as  though  she's  the  unannounced  guest.  "Sit,  sit,  make  yourself  at  home.  Would  now  be  a  good  time  to  discuss  your  latest  investigation?  Or  is  your  article  perhaps  a  better  place  to  start?"

She's just leaving. Elektra steps outside a townhouse, turns her head to shift the curtain of dark hair over her shoulder, and sees her at the bottom of the steps. Matthew's friend.

Elektra hadn't come through the front door to this residence, so she doesn't know how long Karen's been waiting. Waiting for the person inside? Out of journalistic interest?

morning after starters. / ( ACCEPTING! )

she looks beautiful. a fact that never changes. she's always beautiful. in the daylight with cold cream and foundation and fresh mascara. in the night time with crumpled blouses and ruffled hair and a clenched jaw. at lunch, with marinara on her chin and a vibrant laugh pouring from her throat... karen is beautiful. even now, with black clouds trying to suffocate the sun as it rises, her hazy silhouette dressing in clothes that slithered to the carpet as they undressed, kissing tenderly before sinking into the mattress, fingertips caressing, searching, cradling every touch and settling them into cushioned memory.

AND WEAPONS DON'T WEEP // accepting // @kataireo sent — (The Observer) "You kind of have a little... blood... on your face. ...Don't worry, I'll get it for you."

She goes still, as she often does these days when something unexpected happens. Her gaze tears from a heap of newly collapsed scaffolding — it leaks blood, and hides an innocent man's body, a father — to blink at Karen. Her brows furrow and smooth in the moment Karen takes a step towards her, but Elektra allows her to do what she must.

There's a child at their heels, red from crying, and she shouldn't have to look at her father's blood on Elektra's cheek when they talk.

Her voice is low and urgent, her eyes stay locked on Karen's. Experience says they have seconds until police arrive on scene and attempt to arrest them. "Can you take her?"

and it all comes back to this, once again.

it always comes back to this, like a sandstorm to a runaway boy named kafka, who can never escape his fate once it is written down.

jeanne-marie beaubier, likewise, cannot escape the sins of her past and her failed salvations now that they’re recorded history, no matter how much she has since grown, developed, and learned to be more functional, less volatile, more worthy of equality, trust, and respect.

but none of that really erases the past, both what happened and the kind of woman she has been growing up; none of them really takes off the badge of being an unreliable, mad, forgetful woman, who self-sabotages and self-indulges without shame or self-restraint, akin to breathing air and drinking water in regards to the frequency and the necessity of how often she indulges in those, indulges in war and love alike.

it is not that past version of her, a young precocious woman still learning to understand her mind and the world around her, that is here today in manhattan, sitting at the paralegal and journalist’s desk. simply a heroine doing her job, providing her testimony after a x-avengers collaborative mission gone wrong, but it’s not that simple, isn’t it?

whether it’s then or now, aurora’s words can never be simply taken at face-value; she must first go through the trials, to prove that she knows what she is and how she is, to prove that she takes full responsibility for her sickness and the woman she is or isn’t when her sickness takes over, and to prove that she is still herself, she still possesses the key to her damned mind, as crazy and broken and damaged as it may be.

“okay,” she sighs, lowering her gaze, part shame and part resignation. here goes nothing.

“karen, i have dissociative identity disorder,” not multiple personality disorder, not split personality, not hysteria, and certainly not demonic possession, no matter what they said in school. “or DID, for short. alongside schizophrenia and PTSD. i have been diagnosed with the first two since i was eighteen, the other one relatively later, and i have been in treatment and therapy for my conditions for well over a decade now. despite my persistent symptoms, i am fit to work as a superhero and investigator, in addition to my work as a schoolteacher.”

crossing her arms, aurora sits back in her seat, getting more comfortable – but still unable to meet karen’s eyes; madame page, as jeanne-marie should call her, but the blonde has asked to be on a first-name basis, so the brunette shall respect that.

“i grew up at madame dupont’s school for girls in laval, quebec my whole girlhood, before i eventually became a teacher there, as well as a nun, which lasted until the institution burned down,” aurora says, her gaze distant as if she herself is imagining those like she was there: the rushing fires, the helpless screams of the staff and the students, the rooftop of the girls’ dormitory high enough to fall off and — “i continued to teach more or less, until logan howlett recommended i join the alpha flight, or more aptly, seek out guardian. the rest is notable history.”

all of this, even the parts jeanne-marie has opened up about, is pretty much public records, the canadian authorities have these details on all of their best and most public-forward superheroes and icons, out in the open for anybody to access from any corner of the globe. but the secret that the two have been dancing around has yet to come, until:

“i do not like talking about my ... états de soi,” or alters, as many would describe it. “sorry, i mean – my states of self. but if it’s any relevant for your holistic understanding of the bigger picture, then i will say this: madame dupont’s was a very isolating and unsafe place, looking back at it. i’m ashamed my mind had to respond this way at all, but – when i struggled to be myself wholly, aurora emerged for me. we did not like each other for a long time, but – we work with each other now. along with the others, whom i will not name or discuss.”

jeanne-marie finally looks up at karen, borealis-green eyes dewy as if the talk of aurora — or more likely, the revisit to her time at madame dupont’s — has stung something deep and buried within her, something that can only be described an ache she’s ashamed to even possess, let alone be hurt, wounded, or scarred by.