‘ i don’t remember many of my childhood dreams. ’

maybe that’s the point. maybe you mean vaguely, maybe you mean fuzzy around the edges, like a photograph taken with a shaky hand. but i can’t imagine that describing us. there are a lot of my dreams that i don’t remember; in high school i kept a dream journal for a time, but writing things down felt dangerous, somehow. like it was evidence that could be used against me. i stopped, obviously. wouldn’t you?

the dreams i do remember seem to have changed in retrospect. i’m in a birdcage and you are there. i’m underground, the lantern in my hand long-since blown out in the restless breath-wind blowing through the cave, and you’re the singing bird somewhere beyond my sight. not a canary. you wouldn’t die so easily just to warn me; you’d sing and you’d sing and you’d listen to the old myths, you wouldn’t look back, and we would both reach the sunlight. i’m ignoring, of course, that we weren’t headed towards the surface in the dream. we were going deeper into the cave.

some part of me that still clings to naive platitudes wants to say that maybe we were headed towards another exit. i don’t think that’s true, though maybe it’s neither true or false. one of those neither-both things. i woke up before i figured out the answer.

     ❛   heath’s out sick, so –   ❜   dan frowned around the word sick. sick, like this place. sick, like the walls. he glanced to the sight of one, as though expecting to see peeling paper and years-old decay grimacing back. he wasn’t a boy any longer; visions like that came very few and far between. still, he swallowed, glancing back to anna. it should have been a quick trip: drop off the hospice materials, then off to the next address on the list. but he felt far-away suddenly, free-floating.   ❛   sorry, uh – could i have some water? if not, i can go ahead and get out of your hair. tina has lucky me doing all his runs today.   ❜   he laughed, but the sound – what was that?

@thraed, starter call

there is a certain glance he gives the walls that makes me squint. like he sees something there, and therefore like i should see something there: and sometimes i do, mabel, sometimes the walls are crumbling or bleeding or tearing themselves to shreds like ... like that woman in the yellow wallpaper, did you ever read that? did your fancy-shamncy private school teach that one?

it’s about a woman who’s going insane. that’s how they taught it, anyways. my english teachers were always men and were never much for in-depth literary analysis regarding any character who was not exactly like them. it was on the curriculum. anyways. i don’t think i ever believed that — but maybe i just saw myself in it too much. the point is ... she’s convinced there’s women trapped in the wallpaper, and starts tearing at it to free them. that’s the short version. sometimes i imagine you’re right there, behind sally’s god-awful vintage floral wallpapers that always seem a little brighter than they should be at their age — they must have been here since you were a kid, since your mom was a kid, at least, but the colors are almost neon. it’s a flourishing garden you have here. sometimes i get the sense it’s like brightly-colored berries, or caterpillars, or moths — bright because it’s poisonous. aposematic.

it’s stupid, this attempt to mythologize everything. you’re not here, but this man — dan? — is. and he’s asking for water, and i’ve just spent thirty seconds looking at the damn wallpaper instead of answering.

‘ of course, come in. ’   sally’s asleep still. i’ll wake her for lunch after dan leaves; it doesn’t hurt anything to let her rest a bit longer, and she’s seemed so tired, lately. for a moment i stand in front of the door. i’ve invited him across the threshold but my body takes a minute to catch up with my words; when i step out of the way i try a sheepish smile on for size, but it doesn’t really fit, does it?

it doesn’t matter. i’m already turning towards the kitchen. i don’t know who’s idea it was to give this house so many rooms; the kitchen is at least three rooms away from the entranceway, and that seems unexplainably wrong to someone who grew up in a barely-two-story railroad townhouse where the front door opened into the joint living room / kitchen / dining room.

i’m not really anything like a person.

     the words resonated, rang out like clamoring bells from the height of a too-tall tower. there was a knot at the back of his neck, one that felt familiar, like an honest-to-god strain, out of sight and out of mind. he thought, but he wasn’t certain, it had started forming that first night, that first meeting, back in frazier. there was no hiding there; instead, there were layers of curtain, gripped and grabbed by fists that sought to unveil, to show him who he really was. look, a mirror, full height and furrowing, look. had that made him a person, then?   ❛   who is?   ❜   he thought better about chuckling. the sound didn’t always land in the gaps he’d intended. that noise again – not a warning, but a sign. ( the two aren’t always mutually exclusive, doc. )

     he rubbed the palms of his hands together, a slow, calloused warmth sparked by a needless friction. i’m not really anything like a person. one foot half in, the other slipping, sliding over ( the side of a tower ) a slab of ice. the more he listened, the more the bells sounded electronic, vibrant. they hollered in the caves of his ears, still cloying for the attention of something – something unlike himself. a part of him that shined, maybe.   ❛   i don’t mean to pry –   ❜   lord knew he didn’t, but goddamn, that sound.

     ❛   – and christ knows i’m no preacher.   ❜   his elbows were balanced on his knees, and if he were caught and made whole from the corner of someone’s eye, he might even appear to be praying. dan sat up, the idea pinpricking that part of himself that said it was best not to crack-wise here. the problem was, he wanted to help: the problem was, he couldn’t stop helping since he’d looked – since he’d seen that part of himself that was revealed and left wanting. the tone again. ( HI, YOU’VE REACHED MABEL MARTIN – ) it wasn’t a bell; it was an answering machine.   ❛   – but i’m not so sure there’s any way to measure that beyond your own experiences.   ❜   who are you, anna?

        @thraed, trouble will find me

i’m not sure i’m good at talking to people anymore.      that’s what they say,      isn’t it:      too long spent alone will make something in your mind snap,      and suddenly you’re an old spinstress,      monologuing to her plants to help the roses grow faster.      is that what they say?      something along the lines,      at least      —      i may not be a person,      not deep down at the heart and marrow of me,      but i was good at blending in with them at a point.

i was a decent enough actress,      once      —      or perhaps it’s that people see what they want to see and let any peculiarities fall by the wayside.      before the house and the answering machine and the endless,      endless labyrinth that has twisted up my insides to reflect its corridors.      (      before you,      mabel.      a before that i do not wish to return to,      would never go back to.      there is no other choice to be made.      )      who is?      i can consider that a moment,      turn it around in my mind,      but no;      there is a sense of reality that must come with personhood.      i’ve never had it.      

and god knows i don’t now,      half of me always under the hill.      a crown to prove my inhumanity.      nothing has changed except death,      and even that is constant:      i didn’t die just once,      i am living and dying and living again like the goddamn snake eating its tail,      eternal,      forever and ever.

‘      there’s other people’s experiences,      ’            i say.      putting on a decent impression of normalcy,      even as my history plays out in answer-machine dialtones just beneath the surface of the world.      anna limon is not available now.      anna limon is dead.      anna limon was never alive,      not really,      not in any way that mattered.      i don’t have the honeysharp smile mabel has,      that way she threatens somewhere behind her teeth even as she acts sugarsweet.      i’m not willing to bare my soul to him just yet,      so the smile i give him is not genuine.      a decent enough facsimile,      at least.            

@thraed says:

“I’d like to be a big ball of meat that bees can buzz around and eat when I die, so that I might be granted one sense of purpose.” 

[  a.j.j starters  |  accepting!  ]

        “Eugh.”  He gets the desperate craving to see your life be granted meaning by someone else’s use of it, he really does.  It’s the insects where he draws the line.  “I’d rather be useful while I’m alive, you know?”

i think once i had the same urge      —      it feels so long ago,      medical school and all the stress and studying and yearning-for-purpose that came with it,      but that must have been why i did it,      right?      some usefulness,      some comfort.      like all i was worth was what i could give to others.

@thraed​

THIS IS NOT QUITE OF THEM. but it is like them.

there are certain things – in the twisting patterns of the tunnels, in the way the space does not fit in the normal place it ought to, in the unwinding of reality for the human beings caught under it – that are like them. those who live here, they think, are the stranger’s almost certainly, and perhaps something else entirely, but the space is almost like them. it welcomes them in certain ways. it tries to eat at the edges of their hallways, as if expanding, and of course they push them back, with the same demeanor as one moves away a too friendly animal. exasperation, maybe, and a hint of fondness.

it isn’t entirely to their taste, really. dirt everywhere. small. not that they’re claustrophobic – they always liked small spaces, cramped places, elliot or sam or both of them squeezing themselves between bed and nightstand in tears. back when that was something that was like them, something they still did. but the hallways of the distortion are meant to disorient. the floors are at angles, walls come together in ways that are just slightly off, the rooms and hallways alternatively bland and off-putting, sometimes so clean and corporate that they come away as nearly inhuman, and sometimes nearly disgusting in its decor choice, awful patterned carpets and subtly off shapes.

mr. robot’s in charge of the latter, usually. he seems to like to put his piece of their mind towards it.

they think, just a little, that this woman, anna, might be to this place what they are to the distortion. of it. yoked to it, but at the same time also made of it, with her hand of bone, with the way it bends to her will. her decisions must be decrees. they can respect that, if nothing else, which is why they aren’t trying to prod – at least, not yet, even as the door stays behind them, locked and still except to them.

a pause. not quite a smile. flickering through who should talk like through a rolodex. elliot’s the friendliest, though, which doesn’t say much, but perhaps says enough. ❝ … what should i call you? ❞ elliot asks after a moment, settling inside the body that is and is-not his, among the earth and the caverns and the way that space twists around them both. ❝ i assume you have a name still. it’s okay if you don’t. sometimes i don’t either. ❞

i have not been here long,      perhaps not long enough to feel as if it is a part of me      —      the branches of this place,      my arteries changing shape to match them,      so if a pathologist were to slice into my corpse for an autopsy i would be nothing more than a map of the underhill.      anna limon,      the perfect guidebook.      

none of that is true.      or,      it’s only true from a certain angle.      like how i can only see mabel’s everburning out of the corner of my eye or how a house looks so strange viewed in reverse through a mirror,      how a photograph never quite looks the way you think it will      ...      i have not been here long.      i’ve been here forever.      i can see all of that,      now:      the multiplicity of all of it,      many annas and only some of them king but all of them equally a part of this.      i think      ...      from the moment i stepped into the house i was here.

the person-people-something-someone in front of me      —      because i know better now than to boil anyone or anything down to just one word,      how malleable descriptors must be to mean anything      —      understands what it is to be both a person and a place.      to have control of your surroundings.      i am still unsure that i am used to all of it      —      it comes naturally but that does not make it comfortable,      this power.      my bone exposed,      the walls of this place all of a poison that couldn’t harm me if it tried.      i’ve been there already,      you know?      i’ve drank the toxins of this place and it made me what i am now.      i can’t exactly get any deader.

anyways.      the point is:      they’ve brought a door of their own.      that’s something i understand.      if i wanted to,      i could open one opposite,      here in this nameless space      (      a chamber,      perhaps,      with walls of vine and branching tunnels,      but one that defies description and fights back against me when i try to name it      )      and step out,      close it behind me and lock it without a key.      a door like theirs does not belong here,      but they are,      thus far,      guests.

i’m not sure i could close the hallways off.      there are      ...      limits,      even in ruling a space.      even as king.      they do not belong to fairy hill,      not in the way mabel and i and the house and the land and everything else down here does,      and i don’t much like playing tricks,      so i would not cultivate poison in layers overtop the entryway,      and i would not give it thorns to slice open their hands      —      it would be      ...      unfair,      i suppose,      for me to even try.      unprovoked as i am.

it isn’t like i would,      anyways.      not when they’re trying to be kind.      there’s enough for me to worry about without sparking war here.      it’s just      ...      a thought exercise;      something to think about.      could i block someone from themselves?      maybe.      if i were more of a tyrant.      if i were a little bit crueler.

that isn’t the question asked,      though.      a name.      i can almost hear mabel telling me this is the most basic rule down here      —      christ,      anna,      you don’t just give yourself away to anyone who asks,      who knows what they will do with that knowledge.      saint anna,      king anna,      your highness,      anna limon of the house and of the hill and the throne made of darkness.      (      anna limon is dead,      long live anna limon.      )

‘      no,      i do.      have a name,      i mean.      i’ve lost a lot,      or      ...      shifted priorities in a lot of ways,      i suppose,      because it doesn’t really feel like a loss when the things that are gone aren’t things you wanted in the first place.      but that hasn’t changed.      ’            i don’t ask how a name can be so      ...      schrodinger’s cat.      i know full well how easy it is to forget yourself when yourself means so many things.            ‘      anna.      saint anna if you believe mabel,      but i prefer just anna.      the honorifics get      ...      dull.      hyperbolic.      ’

some other scattered notes on tma verse, though i’m still not quite sure how everything fits together:

anna is an avatar of the beholding. she has a very similar hunger for knowledge as jon does, but while jon’s is all external knowledge stolen from others, anna’s is more internal. she’s desperate to understand everything she does, and she hates how irrational she often is — she wants to give a specific cause and explanation and reasoning to every action.

the martin house has a lot of entities at play, but the lonely is probably the most significant. anna doesn’t spend as much time in the house in this verse as in canon, but she has been there, with mabel, and nearly gotten lost within its fog.

i think, since the ep39 universe has only been touched on in that one episode, i’m gonna play with it a bit and say. mabel and anna’s trip into the house shouldn’t have taken very long from the outside, weird universe-splitting headaches and existentialism aside, but when they emerge it’s been a few hours.

and neither of them notice that. but anna goes back, because she cannot resist the call of curiosity and she needs to know more about why the house caused such an intense reaction.

and it shouldn’t take long. she isn’t there for very long. she runs into sally and ends up interviewing her. never gets a straight answer about how sally knew her name to call out to her the first time they’d visited, but...

it isn’t long, to anna. but when she comes out of the house it’s weeks later.

and nobody has noticed anything is amiss or reported anna missing, because she hasn’t been missing. because not!anna has taken her place in her absence. mabel is the only one who’d noticed the impostor.

anna comes face to face with the stranger’s approximation of her and survives. i don’t think she would be able to do that if her beholding powers weren’t pretty advanced; though they aren’t as flashy as jon’s compulsion or elias’ near-omnipotence, knowing herself keeps her from fully falling victim to the stranger & makes not!anna a non-issue, though it doesn’t quite reverse others’ skewed memories the not!anna caused.

oh,      mabel.      i’ve always thought there are some things in the world that should be obvious,      should be constants in the minds of everybody      —      nothing big,      i’m not saying that everyone should think the way i do,      i wouldn’t,      but.      little superstitions,      mostly      —      my mother taught me never to fall asleep with a mirror facing your bed at such a young age that i assumed it was something everybody knew.      i don’t think i ever knew how true that one would be,      in particular,      but.      whatever came of all the times i set up my dorms or my apartments or arrived at a new house to caretake until there was no one left to care for and forgot that particular rule,      i don’t know.

anyways.      the point is.      i think your worth should be one of those universal truths.      it should be sung from the goddamn rooftops every day;      every birdsong should sing of how much you,      you,      mabel,      are worth.      you aren’t just worth something,      you’re worth everything.      i’d give up everything for you.      i have,      and i’d do it again,      and that’s      ...      it might not be a traditional definition of love,      not in such a literal sense as we have died and returned for each other,      but it’s love,      nonetheless.

when i reach out to put my hand on yours,      it’s the skeletal one.      i don’t think i did that purposefully      —      i haven’t quite gotten used to it,      even now,      and generally when you reach out a hand it’s just whichever’s closest,      right?      maybe not when you do it.      you consider things like that much more than i do,      and i’m sure there’s some hidden symbolism behind left hands and right hands and bone hands and burning hands that i haven’t spent enough time here yet to know.      it’s probably good that i chose the bone one;      it’s a reminder,      of sorts,      that both of us may have monstrous parts but it isn’t all either of us are.

there are people to blame,      people who have made you think that you are not worth the world,      people who have told you that all you are is monstrosity wrapped in twigs.      some of these people are already dead.      i think the others will be,      soon.      if nothing else,      this should be what a kingdom means:      those who hurt you,      gone.      the two of us happy.

‘      you’re worth everything.      ’            there’s no way to state the obvious like this and not make it sound dismissive,      but i hope you understand me,      anyways,      beyond the layer of a misplaced tone.      you’ve braided flowers into my hair.      i think they will always be there,      now:      no matter how many showers should have washed away each and every petal,      something of me has become a garden for you.      only for you.            ‘      and i think      ...      i think you could be anything you wanted to.      certainly now,      ’            now that i am king and you are by my side and we are here,            ‘      you don’t just have to be the      —      the minotaur in the maze.      not if you don’t want to be.      ’