[Open] in the wink of a young girl's eye

[shadysided]

CHARACTERS: Canon Updated Ziggy and You!
LOCATION: See each prompt.
DATE: Just after the mission.
CONTENT: Ziggy canon updates... like... 2 decades. Shit has happened.
WARNINGS: Conversations/narration about mental health issues, addiction, and PTSD.

(Feel free to wildcard!)

I. Local Ohio Woman Threatens Civilians | Hallway

[C. Berman — no, Ziggy, her nickname is Ziggy — wakes up with a jolt.

Wakes up with a jolt somewhere she has not seen since she was 18 years old: the Ximilia.

She's in her thirties now, having drank maybe a little too much after a small, unfortunate backslide in the months following the breaking of a curse and the quitting of alcohol. Two fucking decades. It's been two decades of really bad choices and mental health as flimsy as wafer paper, and so... she doesn't quite remember things clearly yet. It'll come, with time: those memories of her coupla' years aboard the ship, which will no doubt be eerily clear, despite the distance.

But for now, she is dazed, confused, and mildly hungover when she stumbles out into the hallways of the Ximilia. She has a knife clutched in one hand, poised and ready to lash out if she needs to. In fact, someone who is tiredly walking the halls mere hours after their return from the mission will suddenly find a knife held up to their neck from behind. The voice that speaks is a little rough from a disuse and two decades of on-again-off-again smoking habits.]

Instead of trying to move, how about you tell me where the hell I've been carted off to?

[And why it feels so goddamn familiar?]

I don't know what creepy Sunnyvale mental hospital this is, but I'm out of here.

II. Far Away Thoughts | Kitchen

[So. Anyway.

She's gotten her memories back. Mostly, and with some unpleasant blurriness that still needs time to fade. She's in her thirties, and so much time has passed — time that includes becoming a PTSD-infested alcoholic with agoraphobia (lots of watching the same VHS movies every night after a fifth of Jack Daniels, or tail-spinning into guilt over Camp Nightwing and paranoia that the curse is coming to reclaim her). She's improved a lot since breaking the curse, for the record.

It's why she can sit in the kitchen to stare at a bottle of wine, instead of hoarding herself in a room decorated for a teenager who is into high School Musical. It's not easy, but she can do it. She just happens to stare at the bottle for an uncomfortably long time, unaware that she's even doing it. Force of habit, really; time passes just fine when you're zoning out into another world.

It also helps you not drink the thing you really want to drink, if you zone out.

One epiphany, belated, finally hits her:]

... Holy shit. I'm really here. Again.

... I can't believe this is really happening. Again.

III. Memories of a Different Life | Ziggy's Room

[It's funny. Back home, she still feels her skin crawl when she takes those daunting steps out of her home. It had once been a mental sort of prison, one she erected herself. And she had swore to herself and to her sister that she would start really living again. If only it weren't so fucking scary to do something as simple as meeting someone at a cafe, or walking your dog down a sidewalk.

But the Ximilia doesn't make her feel like that. Not really. Not with the memories she has here, still bleeding in so effortlessly and filling the cracks that she had only started mending back home. It makes her realize that perhaps her healing had started a long time ago, in a place she couldn't remember anymore: this station.

She stands in the middle of her room, taking embarrassing posters off her wall and grimacing at teenaged Zac Efron's face. Not just him, either. Somewhere along the way, young her had started really getting into the Jonas Brothers while staying here. How many Disney Channel original movies can one girl hoard?]

... Ugh. So glad I'm over this chapter of my life, suddenly.

[She rolls up a poster and throws it in a box.

Redecorating a little, is all. She stops to look at some little polaroid images and tiny letters on a corkboard — there's some lovey-dovey messages from what she can see is Finn's handwriting and unerring drawing skills. It's amazing how clearly she's suddenly remembering some of these moments in time; it's also a relief to know that at least she had some kind of teenaged childhood here, in a way. Especially when she thinks about the parallel childhood that happened the moment she returned home.

The door to her room is open, anyway; feel free to pop your head in.]

Comments

[singlelogbridge]

A-xing. [He speaks the affectionate nickname with a gentleness that wasn't present before. Alive. An adult. Alive alive alive. She didn't die. His heart aches with it, aches in the best way, and he wants to laugh and cry, to make a joke about how neither of them had the end they thought they did, somehow but now isn't the time. She's scared. She's panicking. He doesn't know how to bring her out of it, but he has to try.

He lifts a hand to his own ear and removes the earpiece, holding it up for her to see.]

It's for sending messages. If you don't want to hear them or read them, you can take it out.

You aren't crazy, Ziggy. You've never been crazy. But you're in...you're somewhere that doesn't make any sense to you, I know.

You were here before. You've been here. But when we leave this place, we don't remember. [And he remembers Itachi leaving for a week and returning as if he'd never been gone. Remembers Itachi telling him all he'd experienced. But however little time Ziggy was gone from the station, for her it must have been so long. She's an adult now. Older than him. (He ignores the pang of it.) She lived.]

You died. You came here after your death. How many years ago was that for you? You're so much—you're so big. [He can't help the softness that slips into his voice at the words.] You grew up. [He sits then, right on the floor in the middle of the hall. As non-threatening as he can make himself, legs crossed and hands palm up in his lap.]

I know this isn't the first impossible thing that's happened. You told me about a curse. Curses were real, weren't they? Can't this be real too?

[shadysided]

[A-xing?

Oh, shit.

The earpiece, the Ximilia, Wei Wuxian — some stupid fucking curse. Only there are two curses, aren't there? The curse the Goode family brought down on the town of Shadyside, and the curse the orbs brought down on the universe. She's not sure why she thinks these things, still reeling from the memory of a conversation with a man called Sherlock while they struggled to retrieve the last one. It feels like a dream and a memory, all rolled up in one confusing pile of dough that used to be a brain. Maybe all of the drinking and mental shit finally caught up with her, huh? And after she'd gone and quit hitting the bottle, too...

But it's not a dream, and she's apparently not crazy.

It's just everything else that is, just like it's always been.

Just like she's always tried to convince the adults, before she gave up and became one, too.

She was here. The problem is, she's remembering. Bit by bit.]

After '78?

[July 19th, 1978. The night she'd died. The night she had sometimes wished she stayed dead. She did come here — she'd wanted to save her sister and all those kids. Reverse the curse... save the day. Ximilia. A place full of suffering and grief, but also support and help that she would never receive after leaving it. Peter Quill, Finn Mertens, Natasha Romanoff, and dozens and dozens more who had been there. Including...

She lowers her knife much further, sinking to the floor on legs that feel weaker.

This time, not because she'd learned one of the only people she'd trusted was a fraud.

But instead, because one of the only people she'd trusted was back in her life, after years of not even knowing he existed.]

... Wei Wuxian?

[singlelogbridge]

[He scoots closer, watching as realization dawns, and his hands come up to rest on her shoulders. For once, he finds himself speechless, only taking in the young woman that she became. He doesn't know how she survived or what became of that curse she spoke of, and he doesn't know why the orbs decided to take her away and bring her back like this, but he's heartbroken and overjoyed, and too grateful to speak.

He only continues to clasp her shoulders as he drinks her in.

Eventually, he finds his words though his voice shakes with astonishment and joy as he repeats his earlier words.]

You grew up, little sister.

[She lived.]

[shadysided]

[She's not really used to anyone touching her these days, not in a friendly or familial sense. Her mom died not very long after she'd become an adult... and she's not sure how much she can blame Shadyside for the lack of friends; she had intentionally withdrew herself from living a normal life, anyway. Maybe someone out there would have been okay with the local village crazy person and accepted her, warts and all. Could've, should've, would've.

She smiles, slight but sure.]

Just barely managed it.

... I don't know if I can say I did a lot between my short-lived death and now.

But I'm here. And definitely alive.

[She shakes her head, looking a little awed.]

Everything's coming back so clearly. You'd think my memories would be a little fuzzy.

[singlelogbridge]

[That doesn't matter he almost says, and only stops himself because it might not land right. It probably matters a lot to her. He doesn't know what her life was like after that horrible night. He can't imagine it could have been easy. But if she's here now, if she lived, if she survived then she has time now. To live and to do what she wants. One of his hands flutters to her hair out of habit, tugging lightly before dropping away as he smiles a little bashfully.]

You would think. [He agrees, though he sounds distracted, still trying to take it all in. A frown steals over his face all at once and quickly shifts into a pout as he crosses his arms, a playful look in his eyes.]

Don't get any ideas though now that you're older, you're still my little sister. [He can't hold the pout for much longer though and he breaks into a grin, shaking his head.]

Aiya, but look how pretty you are! Look at how grown! My heart can't take it, a-xing!

[shadysided]

[She snorts at that, unconvinced of this alleged prettiness — not that she ever particularly tried to form bonds with anyone after what had happened, but she'd spent a majority of her adulthood assuming she was unapproachable in a number of ways. Her mom used to tell her, during her particularly unpleasant fits, that she could be pretty and still look so ugly; it made sense for a long time after. But she couldn't really expect anything else but flattery from someone she saw as family, could she?

It makes her angry that she had forgotten a relationship so important, for so long.]

... I have to admit, the growing took a longer time than it should've. In ways.

[Physically, no, but finding yourself is really hard when you don't try looking.]

... We did it, though. We broke the curse. The killing in Shadyside — it's over.

[And that is something she's proud of.

And it feels damn good to be proud of something.]