ellectrical | (no subject)

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This time, Elle stopped running before she collapsed.

As she’d started about noon, it was now nearing dusk. The sky was a deep blue slipping further into black, and Elle had dropped to the ground, sitting cross-legged in the grass near the shoreline of the lake, watching the sunlight along it dissipate as the evening deepened.

Her breathing, which not so long ago had been harsh and ragged, had evened out by now, deep and slow, so that she barely seemed to move. She didn’t flinch or even glance away at the sounds of others on the grounds, or to any sudden ripples in the water. Though her eyes on the water, she seemed to follow nothing at all, her expression not closed, but empty.

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"Yes," X agrees, because it is true.

"But I -- "

She frowns, picking through her brain for the right words.

The ones she finds, well --

"I think you can be different now. Too. If you want."

X turns to look more fully at Elle, propping herself up on her elbow.

"Not -- it will not be the same. But you do not have to not use it. What you remember. If -- "

Her voice goes quiet as she repeats herself.

"If you want."

"I don't ignore it."

Elle's still on her back, eyes watching the now darkened sky.

"But I don't -"

Beat. "It's - hard to put together. I don't remember it like it all happened - to me. And I had to -"

But she stops there.

Eventually, carefully, X reaches over and nudges Elle's arm.

If Elle does not pull away, she may even leave her hand there.

For a while.

Elle doesn't move away, though she also doesn't return the gesture.

"I couldn't think."

Beat.

"For a while."

"It is better? Now."

"It's not..."

"It's not about it being better now."

"But you can think. Now."

It's more than a little bit of a question.

Edited 2011-07-06 00:58 (UTC)

"I can."

It may not be quite an answer.

X stays silent.

Waiting.

"I could."

Beat.

"I didn't," she rectifies.

"Oh."

X absorbs that.

Or she tries, anyway.

"I -- "

"There was a telepath," she continues, so quickly she nearly interrupts X.

"So I didn't."

"It was successful? Not thinking."

Beat.

"Against the telepath."

"Yes."

"You will need to do it again?"

"I'm still doing it."

"Oh."

Elle finally moves, turning on her side to look to X. Still, her face is expressionless.

"Does that bother you?"

"If you want to stop doing it and cannot."

Beat.

"Yes."

If she does not want to stop doing it --

Everyone is entitled to ways to cope. And it might be something like X's version of meditation.

Which --

It is effective.

"It's - easier."

Other than speaking, she's gone very still now.

"To remember some things like this."

"I don't know if that means I can't."

"I do not know how to find out."

X does not move her hand from Elle's arm.

She also doesn't move the rest of herself anywhere at all.

It --

It only makes sense. Not to move.

"I know you don't like it, but you don't have to know everything."

She says it so abruptly, with so little inflection, that it may not be clear until she's nudged X's hand that she means it as a joke.

X's eyes widen.

"But I want -- "

She cuts herself off as Elle's hand-nudge registers, her shoulders relaxing ever so slightly.

"I want to help. You."

Like Elle has helped her so many times.

Elle doubts her help often came from knowing a whole lot of things.

"I know."

After another pause, she adds -

"You do. Help."

"Okay."

X falls silent again, just for a few seconds.

"It is good that it is easier? To remember things."