[locked] and a heaviness in my head.
[ OOC: Continued from here ]
It's been a while since Lena talked to a younger demon.
There was something about meeting this one that struck a chord.
Not that Lena saw herself exactly as she was all those years ago, but there were enough similarities she couldn't help but take to her. She remembers being that uncertain. She remembers being that ( Read more... )
It's been a while since Lena talked to a younger demon.
There was something about meeting this one that struck a chord.
Not that Lena saw herself exactly as she was all those years ago, but there were enough similarities she couldn't help but take to her. She remembers being that uncertain. She remembers being that ( Read more... )
She would stay here because this is where her home is. She may not have been born here originally. She may be confronted with many people who believe that wanderers like her have no place in this world, in this city, but she knows that's not true.
Her home is here, and no one can take that from her.
"I'm sorry to hear that. It's easier when you have someone to go to, and your mother should be that for you," Lena says. People with Callings who embrace them so fully, it doesn't leave a lot of room for parenthood. It's tough. In a lot of ways, it's tough.
"I can't speak for everyone else. The experience isn't going to be exactly the same, but... yeah, I think so. It latches on to whatever it can, it needs a release, or--well, I'd have gone mad a long time ago," Lena answers honestly. There's no reason to sugar coat it. You don't use your powers at all with no release in sight, or you use them too much--you go crazy.
Everything comes at a price. It's one of the first lessons Sonny ever taught her. Nothing is for free.
Lena studies her and then, she says just as honestly, "The more you use them, the more it'll sound like you. The more the lines will blur until there is no difference."
There won't be much of a distinction. The demon bleeds with the girl, the powers always at reach, and it's easy to masquerade that voice for your own. The more you give into it, the less separation there is, the harder it is to hear your own voice, separate from the Calling.
She shakes her head, a small, rueful smile on her face. "That's okay." She takes a deep breath and then props her chin on her hand, looking out the window. "I fell into a very destructive, very harmful relationship with another demon. He'd use his powers too much, I wouldn't use them at all. It wasn't pretty."
And God, it's been forever since she thought of Rick.
"There are ways to learn. The same things that worked for me might not work for you, but there are. And I'll say something to you now. If you were meant for it, really meant for it, if it's really what you wanted?" Lena asks, that same honesty in her voice.
"It wouldn't make you sick, Jess."
It's honestly as simple and as complicated as that.
If she was meant for it, she would embrace it without a second thought.
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However, she thinks it has something to do with how long Lena has been here, but it's not all that. Jeremy has only been here six months, but he says he prefers it in Chicago. She thinks it has something to do with how terrible their homeland was too.
They make their home here, and it's better than where they came from and she's glad for that.
Jess feels her throat tighten a bit, and she shakes her head, swallowing past it somehow. "It's.. okay. I made friends who showed me that there was more to life than that, just-" She shakes her head, she didn't listen to them or couldn't hear them over the roar of the demon.
"Yeah, I don't... think I've really found a release yet," she admits quietly at least not one that's better than using the powers themselves. There's nothing he's really passionate about and nothing that interests her beyond getting drunk sometimes, she doesn't know-- and sex, sex helps too, but never the kind where you know the person, it's the kind that's just done and twisted and-
And everything comes at a price.
Jess winces at what she says as if she knows, as if she somehow impossibly knows when she can't. "That... explains it then," she says, so so softly and she swallows, staring into her cup as if she expects an answer there.
There are no answers. The truth is the truth as it always is. Maybe it's nothing that can be fixed now either. You can deny your calling but because you use it, the price is that it always sounds more like you than like something else.
"That... sounds rough," Jess says, and she's thinking of how her own relationship with someone very human became harmful, destructive. "But... you're still-- you can have a relationship, I mean, that... guy." Lucky. That seemed pretty healthy so how is that... how does that happen?
It seems like a miracle, an impossible one.
"I'd want... to know those ways, I want to learn if I can," Jess say, and then she swallows, looking down at what Lena says and it makes so much sense.
But
There's always a but.
She looks back up at Lena. "Is what you're meant for and what you want the same?"
Or are they just tools and soldiers of callings, of the universe at the end of the day? She doesn't know.
Sometimes it feels that way.
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Some people come from worlds that are similar to Chicago, worse in some ways, they've escaped a fate that would've been less kinder than the one they found in Chicago. Others have unfinished business, hold on to the nostalgia of their previous world. Some are a mixture of both, but the fact remains, there's no way back.
There's a very real possibility there might never be a way back, and you're left with two choices, as a wanderer. You either never relinquish what you left behind and slowly lose yourself in this big city, or you can rebuild with what you have.
"That's good," Lena says quietly, a concerned, subtle expression on her face. "Friends help more than they know. Without them, you can easily get lose inside your own head, and that's no good. You have to know how to live with yourself in your own company but you also can't be alone all the time. I wouldn't be the person I am now without my friends, who are more than that, really. They're my family."
Lena bites her lip as she watches her. "There are, though. Not all of them as detrimental as you would think. There are ways. Has anyone told you about re-sets?" she asks carefully.
If she has a non-existant relationship with her mother, and Lena is assuming that's the demon in her family or she would've pointed out her father too, there might be a chance she hasn't been told about them.
Lena certainly had no idea of them until Sonny and Gates acquainted her with the oncept.
"Hey," Lena says quietly, when Jess stares down at her cup. It pains her to see it, to think of what she has to struggle with, what they all have to struggle with, and she remembers it so well. Still struggles with it from time to time. "I've been there. I know it feels hopeless, but I'm here to tell you it's really not. Not if we want it to be different."
She would've been too jaded in the past to see it, but she's not anymore.
"Yeah, I can. He's a wanderer and as human as they come. I've never used my powers on him and I don't intend to. A few years ago, I wouldn't have trusted myself to be with him, but I've learned that you can. You can be in a relationship and it doesn't mean you're destined to destroy it, no matter what that voice tells you," Lena says, and it's a marvelous thing.
She knows how impossible it sounds, but it's not.
"I'd help you if you really wanted to," she offers, and she would've been surprised if there wasn't that 'but.'
The indecision, the uncertainty, that solid belief that you can't when every part of you wants to.
"Depends. And a lot of what it depends on is on you," Lena answers. She isn't going to sugar coat it either, after all. She doesn't know this other girl's exact history, but the sole fact she wants to learn, it means something, and Lena believes in her, believes in anyone that wants to try. "I believe it's not. You won't really know the answer to that until you try."
Open yourself up to the possibility there might be more than what you've been handed down.
More than just demon.
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She knows so many wanderers end up drowning in this city, in its pain, and they sink far down and they're lost to it. However, there are still others that find a way to start anew, that rebuild, that grab hold, and that push on.
And it honestly has to be so difficult, but she admires wanderers for that, for trying, for fighting still when the world claims to not want them there, when they've lost everything that they've left behind.
Jess looks over at her and nods in response to that. "Yeah, they do help so much. I know I'd be a lot worse off without them. I wouldn't be me, who I am right now," she says, because the demon would take over completely. What would Jess have to fight for, to be her still for if that demon swooped in without her having any friends, anyone she loved? "Mine are my family too."
She looks over at her, and the confusion on her face is probably answer enough. Jess shakes her head. "... no," she says. It's nothing that she's heard about before. "What are they?"
If there's something healthier she can do, maybe she should-- she could try to do that instead. Jess would want to try to do that instead. She doesn't want this, she doesn't want to be something instead of someone.
She looks back up at Lena when she says her name, and Jess swallows a bit, glancing down before she forces herself to meet Lena's gaze. Jess nods after a moment, slipping her hair behind her ear. "Okay," she says, and it does feel hopeless but there's that tiny light in the dark, and Jess believes her.
There's hope. She just has to find it, to hold on to it even when the demon is loud, and the demon is loud so much of the time, but it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe. Hope is so hard to hold on to, but she wants to and she has to.
Or there'll be nothing of her left sooner than it should be.
Jess feels something ache in her chest at the fact that he's a human wanderer. A human. Eric was human. He was very human and thus very easy to manipulate and it has to be that much harder to resist it when it's that easy. But she did it. This woman did it. "Sometimes it's the voice and sometimes it's me that tells me that," she admits, pressing her lips together.
After the last time, it's so hard to trust herself at all and she knows she needs to in order to overcome it but it's-- there's a barrier.
She looks up at Lena almost surprised at the offer though she shouldn't be when Lena took her here and gave her coffee, and it's-- Jess nods, feeling that burning in her eyes but she nods. "I want it. I want help," she says. "I have wanted it. I'm just not... good at asking for it and I didn't-- I wasn't sure who to ask."
Who to admit it to that she needed help, that she'd been using her powers and she was scared and there was that feeling that she could stop herself but then she didn't. It got worse. It spiraled.
Jess doesn't want it sugarcoated, and Rachel never would either. Rachel was always honest, and there's this deep pang in her chest, in her heart of missing her best friend. It burns, and she swallows past it, looking at Lena, focusing on her words.
She nods, pressing her hands against the cup of coffee. It feels like they might shake if she doesn't so she presses them against the warmth of it and closes her eyes.
"Okay. I want to try."
Even if she's not sure, even if she has hope but it's so small but it's there. She thinks it might be the first time it's been there in a really long time, and she's afraid of that light going out but she also wants to grab hold of it.
"I do. I don't know what I believe or what... or anything. I don't know, but I know... I want this."
This and not the rest of it, not what the demon wants.
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It's what happened to Lena when she was Jess's age.
Lena would hang around people like Rick and Gina. She didn't feel like she may not amount to much as it is, and who was she to judge them, being a demon like them? Carrying that Calling that made her just as capable of destruction as they were?
They treated her like one of their own. They protected her and cared for her, in what way they could, and despite all that, they brought out the absolute worst in each other. It was an addiction of its own, and Lena couldn't see past herself to take a step back.
It's a world of difference when her support system has people like Lucky and Zoe, like Charlie and John. She honestly knows that she wouldn't be here if it wasn't for their help, and she wouldn't have been able to stand on her own if she hadn't had them to lean back on when she needed to.
Lena leans forward a little. "It's... kind of like what happens when you're going through withdrawal. After a while of not using your powers, you start to feel the urge like none other, and emotions are everywhere, so it's easy to succumb. Re-sets are when you isolate yourself for a certain period of time, to... ride out that wave, so to speak. The need and urge to use when the Calling is at its strongest passes, believe it or not, and you can go back out there and start from step one."
It's not ideal, but it's the solution Lena was taught by Sonny, and she hadn't believed it at first, and it's hard, she wouldn't lie about that, it's one of the hardest things she has to do, and she does it constantly, but the older you get, the more time passes before you need a re-set.
You build up the resistance, and eventually it starts to pay off.
"We're flawed, Jess. We hurt the people we love. It's something that becomes fact, and it's not always because we're demon. It's because we're human, too. And all these things that make us who we are, the bad parts too, we don't have them because we're doomed to submit to them. We can have them to rise above them, and it takes a lot, and it's every day. But I can tell you it's worth it," Lena says.
It's worth it, despite the ability inside of her that could so easily manipulate and destroy Lucky if it wanted to.
But he's trusted her not to, and it's that trust that keeps her toeing the line.
The thing is, it'd never work if Lena hadn't learned to trust herself. If she hadn't learned to love herself. Without that, there wouldn't be much she could give others, give Lucky. And that's hard to learn, too.
"I wasn't great at asking for it, either. In fact, I never did. If it wasn't for this man who found me at the back of an alleyway, offering me an out from a life that would've slowly killed me? I would've stayed there, even knowing that." The man that became a father to her, the man that she used her powers on, the man that she hurt and the man that hurt her, there is so much history there she could not begin to explain.
"You don't need to ask for my help. I'm here, offering it." Lena slips her hand into the breast pocket of her jacket, and she retrieves a pen. She swipes one of the napkins and writes down her name, the name of the Crowbar, and her phone number. "Here. For whenever--and I mean that."
Lena isn't always honest. She is not above lying, or cheating, or stealing. She was a con artist, after all. She was a very good one, and she still uses some of the things she learned in all that time for her job with Sonny. But she is being honest now, aware of how critical it is to not give Jess false expectations, while still giving her hope.
"That's the first step. I'm not going to tell you what to believe in or what to do. I'm only going to show you... my way, another way, and then the decision will always be up to you."
It's something she can promise, and Lena doesn't want to make a promise she can't keep.
She knows how that ends.
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She has a really great, supportive group of friends, but she has such a hard time being honest with herself that being honest with all of them about that too is like some impossible feat.
It was much easier to not be honest, to run and to run, and it’s what Jess has done for so long that she doesn’t know how to change it. She wants to change it, and she knows that she needs to change it too. Jess has to become different, has to stop running, has to face all the things that she doesn’t want to face in order to have happiness, to find something happier than what she has now.
Maybe she’ll mess up. Maybe she won’t be able to do it, but she won’t know until she tries, until she fights, and she’s seeing that. It’s so hard to fight though. It’s so hard, and she hardly feels strong enough to be able to do so, but she knows trying is a necessity.
Jess stares at Lena for a long moment, and the confusion is clear on her face as she shakes her head, trying to process all of it. “…that’s- it works?” She wouldn’t have ever considered it as a possibility. She’s never not used her powers before. If she didn’t or had the strong urge, she might drink instead, but she’s never stopped when the urge got too strong. She’d just find someone to use it on who wouldn’t be as bad to use it on…
In her weirdly skewed morals, it felt like she could do that. She has the power for a reason. Why couldn’t she do that? Rachel would disagree. Maybe Jess really would too if she could tell the difference between what she feels and what it feels.
She looks at her when Lena says that they are flawed, and she knows that that is true. Jess has learned and knows how flawed she is, but she doesn’t let herself see it, doesn’t let herself face that. “It looked like it was worth it,” Jess says quietly, looking over at her with a small but warm smile. She didn’t see very much and she doesn’t claim to know them.
But the way they interacted with each other, it was really clear that what they had was real and worth it and amazing.
Jess can barely imagine having something so healthy and so good right now. It just… it doesn’t occur to her that it could be possible, but here’s Lena telling her that it is possible, that Lena has been where she’s been and she can have more. It’s something she wants to hope for and something she hesitates to hope too much for at the same time.
Right now, she doesn’t trust herself or love herself, but the thought that she could have some control over the ability, some control over this voice in her head that wants to influence so much of who she is and what she does.
“So someone found you and pulled you out of… all of that,” Jess says softly, and it does ound a lot like her own life as she doesn’t know that she would have or could have looked for help, searched for another way, because she wouldn’t have believed it. She wouldn’t have wanted to search and find nothing which is always what she felt like she would find.
Nothing. Darkness. Broken answers.
It feels like her breath catches in her throat at what Lena says, and she reaches for the napkin, pressing her hand over the top of it and nodding. Something-something aching and wonderful and painful all at once twists in the center of her chest, and she feels tears burn at her eyes as she nods.
She can hear the sincerity in it, in the promise. Jess picks up the napkin, sliding the napkin into her pocket, folding it up tightly and setting it in there. She’ll keep it safe in that pocket.
“Thank you,” Jess says, and it’s broken but equally sincere. The ache in her heart building and it's good and bad at the same time, and she's hurting but she's hoping too. Hope is more than she had before.
Another way is more than she had before and more she ever imagined for herself before, but Lena has given that to her, hope.
It’s not a promise of a guaranteed future but it’s hope.
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And it's easy to fall into that pattern of thinking.
Why would they be given such an ability, such a powerful, powerful ability, if not to use it?
If demons exist, it must mean there needs to be a balance between good and evil, and evil itself must manifest somehow, and they were chosen for it. If it's going to end in insanity anyway, if it's going to end in swift death regardless, should they not be allowed the respite of using the powers when the urges strike?
It's dangerous to think that way, and it makes so much sense, too.
But that's the demon's voice, and Lena can tell the difference by now.
Lena, the voice that is strictly her own, understands that there are struggles, that there are challenges one must not succumb to, but rise above, and life's about being tested. Life is the only test that gives you the answers for it until later, until after you've either failed or passed.
"It was," Lena says, just as quietly, and it's so surreal to think back on that time, to think back on that girl she was. Scared and alone and so very messed up. You grasp at straws and then there's all the deep water and you feel like you could drown. She wanted better for that girl she used to be. And she wants better for Jess, as the girl she is now. "It was very much worth it. I would do it all over again."
Even the painful choices, the bad mistakes, because they all led to now, to what she has now, and she wouldn't give that up for anything.
She doesn't expect Jess to immediately trust it. In fact, it'd be dangerous to. Trust is something that is earned, trust is something that is built, and that becomes especially true when it's trust in one's self. You can easily fall into the illusion you have it under control when you really don't. It's just also a delicate and fine balance between doubt and doubting too much, but it's good to keep one's self on their toes.
Even now, now that she has nearly ten years of experience with a Calling, she doesn't let herself get too comfortable because she knows. She knows how strong that voice inside her head can be, she knows how it could easily manipulate her if she let it, and how terrible it would be if it did.
"No. Someone found me, and gave me the tools to pull myself out of it. No one else could've done it for me," Lena says. Sonny told her there was another way, and he taught her about these ways, but they wouldn't have been effective if Lena hadn't made the choice, if she hadn't put the effort in, if she hadn't taken the chance. There can be all the help in the world but if you don't pull yourself out, it's only temporary.
And temporary fixes land you right back where you started.
Lena smiles fondly at her. Fondly, despite having just met her, because she understands.
That painful and terrible and wonderful feeling that aches, that makes you want to dare to hope. "You're welcome," Lena says, and she means that. Even if she doesn't feel like she's done much yet. She knows how important it is to just have someone reach out a hand, someone to show you a different way when all you've known is broken things. To give the smallest sliver of hope because there is.
There is hope.
There's hope for Lena, and there's hope for Jess, and Lena has a feeling one day, Jess will learn what she has.
She'll learn, and she'll learn, and never stop learning.
It's life or something like it.
"Remember, I'm around." Lena reaches out with her hand and gives Jess' a light squeeze before she stands, wrapping the scarf around her neck. With her phone number in the other girl's hand, and every other way to contact her, she feels confident enough to walk away now.
She has her family to join.
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She doesn't know if it's true... what will happen to her? What will she do after this year of high school is over? The demon wants her to leave and to make its own way in the world, but...
Jess wouldn't want that. She doesn't think. Chicago is home and it's a support system of people that she ha been able to care about. Out there, they try to make you feel like only the demon or only the angel matters. There's so much separation, and it is not a place to go if she doesn't want to give into the demon.
She doesn't want to.
It's like a breath of fresh air where she can believe that, can hear it, can see some light in what has been darkness all this time. It's hope. It's a chance. She has never had that before, but now she does and she can... she ha to grab hold of it.
Before it seemed stupid to want anything else, how could she? Why would she? The demon in her head was so loud. How could she have anything other than that? How could she see anything in her future other than that? The voice was far too loud to think about anything else.
She would do it all over again. No regrets. Jess doesn't know what it is like to live without regrets, because they are all she has. Regrets. She regrets what she did to Eric, how that ended. So maybe that is the only one, she can't imagine... wanting to do that again but she's still young and still in the middle of this big mess.
This mess that is her life, and she swallows thickly, shaking her head but trying to keep hold of that light.
It's what she wants, and she knows that. The demon i loud, and it makes her feel like she wants the rest, wants to destroy people, but it's not her.
It's part of her, but it's not-- it can't be her.
It has been everything to her to get hope, to get... another way when she didn't have another way but to give into what she could do. Jess breathes in at the You're welcome and then nods, smiling at her somehow between the feeling in her chest that brings tears to her eyes.
There is hope.
There is hope.
Like if she keeps repeating it in her head, it'll be true.
"Okay. I'll remember," Jess says, and she will remember. When it gets too loud, when she doesn't know what to do, she can- she has the number, and she's quick to put it into her phone so it won't be lost.
She writes Lena in the contact name and then writes hope in the notes for the contact.
Jess breathes in again and can't finish her coffee with the strength of the things flowing through her, the emotions flowing through her. It's a long time until she's able to stand and to walk away like if he does, the hope-- the hope will be gone too but as she walks away, it remains.
The light in all that dark remains. Somehow.
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