fic: discorrupt (elle, passage)
Rating: R (underage sex, disturbing imagery)
Characters: Elle Bishop; assorted
Pairing: Elle/Claire, Elle/OC
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no profit
Teaser: Five people that Elle does not fully remember (loving, fearing, hating, wanting, protecting) and one she does. (fourth in the Passage series)
1. For all intents and purposes, her grandmother will be her mother.
There will be no recollections of the woman who gave birth to her because there is simply nothing there to memorize- but some other things will linger, will be pressed too deeply to ever be removed.
Because of this, Elle will sometimes remember warm weathered hands that smooth down her hair and a lazy soft voice, remember how they lived so far away from everyone else and how paranoid her grandmother was about anyone who showed up on the front steps. She will remember how safe she felt there, how good.
And of course the memories of the fire, of how she started it because she wanted a toy, wanted her way, and the quiet awareness in the back of her head (always) that it was her fault are not removed.
("I know what I’m doing," Maury insists and yes, he does.)
2. Mr. Richard is tall and scary and tells the doctors what needles to put in.
Mr. Bob wears weird glasses and he’s ugly and he’s bald and he lets them put the needles in her arms- and then he brings her toys after they take the needles out. Not that she likes the toys. She throws them at him and cries and tries to run away as soon as she can. “I’m trying to take care of you,” he pleads with soft puppy eyes but she hits him and screams at the top of her lungs when he catches her and touches her hair gently and tries to pull her into his arms like he’s her daddy.
Then Mr. Bob disappears and she misses the weird glasses and the toys because Mr. Richard always just drags her to the little room with the little bed and shuts off the lights and she’s alone all night long.
After a few weeks when Mr. Bob shows up with a doll to take her back to her room instead of Mr. Richard who stares down at her like she’s a bug, she goes running to Mr. Bob without a second thought.
(“I told you I could do it without Maury,” Richard will tell Bob later but Bob still doesn’t relax. Not until she starts following him around the halls and calls him Daddy like he’s the only one she loves. And if Maury comes for a visit right around that time and Richard’s smiling to himself, he doesn’t think on it because she seems to finally be adjusting.)
3. Elle will not know until the age of twenty-six why she hates Uncle Maury so much.
But she hates him from the beginning.
Uncle Maury drinks blue Slushos (she’s always aware of this because she hates his stupid blue Slushos and how they make his fingers cold when he touches her head) and she always wants to crawl away when he walks into the room and she hates that his eyes always stay on her the whole time and-
“She has nightmares after this,” Daddy says from the doorway and Uncle Maury rolls his eyes.
“I thought you didn’t want her to remember,” he sighs like he thinks it’s all stupid anyway and sets his drink aside, watching her as she scratches the inside of her arm and shifts around on her chair and glances at the door that Daddy’s blocking. “Richard didn’t do it soon enough and look how Henry’s acting up. Hey, sweetheart,” and then he snorts when she glares, leans away and considers making a run for the door-
Something buzzes, like the lights do when her arm hurts-
Then the buzzing stops and Maury’s staring at her weird when she reaches out and takes the Slusho off the table and takes a sip, rolls the cold around on her tongue and tries to think and can’t.
Daddy picks her up and carries her back to her room, tucks her in and then does it again after she wakes up after a nightmare she doesn’t remember. “We’ll find something easier on her as soon as we can, Robert, I promise,” she hears once while she’s being tucked in but she doesn’t know who’s talking.
4. Henry Lynch is Uncle Richard’s older son, six years older than her (they think) and a lot taller.
When their daddies get together to talk about work, they wander off together and talk about how their food is always cold when it gets to their rooms and how the cameras never go off. His room always has scorch marks after he leaves even if he only stays a few hours, and he lets her take his hand and spark electricity between his fingers.
Elle likes it even if she doesn’t know why, likes watching his teeth press into his bottom lip.
“You’re hurting me,” Henry says when he can’t take it anymore, and she stops (makes herself) and sits back against the wall and laces her hands together and rocks the rest of the charge away. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” he comments once when she’s rocking and calming herself down. “They’re supposed to come out all on their own.” There’s a silence that fills up the room before he adds, “Not before we’re ready,” and she watches his mouth when he smiles unhappily and folds his legs and looks away.
One day they have sex without knowing exactly what they’re doing, fit their bodies together on her cot, and the scarred skin of his belly feels melted under the breasts she likes touching when she's alone. Right after they’re done, he pulls his shirt back on and gives her his hand and lets her play even longer than usual.
(They actually do it “the first time” three times before their fathers grimace and give up and then they simply don’t do it again because it’s kind of- weird doing it together. They feel dirty, and it’s icky, sort of.)
5. Elle’s seventeen (she thinks) and Henry’s little brother is around her age (they think) and every time their daddies get together now, he steps up close and dips when he hugs her so that his head is under her chin. It looks stupid because Elle only comes up to his chin, and Henry’s even taller, but she touches his back and thinks she doesn’t mind doing it because she kind of likes it.
His name is Richard too but Henry calls him Jamie (his middle name’s James) and she’s the only one allowed to call him Jamie too because he's so proud of the fact that he has his dad’s name.
Jamie’s tall but he’s scrawny in a way that Henry’s never seemed to be and Henry never leaves any of the orderlies or doctors alone with him unless Uncle Richard makes him go away. Jamie doesn’t want her to crackle electricity on his skin (and she somehow knows that Henry would stop her if she ever tried to) but she doesn’t really want to, not really. Elle likes it better when he sits between them on her cot and cools the air down (the air’s always hot around Henry because he can’t help it) and they’re left alone.
Then Uncle Richard comes for more blood, clears out an entire wing and brings in heat lamps.
Then Uncle Maury shows up.
Henry tries to stop it and he gets thrown into solitary and she hears him screaming and crying when she sneaks down to that level and presses her cheek against the door. Even though it’s fireproof, she can feel the heat through it like an oven and her face is wet and her throat hurts when she pulls away and runs back upstairs. She doesn’t know what happens to Jamie, doesn’t even know how long it is before she sees him again, but one night he comes slinking into her room and slides into her cot. The air’s so cold that her teeth chatter all night long but she doesn’t push him away because Henry is still down there and he’d want her to do this.
When Elle wakes up the next morning, Jamie is picking ice off of frozen walls with bleeding nails.
There’s more blood a few days later and Jamie is taken away again (she hears Uncle Richard say, “it’s easier to do it here, don't have to deal with Danny's complaining” when he thinks she's not listening) and then one of the orderlies is left in a closet, frozen hands shattered.
At this point, Elle runs to her daddy when she knows Richard and Maury are busy in the other wing.
“Richard’s hurting him,” she tries to explain because she really needs to say this, he needs to hear it, he needs to listen- and right then Daddy looks up and stares at her and then looks away.
Later, Elle will remember being willing to speak up against daddy this one time (why, she doesn’t know, can’t figure out, she’d never do that) and how it felt to be taught that she was wrong (all of her insides pushed open and pulled apart and it hurts like nails under her skin) and when she sees Henry’s brother the next time, she burns the inside of his arm until he cries (his fault, she’s sure) and Henry stops her (she doesn’t know when he got out of the room) and they almost kill each other (shatter glass and concrete and make each other bleed and if they're both crying the whole time, she won't ever know why) before their dads split them up.
Elle and Henry don’t talk after that but she doesn’t know why she cares that they don’t talk because they don't really know each other anyway.
0. Claire calls her up in the middle of the night while Noah’s away.
It’s been four months since Claire took her to her apartment and Claire’s still not as nice as she should be as often as she should be but she’s not always mean, either, and that’s still enough for Elle (she tells herself to shut up when she thinks about how she wants more) and Claire’s voice over the phone has that ‘I’m such a mean bitch now’ tone that she hates.
“Come get me,” the younger woman orders and Elle rolls her eyes in the dark and starts to complain. “Elle,” she hears before she even finishes the first few words, “get in the fucking car and come get me.”
“I don’t even know where you are,” Elle snaps because duh, she doesn’t, and she’s learned not to call up Parkman and try to use little Molly whenever Claire disappears for more than a week without a call. “And if I don’t know where you are, I can’t come get you-”
“I’m at the bus station. And bring some clothes,” Claire snaps, and she hangs up.
Elle complains all the way down the stairs and out the front door but she does it silently because Sandra’s asleep and the last thing she needs is Sandra to be the one to go get Claire. (Claire would torment her over it for days.) She gets the car started and gets down the street without any of the lights flicking on but she’s cold even though it’s the middle of the summer and she’s cranky and she wonders what Claire’s doing-
Not that Elle will demand any answers because she’s learned the hard way not to.
Before she even rolls to a stop, Claire is striding for the SUV, yanking open the door and jumping in and shoving Elle’s arm without looking in a silent order to leave the station. Elle doesn’t say “ow” the way she wants to (Claire’s stronger than she looks, it’s kind of weird) and she obeys as Claire sits unhappily in the passenger seat with her arms locked around her middle and a glare on her face.
After a few more minutes, Claire opens her jacket- and Elle almost drives into a telephone pole.
“Claire-”
“Shut up,” and the tone’s so hard Elle does, instantly, without thinking.
Claire takes the jacket off, peels the shirt from her skin and drops it without any embarrassment between her feet. What’s left of the bra is discarded and then she digs out the new one from the pile Elle brought with her, puts it on while Elle tries to make sure there isn’t enough light for anyone to see anything. She draws the shirt on, buttons it up and spends too long lifting her hair out from under the collar.
Elle tries again but the words kind of clog up in her throat except for a nervous little “Claire-”
After a minute: “Apparently buckshot is one of the few things that still hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Buckshot.” Elle is the girlfriend. Sort of. Damn it. “Who had buckshot?”
A beat. “The guy with the buckshot,” is offered in a tone rife with duh.
“But-” Elle picks at the steering wheel with her nails, feels chilled even though the car is warm, and settles for staring dumbly into the dark through the windshield for a few minutes. “What happened?”
The first response is immediate, a mean “I just fucking told you” thrown back even as Claire tugs fingers through her hair and shakes herself. But Elle flinches automatically, and Claire licks her lips and hesitates, glances sideways at Elle- and the older woman can’t really do anything but blink a few times, frazzled. The second response, offered after a minute of awkward silence, is different from the first.
“It worked. We almost missed it and we got our collective asses kicked but it worked.” Claire pauses and smiles awkwardly like she’s forgotten how to do it, blinks rapidly and licks her lips and doesn’t meet Elle’s eyes. "We handled it."
Elle doesn’t have any fucking idea what Claire’s talking about.
It shouldn’t upset her, because Elle never has any fucking idea what Claire’s talking about.
Claire doesn’t tell her anything.
No, Claire just disappears for days at a time and comes back looking like she just crawled out of her own grave, shows up with that blank stare and awkward smiles that don’t do shit to hide it. Crawls into bed and silently demands sex until Elle burns strips of flesh and helps it all grows back new. And then Claire stops demanding, slides under Elle with new skin and opens herself up and goes pliant after she hits her peak.
It always happens, always.
Claire runs around doing stuff, making herself useful and getting out of the house, and Elle is stuck taking Mr. Muggles to his fucking grooming appointments unless Noah needs to use her as a taser.
“I can-” A single glance cuts her off, green eyes dark in the dim light. “But I just-”
“You’re not stable.” There’s so many things wrong with Claire saying this to her, even if she’s not sure exactly what they all are. Huffing out a breath, aggression bleeding out as blue-white sparks as she grips the steering wheel too tightly, she smothers her annoyance and tries to focus, get her words out for the millionth time.
“My father trained me-” she starts, but isn’t allowed to finish.
“Yeah, and then you were the best agent ever.” There is the familiar sting where a bullet tore through her, an ache at Claire throwing the words in her face. Elle wonders if this is how having a heart feels, why people make such a big deal over it. Wonders if it will always feel like this with Claire.
Undone, she swallows, stares out the windshield.
Blinks a little rapidly when fingertips touch her knee, settle for a moment and then start to lift away.
“I really want to go home,” Claire says then, and her voice wavers a little, goes quiet.
This time, the ache in Elle’s chest isn’t where Daddy’s bullet opened her up.
Elle drives them to Claire’s apartment instead of the house, strips her nude before Claire even asks and burns strips of flesh black until all the tension leaves the body under hers. After Claire curls up and sleeps hours later, Elle stares up at the ceiling and twists the sheets together until her fingers ache and her palms burn.
When she finally drifts off herself, Claire’s skin is melting under her hands.
Characters: Elle Bishop; assorted
Pairing: Elle/Claire, Elle/OC
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no profit
Teaser: Five people that Elle does not fully remember (loving, fearing, hating, wanting, protecting) and one she does. (fourth in the Passage series)
1. For all intents and purposes, her grandmother will be her mother.
There will be no recollections of the woman who gave birth to her because there is simply nothing there to memorize- but some other things will linger, will be pressed too deeply to ever be removed.
Because of this, Elle will sometimes remember warm weathered hands that smooth down her hair and a lazy soft voice, remember how they lived so far away from everyone else and how paranoid her grandmother was about anyone who showed up on the front steps. She will remember how safe she felt there, how good.
And of course the memories of the fire, of how she started it because she wanted a toy, wanted her way, and the quiet awareness in the back of her head (always) that it was her fault are not removed.
("I know what I’m doing," Maury insists and yes, he does.)
2. Mr. Richard is tall and scary and tells the doctors what needles to put in.
Mr. Bob wears weird glasses and he’s ugly and he’s bald and he lets them put the needles in her arms- and then he brings her toys after they take the needles out. Not that she likes the toys. She throws them at him and cries and tries to run away as soon as she can. “I’m trying to take care of you,” he pleads with soft puppy eyes but she hits him and screams at the top of her lungs when he catches her and touches her hair gently and tries to pull her into his arms like he’s her daddy.
Then Mr. Bob disappears and she misses the weird glasses and the toys because Mr. Richard always just drags her to the little room with the little bed and shuts off the lights and she’s alone all night long.
After a few weeks when Mr. Bob shows up with a doll to take her back to her room instead of Mr. Richard who stares down at her like she’s a bug, she goes running to Mr. Bob without a second thought.
(“I told you I could do it without Maury,” Richard will tell Bob later but Bob still doesn’t relax. Not until she starts following him around the halls and calls him Daddy like he’s the only one she loves. And if Maury comes for a visit right around that time and Richard’s smiling to himself, he doesn’t think on it because she seems to finally be adjusting.)
3. Elle will not know until the age of twenty-six why she hates Uncle Maury so much.
But she hates him from the beginning.
Uncle Maury drinks blue Slushos (she’s always aware of this because she hates his stupid blue Slushos and how they make his fingers cold when he touches her head) and she always wants to crawl away when he walks into the room and she hates that his eyes always stay on her the whole time and-
“She has nightmares after this,” Daddy says from the doorway and Uncle Maury rolls his eyes.
“I thought you didn’t want her to remember,” he sighs like he thinks it’s all stupid anyway and sets his drink aside, watching her as she scratches the inside of her arm and shifts around on her chair and glances at the door that Daddy’s blocking. “Richard didn’t do it soon enough and look how Henry’s acting up. Hey, sweetheart,” and then he snorts when she glares, leans away and considers making a run for the door-
Something buzzes, like the lights do when her arm hurts-
Then the buzzing stops and Maury’s staring at her weird when she reaches out and takes the Slusho off the table and takes a sip, rolls the cold around on her tongue and tries to think and can’t.
Daddy picks her up and carries her back to her room, tucks her in and then does it again after she wakes up after a nightmare she doesn’t remember. “We’ll find something easier on her as soon as we can, Robert, I promise,” she hears once while she’s being tucked in but she doesn’t know who’s talking.
4. Henry Lynch is Uncle Richard’s older son, six years older than her (they think) and a lot taller.
When their daddies get together to talk about work, they wander off together and talk about how their food is always cold when it gets to their rooms and how the cameras never go off. His room always has scorch marks after he leaves even if he only stays a few hours, and he lets her take his hand and spark electricity between his fingers.
Elle likes it even if she doesn’t know why, likes watching his teeth press into his bottom lip.
“You’re hurting me,” Henry says when he can’t take it anymore, and she stops (makes herself) and sits back against the wall and laces her hands together and rocks the rest of the charge away. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” he comments once when she’s rocking and calming herself down. “They’re supposed to come out all on their own.” There’s a silence that fills up the room before he adds, “Not before we’re ready,” and she watches his mouth when he smiles unhappily and folds his legs and looks away.
One day they have sex without knowing exactly what they’re doing, fit their bodies together on her cot, and the scarred skin of his belly feels melted under the breasts she likes touching when she's alone. Right after they’re done, he pulls his shirt back on and gives her his hand and lets her play even longer than usual.
(They actually do it “the first time” three times before their fathers grimace and give up and then they simply don’t do it again because it’s kind of- weird doing it together. They feel dirty, and it’s icky, sort of.)
5. Elle’s seventeen (she thinks) and Henry’s little brother is around her age (they think) and every time their daddies get together now, he steps up close and dips when he hugs her so that his head is under her chin. It looks stupid because Elle only comes up to his chin, and Henry’s even taller, but she touches his back and thinks she doesn’t mind doing it because she kind of likes it.
His name is Richard too but Henry calls him Jamie (his middle name’s James) and she’s the only one allowed to call him Jamie too because he's so proud of the fact that he has his dad’s name.
Jamie’s tall but he’s scrawny in a way that Henry’s never seemed to be and Henry never leaves any of the orderlies or doctors alone with him unless Uncle Richard makes him go away. Jamie doesn’t want her to crackle electricity on his skin (and she somehow knows that Henry would stop her if she ever tried to) but she doesn’t really want to, not really. Elle likes it better when he sits between them on her cot and cools the air down (the air’s always hot around Henry because he can’t help it) and they’re left alone.
Then Uncle Richard comes for more blood, clears out an entire wing and brings in heat lamps.
Then Uncle Maury shows up.
Henry tries to stop it and he gets thrown into solitary and she hears him screaming and crying when she sneaks down to that level and presses her cheek against the door. Even though it’s fireproof, she can feel the heat through it like an oven and her face is wet and her throat hurts when she pulls away and runs back upstairs. She doesn’t know what happens to Jamie, doesn’t even know how long it is before she sees him again, but one night he comes slinking into her room and slides into her cot. The air’s so cold that her teeth chatter all night long but she doesn’t push him away because Henry is still down there and he’d want her to do this.
When Elle wakes up the next morning, Jamie is picking ice off of frozen walls with bleeding nails.
There’s more blood a few days later and Jamie is taken away again (she hears Uncle Richard say, “it’s easier to do it here, don't have to deal with Danny's complaining” when he thinks she's not listening) and then one of the orderlies is left in a closet, frozen hands shattered.
At this point, Elle runs to her daddy when she knows Richard and Maury are busy in the other wing.
“Richard’s hurting him,” she tries to explain because she really needs to say this, he needs to hear it, he needs to listen- and right then Daddy looks up and stares at her and then looks away.
Later, Elle will remember being willing to speak up against daddy this one time (why, she doesn’t know, can’t figure out, she’d never do that) and how it felt to be taught that she was wrong (all of her insides pushed open and pulled apart and it hurts like nails under her skin) and when she sees Henry’s brother the next time, she burns the inside of his arm until he cries (his fault, she’s sure) and Henry stops her (she doesn’t know when he got out of the room) and they almost kill each other (shatter glass and concrete and make each other bleed and if they're both crying the whole time, she won't ever know why) before their dads split them up.
Elle and Henry don’t talk after that but she doesn’t know why she cares that they don’t talk because they don't really know each other anyway.
0. Claire calls her up in the middle of the night while Noah’s away.
It’s been four months since Claire took her to her apartment and Claire’s still not as nice as she should be as often as she should be but she’s not always mean, either, and that’s still enough for Elle (she tells herself to shut up when she thinks about how she wants more) and Claire’s voice over the phone has that ‘I’m such a mean bitch now’ tone that she hates.
“Come get me,” the younger woman orders and Elle rolls her eyes in the dark and starts to complain. “Elle,” she hears before she even finishes the first few words, “get in the fucking car and come get me.”
“I don’t even know where you are,” Elle snaps because duh, she doesn’t, and she’s learned not to call up Parkman and try to use little Molly whenever Claire disappears for more than a week without a call. “And if I don’t know where you are, I can’t come get you-”
“I’m at the bus station. And bring some clothes,” Claire snaps, and she hangs up.
Elle complains all the way down the stairs and out the front door but she does it silently because Sandra’s asleep and the last thing she needs is Sandra to be the one to go get Claire. (Claire would torment her over it for days.) She gets the car started and gets down the street without any of the lights flicking on but she’s cold even though it’s the middle of the summer and she’s cranky and she wonders what Claire’s doing-
Not that Elle will demand any answers because she’s learned the hard way not to.
Before she even rolls to a stop, Claire is striding for the SUV, yanking open the door and jumping in and shoving Elle’s arm without looking in a silent order to leave the station. Elle doesn’t say “ow” the way she wants to (Claire’s stronger than she looks, it’s kind of weird) and she obeys as Claire sits unhappily in the passenger seat with her arms locked around her middle and a glare on her face.
After a few more minutes, Claire opens her jacket- and Elle almost drives into a telephone pole.
“Claire-”
“Shut up,” and the tone’s so hard Elle does, instantly, without thinking.
Claire takes the jacket off, peels the shirt from her skin and drops it without any embarrassment between her feet. What’s left of the bra is discarded and then she digs out the new one from the pile Elle brought with her, puts it on while Elle tries to make sure there isn’t enough light for anyone to see anything. She draws the shirt on, buttons it up and spends too long lifting her hair out from under the collar.
Elle tries again but the words kind of clog up in her throat except for a nervous little “Claire-”
After a minute: “Apparently buckshot is one of the few things that still hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Buckshot.” Elle is the girlfriend. Sort of. Damn it. “Who had buckshot?”
A beat. “The guy with the buckshot,” is offered in a tone rife with duh.
“But-” Elle picks at the steering wheel with her nails, feels chilled even though the car is warm, and settles for staring dumbly into the dark through the windshield for a few minutes. “What happened?”
The first response is immediate, a mean “I just fucking told you” thrown back even as Claire tugs fingers through her hair and shakes herself. But Elle flinches automatically, and Claire licks her lips and hesitates, glances sideways at Elle- and the older woman can’t really do anything but blink a few times, frazzled. The second response, offered after a minute of awkward silence, is different from the first.
“It worked. We almost missed it and we got our collective asses kicked but it worked.” Claire pauses and smiles awkwardly like she’s forgotten how to do it, blinks rapidly and licks her lips and doesn’t meet Elle’s eyes. "We handled it."
Elle doesn’t have any fucking idea what Claire’s talking about.
It shouldn’t upset her, because Elle never has any fucking idea what Claire’s talking about.
Claire doesn’t tell her anything.
No, Claire just disappears for days at a time and comes back looking like she just crawled out of her own grave, shows up with that blank stare and awkward smiles that don’t do shit to hide it. Crawls into bed and silently demands sex until Elle burns strips of flesh and helps it all grows back new. And then Claire stops demanding, slides under Elle with new skin and opens herself up and goes pliant after she hits her peak.
It always happens, always.
Claire runs around doing stuff, making herself useful and getting out of the house, and Elle is stuck taking Mr. Muggles to his fucking grooming appointments unless Noah needs to use her as a taser.
“I can-” A single glance cuts her off, green eyes dark in the dim light. “But I just-”
“You’re not stable.” There’s so many things wrong with Claire saying this to her, even if she’s not sure exactly what they all are. Huffing out a breath, aggression bleeding out as blue-white sparks as she grips the steering wheel too tightly, she smothers her annoyance and tries to focus, get her words out for the millionth time.
“My father trained me-” she starts, but isn’t allowed to finish.
“Yeah, and then you were the best agent ever.” There is the familiar sting where a bullet tore through her, an ache at Claire throwing the words in her face. Elle wonders if this is how having a heart feels, why people make such a big deal over it. Wonders if it will always feel like this with Claire.
Undone, she swallows, stares out the windshield.
Blinks a little rapidly when fingertips touch her knee, settle for a moment and then start to lift away.
“I really want to go home,” Claire says then, and her voice wavers a little, goes quiet.
This time, the ache in Elle’s chest isn’t where Daddy’s bullet opened her up.
Elle drives them to Claire’s apartment instead of the house, strips her nude before Claire even asks and burns strips of flesh black until all the tension leaves the body under hers. After Claire curls up and sleeps hours later, Elle stares up at the ceiling and twists the sheets together until her fingers ache and her palms burn.
When she finally drifts off herself, Claire’s skin is melting under her hands.