What's Behind A Smile - Elle/Bob /Peter (as the catalyst) - (Elle-centric) -Heroes Fic
Title: What's Behind A Smile
Author: force-oblique
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I dont own anything! :P
Table,prompt: Table #7, "Passion"
Characters/Pairings: Elle/Bob - Peter acts as a catalyst ,Elle's POV
Word Count: 2.309
Summary: Elle's reflection on her life and how seeing Peter has changed that.
Author's Notes:I wrote it in the middle of the night…so excuse the crappiness!
Crossposted at my fiction/lyrics lj@souls-eclipse, heroes-peter, peter-elle,heroes-fic and peter-adam-elle <-pimping! =D
Major thanks to my beta, ghost-goodthing aka Jessica. You rock!!!
What's Behind A Smile
Oh, Peter!
I knew he was different the first time I saw him. My eyes lit up. He looked disheveled but still there was grace. Grace within him. Virtue. Like he wanted everything he ever did to matter. I could tell that he wanted to make a difference in the world.
Oh yes!
The first time I saw him, my eyes lit up. And so did my hands.
It was a necessary evil. I couldn’t avoid it. But then again maybe I could. Daddy asked me why I used full power on him. I answered him that he could take it.
But the truth was that I didn’t know.
Yes, I knew that he couldn’t die.I knew he had the power to regenerate, to heal. But I didn’t know how much he could take.
How much pain and how much agony could fit in that tight body of his.
The truth was that I was hoping he could take it. All of it, all of my power and survive.
The truth was that I needed him to take it.
Ever since I can remember myself, I have lived in shame and guilt. I knew what I had done. Maybe not at first but growing up I realized that I had taken my grandmother’s life.
I could see it in Bob’s eyes that he thinks that I did it on purpose.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was only a child. How could I have wanted something like that when even now, sixteen years later I don’t know what I want.
Was I smarter back then? Gifted with some temporary wisdom, that has been taken from me with age?
I was always temperamental, needy and stubborn. But I never wanted to hurt anyone. Even when I was in pain.
Is it the truth though?
Or is it a convenient alibi I have been feeding myself for years just to make myself feel better.
Sixteen years is a long time to live with guilt and shame.
But you get used to it. It becomes a part of you, until one day it manages to drown any other feelings.
I am twenty-four years old and I have never interacted with anyone outside the company.
Not really anyways. I only interact when Bob tells me and with whom he tells me to.
It’s just a means to an end.
”They wont understand you!” he says, but I fear the truth is more terrifying than that.
I fear that I'm the one who can't understand anyone else.
I have lived my life inside the walls of this building, this facility.
I was safe here, they say. But they don’t explain what they mean.
Do they mean I was safe as in me being safe from external dangers or do they mean that I was safe for others?
Have I been a ticking bomb to them? Something that had to be dismantled, tamed and contained?
Was it really my safety they were after?
The minute I saw Peter, it started to feel like a prison.
I have been taught how to act, what to say in each situation. What is proper, what is appropriate.
But I haven’t been taught what’s real and what’s not. I was told I was paranoid. But who is sane growing up in a place where everyone examines you and makes you feel guilty about who you are?
What is healthy about growing up in a place with no other children to mingle with? To laugh and play and act your age?
I am twenty-four years old and I have never been on a date. I have never been swimming and I have never been on a rollercoaster.
But sometimes I think that my life is a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster for everyone else but me.
I fascinate everyone. But not myself.
My power fascinated them but they were not interested in me as a person.
They like to see how well-tamed my power is, how fast I do what I am told.
They treat me like a child because they never cared to see that I have changed.
I was supposed to change but I guess that is more on the outside.
Inside I feel needy and stubborn yet vulnerable as any eight- year-old.
I don’t let Bob know that I have these thoughts.
I fear to think what he would do to me.
Perhaps contain my thoughts with the help of the Haitian and then lock me up inside a cage just like he did with Peter, Adam and so many others.
Every conversation I have ever had, revolved around my powers and how to best use them.
Nothing addressed me. Nothing about me, the real me.
The mere human in me. The woman, the girl that just wanted to learn, to taste, to feel, to listen. The girl that just wanted to share and live and love and be loved.
In Peter I saw myself. He was consumed with guilt and shame over what he had done, the pain he had caused. But his eyes were kind.
I never thought I would see someone like him - like me - in that place.
I had given up hope long ago.
I had almost come to terms with my eternal, never-ending loneliness.
I was to remain a machine, a puppet for the Company.
And then he came. Close to my age, cursed or gifted with powers he could hardly control. Powers that if allowed to take over, they would bring the end - if not to the world then to the people he loved.
I could see it in his eyes. He needed hope just as much as I did. But he wasn’t scared or foolish not to admit it.
He hadn’t spent his life inside a prison. He was out there in the world, free to make his own mistakes. But he was the one that could wipe out a city.
He hadn’t been conveniently diagnosed with any form of insanity or incapability.
Oh so convenient! Was that an excuse for them to overlook the way I felt?
My feelings, my emotions. All those burning questions that I carried with me.
It was easier to ignore someone who was “delusional”.
So I smiled and I gritted my teeth and I waited.
For someone to come. Someone to see me. See me for who I really was.
No labels, no names, no rules, no observation. No controlled environments.
Darn, I am not a lab rat. I am a human being!!
But I don’t know how to be one.
I don’t know how to make conversation. I don’t know how to speak and what to say to make people think I am good and fun and interesting.
I don’t have the luxury of being more interesting than that.
Peter opened my eyes. They opened to a new reality. Maybe the “True” reality, the only reality. The one that had been kept from me for years.
And that reality is that I am not normal. I am not. I have an ability. An ability that could cost people’s lives.
The reality is that I am dangerous.
But the reality also is, that there are people out there with no abilities at all. No abilities other than to hurt, torture, maim and kill more violently and more horribly than I possibly ever could.
Weren’t they the monsters? Werent they evil? Werent they dangerous?
But they were not locked up in here!
The person locked in here is me. For sixteen years I was made to feel like a monster. In a sense I was, but then again I wasn’t.
I was merely a child. A child that needed guidance, help and understanding. Love, compassion and dignity. Friendship, respect and love. A need to love and be loved in return.
But I never got all that.
I found no one to connect with. I couldn’t connect, because no one was there for me.
I didn’t have the words, or the smile, or the looks to connect with other people. I didn’t know what people do in those circumstances.
They never taught me. They never though I’d need such skills, such qualities.
Because they never intended for me to get out of there.
It was all becoming clear to me now.
Even when they let me out, it was only for a task.
And they had made sure it would remain like that.
I am twenty-four years old and I have never been on a date. I have never had a boyfriend. I had never had a friend. Only a daddy who is more like a boss.
I call him daddy but I know it’s to put his mind at rest more that it is to make me feel like I belong to a family. A real family.
He wants me to call him daddy so that he knows that I am not awake yet. That I am still his little girl. His little robot, his little fighting machine with no morals and scruples or a conscience, because he never gave me one.
He wanted me to stay like that forever. Immature like a little girl. Not even an adolescent, because at least at that stage humans do get a personality. They start becoming a person. They stop being a child.
So, is it still okay, Daddy? Are you happy with this little girl?
Are you happy with the way you made me? Or do you find any default you want to fix?
But, even if you cant fix it, it’s okay, isn’t it?
Because you can conveniently blame it on my “delusions”, right? Isn’t that how it goes.?
And here I am now, all over Peter. Trying to be happy with what I have. The only thing I have to save me from this charade. To take me away from this masquerade.
So, I giggle, I smile, I nod, I agree.
Isnt that what they want me to do?
I giggle, I smile, I nod , I agree.
And it’s all okay. Everything's okay. Everything but me.
I am slowly dying inside. And maybe it’s better that way.
Maybe if that little girl dies, something good will come out of it.
Maybe the woman in me will emerge.
A woman I can be proud of. A woman who is not obsessed with her abilty just because everyone else is.
A woman who will have another way to connect with other people than sending jolts of energy from her hands on another person just to make him feel the way she does.
Just to have the passion she is longing for.
Just to make him feel the way she feels, in the hope that deep inside he may see that they are not so different after all.
That she is not that horrible and she solely wants to connect just like everyone else but she just doesn’t know how.
I use my power on him. I tell him he will learn to enjoy it. But it’s not true.
The truth is that I want him to enjoy it because that is all I am. A machine of electricity.
That’s all I can do. I have no knowledge of the world and sometimes, even a few days before he came, I think these walls were the only world I had experienced.
That is all I am. I pray that he will grow to like it, like me.
But even more often, I pray that he will take my hand even while it hurts and take me to where real life is. To where real passion is.
I pray that he will open my eyes to everything that’s out there. And he will tell me that it wasn’t my fault. All those times, all those times I accidentally hurt someone. All those times I hurt someone on purpose because Bob told me to.
Because I didn’t know any better.
But I do now.
Bob says Peter can absorb any power and mimic it.
But can he mimic me? Can he mimic life? Can he delete this imitation of life I have been forced to live?
Can he mimic someone who cares? For me? Someone who gives a damn?
Someone who is genuinely concerned for my well being not because my power is valuable, a commodity or an insurance or just convenient?
Someome who cares for me? The insecure, little girl who, yes sometimes can go a little mental, but only because she doesnt know any better.
I have always been told “yes”. But it is easy to say “yes” inside these walls. Because even if you mean “no”, what will anyone do? Where will they go? Where will they run?
Where will they hide?
Where will I go? Where will i run? Where will I hide?
I never found an answer to that question, because I have no one left in the world.
No family, no friends, no lovers.
No one to care for me and about me. I am utterly alone and they know it.
With nowhere to hide.
But I have found a way. Something they had never thought of.
And I hide behind it. It’s something they can't tell. They can't suspect.
I hide behind my giggles and my smiles and my silliness.
I hide behind my smile and my craziness, my insanity. Because I am delusional anyways, aren’t i?
And it’s easy to smile. It’s harmless and crazy, if it’s done all the time and so is expected of me anyways, isn’t it?
I am a happy little puppet. A happy little marionette. A happy little soldier.
But one of these days I will show them.
I will show him.
I will show him, what’s behind a smile…
And maybe I will be able to see what is behind his, what’s been hiding behind his smile and mask, all these years that he’s kept me here.
~ Fin ~
Author: force-oblique
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I dont own anything! :P
Table,prompt: Table #7, "Passion"
Characters/Pairings: Elle/Bob - Peter acts as a catalyst ,Elle's POV
Word Count: 2.309
Summary: Elle's reflection on her life and how seeing Peter has changed that.
Author's Notes:I wrote it in the middle of the night…so excuse the crappiness!
Crossposted at my fiction/lyrics lj@souls-eclipse, heroes-peter, peter-elle,heroes-fic and peter-adam-elle <-pimping! =D
Major thanks to my beta, ghost-goodthing aka Jessica. You rock!!!
What's Behind A Smile
Oh, Peter!
I knew he was different the first time I saw him. My eyes lit up. He looked disheveled but still there was grace. Grace within him. Virtue. Like he wanted everything he ever did to matter. I could tell that he wanted to make a difference in the world.
Oh yes!
The first time I saw him, my eyes lit up. And so did my hands.
It was a necessary evil. I couldn’t avoid it. But then again maybe I could. Daddy asked me why I used full power on him. I answered him that he could take it.
But the truth was that I didn’t know.
Yes, I knew that he couldn’t die.I knew he had the power to regenerate, to heal. But I didn’t know how much he could take.
How much pain and how much agony could fit in that tight body of his.
The truth was that I was hoping he could take it. All of it, all of my power and survive.
The truth was that I needed him to take it.
Ever since I can remember myself, I have lived in shame and guilt. I knew what I had done. Maybe not at first but growing up I realized that I had taken my grandmother’s life.
I could see it in Bob’s eyes that he thinks that I did it on purpose.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was only a child. How could I have wanted something like that when even now, sixteen years later I don’t know what I want.
Was I smarter back then? Gifted with some temporary wisdom, that has been taken from me with age?
I was always temperamental, needy and stubborn. But I never wanted to hurt anyone. Even when I was in pain.
Is it the truth though?
Or is it a convenient alibi I have been feeding myself for years just to make myself feel better.
Sixteen years is a long time to live with guilt and shame.
But you get used to it. It becomes a part of you, until one day it manages to drown any other feelings.
I am twenty-four years old and I have never interacted with anyone outside the company.
Not really anyways. I only interact when Bob tells me and with whom he tells me to.
It’s just a means to an end.
”They wont understand you!” he says, but I fear the truth is more terrifying than that.
I fear that I'm the one who can't understand anyone else.
I have lived my life inside the walls of this building, this facility.
I was safe here, they say. But they don’t explain what they mean.
Do they mean I was safe as in me being safe from external dangers or do they mean that I was safe for others?
Have I been a ticking bomb to them? Something that had to be dismantled, tamed and contained?
Was it really my safety they were after?
The minute I saw Peter, it started to feel like a prison.
I have been taught how to act, what to say in each situation. What is proper, what is appropriate.
But I haven’t been taught what’s real and what’s not. I was told I was paranoid. But who is sane growing up in a place where everyone examines you and makes you feel guilty about who you are?
What is healthy about growing up in a place with no other children to mingle with? To laugh and play and act your age?
I am twenty-four years old and I have never been on a date. I have never been swimming and I have never been on a rollercoaster.
But sometimes I think that my life is a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster for everyone else but me.
I fascinate everyone. But not myself.
My power fascinated them but they were not interested in me as a person.
They like to see how well-tamed my power is, how fast I do what I am told.
They treat me like a child because they never cared to see that I have changed.
I was supposed to change but I guess that is more on the outside.
Inside I feel needy and stubborn yet vulnerable as any eight- year-old.
I don’t let Bob know that I have these thoughts.
I fear to think what he would do to me.
Perhaps contain my thoughts with the help of the Haitian and then lock me up inside a cage just like he did with Peter, Adam and so many others.
Every conversation I have ever had, revolved around my powers and how to best use them.
Nothing addressed me. Nothing about me, the real me.
The mere human in me. The woman, the girl that just wanted to learn, to taste, to feel, to listen. The girl that just wanted to share and live and love and be loved.
In Peter I saw myself. He was consumed with guilt and shame over what he had done, the pain he had caused. But his eyes were kind.
I never thought I would see someone like him - like me - in that place.
I had given up hope long ago.
I had almost come to terms with my eternal, never-ending loneliness.
I was to remain a machine, a puppet for the Company.
And then he came. Close to my age, cursed or gifted with powers he could hardly control. Powers that if allowed to take over, they would bring the end - if not to the world then to the people he loved.
I could see it in his eyes. He needed hope just as much as I did. But he wasn’t scared or foolish not to admit it.
He hadn’t spent his life inside a prison. He was out there in the world, free to make his own mistakes. But he was the one that could wipe out a city.
He hadn’t been conveniently diagnosed with any form of insanity or incapability.
Oh so convenient! Was that an excuse for them to overlook the way I felt?
My feelings, my emotions. All those burning questions that I carried with me.
It was easier to ignore someone who was “delusional”.
So I smiled and I gritted my teeth and I waited.
For someone to come. Someone to see me. See me for who I really was.
No labels, no names, no rules, no observation. No controlled environments.
Darn, I am not a lab rat. I am a human being!!
But I don’t know how to be one.
I don’t know how to make conversation. I don’t know how to speak and what to say to make people think I am good and fun and interesting.
I don’t have the luxury of being more interesting than that.
Peter opened my eyes. They opened to a new reality. Maybe the “True” reality, the only reality. The one that had been kept from me for years.
And that reality is that I am not normal. I am not. I have an ability. An ability that could cost people’s lives.
The reality is that I am dangerous.
But the reality also is, that there are people out there with no abilities at all. No abilities other than to hurt, torture, maim and kill more violently and more horribly than I possibly ever could.
Weren’t they the monsters? Werent they evil? Werent they dangerous?
But they were not locked up in here!
The person locked in here is me. For sixteen years I was made to feel like a monster. In a sense I was, but then again I wasn’t.
I was merely a child. A child that needed guidance, help and understanding. Love, compassion and dignity. Friendship, respect and love. A need to love and be loved in return.
But I never got all that.
I found no one to connect with. I couldn’t connect, because no one was there for me.
I didn’t have the words, or the smile, or the looks to connect with other people. I didn’t know what people do in those circumstances.
They never taught me. They never though I’d need such skills, such qualities.
Because they never intended for me to get out of there.
It was all becoming clear to me now.
Even when they let me out, it was only for a task.
And they had made sure it would remain like that.
I am twenty-four years old and I have never been on a date. I have never had a boyfriend. I had never had a friend. Only a daddy who is more like a boss.
I call him daddy but I know it’s to put his mind at rest more that it is to make me feel like I belong to a family. A real family.
He wants me to call him daddy so that he knows that I am not awake yet. That I am still his little girl. His little robot, his little fighting machine with no morals and scruples or a conscience, because he never gave me one.
He wanted me to stay like that forever. Immature like a little girl. Not even an adolescent, because at least at that stage humans do get a personality. They start becoming a person. They stop being a child.
So, is it still okay, Daddy? Are you happy with this little girl?
Are you happy with the way you made me? Or do you find any default you want to fix?
But, even if you cant fix it, it’s okay, isn’t it?
Because you can conveniently blame it on my “delusions”, right? Isn’t that how it goes.?
And here I am now, all over Peter. Trying to be happy with what I have. The only thing I have to save me from this charade. To take me away from this masquerade.
So, I giggle, I smile, I nod, I agree.
Isnt that what they want me to do?
I giggle, I smile, I nod , I agree.
And it’s all okay. Everything's okay. Everything but me.
I am slowly dying inside. And maybe it’s better that way.
Maybe if that little girl dies, something good will come out of it.
Maybe the woman in me will emerge.
A woman I can be proud of. A woman who is not obsessed with her abilty just because everyone else is.
A woman who will have another way to connect with other people than sending jolts of energy from her hands on another person just to make him feel the way she does.
Just to have the passion she is longing for.
Just to make him feel the way she feels, in the hope that deep inside he may see that they are not so different after all.
That she is not that horrible and she solely wants to connect just like everyone else but she just doesn’t know how.
I use my power on him. I tell him he will learn to enjoy it. But it’s not true.
The truth is that I want him to enjoy it because that is all I am. A machine of electricity.
That’s all I can do. I have no knowledge of the world and sometimes, even a few days before he came, I think these walls were the only world I had experienced.
That is all I am. I pray that he will grow to like it, like me.
But even more often, I pray that he will take my hand even while it hurts and take me to where real life is. To where real passion is.
I pray that he will open my eyes to everything that’s out there. And he will tell me that it wasn’t my fault. All those times, all those times I accidentally hurt someone. All those times I hurt someone on purpose because Bob told me to.
Because I didn’t know any better.
But I do now.
Bob says Peter can absorb any power and mimic it.
But can he mimic me? Can he mimic life? Can he delete this imitation of life I have been forced to live?
Can he mimic someone who cares? For me? Someone who gives a damn?
Someone who is genuinely concerned for my well being not because my power is valuable, a commodity or an insurance or just convenient?
Someome who cares for me? The insecure, little girl who, yes sometimes can go a little mental, but only because she doesnt know any better.
I have always been told “yes”. But it is easy to say “yes” inside these walls. Because even if you mean “no”, what will anyone do? Where will they go? Where will they run?
Where will they hide?
Where will I go? Where will i run? Where will I hide?
I never found an answer to that question, because I have no one left in the world.
No family, no friends, no lovers.
No one to care for me and about me. I am utterly alone and they know it.
With nowhere to hide.
But I have found a way. Something they had never thought of.
And I hide behind it. It’s something they can't tell. They can't suspect.
I hide behind my giggles and my smiles and my silliness.
I hide behind my smile and my craziness, my insanity. Because I am delusional anyways, aren’t i?
And it’s easy to smile. It’s harmless and crazy, if it’s done all the time and so is expected of me anyways, isn’t it?
I am a happy little puppet. A happy little marionette. A happy little soldier.
But one of these days I will show them.
I will show him.
I will show him, what’s behind a smile…
And maybe I will be able to see what is behind his, what’s been hiding behind his smile and mask, all these years that he’s kept me here.
~ Fin ~