at the end of the war what's mine is yours (closed)

[raw]

CHARACTERS: Elliot & Darlene
WHERE: The Red Coast.
WHEN: DAY:027
SUMMARY: Reunion sponsored by Folgers: the best part of waking up.
WARNINGS: Mr Robot spoilers. Will edit if anything serious comes up.


Elliot's a fuckdamned mess right now, losing time again, homesick, not sure what he wants from the symbiote or the Nest anymore, roused from sleep and dragged up a hill with three brand new minds suddenly bargjng in on the delicate, private cocoon he and Peter had spent the last week weaving together. So he doesn't actually realize at first. Not when she wakes up, not when she steps off the ship and onto the same planet as him, and not when they all head back down to the coastal town together.

Maybe it's because of the brood thing — how can anyone possibly be closer to him than Darlene, right? So if she turned up, of course she would fill that tooth-gap space in his mind that he tries not to brush up against, the emptiness of incompletion that his new broodmate assuage. They're saplings from the same branch of the same fucked up tree, so of course their symbiotes will be the same.

So his first words to her in space are:

( What the fuck. )

Via the telepathy link. Because they're in public. Because they just passed each other, both in those head to toe robe disguises, and new arrivals aren't great at shielding and neither is Elliot and he likes kind of picking shit up from people as he goes around. A radio being tuned, but all the stations are other people's secrets. Their inner lives.

Only this mind was Darlene, even if her thought voice sounds slightly different from her real world voice. He'd know her anywhere.

He badly wants to grab her, but again: they're in public. If someone from one of the other delegates came along and they weren't all fully robed and mysterious... well, he hasn't had to use the little memory eraser yet but he'd kind of like to keep it as an in case of emergencies thing. Which this is not. Not to anyone else.

( Is it you? I can't believe it's you. Holy shit Darlene, I can't believe you're okay. Are you okay? Fuck. )

Chattier than Elliot usually is with his mouth words, and with a bonus avelanche of miscellaneous useless other bullshit, like opening a kitchen cupboard and having the entire contents fall out on you.

Comments

[nastygram]

Darlene's firewall has this short, and the hole that fritzs out briefly shows through to the other vulnerable side. The gritty orange of industrial cleaner on the commuter train. The back of a headstone. Pushing past coats and slippery plastic dry cleaner bags to get to the back of the closet. A keyboard smashed on the edge of a desk. A blank disc drive, overwritten or deleted. And then she patches the hole and she's just looking at Elliot, sharply, again.

"Don't," she says. And then, as she looks away, back down the way they've come, "Jesus. Get your jollies playing hero if you want, I will not get in your way, but you cannot get lost in this shit. I need you out here, with me, okay?"

It's an order but it's plaintive too. All those times she thought she was standing next to Elliot. And she was. But she wasn't. This is the mega version of that. Them, not just him.

[raw]

Elliot draws a long breath through his nose. It had been so much easier when it was only him here; he didn't owe anybody anything except the Nest, and if he was the Nest and so was everyone else he met then it was all the same connection, the same debt. No parents, no companies, no long time best friends or Dark Army contacts or people he's made promises he no longer knows how to keep.

No sister.

Darlene complicates shit by a magnitude.

"Okay," he says, a little defensively, not wanting to see her seeing him, the recursion of the fear. Not wanting to have this conversation. "You know we're always going to be a team."

[nastygram]

She nods, first, tightly.

And then--because she feels stupid and needy, and that's why Elliot's tone is the way it is, and Darlene thinks, shit, last ditch and angry at herself--she says, "Okay." A little defensive too. Overcorrecting her way out of insecurity.

There's still more shit to talk about, but she has got to cool off. Too desperate and she'll give herself away, even if all she wants to do right now is hug Elliot, or have him hug her, or be back in New York without all this fate-of-the-world sci-fi bullshit hanging over them. Regular fate of the regular world only. Freedom from capitalism, the easy enemy.

"Don't worry. I'm not gonna make you pinky swear or anything lame."

[raw]

She'll know Elliot has been truly Invasion of the Bodysnatchers turned into someone other than himself on the day he initiates a hug between them. Instead he just lifts his eyebrows a little, nods, mouth a line.

"I've gotta go." Does he really, though? He's not actually Clark Kent. But he was on his way somewhere when they ran into each other, so maybe. "Don't do anything stupid, okay. And make sure you read all the shit they give you." It's kind of big-brotherly, that don't embarrass me attitude. But then, that's how Elliot gets people to do shit for him, trying to prove they're better than his expectations for them. And maybe it's a little protective, too. Even all grown up and buying his meds, Darlene always feels a little like she's his responsibility.

[nastygram]

"Read the manual. Real good advice."

Darlene puts her back against the wall behind her, posting up while he's turning to leave, determined not to tag after him or cry like a bitch about any part of this. Chip back on the shoulder. Let him walk off and she'll go on her way too.

As she watches Elliot pull into place any stray layers of the mandatory disguise, her thoughts flicker for one sec to his stupid-ass hoodie. The compulsive way she's seen him adjust the hood, the brisk way she's seen him shove it down again. It's enough that she pushes away from the wall, quick.

"Hey." She teeters on the edge of second-guessing before she takes the plunge. "He's still around, right."

Encouraged by a hivemind if anything. That's what Elliot meant. She knows it without asking which means it is stupid to ask, but for this, there is no manual. And if Elliot dares to push out toward her mind in this moment, Darlene is keeping it purposefully blank, free of any thought or impression or bad fucking memory. Tense, the way you hold yourself when you know a punch is coming.

[raw]

Elliot stops in the mouth of the alleyway, still as a startled deer before it bounds away.

"Yeah," he says, because he can't exactly lie. Not now — he would even say, infrequently — but he loses time and knows it isn't just some blackout, has to ask his broodmates to keep track. But the asshole has a way of pulling the shutters down and keeping himself invisible that Elliot himself can't actually imitate.

What Mr Robot's motives are, here, in this place where there is no more capitalism and no more ECorp to taste his revenge, Elliot still doesn't know. But he dreads to find out that they are nothing good.

"I don't think he'll ever go away," he says thoughtfully, voicing a deeply upsetting thought he has a lot just right out loud. But he doesn't reach for her mind and doesn't let her reach for his, just steps out into the crowd and is gone.