40fandoms: Fandom 18
Mar. 13th, 2016 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgs[Title] Roots
[Fandom] Zoe (a modern opera on the BBC about twelve years ago that no one but me has ever heard of)
[Rating] PG-13, maybe R. Language. Mentions of self-harm and incest. (Also spoilers for the ending but I doubt anyone minds ^^)
[Notes/Summary] In prison, Zoe tries to come to terms with who and what she really is.
Everyone here knows what she is. Some of them talk about her and some of them stare at her like they can't quite believe she looks so normal. Even the staff – they work really hard to treat her like just another inmate but there's this edge, this – they look at her out of the corner of their eye when they think she's not watching.
Sometimes it makes her angry, stupid rage spilling out of her like tears, but the thing about being in prison is you can be as angry as you like and it'll just wait and be exactly the same after. She's not the only one who's in the process of working this out. People are always trying to hurt themselves or each other or just screaming and screaming as if that's the only thing left to say. It doesn't change anything.
It isn't how you'd think. You're not locked up in one room all the time – you can go to classes and you have to exercise and there's a little library – but she's – not happiest but okayest lying on her bed and not being looked at.
She is not okay because it's all the stuff she tried not to think when she first found out is coming back now.
My dad isn't my dad. My dad is a creep who was obsessed with this woman. Stalker-obsessed. She told him to leave her alone and he took a lock of her hair and with it he made me. I'm her. I am a her that belongs to him.
All the insistence on eating your vegetables and getting a good night's sleep and taking care when crossing the road and not drinking and not smoking and not doing drugs and walking not running and –
She can't cut off her hair again, not this time, but sometimes she pulls it out and sometimes she punches her own arms, or scrapes her knuckles against the wall, or bites herself. Making marks on his precious Zoe. His precious Sophie. Cheapening her. Reducing her value. It's not fair. She's killed him already. That should have solved all this. That's why she did it, on the understanding that she'd be killing all these thoughts too...
I was already starting to look like her. In that film she was just like me. I was already starting to look like her. How long would it have been? He was going to want to –
Oh, stop being so pathetic, such a baby, such a poor little private-school bitch, say it out loud, he was going to want to fuck me –
She says it again and again, trying not to care about it, but eventually she has to stop and taste blood or tangle strands of hair round her fingers. The shock of it echoes back through her life. When she was little and he dried her off after her bath. When she sat on his lap for story time. When he held her hand as they walked down the street. He was waiting, the whole time he was waiting for –
Of course she was never allowed to smoke, growing up. She never tried – bought into the party line that one cigarette and you were pretty much committing suicide right there. Once on her way home for the holidays she was kept waiting at a station somewhere in Europe on a packed platform and some girls nearby lit up. Dad smelt the smoke on her blazer and slapped her and said she must never, ever smoke again. In here, most people smoke, and the thought of rotting herself from the inside feels too good and when she is coughing and trying not to keel over from it and people are laughing at her at least they are seeing her as a sad little posh bitch and not a freak of nature.
There's a group of them passing round a cigarette and this other girl there, this newer girl, says, You're her, right, you're that Zoe Herkommer. That's why some of them call you Dolly. Like the sheep.
Dolly is probably better than Zoe and it's definitely better than Sophie, so she nods.
You killed your dad, right? 'Cause he'd cloned you?
She wants to stub the cigarette out on her hand rather than listen to this but the others would make her sorry if she did. Her questioner shrugs. It's okay. My dad was a fucking cunt too. Wish I was in here for killing him.
That makes things a bit better. Someone else saying it like it's normal means she's nothing special. It doesn't mean she doesn't still want to pull her hair out, but it reminds her that she isn't the only one. That deep down, she is normal after all.
[Fandom] Zoe (a modern opera on the BBC about twelve years ago that no one but me has ever heard of)
[Rating] PG-13, maybe R. Language. Mentions of self-harm and incest. (Also spoilers for the ending but I doubt anyone minds ^^)
[Notes/Summary] In prison, Zoe tries to come to terms with who and what she really is.
Everyone here knows what she is. Some of them talk about her and some of them stare at her like they can't quite believe she looks so normal. Even the staff – they work really hard to treat her like just another inmate but there's this edge, this – they look at her out of the corner of their eye when they think she's not watching.
Sometimes it makes her angry, stupid rage spilling out of her like tears, but the thing about being in prison is you can be as angry as you like and it'll just wait and be exactly the same after. She's not the only one who's in the process of working this out. People are always trying to hurt themselves or each other or just screaming and screaming as if that's the only thing left to say. It doesn't change anything.
It isn't how you'd think. You're not locked up in one room all the time – you can go to classes and you have to exercise and there's a little library – but she's – not happiest but okayest lying on her bed and not being looked at.
She is not okay because it's all the stuff she tried not to think when she first found out is coming back now.
My dad isn't my dad. My dad is a creep who was obsessed with this woman. Stalker-obsessed. She told him to leave her alone and he took a lock of her hair and with it he made me. I'm her. I am a her that belongs to him.
All the insistence on eating your vegetables and getting a good night's sleep and taking care when crossing the road and not drinking and not smoking and not doing drugs and walking not running and –
She can't cut off her hair again, not this time, but sometimes she pulls it out and sometimes she punches her own arms, or scrapes her knuckles against the wall, or bites herself. Making marks on his precious Zoe. His precious Sophie. Cheapening her. Reducing her value. It's not fair. She's killed him already. That should have solved all this. That's why she did it, on the understanding that she'd be killing all these thoughts too...
I was already starting to look like her. In that film she was just like me. I was already starting to look like her. How long would it have been? He was going to want to –
Oh, stop being so pathetic, such a baby, such a poor little private-school bitch, say it out loud, he was going to want to fuck me –
She says it again and again, trying not to care about it, but eventually she has to stop and taste blood or tangle strands of hair round her fingers. The shock of it echoes back through her life. When she was little and he dried her off after her bath. When she sat on his lap for story time. When he held her hand as they walked down the street. He was waiting, the whole time he was waiting for –
Of course she was never allowed to smoke, growing up. She never tried – bought into the party line that one cigarette and you were pretty much committing suicide right there. Once on her way home for the holidays she was kept waiting at a station somewhere in Europe on a packed platform and some girls nearby lit up. Dad smelt the smoke on her blazer and slapped her and said she must never, ever smoke again. In here, most people smoke, and the thought of rotting herself from the inside feels too good and when she is coughing and trying not to keel over from it and people are laughing at her at least they are seeing her as a sad little posh bitch and not a freak of nature.
There's a group of them passing round a cigarette and this other girl there, this newer girl, says, You're her, right, you're that Zoe Herkommer. That's why some of them call you Dolly. Like the sheep.
Dolly is probably better than Zoe and it's definitely better than Sophie, so she nods.
You killed your dad, right? 'Cause he'd cloned you?
She wants to stub the cigarette out on her hand rather than listen to this but the others would make her sorry if she did. Her questioner shrugs. It's okay. My dad was a fucking cunt too. Wish I was in here for killing him.
That makes things a bit better. Someone else saying it like it's normal means she's nothing special. It doesn't mean she doesn't still want to pull her hair out, but it reminds her that she isn't the only one. That deep down, she is normal after all.
