If I'm Out of Line, Just Show Me the Door [CLOSED]

[ownperson]

Who: Agent South Dakota (ownperson) & Agent North Dakota (gooddefense)
What: Unresolved tension boils over
When: Mid-December, pre holidays
Where: North's farm, Northwest Hollow
Warning(s): Excessive alcohol/alcohol abuse, ongoing mental health crises, discussion of betrayal/fratricide by proxy, possible references to past emotional abuse/neglect, others added as necessary



She doesn't mean to get back so late.

One drink turns into two drinks into five into ten and, outside the Oak & Iron's windows, the world turns black and white as night creeps in and snow drifts down from clouds overhead. Midnight is already long behind her by the time the bartender finally cuts her off so they can close up, ushering her out to brave the chill as she curses herself for losing track of time. It's a long walk back from downtown to the farmhouse even on a good day and, between trudging through snowfall and her own drunken clumsiness, this is not a good day. Should've left sooner. Should've been back hours ago. It's just—

Been getting harder and harder to spend time in the house without wanting to scream, the last few days—fuck, the last couple weeks, really. Hours will go by where everything seems okay and then something will happen, something small, something she barely even notices, and everything gets weird again. North gets weird again. But then she doesn't say a word, and, eventually, things go back to normal. Until the cycle repeats. Over and over and over again and—

She just needed to get out of the house. Needed a drink and to clear her head. That's all. That's fucking all.

Her pale skin is red and her hands are shaking as much from the cold as the alcohol, by the time she hauls herself up the porch steps and fumbles with the lock on the door. It's not quiet, it's not considerate. When it finally clicks open, she shoulders the door and stumbles inside, shoving it back shut behind her. Her boots thud heavily against the wooden floor and she grunts, huffing as she fights to get the stupid things off so she can drag herself to bed.

Comments

[ownperson]

It's a lot of information to process, especially running on fumes as South is. Fresh context to place Carolina in, reshaping parts of the shallow image South has had of her for all these years. Even the mention of dyeing hair gets narrowed eyes aimed at Carolina's roots, like she's trying to figure out what her natural colour could even be—a minor detail, really, all things considered, and yet still, a part of that image growing more complex, filling out at the edges.

She might've said something about it, or commiserated, again, about the pressure of comparison, of feeling so horribly unpersoned by the knowledge that no one can ever just see you for you—

And then: You know him, actually. You hate him.

"...what?"

It's not a syllable of understanding, not immediately. Pure, exhausted confusion, that's what it is, as she stares at the side of Carolina's head like if she bores holes with her eyes she might understand faster. How could she possibly know and hate Carolina's—

(Nine, ten, eleven...)

—oh. Oh there's no fucking way.

South's head slides off her hand so sharply in her surprise she almost cracks her jaw on the workbench. She jolts upright just in time, suddenly feeling wide, wide awake. "Your dad is the fucking Director?! What the fuck!"

[cyansoldier]

Yep. Carolina was expecting that. How else do you react to some grade A bullshit of the familial-vocational variety? She chuckles— not forced, exactly, but with no real sense of amusement, either. It's embarrassing. It's bad. Her father is bad and more often than not she's petrified about what that means for her. Put her in front of any mirror and she'll pick her features apart— assigning which are his and which are hers— exhaustively.

(What's worse, wanting to be the better parent and knowing you're the bad one— or knowing you would have picked the bad one over the better, if you had the chance? Her mother was always an unavailability. But him. Him. He was possible. He was within her reach, and that drove her fucking insane.)

"You can imagine my pride," said in weary, sarcastic tones. Carolina sets her gun down, puts on a brave face and turns toward South. "He said it was important that no one knew."

[ownperson]

A whole parade of expressions crosses South's face in a remarkably short period of time, some less clear than others, all of them some kind of stunned. Anger, disbelief, confusion, thought—those, and much more in between. Her hands are no more stagnant, running through her hair, rubbing at her face, settling in her lap or curling into a fist against the workbench.

What the fuck. What the fuck. All those years, thinking Carolina got preferential treatment—a part of her, the part that still holds all that well-worn resentment, can't help but think I was right, I was fucking right. And yet. And yet.

"...the bastard didn't even put you on the fucking recovery list."

[cyansoldier]

"Yeah, that... stung. I thought being his— would mean something in the end." Stung— it gutted her. Admitting that, though, is like coughing up metal shrapnel— painful, messy, humiliating. Waylaid in the snow and waiting to be picked up, looked after. What had she done wrong? She did everything he asked. She pursued Texas. She refused York. She fought and fought and fought for him, and he left her there, and she can't shake the feeling that it's her fault— that she must have done something to make him dislike her.

Parents should have to like their children, at least a little, she wants to say, juvenile and bitter and clinging. Don't start acting like an infant.

"Maine took what he needed. He must have assumed I was dead. Well, that's his mistake." She gums solvent onto weathered metal and lets it eat away the grime. Her sober attitude is almost jarring. A star shape shoved into a triangular hole. "I found him once— I'll find him again. And when I do, I'm going to kill him, and all of this will finally be over. It's the least I can do, and I want to be the one to do it."

[ownperson]

"Good," South says, no hesitation, force behind the word like a bullet in the air. "Fucking put a bullet between the bastard's eyes. I can't fucking believe he fucking left you like that, what the fuck. Like he wasn't already enough of a fuckhead—"

She bites down on the swell of indignant rage flooding her system at the thought. She's always hated him, hatred that has only grown and grown with time; he treated her like shit, denied her respect at every turn, used her like a pawn by the end and she hates him for it. But this. To fuck over his own daughter like that. To act so goddamn ashamed she was even his daughter at all—

Maybe it hits close to home. Maybe she already cares about Carolina far more intensely than she thought she could. Maybe it's all that and more. But South's desire to beat the man's head to a pulp has never been stronger.

"...I used to think you got such— special fucking treatment. And all that fucking time. He was fucking using you just as much as the rest of us. Except he was your fucking dad. What the fuck."

[cyansoldier]

Hating the Director is simple. Chewing him up and spitting him out as an unkind name is simple. Putting a bullet into his brain, watching bone and tissue splash whatever surface is nearest, will (she hopes) be simple. What's not simple— digesting South's explosive force on her behalf; contempt for what he's done to her, his daughter, in parallel to what he's done to others.

Her gut pulls toward the surface. She feels more seen than she has in— Christ— too many years, the acknowledgement like a riptide prepared to take her out at the ankles. Carolina pinches her nose where the bridge of her reading glasses might sit.

"I don't know what I expected. I thought, maybe, we'd pick up where we left off. Before his doctorate— before Mom— he was just... normal. A normal dad. I knew that wasn't going to happen. I saw him change. I could feel it in his emails. He talked differently. He would say weird things. And later I thought if I worked hard enough, if I wanted it enough, I could have it. Him. Whatever.

"You're not wrong, though. It was special treatment, and I acted like a brat. I felt entitled. I would get angry— so angry at everything."

[ownperson]

South huffs and gestures at herself. "You're talking to the reigning fuckin' champ of being an angry bitch at everything. I mean, yeah. You were a bitch, back then—sorry—but fuck, man, that's not what I thought was going on when I thought you were getting the princess treatment. Fuck, I thought you were throwing a tantrum because you couldn't just coast by anymore when Tex got there but that's... he was fucking messing with you. He gave you that shit so he could take it away again."

It's too familiar. Not the same as her life, not at all, but she knows what having what finally feels like approval ripped out from under your feet, throwing you into a dark abyss that you're determined to claw your way back up from, feels like. Before the Project, but also in it. A high rank was always as much a threat as a reward.

"...y'know the reason I never— never just fucking asked Dmitri to pay more attention to me? I— thought it wouldn't be fuckin' real if I didn't earn it. Which is... it's fucking stupid, right? To like anyone else that would sound insane. But—"

Maybe not to Carolina. Not based on how she's describing how things felt with her dad. (God, fuck that bastard. At least she knows North would've given her what she wanted, if she asked, even if she could never convince herself of that fact at the time, and even if there's other issues with that whole... everything. This guy? She's sure Lina could've begged at his feet and he'd have stepped over her to get back to his stupid fucking work.)

"...it fucking sucks. It's a fucking humiliating feeling. Fuck. Fuck him."