Chapter Text
when all is said and done and the dust is settling, when the knee-jerk rip-tear grief lets up enough she can think about them, she finds a computer. it doesn't work, of course, but she nudges it with a fraction of the power she knows floods the back of her soul and bleeds black-green electricity over her tongue, and it opens with a sigh and a scream and she's in.
finding the records doesnt take much more than a thought. the memory banks are dead, but they haven't been destroyed yet by rogue actors. dead and destined for destruction-- her power floods it quick and easy as sand floods a pair of new shoes.
when she finds them, she takes a moment to shake her hands out. this, too, is electricity, so she knows how it works, doesn't even have to think about it, but her hands aren't used to bending this way. the clicking of the keys is unfamiliar, grating. her fingers ache from the stiff, clawlike way she holds them above the letters, trying to hit only the ones she wants without taking too long.
not because of what she's afraid she'll see when she opens the files. stamped across them in several colors she can't see- and one she can- is "exterminated.' she's known that for twelve years. she's not afraid of that anymore.
but she opens the file her soul whispers is of party poison eventually. they were 5'6".
right across the top is emblazoned a name she never knew them as, and right under it is a number. see-- that's the funny thing about the batt. they say there's a truth to be found, and that truth is the smallest bit inside an empty, worthless shell.
they strip a person down to a tiny little thing, a name they were given and an appearance they inherited-- not even inherited.
that could never be inheritance. inheritance is taking from the dead the things they no longer need, the things they can no longer use, the things that aren't used up or useless but are useless to their original owner. a gift, but if it's rejected there's no one to object, no one can be offended.
the batt strips a person to their unaltered, untouched appearance, and they call it the truest form of that person. they see the hair a person's born with and say it must be like that forever and ever. to change is to hide, they say, and hiding is a moment from dishonesty, and dishonesty is the antonym of truth. and truth, after all, this single unchangeable, untouchable, tiny, pure thing, this thing which must be stripped bare to be seen, must be found and revealed. a person is a tiny thing clawing to get out of the stifling pressures put on it.
citizens dress in plain clothes so their true forms may be seen, and the city may judge those.
she doesn't like that very much.
you pick your name in the zones. she thinks the city gave her one, once, maybe, if only because the city has a need to name everything it touches. maybe it was only a number, but she was called it and they said she was it because it was placed upon her and it contained her. wasn't that enough?
but party poison was called party poison because they told people to refer to them as party poison. their hair was red because they layered bleach and dye into it knowing that it was bright as a flag, and sometimes they were 6' because they were wearing six-inch stripper heels and sometimes they were 3'2" because they were kneeling next to her when she was crying.
killjoys layered truth onto themselves bright as the sun, bright as fresh spray-paint, bright as a neon sign, each layer having as much value as the last. in choosing to live, they chose to live as, and that was more truth than anything the batt said about them.
the batt impressed truth into a person-- here is what you are, it said. peel away your layers and show the small thing you are underneath-- that's who you really are, that's who really has value.
the zones waited with baited breath and said, who are you? they held out color and fire and danger to lay into a person's skin, calling out, show us who you are! who do you want to be-- that's who you are. put on who you are-- become yourself.
the system resisted when she erased the name the batt had given poison. it snapped at her as she rubbed out the numbers they were stored under, but she bit back and its weakly reanimated wrath settled. she put no where it said sex, too.
then she moved on. all she'd wanted to know was a bit more about them, and as much as this system claimed to hold that little thing the batt called the truth, the root and center of poison, it had nothing but a hodge-podge, outdated, unrecognizable homunculous of them.
hair color: brown.
as if! she'd looked back on the day they died, and their hair was candy-red, redder than blood.