Work Text:
You don’t know what you were thinking.
There’s a body in your bed—the body of a woman. A brain-dead woman. You stole her from the hospital and now she’s in your bed, limbs akimbo, the too-big track suit you put her in almost falling off. You barely managed to get her up here. You don’t know what hurts most, your fucking useless arms from the carrying or your head from making people ignore you.
And now you have a body.
Fuck, what were you thinking? What are you going to do if this doesn’t work? She’s dying.
She was dying before you took her here, though. It’s done—slightly too late to freak out now.
Time to figure out if you can do this or not.
The first time you tried, it was like trying to run with a water glass full to the brim without spilling. That is to say—you made a mess.
After you managed to extract yourself for the sudden chaos caused by the terrified man – seeing your arms move without you being in control was apparently not a pleasant experience – you came to the conclusion that you need a quieter mind. One less prone to screaming and absolute panic. Someone you can lull into obliviousness before you try to grab control.
It didn’t take you that long until you realized that there exists a very specific subset of people who might be perfectly suitable for your purposes. One thing lead to another—and now you have a comatose body in your bed.
You know it’s possible—you know you did it, once—but you don’t know if it was just a weird fluke triggered by anger and desperation. If it wasn’t...
Well. It could be exactly what you need.
A blank slate.
You swallow, and close your eyes. You reach out. You feel the minds of the other tenants of the building—ignore them. Focus on the one closer to you.
It’s not like Charge—not just a buzz, hard to even notice. There’s something there, it’s just empty. Not even like someone dreaming – closer to someone unconscious. Not like someone not thinking, not like dampers, just... Available.
You reach out and you...
Jump.
The defiance of gravity, leaping up. The pull back down. The vertigo.
The impact.
You feel, not through your own senses, but through these senses, a body that’s different; strange.
You gasp for breath, hear loud banging, and then you open your eyes.
You feel...
Like shit.
You have to struggle to breathe, and your mouth feels like it’s full of straw. You’re thirsty. You’re hungry. Your stomach growls at you – your legs are aching – everything is bright and weird and you think you’re panicking.
You are definitely panicking.
It’s not like you’re unused to feeling like shit, but this is a distinctively different flavour of shit.
You try to calm your breathing; eventually, you succeed. You try to feel your body; your legs, your arms, your fingers. You wiggle your fingers. Bend your elbow. Hold your hand up in front of your eyes, and you see her hand there – long slender fingers.
No scars.
You wiggle your fingers. Her fingers wiggle. You bring it down to touch your face. Her face.
Fuck.
It’s working. It works. You’re in her body. Like it’s your own.
It’s not effortless. There’s a... pull. You feel that you don’t really belong in this space you’re in. That if you’re careless, you’re going to fall out.
But it works. You run your hands over your face—a nose that feels too big, chapped lips that just feel weird, and you laugh.
Your voice is hoarse, but it’s softer. Higher pitched. A woman’s laugh.
With some effort, you manage to push yourself up to sittning—everything is off balance. Your chest feels super weird, because, right—you bring your hands to it and you have boobs. Which is... weird. You have no idea what you expected boobs to feel like. It doesn’t feel much at all. An awkward weight, pulling at your chest. Not much, but enough to make itself noticed when you move.
With your heart in your throat you spend a few minutes trying to get her hand to unzip the jacket. Grabbing the zipper is a challenge, a then you pull to hard and it gets stuck—but then you finally manage.
You look down at her—at yourself—at the curve of her breasts, turning into to her stomach, down to the hipbones coming out from the pants. Unscarred, smooth—unmarked.
A little gasp makes its way out of you, or maybe it’s a sob—you don’t understand why. It’s not as if you believed the tattoos would move along with your mind. You’re looking down at a completely different body.
But the lack of orange marks—
You put your hands on her—your—exposed rumbling stomach, and your face feels off, somehow. Then you realize your smiling. Your next exhale comes out as a laugh. You pat yourself—her—feel her ribs—she really needs to eat, they’re almost as bad as your own—and up to her chest.
It’s weird. It’s just weird. You laugh a little again. Not a bad weird. Not weirder than the feeling of your own body and the way the skin clings to your bones and your feet always ache.
You laugh a bit more, before you try to stand up.
And fall on your face.
Ha.
It hurts, but you can’t stop laughing. It’s working. You’re in her body. You can make it move. You sound like her. You look like her. You can walk her out of here and no one will know.
You will be able to walk her out of here.
All you can do right now is roll over.
And there’s— There’s you. Face down. You must have collapsed when you... left. Should have thought of that.
Well.
That body’s been through much worse. It can take some time on the ground. Thank god you don’t have to see the face from this angle.
Your face.
Not right now, though. Right now you’re someone else. And you are going to figure out how to do this. If you can do this...
It takes you fifteen minutes to walk her to the bathroom. It’s easier once you manage to get the pants off; you keep stepping on them. Then you pull the towel off the mirror and almost fall over again. You stare, wide eyed, open-mouthed, at the face looking back at you. A different face. Different body.
She looks haggard, but not in the way you do. No disfiguring scars, no buzz cut growing out in tufts. No marks. No tattoos. If you clean her up she’s going to be pretty. You grin at yourself, and you don’t look crazy—you look... You look...
You look normal. You look human.
This changes everything.
You have her walk in circles in your room, do sit-ups, pull ups, push ups—anything you can think off, for weeks, until her body works properly and you can move it as well as your own. Better.
You get her some nice clothes—it takes two tries until you find her size. Make up. You fix her hair.
Then there it is. Staring back at you from the mirror, smiling. A beautiful woman, ready to face the world. You swallow.
Then you leave the flat in her body for the first time. You don’t really have a plan, you just want to go for a walk. Maybe some shopping – you dig your wallet out of the pockets of your real body.
Leaving it behind is nerve-wracking, but you haven’t figured out a better option. You have no sense of what your real body is doing when you’re controlling this puppet woman; none whatsoever. Someone could find you here, strip you, send you back.
But that’s extremely unlikely, and leaving your body there is less risky than taking it out so out you fucking go.
Into the sunlight. Making you squint, hitting your bare shoulders. No one even looks twice at you—you think. You actually have no idea what they’re thinking—and the thought almost makes you run back upstairs in a panic. Stupid. They have no reason to look at you, or think twice about you. You’re a lovely woman, out for a walk. You set your shoulders, pick a direction, and walk.
After fifteen minutes you get on a bus. After thirty minutes, no one has reacted to you, and you can’t keep the smile off your face. They have no idea. You walk into a clothing store and give the clerk a blinding smile, pick out the fanciest top you can find and then you spend ten minutes in a changing room trying not to cry.
It’s a women’s piece of clothing—it would look stupid without cleavage to fill it in, but fuck you’ve dreamed of this. Of just... Like anybody else. That looks nice, I wonder if I could. Without thinking.
Such a stupid thing. Shopping. Trying to make yourself pretty. After everything, that’s what makes you want to cry. It’s stupid.
But you buy the top, and you smile all the way back home.