Chapter Text
There’s an all-too-popular saying that floats around here and there, one that’s been far too needed in Astra’s realm of stressors lately, that being: Practice what you preach.
Because the heavens above know, every star in the cosmos, out there in the vast horizon that exists is aware that she’s the first person to insist that feelings are okay. It’s okay to feel things, to feel great things, to feel awful things, to feel nothing, sometimes — it happens.
Some days are immaculate. Some days are the sort where the sun is so beautifully shining, so wonderfully bathing the land in its perfect warm glow, and your luck is at an all-time-high as you may find an extra 500 credits lying around here or there, perhaps even catch Jett in one of her pleasant moods where she’s willing to cook an extra serving of her lunch for you, and there aren’t any tedious nor dangerous missions scheduled, and it’s just wonderful. It’s just the type of day where every card plays to your hand (or, in Killjoy’s nerdy words, ‘every DND dice rolls a perfect Nat20 on everything you do’).
And then other days are the opposite.
Like today.
Today is the sort of day where the sun is nowhere to be seen. The sky is a hideous blend of dirty grays, smoky blacks, and very little warmth to be had as wet tears from above paint the windows in raindrops. It’s the sort of day where she’s woken up on the wrong side of the bed, and misplaced one of her favorite liquid eyeliner pens, and tripped on the way to the VLT/R launchpad resulting in an unfortunately scraped knee that reminded her it was there in painful strikes of stings every so often — and, yeah, she had a mission today. An awful mission, in fact.
A barely-survived outing in the Caribbean, bringing home a team that survived, yes, but survived with many nasty injuries to show for their efforts.
Jett couldn’t cook for her even if she wanted to, because Jett is in the medbay, barely recovering from bleeding to death after being used for moving target practice. She is being tended to by Viper, who is filling in for Sage—who is resting off a 72 hour shift from a separate mission’s bloody results—and Skye, who is also on the brink of death and in the chemist’s less-than tender-loving-care.
It was just one of those days. It was just the sort of day where nothing was going to work out as Astra needed it to, no matter her efforts, and she had personally accepted that by 8:46 this morning when her brisk jog to the VLT/R resulted in her little tumble and consequent minor knee injury. Everything that had happened after that point had only proved her right. (And man, did she love to be right, but not at a time like this.)
Today would've been amazing. Today was going to be amazing.
Today was supposed to be positively amazing because at 9 PM tonight, she has a date with who may just be the sweetest, kindest, finest man to have ever graced the planet earth — and even this so sweet treat has been rotted through because of one crucial detail:
Well… Several, technically.
Because that mission had been so physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing, she'd gone straight to her room once the team had returned home, laid in her bed, and decided to take a nap to recover some strength and relax off that stress.
And she has woken up exactly 30 minutes before she is supposed to meet up with Harbor.
Thirty minutes.
Half an hour to shower, pick an outfit, change into that outfit, and complete a full face of makeup.
Bonus problem:
Astra’s hair is a hot mess.
(Fighting for your life’ll do that to you.)
Where cornrows braided into her scalp had once so neatly laid in line, flyaways and stray messy strands sprout like weeds in the rows of curly greenery. She can see where dirt is caked in some areas, where the dampness of the weeping skies has given her some less-than-welcome shrinkage in all the proud bushes of hair not weaved into braids, and there is no way she can go on a date looking like this.
And to think… She had the entire afternoon to fix this mess on her head, and had slept through every hour of that timeframe completely.
If you asked her how she was feeling right this very second, the absolute shock-turned-numbness of it all could only boil down to very simple words: She is not okay.
Freshening up, picking the perfect outfit, getting dressed, and doing her makeup alone would typically take her over half an hour— forty-five minutes at least — so what the hell is she going to do about her hair!?
The very dim bright side, very low upside to it all is that at the very least, she didn’t have too fancy of a style planned. Nothing like the elegant twists of coiled hair, or lengthy, mesmerizing box braids she used to sport in her school days; she was merely going to go for a touch-up of her usual style and let her attire and makeup speak the rest of the glamor for her.
Styles like those could take hours. She’d know.
After all, she’s become the resident hairdresser for Raze and Phoenix because she has the most experience, and that comes from years of the art of hair being rooted deep into her since childhood.
Picture this:
10-year-old Efia at home, in her mother’s bedroom in the heart of the city, helping her style her hair. Heavy traffic sounded on every side of their neighborhood during the day. It was hardly a surprise to hear the rip of a motorcycle or roar of a speeding car breaking through the wind at any hour the sun was still in the sky.
They’d watch TV together as they worked. As nimble fingers twirled and twisted around hair strands, as dancing digits tangoed and trilled curly locks into woven braids, the television would play like background music to their efforts. Both seated on her mother’s bed, relaxed against the cloud-soft comforter, a plastic container of hair products next to them.
She remembers even the smallest details of times like those; the sticky, gooey feeling of gels and oils caked into her fingers and palms, the scent of coconut and flowers drowning her nose in sweetness. Her mother had very long, very healthy hair, so Efia fully understood why she’d be drafted along to help. Braiding such a bundle of lively curls alone could take from sunrise to sunset— literally.
Before she’d been old enough to assist, Efia distinctly remembers such times when her mother had to style it all herself. If she began doing her hair at, say, 9 in the morning, it would not be finished until at least 5 in the afternoon. And that excludes bathroom breaks, meals, chores, and other obligations around the house or tending to her daughter. Having an extra set of helping hands just made everything about the process easier, and it certainly helped Efia get in the habit of tending to her own hair efficiently too. (Bonus: for her help, her mother always rewarded her with a personal favorite snack; plantains, in all their dulce glory. Second only to rice water porridge with sugar and nutmeg, if you ask Efia.)
She had some friends at school who never did their own hair. They always needed their parents, or a visit to the salon for any major change, or even a minor touch-up or wash, really. In fact, she can recall a number of elicited gasps and widened eyes in the hallways between class or in the cafeteria from her classmates when she mentioned that she could do her own braids or twists anytime.
Shouldn’t everyone be able to, though?
Is it truly so surprising, to be able to tend to your own scalp’s natural garden? To trim and water and root the ethereal stems and blossoms bursting from your own head; shouldn’t one be able to care for themselves wholly? Hair included?
That had always been the way Efia saw it, but to be fair, her texture of hair did take a bit more… Effort, than those without it, she’d say.
Managing these tight coils, so prone to tangling and so tedious to comb through, she’d found in her time to be much harder than managing straight hair.
And again, she’d know this from experience too.
Efia doesn’t like to mention it much, but in her youth, she too once had straight hair.
How? Relaxer, quite simply.
For those born with tight curls and coils, there are chemicals and solutions made that can relax these curls, or mellow them out into a straight texture; from the look of tightly weaved bushes to smooth vines in an instant, you can have hair that you can brush through within seconds every morning and deem it ready for the world to see. The very same head of hair Rapunzel sported, or that models proudly wore on television in all their silky shine and smooth touch could be yours too, even if you hadn’t been born with it.
If you asked her about it now, she’d never dream of getting her hair straightened again. She never wants to change her lovely curls from their flouncy, bouncy glory. And yet she doesn’t mean it in a poor way either;
Everyone decides differently what is best for themselves, their hair, and how much time or effort they’d like to put into it. Some people are merely more comfortable with the shortened hair appointment times that relaxed hair comes with, and that’s fine. That’s their cup of tea, and it is to be respected.
For Efia, for her specific case and experience, her problem is that she remembers she had not done it for that reason. It had never been out of preference or comfort or quality of life in her schedule.
It had been to feel some semblance of beautiful again.
And then comes the argument: Just what is beauty?
And really, she could go on for days on a topic like this.
Because maybe beauty isn’t real. Maybe beauty is some fabricated, fakely-strewn and fauxly-stitched concept of mixed aesthetics or trying to find some hint of meaning behind everything, even when there is none to be found.
Maybe beauty is no deeper than shallow pools or playground sandboxes. Maybe beauty is not deep at all. Maybe it’s as fake as can be.
Maybe it has never been a real concept, because we can claim a jewel is pretty without finding the authenticity behind it; whether or not you know it is a real or synthetic diamond, you would find its shine and glow and elegance to be, “beautiful.” Regardless of if a rose is made of cloth or petals, or if a fur coat is made of false fabric rather than real pelt, its visual value could, more or less, be the same.
But then, perhaps the argument can be made that beauty is real — just subjective. In the eye of the beholder, as they say.
In fact to some, the lack of authenticity could indeed make the beauty value of something lesser in one’s eyes. And yet to another, it could affect nothing, so long as the difference isn’t glaring or obvious. If the diamond, rose, and fur coat still look like gems and flowers and fashion, what complaint is there to be had? How much more value does authenticity truly bring to the table when you measure something in terms of beauty?
How can be beauty be measured at all if it’s subjective? The value and range of such would change for every person and every differing opinion.
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe it does change, and maybe the collective, overall idea of beauty, or what is more or less beautiful than something else, depends on the majority’s belief.
If you asked Astra what the majority of the world would argue is, “beautiful,” she’d be able to tell you many things.
Her observations come from the media she’s consumed from the world around her. Commercials in between her favorite shows, television love interests in all the hot new dramas, magazine photoshoots of top models, internet headlines on every trending app, that sort of thing. If she goes off of those widely spread images and views of what beauty should be, the most common attributes she’d find to be, “beautiful,” would include straightened hair.
From car and perfume commercials to internet vlogs and trending photos on social media, the common threads constantly seem to include straightened hair. Even on people like herself, with afro features, who she knows do not naturally produce a straight texture of hair from their scalps. Some of these afro-featured celebrities change, she notes. Like chameleons, they change to suit their surroundings, to fit in. To avoid confrontation or danger, from those who may not like the way they stand out.
So from a very young age, there has always been a chunk of Efia’s mind that knows her hair is not beautiful. And if she is not born with hair the way it is supposed to be, like all of these models and influencers and actors on her phone and television screens everyday, then she needs to adjust.
Efia was 9 years old when she’d begged her mother to take her to the salon and get her hair relaxed.
She was 9 years old when she’d forgotten what made her beautiful, and instead aligned her beliefs to those of the majority. If she wanted to be seen as pretty, or loved and valued among others, or respected by her peers and by society, then she needed to change.
And so change she did, much like the ever-illusive chameleon.
All it took were a few chemicals; a helping of that relaxer really. A few chemicals, a couple hours in a salon chair — nothing like the 6 or 7 hour appointments, sometimes longer, of her personal favorite braids or twists — and boom;
She’d become beautiful, hadn’t she?
She finally mimicked all the models in her magazines and actresses on her television every night. She finally had hair that was as smooth as ice, silky soft to the touch, sheeny and dazzling under the daytime sunlight and nighttime moonlight, and she felt like a princess. She felt like a queen, adorned with a brand new priceless crown, a radiant tiara, ready to overcome any and all that opposed her.
Compliments came in like moths to flame, too. From teachers around the school corridors, classmates at their desks in between school subjects, kids she’d never even spoken to at recess on the metal bars of the jungle gym. Oogles and gawked gazes followed every path she took, and she truly felt like a celebrity herself, for merely changing her hairstyle. Hell, she’d even pretend she was a celeb, marching down the famed red carpet, or waltzing along a limelight lit stage, adored by all, cherished by every set of bewitched eyes that laid upon her.
From a weed, she became a flower. From a dandelion, she evolved into a rose.
And at that point in her life, Efia had truly believed she had understood true happiness; True beauty.
And when she was 10 years old, she began to understand why she’d been so horribly wrong.
Picture this:
10-year-old Efia at home, in her mother’s bedroom in the heart of the city, helping her style her hair. Heavy traffic sounded on every side of their neighborhood during the day. It was hardly a surprise to hear the rip of a motorcycle or roar of a speeding car breaking through the wind at any hour the sun was still in the sky.
They’d watch TV together as they worked. As nimble fingers twirled and twisted around hair strands, as dancing digits tangoed and trilled curly locks into woven braids, the television would play like background music to their efforts. Both seated on her mother’s bed, relaxed against the cloud-soft comforter, a plastic container of hair products next to them.
Sometimes, they worked in silence. There was no need to talk, no talks to have, no thoughts to even bring a subject up. The television often provided enough entertainment for them, after all. From mirthful sitcoms and colorful cartoons to tear-jerking dramas and scandalous reality shows, it wasn’t difficult to find something worth their time.
Efia, though, had always been a curious little soul, and an outspoken one at that. When a thought popped into her head, especially in the company of someone she was so comfortable with, rarely did she consider pulling the punch of her words.
In the middle of weaving a lovely, long braid of her mother’s hair, the girl asked: “Mama, how come you still wear your hair like this?”
And her mother, mocha eyes still glued to the luminescent screen of the TV, idly responded in a low hum. An inquisitive little, “Hm?”
“How come you don’t get it straightened up?” Efia half-speaks, half-mumbles, focus divided between her thoughts and her work. Even in childhood, she wouldn’t half-ass her efforts. Not for the world, nor curious little 10-year-olds’ musings.
Her mother laughs, a little laugh, at that. Something between a chuckle and a scoff, that really is more of a huff than anything else.
“Girl, you ‘n me are straightenin’ it up right now, ain’t we? ‘Cos I don’t know what else we doin’, if not that, baby.”
“Mm-mm,” Efia mumbles back, fingers twisting fervently towards the end of that brown braid’s length, weaving every strand into one another like basketwork. “Not just straightenin’ it up .‘Cos you don’t straighten it, I mean. How come you don’t get your hair straightened?”
“‘Cos I don’ want to. Simple as that,” Her mother shrugged as she said it. Her shoulders relaxed again real quick though, likely sore enough already from styling they’d done, and several more braids they still had left to do.
Efia thought nothing of the next words she spoke:
“But don’t you want to look beautiful, mama?”
Doesn’t everyone want to be beautiful?
Then, and now— in her early tweenhood, and even these days, in her early adulthood— beauty is still a standard Astra strives for. Eye-catching beauty. Expressive beauty. True beauty.
Authentic beauty.
She understands it now, but had never understood it back then.
If to have beauty is to be beautiful, and to be beautiful is to adhere to subjective standards of beauty, then beauty is an ever changing concept and idea, flipping wildly from person-to-person. What one may find hideous, another may find life-changingly gorgeous.
But it must be your beautiful. Not your pretending to be someone else’s.
9 and 10-year-old Efia never understood that.
‘But don’t you want to look beautiful, mama?’
Efia had thought nothing of the words she’d spoken then.
And her mother thought everything of them, apparently.