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And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
-Richard Siken, Litany With Certain Things Crossed Out
Bree Davenport's heart is a revolving door with no place to stay. She doesn’t know how to stay. She doesn’t know how to stop, how to brake, where the brakes even are—
Because who the fuck does? Who, with a chip in their neck and muscles built to crush and chop and burn but never break, would ever know how to stop?
She knows that Mr. Davenport says that he loves her. That her brothers love her, too, in their own ways, but—
She knows that Adam doesn’t know how to love without it bruising, that Chase’s healing is the only super fast about him because he had to heal fast, because the bruises would linger if he didn’t because Adam doesn’t know his own strength and that's how you show love, right?
(But just because the pain heals quicker doesn’t mean that it isn’t dealt to begin with. That there isn’t some part of Chase that fears his brother as much as he loves him. That there isn’t some part of her brothers that learned to associate love with pain long before they ever had their first hug.)
She knows that Chase doesn’t know how to love without it being condescending, because when you’re built to be at the top of the mountain you never know how to find your way down, because Chase cries when Spike comes out and he doesn’t know who he is when he’s not in control, when he isn’t the smartest person in the world, that when he falls out of Spike and he can’t remember anything and he’s stuttering and he’s the smallest he’s ever been and he isn’t who he’s supposed to be and that’s the very last thing that Chase can suffer.
(That when Sebastian turns his back on them, going back to Krane, stabbing Chase in the back, Chase’s stutter comes back in the sort of way that Bree hasn’t heard from his lips since they were kids and Spike was unleashed that first day of school and everyone was so excited to have someone who could actually fight on their team, because Adam and Bree are muscles while Chase has only ever been bones, and the way that bones clatter against each other when they’re scared is something that they learned from watching movies as kids, their one and only glimpse at a remotely normal childhood.)
Bree knows that she herself loves like a lightning bolt, the accelerating pace of electricity streaming through the stormclouds, crashing through water vapor at the speed of light until it destroys whatever it comes in contact with. That she loves hard and fast in a way that doesn’t know how to stop, that she dated Owen long after she stopped liking him like that—if she ever did in the first place—because that’s what girls do, right? They love like it’s a fucking marathon. They love boys who are cute and artsy and thoughtful, and they follow those boys all the way to the altar where they wear a white dress and they kick up their ankle behind their back and they lose themselves to the storm.
(Because Bree also knows, from far before she can let it be known, that she loves in a way—for a person—she's not supposed to. Love is supposed to be about girls in swishy skirts swooning in boys’ arms, slicing themselves open on their own bionics at the altar, carving away their chips from their spines in order to be normal.
To be normal is to be human, right? That’s been the case since the beginning of time.
Bree loves her swishy skirts, but she also loves the way that her muscles burn, and she loves the way that other girls smile. The way that they laugh and the sweet curve of their waists and chests and the way that their skin smells of stubbornness and sweat and chocolate, the sort of sweetness that they were never allowed before they left the basement.
Bree thinks she likes Owen, but nothing can compare to the way that it feels when dance partners switch at homecoming and the “sleep” portion of a sleepover begins and Caitlin rolls into her side and Caitlin's motor mouth is accidentally pressed against Bree's neck and shoulder and she feels Caitlin's hot breath against her skin and all Bree wants is for Caitlin to move her mouth up just a bit, for lips to meet lips, to be able to breathe that air—)
She knows that Douglas loves like a nuclear reaction, that he loves with claws dug into flesh, that he loves in the sort of way that you love something you never got to have, when you love the idea of something, and it’s yours, you want it to be yours, you need to have control because you had it stolen away and you’ll do anything to have it back, to prove that you were right, that you were the wronged one.
(Like father, like son. Like father, like daughter. You love in a way that bruises, in a way that condescends, in a way that scars, because you need control, you need the wind in your hair, you don’t know what love is without pain, and maybe the only way you know how to love is to dig your teeth and nails in so far that you taste blood, but that’s better than letting go, right?
At least when the blood runs red, there’s proof that there’s something human in you.)
She knows that Mr. Davenport says that he loves them, but that he never wanted to have kids, he doesn’t know how to have kids, that he says he saved them because they’re human, but he didn’t start treating them like humans until Leo came along.
(Douglas loves them like they’re his stolen experiments, half-child, half-experiment, and Mr. Davenport loves them the same. Like brother, like brother. Blood is stronger than water, and all that.)
She knows that Leo and Tasha do love them like they’re human. That Leo loves them like a bubbling spring, and Tasha loves them like a hearth, and that you can’t live without water or warmth.
(Bree didn’t realize until Leo and Tasha argued and fought with Mr. Davenport that they’re kids and they deserve a room and deserve school and deserve lives to call their own that there was anything really human about her.
Bree never had a stuffed animal to call her own until Tasha demanded that they have a birthday. Never had a hug until Leo flung his arms around her and told her that he had always wanted a sister and she realized how much she had been starving her entire life.)
She knows that Skylar loves like a bruise. That on Caldera, violence was how you showed affection, and that while Adam learns a bit, over time, how to pull his punches, how to soften his blows, how to be tender, Skylar Storm never did. Sure, she knows how to play board games, and how to enjoy movies, but she doesn’t know how to hug in a way that doesn't leave bruises.
She knows that Kaz and Oliver love like fire, the sort of thing that both warms and burns, melts and sears, and that one cannot exist without the other, that they've never learned how to exist without the other, and it would be so easy for that to blister and burn—
She watches as her brother slowly warms up beneath Kaz’s attention. As Oliver’s attention against Skylar burns like oil on riverwater.
It’s through watching Oliver and Skylar, who are terrible for each other, because Skylar’s never learned how to pull her punches and Oliver’s never learned how to accept no, that Bree realizes that maybe the romance movies that she built her entire life on living in that basement, growing up in those uniforms, were never good examples of what love should be like, all that stalking and the bending to be what the other person wants.
That when she catches sight of Chase's head leaning against Kaz's shoulder after they come back from a trip to Grandma Rose's, fingers casually entwined when no one is paying attention, she thinks that tenderness might be necessary. That you need someone who sees you not as an idea, but as a person. That that's how you can make a love that lasts without aching down to your very bones.
And when Bree heads back to the Island to teach, when she looks at all of the bionic soldiers in front of her, all of these people who are trying to figure out how to love in their own ways, she ends up nursing her wounds and bruises after a sparring match with S-1, who is now Taylor, a name she chose herself.
Taylor loves Bree like she’s more than just a designation, because Taylor that was once S-1 knows what it was like to be born a designation, a machine, a bionic creature, before she was ever a person.
Before Taylor, when people said love Bree thought it meant—this thing has to hurt. It was meant to.
But Taylor eclipses all that came before her. She is the moon in front of the burning, searing sun, bringing blessed dark and moonlight to a world starved of gentleness.
Because yes, Taylor loves in a way that bites, but she bites because Bree wants it, wants the way that Taylor's nails dig into hers when Krane comes back, wants the way that her veins sing when Taylor kisses her, when Taylor looks Bree dead in the eyes and says, “I'm staying here, with you."
Even when Bree takes off running. Even when Bree leaves Centium City and her brother and his boyfriend and goes on a road trip, wind in her hair, flying down the highway with a whoop in her lungs and a craving for trying new food and new areas of Taylor's skin in her stomach, Taylor is right there with her, because Chase can figure out what love means to him, what it means to not be lonely anymore, what it means to love without control, but she doesn't have to stick around to watch him do it.
She's going to run, going to fly, going to rocket through it all, but the human way, with a car and a train and a camping tent under the stars, and she's going to do it all with Taylor to stop her from going too fast and missing all of the things that matter.
Taylor loves like a car crash.
Taylor loves like the speeding train finally screeching to a stop. Like the light on the subway to the mainland lighting up when it’s your stop.
(When you’re finally home.)
Taylor loves in a way that makes Bree finally know what it's like to put the brakes on. To stop.
To finally stay.
You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way
So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, it felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I had a feeling that I belonged
-Tracy Chapman, Fast Car