maskormenace | 007. ( video. )

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007. ( video. )

( HI guys. This is Sarissa. Last time she was on the network she was wearing a ridiculous shirt and was even more ridiculously drunk, a shenanigan that involved yelling at people about art and being excessively poetic. It was a mess.

Now here is Sarissa, looking a lot more serious. Her hair is pulled back into a messy bun, is wearing a dark charcoal button down, and is entirely sober. )

Uh— hi. I’m Sarissa Theron. A few of you have already had the misfortune of speaking to me, in person or on here. Usually I’m pretty obnoxious, so—

( She frowns, and pauses. No, deflecting won’t work for this, and she rolls her shoulders to get herself to focus. )

Some of you might have heard by now that I was murdered. Twice, actually. The first time was just after Thanksgiving and the second time was at the tail end of that blackout we was all in a fluster about. I lied the first time around and said I didn’t know who killed me, because…

( Her gaze drops, for a moment. ) I was scared, mostly. Thought I was protecting the people I cared about, and I thought silence was the only way to do it, because the person I was protecting them from was - is - invulnerable. That kind of backfired, but. So— here I am.

His name is Sylar, but some of you might’ve met him as Gabriel Gray. He has a kind of… hunger, or an obsession, I guess, with collecting powers. That was why he killed me the first time around, so he could take a power of mine.

( She exhales, slowly, working herself up to the next bit. ) To be perfectly clear, he’s a fuckhead and he tried to hurt people I care about to make a game outta our lives. But I think— I think despite my visceral feelings about it, what’s more important than trying to take him apart is trying to get him help. Justice, obviously, he needs to take responsibility for what he did, but just— if you find him, and if you’re able to contain someone like him, don’t hurt him or... be shit, basically. Something happened, maybe, to make him how he is and vengeance and all that aren’t gonna help him get better, they’ll just give him more rage to run on. I figure enough of us around these parts are from heaps messed up worlds or have seen messed up shit to know what that’s like, in some way.

Anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t come out and say it sooner. If you have questions or that, I’ll answer them as good as I can.

( ooc: Sylar stuff is public knowledge as of the Majority report if you want your character to be a bit familiar with it. )

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It's a lot easier to remember all the shitty things, Sarissa.

[ barry would know; it's what had made him pull up his shoulders and try and make himself steel: impenetrable, immovable, unable to be hurt. but that's not the way you're supposed to live life. that's not the way nora allen wanted him to grow up and see the world, as one big ball of shittiness. ]

[ he weighs the pros and cons quickly of what he's about to say, and decides it's a pro. the flash shouldn't be giving a lot of his own personal information away, but he thinks he should. he's not obligated to by any means, but sometimes it's what helps people. sometimes that's how you save someone, not by acting heroically and endangering yourself, but by being open. ]

I'm who I am because of something that happened to me when I was younger. Something that goes beyond the definition of being absolutely shitty. And it sucks. Sometimes I think I deserved what happened, but I don't believe I did. Not really. No one deserves to die, and no one deserves to have their power taken away from them.

[ he's not talking about the superpowers they all have. he doesn't think he needs to specify that at all. ]

The day you let yourself actually believe that will be the shittiest thing you can ever do. You would've given up your power, and that's the one thing you have that no one can take away from you, even if this Gabriel tried to. You're the Muscle Woman, remember? You can lift cars up. I think you can lift yourself back up again if you tried.

Yep.

( Her voice sounds a little tight, because she's trying to press some control over it. She keeps trying to be stone instead of what she was before. Too impulsive and too emotional, but she's not really the type to do well as granite or marble. She can carve pieces off herself all she likes, or the world can try to sculpt her, but she's starting to wonder if she's even meant to be this rigid, or if there's be some fault in her that just means she winds up cracked instead of being a statue, or art, or something that makes sense. It's not like she's been trying it long, this firmness and rigidity, and not like she's even doing a good job. It'd just be nice to feel like it was doing something at all. Anything.

Maybe if she were better at being stone, the Muscle Woman thing wouldn't get a bit of a laugh out of her. )

'Course I can lift myself up. You haven't even seen me doing a salmon ladder. When I'm not screwing it up so I fall off, I'm bloody brilliant.

( It's a flimsy joke at best, but it's easy to highlight her vanity before addressing the issue properly. ) I don't have a whole lot of choice. My sisters need me. I can't— I can't fall apart again, and I know it pisses Sarah off when I get all serious about stuff.

( """"serious"""" read: depressed, martyrish, self-loathing. )

[ barry's attempts at picking himself up in the face of someone wanting him to be fairer to himself often leads with him running. he runs away by avoiding the topic, changing it, going quiet. he can see she's trying to lift herself up to reach a height he doesn't think is natural for her to try and ascend to. (but then again, he doesn't know her. he's only assuming, because he knows no one, not even the toughest of people, would be okay with dying twice.) ]

Everyone has a choice.

[ coming from that vibrating voice of the flash, barry feels like he's not being a hypocrite in some ways. he oftentimes doesn't feel like he has much of a choice. he has to keep himself confident, together, the spine of team flash, for without the spine the legs can't move. but he often uses his team as an excuse not to let himself crumble when he needs to. ]

It's what you decide to do with that choice that really matters. [ and he can't say his decision to keep thawne alive is a good one. he doesn't even know if the decision to kill him would've been better. ]

[ but what he does know: ] And I don't think Sarah gets pissed off when you get serious about things. I think she gets pissed off she can't help you.

( she doesn't stop the feed, but she isn't immediately able to reply. her elbows are propped on her knees and her hands are balled so tight into fists that it bleaches her knuckles, and she sits with her fists propping her head up at the temples. it'd be nice to be blase about this - to not care about electrocution and buzzsaws and chlorine gas. It'd be nice not to care about any of it and to be able to bounce back. easy breezy beautiful covergirl, and all that malarkey.

but she can't. sarissa feels a bit like she's running into a brick wall most hours of most days, (if not minutes, etc) but whether the fault lies in what happened or in herself, some shortcoming, it's hard to say. surely she should be able to do this? be okay? surely it was better than going to pieces and getting in fights and doing everything she normally does? )

Right now I'm struggling to figure out what my choices even are, mate.

( quiet and tired, but honest. she's not got the energy or the heart to be as flippant and casual and absurd as she might be, otherwise. ) And you're probably right. I mean, I reckon— I reckon with Sarah, she doesn't the bad to stick. Keep rolling, gather no moss, and the bad things can't keep up if you have enough momentum. You can demolish all the dark shit and it'll all be good. I think that's it, anyway. She's complicated.

Sarissa, I'm the fastest man alive. [ he almost laughs; god, it sounds so weird to say that aloud sometimes. in this context, it's definitely weird, since barry allen never admits to these emotional vulnerabilities. ] You can run as fast as you want, for as long as you want, but you eventually tire out. I do.

[ he'd run for over a decade from how lost he felt without mom, without anyone truly believing him about what happened that night in the living room outside of iris west. he doesn't quite know how to take any of the revelations he's since found in the last two years, so he's run from it, believing that's the best way of coping. ]

[ it isn't. barry will soon realise that. flashpoint is his alleged happy ending, but he can already see the cracks in it. ]

[ prepare yourself for a joeism. ]

You've got a choice right now. Do you let this define you and beat you down? Or do you rise up above it? I'd tell you what I think you're already doing, but sometimes you have to come to those conclusions yourself.

And eventually you run outta places to run to. I didn't... I didn't used to run. I used to try and face things. Thought I did, anyway. Somewhere along the line, but— I couldn't remember how. It was like I lost the guts of me, when I thought Georgia was gone. Like— without her I didn't have a way to stand up anymore. Less running, more like the ground fell away and all I could do was free fall. Does that make sense?

( she loves the joeism, though. it's a good ism. joe seems like a maker of good isms. )

I've been here almost a year. A year of letting things define me, and a long stretch before that. I wanna say it's the time to be changing things and having a bit of a shake up, but I reckon that might just about be the scariest thing I ever thought.

( There's a quiet laugh, and she lifts her head up off her knuckles. )

And I feel like a wanker for blathering all this shit at you, honestly.

Edited (html i s2g pls) 2017-02-12 09:46 (UTC)

[ barry shrugs his shoulder. ] It's okay. Sometimes you need someone to talk to. You shouldn't feel like a wanker.[ the word sounds so odd coming from him. barry's never been one for swearing much, and he's found himself cursing so much already. ]

It makes sense. [ he almost loses the vibration of his vocal chords, but the flash remains, barry doing the talking through that voice. or is it the flash? sometimes barry doesn't know where he begins and the flash ends, or if there's a beginning and ending at all. ] Change is scary, because you can't control it. I've been running my whole life. It's probably why I got these powers in the first place. [ he surmises, considering he'd been running from bullies long before mom had died. when she had, he'd been running toward something else. ]

You can stop falling. Anytime. Georgia might not be there to help you, but isn't she there, anyway? [ his voice pitches slightly at the end of his question. ]

[ very quickly does he mull over what he's thinking of saying next, and then decides to go for it. he's intent to keep the flash and barry separate, and has had an easier time doing it in flashpoint because there's been no call out for the flash. here? he's needed more than barry allen was, but the flash needs to remember who he is deep down. ] There's someone in my life who's really important to me. I never feel like I'm losing control when she's around. Whenever I run, it's to her, even when I don't realise it. Without her, there'd be no Flash. She's not here, but I know she is, because I carry her with me. And I know she'd want me to say that it's okay to lose your guts, because sometimes there's power in rediscovering them.

( It also just sounds weird and wrong from Americans, but she doesn't touch on that. She's too caught up in the bit about Georgia, about the person he's missing, and it makes her chest ache, like she's been trying to pry open her ribcage to get at something that she knows won't be there once it cracks open. )

She's there all the time. Every bleedin' minute, I'm pretty sure. Feels like I can't breathe for how much room she takes up, sometimes.

( Sarissa's voice is very quiet when she says that. It's a hard thing, to be so painfully in love with someone who is so absent, and who you don't know where things stand with. When she first got here, she wouldn't even call her Georgia, just Satan, the worst, a traitor that tore everything apart, took to Sarissa's life like a wrecking ball. None of that was true, though, and it definitely wasn't fair. At least, she didn't know if it was true, and it probably wasn't fair. )

She sounds like a good sort. I'd ask her name, but I figure - secret identity stuff, yeah? What's she like?

( Softly, she asks: )
And um, what happened? To make you get the powers? Or was it like... some weird puberty thing, the rest of us got crappy skin and growth spurts, and you got super speed?

( A way out. A way to avoid talking about the hard stuff, if he doesn't wanna. Seems fair, after how he's trying to help her. )

[ he laughs. ] Nothing cool like that. This really cool scientist was turning on his particle accelerator for the first time. It exploded, and it affected a good portion of the city. I got struck by lightning when it did, and ... I woke up super fast.

[ "this really cool scientist" happened to be his arch nemesis dressed in the skin of someone barry had admired greatly ever since he understood what star labs was. he should probably never speak of harrison wells of earth-1 in such a kind way, but harrison wells of earth-1 had lived once. in another timeline, he had lived, and barry thinks wells' doppelgänger deserves some respect, even if the deeds done were of a man who latched onto his legacy to create another one. ]

[ it's too convoluted to share with someone else, so barry doesn't. he also doesn't share how he thinks he may have messed everything up by going back in time and saving his mom. it has to mean something if he looks at iris west in this new timeline and feels just as calm and at home as he was in her presence and friendship in the before. ]

[ his voice is warm, and it sounds like he's smiling, ] She's ... the reason why I'm the Flash. I've never been able to really describe her.

That actually sounds much cooler than super powered puberty. ( And, well. A pause. ) Messed up, but. And heaps lonely. Least here, everyone else knew about the weird shit going on. They had a taste of it. How many people are involved with lightning and particle accelerators? Not many, I'd guess.

( Still, she laughs quietly, for all the solemnity. )

So, I met Georgia when I got thrown through a bar window. Literally just kinda rolled over to her. I'm really glad I never tried to describe her then, because it just would've been... some cliche line, y'know? I get what you mean, about not knowing how to describe your— her. Nothing I say could ever do Georgia justice, but I can describe how she makes me feel. And maybe that's more important than describing her to anyone, or trying to make up some portrait for other people. Just remember how she makes you feel, and hold onto it. Y'know?

[ he cracks a smile. he suspects if he talks about iris, he'll end up saying her name — and though talking about iris west is something he enjoys doing very much, he's keeping in the back of his mind that he doesn't know her anymore. the iris west he loves doesn't exist, because he changed one small factor in his life that had inevitably modified hers. ]

[ it's a thought he has never given much oxygen to. he's living the dream, and he's going to ask her out — and start all over again. he doesn't tell sarissa that iris hadn't been enough for him to stay put on that porch. ]

You know, for someone who's got a lot of strength and gets thrown out of bar windows, you're kind of gooey on the inside. I promise I won't tell anyone.

( Despite herself, Sarissa laughs quietly. )

World's worst kept secret, Snaps. I'm about as tough as a roll of spun sugar. Equally delicious, slightly less likely to dissolve in water.

( Sarissa sniffs a little bit, and rubs the tear away with the heel of her hand and then her forearm, even though he can't see. )

I'm a nightmare. Some gooey things turn out to be hot tar, not marshmallow.

[ his smile warms his voice as he jokes, ] Yeah, well — you'll only turn out to be hot tar if you move pretty fast. And I've seen you move. You're actually kind of slow ...

[ in comparison to him, a fighter jet would still be slow. it's a joke he likes to make, though. it's not to point out his abilities, but to make fun — as it's always meant to be. the flash doesn't quite have it in him to be anything but a soft marshmallow, even when he's cooking at hard, fast speeds. ]

Bit too slow for a nightmare. Aren't those supposed to creep up on you at flash-speeds? I think you're going to have to work on that.

Hey, some things are just meant to be. I have to be slow so people can see me better. Face this good looking just has to be admired, yeah?

( It's a bit of a desperate attempt to scramble back on top of the horse, to make herself feel better. Jokers from cradle to grave and then grave again and then beyond. Seemed a bit fucked up, but Sarissa's been used to accepting "a bit fucked up" as her default state of being. )

Maybe I'm like slow-mo tar. Like The Blob. "It'll eat you alive," and all that.

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007. ( video. )

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