Calypso drowned out the scene around her. Reconciliation between Sal and her parents, at the very least the first step in the arduous process. Sal flinched and then confirmed to Artemis that she wasn’t ready for an embrace yet, when she began approaching her. But ultimately, she and Bradley led their daughter outside through the back.
The skeletal monster girl focused on her intertwined claws. Poured every last bit of her all-consuming anxiety into shifting them back, to the point she found herself pressing sweaty palm to sweaty palm. Visibly trembling as it also took this energy to keep her from just… Emotionally shutting down.
It was scary. Calypso genuinely felt the change she somehow—despite all odds—managed to fashion within herself. She realized that she could feel a lot more than she realized, she didn’t have to pose or command herself internally to act human as much anymore.
There was actual light buried deep within. But Calypso could also feel just how minuscule it all was, despite months of “work”.
Any massive hit could send her straight back to zero. And there was nothing heavier than the relationship between her and her mother.
Now she has to face her, as a monster that broke her sanity in the first place.
She wished that she could swallow her heart back into place, but her mouth dried so quickly that she only tasted iron. She wished that she could cry, but she was physically tapped.
Maybe the snapback was going to happen much sooner, than later.
“Calypso. Please.”
It was Moses’ assured, steady voice that Calypso realized that she was cutting into herself again. The tips of her claws dug into her still-human-enough knuckles.
“Remember that emotion caused you to transform like this, to begin with. This… I understand that this is uncomfortable. I’m not asking you—or testing you to become a master, some saint of our practices. What I am pleading to you right now… Don’t end up like a broken woman like I.”
That instantly caused Calypso to glance up at her professor. Hoisting the door for herself on her own, by wedging her chair between it and the frame.
“Trust me when I say—my teachings to you weren’t some diabolical, long-term plan. I-I genuinely…Want you to have the resources I lacked. The advice that can’t apply to me anymore, because I have burnt my bridges or had them forcefully destroyed--t-taken from me. I tried being smart… But still ended up the fool.”
There was an errant, but nevertheless, built-up sniffle, that escaped the sullen woman’s façade.
“Please, Calypso… It’s not a sin to be afraid. Or sad. To feel anything—despite its reach unescapable or a needless prison of our own making… Stew—accept that you’re not okay right now. And let that process pass right through you.”
The woman nodded to herself. Calypso couldn’t exactly pin down why, as she watched her begin to exit.
“I’ll be right here. In general, mind.”
It was just Calypso felt in this empty home. Just left with her now unbound thoughts.
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This was a girl that was painfully aware of how still she could be. She noticed, and felt the stares of passersby, wondering how she managed to be such a statue at points, so lifeless. So, when she felt herself physically loosen, found herself melting due to her innermost walls in the process of caving in… Her eyesight began to blur as well. Sitting there welling up, for what felt like lifetimes.
She couldn’t take in the fact that her human skin slowly but surely took back her dainty fingers, after some point.
The sudden slam of the door was unmistakable.
Calypso turned so fast, causing her to blink the excess water clouding her sight, that she caught the stray tears being flung away. They were still crimson, meaning that her eyes were still twisted with malice, pitch dark with only amber light shining through.
What must’ve been such a terrible sight, for her mother.
Penelope Grimes stood there, letting her bags hit the floor as she stood there, slack… Her face beginning to crumble into unraveling sadness.
Calypso couldn’t control her simpering pants, as she instantly stood up. Naturally, her mother froze on the spot.
She couldn’t help it. Calypso immediately shrunk in her spot in turn. Regressing back immediately, right after finally letting it all go.
“no… No!”
Calypso’s regression was broken. She watched something she never thought possible.
Anger. Light. Fire, behind her mother’s eyes.
Penelope gritted her teeth and balled her fists as she crumpled the ends of her sweat jacket into her palms.
“No no no! This—this is why all of this is my fault…! Because I didn’t—I wasn’t—I’M SO GODDAMN WEAK!”
Nothing but confusion and fear was etched on Calypso’s face. She couldn’t help but raise her palms outward towards her mother, trembling on the spot trying to keep her tears from blinding her.
Penelope clutched at her head, “I was never made for any of this—I just never had it in me! This is why Dallas was—why his death was the worst thing that happened to us! He was strong, he always knew what to do while I just rotted like the pa-pathetic corpse I am!”
Soon the worn, disheveled woman put her hands on her face. Despite very potent sobs, her already meek voice muffled against her palms, and her slurred speech… Calypso knew exactly what she said.
“It’s all my fault… Every… Single… Thing… I’m sorry, baby. It should’ve been me. I should’ve—”
Calypso just wept.
She wept, ran straight toward her broken mother, and embraced her like a child would.
“Don’t you dare think that!” Calypso was practically screaming. A level that she never thought she could. It hurt her throat, but the idea of what her mother was proposing did so more.
Calypso simply held on, “I barely survived with father—I-I never truly did! It was that—it was that-t-th-that started this entire mess in the first place! I gave up!”
The daughter moved to put her hands on her mother’s shoulders. Staring deep into her trembling eyes… And despite the sinister gaze looking back, never less sported sadness, empathy, and care.
“Y-you’re not wrong—I-I have resented you, for being so… Defeated. But that was only because I was more like you than I could ever admit—I just had su-such a self-important… Ego to it all. Acting like—some bitter loser, because that was the only way…”
Calypso gripped her mother’s small shoulders, watching her become more undone by each word. But Calypso had to keep on.
“Had it been… You… On that day… Oh god… It would’ve been the same, damn problem—just in a different way. I couldn’t live up to him as much as you could. And the idea of me hating him as I did you—still—i-it’s still the same sense of emptiness... Nh—en—In the end...”
She was so tired, the monster girl.
Her grip lessened, her voice became so shot, one could hear slight, haggard breaths in the interim between the recovery of blubbering. And like years before, with no societal or personal pressure against her, simply let her head rest against her mother’s shoulder. Letting the tears cascade down her flushed cheeks.
“Enough of death… I’m su-sick of it all… Let’s just live. Not just for him, or anyone that’s o-outside of us… But for us useless, defeated nothings. Let’s give up trying to please a universe that’s clearly fucked up, Mother. Before it’s too late for the both of us.”
Penelope huffed something between relief and despair. Either sense, a weight was forcefully removed from that woman’s chest.
“You were always so smart…” Penelope embraced her dear child. “So much smarter than any of us…”