Inhale and exhale through her nose. Flex her fists again, stretch the fingers—hasn't actually wrapped them, should've, but didn't, and by now the sting in her battered knuckles is part of the relief.
"She came up to me in the bar." Punch. "I-I was kinda being pissy with someone, whatever, wasn't like I was gonna fucking hit anyone—" Punch. "Started fucking— telling me off. Apparently—" a bitter huff of empty laughter, matched by another hard punch, "—I already have a fucking reputation."
How? Has she really made that much of a fucking mess, already? A few sharp comments and glares, bumping into people, drinking a lot, that's all it takes? She's that fucking poisonous?
"Then we got into the stupid fucking CT shit and she kept tryna fucking psychoanalyse me like— like you know fucking who." Punch. "And then she started talking about the fucking demons and I don't care. I don't fucking care about the fucking demons. And she—"
This is where she gets stuck again, frustrated noise in the back of her throat as she launches another punch.
Pissy— okay, that's normal— told her off, not exactly surprising— reputation? That can't be right. It isn't like South's running a three-part marathon around town, sticking her head through every door. It had taken enough coaxing to get her into Carolina's yard. What has she done, other than drink hideous amounts of alcohol in public and flash mean-eyes at random strangers? She nods, listens, chews the story in parts, trying to make sense of it.
Like you know fucking who. A laugh, all contempt. Oh, yes. She knows exactly who.
South continues, and Carolina feels herself wind tight. It doesn't make any sense. Her own first meeting with Valdis had been mostly innocuous— a job offer she had shrugged off. Carolina is the one who had actively participated in Connie's death. If anyone had arrived as a threat, it would be her. Not South. South, whose only real crime toward CT, since her arrival, had been a nasty phone call. So, what's the deal? What the fuck?
South's head shakes sharply. No. Not threats. Threats don't mean a damn thing to her. Threats are a language she can understand and speak fluently.
"She asked why I don't care. Told her I'd had worse," she answers, rolling her shoulders before another strike. She still believes that. Nothing some stupid demons can do to her can hurt worse than the things she's brought upon herself, than the inevitable severing of the connective tissue tying her and her brother together the moment the truth comes out. "And then—"
Another bitter sound. It's echoed by another thump of fists against sand.
"—she starts going on about losing the only person she's ever loved and how she's not fucking being messy about it. Like I'm so fucking beneath her for— for having fucking emotions, I fucking guess? But apparently, I can get away with that. Unlike her, or whatever. I don't fucking know."
What the fuck does that mean? What the fuck was any of that? Since when has she ever fucking gotten away with anything when it comes to her anger, when it comes to all the ugly, unpalatable emotions no one ever wants to see?
"She shouldn't expect you to process things the same way she does. Putting that onto a stranger is—" she makes an aborted, disbelieving noise between punches, "—it doesn't make any sense. When have you ever gotten away with anything? She wouldn't know if you did or didn't. She doesn't know you."
Never in the Program, that's for goddamn sure. Not once.
"What did she expect you to say? I'm fine now, thanks, I'll put the drink down and do something productive with my time? Of course you're angry. No one wants to hear 'get over it' from someone they don't know."
The way that something akin to relief washes over South is tangible—in the way the line of her shoulders shifts, in the way her expression melts to something between surprise and the hurt frustration that has dominated it since Carolina came outside (that has dominated it for... a lot of the last few weeks, in some form or another), in the way she stalls her assault of the bag.
"No, yeah, that's—" (She's not telling her she's crazy and overreacting.) "That's it, right, like, where the fuck does she get off saying that shit to me? She doesn't— she doesn't fucking know me, she doesn't know shit about me, she doesn't know what— what I did. How that fucking feels."
For a moment, she seems paradoxically small, the way the guilt bears down upon her shoulders and makes her want to shrink into the ground. Then she shakes it off, stands tall, and blows hair out of her face before throwing another punch, rolling into a set.
"...I've always been the bad twin," she says, in a pause, catching her breath between words. "Y'know? Always. Ever since we were fucking kids. North got born with the better personality and no one ever fucking let me forget it. Too angry. Too— too fucking everything, I don't fucking know, I'd cry and I could practically fucking hear dad roll his fucking eyes."
Usually hates talking about home, their childhood. Doesn't know why it's spilling out like this. Doesn't bite it down, either.
She's surprised when South gives these small bits of information. Glimpses into a tumultuous, unfair childhood in which she'd stood in the shadow of a twin boy assumedly more kind, more patient, easier on the nerves than she ever was. It's progress. She won't call it progress, for fear of chasing South away like a terrified animal, but it is.
"An easier personality doesn't always mean a better personality," she says. "But I understand what you mean. People don't like difficult. They don't like anger and they don't like getting their hands messy when they don't want to." Thump, thump, thump. South pants on the opposite side of the bag. Carolina rolls her shoulder, adjusts her own stance. "It sounds hard. Being compared like that all the time. It's not like you can just change how you feel things. Some people experience intense emotions— that's just the way it is. It doesn't make you better or worse, on principle."
What you do with those emotions is a different story for a different day.
South snorts, like it's the funniest question she's ever heard. "Ha. No. Kinda started taking interest when I first came out, was trying out girly stuff to see if it fuckin' fit, but that stopped pretty fuckin' quick after I figured it wasn't for me."
It's not like they ever disrespected her as their daughter—no, they accepted that without any targeted fuss. Sighed and grumbled about the extra costs, but she's sure they'd have done the same if she'd gone and gotten ill or something. But that fleeting interest in actually being involved with her life, only for it to drift away when she realised she didn't have the kind of daughter that wanted to dress up and do makeup...
Well, that stung more than if she'd never bothered to care at all.
Between thoughts, she keeps up her rhythm. Steadier, now. Grounding effect working. Keeping her in the moment, helping clear her head so she can find the words at all.
"Everyone always wanted me to be more like him. Some of 'em would say it to my face." Fuck you, fifth grade teacher. You weren't the last but you sure were the first. "I-I couldn't do anything right. I tried. I fucking tried to be— good enough, I don't know, but I couldn't. I'm not that fucking person. I can't switch this off. I can't—"
Be what everyone wants her to be, instead of the mess that they actually see. The difficult one. The problem they resent having to solve.
She breathes out hard through her nose. Falls back into rhythm.
"...North was all I had. He— he's always had my back."
And she turned on him. Like the fucking monster he spent so long trying to convince the world she wasn't. All that effort and, in the end, he was the one that was wrong.
She thinks, in some far-back corner of her mind, about her mother. Be like her; a mantra she's heard more times than she has bones in her body— and, for the most part, Carolina succeeded, although not unscathed. Annoyed, in her teen years, any time her school's military-coupled administration had referred to her as little McCallister. You look just like her—move just like her— if I hadn't known any better, I'd think she came back to life, chipped off a couple years and gone for a second GED. Until one day, between classes, she took a pair of craft scissors to the hair that was so very like her mother's. Angry— fucking furious— then sick with guilt when she eventually made it back to her dorm.
It's torture, being crammed into a can that isn't yours— no matter if you fit or if parts of you squish out like ground beef clenched in a fist.
"It's not fair," she says matter of factly, like reciting the sum of two plus two. "Of course it didn't work. You aren't him, and he isn't you. And, yeah, that's obvious, but when you've got people telling you for years that you should be like him, I think part of you forgets it can't actually happen. Or maybe it's just frustrating. Like a game you can't win, or some puzzle you can't solve, because you don't have all the pieces, but people keep pressuring you to do it anyway. And that doesn't make you inadequate, you're just not him."
A flat, full-knuckled punch. The bag jerks back against her hands.
The laugh that rings out from the other side of the bag is bitter, and hysteric, and if you didn't know better, you could almost make the mistake of thinking it were a little wet. South's head thuds against the bag, forehead to rough fabric coarse with sand. Her shoulders rise and fall with the force of tidal waves. Another surge of emotion she can't identify, loud and overwhelming, dragging her under with its weight.
"You are—" she swallows, breathes, keeps it together, "—one of the only fucking people to think so."
North, of course. Connie, she thought once. Maybe there's been others, friends that have come and gone that saw her for her, but did anyone else ever really understand the feeling in the first place? When explaining always felt impossible, like everyone would call her ridiculous for feeling this way, for wanting to be treated as herself?
(In mere days, she will feel somehow worse than she ever did. She will hear her brother tell her just how much her push for independence has hurt him. How it feels won't be what he means, and yet the guilt will curl fresh beneath her skin, failing to truly understand.)
The way Carolina talks is too full of understanding to mean nothing, to imply nothing about herself, but to process that right now is more than South can manage.
Inhale, exhale. Breathe until she no longer feels like another bomb about to go off. The feeling isn't— bad, she doesn't think, slowly coming into focus as the rush of reassurance she's not used to finding anywhere but from North, but it's a lot.
"...thanks." God, she sounds stupid. But what the fuck else can she say?
I get it, says every facet of her posture, her expression, the weight of her words and a sort of stoic, knowing smile that cracks the sandstone of her face. She'll tell that story another day. Another month. Never, maybe, if she can help it. (It's getting harder to keep these things in. Harder with no war to distract her, no father's favor to win, no fierce competition.)
"I know you aren't going to like this, and I promise I won't make it into a thing, but I think I should talk to her. Valdis. Someone needs to set the record straight. You aren't a threat, and you shouldn't be treated like one."
Her head lifts just far enough that she can thunk it right back against the bag. "Ugh."
She's right: South doesn't like it. Isn't it her own battle to fight, her own problem to deal with? But god, the idea of trying to defend herself again, it makes her squirm. Feel like some disgusting thing wriggling in the dirt.
(And maybe on some level the idea someone else even wants to defend her is... well, it's kind of nice. Beneath the mortification and fear.)
"Will that really fuckin' help anything?" She already knows what Carolina's going to answer, but she has to whine a little anyway.
Poor South's forehead hits the sandbag like a kid who's just dropped their ice cream off the top of a bridge, bought a new one and dropped it again. Carolina softens imperceptibly. Sympathizes with how difficult it is to defend yourself when you can barely find the right words to explain how you feel; harder when that person's already gone and pissed you off once. She considers patting her on the shoulder. Doesn't. But the sentiment is there.
"Maybe. Maybe not. It's about setting a boundary. I have good report with her, and I didn't get any of this when I first showed up, and I was arguably more of a threat than you, so it's extra bullshit. She should know better." A beat. "It'll be fine. Yeah?"
It's probably fucked up that a part of her bristles at the idea of being less of a threat than Carolina, when that's what she wants in this situation, isn't it?
She keeps that on the inside and just sighs heavily, like accepting this is a reasonable course of action takes genuine effort (because it does). "Yeah. Sure. But if it fuckin' backfires, I've earned an 'I told you so'. Maybe two."
"That's fine." She shrugs. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. I'm going back inside. If you want coffee or water or something, the door's open." She turns on her heel, stops and makes a snappy gesture at the branch and rope suspending the bag in air. "Don't snap that. And wrap your hands, for god's sake."
"Ugh, fine," South groans, overdramatic and playing it up a bit. Steps away, begrudgingly, just long enough to find some bandages to wrap her hands with before she gets back to it.
Feels... a little better, now, if still raw around the edges in a way that's sure to leave her bitching to North when she makes it home. Bolstered, but still shaken. But still. Better.
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no subject
Date: 2025-12-06 07:59 pm (UTC)Inhale and exhale through her nose. Flex her fists again, stretch the fingers—hasn't actually wrapped them, should've, but didn't, and by now the sting in her battered knuckles is part of the relief.
"She came up to me in the bar." Punch. "I-I was kinda being pissy with someone, whatever, wasn't like I was gonna fucking hit anyone—" Punch. "Started fucking— telling me off. Apparently—" a bitter huff of empty laughter, matched by another hard punch, "—I already have a fucking reputation."
How? Has she really made that much of a fucking mess, already? A few sharp comments and glares, bumping into people, drinking a lot, that's all it takes? She's that fucking poisonous?
"Then we got into the stupid fucking CT shit and she kept tryna fucking psychoanalyse me like— like you know fucking who." Punch. "And then she started talking about the fucking demons and I don't care. I don't fucking care about the fucking demons. And she—"
This is where she gets stuck again, frustrated noise in the back of her throat as she launches another punch.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-06 08:32 pm (UTC)Pissy— okay, that's normal— told her off, not exactly surprising— reputation? That can't be right. It isn't like South's running a three-part marathon around town, sticking her head through every door. It had taken enough coaxing to get her into Carolina's yard. What has she done, other than drink hideous amounts of alcohol in public and flash mean-eyes at random strangers? She nods, listens, chews the story in parts, trying to make sense of it.
Like you know fucking who. A laugh, all contempt. Oh, yes. She knows exactly who.
South continues, and Carolina feels herself wind tight. It doesn't make any sense. Her own first meeting with Valdis had been mostly innocuous— a job offer she had shrugged off. Carolina is the one who had actively participated in Connie's death. If anyone had arrived as a threat, it would be her. Not South. South, whose only real crime toward CT, since her arrival, had been a nasty phone call. So, what's the deal? What the fuck?
"Did she threaten you?"
no subject
Date: 2025-12-06 08:47 pm (UTC)South's head shakes sharply. No. Not threats. Threats don't mean a damn thing to her. Threats are a language she can understand and speak fluently.
"She asked why I don't care. Told her I'd had worse," she answers, rolling her shoulders before another strike. She still believes that. Nothing some stupid demons can do to her can hurt worse than the things she's brought upon herself, than the inevitable severing of the connective tissue tying her and her brother together the moment the truth comes out. "And then—"
Another bitter sound. It's echoed by another thump of fists against sand.
"—she starts going on about losing the only person she's ever loved and how she's not fucking being messy about it. Like I'm so fucking beneath her for— for having fucking emotions, I fucking guess? But apparently, I can get away with that. Unlike her, or whatever. I don't fucking know."
What the fuck does that mean? What the fuck was any of that? Since when has she ever fucking gotten away with anything when it comes to her anger, when it comes to all the ugly, unpalatable emotions no one ever wants to see?
no subject
Date: 2025-12-07 01:28 am (UTC)"She shouldn't expect you to process things the same way she does. Putting that onto a stranger is—" she makes an aborted, disbelieving noise between punches, "—it doesn't make any sense. When have you ever gotten away with anything? She wouldn't know if you did or didn't. She doesn't know you."
Never in the Program, that's for goddamn sure. Not once.
"What did she expect you to say? I'm fine now, thanks, I'll put the drink down and do something productive with my time? Of course you're angry. No one wants to hear 'get over it' from someone they don't know."
Carolina waves her hand, "Sorry, keep going. I'm listening. Just— Jesus."
no subject
Date: 2025-12-07 02:01 am (UTC)The way that something akin to relief washes over South is tangible—in the way the line of her shoulders shifts, in the way her expression melts to something between surprise and the hurt frustration that has dominated it since Carolina came outside (that has dominated it for... a lot of the last few weeks, in some form or another), in the way she stalls her assault of the bag.
"No, yeah, that's—" (She's not telling her she's crazy and overreacting.) "That's it, right, like, where the fuck does she get off saying that shit to me? She doesn't— she doesn't fucking know me, she doesn't know shit about me, she doesn't know what— what I did. How that fucking feels."
For a moment, she seems paradoxically small, the way the guilt bears down upon her shoulders and makes her want to shrink into the ground. Then she shakes it off, stands tall, and blows hair out of her face before throwing another punch, rolling into a set.
"...I've always been the bad twin," she says, in a pause, catching her breath between words. "Y'know? Always. Ever since we were fucking kids. North got born with the better personality and no one ever fucking let me forget it. Too angry. Too— too fucking everything, I don't fucking know, I'd cry and I could practically fucking hear dad roll his fucking eyes."
Usually hates talking about home, their childhood. Doesn't know why it's spilling out like this. Doesn't bite it down, either.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 03:08 pm (UTC)She's surprised when South gives these small bits of information. Glimpses into a tumultuous, unfair childhood in which she'd stood in the shadow of a twin boy assumedly more kind, more patient, easier on the nerves than she ever was. It's progress. She won't call it progress, for fear of chasing South away like a terrified animal, but it is.
"An easier personality doesn't always mean a better personality," she says. "But I understand what you mean. People don't like difficult. They don't like anger and they don't like getting their hands messy when they don't want to." Thump, thump, thump. South pants on the opposite side of the bag. Carolina rolls her shoulder, adjusts her own stance. "It sounds hard. Being compared like that all the time. It's not like you can just change how you feel things. Some people experience intense emotions— that's just the way it is. It doesn't make you better or worse, on principle."
What you do with those emotions is a different story for a different day.
"Was your mom any better?"
Nudging gently. An invitation to share more.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 03:43 pm (UTC)South snorts, like it's the funniest question she's ever heard. "Ha. No. Kinda started taking interest when I first came out, was trying out girly stuff to see if it fuckin' fit, but that stopped pretty fuckin' quick after I figured it wasn't for me."
It's not like they ever disrespected her as their daughter—no, they accepted that without any targeted fuss. Sighed and grumbled about the extra costs, but she's sure they'd have done the same if she'd gone and gotten ill or something. But that fleeting interest in actually being involved with her life, only for it to drift away when she realised she didn't have the kind of daughter that wanted to dress up and do makeup...
Well, that stung more than if she'd never bothered to care at all.
Between thoughts, she keeps up her rhythm. Steadier, now. Grounding effect working. Keeping her in the moment, helping clear her head so she can find the words at all.
"Everyone always wanted me to be more like him. Some of 'em would say it to my face." Fuck you, fifth grade teacher. You weren't the last but you sure were the first. "I-I couldn't do anything right. I tried. I fucking tried to be— good enough, I don't know, but I couldn't. I'm not that fucking person. I can't switch this off. I can't—"
Be what everyone wants her to be, instead of the mess that they actually see. The difficult one. The problem they resent having to solve.
She breathes out hard through her nose. Falls back into rhythm.
"...North was all I had. He— he's always had my back."
And she turned on him. Like the fucking monster he spent so long trying to convince the world she wasn't. All that effort and, in the end, he was the one that was wrong.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 08:05 pm (UTC)She thinks, in some far-back corner of her mind, about her mother. Be like her; a mantra she's heard more times than she has bones in her body— and, for the most part, Carolina succeeded, although not unscathed. Annoyed, in her teen years, any time her school's military-coupled administration had referred to her as little McCallister. You look just like her—move just like her— if I hadn't known any better, I'd think she came back to life, chipped off a couple years and gone for a second GED. Until one day, between classes, she took a pair of craft scissors to the hair that was so very like her mother's. Angry— fucking furious— then sick with guilt when she eventually made it back to her dorm.
It's torture, being crammed into a can that isn't yours— no matter if you fit or if parts of you squish out like ground beef clenched in a fist.
"It's not fair," she says matter of factly, like reciting the sum of two plus two. "Of course it didn't work. You aren't him, and he isn't you. And, yeah, that's obvious, but when you've got people telling you for years that you should be like him, I think part of you forgets it can't actually happen. Or maybe it's just frustrating. Like a game you can't win, or some puzzle you can't solve, because you don't have all the pieces, but people keep pressuring you to do it anyway. And that doesn't make you inadequate, you're just not him."
A flat, full-knuckled punch. The bag jerks back against her hands.
"You're you. They should have let you be you."
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 08:34 pm (UTC)The laugh that rings out from the other side of the bag is bitter, and hysteric, and if you didn't know better, you could almost make the mistake of thinking it were a little wet. South's head thuds against the bag, forehead to rough fabric coarse with sand. Her shoulders rise and fall with the force of tidal waves. Another surge of emotion she can't identify, loud and overwhelming, dragging her under with its weight.
"You are—" she swallows, breathes, keeps it together, "—one of the only fucking people to think so."
North, of course. Connie, she thought once. Maybe there's been others, friends that have come and gone that saw her for her, but did anyone else ever really understand the feeling in the first place? When explaining always felt impossible, like everyone would call her ridiculous for feeling this way, for wanting to be treated as herself?
(In mere days, she will feel somehow worse than she ever did. She will hear her brother tell her just how much her push for independence has hurt him. How it feels won't be what he means, and yet the guilt will curl fresh beneath her skin, failing to truly understand.)
The way Carolina talks is too full of understanding to mean nothing, to imply nothing about herself, but to process that right now is more than South can manage.
Inhale, exhale. Breathe until she no longer feels like another bomb about to go off. The feeling isn't— bad, she doesn't think, slowly coming into focus as the rush of reassurance she's not used to finding anywhere but from North, but it's a lot.
"...thanks." God, she sounds stupid. But what the fuck else can she say?
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 08:57 pm (UTC)"Sure."
I get it, says every facet of her posture, her expression, the weight of her words and a sort of stoic, knowing smile that cracks the sandstone of her face. She'll tell that story another day. Another month. Never, maybe, if she can help it. (It's getting harder to keep these things in. Harder with no war to distract her, no father's favor to win, no fierce competition.)
"I know you aren't going to like this, and I promise I won't make it into a thing, but I think I should talk to her. Valdis. Someone needs to set the record straight. You aren't a threat, and you shouldn't be treated like one."
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 09:36 pm (UTC)Her head lifts just far enough that she can thunk it right back against the bag. "Ugh."
She's right: South doesn't like it. Isn't it her own battle to fight, her own problem to deal with? But god, the idea of trying to defend herself again, it makes her squirm. Feel like some disgusting thing wriggling in the dirt.
(And maybe on some level the idea someone else even wants to defend her is... well, it's kind of nice. Beneath the mortification and fear.)
"Will that really fuckin' help anything?" She already knows what Carolina's going to answer, but she has to whine a little anyway.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-10 02:24 pm (UTC)Poor South's forehead hits the sandbag like a kid who's just dropped their ice cream off the top of a bridge, bought a new one and dropped it again. Carolina softens imperceptibly. Sympathizes with how difficult it is to defend yourself when you can barely find the right words to explain how you feel; harder when that person's already gone and pissed you off once. She considers patting her on the shoulder. Doesn't. But the sentiment is there.
"Maybe. Maybe not. It's about setting a boundary. I have good report with her, and I didn't get any of this when I first showed up, and I was arguably more of a threat than you, so it's extra bullshit. She should know better." A beat. "It'll be fine. Yeah?"
no subject
Date: 2025-12-10 08:14 pm (UTC)It's probably fucked up that a part of her bristles at the idea of being less of a threat than Carolina, when that's what she wants in this situation, isn't it?
She keeps that on the inside and just sighs heavily, like accepting this is a reasonable course of action takes genuine effort (because it does). "Yeah. Sure. But if it fuckin' backfires, I've earned an 'I told you so'. Maybe two."
Wrap?
Date: 2025-12-10 08:38 pm (UTC)"That's fine." She shrugs. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. I'm going back inside. If you want coffee or water or something, the door's open." She turns on her heel, stops and makes a snappy gesture at the branch and rope suspending the bag in air. "Don't snap that. And wrap your hands, for god's sake."
And back up onto the porch she goes.
wrap!
Date: 2025-12-10 09:58 pm (UTC)"Ugh, fine," South groans, overdramatic and playing it up a bit. Steps away, begrudgingly, just long enough to find some bandages to wrap her hands with before she gets back to it.
Feels... a little better, now, if still raw around the edges in a way that's sure to leave her bitching to North when she makes it home. Bolstered, but still shaken. But still. Better.
(She's not sure if she'll ever get used to this.)