Work Text:
What are you?
Oh.
You are a rehearsed speech and picked-ragged cuticles and breath caught in your chest when they ask
“Do you know your ID tag number?”
It’s not a fair question.
528M32 is Miriam Johnson and her mother is an alcoholic. She is not self-aware. 324B21 is Cosima Niehaus and she lives on a boat. She is not self-aware. 903V18 is Alison Hendrix and she is not self-aware. They have no idea.
You are not like them.
You are not like them.
You are not like them.
You are
779H41 is the answer you give them because it’s the answer they want. They send you away and you know that it’s so they can talk about you. About how impressive you are.
But no one tells you that you are impressive. Not to you directly. No one praises you. No one tells you that you said everything exactly right.
You said everything exactly right.
You are a tantrum in your bedroom. You are smashing glass and tearing pages and throwing your body against the wall. You are screaming into the floor until your throat burns. You are wrists and knees slamming into anything within reach.
No one stops you. No one yells at you or crouches beside you or rubs your back until you aren’t breathing only in small angry gulps. You are sure that you fall asleep on the floor but you wake up in bed, in a version of your room that is clean and untouched. This happens every time. One morning you swing your feet to the floor and slice your heel on a piece of glass. It’s the only time that you are certain that your destruction was outside of your head. You are learning bitterness. You are learning.
No one mentions anything, but you know it has been documented. You wonder when you will know exactly what they say about you and what they say it means.
You are drinking your first martini at eleven years old. They pass it to you because it’s easier than talking to you. You are a tiny thing in a tailored blazer who never flinches despite being elbow height to everyone else in the room. And that makes people nervous. They don’t know how to talk to you. They just look at you with expectation. They observe.
The martini tastes sterile. It makes you feel clean.
You drink two. They watch you do it.
Eventually, a board member breaks away from his peers and tries to engage. You have read up on him. He has a daughter at home. You know that when he looks at you he can’t help seeing her.
“What do you like, Rachel?”
What do you like, Rachel?
Your hands don’t feel like they belong to you anymore. Your fingers could pick themselves bloody and you wouldn’t feel a thing. You could watch your hands slap him, maybe even leave some of your blood smeared across his cheek. You wouldn’t feel it. They are not your hands anymore.
What do you like, Rachel?
You think you’re laughing but your face feels numb and bloated. It isn’t your face.
What do you like, Rachel?
It’s a question for a child.
What do you like, Rachel?
It’s not a fair question.
You are a straight back and hands clasped together, elbows on a boardroom table. Your feet don’t reach the floor. Everyone else with a seat is an expert or a stakeholder. In your spare time you pore over files and reports and datasets, everything that you are allowed to touch. You can hold your own.
Still you can feel them slivering glances at you when they mention progress. When they mention subjects. So you mention progress and you mention subjects. You make decisions and you override others’. No one says it but they are impressed. You are learning professionalism. You are learning.
You always leave the meetings first. You have appointments. You have lessons. It’s been scheduled that way, not by you. They send you away and you know that it’s so they can talk about you. About what they plan to do next. You find out when they send you the minutes.
You are sitting in the only stairwell at Dyad that has no glass, no cameras, no people. You found it years ago when you decided to memorize the building. You know every hallway. You know every emergency exit. The door at the bottom of this stairwell has a crash bar and no alarm. At one point it must have been where cleaners took their smoking breaks, a secret spot that wasn’t passed down to new hires and was eventually lost to staff turnover. It’s yours. The paint on the handrail is chipped. Everything smells metallic and stale.
You could go outside and no one would know. Stand in a parking lot and
then what? Where would you go? (not fair.) So you go there and sit on the last step whenever you need to think. You sit there whenever the violent klaxon starts pounding inside your skull and throwing a tantrum would be embarrassing. And if you do need to rage here, you can. The stairwell is remote and contained and concrete. It’s safe.
The last day you visit the stairwell is the day that you sit down on that last step and look up to see a camera staring back.
You are a scalpel opening 528M32. You didn’t expect skin to behave that way, as if it’s being chased away by the blade. You are releasing the tension that holds a body together.
It’s easy.
Talking to her was easy. Talking her into an overdose was easier. She had no idea what she was, but she knew she was dying and she was dying for a fix. You could give her what she wanted and she, well
You sink your hands into her. You are tempted to push past everything and press your knuckles against her spine. As if she might wince if you do. You look at her face, take in her hair, her shaved scalp, her piercings: it’s easy. It’s not your face. There is nothing of you in her.
Her uterus is full of growths. You take samples. You make notes. 528M32 is a picked lock. She’s a cracked password. She’s access granted to every file, note, and scrap of paper ever denied to you. You won’t be kept out.
“I took initiative,” you say when Aldous arrives. You show him your autopsy report. It’s meticulous.
He does not praise you. He does not tell you that he’s impressed. He does not skim the report. He does not acknowledge the ground you have broken, by being willing to do what he wasn’t. It’s right there in his hands but he won’t look at it. He just looks at you like he does not want to look at you.
And he wants you to look at 528M32, at her face. He calls her Miriam, like her name matters. Like you are just like her. Like you are just like the rest of them.
Oh.
What are you?
Oh.
That’s what he thinks. That’s what they all must think. But you are not like them.