Maeve Wiley (
complexfemalecharacter) wrote2022-08-12 03:13 pm
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Entry tags:
(no subject)
The really shitty thing about her best friend being her boyfriend is that when Maeve is hurt by something her boyfriend did, she doesn't know who the hell to talk to about it. Even going to Robin would be a little weird, if only because Steve is probably there right now, spilling the whole weird fight to her.
Was it even a fight? Maeve has no idea. It felt awful and adult and while not final, by any means, it's still left her with a sour taste in her mouth and a deep fear she's just fucked something up beyond all measure.
In the end, she texts Gideon.
I need to come over.
Before Harrow, she would have just gone, but she and Harrow have some sort of tentative truce going for them now and she doesn't want to risk it by just showing up unannounced. She needs to walk, though, so she leaves her flat as she waits for Gideon to get back to her, and by the time she's told she can come, she's already halfway there.
The rest of the walk doesn't take much time at all and Maeve rings the buzzer to be let in, chewing on her ragged thumbnail as she waits.
Was it even a fight? Maeve has no idea. It felt awful and adult and while not final, by any means, it's still left her with a sour taste in her mouth and a deep fear she's just fucked something up beyond all measure.
In the end, she texts Gideon.
I need to come over.
Before Harrow, she would have just gone, but she and Harrow have some sort of tentative truce going for them now and she doesn't want to risk it by just showing up unannounced. She needs to walk, though, so she leaves her flat as she waits for Gideon to get back to her, and by the time she's told she can come, she's already halfway there.
The rest of the walk doesn't take much time at all and Maeve rings the buzzer to be let in, chewing on her ragged thumbnail as she waits.
no subject
"What happened?" she asks.
no subject
One thing she does know, she'd been right to call his question unfair and she's right to be hurt by it. That part of the conversation, yes, Steve was very much the idiot. But maybe she's been stupid, too, thinking a guy like him, someone who very much grew up in a conventional home, even if it wasn't always happy, wouldn't want a proper family.
no subject
"I mean, probably, but I won't hold it against you. Or Steve." Maeve comes into the apartment, and Gideon shuts the door behind her. "Well, I've got beer and Harrow isn't here, so..." She shrugs. "We can talk about it or not talk about it. Whatever you need. Kitchen or lounge?"
no subject
"We were having a nice night, too," she says once she's removed her boots and follows Gideon into the kitchen. "He asked about the book I'm reading and once I told him about it, he said he hopes our children get my brains."
no subject
"Got it," says Gideon, turning and heading towards the kitchen, padding down the hall in her bare feet and her short shorts and a t-shirt. She might have put more clothes on if it was anyone other than Maeve, but they're beyond that. If they were ever there in the first place. She glances back over her shoulder at Maeve. "He did? That dickwad."
It's clear from her expression that she doesn't really know why that would be a problem, even though she recognises it clearly is.
no subject
"Just the assumption we'll be having kids someday," she says. "I... I've never wanted to be a mum. My own was such a shitty parent that I decided I was never going to take the risk of hurting someone like she hurt me."
no subject
Her hand on the fridge door, Gideon pauses, glad, for a moment, that's she's got her back to the Maeve as she grabs a beer for herself out of the fridge. She grabs a second one and turns, holding it up with a questioning look on her face.
"At least your mom didn't think you were a war crime, right?" she says. "I take it he didn't take that well?"
no subject
"He didn't," she says, tapping one finger on the table, then drawing a circle, needing something to look at. "He didn't try to change my mind, but he... he made it seem like I was making some sort of decision about him. Like I just didn't want to have a family with him, not in general."
no subject
"I mean, I'm pretty sure Wake was on the good shit, based on what I now remember." When Maeve doesn't answer about the beer, Gideon snags a soda to go with it and brings all three drinks back to the table, sitting down opposite Maeve. "That feels like a really...You know." Gideon likes Steve a lot, honestly, mainly because he seems to love Maeve a lot, and that's her basic requirement for success. "Like he's missed the point kind of collosally?"
no subject
"Thank you," she says as she takes one of the beer bottles, fiddling with the cap absently. "He did and... maybe I did, too. It's like he just realized how much he actually wants to be a dad and hadn't realize before this how much I do not want to be a mum."
no subject
Gideon twists the top off her own beer and takes a long swallow of it.
"Okay," she says, and, honestly, she has no roadmap for this because a) she's never going to have sex with someone who can impregnate her ew and b) she's never going to be the one doing the impregnating either - though imaginging the look on Harrow's face during that conversation is hilarious. "So I guess you both have to decide how much of a dealbreaker you think it is."
no subject
"That isn't why I'm mad at him, though," she continues. "He asked... he knows I had an abortion before I came to Darrow. He knows the choice I made when it happened by accident and he still asked what I would do if it happened accidentally to us."
no subject
Gideon is way out of her depth here, both in terms of emotions and experience, but Maeve matters to her, as much as anyone else she's ever met in her life, and that means that she'll muddle her way through it.
"Maybe he thinks it'll be different because it's him?" she says. "Like, you didn't want that baby, sure, but that baby wasn't his?"
no subject
"Maybe," she agrees finally, then exhales slowly. "It just felt like such an unfair question. He knows I've already had an abortion. He knows what my mum was like. He knows I called protection services for Elsie, it just... maybe I'm being unfair. I don't know."
no subject
It would be a surprise to a lot of people that know her, but Gideon isn't actually bad at silence. She spent most of her life in a penitent's cell and, while she might not have subscribed to everything the acolytes of the Tomb exepcted of her, she did get pretty used to not having anyone to talk to.
"I don't think you're being unfair," she says, finally. "I think you're hurting and that makes a person lash out. There's a difference."
no subject
And she wishes she could properly communicate why that particular question felt so unfair.
"I feel like I maybe should have seen this coming," she admits. "He's so good with kids and he obviously likes it."
no subject
There's all kinds of things that Gideon never sees coming, but she is in love with a duplicitious, awful excuse for a person, so their experiences aren't the same. She loves Harrow more than anything in any world, but that doesn't mean that she's not also entirely wise to her shit.
"You didn't want to think about it," she says. "Maybe."
no subject
"Obviously it's something we needed to talk about eventually," she says with a sigh. "I just didn't realize he assumed we would have a family someday. I mean, even if I did want kids, it seems unfair to have them in a place where one or both of their parents might disappear at any time."
no subject
"Where I come from, nobody has kids anymore," says Gideon, picking at the edge of her bottle's label with her thumb nail. "Harrow was the last baby born to the Ninth. The two of us, and Ortus, who's older -- we were the only kids. I guess other houses have children, but not us." She sort of shakes herself, pulls herself back to the conversation that they're having. "I come from an Empire at War, Maeve. If people didn't have kids because they thought they might leave them, nothing would ever get done."
no subject
She knows other worlds are harder, more difficult than hers, more difficult than Darrow even. But for Maeve, Darrow is a fantastic place where she's seen things and met people she was never meant to. She loves Steve and she doesn't want to leave, but she can't help but feel that this place isn't permanent.
no subject
"Yeah, okay, that was a shitty example," says Gideon. "And of course you don't need a reason. If you don't want to have kids, you shouldn't have kids." She leans her chin into her hand, thinking, for a moment, about how maybe someone should have had that conversation with Wake.
"I don't know. I spent my whole life trying to live in my own future. Maybe I'm just...I can't do that anymore."
no subject
She's genuinely curious, both about what it might mean to Gideon and what she's been doing. She honestly doesn't know. Her past has informed her present so fully that she often can't even consider a future when she's so used to just surviving day to day.
no subject
"I was going to join the Cohort. Front line infantry," says Gideon. "I was going to pay off my debt to the Ninth and get rich and laid." She smiles, almost wistfully. Her life has turned out a lot different to what she'd wanted, what she'd expected. Would she change it? No. "What it meant was that I was going to survive the Ninth. One way or another."
no subject
In some ways, it makes her feel bad for being upset about this.
"I guess I just need some time to figure it out," she says with a shrug and a small smile.
no subject
"Sounds like it," says Gideon, still picking at her label with one thumb. After a moment, she holds out her other hand to Maeve, wiggling callused fingers. "You'll figure it out, Maeve. You're one of the smartest people I know. And I know actual fucking geniuses."