morganknight | Inbox for Avalon

[Morgan shakes his head slightly.] You were one part of something far bigger. That's all any of us ever are. You can't divert a river unless the whole thing's a hair's breadth from tumbling into new banks anyway. And you need to find some self-forgiveness.

[ He's right, she knows he is. She's been telling herself the same thing for years. But how is she supposed to believe it? She's not the only one who blames her. In fact, as far as she's been able to tell, she's the only one who assigns Bruce any blame at all.

Ah- that was it. Minako couldn't understand why Steph didn't just talk to someone about what had gone wrong, and Steph couldn't understand why it was so difficult to explain.

She lets out a long breath, slumping down into her chair again as that frustrated energy drains out of her. Her arms slide out in front of her and her face lands in front of the ice cream carton. ]

I'm such a hypocrite. How can I hold it against anyone when they treat me the same way I treat myself?

[ Her ice cream is starting to melt around the edges. She should deal with that. ]

Yeah. Now you're getting about where I was, when I started to think things over. [His circumstances had been... pretty different, but the path and the outcome much the same.]

[Morgan reaches out to slip a finger under one cheek, trying to lift her head a little.]

That was when I started to think that maybe, if the people who loved and cared for me saw some value in me, I could try to see some in myself. And right about when I started realizing there's never a point in life where you switch from doing 'wrong' to doing 'right'... that every day is learning to do a little bit better than you did yesterday.

[ She looks up at him with eyes like an abandoned puppy. ]

Well... mostly they haven't.

[ There's an oxymoron in there, but she hasn't seen it yet. ]

People can love you, care for you, see the good in you, and still think you can do better, you know. But that starts with yourself. [He strokes a thumb over her cheek, still leaning over rather uncomfortably. But never mind that.] You need to know yourself. The best you can. Without lies, without deceptions. Honest truths, both the good and the bad. You're a flawed and imperfect person the same as everyone, but a wonderful and special person too. You can see both of those, and know both of those to be true -- it's not one or the other!

[ She looks away again, considering.

For a long time she knows they didn't think she could do better. Otherwise they wouldn't have kept trying to make her quit. Babs at least had stopped that, and Bruce... was Bruce. But Tim only seemed to see her value when she was wearing a costume, and even that had taken a long time after her 'death'. Cass... even when Cass made a point of getting in her way, she was never cruel about it. She supposes that's the advantage of having a friend who can read your emotions like a book.

Morgan sees the good in her, though. Kipposhi seems to as well, though he doesn't point it out as much. What do they see? What about her is good? Her mind still feels like a hurricane, trying to drag her into the past.

She sighs again and sits up enough to start scooping the melted ice cream up from the sides of the carton. ]

I don't know what I see right now.

Y'know, it's better to know you don't know than to think you know and be wrong.

[Morgan sits up himself, sticking a leg out under the table to kinda hook his ankle around hers in lieu of other contact. Another hefty bite, a moment to think and swallow, before he speaks up again.]

It's a little weird here because so many people are heroes and decent folks and used to exactly the sort of stuff we do, but -- how many people do you know, out of the seven billion on Earth, who'd have spent so much time and energy as you did, in a collapsed city, trying to save people despite all the odds?

[ She starts counting them on her fingers, limiting the list to only people she knows personally. She gets up to 8 before pausing. ]

Does it count if most of the people I know are heroes?

[Okay, give him a moment to suppress his eyeroll.] I'm talking about everyone ever, Steph! Average people on the street included! Go out into a city of a million people and tell me how many people you'll find to do that stuff.

[ Look, she knows a lot of superheroes, okay? If she doesn't count them, she can't count villains either. That leaves... not a ton of people. ]

Okay, fair. I did have a boyfriend abandon me during an earthquake.

[ That bar might actually be too low now. ]

...dick. [Come on. Who could abandon Steph, let alone in an earthquake? She's the sort of girl who'd either be running out to help people in a serious one, or -- well, look, Morgan always has an undercurrent of naughtiness running through his head. He can't help it, he's got a lot of physical energy to put to use.
If he were better at hiding his thoughts, that might be more excusable.] I sure hope your standards have gone up since then or I have some serious self-reflection of my own to do!

[ Steph scoops up the last of the melted bits of her ice cream as she wonders what he's thinking about. ]

...I dunno. Robin was kind of a jerk too, but I'm not exactly blameless there.

[Hopefully she won't be horrified, come the day when she finally figures out what that particular look in his eyes means. But skipping that for the moment...]

If it helps, I have really, really good taste in girls. Figured that out pretty quick after a couple of idiotic mistakes of my own. So you can rest assured you're a member of really elite company!

[ She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. ]

Not the most convincing endorsement.

[ She's in too dark a mood still to smile, even though she isn't especially serious. ]

You wouldn't say that if you knew my first real love and my wife. You'd be all, 'Damn, I'm on their level? I'm one of the greatest girls in the history of girldom.'

[He might be phrasing it silly, but he's not joking. Truth is, Steph actually beats both of them handily in a few areas, making for a sort of very easy and very comfortable compatibility that Morgan likes quite a bit.]

[More seriously, though, Morgan smiles her way.]

I don't think you're perfect or flawless, but I really do think you're pretty damn terrific. You have qualities I really like, and ones I really admire, too. No joke, no lie, no exaggeration.

[ Her lips quirk in what might be a smile by comparison to her previous expression. She doesn't think he's lying, not really. But it could be exaggeration, or just seeing things that aren't really there. ]

Well, you don't have to worry either. I've gotten very good about punching jerks.

[Maybe it is... but if she can reconcile Morgan's general attitude and behavior to that sort of delusion, more power to her imagination. If nothing else, he has absolute confidence -- in himself, and by extension, in his own beliefs and perceptions. Including, especially, about her.]

If only dumb little voices inside your own head could be punched, you'd have no problems at all, then!

That's what ice cream is for.

[ She points her spoon at him in emphasis before returning to that all-important task. Nothing like frozen sugar to soothe a troubled mind. ]

A brain freeze is not the answer to mental health, Steph!

[Of course he knows that's not what she meant!]

I dunno, I'd say I'm coping pretty well, all things considered.

[ She gets the joke, but her capacity for humor right now is nearly nonexistent. ]

I mean, my first choice was brooding on a rooftop somewhere. And even that's a whole hell of a lot better than pretending to be dead.

I'm glad you came over.

[Really, he is. He likes to think he can help, but... if nothing else, she cares about him and respects him and trusts him, and that's all to the good. Sometimes those qualities are what you need most in life.]

You're not allowed to pretend to be dead, though. I've had too many people I cared about actually be dead for that to ever be okay.

[ She's glad she did too, even if her familiar gets most of the credit. It's hard to reach out when you're suffering because people you care about mistreated you.

She grimaces at his comment, then huffs a sigh. ]

I probably wouldn't have agreed to it if I hadn't been more than half dead to begin with.

[ She refuses to feel guilty for a decision she doesn't even clearly remember making. Especially not when it turned out to be exactly what she needed. ]

I'm personally invested in keeping you out of that state to the best of my ability anyway.

[The past is the past, and involves him not at all. Why feel guilty about it? It's the present, and to as much extent as practical, the future, that concerns him.]

By the way, speaking as not a segue at all unfortunately, I'm one hundred percent on board with your opinions on necromancy.

[ There's not much she can say to his first statement. She appreciates the sentiment, but they both know that things don't always work out. She lives a dangerous life, and she can't seem to change that even when she wants to.

In context she's not really sure how to take the comment on necromancy. An hour ago she told someone if she was ever raised from the dead she'd punch the person responsible but... it just hits sort of weird coming from her boyfriend.

She chooses to ignore the feeling. ]

I'm glad. Even if losing people does suck.

[ She also feels a little weird saying that when almost everyone she knows back home is dead. But still. ]

[Morgan nods his agreement, but then straightens up slightly.]

And it's life. I wouldn't trade a moment of the time I had with anyone I cared about to spare myself any amount of pain at all.

[A hard-learned lesson. But a vital one. Especially here, where friends could vanish without warning. He'd come into this world, and particularly this relationship, with that knowledge... and like he said. He wouldn't trade a second of it.]

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