perfectible | duplicity ic inbox

He's not the kind of person to forgive bad choices because of pressure.
I wish I could. But he's always there, at the edge of my thoughts.

[ judging her. maybe if she could just be the person mal wanted her to be, she'd be good. she'd be the saint people want her to be. but alina can't shape herself into that no matter how she tries. and she'd done awful things, shown her hunger for power, well before duplicity got ahold of her. maybe it's not the city. maybe it's just her. ]

Are they "bad" choices if they're what you have to do to survive? Or are they hard choices?

I thought Jughead would judge me for the things I did, I always thought he would and he never did. Not here or back home. And I did worse things back home. He got mad or disappointed but... in the end, he understood.

[ and while she isn't sure what alina's relationship is with mal exactly, if it's love or just deep friendship, if he's an archie or a jughead or something else to her... she understands. ]

He sounds nice.
Weird name, but.

[ this is a good way of avoiding saying that mal had judged her. and she thinks she probably deserved it, but she also doesn't know how to be anything other than what she is now. she can't go back to the girl she was, the girl she'd been with him. ]

It's a nickname. His real name is Forsythe Pendleton Jones III.

Somehow weirder.

Exactly. [ she laughs to herself.]

What choices do you think Mal would judge you for?

It's complicated.

Everything is complicated, especially here.

[ well. she doesn't need all the context, alina thinks. ]

My choice of Submissive, and the way that I've humiliated him.

So Mal knows him?

[ how does she ask this next question delicately, without judgment? ] Does your Submissive ask for that? [ being humiliated? betty knew it was a kink. ]

He does know him.

And no. He doesn't like it.

Did he do something?[ if anyone understands that hunger for revenge, for payback, it's betty.]

Yes.

All Mal's ever wanted is to run away. Hide. Pretend it never happened.
I'm not that noble.

I don't think running away makes you noble. [ betty doesn't run away either. ]

It might make you smarter but... I'm not sure that running away is the right choice.

I'm not sure fighting is either.
I'm not sure I like what it's making of me.
But I don't know how to do anything else.

Sometimes it's not.

What do you think it's making of you? What are you afraid of becoming?

[ she realizes that maybe it'll be easier if she just shares her thing first. ]
Because sometimes I'm afraid there's a darkness in me that's going to smother anything that's good about me. I'm afraid that there's some of kind destiny or fate or maybe it's even biological, that something I inherited from my dad and his father and his father's father will make me do something horrible, like they did.

Betty, that's not true.
I know terrible people.
I'd like to believe I recognize them when I see them now. That's not you.

I hope that's true and that it stays true.

I think to fight him, I have to become like him.
I don't know if there's any coming back from that.
But I can't turn my back on it either because I'm the only choice we have.

That's what I felt about my father. In order to stop him, I had to do things like he did, think like him, to play his games. But I had people behind me, to keep me anchored, to pull me out of that darkness when I couldn't do it myself.

I can't believe that you don't have that too. [ in some shape or form. just from her interactions with alina, betty felt drawn to her and she knew that if she were from where alina was, she'd be one of those people behind her.]

It's not that simple.
No one else has the power that I do.
Literally.
And I need more to beat him. And I feel like I get farther from human as it grows.

He's that evil?[ she suddenly feels uncomfortable with how vulnerable she'd been with him.

but betty's seen this movie, read this book, but she still has to ask.] Are you going to die? Fighting him?

Edited 2021-10-02 03:43 (UTC)

I don't know.
Maybe.

[ is there a socially acceptable way to say "that's just about the only thing i have left to look forward to?" because, you know. ]

[ oh.

betty just stares at her phone because that's one of the worst things she's read. of course, alina isn't the only one whose world is in peril or has to go home to face a shitshow. bellamy... betty can't even think of how bellamy is probably dead now. and not this city's version of dead but actually, truly dead. ]

As bad as this place can be... I hope you never have to go back there, Alina. Because no one should have to do that.

[ especially not someone their own age. ]

And I hope you know that nothing you do here makes you a bad person, at least not to me.

How many bad things does a person have to do before they're simply a bad person?

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cw: suicidal ideation

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