[ She looks up then, eyes wide, hopeful but also with a touch of trepidation. She's not good at gift giving.
She's only done it once before. ]
I opened mine.
[ She doesn't understand many of the words.
Not yet. Learning to not just read the book but understand it...
Eleven knows, intrinsically, that she doesn't have a future. Didn't have one before Beacon, has even less of one, somehow, here.
But it's okay. The book is something to look forward to in this place that is beginning to stretch like the hallways to the small, dark room in which she was alone.
Inside the parcel is what looks, at first, like a thin blanket, just it's a little irregular, a little frayed at the edge. Like someone took a piece of fabric and cut it with scissors, not knowing it'd fray.
A cord has been tied around two of the edges - not fastened with thread or other sophisticated means, just tied around the fabric. ]
It's a cape.
[ An ugly cape that she made herself not knowing how easily it might come apart. ]
I thought... a mask. But I didn't know what animal.
[ Bird and spider are taken. ]
So... I thought. Cape. We can make you a mask. But... you have to be careful. You can be a hero. When you have no powers. But leave hero fighting to me. I can fight.
[ He doesn't need to know they haven't returned, those powers. The important thing is that he understands not to think he should take his cape and run at monsters and die. He can be her hero without trying to be heroic. ]
I read it a couple of years ago. You know, a lot of people just think of maths as numbers, but it can be a lot more than that, and it can help you view the world with more than words. [ peter comments with a slight smile. science, first and foremost, is his thing, but getting her anything to do with science would've been a gross misstep. food would've been easy, simple, but he'd wanted to get her something that meant something to the both of them.
(maybe.)
he thinks betty had told him once that he's pretty good at getting the spirit of a gift, but not necessarily the gift itself, only in a decidedly more betty way. he'd opted to take it as a compliment, at least up until his first christmas with mj, when they were still figuring out who and what they were to each other — after gwen, but before everything else — mj had said they should make each other mixtapes. peter hadn't know where to begin: music wasn't really his thing, and she'd said it should be something important, so he'd recorded the audio from half a talk on magnetic fields.
he straightens back up and nudges the door open a little more with an elbow — he thinks it'll be a little weird to open the present and leave her in the hallway. the room looks lived in, in the way that a space that's been occupied for six months would be, but there's not a whole lot there that's personal — a couple of chairs, a few books that identify themselves as belonging to peter by virtue of topic; some paper in a loose, vague pile on the top of a desk, a couple of pens, a baseball bat newly gifted to him by way of secret santa.
he starts to unwrap it as he moves back inside; it's a cape, she says, and he's not entirely sure, at first, if he'd have been able to put two and two together without eleven elaborating. as he pulls it out, it's a little more obvious. surprise gives way to a laugh; there's a slight twinge of guilt at the fact that he she knows both him and spider-man, but not that they're one and the same. ]
Thank you, El. [ a breath of a pause, and he wraps the cape round himself— ] Like this? [ beat. ] And am I supposed to have a hero name, or is it just for looks?
[ She waltzes up to him, shaking her head slightly, and helps adjust the cape. The adjustment makes absolutely no difference in how it sits on him, but it's important to her, so it gets done. ]
Like this. It fits.
[ How she could possibly determine that is anyone's guess. ]
Yes. You need a secret idea.
[ Identity. Close. ]
So, a hero name. It's not allowed to have Doctor in it. Or be about science.
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savingthrows) wrote2019-07-31 01:14 am
no subject
[ She looks up then, eyes wide, hopeful but also with a touch of trepidation. She's not good at gift giving.
She's only done it once before. ]
I opened mine.
[ She doesn't understand many of the words.
Not yet. Learning to not just read the book but understand it...
Eleven knows, intrinsically, that she doesn't have a future. Didn't have one before Beacon, has even less of one, somehow, here.
But it's okay. The book is something to look forward to in this place that is beginning to stretch like the hallways to the small, dark room in which she was alone.
Inside the parcel is what looks, at first, like a thin blanket, just it's a little irregular, a little frayed at the edge. Like someone took a piece of fabric and cut it with scissors, not knowing it'd fray.
A cord has been tied around two of the edges - not fastened with thread or other sophisticated means, just tied around the fabric. ]
It's a cape.
[ An ugly cape that she made herself not knowing how easily it might come apart. ]
I thought... a mask. But I didn't know what animal.
[ Bird and spider are taken. ]
So... I thought. Cape. We can make you a mask. But... you have to be careful. You can be a hero. When you have no powers. But leave hero fighting to me. I can fight.
[ He doesn't need to know they haven't returned, those powers. The important thing is that he understands not to think he should take his cape and run at monsters and die. He can be her hero without trying to be heroic. ]
no subject
(maybe.)
he thinks betty had told him once that he's pretty good at getting the spirit of a gift, but not necessarily the gift itself, only in a decidedly more betty way. he'd opted to take it as a compliment, at least up until his first christmas with mj, when they were still figuring out who and what they were to each other — after gwen, but before everything else — mj had said they should make each other mixtapes. peter hadn't know where to begin: music wasn't really his thing, and she'd said it should be something important, so he'd recorded the audio from half a talk on magnetic fields.
he straightens back up and nudges the door open a little more with an elbow — he thinks it'll be a little weird to open the present and leave her in the hallway. the room looks lived in, in the way that a space that's been occupied for six months would be, but there's not a whole lot there that's personal — a couple of chairs, a few books that identify themselves as belonging to peter by virtue of topic; some paper in a loose, vague pile on the top of a desk, a couple of pens, a baseball bat newly gifted to him by way of secret santa.
he starts to unwrap it as he moves back inside; it's a cape, she says, and he's not entirely sure, at first, if he'd have been able to put two and two together without eleven elaborating. as he pulls it out, it's a little more obvious. surprise gives way to a laugh; there's a slight twinge of guilt at the fact that he she knows both him and spider-man, but not that they're one and the same. ]
Thank you, El. [ a breath of a pause, and he wraps the cape round himself— ] Like this? [ beat. ] And am I supposed to have a hero name, or is it just for looks?
no subject
Like this. It fits.
[ How she could possibly determine that is anyone's guess. ]
Yes. You need a secret idea.
[ Identity. Close. ]
So, a hero name. It's not allowed to have Doctor in it. Or be about science.
[ That's a personal rule she just made up. ]