cautionarytale | 133 [voice]

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133 [voice]

You think anybody ever really changes?

[She sounds SO BITTER. She sniffles, not like she's crying but rather like she's just had the longest day of her life, everything hurts, and her nose is running. For a second, it sounds like she's about to answer her own question, but she stops herself.]

[private to Sylar]

If you want your shirt back, come and get it.

[ooc: Elle's back, updated to her actual canon death in "The Eclipse Part 2."]

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[He was a little unsurprised it was Sylar, but that was his general impression of the other inmate more than anything. He watched her carefully, and handed her the damp cloth in his hand before asking anything else.]

"Why? How did he end up doing that?"

[He wanted to know what happened before he addressed the obvious issue in her post.]

"He's a killer, it's what he does." [She looked up when he held the cloth out to her, and took it from him gingerly. Part of her was so on-edge, her nerves so frazzled, that she didn't completely trust even Howie.] "It's what we do."

[She pressed the cloth against the outside of her thigh, trying to moisten some of the dried blood before scrubbing it off.]

[He shook his head softly, and leant back against the sink,] "No, Elle, people have reasons for killing. Even killers."

[He guessed this went back to her initial statement, and there were two things he thought about saying. Instead of picking between them, he just went for both,] "Only by believing nothing can change do you make it true. It might sound kind of cheesy, but it's true."

[He paused, then asked the second, much more important question,] "How did you think he'd changed?"

[She wrung the bloody cloth out into the tub and went back to rubbing it down her leg.]

"It doesn't matter," [she murmured.]

[He shook his head,]

"It does matter. It's obviously affected you, so it matters."

"Let me make the judgement call on this one, sarge. It really doesn't matter."

[Howie paused,] "Then at least tell me why it doesn't matter, because it seems like a big deal to me."

"It doesn't matter because he didn't change. There's no point in getting all misty-eyed about what might have been. He couldn't change. I couldn't change. We're damaged goods."

[She was just repeating things that Sylar had said, but they were true, weren't they? As much as she wanted to believe she could be happy, normal even, it was becoming increasingly obvious - like it wasn't before, she thought bitterly - that good things weren't in the cards for her. Every time she went home, everything, no matter how bad it had been before, only got worse.]

"I'm a badguy. I can't change that."

"No, I don't believe it. Nobody was born a bad guy, and nobody can't change. It's..."

[He frowned and looked down at the floor,] "It's just a way of avoiding responsibility. A massively subconscious one, perhaps, but saying 'I can't do any better' is just... not taking any responsibility. And I know you can, Elle, I know you can decide to do things for the right reasons. I've seen you do it." [They might not have been the right thing at the time, but the reasoning was pretty sound.]

"But you believed he changed, didn't you? What convinced you? Please, tell me, Elle, I... please."

"It's not about better." [She was tired of trying to be better and never quite getting there. She'd never been good enough, and just the word 'better' annoyed her, but this was about something else.] "It's about what I am."

[She squeezed the cloth tightly in one hand, wringing as much blood from it as she could. It was mostly dry now, but she stubbornly kept scrubbing her leg with it.]

"I'm sick of trying to be something I'm not for..." [Her hair fell messily across her face, blocking him from her sight.] "I don't even know why."

"Elle, what you are doesn't automatically define whether you do bad or good things."

[He frowned, and pushed himself up from where he was leaning on the sink, reaching over and putting his hand over the one where she had the cloth,] "That's not going to help, give it here a second." [It was a minor distraction, and he went back to his original point,] "It's not about trying to be something you're not. It's about trying to find that part of you which does, and has, made right decisions, and... believing that you've got a capacity for that too. Who we all are is defined by our ability to change as much as it is staying the way we are. Nobody is damned and nobody is saved. Someone turned you into a bad guy. You weren't born like that. I'm not trying to make you a hero, Elle. I'm trying to... show you the value in having a moral code. You don't have to bound into buildings and save everyone, and that kind of thing. But you also don't have to hurt people."

[Elle flinched at his touch, but let him take the cloth. She raised her head, shaking her hair out of her eyes and frowning up at him.] "Do you like me?"

[He took the cloth and ran it under the tap, rinsing the blood out, before handing it back to her,]

"Yes, I do. I... don't like everything you do, but I like you."

[He paused,]

"But it shouldn't be about my approval."

[She turned her attention back to washing the blood off her leg.] "Can you just... not lecture me for a while?"

Edited 2011-05-05 01:30 (UTC)

[He paused, and felt a little guilty that she'd just come back and he still managed to fall into lecture mode first. He was trying not to do that,]

"Alright, Elle. I'd... still like to know what happened. Just because I'm concerned, not to lecture."

[The lecturing thing was especially difficult, as he had a tendancy to lecture people he liked, let alone those he didn't.]

"I told you what happened: Sylar killed me." [She'd gotten most of the blood off, but she still didn't feel clean. She wanted to take the longest shower of her life and then... not have to face things.]

"I know, but... how did that come about?" [He leaned back on the sink, mainly just worried about her, more than anything else.]

"He realized that he's a killer and he couldn't change," [she said wearily. She didn't want to talk about all the sordid details of what had led up to her death.]

"So..." [She made a slicing noise and a cut-off motion across her throat.]

[He frowned a little at her motion,]

"... fine. But he's wrong. He can change, and so can you. I'm not lecturing, I'm just telling you I think that."

"Then why didn't he?"

"Because he didn't believe he could. He condemned himself, by telling himself there was no other option. Don't do the same."

[She rolled her eyes.] "Somehow, I still feel like he came out on top."

[He frowned. She died, of course she felt like that,]

"If you really want to believe that's not the case, you'll have to tell me a little more about what happened.

"What else do you want me to say? He killed me, okay. End of story."

"Okay, okay. Do... do you want me to tell him to leave you alone, or not? I can do that, if you want."

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