rainfall.
the drops of water hit the pots and pans on and off through the night. penny moves through the dilapidated house carefully, pushing her too long hair out of her face as the wind makes the house rattle from the force of it all.
she hates hurricane season. it's always unpredictable, wet, and with her grandmother's wavering health, each year was harder than the last. the only good thing about this season is that it seemed to be calmer than usual--and that for once, her father had come down to assist with adelaide instead of leaving it to her.
or perhaps that was too harsh, to say that he had come to assist. penny had always resisted her mother coming to the house to help, refusing to listen to any of her opinions on her bedmates (whether penny had any or not at thet time) or to hear her mother's opinions on tabitha, despite her hands off approach with tabitha in general, despite the fact that penny was the one who had been acting as a mother to tabitha almost her entire life.
she had considered asking her sister to come--and one look at adelaide's shaking hands, her wan face, made penny decide it was better to not do so. that tabitha didn't have to bear witness to her fragile state. penny had enough strength to do it, to bear it.
so here she was, trying to make sure the house was full of pots and pans to catch every drip drop of water, hearing it groan and creak with every movement from the wind. her father's footsteps seemed to echo through the house more than they should, despite how big it was. penny counted them as she reached into her pocket for a cigarette, deeming it safe enough to light it.
unbidden, she thinks of a passage in the moment: one of her heroines, up to her neck in water, flailing helplessly, eyes wide and hair plastered to her skin. someone peering down at her, as she shouts for help, and receives none. the shimmer of light on something in the water-- a fin? a tail? a fish or a mermaid?
penny lets the idea ruminate there, thinking of how blue the water would be, the color of the light hitting those scales in the water. she brings the cigarette to her lips, clenching down on it with her teeth, hand sinking into her pocket for the lighter, fingers flailing as it went.
"you should be reaching for a pencil, not a lighter," her father's voice calls from the hallway.
like she's thirteen again, her hand jerks up from her pocket, face flushing. "daddy--! i'm not a child anymore--"
"think i don't know that with the wrinkles i've got?" he laughs, coming into the room with a full pot of dank water. he gives penny a keen look over the rim of his glasses, glittering in the lowlight of the room. "penelope dupree, we both know what smoking does. so how about you put it away for my sake?"
penny obediently, with her own wrinkled up nose, puts the unlit cigarette in the pocket of her jeans. he moves past her, out to the kitchen. the sound of water going down the drain fills the silence, and penny goes back to her previous task of checking all the pots and pans currently out. once she's satisfied, she follows his trail into the sprawling, warm kitchen. the wood groans beneath her footsteps, the door frame more so as she leans against it to look at her father.
she had cleared his height by the time she was twelve. at fifteen, she had hit six feet, and at nineteen, had finally capped off at 6'3". having to look down at her father wasn't entirely new for her despite how odd it had been to do so growing up.
right now, however, penny looks at his slate grey hair, the slope of his shoulders. how she can see a bit of liver spotting here and there, comparing it to her grandmother's own upstairs, her much weaker, more fragile state. it makes her all the more aware of her own age--and the possibility of having to lose her father soon. or, having to step in to care for him too.
her stomach makes a painful turn in her gut at the thought. logically, it's silly to feel this way. tabitha, her mother, his siblings were all candidates who could help him if he ever needed it. he was in good health, he was active and aware -- almost too aware, most of the time.
the rest of her remembers: that was how her grandmother had been before she had forced her to go to the doctors. she had been healthy, strong for so long until she simply wasn't, until penny had to finally insist otherwise.
"we ought to talk about it," her father's voice interrupts her thoughts abruptly. he turns around, his expression stern and more than a little stubborn in it's own familiar way.
she knows what it is, dancing around the subject, "gonna have to be specific, daddy." penny takes a stride to the left inside of the kitchen, heading for the cabinets. "lot of its around here."
"don't play with me, girl," penny opens the cabinets as his gravelly voice pours over her, "you and i know both that you're too young to be doing this for your grandmother--and that there's plenty of ways to remove yourself from this situation--"
penny pulls down the plates, ancient, cracking in places, keeping her voice steady, "i'm not leaving her, daddy. we've talked about this when i was twenty, we talked about it two years ago. i'm not even thirty yet. momma's not equipped for this, and we both know," she turns on her heels, glaring at him as she slams down the plates with finality, "you ain't exactly the most attentive person out there neither."
his jaw goes taut. penny draws herself to her full height for once in her life, asserting herself in a way she had never dared to before.
"leave it," she commands him. "just be happy that i take an interest in helping my grandmother for as long as she needs."
penny can see on her father's face he wants to argue. he probably has some kind of service or pamphlet in mind, numbers ready to dial to force her out of the house, to make her start putting out books again, to be his pride and joy. penny understands his needs, that he wants more for her than anyone else. he doesn't, however understand her.
that's always been the issue with them, understanding in stops and starts, always half a step behind each other, and never quite getting there. penny is tired, too tired to do this now. her hands ball themselves into fists at her sides with all the things she could say, things she wanted to say, hoping her father wouldn't make her do this now.
he throws up his hands in defeat. penny bottles up her words for another time, and the rain continues on outside.
movies.
her grandmother no longer occupies the house. it is august, 2019, and no one truly knows who she is and isn't. she came here to get some space, and instead, the wonder woman movie movie is playing before her. diana is shifting uncomfortably in her head as they watch. for once, penny shares her discomfort as the move says that she--diana is zeus' child. at the exaltation of the sword before her, the supposed god killer. that seems to anger diana the most; in their shared mind's eye, penny sees that scene different: she sees the statue of a warrior, her head held high, her hands gone--yet at her side is a shining gold lasso that no one has ever touched, but all adore.
at the same time, the image blurs around the edges; and she sees the lasso laid against precious velvet. she can her hippolyta's voice, telling her that these were meant for her, that they would be what guided her, and it was blessed by the gods.
"they can't both be true," penny says, putting her head against her hand. the movie keeps going at a speed that she can't keep up with. she keeps feeling diana pulling on the knowledge: her mother writing in pain from an arrow shot at her shoulder; her mother telling her of being born from clay; and the clay's texture never staying the same in the recollections. even hippolyta's hair shimmers and shifts from a bright, straight blonde, to a long curly inky black.
they are. they can be, diana says, the sound her thoughts make forcing penny to sit up a little straighter. i know what we are watching isn't true. i know that the television who you've shown me isn't true either. i know i did not live her life as it is onscreen. diana shifts more as the scenes roll on. i have not always loved steve trevor. i think of him as etta candy's more than my own.
"you have kissed, though," penny says, frowning. "you have been together."
diana, somehow, makes it feel as if she's shrugged. as if her fingers have curled over the feelings, the memories of steve trevor in her head.
penny allows it. she mutes the television, though, and tries to shift through the wellspring of lives diana has lived. logically, she always knew that comics held different continuities, timelines, futures, pasts. that in mythology, gods could live in cycles over and over again, endless and always learning and unlearning, making and destroying.
it's so different when it's her own life now, shared with someone who wasn't always a god, but was god touched. she has questions for diana, big ones that are pressing against her mind, out of curiosity and out of a need to understand.
"how do you know?" she asks, standing up from the couch. the movie goes on as penny pets batty, and then pris. "which memories are real, which ones aren't? how can you be sure?"
diana takes momentary control of her hand, and reaches into the pocket of penny's pajama pants. their fingers wrap around the golden prefect, glowing and firm in their shared hand. my eyes are not always perfect. gods can deceive for sport. people can lie--lies so intricate and layered that it's hard to find reality, truth.
"that isn't really concrete, princess," penny says, keeping her fingers on the lasso. "i need something more than that. to-- to understand." she pushes insistently. she can feel in that strange sensation, diana reaching out to her. penny hesitates. then reaches back.
she finds herself pulled into that nowhere place that resembles themyscira. the grass a blinding green, the sky a beautiful blue. diana stands before her, the wind picking up in her hair. she looks regal here, and when she pulls out the lasso, penny intrinsically understands that the rope is real here as it is in reality.
diana offers one end to it. "you cannot lie here. try, however, to think of a memory. your own memory."
the lasso is warm beneath her fingertips. her thumb rubs against the side, as if penny is capable of rubbing through it, or wearing it down. instantly, the memory she has is of her grandmother adelaide, with her long white hair, her wizened face, the smell of the peppermint that permeated her house.
that's not the stand out, that's not what makes it stand out the most. it's the emotions behind her memories that are surprising when filtered through the lasso. usually, in her memories, the emotions, while there, weren't immediate. the feelings were more distant, in the past. holding the lasso between her fingers, the emotions are what's most overt now, recalling her grandmother's face in the memory: the warmth she had always found in her, the happiness she felt, the surety of a woman like this in her life. the woman who liked to listen to her stories, who took her into her home in a way that her parents never did.
diana tightens her grip on it. "you can feel it, can't you? the way you felt about her. the way she felt about you."
penny nods, trying to keep her own emotions at bay, trying not to be overwhelmed by how strong they were. she nods wordlessly in response. diana tugs on the lasso, and this time one of her memories emerges: diana walking down a beach. no battle flares, no men invading the beach. the smell of unfamiliar death, the awe and confusion of bodies around her, men moaning in pain. a metal wreckage, the smell of gasoline that has never permeated her senses before.
diana's emotions, sensations are just as overwhelming, just as strong as penny's own. diana's voice is gentle as she speaks, "you can feel it, can't you? the way i felt in my heart. the way every sensation feels here. how our emotions might not always be concrete or simple," she shuts her own eyes, letting penny experience the confusion, the surprise and curiosity. what it felt like for her to kneel down and see a man with blood running down his forehead, his eyes unfocused, his mouth forming words she couldn't understand then, but penny understands now as help me, please help me--
penny reaches out. wants to reach out to help him.
"memories that have layers, that aren't real don't feel like this," diana shifts them away from the memory with steve, bringing penny into the apartment, with ares' helmet between her hands, taking her away from such an overwhelmingly large memory. instead, she lets penny feel how easy it had been to crush it between her hands. how the memories at the edge of her mind had felt soft, immaterial. penny can tell immediately: the emotions are either too bombastic, even for diana, or too muted in the moments where it should have been large, overwhelming and clear. her fingers tug harder, on her own, and one simple tug turns them to shattered glass.
"minds can be fooled. but here," diana is finally close enough to reach up and tap penny's chest, "your heart-- my heart, cannot be fooled. not truly. and those who try to deceive either of us--"
"get a punch," penny supplies, with a cock of her chin.
diana smiles, and laughs. "yes. a punch."
back again.
memories are fickle little things. penny goes to sleep in the themysciran embassy, her hair long and dark, without the lasso, without the gauntlets. she hasn't had them for almost two years, and sometimes she still has such fantastical dreams, intertwined with memories. sometimes she dreams of that rainy night and conversation with her father. sometimes she dreams of those conversations with diana. and sometimes...
there she is a little girl, hair like a black flag. she is diana, daughter of the hippolyta tenth queen of the amazons. she is a little girl and she wants to get out of her mother's thumb. she runs past guards, past buildings spiraling into the sky. she breathes in the air that is so clean and fresh and her heart yearns and yearns for more than this. yearns to go past the shores of themyscira, past the fog. there is more to life than this.
she is also penny dupree and she wants to be more than a stupid, shy little wallflower. she feels taller, gawkier and more out of place among the people in her school. the girl who sneers at her has bright green eyes and freckles that make her stare at her over and over again and penny wants to know why she's so cruel to her when all she wants is to be her friend. later, when she is older she understands that she wanted to be more than just her friend, and maybe that's why they never got along. maybe that girl knew what penny did not at that age, and it makes her ache.
in her memories, steve trevor has eyes that are so bright, so wanting for her that she aches. she has never met a man before -- and she never will meet one like him at all. even when she can't understand him, even when she isn't able to wrap her mouth around his tongue, she understands when he mourns his fallen comrades. she reaches out for him, puts her arm around his shoulders, and she holds him when he cries. there is something there that she has never felt before, never seen before. something deep inside of her knows that this is the beginning of the end of her girlhood.
in penny's memories, she feels herself wilting benath her mother's iron will, beneath her thumb and her expectations. all she thinks about is running somewhere elsewhere. anywhere at all. her mind opens up before her, and she begins to write and write and write until she feels as if she can finally transport her elsewhere, to a better place.
the memories swirl, fold in on themselves. she is penny, experiencing high school. she is diana, who takes in the shore of man's world, her heart heavy with the knowledge she will never see home again. she is penny, who discovers real love with a woman who is a foot shorter than her and so much braver, who tastes like peppermint when she kisses her. she is diana who kisses mala when she's fourteen under an eternal sun. she is penny who picks up her sister and spins her around in the afternoon sunlight, happy to be with her. she is diana, who throws away her lasso to tell donna that she loves her.
penny wipes at her face, and she tries to pull herself out of the dreams, out of the memories. she realizes, slowly, that she is not asleep anymore. that what she is seeing vividly in her minds eye, comes with a searing headache. she pants, hand coming up to touch her forehead, focuses on running down a hill--remembers that it should be mostly red clay, not a flowering green. remembers that she wasn't without blemishes; a scar on her thigh from sixteen, a scabbed knee. they materialize, like an overlay, on the unblemished skin that she knows is diana's.
penny breathes. she breathes. she breathes, and her eyes prick with unshed tears.
"diana?" she asks, hoping for an answer.
"penny," diana says in that way she always does: calming, assured, good. penny swears she can feel diana's own self settle back into her, and she laughs.