#set in oh the first couple weeks of the switzerland arc somewhere around there

[unicyclehippo]

for your one word prompts, trust? <3

it's been building for a little while now, the unease, the confusion, the hurt every time beatrice takes a call and walks out of the apartment or sends a coded message on the burner she hides in the salt tin on top of the fridge or sidesteps questions, and ava has been meaning to talk to her about it, sit them both down on the couch with a nice soothing cup of tea and the frankly painful and painstaking list she's written out of Things I've Noticed You Not Telling Me. she meant to, she really did. but today has just been. bad. from start to end.

//

beatrice wakes her before six with a nudge and they dress silently, slipping out into the grey morning and down to the lake to train. pretty soon, the clouds split and ava spends her morning mostly flat on her back. over and over and over and over and over again. beatrice is impassive and challenging in turns, a good teacher but cold, calm, and by the end of their sparring ava feels half-dead again.

the rain doesn't help. it's cold and slow, half-frozen to a sludge and it stings when it hits. drips off the end of her nose, her chin, the ends of her fingers when she stands in it, panting.

'h-how'd i do, coach?' ava jokes, teeth chattering. 'too impressive, right? gotta rein it in?'

beatrice smirks, just a little. she's always happier when she's been training and ava hasn't quite figured out whether it's because of the exercise or because she likes to win. 'you did well,' she says. ava starts to deflate, when she adds, 'it's important to train in all different...terrains.'

'ooh.' ava closes her eyes. savours it. 'that was so bad.'

she gets about half a second of beatrice laughing when there's a single buzz from the picnic table where they've stashed their things. a few long strides gets beatrice there in mere moments, before ava can even start to think to do the same, and then beatrice calls back to her,

'time to test your endurance, ava. we're jogging back to the apartment,'

and sets off without another word, slinging her waterproofed backpack over her shoulder.

the grey swallows her up. ava swallows down a mutinous thought—to stay, to ignore beatrice's instruction—and stumbles forward to her own pack, her jacket which has remained thankfully dry beneath the picnic table roof. her fingers catch, numb, on the zipper. the teeth tug closed, all the way up to her neck.

there's a good reason that beatrice isn't telling her about these messages, these secret phone calls. ava is pretty sure they're from camila, or mother superion, based on the timing and the secretive way beatrice sends messages back. there's a good reason, she just knows it.

//

by the time ava makes it to the apartment, beatrice has already showered and dressed. heat billows out from their tiny bathroom in a white cloud; the steam stings her frozen nose a little, smells hot and a little like the shampoo they both use, something flowery. ava's never bothered to check what it was, just enjoys pouring it into her hands - it comes out of the bottle pink, which always makes her smile - and sudsing it up, the scent slightly chemical and overpowering but it lasts the whole day. ava knows because she can always tell when beatrice has just left a room at work, the smell lingering, and it clings to their pillows too, much gentler by the time they get to bed but still there.

'i have work today,' beatrice says, tugging on her boots. 'hans and i are going over the inventory, nine to twelve. it might run late, depending.' on what, she doesn't elaborate.

'i could come with -'

'it'll be boring and cold,' beatrice denies with a shake of her head. 'please, stay here, stay warm. we can't afford for you to get sick.'

'can i get sick? or would the halo heal that too?'

'i'm - not sure.' beatrice pauses, reaching for her coat. her fingers close around empty air as she thinks about it. shakes her head. 'better not test it.' her eyes narrow when ava just hums. 'ava. please don't test it.'

'fine. buzzkill.'

'i'm not a buzz-'

'i'm teasing, bea.' ava glances to the bathroom - warm, inviting - and back to beatrice. 'hey,' she says, effortlessly casual. rainwater drips down to her soggy, muddy trainers. 'who was the message from?'

'message?'

'yeah. down by the lake? you got a message.'

'ah. it was from hans, like i said.' beatrice doesn't meet her eyes when she says it, stooping to collect her keys and wallet from the coffee table. 'right. i'll be back around midday, maybe one. i'll bring lunch. any preferences?'

the truth, ava wants to say, but it feels a bit dramatic. and she kinda just wants to shuffle into the bathroom and defrost, so she says, 'curry. nice and hot.'

'alright. i'll see what i can do. and ava?'

was this it? was she going to tell her? ava perks up, smiles.

'i know this is unfair but - the rain, could you...?'

ava slumps. waves her away. 'i'll mop. don't worry about it.'

'thank you. truly.'

//

beatrice is late. she comes through the door at twenty past one, wind-swept, cheeks flushed with the cold. it's not raining anymore but the chill lingers and she has mud splattered on her boots and the cuffs of her dark jeans, which she changes for black sweatpants and thick woolen socks.

'how was inventory?' ava asks, turning away from the sink where she's finally got around to washing up their coffee cups—okay, mostly her own, which she's left scattered around the apartment—and pulls bowls up from the cupboard, dishes up their curries. she sticks a finger into the centre of her own and frowns, slides it into the microwave. weird. it's not a long walk from the store but either it's colder outside than ava thinks or beatrice took the long way home because the food is barely warm anymore.

the suspicion stings and before she can think it through totally, she's reaching for the crumpled up receipt, plastic bag rustling under her fingers. it is soft and creased, made of that thin, cheap paper in off-grey; someone, maybe beatrice, has touched it with a wet hand and the blue ink of their order has spilled, bled across the page. where it is water-spotted, the paper is soft and easily torn and it rips a little when ava smooths it out but even so, the collection time is legible in the bottom corner.

twelve forty-three.

'—doesn't have what it takes to be manager, i fear. the entire procedure could do with an overhaul for improved efficiency, which i suggested to the owner—'

'why did it take you forty minutes to get home?'

beatrice pauses. takes her time to roll the second sock onto her foot, tucking the end of her sweatpant neatly over it.

'who messaged you this morning? who really messaged you? and don't tell me it was hans because i know he wouldn't be up before nine. ever.'

'the road was slippery. and it was hans.'

'oh it was hans?' ava crosses the kitchen, grabs her own phone out of the pocket. she holds it up. 'i'll text him then, huh? maybe call him and ask - hey, did you call beatrice at the ass crack of dawn this morning?'

'you're being childish.'

ava sucks in a sharp breath, recoils. 'childish? are you for real?' beatrice grimaces, apologetic, but it's not enough. 'me asking questions is - is not me throwing a fucking tantrum.'

'i shouldn't have -'

'no! don't fucking bother!' she says, and it comes out rough and too-loud. heat prickles across her skin - embarrassed, humiliated - because she's pretty sure she's being loud enough that their neighbours can hear, if they're home, if they're listening, and what they'll hear is that beatrice thinks she's a child. what they'll hear is ava's voice cracking with some awful mixture of hurt and anger. 'i'm not being childish. i'm - i'm being scared,' she spits. 'scared and confused and alone because the one person who is supposed to be helping me keeps lying to me!'

beatrice's eyes go wide, flicker over to the fridge and her stupid salt container on top.

'do you think i'm - i'm stupid? huh?' the idea hurts but the heat flares and stings and ava feels like she's on fire so the hurt isn't hurt, it's just fuel. 'you think i don't notice when you sneak off? when you take calls and messages all the time and pretend like they're about something else? when you stay late at work?' she says with a mocking edge, because beatrice has told her exactly that three times in the last two weeks and it's getting stale.

'it's the busy season -'

'are you serious!'

the halo flares and the water in the sink overflows with the force of it, displaced, slops down to the tiles and splashes all over. mugs knock together with dull clacks beneath the water, the sound deadened, drowned. 'stop lying to me. you keep telling me to trust my team but what the fuck does that mean? do you even know?'

beatrice has no answer. she stands in the living room, empty-handed. offers ava nothing in return for her questions.

something cracks in ava's chest and an awful thought bubbles out, filling her chest until she can't breathe. beatrice doesn't care, she doesn't care, she's just standing there and ava has spent too many years begging people to care, to help, to go through it all over again. especially with someone who took her face between her hands, who spoke into her ear as she was passing through pain and stone, and promised to care. promised to remain.

ava drags in a shuddering breath, turns sharply away. she plunges her hands into the sink to rescue the mugs from beneath the water, beneath the waves her halo flung into motion.

'i don't have a team,' ava tells her, voice dull. 'the only person here with me is you and if you don't - if you don't talk to me or - or trust me then we're not a team. you get that, right? it's not about following orders anymore, beatrice. there is no order anymore. not when things are fucked up like this. so it's gotta be about figuring it out together, that's what a team is, isn't it? and even if i can't help, even if i'm - s-slowing us down or doing it all wrong, you're not helping by lying to me.'

the apartment is so quiet now that ava isn't yelling but her head is ringing and she nearly misses it when beatrice starts to talk, so quiet is her voice.

'i shouldn't have lied.' ava snorts. flings the sponge onto the side. 'i didn't want to trouble you with -'

one of the mug cracks in her hand. ava hisses under her breath, spins back around to jab a finger at beatrice. a blod of suds, barely red, lands on the kitchen table between them.

'you didn't want to tell me anything because you thought i'd run again.'

'no.'

beatrice steps forward, into the doorway of the kitchen, her eyes wide. 'ava, no, i never thought that! i -'

for a moment, a very un-beatrice like strain is evident on her face and the part of ava that is hurt and on fire wants to take it as proof, as some desperate scrambling to put together a better lie. the hurt is potent, sick and harsh like a knife in guts, twisted. but there is a much bigger part of ava that likes beatrice—hates to see her hurting, struggling—and so she waits and watches as the strain breaks, as beatrice pushes past it. sees, for the first time since they barricaded themselves here in this nowhere town, the boundless care that beatrice had offered so freely to ava back in a room full of concrete and chrome.

'i am so truly sorry,' beatrice murmurs, takes another step closer around the table. reaches for ava in one moment before she folds her hands behind her back in the next. a different strain, much more completely conquered. 'i'm sorry, ava, that my actions led you to that conclusion. i know you've changed. i know your dedication, your focus. your - desire to see this through. i see it,' beatrice insists, raw and honest.

with each word, ava feels herself calm. the electric sting of the halo settles.

'it was never a question in my mind that you would run again.'

'then...why? why hide -' ava gestures to the salt container, to beatrice. 'whatever it is?'

beatrice looks ashamed. even when she explains, there's still something missing, something just out of reach that ava cannot hear and beatrice cannot - will not? - say.

'you are working hard. and making vast improvements in everything you do. and so,' beatrice says, and moves to the fridge, pulling out her burner phone, 'when camila began to send me updates and it was all bad news - all of it - i asked her to send it only to me in, what i see now,' she says, tone wry, 'was a misguided attempt to help you. i didn't want to add anything more to your plate - you're dealing with so much already, ava, i only wanted to...spare you that,' she confesses, words barely more than a breath by the end.

ava frowns, not with the weight of anger, only attention. she nods, slowly. 'okay. i - can understand that, i guess.' she huffs. leans her head back, stares at the light on the ceiling.

it's glowing bright. beatrice must have changed it at some point, ava swears it was flickering yesterday.

reaching behind her, ava pulls the plug from the sink. it gurgles as it drains. she peeks over at the braced beatrice.

'so. you do trust me, then?'

a smile, achingly sweet. 'yes, ava, i trust you.'

'oh.' ava pushes her fingers through her hair, forgetting suds and sink water and the little bit of blood. she wipes her hand dry on her shirt, ignoring beatrice's grunt of dismay, or maybe disgust. 'sorry for yelling at you.'

'and i am sorry. for lying. and calling you childish. that was uncalled for.'

they stand together, a few paces apart, just staring at one another. ava is the first to move, exhausted, swaying forward into beatrice. she drops her head heavily onto the other girl's shoulder, curls her arms around her in a way she hasn't dared to do for days. beatrice exhales shakily, breath hot against ava's hair, her ear, and brings her hands up as precisely as she always does. right hand to the back of ava's neck, fingers pressed to her hairline and no lower. left hand against ava's right shoulder blade. then, the tiniest shift. beatrice's littlest finger lifts from its place on ava's hairline; it touches back down, cold, against the agonisingly bare skin of ava's neck.

'do you - can you forgive me?' beatrice asks, very very quietly. 'can we try again?'

there's not much space between them but ava finds it and banishes it, moves closer, hugs beatrice a little tighter. turns her head, nose to neck. 'yes,' she mumbles. 'yeah. i do. we can.'

beatrice nods against her. 'thank you.'

[aion-rsa]

Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Dumb Patrol

https://ift.tt/3eT5rvb

This Doom Patrol review contains spoilers.

Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7

As its title suggests, Doom Patrol gets pretty dumb this week when the manor experiences an infestation of microscopic beings that feed off of bad ideas, but which reveals Miranda to be an effective primary. Meanwhile, Cliff rockets back to Earth, and vows endlessly to kill the Chief, who is seeking answers in the Yukon, and Rita decides to shadow the Cloverton beekeeper for her community theater role. And once again, Doom Patrol hits us with a silly episode that still manages to push character development forward – even for Willoughby Kipling — and unveils more of Chief’s plan for Dorothy.

“Dumb Patrol” introduces the pink-skinned microscopic beings the Scants which, as a 1950s health class PSA from the Knights Templar explains, implant very bad ideas into infected humans, who then produce “uma-jelly” upon which the creatures feed. Bad ideas as a weapon is incredibly effective, it turns out (and is quite tasty, if the Scant Queen played by Jhemma Ziegler is to be believed).

After some Scant mist inspire Larry, Vic, and Roni to open a crate from the Eismann Gallery marked “Do Not Open” on the front, the back, and the sides – all caps, underlined – we’re treated to great comedic moments where our typically dour characters can get goofy.

(As an aside, the Eismann Gallery “somewhere in Switzerland” is likely a reference to Horst Eismann from the Doom Patrol comics who collects bizarre objects, and who Kipling claimed in the first episode of the season to possess enough magic to return the team to normal size.)

Despite Miranda’s fairly sound advice that Captain Trainor should give his family space, he asks for her to ring up Flit from the Underground – where they both teleport into the hospital where Larry’s grandson was held. The normally morose Larry goes from Negative Man to Positive Man as he chipperly announces himself as “Doctor Trainor” with a lab coat, and almost gets captured by the Bureau of Normalcy.

Meanwhile, Vic and Roni’s relationship, already moving way too fast to be believed, shifts into a whole new gear with them agreeing Vic should just perform surgery on her to remove her tech (an idea Larry is more certain of than anything in his whole life; and he should know since he is already dressed as doctor). Oh, and Cyborg confesses his love to her, which leads to a sweet “booyah” between couples.

Since Vic and Larry are two of the more downer characters on Doom Patrol, this foolish optimism fueled by the Scants is a refreshing breather. This is especially true for Vic. Larry’s arc is often heart wrenching, but meaty, whereas Vic doesn’t typically have as much to do. I have to say, I am like Vic overall more this season.

Kipling also benefits from being a dum-dum. Already a likable smartass, it’s nice to see the drunk wizard taken down a peg. Even he isn’t too smart to avoid getting infected by the Scants, and the Scant Queen prods him about his secret love for Baphomet, the horse-head demon without a body. It makes one almost feel bad for Willoughby, who uses a first edition The Catcher in the Rye for some papercut blood magic to send a message to her.

Rather than the Scantoverse from the comics (created by artists Mike Allred and writer Gerard Way, musician and creator of The Umbrella Academy), the Scants are hanging out in the painting that had trapped Beardhunter and Mr. Nobody. Sporting some Beast Boy Teen Titans Go! undies, Beardhunter mentions Nobody skipped out of the painting for another gig, cheekily referenced in a meta onscreen promo for the animated Harley Quinn series where he plays Joker and Clayface. Along with the Scant Queen’s self-referential magazine, these kinds of jokes work on Doom Patrol because the show has set up the expectation of weirdness, and they allow the viewer to revisit characters like Beardhunter and Nobody (though, for now, in absentia).

But the show also plays with expectations by making Miranda a calming, rational persona as primary. Sure, she seems to be trying hard to be well liked and learn how things are done around Doom Manor because she’s the new kid. Indeed, making breakfast, fawning over Rita as her biggest fan, and offering help from the other alters – not to mention saving the day by killing the Scant Queen – go far in winning the team over. And she appears less chaotic than Jane.

However, Miranda appears to have her own agenda underway in the Underground, and it looks like Jane will be stuck down there investigating. Who will be the one topside to ask for Jane back? Probably Cliff.

That is, unless Cliff isn’t too absorbed with his newly arrived daughter.

In classic Chief fashion, he rocketed Robotman back to Earth (and right through a billboard for the autobiography from the dino-side of Animal-Vegetable-Man, which received accolades from Gerard Way, Doom Patrol writer Jeremy Lambert, and, of course, supervillain Kite Man).

Read more

TV

Doom Patrol Season 2: Dorothy Spinner is Forever Young

By Rosie Knight

But it turns out he wasn’t trying to kill him, as it initially appeared at the end of last episode. Cliff has a literal journey walking back to the manor, vowing to kill Niles along the way, getting shat upon by a bird (who he also vows to kill), and subjecting himself to pathetic shout-outs as a talking statue in exchange for cellphone use. But Cliff literally wills himself forward and is eventually rewarded with Clara waiting for him – and holding the missing tape of Niles’ confession of what he did to Cliff. I had a suspicion the Chief was out to betray Cliff again, and it seemed confirmed last week, so this reveal was a welcome surprise. The Chief is no saint, but I want him to ultimately be a good guy, perhaps because I can’t help but love Timothy Dalton’s performance so much.

And it does appear that Dalton will have more to do as Chief coming up. His venture into the Yukon, searching for Slava, instead leads to a vision of Candlemaker who suggests he is a creation of Slava’s ancestors. I don’t know if I buy it; Candlemaker has already proven himself to be a manipulator. But the vision is enough for Niles to call upon Kipling, wherein the episode closes with the two appearing to discuss a plan to dispatch Dorothy because she is too powerful to be contained. It’s a dark episode finale for the remorseful Chief to be pondering killing his beloved daughter.

Finally, Rita had her own parental issues to work through this week. While shadowing the Cloverton beekeeper who she is portraying in the community theater show “Our Town” (but not the Thornton Wilder one), she seeks to find inspiration for her one line: “My Bees!” Rather, she ends up drunk with the beekeeper, talking about how parents are sometimes full of their own ideas in an attempt to protect their (potentially also dumb) kids. Rita may think she has found catharsis by talking to the bees, but something inside her might be fixed after all. She demonstrates control over her powers to thwart a mugging, and potentially becoming a real superhero: The Beekeeper? Does Cloverton have a new avenging angel buzzing about?

OK, a final petty thought that is driving me a little bonkers about a show I think is legitimately great, but Rita seems to have a disappearing parasol at the beginning of the ep when she walks up to the beekeeper’s porch. The sudden vanishing act had me wondering if Mr. Nobody was operating behind the scenes after all.

That said, an episode about our heroes having a lot of dumb ideas ended up being a smart story that allowed the actors to stretch a little and have some out-of-character fun in their roles.

The post Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Dumb Patrol appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2WLhKDl