Chapter 54: Buttons
Peter stood posted outside the bedroom door, as Scar and Dakota tried encouraging Mindy to sleep off whatever was infecting her mind and causing her to go all loopy. But no matter how compelling they sounding, she refused to give in, and kept making beeline after beeline for the exit.
Dakota suggested at one point, to sneak a sleeping pill into Mindy's water. Scarlett slapped him, and the idea never got brought up again.
Eventually, Mindy became too exhausted to fight them any longer, and succumbed to the numb void of sleep.
When she awoke a few hours later, she was relieved to find that not only had the inebriated effects worn off, but she hadn't dreamt of The Projectionist once. After an embarrassing recap of events, as well as getting some food in her, Jiminy urged Mindy to get as much rest as she could before facing Cthulhu the next day.
Mindy agreed and constructed a proper bedroom for herself.
Since she was too drained to come up with anything awe-inspiring, so she copied-and-pasted the Captain's Quarters of the original Jolly Rancher, complete with a signature Jiminy Cricket matchbox bed. She didn't mind if the architecture didn't match any of the other aesthetics present in the rest of the Underwater House. All that mattered, was that it felt like home.
Mindy tossed and turned, but was having more difficulty shutting her brain off than usual. Her mind circled back to the events of earlier that day; the memories replaying over-and-over again like a plane crash she couldn't look away from. How could she have let herself lose control like that? She could've blown up the entire ocean, or worse, the entire Dremesphere! But what really unsettled her, was the fact that she'd nearly killed Ursula...and in the moment, hadn't had a single problem with doing so.
Mindy couldn't deny she'd enjoyed having that much control over someone. Let alone someone as formidable as the Sea Witch herself. How could she not? She could still remember the sensation of such grandiose, raw power sizzling at her fingertips...it'd been tantalizing, and even made her mouth water at the sheer thought of wielding it again.
It hadn't even been a fight since the whole exchange had ended in a matter of seconds.
Once the bubble had shattered, Mindy had struck with the ferocity, speed, and deadly-accuracy of a king cobra. Ursula hadn't even gotten a single smidge of elbow-room to defend herself, and the Anomaly had the octopus quaking at her tail in a heartbeat. From there, with a mere flick of her wrist, she could've done anything she wanted to the beastly woman. She could've set her aflame, turn her into calamari, and feed her to a pack of sharks bit by bit. She could've had The Krakken show up, and sit back with a bag of popcorn as the two sorted out their differences. She could've even Thanos-snapped her out of existence, as though she were never a character in The Little Mermaid at all.
Mindy hadn't gotten the chance to do any of these things, as the Amulet of Illusions had immobilized her before she could wreck any more havoc. Which she was still extremely thankful for. It felt good to know she could always be stopped before inflicting any severe, life-altering, reality-ending damage.
The downside was that the images were still fresh in her brain, however. No amount of wishing, begging, or praying could make Alistaire take away the sounds of Ursula's screams, the shell-shocked horror present in her eyes, the blood pouring out of her ears as she sang-
Mindy shuddered then...
She made it a point to apologize to the Sea Witch as soon as possible.
The sound of something clattering outside her bedroom door, made Mindy's head snap in the direction of the hall. A small smirk touched her lips as she heard a familiar voice hiss: "Fuck!" somewhere beyond the darkness.
Mindy crept out of bed, and headed into the kitchen to investigate.
She spotted Scarlett crawling underneath a barstool beside the counter. Her eyes alighted with fresh panic, as her hands scrambled for something on the floor. With a slight dip of her head, Mindy caught a mechanical pencil at her feet.
Bending down, she picked it up, and approached Scarlett while clearing her throat.
"Lose something?"
"Dammit," Scar's shoulders sagged, "I was trying to not wake you up. Sorry hon,"
"I wasn't sleeping anyway,"
After helping Scarlett up, Mindy handed her the pencil. Scar gave a mock-curtsey as a thank you before settling back into her stool. Mindy gingerly occupied the one beside it. She tilted her head as Scarlett hunched over a page in her sketchbook.
"Watcha workin' on?" Mindy asked.
"Homework," Scarlett said.
"We haven't been to school in weeks,"
"I know. But our little therapist bug gave me this worksheet to do after our session," Scarlett explained, "Needless to say, things got pretty intense and we got into some heavy shit,"
"You mean, you actually told Jiminy about..." Mindy leaned forward and whispered, "Your dad?"
Scar nodded, "It wasn't easy, but I needed to,"
"How're you feeling about it?"
"To be honest, I'm starting to regret it a little," Scarlett admitted, "He offered multiple times to take a break, and discuss it another day, but I didn't listen. I insisted on getting it over with, and...and I have to deal with the consequences. But at the same time, it felt good to let it all out. I've never told the story in one go before, and it was very freeing,"
"That's incredible," Mindy reached out and squeezed her friend's wrist, "I'm so relieved you guys got along just fine, and that you actually seem invested in his teaching methods,"
"You were right," Scar grumbled.
"What was that?"
"You were right,"
"Didn't quite catch that,"
"You were right! I needed to get professional help! You were right, you stupid bitch! Are you happy now?!" Scarlett giggled as she threw her pencil at her, "I'm shouting it from the rooftops! You were right, you were right, you were right!"
"Shh!" Mindy punched her good-naturedly, "You're gonna wake the entire house, dumbass!"
The girls doubled over with silent laughter. They tried covering up their snorts, but that only made them chortle harder. Eventually, it died down enough for Mindy to catch her breath, and take on a somewhat serious tone.
"What kind of worksheet is he having you do?" she asked.
She was genuinely curious since Jiminy had never given her any worksheets in the time they've been together...now that she thought about it, she and Jiminy had never had a legit therapy session before. Mindy briefly wondered if she should be concerned about this revelation, but Scarlett distracted her.
"Basically, he's trying to help me change my current negative, self-deprecating thought process into something more positive and sickeningly sappy..." Scarlett answered, "It's really fucking hard because...because..."
"...because you've never done it before?" Mindy ventured, "You're so used to doing what you've always done to survive, that you feel like the damage done was irreversible and training your mind feels like a daunting and impossible task?"
"It's not just that," Scar said, "It feels weird being so forgiving to myself. It's breaking my brain to actively choose being nice to myself. It keeps screaming at me that I'm cutting myself too much slack. And every time I try to justify myself on paper, it ends up feeling...fake,"
"I'm sure it's not that bad,"
Scarlett didn't say a word, and passed the opened page of half-baked scribbles to Mindy.
"'I'm an asshole who impulsively lashes out at people for no apparent reason, and since I'm too stubborn to apologize, I use my anger issues as an excuse for bad behavior'" Mindy read aloud one of them at random, "Alright, let's see what you changed it to. 'I'm a good person...a really good person...I don't know why I insist that I'm not,'"
Scarlett avoided eye-contact as Mindy looked up at her with a grimace.
"At least it's positive?" she offered.
Scar's expression flat-lined.
"But I wouldn't say you have anger issues. Just that...you're very self-spoken. Your blunt, sometimes brutal honesty is one of the many things I love about you, but too much of a good thing can be bad. I think a more accurate statement would be..." Mindy trailed off as she scooped the pencil off the ground and wrote, "'I tend to not think before I speak. But I'm human, and I along with everyone else are learning how to be better every day. All I can do, is make more of an effort to be more considerate and sensitive to other peoples' feelings as well as the situation,'"
Scarlett stared at her in astonishment.
Mindy blinked, "What?"
"You make it look so easy," she said, "Has anyone ever told you you'd make one hell of a therapist?"
"Um," Mindy blushed, "No, I haven't considered it,"
"You should," Scarlett said with a wry grin, "You'd be a really good one,"
Mindy wheezed, "I don't think that's such a great idea. I'm a writer, that's all it is. I know how to take an existing sentence, and embellish it to make it sound and feel better. Plus, come on, really? This-" she gestured down at herself, "-as a therapist?! Don't you think I'm a little too...chaotic for that?"
"All the best ones are...at least, that's what I've heard anyway," Scarlett said.
Mindy nudged her with an encouraging smile, "Why don't you try the next one on your own?"
"'I should've known better than to be friends with those assholes who sold me out,'" Scar read in a flat voice, "'Everything that went down was my fault for being too stupid, too weak, too much of a chicken shit to fight back. I should've seen the obvious signs of danger, and done something to prevent it from happening,'"
"You aren't a mind reader, Scar," Mindy said, "You can't keep blaming yourself for something that wasn't even your fault,"
"I know..." Scarlett looked away and started knotting her hair, "It's just that...sometimes, there's this...this voice in my head that tells me I was a mistake. That I should've never been born, and I should hate every second I'm alive,"
"How is that justified?" Mindy demanded.
"Why else would all this awful shit happen to me?" Scar shot back a little fiercer than she'd intended, "I must have done something to piss off God, the universe, or some otherworldly being-maybe Walt Disney himself I don't fucking know...I keep asking myself, why? Out of the bajillion or something people on Earth, why do I have to suffer? Why does my life have to be so Goddamn miserable?" a terrifying thought crossed her mind then, and she asked in a broken husk of a voice, "Am I just...destined to feel this way, forever? What is wrong with me?"
Mindy answered the question by ensnaring the girl in a suffocating hug.
Not a word needed to be spoken. The silence spoke for itself. What spoke even louder was Mindy's vice-like grip, and the anguished, heartbroken tears Scarlett felt sliding down her back.
Realization flooded her, and soon she started to weep too. Mindy rubbed comforting circles into her upper shoulders as Scarlett buried her face in her hair. The princess didn't even wince at the snot tangling itself into it, and instead squeezed Scar tighter. The position was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but she didn't dare move. She feared that letting go before Scarlett was ready would cause her to throw her defenses back up, and retreat back into her shell of solitude.
And she couldn't let that happen. Not after all the progress they'd made. So, Mindy imagined herself as Scarlett's human anchor; stiff, unyielding, and grounding whatever was attached to it to the ground. To reality. To life. To hope.
To love.
"You are not destined to suffer, Scarlett Bloom," Mindy stated with a sniffle, "Sometimes bad things happen to people who don't even deserve it, that's all," when Scar didn't respond, she took it as a sign to continue, "I get that little voice too. It tells me I'm a disappointment. A failure. An imperfect daughter to a couch potato of a father. It says I don't deserve to have these amazing powers, since all I seem to do with them is cause misery to the people around me,"
"That's bullshit, and you know it,"
But Mindy shook her head, "You didn't see what happened at the graveyard,"
"I didn't need to," Scarlett sat up and looked her square in the eyes, "You'd never hurt anyone on purpose unless you had good reason,"
"You don't understand...I could have-" Mindy choked on her words, "I could have killed her today. I-I don't know what came over me. I'd never been so...so furious in all my life. It felt good. It actually felt good to have that sheer amount of control over someone else. To be in charge of whether that person lived or died, it was intoxicating. Euphoric, almost. And that's what scares me the most. Because in that moment...filled with bottled-up frustration, hatred, and above all rage. I couldn't have cared less about whether or not she would survive. It was-"
"-villainous,"
Mindy drew inside herself with a short nod, "If...if I'm not careful, I could do it again,"
"That won't happen. We will not let that happen,"
"How can you be so sure? It's only a matter of time before I get someone killed...I'm a monster, Scarlett,"
Scar grabbed her by the shoulders. She frothed at the mouth, and her whole body trembled with unbridled passion as well as anger, "You listen to me Melinda Maye Singh. You're practically a cherub with chubby cheeks and feathered wings. That doesn't mean you're flawless, or righteous one hundred percent of the time. But you are not a monster. You know how I know? I've seen monsters. I spent most of my formative years hanging around monsters, and that ain't you. And you wanna know something else? Ursula was asking for it!"
Mindy gasped, "Scarlett!"
"I'm being dead serious," She growled, "She's the one who pushed you too far, she is the one to blame, not you. She was asking the world of you. She wanted to see you pushed to the brink of insanity, and she got what she wished for. Whatever happened today was not your fault, and you are not a monster. End of story,"
Mindy tried coming up with another argument, but ultimately gave in with a sigh, "See? If you can be so forgiving to your best friend, what's stopping you from doing the same for yourself?"
"I could ask you the same question," Scar said with a dry chuckle as she released her, "But I have a feeling your answer would be as good as mine, which is that it's overall easier to be forgiving to someone who isn't yourself, because you see that other person as almost perfection itself. If however, you look in the mirror... all you can see in yourself is imperfection,"
Mindy paused, "You have a lot of experience with this feeling, don't you?"
"You could say that," Scarlett shrugged, "I've had demons festering in this noggin for ages, but it's only now, because of you that I finally have the courage to face them,"
"Does..." Mindy stopped, then treaded with caution, "Does that hyper-critical voice ever go away for you? Even if only for a little while?"
"Yeah..." she said, "But when it does, it's fleeting and before you know it, it drags you back under before you fully get to savor it,"
"What do you do to get through it?"
"Uh...I dunno," Scarlett drew her eyes up in thought; as if the answer were somewhere in the cracked ceiling...then she spoke again, "I just, do I guess...because, there is no other option for me. The alternative is what? Offing yourself? Giving the people who've hurt you the satisfaction of seeing you crumble?"
Mindy didn't reply to any of these hypothetical questions.
Maybe it'd be worth it, just to make the voices stop...
She didn't dare utter this thought aloud, but Scar seemed to read her mind just from the blurred, distant look in her grey eyes.
"You know that's why Hook was saying all those horrible things to you, right?" Scarlett's own eyes glistened with pleading for her to understand, "He saw you at your worst, and took advantage of it. Like kicking an animal when it's already wounded. That was low even for him, and you should never let him make you feel that powerless ever again. Killing yourself is the easy way out. The coward's way out. No, I live out of spite. I live to protect myself and those I care about from the world's unfairness. You can't get hurt if you never give others the chance to hurt you,"
"Or know you," Mindy added, "Doesn't that get exhausting for you? Aren't you tired of scaring everyone away?"
"So what if people are scared of me?" Scarlett huffed, "That's their problem. I don't care if they think I'm mean. If it helps me wake up the next morning, that's all that matters,"
Mindy couldn't bring herself to disagree with her philosophy.
"Let's make a promise to each other," she said after a beat had passed, "As long as we're both still alive, we won't make any self-deprecating comments...for the rest of our existence, we'll keep the other in check to remind her of how badass she is,"
Scarlett nodded, "We should come up with some kind of codeword. In case we're in a situation where there just isn't time for an inspiring speech, like a battle or being sucked into a swirling vortex,"
The two fell into a contemplative silence...
"Buttons,"
Mindy looked to Scarlett in bemused surprise, "What?" she asked with flushed cheeks, "It doesn't take a lot of time to say, and...I don't know, I just thought it was cute I guess. We-we can totally change it to something else if you want!"
"No, no, no," Mindy protested as she took Scar's hand with a gentle smile, "It's perfect,"
"B-buttons it is, then," then, Scarlett had a thought, and she blurted out, "Did we just come up with the world's first reverse-suicide pact?"
Mindy couldn't hold in the peal of bell-like laughter that exploded out of her. Scarlett's lips eased into a lopsided smile. Her pupils shrunk to adorable pinpricks as her hands slapped over her mouth.
"It's a miracle nobody heard that," Mindy squeaked.
"Nobody except me," Scar teased, "My ears have been blessed,"
It was Mindy's turn to blush. And she felt the beginnings of that same strange fuzzy feeling swelling somewhere within her chest...
