Warning: Angst themes, mature pairing
The Human Condition
Crossing her hands against the wooden door-frame, Violet Parr arched her back and felt as though she had put herself in prison, and then maybe, just maybe Mom and Dad would see just how tainted she actually was, she was no shade of purple, and maybe it was better this way, him a free man and her in his place, in this prison, in the prison of him.
Fall had brought Tony, and Tony, Violet realized, wasn't worth pink headbands and shades of purple, Tony was not worth ruining herself, even if she could see where she was going for once, her black hair pulled backward. Yes, she looked between her bangs and saw that Tony was no more than a boy who wanted to be seen. And Violet was a girl who still wanted to be invisible, so this could not work.
Somehow, though, when the red-haired criminal on television was escorted into the clean courtroom, his foot in a cast and his right side burned severely, but not so that he was ruined, Violet found a distinct difference in his sincere swagger and Tony's conceited cat-footfalls. This man wanted to be seen, too, but not in Tony's way, in a way that was acceptable, likable, even.
Buddy Pine barked the newscasters, but Mom and Dad whispered from the couch, saying Syndrome-this, Syndrome-that.
Violet didn't want to understand the red-haired criminal, who, months ago, had put her family in peril and nearly claimed Jack-Jack as his own, had permanently wooed Kari, the ex-sitter, who still warbled, overcome, at freckles even after her mind had been claimed by the American government. Syndrome had been a different kind of adult, an adult who had this kid-grin that Violet remembered now, pressing her form against wood, wishing she could make her feelings invisible.
Violet didn't want to understand the red-haired criminal, but she felt she needed to.
"Goddamned zero-point," huffed Dad, as Violet watched formlessly from the wall.
"Oh, Bob, you don't even know what you're talking about—let it go, let him go!"
"What kind of a time is it when a villain can't even die!? "
"He was lucky, Bob, and we're lucky, too!"
Violet did not think they were lucky at all, and so she went into the wallpaper and felt like dying.
By and by, Violet was consumed by the newspaper, the trials, the quotations she read on billboards.
She didn't know what to believe, but she wanted to believe in something, so she tried to believe in Dad, but Dad wasn't a smart-mouth who had laughed decadently about a murderous robot like it was a toy in a cereal box. Dad wasn't on television; Dad hadn't survived being turbine fodder, and Violet, a morbid teenager who was wowed by life and death, found herself believing in Syndrome.
Violet scarred herself with smoldering cigarettes that the punks had left behind the gym. She thought of Mirage, wanted desperately to know more about Mirage, the only woman on the island, such a pretty smile.
There was hope, after all, Violet pondered, smiling too, the butt's end sticking her like a hickey on her underarm. Mirage had been tall and lanky, like herself. Mirage's legs had been too much for her body. Mirage, maybe, Violet supposed, was a nice girl.
Violet ceased smiling. However, Violet's skin was moon-white, and her tresses fell black licorice and limp to her back. Mirage's complexion was espresso and her high-beam hair spilled out over her elbows and made kisses down her neck. Violet's body was undeveloped, sad, fourteen. Mirage's breasts were perky, and she made all the right movements when she clicked around in her black heels.
Violet wondered why Syndrome had wanted Mirage, and why Mirage had wanted Syndrome, and she wished that Mirage would tell her about Syndrome, like an older sister, over ice cream, saying "He likes when you touch him there."
Feeling goose bumps, Violet dropped the cigarette and ran away from this silly, silly thought.
Clearly Mirage was not a nice girl, or at least, she hadn't been. Violet wondered if the opposite could happen to her, and she pounded her tennis shoes across the asphalt.
Violet dropped the pink and opted for black shiny shoes and white slacks and a white, clingy blouse. She let her hair hang in front of her eyes again.
Dad looked up from his newspaper, his newspaper plastered with "Pine Claims Not Guilty!!" and "Poor Dosages To Blame?" . He looked at his daughter for a moment, and then shrugged, unaffected.
He just cannot love her still, wrote Violet on lined notebook paper.
She left him
Giving out the password
As though it were
Their sex, their special
Secret.
She cringed when Mom yelled "Lights out!" and erased the paper with a fury.
Violet tries to walk casually by city hall, throwing glances, but he's always inside. His trial is lasting thousands of years.
"Kill—er". Violet smacked the word as though it were berry lip gloss, she smoothed the word over her tongue, she tasted it.
She'd seen late-night programs about murders, trials, and victims. But what stood out where the criminals, angry ones, who sought out squealers, raped them, punished them.
Is that why Mom and Dad were quiet lately? Were Mom and Dad scared? Violet didn't think so. They shouldn't be, anyway. Buddy Pine wasn't that kind of criminal, was he?
Violet wondered if somewhere, Mirage was thinking the same thing. And maybe she was scared—after all, it was she who was responsible, really. Maybe she was filling a suitcase with her belongings, maybe she was going to change her name, become an illusion, a dancing idea, a blank canvas, her suitcase rolling along stones. Waiting for Syndrome to re-discover her, crack a few codes, break her secret.
He could, and somewhere, Violet imagined Mirage cursing herself for ruining the perfect plan. Cursing herself that he was alive. Cursing herself.
But Violet had high hopes for her. Being fourteen and vulnerable, she didn't think Buddy Pine would do harm to anyone anymore. After all, he said he was innocent. He said it was the medication, his sickness, something like that she couldn't quite understand, no matter how hard she scratched there was an itch, a missing piece that Dad and Mom weren't talking aloud about.
Trial week, Violet's stomach was a mass of worms. She wondered if he'd get off. She wondered if he'd become like everyone else, a subservient shadow, and wouldn't he hate it?
Wasn't that the plan? Conformity, hypocrisy—Syndrome' s visions had been bleak, communistic.
"Raving liberals," Dad had said, shaking his head, afterward.
Violet shrunk back against her locker when Tony walked by, sniffing around like a bloodhound for some sort of kill.
She made sketches of herself against black paper with a white marker, made herself in a new super suit, no emblazoned I to remind her who she belonged to, she was someone else entirely, her hair cascading outward, her eyes bright milk. Violet poured her true self into this drawing, all darkness and despair and ridicule.
Cartoon Violet did not look like a Super Hero.
Black leather and a dark purple mask.
She looked like a villain.
One night, Violet dreamed another idea, that Mirage and Syndrome had forgiven each other, and that on the day of the hearing, she greeted him outside the courthouse in a revealing dress and they picked up right where they'd left off, all "sorry, baby" and "didn't mean it". There was no white horse, but sometimes there was a white Cadillac.
This made Violet furious upon waking up.
After all, Tony and Mirage were two of the same. Elegant, beautiful, gorgeous people, fake people.
And she and Syndrome were outcasts, angry, waiting.
(She couldn't quite put a finger on why she was obsessing over him in the same way Buddy Pine had been obsessed with Dad, but there was something so tainted, and something she believed in, he knew that Supers were full of shit, why did he want to be Super? He was too real to be Super, he was too funny, he was a nerd, he was someone she would want to be friends with at school. And maybe that was why?)
Violet did her makeup and dressed in her new, monochromatic clothes, and told Dad she was going downtown to study at the library.
"Just—" he struggled with his words. He had a problem with discipline. "Just stay away from the courthouse, you understand? I know it sounds like I'm treating you--- ah--- like a child, but the fact is, Violet, that I don't want anything to happen to you. That guy's a loon."
Violet smiled in the new way everyone adored. "'Kay, Dad. Don't worry!"
At the courthouse, Violet strained her eyes across rows of people, flashing cameras, bright lights snapping through the air. Guilty, better be, huffed some kids to her left and she glared at them. They didn't understand his brilliance.
After ten hours at least, the door opened to the large, proud building and the murmurs of the crowd died down to a sound as scuttling as a finger across sandpaper, as though this moment were a secret they all needed to keep.
Violet's heart pounded in her chest. Out of all these people, who else had seen Syndrome for who he really was? No one but her! And she knew, she just knew, that when Syndrome saw her, he was going to understand her, too, and he was going to make her part of his plan. They both had nothing to lose.
Slurs began, screams, yowls of the crowd.
"Innocent lives!"
"Medical lies!"
"Explain yourself!"
"Are you really Buddy Pine?"
"Of course he is!" yelled Violet, but no one could hear her; she wasn't even opening her mouth.
And then, a form appeared. It was Pine's lawyer, a pretty, tiny black woman with wonderful white teeth and a tailored beige suit. She raised a ringed finger to the air, her neck dancing with diamonds. She smiled victoriously, and in that moment, everyone knew.
The crowd broke out into violent shouting and the lawyer looked tickled. She beckoned backward, and out he came.
Buddy Pine was looking older without the black spandex, he'd traded his former clothes for a modest navy suit, but on his feet, Violet was pleased to see, were bright green running shoes. His hair wasn't quite so high, but then again, some of it did go through that turbine, so what he was left with was a spiked shock of red, shorn around the ears, still impressive. He grinned placidly out over the crowd, not making eye contact with anyone, but his eyes are scanning about. Violet stands on tiptoes.
She's made herself visible, and he'd know her when he saw her, right?
He grinned. "I'd like to say something," he told the mob effortlessly, brightly, even.
The yelling died down.
"I'm real, real sorry for everything that went down, it was never supposed to happen." This little speech is given with a shrug, as though to say 'I really don't give a shit, but it's nice you all came to see me.'
Violet will take what she can get, as Buddy marches forward like a war hero.
She stands on tiptoe, waiting, and when he passes her, she put up her hand in some sort of gesture, her dark eyes catching in the light, her pole legs straight and narrow, her skirt rippling around her ankles in the California breeze and she makes eye contact (finally!) with him.
His blue eyes shock her brown ones, and he looks away as quickly as he looked at her, a glance really, before shuffling past photographers, opening the door to his limo and sliding across the seat.
Five seconds.
In holding cell 228, Violet and her family were being grasped by energy and forced into place. Mirage had come in once or twice to offer angry glances and papers before clacking away in her heels, and Syndrome reacted stuffily to her presence.
Violet had watched intently.
"Ah, the human condition," Syndrome had announced to no one at a point, folding his arms against his back like an enlightened professor of literature.
Dad gritted his teeth balanced against the constraints. Mom looked pissed off.
Mirage gave a little 'hmph' of disinterest like she'd heard this one before, and left the room for what would be the very last time.
The redhead did not appear to be vexed. "Sad, really. I mean, here in this very room, we got like, tons'a people who the public used to like. The changeable public. Too sad. But see, the human condition is depressing because we all gotta be something, we gotta make something outta ourselves, and impress the pants off every hog farmer and business entrepreneur there is out there, you know! And we're all victims of it!"
He paused, and gave a mock sigh. "But in the end?" A biting, nasty chuckle escaped through his lips. "We're all just numbers. You're just numbers."
'Not me and you,' Violet Parr had thought hopefully, admiring his scholarly attitude. 'We're different.' And so the fascination began.
Violet fell back into the crowd, and felt their force gnawing at her brutally. It didn't matter what they were screaming about anymore.
Syndrome waved from his limo and was driven far away, making his point clearer than the white saucers that were Violet's eyes.
Numbers.
She and Dad, Mom, Dashell, Mirage, Jack-Jack, and Tony Rydinger. All little empty molds, to be filled with useless thoughts and ideas, then left out to dry in the beaming desert sun.