amethysts | [narrative] it's like you never had wings

Who is Liberty Shrike?

Libby asks herself--Shrike asks herself who she is. What makes this girl tick? What's her programming and how does it adapt? She has to evolve organically out of Libby, this new person, and Shrike organizes herself like she always does. First of all, she has to establish why Shrike was Libby.

The pieces are all there, easy enough. A lie is best when it's mostly true. Shrike was a slave, once, but when she was young, when she had Larkspur--

Larkspur can't be part of this, she decides. Two people know Wren's name and two people know Larkspur's. It's three people in all. The overlap, Jesse, can be trusted not to talk, trusted to understand why Shrike has to reinvent. Nikolai doesn't know enough to call her a liar about Larkspur and he'll keep Wren's name safe, because he keeps Shrike safe. Miles knows about Larkspur but not Wren, and Miles troubles her until she decides how to handle this. There was Larkspur, once, who is too precious to share, and he won't give her away.

But then there was Shrike. She makes him out of Jesse and Nikolai, a little bit of Loki. Shrike, she decides, was a tall, slender young man. Twenty, young enough to be close to a fourteen-year-old girl but old enough to eliminate sexual tension in this story, because this story has to be pure. Shrike found Shrike when she was new, after Jo cut her loose, and he stopped her hooking for a while. Shrike took her in and taught her hacking, because Shrike was a good person even if he had a sharp sense of humour and a sharper laugh. His city's razor edge is Nikolai, his heart is Jesse, and his laughter and sleek smile are Loki.

But Shrike died. Saving her? That's too melodramatic. No, a person as good but dangerous as Shrike had enemies, and Shrike found him with his throat slit in their apartment. Then Shrike had to run, grieving, and the grief is a little of Larkspur but mostly the hole that bored through her chest when she thought Jesse was never coming back.

No. Shrike isn't dead. Shrike is in prison. That's better. He's in prison and while, in bravado and defensiveness, Shrike said she didn't want to go back, she does. For Shrike. Shrike is part of why she wants truth so much, because he's unfairly imprisoned. He feeds her outrage at authority. Shrike has someone who will miss her if they never make it back, and there, that's much better, much more pathos and much more realistic. Death is boring but an innocent man incarcerated who wanted to save a tattered baby bird--that's tragic.

So it's Liberty Shrike, shortened to Libby and without a last name before because she hurts when she talks about him, but she'll talk about him. People will see parallels with her and Jesse; even better, it'll make them tender, and want to protect Jesse too. Poor girl, she can't go through that kind of loss again.

The next two years unfolded pretty much as they actually had. Her month on the ship is documented, but her lie fits easily into it. She hasn't said anything she can't take back as a self-protective lie.

She accepts no one will be afraid of Liberty Shrike just yet. But she'll make them love her, and even if it's better to be feared love will get her places. Fear can come later.

Shrike isn't all softness, no. Shrike is learning how to be soft again, taking off her armour and setting it aside carefully because she's afraid. And doesn't someone, everyone, want to take care of her? People love nursing tender things back to tenderness. Look at how much everyone loves Nill, how instantly she's protected. What that woman did to keep her safe. So help Shrike get better and feel better about yourself.

She might be better off to have a love interest. Who?

(Mouse--no, she can't do that to him. Shrike can't fake it with him, that's not fair, not when she can't really love anything anyway. That has to go away now. Whatever it was.)

There's Percy, she thinks. Percy, James, one of the ragged young men from the past, the Alayne girl, Wichita, Gwen. That's the top of her tentative list before she tables it for now. Definitely a hero, or an anti-hero at least, someone protective and loyal and willing to let her be public about them. Someone of the right age and the right calibre to be involved in her saving. Maybe, she thinks with a hint of a smile, Loki would enjoy getting to play protective over her.

She's not a good person inside even if she's going to fake it outside, so the idea of using someone like this doesn't phase her at all.

So that's backstory and some storylines. Shrike is a writer, sometimes, she's proven that--and a nice thing about being Shrike is that Shrike can talk about books, which Libby couldn't. Shrike can play the piano and do ballet. There's a lot of good things about being Shrike. She can write poetry again.

The next step is figuring out how she acts. She curses less, uses less slang. That can start right now, toning it down, and she needs to practice anyway since it's so instinctive. Much, much less aggressive, less mocking and harsh, which also starts now. She's been sobered by Strela--and that's true, Shrike has seen what her rage does now that she can wield it.

(She's practising her telekinesis. Every day. That's what she does now: works on her telekinesis and perfects her new encryption. She reverse engineered Stark's hack, the first one, and he won't do that to her again. Even so, she's keeping everything with Loki off the network, because nothing is perfect. She's learned that the hard way. She's not the top predator anymore. Yet.)

It's not going to actually stop her from doing it again, of course. (In the absence of pain anything is possible. In the absence of pain Shrike is making herself perfect.) She has people to protect and, she knows, protection is a very important part of who Shrike is.

"Hi," she says to the mirror, arranging her hair in a dozen different styles, "I'm Shrike. And I'm sorry."

It sounds more real every time. Her hair goes in a loose, bright fall around her shoulders, always clean. She mutes her eyeliner and makes blush out of mica, makes a lip balm out of beeswax and a wash of strawberries to make it pink. Shrike wears colours, not blacks, except for the fitted pair of knee high boots she stole from Strela, which are her trademark. She likes blues and greens, whites and pinks. Libby cuts a dress out of sheets in an unused room, and unravels thread to stitch it up. In the end she stands in front of a mirror with no piercings in her face and her blue streak minimized (she'll cut it out, later), make-up carefully girlish and soft, in a white sundress embroidered with a tiny black bird over her heart in her knee-high boots.

Liberty Shrike is a very pretty girl.

"Hi," she smiles, "I'm Shrike. And I'm sorry."

(Inside, Libby doesn't feel anything.)