Hungry
She knew she was going to kill someone someday; it was only a matter of time. She was empty, she had to be filled up, constantly hungry for a little bit of something inside. She tried actually eating: some apples, some chips, even a hamburger once. Focusing long enough to make herself solid she would lift up the fork and knife, cutting into the apple or the hamburger or once a piece of toast. This was polite, she saw it on the TV, mustn't eat with the fingers, it would be rude and unladylike. She was already unladylike, unlivinglike but she didn't want to be rude.
Robin -- Tim- had told her that she was wasting food; he couldn't understand why she was bothering to eat when it was just going to fall through her and clatter on the floor anyway. It was just going to cause a ruckus and all undigested and chewed up it was going to cause a mess too. Wouldn't want Bart to slip, wouldn't want Kon's shoes to get dirty.
Wouldn't want her to make a mess.
Wouldn't want her to try.
Wouldn't want her.
When she finally remembered her mother, two months, five days, eight hours and six minutes ago, she remembered that elbows where a no-no on the table. The next time she tried to eat, this time in an abandoned honeymooner's suite on the fifth floor, she desolidified her elbows. That time around she tried to eat a bowl of alphabet soup, eating each letter in the form of a word. First she tried to spell "Young Justice" but the letters fell through her stomach and onto the floor. Then she tried to spell "Brother" because it's the only other word that came to mind -- they too fell through her stomach, sliding down the chair leg and plopping onto the floor.
None of the letters ever fell into a discernable pattern, no matter what order she put them in.
Robin told her that she should take the east side of the compound, slip in through the vents and cut out the power. Then, because this was the plan that Robin outlined on the white board, Cassie and Kon and Anita would break through the front door and destroy what ever the DEO was cooking up next. Robin didn't tell her what, said she didn't need to know.
She knows he's lying. Robin lies all the time, tells all of them tiny little lies about where he's been, who he is. He says his name is Tim, but she knows it's not really. He'll always be Robin, whether he wants to be or not. He tells her she doesn't need to know that the man they are taking is the one that kidnapped over two hundred "extra-ordinary" children. He doesn't tell her that he's the man that ordered various tests and experiments that would push the abilities of these `assets'. He doesn't tell her that he was the man that introduced her to her first kiss, that introduced her to her first time whether she wanted it or not. He doesn't tell her that because he doesn't know. But he still lies because he never bothered to ask.
She told them once and they looked at her as if she was weird, so she stopped telling them and they stopped listening.
When Secret, that's the name she calls herself even though everyone calls her Suzie, first met Robin he had trapped her in a bottle. They called her Secret because that's what she was: unknown. Then she didn't know her name, didn't know her place, didn't even have a sense of self. When she finally remembered she told them to call her Suzie. She told them to call her that because that's her name and she doesn't want to tell them what she wishes to be. Tired of people knowing who she is, because she really isn't that way, she really isn't Suzie who had the unfortunate luck of having a brother with the penchant for death. She isn't really Suzie who was electrocuted to millions of tiny little atoms held only together by the black buried deep in her brother's heart. She isn't really Suzie who wanted to be the normal girl with blonde hair and pink fingernails. She isn't really Suzie, because she isn't really real.
Now that she knows so much about herself she can't be a Secret.
But she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to know why people claw inside of her, trying to get out, banging against her walls. So she calls herself Secret anyway, as if that way she wouldn't have to know all the things that die inside her.
She doesn't want to tell every person that dies that there isn't a heaven or hell, just her and her gaping emptiness that no matter how many people she crossed over, they never stayed long enough to fill her.
No matter how they clawed against her stomach, they never broke through and she couldn't let them even if she tried. She never tried.
Robin found her trying to eat Cassie's Wheat Thins. Doing the daily rounds, he had heard her methodical crunching two halls down. It took effort, solidifying her teeth so that the crackers could break down into little pieces. They would clatter against the floor, slipping through her back and smashing into pieces against the wood parquet. He stood in the doorway for a total of five minutes, watching her floating to the corners of the room, catching peeks of solidified teeth as they crunched on the crackers. When the pieces hit the floor he barely breathed.
She watched him, watching her, trying to do something she couldn't.
He didn't come inside, didn't say anything. He tried to give her a smile but she knew she had made him cold, that she had frozen the breath in his lungs and the marrow in his bones. She had smiled at him and he had left, eyes glassed over, step out of sync.
She's going to kill someone, one of these days, she's so hungry, and nothing she ever pretends to to eat fills her up.