Characters: Dakota and Jet (played by sy.)
Content Warnings: None
Location: The Bonaduce House
Dakota has kept a compliant Jet in her attic for a little over three weeks now, with a few medical examinations from New Portsmouth's doctors bearing no fruit. She just got back from Eusébio's house and is now re-evaluating her relationship with Jet.
Dakota lets Jet go after a realization at her new boyfriend's house. Jet is very unhappy with this development.
The title is a reference to Arcane season 2 episode 8, in which a character (Jinx) says there's no good version of her despite the previous episode showing differently. I associate Jinx a lot with Dakota, so Sy. and I wanted to make a nod to that!
Early February. Morning.
Dakota made up an excuse to head home quickly after she, Julius, and Eusébio finished cleaning his houseboat.
It wasn’t out of avoidance–she would’ve liked to stay, obviously, but something had been nagging at her while she cleaned. Another time with bloodstained floors. A girl in an attic.
She’s…kind of a lousy host, all things considered. Something she already knew but more solidified in her mind. The conversation she had with Eusébio has been repeating in her mind.
“I’m not a good person.” “I’m not a good person either.”
“Don’t be mad at me when something happens.” When she eventually does hurt him. “’cause I’m warning you about it now.” “I won’t.”
He doesn’t know the extent of what she talks about and might genuinely be unable to coneptualise it. There was no mention of it, no natural way to bring it up. She’s grateful Julius decided not to even hint at it, at that. How in the world can she trick someone into loving her while simultaneously trying to force someone else? She can’t be a good person, but she can try and bandage and smooth over the most jagged edges.
Dakota unlocks the door to the attic.
“Good mo-orning…” Her sing-songy tone is a little more melancholy than usual.
jet’s on her stomach, playing with something on her phone. … it’s sudoku!
ignored …
Yeah, this is on par for the course.
See, here’s what she always tells herself: Jet could leave. Maybe not by herself, but she has her phone. One distress call and people would break her out. Still…
“Had an interesting night last night…” Which is all she’ll say about it unless pried into.
She tilts her head and gets a proper look at Jet. All encompassing and just as surreal as the day they met each other again. One could argue Jet was the very first person Dakota learned how to love wholeheartedly without limits.
It’s routine by now, but she finds her way to Jet and wraps her arms around her tightly. Breathes in–Jet has stopped smelling like her own and like just another extension of Dakota’s domain.
yes, this is par for the course. jet doesn’t try and shove dakota off when she comes in for the hug. fawn and fawn and fawn. easier to save energy this way.
how many days has it been? weeks? does dakota let her shower? why hasn’t jet tried to jump out the window yet? so many questions, and yet…
“uh-huh…” tap-tap-tap. “more interesting than the idea of keeping me trapped here until i die, clearly.”
“Mm.” No proper response. She gave up on walking circles around that subject anyway.
“….I’m gonna miss you. For what it’s worth,” she mumbles. Then she stands, unlocks the attic door, lets the heavy locks clatter to the ground.
“You can leave whenever you want. Thanks for indulging me for a bit.”
it works: jet is confused.
the moment’s so anti-climatic she thinks that dakota might be an imposter. where’s the flair? the dramatics? the long monologues? their biting back-and-forth?
she sits up. finally taking interest.
“… you’re lying. this is some fucked test isn’t it. stockholm syndrome shit.”
Dakota blinks. Meets Jet’s eyes.
She’s not sure what she expected her reaction to be but it certainly isn’t this. Flat out denial. Maybe it does really look like a trick.
“It’s not. I can walk you to the door if you want. Or just leave you be. Up to you.”
the way i thought i replied and didnt
“…” staring.
“all those hours i wasted trying to convince you… and now you’re just gonna let me go.” not believing the situation still. sudoku’s open and half-finished.
“Yes. Turns out you just had to wait for me to do some thinking.” Who would’ve thought?
Dakota doesn’t want to linger at the doorway longer than she has to. She’d like to be relishing in that new feeling of honeymoon love, but all she can feel is self loathing looking at Jet, who she loves just as much and even more timelessly, in front of her.
“…well. Door’s open. I’m gonna go take a shower.” (Worth noting, now that the initial interaction has settled, the clothes she’s wearing don’t look like her own. A dress shirt and black pants like she just came back from a business meeting. Her hair is pulled back but you think you can see parts of it crusted together with dark crimson.) “If you need anything else, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
for some reason, the reason irks. it itches. everything i said and did… and that wasn’t enough to prompt some critical thinking? why now, of all times?
this isn’t right.
jet has a keen eye. she knows blood when she sees it.
she scoffs. on the cusp of a sneer, even. “… figures. i should’ve known.”
Jet, unfortunately, knows her enough to know when to get a reaction out of Dakota. Even through weird behaviour. She furrows her brow.
“Should’ve known what? Are you leaving or not?”
“yeah, i’m leaving.” voice flat. she makes a point not to address the other thing.
jet grabs her phone and makes for the door, suddenly incensed. pissed off, and trying badly not to be.
“where’d you put my shit. where’s my guitar.”
“Guest room. I’ll lead you.” And like a deep soul bond forged out of sharing the worst of one’s teenage years with someone else, Dakota mimics that emotion effortlessly. She’s climbing down the attic stairs now.
“Should’ve known what?” Pushing again.
she feels the urge to kick dakota down the stairs.
“… why don’t you fucking guess?” this is peak petty teenager behavior. jet’s just being mean for the sake of guilting dakota. now that there’s a chip in the armor, there’s a vicious and compulsive need to exploit it.
“since you’re the one who apparently had an interesting enough night to wanna let me go.”
“You’re fucking impossible.” She’s on the ground too quickly, already storming to the guest room without waiting for Jet to follow.
“I just–” As she fiddles with the lock in that door, too. “–realised that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life keeping a horrible secret that makes me an objectively horrible person. I need to get over myself. Does that satisfy you?”
it’s almost too easy to forget that dakota almost killed her those weeks ago. jet leans against the wall, arms crossed as the lock is ridiculously fiddled with.
“and what, pray fucking tell, made you have this realization?”
“or should i say who?”
Oh, god fucking damn it. She knows it’s traps Jet is laying out but she can’t help but keep falling for them.
“Yeah, actually.” Now her tone is venomous and not at all the previous melancholy. (nsfw/straight up untrue) ||“I had passionate fucking sex with the hottest guy ever, who’s also famous, by the way, and now I have the clarity to want you gone. Obviously.||
no reaction. you know better than to use this as ammo against jet, dakota. she goes far beyond the physical. she moves people’s souls with her music. draws you in with her fucked-up charm and nostalgia.
jet doesn’t know if dakota’s lying. but she does know that this guy will never be her. jet is one of a kind. your special girl.
“… don’t lie.”
She goes far beyond the physical. Dakota was never as mature. She was always horrendously clingy with Jet and (addiction) ||at the worst of her phases she’d always be half-dazed, staring at Jet’s lips with all the desire in the world.|| Jet’s music always touched her but it was never enough. She never pushed and Jet never pried. It rotted over time.
She leans against the hallway wall, arms crossed.
“It was a guy. He is famous. That part’s true.” She skips the part about the love potion. “We……” Her eyes dart to the side. Jet will cling onto it if she mentions it, so she doesn’t. “Talked. I warned him about how horrid of a person I am but I don’t think he could understand the half of it.”
She tilts her head back to meet Jet’s eyes.
“But he really adores me. I can tell. I like that. I don’t want to keep this hidden from him forever. I want to move on. There. Happy?”
rot can be a pretty thing. it can smell sweet to the point of sickness. jet has never been one to shy away from the macabre, from change, from the hunger of time… but this is different.
girl logic.
“talked.”
jet slowly moves her arm. twists a lock of her hair between her fingers… but they both know she’s not talking about her own. “with your teeth. huh.”
her teeth are for anyone. and her thoughts twist for anyone. anyone but her. jet was never special.
Totally girl logic. Dakota knows part of her wording is to incite some sort of hurt in Jet, now. It’s not a replacement but she can twist it to look that way.
“Yeah, actually. Both of us. To each other. He liked it, actually.”
“must’ve been nice to be asked.”
she drops her hand and approaches the door. she makes it a point to glance at dakota once and then away. into the guest room.
“… not that i would fucking know.”
No rebuttal. She’s well aware. It’s part of why she’s doing this, isn’t she? In an effort to redeem herself at least a little bit?
“Yeah, well.” Not much else to say. “He also liked me from the start. Not that you’d know.” She starts heading down hallway, to her own room.
she lets dakota leave. the guitar is the only thing that matters, but jet takes everything else anyway– the fire will have them soon enough.
she knows there is no comparison. she was dakota’s messy first. the one where you figure shit out with… or maybe not. in a weird, twisted way, jet understands that dakota treats her so callously because of that.
but scorn is scorn. she is only a girl. standing at the doorway, staring at dakota’s retreating back.
“if that’s what you think love is, then die alone dakota. i gave you years and you fucking rip my throat out and keep me in your attic. i waited for you. to talk to me, to believe me, to realize you fucked up.”
“… but i should’ve fucking known. some guy beat me out. hah.”
Jet can see the way Dakota’s shoulders tense, the way she stops her walk, clenches her fists. After so long Dakota’s pretty sure Jet is the only person that sees her without her carefully curated body language. Just whatever feels instinctual.
“Isn’t this–” Hand wave. “Acknowledgement enough?”
Hook, line, sinker. It’s impossible to de-escalate when it comes to Jet. She turns around again.
“I fucked up. I knew I fucked up from the moment I first asked someone else for help. But I didn’t want to let you go. I’ve known you’re human for weeks now, I just–” she buries her hand in her hair, frustrated. “–I didn’t want you to know, okay? I didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t want to lose you and you’re so flighty I know I’ll probably never hear from you again the second you leave. But I just don’t want this in my conscience anymore.”
too little, too late it seems. the guitar bag on jet’s shoulder sags, but jet’s face isn’t one of relief. her emotions have felt so far lately. dakota is the first in a long time to bring them flooding back.
“… you never fucking ask.” it’s all she asks for, really. reciprocation in the things that matter. “i would’ve understood. i would’ve been okay with the tests, i don’t care about any of that. i don’t care that you’re a demon now. you just couldn’t… ask me.”
if it really were that simple.
The problem is that they always go in circles about these hypotheticals. Things that could’ve happened that didn’t. Things they could’ve done that they didn’t. A future in which they react better because the other added a few more words, a few more actions. As if it changes any fundamental truths.
“If I had asked, would you have said yes?” She knows the answer. “I would’ve done it anyway. And–”
It’s funny, because Jet gets all of Dakota’s emotions unearthed, always. There’s a reason the first and last time Domizio saw her crying was because of Jet.
“….I know you wouldn’t have cared. That’s the thing. You don’t care about anything. You never have.”
she’s heard that phrase her whole life. and jet has never known what it means, and has never felt the need to find out. the people who matter to her, matter in a way only jet understands. all she needs back is an open hand. for dakota to reach back. them against the world.
jet… alone against the world. “if that’s what you think, then we never knew each other at all.”
“but sure. i can show you what it’s really like for me to not care. if that’ll get me off your conscience.”
she turns to leave.
She has tried so desperately to make Jet love her in the ways that matter to Dakota, but it’s never worked. She can’t reach back if Jet won’t meet her halfway. That’s just how it works.
“…not in a way that read to me, at least.” She’s given up on trying to stop talking until they just eventually part ways. Just keep getting sucked into that vortex.
“You never did anything without me asking, you know. That’s the thing. I had to direct. And I didn’t mind posing you and telling you how to feel and how we should be, but I’m just.” Generalised hand motions.
“…….being friends with you always hurt, Jet. Up until the very end.”
changing is hard. too hard. it hurts, to be someone else for so long.
jet cannot change for those who love her. and dakota cannot change for those she loves. a beautiful ouroboros chasing its own tail, never to meet.
hand on the doorknob. “i don’t pretend to know what you want. i can’t read you like i read my music. if you had just… whatever. it doesn’t matter.”
hurt is only one emotion, jet doesn’t say. but it’s the only one she ever remembers. forget all the other memories they had; endless hours poring over lines of dialogue and chords, walking red carpets, ditching red carpets, small snatches of time between takes. so so much. pain was just a part of it all.
“enjoy your new friend, dakota. fuck you.”
It’s hard to get those acting muscles working when Jet intrinsically makes Dakota lower her guard. From the beginning up until the very end. Jet was the first and only person who ever got to see all the horrendous and nuanced sides of teen idol Dakota Bonaduce. She was always honest with her. Vulnerable about everything. Jet knew all the intricacies of her life in the spotlight if she cared to remember them.
But she doesn’t want Jet’s last memory of her to be anything other than a cold, steely anger. So she breathes, and she smooths over the edges of nuance, shoves down the pit of despair and desperation. Willingly lets Jet go for the very first time in her life.
“Boyfriend, actually.” Though they haven’t labelled it yet. “Bye, Jet.”
🖕
on her way out. “fuck him too!”
“Already on it!” She yells back, and with that final, very mature quip, slams the door in Jet’s face.