Her ire hardly sated by yelling at the Transformer, Lizzie turned back to her partner. "Damn it, D.J., you're talking nonsense!" she said. "Do you even hear what you're saying, grandma? I can't go back to being a teenager again, any more than you can! It's impossible! I'm a grown-up!"
"Well I'm not!" D.J. shouted.
"Well you sure as hell used to be!"
"Mistress Elizabeth," the Transformer impinged, "Kiya Jaeger is not taking no for an answer."
Lizzie whirled on the tiny machine in a fury. "She'll have to! Didn't you hear what I said? We're closed! We're busy! If her problem's that vital invoke Office Time! That's what it's there for, damn it!"
"Actually, it was only intended to take care of the more routine cases," D.J. corrected.
"Hush! That's enough out of you, young lady!" Lizzie cried, unconsciously reverting to the tone she had adopted with Lesley when he was young (he had had a tendency to flip between genders in those days).
D.J. took a breath and continued in a quiet voice. "Lizzie, try to understand. When Deja Voodoo resurrected me, I discovered that everything I had ever thought I had known about myself was wrong. And that night I told you about it we discovered that even that was wrong. I feel I hardly know myself anymore."
"That makes two of us, then. Delia, we settled all this, we found out who you are. So you lost some years. The other memories you have more than make up for it. The time we took between episodes raising Lesley more than makes up for it, for that matter — you've lived twice your age in actual life experience. What will it be next? Are you going to want to return to infancy and recover those years?"
"Now you're being ridiculous."
"I'm not, don't you see? What you're proposing is just as ridiculous."
"You don't understand. How could you? How could anyone who hasn't woken up one day to find their very existence ... a ... lie..." Seeing Lizzie's ominous expression, D.J. trailed off.
"Perhaps you've forgotten," said Lizzie icily. "I woke up one day to exactly that. I spent my first twelve years thinking I was a boy. Then one morning I discovered I had turned into a dragon overnight. Adjustment number one. Eight years later, plunged into the maelstrom of Author caprice Backstage, I'm turned into a girl. Adjustment number two. Within a year of that I learn I've really always been a girl. Adjustment number three. Are you starting to sense a pattern, here? And somehow I've managed to pick myself up and keep on living without going off the deep end."
"It's-it's not the same—"
"The hell it isn't!"
"Lizzie, please, I need this, I—"
"Well I need you, back the way you were!" Lizzie was fighting off tears, now. "I can't handle you like this, Delia, it's like the rock of my existence is melting into sand beneath my feet! I've waited and waited for you to get over this, and all you're doing is getting worse. You're not a kid. You can't be a kid. You have to stop this foolishness."
"Lizzie, please don't ask me to—"
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."
"I'll do it anyway!" D.J. exploded, in tears herself now. "If you won't come with me I'll just have to do it on my own!"
"I forbid it!"
D.J. balled her fists and stamped her foot, taking a breath to do — she knew not what.
"Stop!" Lizzie commanded, forestalling her. "Just stop. I can't believe I'm even listening this!"
"I can do what I want to!" D.J. raged. "You're not my mother!"
Lizzie looked at her aghast. "I almost feel like I am," she breathed. "D.J., what's come over you? You're acting like a child—"
"You certainly are," said a new voice. "Both of you."
Go back - Go to the parent episode.
Mon Aug 23 15:25:35 2004
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