defenderofdesmoines | That Same Niceish Hotel in New York

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That Same Niceish Hotel in New York | Sunday Morning

So, it turned out that you couldn't just deliver a big, dramatic, speech and end it with a mic drop about your own sexual assault without -- weirdly! -- most of your friends wanting to check that you were okay.

Sounds fake, right?

In any case, Annie had received a text from Rey today that she hadn't headed back to Fandom just yet, and thus, she'd made a few arrangements.

First and foremost, she had called down to the front desk with some basic sizing information, and within an hour, a discreet employee had appeared at the door with clothes for both herself and Diego (and then had left with an absolutely massive tip, since Annie had added to it when he'd given her a second look, just to be safe.)

With that taken care of, Diego had headed out on a run just to get out of the room for a little while (since he wasn't the one with the famous face running around dropping truth bombs on television), and Annie ordered basically half of the room service menu for brunch while waiting for Rey.

Clearly the cure for her hangover, amongst her other less physical ailments, was pancakes.

[for she who is mentioned, but also open for phone calls or boyfriend or whatever, too! eta: warning for discussion of sexual assault in the Rey thread!]

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"Nope, Diego went for a run and I just ordered so much food from room service," Annie told her, shutting the door. "I kind of figured everyone headed back to Fandom last night."

Which meant she was really, really touched that Rey had stayed, and it showed.

"As far as I know, everyone did," Rey said. "I wanted to check in in person if I could."

And if Annie wasn't up for it then that would have been fine, too.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm okay," Annie told her, almost automatically. And it was actually a lot more true now than it would have been last night, though she did also still amend, "Okayish."

She considered what she wanted to say for a second longer, and then just decided she was going to go ahead and hug Rey rather than try to elaborate for right now.

And hey, unlike last time, she probably wouldn't start crying. (Annie was genuinely unsure if she had enough water in her body still to produce that many tears, anyway. Like it seemed maybe physically impossible at this point.)

"We'll take okayish," Rey said, hugging her back tightly. "I'm sorry this happened."

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything," Annie told her, holding on tightly. It felt so much better now that she'd opened the floodgates a little and told people what was wrong, but it had been hard getting here, too. "And that I've been acting weird."

"Do not apologize for that," Rey told her. "You don't have to say anything you don't want to. Or are ready to, or whatever."

"I just like, didn't know how to tell anyone," Annie admitted, pulling back after a minute. "Like, I wanted to, but I kept getting stuck. And then yesterday I just -- the lying all kind of got to me."

"I can't blame you. Yesterday was a lot, even before the speech."

Like, Rey could only imagine what finally set it off but there seemed to be options.

"And like, they just wanted me to keep going about how great it all was, and I couldn't anymore."

Annie wasn't even sure what had set her off. Just the speech itself, really, and how she was expected to recite this bullshit when she'd spent her day staring at bigotry and being told to lie about her virginity, all for a company that seemed willing to put her through anything to make money.

"I should've told someone sooner," she added, signing.

"He shouldn't have done it. It's not about what you should or shouldn't have done," Rey told her.

"Yeah," Annie agreed reluctantly. "And I'm getting better about it, but, like -- I still kind of blame myself, and that made it hard to talk about."

Rey had actually gotten more of the story than anyone else until it had all come out with Summer, and Annie was working on it, but the freezing had made it all -- embarrassing. Like she was some kind of helpless victim, instead of a literal hero.

"You did nothing wrong," Rey told her. "You didn't ask for it, you didn't have control over your reaction, no one worth talking to is going to blame you for it."

Other people would, of course, but those were the people not worth talking to.

"That helps," Annie admitted. "And like, I'm probably going to get in trouble for all that, but -- like, Rey, there is no way I'm the first woman he's done that to, so at least...it's like, out there, you know?"

"I know. At the very least you may have put an outright stop to it." At least everyone would know going in now.

"It wasn't just --" Again, Annie was sort of at a loss to how to not put things crudely, but she soldiered on. "It wasn't just, like, he propositioned me. Like, he did, and I rejected him, and then he turned it into a threat instead."

So hey, guess what: the guy who you already knew was a scumbag? Was even scummier.

"What kind of threat?" Rey asked slowly.

"Getting me kicked off the team," Annie replied, "and then, when I broke all the screens around us and gave him a chance to explain himself, he changed it to, 'I'll tell people you attacked me if you don't.'"

"So he really has done this to a lot of people before," Rey realized. "I can't blame you for breaking the screens either."

Annie quirked a little half-smile at her. "Yeah, it was supposed to freak him out, but all it did was give him like, the idea, I think. But that's where I froze."

She blew out a little breath. "But then Queen Maeve -- like, my idol since I was, like, thirteen -- walked in on us, and he left, so...she kinda saved me."

So Annie hadn't had to make a decision at all, which had actually sort of made the following weeks after even messier for her, in terms of feelings and certainty about what she would have done if Maeve hadn't shown up then.

Yeah, Rey could see where freezing would happen, when you thought you had one up on a person and they just used that.

"Did she see what was happening?"

"Yep." The Deep had had his hand on her face and Annie had been crying by then, so while Maeve wouldn't have known explicitly, like -- there was no way she hadn't had an idea. "And she told me to clean myself up and acted like it was no big deal."

And then had gone on to tell her to pretend she didn't have a boyfriend, which was like, a whole other confusion that Annie hadn't quite sorted out.

"I'm sorry, what?"

It'd be easy to think that Rey always saw the best in people, but she actually recognized that sometimes people were just going to do horrible things. But when someone could step in and help and didn't, she... well, she didn't think it was worse, but it felt more personally offensive.

Annie nodded slowly, pursing her lips. "It's why I'm so sure he's done it before."

Because the only other woman on the team had treated it like it was something she, Annie, probably should have expected.

This really just made the whole situation more gross. She had more to say on Maeve- again, she was supposed to be a hero- but was this something she'd had to deal with personally? Then maybe she shouldn't rant.

"I can see why adjusting was so hard," she said.

The thing about Maeve was that she had had to deal with this, personally, but she had a way, way worse guy to deal with.

Didn't make it right, but at least The Deep wasn't going to laser anyone in half if he didn't get his way.

"It's been like, impossible," Annie sighed, rubbing her temple. "Have you seen, like...any of the advertisements with me around, too? Because they changed my uniform right after this, too."

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