My Other Reaction To Stress
Feb. 28th, 2009 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infinitepryde(stress detailed in a friendslocked post, sorry)
... is to write fanfic.
Usually, Pryde and Wisdom fanfic.
Silence.
No air. No rest. No sound. Only the long gliding arc of a weapon eternally past its target, slingshot around the brief burning heat of the sun and off into the emptiness forever between the stars. Only the deadly *thinning* that had already begun, as her body -- phased so hard its metabolism had virtually stopped, so that she needed no air, no food, nothing -- began to dissociate molecule from molecule, dissipating into the mass of alien metal around her.
She prayed that when she drifted apart far enough, she'd lose awareness entirely. Since if she didn't, it was all too possible that she'd live out there for a very damned long time.
Maybe forever.
Pete Wisdom gasped for air, fought for contact, and came up from the dream just enough to realize that he *was* dreaming. That one. Again. He couldn't be surprised; the Skrulls and John and the damned door had given him other things to have nightmares about, but recent events had her right back in his head.
Never mind. Bad dreams he was used to. He tried to force himself awake.
It didn't work.
How long till the universe ends?
The black hole death took too long for Kitty to keep the zeroes straight. The death of iron only had fifteen hundred zeroes involved, but that one might not kill her. Thirty or forty zeroes if the fundamental building blocks of matter were unstable. And if the world were kind, and the universe kept building pressure and expanding faster and faster -- first the galaxies would fly apart. Then worlds tear free of their suns. Then both suns and worlds were torn apart.
A mere fifty billion years, but she'd see all but the last few minutes of them.
Trapped in the silence. Helpless. Alone.
She tried to draw a breath, but the shift of her ribcage against her prison's metal sent a tearing agony through bone and blood and nerve. That was fine. Pain she could deal with. Pain she could cling to, focus on. Think about her other self, who existed in pain and madness and chaos, coopted her enemy, built herself a new body out of scrap and nothing to come back --
Opening her eyes hurt worse than trying for air had.
Her other self. Her older self. Kate Rasputin --
Pete drove his nails into his palm. It didn't help.
She'd needed power. But she'd been able to open gates, world to world. Kitty didn't need to open a gate. She just needed to walk through a different wall than usual.
The effort of concentration was a fire in her brain, screaming against the resistance of the alien metal. She'd managed to shut herself down; forcing her metabolism awake again to support her last all-out try at rescuing herself -- well, if it didn't work to get her out, at least it would burn through the time she could keep herself together. Maybe she'd still go out like a light.
There still wasn't any air, and now she needed it. Red bursts in the blindness of her vision. Sparkles bright as stars: neurons firing at random, struggling, dying.
Her fingertips numb even against the nothing resistance pain that caged her.
Phase. Hard. Walk on the air that isn't there. Let the colors and lights come, like sleep, like dreaming. Just keep trying.
Right angles to anywhere.
The world twisted around her in a flare of fire, and she slid through it and went away.
"I thought you'd understand," a voice said in Pete's memory, quiet and tired and broken and old. "A lifetime of service, and we got so little. And then when the only person that makes it better dies --"
Pete covered his eyes and wept. Even as he lifted his hands, he knew the gesture was wrong.
It was as if he were expected to weep, expected to sympathize, expected to be broken beyond repair by those words. As if something had pulled a cover away and shown Pete a secret that would destroy him. But Kitty's death wasn't a secret; what it meant to him wasn't a secret; he ignored it, but that didn't mean he didn't know. And any sympathy he had for the temptation meant nothing at all beside the rage and loathing he felt for the owner of that voice falling to it.
If something had really known what it was doing trying to break him, it'd've hit him where he *was* weak: that Sid's fall was at the hands of a creature Pete had himself set free.
Something was trying.
Pete chose to let it think it was winning.
... is to write fanfic.
Usually, Pryde and Wisdom fanfic.
Silence.
No air. No rest. No sound. Only the long gliding arc of a weapon eternally past its target, slingshot around the brief burning heat of the sun and off into the emptiness forever between the stars. Only the deadly *thinning* that had already begun, as her body -- phased so hard its metabolism had virtually stopped, so that she needed no air, no food, nothing -- began to dissociate molecule from molecule, dissipating into the mass of alien metal around her.
She prayed that when she drifted apart far enough, she'd lose awareness entirely. Since if she didn't, it was all too possible that she'd live out there for a very damned long time.
Maybe forever.
Pete Wisdom gasped for air, fought for contact, and came up from the dream just enough to realize that he *was* dreaming. That one. Again. He couldn't be surprised; the Skrulls and John and the damned door had given him other things to have nightmares about, but recent events had her right back in his head.
Never mind. Bad dreams he was used to. He tried to force himself awake.
It didn't work.
How long till the universe ends?
The black hole death took too long for Kitty to keep the zeroes straight. The death of iron only had fifteen hundred zeroes involved, but that one might not kill her. Thirty or forty zeroes if the fundamental building blocks of matter were unstable. And if the world were kind, and the universe kept building pressure and expanding faster and faster -- first the galaxies would fly apart. Then worlds tear free of their suns. Then both suns and worlds were torn apart.
A mere fifty billion years, but she'd see all but the last few minutes of them.
Trapped in the silence. Helpless. Alone.
She tried to draw a breath, but the shift of her ribcage against her prison's metal sent a tearing agony through bone and blood and nerve. That was fine. Pain she could deal with. Pain she could cling to, focus on. Think about her other self, who existed in pain and madness and chaos, coopted her enemy, built herself a new body out of scrap and nothing to come back --
Opening her eyes hurt worse than trying for air had.
Her other self. Her older self. Kate Rasputin --
Pete drove his nails into his palm. It didn't help.
She'd needed power. But she'd been able to open gates, world to world. Kitty didn't need to open a gate. She just needed to walk through a different wall than usual.
The effort of concentration was a fire in her brain, screaming against the resistance of the alien metal. She'd managed to shut herself down; forcing her metabolism awake again to support her last all-out try at rescuing herself -- well, if it didn't work to get her out, at least it would burn through the time she could keep herself together. Maybe she'd still go out like a light.
There still wasn't any air, and now she needed it. Red bursts in the blindness of her vision. Sparkles bright as stars: neurons firing at random, struggling, dying.
Her fingertips numb even against the nothing resistance pain that caged her.
Phase. Hard. Walk on the air that isn't there. Let the colors and lights come, like sleep, like dreaming. Just keep trying.
Right angles to anywhere.
The world twisted around her in a flare of fire, and she slid through it and went away.
"I thought you'd understand," a voice said in Pete's memory, quiet and tired and broken and old. "A lifetime of service, and we got so little. And then when the only person that makes it better dies --"
Pete covered his eyes and wept. Even as he lifted his hands, he knew the gesture was wrong.
It was as if he were expected to weep, expected to sympathize, expected to be broken beyond repair by those words. As if something had pulled a cover away and shown Pete a secret that would destroy him. But Kitty's death wasn't a secret; what it meant to him wasn't a secret; he ignored it, but that didn't mean he didn't know. And any sympathy he had for the temptation meant nothing at all beside the rage and loathing he felt for the owner of that voice falling to it.
If something had really known what it was doing trying to break him, it'd've hit him where he *was* weak: that Sid's fall was at the hands of a creature Pete had himself set free.
Something was trying.
Pete chose to let it think it was winning.
