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| The Girl in the Ice; 5/24: Early Evening | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 4 2014, 08:30 PM (29 Views) | |
| Trauma | Dec 4 2014, 08:30 PM Post #1 |
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[Sort of continued from Debriefing, I guess.] Abby was sound asleep. Terry didn’t need to look over at her to check; he just knew, like he always did. He’d promised her that he’d try to do the same, but that had been a while ago now. He was still sitting up with his back against the headboard on the other side of the bed, which was his bed, technically, except that Abby had refused to sleep alone in the room they’d given her last night, so he supposed that by now this one was probably hers as much as it was his. Not that he minded. Not if she didn’t, and he believed Abby when she said she wasn’t afraid of him, even after he’d tried again to explain about what his powers really were. He’d have known if she were lying, after all. So if she wanted to use his room as her safe place to sleep in, that was fine (even if it still seemed a little strange). She hadn’t really wanted to do anything except sleep when she’d gotten back from her mission, though he’d managed to coax her into eating at least some of the stuff Butterball had prepared for her before she insisted on curling up and passing out. Which he’d promised to do, he reminded himself. Instead of sitting here, thinking about his powers. Brooding over them, as she would have said it, but he really didn’t think it was that. He was… thinking about them. About what Jean Grey had said, and the parts she hadn’t said. She’d made it sound simple. Well, not simple. But straightforward. Not different, or at least not anymore different than anyone else. Come to think of it, maybe that was what Dazzler had been trying to say to him too, even if he still couldn’t make himself feel like she really understood. Someone who looked her, who shone like her, and performed for strangers like she did… …wow, he probably sounded like the emo kid on MySpace again, didn’t he? Thinking that no one could understand him, even in a Helicarrier full of people who’d been in Camps, who’d been mutants, had been different, for longer than him. Thinking that it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t control it. Jean Grey had seemed so sure that he could. Even when she’d been begging him to stop - she’d begged him, she hadn’t lashed out, and stopped him herself, and he was pretty sure that she could have done that. And he had. He’d controlled it. He’d been able to control it, and the more he thought about it, the more Terry was starting to wonder if that was why he was still awake, and why he couldn’t even think about trying to sleep. He could control it; maybe he’d always been able to do that. Maybe it could have been different, back home, if he’d known- no. No. Pushing that thought out of his mind, as far away as he could make it go, Terry exhaled slowly, and slid down till he was stretched out on the bed. He’d sleep. He’d at least try, and that way he’d be able to tell Abby that he had without lying, which she always caught. So he closed his eyes, and tried to clear everything else out of his head too. That was when he felt it. It couldn’t be all that close. Terry knew that, because if it had been, he would have felt it before now, because it was terror. Not fear, not dread, not even panic: it was terror. Weak, and faint, but completely pure. Or was it close? After another few breaths, he started to wonder if he’d been wrong about the distance. It felt… nearby. Faint, but close, like- he stretched his thoughts out to it, trying to feel it clearer. Trying to catch hold of it. Cold. Freezing cold. Freezing cold, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move, he was stuck. Paralyzed. Held. He was freezing and trapped and paralyzed and there was a room, a room full of dead people. Dead, they were dead, dead, dead, dead staring at him and he couldn’t move he couldn’t move he couldn’t move and he was so cold. So cold. They had him. They had him, they’d cut into him, tear him apart. It was what they did, it was what they did, it was what they did he’d seen what they’d done to Nezhno cold cold cold cold cold can’t move can’t scream can’t move cold cold cold cold- “Coll—!!!” Terry sat bolt upright, choking on half the word as it tried to escape from his lips and died in a hollow cough. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, cradling his head in his arms. Trying to catch his breath, which took a few seconds. Only once he was sure he had it, and that he knew where he was, and who he was, and that his powers weren’t about to rip away from the control he’d tried to keep them under, did Terry dare to look over at Abby. But she was still sleeping. Terry almost couldn’t believe it. How could she sleep, with someone screaming like that? He could still hear it in the back of his mind - no. Her. He could hear her, the girl who was freezing. Like someone sitting behind you on a bus, thinking they were whispering but still loud enough to make out every single terrified word. Was she real? How could she not be? Making a decision, Terry eased himself off the side of bed, doing everything he could to keep from waking Abby. She needed sleep more than she needed to be groggily trying to convince him he was crazy, and it was all too easy to imagine that that was what it would be. It’s just a nightmare, Ter. You fell asleep, even if you didn’t think you had, and you had a nightmare. Everyone does. He didn’t, though. He didn’t have nightmares. Or at least, he didn’t have his own. It took a half minute of searching, through drawers and the side-table (for a military battleship, the rooms in this Helicarrier made it seem oddly like a hotel sometimes), till he’d found a pad and a pen, but once he’d got them, Terry dashed off a quick note for Abby, in case she woke up. Can’t sleep. Didn’t want to wake you. Gone to find people. T. There. That would have to do; the frozen girl was still crying in his head, making it hard to concentrate on anything else, but he thought that would be enough not to worry Abby when she found it. Terry quietly left it on the shelf beside the side of his bed she’d claimed, then slipped out of the room. Someone else had to be able to hear this, too. Someone else would know what to do. [Continued eventually in No Sudden Movements] |
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3:32 AM Jul 11