“It's changing colors—” your cousin says and you can't help the oh my god that escapes you because this is insane, this is insane, and your cousin says something else as well but the thunderous whine grows huge and presses on your eardrums, on your brain, and you can't hear anything because you can feel it thrumming through the air and into your bones.
The old VHS camera in your hands crackles as the picture blurs and rolls on the little screen and you're barely even looking at it now, because the thing has pulsed from glowing blue to warm red. (Steve touched it, it drew his sweat off his nose and through the air and you can't stop thinking about the way the drops floated, immune to gravity down here in this weird cave.) It's crystal, roped with stuff that looks like vines or veins and those tendrils were moving on it like they were alive; its centre like a glowing egg, with spikes of huge crystal coming off it, pointing out of it every which way. It looks like a star. It's huge, filling the cavern. The tunnel wasn't completely straight all the way down but it must have fallen here, shot into the earth, unless it grew out of the ground.
“I can't hear you over that—” you start, but don't finish. The noise is immense, pulsing like a heartbeat, a high-pitched piercing whine that feels like it's bursting your eardrums, making your blood sing in your veins and you swing the camera back to Steve Montgomery (who you don't know except through his campaign posters for class president and because he's popular and you're the kid the popular kids spit on except he knew who you were and he has never tried to hurt you like the others do).
And he's yelling, “This is awesome!”, his voice catching on an amazed laugh halfway through except then he's reeling back and you can see a stream of something dark running down his face and pouring off his chin and it's blood.
“Oh, dude, your nose!” you say, dismayed as he raises his hand and stumbles backwards, and you call out his name as he turns away from the thing and towards you, a gory mess dripping over his face: “Steve!”
And even as you're yelling and Matt's yelling too - “Steve, Steve! Steve!” - you feel a pressure, like something squeezing your head, your lungs, and then the noise sends a bolt of pain through your head and your cousin's shooting backwards like he's been shoved, screaming, feet dragging through the dust, except there's nothing there pushing him and you get a glimpse of Steve's hand dropping from his bleeding nose to his throat like he's being strangled before he drops to the floor kicking and spasming and the place starts to shake and rumble, the noises rises to a roar and it all happens so fast and you don't understand and you're going to die down here, you're never going to get out of this fucking cave, and something invisible slams you backwards, your heels jarring over the floor as rocks start to fall from the ceiling around you and your body moves without you moving it and you've lost track of the others, you have no idea what's happening but the last image you get is the crystal, glowing deep red and disappearing as you're dragged away and the cave begins to shake itself apart.
You're floating in the clouds. Literally, floating, cushioned in thin air. It's so easy, flying, so much easier than you would have ever dreamed and it makes you grin to see how high you guys have flown. The air is cold way up here and you're all wearing thick winter clothes - yours a little thinner than the others' - and the air rings with laughter as your friend (your friend, you have friends, and your life is better than it's been for years) throws a football to your cousin, and you're ready to grab it with your mind if you have to but he catches it neatly in his arms. The light momentum carries him gently backwards towards you.
“Oh, dude!” you laugh. You've never been happier, you can't remember a better day than this. “Nice catch, man, yes!”
The last word is swallowed by your laughter and your cousin's laughter. His face is alive with joy as he grins at you and into the small digital camera you're filming the two of them with. He turns back to your friend, yelling his name to get his attention and something else that you don't hear because your attention is on the noise you just heard. It's distant, a low roar, which is sort of weird because apart from the wind it's been quiet up here so far.
“Hey Matt, do you hear that?” you yell, panning the camera around to try to find where it's coming from. It's getting louder and louder and you frown. “What is that?”
But almost before you can finish the words, you know because there's a jet, huge and terrifying, passing between you and blowing the three of you out of the sky. The wave of air from it passing blows you back, sucks the air from your lungs. You lose your grip on the camera and you barely notice, dropping like a stone, terrified and miserable, shouting: “Steve!”
You're watching your friend fall, limp and unconscious, your stomach feeling like its been left behind in the clouds. Steve's never going to catch himself. Your mind is groping for your power but the panic's knocked it out of your reach and you can't see your cousin and he must be falling too. Every second of the way down flashes through your head like a full-blown premonition and you know you're going to be screaming on the entire way down and you'll die still trying to remember how to fly.
You need money. You need money because your mother is dying and she's the only one who's ever loved you. She needs medicine that neither you or your father can afford or else she'll leave you too. If that happens, there'll be no one left. You don't want her to die. You love her. The thugs you robbed in the park across from your house had some money but you still need more. You wonder if you killed them and there's no twinge of guilt at the thought, just a numb kind of curiosity; they're nothing compared to you – so what does it matter if you did? The blood had smeared on the road and you'd felt powerful.
Your father's old fireman's gear is hot and heavy, sweat boiling out of your skin and running down your neck and your back and your cheeks underneath the mask that traps your breath in a bubble around your face. The doors open automatically for you and you stride into the gas station, your camera trailing behind. You float your camera with your mind, barely needing to think about it anymore, not having to pretend you're holding it to make it do what you want. It's second nature now. You need a record of this. No one else knows you're alive but your camera will; no one knows how powerful you are but your camera does. When you want to know who you are, when you want to remind yourself that you're stronger, you only need to watch what you've filmed.
You don't say a word, just ball your hand into a fist and punch the air, your mind following your movement easily, so easily. You feel your power connect and the guy behind the counter is thrown violently backwards and crashes into the shelves of cigarettes behind him. It's easy. It's so easy and you don't feel guilty, you just feel desperate and thankful for the power that lets you do it. You need to move fast.
Swinging your backpack off your shoulders, you unzip it then throw your hand and your mind out together, popping open the cash register drawer and floating the money directly into your bag. The mask obscures your vision and you're getting impatient, urgent, muttering come on, come on, come on come on come on in a voice that you barely even realise is rising. Everything's too much; it feels like things are slipping away or out of control and you fight back against it, shaking the bag as the coins and banknotes fall into it, backing out of the door as the money streams to you.
Then it's all in and you zip up the bag and stride back out into the night. You have to get back to your mom. You can't be alone. Your cousin hates you and your only friend is dead, so you need to take the money and get her pills and go back home to save her life.
You're by the gas pumps, slinging your bag back onto your shoulder and—
“Hey!”
You turn and it's the cashier and he has a shotgun aimed at you. Aimed at you, when you're stronger than he'll ever be in his entire worthless life, when the desperate need to get home is making you sick to your stomach. A rage builds inside you and you lash out with your mind, knocking the gun out of his stupid, shocked hands and you taste a heady kind of triumph on your tongue. You're not even going to teach him what a mistake he just made even though you could because you have to—
Except the shotgun goes off as it hits the pavement, you hear it fire, and then the roaring heat and concussive force of the explosion slams you off your feet and you're bruised and scraped and burning and it hurts so bad that there's only a moment, rolling and squirming in agony as the flames lick your exposed skin, before you mercifully fall into blackness.
You're floating in mid-air outside the Seattle Space Needle, watching people film you through the glass with cameras, smartphones, iPads. You hurt. Everything hurts, searing agony twitching through your bandaged limbs. Your body feels heavy and sometimes you've been moving your body with your mind more than with your muscles because it's a little less painful that way. There's a helicopter with a searchlight trained at your back and a phosphorescent dust in the air from the lights you exploded at the peak of the tower. You peer in at the people, your hospital gown rippling in the breeze.
Your traitor cousin flies up behind you, puts a hand on your arm and you spin, swing your bloody arms heavily, lash out hard with your mind to throw him through the air away from you. He's dead to you, he's nothing. He betrayed you and it hurts, everything hurts so badly—
The thick glass of the Space Needle windows shatters with barely more than a thought from you and you yank all those cameras out into space, pulling them into a protective ring around you. They hover around you, capturing everything, from every angle. Your camera melted when you were on fire, so you take more this time. You want this recorded. You need a witness and people are unreliable.
You ache. Your body throbs. You are stronger than this.
“Andrew! Andrew!” It's Matt, again. He should go away, he should shut the fuck up— “Look at me. This has to stop right now, okay? This is really, really bad.”
You interrupt him before you even know you're intending to talk, your voice raw and thick through your burned throat. It hurts so badly to speak; the words rip out of you viciously. “Why did you catch him?”
“Listen, just focus, okay—”
“I dropped him.” It comes rolling off your tongue like a growl. You hate him, almost more than you hate you father, who should be dead on the ground outside the smoking hospital, smashed on the pavement from twenty stories up, except your cousin caught him and saved his life. “Why did you catch him?”
“Andrew, this is not a game. Do you understand? You're hurting people,” Matt says, like you don't know. Like maybe you just don't get it.
“You're weak, Matt. You're all weak.”
“Andrew—”
“I am stronger than all of this.”
You can still hear him talking, desperately - “Andrew, listen to me, okay? Just, just— I need you to listen. Just focus for a second—” - but you're past listening to him. You're done.
“Do not tell me what to do.”
“They can't stop us, it's not too late for us to go!”
“It is too late! I'm done. It's over.” Doesn't he realise that you have nothing left? There's nothing but the power, now; it's the only thing you can cling to. Your body throbs and your voice is raw and wounded when you speak, and you hate how weak you sound. “God, you treated me like shit. You left me alone.”
“Andrew, you're not alone up here! I'm here with you. I should've been with you all along but I'm here now and we can stop this right now, you and me.” The words hurt, dully, and you want to believe them, you want to trust him. You want to, but you can't. He betrayed you. “Andrew, we can just fly away—”
That's when you stop listening. He keeps talking, but his voice dulls in your brain to something like static. The words don't go any deeper than surface level. All you can think about is how weak it makes you feel, wanting to go with him. He's lying. He doesn't want to help you, he's just scared. He thinks he can trick you.
“Apex predator,” you say, not meaning to. Once it's out of your mouth, you start to believe it. You remember what it means. You don't need anyone. You don't. He yells and your attention comes back to him. He's weak. He's nothing. You want him gone.
“I'm an apex predator,” you repeat, and that's when you run your cousin over with a bus, six hundred feet above the ground.
You don't see what happens to him because you're half-falling, half-flying downwards, a fast arc that you lose control of, ploughing into the pavement with a burst of searing agony through your raw blistered limbs. It makes your vision bleed black at the edges. You stumble to your feet and vomit from the pain. There are people and you turn towards them—
Then a burst of sound – your name – and Matt slams into you, sweeping you back up into the sky.
Next, a series of buildings, streets, stop-motion blurs as you claw with Matt for dominance, hands scrabbling around his throat as you slam through walls and windows, into the ground, denting the pavement. Your power protects you instinctively, cushioning the blows a little. Everything blurs around you with the pain and the speed and the rage that's swarming up your throat and giving you strength to keep fighting. You're not weak. You're so fucking sick of being weak.
You fly backwards, mouth twisted into a snarl, picking cars up with your mind, flinging them at Matt. You want him dead, you want him gone, you want—
You hit a streetlamp, bursting the light, electricity jolting through you, knocking you out, and you drop like a stone to the ground.
You come back to yourself. The first thing you see is your arm, bloody and blistered, red raw flesh that looks like you've just been skinned from wrist to elbow. You look at it and you want to cry. You struggle to you feet, your cousin yelling behind you, police yelling back, guns trained on the both of you.
Matt says something, you don't hear what, but there's a gunshot and he screams, buckling in on himself and you think he must have got a bullet in the stomach or something. That's not what makes you raise your arms and shove back the cops and their cars, mostly it's just that you can't stand this anymore.
“Leave me alone!” you scream, wanting to destroy the world, wanting everything to stop, everyone to disappear or die.
Matt jumps back into the air and you chase him this time, out of control, spinning into buildings and ricocheting off them until you both slam into a statue in the middle of an open square. People run, scream, sirens blare, cop cars surround you in a ring and you see red lights dance over your body as they take aim. The world greys out as you almost sob with pain, flat on the ground.
You drag yourself to your feet, delirious with agony, barely aware of where you are or what you're doing. Matt yells at you but you don't know what he says. When you turn around you hear a cop shout Open fire! and you throw your hands up and catch the bullets in the air in front of your face, your body shaking, screaming as the space before you fills up with bullets, hundreds of them.
The police stop firing and you send them flying with a massive wave of energy. It sends their cars flying, scatters bullets, throws men through the air, but you don't see that because the effort drove you back down to all fours.
You drag yourself up again, the pain intense and violent enough to make you want to puke and you want to bring everything down because there's nothing left for you. Everything went so wrong and there's no coming back from this so you might as well go as far as you can, show everyone how powerful you really are. You scream and raise your shaking hands, more animal than human, a creature of black rage and pain, blood seeping from your pores. You've never done anything this big and you scream and shake and the windows in the buildings begin to shatter, huge sheets of glass crashing to the ground. You hear Matt sobbing, yelling at you, but you're beyond the point of being able to stop and listen to what he's saying.
You scream and scream and throw your mind into tearing everything down because it's the only thing you have left to do. Then something huge bursts through your chest, sticking you like a beetle with a pin, the pain intense until it dies as abruptly as the scream from your throat. Your power draws back but it can't fix this. If you could collapse, you would, but the thing through your chest holds you up as your arms drop to your sides and swing and finally, everything stops.
The kanima – Jackson, that scaly, slimy thing is Jackson – fights hard. You all thought it was dead but it came back to life, and now the three of you fight it, claws out, teeth bared. Derek goes for it first, then Scott, then you, one after the other as you all get thrown back in turn, twisting to avoid getting raked and paralysed by those venomous claws. You hoist yourself back up onto your feet and into the fray again when Scott or your alpha are forced back. The wolf inside is getting louder, wanting to tear into the creature, wanting to rip it to shreds. You wish your packmates were here with you. Together, you and Erica and Boyd could take this thing down.
You're knocked off your feet and Derek steps in. You shake your head to clear your ringing ears and when you look up you see your alpha stumbling after catching a swipe of those claws. He goes down, muscles starting to lock as he drops to the ground and you have to help him, he's your alpha (your family) and you have to—
But when you move forward to throw yourself back into the fight, you find your way blocked. Allison's there. Why is she—
She moves fast and your attention is split between her and the fight so you barely have time to recognise what she's about to do as she spins blades in both her hands and brings them down in a vicious slash that crosses your chest and stomach, biting so deep into your flesh that it feels like you've just been gutted. You gasp sharply and try swiping her with your claws, except she's expecting that, reading your motions. She side-steps and ducks it easily. You're hunched over with pain, blood soaking into your clothes, tasting it in the back of your throat. You draw yourself up, fighting the agony down, except she's there again, behind you, driving both knives point-first into your back, so deep you're almost surprised the tips don't slide out the front of your torso, and then she rips them up and back out again and you drop to the floor with a whine.
You don't know what you've done this time. You're thirteen years old and your big brother is gone and your dad is pissed. You're terrified and you're powerless. You can't help shifting back as your dad steps forward, towering over you, and you stumble, trip over your feet, falling hard. Your hand shoots out to catch yourself and your wrist twists as you land, a jolt of pain shooting through your bones. You scramble back like an insect. Your dad doesn't look like himself, face spread with a sneer that almost looks like a grin from all the way down here on the floor.
You're babbling, saying sorry and that you won't do it again, whatever it is, that you didn't mean to disappoint him and you can do better. He says something but you don't catch what it is because you were closer to the open door to the basement than you thought and as your father speaks, you shuffle back just a little too far and—
You feel every step as you tumble down into the basement, hard edges slamming into your stomach and shoulders, driving the air out of your lungs, knocking bright bursts of pain on your forehead, your cheekbone, your knees. Close to the bottom, there's a sharper pain in your ribs but there's no snapping noise or anything so it's probably not broken. That doesn't mean it isn't enough to make you nearly black out, though. You lie there with your breath coming in harsh sobs as you listen to your dad come down after you.
For a moment, when he puts his hands on you, you think he's going to help you.
“Clumsy, Isaac. You need better reflexes than that,” he says, instead, voice so horribly calm, and he says more but you lose yourself to pain for a while and the words don't stick in your head.
The only time you fight back is in a panic when he drags you to the open chest freezer because you know what happens next and you can't, you don't want to go in there, you don't know what you did, but he's so much bigger than you and so much stronger. You break your fingernails scrabbling across the floor as he lifts you up and you kick out without thinking, catching him in the knee with your toes, and for that you get a fist to the jaw that leaves you half-conscious and limp, a dead weight that he dumps into the empty, unplugged freezer. The last thing you see is his mouth drawn down into a frown before the lid closes you in darkness and the rising panic when you hear the padlock click wipes every last thought from your brain.
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musetrash2015-01-23 11:39 am
ANDREW DETMER
no subject
The old VHS camera in your hands crackles as the picture blurs and rolls on the little screen and you're barely even looking at it now, because the thing has pulsed from glowing blue to warm red. (Steve touched it, it drew his sweat off his nose and through the air and you can't stop thinking about the way the drops floated, immune to gravity down here in this weird cave.) It's crystal, roped with stuff that looks like vines or veins and those tendrils were moving on it like they were alive; its centre like a glowing egg, with spikes of huge crystal coming off it, pointing out of it every which way. It looks like a star. It's huge, filling the cavern. The tunnel wasn't completely straight all the way down but it must have fallen here, shot into the earth, unless it grew out of the ground.
“I can't hear you over that—” you start, but don't finish. The noise is immense, pulsing like a heartbeat, a high-pitched piercing whine that feels like it's bursting your eardrums, making your blood sing in your veins and you swing the camera back to Steve Montgomery (who you don't know except through his campaign posters for class president and because he's popular and you're the kid the popular kids spit on except he knew who you were and he has never tried to hurt you like the others do).
And he's yelling, “This is awesome!”, his voice catching on an amazed laugh halfway through except then he's reeling back and you can see a stream of something dark running down his face and pouring off his chin and it's blood.
“Oh, dude, your nose!” you say, dismayed as he raises his hand and stumbles backwards, and you call out his name as he turns away from the thing and towards you, a gory mess dripping over his face: “Steve!”
And even as you're yelling and Matt's yelling too - “Steve, Steve! Steve!” - you feel a pressure, like something squeezing your head, your lungs, and then the noise sends a bolt of pain through your head and your cousin's shooting backwards like he's been shoved, screaming, feet dragging through the dust, except there's nothing there pushing him and you get a glimpse of Steve's hand dropping from his bleeding nose to his throat like he's being strangled before he drops to the floor kicking and spasming and the place starts to shake and rumble, the noises rises to a roar and it all happens so fast and you don't understand and you're going to die down here, you're never going to get out of this fucking cave, and something invisible slams you backwards, your heels jarring over the floor as rocks start to fall from the ceiling around you and your body moves without you moving it and you've lost track of the others, you have no idea what's happening but the last image you get is the crystal, glowing deep red and disappearing as you're dragged away and the cave begins to shake itself apart.
no subject
“Oh, dude!” you laugh. You've never been happier, you can't remember a better day than this. “Nice catch, man, yes!”
The last word is swallowed by your laughter and your cousin's laughter. His face is alive with joy as he grins at you and into the small digital camera you're filming the two of them with. He turns back to your friend, yelling his name to get his attention and something else that you don't hear because your attention is on the noise you just heard. It's distant, a low roar, which is sort of weird because apart from the wind it's been quiet up here so far.
“Hey Matt, do you hear that?” you yell, panning the camera around to try to find where it's coming from. It's getting louder and louder and you frown. “What is that?”
But almost before you can finish the words, you know because there's a jet, huge and terrifying, passing between you and blowing the three of you out of the sky. The wave of air from it passing blows you back, sucks the air from your lungs. You lose your grip on the camera and you barely notice, dropping like a stone, terrified and miserable, shouting: “Steve!”
You're watching your friend fall, limp and unconscious, your stomach feeling like its been left behind in the clouds. Steve's never going to catch himself. Your mind is groping for your power but the panic's knocked it out of your reach and you can't see your cousin and he must be falling too. Every second of the way down flashes through your head like a full-blown premonition and you know you're going to be screaming on the entire way down and you'll die still trying to remember how to fly.
cw: explosions, fire
Your father's old fireman's gear is hot and heavy, sweat boiling out of your skin and running down your neck and your back and your cheeks underneath the mask that traps your breath in a bubble around your face. The doors open automatically for you and you stride into the gas station, your camera trailing behind. You float your camera with your mind, barely needing to think about it anymore, not having to pretend you're holding it to make it do what you want. It's second nature now. You need a record of this. No one else knows you're alive but your camera will; no one knows how powerful you are but your camera does. When you want to know who you are, when you want to remind yourself that you're stronger, you only need to watch what you've filmed.
You don't say a word, just ball your hand into a fist and punch the air, your mind following your movement easily, so easily. You feel your power connect and the guy behind the counter is thrown violently backwards and crashes into the shelves of cigarettes behind him. It's easy. It's so easy and you don't feel guilty, you just feel desperate and thankful for the power that lets you do it. You need to move fast.
Swinging your backpack off your shoulders, you unzip it then throw your hand and your mind out together, popping open the cash register drawer and floating the money directly into your bag. The mask obscures your vision and you're getting impatient, urgent, muttering come on, come on, come on come on come on in a voice that you barely even realise is rising. Everything's too much; it feels like things are slipping away or out of control and you fight back against it, shaking the bag as the coins and banknotes fall into it, backing out of the door as the money streams to you.
Then it's all in and you zip up the bag and stride back out into the night. You have to get back to your mom. You can't be alone. Your cousin hates you and your only friend is dead, so you need to take the money and get her pills and go back home to save her life.
You're by the gas pumps, slinging your bag back onto your shoulder and—
“Hey!”
You turn and it's the cashier and he has a shotgun aimed at you. Aimed at you, when you're stronger than he'll ever be in his entire worthless life, when the desperate need to get home is making you sick to your stomach. A rage builds inside you and you lash out with your mind, knocking the gun out of his stupid, shocked hands and you taste a heady kind of triumph on your tongue. You're not even going to teach him what a mistake he just made even though you could because you have to—
Except the shotgun goes off as it hits the pavement, you hear it fire, and then the roaring heat and concussive force of the explosion slams you off your feet and you're bruised and scraped and burning and it hurts so bad that there's only a moment, rolling and squirming in agony as the flames lick your exposed skin, before you mercifully fall into blackness.
no subject
Your traitor cousin flies up behind you, puts a hand on your arm and you spin, swing your bloody arms heavily, lash out hard with your mind to throw him through the air away from you. He's dead to you, he's nothing. He betrayed you and it hurts, everything hurts so badly—
The thick glass of the Space Needle windows shatters with barely more than a thought from you and you yank all those cameras out into space, pulling them into a protective ring around you. They hover around you, capturing everything, from every angle. Your camera melted when you were on fire, so you take more this time. You want this recorded. You need a witness and people are unreliable.
You ache. Your body throbs. You are stronger than this.
“Andrew! Andrew!” It's Matt, again. He should go away, he should shut the fuck up— “Look at me. This has to stop right now, okay? This is really, really bad.”
You interrupt him before you even know you're intending to talk, your voice raw and thick through your burned throat. It hurts so badly to speak; the words rip out of you viciously. “Why did you catch him?”
“Listen, just focus, okay—”
“I dropped him.” It comes rolling off your tongue like a growl. You hate him, almost more than you hate you father, who should be dead on the ground outside the smoking hospital, smashed on the pavement from twenty stories up, except your cousin caught him and saved his life. “Why did you catch him?”
“Andrew, this is not a game. Do you understand? You're hurting people,” Matt says, like you don't know. Like maybe you just don't get it.
“You're weak, Matt. You're all weak.”
“Andrew—”
“I am stronger than all of this.”
You can still hear him talking, desperately - “Andrew, listen to me, okay? Just, just— I need you to listen. Just focus for a second—” - but you're past listening to him. You're done.
“Do not tell me what to do.”
“They can't stop us, it's not too late for us to go!”
“It is too late! I'm done. It's over.” Doesn't he realise that you have nothing left? There's nothing but the power, now; it's the only thing you can cling to. Your body throbs and your voice is raw and wounded when you speak, and you hate how weak you sound. “God, you treated me like shit. You left me alone.”
“Andrew, you're not alone up here! I'm here with you. I should've been with you all along but I'm here now and we can stop this right now, you and me.” The words hurt, dully, and you want to believe them, you want to trust him. You want to, but you can't. He betrayed you. “Andrew, we can just fly away—”
That's when you stop listening. He keeps talking, but his voice dulls in your brain to something like static. The words don't go any deeper than surface level. All you can think about is how weak it makes you feel, wanting to go with him. He's lying. He doesn't want to help you, he's just scared. He thinks he can trick you.
“Apex predator,” you say, not meaning to. Once it's out of your mouth, you start to believe it. You remember what it means. You don't need anyone. You don't. He yells and your attention comes back to him. He's weak. He's nothing. You want him gone.
“I'm an apex predator,” you repeat, and that's when you run your cousin over with a bus, six hundred feet above the ground.
You don't see what happens to him because you're half-falling, half-flying downwards, a fast arc that you lose control of, ploughing into the pavement with a burst of searing agony through your raw blistered limbs. It makes your vision bleed black at the edges. You stumble to your feet and vomit from the pain. There are people and you turn towards them—
Then a burst of sound – your name – and Matt slams into you, sweeping you back up into the sky.
Next, a series of buildings, streets, stop-motion blurs as you claw with Matt for dominance, hands scrabbling around his throat as you slam through walls and windows, into the ground, denting the pavement. Your power protects you instinctively, cushioning the blows a little. Everything blurs around you with the pain and the speed and the rage that's swarming up your throat and giving you strength to keep fighting. You're not weak. You're so fucking sick of being weak.
You fly backwards, mouth twisted into a snarl, picking cars up with your mind, flinging them at Matt. You want him dead, you want him gone, you want—
You hit a streetlamp, bursting the light, electricity jolting through you, knocking you out, and you drop like a stone to the ground.
You come back to yourself. The first thing you see is your arm, bloody and blistered, red raw flesh that looks like you've just been skinned from wrist to elbow. You look at it and you want to cry. You struggle to you feet, your cousin yelling behind you, police yelling back, guns trained on the both of you.
Matt says something, you don't hear what, but there's a gunshot and he screams, buckling in on himself and you think he must have got a bullet in the stomach or something. That's not what makes you raise your arms and shove back the cops and their cars, mostly it's just that you can't stand this anymore.
“Leave me alone!” you scream, wanting to destroy the world, wanting everything to stop, everyone to disappear or die.
Matt jumps back into the air and you chase him this time, out of control, spinning into buildings and ricocheting off them until you both slam into a statue in the middle of an open square. People run, scream, sirens blare, cop cars surround you in a ring and you see red lights dance over your body as they take aim. The world greys out as you almost sob with pain, flat on the ground.
You drag yourself to your feet, delirious with agony, barely aware of where you are or what you're doing. Matt yells at you but you don't know what he says. When you turn around you hear a cop shout Open fire! and you throw your hands up and catch the bullets in the air in front of your face, your body shaking, screaming as the space before you fills up with bullets, hundreds of them.
The police stop firing and you send them flying with a massive wave of energy. It sends their cars flying, scatters bullets, throws men through the air, but you don't see that because the effort drove you back down to all fours.
You drag yourself up again, the pain intense and violent enough to make you want to puke and you want to bring everything down because there's nothing left for you. Everything went so wrong and there's no coming back from this so you might as well go as far as you can, show everyone how powerful you really are. You scream and raise your shaking hands, more animal than human, a creature of black rage and pain, blood seeping from your pores. You've never done anything this big and you scream and shake and the windows in the buildings begin to shatter, huge sheets of glass crashing to the ground. You hear Matt sobbing, yelling at you, but you're beyond the point of being able to stop and listen to what he's saying.
You scream and scream and throw your mind into tearing everything down because it's the only thing you have left to do. Then something huge bursts through your chest, sticking you like a beetle with a pin, the pain intense until it dies as abruptly as the scream from your throat. Your power draws back but it can't fix this. If you could collapse, you would, but the thing through your chest holds you up as your arms drop to your sides and swing and finally, everything stops.
ISAAC LAHEY
no subject
You're knocked off your feet and Derek steps in. You shake your head to clear your ringing ears and when you look up you see your alpha stumbling after catching a swipe of those claws. He goes down, muscles starting to lock as he drops to the ground and you have to help him, he's your alpha (your family) and you have to—
But when you move forward to throw yourself back into the fight, you find your way blocked. Allison's there. Why is she—
She moves fast and your attention is split between her and the fight so you barely have time to recognise what she's about to do as she spins blades in both her hands and brings them down in a vicious slash that crosses your chest and stomach, biting so deep into your flesh that it feels like you've just been gutted. You gasp sharply and try swiping her with your claws, except she's expecting that, reading your motions. She side-steps and ducks it easily. You're hunched over with pain, blood soaking into your clothes, tasting it in the back of your throat. You draw yourself up, fighting the agony down, except she's there again, behind you, driving both knives point-first into your back, so deep you're almost surprised the tips don't slide out the front of your torso, and then she rips them up and back out again and you drop to the floor with a whine.
cw child abuse
You're babbling, saying sorry and that you won't do it again, whatever it is, that you didn't mean to disappoint him and you can do better. He says something but you don't catch what it is because you were closer to the open door to the basement than you thought and as your father speaks, you shuffle back just a little too far and—
You feel every step as you tumble down into the basement, hard edges slamming into your stomach and shoulders, driving the air out of your lungs, knocking bright bursts of pain on your forehead, your cheekbone, your knees. Close to the bottom, there's a sharper pain in your ribs but there's no snapping noise or anything so it's probably not broken. That doesn't mean it isn't enough to make you nearly black out, though. You lie there with your breath coming in harsh sobs as you listen to your dad come down after you.
For a moment, when he puts his hands on you, you think he's going to help you.
“Clumsy, Isaac. You need better reflexes than that,” he says, instead, voice so horribly calm, and he says more but you lose yourself to pain for a while and the words don't stick in your head.
The only time you fight back is in a panic when he drags you to the open chest freezer because you know what happens next and you can't, you don't want to go in there, you don't know what you did, but he's so much bigger than you and so much stronger. You break your fingernails scrabbling across the floor as he lifts you up and you kick out without thinking, catching him in the knee with your toes, and for that you get a fist to the jaw that leaves you half-conscious and limp, a dead weight that he dumps into the empty, unplugged freezer. The last thing you see is his mouth drawn down into a frown before the lid closes you in darkness and the rising panic when you hear the padlock click wipes every last thought from your brain.