meadowlarklogs

"What if they kill him while you're there? Stop being fucking stupid." What the fuck is that accomplishing? Watching him die, and not a damn thing more. It's not even like he'll get to say goodbye, no last hugs, nothing but a terrified look and then a spike to the brain from behind. Clinical, efficient. They even take away the bodies, nobody knows where they go.

But there are a few ideas.

The judge recycle absolutely everything. Nothing wasted.

"Screw it," declaratively, and he dips to bodily pick her up. He's gonna carry her fireman style over his fucking shoulder out of this alley, and she can hate him later because she'll be alive and around to hate him. That's better than the alternative.

Kyna's so shocked by it that when he grabs her, she doesn't even try to wiggle away until she's already over his shoulder. It just makes her more furious, furious enough not to check her volume when she cries out, "Ian, what the fuck! Let go of me!"

It's loud enough, apparently. One of the aliens stops what it's doing, swings its head around toward them.

Her shrill voice even startles him, and he whips them both around to check and see if they were spotted.

Of course they were.

"Shit," snapped out, but-- holy fuck is he less defenseless than he was back home in real life. If he could do this before, Jamill would have never gotten taken.

(He feels like he's getting away with murder, not being able to tell Nia what happened. Getting taken before she knew. It was his fault.)

His free hand shoots out and up, and the asphalt in the alley rises with it. High and wide, blocking off the path, before he turns to take off.

It won't hold them for long. They can bust through it.

But fuck it, he can keep making 'em, right? It's bound to slow 'em down.

Edited 2020-09-14 22:30 (UTC)

If there was any chance of them sneaking off, it's gone now. The asphalt wrenches out of the ground, and now the whole group is turning towards them.

As though Ian's use of his powers remind her that she has her own, she phases through him, hitting the ground with a thud as the air is knocked from her lungs. This would be the perfect distraction to go back for her brother, but even if she phased through the wall and the aliens, she has no idea how she'd free the prisoners and get them away.

Ian is right, but it doesn't make her feel better. It just makes her more furious.

"God damn it, Ian," she says, grabbing for his hand to run. She's not even sure how much of her anger is for him, though. She's mad at everything. All of it. How fucking stupid and unfair everything is.

She scares the ever-loving shit out of him when she falls, and it's not in a jump scare kind of way. He thinks for a second that he's dropped her, or that he's-- that he fucked something up, somehow. He doesn't have time to process it before she's on her feet, and she tugs him from the thought with a sharp jerk to the hand.

The relief is almost staggering.

They turn an alley corner, and then another. Buildings are stacked in more closely than reality should allow, and somehow they never make it to a street or a sidewalk. Just damp, claustrophobic alley after alley between hulking behemoths towering over them.

"We have to get out of the city, we have to get out right the fuck now," he manages breathlessly. "They're gonna rip it out of the ground in blocks."

Some of her anger ebbs when she's hit with that relief. He's just trying to protect her, as frustrated and helpless as she feels. But really, this is nothing new, right? Her hands were tied in the sim, with most of the monsters she encountered, even with figuring out why the hell she's been dragged to New Amsterdam in the first place. Why shouldn't this be an extension of that?

It's getting harder and harder to tell herself that this is a dream she has control over. Her emotions are too tangled and messy to be rational about it, and soon enough all she can focus on is keeping up with Ian's longer strides, looking for a path out. She doesn't have much luck. Every time she thinks she sees a promising alleyway, the buildings seem to creep towards each other, blocking their escape.

They turn another corner, what feels like the millionth, and Kyna nearly skids right into one of the aliens, hulking and so terrifying her blood instantly runs cold. Kyna barely has time to think before it's lunging at them. She doesn't have time to process anything but Ian's hand in hers, all-encompassing panic, and a rush of desperate protectiveness.

She doesn't do it consciously, but before she can duck away, the thing's arm passes through them—both of them—and the only reason she realizes what's happened is the glow of her chest.

"Fuck fuck fuck."

Yeah, he is not even remotely prepared for that. He doesn't even get the chance to dig in his heels before he's already halfway through a fucking alien, and his eyes go saucer-wide. No time to stop, his feet skip a beat long enough to look back. Hell, a second later he throws up a wall behind them.

"What the fuck was that," he shoots at her breathlessly, steering them around a corner and slowing from a run to long-legged strides.

"I don't know."

She's still reeling from it, so distracted that the concrete suddenly ripping from the ground makes her flinch. God, so much for a useless power, Ian.

He slows, and she slows further, trying to drag them to a stop and grab his other hand. That might not be the best idea if their fear starts one of those feedback loops, but it's instinctive.

"We should try to wake up, right? Like the other times."

He thinks it's that he put in all of his Useless Power dues for months while other people did kickass stuff like flying or waterbending or walking through walls and electrocuting shit. Week after week of changing the shape of his screwdriver mournfully in the back of a safehouse.

It's sort of like the universe is consoling him and rewarding him for his shitty circumstances.

His eyes flicker from her to the wall to make sure it's still holding, and then he nods absently. "Yeah, except that was you waking up every time, I still have no idea how in the fuck you do it."

He's always been a deep sleeper. His body's first instinct in the morning is usually 'nah'.

Oh, God. She can't believe he's putting her in charge.

"You totally kicked me out that one time."

That counts, right? But then maybe he'd just be trapped in here without her. But okay. Okay, sure, she can make it work. She tightens her grip on his hands, trying to anchor herself, and squeezes her eyes shut. All she has to do is block out everything else and focus, just like during a ritual. Just like last time.

And it takes a moment or so, but it works. She's waking up in her bed, blinking up at the ceiling, her heart still racing.

That must have woken Ian up too, right? God, she wishes she knew the rules for this shit. She half trips out of bed, tries to be quiet enough not to wake up Lance as she slips out of her room.

"Ian?"

There's a little bit of a delay between when she wakes up and when he does — she might hear it on her way through her door, the sharp sucking intake of breath that comes from someone jerking awake from a particularly unpleasant dream. It takes him a second, but he slowly collapses back down onto the couch right before she says his name.

Not surprising, really. He scrubs at his face, manages a hoarse and quiet, "Yeah."

He's up.

Sorry.

God, he hates that fucking dream. It was a little different this time with her in it, but not much.

Her anger at his lack of action feels distant and distorted now in the way intense emotions in dreams always seem to. It's the fear that sticks with her, less because of her own discomfort and more because of the realization that he must dream about this shit constantly. It makes sense, and she should have thought about it before, but... Somehow, she just never considered it.

Kyna crosses the room and perches on the arm of the couch by his feet, wanting to be close but not sure invading his space is a great idea. She's quiet for a moment, chewing on her lip.

"Are you okay?"

He moves in that slow, tired way post-sleepers do. One elbow after the other, and then gently hauling himself back a little so he's propped up by the other arm of the couch. He's still a little groggy, never really been a morning person. Or a... middle of the night person.

"I'm fine," he says, and it's tired but honest. He's gotten used to those. The bigger thing is, "Sorry you had to see that."

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