@fiddlingonthetympanic:
[Hi, here's some hastily written things about the aftermath of parasitic infestations.]
Krakoa, Seven Months after the Salt
Mutants--at least mutants like them--are no strangers to horror. They cut their teeth on it. For Woolf, that g-dawful, wrenching crack-and-peel-and-scream was her metaphorical fucking bat mitzvah. There's nothing particularly special about the worms and the salt, except--
(The stink of shit and bodies upon bodies. The devouring: Daken endlessly feeding and breeding the worms as Tess went through body after body. 'Is it pretty?' she'd breathed, her parched, open eye sockets gaping wide as a dead fish's mouth as waves of glittering salt rolled down the hillside. 'I bet it's pretty.'
She'd hummed that fucking song, too, about dead things. The worms and the hearse.)
Woolf settles a few feet away from him, watching the distant bloom of greenery as the chlorokinetics of Krakoa do their work to "help" things along. "Small miracle the Pit didn't swallow all of us." The "new" Quiet Council has the rest of eternity to think about their mistakes down there, among them the genocide of the feral population and salting the earth. Her lip curls.
Daken is close enough she can rest her head on his shoulder like she did while dying--or punch down and catch him in the balls. "I heard a rumor of a rumor," she begins, then sinks sharp teeth into her bottom lip. 'The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle--' The taste of her bile is sour. "A rumor of a rumor--" She pauses, swallowing down the words and with them, the very natural urge to gag. 'Gotta get out the stuff that'll kill you--'
She exhales noisily, counts down from five, and tries again. "A lab. Things that shouldn't be in it."
( It seemed silly. A freak stomach bug, at first, a few sick -- then, everybody, bursting, but so many of them cursed with it unending.
“It’s going to be over soon,” Daken tells Woolf, cradling her, the spawning larvae slurring his words as they tumble out from between his lips, the thing that has eaten his tongue and replaced it hardly a good companion for forming words. The salt in the distance collapses towards them, sparkling crystals tumbling into clouds and -- god, an end. “It’s so fucking beautiful. It’s coming, I -- I can see --” )
Daken doesn’t want to think about it, now. Who does? It was an absolute fucking nightmare, and nearly all of them have seen some hell before.
The anxiety and revulsion and guilt lies in them, even now.
Even now: He can tell it’s on the tip of her tongue, the waft of nausea and fear coming from her. He wants to tell her to shut the fuck up, stop thinking about it before she even does, but he doesn’t stop her.
Daken closes his eyes, and imagines: Mutants hidden amongst mutants, toiling, feeding little worms little droppers in little plates, floating infested flesh floating in a giant tube, or maybe...
“I don’t care,” he snaps at her, swivelling his head away. “It doesn’t matter. Stop -- just stop. I don’t want to hear about it.”
