Let's play the 'Word Association Game'! Send my muse a word, any word, and they'll respond with the first word that comes into their head. || ACCEPTING
... Oh. That one's not so easy. There's a lot that comes to mind with that. People he couldn't save. People he'd killed. Loved ones he never said good-bye to. Choices he never made, and those he did.
He thinks of his mother, the regret she must have felt whenever they locked eyes (the same eyes he sees in his daughters' faces, and god, he hopes they never look at him like she did). He thinks of his dad, the brief flashes of memory he has of the man - of the shotgun blast and the red pooling on the polished floors. He thinks of his brother, Dog, face contorted in rage and pain and coated in slick red from the claw marks gauged into his face. He thinks of Rose, bleeding out in the snow for the crime of caring about him, and the cooling bodies of his pack who were executed for much the same. Of David, choking on his own insides as the gas rolled in, the hate in Clara's eyes as Saul lay cooling on the ground, the cold abandonment of watching Herakles leave, Burr's survival, the callous derision from Ogun, letting him come back to hurt Kitty, not taking Natalia with him, the news about Steve, Itsu's mutilated corpse, Bandou's disgust, Roanoke, the Hudsons' betrayal, Amiko's little face, Viper, Mariko, Akihiro, bodies he never put a name to before they hit the ground in butchered chunks. He thinks about Laura on the team, Josh on the gurney, Quentin's vanishing. He thinks of his own death.
He thinks of coming back.
He thinks of decades of sleepless nights, of sitting beside ghosts nobody else would ever see, and drinks that did nothing, and nightmares that ended with waking moments over a toilet. How do you put that into words? Into one word? How do you condense two centuries of mistakes (he is a mistake) like that?
You knew who these people were- Batman, Robin, Nightwing. They were the heavy hitters the X-Men had always hoped to emulate by being a face for what mutants could be and contribute. It felt unsettling to be in their presence; the sense that they didn't belong here was overwhelming.
Bobby usually so outgoing and friendly found himself shy and grateful he wore his icy skin that hid his face like a glassy mask. It took everything in him to not have his mouth hang open, staring.
Artemis has been a grounding presence in Wally's life for a while now.
For years, really. Even with their on again off again tendencies, they've always been there for each other. She is that level-headed figure that someone with his overthinking tendencies truly needs, knows how to keep him focused on the here and the now. It's thanks to her that Wally has been able to come to terms with a lot of things about himself— things that aren't just related to having become a metahuman at the age of ten, but other things too. Beliefs he thought were his but in reality he didn't quite agree with, only didn't question because it was what he had been taught by his parents; ways of seeing the world, of seeing people— even ways of seeing HIMSELF. She'd waltzed into his life and turned everything upside down like a blonde hurricane, leaving him to rearrange the furniture into something nicer and throw away things that didn't have a place in his life anymore.
Roy was crude about it, he talked about how pussy got Wally to stop citing the bible or sounding like a Nixon/Reagan speech. Wally got angry every time, at Roy for saying it like that and at himself for not being able to deny it.
He's grown since then. He likes to think he's a nicer person to be around of now.
He and Artemis still have their dry spells, periods of time where they took breaks from each other because of some disagreement or another. Wally is pretty sure that's just what dating within their 'career' is like: disagreeing about what the other is doing because you are both self sacrificing idiots who are also selfish enough to be unwilling to let the other die for 'the cause'.
It's been about a year since their last big disagreement, and they've been enjoying some quite comfortable peace.
That translates into Wally having to sit there, eye twitching and jaw setting, as Cyborg laughs at him upon finding out that the boys night has to lose a member because Wally's next date night falls on that very same night, and it cannot be postponed for anything in the world because he has to take Artemis to a ballet recital.
"I don't know what you find so funny about it, ballet is cool," Wally huffs. "The Nutcracker is a timeless masterpiece and it takes a lot of training and strength for the ballerinas and the- the ballerina guys to be able to do all that. Besides, Dick did ballet, too, and you don't think he's silly for it!"
Speak of the devil and he shall come, both men turned towards the door when they heard it slide open and sure enough, there was Dick.
"Grayson, can you believe this?!" Cyborg was still laughing. "He's ditching boys night to go watch people in tights bounce around a stage!"
"It's the Nutcracker!" Wally yells, then breathes, trying to regain his composure as he turns to Dick and gives a light shrug. "I'm sorry, man, but I promised Art that we'd go and she only managed to get tickets for that date. I can't let her down."
It is one of the rare times that Yeshua is alone, not teaching, not surrounded by his disciples, just simply existing. It is late. He cannot sleep. Such a thing is normal for him more and more these days. Sleep is hard to come by when you have so much resting on your shoulders. He was sitting outside, enjoying the warmth of the night when he felt the ever familiar presence of an angel. Angels are light incarnate. It feels like the only way to describe it. They bring comfort and gentleness, all the anxieties that he was feeling simply rolling off of his shoulders.
He looks to Gabriel, smiles a little. "Do you bring a message from my Father?" Though he half wonders why They simply couldn't tell him Themself. Oh, it doesn't matter, does it? "Regardless of why you're here, it's nice to see you."
is the floor supposed to feel like it's moving? + if i throw up in this sink, you can't tell anyone. - Dick !
a meme i shan't find
@sleepsands
"---if you throw up in my sink, i am telling everyone."
a hand is on his shoulder, pushing him to stand upright.
he's not going to be given the opportunity to throw up in the sink-- he's being guided to the nearest toilet. don't ask how long it's been since she cleaned it.
he felt the presence in the room, like an all-encompassing pull. it distracts him, almost, from the knife in his gut. but not the pain that was rippling out of it, and throughout his body. his hand lingers where his wound is, and it takes a moment for him to steady himself with his spare hand so as not to lose his balance. gabriel is speaking before he knows it. and the words come out disjointed, curious more than anything. it unsettles him somewhat - but what can he do, when his only task as of now is to not pass out.
"gabriel." the name passes through him, almost in greeting, if it hadn't been said through clenched teeth. if it was any other being, even a stranger, he may request the help off them. tell them what they need to do, rely upon them for their assistance. but gabriel did not give him a chance to even consider the question. before he knows it, he is so painfully on his back. the pull of the blade from him causes it's own yell to escape from him, the sharp edges cutting through already torn flesh.
but it is gabriel's next actions that truly make him shake. he sees white - almost, and a hand moves to immediately grip the other's wrist, fingers digging in harshly. to try and stop gabriel - at the very least, from intensifying the pain more. "st-" the words catch on his breath as he pants. "stop." he curls, slightly, and that barely gives him any relief. but it does. somewhere, through the haze of everything, he realises that gabriel may need direct instruction. and that stop may simply result in him getting up and walking away. and so - with a hard swallow, he tightens his grip on gabriel's wrist even more (if that were possible), to keep him here. even if it hurts.
When Lorna was a teenage girl—dreaming of a fabulous life of being a sultry, sexy Samantha in the BIG, bustling Apple—she read a looooot of Cosmo. In between dating sensitive emos, and more sensitive jocks, a long string of failed relationships who broke up with her for “intimacy issues”---guarded walls, not putting out, being too much of a “good girl" who somehow didn't pay enough attention to them—Lorna wondered vaguely and ominously if she was a “flower” or a “gardener.”
The flower, she reasoned, was the star of the show. Big needs and a big heart, which she had both of in spades, she reasoned, checking every box on the Cosmo quizzes in her well-used green and pink gel pens.
But a gardener? A gardener attracted the flower, and made them bloom. A gardener was a protector, a provider, they babied and nurtured and helped them grow—and most importantly of all--a gardener was attractive to the all-present, intense, beautiful, all-consuming flower. In essence, a gardener gets all the passion–and all the credit. And, most importantly to Lorna--a gardener is the stable one—to whom the irrepressible, perfectly unstable—cannot live or cope without.
Alex and Lorna, she liked to tease, made two halves of a perfectly silly goofball. But, in Lorna's mind—that required a little finagling on her part. Make herself a little smaller, and a little more useful. Not that that was a bad thing, no, not at all. Her big heart made her WANT to care for him.
He was gooey and soft and gentle in all the right ways–and yet, just like Lorna, he found it sometimes impossible to cope with the giant pores inside him that leaked those big emotions like squeezed grapes out of a barrel. She lapped up sweet wine and rubber corked every hole. She relished the taste of him, fruity and strong and bitter. He made her tongue pop, he made her stomach knot and bubble and nerves tangle and untangle, like she was playing with crochet yarn instead of picking at her fingertips until the cuticles bled a brighter, pinker blood than that deep wine red she loved so dearly.
Alex brought order to her frazzled mind. Through caring for him, she cared for herself. Through loving him, she healed herself. And besides that—through every cutesy inside joke, every giggle and whine from the both of them, every dance where they were the only two mutants and people in the world—she lit up inside and…
Sometimes, she was the one who blossomed.
Still, with so many failed relationships. So many guarded walls. And so many “intimacy issues”--she hadn't said the words yet, and he hadn't either.
Co-habitating was one thing. Alex cooking all their meals–Lorna doing the dishes. They protected each other as mutants, in a world that hated mutants. They survived with each other in public, and thrived in private.
But saying those three little words—
Lorna looks him in the eyes, and she is softly spoken and very far away. The large, large part of her that connects to every vibration in the Earth and rejects it, as it is too powerful to contain in one tall little lady–it tells her that everything inside her is rotted and uncontrollable and maybe even evil. She wants to lose control, she wants to hurt and to fight and to lash out—and she won't, she thinks, she won't ever let herself--won't ever hurt Alex—not if she can help it, not if she tries, not if she makes herself small for him, kind for him, good for him as he is good and beautiful for her.
Maybe she's just too ugly.
“Alex,” she says, and her voice is wracked, choked up, tiny, but deep. Every force inside her, metal and blood and dirt, wants to stop. And all of the same forces want him more than it is possible to say except with metal and blood and dirt.
Their house is clean and tidy and neat, except for a few cluttered dissertation papers, forever incomplete, surrounded by dinosaurs, as if they can guard and protect the secrets hidden behind procrastination.
Lorna won't meet his eyes.
“I think I love you.”
But really, she knows it. And she has perhaps since the moment he looked at her with those big wet eyes and fought for her, defended her like nobody else has.
Lorna is the Earth. And Alex brightens and burns like the sun.
