Every day Twitter threatens to collapse beneath us so I might as well be here, too.
tinyvoicejill on twitter
Karalovesallthegirls on ao3 and also tumblr. My main tumblr is myarmsareridiculous which I believe is what shows up if I follow you??? Who knows,,, every day is a mystery.
My NGL is here although I can't guarantee I'll respond to all prompts.
have realized that while i am not a fan necessarily of "people meet and immediately fall in love" i am a fan of "people meet and are immediately obsessed with each other." the love can come later but the absolute fixation should be immediate
For the prompt thing I donât think this is very vague but superpowers? (Iâm back in a supercorp era I fear)
(I am too babe thereâs no shame⌠unfortunately this is not like Supercorp at all lmao. Also some content warnings on this one for descriptions of drowning/death experiences and some general body unpleasantness?)
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Talk of the people with gifts resembles that of boogeymen or ghosts. Theyâre not real things, just threats you tell your children to keep them in bed.
âStay asleep,â they warn with a jovial tone too light for terrified children to identify. âLest the monsters get you.â
Children grow up and stop believing in the monsters, at least in their minds. But their hearts and bodies never forget, not fully, and so when they do in fact encounter something - someone - who their minds know should not exist, theyâre left with a confusing, skin crawling sensation they can never quite explain. They hate and they fear, but they donât know why.
Thatâs how itâs always felt to Carson, at least.
Like they didnât really understand where their intense dislike for her came from, just that they all feel it. Itâd been like that with her mother too, growing up. People feared her, and they feared Carson along with her. Her dad had helped temper the hatred some - the gifted are always easier to tolerate around others. Like a lion in a zoo - you can sense the power they hold, but you feel protected from them. Itâs when youâre caught alone with one that the primordial parts of your brain really sense the danger.
Nothing is scarier than being alone with another person: for them first, and then for Carson as a result. The safest she can be is invisible. Carson tries to stay lost in crowds or completely alone whenever possible, though crowds bring their own dangers as well. After all, the more people there are the greater the chances some future atrocity is lurking ahead for one of them. And whatever horrors lay ahead for these strangers Carson will know. Will feel.Â
That is her gift and curse: foresight. She feels it beneath her skin like a slithering vine whenever sheâs near one of them. It whispers warnings in her bones, and its whispers grow louder the nearer they are to her or to their fate. For as long as sheâs been able to tell, Carson has always known when bad things were about to happen to others. Their future anger, their terror, their demises - all of it calls out to her before theyâre realized. Sometimes days ahead, sometimes hours. Sometimes seconds. Sheâd cry into the night as a child, pillow wrapped tight around her head, and beg her mother to make it stop. Beg her to take away the gift.
âThe gift is not a part of you, my love. It is you. You canât stop it. Iâm so sorry.â
Her mother carried so much guilt for her gift, for creating her at all. Carson always figured thatâs why she left them. The guilt was too much. Carson was too much. Something her mother never told her, perhaps never even realized, was that there was something Carson could do to end the devastating grief of the gift.
She could stop the bad thing from happening.
She realized as a teenager when she felt the impending assault of a classmate. When the pain felt too large to ignore and she followed its guiding pull behind the school moments before the attack. When she was able to hit the man before he could harm. Her classmate had hugged her, thanked her, and all the pain sheâd felt for hours vanished. Thatâs when she knew the gift wasnât a punishment. Itâs a responsibility.
Sheâd become a small-time hero of sorts, though few knew to what degree. People in town seem to loathe her less, even if they still fear her. Their hatred is mediated by her helpfulness. Preventing horrors before they can occur does not gain the same attention as intervening during a crime can. Most of the work she does to protect people prevents them from ever even knowing they were in danger at all. It makes the pain lessen inside of her, though, and thatâs enough.Â
Her life is small but manageable, and her heroic interventions dull the ache to a background buzz. Living in a small town keeps things easier, too: the one time sheâs visited a big city she nearly fainted in the streets under the pressing pain of the thousands of lives around her just waiting to suffer or end. Lake Valley is easier, the suffering fewer and farther between. Life is tolerable. Sometimes even pleasant, if sheâs lucky. She can handle it.
Then one day she wakes in the middle of the night and itâs like her soul is ripping from her body, gripping hard at her bones in its effort to stay. Her body breaks out into hives, she finds herself retching fruitlessly into the toilet. Every breath she takes feels damp, her lungs sloshing and stuttering around water that isnât there. Sheâs drowning. The terror of it nearly consumes her - her fingertips feel raw like sheâs been clawing at the walls to escape, her head aches like sheâs bashed it against something hard. Sheâs felt people die before, hundreds of times, but sheâs never felt it like this. Her gift screams within her body so loudly her jaw aches: Run. Go now. Find her. Save her.Â
Her feet are moving before her brain even tells them to do so, taking her into the kitchen until she has a knife in her hand. She didnât mean to grab it, yet she knows she needs it. Out of her house she runs, racing down the country dirt road that takes her from her isolated cottage to the rest of town. The gift guides her till sheâs on the paved road and racing across it, down the grassy hill until she sees it, there, sticking out of the water: the tail end of a compact car, its headlights shining up as it sinks.
Hurry. Save her now.
Carson splashes into the water, passively aware of the jagged rocks tearing at her skin - she hadnât put shoes on, hadnât had time - but all she can focus on is her grip on the door handle of the front seat. She tugs and it opens easily. The unconscious womanâs hand is still tangled around the handle on her side. Sheâd tried to open it, it seems, but couldnât against the waterâs pressure. The car is filled with water now, though, and the pressure is gone. If it were not for the pulsating panic exploding through Carson at the sight of her, sheâd think the woman was already dead.
Carson reaches around her and tugs at the seatbelt only to find it unyielding.
Knife knife knife, the gift chants, and she slashes at the belt with frantic jagged swipes.
Carson cuts the woman free and lets the knife fall with the sinking car. She focuses her hands on pulling her body out and away. Nausea roils in her as she drags her to shore, wave after wave of flickering pain as the woman gradually dies in her arms.
Another car has pulled up she can see on the road. The taillights sinking deeper into the lake must have caught their eye, and Carson prays they are calling an ambulance now but she canât stop to ask, not while she feels the woman die, and so instead she lays her on the grass and she presses on her chest and she breathes into her mouth and she feels a deep gnawing emptiness settling into her bones as the woman fades, and a death has never felt like this before. Sheâs never felt this emptiness before.
And then the woman gasps out a mouthful of water and a euphoria Carson has never known floods her body. She rolls the woman onto her side as she throws up water and nearly collapses under the feel of it. Carson presses her head to the womanâs shoulder and cries. What devastation sheâd felt this whole time has been flipped on its head with a rush of endorphins so powerful she trembles. Carsonâs never felt joy before, not like this, not with someone else.
The ambulance arrives soon after that. EMTs come to load the woman onto a stretcher and Carson stiltedly tells them what she knows. Theyâre not surprised to see her. Carson is often there at scenes like this, pulling people from the brink of death. They look at her like sheâs something to be feared, to be respected, and all Carson can see is the woman sheâs saved. Sheâs beautiful, Carson realizes, especially now that color is returning to her skin. Her red hair lays tangled and plastered against her face and around her oxygen mask, and all Carson wants is to brush it aside.Â
âWeâll take it from here, Miss Shaw,â the EMT says nervously as they begin to wheel her away, and every step they take from her pulls the ache back into her. Itâs only when theyâve gotten a ways away that Carson realizes how the last few minutes of contact have felt for her. How the moment the woman came back to life, the pain of her gift went away. Thatâs never happened before. And now she feels that distance like a wound, and the panic sets in with it.
âWait!â she calls out as they load her onto the ambulance. âIâm coming with you.â
They seem hesitant to let her but she doesnât give them a chance, instead climbing aboard like she belongs there. Like she belongs with the woman.
On instinct, she grabs the womanâs hand. Instantly the panic lessens, the pain. The world fades into just this moment, just the soft beat of a heart that had moments before been still.
âDo you know this woman?â they ask as they wrap her in a shock blanket. Sheâs soaked and shivering, though she hardly feels it.Â
Yes, the gift aches within her. Yes yes yes.