[OOC: There was supposed to be more, but if I finish it out the way I planned, the event will be over before it goes up. Just let me know at which point your character turns up, even if it's right at the beginning.
ALSO please note that I will avoid discussion of self harm in your thread unless I've gotten your permission first. ]
We're going to need a bigger boat. He only thought it. He didn't dare to say it while the video of the crew dying played. In his head, the Jaws quote was a desperate attempt to not be as numb as he felt, watching the screen unflinchingly. Humor was a defense mechanism. See, he told himself, I still need a defense mechanism for this.
But the coldness grew and brought the dark with it.
----
When he came to and rushed to see what had happened, the joke was the only thing still hanging around. His teammates weren't, and that scared him more than the snuff screening that had been thrust upon them. The rubble he laid on wasn't encouraging.
"Didn't have to get hit with the bigger boat." Aloud, this time, and he almost wants someone to yell at him or ask him what the hell he was talking about as he got to his feet. Someone that he could then ask a more important question: where are we?
Not where he was. He's not on the ship anymore, or he thought he wasn't. The absence of walls was a giveaway, and the wrought iron fence, mostly melted to slag, but there are a few standing segments. The sky is low and overcast, and Robbie can't spot the sun through it - a sun. It wouldn't be the sun.
Maybe he was on the ship. It could have its own Habitat Deck. That would explain why the sky was so flatly colored, so uniformly grey. If he squinted, Robbie thought he could make out the cloudcover shifting in all directions, like the wind couldn't make up its mind. Undulating. He watched it for a few seconds with a growing sense of something is wrong when the previously unfelt wind hit him.
Robbie, very professionally, nearly jumped completely out of his skin. It wasn't just disturbing of the utter stillness; it was what the wind brought with it. The smell of burnt pork. It tastes black and oily, and he thinks it coated him from nose to lungs because the wind is gone and the smell remains.
He must have jumped, he realized, because his back was against the fence. The bars felt warm through his uniform. The explosion couldn't have been that long ago.
Several synapses fire at the same time, and all of it - the smell (of the dead), the sky (grey with smoke), the rubble (of flattened buildings and decimated cars), the fence (that stood outside Stamford Elementary) - coalesces in his mind. He was in Stamford. The Time Trapper sent him home, on the middle of a mission, and screwed up the timeline, sending him years in the past to the massacre of over six hundred people. His fault. Now, he's home. He's almost literally home. Springdale was less than half an hour away, but Robbie won't get there. Someone will find him, any second now, because if the iron was tolerable to touch, there were other heroes here, doing search and rescue. No. It was already a recovery, by now.
There was no rescue in Stamford. Only recoveries, one after another, body bags getting carried through the rubble and lined up on the ground until there was an available vehicle to take him to a morgue that still had fridge space. Them. Not him. He was the lucky one who lived.
He was too caught up in his head to pay much attention to the shuffling bricks on the ground. Like the rest of the area, their color was buried under black soot and grey ash. The motion continued, until a shadowy hand emerged between them, like a crab working its way out of the sand.
Robbie had convinced himself that this was not Stamford. It was also not a dream, because the idea that this could be another one of his nightmares occurred to him. He's never been cognizant in a dream. He's being crazy, and he couldn't afford to be crazy, with over 20 teammates missing. Missing. They weren't dead again - too - and he didn't smell anything. He's on a bad trip from the knockout gas, and the grey was the cell walls, and this was completely manageable as soon as the visual hallucinations stopped, and he was not schizophrenic, dammit.
"I wanna go home..."
He quietly shrieked and jerked his head around, turning enough that he's done a 360 sweep - no, there's no one here. Just him. There's no one else left. There's no kid around here to talk. (Although, if this was Stamford, then he's in the schoolyard. He would not have to move much debris to find a child's body.) There's no one here.
But Robbie was looking around again. This time, with his eyes on the ground, daring himself to find a body. He didn't see a body, child or otherwise. Instead, a shadow was dragging itself upright. He thought, again, about dreams - filled with animated corpses that knew his name and asked him why. Robbie never asked them, why what.
This wasn't that. He saw through this, but it moved. Approached. He felt - nothing. Cold, maybe, but it wasn't from fear. Just a horrified nothing as a child's shadow ambled up to him. The internal rationalizations stopped abruptly between Peter Pan and ghost, and he swore that the shadow tilted its head back as if up into his face. He stared back through the faceless face and swallowed the compulsion to apologize.
The shadow kicked him in the shin, but there was no contact. Then, it ran a few yards away and stayed there. Watching him, watching it. (It had laughed, when it kicked him and ran. Laughed, like a five year old girl. He heard it. He knew he heard it.)
No. This was why they always said not to do drugs. Robbie began to back away from the girl-shadow, before his subconscious supplied a name for her from the list of six hundred and twelve dead. Forty-two would be her size. They were just kids.
He backed away.
She followed.
-----
The second shadow appeared by darting through his legs, before falling on the ground in blurry convulsions.
----
The third, he witnessed the birth of. The soot silhouette of a boy tore itself off the very cement and beckoned him.
----
Shadows seven and eight played leap frog with each other. That was the first time they seemed solid, and it kept his mind too busy to notice that he had left the school behind and yet continued to find these young shadows.
----
It wasn't until 15 that he realized he'd been keeping count of them, despite how they stayed squarely behind him.
----
With 26, the in-fighting started. This largest one began abusing the smallest. Robbie told her to stay close to him, and from then on, the littler ones hovered within arms reach.
----
Thirty-three saw one consistently trying to climb up onto his back for a piggyback ride. Robbie barely noticed when the boy succeeded.
----
59. Robbie had to help this one out, half pinned by a girder (with no trace of the building it must have belonged to). His arms slid right into the ground to lift her free, and everything that sank in came out coated in a thick, ruddy tar that dripped like congealing blood.
The splash of color made him look faded. In this light, cornflower eyes seemed grey, and his hair was more silver than sunny. Even his uniform's bright, complimentary tones took on that pre-dawn sameness. Robbie paid no attention to this. There was one more to find.
CW: Discussion of child death, bodies, mental health, possible self harm
ALSO please note that I will avoid discussion of self harm in your thread unless I've gotten your permission first. ]
We're going to need a bigger boat. He only thought it. He didn't dare to say it while the video of the crew dying played. In his head, the Jaws quote was a desperate attempt to not be as numb as he felt, watching the screen unflinchingly. Humor was a defense mechanism. See, he told himself, I still need a defense mechanism for this.
But the coldness grew and brought the dark with it.
----
When he came to and rushed to see what had happened, the joke was the only thing still hanging around. His teammates weren't, and that scared him more than the snuff screening that had been thrust upon them. The rubble he laid on wasn't encouraging.
"Didn't have to get hit with the bigger boat." Aloud, this time, and he almost wants someone to yell at him or ask him what the hell he was talking about as he got to his feet. Someone that he could then ask a more important question: where are we?
Not where he was. He's not on the ship anymore, or he thought he wasn't. The absence of walls was a giveaway, and the wrought iron fence, mostly melted to slag, but there are a few standing segments. The sky is low and overcast, and Robbie can't spot the sun through it - a sun. It wouldn't be the sun.
Maybe he was on the ship. It could have its own Habitat Deck. That would explain why the sky was so flatly colored, so uniformly grey. If he squinted, Robbie thought he could make out the cloudcover shifting in all directions, like the wind couldn't make up its mind. Undulating. He watched it for a few seconds with a growing sense of something is wrong when the previously unfelt wind hit him.
Robbie, very professionally, nearly jumped completely out of his skin. It wasn't just disturbing of the utter stillness; it was what the wind brought with it. The smell of burnt pork. It tastes black and oily, and he thinks it coated him from nose to lungs because the wind is gone and the smell remains.
He must have jumped, he realized, because his back was against the fence. The bars felt warm through his uniform. The explosion couldn't have been that long ago.
Several synapses fire at the same time, and all of it - the smell (of the dead), the sky (grey with smoke), the rubble (of flattened buildings and decimated cars), the fence (that stood outside Stamford Elementary) - coalesces in his mind. He was in Stamford. The Time Trapper sent him home, on the middle of a mission, and screwed up the timeline, sending him years in the past to the massacre of over six hundred people. His fault. Now, he's home. He's almost literally home. Springdale was less than half an hour away, but Robbie won't get there. Someone will find him, any second now, because if the iron was tolerable to touch, there were other heroes here, doing search and rescue. No. It was already a recovery, by now.
There was no rescue in Stamford. Only recoveries, one after another, body bags getting carried through the rubble and lined up on the ground until there was an available vehicle to take him to a morgue that still had fridge space. Them. Not him. He was the lucky one who lived.
He was too caught up in his head to pay much attention to the shuffling bricks on the ground. Like the rest of the area, their color was buried under black soot and grey ash. The motion continued, until a shadowy hand emerged between them, like a crab working its way out of the sand.
Robbie had convinced himself that this was not Stamford. It was also not a dream, because the idea that this could be another one of his nightmares occurred to him. He's never been cognizant in a dream. He's being crazy, and he couldn't afford to be crazy, with over 20 teammates missing. Missing. They weren't dead again - too - and he didn't smell anything. He's on a bad trip from the knockout gas, and the grey was the cell walls, and this was completely manageable as soon as the visual hallucinations stopped, and he was not schizophrenic, dammit.
"I wanna go home..."
He quietly shrieked and jerked his head around, turning enough that he's done a 360 sweep - no, there's no one here. Just him. There's no one else left. There's no kid around here to talk. (Although, if this was Stamford, then he's in the schoolyard. He would not have to move much debris to find a child's body.) There's no one here.
But Robbie was looking around again. This time, with his eyes on the ground, daring himself to find a body. He didn't see a body, child or otherwise. Instead, a shadow was dragging itself upright. He thought, again, about dreams - filled with animated corpses that knew his name and asked him why. Robbie never asked them, why what.
This wasn't that. He saw through this, but it moved. Approached. He felt - nothing. Cold, maybe, but it wasn't from fear. Just a horrified nothing as a child's shadow ambled up to him. The internal rationalizations stopped abruptly between Peter Pan and ghost, and he swore that the shadow tilted its head back as if up into his face. He stared back through the faceless face and swallowed the compulsion to apologize.
The shadow kicked him in the shin, but there was no contact. Then, it ran a few yards away and stayed there. Watching him, watching it. (It had laughed, when it kicked him and ran. Laughed, like a five year old girl. He heard it. He knew he heard it.)
No. This was why they always said not to do drugs. Robbie began to back away from the girl-shadow, before his subconscious supplied a name for her from the list of six hundred and twelve dead. Forty-two would be her size. They were just kids.
He backed away.
She followed.
-----
The second shadow appeared by darting through his legs, before falling on the ground in blurry convulsions.
----
The third, he witnessed the birth of. The soot silhouette of a boy tore itself off the very cement and beckoned him.
----
Shadows seven and eight played leap frog with each other. That was the first time they seemed solid, and it kept his mind too busy to notice that he had left the school behind and yet continued to find these young shadows.
----
It wasn't until 15 that he realized he'd been keeping count of them, despite how they stayed squarely behind him.
----
With 26, the in-fighting started. This largest one began abusing the smallest. Robbie told her to stay close to him, and from then on, the littler ones hovered within arms reach.
----
Thirty-three saw one consistently trying to climb up onto his back for a piggyback ride. Robbie barely noticed when the boy succeeded.
----
59. Robbie had to help this one out, half pinned by a girder (with no trace of the building it must have belonged to). His arms slid right into the ground to lift her free, and everything that sank in came out coated in a thick, ruddy tar that dripped like congealing blood.
The splash of color made him look faded. In this light, cornflower eyes seemed grey, and his hair was more silver than sunny. Even his uniform's bright, complimentary tones took on that pre-dawn sameness. Robbie paid no attention to this. There was one more to find.