everyone i know goes away in the end. (au & rw)
She kept the news on in the background while she studied, volume low, just in case something interesting was happening in the world. The way this semester was going, that was the only way she would know - Laura didn't have time to take breaks and catch up, she barely even had time to check her voicemail every once in a while. Brandon was probably getting sick of only hearing from her in the occasional short text message. She'd heard this semester was going to be harder, worse than the one before it, but she hadn't realized just how all-consuming it would be or how little of a life she would have outside her schoolwork. Distracted text messages, bitching sessions with Rose, that silent news broadcast, those were pretty much it these days. As she glanced up from her textbook to check the running ticker at the bottom of the screen, she couldn't help thinking that this was awfully sad.

For a few seconds she just stared at the screen in confusion and stubborn incomprehension, the silent images washing over her without taking hold - and then, in a sudden rush, they resolved themselves. Xavier's, a smoking ruin of half-collapsed walls and scorched ground. Ambulances and fire trucks stopped haphazardly across the lawn. Paramedics carrying stretchers, and body bags. A blandly pretty newscaster took the screen, her face set in a careful look of concern, but Laura didn't bother to turn the volume up. She didn't need to hear it, she just needed to drive. As she grabbed her keys and raced from the room, she didn't even notice that the muted TV was still on.

The drive to the school seemed to take forever, although she knew she'd never made it that quickly before in her life, and she spent the drive telling herself over and over that somehow everything would be all right. That it wasn't as bad as it looked. That she'd arrive to find the people she loved battered but alive, as she always had before, that this wouldn't be the day her luck finally ran out. By the time she reached Xavier's and left her car on the grass outside the main gate, all her mental reassurances had started to feel sickeningly hollow. Dropping the keys in the front seat, not even bothering to shut the door behind her, she sprinted toward the flashing lights of the ambulances and the still-smoking building behind them. Someone called after her - "miss, come back, you can't go back there" - but she just kept running, and whoever it was, they didn't chase her. By the time she reached the edge of the burnt turf, the spot where rescue workers had started to lay out those they couldn't save, she couldn't even hear them over the rush of her pulse in her head.

Struggling to catch her breath, to compose herself just the slightest bit, she slowed to a walk as her feet touched burnt grass. The cameras hadn't been allowed this far back, and the paramedics must not have had time to waste putting sheets or body bags over the bodies of the dead - they were still in the building searching for survivors, she could see them making their frantic way through the wreckage. Other EMTs were coming through to collect the bodies, cover them and carry them out, but they hadn't gotten here yet, and the leather-clad corpses lay exposed on the lawn. At first, Laura couldn't even make sense of what she saw, couldn't force those broken and bloodied bodies to resemble people that she knew. She even let herself think, for a few excruciatingly hopeful seconds, that they weren't people she knew - and then she saw the white streak in one body's tangled brown hair, and she couldn't tell herself that that wasn't Rogue anymore.

Once she'd seen it, once that mental block had been broken, she didn't have the luxury of missing details. Rogue's uniform had been shredded by some kind of blast, and the skin beneath it was burned and torn; half her face was so blackened and distorted that it was no wonder Laura hadn't recognized her at first. Her one remaining eye was half closed, bloodshot starburst showing under the edge of her eyelid. Fighting down the need to be sick, Laura had to look away, and her eyes went over to the next body without her really wanting them to - she had seen enough, she didn't want to see any more, but she couldn't stop herself. She had to know who else she'd lost today.

There wasn't much left of Brandon's chest but jagged bone and raw meat, bits of metal shrapnel and congealing blood, and for a few seconds that was all she could see. She couldn't look at his face, couldn't drag her eyes away from that mess of blood and skin and broken ribs - somehow, that was easier to look at, that was easier to cope with. Laura had to take a step back before she could force herself to look, had to put that physical distance between herself and what she was seeing, and even then it was almost more than she could bring herself to do. Steeling herself, swallowing hard, she made herself look - and his face was unmarked beneath the blood stains, his eyes almost peacefully closed, and that didn't make it any easier to see. Not when she couldn't block out the hole in his chest, the ragged stump of his left arm, the blood soaking into the grass beneath him. She wasn't sure when in this whole horrible mess she'd started to cry, but she could taste the salt tears on her lips now, and there was no way she could stop them.

It could have ended there, that would have been enough to leave her sobbing in the grass, but there was more - Matt, his neck twisted at an ugly angle, staring blindly into the grass. Artie, deep shrapnel cuts across his throat and chest; Cal, so burned she barely recognized him. Bobby, half his skin still frozen, the other half raw and bleeding. Everyone. Kitty, Luce, Val, Sam, Angel - Nate, twenty feet away, absurdly human and absurdly young now that something had finally been enough to take him down. Everyone she cared about, everyone she worried about while she was away, everyone she'd been so impossibly lucky not to lose before now. Their blood was soaking into her shoes and the cuffs of her jeans, their bodies were all she could see. And for a few minutes, as the ambulance lights flashed behind her and the rescue effort went on, Laura just let herself cry and didn't think about anything other than how much she had lost, how much she hurt.

When she could breathe again, she wiped the drying tears from her cheeks and turned toward the ambulances, the rescue workers who were finally making their way over to her. There was still something she could do here, even if she couldn't save anyone she loved - she could identify the dead, she could tell them who they might still need to look for, she could do something besides sit on the sidelines and cry. She'd have all the time in the world to cry, but right now, she could make herself useful. It was too little, too late, but it was the best she could do.

And that was when she jerked awake on the rec room couch, her heart pounding in her chest, her breath coming in gasps that sounded an awful lot like sobs. For a few seconds all she could do was shake and wait for the dream to recede - which it didn't, and after a few seconds more she realized it wasn't going to, it was going to stay with her. She wouldn't get to shake this off like any ordinary nightmare and go on with her day. Her chest still felt painfully tight, but it had loosened enough for her to sit up and look around, and now she could see that she wasn't alone - there were more people in the room with her, students and residents, asleep or comatose just as she must have been until right now. Trembling, she forced herself up off the couch and onto her feet, gripping the couch arm until her legs were steady enough to hold her. She might not get to forget the dream, she was pretty sure it would haunt her for a long time to come, but the blood and the horror and the sickening grief weren't the only things she remembered - in the dream, she'd collected herself, and even though it had hurt, she'd gone on. If she could do it there, she could sure as hell do it here.

As soon as she was sure she could walk without her knees giving out, Laura started moving. Scared or not, shaken or not, the people she cared about needed her.

(NARRATIVE)