I don't know how to live through this hell; woken up, I'm still locked in this shell. [AU & RW]
Val stared at the kit in front of him. He'd been alone in the medlabs since his little brother had left. Although the students and residents of Xavier's had been ordered to stay together in pairs, he knew Madelyne was still taking her much-needed rest, and there was a part of him that didn't really care about the rules. Not right now. Because for some reason, despite how hard he was trying and how many times he went back to the last step in order to recall what came chronologically next, he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do to finish preparing this package. There wasn't a whole lot that had to go into the box, and it wasn't a very complicated arrangement, but the parts in front of him might as well have belonged to some billion-piece white puzzle without any hints or clues to help him make sense of it. He'd been messing up all day, having problems with everything he laid his hands on, but now it was like he was completely unable to locate the next step in his head. His gaze swept from one piece of equipment to the next, hands raised uselessly in front of him, staring at each individual package as though hoping they'd speak to him. Give him something, anything to go on. Just a little bit of guidance.

He felt like he was going crazy.

"Fuck," he swore emphatically under his breath, and with a furious jerk of his arm, he sent the kit and all the miscellaneous pieces in front of him flying. They hit the floor and the far wall with jarring clatters, spinning against the metal surfaces until they came to a dead rest wherever they landed. "Goddammit." The anger had surged up inside of him without any warning. Much like before, with Nico, he didn't really know why it came on so fast or why he was lashing out at something that didn't deserve to bear the brunt of his rage, but it was hard to force himself to care. He had feelings too, and it felt like he choked them back so often out of polite regard for whatever would be easiest for his family, or his friends, or to avoid making more problems. Like with Luci. What had his brother expected him to do, simply accept him for who he was and never say a word about how the revelation that his brother was gay made him feel? Or Nico -- after all those times when Val had practically bent over backwards to appease him, wasn't he allowed to demand some time and space on his own when he needed it? Right now he needed it. He couldn't stand that he could still feel Nico's worried thoughts rushing in the back of his mind, hear Luci's distant but wary curiosity at some of the ideas running through his own head. Let me out of the connection, he demanded roughly of his older brother, ignoring the spike of confusion from Nico. Don't ask why, just fucking do it. Get out of my fucking head. Right now. Val was no telepath, but he had learned a few tricks in the years of being mentally bonded to his brothers, and he shoved hard through the connection, his thoughts unwelcoming and harsh. Let me out.

And then there was silence in his head, a ringing sort of emptiness that didn't appease his anger but left him feeling, at the very least, alone. Good. He was breathing heavily, he realized, and he could feel his heart racing in his chest. More than anything, he wanted to get out of here, away from the mansion and everything that made him feel so shitty, and hopefully lose himself in one of the few vices he afforded himself -- alcohol and women -- but that could wait. Soon, he promised himself. As soon as he sat down and took a few deep breaths. Whatever it took to make this feeling go away.

He sat there on the floor for more than a few minutes. By the time he opened his eyes and focused on the clock hanging on the far wall, an hour and change had passed. It didn't honestly bother him that he'd lost so much time, because the anger in him seemed to have subsided a bit, and he felt almost decent again. Still exhausted and sick of everything, sick of his life, but he wasn't boiling inside like he wanted to break everything that he touched. There were things that he had to do. Clean up the sick bay, for one, because he knew despite everything that he didn't want Madelyne to wake up to the mess he'd left behind. Then he could call a car and drive into the city. He felt oddly purposeful as he gathered his energy to get back to his feet. But...his limbs didn't seem to want to obey him. They were stiff, and he realized as soon as he tried to move them that he was deeply uncomfortable, from more than just pins and needles settling into his muscles. He shifted, jaw clenched hard at the effort that it took, and his body reacted, but not the way it should -- not nearly the way it should if everything was normal. Oh God. It wasn't anger this time that flared hot and fast inside of him, but rather a blinding-white shock of fear, pure terror that left him cold and shivering, or at least it would have if he could get his joints to do anything more than grind into a sloppy, uncoordinated shudder. And words flashed through his mind.

Rigidity. Chorea. Impaired psychomotor functions. Impaired cognitive abilities. Subcortical dementia. Irritability. Apathy. Anxiety. Depression. Reduced display of emotions. Egocentrism. Aggression. Compulsive behavior. Weight loss. Osteoporosis. Cardiac failure. No no nonono. He knew this was going to happen one day. His healing factor was vital, and he knew it could protect him from the slow and steady atrophy of his own brain from the treasonous mutated gene inside his body for a long time, but sooner or later, the tidal wave of damage was going to be too great for him to hold back on his own. He'd spent his whole life preparing for this eventuality. He'd done research, hard nights spent pouring over new medical texts in the dark, schooling himself to recognize the symptoms and deal with them so that he could continue to live his life as normally as possible for as long as he could manage it. But it wasn't supposed to happen now. He was supposed to have years, decades even, before anything like this began to happen to him. And he'd never imagined that it would be so fast. Not all at once, not like this. He'd always thought that he would have more time. Enough time to explain everything to Nico, to see his friends and kiss them goodbye, to experience the things he loved and really savor them at least once more before he couldn't do it on his own anymore, to thank Luci for everything that he'd done for them both and all the things he'd sacrificed for their family. He couldn't give up like this, not without fighting with everything he had left in him to get up and somehow, in some way, connect with his brothers again. More than anything, he didn't want to burden them with -- with himself, but he couldn't do this without them, either. Fear was climbing up into his throat so thickly that he could barely breathe, but he struggled anyway, forcing his fingers to bend and wrap around the cot supports behind him. It was painful, difficult, almost impossible to make any headway, and he came close to screaming once when his sweaty hands started to slide against the metal, but he got himself up to the edge of the cot -- he didn't dare look at the clock to see how long it had taken him -- and at last managed to pull his own legs underneath him by sheer force of will. For a moment he teetered on his feet, barely able to hold himself up despite the wooden rigidity of his own body, and then he lunged towards the door in a desperate attempt to gain a few yards. His shoulder caught the edge of the curtain next to the bed; he felt a moment of searing, indescribably sharp pain rip through his torso and he gasped, the sound lost in the crack of the rail above, and the fabric twisted around his body brought him down to the floor along with the plastic pins that held it up at the top.

Val lay panting on the ground for a long time as he tried to calm down. Nothing worked. The fear was devouring him, eating him alive, every inch of his body owned by the disease that he knew was inevitably going to win. It wasn't until he realized that he couldn't even force his fingers to respond anymore that he started shouting. "Someone! Nico, Luci! Please! Help me!"

He woke up on the same cot in the medlabs with a jolt that rippled through every living, responding, movable muscle in his body. Fine or not, he kept on screaming and didn't stop even when the door opened, even when there were people speaking his name, not until his voice started to grow so hoarse that he had to stop. And then he sat silently, face buried in his hands, and could never quite stop shuddering.

Just in case it came back again.
[ NARRATIVE ]