infinitus - [infinite , unbounded, immense];

He breathed out gently, lungs deflating with the slow exhale.

Had he been dreaming? Bruce couldn't exactly remember the last time he had slept well enough to dream. REM was a thing of the past, something he took for granted in his former life. The one before the accident. Now he wished that actual sleep would take him. Between the fear of losing control and never getting quite enough rest Bruce nestled somewhere in the realm of just barely awake. It was how he lived his existence. How he waded through the waters of every moment in time, hoping not to drown completely within himself and give in entirely to the force that lived within him.

If this was a dream, it didn't feel right. Not at all. It felt different. Wrong somehow and he didn't like it one bit. Nothing in his life was normal, but typically sleep was the one thing Bruce could count on that was constant. The little that he got. This. This was different. Not what he was used to, but why did that surprise him exactly? Honestly it didn't. He took everything as it came. That was the price of being cautious. Even the urge for dreams were cautious considering that his whole life was a living nightmare.

The room smelled unlike anything he could place. The air tasted funny. The usual sounds escaped him and when Bruce opened his eyes he wasn't in a place he recognized. This looked like his room in the Tower back home, but he didn't think it actually was. His things weren't all there, for instance. The paperwork was gone, but the desk remained. The blankets were familiar but they didn't quite feel right. Even the patch he'd had to sew to keep one of the blankets together was still there. But....that wasn't comforting.

Slowly, he pushed himself to sit up. It took a moment for his vision to clear from the drowsy haze his eyes had taken, but once they had gone back to their normal sharpness Bruce found himself in quite a predicament. There was no smell of breakfast to greet him as was usual. No banter from the others. Nothing but the room and himself.

( This had to be a dream. )

[ Emma Frost // Open to anyone that feels like it ]
"Growing" and "changing" were not things that Emma Frost cared to do at all. She liked things to be the way she wanted them and that was that. Apparently, other people seemed to think that she needed to expand her horizons and learn to tolerate things that she felt were intolerable. Children, for instance. She loathed them, but dear sweet Charles wanted her to learn to love the children he had left in her more than capable hands. It was like being put through a torture chamber of incessant chatter and whining. She persevered only because she knew that the ends justified the means. If she dug her fingers deep enough into the inner-workings of this academy, she could shape the future of not just these children, but also the nation or the world. If she molded these minds in the right direction, she could have the ear of the future leaders of the world and make things better for herself and her colleagues. Of course, by the time some of these little brats became world leaders, she and those she worked with would be old and gray. Obsolete pieces of the political machine. Maybe, maybe not. No one really knew the future anyway.

( Blue ones, green ones, tall ones, small ones. )

[shattered adath ● michael / anna]
( Maybe she hadn’t exactly broken her bad habits, but she hadn’t engaged in any general thuggery for at least a few weeks. )

[ au ficlet ● arillius ● thessia / jorja / kenley ]

( Battle sang loudly around her; swords clashing, the warcry of the victorious and the swan song of the dying. The very air sizzled and crackled with energy, a storm of promise which played across Trissia’s senses. This flesh vessel she wore for such moments was tiring, arms becoming heavy as she fought for dominance over the darkness which had tumbled from the gateway. It loomed in the centre of the make-shift battlefield, trees flattened beneath the yawning mouth of darkness which spat furthermore terrors to torment them all. From it rolled icy cold, disease and death and it was truly no wonder the beings which had called it home for so long wanted <i>out</i>. It hurt to see the forest destroyed even further, the war which had been on going for longer than most can remember spiraling out of control. The Demos tore their way through ancient magics to invade upon a land they had coveted for centuries if not more. That was not something Thessia was going to allow.  )

Before Wren had always expected the end of the world to be something to do with fire. Hot and wild, something which burned through the world and cleansed it. She had been wrong; the end of the world was icy and desolate. There was no way to know how far through winter she was, how much longer she had to endure what felt like her bones shuddering beneath her skin. Maybe it was forever. This was how she would die: not torn to pieces by the walking dead or the darkspawn Masters but coming to pieces one shiver at a time. A whimper not a bang. Which was unfair in such a loud, explosive world. Not that she wanted to die either way. Or perhaps she did now. Perhaps she had waited long enough for death that she was just... ready.

Especially as no one had come back yet. Three nights and no one had returned to the base they had created in an abandoned apartment block. Left behind, traitorous voices whispered, making her duck further into the mismatch of blankets she had pulled around her. The room was dark but for the periodic splashes of moonlight which spilled through the yawning window to her right. Wind whistled through the window, rattling the glass and threatening to blow it inward so its icy grip could reach Wren proper. It was time to move on, to continue on to the Haven they had heard of on the radio but cowardice kept her rooted to the spot.

A noise below had her jumping, hand shooting out of her blanket fortress to reach for the shotgun beside her. Fingerless gloves settled on the heavy as she rose, the blankets tumbling away from her. She tilted her head, straining to hear the noise again. A scrape of boot on concrete perhaps. Or talons, claws ready to rend her flesh. Silently she moved forward, shotgun dipped low but ready, her finger hovering over the trigger.

[ open to all ● post-apoc, supernatural ]

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