It's a Graves thing (soundofwings) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-24 10:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | death |
Who: Death -> Iris
What: Running from a Pit and back through the door (Narrative)
Where: Gotham -> Passages
When: Around the same time as Dickie's pitting
Warnings/Rating: Some sadness, some angst
Death had been waiting for it, keeping an ear out for Eddie's voice giving her the warning she was dreading. She knew that Dick had passed without her help, and while she was still uncertain how that was even possible, she couldn't linger on it. It made her angry, made her worry, turned things on their side, but she couldn't change it, and so she moved on.
She could feel the strange, hollow spot in the world where Dick had once been, and it felt wrong. Not as wrong as she knew it would feel once they put him in that pit, dragged him back from wherever it was he had gone, but still wrong enough to be an itch in the back of her throat. She wondered if he would light up in the world with a sickly green the way that Jason did to her now. She could feel the pinpoints of all of those touched by the Pit, like connecting the dots across Gotham: Jason, Eddie, Stephanie, Selina, and soon Dick. They moved like faint planets in irregular orbits around the bright depressions of the Pits themselves. And she, as always, held the city in her hand, watching.
Either half an hour moved differently than it used to, or Eddie had overestimated the time they would actually need to get Dick from the Tumbler to the Pit, because she felt green fire begin to light up the back of her mind before she was quite ready for it. It was different than when Jason had gone in, a different Pit with a different feel. The last one had felt like being gutted from neck all the way down, having everything inside her pulled out, something stolen, and then put back in all wrong. This was worse even than that, as it was laced with electricity and lightning on top of the rest of it. In that moment, she wasn't certain if she screamed or not, but across the world, a tiny handful of people died that were not supposed to be taken in that moment. An extra dozen added to the larger total of the plague.
Death scrambled for a door, anywhere she could escape, and found herself in her own realm, familiar sights all around her, but still she burned. Another door, a dark hallway beyond, and she flung herself through.
Iris stumbled over the threshold, toes catching on carpet and sending her to her hands and knees. Her breath caught in her throat, and eyes teared as Death settled in the back of her mind, strange after so long of being through the door constantly. She looked down at her own hands on the carpet, blurry from tears that she couldn't stop, and was surprised to see the slimness of her own wrists, pale as they emerged from the sleeves of her dress. The dress she had put on weeks ago before leaving her room. She could barely even keep track of how long it had been, the time spent in the back of Death's mind a strange combination of seconds and infinity. She tried to struggle back to her feet, to take the both of them back through, but her legs refused to cooperate entirely, and the voice at the back of her mind refused. They had found a cure. She could rest. She could avoid (at least for the moment) the way the first Robin would feel after being resurrected.
The realization that she would be back on her side of the door for at least a bit finally sunk in, and Iris blinked as she shifted, sitting right there in the hallway. She lifted one shaky hand, fingers coming away from her cheek shiny with wetness as she continued to cry, unable to control it. Her mind, still in shock and shaking of weeks of not being in her own body, finally caught up to her, and the emotions of it all hit. While it was impossible to wither and die when you were a part of Death herself, Iris had been so long out of her own body that it was lacking in so many things: food, water, sleep, medication. She felt, suddenly, as if she were stripped down to the most basic things that made up herself, and every thing was raw and exposed.
The tears that hadn't stopped suddenly deepened, accompanied now less by reaction and more by actual emotion, the depth of which she hadn't felt in so long as it had been cushioned by drugs and denial that she was a feeling being. The silent tears turned to sobs as her mind touched and focused on so many thoughts, each as sharp as the last. Siblings and Christmas, loneliness and strange fascinating photographers, the ever-present feelings of not fitting and not being quite right. They mixed with the things that leaked over from Death. Physical pain and the weight of so many that she had ushered away from life. So many in such a short time, and the ones that she couldn't stop, even though she wanted to. Iris sat, legs curled to the side, covered her face, and (for the first time in longer than she could recall) cried until she couldn't any more.