yoda of killers (yodaofkillers) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-09-10 01:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | [event] age swap, x-23 |
Who: Laura Kinney
Where: Her Bathroom
When: Sept. 9th. Evening [backdated]
What: Laura has a realization.
Rating: PG-13 [Possible Trigger; hinting at self-hurt]
Laura had never really looked to the future. She'd made steps to be a real girl. She'd started making her own choices. She'd met people who looked at her as a person and not a weapon. They didn't look at her as a threat and they accepted her. At least, that's how she felt when she was with them. She felt comfortable. She didn't know if she felt normal, because she didn't know what normal was supposed to be. The television told her things, but having met real people outside of a box where everything was solved in an hour or less? She had come to the conclusion that the people and relationships on TV were abnormal.
Television also made very light of people like her. They made it look so easy to suddenly gain humanity and deal with it. They had bright shiny people with big hearts waiting with open arms. She had a man in an apartment who snuck off alone to do things she never questioned him about. The other was a child whose mother tried to kill him. Neither of them smiled a lot. At least, she'd never seen either of them really smile. It didn't quite touch the eyes right. She'd seen big genuine smiles back at the school.
The memory of them made her chest squeeze. Especially when she remembered that some of them had been directed at her, but Gotham had been a clean start.
Gotham was a place no one had known her or her past. She'd shared, but it didn't make much of a difference. His scent hadn't changed, but he'd already been wary when he'd met her. He invited her over to do things. That was normal wasn't it?
She wondered how long that would last as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her features had changed, as had her body. The age difference was much more startling than she'd thought it would be once the realization began to set in.
Laura was going to look like this one day. She wasn't going to look into the mirror and see the teenager or the child that had been tortured. She looked so different and it felt freeing to know that she could transform. Her fingers traced the new lines of her face curiously as if the contact would ripple the image. She could become a new person. She would grow into this person, not as she had overnight, but through time. Trial and error would shape her into something new, someone more human.
Her features were softer. Her eyes were less harsh. Wolverine had lived for a long time and she couldn't help but wonder how long she would last. Would she look like this for as long as he looked like he did? What would she do when all her friends grew old and died and she was still around?
Would she make new friends? Would she seek solitude? It was something to question Logan about the next time they crossed paths. She'd asked him once how he dealt with loss. His answer had been to live with it.
She'd listened to the words, but she hadn't understood what he meant. He didn't live with it by choice. He lived with it because he wasn't dead. He outlived them all.
Closing her hand in a fist, she popped her claws out and looked at her arm. Her other hand hovered over the faucet knob. She took in a deep breath and exhaled.