Richard Richards hates his family (b4ckp4ck) wrote in superbabies, @ 2013-06-10 20:40:00 |
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She was waiting in the tree for him when he leapt off the tallest spire of the manor that he could find, gliding down to bring a bag of nuts to the squirrels waiting patiently in that particular oak. They were perfectly capable of finding their own food, of course, but they certainly weren't going to turn down a perfectly good bag of walnuts if it was being offered, especially if it was being offered by the One With The Tail or the One With The Nose. She was waiting there, sitting on the big, comfortable branch that Teddy liked, holding a scrap of fur in her lap.He didn't want to look at the fur or at her face, so he fixated on her tail, proud and fluffy behind her, trying not to see her as he found his balance further along the branch, where the footing was more precarious, even for someone with his excellent sense of balance. "She's disappointed," she said quietly, her voice low in too many ways. She paused, seeming to wait for him to answer; when he remained silent, she sighed softly and said, "And he found out, you know. You think you could hide it from him forever? You think that they'd ever have been okay, knowing this? Knowing what they made?" His eyes, fixed on her tail, nonetheless couldn't help picking up the red-brown splotches on her skirt, on her face, furrows down her arms and on her fingertips where there should have been claws. He shuddered, taking a step back, unconscious of the warning creak from the narrowing branch. "Do you know what it did to him?" she asked mercilessly. "To know that his sickness was so bad it infected everything he touched?" "It's not a sickness," Teddy said, and his voice was weak even to his own ears. "I... I talked to... Billy said it's not a sickness." She laughed, the sound coming out wrong. "You said you want to tear at your skin because you want to find what's underneath it," she whispered. "How often do you think Doreen thinks about hearing you say that? Do you think Robbie would be able to hear that without thinking that you're doing exactly the same thing that he used to do? You've seen his scars. How could you be so selfish, putting them through that?" He couldn't help it; he had to look at her. Dressed in one of his favourite secret outfits, a floating skirt that felt like gossamer and a long-sleeved, high-necked top whose ruffles lent a hint of curve. Blood splattered both garments; both were rent in places, exposing patches of flesh where skin had been torn away. Blonde hair curled around her face; her eyes were missing, but she still stared at him accusingly. "You think you can have this without this?" she asked scathingly, gesturing to herself, to the blood. "You think you can have it without hurting them?" He took another step backwards, forgetting that they were in a tree. The branch, thinner and weaker at this end, cracked. For a moment, as he tumbled backward, he tried to pull up his force shields to dull the inevitable impact. But Robbie's voice sounded in his mind, broken and weak the way it had been during his last episode, asking why Teddy would do something like that, what could drive him to it, and the shields wavered and broke. He hit the ground hard enough to snap his lighter-than-normal bones, sharp pain spearing through his wrist and ribs. Sharp pain radiating from his wrist was the first warning Rick had that something was wrong. The silver hand still ha dproblems, but this sort of pain wasn't one of them, and it was in the wrong place, anyway. It was where silver and regular flesh met, instead of in the hand or fungers where the muscles tended to spasm if he'd used them too much or had been awake too long. And this wasn't cramping. This was burning. Staring down at his hand, he could see shapes forming in the flesh, the shapes of fingers wrapped around his wrist, darkening to bruises, darkening further to -- Fire. Fire-gloved hands wrapped around his arm, the FoH thug whose face was burned into his memory looming up momentarily, the spectre of the fight that he'd told himself over and over again to get over. It wasn't like the loss of his hand had been permanent. It wasn't like he had anything to complain about. It wasn't like he'd died. He couldn't tear his eyes away as his flesh darkened, burned, charred. It happened in slow-motion now, the damage happening in layers instead of all at once, the way it had the first time. He'd researched burn wounds afterward, out of a sick sort of fascination. It was happening just like that, skin crisping and sloughing off, muscle eaten away by the flames, the bones of his fingers appearing, white for a moment before they too charred and crumbled to a soot-coloured powder. Someone touched him. The thug loomed again, his face wavering between the brutish features Rick remembered and finer, sharper features - blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, brown hair with grey peppered through the temples, disappointment. Reed -- the thug -- Reed -- the hands tightened, and he screamed, trying to push the attacker away. But Todd was behind them, still in a way Todd hadn't been during the initial attack, smoke drifting from a burn on his chest that wasn't healing. It should be healing. Nothing killed Todd. But he wasn't moving, and the fiery hands were still locked around Rick's arm, the flames creeping higher now, dancing up over his elbow, roaring higher around him. The smell of charred flesh lay thick in the air, and he couldn't feel the hands on his arm anymore, not through the pain, and the fire was everywhere. The fire was everywhere. Lux knew a decent response for that, and it was right at the end of the pier. And even if his brain was going to try to tell him that he was going to burn, he was damn well going to sit at the bottom of the lake and logic it out. The laws of science didn't allow fire to burn at the bottom of the lake, no matter what his brain told him. He could hold onto that. The science wasn't working. Sean had fixed the chemical composition of hundreds of substances in his mind by now, but the science wasn't working. He'd been practicing, turning one rock into a different type of rock, but the science wasn't working. Instead of different gemstones and pieces of igneous and sedimentary rock, all he had was sand. Piles and piles of sand. "Sean?" A brown hand on his shoulder, long-fingered and elegant and with the divot in the knuckles that Sean loved to kiss as often as Yassir would let him. He choked back a warning, pulling away, but -- "No. No, no, no no no--" The sand was still in a reasonably coherent form. He pressed his hands against it, whimpering at the feel of the grains moving against his palms, and willed it back into the proper form. And it crumbled, leaving him with a pile of sand and a handful of red feathers. And beyond, Lottie and Shay and Sophie and Hakeem and Wolfgang stared at him with blank, accusing eyes before crumbling. [ooc: Rick is eventually going to get sedated and will spend at least a day in the medlab. Teddy is going to end up with broken ribs and a broken wrist and is also going to be spending time in the medlab. Lux is sitting at the bottom of the lake applying logic to the situation. And Sean actually does have a bunch of rocks turned into other rocks, he just saw sand. Whoever wants to find him sitting there crying over his bunch of rocks is welcome to!] |