Diana of Themyscira (cannotstandby) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-12-19 01:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kitty pryde (shadowcat), pyrrha nikos |
Who: Kitty, Diana and a brief appearance by Pyrrha
What: Diana has a bad dream, and Hulks Out.
When: Beginning of December
Where: In and around her home
Warnings: Mentions of dream character death and violence
Things were coming to a head in her dreams. Diana was closing in on Ares, she could feel it. When she’d woken up from the dream where everyone in Veld had died from a mustard gas attack, Diana had been left shaken to her core, much as her dream self had been. Though at least in her dreams, she was able to take that feeling of loss and horror and focus it in order to fight Ares.
But Ludendorf had not been Ares. And then she’d gotten the bombshell that she herself was the godkiller, as she was the daughter of Zeus. But the fight with her brother had not gone how she’d thought it would. He was powerful, and an explosion had left her temporarily deaf, during which Steve had come to her to say goodbye. He’d given her his watch after telling her to save the world. The fighting had resumed, but Ares had bested her, and while she was lying on the ground as metal constricted around her, threatening to crush her, she saw the plane that Steve was in fly away.
And then it exploded, and Diana cried out. In her pain, she’d broken free of her confines and went on a rampage. While she didn’t kill any of the German soldiers, she still wreaked havoc, hitting them and throwing them until finally, Ares threw Doctor Maru at her feet. She picked up a tank and held it over her head, intending on dropping it onto the woman who had created the mustard gas that had killed all those innocent people in Veld. Ares was telling her to do it, to kill Doctor Maru.
But that was where the dream ended, and Diana woke up a complete jumble of emotions. She cried out, a sound that was a mixture of deep pain and anger. Without hesitating, Diana leapt through her bedroom window, shattering it. Luckily, she wasn’t naked, she was wearing a tanktop and boxer shorts. But that didn’t even register in her mind as she was in a frenzy, motivated by the pain and anger she felt.
Diana would hit whatever crossed her path without a care as to whether they deserved it or not.
It had not been an easy few nights, after Veld. Kitty understood what that kind of pain felt like. To watch innocents die and be unable to stop it or to help it. To walk through the wasteland where the bodies lay. But there wasn’t much to say, or do, than hold Diana at the time.
The dreams wouldn’t lead anywhere good, so Kitty didn’t sleep very well the nights she was over Diana’s, wary of being woken up by Diana thrashing.
Only that wasn’t thrashing.
The force of Diana leaping from the bed was such that Kitty was thrown into the nearby wall. She phased through it barely in time, hitting the tile in the kitchen and rolling. She crawled to her feet and ran back into the bedroom in time to see Diana charging down the road. “Lockheed, find help!”
She grabbed her phone and climbed out the window, running for her motorcycle and rocketing off after her girlfriend. Who did she know who could stand toe to toe with Wonder Woman if she couldn’t talk her down?
Diana was in a blind rage of sorts. She was hurting and to her, she wasn’t in Orange County. She was in Belgium at the base where Ludendorf had been preparing a strike that would kill millions of people. Doctor Maru was at her feet, and Diana was holding the woman’s life in her hands quite literally.
Though the sound of a motorcycle caught her attention. At first, it had sounded like a plane and she’d turned around, almost expecting to see the one Steve had been in when it exploded. Instead she saw a motorcycle coming towards her. Diana was in the middle of the street and got ready to either grab the person on it as they sped by or take out the motorcycle.
“Diana!” Kitty called out, hitting the brakes to try to skid to a stop next to Diana. “Snap out of it! It’s 2017, not 1918!”
It was worth a shot, and assuming she wasn’t suddenly yanked off her bike she’d raise her hands up in a peace gesture.
“No! I’ve had enough of humanity’s evil!!” Diana exclaimed. She didn’t yank Kitty off her bike, but she did clench her fists. “Ares is right. Humanity doesn’t deserve my protection! All they do is hurt and kill each other!” It was definitely something that Diana was saying this. She normally was the one with an unwavering belief in others and in the goodness of people. But right now? She was the exact opposite of that.
“That’s not all they do. They love each other, the protect and help each other. And sure, some people do bad things, but more than that do good things. We’re all worth protecting, good and bad. Except maybe Nazis.” Kitty got off her bike and tried to edge closer to Diana. “You’re not a judge and jury, Diana.”
“If not me, then who? The gods don’t care. There are children starving to death every minute because those with the power to make a difference don’t care! There is war and horrors at every turn. Hate rules, and it’s only a matter of time until the world tears itself apart because of it!”
“And you’re the one who’s gonna tear it apart?” Kitty asked. “That’s not how you make change. Not until you run out of options, and we’re not there yet.”
Granted, there were days she thought they need a literal revolution, but this wasn’t one of them. “Diana, I’ve seen your heart. There’s only love in it, this hate isn’t you.”
She’d tortured Hydrabus agents, killed the man that planted the bomb that killed Xi’an and 200 other men, women and children. Beaten Nazis. Kitty had embraced the darkness she was capable of and the past year had been a constant fight not to give into it again. “Do you have any idea how close I came to the brink? The kind of darkness that’s in my heart? The things I would do, the things I’ve done, out of anger and vengeance and grief. You pulled me from the edge, from falling over and becoming the kind of person I usually fight.”
She reached out with her hand. “Take my hand.”
Diana looked at Kitty hard as she spoke. Her heart and head were a mess, and she couldn’t make sense of it. However, something Kitty said reminded her a little bit of what Steve had said to her in a recent dream.
Maybe it’s not about what you deserve. But it’s about what you believe.
His voice echoing in her head cut through all of the anger and hate like a knife, and her face went from hard to soft as tears started rolling down her cheeks. “He’s gone, Kitty,” her voice cracked.
“I’m sorry.” Kitty stepped forward, and enveloped her arms around Diana, even though in both height and muscle mass she sometimes felt like her girlfriend dwarfed her. This time, she was going to do the comforting. “I’m so sorry.”
While Steve’s death had been the worst part of the dream, it was equally horrible to know that she didn’t know if she dropped the tank on top of Doctor Maru or not. In the dreams, she didn’t have Kitty there to talk her down. Steve was dead, and Chief, Sameer and Charlie weren’t anywhere close to her either. It was something that she’d either pull through herself or she’d do what Ares wanted her to do.
When Kitty hugged her, Diana hugged her back tightly, but not too tightly. She was minding her own strength. Though the tears came faster and some sobs came out of her. Even though her feelings for Steve hadn’t crossed over into this life, it still hurt every bit as much as it had in the dreams.
Rubbing Diana’s back, Kitty just let her cry, not caring or noticing if anyone was watching. This was the kind of pain that could never be put into words. She should know, she’d experienced it enough, and she’d never wanted anyone she loved to have to know it as well. She couldn’t even tell Diana it would be okay, so she just let her cry it out.
Diana cried it out, holding onto Kitty in the process. It took a good couple minutes before Diana was able to get ahold of herself enough to maybe get back home. “I’m sorry, Kitty. That was probably a rather rude awakening,” she said through a sniff. Because of course even while in pain, Diana would think of others before herself.
So long as she wasn’t in a blind rage like she had been a couple minutes earlier, of course.
“Be more worried about your house,” Kitty replied. She pulled her phone out, texting an all clear to Natasha before Widow brought down the heavy hitters. “I’m just glad you’re okay.” She put her phone away and then put her arms back around Diana. “Really glad you’re okay.”
“Physically, that is,” Diana corrected. Even if her body ached from the metal that Ares had been constricting her with before she’d burst out of it. But she healed very quickly, so the soreness would dissipate quite quickly. She rubbed Kitty’s back, and closed her eyes when she hugged her again.
“Physically.” Kitty nodded, then started pulling her towards the motorcycle. People were staring, and this was going to get weird as it was, but she was more concerned with getting Diana somewhere quiet to decompress.
She had to bite her tongue - this was probably a bad time to blurt out emotions.
It clearly went without saying that Diana wasn’t okay emotionally. She followed along with Kitty, not even noticing that people were staring. She got on the bike behind Kitty, then wrapped her arms around her girlfriend’s middle and pressed her face into her shoulder.
Speeding down the street, Kitty followed the path Diana had left behind. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but she might have to text Nat again about a clean-up crew. Once back at Diana’s, she helped Diana off the bike and into the house. “Do you want a drink?”
Once back to her place, Diana shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t really know what I want instead of a drink.” Except maybe to just sit and try to remind herself that her dreams were not reality here. She brushed some hair out of her face and sat down on the couch.
“Uhm.” Pyrrha came into the living room. It was hard for Kitty not to notice the defined abs under that thin green tanktop or the toned legs in those toned legs in the red boy shorts. She wondered if this woman was also an amazon, she was built like one, arms included. “What just happened?”
Kitty started to make tea. “Uh…Burglar. We chased him away.”
“Sorry if we disturbed you,” Diana responded. “It is taken care of now.” She tried to look like she wasn’t heart broken, but she was probably failing at it. Diana wasn’t the best at hiding her emotions, after all.
She looked between them, then shrugged and returned to her room. Kitty let out breath, bringing the tea to Diana and putting the cup in her hands. She sat next to her. “How are you doing? For reals.”
As much as Diana liked Pyrrha, she was relieved when she returned to her room without further questions. Even if she was aware of what dreams were, Diana didn’t want to go into details about what she’d just dreamed.
She held the cup of tea in her hands and looked at it for some moments. “I don’t think there are words to describe how I am doing. Ares was attempting to crush me to death when I watched the plane Steve was in explode high overhead. I went into a rage and started attacking all the Germans that were there. Ares then threw Doctor Maru at my feet and I picked up a tank and was holding it above my head, intending to drop it on her. It would be the least she deserved after everything she’d done.”
At the mention of exploding planes, Kitty’s complexion noticeably paled and she couldn’t quite hide a brief flash of pain on her face. Planes exploding with love interests was just a little too close to home for her. “And then you woke up and you don’t know what you do next.”
She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I want to say I wouldn’t crush her. And maybe I wouldn’t. Too many times in my dreams we’ve pushed to be the good guys, to not be executioners. But too many times, that comes back to bite us in the ass. And …”
She trailed off, not wanting to impose her own trauma on Diana’s right now. “I can’t say what the right thing to do is, but I know you. And I know you’ll make the best choice.”
Diana saw the expression on Kitty’s face in response to the mention of Steve’s death. She nodded a little. “Yes.” She listened to Kitty, finally taking a sip of her tea. “I want to believe that I wouldn’t drop the tank on her. But I keep seeing the faces of those innocent men, women and children in Veld that she killed. The millions of other lives taken because of her work. Part of me does think Ares is right, or at least in that moment that is what I felt.”
“The scary thing he isn’t exactly wrong.” Kitty gestured at herself. “My grandparents survived the Shoah. Being a mutant in my dreams isn’t much different. Look at the way women are treated, or unarmed black men, or gay people. Humans can be horrible to each other. But they can also be amazing. Acts of love and kindness, moments of joy. There’s no one who’s 100% good, and only a few people who are 100% bad, but even those guys are still human, whether we want them to be or not.”
“And there are the shades of grey that make up life. Shades that I did not know even existed in my dreams until I left Themyscira. I saw everything as black and white. Ares was evil and must be killed, people were always good and just. It is a very rude awakening. I just hope that I am able to hold onto myself and not lose it because of everything I have experienced.” Diana took a slow breath. It was one thing to believe that one could make it through anything. It was quite another to have all of one’s beliefs broken into pieces.
“I believe in you,” Kitty whispered. She squeezed Diana’s hand tightly, pretty sure Diana had been the one to save her from herself. So her words were heartfelt. “But you need to believe in yourself, and your friends. Because that's the belief that matters most.”
Looking at Kitty, Diana took a slow breath and gave a little not. “I hope that I stop listening to Ares before I drop the tank on Maru. If I kill her like that, I am no better than she is.” Diana didn’t have any qualms with killing her enemies, but she did try non-lethal methods of incapacitating them first.
Kitty thought that Maru probably deserved it, but that this was a Dark Side Moment. Killing an enemy in combat versus basically murdering them. She nodded. “Better ways to take care of her than that.”
“Yes, there are.” Diana couldn’t help but to think of Antiope and Steve, both people that she held dear to her and both had been taken from her because of this war. Part of her wanted to blame Ares for the war, but she had seen too much. She knew that men would always fight each other. It was just part of being human, it seemed. “I hope that I can break the cycle of death, ending it with Ares’ death. At least for a little while.”
“You’ll find out I just hope it’s an answer you want,” Kitty replied. She scooted closer. Maybe someday she’ll tell Diana how Xi’an died, but not today. She didn’t want to play ‘who’s trauma is worse’ on accident.
“So do I,” she responded with a nod. Diana leaned into Kitty when she scooted closer. She needed to figure out how to not tell Pyrrha dream details without completely lying. Lying was something Diana couldn’t do.
Kitty kissed the side of Diana’s face, before she did something silly like blurt out an emotion. “No matter what, I’ve got your back.”
“Thank you, I am glad for that,” she responded. She sipped her tea again before she leaned her head on Kitty’s shoulder. She should do something about that broken window, but she couldn’t bring herself to move right now.