Ruth had gone to bed with a headache, taking a vicodin in response to the building pain in her head. It felt, quite literally, as though she were trying to blow an egg out her nose. That was what the pressure in her head amounted to. Not wanting to wake Polaris, or cause the poor girl to worry about her some more, Ruth had retired to her bed and put on a little white noise to sooth herself to sleep. Granted, the medication should have been enough. In Ruth's case, it rarely was.
Her head lolled gently to one side, black hair splaying out across the pillow, and she curled carefully into something of the fetal position. Slowly, her breathing, which had fallen to the level of someone who was calmly sleeping, starting to speed up as the icy cold grip of panic clutched at her heart. Ruth panted as though running, fingers curling in the sheets until they seemed fit to rip.
The press of bodies against her was suffocating. So many people pressed together tighter than sardines in a can. All of them were panicking. The impression of their panic (the psychic echoes of their not yet existing panic) was like a thousand bells ringing discordantly in Ruth's mind, yet she made herself concentrate. Xavier had always told her to focus first on herself, then push outward. Now she built her walls, brick by brick, then reached out past it. The giant robots were moving against them. Killing those she cared about.
No. It hurt to watch, yet she had a sense of hope somewhere in the back of her mind. The hope was they could change this. This was something they could stop. If they worked at it. Ruth felt herself start running, seeking something, but she wasn't entirely sure what. There was an answer. A stop to this.
Just as she felt she reached it, the dream ended and Ruth woke up, sweating yet so cold she shivered as though she'd been plunged in ice. Sitting up slowly, she ran her fingers through her damp hair.
"We ain't all gon' die. No, we ain't." Whether she said that solely to reassure herself or not was up for grabs.