justprompts; Looking at Something (Bonus Picture!)
[A/N: As usual, all characters mentioned are intended to be the canon version of said characters, though of course anyone's welcome to respond as they like.]
Snow Nights
I dream about snowmen a lot.
Sometimes when I dream, I dream about the first time I ever made one. I think I was five or six. My dad was home from work, so it must have been Christmas or New Year's or something like that. I remember my mom bundling me so tightly that I could barely move my arms. Like that kid in A Christmas Story. Once we got outside, my dad would unwrap the scarf a little, unzip my coat, and take off one of the seven hundred layers my mom put me in, all the while grinning at me like we were co-conspirators. I loved it; it made me feel like my dad was my pal, not just my dad, and we were on a mission to foil my mom's nefarious plan to ruin my fun snow day.
"I don't want you to freeze, Bobby," she would always say while my dad rolled his eyes.
Heh.
Anyway. In real life, my dad and I spent hours making that snowman. The snow was perfect, the day was sunny, and it seemed to five year old Bobby Drake that it was a totally magical afternoon. We'd roll the snow up a little, then get distracted and toss some snowballs at each other or make snow angels, or just huddle up and he'd ask me about my favorite movie or TV hero or something. It's one of my best memories of my dad, something I used to hang onto after they found out I was a mutant and stopped talking to me as much.
The dreams are different. In my dreams it takes less time. We skip bits. We'll be rolling the base and suddenly the entire thing's almost done, except for the face and arms. Sometimes it's not even my dad I'm with, it's Hank or it's Sam. Sometimes it's the Professor, but he's walking. Once or twice it was Alex, but those weren't very good dreams.
The dream always focuses on the face and arms, not the snow. In real life it was pretty standard; his mouth was made of pebbles, his nose was a carrot, his arms were sticks, and his eyes were some old buttons we took from my mom's sewing kit. Sometimes it's like that in the dreams. Sometimes we're putting real peoples' body parts onto the snowman. The worst is when I recognize them. Those are the dreams that feel more like nightmares, the ones that make me wake up in a cold sweat.
I used to have dreams about dancing snowmen after my mutation manifested for the first time, when I was still just a kid trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me. Like that scene in Dumbo. Snowmen on parade. Ba da da dum da dum da dum. They'd always start out dancing and skating and being funny just like that movie, then when there were a few dozen of them they'd start following me around like an army. With determined faces and waving stick-arms.
But most of the time I dream that I'm a snow man, and that someone's putting me together. Not that it's super far from the truth. For a long time I was more a snowman than an ice man, right?
It used to be that Lorna was the one putting me together. It was like that for awhile. Forever it feels like. Sometimes it was Emma, but weirdly enough it was more likely that the pieces being used for my face were Emma's pieces. I guess that's what happens when someone's mind is inside you. You start having weird dreams of pieces of their body being stuck to your snowman self.
Maybe I should see a therapist.
Stop laughing.
These days when I have the dream, it's always of me putting myself together. I see it from the snowman's point of view, as flesh-Bobby rolls up the pieces of my body and puts me together. But he always stops. He always gets this look on his face, like he can't find what he's looking for, and he never gets around to finishing me.
I don't need a therapist to tell me what that means.
Yeah.
Great.
I never get around to finishing myself, and I sure as hell don't know how.
Snow Nights
I dream about snowmen a lot.
Sometimes when I dream, I dream about the first time I ever made one. I think I was five or six. My dad was home from work, so it must have been Christmas or New Year's or something like that. I remember my mom bundling me so tightly that I could barely move my arms. Like that kid in A Christmas Story. Once we got outside, my dad would unwrap the scarf a little, unzip my coat, and take off one of the seven hundred layers my mom put me in, all the while grinning at me like we were co-conspirators. I loved it; it made me feel like my dad was my pal, not just my dad, and we were on a mission to foil my mom's nefarious plan to ruin my fun snow day.
"I don't want you to freeze, Bobby," she would always say while my dad rolled his eyes.
Heh.
Anyway. In real life, my dad and I spent hours making that snowman. The snow was perfect, the day was sunny, and it seemed to five year old Bobby Drake that it was a totally magical afternoon. We'd roll the snow up a little, then get distracted and toss some snowballs at each other or make snow angels, or just huddle up and he'd ask me about my favorite movie or TV hero or something. It's one of my best memories of my dad, something I used to hang onto after they found out I was a mutant and stopped talking to me as much.
The dreams are different. In my dreams it takes less time. We skip bits. We'll be rolling the base and suddenly the entire thing's almost done, except for the face and arms. Sometimes it's not even my dad I'm with, it's Hank or it's Sam. Sometimes it's the Professor, but he's walking. Once or twice it was Alex, but those weren't very good dreams.
The dream always focuses on the face and arms, not the snow. In real life it was pretty standard; his mouth was made of pebbles, his nose was a carrot, his arms were sticks, and his eyes were some old buttons we took from my mom's sewing kit. Sometimes it's like that in the dreams. Sometimes we're putting real peoples' body parts onto the snowman. The worst is when I recognize them. Those are the dreams that feel more like nightmares, the ones that make me wake up in a cold sweat.
I used to have dreams about dancing snowmen after my mutation manifested for the first time, when I was still just a kid trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me. Like that scene in Dumbo. Snowmen on parade. Ba da da dum da dum da dum. They'd always start out dancing and skating and being funny just like that movie, then when there were a few dozen of them they'd start following me around like an army. With determined faces and waving stick-arms.
But most of the time I dream that I'm a snow man, and that someone's putting me together. Not that it's super far from the truth. For a long time I was more a snowman than an ice man, right?
It used to be that Lorna was the one putting me together. It was like that for awhile. Forever it feels like. Sometimes it was Emma, but weirdly enough it was more likely that the pieces being used for my face were Emma's pieces. I guess that's what happens when someone's mind is inside you. You start having weird dreams of pieces of their body being stuck to your snowman self.
Maybe I should see a therapist.
Stop laughing.
These days when I have the dream, it's always of me putting myself together. I see it from the snowman's point of view, as flesh-Bobby rolls up the pieces of my body and puts me together. But he always stops. He always gets this look on his face, like he can't find what he's looking for, and he never gets around to finishing me.
I don't need a therapist to tell me what that means.
Yeah.
Great.
I never get around to finishing myself, and I sure as hell don't know how.