Psychonauts Fic: Hydrophobia
GUESS WHAT I'VE BEEN PLAYING RECENTLY~~~~
Title: Hydrophobia
Fandom: Psychonauts
Rating: K+
Pairing: None
Summery: A take on Razputin's first encounter with his family's curse.
You never truly understood the meaning behind your father’s words when he said “Son, don’t ever go near water because the curse will kill you”, only that the blue dephs of a pond in the woods, or the rippling shores of a lake, or the vast shimmering oceans your caravan would pass on your travels, fascinated you to no end.
What was it about the curse that prevents you from swimming? Joining the kids that play in the waves by the sea and make you feel left out? When you were little, just a kid of four and already secretly devouring the contents of True Psychic Tales, you didn’t understand.
You’re not sure how the curse began, or where it started. The Aquato’s were just a circus family and they got into a tiffy with another family over marriage arrangements. Nobody really knows after over 500 years. But what you do now is that there’s really no psychic feel to it. There’s no random impulses to throw yourself into the water except for the longing to understand why you can’t enter it ever.
On a day when your family is taking a day off, when the sharp autumn skies cover the world and the air is cool, you sneak out of practice because you are very bored, bringing an ample pile of comics, including the lastest issue of True Psychic Tales. Your father doesn’t like them, you know, so you try to read them when night falls and your curled up in bed, under the covers with a flashlight in hand. Today is a day you want to spend on your own reading them.
There’s a lake nearby, crispy cool looking and still by the road. The grassy shore is soft, and you don’t really think much except to plop down on the ground and read the day away.
Around noon the wind picks up and sweeps the topmost comic from the pile to the edge of the water. Panic takes hold of you at the thought of losing one of your precious windows into the psychic world, and you immediately drop the other comic to hurry and grab it before it slips into the water.
You reach the comic before it’s gone and grasp it, sighing with relief, and then you look about for a rock to maybe place on your pile of adventures to prevent them from flying away again. There’s a decent sized one sitting halfway sunk in the water, and you reach to grab it.
You hear the splash of water and then feel a distorted shadow loom over you, and that’s all you know before you are grabbed and dragged down with a deafening splash.
The first cold, shocking contact of autumn cooled lake water is not frightening at first, because it’s solid blue and silver bubbles rush past you as you sink further and further from the surface. The sunlight wavers with the rippling, broken surface from your surprise descent.
For one, fleeting second you think it’s pretty.
And then you realize you can’t breathe.
You struggle, of course, try to get out of the grip of water pulls you down, down, down to darkness and your lungs burn with instinct. You suddenly understand your father’s words, the curse that holds you like death, and that truly this is a frightening fate for the enemies of the other family.
Fear overtakes you like you’ve never known before because it’s quite obvious that you are drowning and even if you get out of this, you’re grounded for life. It swallows you down to your very chilled bones and you feel like you can’t escape it’s grip. Adrenaline surges and your heart pumps vigorously in your ears. You try to resist the urge to take in air that is floating away from you in the form of bubbles, but whatever holds you is trying to squeeze the breath from your lungs.
It’s too long and you can’t help but gasp and watch previous oxygen fly to the surface.
Everything hurts, you’re too cold and you just want bliss.
The next thing you know is the sound of someone’s voice above you, and you can’t tell whose it is. But then you’re coughing up water and vomit violently and you can’t remember the last time you were so cold before.
Someone seems to have seen your plight and struggle against the curse, and a man’s breathless voice is above you asking if you’re OK. You don’t hear him, because your green eyes, opening to the innocent surface of the lake, sports a large, clawed hand made of water portruding from it’s surface.
It beckons your return, and you want to run as far away as you can.
The man takes you back to your father by the caravans, who’s worried and angry and scared but probably not as scared as you are. You don’t hear his scolding voice because you are cold and want to fall asleep.
Your name is Razputin, and nothing in the world will probably scare you more than the cold, unforgivnig depths of a body of water.
Because you didn’t understand.
You certainly do now, at the ripe age of ten and already in the head of a deranged fish terrorizing the population of their mindscape, desperately trying to recover the brains of your fellow campers, but back then, you never did.
There is some comfort to this curse, though. You are all cursed to die in water.
Perhaps that means that nothing else in the world can kill you.
Title: Hydrophobia
Fandom: Psychonauts
Rating: K+
Pairing: None
Summery: A take on Razputin's first encounter with his family's curse.
You never truly understood the meaning behind your father’s words when he said “Son, don’t ever go near water because the curse will kill you”, only that the blue dephs of a pond in the woods, or the rippling shores of a lake, or the vast shimmering oceans your caravan would pass on your travels, fascinated you to no end.
What was it about the curse that prevents you from swimming? Joining the kids that play in the waves by the sea and make you feel left out? When you were little, just a kid of four and already secretly devouring the contents of True Psychic Tales, you didn’t understand.
You’re not sure how the curse began, or where it started. The Aquato’s were just a circus family and they got into a tiffy with another family over marriage arrangements. Nobody really knows after over 500 years. But what you do now is that there’s really no psychic feel to it. There’s no random impulses to throw yourself into the water except for the longing to understand why you can’t enter it ever.
On a day when your family is taking a day off, when the sharp autumn skies cover the world and the air is cool, you sneak out of practice because you are very bored, bringing an ample pile of comics, including the lastest issue of True Psychic Tales. Your father doesn’t like them, you know, so you try to read them when night falls and your curled up in bed, under the covers with a flashlight in hand. Today is a day you want to spend on your own reading them.
There’s a lake nearby, crispy cool looking and still by the road. The grassy shore is soft, and you don’t really think much except to plop down on the ground and read the day away.
Around noon the wind picks up and sweeps the topmost comic from the pile to the edge of the water. Panic takes hold of you at the thought of losing one of your precious windows into the psychic world, and you immediately drop the other comic to hurry and grab it before it slips into the water.
You reach the comic before it’s gone and grasp it, sighing with relief, and then you look about for a rock to maybe place on your pile of adventures to prevent them from flying away again. There’s a decent sized one sitting halfway sunk in the water, and you reach to grab it.
You hear the splash of water and then feel a distorted shadow loom over you, and that’s all you know before you are grabbed and dragged down with a deafening splash.
The first cold, shocking contact of autumn cooled lake water is not frightening at first, because it’s solid blue and silver bubbles rush past you as you sink further and further from the surface. The sunlight wavers with the rippling, broken surface from your surprise descent.
For one, fleeting second you think it’s pretty.
And then you realize you can’t breathe.
You struggle, of course, try to get out of the grip of water pulls you down, down, down to darkness and your lungs burn with instinct. You suddenly understand your father’s words, the curse that holds you like death, and that truly this is a frightening fate for the enemies of the other family.
Fear overtakes you like you’ve never known before because it’s quite obvious that you are drowning and even if you get out of this, you’re grounded for life. It swallows you down to your very chilled bones and you feel like you can’t escape it’s grip. Adrenaline surges and your heart pumps vigorously in your ears. You try to resist the urge to take in air that is floating away from you in the form of bubbles, but whatever holds you is trying to squeeze the breath from your lungs.
It’s too long and you can’t help but gasp and watch previous oxygen fly to the surface.
Everything hurts, you’re too cold and you just want bliss.
The next thing you know is the sound of someone’s voice above you, and you can’t tell whose it is. But then you’re coughing up water and vomit violently and you can’t remember the last time you were so cold before.
Someone seems to have seen your plight and struggle against the curse, and a man’s breathless voice is above you asking if you’re OK. You don’t hear him, because your green eyes, opening to the innocent surface of the lake, sports a large, clawed hand made of water portruding from it’s surface.
It beckons your return, and you want to run as far away as you can.
The man takes you back to your father by the caravans, who’s worried and angry and scared but probably not as scared as you are. You don’t hear his scolding voice because you are cold and want to fall asleep.
Your name is Razputin, and nothing in the world will probably scare you more than the cold, unforgivnig depths of a body of water.
Because you didn’t understand.
You certainly do now, at the ripe age of ten and already in the head of a deranged fish terrorizing the population of their mindscape, desperately trying to recover the brains of your fellow campers, but back then, you never did.
There is some comfort to this curse, though. You are all cursed to die in water.
Perhaps that means that nothing else in the world can kill you.