30 Quills: Meaningless (#21 ~ A world without you is a world without meaning...)
Gaaaah, Miss Julie's art inspires me to write so often. This pic and its follow up here, directly inspired this fic. Lines from the art were used in the fic with kind permission from Miss Julie.
Note: Comic timelines confuse me. I wouldn't even know where in the YA timeline to begin sticking this, so let’s just pretend that I do and call it AU or something . . . >_> Also, didn't mean for this to get so long. The words just sort of kept vomiting themselves onto the paper . . . Word limit? WTF is that?
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Meaningless
30 Quills challenge: #21~A world without you is a world without meaning...
~+~
When it actually happens, it is nothing like the movies. There is no epic musical score, no dramatic dialogue, and nothing moves in slow motion. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
Haweye recalls drawing her bow on the beast ten times her size, holding her breath and standing her ground, knowing she is about to be mauled. The next thing she feels is pain as her shoulder hits the asphalt hard and her sunglasses are knocked askew, bow digging into her side. Wiccan screams something in the background and the flash of blue light that follows burns even behind her eyelids. Something massive and heavy hits the pavement with the sound of colliding freight trains.
When she finally rights herself, it takes a moment for her vision to clear. A groan makes her eyes snap towards the figure on the ground near the fallen creature that had nearly taken her life. Hulking’s imposing green body quickly regresses into his human form, suddenly looking small, fragile and . . . bloody. He goes limp and doesn’t make any other sound.
For a long moment, Hawkeye thinks she is hallucinating. Maybe she hit her head? But when Wiccan lands on the ground screaming Teddy’s name as he stumbles towards his boyfriend’s prone form, she knows this is reality. Kate stares for what feels like an eternity and tries to remember how to breathe.
"Hawkeye!"
She turns to see Patriot rushing towards her, worry furrowing his brow.
"Are you alright--"
"Fine. Just-- Just . . . " She doesn’t know.
Patriot's hand moves towards her shoulder, but she pulls away, running a frustrated hand through tangled hair, "Go to Wiccan and Hulking, it's--"
Grief chokes her throat for a moment and she has to swallow it down thickly, "Eli, I think he’s-- I think . . . It's bad."
The use of his real name makes Patriot's brow furrow deeper. He leaves her for the moment, moving towards the pair on the ground and swears he's just stepped onto the scene of the some bad melodrama.
Wiccan is hunched over Hulking's body, hands pressuring a gaping wound, murmuring a frantic spell that didn't seem to be doing much of anything. The pool of blood seeping into the ground beneath them looked too large to be real. How could anybody have that much blood? If this is a drama, it’s a bad one; the fake kind you point and laugh at while throwing popcorn. There is nothing to laugh about, and the only kind of throwing he feels like doing is throwing up.
Patriot falls to his knees opposite of a panicked Wiccan, too shell shocked at the moment to do more than watch.
“IwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostop. . .”
"Wiccan . . ." he finally finds his voice, a croaked whisper.
Wiccan cannot hear him. He can't listen, he's too busy fighting back the panic and the anguish threatening to wrest what little coherent thought and control he has left, which he needs more than anything to get this spell to work.
Patriot’s hands shake ever so slightly as he cradles Hulking's head in his arm, checking for a pulse before taking a limp-- cold-- hand and squeezing it tight in his own. His quaking fingers feel no response; there’s none to be given.
“Wiccan,” he tries again, the usual sternness of Patriot’s voice completely gone, but he is ignored once more.
“Guys,whatthehellwas-- shit. Oh shit--” there is an honest distress present in his voice that Speed is usually allergic to displaying-- ever-- and for a very long minute he actually stands still, “Whathappened?Where’reStatureandVision?Is he--shit,shit--is he--”
Kate’s scream of frustrated rage cuts him off from saying the unthinkable. She throws the first sizeable piece of debris in reach at what seems like a crumbled statue toppled about the street.
With a start, Speed realizes it is the petrified remains of one the creatures they have been fighting. The creature looks like it froze into solid stone mid-flight and then made a rather unfortunate landing into the street’s unforgiving pavement, cracking into an irreparable mess; a mess which Kate now seemed determined to further annihilate with each subsequent throw.
“Dammit! Dammit-- Dammit!!”
“Katie--” Tommy has a gentle grip on her arms the next second, but it is enough to stop her from throwing anything else. She straightens stiffly, refusing to meet his eye, glare aimed at the nullified threat. The broken remains of the petrified creature stare back like a taunting Picasso.
“It’s my fault.”
“Let’s not play that game right now,” he tightens his grip, rubbing soothing circles with his thumbs over her arms. She crosses them but does not pull away.
“IwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostop. . .”
“Wicc-- Billy. Billy, please he’s . . . he’s--” Eli cannot bring himself to finish the sentence, a hand squeezing hard on Billy's shoulder.
Billy stumbles over his words but refuses to stop his mantra. The blue light around his hands sputters off and on like a bad engine. He is exhausted from the day’s endless battles, but he has to keep going, has to get this right; he can’t afford not to. Focus, Kaplan, focus.
“Iw-wanttheble-bleedingtosto-stopIwantt-thebleed-dingtosto--”
“Billy, please. You have to stop now . . .” There is a trembling quality to Eli’s voice when his hand presses against Billy’s damp cheek.
When did he started crying? He can’t see clearly enough anymore to tell if the blood flowing beneath his hands has slowed. He is so tired his arms are shaking, his whole body is shaking and he just can’t seem to string the words together clearly enough to make them effective. The blue light at his hands will not stabilize. He has to try harder.
"I-Iwanttheb-bleed-dingtosto-stopIwa--"
Eli’s voice is firmer when he interrupts again, gently wiping the wetness from his face, "I'm so sorry, Billy but . . . He's-- He’s gone."
He pulls away from Eli with a strangled noise of denial, slumping over Teddy’s body and clutching at the bloodied cloth beneath his hands. It feels suddenly like something has been opened inside of him, a pandora’s box, and he struggles to breathe through the emotions overtaking him.
Unpredictable. Obstinate. Unruly. Impulsive.
These are the things Billy hears whispered behind his back when no one thinks he is listening.
Wait and see, they often say. Someday, something will make him snap, and he will turn on us . . . Just like she did.
Billy wants nothing more than to prove them all wrong. He understands that his kind of power breeds paranoia, even prejudice, when the world has been given the kind of example set by the Scarlet Witch. And although Billy does not condone her crimes, neither can he believe-- as so many were wont to-- that she had committed them out of some kind of innate malice. He is sure she had not made a sentient choice to harm, she simply had not been in the right mind. She is as much a victim as anyone else. Overpowering unmitigated emotion had been the true culprit behind all the chaos she had caused.
That is how Billy rationalizes it, but conjecture and hypothesis does not always equate comprehension. Only now as the feeling of despair rushes over him does he intimately understand just how overwhelming it can be. Now he knows why they are right to fear their kind of power.
Terror gripes him in a vice as magic wells within him to a degree he has never felt before. It courses painfully through his veins, pulsing with every beat of his heart growing even as his control over it slips further and further away. He feels ravaged by the strength of it, as if he could be torn apart limb by limb if he does not release it somehow.
Wiccan!
The voices of his teammates, his friends, sound faint and thin through the rush in his ears. He tries to answer, but his voice has been robbed by the sobs racking his frame.
Wiccan! Plea--
Blue light swarms around him in gale that rips the very breath from his lungs. He is suddenly alone. He cannot feel Eli, or Kate or Tommy-- only the body growing cold beneath his touch. There is no more sound, no more sight, only his own thoughts echoing in a blue void.
Is this what she had felt? This inconsolable loss of what felt like a part of his own soul, and the all-consuming desire to just get it back.
Wiccan! Get a hold of--
They call, but they can no longer reach him in this place. He has sealed them out, pushing them away as the light wraps around him in a tight sphere where all he can do is reel in his pain, trying to focus his power, trying to keep it from hurting and losing any more of the people he loves.
This isn’t what he wanted. His control is slipping through his fingers like sand and he can’t even grasp the edges of it. Thoughts race through his mind, skewed by grief and misdirected anger.
It is their fault. They are to blame for this. They weren’t strong enough. They weren’t fast enough. They hadn’t cared enough.
“No . . .” he shakes and clings tighter to the unmoving body beneath him.
It is so easy to let himself feel that way, to let himself believe it, but none of that is true. He knows it in his heart; hears it in the way his friends’ faint voices now shout in his defense as the real Avengers close in to shut him down, keeping them at bay even if it means becoming targets themselves.
Wait! Give him a chance--
He had sworn to himself that he would not let this happen. He would prove the Avengers wrong and show them he would never allow himself to be a danger to anyone, but now that it was unleashed, he cannot figure out how to pull this raging storm of power back. The reigns have been torn from his hands; he doesn’t know what to do.
Yes you do, Billy. We practiced this . . .
Teddy’s voice echos through the chaos in his mind, coaching him like nothing has changed; as if he were right there, just beyond to the fog of his frenetic power. Billy shudders with emotion, letting that voice sooth over him, encouraging and patient. He tries to pull every last vestige of his scattered focus into a single train of thought.
Don’t focus on the problem, focus on what you want . . .
“I want . . .” he takes a ragged breath, “I want control.”
Say it again . . .
“I want control . . . I want control. I want control.”
Imagine what it will feel like . . .
The thrashes of his undirected magic surround him, spinning in rebellion for a few moments before beginning to bend to his will. Destructive whips of raw power slowly melt into soft curls of harmless blue light, receding like a wave back to Billy’s form as he forces himself to continue his unrelenting mantra.
“IwantcontrolIwantcontrolIwantcontrol . . .”
You got it, keep going . . .
The power boils under the surface for many long minutes, roiling within him, still resisting complete dormancy.
“IwantcontrolIwantcontrolwant--control...I--Iwant control...I want . . .”
Billy, it’s okay--
Billy chokes, trembling with the effort to hold everything back. His fingers tighten in Teddy’s blood-soaked uniform as he lets his head fall onto his chest, trying to draw strength from what had always been his greatest source. The world is silent and white behind his eyelids as continues to whisper his spell, feeling the power ebb completely back to its usual peaceful hum within his bones.
Billy--
When the air finally clears, he is still hiccuping his words through soft sobs, his entire body feeling numb and heavy.
“I want control-- I want . . . I want . . . I-I want-- you back . . .”
“I’m right here,” A soothing hand slips gently into his hair and Billy nearly jumps out of his skin before freezing in utter shock.
“Hey, it’s over now. You did it,” Teddy’s voice is scratchy and tired.
Billy can feel his chest rising with uneven breathes. The skin beneath his hands has warmed, and though there is still a lot of blood around them, the wound is finally closed. He blinks as Teddy brushes a tear away from his cheek, blue eyes tender despite the obvious weariness.
“I’m so proud of you, B . . . You alright?”
“Oh god!” His arms pull Teddy close enough to choke the air out of him, keening hoarsely into his into neck.
Teddy does not complain, shifting up onto an elbow and wrapping a strong arm tight around him in return.
“Shh, B . . . I’m okay, shh . . .”
“S-Shut up! I’m so--” Billy hiccuped a sob, “Mad at you--”
Teddy sits up completely and just pulls him closer, running a calming hand down his back as the others rush in towards them.
“Teddy!” several voices chorus at once.
“Got two people mad at you here, just so you know,” Kate’s scolds in a watery voice even as her arms fly around him and Billy.
On his other side, Eli grips his shoulder tight, his other hand ruffling Billy’s hair, “Make that three.”
He hears the exasperated click of a tongue, and feels a breeze before Tommy enters his field of vision, all crossed arms and pursed lips; the picture of annoyance even as he mumbles, “Ya made B get all blue light drama queen on us, so . . . I guess it’s four.”
Teddy smiles tightly through a shuddering breath, but doesn’t offer an answer, doesn’t think the tightness in his throat would permit one. It’s okay though, because they don’t need any more words to define this moment. The silence is anything but meaningless.
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[Art by: Kaciart]
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Fin
~30 Quills Fic Index~
Note: Comic timelines confuse me. I wouldn't even know where in the YA timeline to begin sticking this, so let’s just pretend that I do and call it AU or something . . . >_> Also, didn't mean for this to get so long. The words just sort of kept vomiting themselves onto the paper . . . Word limit? WTF is that?
~+~
Meaningless
30 Quills challenge: #21~A world without you is a world without meaning...
~+~
When it actually happens, it is nothing like the movies. There is no epic musical score, no dramatic dialogue, and nothing moves in slow motion. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
Haweye recalls drawing her bow on the beast ten times her size, holding her breath and standing her ground, knowing she is about to be mauled. The next thing she feels is pain as her shoulder hits the asphalt hard and her sunglasses are knocked askew, bow digging into her side. Wiccan screams something in the background and the flash of blue light that follows burns even behind her eyelids. Something massive and heavy hits the pavement with the sound of colliding freight trains.
When she finally rights herself, it takes a moment for her vision to clear. A groan makes her eyes snap towards the figure on the ground near the fallen creature that had nearly taken her life. Hulking’s imposing green body quickly regresses into his human form, suddenly looking small, fragile and . . . bloody. He goes limp and doesn’t make any other sound.
For a long moment, Hawkeye thinks she is hallucinating. Maybe she hit her head? But when Wiccan lands on the ground screaming Teddy’s name as he stumbles towards his boyfriend’s prone form, she knows this is reality. Kate stares for what feels like an eternity and tries to remember how to breathe.
"Hawkeye!"
She turns to see Patriot rushing towards her, worry furrowing his brow.
"Are you alright--"
"Fine. Just-- Just . . . " She doesn’t know.
Patriot's hand moves towards her shoulder, but she pulls away, running a frustrated hand through tangled hair, "Go to Wiccan and Hulking, it's--"
Grief chokes her throat for a moment and she has to swallow it down thickly, "Eli, I think he’s-- I think . . . It's bad."
The use of his real name makes Patriot's brow furrow deeper. He leaves her for the moment, moving towards the pair on the ground and swears he's just stepped onto the scene of the some bad melodrama.
Wiccan is hunched over Hulking's body, hands pressuring a gaping wound, murmuring a frantic spell that didn't seem to be doing much of anything. The pool of blood seeping into the ground beneath them looked too large to be real. How could anybody have that much blood? If this is a drama, it’s a bad one; the fake kind you point and laugh at while throwing popcorn. There is nothing to laugh about, and the only kind of throwing he feels like doing is throwing up.
Patriot falls to his knees opposite of a panicked Wiccan, too shell shocked at the moment to do more than watch.
“IwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostop. . .”
"Wiccan . . ." he finally finds his voice, a croaked whisper.
Wiccan cannot hear him. He can't listen, he's too busy fighting back the panic and the anguish threatening to wrest what little coherent thought and control he has left, which he needs more than anything to get this spell to work.
Patriot’s hands shake ever so slightly as he cradles Hulking's head in his arm, checking for a pulse before taking a limp-- cold-- hand and squeezing it tight in his own. His quaking fingers feel no response; there’s none to be given.
“Wiccan,” he tries again, the usual sternness of Patriot’s voice completely gone, but he is ignored once more.
“Guys,whatthehellwas-- shit. Oh shit--” there is an honest distress present in his voice that Speed is usually allergic to displaying-- ever-- and for a very long minute he actually stands still, “Whathappened?Where’reStatureandVision?Is he--shit,shit--is he--”
Kate’s scream of frustrated rage cuts him off from saying the unthinkable. She throws the first sizeable piece of debris in reach at what seems like a crumbled statue toppled about the street.
With a start, Speed realizes it is the petrified remains of one the creatures they have been fighting. The creature looks like it froze into solid stone mid-flight and then made a rather unfortunate landing into the street’s unforgiving pavement, cracking into an irreparable mess; a mess which Kate now seemed determined to further annihilate with each subsequent throw.
“Dammit! Dammit-- Dammit!!”
“Katie--” Tommy has a gentle grip on her arms the next second, but it is enough to stop her from throwing anything else. She straightens stiffly, refusing to meet his eye, glare aimed at the nullified threat. The broken remains of the petrified creature stare back like a taunting Picasso.
“It’s my fault.”
“Let’s not play that game right now,” he tightens his grip, rubbing soothing circles with his thumbs over her arms. She crosses them but does not pull away.
“IwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostopIwantthebleedingtostop. . .”
“Wicc-- Billy. Billy, please he’s . . . he’s--” Eli cannot bring himself to finish the sentence, a hand squeezing hard on Billy's shoulder.
Billy stumbles over his words but refuses to stop his mantra. The blue light around his hands sputters off and on like a bad engine. He is exhausted from the day’s endless battles, but he has to keep going, has to get this right; he can’t afford not to. Focus, Kaplan, focus.
“Iw-wanttheble-bleedingtosto-stopIwantt-thebleed-dingtosto--”
“Billy, please. You have to stop now . . .” There is a trembling quality to Eli’s voice when his hand presses against Billy’s damp cheek.
When did he started crying? He can’t see clearly enough anymore to tell if the blood flowing beneath his hands has slowed. He is so tired his arms are shaking, his whole body is shaking and he just can’t seem to string the words together clearly enough to make them effective. The blue light at his hands will not stabilize. He has to try harder.
"I-Iwanttheb-bleed-dingtosto-stopIwa--"
Eli’s voice is firmer when he interrupts again, gently wiping the wetness from his face, "I'm so sorry, Billy but . . . He's-- He’s gone."
He pulls away from Eli with a strangled noise of denial, slumping over Teddy’s body and clutching at the bloodied cloth beneath his hands. It feels suddenly like something has been opened inside of him, a pandora’s box, and he struggles to breathe through the emotions overtaking him.
Unpredictable. Obstinate. Unruly. Impulsive.
These are the things Billy hears whispered behind his back when no one thinks he is listening.
Wait and see, they often say. Someday, something will make him snap, and he will turn on us . . . Just like she did.
Billy wants nothing more than to prove them all wrong. He understands that his kind of power breeds paranoia, even prejudice, when the world has been given the kind of example set by the Scarlet Witch. And although Billy does not condone her crimes, neither can he believe-- as so many were wont to-- that she had committed them out of some kind of innate malice. He is sure she had not made a sentient choice to harm, she simply had not been in the right mind. She is as much a victim as anyone else. Overpowering unmitigated emotion had been the true culprit behind all the chaos she had caused.
That is how Billy rationalizes it, but conjecture and hypothesis does not always equate comprehension. Only now as the feeling of despair rushes over him does he intimately understand just how overwhelming it can be. Now he knows why they are right to fear their kind of power.
Terror gripes him in a vice as magic wells within him to a degree he has never felt before. It courses painfully through his veins, pulsing with every beat of his heart growing even as his control over it slips further and further away. He feels ravaged by the strength of it, as if he could be torn apart limb by limb if he does not release it somehow.
Wiccan!
The voices of his teammates, his friends, sound faint and thin through the rush in his ears. He tries to answer, but his voice has been robbed by the sobs racking his frame.
Wiccan! Plea--
Blue light swarms around him in gale that rips the very breath from his lungs. He is suddenly alone. He cannot feel Eli, or Kate or Tommy-- only the body growing cold beneath his touch. There is no more sound, no more sight, only his own thoughts echoing in a blue void.
Is this what she had felt? This inconsolable loss of what felt like a part of his own soul, and the all-consuming desire to just get it back.
Wiccan! Get a hold of--
They call, but they can no longer reach him in this place. He has sealed them out, pushing them away as the light wraps around him in a tight sphere where all he can do is reel in his pain, trying to focus his power, trying to keep it from hurting and losing any more of the people he loves.
This isn’t what he wanted. His control is slipping through his fingers like sand and he can’t even grasp the edges of it. Thoughts race through his mind, skewed by grief and misdirected anger.
It is their fault. They are to blame for this. They weren’t strong enough. They weren’t fast enough. They hadn’t cared enough.
“No . . .” he shakes and clings tighter to the unmoving body beneath him.
It is so easy to let himself feel that way, to let himself believe it, but none of that is true. He knows it in his heart; hears it in the way his friends’ faint voices now shout in his defense as the real Avengers close in to shut him down, keeping them at bay even if it means becoming targets themselves.
Wait! Give him a chance--
He had sworn to himself that he would not let this happen. He would prove the Avengers wrong and show them he would never allow himself to be a danger to anyone, but now that it was unleashed, he cannot figure out how to pull this raging storm of power back. The reigns have been torn from his hands; he doesn’t know what to do.
Yes you do, Billy. We practiced this . . .
Teddy’s voice echos through the chaos in his mind, coaching him like nothing has changed; as if he were right there, just beyond to the fog of his frenetic power. Billy shudders with emotion, letting that voice sooth over him, encouraging and patient. He tries to pull every last vestige of his scattered focus into a single train of thought.
Don’t focus on the problem, focus on what you want . . .
“I want . . .” he takes a ragged breath, “I want control.”
Say it again . . .
“I want control . . . I want control. I want control.”
Imagine what it will feel like . . .
The thrashes of his undirected magic surround him, spinning in rebellion for a few moments before beginning to bend to his will. Destructive whips of raw power slowly melt into soft curls of harmless blue light, receding like a wave back to Billy’s form as he forces himself to continue his unrelenting mantra.
“IwantcontrolIwantcontrolIwantcontrol . . .”
You got it, keep going . . .
The power boils under the surface for many long minutes, roiling within him, still resisting complete dormancy.
“IwantcontrolIwantcontrolwant--control...I--Iwant control...I want . . .”
Billy, it’s okay--
Billy chokes, trembling with the effort to hold everything back. His fingers tighten in Teddy’s blood-soaked uniform as he lets his head fall onto his chest, trying to draw strength from what had always been his greatest source. The world is silent and white behind his eyelids as continues to whisper his spell, feeling the power ebb completely back to its usual peaceful hum within his bones.
Billy--
When the air finally clears, he is still hiccuping his words through soft sobs, his entire body feeling numb and heavy.
“I want control-- I want . . . I want . . . I-I want-- you back . . .”
“I’m right here,” A soothing hand slips gently into his hair and Billy nearly jumps out of his skin before freezing in utter shock.
“Hey, it’s over now. You did it,” Teddy’s voice is scratchy and tired.
Billy can feel his chest rising with uneven breathes. The skin beneath his hands has warmed, and though there is still a lot of blood around them, the wound is finally closed. He blinks as Teddy brushes a tear away from his cheek, blue eyes tender despite the obvious weariness.
“I’m so proud of you, B . . . You alright?”
“Oh god!” His arms pull Teddy close enough to choke the air out of him, keening hoarsely into his into neck.
Teddy does not complain, shifting up onto an elbow and wrapping a strong arm tight around him in return.
“Shh, B . . . I’m okay, shh . . .”
“S-Shut up! I’m so--” Billy hiccuped a sob, “Mad at you--”
Teddy sits up completely and just pulls him closer, running a calming hand down his back as the others rush in towards them.
“Teddy!” several voices chorus at once.
“Got two people mad at you here, just so you know,” Kate’s scolds in a watery voice even as her arms fly around him and Billy.
On his other side, Eli grips his shoulder tight, his other hand ruffling Billy’s hair, “Make that three.”
He hears the exasperated click of a tongue, and feels a breeze before Tommy enters his field of vision, all crossed arms and pursed lips; the picture of annoyance even as he mumbles, “Ya made B get all blue light drama queen on us, so . . . I guess it’s four.”
Teddy smiles tightly through a shuddering breath, but doesn’t offer an answer, doesn’t think the tightness in his throat would permit one. It’s okay though, because they don’t need any more words to define this moment. The silence is anything but meaningless.
~+~
[Art by: Kaciart]
~+~
Fin
~30 Quills Fic Index~