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31_days2010-01-17 05:14 pm
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2010-01-17 05:14 pm
[January 17] [Original] Take a third option
Title: Take a third option
Day / Theme: January 17: belong not to the real existence of things
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: Terry Mica Davenport, Iall
Rating: PG-PG13
Notes: If Terry had her way the title would be Take a third option (and shove it). It will probably end up being posted as that on my writing journal, even. Thought you should know :3
This can't be real and she knows, she knows it can't be real, and of course she tells him so.
There's not much, in her mind, that can't be helped by telling people so.
It doesn't surprise her when he just glares at her for silence but it does surprise her that he's smiling anyway and that the feeling's going out of her hands and feet fast. She looks down at her hands -- the color's running out of them, her skin's already as pale as it would be had she spent six hours in the sea. She can sort of see the colors on her clothes and on her skin burning off into the air like smoke.
"Stop it," she says, looking at him with wide eyes, "I don't want this, don't--"
"Hush," he replies absentmindedly, and puts a hand over her mouth.
He lets go when she bites him, sure, but most people do; she's good at that sort of thing. It doesn't help because she's falling already, knees buckling as she stifles a scream because it feels like her head's on fire.
Not literally on fire, she'd correct herself if she could think, but it burns and there's this feeling like flames licking up on the sides of her head, sparks in the inside of her head and something's going to break soon.
So it goes. And so it does.
- - -
They have to know too many things, if only just bits and pieces so that they can make out the edges, and truly that's not enough. There's the things they need to know so that they can find out where things go wrong, and after that there's the rules to manage those things, and after that the rules to fit the rules, and--
And it's not anything that a human should be able to understand; as far as she could think, she was more or less human. So the sparks all along her eyes as she wondered why the floor was suddenly facing the other way and magnetic were normal, as far as could be told.
The problem, though, with what he did is -- is that once someone knows enough for them to truly decide, and once they've been neatly influenced by the new knowledge in their head begging them to come and play, they are going to finally know enough about the situation to be able to refuse.
This has never been done (no one knows of this having been done).
Of course it hasn't. (The Untainted got them, as you do.)
- - -
(All the parentheses are liars. You should know this already.)
- - -
She gets up shaking, she gets up weak and dizzy and confused and wanting to die from the feeling, now, that the cells that make her up are coming detached starting at the soles of her feet (also from the feeling that she's somehow been beaten and this headache at the side of her head like a battering ram).
There are things that are not supposed to happen: he above all should know this, because he is the first among those who are supposed to prevent them from happening. He should also know better than to cause them.
But she doesn't know what she could do and she's not thinking straight enough to try. She just looks at him with a wide-eyed betrayed sort of terror and starts walking down, back to the world.
- - -
After a while, he realizes this is not as bad as it could be. He -- he could have been dead, after all. That probably would have been worse (maybe).
Somewhere, there must be a way he can turn this to his advantage.
Day / Theme: January 17: belong not to the real existence of things
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: Terry Mica Davenport, Iall
Rating: PG-PG13
Notes: If Terry had her way the title would be Take a third option (and shove it). It will probably end up being posted as that on my writing journal, even. Thought you should know :3
This can't be real and she knows, she knows it can't be real, and of course she tells him so.
There's not much, in her mind, that can't be helped by telling people so.
It doesn't surprise her when he just glares at her for silence but it does surprise her that he's smiling anyway and that the feeling's going out of her hands and feet fast. She looks down at her hands -- the color's running out of them, her skin's already as pale as it would be had she spent six hours in the sea. She can sort of see the colors on her clothes and on her skin burning off into the air like smoke.
"Stop it," she says, looking at him with wide eyes, "I don't want this, don't--"
"Hush," he replies absentmindedly, and puts a hand over her mouth.
He lets go when she bites him, sure, but most people do; she's good at that sort of thing. It doesn't help because she's falling already, knees buckling as she stifles a scream because it feels like her head's on fire.
Not literally on fire, she'd correct herself if she could think, but it burns and there's this feeling like flames licking up on the sides of her head, sparks in the inside of her head and something's going to break soon.
So it goes. And so it does.
- - -
They have to know too many things, if only just bits and pieces so that they can make out the edges, and truly that's not enough. There's the things they need to know so that they can find out where things go wrong, and after that there's the rules to manage those things, and after that the rules to fit the rules, and--
And it's not anything that a human should be able to understand; as far as she could think, she was more or less human. So the sparks all along her eyes as she wondered why the floor was suddenly facing the other way and magnetic were normal, as far as could be told.
The problem, though, with what he did is -- is that once someone knows enough for them to truly decide, and once they've been neatly influenced by the new knowledge in their head begging them to come and play, they are going to finally know enough about the situation to be able to refuse.
This has never been done (no one knows of this having been done).
Of course it hasn't. (The Untainted got them, as you do.)
- - -
(All the parentheses are liars. You should know this already.)
- - -
She gets up shaking, she gets up weak and dizzy and confused and wanting to die from the feeling, now, that the cells that make her up are coming detached starting at the soles of her feet (also from the feeling that she's somehow been beaten and this headache at the side of her head like a battering ram).
There are things that are not supposed to happen: he above all should know this, because he is the first among those who are supposed to prevent them from happening. He should also know better than to cause them.
But she doesn't know what she could do and she's not thinking straight enough to try. She just looks at him with a wide-eyed betrayed sort of terror and starts walking down, back to the world.
- - -
After a while, he realizes this is not as bad as it could be. He -- he could have been dead, after all. That probably would have been worse (maybe).
Somewhere, there must be a way he can turn this to his advantage.