sixthiterationlogs | Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

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Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Around town
WHEN: Post-quake
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Some shell-shock. And because it's Sam, a lot of swearing.

As hard as Sam tried, she couldn't stop thinking about the night of the Rain of Fire. Compared to what had happened to her and the life she knew that night, an earthquake should have seemed like small potatoes. She lived in stupid California, for fuck's sake. This shouldn't have been enough to scratch up memories of the Rain, like a scab being ripped off her elbow. But introspection had never been Sam's greatest talent. So she understood herself less than complex physics or genetic sequencing or the right way to make fun of people who actually liked Walter Keane portraits. And when the memories flooded her brain, she was helpless to stop them, much less understand.

Sam was fast. She’d been fast even before she died. High school track team. Only for a hot minute, it seemed, but it had stuck with her. And it served her well, now, as she raced through the jumbled and ripped up streets of Los Angeles, jumping over steaming craters in the concrete, dodging around debris that was so twisted and mangled that she couldn’t even begin to guess what any of it had originally been. Was that bent metal rod a piece of the international space station? A support beam from a skyscraper? A fender? No way to know, no time to care.

She raced along Vine, her wig tilted to a terrible angle, her clothing ripped and torn. Her shadow stretched out in front of her, illuminated by fires from every direction. No matter which way she turned, she couldn’t erase the image of Sterling Engelhart being sucked down into the earth. “He had a piece of me with him,” Elizabeth kept moaning to Aubrey, before she succumbed to torpor and the hunters opened fire. If Sam believed in miracles, she’d call it one that no one had been shot. She’d separated from Grace and Avery at the Ordo library, then immediately turned tail and started back for home, despite their protestations that she should stay with them.

Even in this state of emergency, Sam was still afraid to reveal her secrets to them. Karen had well-ingrained the notion that no Kindred could really be trusted. The streets were full of the dead, dying, and bewildered. Most of the people that she passed seemed to come to life only when a large chunk of building fell from above. And then there was screaming and running and still more dying, as if they were reliving the first volley of space junk and satellites all over again.

“Joanna!” she heard someone screaming. “Joanna! Where are you?”

Sam did the math in her head. Based on her rough estimates, Los Angeles had probably lost well over one-third of its population tonight. And it was still too soon to make a final call. The looting hadn’t begun yet. And the panic. That too would inevitably raise the death count. And as for the rest of the world? Who knew?

Sam walked to a pile of rubble, leaning over to move a piece. She didn't hear anyone or anything underneath. With a scowl, she kicked it. What had it even been? A shed? A supply store? A fucking outhouse? There was another way this was different from the Rain. The landscape was still alien, whether it was pristine or wrecked. She was an outsider, a foreigner without any landmark to navigate by.

Her walkie crackled from her belt. “Mother to Sleepwalker.” Avery’s voice. He sounded formal. It was the same voice he used when he was in Court. “This is Mother to Sleepwalker. Come in Sleepwalker.”

She yanked it free, bringing it to her mouth. “This is Sleepwalker.” Her voice didn’t tremble too much. That would probably come later.

Avery’s tone softened. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to force herself to believe it.

“I wish you’d stayed.”

“I have to go.”

“Will you at least tell me where you are?”

And there was yet another way this was all different from the Rain. There wasn't anyone around here like Avery, anyone to worry about her whereabouts or even care if she was alive or dead. For all she knew, she was dead and now a fucking ghost, haunting this clown rodeo. Angrily, she pressed the heel of her palm against the side of her head. She wanted to force the memories out. And maybe hide her face a little, as her expression crumpled.

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There were worse ways to go, she supposed. Sam and Avery had fully intended to go out saving the world. Or, at least, that's what Sam had been going for. Avery, apparently, had plans of his own.

She'd never know how that story ended.

It was hard to describe the way it felt. The best she could come up with was a sense of tiny, invisible fish hooks shooting out of his eyes and going directly into hers, latching onto the tissue of her brain. It was more than just her brain. It was her Self. It didn't hurt. But it wasn't pleasant either. And she couldn't squirm free.

Vaguely, she was aware of Avery talking again. His voice sounded far-away and cottony. "If I die in this attempt, I need you to drop everything and run for that truck to save yourself. Don't look back. Don't try to save me or anyone else. Just escape."

For some reason, that sounded like a very good idea. She nodded absently.

Damn it, Avery. Fuck you.

Sam grunted a little, trying to shake off her own memories of helplessness. "Yeah," she agreed. "I don't think so."

Wanda pushed into the inn, feeling as if more didn't have to be said on the subject. She looked around the common area before nodding her head towards the back door. She remembered there was a small first aid kit near the kitchen for small injuries.

"There." She nodded with her head.

Her ankle was beginning to actually hurt and the thought of wrapping it up started to sound appealing.

"I think there is a first-aid kit."

A project. Focus. An opportunity of be of fucking use, for a change. Sam forced her mind to snap back to the present. Wanda was here, Avery wasn't. Wanda actually could benefit from her help, Avery...well. That didn't matter.

"Sit down," she said. "I'll go grab it."

The ankle was probably starting to hurt like a motherfucker. Sam could speak from ample experience. She'd walked on more than one bad ankle before.

"I’ll be over there." She pointed to where she was heading before turning to go.

Wanda could relate to the desire to be useful. It was something she wrestled with daily while living in the small lackluster village. They had their abilities and strengths stripped from them and were forced through hardship after hardship. Wanda had attempted to find comfort in small things but that didn’t change the fact of where they were and what they faced daily.

She walked over to the nearest chair, attempting to look as if the injury wasn’t hurting. She didn’t want to appear weak.

She waited for Sam to return, her chin resting in the palm of her hand.

Sam flounced off to the kitchen. She'd actually spent a fair amount of time in the inn, before the earthquake left her too shell-shocked to venture indoors. Now that she thought about it, it was the first time she'd willingly set foot inside for awhile. Apparently, errands were magic.

Or something.

Anyway, she fetched the kit, returning to Wanda.

"I ran track in high school for a hot minute," she said, kneeling down on the floor to start rifling through the supplies. "Pretty useless, but at least I know how to handle a bum ankle."

Wanda was silently grateful to see Sam returning with the small med kit that was kept in the kitchen. She hadn't been gone long but it was long enough for Wanda to ask herself what she'd do if Sam didn't find it or if the other woman didn't return at all. She could still walk but it was horribly uncomfortable and she could only hide that discomfort for so long.

"Track?" She had to remember what that was. "You mean running?"

Wanda never had a high school experiance and a few words were still unfamiliar to her.

"You hurt yourself a lot?"

"Pretty much constantly," Sam said, pulling out a bandage and unwinding it from its neat, little coil. "Although, to be real, I probably hurt myself more often sneaking out of my window than running. My room was right over the garage. I could crawl out onto the roof and take a drainpipe down."

The funny thing was, she wasn't entirely sure it had been necessary. She could probably have waltzed right out the front door and no one would have stopped her. Teenage rebellion. Mostly just a rite of passage she'd felt the need to go through.

She set to work wrapping Wanda's ankle. Sense memory immediately took over and she felt like she was back in Lake Forest again.

Sneaking out at night sounded like such a normal memory that Wanda was surprised to hear Sam mention it. She didn't know what that was like. After losing her parents at a young age her life had been turbulent and at times harsh. Wanda wondered what it would have felt like to be able to experience that feeling.

Was it similar to fighting? Where your adrenaline pulsed through your body and your heartbeat could be heard like a drum sounding in your ear.

Probably not exactly the same but it made Wanda curious.

"Why did you sneak out?" She asked as Sam wrapped up her ankle. The touch of he fabric worked like a placebo against Wanda's skin, causing the ache to dull.

Sam pursed her lips for a second. The fake answer would make her sound like a shallow, North Shore teen. The real one would not only make her sound crazy, but fracture the Masquerade. Even if there wasn't a Masquerade here, undoing that kind of conditioning was...complicated.

She decided to go for something in between.

"My uncle died when I was sixteen," she said. "It was...I had a lot of unanswered questions. And I guess I went looking for answers in a somewhat self-destructive way. I was just a dumb kid."

Wanda nodded softly, her eyes focused on her ankle as Sam continued to circle it in medical tape. She knew what it was like losing people close to you and what it could do to your behavior. She wasn't proud of a lot of the things she did after loosing her parents or the people that she'd hurt along the way.

It had been about surviving and fighting back then.

"We're all dumb kids at some point." It was the sort of thing that Clint would say and it brought a small smile to Wanda's lips.

"I guess," Sam replied, thinking it the sort of thing she'd say to Grace. Of course, Grace probably hadn't been a kid since the Stone Age. But whatever.

She finished winding the bandage around Wanda's ankle and split the end down the middle, pulling the parts in opposite directions, then wrapping them around the ankle in a knot. It wasn't the prettiest job she'd ever done, but it was satisfying to be able to do something.

Anything.

"My shit was pretty dumb, though," she sighed. It had basically killed her. "Epic levels of fail."

Wanda looked down at her ankle and then wiggled her toes. It ached a bit but she knew that it'd be fine after a few days. She grabbed her boot and slipped her foot back inside, not bothering to mess with her sock.

"What was it?"

She didn't know why she asked but Wanda didn't want to part just yet.

She supposed she'd sort of set herself up for that one. You couldn't call something epic levels of fail without arousing some curiosity. At least with most human beings.

Sliding back, she sat down on the floor, pulling her leg up against her chest. "In my eagerness to be some kind of superhero, I decided that I was gonna figure out wha...who killed my uncle." She never had, actually. Add that to the very long bucket list, which might just as well be labeled the 'never gonna happen' list. "Spent a lot of time around seedy goth bars." She gestured absently to her hair. "It made sense to me at the time. As much sense as you can derive from half-baked, bad movies."

Wanda didn't know a lot about bad-movies when it came to social definitions. Clint had mentioned a few and she'd learned the term but she didn't have a clear picture of what Sam meant.

It was moments like these that Wanda wondered what it would have been like to have a more normal childhood. Before high school she'd been fighting and surviving on her own with her brother. There were people who helped them but she hadn't started taking classes or going to 'school' until she became part of the Avengers. Steve had insisted that she did more than just fight.

"I would have wanted to find out too." She admitted with a shrug. Wanda had spent a long time trying to find her parents killer. It had fueled her through most of her life. She had been ready to not only kill Tony Stark but to make his life hell before hand, to take away everything he loved, just like what he did to her.

Even now, some of the resentment remained but she knew that it hadn't been Tony at the time, just his weapons. It was a hard task to separate what she knew and what she felt.

It was oddly comforting to hear that. Even coming from a relative stranger. Sam had long ago stopped trying to justify that particular bad decision. But there was sort of a 'misery loves company' quality that would forever loom over her and her past.

She shrugged. "Guess it's only...human."

Fuck. That word.

"Anyway," she continued, with more conviction than she felt, "Keep your foot elevated and try not to put too much weight on it. Which I know you won't do. It should be fine in a couple of days."

'Human.' That wasn't a word that Wanda associated with herself. She had been classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the media and something to be controlled by the Accords. The last time that she'd felt human she'd been a child.

Her lips curled together softly and it was a little obvious that the word stuck a cord in her.

"Thanks." She bobbed her head in a quick nod. "I'll head home."

She looked up at Sam, not yet moving from her seat. "If you need anything, let me know." It was a way for Wanda to say thank you but also saying what Wanda usually left unsaid.

For a second, Sam thought she saw an all-too-familiar flicker in Wanda's expression. But maybe she was just imagining it. Maybe her loneliness was making her look for freaks, just like her.

There was a reason she detested the social sciences.

So she shook her head, offering Wanda a small smile in return. "I'm good. Just don't overdo it. I'm not a doctor."

Wanda knew for a fact that a doctor would be telling her the same thing. It wouldn't stop her but there was no helping that. By her very nature Wanda was stubborn. It was how she'd managed to last so long.

She nodded her head and finally pushed herself off the chair. It didn't hurt as much and she managed to move while making it look like she wasn't injured.

Wanda didn't like feeling or looking weak.

She didn't have anything further to say so she nodded her head and headed off. She wasn't very skilled at this 'people' thing.

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Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

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