No. 7 - The way you shake and shiver
Shaking hands | Seizures | Silent panic attack
1k words | OC: Ghost Ambulance, Apocalypse, Run storyline following directly from here
ok of this one i am Certain it doesn't make that much sense. but we're killing our perfectionism here baybeeee
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CN: lady whump, emotional whump, angst, panic attack, hyperventilation, past death of family members, past grief, mentioned gunshot, apocalyptic setting
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The two lights are alternating in glowing slow motion. As one fades in, the world gains a magenta tint that paints spirals in the swirling smoke. The other one replaces it when it fades out and at that, everything goes blue. Then the red blurs in again. Then it blurs out.
There is sound, too, but Elaine can't hear it. The buzz of commotion is muted, as if coming to her from under a thick blanket, as if she's five years old again and hiding her head under a pillow to stop the world from bringing her any more news. Her hands are numb, as if she's bitten her nails until they bled. But she hasn't done it in so long, so she must be fifteen again and the ambulance's open back door must be a ravenous maw, ready to swallow another person she cares about, devour them, and only spit back the news that they have died and left her alone again.
She can't breathe.
She stands motionless among the ruins and the cracks on the asphalt blur together in her eyes. Her lungs have no space to expand. There's an grip around her ribcage and it hurts, a piercing pain as if she's the one who just got shot. Everything rushes around her, like she's the one being wheeled away on a stretcher. Everything is swaying and they're pushing that stretcher into the devouring dark and Cutter is going to die, she knows it, because nobody who disappears in an ambulance ever comes back to her alive; and the air is so hot she can't stand to take another breath, she's frozen still and she can't breathe. Her face is wet and so are her hands and oh, Gods, she killed someone; she attacked without thinking because there was a gunshot and she had to protect them and Joy could have died too but that's no excuse; and there are hands on her shoulders but it must be fake because everyone who loves her is dead; and the voice barely makes it through the pounding of her heart but it's so sharp and high and like a melody, and it repeats something, rhythmical like the swaying all around her:
"Breathe," it says. "Elaine, you're okay. Just breathe."
The shivering blur of her vision gathers, a single stain of colour forms a face in tear-glazed soft focus. Joy is there, right in front of her. She's alive, she's holding her shoulders, but there's soot and blood all over her clothes and she's crying too, and she could be hurt, and-
"Breathe," Joy repeats. "Sit down. You're okay."
Gentle pressure is enough to buckle Elaine's knees and Joy sits down with her. "Come on," she says. "I'll count for you. Breathe in now."
She raises her hand and counts slowly: one, two, three, four, five. Elaine can't focus on anything but the blood staining the fingers that she raises with each number. Pain constricts her chest again and she opens her mouth to speak but her voice dissipates like smoke.
"Breathe in," Joy says. "One, two…"
Elaine forces herself to look her in the eyes. How are they so calm even through the tears, how is she counting so steadily, how can someone go for so long without breathing and how does she even begin to get her lungs to obey her again? Where does she start? There's number one again, maybe this is the place. But the moment's passed, now it's three, four, five. But then it's one again and she gasps, like a drowned woman discovering air all anew.
Once she starts inhaling, she can't stop. Her chest hurts so she keeps gasping and the world wobbles again - but Joy's voice is still there. Counting. Repeating.
"You're okay. Just breathe. You're okay."
Over and over. Until Elaine believes her. Until she remembers that she has to breathe out, too, and waits for another number one to let out air on a long, shuddering hiss.
"That's good." Joy's voice is gentle, even. "Now in."
She leads Elaine through it breath by breath: five seconds in, five seconds out. Then, slowly, the world begins to gain detail again and as Elaine's heartbeat slows, she realizes her hands are shaking. She feels it rather than sees and she's not brave enough to look down and find them covered in blood. Instead, she takes in Joy's face, allowing her presence to become fact. She's here and she's okay. She's got one of Elaine's hands in hers and their fingers stick together but the warmth of her skin is enough to keep Elaine anchored to the cracked asphalt and the biting smoke. The flowing tears do nothing to ease the burning in her eyes.
She wants to explain, but she can't force her words out. Her body feels impossibly heavy now and she sways with a sudden rush of departing adrenaline. Joy catches her by the shoulders again.
Elaine marvels at the embers of determination in her dark eyes. How can she be so calm even with tears still running down her face? She wipes at them almost with annoyance, leaving a smudge of dirt and makeup across her cheek. She sighs.
"Let's go to the hospital, yeah?" she says, voice rough with smoke and exhaustion.
Elaine wants to protest. She wants to tell her, wants the memories to spill out and turn her back into a five-year-old who was too young to understand that people died in hospitals. She wants to be fifteen and feel the loss afresh, she wants to be numb with it so it can't hurt her again. She wants her parents back. She wants to talk to her sister. She wants to never speak to anyone again. She wants to roll everything back and not care whether Cutter lives or dies. She wants him to be okay. She wants Joy to stay with her. She wants to be alone. She wants to sleep.
She shakes her head. It could mean anything and she lets it.
But she follows when Joy stands up and together they watch the ambulance slowly drive away into the chaos and fog.
"Let's go," Joy says quietly. "It's gonna be okay."
And because it's her, Elaine finds it within herself to believe her.
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choose violence ask game: 4, 5, 12
4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?
tbh i that doesn’t usually happen a lot, i slow to follow someone and largely follow leftists when i do. the times i have i think usually have been antisemitism that they refuse to back down from when asked about. like bro cmon you’re a leftist have a little self reflection and thoughtful listening and research like when you listen to every other minority group
5. worst discord server and why
the server where i was told when i was exploring an au where i made a canon cis male character into a trans butch woman and was told that cis male and trans butch lesbian genders are the same type of masculinity and thus i was perpetuating toxic masculinity 😎 it was a hot fucking mess and stupid as hell i left like two weeks later and found my people elsewhere
second place goes to the server that needed you to go to a secondary verification server to show your real government id and face on the internet to prove that you were 18+ that’s sketchy as hell on several levels, but mostly i feel sad for the people who are so paranoid about accusations of pedophilia they’re going to let their name, address and real photo on the internet to avoid the toxic & paranoid environment antis have created. just make a private server and limit who joins so you can all share brain rot in peace and happiness not every server needs to have thousands of members and BNF mods.
also i think it imploded for unrelated reasons a few days ago.
12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them
MIRAGE MIRAGE MIRAGE i mean mirage isn’t actually that obscure in the transformers fandom there’s just so many other characters that it’s easy to get lost. hes shitty old money but also lost all his family’s status and doesn’t know anything but also the autobots second best spy and !!!! i have so many thoughts about him and jazz, him and prowl, mirage and the cybertronian religion, how the old money of cybertron worked
second place mikhail from sirius the jeager, sad abused vampire son boy who lost his people and cut off from his culture but knew his younger brother was alive and just needed to stick around long enough to know that yuliy could continue their culture on <3 im not crying you’re crying
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