Her father was gone. As much as she tried not to believe it, she had to wonder if she was the reason Wanda had killed him. Because he had a daughter. Because of her.
Her friends were gone. Hurt, afraid, and alone, she pushed them away, even Jonas.
Her "aunts" and "uncles" were gone. They came by the Initiative from time to time but little Cassie Lang always slipped through the cracks. Too little to notice.
Her step-father was paralyzed from the waist down. He seldom talked to her. When he did he would wait for her to come within reach, then twist her arm to pull her closer, yelling. When she stayed out of arms reach he would insult her or worse, insult her father. Sometimes he wheeled over to her and she couldn't walk away or else he'd scream at her. "This is your fault! This is all your fault!" He was right.
Her mother ignored her. Why shouldn't she? Cassie was always nothing more than an inconvenience for her. Wasn't that why Rae Lang left her father? She wasn't ready for a child. Didn't want one. And then when she was ready, when she changed her name from Rae to Peggy and married Blake Burdick, when she came for her daughter, Cassie wasn't the little girl she wanted. Willful, insubordinate, angry. Cassie made her lose her mother's first husband and now she had hurt her second.
The Nightmare King pushed her and now she was breaking. The sad thing was he didn't have to do much. He only showed her her normal life and the natural progression of it. Because that's what Cassie Lang did. She didn't fix things, she broke them.
It was easy for little Cassie Lang to sneak out one night. Easy for her to find a remote building, one that no one passed by late at night. No civilians to worry about hitting. She stepped up to the edge of the building and looked over.
She wondered what it would be like. How long would the fall be? Would it hurt?
Would there be a bright light? Would there be anything?
She stared down for what seemed like forever, thinking over what messages to send to her legs. One short, small jump. One last choice. And then maybe- maybe she'd be with her father. Together.
Little Cassie Lang looked down at the streets below and she remembered the nursery rhyme her father would tell her.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Little Cassie Lang stepped back, away from the edge, before slinking down and sitting on the roof of the building, crying.
All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Plays blinked as he realized he was standing on another empty street. Just like last time. Just like his other dreams. He shuddered and hunched his shoulders. Something bad was happening. He shouldn't be here. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He shouldn't-
Should he?
His thoughts were interrupted by the scrape of claws on pavement and he whirled to find himself faced with that same pack of Black Spiral Dancers. He let out a low growll, even as a human, taking a sliding step back as they started to circle closer, their tongues lolling in grotesque mockeries of smiles. Chittering laughter - he felt fear run through him, even if he knew this was just some crazy dream. He should be on Stacy. This - all of this - was gone now.
"Brother..."
The snicker of their alpha grabbed his attention, "...why do I smell fear on you? You're one of us."
Tony gritted his teeth, struggled to hold back the dam and finally, finally released all of his pent up rage and frustration, his fear and anger at being trapped here. He couldn't take this anymore. He snapped. His hands closed around the first object he found - a piece of metal piping - and he whipped the end around into the Alpha's face. He felt bone and muscle give away, heard (and felt) a spray of blood and teeth. With a wordless howl of rage, he kept hitting and beating wildly, blindly, fighting through the sudden pain of someone laying his side open with a claw.
When Ton finally came back to himself, he was slumped against a wall, feeling even more drained then he had before and splattered in blood. The alpha was a dead (or unconscious) lump at his feet and the others seemed to have vanished. This wasn't real. None of it was. He slid to his feet, wincing as he cradled the gash in his side. Pipe in hand, he turned to go, the visions flickering as he slowly made his way back into a vaguely more solid reality.
It's odd how the destruction of her homeworld could look so beautiful. She'd heard stories about Alderaan, the home that her mother had lost, how instantaneous it had been. In seconds, something so vast and rich and old became nothing. Here, on Coruscant, things were not so sudden.
She can still see the ruins of the megacity under the terraforming it had been subjected to. So much destruction had been wreaked, and yet, it was as if the planet were starting anew. Now it looked fresh and vibrant, exotic flora and fauna knitting the patchwork skyscrapers together. She'd wanted to see it flounder under the Vong occupation, but it hadn't. It had flourished. If only thousands of people hadn't needed to be die, if only billions hadn't needed to be enslaved to do it.
But this isn't the real horror. It instead lies around her, the bodies of her friends and family strewn at her feet. They'd been brutalised first, maimed and disfigured before given gracelessly to death. And she hadn't been able to do a damn thing to help them.
Some Sword of the Jedi you turned out to be, says the small portion of her that hasn't been rendered utterly catatonic. Her uncle had forseen this, but he'd seen it wrong. She was destined to stand alone, that much was true, but she offered no shelter, refuge or safety to those she had sworn to protect. She can see disappointment in their sunken eyes. So many had died so that she could live, and what had she done so precious a gift?
Failed. Squandered it utterly.
With this revelation, she realises that the Force has abandoned her. And for the first time in her life, she truly understands it. The Force was for the brave, the noble, the dogged and the capable. It wasn't hers to wield. She didn't deserve it.
"Please," on her knees, whimpering into the ground, "Take me too."
The earth begins to rumble, acquiescing to her tiny prayer.
San had been sleeping when the nightmare took her up and shook her as a dog shakes a rag.
She woke with the startled bolt of all mortally frightened things, but stopped her headlong dash immediately when she found herself— home. The forest was as it always was, dappled and verdant deep, all unevenness and rock-tangled roots among the mast and undergrowth. Her whoop of joy and triumph woke the Kodama and sent birds screeching into the sky.
"I'm Home!" San howled to the midday sky. It was a nightmare! Only a Nightmare, after all! Her feet found the forest pathways as if they had eyes of their own, because there was one person who had to be here if all these terrible things had become nightmares and gone. But Ashitaka wasn't waiting at the rocky outcropping that had been their habitual meeting-place.
But Moro was.
True, it wasn't Moro, but it was something that had once been that mighty Wolf-Goddess. Now it was a dark, shambling thing of bloodshot eyes and black tendrils that hissed like angry snakes and burned like boiling oil. The Malevolence of her shone out like a beacon of blackest night, made only more horrible by the patches of white fur still visible through the corruption. This was the demon that Moro had become, and San screamed a ragged denial to see her mother so damaged.
Normal tiny spiders, giant ones with twitching fangs and legs lumbering over anything in their path, and the abstract ones, spiders made of metal and concrete and shining glass-they were everywhere. The air was thick with the sound of millions of legs scurrying across a landscape that was grey and dead. The occasional building was knocked into by one of the larger spiders, shattering windows and beams and adding to the noise.
They never knocked into any trees, though. There weren't any left.
Leaf was crouched under the rubble of a fallen building, her hackles raised as she watched the larger spiders amble past her. She was stuck, trapped like a rabbit in a hole. She was prey.
Then the spiders found her. It began with the little ones, pouring in through the cracks in the rubble like a dark stream and swarming towards her. The larger ones soon joined in attempting to dig her out, and Lefa was further trapped, pinned down by the webs they began weaving around her. Every swat and bite only took down a small chunk of the webbing, which was quickly replaced. Soon, she was cocooned, and helpless against the damned spiders, the damned Weaver, and all she could do was howl her rage until her throat felt raw. The sound of the spiders just swallowed it up.
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WARNING: Serious contemplation of suicide
Her friends were gone. Hurt, afraid, and alone, she pushed them away, even Jonas.
Her "aunts" and "uncles" were gone. They came by the Initiative from time to time but little Cassie Lang always slipped through the cracks. Too little to notice.
Her step-father was paralyzed from the waist down. He seldom talked to her. When he did he would wait for her to come within reach, then twist her arm to pull her closer, yelling. When she stayed out of arms reach he would insult her or worse, insult her father. Sometimes he wheeled over to her and she couldn't walk away or else he'd scream at her. "This is your fault! This is all your fault!" He was right.
Her mother ignored her. Why shouldn't she? Cassie was always nothing more than an inconvenience for her. Wasn't that why Rae Lang left her father? She wasn't ready for a child. Didn't want one. And then when she was ready, when she changed her name from Rae to Peggy and married Blake Burdick, when she came for her daughter, Cassie wasn't the little girl she wanted. Willful, insubordinate, angry. Cassie made her lose her mother's first husband and now she had hurt her second.
The Nightmare King pushed her and now she was breaking. The sad thing was he didn't have to do much. He only showed her her normal life and the natural progression of it. Because that's what Cassie Lang did. She didn't fix things, she broke them.
It was easy for little Cassie Lang to sneak out one night. Easy for her to find a remote building, one that no one passed by late at night. No civilians to worry about hitting. She stepped up to the edge of the building and looked over.
She wondered what it would be like. How long would the fall be? Would it hurt?
Would there be a bright light? Would there be anything?
She stared down for what seemed like forever, thinking over what messages to send to her legs. One short, small jump. One last choice. And then maybe- maybe she'd be with her father. Together.
Little Cassie Lang looked down at the streets below and she remembered the nursery rhyme her father would tell her.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Little Cassie Lang stepped back, away from the edge, before slinking down and sitting on the roof of the building, crying.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
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Should he?
His thoughts were interrupted by the scrape of claws on pavement and he whirled to find himself faced with that same pack of Black Spiral Dancers. He let out a low growll, even as a human, taking a sliding step back as they started to circle closer, their tongues lolling in grotesque mockeries of smiles. Chittering laughter - he felt fear run through him, even if he knew this was just some crazy dream. He should be on Stacy. This - all of this - was gone now.
"Brother..."
The snicker of their alpha grabbed his attention, "...why do I smell fear on you? You're one of us."
Tony gritted his teeth, struggled to hold back the dam and finally, finally released all of his pent up rage and frustration, his fear and anger at being trapped here. He couldn't take this anymore. He snapped. His hands closed around the first object he found - a piece of metal piping - and he whipped the end around into the Alpha's face. He felt bone and muscle give away, heard (and felt) a spray of blood and teeth. With a wordless howl of rage, he kept hitting and beating wildly, blindly, fighting through the sudden pain of someone laying his side open with a claw.
When Ton finally came back to himself, he was slumped against a wall, feeling even more drained then he had before and splattered in blood. The alpha was a dead (or unconscious) lump at his feet and the others seemed to have vanished. This wasn't real. None of it was. He slid to his feet, wincing as he cradled the gash in his side. Pipe in hand, he turned to go, the visions flickering as he slowly made his way back into a vaguely more solid reality.
He had to find the others.
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She can still see the ruins of the megacity under the terraforming it had been subjected to. So much destruction had been wreaked, and yet, it was as if the planet were starting anew. Now it looked fresh and vibrant, exotic flora and fauna knitting the patchwork skyscrapers together. She'd wanted to see it flounder under the Vong occupation, but it hadn't. It had flourished. If only thousands of people hadn't needed to be die, if only billions hadn't needed to be enslaved to do it.
But this isn't the real horror. It instead lies around her, the bodies of her friends and family strewn at her feet. They'd been brutalised first, maimed and disfigured before given gracelessly to death. And she hadn't been able to do a damn thing to help them.
Some Sword of the Jedi you turned out to be, says the small portion of her that hasn't been rendered utterly catatonic. Her uncle had forseen this, but he'd seen it wrong. She was destined to stand alone, that much was true, but she offered no shelter, refuge or safety to those she had sworn to protect. She can see disappointment in their sunken eyes. So many had died so that she could live, and what had she done so precious a gift?
Failed. Squandered it utterly.
With this revelation, she realises that the Force has abandoned her. And for the first time in her life, she truly understands it. The Force was for the brave, the noble, the dogged and the capable. It wasn't hers to wield. She didn't deserve it.
"Please," on her knees, whimpering into the ground, "Take me too."
The earth begins to rumble, acquiescing to her tiny prayer.
Repost for typo correction.
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She woke with the startled bolt of all mortally frightened things, but stopped her headlong dash immediately when she found herself— home. The forest was as it always was, dappled and verdant deep, all unevenness and rock-tangled roots among the mast and undergrowth. Her whoop of joy and triumph woke the Kodama and sent birds screeching into the sky.
"I'm Home!" San howled to the midday sky. It was a nightmare! Only a Nightmare, after all! Her feet found the forest pathways as if they had eyes of their own, because there was one person who had to be here if all these terrible things had become nightmares and gone. But Ashitaka wasn't waiting at the rocky outcropping that had been their habitual meeting-place.
But Moro was.
True, it wasn't Moro, but it was something that had once been that mighty Wolf-Goddess. Now it was a dark, shambling thing of bloodshot eyes and black tendrils that hissed like angry snakes and burned like boiling oil. The Malevolence of her shone out like a beacon of blackest night, made only more horrible by the patches of white fur still visible through the corruption. This was the demon that Moro had become, and San screamed a ragged denial to see her mother so damaged.
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Normal tiny spiders, giant ones with twitching fangs and legs lumbering over anything in their path, and the abstract ones, spiders made of metal and concrete and shining glass-they were everywhere. The air was thick with the sound of millions of legs scurrying across a landscape that was grey and dead. The occasional building was knocked into by one of the larger spiders, shattering windows and beams and adding to the noise.
They never knocked into any trees, though. There weren't any left.
Leaf was crouched under the rubble of a fallen building, her hackles raised as she watched the larger spiders amble past her. She was stuck, trapped like a rabbit in a hole. She was prey.
Then the spiders found her. It began with the little ones, pouring in through the cracks in the rubble like a dark stream and swarming towards her. The larger ones soon joined in attempting to dig her out, and Lefa was further trapped, pinned down by the webs they began weaving around her. Every swat and bite only took down a small chunk of the webbing, which was quickly replaced. Soon, she was cocooned, and helpless against the damned spiders, the damned Weaver, and all she could do was howl her rage until her throat felt raw. The sound of the spiders just swallowed it up.
So damn late. I apologize. ><
Stuff happens; don't worry about it. :)
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