Can it stop now?
Does it ever stop?
She wakes up in a panic that’s pure and authentic, an emotion so deep that one could mistake it with love or hatred. It ravishes her body in an icy grip that makes her gasp, makes her limbs twist as if a demonic entity were laced with them. She’s pouring sweat, her t-shirt clings to her skin like rotten flesh on broken bones, and she kicks the sheets off as she pushes herself from the mattress. Her eyes are wide with horror as she scans the room wildly, searching for the threat that she knows lies somewhere- lurking in a corner perhaps, or waiting beneath the bed.
The threat never emerges, but she feels no relief. She sits in the middle of her bed with her knees hugged to her chest and she’s sobbing. Her chest feels heavy and tight and something sits uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach, it rolls around in a nauseating way. She nervously scratches her fingernails up and down her shins, not minding the subtle burn of them. It’s something to distract herself, something to calm the raging surge of adrenaline that’s robbed her of her sleep again.
Her jaw clenches without her making it and her teeth chatter uncomfortably. The clinking sound they make is sporadic and eerie, it does little to calm her quickly beating heart. Her body begins to tremble, though she isn’t cold, and her abdomen aches where the spasms overtake her. She imagines herself to look like a roach dying on the ground under the influence of poison, it’s legs closing inwards as it’s body fails. Her body moves of it’s own free will, and it’s quite painful. She presses her fingernails harder and grits her teeth, but the more she fights it the harder it fights her.
Her voice chokes out in an uncadenced rhythm, but she doesn’t make words. Tears slip down her face and she moans in agony with no true sorce of pain identified. The room is black and she doesn’t feel safe, but she wouldn’t feel safe even if it was light. She wouldn’t feel safe if she was in a room full of people. She never feels safe anywhere with anyone at anytime, but she normally has a better handle on things. Until the nighttime. Until the nightmares.
Kimura died under her hands, beneath her body, in the waters of Madripoor. Laura can still remember how it felt to have her lie there in between her thighs, she remembers how her throat felt in her grasp, how her eyes looked as the light dimmed until it was off completely. She’s killed many people, far too many to count, but killing Kimura is a murder she can’t shake. It’s one of two that will forever haunt her, the first being her mother’s death. Her mother’s murder.
She can’t remember the words she said, not exactly, but she remembers sobbing after Kimura was gone and she remembers the looks on everyone’s faces when she turned around. She couldn’t blame the trigger scent and she couldn’t blame someone setting her on the mission. She knew what she had done, why she had done it, and she had an audience. An audience of people who love her. Loved? She wouldn’t dare to ask now.
She felt like a monster in those Madripoor waters, crouched on her knees in Kimura’s grave as her death tainted the blue waves that sloshed back and forth. She imagines worse things have happened there. Worse, or at least in the same likeness. Regardless, her hands were red like crimson. Red like cardinals. Red like blood, like the veins that buldged in Kimura’s glassed eyes.
She didn’t have time to dwell on it then, so she tucked it away like the rest of them. She pretended it didn’t bother her to know the woman who had a hand in creating her was forever gone. It should’ve been relief she felt, but instead it’d been a sickening sort of guilt with a disgusting twinge of remorse. Kimura was not Sarah, but she had more to do with X-23 at the facility than Sarah did, being that her mother had a tendency to stay away during the worst parts.
To say Kimura loved Laura would be a tale greater than any fantasy, but Kimura felt something deeper than love. Kimura hated Laura, and Laura felt it strongly. She felt it as deeply as she could smell it, taste it even. Kimura’s own tortured soul, her own twisted life, had paved the road she walked, so when it led her to Weapon X she knew what she had to do. Even now, after all this time, Laura can still feel Kimura’s fingers in her hair as she dragged her along. She can taste her breath as she hissed out belittling words, awful names, and unimaginable commands. Laura knew Kimura well, her and all of her bitter senses, her and all of her agony. In the waters of Madripoor, Kimura didn’t bleed, but she still left stains.
On the bed, Laura sobs. Her teeth chatter and her hands jerk up and down her legs, her fingernails leaving pink lines with beads of red in their path. Her voice is husky and hoarse and she wants nothing more than to take her body off like a suit, to scratch her bones free of the carcass she’s imprisoned to. Maybe the slight soul she has could fly away then, find a better body with sweeter memories, and she’d have a chance at being happy. At being whole.
Kimura is dead because Laura made her that way, the same way Laura is tortured because Kimura made her that way. And what of Sarah? She’s gone, and Laura thinks of her fondly, but when she remembers how things truly were she almost forgets what it is she regrets. Blinded by the scent that they had conditioned her to kill for, the one they filled her nostrils with when they did unimaginable things to her, that was the scent that she remembers right before she blacked out. And when she woke up, Sarah was dead. Dead by her hands. Her blood red hands.
In the hallway, a light turns on. It’s a sign of life, a sign of the current world, but Laura is too far gone. Her limbs twitch and her stomach aches where wave after wave of spasms conduct the orchestra of her body. Her jaw is clenched in an uncomfortable fashion and she struggles to take a deep breath. Her blood red hands leave her shins and instead she touches her face, dragging her fingernails down the soft skin. A hoarse cry rattles her chest, rattles the heaviness that lives in it.
Her door opens and Gabby’s small frame steps in. She says something, but Laura doesn’t hear. The only thing she hears is Sarah’s cry when her claws pierced her chest. The sound of her body slumping to the cold ground. The sound of Kimura gurgling for life. The sound of her swallowing water and being unable to choke it back out, as hard as her lungs tried. Laura could feel her chest heaving beneath her own weight as she sat on top of her, she could feel her body trying to survive. She wraps her fingers in her hair and tugs, moaning to make it stop. The smells, the sounds, they’re all so real. She’s in her bed, but she doesn’t live here. She lives there, where she could never be set free. Does it ever stop?
Gabby leaves and the yellow glow of light pours into her room, but she doesn’t feel any safer. She’s in the middle of her bed, the comforter wrapped around her legs, and she’s pulling at her hair while her body shakes as if it’s a dying limb on an aging tree in a hurricane. Her teeth chatter and her jaw clenches and it makes her face hurt. She releases her hair to hug her middle, to put pressure on the contraction of muscles that control her body as if she were a puppet. She bites her lip and her chattering teeth draw blood- the sting of it makes her eyes water in addition to the tears that fall. In another room, Gabby’s saying something to someone, but Laura is already gone.
She’s gone like the trigger scent made her gone, gone in the way of mentally escaping and emotionally detatching. Even after all these years, Laura remembers how it feels to lay almost naked on a cold bed with instruments splitting her skin open. ‘To test her healing factor’, they would say. They’d lock her in her room for days with no water, a week with no food. ‘To test her endurance’, they’d explain. She trained as a child the way Logan trained as a man, and they told her it was for the greater good. She tried to part from herself even then, tried to exist in two separate places.
Sarah would read her Pinocchio, even now Laura is fond of the small wooden puppet-turned-boy, but in truth she didn’t really want to be him. She didn’t long to be a real girl, instead she wanted to be a free girl. She wanted to grow wings and fly like a bird or a butterfly. She wanted to open one of the windows of that facility and leap out on faith and fly, even if it only lasted a second and even if she ultimately fell to her demise. Now, she wishes she had. Because she’s a little too real, or rather these feelings are, and she’s farther from being free than she’s ever been.
She’s bound by chains that hold her accountable to actions she wishes she wasn’t responsible for. And, in regards to her creation, she’s the sole survivor. The last one standing- the only one left who needs to be erased. Laura imagines the world would be a softer place if she simply went away, the same way Sarah and Kimura and Zander went away. Nobody ever came to look for them, not in the traditional way of things, and the world has gotten a little bit better. In her bed, her body is taken over by an otherworldly sort of torment and she longs to be wherever it is that they are. Wherever it is that one can be free.
There’s noise down the hallway, but Laura can’t bring herself to come back down. On the bed, she holds herself in her own trembling arms and her body twitches in a way that would make a priest anxious. Her teeth tap-tap-tap against each other and her stomach cramps with the grip of anxiety that’s got her clutched in it’s boney, decaying hand. She thinks of Kimura’s face in those final moments, the time that she realized that Laura was really winning, and it makes a blackness come over her. For the first time ever, Kimura looked scared and even though Laura had been scared of Kimura, she felt a stab of relentless guilt for allowing herself to be the monster that they had all wished for her to be. She had given everyone else a second chance, so why didn’t she let Kimura breathe? Why didn’t she fight the trigger scent for Sarah? The light spills in the room, but even if it was all black she still wouldn’t be afraid. The monster isn’t under the bed or in the closet. The monster is her.
A larger shadow looms in the doorway and she knows his scent well. Gabby steps in behind him, she chews nervously on her thumbnail. Laura would normally feel relief, but right now she only feels desperate. On the bed, her arms hug her stomach and her knees tremble against each other. Her hair is knotted where her fists pulled and she’s gritting her teeth to still the constant chatter that makes her jaw sore. Husky sobs drip down her chapped lips the same way Sarah sobbed when she told Laura her name. Her mind flashes images of her work like a courtroom evidence slideshow, but shutting her eyes only makes them more vivid.
Akihiro stands beside her bed in a moments time and he scoops her up in a swift movement, his strong arms cradling behind her knees and under her shoulders. The stillness of his body exaggerates the rattling of her own and he holds her tightly as he sits on the edge of her bed, lowering her onto his lap. He holds her head against his chest with one arm and keeps the other wrapped tightly around her body. Her legs stretch out across the bed, and she digs her heels into the blanket at the agony of all that’s going on.
With her head on his chest, he strokes her hair, and she buries her face in that place on his neck where he smells the most like him. His scent is savory and warm and calm, not at all fearful or afraid- maybe only concerned but he tries not to let that override the serenity he expels for her. He’s the only one who doesn’t see her for the monster that she knows she is, for the entity from below that she’s allowed herself to become. Against his calm body, she feels herself tremble and her muscles clench in an attempt to fight off the danger that isn’t there. He isn’t one to give up though, and he continues to soothe her with a gentle hand and hushed words.
In his arms, held tightly against his body, she wonders how different things would have been if Kimura would have felt this instead. If Sarah felt this. Not from him perhaps, but from anyone. From Laura even. The realization strikes her with that devastating sort of guilt again and she feels her throat get tight. Akihiro’s low voice coaxes her to relax, to breathe. She feels the pulling of stitches as she comes back into her body, slowly at first and then more steadily. He talks just above a whisper, she feels his lips move against the top of her hair. At the foot of the bed, Gabby waits.
She imagines if she could go back and erase what she’s written in permanent ink as if it were pencil instead, to undo the deaths of those who maybe didn’t deserve it after all. She wonders what the outcome would have been if she had pulled her handler, her caretaker of sorts, from the water instead of submerging her in it. She wonders what would have happened if she resisted the lull of the trigger scent, if she never stabbed Sarah. Akihiro strokes her hair and whispers against her hair, he rocks her back and forth in a gentle way that’s relaxing. At the foot of the bed, Gabby moves and she joins their brother. Laura brings her legs against her once more to make room.
Her muscles relax and her breathing starts to level out. Now that she’s coming back down, she’s faced with the kind of exhaustion that she imagines animals feel before hibernation. Her body is sore and her head aches with a strange sort of throbbing. Akihiro’s skin is soft and warm in a way that’s unlike anyone else’s, she imagines her healing factor makes hers feel similar, but in this moment she can recognize this trait of his as unique and she allows her face to rest against him. He slows the motion of his body to a stop, but his fingers continue to work through her hair and his voice continues to murmur reassurances.
Growing up at the facility, all she wanted to do was get out. She wanted to leave that place and all that it was, and she never intended to take it with her. She’d fantasize about opening the window and flying out, running through the snowy fields that she’d sometimes catch a glimpse of. She would imagine taking her Sensei with her, every now and then Dr. Kinney too, but she always imagined that she could do it alone if she needed to. Now she knows how absurd that was, a fantasy in it’s true form. Encompassed by Akihiro’s physical being, and cradled further by his essence, Laura knows she’s never been capable of doing anything alone. Her eye lids get heavy and she manages to yawn, that exhaustion settling in like a blanket on top of her.
Akihiro shifts them, he inches back on the mattress before laying back and turning so that he rests against the pillows. Laura isn’t entranced by a rage caused by the trigger scent, instead she’s enhanced by a sedation caused by his pheromone manipulation. She’s easily controlled, the monster that she is, and she’s far too human to be able to fight any of it- though this is a control that she embraces. Deep in her chest, she knows the anxiety is sleeping like a beast in the wilderness.
Akihiro is gentle as he arranges her limbs like living doll, like the Pinocchio girl that she is, and she allows it. He places her beside him and pulls her until her head is on his chest. She lays on her side facing him, and she drapes an arm across his middle. Gabby, who’s been silent thus far, climbs in on the other side. She nestles in behind Laura, rests her head against her back, and wraps her slender arms around. Laura relishes the perfect warmth that radiates off both of them, they hold her in an incubation of living, breathing beings that helps quiet the images of decaying death in her mind. She never did become that bird.
Her muscles are stiff like she imagines a corpse in rigor mortis and she’s plagued again with the image of Kimura’s bubbling mouth agape in the sea of Madripoor, her eyes looking at nothing, nowhere. She remembers how Sarah felt after she laid against her chest, the blizzard making her body colder than it should have been. Her fingers twitch on her red hands and she tries to resist the urge to open a window and jump, to leave this place to find somewhere better. Next to her, Akihiro turns on his side towards her. With her face pressed lightly against his chest, he reaches across her to Gabby behind her. She feels as though she could be a cocoon, but she’ll never be that butterfly.
In the waters of Madripoor, Laura killed Kimura. She killed her for revenge after everything she did, killed her so that she’d never hurt her again. She killed her while she remembered being naked on a tile floor with ice cold water spraying her down. She killed her while she thought of being dragged by her hair down a hall, leaving her bloody Sensei in a room she wouldn’t be allowed back into unless it was for trauma-related conditioning. Laura killed Kimura when she thought of sparing a puppy, later being punished for her empathy. Her empathy that she lacked in that sea, in those waters. Laura killed Kimura and it’s one of two deaths that won’t leave her- those two deaths like two sick baby birds who won’t fly the nest. The other death is Sarah’s, the flightless bird that croaks for food and water but will never die. The birds that don’t leave, and Laura is flightless too.
“Shh,” Akihiro says, and he brings his arm from around both of his sisters to only Laura. “Sleep,” he says, and his thumb strokes her face.
She closes her eyes, but she fears being asleep- it carries the kind of loneliness that one could never escape from, not until they’re graced with consciousness again. Sleep reminds her of death, and death reminds her of the cage she can’t escape from. Her body is a prison and her mind keeps guard, it never allows her to entirely escape. In her brother’s arms, in her sister’s too, she feels that feeling rise up again. Like something heavy in the pit of her stomach, like a spider crawling up her spine. She feels her muscles twitch, the ache of her last attack still lingering, and she feels her chest get tight. Her lip quivers because she knows what’s next. She knows her curse, her life sentence for existing.
“Help,” she whimpers, and she feels herself being pulled against him. Behind her, Gabby’s fingers stroke her hair. All of her senses are being stimulated, it should be efficient enough to keep her down, but none of it works. Like a demonic entity taking over, she feels her body begin to tremble and her limbs start to twitch. It’s exhausting, this life she lives. Pretending it’s okay when none it is. The exhaustion she feels is the kind that’s all-consuming. It’s unforgiving. It’s merciless. And she can’t help but wonder…
Can it stop now?
Does it ever stop?