Disclaimer: Callisto belongs to Marvel. PLEASE: Respond to mellyt3@yahoo.com. Please. Swearing and unpleasantness. Uh, this started because Matt Nute said something and I was gonna do another nsync crossover only they aren't in this, and then I walked past Alfred St reminding me of Amanda and my violent envy of her dystopian writing and "Lucy's Drowning" and then Doqz emailed me telling me he'd heard rumours of me writing another shadowlands fic.
But really. This is for Lynx and Ali.
Survivor
by Mel
I can't decide which way of thinking about it is harder. A shift, after so many other and a choice of ways to see it. Either I'm the only one who's left. Or I'm the only one who left.
We all learnt a certain aloneness before now. We all learnt we were alone in another peoples' world. Now, though. Now. I am alone. How much does that change from 'we' to 'I' hurt. Every breath.
I survive, though. Bitch, I am. Mean, I am. Ruthless, I am. But first, before and under all, survivor, I am.
Cities are where I hide. It's a land I know. Sometimes a night's sleep, a moment's inattention, an eye's blink and my city is gone. I am not lost so easily, though. I will always find it again. I will, I do.
The shifts, above all, most of all seem intent on breaking bones. My family, my life it took from me. I don't hold out much hope of finding it again. Hope hurts most of all.
I know survival. I try to teach anyone I can. After all this time I can laugh, almost. That I have anything in common with Charles. I teach survival to anyone who lets me now. Sometimes 'lets' is flexible.
Hospitals hold bedding, bulk food hard to spoil, cloths left in cupboards in wards filled with rotting corpses. Canteens hold knives, food. Schools are built to last. Find thing. Think. Always think.
It's hard not to think. I can't train myself not to remember. Not to hope. I hope I taught enough. So very much death, how could they not be among them. Did I teach the to survive.
They are somewhere, somewhen out there. Nothing disappears entirely. Alive or dead they are out there. I try not to think. I survive.
Children don't survive often. It's not their size. They don't understand basic, simple things. Cause and effect. Action and consequence. They don't know. No one showed them. No one told them that ~this~ is where food is, ~this~ is how to keep warm and dry. Safe. They don't know safety. I try. Too often I'm too late. Too often much too late hurried to bury. More stinking starving children.
Where is your nice distance now? Eat your dinner, there are starving children in Jersey.
No one is pretty anymore. Too much death, too much rotting, too little food. Their parents wouldn't recognise their hunger swollen joints, the putrid sores, the decaying hair.
It gets too easy, sometimes. To think that with these people, these kids, we're alone in this madness. But then, again a split second, a shake of reality, and no, I remember in unfamiliar streets, I am alone in this madness.
One shift gave me back my eye. It took me three days to notice. They never mention that while a patch might protect a damaged eye, it might also stop you from noticing that somehow, you got it back. A shift took it away again, after hard work adjusting, and surprise is a luxury I don't have. Neither is loss, but somehow I can always manage that debt.
I see more people, I teach them what I can quick, quicker, quickest. In this endless seamless fuck up of a reality, I run to keep in place. Maybe, maybe I can meet one, two, three, many of them again. Maybe if I do things right, if I teach things right. I try not to hope. I survive.