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mosaic_archiveHer first coherent thought, if put into words, could have been summed up as 'Not again'.
Her second coherent thought was that that probably wasn't a normal thing to think upon waking to find oneself literally nowhere. She'd closed her eyes again immediately on noticing it. It always gave her a little bit of a headache to look at nothing for too long. She wondered if that was because a human mind wasn't really able to cope with trying to interpret the appearance of nothing at all, if human eyes could even see it properly. She stopped herself. Think too far along those lines and you start to wonder how you're breathing, which could be dangerous. Poor Eddie wouldn't last five minutes here without maybe dyin' in a fit of logic.
A better idea was to try to untangle why she'd been kicked out this time. She'd thought things were going... well, ok, they weren't fine, but she could think about that mess later. Crying wouldn't do anyone any good right now, even if the last things she remembered made her question if she should bother trying to force her way back into a reality that seemed determined to be rid of her.
The older memories, previously sacrificed in her last madness-induced attempt to force reality to accept her, were settling in place like an old familiar blanket. It should have been scary, realizing your whole life was a trick, a lie to keep whatever powers controlled the world from realizing who you were and booting you out. Maybe to someone else it would have been, but her ability to be scared was a little... skewed, at best. And, besides, it was comforting to have it all finally make some sense.
The numbness began to give way to anger as she put the pieces together. She'd told Red she'd believed Selina when Selina had confessed to setting them up, but that was because she could tell Selina was telling what she believed was the truth... and because she hadn't remembered that reality would change the past if it suited it to get rid of something, and alter people's memories to suit. Had any of it ever really made sense? Maybe, maybe not... but now she wasn't sure who to blame for that.
She'd been running when she'd heard something... no, not really heard... It hadn't been a sound. It hadn't been something audible to human ears. That was just how her mind interpreted it in that last second. A crack, and a sound like breaking glass... a sound she normally enjoyed hearing. It sounded so freeing...
It was only then that she realized she could still hear it, or at least a sound like pieces of glass falling... or like some wind-chime, playing a melody. She'd been hearing it all along, but it was like the sound itself had tried not to intrude on her thoughts... a concept that made perfect sense outside of reality, but only if something else were here.
There could be some nasty things between worlds, and she had to look around. And then she frowned. On second glance, this wasn't the same nowhere she'd been before. It didn't hurt her eyes and head as much, for starters. And it was a lot more... inside out, or at least that's how her mind was interpreting it. Inside was a possible-infinity containing almost nothing except herself. Outside was interpreted as the inside of the enormous crystal in front of her, which was also the source of the sound. Flickers of light moved within the stone like some kind of liquid opal, and as they moved there was a music made of broken things... Broken realities.
She paused. That last thought had almost felt like her own, but it wasn't. And other than herself and the Crystal - which definitely felt like it deserved a capital letter but didn't feel like something that could speak - what was there? Light and the shadows it cast... some beads of water on the surface of the Crystal.. a delicate tracing of metal on parts of it, in patterns of spirals and angles and fractals... a soft breeze... and an occasional flicker of what looked like fire or lightning across the facets.
Here is where we look in, or outward, at what we've collected.
As she looked at the shifting lights, she knew. As much as she played the dumb blond because she liked people to underestimate her, it was all a gag. And what was inside - or outside - the Crystal, was a collection of fragmented broken realities. Including hers. It hadn't kicked her out this time. "Oh geeze, someone broke the universe. I'm guessin' it wasn't under warranty. Or insured..?"
There was no insurance. There was just us.
"Heh, funny, but that loses the pun when you're not talkin' about justice... not that there was much of that either." Oh, Jack...
Much of the rest of the conversation her mind couldn't easily put into words. There was no Time for anyone else, and without Time they couldn't be hurt, or dead... or alive. They were preserved like bugs in amber, waiting for a remake of Jurassic Park. And that was going to be her job. Not resurrecting dinosaurs, but pulling everyone else into a new reality, like she'd done multiple times before with herself in the old one. And making sure, along the way, that even if they maybe weren't completely safe or textbook sane, they'd at least keep things consensual. In return, the powers behind the new reality would let her do what she'd wanted all along... because it was something they wanted to have happen as well.
And if they'd let her do that, she'd happily do whatever the voices in her head told her to do.
Her second coherent thought was that that probably wasn't a normal thing to think upon waking to find oneself literally nowhere. She'd closed her eyes again immediately on noticing it. It always gave her a little bit of a headache to look at nothing for too long. She wondered if that was because a human mind wasn't really able to cope with trying to interpret the appearance of nothing at all, if human eyes could even see it properly. She stopped herself. Think too far along those lines and you start to wonder how you're breathing, which could be dangerous. Poor Eddie wouldn't last five minutes here without maybe dyin' in a fit of logic.
A better idea was to try to untangle why she'd been kicked out this time. She'd thought things were going... well, ok, they weren't fine, but she could think about that mess later. Crying wouldn't do anyone any good right now, even if the last things she remembered made her question if she should bother trying to force her way back into a reality that seemed determined to be rid of her.
The older memories, previously sacrificed in her last madness-induced attempt to force reality to accept her, were settling in place like an old familiar blanket. It should have been scary, realizing your whole life was a trick, a lie to keep whatever powers controlled the world from realizing who you were and booting you out. Maybe to someone else it would have been, but her ability to be scared was a little... skewed, at best. And, besides, it was comforting to have it all finally make some sense.
The numbness began to give way to anger as she put the pieces together. She'd told Red she'd believed Selina when Selina had confessed to setting them up, but that was because she could tell Selina was telling what she believed was the truth... and because she hadn't remembered that reality would change the past if it suited it to get rid of something, and alter people's memories to suit. Had any of it ever really made sense? Maybe, maybe not... but now she wasn't sure who to blame for that.
She'd been running when she'd heard something... no, not really heard... It hadn't been a sound. It hadn't been something audible to human ears. That was just how her mind interpreted it in that last second. A crack, and a sound like breaking glass... a sound she normally enjoyed hearing. It sounded so freeing...
It was only then that she realized she could still hear it, or at least a sound like pieces of glass falling... or like some wind-chime, playing a melody. She'd been hearing it all along, but it was like the sound itself had tried not to intrude on her thoughts... a concept that made perfect sense outside of reality, but only if something else were here.
There could be some nasty things between worlds, and she had to look around. And then she frowned. On second glance, this wasn't the same nowhere she'd been before. It didn't hurt her eyes and head as much, for starters. And it was a lot more... inside out, or at least that's how her mind was interpreting it. Inside was a possible-infinity containing almost nothing except herself. Outside was interpreted as the inside of the enormous crystal in front of her, which was also the source of the sound. Flickers of light moved within the stone like some kind of liquid opal, and as they moved there was a music made of broken things... Broken realities.
She paused. That last thought had almost felt like her own, but it wasn't. And other than herself and the Crystal - which definitely felt like it deserved a capital letter but didn't feel like something that could speak - what was there? Light and the shadows it cast... some beads of water on the surface of the Crystal.. a delicate tracing of metal on parts of it, in patterns of spirals and angles and fractals... a soft breeze... and an occasional flicker of what looked like fire or lightning across the facets.
Here is where we look in, or outward, at what we've collected.
As she looked at the shifting lights, she knew. As much as she played the dumb blond because she liked people to underestimate her, it was all a gag. And what was inside - or outside - the Crystal, was a collection of fragmented broken realities. Including hers. It hadn't kicked her out this time. "Oh geeze, someone broke the universe. I'm guessin' it wasn't under warranty. Or insured..?"
There was no insurance. There was just us.
"Heh, funny, but that loses the pun when you're not talkin' about justice... not that there was much of that either." Oh, Jack...
Much of the rest of the conversation her mind couldn't easily put into words. There was no Time for anyone else, and without Time they couldn't be hurt, or dead... or alive. They were preserved like bugs in amber, waiting for a remake of Jurassic Park. And that was going to be her job. Not resurrecting dinosaurs, but pulling everyone else into a new reality, like she'd done multiple times before with herself in the old one. And making sure, along the way, that even if they maybe weren't completely safe or textbook sane, they'd at least keep things consensual. In return, the powers behind the new reality would let her do what she'd wanted all along... because it was something they wanted to have happen as well.
And if they'd let her do that, she'd happily do whatever the voices in her head told her to do.