Women Fandom Hates - Day 3 [Terra]
Title: cracked carousels
Fandom: Teen Titans
Summary: It's nice to have a home away from the home you never had.
Notes: Written for day one of the Women Fandom Hates - Love Fest comm.
It’s hard to keep running, Terra thinks. It’s hard, day after day, to go from place to place and watch the world crumble around you. A mantra repeats in her head, don’t lose control, don’t lose control, and amidst her tears she starts choking it out, desperate as the ground flanking her trembles and cracks, stalagmites ripping their way up through the earth.
“Stop it!” She screams, berating them and herself, everything tinted yellow.
When the mob stopped chasing her, Terra will never know. How many of them are still alive she’ll never know either. It’s one of those things she’s starting to learn not to think about. Vision blurred with tears and yellow light, she runs and runs and runs until she stops, falling over her own feet and landing on the ground with a cry, feeling her skin pull and tear and how fitting is it that the earth just keeps hurting her?
Knees skinned and face wet, she lies there, focusing only on not moving, not thinking, not doing anything that could cause the earth around her to break and tremble. Instead, she trembles. She trembles, cold though it’s summer, crying until the sunny gold filter fades from the dark night sky.
How long she spends there is another thing Terra will never know. That list is rapidly growing, starting with how to be a proper princess to what she wants out of life to how to keep these damn powers in check to how to make herself stop crying upon remembering the bloodstained rocks that fall as she walks. Eventually her leg twitches and the blood on her knee mixes with dirt, eliciting a small cry and a wince. Groping about, she pushes herself to unsteady legs, immediately reaching up to wipe her eyes as she stumbles about. It’s now that she realizes she’s not in the middle of nowhere, lying in the Nevada desert, but apparently in a place with buildings, for her hand catches a wall of some kind. When her vision clears, Terra can finally see where she is-- and what her hand rests on.
She’s behind a red and white striped building, colors faded with time and neglect, a little power generator switch just an arm’s length away, its metal cage rusted away so no key is required to get to it. Another thing Terra will never know-- why she wants to pull it and why she does, because there’s likely nothing to turn on with something this abandoned and unloved.
And yet.
A cheerful, uplifting carnival tune starts up, machines whirring to life and lights spreading out from behind the facade she stands near. Terra sniffs and wipes away more tears, a soft murmur of confusion escaping her as she walks around, leaning heavily against the wall. Before her stands something more beautiful than any palace or dress or crown in the world.
It’s an amusement park. It’s old and abandoned, left alone to rot, yet some twist of fate means power still remains, a merry-go-round ahead of her already lit up and playing a jaunty tune. Rollercoasters, carnival games, weird whirl-a-gig rides-- before her stands a whole world she’s only ever heard about. It’s a childhood. And, she slowly realizes, it’s hers, all hers, spread out in front of her waiting for her to run to it and curl up in its embrace.
So what if it’s a little bit cracked and faded. It’s still good. It’s broken, but it is hers and nothing will ever make that thought stop repeating. She’s walking, limping, slow and then as fast as she can, breathing heavily and brushing her hands over everything she can.
Fresh sobs break out, but they’re accompanied by a hand grabbing a close hanging stuffed animal, a large green dog that she wraps herself around as she slides down the game stand it comes from, mixed laughter and tears as the soothing sound of lost childhood sings her to sleep.
Fandom: Teen Titans
Summary: It's nice to have a home away from the home you never had.
Notes: Written for day one of the Women Fandom Hates - Love Fest comm.
It’s hard to keep running, Terra thinks. It’s hard, day after day, to go from place to place and watch the world crumble around you. A mantra repeats in her head, don’t lose control, don’t lose control, and amidst her tears she starts choking it out, desperate as the ground flanking her trembles and cracks, stalagmites ripping their way up through the earth.
“Stop it!” She screams, berating them and herself, everything tinted yellow.
When the mob stopped chasing her, Terra will never know. How many of them are still alive she’ll never know either. It’s one of those things she’s starting to learn not to think about. Vision blurred with tears and yellow light, she runs and runs and runs until she stops, falling over her own feet and landing on the ground with a cry, feeling her skin pull and tear and how fitting is it that the earth just keeps hurting her?
Knees skinned and face wet, she lies there, focusing only on not moving, not thinking, not doing anything that could cause the earth around her to break and tremble. Instead, she trembles. She trembles, cold though it’s summer, crying until the sunny gold filter fades from the dark night sky.
How long she spends there is another thing Terra will never know. That list is rapidly growing, starting with how to be a proper princess to what she wants out of life to how to keep these damn powers in check to how to make herself stop crying upon remembering the bloodstained rocks that fall as she walks. Eventually her leg twitches and the blood on her knee mixes with dirt, eliciting a small cry and a wince. Groping about, she pushes herself to unsteady legs, immediately reaching up to wipe her eyes as she stumbles about. It’s now that she realizes she’s not in the middle of nowhere, lying in the Nevada desert, but apparently in a place with buildings, for her hand catches a wall of some kind. When her vision clears, Terra can finally see where she is-- and what her hand rests on.
She’s behind a red and white striped building, colors faded with time and neglect, a little power generator switch just an arm’s length away, its metal cage rusted away so no key is required to get to it. Another thing Terra will never know-- why she wants to pull it and why she does, because there’s likely nothing to turn on with something this abandoned and unloved.
And yet.
A cheerful, uplifting carnival tune starts up, machines whirring to life and lights spreading out from behind the facade she stands near. Terra sniffs and wipes away more tears, a soft murmur of confusion escaping her as she walks around, leaning heavily against the wall. Before her stands something more beautiful than any palace or dress or crown in the world.
It’s an amusement park. It’s old and abandoned, left alone to rot, yet some twist of fate means power still remains, a merry-go-round ahead of her already lit up and playing a jaunty tune. Rollercoasters, carnival games, weird whirl-a-gig rides-- before her stands a whole world she’s only ever heard about. It’s a childhood. And, she slowly realizes, it’s hers, all hers, spread out in front of her waiting for her to run to it and curl up in its embrace.
So what if it’s a little bit cracked and faded. It’s still good. It’s broken, but it is hers and nothing will ever make that thought stop repeating. She’s walking, limping, slow and then as fast as she can, breathing heavily and brushing her hands over everything she can.
Fresh sobs break out, but they’re accompanied by a hand grabbing a close hanging stuffed animal, a large green dog that she wraps herself around as she slides down the game stand it comes from, mixed laughter and tears as the soothing sound of lost childhood sings her to sleep.