multiversallogs | just let me know where you've been

Who: Laura Kinney
What: Feelings.
Where: Sobek Croix, the El, the northern woods
When: Sometime post-siege
Notes: Closed narrative
Warnings: Graphic self-injury

Laura does not really permit herself feelings. Feelings are difficult; first you have to determine what they are, then decide why you are feeling them and what you are going to do about it. She doesn't like to wallow in them the way most teenagers do, because for her there is always a goal. An endgame. Something happens to you, you do something about it, and move on. It's the same with emotion. You feel it, it compels you to do something, you move on to the next thing. That's its purpose, as she understands it. Emotion drives people to act.

But it doesn't work that way; it doesn't just go away when she does something about it. She doesn't understand what she has to do to make it stop.

She likes Sobek Croix because of the contrast. It's isolated and forested, but still a part of the city. She can disappear into the forested areas for hours, sitting quietly up in a tree and listening to bird calls, the faintly beating hearts of small animals which don't even notice she's there. The distant sound of human voices talking, laughing, shouting. Laura likes cities, for the most part. She likes being able to be lost in a crowd of people, the morning rush hour traffic as people make their way to work; it makes it easy to pretend that she's one of them. But she'll be left sitting on the train as morning gives way to noon and the car empties out, and she's alone, a stark reminder that, no.

She's not one of them.

There are other ways to let the feelings out.

When blood isn't enough, Laura will go for a long walk. Flag Hill is all steep rocky cliffs, and north of that are the woods -- seemingly endless (until you see the Fog) swaths of wilderness where even the loudest human voices don't reach. Some of the trees out here are so old they look to be piercing the sky. She likes to climb until the air gets thin, up the trees or just the rocky edges overlooking great chasms. Up there, truly, absolutely alone, she can pretend that it can always be like this, that she can stay here where it's safe -- not safe for her, but safe for everyone else.

Then she steps towards the edge and stares down it for a long time, contemplating. Sometimes it's enough for her to stand there and think, I could. Her memory is perfect; she knows exactly what it feels like, remembers every detail of the last one, and sometimes the ghost of a memory is enough. But sometimes it isn't, and that's when she takes the next step.

It's not suicidal.

For that, she'd need to be able to die.

When she wakes up minutes later, she drags herself into the quiet darkness of a cave or especially shaded area, where she'll sit for a long time waiting for her legs to snap back into places enough for her to walk home. She doesn't feel any more alive. It is not a reminder of how much worse things could be, or of the alternative, or of what else there is to fear. It's just that pain is familiar, like shaking hands with an old friend. She feels like she deserves it.

The bones in her legs eventually heal enough for her to get up and make the slow trip back home.