(no subject)

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason hasn't slept a night through since he was fourteen years old. It's nothing new, half his nightmares so familiar they happen almost by rote, though there's a few that still manage to terrify. He goes to bed in tired expectation, feels his body sleep and his brain light up. The fighter in him smiles and welcomes the chance to meet each falling crowbar with something better than child-sized fists, meet them with guns and blades and bombs, and in his dream Jason doesn't start screaming until the shadows grow long and bat-shaped.

He falls asleep in silence.

Jason wakes to his own gasping breaths in bed and the earth shifting beneath him.

"What the f - " he starts, but the world only shakes harder, something in the movement focused, personal. It's shaking his bed harder than anything, and Jason reaches out against the attack, seizes the gauntlet beneath his pillow and wishes it was a gun.

"You'll fucking wish - " he bellows, but as soon as the words leave him he feels himself forced violently back, propelled from his sheets and right into the air. His heart races - his bed's so close to the wall, he's gonna hit and there's no time to twist, nothing to grab, nothing to stop him and it's too fucking late to -

Jason's body flies through the bamboo with a mighty crack and is caught by the ground, coming to rest a dozen yards away with great rivets of earth in his wake.

There's a million things he should be doing. Lying there stunned feels like the best start.

[ooc: open to all in game, posted privately for preplay~ Jason just blew out the side of his hut, still in the boxers and tank top he went to bed in. His power is the sonic scream.]

Comments

[illuxinated]

There's been an odd sort of tension to several of the people Lux has passed on the boardwalk this morning. Instead of the typical polite smiles, they've seemed uneasy, introspective and almost wary as she passed them by. Dread creeps easily into the pit of her stomach these days, and each solemn or uncertain face coils it tighter. Nothing else seems wrong, but she can feel it, now: An anticipation that won't be dislodged. This place is too cruel too often for her to shrug it off.

A sound hits her out of nowhere, drops her down to her knees on the bamboo planks with her hands instinctively over her ears. She can feel it in her fingertips and reverberating in her chest, the sensation so distinctly physical that she doesn't immediately register it as a sound at all. The crack of splintering wood follows from the direction of the hut Jason shares with James. It's a mere whisper of sound against the ringing of her ears, but she scrambles to her feet and runs, heart in her throat.

At the end of a long trench of dark earth sprawls her boyfriend, dazed and unmoving. When she shrieks his name, her voice sounds dim and distant, heard through cotton or a bad line.

"Jason," she says again as she skids to a stop and drops by his side, shouting like her hearing aid battery has stopped working without her knowing it. "Look at me, are you okay?"

[prodigaljaybird]

There's someone shouting at him from underwater, and it sounds like Lux. Jason's eyes blink open. His vision swims, but her presence is instantly recognizable, her long hair tickling at his shoulder and smelling of coconut.

"Something's here," he says, or he thinks so, it's hard to tell through the ringing, but even as he says it he's rolling to his feet. Something's here, and Lux is, too, and there's no time to lament that he's once again put her in harm's way. His back aches, twinges protesting the movement. Jason groans and the earth trembles beneath their feet. "I can't see it," Jason says, more urgently now, "I can't protect you, run."

[illuxinated]

"What?" Lux says, less a question and more simply disbelief. Jason's need to protect her is something she instinctively understands, but it wars with her own nature. The ground shakes ominously beneath them, but she doesn't know how to leave him even after he's begged her to. She knows he's trying to protect her, but who is going to protect him?

"I'm not going to leave you here alone," she insists and feels stupid for it. What can she do against something that could throw Jason through a wall? Still, he's her boyfriend and she loves him, and running away when he's in danger is more easily said than done.