Kingdoms and Thorn Ficlet: The Apocalypse
Jun. 16th, 2015 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scribblemynameA/N: Written for the au apocalypse square on my Trope Bingo Card.
Summary: No one should walk through Dreamer's dreams. Two in this what if world might make it real.
Dreamer lies down to sleep, holding an image in her mind, and she dreams of a battle-torn field, the towers of a city in the far-off distance. It is dark out and the stars glimmer brightly in the clearness of the sky. There is another mind within hers, and she turns to the woman to say, "You should not be here."
No one should walk through Dreamer's dreams. Two in this what if world might make it real.
Dreamer looks out over the field of the end of the world. She can make out the faces of the teams on the fallen bodies, on the ones still up and fighting, but she does not know the faces of the enemies they battle against. In the middle of the field, a slender woman with golden skin and long, straight black hair falling across her cheeks stands, head thrown back to look up at the night sky.
This is Rain. She could destroy the world; she could remake it; she could do anything.
The mind within Dreamer's is Shield's, snapping into focus with the realization of what Dreamer has created around them, spun from possibility and a question at the tip of her thoughts.
Rain is rising into the sky on a fierce wind with the benefit of some ability, whether motive power or direct flight, Dreamer does not know. White light pours from Rain's fingertips and spills through her open palms. There is not even a soundless cry as one by one the stars go out and the world begins to crash in upon itself.
Dreamer holds the image of her own reality in her mind and watches it spin lazily into being as she wakes.
Shield is still with her, only now she is Thought, the more common handle for the more common task. "What did you ask?" comes the golden thought, pouring into Dreamer's head with an aura of radiant power that thickens her tongue in her mouth and fills her brain too full to bursting.
Dreamer wonders sometimes if Thought even knows what her power feels like to others, if she knows she is a telepath too strong for the world they are born in.
What did you ask? Thought needs to know, for as Rain abstains from the battlefield unless the need is great, so Thought is also Shield of unfathomable strength. Shield is the team member who has vowed to protect them all. And Dreamer... What did you ask? She dreams reality and what she fails to release becomes real.
They all have too much power.
She speaks it aloud and acknowledges how unlikely it seems. "What if we did not abstain?"
As thought lies beneath word, so the unspoken wonderment filters through Dreamer's mind and thus fills Thought's, wherever she is now, perhaps cities away.
Is this what will bring about the end of the world? That the team members do not give up their powers, do not give up being the outstretched hand of judgment and enforcement and strength, do not give up what they were created to be. In another reality, it is. In this one, Dreamer does not know. Yet.
It won't, Thought tells her, clipped and certain.
The Database has a saying, that there are limitations and those with special abilities are not all powerful. It is true enough as far as it goes, but there is another statement they all know and it goes further. Alone, we are easily captured. Together, we are invincible.
It won't, Dreamer agrees, because I will not dream this again.
Summary: No one should walk through Dreamer's dreams. Two in this what if world might make it real.
Dreamer lies down to sleep, holding an image in her mind, and she dreams of a battle-torn field, the towers of a city in the far-off distance. It is dark out and the stars glimmer brightly in the clearness of the sky. There is another mind within hers, and she turns to the woman to say, "You should not be here."
No one should walk through Dreamer's dreams. Two in this what if world might make it real.
Dreamer looks out over the field of the end of the world. She can make out the faces of the teams on the fallen bodies, on the ones still up and fighting, but she does not know the faces of the enemies they battle against. In the middle of the field, a slender woman with golden skin and long, straight black hair falling across her cheeks stands, head thrown back to look up at the night sky.
This is Rain. She could destroy the world; she could remake it; she could do anything.
The mind within Dreamer's is Shield's, snapping into focus with the realization of what Dreamer has created around them, spun from possibility and a question at the tip of her thoughts.
Rain is rising into the sky on a fierce wind with the benefit of some ability, whether motive power or direct flight, Dreamer does not know. White light pours from Rain's fingertips and spills through her open palms. There is not even a soundless cry as one by one the stars go out and the world begins to crash in upon itself.
Dreamer holds the image of her own reality in her mind and watches it spin lazily into being as she wakes.
Shield is still with her, only now she is Thought, the more common handle for the more common task. "What did you ask?" comes the golden thought, pouring into Dreamer's head with an aura of radiant power that thickens her tongue in her mouth and fills her brain too full to bursting.
Dreamer wonders sometimes if Thought even knows what her power feels like to others, if she knows she is a telepath too strong for the world they are born in.
What did you ask? Thought needs to know, for as Rain abstains from the battlefield unless the need is great, so Thought is also Shield of unfathomable strength. Shield is the team member who has vowed to protect them all. And Dreamer... What did you ask? She dreams reality and what she fails to release becomes real.
They all have too much power.
She speaks it aloud and acknowledges how unlikely it seems. "What if we did not abstain?"
As thought lies beneath word, so the unspoken wonderment filters through Dreamer's mind and thus fills Thought's, wherever she is now, perhaps cities away.
Is this what will bring about the end of the world? That the team members do not give up their powers, do not give up being the outstretched hand of judgment and enforcement and strength, do not give up what they were created to be. In another reality, it is. In this one, Dreamer does not know. Yet.
It won't, Thought tells her, clipped and certain.
The Database has a saying, that there are limitations and those with special abilities are not all powerful. It is true enough as far as it goes, but there is another statement they all know and it goes further. Alone, we are easily captured. Together, we are invincible.
It won't, Dreamer agrees, because I will not dream this again.
