Participants:
| Scene Title | No Light, No Light |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | No light, no light in your bright blue eyes / I never knew daylight could be so violent / A revelation in the light of day / You can't choose what stays and what fades away |
| Date | November 10, 2011 |
“Else!”
The scream comes as Robyn Quinn suddenly jolts upright, arms flailing out in front of her. Each movement elicits pain, and once upright she gasps for air, a hand over her heart as she pants. Her other hand grips into sheets, old and only providing just enough warmth to keep her from being freezing in the November air. As her breathing slows back down, a hand reaches up, running over her face.
Everything was- fuzzy. Her head hurt like it never had before, and there wasn’t any readily available aspirin for her to take. Her room is dark, shaded by a midafternoon late fall sky and clouds. She groans, trying to think. Bit and pieces of the previous day float in her mind - the break into the Ark, winding through the halls with Eve, hearing Else through the door, the red door to the gallery. Simon Broome making more sense than she’d care to admit.
She rubs at her eyes, trying to focus. To brighten the room up a bit. The drainage ditch filters in next, and immediately she squeezes her eyes shut. A horse “No” escapes her lip as she remembers the grenade explosion. Eric. And then Else, dying in her arms. She had felt the other woman’s last breath, a voice echoing as it replays in her mind, "enjoy what time you all have left." The picture in her mind blurs as tears well up in her eyes again, so she swallows hard and fights them back. Maybe it was all just a bad dream, yeah?
She turns in her bed, and everything hurts.With a small yelp, she looks down at herself - dressed, but bandages up and down her arms. She can feel one on her temple too. That’s right she tells herself. She recalls passing out from fatigue and shock near the end of Stand by Me, still in Griffin’s invisible grasps inside of the truck. Megan had been looking over her, at one point, she thinks. How long ago had that been? Long enough that she was absolutely starving.
With a pause, she looks up, around at the room she’s in. “Her” room on Pollepel, as much as any room belongs to anyone. She must have been brought here, or maybe came back here on her own, at some point. But something doesn’t seem right. It’s not just that it’s darker than the midafternoon normally is, something seems wrong. She can’t quite put her finger on it, though, rising with a pained grunt from the bed and to her feet. She’s largely more sore than she is hurt, at least when it comes to her legs. That doesn’t mean getting up and walking around the room is comfortable.
She takes a look around the room. Her vision still swims, a hazy filter on everything she sees - despite that, she can make out things well enough. Her dark grey bag, and another next it - the one Eve had thrown her in Else’s room. The bed, white and paler white. The stonework of Bannerman’s Castle, the same dull grey as ever. The door, so dark it almost looks black in the poorly lit room. Quinn wrinkles her nose, looking to the room’s single window, out into a grey sky and-
Wait.
She had assumed the grey sky was overcast, cloudy, dreary like her mood. But what she sees steals the air from her lungs as she walks her way towards the opening. The sky is clear, not a cloud to be seen. The sun hangs in the sky, a bright white ball of fire in the sky, her eyes almost feeling like they burn as she looks out into the bright world outside her window. The grass, some of it drifting lazily back and forth in a breeze, is a bright, pale grey, blending into other elements of the world around her.
The Irishwoman gasps, stumbling back from the window. Clumsily her feet catch on each other, sending her falling back first to the stone floor. She practically screams as she lands, back arching as pain shoots through her. She grits her teeth, hair spread around her as she stares up at the ceiling, and she begins to remember every time she’s had this headache.
The first time she had been with Colette, “training” as the other photokinetic called it. Quinn called it torture at the time, but now she saw the wisdom in it. Except- they had made a grave discovery that night. "You just found your limitation." Colette’s words echoed in Quinn’s mind, the revelation that she was unable to paint a red fish because she couldn’t see red, that colourblindness may be the cost of her ability, just as Colette had blown out her cornea entirely with hers.
And that was only the first time, other times she had pushed herself coming to mind. Pulling Koshka from a hospital with Brian. Fighting alongside Ygraine and others to save a friend God knows how many years in the past. Her mission with Raith and Avi and others. A few of many times she had pressed herself a bit too hard. But each of those times, her vision had eventually corrected - a slight bit duller each time, but more or less correct. So what- what had done it this time? What couldn’t she remember?
She closes her eyes. She thinks. All she can drum up is the sound of a shrill scream, her own, the sound of gunfire, and a far off explosion. She lets out a sob as she opens them once more, her cheeks damp. Maybe she would remember, in time, but all she could do now was stare at the ceiling with the knowledge that she had lost a part of herself. And something about the fact that everything she could see was greyscale this time, about the way her head and eyes hurt…
It might not be coming back, this time.
Gaze still up on the dark ceiling above her, she lets out a coughing sob - that fall might have reopened something, it feels like - and holds her hands up into the air in front of her. She clenches both hands into a fist, and then flexes her fingers out, bidding the room to light up around her, to give her some light so she can see better to get up and do- something besides lay here.
But nothing happens.
Quinn furrows her brow. That’s never happened before. She narrows her eyes, and does it again. Still nothing. “W-What…” Her voice is quiet, meek as her eyes widen. Again. Same result. A third time, and a pattern emerges. She doesn’t see any change in the light, she doesn’t feel anything like she normally does. “No no no no NO NO NO NO!” she yells as she tries again and again and again. Each time, the result is the same - no light bleeds from her hands, nothing changes around her, and that subtly electric and warm feeling doesn’t fill her fingers.
She breaks into sobs more earnestly as she tries one last time, straining until she feels something pop and pain shoots through her side. Hands fall back down to cover her face as she lets out a scream at the top of her lungs.
She just lays there, crying until she can’t anymore, thinking to herself about the dying of the light.