#im back babey | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rogueshadeaux · 8 months

Text

STASIS ➳ An inFAMOUS: Erosion mini-fic

I wrote the first bit of this in December before publishing Erosion, when I was still feeling/figuring out what tale I wanted to tell. It’s a portion I refuse to edit, so excuse any issues — I love that I was able to return to this sure of what I want Jean’s story to mean, and combine the two pieces into one. It means a lot to me.

See y’all next Monday!

The crash of the waves and the roar of the wind did nothing to eclipse the sound of screaming in his mind.

A simple text. I love you. Three sweet words he made sure to repeat to them again and again when the silence lasted just a bit too long, when the pauses felt like they needed to be filled. A mantra he wanted them to remember, to keep ahold of no matter where they went; no matter what, I have my father, who loves me. There was no sadness to the reason, no ill-raised childhood or lack of an emotional father to drive him. Quite the opposite, in fact; he strived to be as open and thoughtful and honest as his own parents. He knew his children would be disadvantaged, growing up with only him at their side, but that gave him nothing but drive to repeat those three words at any given chance; he wished to ensure they never knew a lack of love, even as they lacked a mother.

It wasn’t rare to hear the words back, but it was uncommon for those three words to be said unprompted first. Perhaps it was the holiday spirit, something overtaking his daughter’s heart as the sun set on Christmas Eve. It was enough to make him smile at least, as he checked his phone while trapped in near-standstill traffic as the pair approached Seattle. Barely a quarter-mile away was the less-congested turnoff towards Salmon Bay, towards home. Towards his family. There was a relief to it all, a yearn to retire the night with some cheesy Christmas movies and a return to traditions he had left behind for fear of risking those two he said I love you to most. For going home now was more than simple decompression, but a restoration of the person he abandoned at those shores all those years ago.

There was a harmony to returning to the cliffs of his clan, to the tides of his tribe. Pieces of him shattered years ago on that chilled August night, and only now did it truly feel like he could pull the shatterings together and glue them, creating a new mosaic that proudly shined his truth. The I love yous he’d promise away came unrestricted and unconditional because he feared they would feel the isolation he did when the clock would tick long past midnight and the stars would give away to the blush of dawn. When the years were younger and the lines less traced into his forehead, there were three he promised his love to — but fate and hate tore one away, and he buried so many pieces of himself that he felt more scar than skin as he reeled in the epilogue of loss. He had to, if he were to keep the other two safe.

When the truth came uncovered and his lies undone, there was an underlying fear that his deception wavered their trust in him — that his love would be thrown into question as well as his lies. That never happened. In fact, it gave him the chance to unconditionally resume to love the parts of himself he shooed away. The choice to share was ripped away from him, but perhaps that wasn’t a bad thing; it forced him to ratify reality, to share with his children the parts of himself he yearned to every day since they opened their eyes. He became more than their guide to life, but their guide to power as they mirrored him in more than features now. This spanned beyond how his son’s eyes would crinkle like his, or how his daughter seemed to jut out her jaw in thought just as he would during his studies; because now parts of them were welded to his being in ways no other parent would experience.

So returning home held meaning in more than one form now, something he was itching to return to — until that call.

They abandoned the truck right there in the stagnant traffic, letting it stay idling mindlessly as they rushed north. Past the interchange, past the dozens of vehicles and solid red brake lights. They glared at him in bursts like the eyes of a beast, pupils of demons that always seemed to hunt him down no matter how hard he ran.

And ran he did. Eclipsed in pink and blue, he ran, begging any god out there that was willing to listen that he wouldn’t be too late again. Not this time he begged the sky above and the water below his feet as they met the Sound and he ran above it. Don’t let me miss my chance this time.

The structure grew on the horizon, glinting in the light of the setting sun. A wave taller than the trees, a tsunami in standstill. Eugene’s creatures screamed behind him at the sight as He Who Dwells led their charge, Delsin their beacon of light as he ran closer and closer to Salmon Bay. That wave was enough of a glimmer of hope. They were fighting. They were still fighting.

The wave came crashing down, ripping against the surface of the water and rocking the world under Delsin’s feet as its power rushed towards him like the blast radius of a nuke. His steps faltered and he fell under the surface, the shock of the cold winter waters making him inhale a lungful of liquid. He reached out to call to the water as it sent him spiraling and pulled it to him, ribbons of pink and blue abandoning him for frothing fluid and allowing him to rise again, to break the tension of the rocking waves and try to find his footing against them.

Eugene had gone forward and met the battle with vengeance in his eyes, years of unspoken hatred lashing out with harsh strobes of hard blue light, sighted against the one person that caused him pain throughout the years. There were others fighting in broken armor, trying to battle the demons and failing in their fight.

None of that mattered to him. None of it except for a flash of silver in the sky that moved to meet him as he stood against the Sound. A pillar of steel grew at his side and his son landed on the platform white as a ghost, barely able to make a noise. “Dad—I tried to grab her but she—”

“Where’s your sister?” He demanded over the roar of the waves and the screams of the hellions. Brent glanced around like he couldn’t believe the scene, like he was questioning all that was occurring.

“Delsin! You need to stop the tidal waves before they flood Seattle!” the wrought voice of He Who Dwells screamed.

Delsin repeated, more stressed, “Brent, where is your sister?”

His son’s eyes met his, and that was the moment the chill of the world around him sank into his bones, for he knew that expression. He wore it time and time again as he grappled with the effects of sudden loss.

The next hours were a blur; assigning his son to guard the doors that held his people, following the pull of the wild waves and straining to hold them back in Elliot Bay, where his world was rocked years ago. Was it fate’s cruel humor that his daughter would fall like her namesake? Or had Delsin damned her to her sentence when he wrote that name on her birth certificate?

No. He refused to accept such a fact until he saw her himself.

The fight was all but won when he returned to the shores of Salmon Bay, Eugene now himself and standing over the corpse of a woman who haunted them both, concrete speared through her own chest in a final act of defiance. Delsin didn’t care about that; all he cared about was that Jean had not surfaced in the time he stilled it, and he screamed her name to the waters again and again like a siren wailing a sad tune as he dove under, searching for another corpse.

Christmas passed a day of mourning, Delsin refusing to leave the waters of the Sound as blue-steeled angels swarmed its surface as guardians, aiding in his search. Brent had spent the morning frozen in front of the fire until he was handed a small parcel with Jean’s handwriting on a sticker in front: to Asshole with a heart etched in the negative space over the double s. No. He refused to open it without her. She was the only gift he truly craved.

The sun traveled across the horizon until the waxing moon took its place, the half itself seeming to grieve with a dimmed light. A silhouette would shoot through its gleam every now and again as Brent joined his father in his efforts, staring down in the vast black water and praying its emptiness was nothing but a trick of the eye. Eugene was there in bursts, insisting they come inside while he cleared the area of any proof of that witch’s existence. But they refused.

The first night was fruitless. The second was restless. And by the time the sun began to set 72 hours later, it had become hopeless.

Not that the passing time registered to Delsin; none of it mattered. Not the way his eyelids screamed to close, not the soreness in his biceps, not the screams of his empty stomach. He was sure the only reason he wasn’t dehydrated was because he was continuously absorbing the Sound’s dark waters. Perhaps if he pushed enough, he could drain it entirely and perhaps, then, he’d be lucky.

But was it really luck when he was beginning to wonder whether she’d wish to be buried or cremated?

Of course, he knew the answer; it came almost a year ago when his children had the conversation, unaware of how hard he gripped the counter while trying not to imagine that moment. “I want to be cremated, the idea of being worm food scares me. Maybe have some ashes put in art,” she said. “Some big mural right in the middle of downtown.”

Brent laughed, he himself saying something about wishing to be pressed into a gem and shoved into a sword. “What do you want, Dad?” He asked.

Delsin had thought for it to to happen far before either of you pass.

The 28th came on high winds and cold snow, throwing it all around into a blinding and deafening haze. It beat the thermals out from under Brent, whipped Delsin’s chilled hair into his eyes until tears pricked in their corners. Not that that was the only reason; he was losing hope. He had lost another body to the embrace of the Sound. He had been too late to help someone just within reach yet again.

He breached the waters again, gasping for breath and sweeping his slick hair back. The wind pierced through the sheen icy water on his face and made his teeth chatter, left him shivering in place as he frantically looked around the surface. As if the answers would be hidden in its ripples.

But the gusts were so loud, he failed to hear his son's calls until he circled over him like a vulture. “Dad!” He screamed over the winds. “Dad, over here!”

And he whisked away with the pull of the air, leaving Delsin to pull himself atop the Sound’s waters and chase after him.

He could feel it before he saw it; a deep churning in the waters, one that pulled him aside as he ran like a turntable. It was all being directed to a swirling vortex, a circular undercurrent that wasn’t meant to happen in an estuary.

Despite the chill of the ice water on his skin, it was the first time Delsin had felt the fire of being alive in the past few days.

“Go get Eugene, now!” Delsin screamed up into the air before the thick liquid came out from under him and he fell below the surface, the cold doing nothing but shocking more determination into his system.

He kicked and pushed and swam deeper into the dark waters, begging for this to be it. Even when he couldn’t differentiate the reeds from the waves any longer, he pushed. But that blindness didn’t matter, not as he went deeper; something thin seemed to absorb the last of the light to itself, forming a sheen bubble that frothed around—

Her.

There she was, floating freely in a stasis that held her in a gentle embrace. There were so many parts of her that seemed untouched; the hat on her head, the crease of her jacket. Delsin could barely tell the difference between her silhouette and the Sound’s shadow but he just knew, deep in his heart, it was her — especially as he breached the frothing bubble to enter the lukewarm waters and took her in his arms. She felt nearly as weightless as the first time he ever held her, and yet all he could think of was the heaviness of her condition.

Eugene was there the moment he burst through the Sound’s waters, sputtering from holding his breath for so long as he looked down at Jean. His Jeanie, his daughter, who’s head lulled against his chest.

It was there that he noticed the severity of her condition.

Her lips had left their pink for the deepest blue, bits of white frost adorning her temples that slowly melted as the harsh wind hit them. He couldn’t differentiate what purple in her skin was from the cold or the bruising, but there was no mistaking the ever growing swirls of red blood that stained the water around them.

Eugene’s hand immediately felt for a pulse, and murmured as he timed it, looking up to meet Delsin’s eyes. “She’s alive, but barely,” He said.

Advanced regenerative abilities wasn’t the miracle it sounded like; a conduit still felt the pain, the sting. They would bleed all the same and succumb to injuries too great for their powers to heal.

Delsin looked back down; there was a stillness to her face he didn’t like. The blue of her lips and the gray of her cheeks reminded him all to much of Abigail in that one moment he could bare to look at her corpse to identify it.

“Delsin.” His friend said, pulling him out of the flashes. His eyes were earnest but frantic when he looked up.

“Help her,” Delsin begged. Even the wind couldn’t hide how his voice broke.

Eugene’s face steeled. “I have your permission to do anything?” He asked of his friend, knowing the weight of his request.

Delsin glanced back down to run a hand across her forehead, the movement staining it deep pink. He looked to his hand which was covered in blood, and then up to his friend to nod.

“Anything,” he said. “I can’t live without her.”

Jean was gone from his arms in a flash, snatched up by an angel as it veered east towards Seattle. Eugene was next, arms tucked around the hold of a minion as the water under Delsin solidified and he rose to the surface, his son close behind as the ran to see, with bated breath, if there was anything the Doctor could do to reverse her injuries, or if it was too late.

#infamous erosion #infamous second son #infamous OC #Delsin Rowe #sucker punch productions #IM BACK BABEY #LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO #I blame this on doot saying ‘oh idk if I’m gonna write’ and then throwing a piece at me when I was busy with childcare #bastard man #jk ily handsome #had to rush to get it done lmfao but it is HERE #anyways 7 days. I’m sitting in front of your bedroom window with my hair over my eyes like the girl in the ring. I’m so excited

11 notes · View notes