Emma finds herself trapped; Once again and years later. Rated 'R' not for sexual content or swearing, but for disturbing imagery.

I own- Uh... ::looks around and comes up with a handful of coins:: I own this change. Many thanks to Indiana, Andrea, and Stacy, who all were nice enough to do a beta for me.

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Somewhere, hair falls from shoulders to drip to the cement and faded dust. Once upon a time, it was dyed; stripped of colour and covered over.

Somewhere, it's long and silver and flowing. Here, now, it's shock white, crashes around in tiny braids.

Somewhere, there's a room where the pillars and some of the walls have fallen, and the wires left hanging randomly from the ceiling after the fire storms have long since been cleaned up. There's a desolate place, where the only light comes from the fading sun through the hole in the outside wall, and where there's a sound like clinking glass as someone rocks, head to knees, head to knees.

Somewhere.

*

There's blood.

There's smoke and grinding and blood and blood and she knows that there has to have been something else, has to be something else.

Scott has wonderful eyes.

She's never seen them before, never seen anything but the bright reflections of his visor or his glasses.

He really does have wonderful eyes.

She wishes that he'd never close them.

It's a shame about the rest of his face.

It's a bloody shame.

She's always liked green eyes, but for Scott, she'll make an exception.

She traces his eyes with hers. Imagines for a second that his eyes trace hers right back.

Her foot won't move.

She rests her forehead on the floor, tries to wiggle her toes. Her toes will move, but her foot won't. Does it hurt? She's never been able to tell in this form. She looks up, her hair falling into her face.

"Does it hurt?" She asks Scott.

He doesn't say anything.

"Does it, does it?"

His eyes stare at her. She can swear that she saw them glaze over.

He's still looking at her.

Why is he still looking at her?

"Close your eyes," she says.

Close your eyes.

Why won't he close his eyes?

She closes hers, rests her head on the floor again. The edge of a board pokes up, catches her on the cheek. "QUIT LOOKING AT ME!" she screams, her hands over her ears. She whirls, sits, kicks at whatever it is on her foot. She feels something give, and she's free.

She stands quickly, and the world spins, and she wonders why she's sitting down.

There's a second of time, can't be more than a second, and when she opens her eyes, the room is brighter.

Scott's still looking at her.

She stands, strides over to him where he lays just outside the door. Goes to hit him in the shoulder, make him pay attention, but there's no shoulder. No shoulder, no arm, no chest.

She's going to forgive him for staring, because he's obviously lost his head over her. So she steps out of his field of vision, steadies herself against the hall wall. Only the hall wall is gone, so she steps into the living room, trips on something that rolls under her feet. Tries to catch her balance and steps on something else.

There's something wrong, she thinks as she falls.

She can see the sky, lying there, and she slowly realizes it. The sky is too cloudy, tinged with orange.

It can't be a harvest moon. There's too much light.

Good show. She's figured it out, and now it won't have to bother her anymore. She stretches in satisfaction, her toes hitting something. Something soft like pillows. She starts to pivot on her hip, but realizes that she's made an indent in the floor where she has fallen. So she sits, flicking her hair back out of her eyes.

There's something gold on the floor, among the red. It's round, and shining, and has something sitting in it that's...

That's...

It's rather like her. She's sure that it has some significance, but it doesn't really matter much.

The shiny gold thing is on something round. She moves her eyes, tracing the line up to a spot of shadows that somehow resemble a face. There's a difference in the red around it. Looks almost like hair.

There's a round dent in the side wall, the one reinforced with Shi'ar alloys. She wonders how it got there, but decides that as long as she's not the one who has to pay for it...

There's a bell going off in her head.

It has something to do with grade ten physics.

Landing doesn't kill you.

You stop someone a foot from the ground, and unless you slow down their velocity before the impact, it'll still kill them, even if they do hit a field instead of a wall...

Instead of the ground, that is. People don't ever fall into walls.

There are grey shadows coming from the place in the big shadow that resemble the ears and nose, if this was a real person. Something grey, pooling against the red.

But she doesn't think that she ever took grade ten physics.

*

"Bloody hell!"

"Hold on!"

"..."

"HOLD ON TO HER!"

"..."

"Grab her arm again."

"...Now what?"

"Tie that strap around her arm. I'll get her feet, you get her head."

"..."

"I thought I told you... to... hold... on..."

"She flonqing *bit* me!"

"Don't drip on the floor."

"Fine sympathy you have there."

"It's not you I'm worried about right now."

"Any idea what brought this on?"

"You tell me. You're the telepath."

"You think that this is psychological?"

"Look at her. It's not physical."

"..."

"You got on the stat?"

"There's no one close. They're coming in, but..."

*

There was a flash, she thinks. There's something that her mind wants to tell her, some connection that it wants her to make.

She sits in what used to be the living room, her legs to the side, head cocked, listening.

There's creaking and groaning, and the whistling of the wind. Somehow, there's one curtain left on the window, hanging down at an angle. It flaps wildly in the breeze, brushing the back of her head.

There was a flash. She'd been in the sitting room, mind open.

Mind open.

Maybe if her mind was open now...

No.

No.

Something bad would happen.

She'd been in the sitting room, then there was a flash of fear from somewhere, screamed over the bands, and she knew...

No.

She didn't know anything.

No.

There was supposed to be someone else here.

There were supposed to be three someone elses here. There's only... one. The others are...away, she thinks. Somewhere else.

She stands up, brushing at her skin, her clothes, brushing at the dust and red and other colours that are there only in her mind.

She's at the stairs to the basement before she realizes that she was going to move. She stands there for awhile, looking at the overturned table and the door off its hinges before she realizes that the hole must really be where the stairs used to be.

She hears a groan, a whimper, and steps down, steps through and lands with a crash on pieces of wood, her skin slamming through the pile. The halls are dark, lit only by a faint glow coming from down the left corridor. She stands silent, and she thinks that she hears the whimper again, like an animal in pain, and she heads towards the light. She stumbles in the dark, her feet finding debris lurking in the shadows like relics from ancient times.

The glow is closer and she thinks that if she were open, then she could feel the warmth.

She's cold. She's so very cold.

She stumbles in, reaches for the warmth, reaches, and is about to take it when she sees Something Blue on the floor.

She thinks that this used to be a lab. She thinks that the warmth licking just outside her reach must be because some kid mixed his chemicals wrong.

Maybe the Something Blue will tell her how to fix it all.

She leans forwards, shakes its shoulder to ask it, jumps back when it moans. She slips in something wet and knocks a table, the clanging echoing hollowly.

She hadn't realized how quiet it was, the white noise of the wind and the crunching of glass beneath her feet.

There's another moan, and a head looks at her, broken glasses dangling from one ear. The eyes are almost swollen shut, the paw-hand that waves at her weak. She can hear breathing now, rasping, rattling.

Slowly, she creeps forward.

God.

This isn't...

Happening.

Closes a hand on the paw. It engulfs her diamond hand easily, swallows it up past the wrist.

This

Isn't...

"You know?" He asks, his voice falling to the floor like sand.

Happening...

She shakes her head vigorously, her hair flying around her, filling the air with flying white.

*

"Why the hell isn't anyone here?"

"There's no one close enough. They can't... You know what the roads are like, Nathan."

"..."

"... I don't think that this can wait any longer."

"Dom, you know that since the Tempest frays I can't..."

"...Maybe I can."

"Did I miss something major? Like your developing telepathy?"

"I think that you can get me in. You can do that much, even if it's not safe for you."

*

She knows.

She knows.

God damn it, she knows.

The flash of fear from the satellite control agents, a second before...

Before the...

New York has to be gone. New Salem has to be gone.

Hank smiles a little bit, and she can see the effort that it takes him. She shakes her head again. This can't be...

The basement protected him. He didn't die right away.

She can tell, though. She can tell by looking at him that it wasn't enough, that he knows that it wasn't enough.

How much longer does he have? An hour? A day? A week?

He grimaces in pain, the muscles spasming under his shirt, and his grip on her hand tightens. When he releases, she can see blood well up from his palms. Her fingers, her nails, too sharp, too sharp.

How long does he have of this?

She can't save him.

She can't help him.

She can't even touch him.

Can't move him and even if she did, he's been here too long.

She can't...

She can't...

He takes her hand again, squeezing it tightly, and she knows that he's bleeding more. The blood is dripping from between his fingers, crystal drops hanging for an eternity before finally spilling to the floor.

She thinks she might be crying crying.

She leans forward, kisses him on the forehead. Lets her face rest there, and he tries to smile, tries so hard, but he grimaces suddenly. She knows she's crying now, never mind that it should be impossible, because there are wet spots blossoming into being on his fur, and she holds his hand tighter. Raises her other one, rests her fingers along his throat, and he nods his head once.

Her eyes are on his, always on his, and she knows that if she looks down, then she'll see white against blue...

And there's red and red and...

*

"Urg..."

"I never thought that I'd have to hold your hair back while you threw up, Dom."

"We all thought that she was away on business."

"What?"

"We... we all *assumed* that she was away on business. That she was in a plane, or..."

"What are you trying to say?"

"She wasn't... She was... We didn't even ask..."

"Dom..."

"Emma was at the Mansion when the bombs came down, Nathan. She was *there*."

"..."

"Five years with that. Five years without a word."

"..."

"She was there."

*

One foot in front of the other. Left. Right. Left. Right.

One foot. One foot.

One step at a time.

She doesn't know how long she sat there. The fire would have been so easy. Just take the warmth.

She's so cold.

She's so tired.

Left. Right.

Her footsteps stretch behind her, a wandering line against the dried and broken grass.

Somewhere, there's a room with broken walls and a dusty floor, and somewhere there are voices, but she's here, in every moment, living every step like she has for the past five years. Somewhere, someone is thrust into her mind, among the recollections that push each other as far apart as they have pushed her.

She's become the steps, so that everything that she's done since the Tempest is just one more foot in front of the other, one more thing to just get through.

There's a sound, so quiet that she doesn't even realize that she's hearing it at first. She just keeps on walking, one foot in front of the other, a beam of light reflecting dully off of her skin. Here, she hasn't shifted back to normal. Ever.

She turns her head finally, wondering if it's the end, but it's Domino, her footsteps stretching back by Emma's own for a short distance across the horizon.

She doesn't say anything, because somehow, she has to sense that this is a place that swallows words, and that Emma hasn't really heard anything for so long that it might scare her completely away.

Emma's gone back to just watching her feet again.

This isn't real.

She isn't real, because *this* is all that there is, just one step, and another, the sun dancing circles around her when it will, the diffuse light glinting off of the blood on her hands.

There's a hand on her shoulder now, and the touch startles her so much that she stops walking.

She stares down at her feet dumbly.

She doesn't know how she'll get going again.

Domino is looking at her with startlingly bright eyes, her tattoo glowing.

She doesn't know how to get going again.

Domino takes one step back, slowly, her eyes still on her.

She doesn't know what to do any more.

So when Domino steps back again, footsteps falling deliberately, she looks down, and slowly, so slowly, picks up a foot.

Maybe this is a way to start again.

The pattern falls differently, even when she places her feet the same, and she thinks that she's going up.

The world is fading around her, and her footsteps are bright against the grass behind her.

*

Somewhere, a gasping breath is drawn as a pair of eyes shiver open.

And somewhere, a pattern is broken, and footsteps echo hollowly on the breeze.

The original can be found at http://cherryice.topcities.com/cherry/PoI.html