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hyperfixiation-station · 10 months ago

Text

Welcome Home

Based off this post by @simon-rileys :))

Pairing: GhostxReader

Summary: Picking Ghost up from the airport after 3 month long mission with your 4-year-old daughter. What could possibly go wrong?

I did write this on my phone, so please please please let me know if there are any errors. And, as always, no beta!

"Layla!" You say sternly, "stop running around, you're going to get hurt." Your 4-year-old daughter completely ignores you, just giggles and keeps running in circles around the baggage claim.

You sigh and shake your head, grinning ruefully. You can't blame her for her excitement. After all, she's going to see her dad after 3 longs months away. You'd be running around too if your body could manage it. Your heart rate quickens in anticipation at the thought, and you bounce up and down for a moment before getting winded and going back to monitoring Layla.

You watch her little braids with pink bows at the end flop up and down as she runs, zig zagging every which way. Oh well. As long as she is in your sights you can't get too upset. You shake your head as she squeals again, barely dodging an old man as she makes another lap, her chubby little legs never running out of energy

Where she gets it from, you'll never know. You certainly don't have that much energy. Especially not now. You laugh to yourself, looking down at where the small but obvious bulge in your stomach is, the sign of life that you have so carefully hidden with one of Simon's hoodies. Your hand strays to your pocket to touch the ultrasound photos, the ones you got a week ago when you went to find out the gender. You run your finger nervously along the edge of the photos, equal parts excited and anxious to tell Simon you are pregnant again.

You still remember telling him when you were pregnant with Layla. He'd been home at the time, and you had been absolutely terrified. You weren't even married at the time, and had never spoken about wanting kids. You almost had a breakdown when you handed him the positive pregnancy test and he just stared at it in silence. That was, until he looked up at you with a genuine smile and tears in his eyes and asked you to marry him. He didn't even have a ring.

Distantly you hear your daughter shriek, snapping you out of the memory. Your head shoots up, eyes wide and searching for her little form. You rake your eyes over the room, but you see no sign of a brunette in a little pink dress.

"Layla!" You cry, hurrying towards where you heard her voice, at the junction where the wrong terminal meets the baggage claim, "Layla, stay where I can see you!" She doesn't respond, and your heart rate picks up as you start to list off the worst-case scenarios.

"Layla!"

Ghost steps off the escalator, lips twitching under his mask. He had gone the roundabout way, take an extra 15 minutes to walk all the way to the other terminal, just so he could surprise his girls.

Gods he can't wait to see them. Yes, 3 months was really not that long compared to some of his other deployments, but to him, anytime spent away from his family felt like torture.

He never thought he would end up like this, a wife and a kid and a figurative white picket fence. It had always been in the cards for him to die alone. Or at least, he thought it was. And then you forced your way into his life, gave him something to fight for, gave him something worth living for. And gods how he loved you.

He hears a familiar giggle and freezes, snapping out of his reverie. He trains his eyes on the end of the hall, watching the crowd for you and Layla. Sure enough, a little pink ball of destruction comes hurtling around the corner, running full-speed for him. He drops his duffle bag to the ground, and waits for you to show, brow furrowing when you don't follow behind her.

He doesn't have time to dwell on it though, as his daughter appears before him in all her pink, glittery glory.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" She shrieks, launching herself at him. He wraps his arms around her, and hold her tight to his chest inhaling deeply. He can feel her small shoulders shaking, can hear her sniffing, can feel her tears on his neck. Guilt overwhelms him for a moment, self-hatred overpowering him for making her cry. Its gone in an instant, his frown vanishing as Layla places a sloppy kiss on his eyebrow, his cheeks are still covered by a mask.

"Daddy!" She squeals again, burrowing her face in his chest. "I mithed you!" Tears prick his eyes at the sound of her voice. He forgot how much he missed her adorable little lisp.

"I missed y' too, baby girl." He presses his forhead to hers for a moment before looking up, his eyes scanning the hallway for you, frowning again when your still not in sight. "Wh're's y'r mother?"

"She was being thlow tho I lef' her." She informs him, grinning happily as she plays with his dog tags, her head resting against his shoulder. He grins, closing his eyes for a moment as he savors the feeling of his daughter in his arms.

"She's slow, huh?" Ghost huffs, shaking his head at his daughter's antics, "well then le's go meet 'er."

Layla grabs at his face, shaking her head rapidly, looking a serious as an over-excited 4-year-old can manage.

"She has an 'uprise for you." She informs him solemnly. He tries nto to laugh, knowing shes trying to be very serious, but fails. She frowns, squeezing his face with her chubby little hands.

"I'th no' funny." She says crossly, " Mommy 'as an 'uprise for you."

"A surprise?"

"Yeth." She looks around, eyeing the strangers in the terminal before leaning next to his ear, "I'm not appothed t' thay nothin', but-" she breaks off into peals of laughter as Ghost covers her mouth with his free hand.

"If mommy says you're not supposed t', then y'r not sup-" He pauses, hearing your frantic voice echoing from around the corner, "y' didn't tell y'r mother where y' were goin', did ya now baby girl?"

She at least has the decency to look ashamed, hiding her face in his jacket as she shakes her head. He laughs softly and shifts, bending to pick up his duffle bag with his free arm. His daughter clings to his neck, her head buried in his chest as he moves down the hallway, heading toward your panicky voice.

"Layla where did yo-"

"I've got 'er luv, dontcha worry." You freeze in your tracks as Simon rounds the corner, your daughter in his arms. You stare at him wide-eyed, drinking in the sight of him af6er so many months apart. He's in a hoodie and jeans, a black mask covering the lower portion of his face. His dogs tags are out, Layla twirling them in her fingers. He looks exhausted and scruffy, his clothes dirty and torn, but you could care less. Just the sight of him alive and well is enough to make you cry.

He drops his bag to the ground and kicks it out of the way, opening his free arm to you. Tears well in your eyes as you launch yourself at him, wrapping you arms around him and Layla. His arm wraps around you and yoi feel him lean bacm, pulling you slightly off the ground, gently swinging you side to side before setting you down.

You stand in his embrace for a minute, face pressed into his side, savoring the feeling of being in his arms again. Your shoulders begin to shake, tears slipping from your eyes as you inhale deeply, the scent of him like manna to your soul. You let out a small sob and tighten your grip, digging your fingers into his side. You stand like that for a few minutes, a little family reunion in the middle fo the hallway, you sobbing silently while Simon rests his chin on your head, Layla's heel digging into your ribs. You pull back a moment later, rubbing a hand across your eyes as you inhale shakily.

"I missed you Si'." You laugh wetly, looking up at him. He doesn't say anything, just grabs you and pulls you in again, your head resting on his chest. Your daughter's chubby hand moves to rest on your head, her fingers twisting your hair into painful knots. You don't notice, to focused on trying not to cry again.

"I missed y' too luv." He murmurs after a minute, his chest rumbling beneath your forehead. He holds you for a few more seconds before stepping back, his eyes suspiciously shiny. "Now Layla says y' have a surprise f'r me?"

"That I do, dove." You sniff, rubbing your nose with the the back of your hand. You look down, biting your lip nervously as you take another step back. You slip your hand into your pocket, fingers closing around the little bundle of photos.

"Y'gonna expla-" His voice trails off as you pull the pictures from your pocket, handing them out to him. You watch as he gently sets Layla down and takes a slow step forward, his movements almost reverent. He takes the photos from your waiting hand, his eyes growing wet as he studies the photos of the 4 month old baby you have growing inside you. He can't read them, but he knows what they represent. After all, he has one of Layla's ultrasound photos in the pocket of his vest.

"Is this-are you…"

"Yes." You laugh, your voice thick, "we're having a baby boy. In April."

He laughs, a rare, genuine one, and sweeps you up in his arms, spinning you around in a circle. He sets you back down but doesn't let go. His hands slide down to your waist as he leans forward, pressing his forehead against yours. His eyes close as your arms wrap around his neck, and he exhales shakily, the warm air making your eyes flutter. You stand like that for what feels like ages, forehead-to-forehead, just breathing in the other's presence.

"Mommy!" You are brought back to the real world by your daughter, who is standing with her hand on her hips and glaring at you, "Th'op hogging daddy to yourthelf! I wanna turn!"

You chortle softly, stepping back from Simon. He huffs and shakes his head, giving you a very 'she gets this from you' type look. He scoops her up as she squeals, positioning her on his hip. He crouches and grabs his bag, hoisting it on his shoulder before grabbing your hand amd interlacing fingers. You step forward, tugging him behind you as you lead him out of the airport and back home.

"Was it a good surprise?" You murmur as you walk to the car.

"Very, luv."

"I'm glad. How would you feel if I tell you we're having twins?"

So here it is, a month later than promised @simon-rileys @dwkfan , sorry 'bout that

Lemme know what you think :)

#look at me #writing something nice for once #enjoy before i sucker punch yall im the guts again #simon ghost riley #cod fanfic #ghost fanfiction #ghost x reader #no beta we die like men #cod #fluff #ghostfluff #ghost cod #call of duty x reader #call of duty #screaming crying throwing up #cod x reader #simon riley x reader #simon riley

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rogueshadeaux · 2 years ago

Text

Chapter Eleven — Limitations

I hadn’t tried this with regular water even, yet. The entire thing was still a theory, a hypothesis that wasn’t even fully thought out and yet I began the experiment process. My other hand came out too, gauntlets of wet slowly rising from my skin as if sensing my own hesitation and being put off by the idea.

5K Words | 16 min read time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: look it's gonna be body horror from here on out lol my fav series as a kid was Animorphs. I might have issues.

We only got about three of the boxes out of Dad’s old bedroom before Betty demanded a pause; the living room was full, too full, of boxes, all still waiting to be unpacked. “Pick a package, kids! We’ll make three piles: home, donation, and trash.” Betty declared, pointing to spaces she managed to clear up on the floors. “We sort these quick, you all can run off and play with your powers after.”

“Betty, I am a grown man,” Dad mumbled, “I’m not going to go play with anything.”

Betty just chuckled, shaking her head in the way a mother did when she knew her kid was lying.

Betty wasn’t lying when she said the boxes were full of old home supplies; every box was chock full of random house things, nearly all of them outdated. Brent barked out a laugh at some point, leaning the box over to show me a collection of VHS tapes and a player, saying, “Jesus, look at these relics,” and I could physically see Betty and Dad both age an extra ten years.

I was in the midst of pulling out a bunch of ceramic, brightly-colored and slightly-chipped bowls and pots when Dad was the next to burst out laughing, pulling out a red, deflated…something. “Oh my God, Reggie kept this?” He shook his head in disbelief.

“What, uh…” I reached over to feel at another end; it felt like a pool floatie. “What is it?”

“There was this fad, when we were really young, to have inflatable furniture in your room. This,” he held up the plastic like a kill, bagged and tagged, “Is a chair. Reggie’s, not mine — mine was more tape than anything.”

Inflatable…furniture? Inflatable furniture.

We seemed both lucky, and consistently striking out, finding good things for the house while also filing through stuff that, in my opinion, belonged in a museum versus the house. Small dark blue drinking glasses that were printed, HAPPY NEW MILLENIUM 2000, a cast iron that Betty said was hers when she was Dad’s age, looking no less worse for wear. There was a box full of old rags and towels and, while they were scratchy and a bit worn, they’d do the job.

I opened another box, this one more worn than the rest, a folded filing of bursting colors immediately threatening to spill out from the pressure of being released. Soft browns and pure whites mixed with muted blues and reds woven into soft blankets, the patterns immaculate as I pulled one out. “Woah,” I gasped out. I had no idea how old it was, but the blanket was still so soft.

“Oh, goodness.” I heard Betty across the way. I looked up to see everyone was frozen. Brent had his head cocked to the side like a puppy, Betty was smiling sadly, and Dad…I don’t know what that face was supposed to be, but it definitely held a lot of emotion. “You found Ruth’s blankets.”

“Ruth?”

“My mother.” Dad said as flatly as he could manage, face still unreadable.

Brent caught his tone, looking over to Dad and then back to me, that silent twin conversation happening with the slightest twinge of our eyebrows. Betty, in an effort to either stoke the fire or kill it off, began to say, “Ruth learned how to do traditional weaving from our x̌əč̓usadad — traditional teachings. Long ago, those blankets were actually made of dog hair.”

“Dog hair?” Brent and I chimed in at the same time.

“An old breed that’s extinct now. The Akomish learned the technique from the Salish, long ago during trades.”

Absentmindedly, I stroked the blanket. It was soft, a bit scratchy like wool. “So this is dog hair?”

Betty chortled. “It would have been, a few hundred years ago. The dog we would harvest the hair from evolved into a shorthair. That’s just plain wool.” She reached out expectantly, and I passed over the folded blanket, Betty fluffing it out to show the intricate shape in its weaving, the blank middle stamped with a blue fish, Akomish-style. “This was handmade by Ruth. She dyed the wool, wove it on that big loom you saw in the Longhouse, and painted sʔuladxʷ — Salmon — in the middle. She used to be the one to run the traditional weaving seminars at the Longhouse.”

I pulled out another blanket, undoing it to look at the tightly woven blue and white sheet with a bird in the middle, some sort of eagle or hawk. Felt older than the rest. “Here, Regina, give me the box.” Betty asked, standing from her place on the couch. “You both should pick a blanket later tonight, when you get back. That one, though,” she stressed, gently pulling the blanket out of my hand, “Is your father’s — had it since he was a boy. Based his tattoo on it.”

I spun to face Dad, who pulled out of his depression in time to roll his eyes. “You have a tattoo?”

“Had,” he stressed. “Had it removed after we moved to Portland.”

When we fled to Portland, I could hear in the emotion of his sentence. Another piece of him, stripped away.

That box was the last on my side, Brent going through a final one full of china while Dad fished out a box of childhood toys he was adamant no one would want when Betty began talking about donating. He held onto the box with a tight arm though, guarding the Toy Story and old anime action figures as if they were gold.

Sure, no one would want them — except him, maybe.

“Alright!” Betty slapped her hands against her knees, looking at the vintage table clock Dad found now perched crooked on the mantle. “It’s lunch time. Let’s eat something, and then I’ll deal with the trash here while you go with the children, okay, Delsin?”

“Yeah,” Dad nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

Betty and I laid out makings for sandwiches, another bit of prizes she brought in the form of Walmart bags. “I have a microwave in storage somewhere in my shed I’ll bring for you,” she assured us, pulling an onion and tomato out of their produce bags before clicking her tongue, displeased. “Oh, I didn’t…we didn’t happen to find knives while unpacking, did we?”

We made the arbitrary move of looking for a utensil we all knew wasn’t there, conceding defeat after a moment. At least, until Brent said, “I wanna try something,”

We gave him a wide berth at his insistence, Dad catching my confused look with a shrug. Brent was chewing on his bottom lip hard enough to bust it, if it wasn’t already so weathered by his constant idle action, pulling his hands up to look at the palms.

The steel aura was returning, encasing him in their own mimic of football padding instead of simply being forearm sleeves, reflecting the sunlight pouring in from the kitchen window and casting little rays of light everywhere. I hadn’t realized it, but the skin on his arm took on a metallic shine when he used his powers, a silvery blush.

Brent hesitated for a moment, hands sort of caught mid-movement, like he’d been caught trying to yank a treat out of the cookie jar. He was…I wouldn’t say confused, but processing, eyes looking far past the granite countertop as he thought hard.

Eventually he found absolve, brows smoothing over as he brought his hands together like he was trying to warm them, a decent amount of the steel shavings traveling down his arm, wrapping around his hands in their own sort of hold. And then he forced everything apart all of a sudden, the steel around his hand bursting with the effort before pulling back in like negative gauge pressure, forming. Sharpening.

It was a ‘blink and you miss it’ sort of situation; in the span of half a second, the knife had already taken shape, an offset handle to keep knuckles away from the impossibly sharp-looking edge, all of it cool steel. It wasn’t anything special or intricate — but it was a weapon, an actual weapon that Brent caught midair when it began to fall, aura of steel sinking away into his skin.

“Show off,” I jokingly muttered, giving him a genuine smile when his head shot up to glare at me. “Think you can make a sword?”

The hostility melted off Brent’s face when he saw I was teasing, loosening his grip on the knife and holding it by the spine of its blade so Betty could take it. “I mean, probably?”

“That’s something else we should try today.” Dad decided. “See what kind of defensive tools you can make with your power. Keep making knives and shit and I’ll never worry about your safety again,”

“Delsin Xe’las,” Betty chastised, turning to begin cutting the onion, “Watch your language,”

“‘Xe’las’?” I repeated, turning to Dad. “Is that your middle name?” Delsin Xe’las. I only knew Damion Scott.

Come to think of it, though; Brent’s middle name was Si’ahl. “Latin,” Dad said way back when we first asked what it meant. “Your Mom and I met in a Latin class at school.”

Yeah, was definitely beginning to realize that was a load of bullshit, too. Were their names…I dunno, Akomish? Or whatever language the Akomish spoke. Chinook, maybe? I was beginning to feel left out, with the middle name Elaine.

Dad simply nodded. “Yeah. Named after some changeling and a white guy pretending to be Native in an old western,”

Was that…the ‘Delsin’ part or the ‘Xe’las’ part?

Betty interrupted before I could ask, the sound of her slicing onion going silent as she turned to look over her shoulder at me with watery eyes. “Regina, I just realized — I don’t know your power.”

Huh, she was right, wasn’t she? I wasn’t the one throwing beds into space or making convenient kitchen tools — I had no reason to show off. “Oh it’s, uh, water,” I said as if I were unsure of the fact.

“Oh, water!” Betty smiled, wide, like I just told her I won a prize or something. “That’s a powerful element. Source of life and all,”

Why was I blushing? “Yeah…”

“Jean, do the thing.” Brent said off on the side, now leaning against the countertop, giddy.

“The thing? What thing?”

Brent rolled his eyes, as if I was supposed to be able to access some twin telepathy bullshit and actually get what he meant. “Y’know. Evaporate.”

“‘Evaporate?’“ Betty repeated, now fully facing me. Oh, great, now I was trapped in the spotlight.

Even Dad didn’t seem like he wanted to save me, instead just electing to adopt the same lopsided smile Brent had. I rolled my eyes, demanding, “Turn on the tap,” to Brent; I didn’t know the rules of my power yet. Would I have to have a constant source of water to stay evaporated, or would I be safe until I wanted to change back?

But Brent dutifully turned the tap to drizzle, and I ran out of reasons not to show off.

It was impossible to go from solid to gas without making a stop in between at liquid, turns out, something I hadn’t realized until I was standing there, still solid. Guess it made sense though — what part of me was supposed to evaporate if it was all skin? My sweat?

So I changed, skin and clothes fading into a blue that kept shifting in place, the water in me — that was me — seemingly never able to stay still. And as soon as the last of the cotton on my old socks turned to liquid, I burst away into the air, leaving the linoleum slightly wet under my now-evaporated feet.

I’d have to get used to how my senses themselves changed into something else; how my vision inverted into specks of blue that held place in the air, forming around the solids I couldn’t see anymore. My hearing was still there — it processed Betty’s gasp of surprise — but it sounded like…static? No, that wasn’t right. Like carbonation. Fizzes and pops and bursts replaced the noises, and yet I was still able to hear Betty gasp, “Oh my goodness,”

There wasn’t a lot of water at all in the air in here, I was surprised to realize. The closer my eyes traveled to the fireplace, the less water there was — and I even got the joy of watching more dissipate into nothing, the blue dying off as it finally got too hot to stick around. Outside the window, though, the flurries of snow were instead soft sparkles, blue with a glint to it that somehow translated with ease in me; frozen. The water pouring from the tap looked no different than it usually would, if I’m being honest.

At least, until it began to bend in the middle of its stream, the water particles swirling away and up to Dad as his slick silhouette absorbed it.

The water traveled up his arms, settled into the silhouette…but never disappeared. I watched them spread, encasing him in his own little shell and halting in place, ready to be used at his disposal. The entirety of Dad glinted now, no longer a shadow splitting apart the wet, but was the wet, a figure clear enough that I could see him look around, pause on my face, and cock his head to the side, eyebrows creased. “I can…see you?”

He could?

I opened my mouth to respond, a bit shocked to find that the words died off in my throat. I didn’t have a throat — that was the issue. No vocal cords to use. So instead I held up both hands, waiting for Dad to count off the number I was displaying. “Seven.” He deadpanned, the water somehow tracking his rolling eyes.

I wonder if I looked the same to him as he did to me; a being of water, not a shadow. That was good, right? I mean, I wouldn’t be winning anymore games of tag anytime soon, but if he could see me at any point when I would need to evaporate, it’d probably make communication a lot easier.

I wanted to ask. God, I wanted to demand answers out of him of how it looked, but I couldn’t. There was no way to speak. So instead, deciding this was probably enough showing off for now as well, I went back to water, able to garbledly ask, “What does it look like?” as I began solidifying.

“What, seeing you when you’re gas?” He asked, continuing when I nodded. “It’s like…y’know when it’s a hot day and the road sorta warps a ways away from where you are? That whole illusion with the puddles of water? You look like that.”

“Weird, that’s not what you look like at all.” I commented.

“Do we look different?” Brent asked, taking the paper plate Betty offered.

I went into a whole explanation about how the world sort of shifts when I change, something Brent and Betty balked at — but Dad just nodded. “That’s a lot like when I’m invisible with the video power,” he commented. “Kind of like, radio waves or something in the air, broken up by solid objects.”

Right, he did have an invisibility trick! I forgot all about that. “Yeah, exactly. But you’re different when you absorb water, too.”

Dad was next to take a plate, throwing a quick thank you to the side as he asked, “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. When you absorbed the — thanks, Betty — when you absorbed the water, you sort of…looked like me when I’m liquid.” I threw four slices on bread on my plate. “It’s like I can see the water you’ve drained wait to be used.”

“Huh.” Dad simply hummed.

We made our sandwiches, falling into a comfortable silence as we ate until Dad demanded we go get dressed. “You two are going to be my guinea pigs today,” he declared, only partially joking. “I want to test out my theories on what you can do,”

So we got dressed, braving for the cold with jackets and the hats that Conduit gave us only a few days ago. It was crazy how long ago that felt; I was a normal kid freaking out over exams. No powers. I honestly still was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for my body to collapse with the effort of processing all of this. There was no way I was adjusting this easily to everything. It had to catch up eventually.

But for now, I went with the flow, scoring shotgun by zipping to the passenger side door as a rush of water, able to form around the body of the truck instead of having to pass the back end. “What?” Brent practically shouted from the other side as I busted out laughing, solidifying. “You can’t do that!”

“Can and did, bud,” I grinned as he came around the bed of the truck, annoyed. “Cry about it.”

We were off soon after, Dad only having to pause to wipe away the pillowy snow from the truck’s body. But we weren’t going back to the construction site. We headed towards the Longhouse, the eagle totem atop of it just clipping the horizon when Dad instead slowed down, turning right into an abandoned parking lot.

It was huge, and definitely was home to something at some point; there was a foundation threadbare of any actual building material, instead housing a pavilion full of picnic tables and frozen basketball hoops. Off on the edge of the woods was a man-made pond, decorative rocks and frozen waterfall all proof of a nice zen koi pond that’s been shut off for the winter. The tallest picket fence I’d ever seen ran along the edge of the cliffside, its sanded-down tops only just allowing you to see the edges of the Sound before it gave away to the gray horizon.

“We gonna shoot hoops or something, Dad?” Brent asked, only partially joking. He looked just as confused as I felt.

Dad didn’t bother responding, throwing the truck in part and pulling the e-brake. “Come on, let’s go.”

It had started snowing again, really snowing, the white static muting out our surroundings as Dad led us under the pavilion. “Alright, Jean,” he turned to me. “Yesterday, when you got hit with the relay — did it show you anything about snow or ice?”

Oh. That’s what we were doing here. “N-no?” I stuttered out, like this was a question with a right or wrong answer. “Boiling points and, uh, the triple point but not…nothing frozen.”

“Doesn’t the triple point involve ice, though?” Brent pointed out, shoving his hands in his pockets. We both were missing gloves, and definitely feeling the fact.

“I mean yeah, but like, I was the solid part of the equation. Y’know—“ I waved a hand around, motioning to myself. “This me.”

“Well, regardless,” Dad shrugged. “I want you to try and drain some snow, and that pond.”

“But Dad, they’re frozen.”

His eyes met mine, and he cocked an eyebrow. “They’re still water, aren’t they?”

I didn’t have a good retort, which was frustrating, because something deep within me was just consistently repeating how this wasn’t going to work.

Nonetheless, I walked up to a snow pile, reaching my hand out and brushing it with the tips of my fingers, first. Soft, powdery. All fresh snow.

Pulling away, I reached out once more, with the aim to drain this time.

And immediately jumped back in pain.

Instead of water rising, something stung, that white-hot bite that usually settles in your skin before the actual burn when you touch something too hot. I hissed, dragging out the f in “Fuck!” and receiving Dad’s chastising behind me before hearing Brent actually chuckle. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Is that what it’s like?” I shook out my hand. The initial sting was gone, leaving behind a twinge in each individual joint of my fingers.

“Yeah,” Dad confirmed, at the end of a nod when I turned to look at them. “But that’s strange. It’s water, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be able to control it?”

I shrugged, even if the question was rhetorical. Those visions never once touched on anything frozen. Was there really a difference? Was I restricted simply to the liquid aspect of it?

Even then, that didn’t make sense — I could turn into gas! I could change the water from gas to liquid in the air? What was it about the water being solid that was restricting me? But Dad did have a point. It was still water. It would even register on my weird aqua-vision when I was gas. But…come to think of it, I could only heat up water sources, too: there wasn’t anything in the visions about steam or fog or something.

I crouched low, looking at the snow and thinking hard. “I think it’s only water…” I eventually said, trailing off.

“Well, yeah, I thought we established that—“ Brent began sarcastically, but I cut him off.

“No, I mean: I think it’s only liquid I can deal with.” I didn’t take my eyes off the snow, each individual flake highlighted to me. Each one different. “I can warm up water, cool it off, but like…everything I saw? In those visions? None of them involve the other forms of matter. You know, as a gas, I see the water in the air. That’s not — water is always in the air, right? But it can be a different amount…”

Something began to crunch, Dad joining me in a crouch. “What’re you trying to say, Jean?”

“Dad, what can you do?” I turned to look at him. “With water?”

“Would you—“ he faltered, a bit taken aback by how serious I looked. “Would you like me to show you, or—“

I shrugged. “Either. It doesn’t really matter; I just need to know.”

“Well.” Dad sat back on his heels. “I can shoot off water — at different pressures, too. There’s uh, the water stairs—“

“‘Water stairs?’” Brent repeated, now standing directly behind us.

“Best name I could think of,” Dad sort of chuckled. “I can make little floating puddle of water by manipulating both the water and humidity to hold them up and like, bound up them—“

“Humidity!” I suddenly shouted, making them both jump. That made so much sense! “That’s what it is! I don’t evaporate, I become humidity. I’m seeing humidity in the air, not gas.”

I looked at both of them, expecting understanding — and instead receiving bewildered looks. “Jeanie, I wasn’t a good student — I dropped out and all — so would you uh, mind explaining how those are different? Isn’t humidity gas?” Dad finally said.

Brent, though, took over. “I was literally just studying this for my exam. Humidity is water vapor, which is a gas, but it becomes one differently from evaporation due to the critical temperature to turn it into one. It’s below the actual boiling point of water.”

“I still have no idea what that means.”

Brent chewed on his lip once more. “It’s — goddamnit how do I explain this—“

Having already taken Chemistry — and with some newfound intimate knowledge of my own — I tried chiming in to help. “When you heat up water, the molecules move so fast they sort of break apart. That’s when they become gas; near each other, but they ripped apart, the heat being some kind of point of no return. They’ve gotta be cooled off to become liquid again. Humidity, though, is a mixture of a bunch of stuff, including water vapor. Vapor isn’t heated up to be gas and besides, it’s got the potential to easily become liquid again since it hasn’t passed that temperature, uh, threshold. It hasn’t been heated enough to actually rip apart the water bonds. They’re spread thin, sure, but it’s still moisture. That’s what I’ve been doing,” The realization settled in easily, and I said, “I’m becoming moisture in the air, not gas.”

Dad nodded, still seeming a bit unsure, but at least processing it as he asked, “Is that why I see you when you’re invisible? Y’think it’s the Conduit in me looking for water to drain?”

“Please don’t.” I chuckled.

Dad joined in on the light humor, chuckling for only a moment before his eyebrows creased. “So, no snow or ice or anything?”

I shook my head. “Probably not.”

“So, wait,” Brent joined us fully now, crouched all the same. “You literally can only use water in its — fuck what’s it called—“

“Brent.”

“Yeah yeah, sorry.” Dad��s face deadened, looking over at me in annoyance as Brent completely missed it, off in his mental notes. “…Liquid phase? I think that’s it. Would explain why you have to drain, at least. Your power doesn’t involve temperature or like, pressurizing the gas or solid into a liquid, so you can’t drain from ice.”

Dad shook his head. “But she said she can ‘warm up the water,’ didn’t you?” I nodded. “Isn’t that heating?”

Honestly, I shouldn’t have had an answer. It didn’t make much sense regardless of what way I looked at it. But it was there, glaring and obvious, as I processed the question myself. “I vibrate the molecules. I don’t heat them up,”

“The vibrating is what makes them warm.” Dad finished, finally on the same page. “So then, in snow and stuff, do you see the water molecules?”

“I can see the water in everything if I look hard enough.” I shrugged, realizing how unhinged that sounded when said aloud.

“Can you vibrate the frozen ones?”

I wasn’t sure. But I got where Dad was going with this; if I vibrated them hard enough to heat, the snow would melt. I’d have water to manipulate. But would its state of matter mess with me being able to control the water molecules?

This was getting way too complicated.

But Dad wasn’t asking my opinion; he was asking me to try. And really I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

So holding my hand out, I focused on the little snowflakes, my vision slowly shifting as I went from seeing it, y’know, normally, to how it looked when I was Vapor. Every single water molecule in the area lit up like a piece of glitter, its glow different frozen versus vapor.

My hand came out again, hesitating as I thought just how to do this. There wasn’t anything in the instructions that outlined how — I just knew I could.

Well, maybe.

Linking the molecules from the snow to my ‘Conduit-ness’ started as a mental process. It’s something I can’t even pretend to fully understand, but it felt akin to waking someone out of a deep slumber; they sort of moved, shimmied as if trying to readjust under the comfortable blanket of snow. But when my requests became demands, and I forced them awake, they decided to fully make it my problem.

That sting suddenly came back, a heat that settled into the muscles on my arms and began prickling them with its stab, making me flinch. But the close knit molecules of the pile of fresh fallen snow I was concentrating on actually began to move faster. “Jean?” Dad asked cautiously beside me when I grunted.

I probably could have stopped. They were moving, mission accomplished, right? But I wanted to see if I could melt it, make it into something I could drain.

The longer I held my proverbial grip on the snow though, the more it hurt. “Jean, are you—“ Dad moved beside me, my peripheral barely catching how he moved to his knees.

Just then, though, my gauntlets, swirling and spinning, stopped. The ends of it on my hands and laying against my fingers began to frost over, the bite turning from a scathing heat to an absolutely unbearable cold, the needle pricks becoming full on stabs now as the frost slowly began to slip up my arms.

That first stab made me gasp out, strangled, concentration slipping for a moment and the molecules I was working on losing their momentum. “Jean, that’s enough.” Dad demanded, hand on my elbow.

“I’ve almost got it…” I gasped out. My arms began to shake under the pressure — or maybe the cold? I was freezing. The water was moving from a frost to a solid freeze now, and I couldn’t move my fingers at their first two knuckles.

But the molecules were close to spastic now, and I just knew they were on the edge of liquifying. I’d just have to beat out whatever was making my arms freeze. So, shrugging off Dad’s hold, I pushed my arms forward, more water crawling off my back and down my arms to encapsulate every bit of my arm — including the already frozen bits — fighting back against the freeze with a cry. “Regina!” Dad chastised, shooting to his feet. He disappeared from my peripheral, hands gripping each of my shoulders and yanking me back.

It was right then, though, that the molecules burst away from their tight hug, snow melting away into a sad puddle no bigger than 6 inches across. I landed on my ass rather violently, knocking into Dad’s knees as the water disappeared from around my upper arms — but stayed on my forearms, layering atop the freeze and moving in violent waves in an effort to thaw them.

I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. I was literally beyond frostbitten, my fingers and the little bit of my palm that the ice had reached to numb of…anything. Frozen. I was frozen. I tried to move my fingers and nothing came of the action, not even that disconnected feeling after going numb. It was like they didn’t exist. “Dad,” I rushed to say, trying to flex the fingers again and again to no avail, “Dad I can’t feel them,”

#infamous erosion #infamous: erosion #infamous second son #infamous #delsin rowe #sucker punch productions #fanfiction #fanfic #infamous OC #Ah I love setting up things that will be called back to in later chapters

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