dr_riley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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revivalproject2021-10-16 03:33 pm
dr_riley) wrote in revivalproject2021-10-16 03:33 pm
The Lonely
Open to All
WARNINGS: None yet
Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the cogs jamming with fevered panic and hidden within the terror scrambled maintenance and safety protocols that normally kept his heart and lungs and adrenal glands within normal parameters, Drake couldn't help but liken himself to a goldfish in a bowl: tiny and helpless, on display, nothing secret, nothing private, at the whim of an entity far more powerful than any he'd ever come across, and yet the tiniest bit...fascinated. The sudden BANG caused him to flinch and stumble backwards with his arms raised (To what? Protect himself? That's a good one.) and when he looked up again, everything was as it had been a moment ago.
But it also wasn't.
If he'd known right away exactly what happened, he'd have liked to have said that he felt very strange, but he didn't. What he felt was dreadfully familiar. It was something that, until recently, he felt all the time, waking and sleeping, accompanying him to work, meeting him for lunch, coming home and sitting at the dinner table, getting bigger and bigger until he couldn't breathe. He had learned how to live with this quiet terror and was still relearning how to live without it.
What was different was the...hunger? Desire? Biological urge? ...to feel others feeling it. That part was so new and so subtle that he didn't notice it at first. After all, Drake had often, perhaps selfishly, wished that his loved ones might have an inkling of the danger he put himself in every day, of how he felt, of how hard he tried. And sometimes...he wanted to get back at them. He never did, he never would, but the hurt and angry little thought sometimes niggled its way to the surface all the same.
And now it was there full time. It howled in his ears and it filled his lungs and it spoke through his lips:
"I will make you feel alone."
WARNINGS: None yet
Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the cogs jamming with fevered panic and hidden within the terror scrambled maintenance and safety protocols that normally kept his heart and lungs and adrenal glands within normal parameters, Drake couldn't help but liken himself to a goldfish in a bowl: tiny and helpless, on display, nothing secret, nothing private, at the whim of an entity far more powerful than any he'd ever come across, and yet the tiniest bit...fascinated. The sudden BANG caused him to flinch and stumble backwards with his arms raised (To what? Protect himself? That's a good one.) and when he looked up again, everything was as it had been a moment ago.
But it also wasn't.
If he'd known right away exactly what happened, he'd have liked to have said that he felt very strange, but he didn't. What he felt was dreadfully familiar. It was something that, until recently, he felt all the time, waking and sleeping, accompanying him to work, meeting him for lunch, coming home and sitting at the dinner table, getting bigger and bigger until he couldn't breathe. He had learned how to live with this quiet terror and was still relearning how to live without it.
What was different was the...hunger? Desire? Biological urge? ...to feel others feeling it. That part was so new and so subtle that he didn't notice it at first. After all, Drake had often, perhaps selfishly, wished that his loved ones might have an inkling of the danger he put himself in every day, of how he felt, of how hard he tried. And sometimes...he wanted to get back at them. He never did, he never would, but the hurt and angry little thought sometimes niggled its way to the surface all the same.
And now it was there full time. It howled in his ears and it filled his lungs and it spoke through his lips:
"I will make you feel alone."
Rough Cut
Separated.
Set apart.
Empty.
Isolated.
Reminders that formed like a blade thrust deeply into his chest. The pang sharpened, direct, unyielding, unapologetic.
It only stoked his frustration. Any grief he was harboring began to burn away at the edges as he pushed onward, dead set on trying to find out where this was coming from.
Re: Rough Cut
You pulled away from me and that's when I needed you.
That was, perheps, a little less comfortable. Drake frowned inside his cloud and rubbed the back of his neck.
You acted like I was some - some stranger that you didn't know, and every day you knew me less and less.
Enough. It was someone else's turn to be on the other side of this. His turn to be cold and dispassionate. His turn to manipulate and gaslight and use his genius to make startlingly accurate guesses based on context.
Carrying with him a sense of heaviness and dread, he hissed softly behind the soldier.
"Echo."
If the soldier turned, no one would be there, but just out of sight, the voice would come again, "What a funny name. Where does it come from?"
no subject
He then heard his name.
The ARC Trooper shifted, aiming his blaster toward the ground as he jerked his head to look behind. He saw nothing. He saw no one.
"Who...?" It was the first real word he had spoken since, hoarse and unnatural to his own ears.
no subject
No matter where the trooper turned, he wouldn't see anyone. Just a pale mist that seemed to press further in on him, oppressive and suffocating. And that voice, however familiar it might have been, seemed to waft along with it, breezing behind him, floating at his shoulder, curling around his heart.
"Are you a fake? A copy? An imposter?"
no subject
Echo's blood, once boiling, suddenly ran cold.
His breath hitched deep within his throat, constricted, an invisible weight crushing past the layers of his battle-worn armor, deep into his chest.
A copy.
He was a clone. One of many. No one important.
No -- he was important. He had a purpose.
An imposter.
"I'm not-- " He choked out the words, drawing in a sharp, ragged breaths. "I'm...me. Like you're you." He felt lightheaded, briefly returning to his senses, hardly feeling like he was making any real sense.
--Snap out of it, soldier. Focus.
Concern parted from quiet desperation as he tried -- again, in vain -- to look for the voice. Remembering whose voice it was. "...You're Drake Riley."
no subject
God, that was good. He breathed it in like a heady perfume, like the steam off a roasting pig spiced with juniper and cardamom.
Then he heard his name and he opened his eyes, that succulent whiff beginning to dissipate.
"I'm no one." He repeated a little forcefully. "And you...are nothing but an echo. A shadow on the wall that thinks it's real."
no subject
The hard edge of the tone made the clone flinch, forcing him back into a vague space he had no control over. Reminding him of what he was.
Nothing but an echo
A sharp intake of breath ran through his helmet's vocabulator, teeth clenching as the words reverberated in his head.
A shadow on the wall
Too easily that spark of rage reignited. Blaster shots rang out in succession, firing at nothing. There was no visible target to focus on, but there had to be someone out there.