[For Obi-Wan]
Jan. 10th, 2021 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fifthbeatleThe night is dark. Vanya is alone.
She's out in the woods somewhere - maybe the forest behind "'Leonard's' Grandma's house." It's so dark she can barely see what's in front of her. The wind is howling, screaming, almost whining. A clap of lightning rings through her head, so loud the sound vibrates through her teeth. The sound seems to crash into the whining sound. It's the clear resonance of a pitchfork now, only it's so loud Vanya's on her knees. Her knees hit the damp earth below with a wet slash, like her bow slicing through Allison's neck. She begins to sink into the mud below. It gurgles: the sound of Allison trying to breath. Pain rips through Vanya's head. She hunches over and clamps her arms tight around her head to block the sound.
Silence. Stillness. Now, the ground is hard and cold. Vanya lifts her head.
A window. A small sliver of a window behind a thick metal door and a pressurized lock. She looks up and sees the soundproofing foam sloping toward her like stalactites. She tries to hear something. Anything. There's nothing. As she gets to her feet, her soles don't make a sound on the floor. She calls out, but nothing happens. Even as she launches herself at the door, desperate to hear the smack of her hand on the window, there's nothing. She thinks she's breathing, but she can't hear it and she can't feel it. No air is coming into her lungs. It's like she floating in space with no helmet and she reaches for the pills in her pocket and pulls out a small wooden dinosaur. Harlan's toy. Her eyes go wider. The beat of her heart the sound of clothes rustling - it's all gone until the little wooden toy floats up from her hand. It glows sunlight yellow and emits a shrill sound. The light and the sound grow in intensity. No, no, no she can feel it. She's not breathing and she can't move and -- BOOM.
When the legs of her bed jolt up off the floor and land back down, Vanya wakes with a huge gasp for air. Everything is just out of place, knocked over. The mirror in her room is cracked. The little chair in the corner of her room has been spilled over. He body is aching, tight all over. As she jumps out of bed to check on her siblings, she catches the stark white of her skin and eyes in the fractured reflection.
This time, she thinks, she was lucky. No one was badly hurt. She wants to believe there won't be a next time, but she can't.
Vanya never goes back to sleep. She's waiting for the sun to rise and to make sure that none of her siblings are up before her. She makes the coffee and breakfast as usual, but instead of curling up to read, she stalks out to the woods. She's got her weird little mobile phone in her pocket. If something happens, she's going to be okay.
"Leonard" tried to train Vanya out of Reginald's notebook - a method that had failed spectacularly once already. Each of them were sociopaths and narcissists and Vanya can find pride in failing them. If there's one thing Vanya knows, it's study and if she can tune resonance into energy, isn't she a violin? Her love of music, her ability to make it is the power she gave herself. There is no one better suited to honing her powers than her own self.
This sustains her for about two hours. She's found a little clearing where there are fewer precarious-looking branches and sharp, spiny things that she could hurt herself with. She's a good half-an-hour walk into the woods, so she has no reason to believe anyone else is around. She's doing this right, she thinks.
In this small valley, there is an apex at the center with a rock. There sits Vanya, her legs crossed loosely beneath her, floating rocks and moss and a couple of branches around her. There's an impression in the dirt where she's managed to move larger objects with some success, but they never land quiet where she wants them to. It seems like she might be getting tired and maybe a little hungry. Without realizing it, she's following her father's principles, the ones that let her down in the first place: push faster, harder, longer. Break yourself and then go further. It is the only way to achieve greatness.
Which is not what she ever wanted. All she'd ever wanted was for her family to love her, to be one of them. And she was meant to be. Now she knows she was. She was never ordinary. Ordinary.
Ordinary. The word snaps something in her like a branch. Yes, she can feel it, a thick, loud crack like the trunk of a tree has been somehow separated. It's a heavy feeling; one she doesn't know if she can catch if it falls.
She's out in the woods somewhere - maybe the forest behind "'Leonard's' Grandma's house." It's so dark she can barely see what's in front of her. The wind is howling, screaming, almost whining. A clap of lightning rings through her head, so loud the sound vibrates through her teeth. The sound seems to crash into the whining sound. It's the clear resonance of a pitchfork now, only it's so loud Vanya's on her knees. Her knees hit the damp earth below with a wet slash, like her bow slicing through Allison's neck. She begins to sink into the mud below. It gurgles: the sound of Allison trying to breath. Pain rips through Vanya's head. She hunches over and clamps her arms tight around her head to block the sound.
Silence. Stillness. Now, the ground is hard and cold. Vanya lifts her head.
A window. A small sliver of a window behind a thick metal door and a pressurized lock. She looks up and sees the soundproofing foam sloping toward her like stalactites. She tries to hear something. Anything. There's nothing. As she gets to her feet, her soles don't make a sound on the floor. She calls out, but nothing happens. Even as she launches herself at the door, desperate to hear the smack of her hand on the window, there's nothing. She thinks she's breathing, but she can't hear it and she can't feel it. No air is coming into her lungs. It's like she floating in space with no helmet and she reaches for the pills in her pocket and pulls out a small wooden dinosaur. Harlan's toy. Her eyes go wider. The beat of her heart the sound of clothes rustling - it's all gone until the little wooden toy floats up from her hand. It glows sunlight yellow and emits a shrill sound. The light and the sound grow in intensity. No, no, no she can feel it. She's not breathing and she can't move and -- BOOM.
When the legs of her bed jolt up off the floor and land back down, Vanya wakes with a huge gasp for air. Everything is just out of place, knocked over. The mirror in her room is cracked. The little chair in the corner of her room has been spilled over. He body is aching, tight all over. As she jumps out of bed to check on her siblings, she catches the stark white of her skin and eyes in the fractured reflection.
This time, she thinks, she was lucky. No one was badly hurt. She wants to believe there won't be a next time, but she can't.
Vanya never goes back to sleep. She's waiting for the sun to rise and to make sure that none of her siblings are up before her. She makes the coffee and breakfast as usual, but instead of curling up to read, she stalks out to the woods. She's got her weird little mobile phone in her pocket. If something happens, she's going to be okay.
"Leonard" tried to train Vanya out of Reginald's notebook - a method that had failed spectacularly once already. Each of them were sociopaths and narcissists and Vanya can find pride in failing them. If there's one thing Vanya knows, it's study and if she can tune resonance into energy, isn't she a violin? Her love of music, her ability to make it is the power she gave herself. There is no one better suited to honing her powers than her own self.
This sustains her for about two hours. She's found a little clearing where there are fewer precarious-looking branches and sharp, spiny things that she could hurt herself with. She's a good half-an-hour walk into the woods, so she has no reason to believe anyone else is around. She's doing this right, she thinks.
In this small valley, there is an apex at the center with a rock. There sits Vanya, her legs crossed loosely beneath her, floating rocks and moss and a couple of branches around her. There's an impression in the dirt where she's managed to move larger objects with some success, but they never land quiet where she wants them to. It seems like she might be getting tired and maybe a little hungry. Without realizing it, she's following her father's principles, the ones that let her down in the first place: push faster, harder, longer. Break yourself and then go further. It is the only way to achieve greatness.
Which is not what she ever wanted. All she'd ever wanted was for her family to love her, to be one of them. And she was meant to be. Now she knows she was. She was never ordinary. Ordinary.
Ordinary. The word snaps something in her like a branch. Yes, she can feel it, a thick, loud crack like the trunk of a tree has been somehow separated. It's a heavy feeling; one she doesn't know if she can catch if it falls.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-14 07:38 pm (UTC)"I know it's not about clearing your mind as much as... accepting it." That doesn't sound quite right, but since she's clearly out of her depth and she's already asked for his help, she's less interested in impressing him than she might be were this another teacher or friend or sibling's manfriend. Save for causing the actual apocalypse, Obi-Wan has seen her near her worst.
She knows that's not true. Today, Vanya wasn't angry, she was scared. Angry is what makes her powers the most dangerous. She can't imagine being angry here, but she couldn't have imagined she was a nuclear reactor either.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-14 11:11 pm (UTC)There are times when he can't believe just how short his first meditation sessions were. He understands why it's preferable, that people will never be able to learn if they're expected to sit still with their own mind for an hour or two immediately, but these days Obi-Wan rarely meditates for under an hour.
"Then," he says. "We close our eyes, find a comfortable position for our hands, and we breathe. Pay attention to the inhale, the exhale, focus on that, be aware of that. And every time we notice our mind has wandered, without judgement, we return our focus to our breath."
no subject
Date: 2021-02-15 04:54 am (UTC)So, she repeats it back, "get comfortable, close my eyes, breathe and withhold judgement." Most of that is good advice for right now, too so she takes a breath and lets the exhale slip out some of the shit she knows she's holding in her shoulders.
"So, it's okay to starts small," Vanya recaps now that she's chewing on all the pieces. "A-and if I can't... stop my brain from thinking, that's okay. I just have to-to... What? Not feel it?" The question feels unforgivably stupid but, in the spirit of learning and trusting, she tries to tease a new perspective out. "Or... assign it no... value?" She breathes a laugh. "God, am I hopeless if I can't imagine what it would be like to not judge a thought?" While playful, this is still a move of self-deprecation, however well-intended.
She just wants to get it right. Not for Klaus or for Obi-Wan or Allison or anyone but her.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-15 10:04 pm (UTC)He smiles then and says, "We can't not feel our emotions. They exist, they're part of what make us who we are. Emotions give us our compassion, our ability to love, to be kind and thoughtful. The goal isn't to not feel them, but to stop letting them control us. The Jedi are warned that anger is a path to the dark side, but what is really meant is that anger that controls us, anger that makes our decisions for us, that can lead us to the dark side."