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"Hey there, beautiful."
The sound is coming from the left, but Vanya pays no attention. Even without sound-sensitive powers she would have heard it, but an entire life in New York City has taught her to neatly ignore this sort of attention. She's been told that the way she dresses discourages this behavior but, 1) that's an absurd and backward concept and 2) no, it doesn't. There are all kinds of lies that Vanya has been told about what will and won't subject her to this sort of attention. Books are, she has been assured, an absolute turn-off. Yet here she is, coming out of the library with a stack of them and this is still happening. She's annoyed, but at the people whose voices she can still hear telling her these things and at this dude that's trying to make his shit hers.
"Did you hear me??"
Of course she did, but she's also got the benefit of having her face firmly in a book. It's a book of music, an advanced book of violin exercises. After the first excited session where her fingers were finally reunited with bow and strings, she came away feeling complete and very, very rusty. Before coming to Darrow, not a single day passed where she didn't play, save for her time in Texas. With this little book of arpeggios and finger-stretching exercises, plus a few deconstructed pages of some classical favorites, she is feeling excited all over again, just like she did the day she saw found the new extension of her arm in that vintage shop. Nothing can bother her, she thinks. With her family and her music, she's finally starting to feel complete, again. Maybe for the first time.
"Hey! Don't ignore him!"
The voice is coming from the opposite side of the little alley she's found herself in. She lifts her eyes and sees that there are two men standing between her and the end of this stretch of space between buildings. At first, she's alarmed, disarmed and a little confused from the seismic shift of being inside the peaceful library brimming with potential knowledge and... this. There are few things that impress her less than displays of useless masculinity.
"I'm not interested," Vanya says curtly, though not entirely impolite. It's a stronger tone than she'd have used in the past, but she didn't know who she was then. What can the voices of these men do to harm her? Nothing. In fact, with her power, the sounds they make are more a danger to themselves than the are to her.
"Ohh, you think you're too good for us?" There's three of them now. Vanya swallows a little lump in her throat and tries to move between them. A hand stops her by the shoulder, just a little too close to her chest. When she looks all the way up at one of them, her eyes are burning. Two of them laugh.
Whatever is said next misses Vanya's understanding entirely. One hand shoves her back and another pulls from behind. She's focusing on her breathing, not the whine of the tuning fork that is threatening to piece her inside. She is stronger than them, but suddenly she can't remember that. It feels too much like something else. She doesn't want to remember what, but she does:
It's "Leonard." It's the men Leonard hired to touch and harass her so that she would blast out and fulfill what he believed was his destiny as the thing that un-ordinaried wayward Number Seven. The world is full of men like these that only want to manipulate and take. Their hands feel like others, like the tight, oppressive grip of her father's hand on her shoulder telling her no, you mustn't go because you are nothing.
The world is closing in - a feeling she used to associate with needed to take pills. All she wants is to close in with it, but the tone in her head is a shrill scream now. She can feel the energy bending around her as her hair is swept off of her shoulder in a nauseatingly tender gesture. At some point, the books have been knocked from her hands that are now in tight fists. They are trying to take control of her and it is working, just not in the way they think.
"STOP!" She bellows, and the world slows down. It's only when she can see three pairs of eyes open wide that she has any idea what is happening. Blue-white light shoots out from the center of her. One of the men is looking her dead in her blindingly white eyes as the blast comes tearing out of her in a devastating orb. Two of them are kicked back several hundred feet. One of them slams against a wall. The streetlight on the corner swings and shakes ominously. There is no satisfaction in her. They wanted to be the thing that scares her, but there's no terror like what Vanya fears for herself.
Before she knows it, she's tearing backward in a frantic half-run. She's almost at the edge of the alley, but something trips her and she goes down hard, skidding backward on her arm and ass so hard that the sleeve of her coat rips all the way through. She's tripped on the shoe of a felled fourth man. She crab-crawls backward, startled, as her fists clench in anticipation of another, more deliberate blast.
The sound is coming from the left, but Vanya pays no attention. Even without sound-sensitive powers she would have heard it, but an entire life in New York City has taught her to neatly ignore this sort of attention. She's been told that the way she dresses discourages this behavior but, 1) that's an absurd and backward concept and 2) no, it doesn't. There are all kinds of lies that Vanya has been told about what will and won't subject her to this sort of attention. Books are, she has been assured, an absolute turn-off. Yet here she is, coming out of the library with a stack of them and this is still happening. She's annoyed, but at the people whose voices she can still hear telling her these things and at this dude that's trying to make his shit hers.
"Did you hear me??"
Of course she did, but she's also got the benefit of having her face firmly in a book. It's a book of music, an advanced book of violin exercises. After the first excited session where her fingers were finally reunited with bow and strings, she came away feeling complete and very, very rusty. Before coming to Darrow, not a single day passed where she didn't play, save for her time in Texas. With this little book of arpeggios and finger-stretching exercises, plus a few deconstructed pages of some classical favorites, she is feeling excited all over again, just like she did the day she saw found the new extension of her arm in that vintage shop. Nothing can bother her, she thinks. With her family and her music, she's finally starting to feel complete, again. Maybe for the first time.
"Hey! Don't ignore him!"
The voice is coming from the opposite side of the little alley she's found herself in. She lifts her eyes and sees that there are two men standing between her and the end of this stretch of space between buildings. At first, she's alarmed, disarmed and a little confused from the seismic shift of being inside the peaceful library brimming with potential knowledge and... this. There are few things that impress her less than displays of useless masculinity.
"I'm not interested," Vanya says curtly, though not entirely impolite. It's a stronger tone than she'd have used in the past, but she didn't know who she was then. What can the voices of these men do to harm her? Nothing. In fact, with her power, the sounds they make are more a danger to themselves than the are to her.
"Ohh, you think you're too good for us?" There's three of them now. Vanya swallows a little lump in her throat and tries to move between them. A hand stops her by the shoulder, just a little too close to her chest. When she looks all the way up at one of them, her eyes are burning. Two of them laugh.
Whatever is said next misses Vanya's understanding entirely. One hand shoves her back and another pulls from behind. She's focusing on her breathing, not the whine of the tuning fork that is threatening to piece her inside. She is stronger than them, but suddenly she can't remember that. It feels too much like something else. She doesn't want to remember what, but she does:
It's "Leonard." It's the men Leonard hired to touch and harass her so that she would blast out and fulfill what he believed was his destiny as the thing that un-ordinaried wayward Number Seven. The world is full of men like these that only want to manipulate and take. Their hands feel like others, like the tight, oppressive grip of her father's hand on her shoulder telling her no, you mustn't go because you are nothing.
The world is closing in - a feeling she used to associate with needed to take pills. All she wants is to close in with it, but the tone in her head is a shrill scream now. She can feel the energy bending around her as her hair is swept off of her shoulder in a nauseatingly tender gesture. At some point, the books have been knocked from her hands that are now in tight fists. They are trying to take control of her and it is working, just not in the way they think.
"STOP!" She bellows, and the world slows down. It's only when she can see three pairs of eyes open wide that she has any idea what is happening. Blue-white light shoots out from the center of her. One of the men is looking her dead in her blindingly white eyes as the blast comes tearing out of her in a devastating orb. Two of them are kicked back several hundred feet. One of them slams against a wall. The streetlight on the corner swings and shakes ominously. There is no satisfaction in her. They wanted to be the thing that scares her, but there's no terror like what Vanya fears for herself.
Before she knows it, she's tearing backward in a frantic half-run. She's almost at the edge of the alley, but something trips her and she goes down hard, skidding backward on her arm and ass so hard that the sleeve of her coat rips all the way through. She's tripped on the shoe of a felled fourth man. She crab-crawls backward, startled, as her fists clench in anticipation of another, more deliberate blast.
