This is just one-shot, something that came to me while I was daydreaming. I wrote it down without thinking and when I re-read it I realized that it fit with River pretty well. I don't know how accurate a representation it is but still… I find her character really fascinating at the depth of character that never got explored and how you never find out exactly what happened to her.
But I digress. You're probably not even reading this anyway.
It's too loud.
Not Outside. Outside it's loud but not the buzzing. And outside of the Outside it's completely quiet. Outside of the metal and the walls that are holding all the nothing out, there's no sound. Not the sirens. Not the screaming. Inside is the problem. I can feel the shrieks coming from the back of my eyelids and bouncing off the back of my skull, making me blind. It builds pressure inside of me until eventually I explode. It screams like feedback, microphone too close to the speakers. And it hurts me here and here. I feel the red dripping out my ears and going down my back. Cool and hot. My vestibule and cochlea rupture from the pressure. Breathing from inside out. Hands pushing my lungs and making them work without tempo. Without rhythm.
I know it's not there. The screaming is just me and the hands, but I can feel it and smell it and taste it. I have to remember to breathe and blink but They won't let me. They make me breathe Their way. Out and in, the wrong direction.
The Outside mills about, unaware. Or maybe it is aware but I can't see. Wrong hypothesis. Wrong assumption. It – they are aware but they cannot comprehend. The other them, not Them. How could they? I can't explain it to them. I formulate words in my mouth and they fall out, hesitant and shatter on the floor, never what I tried to say. The syllables get all mixed up on their way from my brain to my mouth and the buzzing shakes them loose out of order. It never stops buzzing and screaming in there. Inside where it's supposed to be safe is where it's the worst.
They ask. The others that don't know the screaming. They try to help. They ask questions and before I can stop it the words come out of my mouth that I don't mean. My limbs like puppets follow what is Inside. I didn't want those. The screaming made me say that. And all at once I try to take it back but the words saying no stop inches short and die unheard. I can't control it. It's not my fault that I lay there without speaking, or shrieking in harmony to the Inside noise. It's not my fault that I can't say what I want. It's the screaming, it's always the screaming. It drowns out my thought and doesn't let me say.
Hands over ears and eyes tight shut but the red still drips out through clenched fingers. I can see the red all over my eyes and it keeps the light out. The hands, Their hands, blue on red, reaching and pushing and pulling and making me do what I don't want. The others say that They're gone but They're still here and I can feel Them. Fingers dipped inside my skull, pushing. And the buzzing, the feedback, the sirens, the screaming. They continue. They persist. And in the darkness and red and the impossibility, they thrive.
So that was a relatively pointless fic, but it was a lot of fun to write and I'm thinking of writing more in the future. Anyway, R&R?
