A/N: The descriptions of anything perceived are actually based on my own synesthetic experiences, or from how others' have been described to me, because I felt that was the closest I was going to get to someone trying to describe a thing that, for all purposes, can't/shouldn't exist. Anyway I decided I wanted to explore the lasting effects of the experiment corpuswarblade and myself headcanon on Ruko's psyche in particular. So yeah, I dunno, it's alright for a oneshot?
Smack!
The giantess' eyes shot wide as she searched for an explanation. It was hard to pinpoint the source in her haze, not that this was new, but it wasn't supposed to be happening if she was awake. Oh how she'd come to loathe sleep, and the distant, dreamy reprieve everyone else seems to find such solace in.
They told her they'd blocked it out, that as long as she wore what they'd so graciously given her, she'd no longer be plagued by these visions of impossible things, and she wasn't, still isn't, until she sleeps. When her body gives way, all of her attempts to cling prove to be for naught. Her head echoes with bloodlust, or rather, a need, a need for ending, a need for a halt to the endless flow. In sleep she can see time, how it is etched out across a vast expanse without end, inexplicable to any, even she, who sees it, can't fathom it no matter how hard she tries. In sleep, the sounds come, sounding like they're coming from some space impossibly deep within herself. In sleep, lights with no source assault her vision in ways that should have, by all means, rendered her blind by now. In sleep, she can feel the other, the man who suffers with her, she can understand everything he does, as he does, but upon waking it is always rendered null, merely a ghost of a memory. Sleep is Hell.
It was worse before. Before, she hadn't been able to escape it, even in waking hours. She heard sounds from directions that simply could not exist according to the scientists, she saw colors off the visible spectrum, before she was grounded, there was a space where temperature did not exist, and whatever she was walking through was sticky and smooth, both gas-like, and solid if she pressed. There are no words for what they both saw when they had so stupidly agreed to the experiment. They were told they were lucky to have been returned, but really, that was a lie. Were they fully up there, they would be okay. They weren't.
Upon their return, the scientists were elated. They succeeded in saving such valuable people, and no harm done, they said. Then they demanded of the giantess to stop lying, demanded she wake up. They postponed testing til she was rested. They told him it wasn't a funny joke. It wasn't a joke. They could see these things, perceive the space in time an object took up, in a horrible, hazy form that violated every rule at once.
Upon discovering they were not lying, they tried to fix it. They did fix it. The oscillating forms of impossible geometry, the colors, all of it was gone.
They could do nothing to fix the thoughts.
The thoughts were the worst of it, as far as the giantess was concerned. She wanted nothing more than to be grounded fully. She was not a bad person, she was loving, kind, loyal, but the urges…no the fundamental need, it hurt. And nothing could be done to stop it. Acting on it helped a little, the thoughts would become lighter, a higher pitch, more bearable. Acting on it was not proper. Death would not claim either of them, either. They had given up their mortality, achieved a dream, at the price of unimaginable frustration at things they can see but never dream to understand, painful things sending their brains into overdrive a hundred times over, along with these painful, burning needs, they were literally white hot against a part of themselves they didn't know existed before the experiment, and even forgot on occasion after.
The only thing that helped was the high Priestess. The woman Ruko would guard with her life. Thinking about it, the scythe-wielding guard never knew what her counterpart did to aid. Perhaps he had someone, too? Doesn't matter. What matters was she has Luka, but not in dreams. Not in the haze. And Luka would die before Ruko could, she knew that. She's older than the clergy, and all she can do is to cling. Cling to the scrap of someone to love she could, because she lives dreading the day that smack of her body on the cold floor isn't accompanied by the cold. The day the smack originates from somewhere inside her skull, miles away, but inside her no less. The day it's no longer a smack but a wavering frequency that cannot be described in any sense but scientific. The day her eyepatch fails her and she is once again assaulted by these things, yearning to do anything to escape, but unable to because her mind's landscape is already reshaped and primed.
She hates sleep and waking up, because that's when these thoughts come back, that's when she remembers what she is. Too hazy to be protected, to awake to be fully in the other dimension. If only she were able to traverse the scape of time and get out. Sometimes even that occurs to her, and it's painful.
The worst thing this night, though, was that he wasn't there. She was alone, he managed to get away, surely. That thought, that single, insignificant thought brings a tear, and then it's gone. The feelings, the thoughts, gone like they had never intruded in the first place. She is Ruko, loving guardian of Luka. She is free of the dimensional rift, they scientists say so, and she never would doubt that. Her haze-induced thoughts, her doubts, they always vanish like mist, leaving not even a lingering wisp. Really, it is best that way, it makes it easier, forgetting. Sometimes, rarely, she will remember a dream. But that is all it is, a dream. Luka says so. Luka says she is safe and home. Luka wouldn't lie.