-:-
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
-Kahlil Gibran.
There are only a certain finite number of things that can make a Bgztlian fear for their life, as was the nature of their being. Most of these things can be protected against; starvation by sleeping for up to a month, injury by switching to a pure phased state until there's access to a doctor, and cold or heat aren't much of a problem.
The few things that cause worry and absolute panic are strains of disease that hide and attach to particular carriers or show up by walking into an environment in solid form that was simply a horrible idea.
One disease in particular can be picked up by one person and pass within an hour to over fifty people, killing half.
Trembelent de Sang, a disease that had supposedly died out, but apparently been found by some of the worst scientists the Legion had been hunting for a good long while, was that disease.
One hand of evil had the idea to put it in the air systems of a meeting for the heads of the United Planets for the soul purpose of getting the president specifically. Carried the disease in the form of a powder, found a room that had a locking transparent door that could repel meta abilities not unlike Nemesis Kid that also had access to the vents, but neglected to shut the door before he was found out by the one person there that was both able to hold her own in a political situation, fight and had the ability to notice someone casting a long shadow in the wrong direction.
"I messed up," was how Timber Wolf found out his best friend was in serious trouble over the Legion ring communicator to call in reinforcements to protect her mother and get her out of the building.
Brin found her first, locked inside a glass room with the body of the scientist that had committed suicide rather than stop what was happening; his body on the floor, white powder under and over and around the corpse like false snow and Phantom Girl standing next to the door that had the access panel to the switches that turned off the ventilation, kept the room shut and would have given Brin the opportunity to get inside. She wouldn't open the door. She kept faced away from him, arms wrapped around her middle, head bowed and hair flowing back and forth with the amount of shaking she couldn't seem to stop in the least.
She would not turn around no matter how much Brin begged and pleaded, keeping her voice low and even, but unable to probably hear how she was hyperventilating and rocking back and forth. Not until Shrinking Violet came down and confirmed that her mother was okay, Brainy following behind and needing to get a visual on the disease's progression before he could treat her.
She seemed to be hysterical, a little, giving a bark of laughter that spat red and black to the floor, mixing with the powder and taking a position on the dead man's shoe before Tinya finally conceded and turned around.
Brin could say with a vast collection of absolutes that he had rarely been so afraid for another person in his life at the sight of her. Half a smile, trying to hold herself together, but barely able to stand up; her usual lack of color like the pallor of a corpse in a morgue that had been pulled up from icy waters and tucked into a freezer. The white of her eyes and the grey color of her lips colored and coated red with swirling masses of blood, from her mouth it spilled like heavy tree sap from a spring bloom that was healthy and willing to give more than a fair share to the earth; the red streaming from both corners of her eyes and reaching down along her cheeks and jawline, to stain her white uniform. Almost as horrible as her abominable attempt at pretending it was alright, were her hands gripped tight to her hip and shoulder; the tips of her fingers were becoming saturated with black as thick as coal grit, leaving smears when her hands changed to keep her comfortable.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... the shaking won't stop..."
There is a collection of stones that Brin keeps inside a glass jar on the side table in his room. All stones of different realities, different composition, textures, smells, feeling (but Brin likes to think that they're all beautiful).
He keeps them, collected and together, as reminders of times, that do not happen often and are usually remembered in his mental state in the shades of red and white wine poured into cracked crystal glass. Times when Timber Wolf and Phantom Girl can't follow after the other in one way or another. Be it that they can't follow on Legion missions, or incidents that cannot be held in high regard, the words that come with picking up the stone, that echo and flow into each other like gossamer spiderwebs, wool-thick and comforting in abstract. Each one to represent a time, a moment, an opportunity that sometimes led to something bad, or something much better.
"I'll wait for you as long as I have to."
"No, you'll wait for me as long as you can."
He walked into his room as light seeped away from the horizon at the end tail of something so much worse than usual it was amazing that he'd remembered to grab a small stone at all and keep it with him in his pocket while his hands were occupied. Keeping Tinya safe and warm against his chest, contemplating nothing like he had but an hour earlier; like making sure Brainy and Violet burned the outfit she'd been forced to be sheered out of when her blood started to harden with the black of the diseased puss; like how he had been verbally cruel and condescending to the two geniuses while they had treated Tinya inside the glass room, pacing outside like his namesake in the throws of preparing to strike them both down (irrational); like the flicker of Tinya dying, and dying, and being brought back with needles full of last ditch efforts and liquid to jolt her back into waking life.
She didn't move or wake when he shifted her to be held in just one of his arms, now free hand reaching into his pocket to deposit the chosen stone (he'd passed up a red marble sized one for a white piece not too different from shale) and didn't see it reach the bottom, but assumed it landed between two china green flats and one of the ember curdled from what his ears told him when he turned back to his bed.
The covers lifted easily and he managed to slide Tinya inside, his own form reaching in to settle so he encompassed her; his eyes tracing the line of her lips where blood was finally drying along the cuts from her chewing them and their own drying out with the loss of her blood so they were no longer the healthy grey of most female Bgztlians. He wanted to trace her facial features with his hands, the pads of his fingers itching to rub away the blood tracings and the tape Brainy had pressed over both of her eyes ("They'll remain over the next twelve hours; don't let her take them off. Her sight is at risk and while she probably already knows this, it'll be good to have someone nearby to prevent the knee-jerk reaction,") but he had to settle for pressing his forehead to her own. Her bare skin felt like ice while he felt like sunshine.
At least, this was what he gathered she must have felt through pain and sleep, her bare hands twitching and reaching forward to cling onto him.
A/N: For kaithelonechampion in consideration for the prompt left in my augment-techs tumblr ask box. I am SUPER sorry for this taking a while, but mixed prompts always seem to make me happy enough to make them fat and big.