As a writery person, I feel obliged to put a note here: I am not happy with this chapter. It feels a little disjointed to me.I don't know what you out there in cyberspace think. Read and review!
The pictures of time and space are rearranged
Sad Statue: System Of A Down
In retrospect, she would rather have had a hundred more injections that live through the trauma again.
It took about half an hour for the hallucinogen to settle itself firmly into Violet's brain, but the results were worse than anything she could have ever imagined.
It started suddenly, and with no warning apart from a growing lethargy. All at once, Violet noticed that there was a flashing zebra crossing running the length of the room, parallel to her body. She wondered why she had not seen it before. A multitude of animals began to cross it, all of them a mixture of smudged cartoon colours. She saw a cartoon giraffe cross and that's when the penguins approached her.
It was exactly like having a very high fever, she remembered later on. It had the same lucidly transparent feel to it, the same silence of a sickroom, the same distorted reality.
The hallucinations continued for about fifteen minutes, each of them stranger and less real than the previous, but she was in no state to notice that. Eventually, she fell asleep. And where the hallucinations had felt partway real, the dreams were all real.
Her family, a circus act on unicycles, wearing frilly red costumes. Violet stood in the ring, calling them, calling them, but they don't come. They don't come.
Her mother passes near her and she sees that her eyes are glazed, and her arms and legs move as if on automatic pilot. Helen Parr is dead, and Violet knows it.
No. This is wrong. Violet runs from mother to father to brother; they are all dead. Every one. They are performing; cycling, juggling, maybe dancing. They are all dead.
Violet's fear penetrates her muscles and she runs, runs from the tent, into a world where mindless walking zombies go about their daily life. No one pays attention to her. Not a word is spoken. Even the wind has died its own unnoticed death.
She is ignored, but she knows something is watching for her, looking for her, and it wants to turn her into one of these mindless deadmen.
So she runs.
Though crowds of the walking dead, through silence like tar.
This dream takes a long time; she runs through the crowds for hours. Looking for a place to hide where this Thing that is chasing her cannot find her.
And all the time there is an ominous background noise that sometimes grows louder, sometimes grows quieter; a sort of swishing noise, swooshing, like slow sickly waves or like someone trying to say something on a tape that is being played at an eighth of its normal speed. It is not a good sound.
And then she is running through jungle but because there are no more people that sound is louder now, more groaning, nearer, more dangerous. She feels it like a virus, coming for her. The jungle is empty, the jungle is silent, the jungle is a world waiting to end.
But she's reached the top of the volcano now, she notes, and there is someone sitting on the tiny, comical cartoon point. It is Syndrome.
He sits slightly hunched over, staring out across the sea, with his chin propped up on his knuckles: a semi-conscious parody of Auguste Rodin's 'The Thinker' . Around them is a clearing of short grass.
That sound has gone now. There is just silence, but she runs up to him anyway, scared more.
"It's coming, the Virus is coming," she says to him. He doesn't even look at her.
"I'm the only one who's not dead yet," he says matter-of-factly.
"I know I know come on let's go the Virus is coming." She tugs at him, but he doesn't move.
"Where to?" he says softly, and looks at her. He is not dead, she knows that. He is not dead, and they are the only ones who aren't. His eyes shine with hideous intelligence... and if the Virus catches them, that intelligence will vanish in a haze of death.
And the background noise that had disappeared suddenly becomes a roar of attack, and some great, invisible wind blasts across the plateau.
Syndrome says nothing, and Violet looks into his eyes and sees that he, too, is gone. She is on her own in a world of the dead and the Virus is coming for her now
A door clangs open. Violet lurches upwards with a shock of terror. The Virus, the Virus, the Virus, is all she remembers.
Hands she can't see in the dim luminescence of the cell grab her suddenly and drag her toward this bright rectangle of light. She is pushed into a world of waiting white, eyes screaming as they're overloaded in this disorientated, stumbling figure. She is aware that she is coated in perspiration; her skin is shiny with it.
Violet squints. This is all too fast, suddenly. Too fast. Voices babble everywhere. She stumbles, moving randomly. She's blind in the white light, waiting for her eyes to adjust, but they can't focus. Something is wrong.
It's like a very old memory, pressed in a book to be savoured on rainy days. Familiar, thank God, no-one's dead. It's not the volcano top. The dull grey room with harsh lighting. A gaggle of grey-uniformed men flit through the room (people, too many people but thank God they're not dead) but she focuses with all her will on the one thing that seems real.
Syndrome is stood there, grinning. He approaches her, resplendent in his egotism, arms folded behind his back. Violet's utter disorientation and confusion doesn't allow her to see any of this, of course; she has to warn him. The Virus is coming, is coming.
She's still in the grip of the hallucinogen, and it's still nested in her mind. The dream is still reality.
Syndrome is standing close to her, lips curled in a sneer.
"Enjoy your trip?"
She takes one lurching step forwards and falls onto him, clinging onto both his shoulders, burying her fingers in the material, pulling her to him, embracing him desperately. She can't hold herself up. She feels him stagger in surprise, but she has to tell him, to warn him.
"I won't let it happen to you," she whispers. "I won't. I won't let it happen to you, Buddy. When the Virus comes North, don't sit on the point of the volcano, you have to run. You have to run. You can't die because of me. I won't let you die. No. I won't let you die."
There's an arm about her shoulders and under her knees now, supporting her. Lifting her off her feet, stopping her struggle to stay vertical and balanced. She feels her job is done, and blackness claws at her mind, dragging it deep into an abyss. And the last thing she remembers before she drowns in this is that there are tears on her face.
llllllllll
Violet woke in a comfortable semi-darkness, in the calm quiet which indicated that someone was nearby and not saying anything. She shut her eyes again.
It wasn't Syndrome. She knew that much.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She licked her lips, and tried again.
"Water."
It was barely a whisper, but it was registered. Someone got up momentarily, and there was the sound of water being poured.
A glass was pressed to Violet's bottom lip, and a tiny dribble of water moistened her lips enough for her to open them, and swallow the liquid. It cleared the mugginess in her head a little, but the confusion still remained.
"I need -" she whispered.
"Hush," said a quiet female voice. She felt herself lifted up and carried across the room, through another doorway, where she blearily cracked open an eye. She felt her feet being pressed to the floor, and the door clicking shut again.
Violet used the toilet that was there. She felt a lot better.
Violet opened the door to the bathroom and walked unsteadily back to the bed. She lay down on it, and drifted away again.
llllllllll
It could have been days, hours, minutes. Violet's brief interludes of consciousness were punctuated by requests for water. She knew only that her back was held by something reasonably soft, that she was covered in a light sheet. She was warm and dry. She asked for nothing more.
Violet became intensely aware in this time of how many people were in the room.
Sometimes it just felt fuller.
Sometimes she had bad dreams where she felt something chasing her, but never the Virus dream. She hallucinated a couple of times; showers of stars that fell from the ceiling, ducks that swam across the floor. Her mind was too detached to wonder about the past, the future. Everything was blurred and slightly unreal. Many times she decided not to think about it because it made her head hurt, and she chose to sleep instead.
llllllllll
Violet woke to find her head slightly clearer but still quite tired. She wondered what had woken her.
There were too many people in the room. Instead of one, there were two. She dropped below the surface of sleep again. She had not moved or even opened her eyes.
She dimly heard footsteps lead to a door, which opened and closed again. There was only one person in the room, but it was not the same person who had been watching over her previously. This was a new person.
She knew who it was.
It her head had been tipped to the left, facing a wall. She now opened her eyes (slowly, oh so slowly; exhaustion was still a major factor of her life) and lifted her head slightly, moving it around.
Her eyes settled Syndrome. He was sitting alertly in a chair with his arms crossed over his stomach, and his gaze was locked unwaveringly on Violet.
"Welcome back to the world."
Violet made a monosyllabic noise. Speech was a brain function that required entirely too much energy.
"You really are a fascinating little thing, Violet, aren't you?"
She tipped her head away to face the ceiling and let her eyes drift closed.
"Your entire... psychedelic episode lasted about twenty-four hours. When I had you pulled out of the room, you promptly stumble over to me and endeavour to explain how, when the Virus comes North, I should not sit on the point of the volcano, but run."
The Virus rang painful memories, and she subdued them. She succeeded... she felt so far away from herself, and her memories.
"What, pray tell, is 'the Virus'?"
"Kills people." Her words were slurred, devoid of the energy it used to breathe with enough control to form them. Mumbling, because she hadn't the energy to move her jaw.
"And the 'point of the volcano'?"
"You were sitting on the volcano when it got you... everyone else was dead... I tried to make you run... but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide."
Violet turned away from Syndrome, slowly and laboriously. The dream had been horrible. It had been hell. She felt dead.
There was the sounds of a chair being pulled closer, and when Syndrome next spoke, his voice was right by her.
"It would appear that, insofar as bad trips go, you had quite the ride."
Violet said nothing. She felt his voice begin to fall slightly as her meagre focus began to drip away. She was starting to drift again.
"So, little Incredigirl... have you any information you wish to impart? Of a geographical nature regarding your family, perhaps?"
Some warning bell echoed distantly through her mind, but her thinking had a black and explanding fuzzy border.
"It can happen again, you know," said Syndrome quietly, but he spoke right into her ear. "It can happen again... the injection, the drugs, the nightmares. I can make it all happen again, and maybe the Virus will come back for you this time."
Violet curled up slightly. Her mind was blurred and uncertain, but an underlying thread of fear suddenly ripped through her subconscious and hit her brain in a whiplash of fear.
She did not want to go back to that world of the waiting dead, but she knew that that world was likely to become permanent if she gave Syndrome the information he wanted. Her family were as good as dead if Syndrome found out where they lived.
"Do you want it to happen again?" murmured Syndrome, and Violet could detect wicked strands of fury.
"No," she whispered.
"Choose."
Then, just like that, Syndrome was gone, and Violet drowned once more in worried sleep.
llllllllll
It was maybe a day later.
Violet was sitting upright, alert and cross-legged, tired but not sleepy. She held a glass of water in one hand and sipped from it occasionally.
She had woken up maybe an hour ago, mind clear and lucid. She still suffered from some physical fatigue, but that was only to be expected. She remembered her previous hell, blurred over as it was, and Syndrome's threat. She tried not to dwell on it too much.
She was wearing different clothes to what she remembered: a light, black vest-top, and black jeans... she recognised them as her own, and assumed someone had taken them from her pack (wherever the hell it was). Her trainers were sitting uniformly by the bed. Someone must have changed her, and as soon as Syndrome came to visit, she was going to raise holy hell if she found out it wasn't a woman.
The door hissed open, and Violet stared sharply at the newcomer.
It was Red.
She looked somewhat worn, as if she'd had to do some gruelling work. Her blonde hair was tied back, and she wore a plain grey t-shirt and black pants.
"Red?" asked Violet, surprised. Red gave her a scared smile.
"Hey, Vi. Looking better."
"Feeling better. I reckon that drug is out of my system now. Have a seat."
Red moved over to sit by Violet, pulling a thin torch from her pocket as she went. She sat down by Violet, and Red gripped her chin with her fingers.
"Look into the light for me, please."
Violet complied. Red shone the light into each of Violet's eyes in turn, and nodded in satisfaction. "Nothing wrong up there. Any pains?"
"Um, yes. My neck - shoulder – Red -"
"Only to be expected. That was a thocking great needle. The primary stiffness has died down but it will be tender for a while."
"Red, what are you doing here?"
"When you disappeared I was grabbed and hauled in for questioning. They held me for about an hour, and released me. About a week later, Syndrome approached me about my medical knowledge. He had a patient who was slipping away. That would be you, Vi."
Violet nodded, and indicated that Red should continue.
"I was shown into this room where you were lying comatose, looking like death. The first thing I did was to get you cleaned up. The second was to have some counterdrug administered into your bloodstream, to fight the chemical. Syndrome, intentionally, perhaps, appeared to have given you an overdose."
Red stared away, looking moody.
"You woke for the first time about two days after someone had brought me in, and asked for some water, and to use the bathroom. After that, things started to look better; you appeared to retain some vestiges of consciousness, even through nightmares. And now you're awake, and you look like death after being in a casserole pot for a couple of hours."
Violet's face creased in confusion. Red rolled her eyes and sighed, and Violet noticed the thin crows' feet around Red's eyes that hadn't been there before.
"I think you've lost maybe a stone in weight. Mostly dehydration - water loss, you know, but I think I've rectified that."
Violet looked down at herself, and didn't see anything different, but when she touched her face, she felt how her cheekbones were slightly more pronounced. She took a gulp of water to slap some sense of reality back.
"And you?" Violet asked shakily. Red shrugged.
"I've stayed and looked after you."
Violet looked down into her water glass.
"Thank you," she whispered, and was surprised when Red gave her a fierce hug.
"I don't know what you've done to deserve Syndrome's attention, but by God, I hope it was worth it."
"My father is Syndrome's worst enemy. He wants my father dead. I know where my father is. Syndrome doesn't. He wants me to rectify the situation."
Red pased for a moment. "And... torture...?"
"Yes. He's been quite inventive."
Red appeared to shakily pull herself together.
"Well, you appear quite chirpy, but you could do with a lot more bed rest."
"I don't think I'm going to get it."
Red looked at her and Violet could see alarm in her eyes.
"You... you seem... different. Older, maybe."
Violet examined herself mentally with frank curiosity, and nothing appeared changed. Mystified, she glanced at Red to see her shaking her head and smiling.
"Never mind. Humour an old woman."
Violet smiled in return. "So tell me," she said. "How long have I been out?"
llllllllll
Violet was sitting cross-legged on her bed, floating on the remnants of a painkiller high. She was resting her chin on her knuckles.
It had all been so... sudden.
A week. She had been in this place a week. Surely her parents must have noticed by now. After all, Violet had made it clear she would write postcards every three days, and so far, they were two short.
Snug - surely he must have noticed. Made sure she'd kept contact. Anything.
And as for herself... she thought she was coping with it remarkably, if worryingly, well. That nervous breakdown had never happened. Maybe because she was a super (albeit a neutered super - no powers), and she had been in similar situations, she could cope with it better than a normal person. Remarkable, really.
She was amazed she could still think lucidly, with all that pethidin still floating around in her bloodstream. (Pethidin, she had found out from Red, was a couple of steps below morphine.) No, the problem was that she was thinking too jovially.
Violet was drawn from her brood by the door opening. It was Syndrome.
If it wasn't for Syndrome then my father would still be listening to the police scanner, getting maniacally depressed and having us move house every year.
This thought was so sudden, so unwarranted, that her brain staggered for a moment, internal gyroscope thrown akimbo. Her view of him slipped down a notch in intensity.
He might hurt me but he healed the rest of my family.
Smug git.
"Yes?" she said promptly. Syndrome looked a little off-balance for a moment, as though he was expecting a much meeker person, especially since he had just entered the room to find Violet bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, figuratively speaking. Violet supposed she should have been meeker. She'd just hang-glided over hell, after all.
"Feeling better."
"Yep." She was feeling a lot better, and a lot happier, after psychoanalysing Syndrome's effect on her family. Oh, and the painkillers might have had something to do with it.
Syndrome moved a little further into the room. There was a strange glint to his eye.
"Tell me, Violet Parr... what is it you want most, right now?"
"A lack of discontent and some emotional stability in my life."
Syndrome's expression was classic. Violet couldn't resist a smirk. It made him angry.
"Answer the question."
Violet stared into space for a couple of minutes. Family? Friends? To be free? To be loved?
No, those were the things that she thought she should be feeling. She settled on a definite one.
"A shower, and a toothbrush," she said, with an air of finality. Syndrome's expression... what a kodak moment.
"A shower and a toothbrush," he said flatly. He'd lost all his menacing overtones, to be replaced by an aura of utter confusion.
"A shower," repeated Violet, staring dreamily away. "And a toothbrush... my teeth feel like sandpaper." She ran her tongue over them experimentally, and grimaced.
She risked a glance at Syndrome. He looked completely - nay, ridiculously - out of his depth. The humour didn't miss her. His look was one of complete confusion, bemused bewilderment and staggering surprise.
"A toothbrush," repeated Syndrome emotionlessly. He rubbed his head. "Women," he muttered under his breath. Violet burst out laughing.
Syndrome's air of dangerousness seemed to have evaporated, because he didn't get angry. His look of bemusement stayed with him. She tried to calm herself down, with some success - the laughter was hurting her rib.
"Would you rather I have stuck with emotional stability?" she asked, amused. Syndrome gave her a look which stated 'I have absobloodylutely no idea what you are talking about, because I have you at my mercy and all you do is dream about hygiene. Something is not right here.'
"So tell me... what do you want?" asked Violet, leaning back. The ghost of a grin twitched her lips.
This appeared to slap Syndrome back on track.
"I want to know where your family is currently residing."
"Hang on a minute, haven't we heard this song before? I thought we'd agreed that you couldn't get it out of me with a crowbar."
Syndrome seemed to be regathering some of his self-control. A smirk flickered on his face.
"Be as stubborn as you like. I haven't tried the sodium pentathol on you yet."
"Sodium pentathol... hang on a minute, isn't that -"
"The Truth Serum, yes."
"I was going to say, 'isn't that notoriously unreliable?' It just makes people talk more, not tell the truth."
"You know what sodium pentathol is?" He was evidently surprised.
"Of course. I graduated top in my high-school chemistry class."
There was a pause, and Syndrome said: "So I'm going to have to go through the whole hallucinogen thing again?"
"Don't sound too annoyed... you're not the one who had it forcibly injected into you."
"It's time-consuming and so far has proved ineffective... although I'm pretty sure that, given another week, it can break you."
Violet stared at him with frank amazement. Syndrome was a very strange person, emotionally speaking. He reacted to her mood. If she was scared, he played the part of the sneering warlord. If she was not bothered (in this case because she was on the vapours of a painkiller high) then he seemed chatty, conversational. He was an emotional chameleon: he adhered to the stereotype expected in conversation. Violet wondered if it was her that he was responding to - after all, she was a living reminder of how he used to be.
Oh well, then. Best not ruin a good thing.
"So you're not going to bother?"
"Don't be daft. Of course I'm going to bother. I haven't spent the last five years rebuilding an empire to be felled at the first hurdle." He seemed marginally insulted, and his expression became sterner.
Violet moodily held out her palm. A thin violet shield shimmered momentarily into life, then winked out of existence. There was still that mental block, overriding her inner concentration. It served only to depress her more. She rested her chin on her palm and stared rather pointedly at Syndrome.
"So... the whole 'trip' thing is going to be repeated?"
"Yes."
She sighed, somewhat theatrically. "C'mon, you know I'm not gonna tell you. Threaten me, bribe me, cover me in sauce and throw me to the wolves, you know full well this girl isn't singing."
A dangerous, informal tone. A gamble on his emotions and predictablilty. Violet studied Syndrome under the guise of glaring at him, and thought she recognised his somewhat bemused expression: it was exactly the same one her father wore when talking to Edna. Bob couldn't put E in a box, get her personality down; to him, Edna was completely unpredictable. Syndrome must have felt that way about Violet right now. First toothbrushes, then wolves... dear me.
"So let me get this straight," said Syndrome, with a dangerous air of a man trying to talk his way through a maze. "You want, right now, a shower and a toothbrush. You would also know that sodium pentathol is useless. You would regretfully prefer not to have another trip."
"Close enough."
"And you claim to be completely sane? This is not how it is supposed to go when being interrogated."
"Dunno. Never been properly interrogated before. Oh, sure, I've met the odd evil warlord, but it was more of a case of a couple of random questions about how I would like to die, and then lots of gunfire."
Syndrome stood right in front of her, arms folded over his chest. His expression was fierce and might have scared her some other time. Violet refused to be cowed.
"You're annoying, did you know that?" he snapped. Violet grinned at seeing him unnerved.
"So I can go?" she asked brightly, playing on his irritation. Syndrome growled in sheer rage, turned on his heel and was just exiting when Violet heard him growl, "I need some aspirin and she needs a lobotomy."
Spooks-A-Lot: It's Syndrome! Of course there's torture. I'm not sure (i.e. I can't remember) but don't think there is any more physical torture in the story.
The Star Swordsman: It'll work out eventually, but for now, it can only get worse.
j752572: Nice name. Has it anything to do with real life? I know mine doesn't. I just liked the sound the letters made together. Funnily enough, no-one has asked me why my penname is also the name of a torture device...
Anyway. More nasty cliff-hangers to come, you can count on that.
PitbullLady: Oo. Harsh.
I suppose that five years was enough to make Syndrome mature somewhat, as well as Violet, making him more focused and more serious, and as a result more evolved in his torture methods.
As for my 'respiratory depression' bit, I will dispense my lame excuses forthwith:
1) Blame Stephen King. In his book 'Misery', the main character goes into painkiller-induced respiratory depression, and wakes up a week or so later to find himself so mangled that he's nearly dead but conscious and not in shock. That's where I got the idea from.
2) Buddy does not know his terminology, and when he says 'respiratory depression' might mean say, Violet's breathing dropped dangerously.
3) I did not consult my mother this time, who is a trained medical professional on such matters, whereas I have for later chapters.
Take your pick.
The point of this chapter was to expose something about Violet's view of Syndrome, which will be essential to their later romance. I'm not explaining what it is now, or it'll ruin the plot.
Review again!
Nina: Thanks! It's reassuring to know that I don't have to be scared of growing up. I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a shop I visit regularly... I think she's in her late thirties, early forties? She was telling me about the bets she'd won by doing various stupid things, like completing the last lap of a motorbike tournament topless for £200, or riding the length of a Scottish island naked with her friend, just for kicks. She hasn't grown up beyond about 17.
I want to be like her... it'll mortify my parents.
Perfect.
auri mynonys: Thanks! I was expecting a bit of rap for that needle scene (and boy, did I get it from a couple of reviewers). I hate needles. Hate them. Haaaaaate them. When I had my TB jab when I was fourteen, I went into shock so bad that I had to miss the rest of the schoolday. Blehh.
This chapter exposes a little of Violet's subconscious view of Syndrome that can be identified in later chapters, though not now, and will be essential to their later romance.
Da-manta-ray: Thanks! I've been worrying about OOCness. Keep an eye on it for me?
As for romance... it's honest-to-God not that far off.
irishpiratess: It's so annoying when the fics you want to read you can't find... try looking up a Syndrome/Violet fic outside It's impossible. Either that, or I'm not looking in the right places.
Villain/goody romance is the most fun to read and write, possibly because it's so complex. You have waive bad feelings and general hatred for it to work and, when it's done well, is great to read. It's so much harder to write a Violet/Syndrome than, say, a Violet/Tony.
I was reading fanfiction for about four months before I signed up for an account -not just Incredibles, but tons of other fandoms as well, to get a grasp of variety and style. Boy, was I surprised. I didn't even think a Violet/Syndrome fic was possible, or that anyone would have thought one up, until I ran across 'Changes' by lotussister. Who has stopped updating. : (
I promise I won't forget this fic.
nny11: I hate needles. Hate them. Haaaate them. In fact, I am loathe to give up that vowel: I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate them. When I had my TB jab when I was fourteen, I went into shock so bad that I had to miss the rest of that schoolday. I also channelled my own reactions into Violet: I forgot to breathe. My throat sort of sealed up. It was horrible. Bleargh. Yes, in case you hadn't noticed, I too have a needle phobia. I sort of figured it would produce the most emphatic response from a reader, and, judging from your review, it appears to have worked.
Sorry about that.
Gremblin: Trying to update regularly, at least... I just like leaving chapters on cliff-hangers. Means you readery people don't get bored with me and go somewhere else. Sorry about that. ; )
Cristy Demonwrath: I e-mailed my response to you because it was so damn long. ; )