tunnel vision
Aug. 14th, 2022 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Tunnel Vision
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout 3 (Lone Wanderer)
Wordcount: 1,157
Summary: J.J makes it all of two steps out of the tunnel entrance before it drops her. Vertigo, or something like it.
Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Emetophobia
Remarks: I honestly forgot I wrote this a couple of months ago - it was mostly a character study attempt to try and become invested in Fallout 3, which sadly did not work. The writing itself is nothing stellar, but it might as well go in the archives as a 'done is better than perfect' success story!
J.J makes it all of two steps out of the tunnel entrance before it drops her.
Vertigo, or something like it. Best diagnosis she can make facedown in the dirt, an acrid wash stinging her throat.
Maybe there's a better word in one of the few of Dad's books she hasn't read yet. Something to describe what happens when the entire world up and spins away on you, leaves you falling up or down or sideways until you finally crash into something solid enough to get a hold on.
The surface that's claimed her is rough, gritty and uneven, and it only adds to the sense of being dizzyingly unmoored, the very foundations of the world crumbling away in little fragments that coat her hands in brown and grey. She digs fingers in until the broken ones cry uncle louder than Freddie on his eleventh birthday.
Same year as Mr Brotch pulled out the old tape for the class as a reward for making less of a ruckus than usual on quiz day. Why anyone thought aerodynamics was worth learning in a vault was anyone's guess, but they'd been captivated by the crackly, swooping snatches of endless landscape, the visions from the inside of an ancient machine spiralling through an unthinkable void.
She'd catalogued her symptoms with distant interest. Dizziness, nausea, sweat that prickled cold on her skin - around the time she stopped being able to swallow she figured maybe it was something real after all, right before she leaned over and threw up on the floor, spattering Butch's shoes at the desk next to hers.
He'd mined it for weeks, gloatingly proud of stringing enough schooling together to figure out Liu rhymed with spew. But he'd cut it out once she made him.
Dad had taken her temperature, checked her throat. Found nothing but a trick of her own mind.
"Motion sickness." His eyes had that faraway look, fond and sad, so she knew what was coming next. "Just like your mother. She would turn a terrible green if she so much as looked at…" Something made him pause, and he left the memory unfinished; chucked her under the chin instead, quick and affectionate. "Well. A ginger chew and a lie-down, and you'll be good as new. You should have said something sooner, sweetheart. No need to sit there feeling ill."
J.J. had just stared at him. Bemused, even then, by the lack of logic from someone who was usually so knowledgeable. What would have been the point in saying anything? Mr Brotch said they were watching the video, so that's what they were going to do. Same way as there was no getting anyone to stop calling her the name that was in the register instead of the one she actually liked, or moving her and dad out of her favourite room because it was better for the vault somehow.
The only time what she wanted mattered was when there was no one around to tell her otherwise.
A law as immutable as gravity, she might have said. Only gravity's gone and abandoned her now. Guess there's a lesson there.
She gets herself up on her elbows. It hurts: a list of ailments easier to catalogue than the one that's actually laid her out. At least two broken fingers on her left hand, and her ribs feel pretty bad too. It's her mouth that bothers her the most, though; her lips seem twice their usual size, and she winces when her tongue finds something soft and bloody where teeth are supposed to be.
He'd swung at her head. Mr Hannon, Paul's dad, whistling she'll be coming 'round the mountain in the mornings; the image of the mushy ruin of Jonas' face still fresh in her mind, and he'd swung at her head.
She'd made him stop. Same as she did Butch when he crossed a line, got under her skin.
Doesn’t want to think too hard about what that means just yet.
She catalogues everything else instead. Pipboy on her wrist. The weight of a baseball in her pocket on one side; the clunky bulge of a coffee mug on the other. Baseball bat lying somewhere nearby where she's dropped it.
All evidence of how clearly she hadn't been thinking, that's for sure. Like vertigo without the puking, a roaring disconnect between what you knew and what actually played out around you. Has a vague recollection of deciding she'd need something to hold water in and now she has the empty mug she'd painted for dad's birthday instead of a bottle full of calories. Smart, Liu.
The bat has some use at least. Clearly. But she's still not thinking about that.
The cap's still on top of her head when she reaches for it, and the flicker of relief she feels when she pushes it down low over her eyes gives her an idea. Butch's jacket is a heavy weight over her shoulders - and she's taken it off him before, but never with so little struggle, never with him shoving it into her hands of his own will, beaming, insistent.
She wriggles out of it, drags the crisp leather up and over her head like a blanket against monsters in the dark. This time the relief is an electric current, a surge through shaky limbs. J.J. squints through the hole she's left herself, the bright circle of - shit, is it morning? Time's spun away with the rest.
It's bright, anyway. Pricks tears in her eyes anew. Blurs the grey and brown and something that might almost be blue, the way the books always promised, and she stares through it, stacks the colours one on top of the other until they start to make a sort of consistent sense. Rebuilds the landscape through the framing of the cap and the jacket, ceiling and walls, up and down and sideways.
When she grunts her way up onto her knees, then her feet, she doesn't immediately fall back down. Still feels queasy in her stomach, but she'll survive it. Has to survive it. She didn't think to grab any ginger chews.
Could have said something sooner, dad. Could have said any damn thing at all.
Dad's not here, lying on the floor among the ancient bones scattered down the tunnel behind her. It's good, but it means she'll have to go out there soon enough. Into the sprawling, dizzying space. Follow the maps she'd hastily ripped from the Overseer's terminal; hope like hell she could find this town the reports had mentioned with her head pointed mostly at her own toes.
Right this second, though, she sort of just wants to stand still on unsteady feet under a gusty, dusty warmth that smells like nothing she can put a name to, and not move too much, and not think too hard at all.
And because there's no one else to tell her otherwise, she does.
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout 3 (Lone Wanderer)
Wordcount: 1,157
Summary: J.J makes it all of two steps out of the tunnel entrance before it drops her. Vertigo, or something like it.
Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Emetophobia
Remarks: I honestly forgot I wrote this a couple of months ago - it was mostly a character study attempt to try and become invested in Fallout 3, which sadly did not work. The writing itself is nothing stellar, but it might as well go in the archives as a 'done is better than perfect' success story!
J.J makes it all of two steps out of the tunnel entrance before it drops her.
Vertigo, or something like it. Best diagnosis she can make facedown in the dirt, an acrid wash stinging her throat.
Maybe there's a better word in one of the few of Dad's books she hasn't read yet. Something to describe what happens when the entire world up and spins away on you, leaves you falling up or down or sideways until you finally crash into something solid enough to get a hold on.
The surface that's claimed her is rough, gritty and uneven, and it only adds to the sense of being dizzyingly unmoored, the very foundations of the world crumbling away in little fragments that coat her hands in brown and grey. She digs fingers in until the broken ones cry uncle louder than Freddie on his eleventh birthday.
Same year as Mr Brotch pulled out the old tape for the class as a reward for making less of a ruckus than usual on quiz day. Why anyone thought aerodynamics was worth learning in a vault was anyone's guess, but they'd been captivated by the crackly, swooping snatches of endless landscape, the visions from the inside of an ancient machine spiralling through an unthinkable void.
She'd catalogued her symptoms with distant interest. Dizziness, nausea, sweat that prickled cold on her skin - around the time she stopped being able to swallow she figured maybe it was something real after all, right before she leaned over and threw up on the floor, spattering Butch's shoes at the desk next to hers.
He'd mined it for weeks, gloatingly proud of stringing enough schooling together to figure out Liu rhymed with spew. But he'd cut it out once she made him.
Dad had taken her temperature, checked her throat. Found nothing but a trick of her own mind.
"Motion sickness." His eyes had that faraway look, fond and sad, so she knew what was coming next. "Just like your mother. She would turn a terrible green if she so much as looked at…" Something made him pause, and he left the memory unfinished; chucked her under the chin instead, quick and affectionate. "Well. A ginger chew and a lie-down, and you'll be good as new. You should have said something sooner, sweetheart. No need to sit there feeling ill."
J.J. had just stared at him. Bemused, even then, by the lack of logic from someone who was usually so knowledgeable. What would have been the point in saying anything? Mr Brotch said they were watching the video, so that's what they were going to do. Same way as there was no getting anyone to stop calling her the name that was in the register instead of the one she actually liked, or moving her and dad out of her favourite room because it was better for the vault somehow.
The only time what she wanted mattered was when there was no one around to tell her otherwise.
A law as immutable as gravity, she might have said. Only gravity's gone and abandoned her now. Guess there's a lesson there.
She gets herself up on her elbows. It hurts: a list of ailments easier to catalogue than the one that's actually laid her out. At least two broken fingers on her left hand, and her ribs feel pretty bad too. It's her mouth that bothers her the most, though; her lips seem twice their usual size, and she winces when her tongue finds something soft and bloody where teeth are supposed to be.
He'd swung at her head. Mr Hannon, Paul's dad, whistling she'll be coming 'round the mountain in the mornings; the image of the mushy ruin of Jonas' face still fresh in her mind, and he'd swung at her head.
She'd made him stop. Same as she did Butch when he crossed a line, got under her skin.
Doesn’t want to think too hard about what that means just yet.
She catalogues everything else instead. Pipboy on her wrist. The weight of a baseball in her pocket on one side; the clunky bulge of a coffee mug on the other. Baseball bat lying somewhere nearby where she's dropped it.
All evidence of how clearly she hadn't been thinking, that's for sure. Like vertigo without the puking, a roaring disconnect between what you knew and what actually played out around you. Has a vague recollection of deciding she'd need something to hold water in and now she has the empty mug she'd painted for dad's birthday instead of a bottle full of calories. Smart, Liu.
The bat has some use at least. Clearly. But she's still not thinking about that.
The cap's still on top of her head when she reaches for it, and the flicker of relief she feels when she pushes it down low over her eyes gives her an idea. Butch's jacket is a heavy weight over her shoulders - and she's taken it off him before, but never with so little struggle, never with him shoving it into her hands of his own will, beaming, insistent.
She wriggles out of it, drags the crisp leather up and over her head like a blanket against monsters in the dark. This time the relief is an electric current, a surge through shaky limbs. J.J. squints through the hole she's left herself, the bright circle of - shit, is it morning? Time's spun away with the rest.
It's bright, anyway. Pricks tears in her eyes anew. Blurs the grey and brown and something that might almost be blue, the way the books always promised, and she stares through it, stacks the colours one on top of the other until they start to make a sort of consistent sense. Rebuilds the landscape through the framing of the cap and the jacket, ceiling and walls, up and down and sideways.
When she grunts her way up onto her knees, then her feet, she doesn't immediately fall back down. Still feels queasy in her stomach, but she'll survive it. Has to survive it. She didn't think to grab any ginger chews.
Could have said something sooner, dad. Could have said any damn thing at all.
Dad's not here, lying on the floor among the ancient bones scattered down the tunnel behind her. It's good, but it means she'll have to go out there soon enough. Into the sprawling, dizzying space. Follow the maps she'd hastily ripped from the Overseer's terminal; hope like hell she could find this town the reports had mentioned with her head pointed mostly at her own toes.
Right this second, though, she sort of just wants to stand still on unsteady feet under a gusty, dusty warmth that smells like nothing she can put a name to, and not move too much, and not think too hard at all.
And because there's no one else to tell her otherwise, she does.
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Date: 2022-08-15 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 03:24 am (UTC)