Work Text:
"No…that didn't just happen…"
"It came here. To us. Oh, what is this shitty luck?"
"…just assholes is what they are. Oh. Hey, man—"
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"—come on man, wake up!"
Grizzy jolted awake, face peeling harshly off the cool train window. What'd he miss? He was already facing the window, the same green hills and distant mountains flying by, the same monotony that lulled him to sleep in the first place; everything had been green for hours, and his brain still hadn't quieted yet. What were the chances that the voices in his dream made him literally wake up, if there wasn't even anything to panic about? So much for good intuition.
And spacial awareness, apparently.
"Finally," a voice muttered next to him, making Grizzy nearly die inside with his jerky reaction. When did he get there? He swore the only voices he heard were the random people in his dream, but nope, a man was standing in the train car's aisle, with blond hair as messy as Grizzy's own felt and a pair of headphones looped around his neck, obviously the owner of the last voice who snapped him awake. Ignoring or uncaring to Grizzy's startle response to his presence, the man continued, waving the hand holding his phone off in a vague direction, "This place's the last stop." He also had a suitcase by his side, hoisting on a backpack as he spoke.
Grizzy ran his fingers through his hair. "Well fuck me, then," he bit out, voice strangled from sleep. How long was he out for? It couldn't have been that long. He moved his head way too sharply down to flip over his phone, and nearly winced out loud at the crick in his neck.
Must've been a long time, then—6 HOURS?!
The man, having the audacity to, snickered, "What, not looking forward to being in Oyra?"
"I don't even know what continent I'm on anymore," Grizzy mumbled, reaching for his bag. He's never heard of the town Oyra in his life.
"Not many to choose from for that. Wanna do a coin flip?" He sounded faintly amused, like Grizzy's turmoil was routine entertainment for him. From Grizzy's brief glance out at blurs of cattle racing by, he supposed it probably is, living in an end-of-the-line place like this.
Way too late, he realized that, wait, his brain was being too quiet right now. That's not a good sign.
The second he rolled out of bed, his brain pulsed with adrenaline, some kind of foreign fight-or-flight instinct screeching at him until he was fumbling with a suitcase, nearly cracking his screen with how fast he purchased tickets, and speeding westward on a train to who-knows-where.
He hadn't tried to fight the mental alarm in years. If it could ward him off a few years ago from going to a city about to be flattened by a tsunami, he supposed it was only right to trust it with his life. Even if it made him nearly piss his pants every time he felt it.
His alarm had lulled into a gentle, pulsing warmth as he settled down in his train seat, throwing his headphones on, music blaring and news notifications enabled in case he heard of his hometown getting nuked by nature. Honestly, with how many natural disasters there have been for his generation, you'd think there would be more warning systems put into place that wasn't just a belated phone notice.
Just because his instincts stopped screaming, though, didn't mean he was out of the woods yet. If anything it just meant he was in the "Calm Before the Storm" stage, his intuition holding its breath, taut with tension until it snapped free when something went wrong—and something always went wrong.
That thought definitely got him packing up his things faster. "You said we were in Oyra?" Grizzy asked, the man looking up from his phone in slight surprise at being addressed again.
"Hm? Oh, yeah. You can probably get a ticket pretty quickly, if you want to go back east. Trains don't linger around long. There's way more fuel than people here."
No, that didn't make sense. Grizzy frowned, pulling up his stuffed, rushed-to-pack backpack. "Right. Do you know if there's anything nearby? Like, a dam, or like a coast or something?" It wouldn't be the first time his instincts pushed him to somewhere, actually. Once it made him linger in a national park until a thunderstorm hit, his senses relaxing enough to watch the geysers burst in front of him without as much tension.
The guy scoffed, "Oh, sure, yeah, just hike through all those mountains, and you'll probably find a beach at some point." He pocketed his phone, jutting his head in the direction of Grizzy's window. Behind the glass, past the green and the cows, were where the mountains narrowed, a town nestled between them that the train was rushing towards. "Nothing else but cattle for miles, here. The people are good, though, I'd like to think. Train station helped 'em expand and not be…uh… stereotypical rural people."
The taut line of tension in Grizzy's chest quivered, goosebumps bursting down his arms despite only warmth flaring to life in his chest. Panic slowly began to snake around his heart, constricting. "Nothing at all?" He said, voice strained from anything but drowsiness, at this point.
"Cattle, oil, or beer, take your pick."
It was a burn in his gut, and Grizzy snapped to a standing position, grabbing onto his seat for balance as the train began to brake. From what the window showed, the town was much closer now, the mountains oppressively tall. He knocked his phone off the ground towards the blonde.
"You good, man?" He questioned, losing some of the casual sarcasm to pick up the phone. His eyes seemed to track the visible disarray on Grizzy's face, free hand dipping into his pocket to pull out his own phone.
"Fine. Just, uh, feeling a bit sick. Probably just hungry, I didn't eat at all during the ride," Grizzy lied quickly, schooling his face that was probably contorted in a grimace. With an internal sigh of relief, the stranger relaxed, lowering his phone and readily handing Grizzy's back.
"Good. Name's Wren, by the way."
"Grizzy. And thanks for waking me up, I think I would've been knocked out for like a year if not for that." Another lie. He knew for a fact he would've woken up from how loud his head is, now. It's not even a noise, but an itch, a static muffling his other thoughts and forcing him to think of the 'wait for itttt…wait for itttt…' type of tension.
"Huh, well, hibernation does seem to be up your alley."
Routine irritation pierced through the static, and Grizzy groaned. "Everyone I meet says the exact same thing, I swear to god… Bear thing this, bear thing that. I'm not even 'Grizzly'!"
"Eh, close enough."
"Fuck you."
Wren laughed, a deep genuine sound. Grizzy couldn't help but smile even as his gut throbbed with the flames of a sputtering campfire.
The train was slowing completely now, though, the buzz of the conductor's voice explaining how this was the last stop filtering through. Briefly, he wondered how he would've lost his mind had he not have gotten the warning ahead of time. Maybe he wouldn't have noticed the noise at all.
"Well, good luck getting back home, man. If you ever stop by Oyra again, just ask someone at the pub for me, and they'll hit me up."
Grizzy said his goodbye, and when the doors opened, Wren walked off, taking a path directly off the platform that led into town. Everything seemed very still, here. Only a handful of people departed from other carts on the train, a few rushing for the ticket booth looking as frazzled as he did after his 'hibernation.' Those who knew where they were going—locals, clearly, their faces brightening at the first glance of the Welcome to Oyra! sign—left quickly, and before long, only a few lost souls lingered with him.
There weren't even any animal noises. No birds, despite the steep slope bordering the train station being covered in forest. No scavengers, despite the copious amount of trash littering the station ground—no wonder locals want to get out of here so fast. There wasn't even the faint sound of the cattle that Grizzy swore he saw practically seconds ago out of his window.
Odd didn't even begin to cover it, not to mention the way his sense tightened the second he stepped onto the platform, a string held as taut as possible pressing against his heart. It was going to snap. What was it? What was about to happen? He couldn't tell, but could the animals? Was that why they were nowhere to be found? He remembered watching someone's viral recording of a whole cloud-worth of seagulls careening away from the sea, panickedly escaping the behemoth of a wave before a single alarm sounded.
He glanced at his phone, the lack of notifications only concerning him further. Whatever this was, nobody knew about it. And, with one quick glance at the quaint-looking town, they weren't ready for what was about to happen to them.
"5 HOURS?! No, I want out now! Have you smelled this place for even a second? It stinks! I'm expected all the way in Malcova by this evening." A high-pitched, rambling screech of a complaint came from the direction of the ticket booth, the man behind it looking exhausted as the woman in front of him rattled off her busy schedule, gesturing wildly at her briefcase and tie.
Grizzy grimaced in sympathy, hearing the guy drawl out an "I'm sorry, ma'am" as he swiftly fled from the volume. Sounds like he won't be getting home for a while, anyway, not that a single part of him was keen to do so. The tightness still clung to his chest as he hopped down a step onto the stone path. It stretched as he fell, a tingling rocketing up his body.
Then he hit the ground, and the feeling thinned with a shiver going up his spine, the thread a singular atom away from snapping. And then the ground shook.
The deep, aggressive quake had Grizzy's intake of breath and muttered curse drowned out instantly by a scream from the platform. A flicker of heat like an ember shot up his legs from where they planted firmly in the earth for balance, tickling up the right side of his body in a straight, direct line up his right hip to his ear.
The ember moved with him in the split second it took for his head to snap towards it,burning to his temple, right eye, nose, left eye, and pupils until they were staring directly where it was coming from. An innocuous mountain maybe 10 miles away, smoking.
And then the tension in his chest snapped, and everything froze, brain screeching every alarm possible as his brain worked overtime.
In the moment before he had the most unexplainable experience of his life, he thought three things:
One: HOLY SHIT THAT'S A VOLCANO!
Two: IT'S ABOUT TO POMPEII THE FUCK OUTTA THIS PLACE!
And Three: Wait…it feels like I can—
In the future, he would never be able to explain correctly what he saw, next. He's not sure he saw anything, but it was like he closed his eyes in a blink, something clicked on in his head, and when he reopened his eyes, he could sense everything.
A flash of red, of unyielding heat, of bubbling, of a deep and roaring pressure in what felt to be his gut, of that pressure bursting free and rising like air popping a balloon in his ear…but this explosion wasn't of air. No…
What the fuck? was his only discernible thought. The scorching red rocketed upwards through his awareness like vomit in his throat, a whoosh! of pure relief as the heat left in a flood. The red was too much to be called just "red," a fiery barrage of colors and blackened rocks and oh, it was magma. He could feel it now, propelling upwards into the air, releasing all the gases built up beneath it in a harsh mushroom cloud of smoke.
All of the tension in his body, the wait wait wait wait feeling that persisted in his soul, was released in this one singular cloud, rocketing outwards in all directions in the time it probably took someone to blink. Something akin to belonging bubbled somewhere deep inside him, probably where his heart once sat. This release, this overwhelming sense of peace as all of his turmoil was now gone—one with the lava, one with the smoke, one with the rocks—it felt like bliss.
And then reality returned in a lurch, because WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!
Confusion sputtered to the surface first, a fresh trail of lava speeding down the rock-face of the mountain he was just looking up at like five seconds ago. Alarm shot out extra magma and fumes, only adding to the barrage of phantom tingles from the ash he could feel in the sky.
When it clicked and understanding filtered through, the landslide of death-ash had already nearly collided with Oyra, seeming to slam against an invisible surface and retract itself away from the civilization. It moved upwards, away, backwards, anywhere else but where people were screaming, phones no doubt screeching a warning far too late. Desperation made it spread faster, encircling the town, blanketing the sky with darkness.
The everything that Grizzy could sense—now that he was slightly more aware—wasn't just the gases, but more:
Wind whipping against the rocks streaking through the sky, trailed by flames.
Lava eating away at the earth in carved, starved paths, pushing its way downwards.
A wildfire rapidly developing along the treeline, trees cracking as they were enveloped in an instant.
Fumes scattering across the sky enough to cast everything in darkness, awareness flickering through the particles like phantom signals.
And yet, all Grizzy could think of was that he still feels his body. He could feel his eyes widen, hear his pulse racing to match the beat of the steady outpouring of lava. His hand touched his face to remind himself that he existed, the one sensory input almost long completely in the barrage of simulation. He felt his eyes blink more than instructed them to, and through the red, heat, red, fire, rock senses, he could vaguely make out what it looked like from a distance. How the subtle smoke was replaced by a furious explosion of black and red. How the rushing wall of ash warped and danced around Oyra's outer farmsteads and yet hovered over the sky as if waiting to pounce.
Oh, and how the wall curled inwards, slamming into the rockside against the train station after the redirection and curling inwards like an avalanche on a mission.
It wouldn't hurt him, he knew that for a fact, sensing the death-wall's staticky warmth like it carried the heat of a faulty handwarmer and not the scorching potential to incinerate someone on impact. But from the screaming behind him on the exposed platform, he was the last person he was thinking about.
The ticket booth exploded open, the worker, Karen, and other female heavy-sleeper from his train sprinting towards him. All traces of exhaustion were wiped away on the ticket agent's face, replaced by pure panic in the creases of his narrowed eyes as he barked out strangled instructions: "GET to the TOWN! THERE'S A BUNKER there!"
His eyes met Grizzy's, and it took way too much effort to sift through his possible body and volcanic reactions to get himself to nod, the volcano distantly bursting out more magma at a failed attempt.
He struggled even more to run, losing track of his sense of vision to ensure the ashes were being held back by the train tracks for just a little longer. Something about restricting the ash felt stifling, like muffling a scream mid-way through releasing all its pent-up energy. It wanted to spread and expand, and part of Grizzy wanted to let it go, but he refused to. For now. He could tell his resistance was fading with how a trickle of calm was filling his form, muscles of himself or what would be the volcano's equivalent relaxing.
The only things that kept him grounded through the sprint was the yelling of the ticket agent and the wailing of the Karen as they fled, the other woman unable to do anything but sprint and breathe and clench her glasses in her hand to keep them from falling. He was too preoccupied with the barrier loosening and collapsing, attempting again and again to force it to a stop again only for nothing to affect it.
He can't stop nature from nuking this place, anymore. This was bad, they're not going to make it…
"IN HERE!" The man urged, gesturing to a trickle of people packing into a old, dusty-looking concrete box. It looked to be placed on the edge of some sort of plaza, a stairway leading down.
Karen practically dove through the line, muttering a short, "Sweet Jesus!" as she disappeared into the bunker.
Grizzy ushered Glasses to the right spot, too, watching the ticket agent lead her forward farther as she shakily threw her glasses back on.
Heat pressed on him. It was coming. It was here. All around. In seconds it'll move in and suffocate them. Not him, them.
Someone must've noticed something that he sensed, because people started to scream and shove.
He didn't move. He had to stop this. He put all of his focus into his volcanic surroundings, studying its front as it rushed in, minorly disrupting its momentum where at all possible. Sound around him melted away, fully leaning into his senses of heat, red, black, ash.
The second the cloud rolled over the buildings surrounding the plaza Grizzy let his hyper-awareness drop. It was over.
His hearing tuned back in to hear the clang of a closed door.
And then his heart, the all-too-human one, dropped.
Because he heard a hoarse and strangled, "Oh, fuck" from Wren as the wall of death attacked.
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Hazy. That was all he could feel, after it fell.
Thoughts didn't really line up right. It felt like he was waking up from a dream, lingering trapped in the space between remembering and forgetting its events: the time when a sleep paralysis demon would strike.
He didn't know where he started and the warmth around him ended, feeling something like a weighted blanket draped over him. He didn't own one, and he lived alone, but his brain didn't place those two thoughts anywhere close enough to the surface to matter, them scattering to the back with the rest of his logic and the rest of his shock and panic and grief that had only lasted a split second in the spotlight of his mind.
He didn't know where up was, even though he swore he could have felt the ground just a second ago. Something weighed on him, the feeling sharper than the heat, when he tried to remember.
So he let himself go.
He let himself float in the oblivion.
Something told him it'd be better than facing what had happened, here, dream or not.
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He would find out later that the haze lasted two days, long enough for the volcano to explode unhindered, reduced to only steam by the time he woke.
Human senses came back slowly, so slowly. The weight was back, and the heat was back but dulled, stifled, not all-encompassing anymore. People were talking too loudly in their mutterings, Grizzy feeling a spike of déjà vu even in his half-asleep state at their words. It spurred him to claw towards consciousness.
"There's no way. That… didn't just happen." Someone was thinking aloud. It sounded too close but too far at the same time, muffled through the darkness and pressure.
People were wailing, slamming stuff, kicking stuff. "It came here. To us. Oh, what is this shitty luck?"
He wished that's where the words ended. He wished someone would be shaking him awake, now. That was what happened last time, wasn't it?
Memory puzzle pieces fell apart in his head, and he gave up the second more voices trickled through. It was a mob, he soon realized, right overhead, not a dream. There were too many voices to be one of his usual dreams.
"There's nothing left," one was whispering, voice nearly inaudible, wispy like a ghost's but horrified like they've seen one too many of them.
There were footsteps everywhere, authoritative voices ("Ma'am, please watch your step." "Evacuation underway. More gear needed, estimated 25 in the bunker." "Please keep walking, sir.") leading the wailing and the crying and the too-stunned-to-speak survivors away.
Grizzy thought one of the voices rose to a scream as he finally woke enough to shift. Light splintered through the darkness' cracks enough to burn, shoving his head towards it even as he hissed from the pain. The authoritative voices rose in a shout, probably a yell, but was it at him? He couldn't really tell. He felt too heavy to do more than incline his head upwards slightly, eyes adjusting slowly, hearing useless as his brain whirled with its private winces of bright bright bright bright.
When it finally adjusted, the first thing his eyes landed on was a skeleton, perched, leaning against the concrete box. The concrete box. The Bunker.
Wren.
A stray memory stabbed before his eyes, the human senses repressed in the moment of chaos joining the barrage of him remembering everything.
It was of Wren, standing at the doorway, one of the last in the line to trickle in—he hadn't noticed him there, before. He was calling out his name, one hand holding open the door. He was yelling out again and again until his voice cracked, waving to try to get his eyes to focus on him, oblivious to how far away Grizzy's consciousness was. His hand bracing the door left it to reach for him, and it clanged shut. His last words sounded smaller than he remembered.
Grizzy wished he never woke up at all. His hands shattered the rock clinging to him to muffle a scream into his palms, fingers digging into his eyes.
The shouting finally hit his ears, then, right before a dart embedded itself into his neck, his vision instantly doubling and darkening along the edges.
Maybe his wish would be granted, after all.
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Cold.
His wish wasn't granted, that much was clear to him immediately because the cold snapped him awake in an instant, haze scattered. His vision flashed forward with bright light that made him immediately want to vomit.
He tried to move, but he felt heavy for even more wrong reasons this time. His arms wouldn't budge. Restrained. Strange fabric was stretched tight against his skin, also cold. He never wore cold clothes before.
Voices were around him, circling. He was laying down on a metal table. Also cold.
"Twelve casualties," one recited from somewhere, Grizzy meeting the eyes of a doctor leaning over him. Her voice was cold, professional, eyes narrowed behind glasses and face hidden behind a surgical mask. "Twelve." No, not cold, because those eyes were calculating, looking through Grizzy more than at him.
She murmured the number again, like it was a bad omen, like it hadn't been branded into Grizzy's head the second it left her mouth, like he needed to hear it again for it to sink in what he'd done.
"Should've been thousands," a voice from farther said, a brighter lilt to it, younger, curious.
The doctor scoffed, muttering what may have been the number again, or a string of curses, before her tone rose to a bark, "Put him back under again."
His bounded arm spasmed around a pinch, another figure in scrubs already moving away before he could even gather enough awareness to speak.
Gradually, the haze returned, the cold poking at him the whole way into unconsciousness.
…
Finally, he could think straight again. He dragged himself from the depths of nothingness to try and actually look up and figure out what the fuck was going on. His head wasn't restrained this time, but his hands were, stuck to the too-cold table with the too-cold air pouring down on him. Vents somewhere whirred. Machines beeped along the walls.
There was a presence in the corner of the room, two men clad in nearly-identical, bulky uniforms, talking. A uniform that he, upon first glance down at his own outfit, seemed to share.
"…just assholes is what they are," the taller was finishing muttering, meeting his eyes through a pair of glasses and immediately straightening. "Oh. Hey, man."
Déjà vu assaulted him again as both turned to him, their eyes first widening, then relaxing at the edges, a strange sense of being understood flooding him.
The second one with curly white hair snorted, giving him a small, attempt-at-humorous smirk as he said by way of greeting, "Welcome to hell, buddy."
Strangled with sleep and unconsciousness and a load of confusion that felt heavier than all of the volcanic senses combined, his voice came out rough, already fed-up with this shit.
"Where the fuck am I?"