Chapter Text
The first time she wakes after the incident, the weight of time and despair crashes against her bones with a heaviness that rattles her chest, the echoes of her powers rumbling beneath her skin as her shadows swirl around her frantically, the barrier she once constructed against the world now desolated in the aftermath of shattered bones and desolated souls.
Please, Lottie! Save me! Lottie!
She clenches her eyes, unable to withstand the ghostly voices that pierce through her mind with a jagged sharpness akin to barbed wire shredding open her skin, an incessant ringing slamming around her skull as she raises her hands to claw helplessly at the noise; her shadows encasing her in a swirl of impenetrable darkness, their wispy tendrils darting around the air as they poke and prod around her desperately, trying to sense the danger that she feels curling up at the bottom of her spine.
Please! Save-
“Hey,” she hears suddenly, a voice beyond her own mind cutting through the noise with a relievingly unrecognizable cantation that jolts her eyes open, looking over at an unknown woman calling her name softly, “Lottie.”
She blinks once, her shadows twisting around the edge of her vision as a beautiful blonde-haired blue-skinned woman looks back at her with intense, wide orbs encased with a reptilian yellow-milk eye color that feels warmer than Lottie thinks they should be able to, her shadows coiling around her as they assess the woman’s presence.
“Who are you?” Lottie murmurs, her voice raw and ragged when she tries to swallow down the dryness that scratches against her raspy throat, her shadows retreating back around her as they trace chilly morsels of their dark essence against her aching windpipe, soothing the pain to the best of their ability.
“Shhhh,” the woman reassures, her hand coming up instinctually to brush Lottie’s hand comfortingly, the human contact so warm and soft that Lottie almost flinches away from it; the touch so eerily distant to her recent memory that she cannot allow herself to fully enjoy it, “It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is that you’re safe.”
Safe.
She can’t think of the last time that she felt anything close to safe or secure. But looking back at the woman, her beautiful hair pushed back from her face as she shifts the scales away from her skin effortlessly, revealing a face of a beautiful woman with sun-kissed skin and hazel eyes looking back at her with concern; a black tactical suit marked with a yellow ‘Y’ symbol that is vaguely familiar to her muddled brain,Lottie can’t find it in herself to fight anymore.
Her shadows seem to sense the bone-deep exhaustion she feels, their frantic movements slowing to the familiar smoky movements they always dance within as they encase her back into the impenetrable dark cocoon that she melts easily into, her breath steadying into the quiet stillness that she knows intimately.
She allows herself to close her eyes, the lingering presence of the woman and her shadows lulling her into a peaceful rest, finally drifting under.