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[Brief primer on Academyverse: An underground scientific facility is working on altering memories and brain chemistry to develop the perfect soldiers, spies, security, etc, through use of science, magic, and a combination thereof. A mass accident ends in the cells opening, current subjects getting loose, and the main building and faculty of the 'Academy' being taken down in the process. Now the failed projects are trying to make their way in a world where they're being hunted, they can't remember where they came from, they have psychic abilities very few of them actually know how to handle, and with very few exceptions, most of them have had their brain chemistry altered so that one emotion dominates over all others, combined with their untapped psychic potential to the point of most of them being able to induce it in others just by being close to them.
Brief primer on Lauren: She is also Wonder, and cannot remember anything pre-Academy. She got off well, being found and adopted by two of the handful of scientists who were affected and managed to be capable enough to escape (Surprise and Fear). She, her 'parents' and her 'brother' (Zest) managed to get away and found a settlement for the escapees and other people who are, for various reasons, on the run and need a safe place, and in normal verse, end up as one of the few happy endings. And then there's what follows.]
Bloodied and bruised and a decade older, Lauren Clark stands in the doorway, staring into the multiverse with something more like shock than the wonder people are used to from her on her face.
The blade in one hand is crusted with half-dried blood, her hand coated in the same; the gun on her belt is empty. She brushes her dirt-matted hair back from her face with her other, slightly cleaner, arm, and takes a step inside. Dark brown and red footprints are left behind her; she winces, and balances carefully to remove one shoe and sock, then the other. Her feet are dirty and scarred, but they don't track blood and mud across the floor.
Lauren has seen a lot, in ten years. She's seen the place she once called home on fire and the cold, broken body of the boy she called her brother. She's seen her mother maddened by a second round of experiments, and she's killed her father herself, a merciful act that was no less painful for that knowledge. She's seen friends fall, both to death and madness. She's seen her first hope wiped out of the world, and she's seen how hard the path they travelled was first-hand.
Still, under the grime and the ashes and the bloody streaks on her face, there's a light in her eyes, there's a smile on her face. There's still hope, there's still joy. Shey'll never fully wipe that away.
They turned her into this, this thing that can't help but find joy and beauty and wonder, even in the most broken of things. They warped her mind and they buried everything else, so deep that some days it felt like she'd never be anything but wonder, like it would burn in her chest until it burned everything else away, like the joy of it was a curse. Still she clawed her way back, till she was a girl again, more than the wonder and the weapon and the worn remains of something that once she might have called a soul.
She can feel everything now, pain and pleasure, joy and sadness. She can cry at tragedies, even as the burning in her chest prompts her to smile at the beauty of the life cycle. She can be a girl, even with a gun in her hand and a smile on her face. She can take the things they taught her, turn it around, and use it to take them down.
She knows herself, broken and patched-together and imperfect as she is. And there is something beautiful and, yes, wonderful, in that.
It's an older, wiser Lauren Clark that sets her weapons on the table in front of her, sitting down and looking around as if she never expected to see this place again, as if it's a miracle to be back here.
But to be fair, she never did expect to find her way back here, to the one almost-home that they never managed to destroy.
Brief primer on Lauren: She is also Wonder, and cannot remember anything pre-Academy. She got off well, being found and adopted by two of the handful of scientists who were affected and managed to be capable enough to escape (Surprise and Fear). She, her 'parents' and her 'brother' (Zest) managed to get away and found a settlement for the escapees and other people who are, for various reasons, on the run and need a safe place, and in normal verse, end up as one of the few happy endings. And then there's what follows.]
Bloodied and bruised and a decade older, Lauren Clark stands in the doorway, staring into the multiverse with something more like shock than the wonder people are used to from her on her face.
The blade in one hand is crusted with half-dried blood, her hand coated in the same; the gun on her belt is empty. She brushes her dirt-matted hair back from her face with her other, slightly cleaner, arm, and takes a step inside. Dark brown and red footprints are left behind her; she winces, and balances carefully to remove one shoe and sock, then the other. Her feet are dirty and scarred, but they don't track blood and mud across the floor.
Lauren has seen a lot, in ten years. She's seen the place she once called home on fire and the cold, broken body of the boy she called her brother. She's seen her mother maddened by a second round of experiments, and she's killed her father herself, a merciful act that was no less painful for that knowledge. She's seen friends fall, both to death and madness. She's seen her first hope wiped out of the world, and she's seen how hard the path they travelled was first-hand.
Still, under the grime and the ashes and the bloody streaks on her face, there's a light in her eyes, there's a smile on her face. There's still hope, there's still joy. Shey'll never fully wipe that away.
They turned her into this, this thing that can't help but find joy and beauty and wonder, even in the most broken of things. They warped her mind and they buried everything else, so deep that some days it felt like she'd never be anything but wonder, like it would burn in her chest until it burned everything else away, like the joy of it was a curse. Still she clawed her way back, till she was a girl again, more than the wonder and the weapon and the worn remains of something that once she might have called a soul.
She can feel everything now, pain and pleasure, joy and sadness. She can cry at tragedies, even as the burning in her chest prompts her to smile at the beauty of the life cycle. She can be a girl, even with a gun in her hand and a smile on her face. She can take the things they taught her, turn it around, and use it to take them down.
She knows herself, broken and patched-together and imperfect as she is. And there is something beautiful and, yes, wonderful, in that.
It's an older, wiser Lauren Clark that sets her weapons on the table in front of her, sitting down and looking around as if she never expected to see this place again, as if it's a miracle to be back here.
But to be fair, she never did expect to find her way back here, to the one almost-home that they never managed to destroy.
