Family Ties

Family Ties Chapter Twenty Two (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch…any more titles and your bit
will be longer than the whole a/n, lol!
And, just because I can… “Mission…quest…thing…” InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink get
megacookies for archiving. J ProPhile gets more gold stars because of the
pink roses. Belated pleasure, LOL. Whoa…that so sounds dirty, doesn’t it? Let ‘em wonder, LOL. Ramsey, Tex and Jubilee are lovely bunnies
for being helpful and get lots of musekibble.
I’m fresh out of armadillos.
Readers/Reviewers: *dances with
glee * I so love you people.
Really. J

 

 

 



This doesn’t
feel right… She could not pinpoint
just how she knew that, but know it she did.
It was like swimming, she thought, though not in so many words. It was like trying to fight against an ocean
current and failing; her arms and legs hurt, her back burned with strain and
her skin felt like her entire body had been scored with a very sharp knife then
dipped in salted lemon juice. She tried
to move but found herself seemingly bound, each twitch and attempted jerk of
her arms and legs making ribbons of pain shoot through her body, straight to
her head, but producing no actual progress in terms of unbinding her
limbs. Despite all this, she was not
worried, not truly. Not until she found
she could notduceduce a noise. You
know how to do this! You’ve talked
before! She tried again, figuring
her previous inability to be a fluke. Inhale
slowly, that’s it…lick your lips. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Why can’t my tongue move? The seed of panic blossomed into a
wildly blooming monstrosity in her chest.
A distant, very faint beeping was her only companion in the silence as
the blank world around her took on a faint whitish tinge. All of a sudden, her chest felt it was being
crushed then set afire as her body arched unbidden, jumping and jolting in
response to unknown stimuli. No! she tried to scream, tried to beg
whoever or whatever was doing this to her to stop. I have a baby! I have
a…a…Wanda! Let me up! Let me go! Some part of her mind whispered “powers” and her fingers finally
moved, twitching to respond.

“Her pulse
just shot up,” a male voice said, practically shouting.

“Fuck…too
fast!”

“She’s hot
as Hell!”

No shit,
Tabby thought in her cocoon of pained immobility. Why can’t I get my powers to work? She felt like she was on fire inside as she
tried harder, for the first time having to actually think about how to activate
her abilities, trying to quantify the steps into meaningful processes. No thinking…hurts…God, make it stop…
She had not prayed in years but Tabby found herself becoming very religious all
of a sudden, the shocks to her chest happening thrice more as her body bucked
beyond her control and the distant beeping evened and slowed to a less frantic
pace. Her eyes felt dry as sand as she
tried to open them, the scenery before her dismal at best, horrifying at
worst. She could not make out clear
images, just shapes and notions, and the shapes and notions available were
making her want to scream. Two forms in
blue were spattered with a dark liquid that she knew was her own blood ominous
pale shapes hove around her and made mechanical noises and silver flashed
across her vision before another hot pain seared through her body. I can feel that, she wanted to
scream, but no sound would come out.

“Her eyes
are open…”

“Sometimes
that happens. She’s still out. Her signs are coming back to something close
to normal. Nurse, tape her eyelids,
please.”

I’m
awake! Tabby tried to scream but the shriek was internal, deafening
her. She was faintly relieved as she
finally lost consciousness again.[1]

 

“Scheisse[2]!”

“Erika!”

“Verdammten
trapeze,” she grumbled in deference to her mother’s proximity.

“Take it
easy,” Kurt suggested over the tinny din of the loudspeakers being tested. In the middle distance, the massive tent for
the evening’s performance was being erected and equipment tested as performers
ran through routines a few more times before they would break and relax before
the show. “If you’re concentrating too
hard, you’ll mess up!” He swore himself
as Erika let herself fall to the net underneath the rig, a late addition to his
family’s equipment that his father insisted on after the accident. “Erika!” he called, porting to her without
thinking twice. His Romany family as
well as his immediate family never noticed anymore when he did things like
that. He was just Kurt to them. Now, he was Kurt with a headache. “Erika, come back here!” he called, striding
after her. Giving up on a two legged
stance, he dropped to all fours and caught up to his sister quickly, seizing
her by the arm to stop her progress towards the trailer. “Stop!”

“Let me go!”[3]
She tried to wrench free from her brother’s grasp but found herself held
fast. “Damn it, Kurt!”

“Language,
Erika,” he chided half heartedly. “What’s
the matter?”

“You saw me
up there!” she sniffed furiously. “I
forgot half the routine! I’m only up
there for ten minutes and I missed three grabs and nearly knocked Papa off the
rig!”

“Accidents,”
he said airily. “We all have accidents.”

“You don’t,”
she said accusingly.

“I’m a
special case,” he said patiently. Kurt
let go of her arm but she did not run away again. He looked her in the eyes to hold her in place and said softly, “Erika,
we know you can do it. You just need
time!”

“I’m a
failure, Kurt! This,” she gestured
wildly to the rig, to the circus gearing up around th“is “is what we are! It’s what we will always be! It’s our blood,
our life, and I can’t do it!”

Kurt fought
the urge to sweep her into a hug, knowing she would fight him off in the mood
she was currently suffering. “Erika,
listen…you’re not a disgrace. Just
because you’re having some problems…”

“Problems?”
she shouted, backing away several steps.
“Problems? Kurt, I can’t even
manage a simple catch and release! What
kind of acrobat am I? What will my life
amount to if I can’t do this?”

“There’s
other things you can do, other things you can be if….God forbid,” he made a
sign against such things out of habit. “You’re
very young to think your life is worthless…”

“You have
no idea what it feels like,” she hissed, forgetting for a moment who she was
talking to. “No idea!”

“Wait!” he
cried, leaping in front of her. “What if there was something elsu cou could do,
at least for tonight? Would you feel
better then?”

“Was?” Erika blinked at him and frowned. “You think offering me some other task would
make me forget that I’m a failure?”

“You’re not
a failure!” he growled.

“Katja and
Anja think so,” she said quietly.

“They’d
never say that!”

“They didn’t
have to…I can tell by the way they look at me.
They pity me. They know…”

“Know what?”
Kurt demanded. “They have no idea! And neither do you!” He fluffed his bangs in frustration and
glanced around, checking where his family was lurking. “Erika, I know this is hard for you, but try
not to be so…confrontational.
Especially around Mama and Papa.
They feel like they aren’t doing enough for you…”

She
sighed. She had not honestly given much
thought to how her temper was making her family feel. “I just feel so empty now…”

“You’re
very young. Being an acrobat isn’t all
there is,” Kurt said gently. “Look, Katja
is tearing herself up still because she thinks it’s her fault and Sergei is
scared of his own shadow around Papa…when you act like this, they both blame
themselves for the accident.”

“It wasn’t
their fault,” Erika said softly. “It
was an accident.”

“Everything
happens for a reason,” he said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “Have some faith, Erika!at wat would Opa say if he saw you so upset?”

“He’d tell
me that I’m a product of generations of Rom who never gave up and to remember
that whenever I felt like pitying myself…” She rolled her eyes. “He was so corny.”

“Well, he
had a point. We could survive the black
plague so what’s a little head injury to a Rom, eh?”

“You are so
weird. It’s a wonder Kitty can stand
you,” she teased her brother.

Kurt’s eyes
lit briefly as he contemplated Kitty. “She
and Storm are coming tonight.”

“I wondered
why you were looking so goofy earlier.”

“I was not…well,
maybe a little.” He shrugged, an idea clicking away in his brain. “Oh, great,”
he sighed.

“What?” Erika turned and frowned. “Piotr…he’s been acting weird lately!”

“Tell me
about it.”

Piotr drew
even with them and paused, favoring Erika with a slight smile before addressing
Kurt. “Have you seen Anja recently?”

“Ja…” He narrowed his eyes at the large Russian
teenager. “Why?”

“No reason,”
Piotr smiled. “Where is she?”

Erika
answered, “Practicing. Like you should
be!”

“It does
not take much effort for me to bend some metal for the crowds. What do I need to practice for?”

Kurt made a
noncommittal noise in his throat and said, “What did you needa foa for? I’ll pass her the message.”

“I’d rather
talk to her myself,” Piotr said much too politely, going so far as to offer a
small bow to Erika before strolling towards the Wagner family’s rig.

“He’s been
panting after Kitty for weeks!”

Erika
smirked. “Not anymore,” she
muttered. Kurt had turned his back on
Piotr but she had not. She saw him
approach Anja and strike up a conversation, saying something that made the girl
giggle. “I think he’s got other things
on his mind…Come on. I’m hungry. Let’s start lunch.” This might end up being a good trip after
all…



[1] Actually,
some people have reported this sort of thing during surgery. It’s like a type of paralysis and is quite
horrifying.

[2] Shit. I used this one quite a bit during the last
week in Germany, lol…

[3] Let’s just
pretend they’re speaking in German or Rom, shall we?