Work Text:
She is back on the train. Her face and clothes are dirty, she can see her reflection in the window that has already cracked under the pressure. The air is warm and she feels the oxygen decline heavily with every breath she takes. Trying to regulate her breathing and she fails, now only breathing in deeper, desperate to get something out of it. The roof squeals and caves in. The floor has gotten bumpy. Blocking her way forward. Blocking the way back. There's no way out again.
With shaking arms and legs she gets on her knees, then lays down on her stomach. She closes her eyes.
Wishes it to be over, to die or to wake up.
She feels a bit of metal touch the back of her head. Tries to look up and finds her entire body locked in place by the ruins of what once was the train. The air is so thick it feels like mud.
She curls and uncurls her toes and fingers, the only parts of her body she can move now and tries not to be afraid. Tells herself that she has never been scared of death, and that pain is not pleasant but nothing to fear.
She finds that it is neither pain nor death that make her afraid.
She has never believed in anything but hard-proof reality. Science. She doesn't look down on superstitions or religion, she just never understood the concept. That there is something abstract and gigantic that interacts with humans in such weird, backwards and interpretive ways.
It's all just very illogical. Other dimensions, invisible protectors, concepts that work the world without ever being tangent- it just doesn't make sense to her. But as her chest is pressed down to the ground and she feels her heartbeat pound desperately against the floor, she starts to understand that she is afraid of the earth itself.
Logically speaking, what is happening to her is an accident. This is what happens when a tunnel caves in because of a breach in safety regulations or maybe even because it's a creepy ghost train controlled by train ghosts. She would almost prefer if it was the latter.
But deep down she knows this is not the case. It doesn't matter how or why she got here.
It's the earth itself crushing her. It's the earth itself that presses down on her, that makes it impossible to breathe.
She can't speak. There is too much metal and dirt in her mouth for that. Her fingers are pressed to the floor, she can't move a muscle now. The tears that start to form in her eyes don't have anywhere to go.
She doesn't know how to pray to the earth itself. She's never really learned how to pray anyway. But she tries, she tries to form desperate pleas to something she doesn't understand but is sure must be real. It must want her dead.
Her muscles ache from trying to press against merciless metal. She doesn't try to bargain, she knows there's nothing she can offer. So she begs. It's not a clear thought, not even a sentence. It feels like the metal is pressing on her mind, giving her no space to think. Only one word makes it through, over and over. Please.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.
When the word loses its meaning, the weight pressing in from both sides sharply reminds her of what she is pleading for.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.
She can't breathe. Shapes dance before her eyes but quickly get crushed. It feels like the ground below her chest is alive, vigorously pushing against her as if it wants to break free. She realises it's just her own, frantic heartbeat. Her arms and legs have gone numb.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please-
She stops. Stops thinking, stops breathing, stops hopelessly moving the last muscle she has left. Her heartbeat ceases and the last thing she notices is that it is no longer metal that is crushing her. The earth is warm and soft and it surrounds her, owns her and then she is gone.
When she opens her eyes again, she sees the green light of an emergency exit sign. Something like a breeze blows past her.
She can see the train, the remains of the last wagon in front of her, warped by the earth. She tries to remember what happened, how she got here, but she knows there is no way anyone could have reached her in time.
The realisation that the earth must have let her go apalls her. It doesn't make sense. It's impossible.
An avalanche does not spare anyone.
An earthquake does not show mercy.
Forces of nature don't work like that. They can't hear you pleading and praying and begging.
The only ways you can survive are preparation or luck. But she didn't have either. She must have been moments from dying. And the only thing she did was lay down and wait.
Being stuck there, getting crushed under the weight of the universe is not half as scary as the deep, terrifying knowledge rising up in her that this force, this entity that makes up the ground of everyone's lives and destroys it just as easily- it heard her. It listened to her.
Because that means that the gravitation she feels is not just a mind trying to work through a traumatic incident.
That this call she feels in every single one of her bones, to dig, to crawl, to be in and with the dirt is not just her perceiving her own need to work through what happened. No, this thing, this... force is calling her. And despite herself she wants to answer, wants to go back, lie still under the world and beg it not to crush her.
Slowly and unsurely, she places her hand on the bare tunnel wall. The earth pushes against her palm, she shivers but does not stop. It is gentle but gently unstoppable and she is terrified of finally having something to pray to.
When she wakes up there is dirt in her bed and her plea carved deep into her soul.