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theschizophrenicchristmasgoblin · 3 months

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The Bin Chronicles

The first thing you need to know about me is that I will not be - in any sense of the word - a reliable narrator.

In fact, being an unreliable narrator is exactly what makes me so uncomfortably authentic. I’m a person who struggles with mental illness writing about having a mentally ill experience in multiple mental facilities with other mentally ill individuals.

If you resonate with what you’re about to hear, I’m deeply sorry and hope you’re getting the care and support you need. If you don’t resonate with my story and are simply reading for entertainment, welcome.

Disclaimer about the word bin*

In case you’re wondering what “bin” means in the title of the book, The Bin Chronicles, let me tell you. It is shorthand for the term “looney bin”. It’s an affectionate joking term that some people use to refer to the psych ward. If anyone asks, I made it up.

Chapter 1 - The Drive

Clutching my bleeding forearm to my chest, I tried to wade through my sandbag heavy thoughts. Were the handfuls of ibuprofen I downed ever going to kick in? Would I get charged extra if I bled out in the Uber I impulsively scheduled? Should I have texted all those friends to see if they were awake enough to convince me to go to the ER? Did I even deserve to go to the hospital for something like this?

The piercing headlights of the approaching white sedan broke through my worrying. It was decided. At 1:39 AM on August 20th, 2023, I was going to head to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room for severe self-harm.

I’d like to say something inspiring such as “getting in the backseat of that Uber was one of the bravest choices I’ve ever made”. But I’d be lying. It didn’t feel like a brave choice. I didn’t even really want to get help. I just knew that the voice in my head telling me that I needed to cut deep enough to require stitches needed to be taken seriously.

The only memory my increasingly painkiller sedated brain encoded was the irony of being in this particular car. Never in my life have I had a kinder driver. He went above and beyond and offered me a phone charger and water. That had never happened to me before. Meanwhile, I was having one of the worst nights of my life. His warmth made the hot tears roll down my cheeks even harder, as the juxtaposition of a stranger’s kindness compared to my own deadly self-hatred felt like too much to bear. It would have looked like a completely normal ride had I not been holding my injured arm to my chest.

Now that the anxiety of whether or not I should get into the Uber subsided, a new worry popped up. Was the cut deep enough? If not, would they turn me away? I was determined to finally go inpatient and in my deranged mind I thought the only way to get there was to have a medical emergency. As these thoughts multiplied, I remember trying to take in the city and its beautiful florescent lights. For a split second, I felt true serenity being one of the only cars on the highway. With my arm starting to throb and soak through the gauze, the tranquility didn’t last.

Suddenly, everything looked familiar. I had worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for a year as a research coordinator. I recognized Flour Bakery + Cafe, the little coffee shop with the best butter chicken sandwich around, and the old watering hole where we used to drink after work, Harvard Gardens. I got to retrace my daily commute on Staniford Street passing a Domino’s pizza that made me salivate (yes I like Domino’s, don’t turn your nose up at me!) and a sub shop I never got to try, turning right onto Cambridge Street where I could never resist the Whole Foods next to my work at lunch time. Streets usually jampacked and bustling with cars and pedestrians commuting to and from work were eerily empty. No babies crying, dogs barking, no full hands with lunches and coffee or music blaring while bicyclists rode past. As I finally reached the main entrance of Mass General, a feeling of dread set in. I knew that I wouldn’t be going home that night.

I got out of the car. Part of me thought about getting right back in. I guess in that moment I did two things: I fulfilled my mission of taking myself to the ER and I not only admitted I needed help but brought myself to the place that could keep me safe. Once inside, I talked with the woman at the front desk. Everyone there was incredibly calm and kind and I immediately felt a sense of relief. They asked me some basic demographic intake questions like my age, DOB, the nature of the visit, whether or not I had current suicidal thoughts. Unlike my previous ER visit earlier that week, the first thing they did when they saw me was stitch me up. I’ll never forget that the provider doing them said it was almost too superficial to require stitches. While many people might feel comforted by that fact, I felt discouraged. I felt like I hadn’t made the cut deep enough which in turn made me believe I didn’t deserve to be at the hospital. I didn’t see the psych triage team that morning, but I finally fell asleep in a recliner.

Before I explain any further, let me tell you how I put myself in this minacious situation.

…

The weeks leading up to Mass General and eventually McLean Hospital were not pretty. I had been going through a depressive episode for the past 6 months if not longer, but during those last two weeks things had gotten much worse. One of the things I struggle with when I’m depressed is hygiene. Usually that takes the form of not taking my prescribed pills or brushing my teeth. Graphic, I know. Sometimes it involves not brushing my hair or taking showers too infrequently. This time it was all of the above. I felt hopeless consistently and I stopped enjoying things that had otherwise brought me joy.

At that time, I really enjoyed smoking weed and drinking daily. I stopped them both cold turkey. Another source of enjoyment for me was watching TV with my partner every day. During this period, I stopped being able to pay attention to our shows. Instead, I spent most of my time watching myself from outside and above my body. I couldn’t watch TV or hold a conversation without dissociating. Dissociation is a break in how your mind processes information. Dissociation can cause feelings of disconnectedness from your thoughts, feelings, memories, or surroundings. It can also mess with identity and sense of time. It can be a natural response to trauma, a way to cope with stressful experiences, or a symptom of mental illnesses like PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder to name a few. Alternatively, it is sometimes a side effect of alcohol or taking or coming off of medications. For me, I either view myself from outside my body or stare blankly while being bombarded with anxious thoughts or none at all until someone snaps me out of it.

As soon as I lost interest in those aforementioned activities, I couldn’t bring myself to go back to them. I stopped eating. I struggle with a self-diagnosed weed-induced binge eating disorder where most of the time I restrict my food intake except for when I’m high. Once I stopped smoking, I lost my appetite completely. I wasn’t even restricting; I just had no energy to eat. I didn’t see the point in it anymore.

I couldn’t keep myself up past 8:30 at night. I’d blame it on the medications I was taking, but I can’t even do that because my psychiatrist and I took the one medication that was impacting my sleep, Abilify, out of the mix. Abilify is an antipsychotic that treats many different mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar I, autism spectrum disorder, and Tourette syndrome. What it does is balance the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain to help regulate moods, behaviors, and thoughts. We decided to stop the medication because I wasn’t feeling any positive or negative effects and I didn’t feel like it was contributing to our goal of getting me out of my depressed funk.

Now I had nothing to blame for my change in sleep but my depression. I would later learn from McLean how important it is to change the narrative from “my depression made me do this” to “my experience with depression made me feel this way”. It might sound like a small change, but what it does is stop you from making your illness your whole identity. Personifying depression can give it a life of its own, and it can be empowering to separate yourself from it by making these small linguistic changes. Now that I have that information, I can reframe the narrative to recognize that one of the symptoms of depression is sleep disturbance and that I was at the time experiencing that symptom rather than blame my depression as a whole for the situation.

I started moving slowly. I felt like I was wading through water any time I had to stand. My energy was at an all-time low. I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed on the weekends and went right to bed when I got home from work. My bones ached. I felt tired all the time. I felt worthless. I felt like my life had no meaning, like I was merely a husk of my former self. I didn’t feel like I had any value to offer or bring to the world anymore.

I stopped paying attention at work because I couldn’t focus. I cried constantly and isolated myself from the rest of my coworkers. I had to step away from meetings because I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t able to keep up with my social life. I stopped calling my friends and didn’t return their calls when they reached to check in. This may sound like I’m beating a dead horse, and it most definitely is redundant, but I want to highlight what the signs of depression were for me. I hope this helps you to identify it in yourself or in someone else.[MOU1]

I felt like there was no reason for me to live and I fantasized about ending my life. I thought about all the ways in which I could kill myself and how to make it as painless as possible for my loved ones. I had recurring dreams about overdosing on painkillers. To make matters worse, I promised myself that I wouldn’t fail. I knew I didn’t want to end up fucking it up like I did the last time I attempted in 2020. I didn’t want to end up in the hospital or disfigured in some way. I just wanted it all to end.

On August 16th I cut so deeply that I needed stitches. I was on the phone with my partner Beau as he was driving home from work, and I just started cutting and couldn’t stop. The cut was actually a few days old, and it was already relatively deep. I’ve started doing this new thing where I cut in the same spot over and over again. I’m not sure why I switched from hurting myself in multiple places to the same one, but I know that this change is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it deepens the cut which can lead to needing hospital-level care.

Completely on brand, I decided to reopen this old wound and make it deep enough to require stitches. I think the reason I did this was because the other day when I made the initial cut, I called my ex roommate who is studying to be a doctor and she said that it might need stitches. Upon further inspection, she said it should heal on its own. I absolutely hated that she was right, and I wanted to prove her wrong. Welcome to my fucked up brain.

So on August 16th I reopened the wound and slashed at it until my partner came home from work. I couldn’t feel anything while it was happening, and I dissociate[MOU2] d as I watched myself deepen the cut from above my body. Before my partner got home I started rehearsing my smile and my coyness. But as soon as he opened the door, I caved. My cut was bleeding through the gauze, and it was having trouble clotting which was unsurprisingly really hard to hide.

I told him I thought I needed to go to the hospital. So off we went to Newton Wellesley Hospital. It was a surreal experience driving to the emergency room. I wasn’t in an ambulance, just a regular car. And there was that damn irony again, we could have been going anywhere. [MOU3] [MOU4] There I was, bleeding in the passenger seat, but there was no indication to the rest of the world that there was an emergent situation. No one knew I was hurting, inside and out, or that there was a wound acute enough to require stitches.

When we got to the hospital, Beau had me get out of the car so he could park. Upon entering the hospital, I was dismayed at how long the line was. I went all the way to the back and tried not to listen to other people’s conversations. I could smell the hospital: the pungent soapy yet flat geriatric scent that stops you from wanting to take a full deep breath in, the eye-watering bleach that they had used for God knows what, and the stench of stale discomfort and worry. I finally reached the front of the line and it was my turn to tell them why I was there. I strained to get the words out. “I’m here for self-harm”.

Suddenly, I’m treated like VIP. I don’t have to go back to the waiting room like everybody else. I now get to stay at the front of the line, and someone comes to check on me every 5 minutes. Finally, I’m brought back to a different part of the hospital along with a middle aged man who drank too much and took a spill. He keeps insisting that he’s not an alcoholic, and it becomes clear to me why they put us on the same unit: we were both there in a special part of the ER for those who purposefully harmed ourselves in some way. Or maybe it was that we were all dangers to ourselves. [MOU5] I was put on a bed in the hallway but I wasn’t there for long because someone from the psych[MOU6] team came to get me before offering me medical attention. The Psychiatry Triage team at Newton-Wellesley consists of independently licensed social workers. The way it works is people coming through the ER are first evaluated by the Emergency Department clinical team to ensure they are medically cleared. Then the social workers psychiatrically assess the patient to decide what the best level of care is for them. Looking back on this, it’s definitely weird that I wasn’t medically cleared first. Anyways, a nurse came to get me to help me put on scrubs. From there, the social worker and I went into an empty room and I was told to take any seat. I picked one and then was told to find another one, which to delirious me was the first sign that something wasn’t quite right.

The social worker sat far away from me and constantly had to lean in to hear me better. I told her what was going on, and that I wanted to do an outpatient program for Borderline Personality Disorder at McLean Hospital. This is a diagnosis I received in 2021. She laughed in my face and said it would take way too long to get off that waitlist. She asked me once if I wanted to go inpatient[MOU7] , but didn’t give me any information about the process. I declined, and she asked me why I had come to the hospital in the first place. I gestured toward my arm.

What is inpatient treatment you may ask? Here’s what I wish I knew when I was asked if I wanted to go…inpatient treatment is meant to be a short time in a psychiatric hospital to keep people safe during a mental health crisis. This is the most intensive treatment option for mental health, otherwise known as the highest level of care. What this term describes is different types of mental health treatment. This level of care includes hospitalization, whereas the lowest level of care refers to weekly or less often outpatient therapy sessions. Outpatient refers to a level of care in a non-residential setting where patients can live at home while participating in treatment. There are two main types of inpatient care: hospitalization and residential treatment. Hospitalizations are designed to be short term, often an overnight stay up to a few weeks long, and residential treatment often lasts 30 days or more. The focus of inpatient care is stabilization of the patient and developing a treatment plan for continuing their care once they are discharged. Hospitalizations are often thought of as a necessary safe place for those who are experiencing crisis, while residential treatment can help someone avoid a crisis before it escalates to that level. Inpatient can be voluntary which means you agree to seeking intensive care, or it can be involuntary which is referred to as involuntary or compulsory hospitalization where the person does not want to be at this level of care[MOU8] .

For context, inpatient units often look more like a college dorm than a hospital floor. There are both single and double rooms that often have their own bathroom that is shared with the adjacent room. There are also both group therapy and individual therapy rooms where you meet with psychiatrists, therapists, and group facilitators daily. There are common areas for eating, family visits, relaxing in places such as sensory rooms where there are comfortable chairs, fidget toys, and more, there’s always a nurses station where you take your meds, and there are offices for the staff and clinicians who you meet with on a weekly if not more frequent basis. This depends on if you are in a residential or hospital setting. These units are locked or secured environments, meaning that you cannot leave the unit without supervision. On the floor are a team of professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, case workers, nurses, nutritionists, recreational therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health technicians to name a few.

After this awful interaction with the social worker, I was brought back to my hallway bed and was told to sit tight. A doctor came over and questioned if I even needed stitches, so I showed him my arm and he quickly covered it back up and agreed. To give you a visual, puffy fat [MOU9] was visible from my open wound[MOU10] . At first the deep groove filled up with dark red blood and you couldn’t see anything underneath. When they finally removed the rudimentary bandage I had made, that’s when you could see the true damage. According to my boyfriend the cut was about 3 inches long by an inch wide. While the left side of it was thinner, the right side of the wound was gaping. Yellow fat was visible almost in the shape of a bubble drawn flower and it was protruding a tiny bit past the wound. I could see a small black spot that I later learned was a vein. The fat looked bumpy and textured. No butterfly bandage could hold together what I had done to myself.

Hospital staff came over with an EKG and then they finally put me in my own room where x ray came over to look at my arm. Then the doctor entered the room with a huge syringe. He squirted it into my open wound with no regard for my pain tolerance. Then he began sewing the skin on my upper arm back together. Oddly enough, he never asked if the numbing medicine had kicked in. I can’t quite describe the feeling of the needle, but it was strange, dull, and felt far away due to the numbness. It looked exactly like stitching clothing, a long needle with a thin piece of string except there was a hook for the stitch which entered my arm on either side of the wound. This created small holes that filled with blood too. He told me not to look but I couldn’t help myself. I was grotesquely in awe. As he dabbed at the blood flowing from my open wound I thought I might be sick. When he was done, I had 7 blue stitches on my left arm. The doctor left as quickly as he came.

Then the nurse who had helped me undress and put on scrubs came back in. I told her that I had had an awful experience talking to the social worker. She said, “I’m sorry” and then walked out. Anothernurse overheard the conversation and said she could talk to the social worker for me. I almost let her advocate for me, but I was too scared that the social worker would come in and try to talk to me again, so I said no. She said she could look in the nurses station to see if another social worker was available. I thanked her. She came back with a list of crisis hotline numbers. I left disappointed with no aftercare plan in place. I texted my therapist about it, and she said that particular social worker was known to be a bitch. It’s still insane to me that the last thing I got that night was stitches when that’s all I went in for. It would be understandable to delay my stitches if they had properly gotten me set up with inpatient or outpatient care, but as you can tell that was not the case. I vowed to not go back to Newton Wellesley in the event of another mental health crisis.

…

When I returned home, my therapist made it clear that if I self-harmed again I needed to go directly to the hospital. Her and my psychiatrist both thought I needed to go back to the hospital regardless, but I didn’t want to leave work. I thought that leaving work for a medical emergency meant I wasn’t a good employee. That I wasn’t dedicated enough. To this day, I still feel that way.

Alas, I hung in there. For those of you who don’t go to therapy, therapists often use the phrase “hang in there” when the session is over and you’ve just unloaded five years’ worth of trauma into a fifty-five minute slot. I have always hated the phrase because I feel like it is minimizing. You’re contemplating ending your life? Just hang in there[MOU11] . Anyways, I “hung in there” for three more days.

I don’t remember what time it was on August 19th that I made my decision. In my head I suddenly had a plan. I would pretend for the rest of the day that everything was fine, that I was in a positive mood, and then at night I would cut to the degree of needing stitches again and take myself to the ER. I was actually really nice and generous that day. I bought my roommate and partner dinner and drinks. I kept up appearances. My partner commented on how good of a mood I was in and I cheerily agreed, suggesting that my depression must have finally gone away. On the inside, I was on a mission. All I wanted was for my boyfriend to go to sleep that night. I didn’t want him to take me to the ER because he had already helped me get to the ER for self-harm three days prior. It didn’t feel fair to have him take me for a second time in the matter of one week.

Somehow, I forced myself to watch part of a movie with him. As soon as he started to doze off, I got to work on my plan. I located my scissors. I went into the bathroom. I normally cut horizontally on my left arm. In perfect dissonance, I decided to cut vertically on my right arm. The pair of scissors I was using had gotten dull from years of use. I could barely cut my skin. It was also awkward because I’m a righty, so using my left hand to cut vertically was a challenge. I was listening to Call Your Mom by Noah Kahan [MOU12] on repeat. The pre chorus and chorus really haunt me.

“Stayed on the line with you the entire night

‘Til you let it out and let it in

Don’t let this darkness fool you

All lights turned off can be turned on

I’ll drive, I’ll drive all night

I’ll call your mom”

At the time I didn’t realize how much I was contemplating suicide. The idea of having someone on the phone with me who I could talk to about these feelings rather than acton them would have changed the course of my life. Having someone remind me that the darkness that I was feeling was temporary might have made me make a different decision. That night, I really needed someone to call my mom.

I took one earbud out of my ear so I could hear if my partner woke up. In the bathroom I felt too far away from my room, so I moved to the couch. I used my flashlight on my phone to see what I was doing. He stirred. I freaked out. He got up to use the bathroom and I quickly shut off the flashlight and put a blanket over the bloody scissors and blood-soaked napkins. Somehow he didn’t get suspicious and went back to bed. I started thinking about what I would take with me to the ER. Underwear is a must. Computer, computer charger. Piece of paper from work about FMLA resources. Phone charger. Scrub pants. Comfy clothes.

I got a plastic bag for my dirty supplies. While cutting didn’t hurt on the 16th, it hurt every second on the early morning of the 20th. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I packed my bag, took one last look at my room, and left my apartment. As soon as I got outside I started hyperventilating. In a very unlike me fashion, I proceeded to text a bunch of my friends to ask if they were up. 2 responded, 1 was busy. I called my friend from home and told her I needed to go to the hospital. She stayed on the phone with me until I got in the Uber.

#bipolor #borderline personality disorder #actually borderline #depressing shit #tw depressing stuff #self h@rm #suicide squad #mental health #mental illness #actually mentally ill #mental instability #mental institution #inpatient

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whatisonthemoon · 2 years

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Mind Control U.S.A. (1979)

The marquee remains: PEOPLE’S TEMPLE, REV. JIM JONES PASTOR. The huge, cavernous building in the heart of San Francisco’s black ghetto is boarded up now; its furniture and fixtures were auctioned off to pay the cost of sorting out, embalming, shipping and burying over 900 men, women and children who followed Jim Jones to death.

First there were the photographs of brightly clad bodies, arms clasped around each other, beside a vat of poisoned purple Flavor Aide. Later, the tapes of the Reverend Mr. Jones exhorting his followers to drink the potion and “die with dignity” and eerie reports of the Big Brother tactics—amplified propaganda recordings, drugs, physical and sexual coercion—that he used to shepherd his flock to doom.

Jonestown was a horrible mess in many ways, but in the end, it was the specter of mind control that really chilled the hearts of Americans, probing a lurking fear of vampires and zombies, armies of the living dead held in thrall in the hypnotic gaze of the master operator. It is a specter that has surfaced repeatedly in the last 30 years, in the thousand-mile stares and exuberant, empty grins of returning Korean War POWs, the secret behavior-modification experiments conducted by the CIA, the helter-skelter killing spree of the Manson family, the transformation of Patty Hearst into Tanya, and now in the cult of cults.

Scientists now conclude that the brain processes information not in one way but in several concurrent streams. Neurophysiologists, unlocking the biological codes of the mind, have confirmed what Freud predicted nearly a century ago and what LSD had turned millions on to—that the conscious “self” is only a small part of a much more complex operation and that below the surface is always the “other” and another after that, a series of alternate realities. Meanwhile, across the ages the steely eyes of voodoo practitioners and medicine men watch the synthesis of their ancient arts into behavioral sciences, Madison Avenue mass marketing, brainwashing, mind control, deprogramming.

Shamans and witch doctors have been tapping into the hidden “other” for countless centuries. Still extant are the Australian aboriginals called “the people of the Dream Time.” At puberty, the young male of the tribe is separated from his mother and isolated in the wilderness for several days without food or water. He is kept awake and in constant fear by the sound of the bullroarers, long narrow pieces of wood that when whirled in the air make a moaning roar. When he is at the point of collapse, the tribal elders, wearing animal masks and emitting piercing shrieks, emerge from the bushes and circumcise him. The young native returns in a zomboid state, a willing slave to tribal authority and taboos. He lives in the Dream Time, between fantasy and reality, haunted by the presence of animal demons but otherwise happy and sedate.

Brainwashing, or mind control, as most people understand the term, is something akin to the aboriginals’ rite of passage updated by the scientific revolution. It is a coercive indoctrination process used to tip people over into the Dream Time, obedient to tribal taboos or modern ideologies.

The word brainwashing dates to the Cold War, when it was exemplified by George Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984 and by the Chinese “reeducation” methods employed with near-perfect efficiency on American prisoners during the Korean War. The Chinese did not advance far from the basic aboriginal concept. Isolation, coercion and indoctrination comprise the crude but effective formula that they modernized by substituting Pavlovian behavior-modification techniques for animal masks. In America, where the interest was not only focused on enforcing an ideology but on creating monsters, too, mind manipulators would be more creative.

The CIA vs. the Mind

And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing … a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people in fact will have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.

—Aldous Huxley, 1959

American contributions to the “science” of mind control began with a few “truth drug” experiments—mostly involving tincture of marijuana—under Office of Strategic Services auspices during World War II. Convinced that Hitler was a closet case, researchers explored ways to putsch der Führer over the gender line. In the Pacific theater, staff anthropologists reported that the Japanese considered nothing so shameful as bowel movements, so government chemists compounded a formula that duplicated the smell of diarrhea and packed it in aerosol cans under the code name “Who Me?” It was distributed to children in occupied Chinese cities who would sneak up behind a Japanese officer and spray the seat of his pants with the liquid. The object was to cost the Japanese “face.”

Sophomoric frat-house pranks like the above sufficed until 1949, when CIA officials were both horrified and intrigued by the glazed eyes and mechanical confessions of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty at his treason trial in Budapest. A memo was circulated speculating “some unknown force” was controlling him, and work was begun in earnest on a number of projects aimed at “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.’’

The public first heard about “brainwashing” in 1950, when CIA propaganda operative Edward Hunter coined the term in a widely read article for the Miami News headlined BRAINWASHING TACTICS FORCE CHINESE INTO RANKS OF COMMUNIST PARTY. In it, Hunter alleged that the Chinese possessed techniques “to put a man’s mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe that what did not happen actually happened, until he ultimately becomes a robot for the Communist manipulator.”

Two years later, such allegations seemed to be substantiated when Americans saw the first film clips of downed U.S. pilots calmly confessing to war crimes. The result: further escalation of CIA behaviorcontrol research.

Recently, material released through the Freedom of Information Act and compiled in John Mark’s book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate details the CIA’s secret war on the mind. In all, the agency sponsored 149 projects between 1950 and 1973 focusing on drugs, hypnosis and electroshock. In one experiment—the “A”-forArtichoke treatment—a suspected Soviet agent was injected with enough sodium pentothal to knock him out and then 20 minutes later was shocked back to consciousness with a shot of Benzedrine. This procedure, agents reported, induced a Dream Time effect in which they could make the subject “believe any fantasy”—that he was talking to his wife, mother or commander—with 70-percent efficiency.

Another mind-control project, the “depatterning” technique developed for the CIA by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute in Toronto, combined prolonged sleep with electroshock. The process, which one agent described as “the creation of a vegetable,” could completely obliterate a subject’s emotions and memory in 15 to 30 days.

In the 100 years since Freud, psychology had made great strides toward healing the troubled mind and unraveling its secrets. Now it appeared that the science could be used with devastating force as a weapon to imprison people. The discoveries of Pavlov and later Skinner suggested that new behaviors could be shaped simply by pressing the right buttons, but the CIA was dissatisfied. The Skinnerian behaviorists, who dominated university psychology departments in the late ’50s, were too rigidly scientific to accomplish the far-reaching goals the CIA envisioned. Instead, money was funneled through the CIA’s conduit, the Human Ecology Foundation, to unwitting researchers whose more imaginative discoveries contributed to the expanded effectiveness of the CIA’s mind-control techniques and spread to be incorporated by radical therapists in the ’60s and cult leaders in the ’70s.

The bulk of the research, however, was devoted to LSD, which the CIA thought could be used to squeeze information from enemy agents and discredit them by disturbing their memories or changing their sex drives.

Operation Midnight Climax operatives equipped an apartment on Bedford Street in New York’s Greenwich Village with red lights, Toulouse-Lautrec posters, photos of women in chains and black stockings, and a two-way mirror. Using the services of local hookers, they tested to see if a john, after a surreptitious dose of acid, was more likely to reveal secrets before, during or after sex.

Under code name MKULTRA, the agency sponsored scores of additional LSD experiments. The researchers in this program tried the drug first on themselves and their CIA colleagues. In Pink Panther style, agents were encouraged to dose each other clandestinely (leading to the notorious case of Dr. Frank Olson, whose suicide after a bad trip was hushed up). Despite such mishaps, MKULTRA was expanded to include university research. Ken Kesey turned on in one such test. From the laboratories, LSD leaked off campus, and by the time Drs. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) got in on the act, the CIA’s miracle mind-control drug was well on the way to igniting the psychedelic revolution.

William Burroughs once said, “A paranoid is a person who knows all the facts,” and a few people claim that the leak was not entirely unintentional, that while tripping out on Sandoz acid, MKULTRA boss Sidney Gottlieb conceived the grandiose scheme of using the drug to disorient and repattern a large “normal” population—just to see if it could be done.

Interlude

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

—William Blake

Whatever their plan, in the following years the astronauts of inner space left the MKULTRA boys stranded in a cloud of dream dust. During the ’60s, mind control meant higher consciousness; brainwashing reverted to its Chinese root word, hsinao, “to cleanse the mind.” People escaped to the Dream Time on drugs or, like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, through Zen practices as a way out of socially ingrown repressions, hang-ups and the paranoid rigidity of the previous decade.

Others turned on to mass-marketed group therapies like Silva Mind Control and T.M. While some of these opened out to the farthest reaches of higher perfect wisdom, a countercurrent of back-toreality proponents spliced the journey to higher consciousness with cruder Dream Time—evoking techniques to make devotees feel high with both feet on the ground.

On the way to “getting it” (EST language for a crystalline glimpse of ultimate reality), John Dean, John Denver, Cher and 100,000 Erhard Seminar Training graduates were called assholes and turkeys, blitzed with a combination of encounter, psychodrama, Zen and Dale Carnegie, pushed to the breaking point in marathon sessions in which they were forbidden to eat, smoke, talk or pee (EST bathroom breaks, originally scheduled every 12 hours, now come more often, due to frequent accidents); and finally, they were indoctrinated with the gospel according to Erhard—“What is, is. What isn’t, isn’t. You alone are responsible for everything that happens to you.” Graduates attribute incredible life-renewing benefits to the EST catharsis—of course, so did many American GIs after Chinese brainwashing, a technique that EST closely resembles, according to some experts.

The ’60s ended, the ’70s were born. Sounds of sloshing in rebirthing tanks, and a chorus of primal screams.

The Coming of the Cults

The office of those who seek new worlds is to stumble upon those they never expected to find.

—Cervantes

Then, in the wake of the consciousness revolution, there came the God Squad—clean-cut, smiling young missionaries touting drugless, sexless highs and spouting hellfire, denouncing parents and society as instruments of Satan while hawking flowers, incense, books and vacuum cleaners. For the many who had been overwhelmed by the lack of social control in the late ’60s, the cults provided muchsought-after structured mind space.

By the mid 1970s, there were at least 3,000 cults in America, attracting some ten million members. Of course, there is nothing new about cults. They have existed through the ages. Some 2,000 years ago, Christianity was a cult. Centuries later, pioneer America was a breeding ground for utopian communes and weird religious sects, some of which, like the Mormons, found their way into the mainstream. A cult in one simple sense is a minority, outside the culture, whose beliefs and practices differ markedly from those of the majority. Once a cult is accepted by the culture, it is no longer a cult. Others define a cult by the degree to which it exerts control over its members, but the implication that there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of mind control has led only to confusion.

In addition to the larger groups—Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Church of Scientology—there proliferated a slew of minicults such as the Assembly, the Body, the Children of God, the Druids and so on even unto the Zoroastrians, all with practices as varied as their names.

The Hare Krishnas chanted. Members of the Way International communicated via glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”). The Druids, a small Bible-astrology sect, meditated on “Mother” Laura Copeland (nee Gerrie Leah Garcia), their high priestess. Moonies concentrated on Divine Principle (Moon’s book of revelation) in moments of stress or doubt, and they eschewed sex, drinking, drugging and sleeping.

To become “clear,” the Scientologists practiced a series of “auditing” drills on the “E-meter,” a crude but effective lie detector, with which trainees went through past painful experiences until there was no charge (“uptightness”) left. In the higher levels of Scientology, “Operating Thetans” used the E-meter to produce increasingly realistic hallucinations of time travel and out-of-body experiences. The simple object of all these practices: obliteration of “self” in pursuit of some powerful kicks.

These cults promised bliss, ecstasy, life-changing experiences, personal encounters with God. And they delivered. Members saw visions, heard voices, reported blinding flashes of light in which all was revealed, experiences comparable to the most powerful hallucinogens.

Robert Kaufman, in Inside Scientology, describes one auditing session:

“I was in a prison cell. A noose was being placed around my neck. I got down on the floor . . . and started choking. My head jerked in spasms until I thought it would rip itself off my neck.”

In their book Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, communications experts Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman have compiled a number of similar incidents from members of other cults:

“I felt my body going numb, going away, and I had many sensations all at once, like I was physically dying but spiritually being pulled out of my body. At the same instant, this thing was opening up before me. I could see a light and feel something coming toward me to get me or help me. Then I heard this heavenly singing, all different kinds of pitches, like Ahhhh!

“I began fantasizing. It was beautiful. I was out of touch with reality; it was as though I could see in a different dimension. I experienced an intense joy the whole time. I reached a point where the fantasies became real. It was poetical. I was speaking in biblical languages. At times I couldn’t open my mouth, but when I did it came out in verse.”

It was not, however, visions, numbers or beliefs that, long before Jonestown, sparked mounting concern; it was the suspicion that some cult practitioners were dispensing these highs, like the mind manipulators of the ’50s using LSD, to disorient and control. If the MKULTRA boys did have a secret plan to repattern a large “normal” population, what actually happened went far beyond their wildest dreams. A large percentage of the population was definitely “other.”

While Jonestown is the best documented example of cult mind control, the heavy-handed tactics used there seem old-fashioned compared with the possibilities raised by critics for this sort of drugless programming. “A person becomes critically vulnerable in the aftermath of this shattering break,” write Conway and Siegelman. “The brain’s information-processing capacities may literally become disorganized, not simply leaving the mind open to new ideas and information, but in fact rendering it receptive to a whole new plan of organization.”

One of the unforgettable images of the ’60s is that of the smiling, white-robed guru sitting in lotus position on a flower-covered dais. In the presence of whichever guru you’d care to imagine, people would feel high, claim to see glowing auras of white light, feel a sublime sense of happiness and inner peace. The room would invariably glow with good vibrations. To the degree that the mind-control secrets of these Eastern masters can be explained by Western science, those good vibes were real indeed. Researchers have demonstrated that an atmosphere can be suffused with mood-altering alpha and beta waves, the brain’s own peace-and-love frequency, stimulated by meditative practices. But an alpha-generating state is also a highly suggestible state.

The set remained the same in many of the ’70s cult practices. Followers received heavy doses of peace, love and brain waves. Then, in an insidious twist, they were indoctrinated. At least, this is how Moon did it. Isolated amid those good vibrations, devotees were instructed to believe that the cult leader is the divine authority, the supreme operator. “I am your brain, my will must be your will,” says Reverend Moon.

Siegelman, Conway and others (including many ex-cultists) maintain that as an alternate reality is conjured by these practices, it is shaped to the needs of the group through indoctrination. The formula for cult mind control as they see it is:

Turn on convert to alternate reality through cult practices.

Shape this new reality to the needs of the cult through group reinforcement and indoctrination.

Purge convert’s conscious “self” and keep it on hold through exercises that stop thought—i.e., chanting, various forms of meditation, marathon ideology lessons—until, in the words of one ex-cultist, thoughts become “like distant telephone signals.”

Prior to Jonestown, warnings about cults were given some credence by scattered reports of cult weirdness and violence. In 1972, two followers of Love Israel’s Church of Armageddon died during a “faith testing” ritual in which they inhaled toluene, an industrial solvent used for breaking down rubber. “Love Israel did nothing,” a former follower told the press. “He just told us to pray over them and they would rise in three days. We were so brainwashed we believed him.”

A few years later, David Brandt Berg, the reclusive founder of the Children of God, was said to be extolling robotized women disciples to be “fishers of men,” to frequent discos and singles bars and “flirty fish”—exchange sexual favors for church donations. To date, however, law-enforcement agencies have maintained a hands-off policy on the cults-mind-control issue, fearing entanglement with First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom.

Deprogrammers: To the Rescue?

“What is happening to you now is what should happen to any normal healthy organism …. You are being made sane, you are being made healthy.”

“That I will not have,” I said, “nor can understand at all. What you’ve been doing is make me feel very ill.”

—Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Enter the deprogrammers, mind-control hit men who promoted their no-holds-barred, emotionally charged and extralegal methods as the only way to defreak Jesus freaks and other cultists. With their help, desperate parents began to kidnap their children (even “children” well past legal majority) and secret them in motel rooms and camps, where the deprogrammers perform their modern-day exorcism rites. The procedure is not unprecedented. According to legend, Thomas Aquinas’s parents locked him in a room with a whore to dissuade him from joining the Dominican order. Unlike St. Thomas, though, cult children started suing their parents and filing kidnapping and assault charges against deprogrammers. In this manner mind control received its first test as a legal issue.

At the center of the storm is Ted Patrick, 48, a short stocky black man with a rocket metabolism that has earned him the nickname “Black Lightning.” Opponents, calling him a “criminal lunatic” among other things, have lodged $60 million in lawsuits against him, but for many parents who have lost children to the cults Black Lightning is a superhero. Patrick works with a team that includes parents, successful “deprogrammees” or “reprogrammees” and a security force of musclemen to assist in the initial abduction. Deprogramming sessions last from two days to two weeks and resemble, ironically, the high-pressure, instant-transformation therapies of the late 1960s from which many of the cults have borrowed heavily. Others bluntly compare deprogramming methods to Chinese reeducation processes.

The active principle in deprogramming consists of bombarding the subject with opposite information designed to “break” false religious views. Patrick aims first to enrage his subjects. To do so he will threaten to put them “out of action,” to prolong detention indefinitely; he rails against their beliefs, confiscates their Bibles and wipes his ass on photographs of cult leaders. “Once they begin to argue, we’re home free,” he claims. “Once they start to communicate I know I can win.” Hopscotching across America, Ted Patrick claims to have performed 1,500 deprogrammings involving Children of God, Moonies, Hare Krishnas, Scientologists and members of the Way International. On one occasion he even zealously deprogrammed a woman he claimed had been brainwashed by a labor organization, the National Caucus of Labor Committees.

Patrick began his deprogramming raids eight years ago, after his own son was briefly enchanted with the Children of God. His activities quickly attracted press coverage. Jerry Sharpe of the Pittsburgh Press reported, “Patrick is an amazing guy. The girl was clutching the Bible, staring ahead and repeating ‘Praise the Lord’ all the time. Patrick walked over and ripped the Bible out of her hands so hard he almost threw her against the wall. He said, ‘You don’t serve God, you serve the Devil.’ ” Of course, not everybody thought he was that “amazing.”

By 1973, the cults—supported by the ACLU—had begun to fight back, and Patrick found himself in court. That January, Dan Voll, a junior at Yale and a member of the New Missionary Fellowship—a small, respectable evangelical Christian youth group promoting short hair and long skirts—was grabbed by Patrick on 119th Street in Manhattan. His shouts attracted police, he was released and filed assault charges. To the surprise of many, the case against Patrick was dismissed. Judge “Turn ’em Loose” Bruce Wright cited New York State law permitting a violation of law to prevent a “greater injury,” the same legal principle cited by John Erlichman in defending Nixon. Mind control, Judge Wright suggested, was such a “greater injury.” Patrick termed the decision a “great victory” for the nation.

But Patrick’s victory was short-lived. A few months later, in a similar case, he was condemned for “vigilante tactics” and sent to the slammer. Since then he has served time in New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado. Yet the controversy surrounding the legal status of deprogramming and mind control remains unresolved. In 1978, for example, a Rhode Island court ruled that deprogramming itself (apart from the initial abduction) was not illegal, by interpreting the First Amendment to mean that the individual is protected from government interference in religion, not from individual interference. “Deprogramming,” this ruling suggested, was “persuasion.”

Today, the deprogrammers are as proliferate and varied as the cults. Following Patrick’s lead, a host of competitors selling their own brands of deprogramming, debriefing, stress interviewing and reality therapy have entered this new and lucrative field. While Patrick charges a flat fee of $10,000 for his services, the fees of his imitators range as high as $50,000. Of these rival services, the most successful has been the Freedom of Thought Foundation. Hidden away on five acres of land in Arizona’s Tucson mountains, FTF features “the finest deprogramming group put together in the whole world,” according to founder Michael Trauscht, who hopes to “make Tucson the anticult capital of the world.”

The “reality therapy” of the Trauscht group is based largely on Patrick’s methods, but instead of abducting converts they have made use of existing laws—in an alarming way—to legally kidnap members of cults. Under California’s “conservatorship” laws, a temporary guardian can be appointed in cases of “incompetency” for 15 to 30 days, “with or without notice to subject.” The law, designed to apply to the senile, unbalanced or critically injured, was stretched by several sympathetic judges to apply to cultists. Translation: cult consciousness is a form of insanity.

Trauscht presented parents with an affidavit prepared for their signatures and containing allegations that their son or daughter appeared to be the victim of mind control, that his or her personality had changed abruptly or that assets belonging to the child had been transferred to cult leaders. The charges could be false, since the whole business was conducted without the knowledge of the subject, and there would be no hearing, no notification and no representation for the cult member.

Trauscht and company were able to obtain similar orders in ten states, apart from California, before the first test came in San Francisco in a case in which five Moonies were allowed representation at a conservatorship hearing. Another surprising decision: Judge S. Lee Vavuris ruled in favor of deprogramming, declaring, “The parent-child relationship is never ending. The child is the child even though a parent may be 90 and the child 60.”

Not so surprisingly, the California State Court of Appeals overturned his decision.

That ruling stalled Trauscht briefly, but since then, in response to Jonestown hysteria, Vermont and a number of other states are considering guardianship laws, not for the insane and feeble, but specifically to facilitate deprogramming. The implications of such action are astounding—visions of writers, artists, punks, unpopular religionists, High Times readers, me, you, everybody rounded up and sent to deprogramming centers. Still, the chance that such laws will be written are, at this time, slim.

Mind Control on Trial

If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and the mind itself is controllable—what then?

—George Orwell, 1984

On Capitol Hill, since the assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the debacle in Guyana, the cult wars have heated up. While the White House has been noncommittal on the issue (Ruth Carter Stapleton is a “memory healer”), the Congress has initiated two new investigations into cult activities. So far, these have amounted to little more than sound and fury, an attempt to ease the troubled minds of the folks back home.

I attended one such hearing on February 5, 1979, an “unofficial” investigation into cult phenomena organized by Senator Robert Dole. The Moonies were out in force. A ragtag oompah band was playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and a less familiar tune—“Shining Fatherland,” the anthem of the Unification Church—on the steps of the Senate Office Building. About 500 had gathered to protest the hearing.

Blue and red polka-dot badges proclaimed SENATOR DOLE—THIS IS A WITCH HUNT as Moonies sang, clapped, leafleted and “love-bombed” visitors, telling everyone to “have a nice day.” Peanut butter sandwiches were passed around. White, yellow and black faces smiled in subzero winds.

Inside, Moonies—along with Hare Krishnas, Scientologists and followers of the Way—jammed the gallery of the Senate Caucus Room (site of Joe McCarthy’s list-waving anticommie histrionics) elbow-to-elbow with politicians, reporters, psychologists and concerned parents, all under a phalanx of television cameras. Several feet away sat Neil Salonen, president of the Unification Church and Moon’s chief Yankee spokesman, 34, heavyset and perspiring slightly. At the witness table, Ted Patrick was haranguing the panel: “Cults like the Moonies destroy a person’s free will, make it impossible for him to think for the rest of his life.” The chamber erupted in shouts of “Liar! Absolute liar!”

There were charges and countercharges, but no hard evidence; and definitions of what constituted a cult as opposed to a legitimate religion had the committee hung up, embarrassed and confused. Struggling to come up with a legal definition of “free will,” one hapless congressman became so disoriented that he began to mumble a hypothetical defense of the Salem witch trials, and the panel was relieved to adjourn for lunch with Senator Dole’s recommendation that they “get together and talk some more.”

As we slouch toward Bethlehem and lurch toward 1984, such bafflement is typical. Even though programming is a consistent factor in any culture where people share a common language and, hence, to some degree, the same way of thinking, the fact is often overlooked in the emotional debate surrounding cult programming. The controversy is not about a programmed versus an unprogrammed, “free,” anarchic existence; it concerns programs that run counter to socially accepted programs. It is important to keep in mind that similar but less extreme mind control methods are employed daily in school, business, “legitimate” religions, advertising and television. The implication that there are acceptable levels of mind control has contributed immeasurably to public confusion.

The modern phenomenon of mind control, rising out of the secret CIA laboratories or out of the culture itself to be perfected by the cults and amended by the deprogrammers, suggests that human beings are much more malleable than some who cling to a myth of the individual as self-contained unit would like to believe. On the other hand, the discoveries in this area hint at powers of communication and control long hidden from the “conscious” human being. The expanded-consciousness movement in the 1960s went far in advancing this view.

Ideally, mind control is not indoctrination or deprogramming. Neither is it a kind of property to be sold to an elite corps of paying believers. Unfortunately, today it is all three.

It can be a weapon; it can be a boon. Science can be useful in explaining these phenomena; it can also exploit them. The Dream Time, our ancient heritage, can be used to obliterate personality in the interest of organizations and ideologies or to escape personality in the interests of enlightenment. But until such conflicts are resolved, mind control is out of control.

#mind control #cults #moonies #unification church #CIA #mk ultra #hare krishna #love-bombing #children of god #the family international #scientology #unification church in the united states #unification church in usa #deprogramming #brainwashing #human ecology fund #human ecology foundation

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searidings · 3 years

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this is what happens when @ekingston and i get our hands on the prompt “that's my wife!” and agree that she'll draw my idea for it and i'll write hers (aka hearing kara call it out as she watches lena being wheeled down a hospital corridor)

“Excuse me, you can't go through there!”

Kara growls. The woman blocking her path is short and gently rounded, the kind lines of her face drooping in disapproval above her nurse's scrubs. “No visitor access beyond this point, dear. Immediate family only.”

“Immediate— you're joking, right?” Kara cranes her head, peering through the closing doors to catch a last glimpse of Lena's gurney as it rounds the corner at the end of the hall. “That's my wife!”

The nurse gapes at her. “Your—?”

Kara growls again, louder. It's a good thing she'd blown out her powers twenty minutes ago, or she would not be held responsible for the Kryptonian-shaped hole in NC Memorial Hospital's expensive surgery doors. “Yes, my wi—”

Her snarl is cut off by a hand clamping down firmly over her mouth from behind. Kara's first instinct is to bite it. She resists, narrowly, as the familiar scent of shea butter moisturiser registers in her adrenaline-fogged brain.

“You sure about that?” Alex squeaks around a nervous laugh, voice pitched a half-octave too high. She removes her hand from Kara's mouth, wiping her damp palm on her pants with a wrinkled nose. “Get hit on the head during that fight, did you?”

Kara whirls on her sister, eyes blazing. “Am I sure?” she parrots incredulously. Alex cowers a little beneath the force of her stare. “Unless you're trying to tell me I hallucinated my entire wedding—”

“Supergirl isn't married,” Alex stage-whispers loud enough to be heard in Florida, glancing pointedly down at Kara's ash-caked body and oh yeah, she's still wearing her supersuit.

Right, right.

The nurse – Rosemary, her badge reads – finally picks her jaw up off the floor long enough to speak. Her eyes are wide, sparkling with sudden glee. “So Lena Luthor and Su—”

Kara's hackles rise at the suggestion in her tone. “Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers are happily married,” she interrupts sternly. “You might have seen the wedding photos in last month's Vogue.”

The nurse smirks. At her elbow, Alex drops her head into her hands.

“Kara Danvers, hm? Amazing what a pair of glasses do for you, dear.” Rosemary's brow quirks with impish satisfaction and, oh. Whoops. It would appear that in her haste to quash any potential rumours of Lena's infidelity behind the back of her very recent, very publicly human wife, she'd forgotten about the other delicate matter at hand.

Alex sighs so long and so heavy Kara legitimately marvels that she doesn't pass out from the strain. “I knew keeping a spare NDA in my back pocket would pay off,” her sister groans, thrusting an official-looking, if crumpled, contract beneath the nurse's nose.

“Sorry,” Kara murmurs sheepishly as Rosemary signs away page after page of her right to ever disclose Supergirl's identity in any capacity. “I wasn't thinking, I can't— Alex, it's Lena.”

“I know, I know,” her sister soothes, frustration dissipating as she reaches out to pull Kara into her side, ignoring the soot and grit that smear across her jacket at the contact. “She's gonna be okay.”

“But what if she's not?” Kara asks and the sobs arrive then, the last remnants of the fight or flight response that had propelled her this far dissipating beneath the weight of her terror. “She stepped right in front of that bullet, Alex! Of all the stupid, reckless—”

“If I recall, she was pushing you back after you shoved her out of the way in the first place,” Alex hums thoughtfully. Kara's tear-filled eyes snap to her face, incredulous, and her sister grimaces. “Right, right. Not the time.”

“She has to be okay,” she gasps, clutching hard at her sister's jacket as her knees threaten to give out beneath her. “She has to, I can't— I feel like I can't breathe. Like my heart's been ripped out.”

Alex clicks her tongue in sympathy, wrapping a firm arm round Kara's waist and guiding her to a nearby row of chairs. Rosemary deposits the signed NDA wordlessly on the hard plastic beside them, reaching into her scrubs to produce a pack of tissues.

Alex accepts, extracting one to dab at Kara's snotty, tear-stained face with her free hand. “Welcome to married life, kid,” she chuckles, pressing a kiss to Kara's matted hair. “It can be a real bitch.”

It's a long night.

It's a long night, a night of anxious waiting and barely-restrained nausea and vending machine coffee so bad even Nia won't drink it. Her family, their family, crowd the waiting room, dozing across the rows of seats as the hours drag on and on.

Alex tries her best, at varying intervals, to force her back to the Tower for a stint under the sun lamps. Every time without fail, Kara sets her jaw, then sets her feet in the middle of the surgical wing waiting room and refuses to budge.

This leads to several arguments, and a lot of impassioned shoving.

“What if she needs me?” Kara laments tearily, pout activated and puppy dog eyes firmly in place. Alex, mid-football tackle with her arms and right shoulder braced against Kara's torso as she attempts to use her entire bodyweight to force her sister toward the exit, only grunts with exertion. Behind them, J’onn dozes in the corner. Brainy and Kelly and Nia continue their conversation without batting an eyelid.

“No, scratch that, she does need me,” Kara corrects, unaffected by her sister's NFL-worthy body slam. “She's been shot. I'm not going anywhere.”

Alex, perhaps finally sensing defeat after her fourth unsuccessful attempt, gives one final shove with all her strength. Kara doesn't so much as wobble, and her sister releases her with a huff. “Fine. But for the love of God, change your clothes before you start shouting about your wife again,” she pants, red-faced and sweating as she collapses into a nearby chair. “That was my last NDA.”

That's a compromise she can make. Kara accepts the bundle of clothes Nia presents her with, stripping out of her dirt-caked suit and re-donning her glasses. Thankfully, the only person around to witness Kara entering the bathroom as a superhero and re-emerging as a Catco reporter is Rosemary.

The updates on Lena's condition are sporadic at best. By the time the first surgeon emerges to say the bullet has been removed from Lena's chest cavity Kara's accidentally cracked three plastic chairs, advanced all the way to Lollipop Land on Alex's Candy Crush, and worn a groove into the waiting room linoleum with her nervous pacing.

When another doctor emerges three hours later to tell them Lena had developed a tension pneumothorax and needs additional treatment, Kara's made it to Rainbow Reef and chewed her bottom lip bloody.

When, at five in the morning, yet another doctor appears to inform them that Lena is being placed on anti-radiation medication to counter the Kryptonite that had coated the bullet, Kara's finished all nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-five levels of the damn game. The doctor leaves, promising to be back with more news soon, and Kara squeezes her sister's hand so hard poor Nurse Rosemary has to be called to administer an ice pack for the bruising, solar flare be damned.

Dawn breaks to find Kara scratchy-eyed and grumpy, worn ragged with worry. The waiting room begins to fill up around them, new patients and their relatives coming and going, and still there's nothing new on Lena. Every time another scrub-clad surgeon pushes through the doors Kara's heart skips a beat, all of them sitting up straighter in their seats, but every time the doctor passes them by.

Kara's just wolfed down six cold breakfast sandwiches procured by Brainy on his sojourn to the hospital cafeteria and is debating the relative merits of starting Candy Crush over from scratch when another young doctor appears. Her scrub cap has avocados on it. Kara likes her already.

“Family of Ms Luthor?” she calls, looking around, and Kara pushes up hard from her chair to the resounding snap of cracking plastic. Whoops.

“It's Luthor-Danvers,” she gabbles as she bounds over to the surgeon, palms sweating. No matter how many times she hears it, it never loses its thrill. “I'm, I'm her wife.”

The young doctor's features soften. “Of course. I've come to let you know that it looks like Ms Luthor-Danvers is out of the woods. She's sedated and still on an anti-radiation drip, but she's through the worst of it.” She appraises Kara, gaze lingering on her chewed-raw lips and clenching fingers, then leans closer conspiratorially. “It's not general visiting hours yet, but you can see her, if you'd like.”

“Yes!” Kara's shouting almost before the surgeon has finished speaking. “Yes, please, yes.”

She hugs them all, Alex and Brainy and Nia and Kelly and J’onn, and leaves them in the waiting room as she follows the doctor's sunshine-yellow crocs down the hall.

They round corner after corner, an interminable maze. Powerless as she is, she can't hear Lena’s heartbeat, and the absence of the steady beat that has become the soundtrack to her existence sets her even more on edge.

But at last they turn a corner, and there she is. She's pale and bandaged and her eyes are closed, creamy skin streaked with dirt and bruises, but she's there, she's alive, she's Lena.

The surgeon holds the door open for her with a smile and Kara's across the room in a heartbeat, smoothing a hand over Lena's warm cheek and pressing kiss after kiss to her forehead and hair.

“I love you, I love you,” she whisper-cries against Lena's temple, tucking her matted curls behind her ears. The smell of blood and dirt and antiseptic is almost overwhelming, but beneath the dust and debris caught up in her hair Lena's scalp smells the same as always. Kara presses her face to the crown of her head and inhales deeply, soaking it in.

“Why'd you have to be so damn brave?” she whispers, nuzzling her cheek against silky softness. “I love you so much. Please don't step in front of any more bullets. Please learn to be a coward, occasionally.”

The singular relief of having Lena living and breathing and in her arms again is so complete, so compounded by the fear and the adrenaline and the sleepless night and the solar flare, that she feels suddenly that she may crumple to the ground from the force of it all.

Unwilling to relinquish her hold for even a second she appraises the bandages covering Lena's right side, then crawls onto the hospital bed on her left, careful to avoid her many wires and monitors. She tucks herself in beside her on the wide mattress, chin hooked over Lena's shoulder and face pressed to the side of her neck, and lets the tears that haven't really stopped falling since that bullet had left its chamber fall for just a little longer.

Nothing matters outside of the two of them, outside of the warmth of Lena's body and the softness of her skin beneath Kara's lips and the steady thud of her heart beneath Kara's palm. Nothing else in the world exists, so when an unfamiliar male voice sounds from the doorway it takes her a moment to register the intrusion.

“Excuse me, ma’am, you really can't be on the bed with her,” the strange, disembodied voice calls from behind her and Kara frowns tiredly, unable and unwilling to acknowledge anything outside of the woman in her arms.

But before she's even managed to raise her head another voice sounds, the soft tones of a young surgeon in an avocado scrub cap.

“Oh, honestly, Peter,” the kindly doctor says with gentle reproach, a quiet calm washing over the room as the door is pulled closed and she and Lena are left alone. “Leave them be. That's her wife.”

#check out easter's incredible art! as usual she absolutely nailed it #in my humble opinion you can simply never have too many 'that's my wife!' concepts in the world #it just never gets old #ridings writes #supercorp #supercorp fanfic #kara danvers #lena luthor #supergirl

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yandere-sins · 3 years

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His Love

Horrortober Day 4: Needle | “It’s just a tiny sting. You won’t notice it at all.”

Day 4! Time is passing so fast... but I am glad to do this challenge :3 I think the biggest challenge for me is actually writing for the character’s I predetermined at the beginning. I find myself wanting to switch them around for prompts but no! I will stick to the list and keep challenging myself ^-^

Warnings: Yandere, TW Needle/Syringe, Kidnapping, Gags and being tied up, Sedation Characters: Dazai Osamu x Reader

It was wrong.

With tears streaming down your face, you had to recognize that everything you thought had been right was actually terribly wrong. You only just met him. Perhaps it had been a month now. But really, you only just met this wonderful stranger named Dazai. He didn’t just catch your eye, he also pulled at your heartstrings. It was the kind of love you always had wanted, just… it wasn’t. Not really.

Not if that love meant being held captive, gagged and tied, staring into the face of a madman.

Something about the way he held the needle in his hand, clear drops of something collecting at its nozzle, seemed utterly wrong. Not just morally. Morally it was very wrong. No one should fear getting injected with something unknown. But the way he held it was strange enough to ring alarm bells. As if he didn’t know how to properly use it.

As if he didn’t know what he was doing.

“Shh,” Dazai shushed you calmly, holding down your right leg as you began to move and struggle again. Panic rose inside of you, festering in every inch of your body. NO! you wanted to scream at him, your bare feet trying to kick Dazai or at least the syringe out of his hand. Whatever his plan was, you didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

You’ve tried being calm, tried being patient with him. When he invited you over to his apartment, only to spike the tea he served you with drugs, you were scared, yes. But you tried your best to work with him and his crazy wishes. No useless question fell off your lips anymore after Dazai stared at you crazed when you asked him if you could leave. You’ve been so good. So why did you have to go through this?

“It’s just a tiny sting. You won’t notice it at all,” Dazai assured you, or rather, reassured you. But with your mouth gagged, you couldn’t tell him how little you feared the needle and how much you feared what it would transfer in your body. With the last bit of effort you could come up with, you looked at him, fixating his eyes with yours. As miserable as you could, you pleaded with him silently to please not do it.

And for a moment, it seemed to work. Dazai merely stared back. You weren’t sure what he saw, maybe it was his own reflection that made him hesitant, but it caught him, made him lower his arm. “You know,” he mumbled, slowly painting his fingers over your leg. It gave you goosebumps, but at the same time, it helped to lower your anxiety, seeing how he relaxed. “I don’t like doing this to you, either.”

Even you knew those were empty words. Just like all the other words he always told you. Dazai’ loved you’, ‘adored you’ even. What a joke. ‘Couldn’t imagine a life without you’ and ‘wished to always be with you’. And he could have! Some part of you believed that if he hadn’t done these things to you—kidnapping and mistreating you in every way possible—then perhaps, you two could have become the couple he wanted. He could have proved you wrong. Proved that the love you always wanted did exist!

You two could have found a way to live. With each other or apart, but in love. Beautiful, pure love. But not like this. Not with him still gripping the syringe in his hand, eyes lowering to leer at your body presented to him like a gift. A gift he wrapped himself while you were unconscious like so many of your days now. Because you were his present to enjoy, no matter if you liked it or not.

A sigh of relief left you, despite getting stuck on the gag, and you dared to look away, only to feel his grip tighten around your ankle again. Alarmed, you opened your eyes again, looking at a man full of disappointment and anger. Back was the tension that left you before and gone the feeling of safety you irresponsibly allowed yourself to have after the threat seemed banned.

“I don’t like doing it, but I hate it even more to see you’ve been hiding this from me.”

From his trouser’s back pocket, Dazai pulled a black, rectangle object, dangling it in front of your face. Shit, you thought, and you were pretty sure the truth was showing in your expression. You knew exactly what it was: your savior. A phone that the man who came to patch you up after a rough fight with your captor two days ago left you. It had been a risk to have, but you hid it in the cover of your pillow. But without the possibility to use it until now, this random act of kindness had been in vain. You’ve been wanting to dial the emergency contacts, but before you could, Dazai had forced you to rest, leaving you restrained until he came back. But you didn’t think he could find it, even if you never used it.

“Why must there be secrets between us, my love? You know I hate being deceived, but let’s be honest, did you really think I wouldn’t find it?”

Tugging at your ankle, you yelped, losing the strength in your body to keep yourself up and face him. You’ve been good. All this time, you had been understanding and patient. But who could blame you for clinging to a ray of hope? Shaking your head, you tried to plead with him again, but this time, his expression was merely filled with conceited disappointment. As if he was any better than you. That overprotective, obsessed, and mad asshole.

“So while I go out and find who dared putting these stupid thoughts in your head, I can’t risk you being as awake and clever as you think you are.”

The syringe came back in sight, and you felt almost defeated, knowing there was nothing you could do against a decision he had already made. There was only hoping for the best and trying to prepare for the awakening by his side later, coddled and suffocating in his chest.

“Dazai,” you said, but what came out was probably nothing more than blabbering against the gag. If he could say empty words, then so could you. If your survival depended on being sweet and kind to the man who was ruining you with his mere presence, then you would be what he wanted from you.

His eyes opened wide, his name being such a rare word to hear from you, even if you butchered it with your inability to speak properly. Letting go of your ankle, he climbed on top of you, making it easier to look at him again while you laid down and relaxed. “I love you,” you lied, the feelings never reaching your eyes, but they certainly lifted Dazai’s mood. “Me too!” he sighed, smiling softly. “I love you too.”

It really was just a tiny sting, but against his promise, you felt it painfully in the side of your upper body. Letting out a strained groan, you temporarily tensed before you were sedated, eyes slowly closing as you drifted off to another sleepless night for you. In the cold, dark bunker that Dazai called your home, nothing seemed safe, and nothing was right. You could do everything you dared, but you couldn’t do the things you wanted.

However, something even Dazai had to realize at some point was that you hadn’t given up yet. You’d never. You had a life before this—one you loved. Even if you had to make yourself small and loveable, endure the hardships of a thousand needles and the love of a psycho who you once thought was the man of your dreams, you wouldn’t give up. You wanted to believe that there was more to life than being here, that there was so much more to see and experience than the trauma you were going through. That there still was true love waiting for you. A love that was stronger than all of this.

But did you really believe you were stronger than that cunning man who calls you the love of his life?

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jessiebanethedragon · 3 years

Text

Good Soldiers

Empire!Crosshair x Reader

a/n: takes place after the events of the first episode so SPOLIERS

warnings: kissing, idk angst

Word count: 1749

The Green Visor stares at you menacingly. Even though it is not powered up, nor is it being worn at the moment. Having wrenched it off of the sharpshooter whilst clambering over him as Wrecker held him at bay. The scratches on your face, the busted lip and bruises littering you body are proof of the intense fight you’d been a part of. To say you were grieving might not be too much of an overstatement.

To be honest, all of you were grieving.

The damage the five of you had to do to Crosshair just to sedate him so that he couldn't hurt anyone else was enough to give you all nightmares for years to come. You did not feel like you were crying, crying implies you almost had control over the tears on your face. These ones started falling before you were conscious that they had started.

The rest of the batch only had an inkling of what the sniper meant to you. Their proximity to the two of you made hiding your feelings impossible, but to the exact degree, no one knew quite how deep these feelings went. They could see his eyes soften when he looked at you, the lingering touches and prideful smirks. They could see you bat your eyelashes at his scornful glare when you asked for something, and they could glance at a smile only reserved for their brother.

Hunter, Wrecker, Tech and Echo never heard the whispered ‘I love you's’ in his bunk, nor did they know that you knew how his ungloved hands felt on every part of your body. Rough on the surface and soft underneath, just like the sniper himself.

You clutch your necklace in your hands as you cry. Aggressively wringing the chain through your battered hands in hopes the pain grounds you. But it couldn’t deny the truth. Crosshair was no longer the man you loved.

He’d shot Wrecker, electro shocked Echo, busted Tech’s glasses, and even though Hunter said he was unscathed, he was twitching at every noise.

“Hey.” It was Tech, moving to crouch down to your level from where you sit on the floor of the Havoc Marauder.

“Can I see him?” You ask, sniffling up the tears in an effort to look more like the warrior the men know you to be.

“I don’t think you want to.” Tech says while scanning you over with the handheld medical-whats-it. Nothing serious is wrong, and yet at the same time, everything serious is wrong. “He’s still… restrained.” Tech explains slowly. “There hasn't been a change in his disposition yet.” the scanner beeps as it delivers its report.

“So you mean he’s still on a homicidal rage to kill us all.” You simplify bitterly.

“When you put it like that he sounds exactly the same as before the chip.” You try to manage a fake smile at that, but even with all your acting skills piled together the curve only makes it halfway. It drops so quickly when you hear the sound of struggle followed by an anger induced scream that sounds too familiar.

The havoc marauder does not have a set of barracks or prison cells so the only way to keep Crosshair safe from himself and to keep you safe from him was to magnetize a pair of cuffs to the metal of the bunks, three sets total, one for his hands and one for each foot. You shudder at how dangerous he really is, and how you never noticed.

You’re making your way into the bunk area before Tech can stop you and you rush through the doorway, wisps of hair surrounding your dirty face and heaving chest.

Through the glare, he grits his teeth. Sitting with his hands pinned above him to the metal frame of the second bunk. Forcing him to sit on the edge of Tech’s bed.

“You’re clever traitors, I'll give you that.” He says, words slithering out threateningly. The commotion that caught your attention has bought the other four into the doorway as well.

“Ohhhhh,” he taunts. “The cavalry has arrived hasn't it?” you blink. A lot. Because if you blink fast enough the image blurs enough so that it looks like the man you love. Gingerly you step towards him, ignoring the hand that reaches out to stop you. You sit yourself on the bunk opposite.

“Do you… do you recognize me?” You ask, still clutching your necklace. He shifts as best he can in the cuffs and doesn't answer. “Crosshair…” You whisper hopelessly.

“CT 9904.” He corrects. You raise an eyebrow, and decide to switch tactics.

“So CT 9904 what do you make of CT 9903, CT 9902, and CT 9901?” you gesture to Hunter, Wrecker and Tech respectively.

“Enemies to the empire.” He states,

“You can’t reason with him with the inhibitor chip still inside.” Tech chimes in, making you sigh and look away from the prisoner on the bed and back at your necklace.

“Do you recognize this?” You ask softly, holding it out to him. His eyes narrow as he looks at it - but stays silent.

It’s a tense moment, the rest of the batch also analyzing the rough gem wrapped in leather that you’ve been wearing for as long as any of them can remember. How Crosshair would have a connection to it, they’re only just realizing. He was never one for much romance, but this gift was different. Given to you on shore leave far away from prying eyes, and confirmation that even though you could never tell anyone, he’d always be yours. The necklace was confirmation of a secret relationship and the only public display of affection either of you could show.

“Crosshair.” you press desperately, “do you recognize this?” His breathing becomes a bit more laboured, more stressed, more like he's fighting something.

“Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders. Good-”

“Tech scan him again.” you demand watching as he begins to struggle against the bindings. Tech presses his way in the room.

“Hold his head for me,” he says before beginning a scan with a specialized tool that he's been young with for some time. You rest your hands on his face, one cupped behind and one so that you can rub calming circles on his cheek. It's the same way you used to hold him after missions that had gone less to plan.

“Good soldiers follow orders.” He says over and over as his eyes glaze over and become unfocused.

“Tech,” you say worriedly, desperately trying to coax Crosshair back to life and calm him down.

“Good soldiers follow orders.” He says with his head falling back, and you do your best to keep him supported.

“I’ve got it!” Tech shouts, looking at the left side of his temple. “Everyone out! I need to sedate him.” Your head flies up, you’re not keen to leave him, not when he's in this state.

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

“I can't leave him…”

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

“Wrecker get her out now!” Tech shouts and you feel arms like tree trunks around your middle and you can’t do more than wriggle as your hands slip from Crosshairs face as you're dragged out of the room.

It’s not too long later when Tech re-emerges but it feels like a lifetime to you. And before you can even get a word out he places a petri dish on the table, before leaving to go into the fresher. You rush back to find Crosshair laying on the floor, one hand still magnetized to the leg of one of the bunks. You doubt the cleanliness of the operation but if there's one thing the bad batch had in great supply it was Bacta and antibiotics.

There's a patch of shaven hair by his temple with a small bandage over it, and the drugs seem to be wearing off quickly because he's already shifting. You run a soft hand over his stubble. You’re scared to wake him, because if he wakes and it isn't the man you know under his eyes, you don’t know what you’ll do.

He groans, it's long and deep like the kind you're used to getting in the early hours of the morning when you get up to sneak him out of your bed and back into his bunk. Your name slips past his lips, and his eyes flutter open.

You’re ready to jump away, scared even though he's still bound. And you recoil when his arms reach for you and get stopped by the binder. He looks confused for a moment before his eyes meet the metal restraining him.

His eyes meet yours with tears falling from them.

“Crosshair?” you ask, “I need to know it’s you.”

“The necklace, I gave it to you.” He says, but you remain far from his grasp still. “It was the last day shore leave, at your-our place. We were in bed, the sun was rising, it was the first time I told you I loved you.” He says slowly, deliberately, in a soft voice he only uses around you. Unconsciously you move to him, his freehand wraps around your waist as he buries his face where your shoulder meets your neck. You pull him away only to press your lips to his in a kiss that’s a mess of tears, teeth and a need to be close to one another.

“I’m sorry.” He gasps when you break away the breath. “Maker, mesh’la i’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.” You tell him, unlocking the binder so he can hold you with both hands, before kissing him again, this time it is somehow more needy than the last, you can't get enough of Crosshair because now you know what it is like to lose him. Your hands reach under his empire blacks, partly because you want to burn every part of the empire to the ground and partly because you're desperate to properly feel him again. You feel his warm hands up your back as they go under your tunic and you keen into his touch.

Hunter clears his throat from the doorway.

“I was on my way to check on you.” He says after the two of you break away. “But it seems you two are getting on just fine.” Your face flushes bright red as Hunter turns away. “Good to have you back Crosshair.” Hunter says firmly.

Crosshair presses a kiss to your neck before smiling.

“Good to be back Sarge.”

#crosshair #crosshair x reader #crosshair x you #jessiebanethedragon #bad batch x reader #the bad batch #bad batch #tech bad batch #sergeant hunter #star wars #the clone wars #clone wars x reader #the clone wars x reader #clone force 99 #clone trooper wrecker #clone trooper echo

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whump-a-la-mode · 3 years

Note

Do you think you can write something along the lines of a patient either bring put under using medication restraints (like Haldol or something) for their own good- they have a meltdown, ect. And/ or slowly waking up to find they have been strapped down? Their kind but stern doctor comforts them as they wake up. It's all just a stressful and heartbreaking experience for the whumpee. They are usually fairly stoic, but now, they feel so weak and defeated. Maybe include some tears? Sorry if this is too specific!!!

I really like this idea! I didn’t intend to go towards any specific genre of whump, since you didn’t specify, but I ended up going a little in a lab whump direction. I hope that’s okay! Thank you so much for the ask, and, again, sorry these are taking ages.

CW//Medical settings, chemical restraints, restraints, sedation, non con drug use, implied lab whump, syringes

Whumpee was screaming.

That was the only thing that could be processed by anyone in the Emergency Room as the gurney was unloaded from the ambulance and rushed through a pair of swinging double doors. Before the doors could so much as swing their way closed, the patient had already been deposited upon an ICU bed.

Around them, doctors swarmed like locusts. The doctors were swarming, and Whumpee was screaming.

“Hold them down!”

“Haldol, dammit! Get me Haldol!”

“I said, hold them down!”

Yet, to the supine patient, there were no doctors. No hospital. No, as far as they were concerned, this was a laboratory in everything but name. A torture chamber in everything but name.

And such was reflected in their movements.

Upon the bed, already half-laden with various pieces of tubing and wires, Whumpee howled, thrashing their limbs about with wild abandon. To them, movement was an end goal. As long as they were moving, there was hope of escape.

As long as they were moving, the pain wasn’t quite so bad.

“Hold, hold!”

“Where in the world is that Haldol?!”

“Right here!”

Even the words could not make their way into their their mind. No, there was no sense in their mind, only the most vague knowledge of flashing colors, of bright lights, of the horrid stench of antiseptic that they knew all too well. Each time a face appeared to them from the shroud, it quickly morphed into that of their former tormentor, eliciting nothing from them but another anguished wail.

Whumpee was not expecting the pain, though perhaps they should have been. Their arm was pushed down to the bed, half a dozen hands working to stop their ceaseless writhing. First came cold, then the prick.

“There. There.”

That was when the hyperventilation began, thrashing escalating along with it. By then, beyond their knowledge, their scope of sanity, the room had been flooded by eight doctors, nurses, and orderlies, all struggling to stop their emaciated body’s struggling.

Whumpee looked like a lab rat upon that bed, blue lines sprouting from pale skin, practically begging their veins to be pierced and flooded. The thought made their tears start, sobs tearing through their chest, jutting ribs and all, as they twisted back and forth.

Yet, at a certain point, their panic reached a peak. Its crescendo ceased, and its downfall began. Slowly but surely, each of their cells was turned to sand until they were more useless and heavy than a burlap sack.

“Clear. Running the line.”

It was a series of words that they had, up to that point in their life, heard far too many times. But, now, there was nothing to be done. No pleas or threats to be howled. Instead, they only breathed heavily, watching as the long, plastic tube pierced its way into one bulging vein.

“Line in. Clear to start the drip.”

And drip it did.

Drip -

Out.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Whumpee laid upon the beach, their consciousness flowing in and out as the tide.

For one moment, vision gently flowed along the sands, showing them hazy views of sterile lights and clipboards and dangling tubes. Then, once more, it receded, washed away into unconsciousness. The next time that the water flooded in, the waves were higher. Alongside visions of white tiles and dancing monitor screens, there was sound. Beeping and buzzing and voices.

When the tide came in for the third time, it stayed.

This time, the first things that occupied their newly-revived senses were not the lights, the tiles, the buzzing. Instead, they were assaulted by the sights and sounds of their own breathing-- quick, shallow, barely enough to move adequate air into their lungs.

That was, until their thought process was interrupted by something far more jarring. A voice.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

It wasn’t the softest of voices, nor the kindest. Though it wasn’t sharp, it was most certainly firm. More of a bark than a yell.

Whumpee blinked, vision once more threatening to fade. The tide dragged along the shore...

But, they were awake. Wakefulness meant confusion, and confusion meant a sharp terror, gripping at their throat.

Sterile lights. White, tiled walls. The reek of antiseptic. Every hallmark of a lab, and more. In an instant, the subtle wave of consciousness turned to a flash flood as adrenaline eliminated even the most far-off hopes of returning to slumber.

And, too, the flood came with more visions. Imagery striking at them, pounding upon the inside of their skull like a mallet. Lab coats, gloved hands, the bars of a stainless steel kennel. Shimmering needles. Pliers and scalpels.

Upwards, they jerked, a desperate attempt seizing them to sit up, as though they had just been struck by a defibrillator. But, they proved quite immediately unsuccessful, a force upon their chest keeping them held firmly down.

Whumpee knew that feeling well. Even with vertigo making the lifting of their head impossible, they did not have to work hard to imagine the restraint strap, most certainly stretched taut over their chest. More panicked experimentation showed that their wrists and ankles were similarly limited.

“Stop.”

Their wide gaze, eyelids straining to open wider as their pinprick pupils shivered, shot to find the word’s source.

The lab coat sat perched upon a stool, legs curled deliberately beneath themself. There existed a firm, focused stare to those eyes. Whumpee felt as though they could not so much as breathe without being observed.

Then again, that was what the doctor was upset at them for, huh?

Well, if they were going to be in trouble, they may as well give something to be in trouble for. If these wackjob scientists thought that they were just going to sit quietly for another hellish procedure, they had another thing coming! At least they were out of their kennel, out of their cage.

“Let me up, piece of shit!” Whumpee snarled as they made another useless attempt to sit up. Of course, the restraints limited them just as well the second time.

“I don’t think I’ll be doing that.” A moment later, it was no longer simply the pressure of the strap that pressed down upon the chest. Too, a strong hand joined, pushing. “You’re staying down.”

“And what are you doing to do to me this time?”

Though there were a few moments of confusion, there was nothing reassuring about them.

“If you cooperate? What I’m going to do to you is ensure a full recovery.” The restraining hand retracted.

“Torture doesn’t usually help with that, just sayin’.” A weak smile appeared upon their face-- all they could manage.

“You’re not there anymore.” This time... this time, there was the slightest twinge of comfort to that tone. As though they were explaining a procedure. Clinically outlining the process in a way designed to minimize panic. “You’re in the hospital.”

“That hellish lab isn’t a hospital.”

“I’m well aware of that.” They didn’t sound all too pleased at being interrupted. “You’ve been removed. You were taken here in an ambulance.”

“I was-” They tensed.

“And sedated for an adverse reaction to rescue.”

“You stabbed me.”

“It was a syringe.” They countered. “Barely a poke.”

As though Whumpee hadn’t been poked enough.

“Whatever.” They at last hissed. “Let me out of this crap, if you’re so intent on rescuing me.”

“You’re already writhing about like a fish out of water. It’s for your own good.”

They clenched their hands to fists.

“What would be good would be letting me go! I don’t need your help.”

A howl of laughter.

“Yes, kid. Yes, you do.” The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid you have a very, very long road ahead of you. And if you don’t want to spend that journey under the influence of Haldol, you’d better learn to calm down.”

#whump #whumpee #whumpblr #medical whump #lab whump #lab whumpee #medical #whump scenario #caretaker #doctor caretaker

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

Whumptober Day 29: Emergency Room

CW: Medical whump, sick whumpee, hospital whump, brief references to past child abuse and resulting traumatic association

Immediately follows Infection and Disorientation

Chris wakes up in the middle of a sentence.

Or rather, when his brain switches back on and he is conscious on a level he can participate in, he’s already talking, and the first thing he is aware of is a woman’s face, brown-skinned and with a slightly dry smile, watching him as he is saying, “-and, and, and then I saw, um, saw towels and the, the, the colors were all wrong, so, so I fixed them.”

“Oh, did you,” The woman replies, and there is a guarded kindness in her. “That was very kind of you.” He blinks at her, his vision slowly coming into focus. Chris takes a deep breath only to wince as a hazy sort of pain ripples up his right side. She leans over, a little closer. Her hair, black and full of tightly-wound curls slips over her shoulders and forwards, just brushing her cheeks. “Are you back with us? Don’t breathe so deep yet, okay?” She tilts her head, putting a hand up to push some hair back from his face. Jake does that sometimes, and Chris turns his head to encourage the affection, closing his eyes again.

Eyes closed feels better.

In the clinic they’re always kinder to trainees, if still brusque, businesslike, getting them in and out with bandages applied, fevers broken, internal injuries healed with rest and whatever drips down the IV to make them sleep when they have done nothing but beg for sleep since they lost themselves to the Drip.

The nurses are nicer than the handlers, and this one is talking to him and touching him but only where he wants her to, and that makes her the nicest of all.

The way the world is spinning begins to settle when his eyes are closed and she lays her hand briefly against the side of his face, and he breathes a little more easily. He must not be in trouble, if she’s allowed to be so nice.

There’s something beeping nearby, and he doesn’t like the flat white light coming from the fluorescents in the ceiling laying on exposed skin - he can feel its weight on his arms where they lay on top of the scratchy rough blanket - but at least it isn’t a cold light.

He shivers, opening his eyes to look down at himself, blinking. There are blankets pulled up to just under his arms, pale blue and sort of rough and soft, both at once, pilling so badly he can pick the little balls of fabric off bit by bit with one hand. Normally trainees don’t get blankets in the clinic, they’re supposed to freeze here, too.

He must have been very good but hurt anyway. Sometimes the handlers just want to hurt you, even when you’re good, because your tears are beautiful, too.

Besides, 499, you wanted this - you signed up so we would make you cry, right? Give me your arm, a little half-dose of purple should get you nice and worked up for us.

He tries to obey, rolling his left arm slowly over to expose the marked-up space at the inside of his left elbow - bandages wrapped around his left wrist over his barcode crinkling - and then realizes something is on - is in - his left arm. There’s… there’s a needle in his arm already, with a thin tube that runs up to a stand on wheels with multiple bags hooked onto it, and he thinks there’s something down below his waist, too. A catheter.

He’s been bad, then. There’s only one reason to have a needle in his elbow and a catheter in, but when he tries to panic, he’s… he’s too tired, and too dizzy, and too foggy, to feel very scared at all. Even if they are going to take him away again, it’s too late. The Drip is already in his veins and there he goes, all of him, wiped clean all over again.

The soft throb of pain along his right side, wrapped up in the gentle blanket that covers his mind, makes it clear he’s not going anywhere very fast, not today. The handlers will have to leave him alone, and that’s good, but if he’s here and on the Drip, it means he’s back again.

Back in the Facility, here to be wiped, refurbished, and sent back to Sir or to someone new… and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

He feels his throat closing against helplessness - no, he was rescued, he was rescued and they said he’d never go back… they swore, they promised, Jake and Nat promised they wouldn’t let him go back, Jake would have fought them, he would have done something-

Tears flood Chris’s eyes and he hitches in a breath on a whimper. Jake must have gotten too hurt to save him. He must have, he might even be dead-

If it weren’t for you, she’d still be alive-

“Hey, hey, come on now.” The soft female voice is closer now, and her hand is back on his face, up to run back through his hair as he sniffles, coughs, winces as the dull pain sharpens briefly and then fades again. “It’s okay, you’re okay. It’s just the hospital, yeah? Your appendix ruptured, you had to come here in an ambulance, had some pretty serious surgery. Can you remember that?”

His eyes manage to open, blurred through his tears, and he looks at her. She’s not wearing the uniforms that handlers or even the nurses wear, but a softly floral scrub top and plain navy pants. Her smile is different than any nurse’s in the clinic that he’s ever seen. She’s looking at him, not through him.

“I d-don’t know where, where, where I am,” He whispers, and she nods, her smile still in place.

“I know. That’s why I’m the one sitting here with you right now. You’re in the county hospital. You’re okay, Chris.”

Not 223499, but Chris.

He reaches back into his own mind and finds the train track that Jake and Nat are on, remembers their faces, their names, the way it feels when they hold him. He brings up the memory of Jake pulling his shirt off, handing it to Chris, whispering, I’ll come back, I promise.

He remembers Jake carrying him up the stairs three days later.

Chris holds, for a moment, the memory of Jake looking at him as they loaded him onto the plastic-backed bed-thing in the ambulance. He can remember, clearly, Jake's voice. We’ll be right behind you, Chris. I swear to God I’ll be there. I promise you, buddy, we’ll bring you back home.

He’s awake.

Jake isn’t here.

“Um, J-Jake, my, my… my…” Chris shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water. What had Nat been saying, before the ambulance came? Talking to Jake, the two of them, going over their story. His name is Christopher Stanton. He’s my little brother, and he’s autistic. “My, my, my my my brother, my-... he p-promised, where’s-... need my, my, my brother-”

“I texted Yoder when you started talking,” The woman says gently. “They’ll be up to see you in just a minute, okay?”

He tries to believe her.

There’s a fog in his thoughts and the trains are all running, but slow, finding their way, winding around the gray clouds in his head. “I, I was talking already,” Chris whispers. “Even… though I wasn’t, um, awake.”

His throat feels a little scratchy and rough, like someone shoved something down there, but the agonizing pain he’d been in - the sharp ache that had been a knife shredding him to nothing again and again and again - is gone. In its place there’s a duller throb, and the sense of floating inside a very nice fog. Like the fog he hates, but… better, somehow, too.

“I was… was asleep, and now… ‘m talking, but, but I was still, um, asleep, and… and and and… and talking…”

“Yes, that happens. It’s coming out of sedation, you kind of wake up before you really wake up, you know? I’ve done this before, and you know, I had someone once who… came back to himself in the middle of telling me about a margarita recipe he used to make for his girlfriend. He didn’t remember it any longer when he was awake. That’s the fun of recovery, I hear all kinds of things when I’m with someone. My wife proposed to me in recovery from her own surgery, you know. She doesn’t remember it at all.”

“You… you you you said yes?” Chris looks back at her. He can focus his eyes again, and the look of her is nice. Soft, but like she’s had to be hard before. Like Nat looks, sometimes, only Nat doesn’t have a wife, or anyone at all but… but Jake, just like everyone else has Jake to help.

He moves his right hand, gingerly - he can feel the thick bandage wrapped around his left, and is never less than terribly aware of the needle in his elbow - and she takes it in both of hers.

Her hands are cool, and dry. He smiles, faintly, and lets his head fall back against a flat pillow behind him. There’s a window to his left, three panes of glass, and outside, when he turns his head, he can see some trees, a courtyard. Birds hopping around the branches, but he can’t quite see what kind they are.

The woman squeezes his hand lightly. Chris takes a breath. This isn’t the clinic, because there are no windows at WRU. You’re never allowed to see outside, not until your owner is ready for you, not until you are good enough to go home.

Going outside is a privilege a pet has to earn.

This… this must be what an actual hospital looks like. He’s seen them on TV, sometimes. The TV ones didn’t really look much like this.

The woman keeps his hand in one of hers and uses the other to check her phone. “Oh, I made her ask again when she was all the way conscious, but yes.”

“That’s, that’s that’s nice. I’m Chris.” His voice is low, and shy, and he doesn’t see her nod - he doesn’t want to stop looking out the window at the clear morning sky - but he can kind of feel it, anyway.

“I know, sweetheart. Your family will be here any second, but they wanted you to have someone when you woke up, so I’m kind of sitting in for them for a bit. Don’t worry, they’re on their way.”

“Jake-”

“Yes, I’m told there’s a man named Jake and, you know, I know Yoder pretty well by now.”

“Why… why, why why why do y’call… Nat? Yoder?”

“Hm? Oh, I don’t know. Just always have. Used to be we weren’t allowed to know each other’s first names, so I guess the habit stuck. How are you feeling?”

“Um. Weird. Am, am, am I… give m’drugs?” Fear hits, again, but it’s faded, a shadow of itself. He shifts his left arm and feels tape pull against the skin inside his elbow, looks at the tubing that runs from the needle up to a bag hanging on a metal stand. There’s a machine, too, that shows numbers he doesn’t understand. His eyebrows furrow. “Was I… bad?”

“No, sweetie, no. No. You just had to have surgery, and you have to be knocked out for that.” The woman pats his hand again, and Chris tries to relax himself. There’s a window, and if there’s a window, he’s not going back. He recites the differences like an incantation. Like a chant. Like a prayer, to keep him safe, as long as he does everything just right.

There’s a window, and so he can’t be going back. He can see outside, the sky and the sun, and so he’s not going back. There’s kindness here, compassion and warmth, and so he isn’t going back. His wrists and ankles aren’t strapped down to the bed, so he’s not going back. Her hand holds his but it doesn’t touch him anywhere he doesn’t want, so he’s not going back. “Do you know what an appendix is, Christopher?”

Chris looks back at her. She has a nice face, and warm eyes, and calls him a name and not a number, so he’s not going back.

He can remember Jake, so he’s not going back.

Jake will come find him, and he’s not going back.

“No, ma’am,” He says, softly.

She laughs, and he likes the sound of her laughing, shaking her head, her curls moving with her. “Not a ma’am, thanks. I appreciate the politeness, though. I just don’t like being ‘ma’am’d, I’m not quite that old yet, now am I?”

“Where… where, where where where Jake is from, you c-call… everybody sir or, or ma’am, if you’re… if you’re raised right.” He tries to put the hint of sarcasm, dry and cynical, that Jake always has when he says it, but it doesn’t work for him. He can tell it doesn’t quite sound the same. He is floating, in this warmly lit room, watching the sky change from grayish-pink to purplish and finally to a pale blue, going cooler and deeper at the top.

The sun is rising, warm, to wash away the cold light.

“Well, that’s not where I’m from. In any case, your appendix is this little doohickey right there along your right side, and yours got infected. So Yoder-... well, Nat, I guess - called a mutual friend of ours-”

“Am-... ambulance,” Chris whispers, thinking of the two people, moving around him. His memories are faded and terrified and full of pain, but he thinks of the gloved hand on his shoulder, the hint of a brusque, calm reassurance, cool focused expression and clear brown eyes. “Finn.”

“Right. That’d be my friend. Then you weren’t feeling super great when we got you here, your appendix burst and you sure gave Mandela a job to do cleaning out that infection, huh? Finn stuck around to help out with that, they trained as an Army medic. Did they tell you that?”

Chris just blinks at her, and slowly shakes his head.

“Yeah, way back. Signed up right out of high school, dealt with some scary shit when things got tense at the Canadian border when Canada started taking runaways… anyway, they’re good in a pinch, but so am I, I guess.” She shrugs. “We can’t trust everybody, so… they helped us get you stable, and then we got you in and out of that OR. Just between us, though? Can you keep a secret?”

Chris blinks twice, then slowly nods.

“Good. Just between us, I think they stuck around because they took a shine to you. Anyway, now you’re hooked up-... let’s see, they said you wouldn’t like the IVs, so let me tell you, it’s something for your pain and a literal ton of antibiotics, that’s all.”

“An, antibiotics-... for the, um, the the infection?”

“Right. That’s all it is, I promise, antibiotics and something to make sure your incision doesn’t hurt too badly. Mandela knows her work, you should be able to leave in the next few days. Mandela’s kind of an arrogant blowhard, but she’s also maybe the second-best surgeon I’ve ever met and she’s, you know, safe… for you. Lucky for us she was meeting someone at that Starbucks across from the hospital, huh?”

“... lucky, lucky for us,” Chris repeats, just to show he’s listening, but he doesn’t quite understand what he’s being told. He could, he thinks, if he could just wake all the way up, but the hint of fog makes the connections a little more difficult, more of a struggle. “Um, can, can I, can I ask-... are you… Tori?”

The woman blinks, and then laughs again, and Chris smiles faintly in return. He wants her to laugh again and again, it’s a nice laugh, it changes the light inside the hospital room when she laughs like that. Makes it brighter, more like sunshine and less like a cold white room with a door he can’t open.

He wonders if her wife makes her laugh.

“Oh, Finn got chatty in the ambulance, hm? Well-”

There are footsteps, and the woman turns before she can answer his question.

“Let’s see… 210, 212… 214… here it is, 216, this should be it. Jake, damn it, knock first-”

The door opens with a hard jerk of the knob, and Chris looks to the doorway. He knows the bit of blond hair before he sees the face it belongs to. The fog inside his head is familiar, but it hasn’t taken anything away from him.

They didn’t take Jake away.

He lets go of the woman and a smile stretches across his face. The throb of pain is gone, it can’t hold together under the weight of the warmth inside him. “Jake!”

Jake moves through the doorway, eyes on Chris, the bright blue focused and intense, shadowed from lack of sleep. His hair mussed, and he’s still wearing the clothing Chris saw him in last, rumpled. He drops a backpack on the floor as he moves, and he doesn’t even seem to realize he’s done it. Nat appears behind him, her braid half-undone, circles under her eyes dug in even more deeply than the ones under Jake’s.

Jake leans over him, one knee up on the bed. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hi, hi, hi, um, hi-... h-hi, Jake.” He holds out one hand. “Um, can you, could, could you please-”

“Oh, Christ, be careful, he just had surgery!”

The woman’s warning is lost, because Jake is already hugging him.

Warm, strong arms around him, and he tucks his head right under Jake’s chin and breathes in the familiar smell of him, deodorant and cologne and the laundry-smell from his shirt, the skin-smell of Jake underneath all of it. The simplest way to anchor himself, the greatest certainty he has that he isn’t going back, because Jake is here, and Jake would never let anyone take him away, not ever again.

“There were people having a fucking pizza party in the ER waiting area while you were in surgery, I thought I’d kill them with my bare hands if I had to listen to it any longer. Who the fuck orders fucking delivery pizza at the ER?” Jake’s voice is cracking, and Chris hums, twisting his right hand into Jake’s shirt, twist-and-release, then finger-twist-tap-tap-tap, and it’s solid and real and the sun is so pretty outside the window.

“Sorry I, I, I, I didn’t tell you I was, um, was sick,” Chris whispers.

“Sorry I didn’t know without you having to tell me,” Jake whispers back. “I hate hospitals, little man, you have no idea how much I hate having to tell lies in a hospital again. Fuck, I hate hospitals so fucking much.”

“Me, me, me me me, me too, but, um, but it’s okay with you here. It’s okay. It’s, it’s not-”

“It’s not the same,” Jake says softly.

“Right. Not, not, not the same. I’m, I’m, I’m not, not, not, um, not going… going back.”

“Never, Chris. Not ever. Letting you go in that ambulance without me is the second-hardest thing I’ve ever fucking done,” Jake whispers, and tears build in Chris’s eyes as he buries himself against Jake’s neck, his hands making short, jerky little flapping motions as he struggles to keep the feelings inside him from overwhelming his ability to speak.

“What, what, what was, was the hardest?”

“What?”

“What’s, um, what’s… what’s the, the, the… the-the hardest thing? You’ve, you’ve ever, um… ever done?"

Jake’s breath hitches, and there are tears in his voice as he holds on tight. “Sitting in fucking limbo knowing I couldn’t be the one to help you.”

Chris swallows back a twist inside his heart. “Y-yeah?”

“Yeah, just… having to be stuck outside while someone else did all that shit that it feels like I’m supposed to do.”

There’s a sudden rustle at the window, and Chris turns his head just enough to see a flutter of red wings disappear down towards the courtyard below.

---

Tori belongs to @whump-tr0pes and is used with permission and great love

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @slaintetowhump , @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth , @cubeswhump , @cupcakes-and-pain @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary

#whumptober2020 #no. 29 #emergency room #sick whumpee #hospital whump #medical whump #conditioning #trauma recovery #trauma recovery whump #recovering whumpee #surgery reference #brief child abuse reference #box boy #box boy universe #box boy multiverse #chris the strawberry blond romantic #jake the shelter guy #found family #listen let me have my heavy-handed touches okay.

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presumenothing · 3 years

Text

first: do no harm

(AO3)

Dr. Mensah’s attention zeroed in on me like a well-tuned surgery bot arm. “You have medical training.”

I was going to deny the hell out of that. I really was.

And then I said: “Not recently,” instead of no or even more accurately I frankly don’t think the company’s education modules count as training by your standards. (As far as I was concerned, the only thing worse than those modules was the one on breaking bad news, but what did I know. Maybe humans actually felt comforted by those tactics they described.) (No, I didn’t think that was likely, either.)

Which reminded me of a necessary addition. “The company won’t cover liabilities related to any non-security tasks you assign me to, if that’s what you’re intending.”

Mensah made a sound that was both grim and viciously annoyed at once, which I immediately saved for further analysis and replication. “Then we’ll just have to not make any mistakes, won’t we?”

–

I hadn’t exactly been thrilled with getting assigned to this mission. Not that mining installations were much of a walk in the park, but this was just asking to turn up memories that were better off buried (preferably forever) in my organic parts.

I don’t usually pay attention to mission briefs, as you may have noticed, and I wouldn’t have this time either except that my half-assed scan turned up the fact that the team weren’t science-doctors on a survey like I’d initially assumed, but medical-doctors. On a medical mission.

Of course they were.

(I wanted to say that someone had allocated me to this on purpose, but realistically speaking the company didn’t give enough of a shit, and the universe disliked me enough that this could totally be pure chance.)

Considering all that, the mission so far had been… much less worse than it could’ve been. Though the bar for that was admittedly very, very low. Possibly somewhere in the negatives.

Anyway. Up until the whole thing with Bharadwaj and Volescu getting almost-but-not-eaten, the task of making sure no one died had mostly been the clients’ job for once, which was a nice change since they were actually competent at it.

I still didn’t care enough to read their background info, but it was pretty clear just from observing that these doctors had experience with working in less-than-great conditions, even if Ratthi did sometimes sigh wistfully about equipment they couldn’t have in field hospitals. It meant that my job had pretty much amounted to patrolling, lurking visibly around the supplies storage in case anyone got ideas about that, and helping to fetch various medical items when I happened to be there and it wasn’t Gurathin asking.

It wasn’t terrible. I’d even got some media-watching time in.

(There might have been the vague thought that things could’ve gone much better if I’d been deployed with a team like this instead of Corporation Rim fuckery that literally bled payment from patients, but part of the reason medical-use constructs had been developed in the first place was so that hospitals could draw up forty-hour shifts and other assorted fun without worrying about doctor and surgeon unions, which told you everything you needed to know about our existence.

Also, the thought was inherently depressing and I already had enough of that in my head, thank you very much.)

The contract was more than halfway through. All I had needed to do to avoid awkward questions was continue making sure no one noticed that I was weirdly well-versed in all this, which wasn’t difficult since they only seemed to have theoretical knowledge about SecUnits at best.

Then the fauna happened, and poof went my cover.

Now all of PresAux knew I was – whatever the hell you called a catastrophically failed MedUnit who got turned loose onto security, because at least if I screwed up here the press wouldn’t be as bad. And that wasn’t even getting into the hacked governor module.

Even constructs didn’t have a term for all that.

–

Of course, none of that stopped this from being a Very Bad Idea. Even if apparently no one except Gurathin (ugh) seemed to agree.

“I’m a SecUnit, Dr. Mensah. I scare people. Patients are harder to assess when they’re running away.” I thought basic logistics might work here.

“You had better bedside manner with Bharadwaj and Volescu than many doctors I’ve seen. Human ones, might I add, and not actively injured themselves at the time.” Mensah’s tone was brisk as her pace – which wasn’t difficult to keep up with either, given my vertical advantage, but impressive nonetheless. “And no one wants to be around Pin-Lee when she’s holding a scalpel. That’s what the sedation is for.”

It’s because SecUnit hasn’t seen her in court yet. Trust me, it’s much scarier, Ratthi chimed in over the feed, with the text signifier for “amusement” but not “joke”.

Pin-Lee just smiled.

It was terrifying. I wasn’t even looking directly at her.

“I don’t have a valid license.” That’d been a part of the legal fallout from the disaster on RaviHyral, though no one had actually bothered with adding malpractice charges or barring me from ever doing medicine again. (Just another side effect of being considered as equipment – I doubted the company would’ve even secured licenses for constructs if not for their paranoia about covering their asses on all fronts.)

But it was a last resort argument, and I knew it.

Mensah knew it, too. “There’s special dispensations for that, especially under the current circumstances, as long as a fully-licensed doctor is in the vicinity at all times. It’s not like any of us can actually get out of each other’s hair in this base anyway.”

Mensah had stopped in a less-chaotic corner and turned to me, not that she could see anything behind the faceplate. I fixed my gaze a generous distance to the left and let my drones do the looking.

“I’m not going to make you agree. You perform a valuable function as our security – far more than I had initially expected, to be honest, and we would all be grateful if you kept doing that. But with Bharadwaj down for the count and Volescu still recovering, we could do with the help.” Her expression was still steady as ever, even though she probably knew better than I did the risks of continuing to operate shorthanded like this. “It’s your decision, SecUnit.”

Right, just the very thing I didn’t need to hear.

I kept most of my sigh internal. “Triage and first-aid only, between patrols. No procedures, and I won’t be responsible if any patients freak out.”

Mensah nodded. “Of course. Gurathin’s on receiving duty today, how about you work out a roster with him?”

I knew it. This was a bad idea.

–––––

You’d be my guardian.

Yes. The education opportunities – most of us were trained on Preservation, if you’re interested in learning and getting your license properly this time. Or not. You can do anything you want.

–––––

ART barged its way into my feed. You’re exhibiting a mildly elevated temperature and respiration rate. Though it could of course merely be a sign of inferior processors rather than emotional distress.

Do you talk to your clients like that?

Do you? ART retorted right back, but obligingly brought up the documentation for its MedSystem before I finished the query for it.

I ignored ART’s attention (with some difficulty) as I flicked quickly through the top few files, taking in the glaring disparities from my existing data. The notable lack of suggesting costly procedures that no-one actually needed, for starters. I’m assuming some of these are your improvements on standard procedure?

I am the cutting edge of medical research, ART proclaimed. You couldn’t accuse it of humility if you tried.

I still wasn’t sure what I wanted, and I still didn’t want anyone to decide it for me. But moving towards the one thing I did want (at least in the short term) had ended up with me running into what was very possibly the most advanced and opinionated diagnosis-treatment AI currently in existence, because that was just the kind of luck I had.

I didn’t have a medium-duty surgical suite in my arms anymore, since that was the entire point of modular Unit construction, but neither did Mensah.

And I didn’t think I wanted to stop doing security, anyway, since it turned out I might not be completely terrible at it; having actual medical knowledge that was MedSystem-malfunction-proof couldn’t hurt.

Plus, overwriting those shitty education modules seemed like a pretty great fuck-you to the company. I was always interested in that.

I tagged some of the more emergency-related files, then added a bunch of the weirder injuries I’d seen on contracts, and prodded ART. Tell me about these?

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #murderbot fic #tmbd #fanfiction #mine #long post #me staring at the wordcount in disbelief: okay then #????

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andypantsx3 · 4 years

Text

in cinders | 3 | obfuscations

pairing: Todoroki Shouto / Reader

length: 24,362 words / 9 chapters

summary: You’re just trying to fairy godmother your best friend into a happily ever after. If only the prince would stop hanging around and cooperate.

tags: cinderella AU, prince!Shouto, romance, misunderstandings, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut

The dress in question belonged to Lady Camie Utsushimi and you hoped she wouldn’t get close enough to notice.

It was a deep blue, almost black in certain lights, and though it wasn’t as fine as Ochako’s gown, it looked like the kind of thing that wouldn’t be out of place in a room full of nobility. In the scant hour you had to prepare, you’d done your best to temporarily alter it, quickly pinning the neckline into a different shape and ironing on spare silver ribbon lifted from Mina’s workrooms.

You’d cut a simple silver mask from the same ribbon, hurriedly stitching around the holes for the eyes and tying off the back with a thinner length. It wasn’t your best work, but then you didn’t intend for anyone to get close enough to take note.

While in Mina’s workroom, you also helped yourself to a scrap of pink ribbon and a pearl button, looping the ribbon through the eyehole to create a simple kind of a necklace. It would look too good with Ochako’s dress to pass up. You made a mental note to feed Mina more pastries in apology.

Back in your rooms, you and Ochako quickly washed down with a rough bar of soap of the type that all the palace servants used. It wasn’t as fine or perfumed with flowers like the ladies’ soaps you often caught passing through the corridors to be delivered to their rooms. It smelled vaguely of the olives that had gone into its production, but at least you smelled clean.

Once dressed, you and Ochako stole down the servant’s passages, taking care to avoid anyone carrying trays to the feast. At a quarter past the candlemark, you crept into the hallway that descended into the ballroom from an onlooking balcony. As agreed, Kaminari had left his post open for the spare minutes you needed to get inside.

“It’s not too late to back out,” Ochako whispered as you pressed open the hidden door leading into the back of the hall. The peerage was still being announced at the entry and you wouldn’t be noticed as you came in.

You grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the door, into the brightly-lit grandeur of the ballroom. At once, you were overwhelmed by the sights and smells of the reception. Bright dresses of every color dotted your vision like spots, their wearers combed and rouged to high perfection. Trays littered the tables at the fringes of the room, piled high with cheeses and sweetmeats and the other labors of Rikido’s love. At one table on the far end of the room, you spied the famous soba noodles.

All around you, the nobility swirled like currents on the sea.

“Wow,” Ochako breathed, sounding just as dumbfounded as you felt. “It’s even more than I thought it would be.”

Something pleased curled in your chest, happy you could give this to her. Even if she didn’t bag her prince at the end of the night, it would be worth it to hear the note of wonder in her voice and see her happily spinning among the party’s guests.

Speaking of Prince Shouto, you peered around in search of his tall figure. As the announcements of noble entries tapered off, you spotted your target in the corner of the room. It was hard to recognize all the courtiers in their elaborate masks, but you knew that head of distinctive red and white hair.

“What do you say you take your new dance skills for a spin,” you said, catching Ochako’s wrist again and pulling her through the splendid crowds.

She followed sedately, right up until she caught on to where you were going.

“Y/N, that’s him!” she hissed, “I can’t go over there.”

You pretended you’d conveniently lost your hearing. “What?”

“I said, I’m not going over there,” she whispered again, furiously. “I can’t look him in the face, what if he doesn’t -- oh hello, your highness! Mr. Midoriya!”

You stifled a laugh, dropping into your best approximation of a curtsy.

“Your highness,” you said, shoving Ochako in front of you. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I had hoped you might grace the Lady Uraraka with a dance. She’s quite new to court, you see.”

The man in question stared down at you, dual toned eyes burning into yours. Up close, you could see he was even more handsome than you had thought, his unusual eyes, sharp nose, and the fullness of his mouth only emphasized by the cut of his dark mask. He wore a doublet in a blue color only one shade lighter than your own gown, and the high points of his starched collar curved up towards his sharp jawline.

Over his shoulder, his valet Izuku Midoriya perked up, dressed in a green that matched his riot of curls.

“I’ve not heard of the Uraraka family,” Midoriya said, dropping into a bow. “It’s wonderful to make your acquaintance.”

Ochako seemed to blush to the roots of her hair at being addressed. “Oh, we’re um. We’re new, as my companion has said.”

Prince Shouto seemed to remember his manners as well, turning to Ochako. “Welcome, Lady Uraraka.” His heterochromatic eyes flicked over her face and he seemed to search for something to say. “I must compliment you on your choice of jewelry. Your necklace is quite unique and beautiful.”

You smothered a grin, proud of your efforts. She had his attention! Time to make your exit.

You bent your knees in a quick curtsy again. “Well, I must take my leave. I’d promised an acquaintance to find her. Please take good care of my friend.”

With that, you all but dove into the crowd, leaving Ochako at the mercy of the prince and his attendant. If the prince had any conscience at all, his chivalrous upbringing would compel him to ask her for a dance. From there, Ochako's inherent loveliness would do all the heavy lifting.

Once you were sure you were out of their sight, you looped around to one of the refreshments tables, intent on getting your evening’s worth out of Rikido’s cooking. If you had to be here, this would definitely beat the scraps you’d intended to scarf down by yourself. You planned on eating ten plates worth as you watched over Ochako from the sidelines. With the luxurious thickness of Lady Utsushimi’s skirts as cover, you might even be able to sneak twice your usual supply back into your room for later.

You were piling your plate high with barely-disguised glee when an elegant hand was held out in front of you. Your eyes followed an arm up a stylish sleeve and into the face of Camie Utsushimi herself. You froze, serving fork hanging from your fingers.

“L-lady Utsushimi!” you cried, quickly abandoning your plate. You swept into another curtsy so fast you heard your knees creak. “It’s a pleasure!”

Camie considered you with an unreadable look on her delicate features. Up close, her face was so symmetrical and pretty it almost made your eyes burn.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, her features relaxed into something like geniality.

“I’m afraid I don’t know your name, Lady…?”

You panicked. You hadn’t planned on being addressed. Before you could stop yourself, you blurted out the first name you could think of.

“Kamiko. I’m, um, from the Ito family.”

Fuck, what were you doing giving her Kamiko’s name?

“Well met, Lady Ito." Lady Utsushimi smiled. "I must tell you that I quite like your dress. I have one just like it! It appears our tastes are quite similar, and I found myself thinking that I must make your acquaintance.”

Internally, you were screaming. Did she recognize it for her own dress? What game was she playing? Was the king’s guard going to march in here any moment and separate your head from your shoulders?

You forced yourself to calm down. “I thank you, my lady. That is a high compliment coming from you.”

She regarded you. “Do you know me? I’m sorry that I cannot say the same - I don’t believe I know of your family.”

You waved a hand dismissively. “Oh you wouldn’t! We’re, um, from the outlying provinces. We don’t really, uh, get to court much.”

Lady Utsushimi gave you a toothy grin. “Well I’m glad you could make it for Shouto’s birthday. Everyone seems to have turned out.”

You found yourself seizing on the opening she left, desperate to get the subject off of you. “Do you know the prince quite familiarly? You call him by his given name.”

She laughed. “Oh yes, Shouto and I are old friends. I only turned up tonight to give him some company should he need it. He hates these things.”

You turned back to the ballroom, searching out the prince’s mop of hair. You found him easily enough, but were startled to see a distinct lack of Ochako on his arm.

A panic seized you.

“Um, forgive me, Lady Utsushimi. I seem to have forgotten something. I’ll just--um, I’ll be right back.”

Without waiting for her response, you plunged back into the fray of courtiers, beelining straight for the prince.

Emerging breathlessly as though from a cold river, you stumbled almost straight into him. Forgetting yourself entirely, you blurted, “Where’s Och--uh, Lady Uraraka?”

He looked at you, seeming startled. “Pardon, Lady…?”

You waved him off, “Oh, don’t worry about me. Just tell me where Lady Uraraka’s gone to and I can be on my merry way.”

He turned to look at you more fully, something curious alighting in his gaze.

“Forgive me, but is it not rude to address your liege lord without the proper respects?”

You froze, blood feeling like it was icing over in your veins. “I--of course, your highness, please forgive me for any offense. I’d only wondered--um, where my friend had gone.”

You hoped desperately that your disguise as a noblewoman stood between you and the gallows.

A smirk played at the corners of Prince Shouto’s mouth.

“I believe she is with Mr. Midoriya at the moment.”

You looked up at him in shock. Was he playing with you?

“Oh, um, thank you. And where might Mr. Midoriya be at this very minute?”

His smirk widened into something dangerously close to a grin. “I do believe I’m owed a name before I will tell you.”

Fuck. Don’t give out Kamiko’s again--

“I don’t have one,” you blurted, then winced.

Prince Shouto stared at you, something a little like disbelief creeping over his features. “You don’t have a name? That’s the first time I’ve heard something like that. Tell me, are you trying to make yourself interesting?”

You flushed. “There is absolutely nothing interesting about me, I can assure you--” nothing that a royal would find interesting anyway, unless they cared about the best kind of soap to lift grease stains from a pan -- “if you could point me in the direction of your valet, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

The prince stepped nearer to you. This close, you could feel the heat coming off of his left side and smell something fresh like mint, underlaid with the tang of saddle oil and leather. His proximity went straight to your head and you took a step back, feeling dizzy.

“I will take from you a dance, then, in place of a name,” he said. His gaze burned into yours like a torch laid to a pyre.

These nobles sure asked for a lot you couldn’t give.

“Um, I’m afraid I’m not much good at dancing.” You groped around for any excuse, taking another slow step back. “I've been told it's as if I'd never learned! Lady Uraraka, though, is a wonderful dancer. I’ll be sure to add you to her dance card when I find her.”

You moved to leave, but a rough hand on your waist stopped you.

“I must insist,” the prince said, “I’ll refresh you, if you are as unpracticed as you say. You would not deny your prince on his birthday, would you?”

You regarded him suspiciously, noting the wry twist at the corner of his mouth. He was being too obnoxious not to be obfuscating. Was there some reason he wasn’t letting you follow Ochako and Midoriya?

“Your toes will pay the price for this,” you intoned, “I assure you I am not being modest.”

Prince Shouto smiled and steered you towards the floor where a dance was already underway. “Perhaps. I will be the judge of that.”

This man had no idea what he was in for.

In the interest of spending as little time in the stocks possible, you did your best to minimize the damage to his toes. You still found yourself trodding on him more often than not though, confused by the many steps and the spritely movements of the couples around you. It became clear very quickly that you had not been lying to him.

Soon enough, the prince leaned down to put his mouth to your ear. “Stand on my boots.”

You pulled back to look at him in befuddlement. “What?” you asked, stupidly.

He tugged you closer. “Step up onto my boots. No one will notice with your long skirts. I will lead you through the dance.”

Your heart pounding in your chest, you did as he asked. This had the effect of bringing you much nearer to him than was proper, and you noticed that even standing on his boots, you tucked neatly under his chin. You hid your face in his strong shoulder, feeling your face turn pink, hoping desperately that he noticed neither your blush nor the messy stitches of your mask.

“So you were not being modest,” he laughed when you’d spun another few rounds, this time with much less difficulty. You could feel it rumble in his chest. “I, too, would guess you had never learned.”

You cringed. “One of many faults, your highness.”

A calloused thumb smoothed your back. “You do not have a name and you do not dance. What do you do with your time?”

Scrub pots. Wash the vegetables that go into your supper. Clean the fireplaces.

You wracked your brain for something suitable to tell him. What did noble women do that men found duller than dirt? What could you give him that he would not ask more about?

“Embroidery, your highness. I am skilled with a needle and thread.”

“With that mask?” he huffed a soft laugh. “Tell me honestly.”

“Well,” you declared, nose feeling hot, “what do you think I do?”

Prince Shouto looked almost delighted by the question, the blue of his left eye shining at you through his mask.

“Let’s see. You write to the Lady Uraraka, seeing as you are such good friends--”

You nodded. Writing, that was something that ladies could do.

“--and you make your own soaps--”

You looked up at him, startled. “What?”

He leaned into your hair, and you could feel him take a deep breath. Your mind felt like it was melting a little. “Your hair, it smells faintly of olives. Most ladies order florals. I’ve never smelled anything like this before.”

Well, it’s not as though he went around sniffing the help every day. All the same, he was too observant.

“Um, what else?” you prompted, trying to reroute him.

His right hand fell from where it clasped yours to gently encircle your wrist. “And you alter your dresses after they’re ordered for you. Do you not find the current fashion satisfactory?”

To your horror, he plucked at the loose silver ribbon you’d ironed on to the hem of your sleeve. It came away easily, clutched in his long fingers.

You opened your mouth to reply -- though what you might have said was a complete mystery to you -- when a blur of pink and green came rushing at you.

Ochako popped up almost between you and the prince, Izuku hot on her heels.

“Your highness,” Izuku sketched a quick bow, “my apologies for interrupting, but your father has need of you.”

Prince Shouto’s hand tightened on your back for a moment, then fell away as he stepped out of your space.

“I see,” he said quietly. He bowed deeply towards you. “I will look for you later, Lady No Name.” And then he was gone, followed closely by his green-haired valet.

Ochako gaped. “Y/N! That was--!”

You hissed, grabbing her hand and rushing off the dance floor. “I know! We have to get out of here before he comes back.”

She looked at you in concern and you held up the sleeve where he had pulled off your ribbon. “Another couple minutes and he’d have figured me out.”

Her eyes grew round with distress. “Do you think he--?”

You shook your head. “Not if we leave now.”

She nodded, and led the way out of the great hall. Once back in the halls of the castle, the two of you ducked towards the doors to the servant’s hall, stealing quietly through the drafty passageways. You kept to the shadows in the kitchen, creeping carefully down the short staircase that led to your shared room.

When you’d finally made it inside, you let out a deep breath, peeling out of Lady Utsushimi’s dress and stowing it carefully under your pallet to return to the laundry rooms at your earliest opportunity.

The two of you changed and collapsed into bed, laughing wildly at the night you’d had. Ochako wouldn’t share more than a word or two on where she’d gone with the prince’s attendant, but you guessed she might have rushed off too embarrassed to dance with the prince and Izuku may have followed to make sure she was well.

Still, it was clear she’d loved being able to go to the ball in her pretty dress, and you smiled, thrilled that you could have given that to her.

Eventually, she stilled, the sound of her breathing becoming heavy. You eventually drifted off as well, feeling the ghost of the prince’s hand at your back and his breath at your temple.

#todoroki shouto #bnha #todoroki shouto x reader #fanfic #bnha x reader #todoroki x reader #boku no hero academia

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bananaofswifts · 3 years

Link

How do you follow one of the most successful surprise albums of all time? Taylor Swift has the answer: release another, as soon as you possibly can.

Despite the fact that she’s re-recording her first six albums, Swift's found time to write, record, mix and master a whole new collection of tunes – and it's one of the best she’s ever done.

Evermore – her ninth studio album – emerges into the world only a few months after its ‘sister' album Folklore, and shares many of its noteworthy traits. For one, it’s another monster of a record – seventeen tracks and over an hour long – and for another, it’s jam-packed with many of the same guests and highlight-reel collaborations: Bon Iver returns on the title track, as does Aaron Dessner – this time with The National in tow on the incredible “coney island”. New collaborators Haim show up (as performers and as characters in the lyrical narrative) to add gloss and sheen to the rather wonderful “no body, no crime”.

“To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs," Swift explained. "To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in.” It's more than obvious these are the results of the same fitful sessions that produced such a wonderful record earlier this year, and to put it more simply, this could be the most magical object Taylor Swift has ever released. As well as sounding incredible as a whole (not all of Swift’s previous albums have hung together as well as this one) these songs also have the air of a victory lap about them, as though Taylor’s basking in the glow of this new cottagecore indie-pop hybrid she’s found(ed).

Other than the songs mentioned earlier – all of the ‘feat.’ tracks are sensational, but most especially “coney island” – there are tonnes of highlights to be found, with only a couple of tracks slipping by without making a lasting impression. From the first listen, however, these tracks reveal just as many pleasures as any of Swift’s other records, older or newer.

If you’ve been a long-time Swiftie, you might be pleased to know that things aren’t all cardigans and tall trees: you’ll find shades of the old Taylor liberally scattered throughout the record, whether that’s in the brutal heart-on-sleeve lyricism of “champagne problems”, or in the tear-in-your-beer down-home sadness of “tolerate it”. There are plenty of new things to enjoy too – from the rather lovely country-folk gleam of “dorothea”, which is titled like a Grateful Dead song and sounds a bit like their sedate moments too, to the languid piano groove of “cowboy like me”.

Swift's become the master of the kind of sheer ecstasy of escapism provided by very good, very long albums in recent years, with many of her records nearing or crossing the hour mark: Lover, unfolded over the course of 61 minutes, with not a second wasted. Is there enough time left this year to squeeze in a surprise third album? Here’s hoping.

#taylor swift #evermore #review

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witchygirl99 · 3 years

Note

ALONG CAME SHIPPO

Here! Have a 2.2k snippet because I don’t know if I’ll ever finish this:

The End of the World begins on a Tuesday.

Fucking finally.

Inuyasha taps out a rhythm on the old wooden desk he’s sitting at, his sharp nails creating tiny indents with each press. There’s no pattern to it really, just boredom shifting the beat from fast to slow, erratic to sedated. He’s sitting in some sort of bedroom, the furniture vintage and the curtains threadbare. The ceiling fan hums as it rotates, too loud to be pleasant. The bed is covered in some sort of ugly quilt, the white patches stained from age.

As far as punishments go, being in here is a good one.

It sucks, being as powerful as he is but as trapped as his current predicament shows. Inuyasha could burn the earth down, shatter the realms, rip apart dimensions. He could do anything he wanted really. For millennia, Inuyasha had done nothing terribly wrong. A few species were extinct, sure. The odd fireball. The whole witch rioting thing was a pain in the ass but overall, not really his fault, no matter what anyone else says.

He’d been just another Almighty Being, living his immortality.

And then the Winged Ones came. Idiots with too many feathers and not enough brain power who at first, Inuyasha will admit, seemed rather harmless. Just fluffy little things. Kind of like fleas but with too much of a complex and not enough use.

Hindsight is, of course, 20-20.

Stupid Winged Ones. Stupid, flying morons who thought they could rule the world. The End of the World is coming, he told them. Don’t be dumb, he pressed.

But no. The Winged Ones banded together, tore him open and flayed him screaming. They chained him, burned him and did the only thing they knew would keep an Almighty Being from gaining back his freedom: they locked him in the Pit, deep in the earth where Creation was born. It was a place so full of magic and power, that it was both everything and nothing at once.

Currently, it’s a bedroom with a shitty ceiling fan and some really disgusting curtains.

Inuyasha sighs. The Pit changes often and at random, too much power to stay as any one thing for too long. He vaguely hopes the next bit of scenery will be a little more interesting.

The ceiling fan suddenly stops. Not like a normal fan would, where it slows bit-by-bit until it grinds to a halt. No. The dingy ceiling fan stops so suddenly it was like it was never on at all, the humming silenced. Inuyasha doesn’t worry; this is actually the coolest thing to have happened to him since he Created fire. Still, something is happening. The Almighty Being can feel it in his bones, a deep, gut-wrenching knowingness that latches on and refuses to go away. The Pit around him is vibrating, fluctuating, pleased.

And then the bedroom door opens.

“Oh good.” A redheaded boy, looking no more than six years old, bursts in and grins up at him. It’s toothy and kind of weird, but the child doesn’t falter at Inuyasha’s lack of response. “I was worried you’d be somewhere else.”

Inuyasha’s not really sure what’s happening, but it’s probably good. The child is not a child at all. He’s not even an Almighty Being. He’s something… Inuyasha frowns, unable to get any sort of read. It’s the first real puzzle he’s stumbled upon since he opened his eyes to the galaxy and the stars sang to him. “Who are you?” he asks. His voice is deep and gruff, scratchy from disuse. The sound of it actually is a little startling. He’d forgotten what he sounded like over the past hundred thousand or so years.

The redhead waves dismissively at him. His eyes are a startling green, like emeralds. The smile never leaves his face. “You can call me Shippo. Names are strange, aren’t they?”

Inuyasha’s frown doesn’t deepen, but it sure as hell doesn’t lessen either. “Shippo.”

“Yep.” The kid bounces on the balls of his feet, hands clapping. “I’m glad I caught you.” Inuyasha wonders where the fuck else he would have been all this time. It’s not like he’s moved. “The End of the World is here so we gotta go.”

He’d like to remind everyone that this is, in fact, the oddest thing to have happened to him in a very, very long time. While he doubts the Pit is this creative in its scenery, Inuyasha figures it’s best to not take it for granted either way. “Go where?” Inuyasha asks. He doesn’t want to ask, but he does it anyways.

“To destroy the world?” Shippo levels him with an unimpressed glance, smile instantly gone. “Did you not get the whole End of the World thing?”

Inuyasha narrows his eyes. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Ugh!” Shippo throws his hands up in the air, looking exasperated beyond all measure. The expression looks peculiar on his face, too old and worn for a body so youthful. “It’s no wonder the Angels locked you up.”

“The–”

“Winged Ones, whatever,” Shippo interrupts, waving a dismissive hand yet again. “You Almighties really like to mess around with names. Seriously. Probably my fault, I was kind of absent but we can only move forward, you know?” He brushes back his bangs and lets out a long breath. “So, like I said. It’s the End of the World. Are you in or are you out?”

“Are the Winged Ones involved?”

Shippo makes a seesaw motion with his hands. “Kind of?”

“Can I destroy them?”

“No.” Shippo looks rather firm on this answer, which makes the next admission all the more startling. “But the End of the World will more or less dismantle all the shit they’ve been doing the last few centuries and will likely throw them into a pit of despair.”

“Can it be the literal Pit?” Inuyasha asks, because fair is fair. They started it.

Shippo gives him that flat look again, his green eyes too piercing for the monotony of the room. Eventually, he huffs out a breath and turns around. “Yeah, fine, whatever.”

Inuyasha gets up slowly and follows the redheaded child out the bedroom door and into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. Bermuda, the creature of all creatures, opens a lazy eye at them before going back to sleep.

“She’s probably my favourite,” Shippo says then, grinning that big, toothy smile at the creature. “Top five best names, for sure.” He says it like he was the one that named her. Inuyasha opens his mouth to ask but Shippo skips ahead then, muttering to himself as he goes. “One down and three more to go. I should probably leave the easiest one last, right?”

Inuyasha half-swims, half-stumbles through the water. He has no idea how the kid can skip through like it’s nothing, “Wait, three more?”

“Three more,” Shippo confirms. “I’m thinking Miroku first, and then Sango. Sango will put up a much bigger fight if we do it the other way around and we’re on a time crunch.”

Yet another question he doesn’t want to ask, but does anyways. “Who the fuck are Miroku and Sango?”

“Uh, your co-Almighties?” It’s more of an incredulous statement than a question, but Inuyasha feels anger bubbling up in his system anyways, the familiar rage burning in his veins like an old friend. He’s missed feeling like this, feeling anything at all than the nothingness of the Pit. His hands curl into fists, his claws digging into flesh and though he doesn’t bleed, the pain of it is almost startlingly good.

Shippo eyes him like he can read every thought that’s racing through his mind. “Weirdo,” he lands on finally. “I really have been absent.”

“Explain,” Inuyasha grits out.

“You actually thought you were the only Almighty Being?” Shippo snorts, smacking a palm to his face. He looks rather disappointed, which is again such a strange look on a body so young. “Well then, you’ve got some catching up to do. There are four of you, all Created differently but Made at the same time. You grew from the ground. The Earth split itself in half to carve out your Creation.”

Inuyasha remembers it, though the memory is hazy at best. For all the things that he can do and recall, his Creation was fuzzy, like looking through layers of fogged glass. “I saw the galaxy.”

“You did,” Shippo answers. “While emerging from the earth, you only had but up to look.”

“And the others?”

“Miroku and Sango are kind of strange. Basically, a rock was–” He stops and winces. “Well, it was blessed. Long story. Anyways, when Sun shone its light down upon the Earth, Miroku grew. That night, when Moon filled the sky, its light shone upon that very same rock and Sango was Created. One rock, two Almighties… You see how it’s weird?”

Inuyasha doesn’t. He nods anyways.

“And then there’s Kagome.”

For some reason, the name stabs something within him. It brings about a pain that rivals Inuyasha’s memories of being dragged into the Pit. He doesn’t know why. Inuyasha’s entire existence was himself, the Earth, and the fucking Winged Ones.

Angels, whatever.

“She was Created first,” Shippo says, wistful. Bubbles leak from his mouth as he sighs, still deep are they in the ocean. “She was Made with intention.” He sneaks a glance at Inuyasha before grinning slyly. “Race you to the top?”

“The top of—?” But it’s too late. Shippo has already flown, jetting up towards the surface without having moved a muscle. Inuyasha stares for a long moment, baffled. He wishes, suddenly, that Shippo had gone for someone else first. Why hadn’t he gone for someone else first?

When he gets to the surface, the waves are all-consuming. Shippo hovers over the top like the water is a solid mass, a floor to be walked-upon. He laughs at Inuyasha’s struggle before snapping his fingers, and then – finally – Inuyasha is by his side, dry, and drowning no more. “You’re a mess,” the redhead tells him with glee.

“What intention?” Inuyasha demands instead, because he may have been chained to the Pit for a very long time, but he’s no fool. He knows a distraction when he sees one. Shippo’s flight out of the ocean was as clear as day, a neon sign of distrust.

Inuyasha is not dealing with this shit, free of the Pit or not.

For a moment, those green eyes pierce him. Shippo is six year’s old in body, but certainly not in mind. He’s difficult to get a read on, but the reverse doesn’t seem true. Finally, the kid shakes his head and sighs, long-suffering. “Still a pain in the ass,” he grumbles.

Still? “We only just met,” Inuyasha growls back, irritated. “Look, this has been a fun few minutes but—”

“Kagome was Made from the Light and the Dark,” Shippo interrupts. His body hovers higher, taking Inuyasha with him, though the child doesn’t seem to notice. “She was born out of love, staring down at the Earth.”

Inuyasha has no idea why this is such a secret. That thought must be written all over his face, or maybe Shippo doesn’t need to read expressions at all. Maybe the child simply knows.

“You were Created second,” Shippo tells him casually.

The comment means nothing. “And?”

A startled laugh comes out, oddly cheerful and childish. His tiny hands form fists around his stomach, like he’s trying to keep himself together. “Nothing,” he gasps out. “Oh, nothing. This is going to be great. The gang is back together!”

Back…together?

But before Inuyasha can ask anymore, Shippo whoops and flings them both into the sky.

#ACS #witchy writes

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thatfanficstuff · 4 years

Text

Married? - Spock

Pairing: Spock x Wife!Reader; Bones x Friend!Reader

Warnings: blood, injury

A/N: I combined a request for a kind of quirky Spock marriage fic and a hurt/comfort fic for spock. Enjoy. I’ll be trying to work through all these requests over the next few days.

***

Bones hurried beside you as they rushed you to the medbay. The two of you had been on an away mission when you’d recklessly thrown yourself between him and a large beast with sharp claws and too many teeth. You’d managed to kill the thing but not before it took a good swipe at your chest. Bones had done his best to stop the bleeding with what he had on hand but he needed the equipment in the medbay to see to you properly.

As soon as you passed through the doors, he began barking orders and started trying to seal the deep wounds while also attempting to keep you infection free. Who knew what that creature had on its claws? “Give her the whole range of antibiotics,” he told one of the nurses. “There’s too big of a risk for infection.”

“Where is she?” a familiar voice bellowed and Bones frowned at M’Benga as they both worked on you.

The other doctor voiced his thoughts. “That sounds like Spock, but it can’t be. Not yelling like that.”

Before Leonard could agree with him, the voice came again. “Where is Y/N?”

“You got this?” Bones asked as the bleeding had all but stopped. All that remained was sealing up the wounds and making certain you weren’t in pain.

M’Benga nodded and McCoy stepped out of the room to find that it was indeed the Vulcan pitching a fit in the middle of his medbay. Bones took him by the arm and steered him to a chair. “Spock. What is the matter of you? Sit down.”

“Where is she, doctor? Where is my wife?”

He furrowed his brow, now concerned for both of his friends. He pulled out his penlight to check Spock’s eyes. “You do realize that the two of you aren’t actually married, don’t you? You were only posing as husband and wife for the mission.”

“I beg your pardon, doctor, but you are mistaken.” He shoved Bones hand aside so the light would quit shining in his face. “If you will check her records, you will see that I am listed as both her spouse and her emergency contact. Now, for the last time, where is my wife?”

It was rare for Bones to see Spock angry, but at the moment he was furious. And he obviously believed everything he was saying. Bones glanced around looking for a PADD. Even as he grabbed one, he held his other hand up in front of Spock. “She’ll be okay, Spock. M’Benga’s making sure all the bleeding has stopped and we treated her to prevent infection. Just calm down. She’s sedated at the moment anyway.”

Bones quickly pulled up your file and his brows lifted in surprise as he saw that it did indeed list Spock as your husband. When the hell had that happened? And why had Kirk told you two to pretend to be married for the mission?

Kirk came through the door but a moment later and patted Spock on the shoulder. “She’ll be okay. She’s tough.”

“Or course, Captain.” Spock sounded much more agreeable than he had earlier but a muscle ticked in his jaw.

“Jim, can I have a word?” Bones asked even as he pulled the captain across the medbay and into his office. He pointed at his PADD. “When the devil did this happen?”

Kirk shrugged. “Not sure actually. They were married before she joined the crew. I thought you knew.”

“Literally no one knows, Jim. Trust me on this. Why did you tell them to pretend to be married for the mission then?”

“I didn’t. I told Spock he better introduce her as his wife. It seemed the smart thing to do given their opinion on unmarried females.”

Leonard felt a sharp pain settle somewhere near his temple and closed his eyes. He ran a hand down his face and sighed. “I’m going to go check on the Mrs. You should check on Spock.”

Bones stopped before he walked into your room and observed through the glass. M’Benga and the nurses were gone and in their place was a much calmer Vulcan. Spock held your hand in his and brushed your hair back from your forehead.

“They’re so cute together,” one of the nurses said as she came to stand beside him.

Bones gave her a quick glance. “Yeah. Cute.”

“Did you really not know they were married, Dr. McCoy? I thought everyone knew.”

He closed his eyes and counted to five before stepping into the room. Spock glanced up then turned his attention back to you. “She’ll wake in a bit, Spock. It’s better to let her come out of it naturally.”

“Yes. Thank you, Doctor. I apologize for my earlier outburst.”

“It’s fine, Spock, and understandable given the circumstances. I’m sorry I wasn’t aware the two of you were married.”

“It is quite all right. I don’t believe we have had occasion to discuss the matter though I believed it to be obvious.”

“You owe me a ring, Spock,” your voice was weak and McCoy was by your side in an instant.

Spock stood and held a cup for you to take a drink from.

Bones checked your wounds to make sure everything looked okay. “How you feeling, sweetheart?”

You nodded and pushed yourself up so you were sitting in the bed. “I’m okay, Len. Not feeling much of anything at the moment.” You tugged on Spock’s hand and turned your attention to him. “I told you the next time someone was surprised we were married and you said it was obvious, you had to buy me a wedding ring.”

He kissed the back of your hand. “As you wish, ashayam.”

“So, I’m not the only one that didn’t know?” Bones asked, slightly relieved.

You gave a little laugh. “Of course not. I think he finds it amusing when people are surprised. I don’t know why. It’s not as if Vulcan’s are prone to public displays.”

“I am being very affectionate at the moment, wife.”

You waved him off. “That’s only because I scared you.”

Spock pressed his forehead to yours. “I will gladly kiss you soundly in the middle of the bridge on a daily basis if you promise not to scare me like that ever again.”

“Now that I would very much like to see,” you teased and as your husband closed the small distance between your lips, Bones backed out of the room. There were some things he was quite happy not witnessing.

#spock x reader #star trek #spock fanfiction #star trek fanfiction #wife reader

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highwaywhump · 4 years

Text

843: eating

This is a continuation of the anon-prompted piece from a couple of days ago! I’m working a longer piece which take place between that one and this one. Ryan isn’t Ryan anymore, but he is stubborn and refuses to eat. A couple of nice handlers help him out.

BIG CW/TW; being forcefed (somewhat graphic), please take care of yourself and read at your own risk. Manhandling, handcuffs, broken bone, stress position, ring gag and gagging, drugging mention, (brief) dislocation mention, (brief) panic mention, (brief) starvation mention, blood, collar, chaining,

Five paper plates filled with tasteless, grey gruel are stacked up in the corner of the room. 843 sits in the opposite corner, arms around his knees and back leaning against the wall. He pretends he doesn’t exist.

He hasn’t eaten in almost six days, not since he stumbled into the reception that Sunday night. The only thing his body has received in the meantime, is four bags of the drip. It starting to show on him, too, but he has stubbonrly avoided the paper plates.

The door to the room clicks and opens, Collins stepping in, Benson right behind him. 843 has a brief, instinctive thought - the guy’s like a fucking dog - but it’s chased away by a stabbing flare of pain. He tightly closes his eyes and bites down on his tongue to suppress the cry of pain he wants to let out. He whines quietly instead.

Collins takes one look at the plates in the corner and decides to give 843 one last chance. At 22 the trainee is a man, but he looks young and boyish. The handler squats down in front of him and sets a bottle of something down on the floor between them. Benson remains standing, slightly unsure of his role. To be safe, he crosses his arms over his chest and looks slightly more intimidating.

843 can’t make out what the bottle on the floor is filled with, but it looks like a watered down version of whatever the paper plates contain. Not exactly appetizing.

“You gotta eat, 843. I’m going lightly on you since you’re new, but you gotta fucking eat.” Colins tries to look him in the eye, but he is evasive and only looks down.

843 doesn’t answer at first. He uses a few seconds to figure out his words. Then, he moves his gaze to meet the handler’s, struggling to keep it from wavering.

“I... I don’t gotta do shit.”

His voice is thin, fragile, weak, a reflection of the body who made it, but the words alone are enough to piss Collins off.

“Right,” he says, mostly to himself, before he’s reaching out and grabs 843′s wrists. He is too weak to react, let alone fight it, so it’s an easy task for the two handlers to wrestle his hands into handcuffs behind his back.The good, old kind of cuffs that Collins thinks is way too underrated.

843 is seated on the floor in just a few seconds, legs splayed out in front like a newborn colt, and Benson is behind him with one boot securely planted on the chain links connecting the cuffs. He catches one of the boy’s fingers in the process and the bone surely breaks, but neither of the handlers acknowledge the hoarse cry of pain he emits.

Collins straddles the boy’s legs and Benson presses his head backwards to rest on the thigh of the leg that secures the handcuffs. It is a hopeless, vulnerable position, painful too, if left long enough.

“Next time, you should just eat what we give you. You brought this on yourself.” Collins voice is cold and balanced as he retrieves a coiled up plastic tube and a cartoonishly big syringe from the bag Benson carried. 843 understands all too quickly what they intend to do.

“No, wait, stop! I’ll eat, I’ll eat, please, let me eat, please, just don’t-” The boy’s pleas are reduced to incomprehensible sounds as Collins pushes a large metal ring into his mouth, behind his teeth, and secures the straps connected to it behind his head. The ring gag feels invasive, too big, threatening to dislocate his jaw if it was any bigger.

There is nothing 843 can do as Collins uncoils the tube, which looks way too long for its intended purpose. The handler is calm, works without rushing. It seems he enjoys the terror that lights up 843′s eyes. The boy’s sounds turn more and more desperate as Collins stretches the tube out to its full lenght and leans in closer.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we sedated him?” Benson says and looks away when the other handler lines the tube up with 843′s left nostril. He has to tighten his grip on the boy’s head to avoid him moving around too much.

“Yeah, it would be easier for you if you we had drugged you up, wouldn’t it?” Collins says, but it isn’t directed at Benson. The boy pants, close to panicking, tries his best to avoid the tube, to no avail.

Collins is careful as he inserts the first few inches - it has been a while since they had had to go to these measures to ensure a trainee didn’t starve themselves - but soon he remembers the technique and removes any last trace of mercy left in him. He is insensitive and without pity as more and more of the tube is ushed in. 843 can’t do anything but endure the horrible sensation and desperately hope the handler misses his lungs.

The boy can hardly feel the tube when it has traveled far enough in, he can only feel the it tickle at the edge of his nostril, but the knowledge that it is there is enough. The tip of it caught on something when it first entered, causing a red-hot flare of pain. Benson’s hands prevented him from jerking his head up, and he had to sit there and take it.

“There we go,” Collins cherfully declares when the tube finally is fully inserted. 843 looks defeated and possibly even worse than before, with a few drops of blood emerging around the tube. Benson still keeps a firm hold around his head, but it isn’t as the boy is going to try anything. He has lost, and he knows it.

The handlers administer three whole nutrition shakes to him before attaching his collar to a short chain on the wall, forcing him to stay seated. The cuffs aren’t unlocked - when Benson asks about it, Collins says it’s to keep him from throwing it all up again - and the tube stays exactly where it is, lodged into his left nostril. The gag isn’t removed either, wearing out 843′s jaw and causing him to drool uncontrollably down the front of his shirt.

“We’ll be back this evening for dinner,” Benson snickers.

“Maybe you can try eating on your own again tomorrow,” Collins cheekily says and roughly pats 843 on the cheek. They lock the door when they leave, even though the boy is securely chained to the wall.

He chokes back the tears and sobs, although all he wants is to cry and bawl. The next time someone puts a paper plate in front of him, he’ll eat whatever is on it.

Tagging: @castielamigos-whump-side-blog

#whump #wru #boxboy #boxboy whump #box boy universe #tw force feeding #tw manhandling #tw handcuffs #tw broken bone #tw gag #tw drugging #tw dislocation #tw panic #tw blood

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