#what fugue state did I enter to create this and then forget about it

[a-loose-collection-of-ants]

Okay so I was doing something for work and sifting through some old things on my computer.... and I found this???

[just-dreaming-marvel]

CHAPTER SIX - TRACKING

LEGACY: A Tony Stark Daughter Story

MASTERLIST

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Word Length: 1,650ish

Summary: The Team works on tracking down Ultron.

 After a long night of trying to track down Ultron, Bruce, Tony, and I were still in one of the labs searching. Everyone else was also helping, I just couldn’t tell you where they were at the time. Bruce was rewatching the recording of last nights events while Tony was fixing up everyone’s tech so that Ultron wouldn’t be able to hack into any of our stuff again. I had been helping him, but I was slowly starting to fall asleep. My head was resting in my hands as I was sitting on a stool and my elbows were propped on the table.

“It can read vocal stress patterns, adrenaline spikes—“ Bruce started.

“None of that was in the schematic we launched,” Tony stated, tossing his tablet on the table afterwards.

“He had a self-constructed learning spiral.”

“In his language database. He was supposed to learn slang, not go insane.”

I chuckled. The two men looked at me, unimpressed. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to break out into laughter. “But you two tried to created an artificial intelligence to protect the world. The whole thing was insane to began with.”

“Look, we know the guy has anger issues. Which, not to point a finger…” As he said that, he pointed a finger at Bruce.

“We told him to solve the world,” Bruce stated.

“And look where that got us,” I said, standing up. “Apparently solving the world means killing us off.”

Tony sighed, looking down at the floor before making his way to me. “You should go get some rest,” he suggested, putting a loving hand on my back. 

“No,” I shook my head. “I’ll be fine after some coffee.” I began walking away. “I’ll be right back."

I started heading down the stairs to the kitchen when Maria and Steve were walking up the stairs talking. 

“Fatalities?” Steve asked.

“Only when engaged.” Maria answered. “Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see.” What?

“Maximoff’s.” Steve said. “Well, that makes sense he’d go to them, they have someone in common.”

I stopped in the middle of the stairs. Maximoff? Where had I heard that name before? Suddenly there was a shooting pain across my head. I put my hands up to my head and groaned. I saw something. Two kids in cages, HYDRA cages. Just like the one I used to be kept in. It was blurry and first but soon cleared up. 

It was the same two that I had seen with Ultron in my nightmare. I was pulled out of whatever I was pulled into when a rested hand on my back.

“Are you alright, Bailey?” Steve asked.

I hadn’t realized that I had crouched down onto the stairs. I looked up at Steve. “Ya,” I replied. “I’m fine.”

Steve gave a worried look before backing off, knowing full well that I was keeping something from him. 

Maria and him kept walking up the stairs and I quickly got up and followed them back up the stairs. Completely forgetting as to why I was walking down in the first place.

“They don’t have someone in common anymore, Cap,” Maria continued as she pulled up something on her tablet. 

We stopped at the top of the stairs as Maria handed Steve her. It was a picture of Strucker. He was dead. The word “peace” was written in blood on the wall behind him. I wanted that man to be taken out, but I was kind of hoping that I would get to help do it or that Tony would be able to. 

“That’s kind of a mixed message,” Steve stated, studying the image.

“Is it?” Maria questioned. “If it was my mission, world peace, I’d probably take out Strucker, too. Ultron could be in any system. He could be pulling planes down from the sky. What if he’s just doing what he’s supposed to?”

“If I thought Ultron were bringing peace, I’d hang up my shield.”

“What?” I quietly gasped in surprise. Steve Rogers not being Captain America anymore? 

“Would you?” Maria questioned, clearly challenging him.

“Let me know if he leaves anymore messages.” Steve ignored the question and began walking away.

“Did you mean it?” I asked, following him closely.

“Mean what?” 

“Steve,” I grabbed his hand, causing him to stop and turn around. “You know what.”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head and looked down at our hands.

“What would you do?” He began to absentmindedly rub his thumb over the back of my hand. “If you weren’t Captain American anymore, what would you do?”

He sighed, keeping his eyes focused on our hands. “Probably find a place in Brooklyn. Mind find a girl and settle down.”

“But what about us?” He quickly met my gaze. “I-I mean… What about your home?”

“Like I said,” he dropped my hand, but not before gently squeezing it. “I don’t know.”

He turned and continued walking towards the main lab, me following a bit behind. We could hear Clint talking on the phone before we saw him.

“Don’t worry about the wolf,” Clint voice rang from around the corner. “Leave the nightlight off. That’s a negative. I answer to you.” Steve and I stopped once Clint was in our sights. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Barton,” Steve said. “We might have something.”

“I gotta go,” Clint said into the phone, hanging up on who ever was on the other end.

“Who was that?” I wondered. 

“Girlfriend,” he answered. 

My eyebrows knitted together in confusion. Didn’t he just say a few days ago that he didn’t have one? I knew he was lying! But I still felt like he was keeping something else. Something bigger than just a girlfriend. Steve and I walked into the lab to see Nat and Tony ending a video call with Rhodey, Bruce back on a computer, and Thor entering from the back staircase. I walked over to where Natasha and Tony were, stopping in front of the table while Steve went to met Thor. 

“Any help from on high?” Steve asked Thor.

“Heimdall’s either away from his post or he’s been ordered not to answer,” Thor replied. The two began making their way towards the rest of us, with Bruce not far behind. “But Ultron can’t hide forever, we’ll find him.”

“Well, he’s not exactly hiding.” Steve handed the tablet with the picture of Strucker up to Thor. 

“What’s this?” Tony asked, coming up to the men.

“A message,” Steve answered.

“Ultron killed Strucker,” I told the group as Thor smacked the tablet into Tony’s chest. Tony looked at the picture and then looked at me. I quickly looked down at my feet to avoid eye contact. 

“And he did a Banksy at the crime scene,” Tony observed. “Just for us.” Bruce came up and looked at the picture from behind Tony as he walked passed.

“This is good,” Nat stated, studying the picture once Tony set the tablet down.

“No, that’s not good,” Bruce shook his head.

“He’s showing us his hand,” Nat said. “This isn’t his pattern.”

“This is a smokescreen,” I stated. “Why send a message when you’ve just given a speech?”

“Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss.” Steve said. I quickly sat down at a computer and looked up Strucker.

“Yeah, I bet he—“ Nat began to type at the computer she was at.

“Everything we had on Strucker has been erased,” I interrupted.

“Not everything.” Tony said.

We followed Tony down into another room. He proceeded to pull out boxes of physical copies of files. They were a mix of HYDRA and SHIELD. We all took a few boxes and spread out across the room to look. Everyone was finding things that were useful. I got stuck with I found one certain file. My own. It looked to be only a portion of it, but something was better than nothing. I laid it on my criss crossed legs and just stared at it, too afraid to open it. 

“Known associates,” Steve spoke up. “Baron Strucker had a lot of friends.” 

“Well, these people are all horrible.” Bruce mumbled.

“Wait.” Tony quickly said. I turned to see him pointing at the file that Bruce was holding. “I know that guy. From back in the day. He operates off the African coast, black market arms.” Steve looks at Tony like he’s accusing him of something. 

I stood up, with my file in hand, and walked over to the table the rest of them were at. “There are conventions, alright?” Tony defended. “You meet people, I didn’t sell him anything. He was talking about find something new, a game changer, it was all very ‘Ahab’” 

“This?” Thor asked pointing to a scar on the back of the guys neck. 

“Uh, it’s a tattoo,” Tony answered. “I don’t think he had it—“

“No, those are tattoos,” Thor stated. Bruce quickly went over to a computer. “This is a brand.”

“Oh, yeah.” Bruce says at the computer. “It’s a word in an African dialect meaning thief, in a much less friendly way.”

“What dialect?” Steve asked.

“Wakanada…?” Bruce tried saying. “Wa… Wa… Wakanda.” Tony and Steve glanced at each other.

“If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods?” Tony wondered, looking at Steve.

“I thought your father said he got the last of it?” Steve asked Tony. 

“I don’t follow.” Bruce said. “What comes out of Wakanda?”  

I walked over and picked up Steve’s shield. “The strongest metal on earth.” I answered. 

Steve continued to look at Tony. “Where is this guy now?”

“His usual salvage yard on the African Coast, I suppose.” Tony answered.

“Well, team,” Steve said, “Suit up. Let’s go get the guy.”

next >

[insession-io]

How Childhood Trauma Teaches Us to Dissociate

What is dissociation?

Dissociation, sometimes also referred to as disassociation, is a term commonly used in psychology that refers to a detachment from your surroundings, and/or physical and emotional experiences. Dissociation is a defense mechanism that stems from trauma, inner conflict, and other forms of stress, or even boredom.

Dissociation is understood on a continuum in terms of its intensity, and as non-pathological or pathological in regard of its type and effects. An example of non-pathological dissociation is daydreaming.

From here on we will talk about pathological dissociation.

Some examples of pathological dissociation are the following:

Feeling that your sense of self is not real (depersonalization)

Feeling that the world is unreal (derealization)

Memory loss (amnesia)

Forgetting identity or assuming a new self (fugue)

Separate streams of consciousness, identity, and self (dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder)

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder

Dissociation is closely tied to stressful states and situations. If a person has an inner conflict, they may start dissociating when thinking about it. Or if they are terrified of social situations, they may experience dissociation when around people.

Some people report severe dissociation and panic attacks after doing certain drugs. Dissociation can sometimes occur when we experience distortion in or an impairment of our senses, for instance, while having a migraine, tinnitus, light sensitivity, and so on.

Trauma and dissociation

Dissociation is a common response to trauma. The experience of being present and in the moment when we are severely abused and traumatized and feel powerless is incredibly painful. This is when our psyche self-protects and makes us disconnect from what’s happening to us in order to make it more tolerable to endure.

That’s why many abuse victims, especially those who suffered sexual abuse, say that they felt like they were watching themselves be abused from the third person’s perspective and it seemed like they were watching a movie rather than being a participant.

Since dissociation is often an aftereffect of trauma, it can routinely reoccur until the emotions related to the trauma are resolved. Regardless of how often you experience it, dissociation can be incredibly unpleasant, terrifying, and debilitating.

Some people describe dissociation as their most horrifying experience. Moreover, experiencing dissociation can create new symptoms or aggravate other underlying problems, and in doing so, make the person’s mental condition even worse.

Childhood trauma and dissociation

Commonly, dissociation experienced as an adult is rooted in one’s childhood.

Since a child is dependent on their caregivers and their brain is still developing, they are unable to deal with their trauma by themselves. However, their caregivers are often unable or unwilling to comfort the child and help them overcome it without severe aftereffects.

Not only that, the child’s caregivers may even be the ones who traumatize the child. It’s not to say that it always happens out of spite, but even when done with good intentions or out of ignorance, the effects on the child’s psyche are as they are.

So what does a child do when they experience stress and trauma? Since they can’t resolve it by themselves, they dissociate. This usually occurs early and routinely. Not every trauma is “big” and evident, but even things that don’t seem like a “big trauma” can be very traumatic to a child.

So, we experience many traumas and “microtraumas” as children. And since a common reaction to trauma is dissociation, we dissociate. And over time, two main dissociative behaviors are the result. One, we may suffer from episodes of dissociation (generally, PTSD and C-PTSD).

And two, we learn to deal with emotional distress by participating in dissociative behaviors, such as addiction to food, sex, drugs, TV, the Internet, attention, sports, and anything else that helps us repress our painful emotions.

Moreover, a child can’t attribute responsibility for their trauma to their caregiver since they need them to survive, so they learn to blame themselves for it, which creates a myriad of other problems, but we won’t talk about those in this article.

People’s stories about dissociation

Recently on my website’s Facebook page, I shared two posts about dissociation. One was a picture with a quote explaining what it is (added here), and the other was a quote from my book Human Development and Trauma:

“Many abused children dissociate and unconsciously warp their perception of reality in order to survive. Naturally this requires that they justify the abusive behavior of their caregivers.”

Under those posts, some people shared their experiences and thoughts regarding dissociation, so I would like to add them to this article.

One person writes this:

“I permanently dissociated, my development was arrested at 13 years when my aunt accused me of trying to seduce her husband who was lusting for me. I spent most of my adult year feeling like a 13-year-old. Healing has allowed for a shift from that state to feeling more adult-like.”

This person shares their dissociation experience starting as early as 3 years old:

“I remember leaving my own body at night from the age of 3ish as my parents would be beating each other to death downstairs. I grew up thinking I really could fly. I only learned of disassociation last year.”

Another person says this:

“Sleep has always been an issue. If I did manage to sleep it was full of vivid horrid dreams. I had two regular dreams all my life. I was always a big reader. Escaping into books I was guaranteed a happy ending. I had to. I was exposed to awful things as far back as I can recall.”

For this person, as for all of us, repressed trauma manifested itself in nightmares:

“I remember that every time something traumatizing happened in my family, right before sleep in my bed I tried to convince myself that It didn’t happen and after that I used to have nightmares of being chased by a horrible monster in an abandoned factory or something. Now after a lot of studying I realized that it was my brain entering REM mode in order to storage the traumatic experience deep in my subconscious so I can consciously forget about it.”

This person feels dissociation when having an aural migraine, which I can confirm from my personal experience too:

“I don’t want to reduce this by any means because this may not be seen as traumatic to others however, this happens to me when I get migraines. I don’t know if it is part of the migraine symptoms or if I am disassociating because they hurt so much for such a long period. I feel far away, muffled, floaty kinda dreamlike. I respond slower cause I feel that people are not talking directly to me. My speech is slow and I feel like I am watching a TV show or like if I am drunk/stoned. It’s weird. This happened throughout my life because I have migraine with aura/fainting spells. It’s a scary uncontrolled feeling.”

And this person’s comment explains very well how dissociation is both terrifying and necessary to cope with enormous emotional and psychological pain:

“The most unreal experience of my life, literally. Would never want to experience it again. As distressing as it was, it was a relief as well. The feeling of being outside of oneself and everyone else, the inability to connect to reality, is the most distressing, but the inability to do that gives you a break from the current trauma, and there’s relief in that.”

Darius Cikanavicius

Dr. Jeffrey Levine a Hartford Therapist Licensed Psychologist with over 40 years of clinical experience. He specializes in treating adults in individual psychotherapy, with expertise in trauma focused hypnosis, energy transformational healing and Internal Family Systems.