[ Misato's body is as much a tool as it is a component of her self, and she can regard with an impassive eye any offense done against it (endless shifts sans sleep mirroring endless days rocking inside a safety chute with red skies above, red seas about).
So when the torture begins, she is an observer as well as a victim, standing in the doctor's shoes as well as her own-- no, this isn't quite her lying on the cold table feeling the tap, tap, tap of the doctor's hand against her (no, not hers) belly, a deceivingly tender gesture compared with what's to come. Feel: a scalpel cleanly cutting through skin, flesh, gracing bones but it's all wrong, this, her scar extends over her sternum, up higher. When she sees the glint of a blade on its way into the socket of her (not her) eye, she thinks first of Asuka. When, so soon after, she feels the flesh beginning to stitch itself together, she thinks of Sam.
Only when she senses the unbearable hunger rise like bile in her throat does she finally place the nightmare's true owner. The language the doctor speaks rings clearer in her mind, the body being mutilated is that of a man, pale skinned. Damon.
She wakes with a start, never with a scream, no, she has willed that habit away a long time ago. Still it takes her a few moments to gather enough of herself to decide what to do.
This could be as easily done through the mental link, but to bridge physical distance is her way of offering a semblance of sympathy without the additional violence of invading his mind. She even affords a knock against the wall that leads to what amounts to his room. ]
( when damon dreams, he doesn't usually have nightmares. or didn't used to, anyway. when his humanit was off, he barely dreamt at all, and when he did... it was nothing like this. true dreams came back with his humanity, and dreams of this have come with sam reminding him that it happened at all. he's made no more effort to deal with the memories than he did before sam uncovered them, and so the dream is inescapable, all-consuming.
it's not a memory, exactly. it's just an amalgam of all the days he was under that scalpel, and truthfully, it's almost bland, in the face of all the further tortures he'd been through. the pain is not the point, though — he's learned to take pain with the best of them, and if it were just the pain he had to deal with he'd be fine. with the pain, however, comes the fear, the starvation, the idea that this would never end. that he would be stuck here, forced to endure this pain and forced to watch enzo endure it, for eternity. vampires don't die, and whitmore fed them just enough to keep them alive. there were no chances even to grab for wooden implements, no way to choose their own end. they would be stuck with this forever.
that idea scared him more than the pain ever could.
there's a passenger in the dream, but damon doesn't notice it until he's woken, shooting up to sitting as his heart races. for a moment he hopes that whoever went theough it with him won't realize whose dream it was... but misato shows up not long after he wakes, and he frowns. she's being uncharacteristically respectful, and he doesn't particularly want to see anyone. maybe she'd listen if he said to fuck off.
[ Misato shrugs, mind still too burdened by the remnants of sleep and its cousin exhaustion, to think up a clever retort. He's right, anyway, and she steps in without further ceremony, taking her seat on the bed and leaning back in an unbecoming, lopsided slouch. The crown of her head against the wall, the point of her jaw aimed toward the ceiling. Her eyes are open, staring up, but she stays silent for long enough that he wouldn't be wrong in wondering if she would ever speak. ]
You never really get to leave things like that behind.
[ Sympathy is so difficult to cobble together, such a precious commodity, but she's trying, she is. ]
( if he has to find something to be grateful for in this situation, it is at least nice that misato is so unapologetically selfish. she's not elena or stefan, who coddle and cuddle as though any of life's great pains can be overcome if you just hug enough. misato doesn't bother with that; she takes the space on his bed because she wants it, and keeps to herself otherwise. they're hardly even in danger of touching at all.
if she could just not speak, that would be ideal. but damon knows how people react to tragedy, even if they like to think they're above interest in the lives of others: they want to talk about it, always. for some it's morbid fascination, for others a misguided and stupid investment in helping. for misato he'd guess it's a mix of both. what could hurt a vampire, she must be wondering, and also, how can i get this person whose emotions bleed into mine to stop being afraid?)
If you have a point please get to it quickly, ( he says, sitting up and rubbing his hands over his eyes. two of them, he has two, both whole, despite the psychosomatic burning in the left one. he has two eyes and his stomach is all closed up and no one's looked at his guts under a microscope in fifty years. he's fine.
[ Coddling is mere distraction, bandaid for broken bones, an impermanent solution to a permanent problem, when Misato believes she has mastered the art of sublimating her trauma into something productive: motivation for her sterling career, fuel for the fire, her indefatigable drive to save the entire human race. Freud would be proud and horrified in equal measure.
She's someone who takes a microscope to her own thoughts with a merciless eye, and also someone who acts before thinking, examining her intentions only later, days and weeks after. Right now, she knows only that she would rather not be alone when she has had a nightmare like his.
She tips her chin down to look at him, as quiet and impassive as she has ever been. ]
You're stuck on loop, Damon. When you're awake, you pretend it doesn't bother you, but in your sleep, you can't help but wallow.
(wallow sounds too much like brood sounds too much like stefan. stefan who wasn't there, stefan who is here, stefan who damon is not. the association makes damon bristle, and he drops his hand to look at misato, eyes narrowed. )
Is this your point? Seriously? You don't even know what you saw. You don't know what that was. And you think you can fix it with some platitudes about introspection and letting go of the past?
( people always want to rationalize trauma. they want to dig through it, find the places it's planted roots and pull them out. like there's a beginning, like if you just find the deepest darkest tendril and you untangle it you'll free someone of their pain and life can go back to normal.
damon has learned a lot in 170 plus years on this earth, but the most important lesson has been that life never goes back to normal. there is no returning to what you were before, no way to make things better. it's what stefan never got, what elena struggled with after her parents died — he wants a way to undo what he's done, she wants a way to be her old self, and damon has always known there's no point to thinking that way. getting mired in the past, yearning for what can't be, it never does anything. wallowing has never been his problem. )
It doesn't bother me.
( he clenches his left hand into a fist. relaxes it. feels broken bones and fire at his back.
[ It's common, these questions that boil down to who are you to say that? As if one has to be drowning to know how to bring another ashore, and yet-- yes, one has to jump into the water to save another, right? How to know suffering without needing to suffer, how to be kind without having known pain. There are no shortcuts. Like everyone else, she longed for a savior, someone blameless and without fault to carry her to safety, only to find that it is the ones whose hurts match your own who can heal you best. But never mind that. Nothing to be done.
She meets his eyes measure for measure. To threaten Misato is to see her raise the stakes. ]
Bullshit. If it doesn't bother you, we wouldn't be here.
[ He likes to make himself out to be dangerous, too strong, too angry, too evil to be hurt, see? She thinks they wear the same armor only painted differently.
Despite her words, her voice barely rises above the constant cacophony of thoughts, sensations and words hovering in the air anywhere one goes aboard the Station. He judges her intention to be selfish, which is his prerogative, but she extends concern just as well, as much sympathy as she's capable of cobbling together. ]
So what do you do? Wake yourself up, punch a few walls, go back to sleep and hope it doesn't come back?
( no one fears him like they should here. they think just because he can't kill he can't do lasting damage, think because his fangs are blunted that he's forgotten how to use them. it's moments like this that he wants to show them how wrong they are, when they meet his eyes with challenge written all over their faces — challenge, and trust. misato doesn't think he won't hurt her because he's weak, but because he's a friend. she thinks his teeth won't search for her neck if she says no.
he wants to tear her throat out just to prove her wrong.
in to eleven, out to seven. )
What do you want to hear, Misato? That I wake up and for a few seconds my bed feels like stone and I can't breathe? Or that I'm as furious as I am scared and I want to kill someone to feel like I'm in control again?
( it's harder to breathe now, and the fire in his memories roars louder. flame flirts with his skin and blood coats the inside of his mouth, thick, cloying after years of starvation, too rich to stomach —
this is why he hates talking. )
That shit's not for you. What I do with my dreams is my business, and until I try to kill another host, you don't get to comment on how I'm dealing with it.
[ She knows Damon won't hurt her because he can't, banking on the handful of instances of Hosts attacking one another resulting in some kind of forced reboot with only flesh wounds sustained. She's taking no real risks here, no matter how fiercely he growls. Fear is a constant presence on her mind, a familiar bedfellow, but he doesn't count among its reasons.
What she hears from him is reactionary and unbridled, precisely what she doesn't allow herself to become, and because of that she disengages, a deliberate stepping back of her mental presence to give him the room to be angry. She thinks of Shinji, raging against the world but only because he feels powerless in the face of it, and that makes it easier somehow to empathize with Damon.
She keeps her mind politely at bay, but leans her body forward across the bed to extend a hand. ]
Let me try something. You'll need to open your mind to it, but it might help.
( he can't kill her, certainly, but hurting her is not something the symbiote will keep him from, and there are so many ways to hurt that are worse than death. that he is not counted among the things she should be afraid of — it infuriates him, and it is getting so difficult to remember why he should care about restraining himself.
elena has stefan now. sam doesn't need him. this whole brood — this whole nest is full of people who think they have any room to comment on others' heads just because they're inside them, as if they're not all as fucked up as each other. as if they know anything about fear, or pain, or loss. none of them truly knows the others, no matter how far in their heads they get, and that they pretend they do is laughable. it's insulting. misato can disengage and feel so superior, looks at him and sees someone out of control of his own emotions, and yet thinks she can understand him.
in a blur of motion, damon has misato pinned against the wall, fangs bared, grip vice-like. )
I told you it doesn't bother me.
( obviously a lie, especially now, but one she should have listened to. these memories aren't hers to pick over and prod at just because she's seen glimpses of them, just like they aren't sam's. at least he understands when to shut his fucking mouth. )
[ What can Misato possibly know of pain, of fear, of loss? What does it mean to become a victim? How can a subject give an account of its own ruin? There is no way to quantify tragedy, each person's suffering is an infinity unto itself. In the face of such futility she has swallowed back her wordless howling to stoke the fire in her belly, while he still screams. A wounded creature, hissing at the hands of any who extends help. Similar and different, but certainly familiar.
Her head spins from the motion, back smarting to signal the bruises she would find there tomorrow, heart in her throat. Adrenaline has her blood pumping fast, senses in hyperfocus. Fear is a physical response, a feeling and a reaction. She can't help the first two, but the last she can control. Gaze as determined as ever, she rests her hands on his cheeks, her hold firm even if unnecessary.
This is all about the mind, see, the scenes she presses into his view flipping past like a family album: Damon sitting on the couch beside her in the hotel room, the comforting weight of his arm on her shoulder; Damon and Sam, laughing at some secret joke; Damon with his eyes on Elena, his heart's desire clear for all the world to see. This is here, now. That was then. The past no longer is. The rest of the scenes are unfamiliar to him: the firm grip of thickly gloved hands, arctic winds nipping her cheeks and the delicate anticipation for reconciliation; the smell of breakfast in the morning, the patter of feet rushing about the house, the warmth of waking up to a home; the scent of cigarettes in the air and an unbearable fullness in her heart.
The message underlying every single one: come back. Here, not there. ]
( misato can know her own loss, can carry it with her wherever she goes and use it to make her stronger, but she doesn't know damon's. each man is an island unto himself, and no matter the bridges the symbiotes build, that will never stop being true. people are better off when they stop pretending that they can understand and heal each other, as if it's that simple, as if affection and words can undo years of damage.
pain isn't anything but pain. the only thing that can lessen it is a person's own will, and damon has never had problems admitting he's deficient when it comes to that.
hell, he's just deficient in general.
misato places her hands on his cheeks and he sees scenes like pictures, watches himself from the outside — his arm around misato's shoulder, sharing a conspiratorial smile with sam, watching elena. the scenes flip, and now they're all unfamiliar, scenes from misato's life before she came to the station. every one, his scenes and hers, all carry the same feeling: leave the past in the past. live in the moment, focus on what's here.
he'd been doing a fine job of that before sam had dredged all of this up. before she'd decided that he wasn't coping properly and needed to be taught how to leave the past where it belongs. )
Stop, ( he growls, and if his voice breaks on the word he barrels through it, not pausing to give misato a chance to call him on it before he's whipped around and thrown her across the room — onto the bed, where no real damage will be done. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
DAY :049 | cw: torture
So when the torture begins, she is an observer as well as a victim, standing in the doctor's shoes as well as her own-- no, this isn't quite her lying on the cold table feeling the tap, tap, tap of the doctor's hand against her (no, not hers) belly, a deceivingly tender gesture compared with what's to come. Feel: a scalpel cleanly cutting through skin, flesh, gracing bones but it's all wrong, this, her scar extends over her sternum, up higher. When she sees the glint of a blade on its way into the socket of her (not her) eye, she thinks first of Asuka. When, so soon after, she feels the flesh beginning to stitch itself together, she thinks of Sam.
Only when she senses the unbearable hunger rise like bile in her throat does she finally place the nightmare's true owner. The language the doctor speaks rings clearer in her mind, the body being mutilated is that of a man, pale skinned. Damon.
She wakes with a start, never with a scream, no, she has willed that habit away a long time ago. Still it takes her a few moments to gather enough of herself to decide what to do.
This could be as easily done through the mental link, but to bridge physical distance is her way of offering a semblance of sympathy without the additional violence of invading his mind. She even affords a knock against the wall that leads to what amounts to his room. ]
Hey. I'm stepping in, okay?
no subject
it's not a memory, exactly. it's just an amalgam of all the days he was under that scalpel, and truthfully, it's almost bland, in the face of all the further tortures he'd been through. the pain is not the point, though — he's learned to take pain with the best of them, and if it were just the pain he had to deal with he'd be fine. with the pain, however, comes the fear, the starvation, the idea that this would never end. that he would be stuck here, forced to endure this pain and forced to watch enzo endure it, for eternity. vampires don't die, and whitmore fed them just enough to keep them alive. there were no chances even to grab for wooden implements, no way to choose their own end. they would be stuck with this forever.
that idea scared him more than the pain ever could.
there's a passenger in the dream, but damon doesn't notice it until he's woken, shooting up to sitting as his heart races. for a moment he hopes that whoever went theough it with him won't realize whose dream it was... but misato shows up not long after he wakes, and he frowns. she's being uncharacteristically respectful, and he doesn't particularly want to see anyone. maybe she'd listen if he said to fuck off.
yeah, right. )
As if you'd listen if I said no.
no subject
You never really get to leave things like that behind.
[ Sympathy is so difficult to cobble together, such a precious commodity, but she's trying, she is. ]
I don't mind it.
no subject
if she could just not speak, that would be ideal. but damon knows how people react to tragedy, even if they like to think they're above interest in the lives of others: they want to talk about it, always. for some it's morbid fascination, for others a misguided and stupid investment in helping. for misato he'd guess it's a mix of both. what could hurt a vampire, she must be wondering, and also, how can i get this person whose emotions bleed into mine to stop being afraid? )
If you have a point please get to it quickly, ( he says, sitting up and rubbing his hands over his eyes. two of them, he has two, both whole, despite the psychosomatic burning in the left one. he has two eyes and his stomach is all closed up and no one's looked at his guts under a microscope in fifty years. he's fine.
everything's fine. )
no subject
She's someone who takes a microscope to her own thoughts with a merciless eye, and also someone who acts before thinking, examining her intentions only later, days and weeks after. Right now, she knows only that she would rather not be alone when she has had a nightmare like his.
She tips her chin down to look at him, as quiet and impassive as she has ever been. ]
You're stuck on loop, Damon. When you're awake, you pretend it doesn't bother you, but in your sleep, you can't help but wallow.
no subject
Is this your point? Seriously? You don't even know what you saw. You don't know what that was. And you think you can fix it with some platitudes about introspection and letting go of the past?
( people always want to rationalize trauma. they want to dig through it, find the places it's planted roots and pull them out. like there's a beginning, like if you just find the deepest darkest tendril and you untangle it you'll free someone of their pain and life can go back to normal.
damon has learned a lot in 170 plus years on this earth, but the most important lesson has been that life never goes back to normal. there is no returning to what you were before, no way to make things better. it's what stefan never got, what elena struggled with after her parents died — he wants a way to undo what he's done, she wants a way to be her old self, and damon has always known there's no point to thinking that way. getting mired in the past, yearning for what can't be, it never does anything. wallowing has never been his problem. )
It doesn't bother me.
( he clenches his left hand into a fist. relaxes it. feels broken bones and fire at his back.
counts in to eleven, out to seven. )
no subject
She meets his eyes measure for measure. To threaten Misato is to see her raise the stakes. ]
Bullshit. If it doesn't bother you, we wouldn't be here.
[ He likes to make himself out to be dangerous, too strong, too angry, too evil to be hurt, see? She thinks they wear the same armor only painted differently.
Despite her words, her voice barely rises above the constant cacophony of thoughts, sensations and words hovering in the air anywhere one goes aboard the Station. He judges her intention to be selfish, which is his prerogative, but she extends concern just as well, as much sympathy as she's capable of cobbling together. ]
So what do you do? Wake yourself up, punch a few walls, go back to sleep and hope it doesn't come back?
no subject
he wants to tear her throat out just to prove her wrong.
in to eleven, out to seven. )
What do you want to hear, Misato? That I wake up and for a few seconds my bed feels like stone and I can't breathe? Or that I'm as furious as I am scared and I want to kill someone to feel like I'm in control again?
( it's harder to breathe now, and the fire in his memories roars louder. flame flirts with his skin and blood coats the inside of his mouth, thick, cloying after years of starvation, too rich to stomach —
this is why he hates talking. )
That shit's not for you. What I do with my dreams is my business, and until I try to kill another host, you don't get to comment on how I'm dealing with it.
no subject
What she hears from him is reactionary and unbridled, precisely what she doesn't allow herself to become, and because of that she disengages, a deliberate stepping back of her mental presence to give him the room to be angry. She thinks of Shinji, raging against the world but only because he feels powerless in the face of it, and that makes it easier somehow to empathize with Damon.
She keeps her mind politely at bay, but leans her body forward across the bed to extend a hand. ]
Let me try something. You'll need to open your mind to it, but it might help.
no subject
elena has stefan now. sam doesn't need him. this whole brood — this whole nest is full of people who think they have any room to comment on others' heads just because they're inside them, as if they're not all as fucked up as each other. as if they know anything about fear, or pain, or loss. none of them truly knows the others, no matter how far in their heads they get, and that they pretend they do is laughable. it's insulting. misato can disengage and feel so superior, looks at him and sees someone out of control of his own emotions, and yet thinks she can understand him.
in a blur of motion, damon has misato pinned against the wall, fangs bared, grip vice-like. )
I told you it doesn't bother me.
( obviously a lie, especially now, but one she should have listened to. these memories aren't hers to pick over and prod at just because she's seen glimpses of them, just like they aren't sam's. at least he understands when to shut his fucking mouth. )
no subject
Her head spins from the motion, back smarting to signal the bruises she would find there tomorrow, heart in her throat. Adrenaline has her blood pumping fast, senses in hyperfocus. Fear is a physical response, a feeling and a reaction. She can't help the first two, but the last she can control. Gaze as determined as ever, she rests her hands on his cheeks, her hold firm even if unnecessary.
This is all about the mind, see, the scenes she presses into his view flipping past like a family album: Damon sitting on the couch beside her in the hotel room, the comforting weight of his arm on her shoulder; Damon and Sam, laughing at some secret joke; Damon with his eyes on Elena, his heart's desire clear for all the world to see. This is here, now. That was then. The past no longer is. The rest of the scenes are unfamiliar to him: the firm grip of thickly gloved hands, arctic winds nipping her cheeks and the delicate anticipation for reconciliation; the smell of breakfast in the morning, the patter of feet rushing about the house, the warmth of waking up to a home; the scent of cigarettes in the air and an unbearable fullness in her heart.
The message underlying every single one: come back. Here, not there. ]
no subject
pain isn't anything but pain. the only thing that can lessen it is a person's own will, and damon has never had problems admitting he's deficient when it comes to that.
hell, he's just deficient in general.
misato places her hands on his cheeks and he sees scenes like pictures, watches himself from the outside — his arm around misato's shoulder, sharing a conspiratorial smile with sam, watching elena. the scenes flip, and now they're all unfamiliar, scenes from misato's life before she came to the station. every one, his scenes and hers, all carry the same feeling: leave the past in the past. live in the moment, focus on what's here.
he'd been doing a fine job of that before sam had dredged all of this up. before she'd decided that he wasn't coping properly and needed to be taught how to leave the past where it belongs. )
Stop, ( he growls, and if his voice breaks on the word he barrels through it, not pausing to give misato a chance to call him on it before he's whipped around and thrown her across the room — onto the bed, where no real damage will be done. )