drear | OPEN SEASON 2.

[ the needles bother him, more for their association with hospitals than the actual pinching pain. he fidgets uncomfortably in his seat, always twitchy and made no calmer by the situation. ]

Yeah. [ he takes a breath through his teeth and shrugs. ] Sure.

[ it's now or never, and he doesn't want to back out now.

the process starts with going under, a feeling that would make him feel unsafe if he weren't then too drowsy to think about it. and then it's like dreaming — like seeing flashes of people that he thinks he knows, of events too vivid to be real.

but they're real, and they're hers. inside his mind, he just watches. outside, his feet kick, eyelids twitch, but it's started and he can't go back.

(what she sees of his memories starts with a cold hospital room, loneliness, and brief flashes of joy and a sense of family, with a girl and a few other boys who make a ragtag band. their 'mother' is a beautiful woman with long, burnt-caramel hair, their 'father' a man with perfect hands, and their smiles are terribly cruel.) ]

[she doesn't know what to make of these, some sort of dream that makes sense but doesn't because all these belong to him, all are his and not hers and it's much like peering through the curtains at someone else's home. parents, though, parents she wishes she was awake enough to tell him they're awful people aren't they. and outside she's beginning to hyperventilate because then what does he see? what does he know?

(she's in a school uniform angrily ripping a letter to shreds pretending it doesn't hurt, she is so alone but there is a woman red as anything who she'd die for, there is so much blood and the red woman's lifeless in her arms, by her hand. there are people in suits, and they whisper to never forget you are nothing, less than nothing while you reload your gun and feel so hollow.)]

[ things they have in common, death and blood, reverberate more strongly. heine stares at the body for a while before he's drawn away again to guns and people who know exactly what they're doing in a way that hurts her, and the surge of... protectiveness (maybe, or just anger), that he feels takes him aback.

in the back of his mind he knows that she's seeing things like this from him, and the thought makes him want to get out. images flood into him more and more quickly, telling him more than he ever needed or wanted to know. he is seeing her past.

(there is school, and lessons, learning to handle guns and knives too big for their hands. the kick hurts but it's important to be able to defend yourself, they learn, and they fight until there is real blood and the fear of something inside them that is —

— not quite right.

then more blood, and he is holding his sister and her voice tells him again and again: this is what you did by trying to disobey. but he runs, anyway, better to run than stay there with her and the blood of all his other siblings. people follow him and he still runs, and destroys, because that's what he's good at.)

his face twists into a scowl, despite being unconscious, and his body shifts. he wants it to stop. ]

[it's like they tore open every drawer a person could lock up and let the other walk around in the wreckage. she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to feel his pressing need to run on top of her own. get out of their heads.

(you forfeited your right to be a person. you will always be a pathetic wretch who paid for amnesty with her body and soul and so nothing belongs to you, not even the color of your blood, because you are a weapon as much as any blade or firearm and you have their same rights.

you will die before you are thirty years old and you are not a person.)

she's suffocating and his memories overlap with the reality she knows. her body isn't responding and she's scared. her mind cannot be a place to hide because there are no places to hide.

panic attack, they'll say, it was a risk, while her adrenaline levels shoot through the roof and push down the sedative enough for her to seize what connects them, tugging at it-get out of her, she doesn't care if it bleeds or hurts she just needs to be done with it because she can't breathe here.

a ghost of the panic might resonate through the link, a fear that consumes and drives in flight and just let them go, please.]

Edited 2014-01-07 10:57 (UTC)

[ alarm rushes through his brain and into his body, processed into rapid breathing and him tensing physically. they disconnect them both in a rush, but it takes a minute or two for him to settle. it's only the sedative that keeps him from breaking something, and he still manages to shove someone over as he scrambles to his feet, pulling an IV drip as he goes. ]

...the fuck. What the fuck —

[ swipes a hand over his face, trying to smooth the raggedness of his breathing. ]

[one of them, well meaning, tries to restrain her and she sinks her teeth into their arm so they'll let go and she can bolt out of the room, sitting down once she's further down the hallway.

back to the wall and herself pulled tight into a ball, eyes shut because she doesn't want to see, doesn't want to hear, and maybe if she's quiet she can sort through his memories and she'll be able to breathe again. she's shaking and she couldn't care about his fate, only her own, because she never would have agreed had she known how badly they were going to have him trespass.

(sorry, sorry, sorry, Heine. sorry for putting you through that.)]

[ he yanks out the IV drip on his own, tearing part of his skin. the pain helps, grounds him in reality rather than what he'd seen in his partner's memories.

he's shaking with every breath as someone hands him gauze and adhesive tape. they realize there's no way he'd trust someone to touch him now; he tapes it messily over the bleeding mark and stumbles aside, leaning heavily against the wall until he can catch his breath.

— now he has to talk to her. it's now or later, and while he'd generally prefer later, he can't exactly avoid her when he has to work with her. ]

[breathe, breathe, you have enough air, it's all she tells herself so that she remembers to breathe deeply again. eventually she does, and she almost gets up until she hears the sound of someone coming, which makes her tense up all over again. no, she can bear no one right now, and she's not moving until either the lights are turned out or her mind feels safe. one or the other will work.]

[ he doesn't try to be quiet. sneaking up on someone like grell—like someone like them—is a terrible idea right now. but he's not thinking too clearly, either, stumbling as he makes his way down the hall to where he can see her curled up against the wall. ]

[when the presence doesn't fade, she risks a glance outwards--him. both the person she wants to see and wants to know is far, far away from her.]

What do you want?

[the words are spat out, as vicious as she knows she has the capacity to be if he so much as touches her.]

I don't know.

[ he replies after a minimal pause, staying a good few feet away. ]

Just came to see if you were dead or something.

[ what a terrible joke. he doesn't know what to say, though, and shifts his weight uncomfortably without moving closer. ]

Still breathing.

[her. dead. after all that? she almost wishes it was so.]

Is that all you came for or do you have questions?

[unspoken: like everyone else did. psychiatrists, superior officers, anyone that had a glimpse at the story asked questions about it like she could give them an answer, and here he had the whole fucking thing in his lap. she was going to be dignified and try to forget everything of him she saw, but she has a feeling she'll never be able to.

if he asks, she's asking in return.]

[ pauses. ]

...not really.

[ if she wants him to know, she'll tell him. and he knows the feeling of not wanting to talk about the past, even if it claws at him in every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment. ]

Do you?

Yes, of course, but what do you mean not really? Either you have questions or you don't!

[somewhere in the back of her head she regrets it, and she'll regret being so harsh later, but for the moment...]

I mean—I wouldn't ask.

[ because he knows how shitty it is having people question everything about you (why are you like this? why do you keep doing this? what the hell went on to fuck you up so much?). because he wouldn't know how to ask, even if he wanted to. ]

Am I supposed to trust that?

[because now he could destroy her and expose her, he could break her with a phrase and she could not stop him. she's supposed to be strong, and that has been exposed for the lie it is.

she wants to go home, curl up on her bed and not move for hours, have some illusion of privacy so she can collect herself. but that requires getting up, and although she can pull herself to standing, her head pounds like someone's driving a railroad spike into it.]

How do I trust any-fucking-thing you say now, hm?

[ he goes silent, eyes narrowing as he stares at her. but he can only look at her for so long when most of his mind is occupied with the new memories he has, thoughts that she's had, people she's known. he knows that she's going through the same with his past, too.

but what he's gone through isn't a secret. he'd tell her if she ever asked without thinking too much about it. somehow, what he knows about her feels... different. ]

I don't know. [ he takes a step back, and then crouches down so that they're on level but at a distance. ] I don't know. I didn't... want to see that.

[it's too much, like they've stuffed too much into a doll's head and the cotton will burst the seams. these were his experiences, his moments. not hers to know, and it feels worse than prying into someone's past with technology--this is how he lived it. it's wrong, even for her.]

Neither did I. Why would they do that?

[she's less hysterical as she keeps talking, words are something solid to grasp, there is a target to blame, and he's not touching her, so there are three things in favour of getting an inch of a grip.]

Why? What was the point?

[she looks at him like he's supposed to have the answers to it, like somewhere in these new memories there's logic in any step if this. being lied to by omission from the Agency--that wasn't new. having the sanctity of one's mind violated? that was something an agent wasn't supposed to experience, or reexperience in cases like her.

she'd like to trust him again, but how can she?]

I don't know.

[ he's repeating himself, it's true, but he really doesn't know what, or why. going through that has made him tired, somehow both physically and mentally. ]

I don't even know how they did it. And they could still use that... whatever.

[she shakes her head slowly. she'll destroy it if they ever come near her again. for a minute, she seems like she's almost going to cry, and then takes a deep breath.]

Can we...make an agreement? You don't think on what you saw, I don't think about what I saw?

[ for a moment he considers saying that he doesn't mind if she thinks about it, but... that's not what's best, now. ]

Sure. Fine.

[ he drops down to sit on the ground, pulling his heels close to himself in a butterfly stretch, head bowed for a moment before he looks up at her. ]

...sorry.

...what do you have to be sorry for?

[she keeps her gaze at him, focusing on his hair to make herself stop being on the edge of tears.]

...I'd forget about it if I could.

[ he runs a hand through his hair automatically, as if there might be something in it that grell's staring at. ]

...Nicht sie.

[the idea occurs to her that they might be listening to all of this, and at the least she can make it a hell of a lot harder for them to hear any of it by getting quieter and switching languages, lest they use it as some sort of sick example.]

Die Psychopathen, der es gemacht hat. Sie muss sich dafür entschuldigen.

Ich will.

[ heine ruffles his hair again automatically and then rubs his forehead, looking away as he speaks again. ]

Sie müssen hier raus.

OPEN SEASON 2.

i'm not sorry at all

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