#pls let me know if there's a better way to tag stuff about wren's trauma

[galaxywhump]

Home Again

Trope: Not Used to Freedom

Fandom: Original Work

[SV-240 masterlist]

[blue for completed]

Timeline: post-captivity, set after Ghosts of the Past.

contents: recovery from slavery whump and forced relationship, hospital setting, childhood trauma, mention of therapy.

~~~

“Jonna Schulte visited me yesterday.”

Nathaniel is looking out the window, so Wren can’t see his expression, but he does notice the tension in his shoulders.

“I know.” Nathaniel’s voice is forced, stiff. “I talked to her.”

“Yeah, I heard you talking.” The emphasis Wren puts on the last word goes unnoticed. “So, what’s the deal with… all that? She didn’t tell me much.”

“We were married, it didn’t work out, so she left.”

Nathaniel spits out his words like they’re poison, as is the topic at large, but Wren doesn’t want to back out. It’s too important, and too confusing.

“She said she didn’t want to abandon me.”

Nathaniel inhales sharply and crosses his arms. “I don’t know what she did or didn’t want. You can ask her.” He finally faces Wren, his gaze like the dark sky before a thunderstorm. “‘I don’t want to talk about this.”

His tone is harsh, and it makes Wren freeze. There it is, the tension he’s felt for so long, his instincts urging him to run, and he feels so small and insignificant, but not in the same way that SV-240 made him feel. He doesn’t feel like a human being confronted with the unimaginable loneliness of being trapped on a distant planet. He feels like a helpless kid.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, looking away, his heartbeat deafening, his hands shaking.

Nathaniel seems surprised by Wren’s reaction, but he doesn’t add anything. The sense of immediate danger slowly fades, though the implications linger in Wren’s mind.

Nothing has changed. The events of the last two years did not overwrite his earlier memories and instincts, not that he really expected otherwise. What Daniel had put him through made him discover mechanisms within his psyche that he wasn’t aware of before, and which he figures must have come from his childhood. Now he gets to see their root cause with new eyes, and he doesn’t know if he’s ready for it.

Between living alone, struggling with the way his body and mind work now, and going back to living with his father, he’s not sure if there exists an option that isn’t terrible.

“Do you need help packing?”

He nearly jumps in place and shakes his head.

“No, no, I’ll do it myself. It’s not a lot.”

His hands are shaking as he puts what little he’d taken out back in the bag and zips it up.

As much as he wanted to leave the hospital before, now he wishes he could stay.

***

When they exit, there are people waiting for them, a small crowd gathered near the entrance, the sight of which causes Wren to stop abruptly, his eyes going wide. And then there’s noise, voices, and they don’t sound angry, but they’re too overwhelming for Wren to register anything. He stepped out of the hospital and fell into a void, and he’s frozen in place, gripping the strap of his bag so hard his knuckles turn white.

Someone grabs his arm and pulls, and his immediate reaction is to try and free himself, but when he manages to tear his gaze away from the crowd, he sees it’s just his father, so he forces himself to move, to put one foot in front of the other, to get the hell out, away from those people, everything is too much, too crowded, and it isn’t until he’s seated in the car that he can breathe again.

He exhales and leans forward until he rests his forehead against the back of the front seat, but he has to straighten up when the car starts. He blinks and his gaze flits towards the window, but he has to look away when he sees the crowd again.

“What happened?”

Wren winces. He can feel Nathaniel’s eyes boring into him, but he doesn’t want to look. It’s not like he knows what happened, anyway; for all he knows, he left the hospital building and regained consciousness in the car.

“Sorry,” he says, and Nathaniel doesn’t push, he never does anymore, he only wants uncomfortable conversations to end, and that’s exactly what happens. The drive home passes in silence, and Wren spends its entirety swallowing back tears.

***

Unlike him, the house hasn’t changed at all. It’s still neat, but unremarkable, average in just about every way; Nathaniel never flaunted his position by going for unnecessary luxury. Still gripping the strap of the bag tightly, Wren enters, and the inside is the same too, because it has always been comfortable, and that was enough. There are some new things, things he doesn’t recognize, but they’re minor, they don’t matter.

The door closes behind him, and something about the sound both sobers him up and sends him back to a day he’d rather not reminisce about. He can’t breathe, he can feel tears coming again, and this time he can’t hold them back, so he rushes upstairs, to his old room, which is also the same, the only difference being the boxes strewn about the floor. His things, brought back to the place he had escaped years ago.

He’s home.

Tears overflow and he furiously wipes them away. All he wants to do is sit on his bed and wallow in emotions that he can’t even identify, but he hears his father’s footsteps on the stairs, and he knows he has to appear at least a bit more put-together. He sits down on the bed anyway, unzips his bag, and starts unpacking it.

“Hey,” Nathaniel says after a symbolic knock on the doorframe. “Need any help?”

At first Wren wants to refuse again. These are his things, he can handle unpacking, and having his father here will probably only lead to more tension, more awkwardness, but…

He looks at the boxes. The bag he can handle, but with how he’s feeling he’s not sure the same can be said about the boxes. Besides, if he’s left on his own, he might just burst into tears and accomplish nothing, and his room being a mess will only drag him further into misery.

“Actually, yeah,” he says, looking up from the bag with a slightly forced smile. “I don’t know what I’m going to put where yet, but if you could help with the boxes, that would be great. Just… clothes on one pile, other stuff on a different pile, something like that.”

“Sounds doable,” Nathaniel laughs, and Wren does too, and they get to work, mostly in silence, sometimes making small talk or commenting on their finds.

“You still have this T-shirt?”

“Yeah, it’s living its best life as pajamas now.”

“Mhm. And this one?”

“Pajamas. Or, uh, for cleaning days.”

“This one too?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a hole in it.”

“Exactly. It’s perfect.”

They laugh, Wren through tears, because of course he’s crying, because he hasn’t seen these things in such a long time, he thought he’d never see them again. There are tears in his breaking voice too, which go unaddressed; it feels absurd, this elephant in the room, his silent breakdown and its cause, but he convinces himself that it’s better this way, that they can both pretend that everything is fine, even when nothing is.

Their conversations are normal, ignoring the context that is anything but. Catching up, how much has the city changed? It must have changed, it’s been… a while. Food. Food is a normal subject. They can get takeout, whatever Wren wants. Not from that one place, though. It closed down a year or so ago. 

It’s strange to think that normal things were happening while he was away. A silly thought, of course he’d never think that everything was put on hold when he was kidnapped, but somehow it still hits him hard. The restaurant closed down, and he was busy being a captive. He doesn’t even know what was going on with his father when he was presumed dead, but he doesn’t want to start that conversation yet; he can ask about it later. Right now he focuses on dividing his clothes into categories with some semblance of sense before putting them in the closet.

The last thing he reaches for is his running T-shirt, and he pauses, holding it up, rubbing the slippery fabric between his fingers.

“I think I’m gonna go for a run,” he says, his idea verbalized as soon as it appears in his mind. Nathaniel, busy collecting the now empty boxes, looks at him with a frown.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”

Naturally, Wren starts doubting himself, and maybe it is a stupid idea, but it’s an exciting one, and he doesn’t want to just give it up.

“Yeah, I… think I need it. I miss running.”

“Alright,” Nathaniel says, still seemingly unconvinced. “Now?”

“No.” Wren shakes his head. “I’ll wait until the evening. So it’s less warm.” And, hopefully, so there’s fewer people. He doesn’t say that part out loud. Being concerned about the weather is normal. Freaking out after being one of the only two people on an entire planet is not. He wants to be normal, and if he can’t, he’ll at least pretend.

The food they get from a place Wren knows well tastes different from what he remembers, but maybe he just doesn’t remember it well, it’s been so long, after all. They talk for a bit about nothing in particular, and when the silence threatens to turn awkward, Wren suggests watching something light, maybe a game show, and they do just that, joking and trying to guess the answers before the contestants do. It’s a familiar scenario in a way that fills Wren with unease as time goes on; he’s relieved when evening comes and he can excuse himself to get ready.

Putting up his hair to keep it out of the way and warming up before leaving the house is a routine he hasn’t forgotten, but it’s not as nostalgic and uplifting as it should be, because he used to do this on SV-240 too. Back then it made him feel better, but the price he pays now is that it’s become tainted, linked to memories of running laps around Daniel’s house, of working out alongside him. That, however, is reduced to a triviality when Wren leaves the house and faces the world outside.

Running laps within the safe area around the house, guarded from the dangers of the planet, was one thing; being faced with the startling realization that he can go wherever he wants is something else entirely. He’s no longer confined, be it to the house, the spaceship, or the hospital. He’ll have to go back home eventually, but he’s the one who gets to decide when that will be.

He’s free.

He sways on his feet a little, and has to take a deep breath of Earthly air. For just a moment he considers turning back, going back inside, but above all he feels… excited. Energized. He wants to get the most out of his newfound freedom, so he braces himself, chooses a direction, and starts running, maybe a bit faster than he usually would, and a wave of euphoria the likes of which he hasn’t felt in a long time spreads throughout his body, through his every nerve. His shoes hit the pavement at a steady pace, and his breathing falls into a familiar rhythm. That’s all that matters.

When he comes back home, he’ll have no choice but to face his thoughts. His first therapy session is coming up - how should he approach it? How much can he tell his therapist? He’ll have to bring up something, think about the last two years with Daniel, recall some of the physical torture, because he can’t imagine himself talking about anything other than that, even though it’s the other memories that give him nightmares each and every night. Is he going to have one tonight, in his old room? He doesn’t want his father to hear it. His father… The time they spent together was nice, and Wren knows it’s nothing new, nor was it a one-off. There have always been days like this, filled with casual, lighthearted conversations, joking and laughter, and yet, when he was away, he could only remember the other days, raised voices, disappointment and contempt. He got a reminder of that earlier, Nathaniel’s reaction to his question about Jonna, Jonna, his mother, who didn’t want to abandon him, who’s one message or call away…

He never wants to stop running.

~~~

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