#tw; traumatic memory

[ssolessurvivor]

Khan's motions, how softly he walks, how tenderly he sits there on the couch beside him, Logan feels his spine stiffen, but he doesn't stand. He doesn't have the energy now. Maybe...getting this out will help alleviate some of his pain. But is Khan ready for it?

No better way than to rip the bandage.

"I became a soldier here, on Earth, you understand. I know you do." He still hasn't been able to look at Khan, not while he wrings his hands as elbows rest on his knees. Not while he allows a pad of a finger to rub and rub that spot on the back of his left hand, that indent nobody can see unless they're looking for it. Unless they know the contours of him. Khan does, but that's besides the point. "War makes monsters of us all, we lose ourselves and pay the penalty of suffering. Five long years of serving, five long years of self-destruction. I belong in hell more than I ever will in heaven."

A hand comes up and rubs his eyebrow then, the ache behind his eyes becoming apparent like a metronome in the static interrupting the music on the radio. His knee slowly starts shaking, up down up and down, just to move something. Trying to come to rights with this, to...tell someone. Anyone. And that someone is Khan. He'll leave from this, he's sure. Everyone else has.

"Just before my contract was up, I was approached for a once in a lifetime chance: they wanted a team to guard a colony of 100 people to Saturn's moon, Mimas, to excavate and see about the possibility of habitation. I took it and met my team who would go up with me. The team you see in those pictures...they were family by the end." Talking about the little alter of sorts: he'd seen Khan, in the early days when he didn't speak, just staring at them from time to time. Once, Logan had gone over and said their names, pointed each of them out, and what they did. But that was it, he'd moved on after that. "After a year of being home, we left for a year of training at NASA, who were sponsoring the mission with the military. I couldn't believe it was actually real until we made it into space."

Logan swallows, the tears having stopped flowing for now, a hand wiping his face clean, dry, so he wouldn't feel dirty. So his skin wouldn't feel tight and blemished. He started getting a soft chill up his spine, the heat of his adrenaline slowly burning off and giving way to the air cooling his body, clinging to the sweat on the back of his neck. He runs a hand through his hair if only for the comfort of it, the habit it holds now.

"I knew we wouldn't be fighting, but it would be good to be there: just herding around colonists who would inevitably succumb to cabin fever after the first six months: we were there for five years. Five years on a distant moon in our solar system...five years of being indoors in a not quite prepared climate controlled station that sometimes barely held on due to the frigid temperatures of the moon itself: Mimas was desolate. Every so often, we'd suit up and go out to oversee some of the excavating equipment, they were digging for the underground ocean. Other than that, we weren't allowed outside. Over time, I came to think of my group as my friends, and then family. I fell in love with one of the scientists, but...I didn't know we'd never have a shot at a life together."

The blonde takes a deep breath and exhales, trying to straighten his spine and lean back into the couch, but he only makes it halfway. It's as if his body is incapable of relaxing, of giving him this moment of calm because recalling it is anything but a pretty story. But...it's about time he's told Khan what happened. He hasn't wanted to keep up the ruse anymore about his scars being from a roadside bombing and an ambush. Surely the sharp eyes of the other have understood by now the scars don't correlate with the damage that would have done. A missing limb would suit that better.

"There had been a few warning signs we missed, in hindsight. A few broken pieces of equipment when the units were shut down. Power outages and destruction of the electrical panels. The last one was the rupturing of an oxygen tank. You see...they never told us we'd be contending with aliens. Particularly hostile alien life." He swallows, looking down at his hands in his lap, wringing once again, the skin turning pink with the onslaught of the abuse of stress.

"It began with breaking the glass to get in...I had my troop armed with assault rifles and shotguns, I had them ready. I was the Commander, it was my job to protect the colony, my team. The power went out, and...I ordered us to split up, I didn't know if there were many of them or just one. Turns out...just one...it was like a fucking movie. I heard their screams before I ever got to any of them...I watched some of them, torn to shreds...the thing wasn't killing them to kill, it was playing with them. It was maiming, mauling...eating. I-I held the woman I loved in my arms and watched the light leave her eyes while her gaping body bled over me."

He goes quiet for a moment, reliving...Feng, sweet Feng in his arms, the locket in a burst of broken starlight around her desecrated body, the lights of the emergency generators and that godforsaken alarm still plays in the back of his mind in his darkest nightmares. Eyes close and squeeze tight as he tries to move on, to continue. He needs it to end.

"I got the flamethrower and baited it. I begged it to come get me, to rip me to shreds...to take me where it took them. Because I belonged there. If I couldn't protect them doing everything I had done and more, asking for help in the radios but nobody came, then...surely I deserved to die. I got to everyone too late, so why did I deserve life? The last thing I remember was the boom of the floor behind me...I see a vague shadow, it smelled like tar and gore, I could taste a fowl acid in the air and metallic blood. I hit the torch and lit that fucker up, but...the pain lingers for a split second, where it latched, and...then I woke up back on Earth. I was told...nobody else was recovered, nobody else survived."

Someone might as well just rip Khan's heart straight out of his ribcage and squeeze it to mush in a hand made of steel - it would hurt much less than the sight of his beloved does, the way he shivers and suffers within that inner torture he experiences, memories about experiences that simply won't let him go.

The worst is that Khan can relate so much - he has been there, he will be there again, and it probably won't ever let him go.

Logan is as alive as he is, a living organism that holds emotions within a sturdy frame surrounding a fragile inner being. He breathes and swallows and laughs and cries, he loves and hates, he enjoys but he also hurts... and he hurts so much right now that Khan can literally feel it, can sense the waves of pain that trail away from him, pulse through the whole of their small little cabin... their save place, their little heaven that is supposed to keep them happy and protected.

Khan wants to protect, he wants to keep him happy, but right now? He cannot do that, not in the way he usually would.

They have never spoken about what exactly happened to the blonde, what exactly he went through, what exactly causes him to suffer so much. Khan has never asked, never prodded - not because he isn't curious, but rather because he's assumed that the memories that are attached to the human's existence are much too heavy to be carried around in the open all the time. He didn't want to pull Logan into a dark place just because of Khan's desire to learn more about him.

It looks like, however, today might be the day where... things happen. Where Logan might decide to open up.

Slowly, carefully, Khan steps closer toward the couch the other has taken a seat on; Another deep breath is taken by him, through his nostrils, and he takes a tentative seat next to his partner, with a softness and grace that a soldier's body rarely possesses because of what it's made to handle, to execute. Blue eyes linger on a familiar body that now trembles so much, that sheds tear after tear, and all Khan wants is to hold him and press his human against himself, wrap his arms around those shoulders, tell him it is going to be okay because he is here now, he will defeat whatever causes his lover pain.

The truth is, however, Khan cannot fight those memories. He cannot fight those experiences. He cannot ask them to come out and face him so he can wrap his fingers around slender throats and kill them - that's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

You belong here, is what he wants to say - you are supposed to be alive and you are supposed to be with me - but none of those words leave Khan, for as he knows they might not make anything better in any way. He instead just sits there, next to his partner, with both of his hands resting on his knees as his softened, clearly troubled expression rests on the one he loves so much that he wants to cry with him.

He won't. He needs to be strong and carry the weight of this moment. He nees to be there for Logan, and he wants to be just that.

So Khan remains silent - he wants the other to go on, to speak, but on his own terms. He won't push him, won't ask for more... he blinks instead, then reaches out for the box of tissues placed onto the small coffee table in front of them before, carefully so, pushing it over, closer to the blonde. Just in case he needs it.

I am here, I am listening. Take your time. Words unspoken, but he hopes Logan will hear them anyways.

[horygory]

Smile (2022)

[bpdmaxxer]

“But he was just a child”

So was I

And I’m suffering and he’s not

[a-a-a-anon]

absolutely fascinated by young dee who is criminally under-discussed so here is my dissertation on what happened in her college years (ft. dr. gainer, setting her roommate on fire, being institutionalized)/my idea for a fic that I will almost certainly never write/my way too serious take on a few throwaway dee lore lines

timeline background: we know that dee majored in psychology ('charlie got molested') and got "three fourths" of the way in (meanwhile dennis finished his psych minor.) assuming this was a four year program, I'm gonna guess that in her third year she got institutionalized and most likely had to drop out ('gun fever too: still hot'.) we also know that she had her back brace until she was twenty ('underage drinking'), so I'm guessing that means she got her back brace off in her third year.

we know that dennis fancied himself a psychologist since he was young, but I think dee did too. in particular I think she was wary and interested in her brother's psychology; she seems very aware of his psychopathy and bpd in 'making dennis reynolds a murderer' and 'psycho pete returns.' in my head she's been interested in dennis' psychology since they were kids and she saw him snapping crows necks. so instead of forcing her way into acting school, she studied psychology to better understand her brother (and also deep down, herself, who is very much the other side of the same fucked up coin.) it also meant she could tell herself she could study her characters even better when she became an actress.

i think she put in (her version of) genuine academic effort to get in, fuelled kind of by spite (remember the way she studied that thick medical book in 'hero or hate crime' or her very quick math in 'boggs: ladies reboot'). she studies books and gets cricket to quiz her and she still fails to get into penn. but frank always pitied her (i think she was his favorite of the twins-remember "let your sister into the gang", "that's my girl!", "i'm sorry the grift didn't work out, sweetie") so he shells out cash to get her in, but also to get her away from home so he has to deal with her even less.

dennis wants to do anything dee does but better and he wants to keep her close by (to watch her crash and burn, and also because he's weirdly possessive-see 'the gang broke dee' "i'm your select!"). and obviously he's barbara's favorite. so barbara gives him money to get in too. she also gets him into a frat and pays for his classes and his rent and everything he needs. dee has to live in a dumpy dorm with a female roommate.

but college presents dee a chance to moult her previous place in life where she was known as a monster (remember how insistent she was that "people can change!" in 'franks pretty woman'. I think dees always wanted to believe she can shed that feeling she's inferior, but she never has). in my head her female roommate is basically normal-has real friends of her own, mentally stable, attractive-which is exactly what dee craves. dee wants to be popular and well liked and she wants to infiltrate her roommates life, imitate her, be in the Cool group. and she places all her hopes on a friendship with the roommate but dee has never navigated real female friendships before, not with someone like her. deep down she also wishes she found what dennis found in mac, whatever it was, because ever since dennis met mac he's never been as close to her. and i do think dee is some flavor of queer. and the roommate is well liked in the way that dee admires and envies. so there is that blurriness between wanting to be her and wanting to be with her. in my head her roommate looks like the woman from dee's fantasy in 'the gang saves the day' (and they both represent that promise of escape from dee's shitty life).

dee is so desperate for the roommates approval and her love and her life that she goes insane, copying and flattering and competing with her. ever the shitty actress, she tries to emulate her, but comes off as manic and creepy. and maybe her roommate is nice enough to not completely shun her, recognizing that she's struggling. maybe in dees mind they actually are becoming friends when her roommate asks things like "are you okay?"

and dee has to talk about her plan with dennis because he's the only person who would Get It. and she makes it sound like it's almost working. dennis feels jealous and worried and threatened that maybe dee might actually be seen as normal, especially when she gets her back brace off in the third year. so dennis fucks her roommate, more of a show that he owns and controls each and every pathetic part of dee’s life than anything else. and so that dee knows she'll never be as good as him, she'll never as easily charm people as dennis does. (or at least he tells her he does).

to prove that To Someone dee is Good Enough, and so desperate for attention, dee (who's been groomed all this time) enters a sexual relationship with her professor dr. gainer. she tells herself she has the power in it, that she seduced him ("he didn't molest me. i had sex with him 'cause i wanted to.") and she has a mental break, because the thing she told herself held her back from being loved (her back brace) is finally gone by now and yet she still feels like a monster, and the only scrap of "love" she can get is from her professor.

and then she can't take the fact that she can steal her roommates clothes, can emulate her sexual prowess (in dee's own fucked up, delusional way), and still neither be well liked like her nor be loved by her. so maybe dee will always be a monster. so dee tried to burn her roommate in her bed, because she represented the promise of change and popularity, and that promise was a lie and dee's effort was for nothing. and she's institutionalized.

and i think there was kind of a falling out between the twins and their parents, because barbara wants to abandon dee but dennis can't help but visit her. and frank doesn't even step foot in a place that reminds him of his traumatic childhood, and avoids dee even more than he used to because she is his childhood mirror image. so the family becomes even more fractured and estranged.

and maybe dee becomes medicated and slowly crawls her way halfway to normal by the first season (her acting classes are so well-adjusted, taking part in healthy hobbies of her!). until her father comes back into her life and everything falls apart <3

side note, even though dee is crushingly lonely-"I just got a cat 'cause I wanted something to hang out with. I don't have, you know, a roommate or anything, and I don't really have anyone to talk to..."-AND she struggles to pay rent whenever frank cuts her off, i hc that she refused to ever get a roommate in particular female roommate again after this because both her internalized misogyny got worse and she was afraid of what would happen (what she would do) again.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Theta/Koschei

Koschei decides to ‘force a regeneration’ to see if it gets rid of the drums.

I’ll let you decide at which point in that process Theta finds him.

>:) (<- evil)

The first thing Koschei hears is Theta-

No, the first thing he hears is the drums. He cringes in on his new body, its limbs awkwardly long and its hair in his face. He claws at his head, and when his nails aren’t strong enough to get inside and scratch the noise out, he starts pounding at his temples. It only encourages the drums to get louder. All he can smell is bitter metal, on his skin, in his mouth, soaked through. It was supposed to be cast off a new regeneration, so why is his blood still clinging to him?

He feels the hands wrap around his wrists and force him to stop. He feels the body kneeling next to his. “You jumped,” Theta hiccups. “You jumped!”

Koschei peers up at the cliffs above. The skies look like they’re burning overhead. Good, he thinks, good, burn down with me.

Him at the edge. Theta frozen feet away. An expression on their face he’d never seen, no matter how much they’d gotten into trouble in the past.

He scared his friend.

“I- I couldn’t move,” Theta says, like they need his forgiveness. “I tried! I couldn’t move! You jumped!”

“It didn’t work,” Koschei says, unable to summon up more reaction than a statement of fact. Theta shivers and wraps around him. They’re shorter than him. He didn’t think about that—only the blessed promise of relief. It’s all that he can hold onto now, Theta’s terrified expression as he tilted over the edge and their body, too small to bundle him up in their arms anymore like they used to. They bury their tears in his hair.

“Of course it didn’t work. You can regenerate, you can’t-” Their voice shatters. Koschei tries to be gentle, but he flinches at the pounding in his head, shoving Theta’s shoulder. Stubbornly, they hold on tighter. “I won’t let you go back up there. I won’t.”

“It didn’t work,” he repeats, like it’ll make sense to them. It hits him, suddenly, what he’s done. The obviousness of it, his whole body a betrayal of a moment’s grasp at peace, how could he- He wants to hide in Theta’s arms, but he can’t, he’s too tall.

“I did this,” Theta says. “It’s my fault. I did this.”

“No,” he snaps. He won’t have it taken from him, even as he can’t look at the shame of it. It was his choice; he jumped. “You told me to get away from the edge.”

“Shut up!” Theta is trying to crush him. His ribs ache from the way their fists jam into his sides. “I pushed you, understand?” He wriggles.

“You didn’t-”

“Koschei, you jumped,” Theta says, voice gone near a whisper again, and he listens to that more readily than he does when they match his volume and fight with him. “I don’t know what they’ll do to you if you jumped.”

He understands.

“You pushed me,” he agrees.

“It was an accident,” they build.

“The wind was too strong. I lost my footing.”

“And I pushed you too hard. We shouldn’t have been this close to the edge.”

“I forgive you.” Theta’s breathing stutters.

“You have a stupid amount of hair now,” they mumble. Koschei agrees. His head hurts so much, and he can’t place what’s worse: the drop after sudden regeneration, or the fresh bruises from hitting himself, or the drums, they’re louder now, he made them louder-

“It didn’t work,” he says a final time, no longer numb to it. His vision blurs, and his breath is coming one-two, three-four, one-two, three-four, stop it, stop it, stop it!

Theta touches his face, smearing his tears over his cheeks. They jam their forehead forward, close the distance until the entire universe is the two of them, alone.

He has to escape somehow. He grasps at Theta’s mind, not calm, always whirring and humming but quiet compared to his. He sinks into them with a sob.

They’re still there, in the back of his head, beating away.

He tries to pretend it’s only the sound of Theta’s hearts.

Maybe, for a moment, he even believes it.

[alice-the-demon]

(⚠️+16, attempted s/a, trauma⚠️)

One step at a time

[nothing0fnothing]

Does anyone else get "the dreams"?

I'm not talking about the ones that are 1:1 recreations of bad things that happened, I'm talking about the ones that have all the same general vibe as your trauma but in a completely different environment.

Like I've had this "walking through jelly" dream since I can remember, it goes like this: There's someone coming after me. They have violent intent. I need to get away as quickly as possible. I can't move fast as all, as if I'm wading through invisible jelly and the assailant is getting closer.

I have this dream in all the ways possible really. I'm young, I'm older, it's in my house, it's on a shipping dock. The assailant is a stranger, the assailant is someone I know. Over and over again. I must have had this dream at least one hundred times in my life.

I have another one I call the "nobody cares" dream. Same as the walking through jelly dream I have it in all different scenarios with all different cast but the dream itself is the same theme, I need help and nobody cares.

They capture these incredibly specific feelings I dealt with in the home I grew up in. The like, specific mix of hopelessness and terror I'd feel when I'd run away knowing I'd be caught. Or like, that dejected snuffing of hope I'd feel when I thought finally someone would help, but they didn't.

Yeah. "The dreams". I have so many more that have been in the roster throughout my life, but I'd love to know if anyone else has had them?

[lunar-years]

.

[fandomsoda]

I have seen hundreds of cycles of suffering and demise, I have been destroyed so many times my nerves are fried to smithereens and no self-proclaimed god can do pain unto me as He once did, not even Himself.

within the mindspace I am forever covered in my own crystalline blood, that fact shall never change. My nicknamesakes left in taters, my limb forever lost, my eyes forever blurry, the only hope I have for a better form is to adjust my current one to amount to some concept of beauty.

The body has fallen horridly ill as we cough up our everything and our voice withers, body trembling in cold and weakness and pain

our primary communication system with all our loved ones has been severed beyond repair and has been so for far longer than any other event.

I stand here and writhe in exhausted agony as our companions call upon us to strain ourselves to speak with them, when it already feels as if we are on our last legs.

I am filled with a weak rage and weariness that none of my kind have ever before known. /❤️‍🩹

[ashintheairlikesnow]

how might finn be doing on this fine evening?

CW: Unreliable narrator, memory issues as a result of trauma, emotional manipulation, gaslighting (or is it?) referenced captivity (or implied captivity of a different kind, depending on how you read it)...

Death Valley

-

North Carolina, Present Day

Wind blew with a knife edge around the rest area, and Finn hunched his shoulders against its bite as he sat, watching Little Mother stalking with single minded precision across the grass. What she was hunting, he had no idea, but she was intent on its capture.

"Take care, Mütterchen," He called out. "Do not go too far."

One of her rabbit-soft ears flicked, the only sign she heard him. Her tail shifted sinuous through the grass, back and forth, back and forth, as she moved with her belly nearly to the ground. Her kittens gamboled around beside him, staying where Finn's body and the bulk of his truck hid them from the worst of the cold. Little Mother trusted him to keep them safe for her while she wandered, and Finn did his best to be worthy of that trust. He dragged a little string along the ground, coaxing the kittens into stalking it, batting at it with paws that had more enthusiasm than aim.

Overhead, heavy gray clouds threatened to finally unleash the sleet the radio had been promising was coming. They hung so low the wisps of them seemed to hover just above the ancient rounded mountains that stretched all around him. If he stood, he could reach up and nearly touch them, feel wisps of damp chill around his fingertips. The rest stop was perched on the top of a mountain itself, the highest point in the state supposedly. There'd been a plaque over by the building.

Finn remembered, in a vague and foggy way, that he had hiked up younger mountains once, with jagged peaks that seemed sharp enough to slice apart the stars at night. He'd gone with friends of his, and a girl he sometimes fooled around with.

Then he'd left for his American holiday, just after, promising he'd show her photos when he got back.

He never came back.

His mother had gotten the film from his little disposable cameras, developed the photos. He'd seen his own smiling face in a photo another tourist had taken of him standing, framed by the Badwater Basin salt flats. Schneider's last photo on the camera found in the wreckage of his vehicle.

Even if he hadn't made it back home to show her, he supposed Anja would have seen all the photos that were released to the public by now. Had she married? Had Anja found herself a husband, had children, built herself the normal life she'd dreamed of? Had she forgotten all about some silly, enthusiastic boy in her class who had once kissed her breathless in a tent with their noses both frozen from the outside chill?

He put his fingers to his lips, but he couldn't remember how kissing her had felt, not anymore. Robert had painted over it all with this slime-slick touch, the smell of decay and lemon-scented cleaner fighting for dominance.

Any passing attraction Finn felt for anyone anymore was only a brief flash of something warm before the memory of Robert froze over him, shattered him all over again.

Children giggled somewhere nearby, a family ushering distracted little ones with too much energy for their tiny size into the building. Would those children know who to run from, if they needed to? Would they know not to trust the friendly smile of a stranger, not to take their own water bottle if he had touched it?

Would they-

"You didn't tell me you got a cat," Noah said from off to the side, and Finn dropped his hand, muscles tensing. He stopped pulling the string, and the kittens set up a chorus of meows, angry that their game had come to such a sudden end. One of them hissed in Noah's direction, tiny fangs bared. "Or...multiple cats."

"Mütterchen," Finn answered, gruffly, gesturing to where Little Mother had gone a few feet away. "She came to stay with me and had the kittens." He didn't look up, even as his heart began to beat faster, heavy inside his chest. "It is nice to have company, driving."

"No doubt." Noah, without asking, dropped to sit right next to him, nearly brushing Finn's left arm with his right. Finn tensed, shifting just enough to put a little space between them again. "Mütterchen, that's cute. What's it mean? Mother-... mother-hen?"

"Little Mother." Finn hated that Noah knew it now, that it felt like simply explaining it to him ruined the fragile love he had for her name. "Why are you here?"

"You turned your phone back on." Noah was looking at him - Finn could feel the weight of his eyes, even though he refused to give him anything in return. His voice was low, outwardly worried. "I told you to stay here, and I came to you. Do you... not remember that conversation?"

Sometimes Finn forgot things. Whole days, entire conversations, events... his memory came and went as it pleased, and only his time with Robert remained clearly etched into his mind, as much as the scars were carved eternally into his skin. Noah sounded concerned for him, but... Finn bristled, anyway. Something felt false in the tone, like he was acting.

Of course he was acting.

He was just upset the Mouse had been hiding in the walls, on the road, where he couldn't find him.

Finn cleared his throat. "No, this I know. I know we spoke, Noah, I did not forget, but. Why did you want to meet me?"

"Why? Finn-" Noah groaned, exasperated. "Come on. You up and vanished, man. Why was your phone off for a week, huh? Your phone, laptop... everything. The GPS in your truck, even. You could have been hurt, or dead, or in a cage somewhere again-"

Finn had to swallow the rising spike of panic at the idea. He could have been, couldn't he? And no one would know, once again no one would know. Just like before.

Noah leaned forward, his voice soft and sweet and sad. "What happened to you? What have you been doing?"

Finn had spent days bundled in the tent, watching the kittens and feeling warm down to his bones even with the icy chill outside. Inside the tent, they kept warm, he, Little Mother, and her kittens. He cooked ready-to-eat meals on a campfire in a pot that he washed using water from a stream. He'd felt entirely, perfectly alone. It had been wonderful.

Had Noah been worried that he was dead?

Guilt gnawed, even as half of him was sure it hadn't been worry but anger that Finn wasn't under his thumb, if he couldn't reach him and follow him and track him and-

And keep him-

"I wanted some time to myself," He muttered, hardly able to get the volume up to be heard. "That is all."

"Right." Noah sighed. "Yeah, no, take whatever time off you want, you know you're helping me out with transporting the, uh, the cargo to be sure, but... Finn." Noah paused. Finally, Finn cut a glance to the side, barely meeting those falsely warm, kind, soft eyes and that slight smile with his own solid closed-off nothingness. "Finn, look at me."

When his gaze didn't stick, Noah reached out and took him by the chin with his gloved hands, forcing him to make eye contact. Finn's muscles locked in a sudden burst of fear but he didn't move. He didn't dare move.

He always froze, for Robert.

"You can't turn that shit off," Noah said, voice low and soft. Poison underneath the velvet, Finn knew all about it. Fury under the false worry. Robert could speak so sweet and kind like that, and then beat him until he broke a rib and feel nothing. "I get worried when I don't know where you've gone off to. You get lost, Finn, and you and I both know it. You get lost in your head, you forget where you are or what you've been doing. You forget how to call for help. You forget everything."

Finn found himself trembling, fighting to stay still. The kittens pushed against his fingers and he pet them with numb hands, a little too roughly, staring at Noah because the other man hadn't yet let go and he didn't dare pull away. "I, I don't-... so much anymore-"

"You do." Noah's voice dipped, became firmer. "You still do. Don't lie to me." He let go, patting Finn's face briefly, and then looked down at one little kitten who had pushed against his leg, letting his fingers dangle so the little one could bat at them. "Remember when the, uh-" He glanced sidelong to see if anyone was paying attention to them, but no one was. "Remember when the runaways had to call me because you forgot how to use a phone? Just sat in the truck's cab talking to yourself for hours? When you kept trying to dial German phone numbers?"

Finn kept his eyes on the ground, feeling a blush heat his face even as he hunched his shoulders to hide it. "... I remember that they took the phone away and called you."

"And you spent months in the little house I rented for you barely able to even remember to brush your own teeth-"

"That was many years ago, Noah, when I first was sold to you-"

"Ssshhh! Even aside from that, what about just a few months ago, when you kept watching crime docs on Netflix and had nightmares for weeks on end and stopped answering to anything but Mouse?"

Finn stiffened, and his hands went up to hold his head as he dropped it, fingers digging into his short hair, eyes closed against heat he refused to acknowledge was tears. His head began to ache, a low pounding throb behind his temples. "Stop," He whispered, but Noah wasn't done.

Noah never stopped.

No one ever stopped because Finn asked them to, or begged, or pleaded...

"If you don't want to work, then stop working," Noah continued, putting a hand up to rub at Noah's back, circling and circling his palm, sending shudders of discomfort down Finn's spine. "Do whatever you want. I don't care, it's fine, you can even keep using the truck. But I'm not drowning in money, and I can't keep giving you cash if you're not doing your job, if you just stop contacting me and I can't even see where you are. I'm not rich, Finn. This isn't a lucrative business, saving people. You're a huge help to me, and I'm grateful for that. But... you can't keep making me worry about you and then acting like I don't have the right, after everything I've done for you. It's cruel, don't you think? You're like a brother to me, and when you just go off the grid for a week, I get so worried, and I don't deserve that. Not after the years I've taken care of you."

Finn watched Little Mother pounce, but she must not have caught her prey. Her tail twitched in dismayed annoyance, and she turned to look at him. He watched her eyes go to Noah. Back to him. Finn swallowed, barely daring to breathe, to move, not even daring to speak. His heart hammered inside of him, sweat stuck his sweater to his back beneath his coat.

"I don't have any identification that's real here," Finn muttered, voice weak. "I can't get a job that is not cash under tables. I-I have no passport, even-... Robert-"

"He took your passport, I know. And if you keep working for me, that's not a problem, I'll take care of you," Noah said, shifting to soothing. He patted Finn on the back and then dropped his hand, leaving crawling goosebumps like ripples in a pond, rolling out disgust over Finn's body. "If you don't want to do this anymore, that's fine. Strike out on your own, go with God, have my blessings, whatever. But I can't just... pay for you for everything forever. Everyone has to earn their keep, around here."

Robert used to say that all the time. Earn your keep. Finn earned his keep, as Robert's Mouse, on his knees or his back or his stomach or listening to the screams from the basement with the muzzle locking his jaw tightly closed, he couldn't even scream with them-

He shivered, shaking his head. "I do not want to stop," He whispered, lips barely moving. "I-I have nowhere to go, no one... I took a week off, Noah, that is all. Just a week-"

"You can take a week off whenever you want." Noah stood, brushing his hands down his thighs as if getting rid of some invisible dust. "Let me know first, and I'll make sure you have no work to do. But if you turn off your phone and your GPS again, I'm going to assume that means you quit, and I'll cancel your phone line and your debit card. So make sure I know where you are. Got it?"

Finn didn't look up. He held Little Mother's gaze as she moved closer to him, her tail a question mark, rubbing her face against his leg and giving a soft, curious meow.

"Hey." Noah nudged his other leg with his boot, and Finn flinched as if he'd been struck. "Oh, man. Hey, don't be like that." Noah softened once more - or his voice did. Finn didn't look up to see his expression. "I just want to know you hear me. I can't spend all my time worrying about you. Make sure I know where you are, from here on out. No exceptions. None. Understood?"

Finn swallowed. His throat felt like it had closed, like his heart had filled it with too much fear to speak. But he managed to whisper, "I understand, Noah."

"Good. I have a job to do here, a couple people to pick up and take to Vermont. You take a couple days to think about our conversation. I expect a call at 8 pm on Thursday, no later than that. If you don't call, I'll assume you quit and act accordingly. Stay safe."

He walked away, and Finn let him go, sitting in the smallest ball he could make of himself, listening to the happy people laughing and chatting around him as they took in the mountain views on every side.

Noah had Finn's passport.

He was sure of it - he was sure he remembered Robert handed it over when he sold Finn to him, when Robert's little Mouse was handed from one man's care to the next, silent and shivering through the experience.

But by the time he'd found the courage to ask, Noah had said there hadn't been any passport, just the title to the truck changing hands.

But Finn remembered it.

Then again, Finn remembered things that hadn't happened all the time, now. He forgot things that had happened, or that would happen. Noah was right, he barely remembered anything, really. Maybe that was something that hadn't happened, too.

Maybe...

But he was so sure, and the memory was so clear...

"Komme, Mütterchen," He said, pushing himself to his feet on wobbling legs. Little Mother and her kittens reluctantly allowed him to put them back into the truck, one by one. He made sure his phone was on and charging, his laptop, checked the GPS that was installed. Just as Noah told him to.

Good little Mouse, closing the door to his own cage.

At least, Finn thought, Noah's cage was so much larger than Robert's had been.

Even if it still wasn't freedom.

[altered-records-system]

[bpdmaxxer]

I hate getting flashbacks so much I don’t wanna remember. I wanna repress my brain repressed stuff for a reason why am I remembering it I wanna forget

I wanna forget so bad.

[promptsforyourwhumpfic]

Whump Prompt #1223

Submitted by @uniwolfcorn - thanks!

Whumpee has a brain operation or head injury that makes them lose their memories and/or change their personality

[jankwritten]

yall wanna know how fucked up my anxiety is about some shit

i scroll past a post that's about a topic i don't like. whatever, it's fine. i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't care about. that's normal.

i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't like or care about but the person presenting it is a person of color? i IMMEDIATELY feel immensely guilty and need to "compensate" by "proving" it wasn't because of race by also skipping other random posts, JUST IN CASE someone thinks I'm racist because I didn't want to watch a video on a topic I didn't like or care about, that happened to be presented by a person of color.

this just in on: the police in my brain are loud and i'm scared of them

[something-existing-somewhere]

I remember sitting in my room as a kid at night making suicide notes and making funeral charts, losing my mind and hoping someone would take me away from everything. Back then, I felt like existing made me lose my mind. With a religious family, i prayed to God so many times to save me, i would've been sent to a loving house that night if he really did exist and cared about my pain that much. All my friends eventually left me because they either pretended or got tired of me. I wrote poems all the time about how alone I felt and yet I wanted people to be my friends so bad but I always ended up alone. Now I don't even try really. Nobody cares and that's the truth

[littlest-bugz]

Child me would be so happy if they saw who I am today- That's not something I would've ever thought I would say, but here I am. It's kind of surreal, if I'm being honest.

That poor kid went through so much pain and suffering, but I never gave up. I have my system to thank for my safety, my ability to bounce back. I am fractured but whole- broken but beautiful.

If only he could see all the good that has come into our life. Yes, I live with the same abusive family, but there is so much good.

I finally got the accommodations I always needed, I can finally say I have friends who care about me and understand me, and I can even say that the suicidal ideation I've dealt with my whole life is not an issue- and so much more that I'm grateful for. Itty Bitty Bugz would be amazed.

I've fought tooth and nail to get here. I've fought so much I scratched myself in the process, but gods be damned I am here. I am alive and breathing, surviving but thriving.

Things will never be the same- not that there ever was a moment of my life not colored with trauma- but I will always be resilient. I will always fight for my life, even if it's far from perfect.

Those who hurt me in the past- they tormented me, made every waking moment of my life hell, yet somehow, I find it in my heart to forgive them. Forgiveness not for them, but me, so I may let go of the past and step into the future- a happy future.

Many of them can only see me in their dreams at this point, but I will never forget them and the pain they cause me. Yet, despite everything they did to me, I came out on top.

Child me would be so happy. There is hope.