dreamcrystals | Passive Dream Recording

Entry tags:

Passive Dream Recording | The Box

Sender: Tobias
To: Everyone
Subject: Passive dream recording
Warnings: Torture, PTSD, hunting

You fly on auburn wings high above the field, looking down at it. It's far below you, and yet you can clearly see the rats scurrying in the grasses, the rabbits hopping into their burrows as your shadow passes, and you know you could swoop down and kill them in an instant. All of them, if you really wanted - the mother and her babies. You can almost taste the meat and blood and fur - but no. You're not hungry right now, and better to let them grow so you can hunt them later.

You turn, wheeling up towards the sky. There's a forest nearby, and you have a destination. You tilt your wings downwards until -

Wham! You slam into what feels like a glass window. Shrieking, you try to go around it, to find where the edge is and - and you hear a teenage girl's voice.

"You are obviously not a leader. You are not even second-in-command. You are a nobody." The voice makes you panic more than the words, and you kick off of the 'glass' to try to dive towards the field and -

Wham! There's another 'wall' - floor? - beneath you. You push off again and panic, trying to find the exit -

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Four more walls, making a cube. You're trapped. You're trapped and you know it's closing in and you can hear the girl laughing. It's a dark chuckle, and you know what that means. You're in the box again. You're in the box again and you know what that means, you know that she could pull you back to reality once again and cause you pain and you're panicking. You flutter around the box, trying to find something, some exit - but you know it's useless.

"Demorph!"

<No!> You shout it wordlessly, struggling against the inevitable. You reach up a wing in front of your face and see - a hand? But it's also a wing? It doesn't make sense, and you hear a gruff man's voice - older, raspy, cold.

"What good is it?"

What good is it anyway? You're going to die here, you're going to die and no one is going to help you and all you can see is your wing/hand and the blue sky and you tense your body, ready for the pain and -

Blackness.

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[This is risky. He can't tell him anything, but...]

<I've had to deal with fighting my instincts for a long time. And I'm never going to be able to fully pull away from them. But the pain... maybe not the physical pain, but I've... it's not new.>

[He had a roof over his head. He should have been grateful. He knows what they'd say.]

The thing is you don't have to, not completely at least. That's one of the traps most likely to get to you after going through something so awful. You think you need to go back to how you were before... but you can't. You're not that person anymore after that, not entirely, and that is one of the things you have to come to terms with. Hard as that is to do.

[Building himself up again had been the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, and he'd mourned for a long time for all the parts of himself that he had lost.]

<I know that. I'm not as gentle as I was once. I'm a predator. I'm not shy anymore, not in that way. But I need to be me again in some way. I can't... they need me to be me.>

[He can't go back, but he doesn't know how to go forward.]

You are not the you of back then, but you are and always will be you. Change is inevitable... this kind of change just tend to be swifter and less smooth than what is natural.

[Moving forward is hard. Sometimes all you want is to go back, back to when things were not so painful and complicated... but you can't.]

You need to look into yourself and find the parts that still fit somewhat, and start building from there. It wont ever be the same again, but... one day you'll look upon yourself and feel like you can see something of that boy you were once again. It will hurt a bit, but it will be the kind of hurt that does not feel all bad. Like waking up and finding you have left childhood behind, almost...

[But it was a long and hard road to reach that point.]

Edited 2024-03-05 20:31 (UTC)

<I don't want to. I don't want to be the victim anymore. I don't want to hurt anyone if I don't need to, but I'm not going to let myself get hurt if I don't have to.>

[He can't. He won't. And he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be the person he was, he doesn't want to hurt like that anymore. To go through every day being bullied, harassed, and forgotten.]

<But I don't know what fits anymore. All the pieces have ragged edges. And half of them are hidden under the couch.>

Edited 2024-03-05 20:46 (UTC)

Those are not the only paths open to you, though I know sometimes it may feel that way. You can be yourself and be someone entirely new at the same time, for a person is a complex thing. Filled with a multitude of facets. Find the parts of yourself that you want to be and build yourself around those until you feel like you finally fit inside your own skin again.

[He is silent for a moment, thinking how to best put it into words.]

Ragged edges can be filed down and smoothed out, couches can be moved. Things may not fit now, which means you must put them together in a different manner. Make new pieces to fit with the old ones... discard those that cannot be salvaged. It wont be the same, no, but you will eventually be whole again.

<Want to be? Or have to be? Because they're very different. I'm never going to fit into my own skin again. I've accepted that. I've accepted myself. That doesn't mean I have to like it.>

[He's not sure it's ever going to stop hurting. But that dull ache, he can live with. It's the pain that comes with remembering things sharply that he has trouble with.]

<... Whole again is... I don't know. I can't even imagine that at this point.>

Either? Both? Only you can truly awnser that, young one. Acceptance is good enough sometimes, I think. I too have accepted I am who I am now, even if I do not always like that person.

[Somewhat of an understatement, since he can genuinely say he hates himself most of the time. But he has come to accept that too.]

It is still a fresh wound for you, I suspect. One that has had little time to heal with all the rest you have had to focus on. It will come in time. Do not try to rush it or you will end up doing yourself more harm than good.

<It's been a bit. Several months. It's hard to tell sometimes, other than the animals in the field starting to hibernate. It's not like I have any use for a calendar.>

[But he suspects 'months' isn't what he's talking about.]

<We haven't had time, no. We keep having mission after mission, but we can't stop. We're the only ones who can do what we do.>

Yet you have been blessed with time to work through it here. My suggestion is to make the most of it while you still have the opportunity.

[He smiles wrily.]

But it will take some time, I suppose, before the hypervigilance and being constantly on edge that comes with fighting a war subsides enough for you to truly believe it.

<I... I guess. It's still hard to believe that our enemies aren't here. They're everywhere, like I said. Resting... it's not even an option. You're right that we're constantly on edge. ... We just don't have a choice.>

<I'm not sure what we'd do with a break. Probably spend all of it worrying that it's not a break.>

It will take time to acclimate to the new reality of things.

I sometimes find it hard myself... and I've been here for months now and the war was already ending when I found myself here. You just have to... let your mind and body realize the danger is not here in their own time. These things can't be forced.

<The war's definitely not ending at home, so... it's hard. But I've been here... maybe a few weeks? And it's only been a little bit since that weird forest let us all out.>

[He ruffles his feathers a little and starts preening himself. He's nervous about all of this, and just... he's not sure what to do.]

<... There's someone else from my world here. She's... she's got a lot of problems with being - what did you call it? Hypervigilant? She didn't used to be. And she doesn't naturally have to be to survive when we're not on missions.>

A few weeks is nothing if you've been living in a constant state of paranoia and vigilance. The body becomes used to being on edge and it takes time for it to wind down again, your mind won't follow until then.

[In other words... it's going to take time.]

That's what my healers called it, at least. If it's a new developement I can only see it being one of two reasons. Either something significant has happened to her fairly recently... or she is having a hard time letting herself aclimate to not having to fight anymore. That can also happen. You can become too used to living in a constant state of war...

<Oh, no. I mean before the war. You would have never guessed she would turn out to be our fiercest fighter. The way she fights... it's ruthless. And it's not like she was gentle before, but she's... blunter. Faster to get to the point. The 'cut the crap' sort of person, now. I worry about her a lot.>

[Not himself. Who'd worry about him? But the others do, and Rachel most of all.]

<But she's still on edge here, yeah. Not that I'm not... I just have less to lose. Even if the others say that I don't... I'd put myself in the way before she gets seriously hurt.>

It's not entirely unusual for such changes to occur when you're thrown into such stressful situations again and again. Sadly enough. I think most people who knew me when I was younger would not have imagined I'd become... so well-suited for war as I am either.

[But it does worry him as well, a bit, to hear about a child that has likely forged herself into a weapon of war.]

I can imagine. Well, you and your friend have a standing invitation to come visit me, should you ever wish to speak to me about anything or just have a quiet place to rest if the confines of the city ever gets to be a bit much. I don't really mind others dropping by from time to time... and I do like to try to be helpful when and where I can be.

<... It's. Uh. Appreciated. I'll let her know. We were talking about how we need therapists. Like... doctors who take care of mental stuff if you're not familiar. And it's not like you're one but you... get it.>

[He shifts a little and looks down at Maedhros, really studying him. ... Sure is some kind of elf or something. But he's not here to talk about the elf, as much as he'd like to deflect the subject.]

<In our world the government is supposed to take care of soldiers both in and out of war. But we're soldiers who are fighting a war where the government is infiltrated and no one knows that it's happening. ... So we can't exactly try that. It's... kind of awful to be without help. Without resources - or even to have anyone care that we're fighting because we can't tell them. So like... not to put you down or anything but this is probably as good as we're going to get.>

It's the least I can do. We... don't exactly have something like that where I'm from. Not outside of Valinor, at least., and even there it's more of a... spiritual healing, I suppose. I'm not much of a healer, that is true, but I do understand what it's like to struggle with these things.

[And he doesn't want anyone to have to dit alone.]

No. Your options are unfortunately limited in that way. It is awful, fighting a war that never seems to end and where the odds are so stacked against you is a very lonely thing. Don't worry about 'puting me down,' as you say, my feelings are not so easily bruised as that. It is only the truth you speak, after all.

It is a good habit to have. Sometimes you have to tell untruths, of course, but it is generaly a bad idea to get to comfortable with the notion. It must be hard for you not to have that emotional release available to you... war is... it is hell, to put it lightly. It would worry me more if it did not upset you. It's good flying helps, if only a little bit.

<It is. But I just... don't have other options. I can't go back to how things were. If I tried, I wouldn't be able to fight anymore. And I don't think I could step away from the fight, knowing my friends were fighting and I couldn't keep them safe. ... Emotional release isn't... something I concern myself with a lot.>

[He was always so sensitive... he's not anymore. And it's not like his aunt and uncle miss him.]

No. Going back is rarely an option we are given. Sometimes all we can do is learn to live with what we have, instead of mourning those things we have lost.

[Absentmindedly he rubs the stump of his right arm.]

No. All we can do is move forwards as best we can.

<I'm just... I feel tired a lot. I wish I could rest. I just want to sleep without these stupid dreams. It's not just... it gets worse than what showed up.>

Hopefully you'll get something of a respite here. I... I am not an expert by any means, and I'm not even sure if you'd trust me enough to try, but I could try a Song of Power to calm your mind and coax more gentle dreams from it sometime? It's not a guarantee, of course, but my brother used to do it for me from time to time... when things got bad enough.

<No offense, but I'm not sure I'd trust anything mind-altering. I... magic's still kind of a new thing for me? So it's taking me a while to trust it.>

[He's trying. He just... he's been suspicious of everything for a really long time.]

Passive Dream Recording | The Box

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