multiversallogs | [ closed ] I think something dark's living down in my heart.

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[ closed ] I think something dark's living down in my heart.

Who: Wolfgang, Benji, later Benny
What: Wolfgang goes off his meds, has a major psychotic break, and then tries to pretend nothing happened.
Where: Nawiedzonydom, Badside; later, Madrasati
When: Some nebulous point after the Spatters raid/riots?
Warnings: Drug use, body horror, self-injury, mental illness, psychiatric abuse of children.

Wolfgang's behaviour has always been a little erratic, but for the most part he is predictable. He likes to have a routine, as difficult as that is to work around how much he sleeps - sometimes half his day or more - so when he's suddenly awake all the time, it's pretty noticeable. He has these moodswings of manic energy, waking up at 3 in the morning and cleaning or taking things apart, putting them back together, pacing on the roof. He has long conversations with birds and the moon. He addresses people who aren't in the room and flinches every time he passes a mirror; in fact, he's covered up every mirror in his room. He won't look through windows in the dark. Sometimes he says things that make no sense and he'll either give up and withdraw or continue trying, obviously pained with the effort of it. But these are little things and they occur very far apart; in between, he's fine. Normal. He goes to work every day. He certainly looks a lot less sick than he normally does and he even mentions that he feels better than he has in months.

At one point he goes to a party and about midnight frantically calls Benji six times over the period of about a half an hour, begging her to come pick him up, becoming more and more incoherent until he is literally speaking nonsense. The train ride home is a miserable affair for him; he flinches at things out of the corner of his eye, hands over his face like he can block them out that way. He's panicked, pupils dilated, sweating, jaw clenched - obviously on something but he won't (or can't) answer what. What comes out of his mouth is word salad. Disorganised nonsense. It barely sounds like English. The exception is when he starts scratching at his skin, growing increasingly more distressed, get them out, get it out! like there's something under there and he doesn't stop digging into his skin until he's bleeding, crying, seeing something under his skin that just isn't there. He clamps his hands over his ears and whines like he's trying to block something out, but there's nothing there. At one point he mutters something about they won't stop talking, stop talking, shut up, shut up, shut up shut up shut up, over and over. He thinks "they" put "them" inside of him and he keeps trying to get "them" out. A few times, she can see what he sees - fleshy movement under his skin, like there are bugs crawling under there. All the lights in the house keep flickering on and off, phantoms appearing in dark corners and vanishing if looked at too closely, and outside it keeps varying between thunder and snow. It's dark all morning.

He finally passes out around noon and sleeps for half a day. The sun rises.

He vanishes into his room after that for three days - the door is gone, too, just a solid wall where it was, like it was never there - and when he finally emerges he behaves conspicuously normally, aggressively pretending that nothing happened, but slinking around with the air of someone who knows they're guilty of something and are hoping everyone else will just ignore it. Deciding to put some of that guilt to practical use, he's been cleaning the kitchen all day, in jeans and a tank top, scrubbing the floor on his hands and knees with a vigor that borders on manic the longer he's at it.

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He sees her feet first, pauses for a moment mid-gesture like he's not sure what to do. He's not even sure how long he's been at this. It's easy to tune out with repetitive physical labour, that's why he's good at jobs doing things like this. He doesn't have to think.

Wolfgang never manages eye contact for long, even with people he likes - he can get a few seconds in before his eyes slide lower or to the side and he ends up talking to someone's chin or else something invisible to their immediate left. When he looks up, he gets about a half a second in before he flinches and looks back down, at his hands which are slightly red from gripping the brush too tightly, at the floor which is pretty spotless by now, he could have given up a half hour ago.

After what feels like forever he sits back on his legs and exhales. This is the cleanest their kitchen has ever been, given Mermaid and also how many pets are in this house. He looks surprised, when did this happen?

Someone has to say something. He manages another second of eye contact. "Sorry," he says, finally, as if that's the problem, that he inconvenienced her.

Making him speak first is probably one of the meaner things Benji can do, but it seems important anyway. When it's an apology-- of course it's an apology-- she purses her lips a little. She steps forward, then, some of the other cleaning tools that Wolfgang isn't clutching to place next to the sink, emptying dirty water into it, all done kind of gently and helpfully as opposed to attempting passive aggression.

Although the jury's out on whether she succeeds. She isn't trying to convey irritation, because she isn't irritated.

At a loss, maybe. "You don't need to apologise for anything," she says, a little firmly. "Maybe that should be me, because I can't just--" You know, play along. Ignore things. Stay out of it. Including in dreaming, for all that Wolfgang probably didn't notice gentle attempts to invite herself over; the wall he built months ago is a strong thing, in that realm of 'magic' she doesn't quite access.

A hand fusses through her dark hair, turning back to him. Maybe also sorry that she can't just wave a dreamwalker wand and fix every problem. "How are you feeling today?" she asks, as if the stripped down, sparkling kitchen is not a glaring answer.

"Fine," he says, which is such an obvious lie it's almost insulting. Of course he's miserable and terrified, of course he feels like shit, of course he would rather have stayed in his room feeling sick, trying not to throw up, realising he has a problem and digging through his drawers looking for any pills he might have stashed and forgotten about. He can play all he wants at pretending none of this ever happened, is happening, but he's always been a shit liar.

He doesn't know what to do with his hands now. His eyes - he's looking everywhere but at her - fall on the things on the counter, he could put that way. Be useful. Instead he feels nailed here. He doesn't even know what to say, except that apologising again is both inadequate and irritating. He's been lying to himself and everyone around him for so long - aware that other people have mostly been playing along, knowing he's been hiding something - that without being able to successfully hide behind a veneer of fineness has him at a total loss. He might as well be naked.

Take it one thing at a time, then. He stands up, wincing, his knees feel locked into position. The sun's streaming in through the closed window, bathing the whole room in a light so bright it washes everything out, it must be noon or early afternoon. That feels wrong. It ought to be raining or something. He wrings his hands, opens his mouth, closes it - he can't think of anything to say.

It's weird, sometimes, how Wolfgang's soul can feel so old, echoed through many, but in other ways he isn't. Benji doesn't think about it very carefully when she steps nearer as he stands, her hands moving like she might help him up -- but inevitably not, watching him, just ready.

"You always seem much further away than you actually are," she comments, finally stepping in front of him with a little more determination than she has, prior, and her hands go out to find his. Still keeping gentle, though, studying a little the over-red skin of his fingers and maybe the state of his nails. "Like an optical illusion. Except maybe the illusion is the other way around to that."

She tips a look up at him, betraying more hesitation than she'd like. "You aren't fine. It worries me. Don't say sorry, it's not your fault."

Wolfgang would rather sink into the floor and die than have this conversation. He's embarrassed that she saw, embarrassed he let himself get to this point - what if Mermaid had seen, what if. Why did he stop taking them? He was fine before. It had sounded like a good idea at the time - the healthy, responsible decision, like he'd decided to stop drinking so much or take up running again.

He can still hear them, but they're quiet, with a tinny quality like they're on the other end of the phone. He had gotten so used to tuning them out.

"I'll be fine." He looks down at her hands, still refusing to make eye contact, knowing that he's still lying and he winces as he says it. It's so hard to say anything; his throat works convulsively but for a long time, no sound comes out. But he owes her. He can't just pull that shit around her and then say sorry and go hide in his room and pretend like they're not friends, that he doesn't care. It's not fair and she deserves an explanation.

Finally, in a low voice, barely audible: "I stop taking my meds."

Benji nods, as if this is a thing she can sympathise with or understand -- she is at least listening and has enough eye contact for the both of them, really. Even after failing to read the details of Wolfgang's condition in his hands, she chooses to keep a hold of them in a light tangle -- she could probably be shaken off rather easily. Her nails are ever blunt, fingers decorated with one hoop of braided silver, wrists long and bare and bony.

"Can I ask why?" --could just be 'why?', but it's not so much about whether Benji thinks she deserves an answer so much as that she isn't sure if Wolfgang will have one.

Edited 2012-08-19 13:11 (UTC)

"They were making me sick."

His constant sleeping, dizziness, nausea, his headaches, sometimes migraines - symptoms that shift depending on what he's taking, but something is always there. He's the first one to get sick with whatever bug is going around and the last one to get well from it. He's put up with it for months, or he must have because he's never been like this before. He's never let anyone see him taking them, although he has a pill splitter on his dresser and there was once an empty bottle in the trash, the label scratched out.

He's not going to mention I think I've been having seizures, it sounds dramatic even if it's true. That's why he hasn't said anything: he doesn't want this much attention.

His fingers twitch, but he doesn't withdraw, his eyes moving from her hands to the floor and nowhere else. "It's fine. I'll be fine. I just - find new ones." Find them.

Mhm isn't doubtful -- in fact, she agrees, that he needs to find new ones. Finally, she withdraws a little, mostly to allow for space now that he's-- actually talking to her some. And also to retrieve her CiD out of her pocket, although doesn't immediately do anything with it, fingers just finding something to do as she considers him.

"I mentioned her before--"

Benji stops, orders her thoughts because people aren't psychic enough to follow tangents, starts again, taking a lean against kitchen counters, ankles crossing. "There's this nice doctor I met when I first came here. I needed to find a specific kind of negation treatment because of my power, I said about it before. They don't, um, have it here really, but they had things like it, and she was--

"Nice. Good, I mean. And she kind of made sure I didn't have to..." What's a good and neat way to say that she offered to doctor Benji off the books? "...do a lot of paperwork. Do you know Madrasati?"

He goes pale, which is a feat considering how pale he was before. The force of his fear - speaking of being psychic enough - is strong enough to literally embed itself in the walls, visions of what he remembers broadcasted on there.

Institutionalization. Experimental surgeries, mutilation. Lobotomization. Actual padded walls, straitjackets. Electric shocks. Later, adolescent wards in sickly hospital beige, orderlies too close at night, isolation rooms, it looks like a prison cell. Being twelve or thirteen, dragged screaming away from her crying parents, injected with something to go to sleep and waking up restrained. A constant, running thread of powerless victimization and most of the people he remembers being are children.

The fact that he knows it isn't like that anymore isn't enough to temper his fear of doctors. He knows, rationally, that it's a job like any other and people do it for money, sometimes out of a genuine desire to help; they're not sadists or mad scientists, they don't kidnap children and brainwash them. And he's not a child, he has the ability to get up and walk away, to say no, to decide who he sees, to sign things on his own behalf.

Knowing this is not enough.

"I can't," he croaks. This is the first time since she's come in that he's looked up longer than a second, and fear is written plainly all over his face.

Edited (I CAUGHT YOU, TYPO, CAN'T ESCAPE) 2012-08-20 01:18 (UTC)

At first sign of magically projected imagery, Benji compulsively glances towards it -- there's been enough haunting-like magic knocking around the corners of the house lately for it to not feel new. The CiD is neglected in her hands, which are still, and it's probably a testament to her particular skillset that she's amazingly unflinching when it comes to watching horror films. Particularly ones that originate from someone's head.

"You can," she insists, gently, looking back at him-- visibly a little tense at magical display and what it means. It's hard to insist that someone you care for do something that scares them. "You could just talk to her, on the phone. Or she could come here. Or I could go with you. I wouldn't let this," a glance to the walls, back to him, "happen to you."

Which is true, and has precedent, but she has her limitations when it comes to sharing her thoughts. Everyone involved is too awake.

There's a long pause, a delay between his reactions like it takes him longer to understand what she's saying. He is obviously trying to pull himself together, the images he's projecting flickering, going away, then coming back, uncertain like he is. He trusts her.

But.

"They'll lock me up." Considering how his last experience being locked up in Baedal went - it's not an unreasonable fear. Then again, he never talks about that, like he never talks about how he has to take mystery pills to keep himself from flipping out and thinking someone implanted things under his skin.

Wolfgang wraps his arms around himself, nails digging into his arms, defensive. He's rationalizing. He has a million excuses why he can't or shouldn't, but the truth is it's just that much easier to be ignorant, to not be validated with no, you're magic but neither be at risk of hearing yes, you're crazy.

Wolfgang has a million excuses as to why he can't or shouldn't. Benji only really has one as to why he can or should, which can come down to a matter of being outnumbered, or sounding repetitive. She worries her bottom lip with teeth as she watches him think and process and finally speak again. Him specifically, too, her interest kept focused off the walls as the images dwindle, fade, re-emerge.

It's quickly becoming clear, though, that sometimes someone can't just help themselves, and that's mental illness, the location of the injury. It isn't easy. Seeing the innerworkings of this in dreaming is a little different than confronted with it in plain reality. It's good, actually, the knowledge that she won't actually let him get to another point of psychotic break -- good in that she can hold onto it. Any other option isn't available.

"She isn't 'they'. She's a woman who could get you the medication you need to function, and nothing more than that. And that's what's going to happen. Madrasati is an independent--thing that wants to help people like you and I, because people like your they exist. Everywhere. I've seen it too, but it won't happen to you now, okay?"

"I'm not xenian." Pause. "I can't afford it." He has a job - of sorts - playing Barbie for Penelope Lane, but the city doesn't pick up his health care tab like it will for most people and he already knows how expensive imported drugs are, he's been struggling to pay for them for almost a year.

A year. Fuck.

But these are excuses and not even very good ones; it's not exactly like he has a lot of choice here, what's he going to do, just not take them anymore, go completely mad? Fuck one of his "friends" for drugs he's not sure will help, hope they don't start wondering why he's asking them for antipsychotics? There's a very real voice in his head saying it's pointless anyway, you're useless, you can't even get out of bed reliably, they should just put you down like a sick dog and he swats around his head like he can make it stop that way, go away.

He starts to pace from one side of the kitchen to the other, chewing his thumbnail down to a stub or else pressing his nails into his skin until he leaves little white indents in his skin. He's sweating, a pale grey colour, and every time he thinks you need to see a doctor his stomach feels like it's about to drop out from under him.

There is a stony kind of silence from Benji for a moment. I'm not xenian. It's weird that it hurts, somehow, completely out of left field and possibly completely irrational, but intense enough for a moment that she simply keeps her mouth shut and sets eye lasers to stun before looking at the floor.

Left over sentiment from another world. It should be left there too, she knows. Also she's the older one here, damnit, even if she feels like Wolfgang has enough wisdom of age that she could fall in if she stares for too long. She clears her throat, and her voice is still gentle, if unyielding, fingertips rapping against the kitchen countertop. "I'm sure she'll accommodate you. I came here with even less than you have now, but I still needed help. I think there are a lot of other things you can't afford either."

Like disappearing into his room for three days and all that that entails. It's a steep price. "Will you at least, please, consider it?"

Wolfgang keeps pacing, grinding his teeth, his tension physically painful.

All his ghosts, his other-selves, the ones playing on the walls like shadow puppets, they're real but not real. He can't get a grip on which is which. It felt real. At the time, it all felt horribly real, and he only knows it wasn't because he woke up and it was gone, nothing in his skin, different voices, no figures standing in the corner and everyone's faces were approximately the way they are (he assumes) supposed to look.

He sits down after a while at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, white-knuckled, staring intensely at the grain of the wood. He is thinking about how fucking hard he had to work to get this after how many times he had the rug swept out from under him entirely, the despair he felt when they let him out and he found he had nothing again, and he knows this is how they get you in Baedal, this is how they make you invested enough to stop caring about leaving and what the Militia is doing to people less fortunate, but - this is his. This almost-stability. It took three years to get here. More than anything, he balks at letting it slip through his fingers.

He looks at her from under his hair, face desperate. "You won't let them take me to the hospital." More question than statement, because he trusts her but the fear is still there.

This premature sense of relief is something Benji struggles to keep out of her expression, because that is only sort of an answer, and people are changeable. Still. She follows him to the table, there, perching at the edge of adjacent chair, her hands at a tangle between her knees. Having simply, silently, watched him think, it's impossible for her to say what goes on in his head now, she has that sense of not knowing if she's done this right, but maybe there isn't a right way to do this at all.

"No, I won't let them," she says, ever barely audible but very serious all the same.

Wolfgang would rather crawl under the back porch and lie down and wait to die there like a sick dog. It's not an option, but a fantasy he entertains for a moment nonetheless.

He runs his hands through his hair, but they get stuck halfway because he hasn't really brushed it and it turns into a poofy bird's nest when he doesn't, and he has to extract them with a wince. He's so tense he looks like he's going to break. Finally, in a low voice, almost defeated: "Okay."

Benji permits herself a smile at that answer, sedate as it is, even if Wolfgang looks like he's about to skitter apart, a wax statue prepared to break beneath the barest hint of pressure. "Okay," she echoes. She's tense herself, and she tips her head as if to rid herself of said tension, from neck, spine, shoulders.

"Do you need anything for now? I'm not sure if you like tea or tolerate it when I make it."

Which is a source of mild amusement, every other time, and translates into her tone now. She isn't sure if he wants to be alone -- or needs to be alone, rather, if her presence is furtherly constructive, or if she should go away and call Dr. Bernàt.

Wolfgang makes the effort to smile - he doesn't quite manage it, but there's that, at least. "I'm fine." His stomach feels like it's in little knots and trying to put something into it probably won't end well. He's pretty sure he's not going to actually be sick, but he's not going to risk it.

Anxious, he wrings his hands painfully, needing something to do with them. He finally settles on trying to put his hair in order. At least he's staying in one place and isn't retreating, hiding again.

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[ closed ] I think something dark's living down in my heart.

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tw: psychiatric abuse, child abuse

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