thisavrou_log | [closed] If I do snap, holy crap

[closed] If I do snap, holy crap

Who: Lara Croft and Ocelot
When: After this.
Where: The Medbay, as is right and proper.
What: Lara's got an obnoxious hallucination and she wants it gone, Ocelot might be able to help with that. Absolutely none of this is a horrible mistake on anyone's part.
Warnings: Discussion of violence and death, violent flashbacks, Shitty Hallucination Sans

She hasn't slept. She recognizes that it's not actually helping the problem at all, but she can't. There's not even a point at attempting it now, the nightmares come the moment she closes her eyes. Not that being awake has kept her free of them. Blood stains the walls and floor of the hall when she turns to fast. Shadows dance in and out of the corner of her vision, a swinging axe, a club, an arrow flying for her throat. She flinches and tenses at nothing, at the slightest sound, waiting for blows that don't come.

The skeleton is almost a comfort. He, at least, is consistent.

He's also the crux of the problem. The rest wavers in and out of focus. Here in a moment, overwhelming and choking her, gone the next, leaving the world coldly normal or hanging over her like a shadow, like a memory. He never leaves.

Aw gee, Lara, he singsongs at her elbow, I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce. Right. So. She was at least partly convinced when she met the man the first time that he was a hallucination. She didn't know if it was a relief or not that Ocelot was a real person. She steps into the medbay and waits for her vision to settle before spotting him and heading his way.

"Ocelot?"

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Ocelot is waiting for her, who will be his first patient aboard this ship. He thinks she must be pretty desperate if she's turning to something as wild as hypnotherapy to work through her demons. If someone is unaccustomed to war, though, the experience is not so easily dealt with or forgotten. Not everyone was made for it. He's not sure about her yet.

"Hello, Lara." When he gets up from where he's sitting, she can see he's not wearing his guns today. That's probably for her benefit. Also, he's wearing his crew uniform, since he's on-duty at the moment. The boots and the spurs, though, as well as the red scarf around his neck, were not left behind, even if he did have to wear the ship's attire for this. Some things he wasn't willing to give up. There was nothing wrong with a little individuality.

He lifts a hand and holds it out to indicate one of the private rooms. He's not going to make her talk about her problems out in the open. "Guess this is what you call the breaking point." She must be at her wits end to be here.

A breaking point sounds... Well, all right, he isn't wrong.

"Something like that," is what she settles on saying, following his gesture into the private room. She's honestly relieved he isn't wearing the guns, she's feeling on edge enough as it is. That the room is close and private is both a blessing and a curse. She ignores it, ignores the derisive chuckle of the imaginary skeleton at her elbow, and looks up at Ocelot. "Right. What do you want to know?"

She's been drifting for too long. Now that she's chosen a course of action, she's determined to see it through at the least. Even if she isn't really sure what it involves.

There's a reclining chair where she can put her feet up, and he gestures for her to take a seat. As if she needed to feel more like a head-case? Well she gets a therapy chair to sit in. Ocelot will take the regular looking chair. This isn't his session. At least he doesn't take notes.

"What's keeping you up at night is a good place to start." He's sure that has everything to do with it. But if he's going to help her, she's going to have to come clean about what happened to her.

She eyes the chair, glances back at him and then gives herself up, sitting lightly in the middle of it. She's going to at least try not to fight this every step of the way. She was the one who called him after all.

She lets out a slow breath at his question, "I suppose saying 'the nightmares,' isn't a very helpful response."

She studies her knees for a moment before looking back up at him, "The short version is... Before I was brought here, I was part of an archaeology expedition. Our ship was destroyed during a storm and we became stranded on an island. The storms there were..." How to explain this without sounding crazy. Well, crazier. "They kept people there. Anyone who came near the island crashed, anyone who tried to escape died in the storms that would spring up out of nowhere. A man, Mathias, had taken control of the survivors that had crashed there before us, turned them into a cult calling themselves the Solarii. They were. Brutal. Anyone who didn't join them was cut down. They killed most of our crew."

The memories for that were still intense. The sounds of gunshots in the night, one of the captive men telling her to run before he was gunned down. "I killed them."

He listens as she explains, watching her eyes and her facial expressions as she tells the story. Clearly, it was a horrifying experience for her. To be tossed into a situation like that so suddenly and with no real training would give any person nightmares.

"It sounds like it was a kill or be killed situation." And if that's true, she at least has good cause for what she did. "But I take it you've never done anything like that before." He sits back in his chair with his hands on the arm rests. "Soldiers are trained so they're mentally prepared when they take a life, but even then, plenty of soldiers are unable to cope with it afterward. Is that what keeps you up at night? Dreaming about the people you killed?" Or maybe there's more to it than that.

She considers his question for a minute.

"It doesn't bother me that I killed them," she begins, slowly, "Maybe it should, I don't know. After what they did--" To Roth, Grim, Sam, to me. "The killing doesn't bother me. The fighting doesn't either. It was terrifying, feeling hunted, being hunted, but I think--" I could do it again. "I dream more about the people I lost there. I was the one who got the expedition going. I was the one who plotted our course that took us into the range of the storms."

"You feel responsible for their deaths. It's the guilt that's eating you up." That's not really an easy fix, and just because he tries to help her with hypnosis, if that's what she wants, it doesn't mean it'll work.

"I'm sure you couldn't have known what would happen there. You shouldn't blame yourself for that." But he thinks this talk would go better with a real psychologist and not someone whose fundamentals of psychology are usually for torturing people.

"What is it you'd like me to do for you?"

I am responsible for their deaths. But she's not here to talk about that. Stick to the practical side of this, if there is one.

"I don't want to. Suppress or forget anything," she says, entierly serious, leaning forward a little. It's important to remember it, all of it. "I can't forget. But if you can stop the hallucinations." She gestures slightly to the room as a whole, the creeping shadows that didn't exist and the bloody skeleton standing in the corner, grinning and waving, "The nightmares, the-the flashbacks or whatever you want to call them. Just long enough so I can sleep."

"I figured you wouldn't make this easy for me." Because suppressing or forgetting those people would be the easiest way to cure her of all of those haunting memories of those who died.

"It's all a product of your post traumatic stress. But it's not like a light switch, you know. You can't remember things when it's convenient for you. I can try, but I don't know how far it'll go to help you until you recognize that you're not responsible for what happened to them and move on with your life. Or you could do the opposite and figure yes, they're dead 'cause of you, but that's just the way it goes sometimes, so they have no reason to trouble your mind about it."

The last may be a little too callous for someone like her. Ocelot accepts that he's killed plenty of people. He sleeps just fine.

It gets him a small twitch of a smile. It would figure that the one friend she's rather certain she could accept she wasn't responsible for would be the one to dog her heels.

"I'm very bad at easy," she admits, thinking for a moment, "All right. I won't be any good to anyone if I start passing out in the halls or screaming at things that aren't there. Do what you need to, whatever it is that will let me sleep."

"I'm glad you put it like that, since sleep will probably be the easy part." Hallucinations she's having while awake will be a lot harder to handle.

"First, you should know, hypnotism isn't something that always takes on the first try. It could take a number of sessions before you see any real effects. For some people, it doesn't even work, though I've done it on some of the toughest customers there are." He's damn good at it.

"If you're prone to dreams, making them stop might be impossible, but we could change the dreams. Train your mind to focus its power on dreams of a different kind. Something enjoyable so you stay asleep. How's that sound?"

She listens attentively, then nods. "That sounds fine." It sounds like something that might actually work, even if she's still a little unsure about the hypnosis aspect of all this. It's a lot of trust to place in someone she doesn't know. Well. Breaking point, like he had said, "What do you need me to do?"

"You can lie back and relax, for starters." If she's able to relax, the process would go forward a little more quickly, though time isn't really a factor. Right now, she's his only patient, and he's surprised he has even one.

"You have a preference for this substitute dream? A place? People you'd like to dream about? It can be about something real or something imaginary. You could sit on a beach or spend a night with your favorite movie star. Skies sort of the limit when it comes to dreams."

She lies back at least, relaxes as much as she can. She hasn't really relaxed without the help of mind altering sweets since she got to the ship, but she at least makes an effort.

"Roth..." She hesitates. There's not really any point in hesitating around someone who's about to go digging around in her head. "He was a bit like a father to me. He died on the island. It would be nice to see him again when he wasn't dying."

"Alright, we'll work with that." He touches a control panel on a nearby table and the lights dim to make things a little more relaxing. She'll need to be in practically a sleep-like state for the hypnosis to work.

"Just close your eyes, Lara. Imagine a time when you and Roth were together. A time when you were happy. Visualize it in your mind. Relax your body, take slow, deep breathes. In and out." His voice is deep and strangely calming. He's done this to plenty of people before. Sometimes voluntarily and sometimes against their will. He's even done it to himself, which is not easy to do.

It's almost a fight to get herself to lay back, to will her body to not go immediately tense.

Picturing Roth isn't hard. She's dreamed of him enough the past few months. It takes a little bit of digging before she finds the one she wants. Roth, smiling and laugh, helping adjust her pack. She's much smaller in this memory. Maybe 13? Not long after her father's death. He'd taken her hiking, easing her out of the black grief she had been caught in. Never mind that now either. Never mind the specter of the skeleton crouched close to her head, whispering in her ear, every graphic detail of Roth's death.

She divides her attention between Ocelot's voice and the memory of Roth's smile and breathes. In and out, in and out. The tension eases out of her very, very slowly.

"It's a long hike up the mountain, Lara." Roth's voice, clear as a bell. Full of warmth as he adjusts her pack for the trail ahead of them. "Let me know if you get tired." He doesn't want to push her too hard, but he knows this trip is good for her. Conquering a mountain is sometimes the best way to conquer other demons.

The air is crisp. The trees are green. The birds are singing, and Roth walks ahead and looks behind to her, waving a hand for her to follow. "Let's try and get as far as we can before sunset."

It's a good memory. She can spend her nights walking the path with him if she can manage to hold onto it. The deeper she lets herself sink into the hypnosis, the stronger the vision becomes and the less she might hear the other voices in her head.

It's a slow process... But so was the hike. She follows Roth, careful not to lag too far behind. She knows he adjusts his pace so that it's easier for her, but neither of them say anything about it. She's young, weak from the months indoors, mourning. She'll be stronger.

The trick is to keep moving.

Behind them is the flicker of wild fire, gunshots echoing faintly in the distance. Roth turns back to watch her climb over a large log that had fallen across the path, holding out a hand to help her down. Just keep moving.

On the couch, Lara's body finally loses the last of what had for weeks been a nearly constant tension, her breathing deeping and slowing.

Ocelot nods and sits back in his chair, allowing her that time to rest and experience the dream as Roth guides her up the path. He helps her when needed, but he seems to know just when she can manage to do it herself is she pushes herself hard enough.

The sounds of gunfire become more distant, almost as if that was the dream and this was reality. Ocelot knows that sometimes, they'd all prefer to live in a dream and make it reality over the lives they actually lead.

In the dream, sometimes Ocelot is seen sitting on a log or leaning against a tree, but he's almost like a phantom and not something she'll really even notice, watching her and her interaction with Roth.

It's a good hike, it's always good when she's with Roth. There are times when he seems unsure of what to do with someone so small and young, but Lara is a good student, intensely curious and eager to learn. She listens attentively to his instructions; conserving her energy, mindful of the paths he points out to her and noting the plants he points out to her, both useful and poisonous.

There is something pulling at the back of her mind. Something... off. The occasional glimpse of bright red in her peripheral vision, there and gone in a moment when she turns to look. Just the absence of her father, surely, just the last remnants of grief. The shock of finding him sprawled over on his desk, blood dripping to the floor from the hole in his head. The straps of the pack dig into her shoulders, keeping her grounded. Loss is something that happens to you. Sacrifice is--

She frowns, stopping on the path for a moment as Roth's voice... It is and it isn't Roth. Not the Roth jumping down from a slight ledge in the trail. Not the one who's looking back at her, calling for her to keep up. Holding out his arms to her with a slight smile. He'll catch her if she jumps, help her up if she falls, he always keeps her safe--

A hand, large and heavy, grabs the back of her neck, hauling her back. You think you can get away so easily? The voice is deep and heavily accented, not a voice she ever wanted to hear, but there's a gun on the ground, just out of reach. She lunges for it, blood in her mouth and she doesn't know if it's his or hers, doesn't matter. The man follows her, landing heavy enough to nearly knock the wind out of her, to reopen the wound in her stomach, reaching for the gun, for her throat. The gun goes off, close to her face, but she scrambles upright and looks around. There was-- There's a path. There's a path, if she can find it, if she can use what Roth taught her. She doesn't have to stay here.

Ocelot can tell when her sleep turns restless. He can see it in the tensing of her muscles and the twitch of her brow. He speaks to her, though his words are not really audible where she is. Only her subconscious mind is aware of his voice, guiding her back to the path, making it more obvious how she can find Roth and continue on her journey with him.

Like he said, one session won't really do it. She might resist it or have other interruptions like the one she just experienced, but Ocelot will try and cut those off at the pass whenever possible. It's a tricky thing, manipulating the mind into seeing and believing something else. He's as much of an expert as one will ever find when it comes to hypnosis, but one can never predict how the mind will respond.

The tension doesn't leave her completely, but the pull of his voice does the trick. She walks forward, up the path. She can see where it leads, see where the undergrowth has been trampled or bent by someone passing through. She knows, impossibly, that it's where she needs to go.

The world shifts, the ground crumbles underfoot and she falls, feet sliding in mud and loose dirt when she lands, sending her tumbling down an incline. The pain when she hits the bottom is nothing but a phantom, a memory too strong to shrug off. Lara staggers to her feet, knees giving slightly. You can do this, Lara.

Roth's voice, from somewhere ahead of her, at the top of the cliff. She thinks she can see him up there, his bandanna red against the grey sky (he never wore-- not that color-- doesn't matter). The grip of the climbing axe, the one he had handed her, is well worn and familiar and she digs it into the soft, crumbling rock of the cliff face and begins to climb.

The memory may not be perfect in her dream, but Ocelot doesn't really want it to be perfect, either. He wants it to be something she can hold on to as positive. A dream that will make her a little stronger every time she has it.

And Roth isn't a perfect recreation, either. Things are perhaps a little off about him that in a dreaming state could be easily dismissed. That red scarf, for instance, that he wears. It's like the man's who is performing the hypnotism on her. You can trust that man, Lara. The one with the red scarf that reminds you of Roth. A little extra hypnotic suggestion never hurts. Lara could be useful to Ocelot, after all. Whether her mind accepts the suggestion remains to be known, but it's there, hinted at now and again as she reaches the end of her journey.

Roth's hand reaches down for her, but only if she needs it. Otherwise, he'll let her conquer this mountain on her own and congratulate her warmly when she reaches the top.

It's a strange little flutter, but one she doesn't pay any mind to when she reaches the top and lets Roth pull her into a warm hug. This is good. This is what she's missed, more than anything.

It's almost not a surprise when it's ripped away from her, large armored hands yanking Roth out of her arms, a large blade more like a hammer than a sword smashing down on him. She screams or she thinks she screams, she can't tell, can't scramble out of the path of the blade or the hand that wraps around her throat. Strangely small and delicate, soft and withered and impossibly strong. She tries to jerk away and the momentum nearly sends her back over the cliff edge, but the impossible small, strong hand holds her, closes around her windpipe, constricting her air.

The woman is beautiful. Face serene and resplendent in red and gold robes. Lara knows her, knows her down to her bone even if she's never seen her like this. Himiko.

You won't leave me so easily.

The words register as a faint whisper. Lara gasps and fights the grip on her, teeth bared in a snarl and finally Himiko's iron grip slackens. Lara falls. Far, far below, waves crash on rocks.

"No-!" Lara jolts upright from the couch. The room is still and dark. The island and the sea is thousands of millions of miles away. She took a careful breath, adrenaline and the desire to move, to fight thrumming under her skin like an itch.

It all happens too fast for Ocelot to stop it this time. His words are unable to tear Lara away from the nightmare, and he can't direct the hypnotic illusion into another direction before she breaks from the session and bolts upright. Ocelot is still sitting calmly in his chair when she notices his presence in the room with her.

"You were down for a couple of hours. That's pretty good for a first session."

The cowboy reaches over for a pitcher of water and pours a glass, then offers it to her. She looks like she could use it. "How do you feel?" Although the dream turned dark, she probably got some rest during the process. Who knows, it might be the longest she's slept before waking up like that in awhile.

"Was it," she says a little faintly.

Her mind is racing, even as she takes the glass of water, sipping from it slowly and giving herself time to think before she responds.

"I'm not sure yet," she begins, weighing her words, "It's like I've found an answer to something." Himiko's fingers at her throat and her hand lifts to touch, disoriented when there's no familiar twinge of pain. "But it might be impossible." Might. She straightens her back slowly, rolling her shoulders, "But. That was the first bit of sleep I've gotten in a while. So that was rather nice, specters trying to kill me notwithstanding."

Ocelot takes his seat again once she's got the glass of water and looks to her. "Like I said, one session can't suppress those dreams for good. It could take awhile. You're welcome here any time you want, though." If she thinks it would help. He's not going to insist or force her into it. Normally he doesn't do this to help people, but instead as some objective of his mission.

"If it helped a little, though, then that's good." Especially if she hasn't been able to sleep that much in awhile.

She nods, "I'll remember that."

There is something bothering her, something slightly off, but she can't quite put her finger on it. She trusts Ocelot (and something about that...) to tell her if there had truly been anything out of the ordinary. She finishes the glass of water and stands, setting it on the desk and holding her hand out to him.

"Thank you. I know this was rather sudden, but I appreciate your help."

"It's no trouble. Kinda nice to actually be doin' something around here." Usually this job is pretty dull since no one comes to see him.

"If you want another session, stop by anytime." Like he said, the one instance of hypnotism won't cure all her problems, but after talking to Miller... maybe she won't be back.

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[closed] If I do snap, holy crap

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lmk if this is alright

it's all good!

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