text/action. we aaaall are living in a dreaaam but life ain't what it seeems

[collegedropout]

Who: Sam Winchester
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Red Fish / Iskaulit Bar
When: November 2nd (or somewhere abouts, if you need a different day)

Warnings: post might deal with mental illness-related talk, potential darker themes like conversations regarding non-consensual icky hallucinations, memory/mention of torture, etc. It's possible that it'll be a pretty light post and none of this comes up depending on how threads go, but I wanted to put out a blanket warning in case I forget. This is a heavier post from Sam! No happy augment glitches today or alien chicks with pancakes, sorry buddies. :(

[ACTION]

Sometimes augment updates happen in pretty unextraordinary ways. Sam laid down to sleep on the 30th, and woke up the 31st to find that he had a vast array of new memories and scars — but not quite so simple. He remembers being bound by his ankles and wrists to the chair in a sodden, dark basement. He remembers the hallucinations, vivid and painful. He remembers the knife cutting skin, the smell of his own flesh seared by a blowtorch. When he wakes up on the ship, he does so disoriented and pale with shock, sweat drenching his pillow.

It almost all feels like a dream.

Almost.

The image of Toni Bevell feels impossible to scrub from his mind. But this... This place — the fleet... he hasn't seen it in many months. It's as he remembers, but with the augment update, there's a sensation of falseness. Is this even real? How is he supposed to know? Not too long ago, he had wholeheartedly believed that he and Toni were lovers, confidants, not at all strangers, and certainly not one being a torturer. He had put so much faith in that hallucination — and it had felt so vivid — that there was a horrible shame and disgust and emptiness when he realizes he'd been played like a golden fiddle.

Toni had just smiled, proud of her savagery.

And here lies Sam's great dilemma: he doesn't trust any of this.

Sure, his foot is scarred, and he's got freshly pink and shiny marks where he'd been shot, sliced. But there's a strange emptiness he feels when he gets out of bed, showers, and redresses for the day. It's Halloween. Strange. He checks the roster on the ship. There's someone named Carl. He remembers noting their arrival before and making a note to meet with them properly; a kid, right? Right. He puts on a smile and goes to work at the bar aboard the Iskaulit, but everything feels robotic in gesture, like he's just going through the motions. He's a decent actor, but this augment shift is really making him misstep. 

Dean's dead, Sam's alone, he's in a basement, she wants information.

Is he even really here?

Would he even remember the basement, if this were just another hallucination? His mind is working in circles, trying to figure it out. What's he told her? What does he not remember? What has she tricked out of him? He has to be careful. He has to keep his mouth shut about anything she'd want to know. Just... go through the motions. She'd said his brain'd melt, if she did the mind tricks too often. Maybe it will. Or maybe it already is. He sure has a headache.

It doesn't help that the echoes that plagued him before his update persist even still. Images full of glamour, wrapped around many people he's come to know. He hasn't felt this uneasy from his own mind since the expulsion of Gadreel. Swallowing hard, he turns on anonymity and tries to make sense of it all at last, days later, on the 2nd of November.

The day Mom and Jessica had died. Go figure, right?



[ANONYMOUS TEXT | ENCRYPTED 60%]



Has anyone woken up here and felt like — nothing's really... real?

Like you're going to wake up and find yourself somewhere worst, and that it's all just a cruel trick someone's playing on you?

I've just been having a hard time... accepting, I guess.

And if this is another trick and the person doing it is listening —

Go fuck yourself.

Comments

anonymous text »

[steeledskin]

I fear it nearly every day.

[ and certainly every night. ]

anonymous text »

[collegedropout]

[Here be Sam, his overwhelmingly nosy sympathy panging in his chest as always.

It's hard not to feel for people who have felt like this. It's one of the worst feelings in the world. In the universe.]

Difficult life back home, right?

How do you handle that, here? That feeling?

anonymous text »

[steeledskin]

I meditate. [ she's only started in on this mechanism since living in the fleet. ] When I start to fear what I've left behind, I try to sweep it to the back of my thoughts.

anonymous text »

[collegedropout]

I... admittedly haven't tried that yet.

It's effective?

action, red fish;;

[recipio]

[ He's only been on the Red Fish, and so far, he's only managed to talk to a couple of his crew mates. Not that he's in any big hurry to meet them. Sure, he can adjust faster than most people, but he can't shake the uneasiness, especially with Maggie still stuck on the Marsiva.

Mostly, he stays to his room except to wander and refuel.

One of those times he does happen to be out, he rounds the corner and almost runs into Sam. God, he's tall. Carl hadn't even heard him coming. He reels back a few steps. ]

Shit, sorry. [ Hmm. Not someone he recognizes, so probably part of the crew. It's early enough there probably aren't visitors? ]

Are you part of the crew?

action, red fish;;

[collegedropout]

[Hey shorty.

No, but Sam is startled only a bit from his near-collision with Carl. To be honest, he would have probably startled before his new memories, too — hunter instinct, and all — but it's a bit harder to mask when you're suspicious of the whole world around you.

He smiles apologetically, perhaps a bit strained, eyebrows furrowing.]

Ah, sorry, shouldn't be blocking the halls.

I'm Sam — communications here. [He offers Carl a hand to shake.] You're Carl, right? New guy here on the Red Fish? Sorry about getting stuck in space.

action, red fish;;

[recipio]

[ It's okay, Sam. He's still a little on edge, too. Zombie apocalypse and all. At least he doesn't have to worry about demons.. Blocking the halls, what?

Carl looks quickly from Sam's hand to his face and back, taking his hand and giving it a shake. ]

Yeah, that's me. I'm maintenance. [ He shrugs a shoulder. There's not really anything anybody can do about being stuck in this place, right? If there were a way to get out, he'd want to hear about it. ]

I mean, you didn't do it. It's not the worst place I've been, at least?

action, red fish;;

[collegedropout]

Congrats on the maintenance gig.

[But he's hardly being serious. He smiles softly, and — god, he's still not sure what is even happening in his life right now. It's all kind of a blur, and his smile doesn't necessarily reach his eyes, because... is he even really here? Is any of this substantial? Does it matter? He couldn't afford to assume either way.]

I can relate. A little relief that this place isn't worse is a healthier outlook than being depressed about it, right?

Action; that bar we work at

[namisan]

[The whole on-automatic robot!Sam hasn't exactly gone unnoticed, though Nami thinks that this has been building for weeks, not days. He's been twitchy since Dean left, and that's what she put it down to. At first.

She's uncharacteristically quiet at the bar while they're sharing a late shift, divided between serving customers and just kind of. Taking a closer look, frowning when she thinks he's not watching. The great observation of Sam Winchester. And while she's completely wrong about the source of everything that's bothering him right now, what Nami thinks is that a) she's concerned, b) surely if this was a reaction to Dean he'd be getting a little better by now, and c) this descent into a cheerful, slightly mechanical Sam whose smiles no longer meet his eyes just reads as...

Well, see point a).

End of the night, she dries the last of the glasses before draping her towel across one shoulder, and... completely undoing her hard work by upturning two glasses again and going for the hard liquor.]

Drink?

[Mildly. She's gonna pour you one anyway.]

Action; bar what bar

[collegedropout]

[It's hard to look at Nami and expect the worst, for Sam. He trusts her, of course he does, but that all depends on if this is actually her and not someone wearing her skin, right? He stays polite, stays joking, but it feels more like someone going through the motions to get out of the situation more than anything. He hates feeling like this; he hates being uncertain. And if it is Nami, he doesn't want to treat her like a friggin' alien. It's a hard balancing act, one he knows he's gonna lose eventually. Either Nami, perseptive as she is, is gonna notice, or... or Toni'll figure out another scheme.

When she pours a glass, Sam's stomach lurches immediately. Memories of smooth red liquid in a wine glass sloshing in a circle curb any desire to accept the drink. No, he doesn't wanna think about where any of this could end up. He's not going to give her a single penny's worth of information. Not a drop.

He smiles a little, cleaning his own glass religiously.]

No thanks; I'm practicing abstinence.

[namisan]

[Well, now she has to drink both of these herself, gosh. She leaves one there for him anyway, mind, in case he changes his mind, and plonks herself down on a stool with her own drink, watching him with a deceptively lazy look.]

Any particular reason why?

[collegedropout]

[His eyes only occasionally drift to the sharp-toothed creature grinning down between them — it'll only be worse if he gives hallucinations the time of day, right? Right. It's things like Arlong that make him wonder what's a trick and what's not. Maybe Toni was right, though. Maybe she's using her witchcraft again and it's actually melting his fucking mind. Would that be a shock? Would she settle for killing him now?

The corners of his eyes crinkle, but it feels more like a wince, like they're steeling for something terrible.]

Have you seen my family? We —

[Information. Information, Sam. He shakes his head a bit.]

Cutting back seems like a good idea, anyway.

[Says the guy who doesn't exactly drink like a fish, but still.]

text

[goodandtrue]

Often and daily.

There are many things that seem to be contrived to hurt us in the end. People, opportunities. I wonder how long until it is all ripped away?

[collegedropout]

[Oh, it's you; he sighs softly, only slightly guilty that he's hidden under the veil of anonymity while others aren't. But he has to remind himself that it's not like he's making people respond, right? Right. It's all fine. It's fine, Sam.

That is, if everyone's even really here? God, he doesn't know.]

Yeah. I wish I knew. It's kind of rude to think maybe nobody here is real, y'know? If I could sort my head out, it'd make life a hell of a lot easier.

[goodandtrue]

[It seems rather pointless to hide behind anonymity. Why bother hiding what so many others already seemed to know? It was nice at least to find someone (even if she didn't know who he was) that was struggling as well. She hoped that having a face to a like minded person would be a comfort to whoever this was as well.]

Why do you think that no one here is real? What has happened?

[collegedropout]

[Well... he supposes he's alright with saying enough.

Being faceless has some perks.]

I was being tortured, for information.

They were using hallucinogenics when nothing else had worked, to try to make me think I wasn't captured. To make me see I was somewhere else other than there. To make things normal in my mind, so I would speak freely.

text

[poisoninmypocket]

[Well, that's...]

I beg your pardon, but are you from the Fortress Between. This is Navarro, if so. There are a few of us here.

[collegedropout]

[Your anonymous friend is super confused bruh.

But he can understand where this is coming from. You never know when you find a friend from home.]

Sorry... It doesn't ring a bell.

What's your situation, if mine sounded familiar?

[poisoninmypocket]

[That's mildly disappointing, anonymous bro. Still, Monty pulls himself up from that and focuses on the matter at hand. There are other people like them here, even if they weren't in the same place.]

We were told the universe came to an end. Every universe save the one I fell to for more than a year and a half. A great cataclysm had destroyed everything a decade ago. Our lives beyond that had been nothing but the dreams of powerful creatures called Hedonists.

We've been pulled into false realities before by forces far beyond our own abilities. Whole worlds stitched together to fool us into believing we were somewhere beyond the wastes.

I fear ever since I've woken here, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were--for reality to crumble once more.

[He's watched a fake reality and all of the people in it distort and crack around him, bro. It's mildly traumatizing.]

text;

[aigue]

What brought this on?

text;

[collegedropout]

[Mr. Anonymous sighs on his end. Lady, it'd take a million hours to explain in its entirety.

But we can do short summaries, cool.]

Someone is tricking me back home. If I'm not already there.

Causing hallucinations, making me think — that things that aren't reality are.

Re: text;

[aigue]

[It's a good summary, at least. Gives her a lot to work with.]

That's unlucky for you
Existential crisis is always difficult
The senses are so fragile, it doesn't take much to mess with them
I believe there was even a philosopher or two who said we can only experience reality through our limited senses
Take those away and you're screwed

anonymous text.

[paraclete]

It's the opposite for me. I fear, at times, how real this may be.

But acceptance isn't easy. Wariness is natural, especially if you've been harmed before. It's good that you fear for your safety. But don't let this consume you to the point it endangers your heart instead of protecting it.

anonymous text.

[collegedropout]

I wish it were easy.

People are relying on me, not to give in to these tricks. If I give away any information here that could be useful... Well. It's better to just not accept it and not risk the safety of others, is what I can definitely say.

[Even if it endangers his heart.

He doesn't care about what happens to him anymore. Not that it was ever healthy for him before, but he'd been doing relatively well, in the fleet, and in the world before the fleet. Back home, though... He feels a little hopeless. Hasn't even had a chance to grieve his brother properly. Who cares about his stupid heart, man.]

anonymous text.

[paraclete]

So you posit yourself as less worthy of safety than these other people.