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

[namisan]

[There's a small frustrated huff of air-- fuck it. It's not fair that either of them have to second guess how much she can actually just, y'know, be there for a friend. This time her fingers do latch onto his, curling around them to give warmth. She'd really prefer to hug him, but how much would that creep him out if he's not sure?]

I'm very real. You can't fabricate me, I'm one of a kind. [Which is bravado, but she says it like she's challenging Sam's mystery woman to prove her wrong.] And you shouldn't be alone with this. But you navigate, Sam. I'll back off when you need me to, all right? I could-- sit here and try and distract you by telling you all kinds of stupid stuff if you want.

[collegedropout]

[He snorts, squeezing her hand back tightly.]

... Well, you're right. If she's trying to pull a fast one on me all over again, she picked the wrong lady to try and charm me. [Sam smiles a bit, and it's difficult, but — But Nami's right. One of a kind. There's nothing she'll get from him this way.] Thank you.

[namisan]

The way you say that it's almost like you think I'm not charming. So rude. [But given the mild voice and crooked smile, she's just joking.

It fades after a moment.]

I'm sorry, Sam.

[About more than Dean. But mostly Dean.]

[collegedropout]

[Apologizing.

He can't even drag up a smile.

Instead he clasps her hand between his and bows his head against their hands like it's supporting him, trying to keep everything together. Apologizing, because his life is fucked up, sure. But also, it sounds like condolences, and he hasn't allowed himself to think it's over. Winchester's don't really have funerals, not like normal people. Jess had a normal one, and it wasn't a beautiful one, not like older folks who've lived a long life. There is a deep, ugly wound on the death of someone young. Dean, was he young? It's hard to tell anymore.

Sam certainly isn't young, no matter how many elders look at him like he's a fresh-faced kid.

He feels really fucking old, right now.

Apologies are few and far between, and this one hurts a lot more than he thought.

Please be real.

His chin trembles.]

... I know.

[He's sorry for a lot of stuff, himself.]

[namisan]

[The chin trembling tips it over the line. She's trying to give space, he's not sure she is who she is-- and here he is curling around their hands like it's the last piece of life left to the world. She can't just play it safe.

Deep down, she thinks, Sam will know it's her. Once his nerves and his mind settle, reorient themselves. No questions. No questions, she can certainly do. It doesn't take any kind of words at all to scoot around the table, extricating one of her hands gently, letting it rest on his for just a moment before she curls a warm arm around his neck instead.

If he stiffens and throws her off, well. She won't take offence. Just this once. But if you're going to curl inward like that, Sam, it's... more comfortable, maybe, more warm, to have a shoulder to curl against instead.

It's all she can do.]

[collegedropout]

[It's too much, enough that he gives up and lets go of the immediate repulsion, of the desire to run far, far away and lock himself away from friends, family, everyone. If this is Toni, she's not going to get an ounce of information about the hunters from him — but he's given up trying to piece it together. This is Nami. It's got to be, and if it's not, he's lost enough to pretend it is.

It's Nami, though. Right? It has to be. It sounds like her, it smells like her, and when she hugs him, it's just the way Nami would hug. It's got to be. It can't be Toni, it can't be all a big lie to loosen up his facts. He wraps his arms around her and buries his face, sniffling, trying not to let himself fall apart completely. Toni would want that, and even if he's grieving and it's not for her, he can't bear the thought.

But it's hard, so hard. And if some tears slip through to dampen Nami's shirt, he hopes she won't point them out — laugh and break the illusion, send him tailspinning back into that damp, dark basement. Please.]

I'm — sorry.

[It's croaked and small, muffled.]

M'just tired, I'm sorry, I'm just — tired. I'll — adapt. I will.

[namisan]

Don't be sorry. And don't try and reassure me, Sam. Your brother is dead. [She says it deliberately and quietly, and it feels like all four words are like taking a knife in her hands and carving it deep. But. Her grip tightens, hand carding briefly through his hair.

It's also the truth.]

You don't have to adapt, or not be tired. Nobody has a right to demand that of you. You do whatever you have to. We'll deal.

[It's okay to not be okay. Anyone who says otherwise'll get kicked through a wall if need be.]

[collegedropout]

[He nods, and there seems to be a sag in his shoulders he hadn't had before — before he admitted what happened back home. Before, he'd been all hard angles and stiff shoulders, and now he's at least relaxed into something more forgiving, more vulnerable. He nods into her shirt.]

I know. We always do.

[It's something Dean would say. He's so worried about him. Being dead, it's one thing. Being... wherever, alone, that's another. And could he really afford to let his brother down again? It tears at him every moment, and sometimes he just wants to scream and throw something, break something. But he's not Dean; he lets it all fester, build up until he's an emotional grenade.]

I just... want to work.

[But.

He's really in no shape to today, and he knows it.

Any customer coming in to this would hardly want a beer.]

[namisan]

If you want to work, work. I won't tell you not to come in. [Because she knows Sam. Days it's been where he's come in with that guarded look and mechanical going through the motions-- a night of sleep and she suspects he'll return for his next shift doing much the same.

Unless this conversation changes things. But there are ways around that.] If you don't feel up to serving drinks, Vash or Remy could always trade in kitchen duties. And if you'd really rather not work at all and just... take some time, just message me.

Although-- [Her smile crooks a little.] Do it too often and I'll probably have to come loom in your doorway or something.

[She can give him space, but there's such a thing as too much of it, y'know?]

You told anyone on your ship about Dean?

[She figures the answer to that is no.]

[collegedropout]

[And as she figured, he shakes his head.]

Not really, um... used to unloading on them. I don't usually talk about that kind of stuff.

[Not with most, mostly just you, Nami. 3:)]

It's just easier to keep quiet, I guess.

[namisan]

[I'm honoured, Sam, but that is unhealthy :||

...said the hypocrite. She pulls back, studying him with a frown on her face. It's really hard to work out what to do when your conversation partner thinks you might be an illusory trap, you know.]

I think you should, but that's not my call to make.

Go rest up. If you want it, there's spare bunks on the Bloodsport. [In case he'd prefer to be in the vague vicinity of someone who at least knows what's going on. Sometimes it helps.] Otherwise you know how to get me if you need me.

[collegedropout]

[He nods. Staying on the Bloodsport a little seems nice. Seems quieter.

He sure wouldn't have to focus on the place Dean had been, just months before.]

Rest sounds good.

I'm - [He swallows his 'sorry'. He knows Nami would hate it. He rubs at his eyes again, composing himself entirely, even if his head throbs from the effort of baring his soul, or whatever.]

I know how to get you. Just jingle some credits, right?

[namisan]

[A soft snort.] You know me so well.

[If she had tissues on hand this'd be the time she'd push them on him like a worried aunt or something. She'll settle for squeezing his shoulder.] Go. I'll finish up here.