In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet, for just a moment, a yellow sky...

[wolfishflame]

Characters: Aly Haskell and Devin Parker
Date: April 7
Location: The roof of the Dreaming Bridge
Situation: Aly's absolutely losing it. Continued from here.
Warnings/Rating: PTSD, maybe?

The words are unclear at first, because she's mumbling into Devin's shoulder. She doesn't deserve this, because she's screwed up so badly that it's all going to fall to pieces around her. It's all going to collapse, and it's her fault. She could have done so much to prevent it, but looking back won't change anything.

Nothing will change anything.

Ever.

"It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault. I screwed up. It's my fault, I didn't...it's my fault."

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[wolfishflame]

At the mention of food, Aly gags, practically dry-heaving. She can taste the blood, still, hot and sticky on her tongue, filling her mouth, each stolen bite of the heart she'd taken chewy and tough, the sensation of it sliding down her throat suddenly as fresh as though she'd just swallowed it.

"No," she gasped once she'd gotten control of herself. "No food. Not for. Not for a while." No water, even. That wouldn't help.

She lets him guide her to the stairs and down them, still shell-shocked. It had happened. It had really happened, she hadn't been able to predict it or stop it, and it had been her fault.

[annihilist]

"Easy," he soothes, pausing for a moment when she gags. Aly like this really is like looking into a mirror. Just like sleep, though, Aly is going to need to eat something sooner than she'd like to - perhaps much sooner, even if he can only convince her to have something small. Her stomach will not appreciate being empty for any significant length of time. Devin sympathizes with revulsion even as he's adding that to the list of things to strategize helping her overcome. Worst comes to worst, he'll take her to a hospital and get her some anti-emetics at the very least.

"Anything else, though? Favorite music or books?" Devin swears this is relevant. If Aly reacts so similarly to trauma as he does, perhaps some of his coping tactics will work well for her, too. "Something familiar helps; repetition helps. For me, anyway," he elaborates more quietly as they descend. He remembers where her room is and takes them there at Aly's pace.

[wolfishflame]

"I have my phone, I have something I could listen to." She laughs a little, and it's less bitter than it could be. "Kinda wish I had podcasts. Listen to someone else talk for a while about something that isn't this."

Distraction techniques. If she was still on the plane, she had plenty; she had her 3DS, and books, and music to listen to...but here, she doesn't have much.

[annihilist]

Devin hums, acknowledging and understanding. Wishing for it will not make them any less alike; at least it allows him to be here for her in a way he has so rarely been able to be for others. He goes quiet then until they reach her room, contemplating an idea, turning it over in his head carefully. Assessing his gut reaction rather than ignoring it.

In some ways, what he's about to say is as personal and vulnerable for Devin as the passenger Aly discovered. This time, it's offered willingly.

"I cannot claim to be as entertaining as a podcast," he begins, reaching to open her door and usher her inside, peering around for roommates, "but if you would like, I can read to you." Pause. "There's one I have memorized, for occasions like this." Dryly: "A bit dense, maybe, for your tastes."

Though maybe that would help her sleep, and he's not inclined to go snag anything more entertaining from the lounge until he's sure Aly's more stable.

I Hate How Late This Tag Is

[wolfishflame]

Aly snorts. "Are you mocking me?" Dense? Is he calling her dense? Granted, she's a little prickly at the moment. But she'd appreciate the distraction all the same.

The room's empty. It usually is, these days. People are disappearing left and right, the Dreaming claiming its own.

"Okay," she says. "Hit me." Then she pauses. "Literally, if you want." While she's prickly and sad, she's also spoiling for a fight. She wants to cry and scream and punch and she knows that Devin won't indulge that last one.

[annihilist]

"The book is dense." Aly can be incredibly obstinate but she's sharp; he'll never deny that. "I can always grab something more entertaining from the lounge library."

Devin sets the bag he brought on one of the unused beds. It's a good thing, he thinks, that her room is empty tonight. She needs space and privacy to process, or to melt down, or both. Or to fight, apparently, and Devin arches an eyebrow at her request-slash-suggestion. He will absolutely not be initiating any fighting, though if she comes at him he can make a reasonable impression of a punching bag.

"Start with a change of clothes." He gestures to the bathroom. "And if not a shower, at least try a washcloth on your neck and face. It'll help."

[wolfishflame]

"What's the book?" She's not going to reject it out of hand. Something she can focus deeply on might help.

The suggestion of a change of clothes is something that briefly angers her - you don't understand - but she knows his advice is good. And some part of her, the very small part that's thinking clearly, knows that she needs the advice. So she grunts and gathers up a change of clothes off her bed with her unbloodied forearms and hustles into the bathroom.

Once she closes the door, she stares at her bloodied hands. Will the blood come off? Should she be more worried if it doesn't, or if it does?

Aly turns on the faucet with her wrist and, after a moment's hesitation, puts her shaking hands under the water.

The choked wail she lets out as the water runs pink down the drain would be audible to Devin even without his vampire hearing.

[annihilist]

"T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets." If she's interested, Aly will be the second person here that he's shared it with to bring some order into chaos, though he's not sure how much it'll help here. It had worked well with X because he'd just read Devin's universe, and so had the value of the book etched into Devin's memories.

The vampire props himself against an empty stretch of wall, glad that Aly is taking his advice on this point. He imagines that each step of this process is going to be one level of difficult or another; the fewer she fights him on, the more he can assist (but the faster she may unravel). It is going to be a long night.

The sound he hears through the door has Devin pushing off the wall immediately and approaching the bathroom. This part of the process, the emotional blowback, is where he is least experienced. He recognizes the feeling behind that sound, though, even if he's never properly learned how to deal with it himself. "Aly?" Devin flounders over what to say for a moment. "You're not going to have to deal with this alone. All you have to do right now is breathe."

Breathe, and try not to drown in the sorrow and guilt and anger.

[wolfishflame]

Aly's bent over the sink when he comes in. Her hands are washed clean of the blood - mostly. There's still crust where it had dried around the edges, and there's some under her fingernails. She's shaking, and tears are making tracks down her face, mingling with the blood around her mouth and chin.

"I can't let it come off," she whispers. "I need to...this needs to be a reminder of what I did, because if I let it come off, I'll forget how I failed!" The last word upscales to a scream.

[annihilist]

It couldn't be more obvious to Devin that there is no way in nine hells that Aly will forget this, but telling her so isn't going to sink in right now. He knows the look of a turning point in someone's life. Those moments remain keen at the edges with whatever emotions carved them, remain crystalline in the memory longer than anything else.

Gently, slowly, Devin takes Aly by the shoulders and tries to coax her back, away from the sink and onto the edge of the tub. Kneeling in front of her, Devin holds her hands firmly in his for a moment. "Your hands are not so dirty as to be full of ruin."

If he lets her, he'll grab a washcloth and soak it, and begin cleaning what remains of the blood on her fingers. As he does so, he murmurs softly and steadily from Eliot's poems: "Time present and time past, are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable…" And he'll keep going while he works, the words for Aly as much as himself this time.

[wolfishflame]

She almost snaps at him that he doesn't know what ruin her hands have wrought, but she falls silent as he recites the poem while scrubbing her hands. She recognizes the general tone, but not the specific words themselves.

"What's that?" she says after a moment, quietly, hoarsely. Her anger is running out and transmuting into lead, a feeling like nothing that might be worse than her screaming hate and guilt.

[annihilist]

"Four Quartets," Devin answers simply, standing briefly to rinse out the cloth before resuming cleaning off Aly's fingers. He'll see if he can find a nail kit, if she'll let him go so far as to use it to scrape away the last remnants of blood. Later, when he's a little surer of her mental state. If he can be sure; they may react similarly to some things, but they are different enough that Devin has to be careful not to lend her his worst habits.

"I find repetition helps," he says without context at first, wondering how best to explain. After a few seconds, Devin continues: "It's like listening to the same song before you go to sleep every night; eventually, the brain associates the song with sleep, and it helps you drift off. I use the poem for something similar. For those times when I have no other solid ground."