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Entry tags:
open | brain heat meme
WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Nightmares, slumber parties, etc.
WHEN: Throughout Justinian
WHERE: Kirkwall and surrounding areas
NOTES: Ignore the first prompt if you're bothered by bugs. Also, while this is primarily to help people RP about their nightmares, feel free to use it for any kind of RP you want. (I.e., you have permission to set up a truth or dare game at the slumber party.) Talk about dreams OOC over here
WHAT: Nightmares, slumber parties, etc.
WHEN: Throughout Justinian
WHERE: Kirkwall and surrounding areas
NOTES: Ignore the first prompt if you're bothered by bugs. Also, while this is primarily to help people RP about their nightmares, feel free to use it for any kind of RP you want. (I.e., you have permission to set up a truth or dare game at the slumber party.) Talk about dreams OOC over here
This month, our heroes' sleep is getting more and more troubled. Here are some excuses to write about it.
I. SLUMBER PARTY: Mid-month, an infestation of hardy, prolific Antivan fleas requires everyone to avoid spending prolonged periods of time in their bedrooms while local alchemist Lloyd Meyers eradicates the bugs with his proprietary smoke bombs (and an equally proprietary flea bath for the Gallows' many pets). While the rooms air out for two or three nights post-treatment, bed rolls are available on the floor of the unstaffed dining hall. Sleeping outside in the courtyards is also an option, but a sudden squall of a thunderstorm will drive people inside on the second night.
Footnote: Characters who live in the city are welcome to join this slumber party anyway. Maybe they miss the ferry ashore, maybe they're afraid of tracking fleas into their own homes, maybe they already did track fleas into their homes and Lloyd is treating them too, etc.
II. ROOM SHARE: Does the thought of sleeping in the dining hall with all of your coworkers make you break out in hives? Have you missed the ferry on any other evening of the month? Lowtown has inns, and Riftwatch has a docks-side warehouse with a few side rooms outfitted as bedrooms. But there are only so many rooms available, so you might wind up sharing a room (or a bed) with a friend or whoever is nearby and desperate.
III. CAT NAP: A lack of sleep—whether it be from the nightmares, the workload, routine insomnia, or staying up too late playing Truth or Dare during the Antivan Flea Incident—might make a cat nap on a desk, in a reading nook, or over breakfast particularly appealing. And bad dreams don't need more than a few minutes to get rolling.
IV. CAMP OUT: Investigating reports of enemy scouts in the mountains, traveling along the roads to a neighboring city-state on a diplomatic errand, looking into reports of weird magic on the Wounded Coast, or heading north to provide some assistance to the war effort? All might require pitching a tent and bunking down for the night with your colleague, whether you like them or loathe them.
V. NORMAL NIGHT: If you’re already sharing a room or bed with someone, you don't need this post. But you can still use it for your nightmare threads.
VI. BETTER IDEA: Do whatever you want. Live your dreams.
I. SLUMBER PARTY: Mid-month, an infestation of hardy, prolific Antivan fleas requires everyone to avoid spending prolonged periods of time in their bedrooms while local alchemist Lloyd Meyers eradicates the bugs with his proprietary smoke bombs (and an equally proprietary flea bath for the Gallows' many pets). While the rooms air out for two or three nights post-treatment, bed rolls are available on the floor of the unstaffed dining hall. Sleeping outside in the courtyards is also an option, but a sudden squall of a thunderstorm will drive people inside on the second night.
Footnote: Characters who live in the city are welcome to join this slumber party anyway. Maybe they miss the ferry ashore, maybe they're afraid of tracking fleas into their own homes, maybe they already did track fleas into their homes and Lloyd is treating them too, etc.
II. ROOM SHARE: Does the thought of sleeping in the dining hall with all of your coworkers make you break out in hives? Have you missed the ferry on any other evening of the month? Lowtown has inns, and Riftwatch has a docks-side warehouse with a few side rooms outfitted as bedrooms. But there are only so many rooms available, so you might wind up sharing a room (or a bed) with a friend or whoever is nearby and desperate.
III. CAT NAP: A lack of sleep—whether it be from the nightmares, the workload, routine insomnia, or staying up too late playing Truth or Dare during the Antivan Flea Incident—might make a cat nap on a desk, in a reading nook, or over breakfast particularly appealing. And bad dreams don't need more than a few minutes to get rolling.
IV. CAMP OUT: Investigating reports of enemy scouts in the mountains, traveling along the roads to a neighboring city-state on a diplomatic errand, looking into reports of weird magic on the Wounded Coast, or heading north to provide some assistance to the war effort? All might require pitching a tent and bunking down for the night with your colleague, whether you like them or loathe them.
V. NORMAL NIGHT: If you’re already sharing a room or bed with someone, you don't need this post. But you can still use it for your nightmare threads.
VI. BETTER IDEA: Do whatever you want. Live your dreams.
no subject
Ellie focuses on Tony's voice first, his hand second. Mercifully, it was just one scream. And if she's screamed, it means she's breathing. The rest of her body just has to catch up to the rabbit-quick panic of her heart jumping and crashing against the inside of her ribcage.
Fuck, but her body's convinced it's dying.
Thedas. Thedas. Black wings flutter at the edges of her vision, but Ellie forces herself to breathe, drawing herself slowly back like she's following the lifeline of his voice.
She unclaws her fingers, puts her hand to her chest, patting slowly, trembling and she comes back. She gulps air a few more times before she manages to focus, following Tony's hand up to his face.
"Ah, shit," she whispers, quietly mortified, but not confused. Instead it looks like this is a little too familiar.
no subject
It's a sentence probably lost in Ellie's reorienting herself, and isn't really directed her way anyway. He can't hear or know about her heart beat, but he can guess from the elevated breathing, the flush and the sweat, the blanch-white of her knuckles, that it's probably still going pretty fast, that it never slows down as fast as you want it to.
His hand flops, kind of waves at the end of his wrist. You're good. "Sounded like a doozy," he says. Relaxes out of his half-crouch, half-kneel, sitting instead in a tangle of legs. Persistently here, observing, all too sharp for the hour. "Not your first rodeo, huh."
no subject
A wholly inappropriate laugh bubbles up in the back of her throat, possibly a side effect of embarrassment as she reaches up to wipe the tears off her face. He's positioned himself in a way that'll ensure nobody's able to see her but him, and in the moment, she's grateful for it.
Nobody likes to be out of their damn mind in a full-blown panic attack, but it's worse when it happens in public.
"Yeah, that one got me good," she mutters, wiping at her eyes again as she shifts up onto her elbow. He's staying, then. Giving her time to get her shit together.
She clings to the space he's offering, because she knows better than to turn down help. Ellie's still breathing fast. Trying to take measured breaths that don't hurt, or twinge at the old breaks in her ribs, or the deep scar in her side.
Heavily, she flops back onto her back, opens her eyes to look at him.
Either Tony's a lot nicer than she first clocked him, or he knows a thing or two about this shit. She searches his face, feels uncomfortably like she knows the answer.
no subject
Or maybe it takes one to know one. Tony's focus doesn't clip away from Ellie's when she studies him right back, when maybe normally it might. But he's had a minute and some years to get over himself (a little), and so staves off the usual impulse to deflect and redirect, corner of his mouth lifting into something nearing a half-smile.
"Worse is when it gets you on the field," he says. "At least nothing's actually trying to kill you right now. Besides, you know." Your own brain.
no subject
But still, they see each other. Takes one to know one, and Ellie finds that the corner of her mouth isn't nearly as hard as she wants it to be, either. She reaches up to rub her forehead, her sinuses. Fuck.
"It usually doesn't hit me on the field," Ellie says softly. That's one upside in the midst of all of this. Is that fucked up? That she's totally normal when she's fighting for her life and killing the shit out of everything in her radius?
... oooh, maybe not.
"It's usually polite enough to wait until I have my guard down."
Like while she's walking through town. One particularly memorable moment that ended in a broken nose and a few stab wounds, but she's not keen on telling a division leader about that little mishap, especially when no civilians got hurt.
"At least then it's a cabbage cart and not a bunkmate."
no subject
He still remembers Baudin, so immediately knowing what to do, counting him through his breathing. Helpful. Embarrassing. He imagines he's kinda hitting a similar note, the mortifying ordeal of being perceived and et cetera, even if the sigh out that carries his words along kind of imply that he personally Tony Stark doesn't count as 'people'.
Tony glances behind him. If anyone was roused by the noise of Ellie's waking, they've politely turned over and gone to sleep. Someone had gotten up, but they're not here now, so probably on a pee run.
"How long?"
no subject
Quietly. She stays where she is, where laying down will help regulate her blood flow, so she won't feel dizzy and sick. She doesn't feel cold and clammy anymore, and her heart rate's going back down, slowly but surely. Talking helps regulate her breathing.
"Um..."
It's a question she doesn't fully know how to answer accurately, but she takes a stab at it. There were tells, before it became fullblown. But it was never debilitating, at least from her standpoint. Disassociation, maybe, but not attacks. Fully losing fucking track of where she is, thinking she's about to die?
"Three years. Give or take."
And it's cruel, maybe. But she doesn't want to say why, so asks, instead.
"You?"
no subject
"Attacks? It's been a minute. Had a bad twelve month run, and it kind of started just when I rifted in, so, you know, not like I could do the normal thing and pop a xanax. But you know, elfroot's not bad." The hand resting on his knee points at her; you're welcome for the tip.
Flops again. "Dreams? Years, off and on. I, uh, went home in my dreams, which is a thing, for us. Like you live out some time and come back, or wake up, like nothing changed, but you remember more. So it's either a couple years or over a decade."
no subject
Strange things happen to your brain when you finally enter a safe place, after years of being anything but.
But Ellie listens, making another face re: the elfroot tip that says oh yeah, she knows all about that, without commenting. It's the rest of it that fucks with her, lays the seriousness into her eyes again.
"That's a long fucking gap to have shoved into your head all at once. Did it help?"
no subject
For reasons that are just. Too insane to communicate here, sitting in the dark, surrounded by mouth-breathing randos, even though probably the distraction of One Hell Of A Story wouldn't go super amiss. Still.
"It seems like it wouldn't. I mean, the passage of conventional time. 'Cause when it hits, it's like no matter how far you get away from something, all it takes is one stupid reminder and you're right back where you started. But it gets less. And it gets less bad. Jolts, not—"
Resting back on the heels of his palms, a sigh out. "—full on screaming lightning."
no subject
But he tries, and she can appreciate that. There are times when she would've tried far less.
"It's usually not this bad," she mutters, rubs her hand along the back of the other, the stumps of her missing fingers. "It's more like you said. Jolts. But it sucks, you know- every time it is this bad, it's like-"
She lets out a humorless laugh, knuckles her cheek clear of a lingering sheen of tears.
"Fuck. Didn't we do this already?"
no subject
"You wanna talk about it?" he asks, looking back to her. He tips his head in the direction of the currently dark kitchen. "We can throw some hot cocoa in the mix, hard liquor in the hot cocoa, see if that helps."
no subject
She's all set to refuse him. She usually keeps her heart closer to her chest, but tonight, it's like it's spilling out of her, and he looks away when she cries, lets her pretend. Dina used to encourage her to talk. Said that that would make it better. She made it look easy, but Joel was the one to raise her, and he never did, never could.
Not until many, many years had passed.
Ellie's not sure that she wants to be like him. Even if she can't be like Dina. But maybe she can figure out something in between.
"... can't promise anything," she says, finally. "But the cocoa sounds good." Pause. "And the liquor."