Colleen Wing has the heart of the dragon (anotherpath) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-04-20 14:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, blake belladonna, colleen wing |
Who: Blake and Colleen
What: Colleen’s latest dream has brought up some issues
When: Morning, April 20
Where: The Chikara Dojo
Warnings: Talk of Scientology, abuse,
Status: Log | Complete
Colleen had done her best to convince herself that she was fine. Her past in Scientology was an annoyance because they wouldn’t let up but she had escaped and that was that. That was all it was supposed to be. She had the Dojo. She had the fight clubs when she needed to make money because some months were slower than others when it came to the classes she had thanks to intimidation tactics. But that was all it was. She was fine.
The Dreams though…. The Dreams seemed to think differently. Especially the latest one. She had worried about how Danny would respond to learning the truth about the Hand. But she had hoped he would see that the Hand she was part of wasn’t the same as the faction led by madam Gao. They were doing good. But he was so brainwashed by the monks of K’un-Lun that all he saw was evil. So she had helped him and his friend escape. Things had been so chaotic...and she wasn’t sure what just to make of it.
So it was back to New York. Convincing Claire to let her talk to Danny. To prove that what she felt for him was real. To prove that she may be part of the Hand, but she wasn’t his enemy. So she went to the hospital to get medicine he needed, to one of her former students who had been placed there. But she’d been betrayed by that student. How ironic that the very thing she had taught her was used against her now.
Bound to a wheelchair, former students ready to hook her up to have her blood drained so she could give ‘one last gift’ to the Hand. Why they’d want her blood…..it didn’t make sense but she currently had to focus on getting out and not on what was going on around her. So she fought for her life, fought her students who she had trained and now betrayed because she was seeing the truth for the first time. Fought and escaped into the rain.
And there was Danny and she just...she couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to fight.
“You’re the Destroyer of the Hand! And I’m the Hand! So light up your damn fist and destroy me!”
She attacked desperately but without heart. Just pain and a sense of loss until Danny finally was able to get her in a hold and just...keep her in place and hold her.
“Colleen, please.”
“It’s not what I thought it was…”
“Look, I know what it’s like. To spend your whole life believing in something and have it pulled away. But we have to stop fighting, we have to stop running.” Breaking away to breathe, she finally turned to look at Danny, let him come to her and hold her to comfort her in the rain instead of holding her to keep her from hurting him - or really herself, “We have to stop destroying everything.”
The fight was gone from her, it was just the rain.
Waking up, Colleen blinked at the tears that were on her face before shaking her head. No. She was fine. It wasn’t anything like what had happened after she had helped Blake escape. Being put in a RPF. The abuse…. Getting out. Letting out a breath, Colleen got out of bed and did her morning routine, washed the tears off her face and changed into her workout clothes. She knew that Blake was going to be coming by for practice and she needed to clear her head before then.
At least that was the plan. But her katas were off and by the time she was at the punching bag, the emotions were getting the best of her again even as she struggled to push past them, ignore them. She was fine dammit. She couldn’t afford not to be.
There was a lot of trauma and brainwashing from Scientology that needed to be undone. Blake had been doing well working through it, but there was still a lot to be done. And as much as she hadn’t wanted Colleen to be subjected to Dreams, she was actually extremely relieved that her friend was here. Colleen understood Scientology, and it made talking about some things easier. Not that they regularly talked about it, but it did come up now and then.
Blake had seen the similarities to the White Fang in her Dreams, though not the peaceful version her parents had once been in charge of, but the version that Adam had perverted with his hate and anger. Fighting prejudice with more prejudice was not the answer, and while it hadn’t been easy to leave Adam and the White Fang behind, for many reasons, Blake had finally managed to do so. But then she’d ultimately gone back to Menagerie, mostly because it was the only place she felt she had left. But it had turned into being so much more.
She’d found a strength within her while trying to save Ilia from the worst of the White Fang. It took them fighting each other before Blake had been able to break through everything that Adam had forged Ilia into, but she’d gotten her friend back. And they’d stopped Adam’s attack on Haven, and Blake had not flinched when she came face-to-face with Adam that time.
And now, just like with her and Ilia, Blake and Colleen were both out of Scientology. They could live the lives they wanted to. For the most part. Colleen was being harassed by Scientologists, and that alone made Blake angry, but she knew better than to give them a reaction. So she’d save it for when she and Colleen were alone and out of public view. One did not always know when someone from Scientology was around and recording them.
That morning, Blake dressed in workout clothes, looking forward to the training with Colleen. She always liked spending time with Colleen, especially outside of the confines of Scientology. However, once she arrived at the dojo and walked in, she saw Colleen hitting the punching bag. She thought something was a little off, but she wasn’t going to lead with that concern.
“Good morning,” she greeted as she dropped her bag down by a bench against the wall.
A reaction was just what they wanted and the sick irony of it all was that the abuse hurled at her during training for the Sea Org meant that Colleen was uniquely positioned to be able to handle the abuse hurled at her and give no reaction. Even if she really wanted to lash out at them. All she wanted was to live her life, but that was too much to ask for apparently.
Taking Blake on as a student had been helpful in its own way. Like Blake, Colleen appreciated having someone there she could actually talk about Scientology with, someone who understood what it was like and not just what was visible and how it was all ‘crazy’ and Xenu. How do you explain how something like that becomes part of you because of growing up there?
The similarities with the Hand made it all the worse. Especially right now. So much so that Colleen barely registered that Blake had shown up before she spoke. But the greeting at least gave her pause and she stepped away from the punching bag, brushing some hair out of her face, fists wrapped.
“Hey.”
Unlike Colleen, Blake wasn’t as skilled in not giving a reaction when provoked, but she had actually gotten better at that. Her dreams had helped with that immensely. She’d learned how to better stand her ground and not give in when pressure was applied. Blake had found her backbone, and was starting to gain her footing in life. Though it was far more difficult to shake off the brainwashing from Scientology than it was to find the strength to stand up to someone like Adam or her abusive ex.
Blake looked Colleen over once she stepped away from the punching bag. She had gotten an early start on a workout, which wasn’t exactly surprising. But it seemed like Colleen had already worked up a sweat, and she wondered how long Colleen had been going at the punching bag before she’d gotten there.
“Everything alright?” She asked. Blake wasn’t certain where Colleen wanted to start today, but she started to loosen up and stretch the muscles in her arms and legs. She didn’t want to pull anything, after all.
Colleen was never one open up and she really was tempted to just say that she was fine and move on from it. But if Blake was actually asking? That clearly meant that she wasn’t keeping things to herself nearly as well as she would want to. So, might as well just say it and get it over with so they could move on.
At least, that was the plan.
“Just dream bullshit.”
Even thinking about it had her frustrated and upset.
“The similarities to the Hand and Scientology are….” Shaking her head, Colleen shifted her weight and punched the punching bag with all her strength. “I was so blind to it and actually believed that Gao’s faction of the Hand was rogue, that the one I was in actually helped. And it did help kids but to what end? And then my betrayal of the Hand just because I wanted to prove a point… they were going to drain my blood and kill me and I just….”
God. The foundation she stood on had shattered. Just as it had when she finally stopped believing in Scientology and saw all that it was. But it made up so much of her...
Even as she’d asked if things were alright, Blake knew that Colleen most likely wasn’t going to answer. She knew how she was, but when Colleen did talk about what exactly the dream bullshit was, she listened carefully. She took note of it and could clearly see the similarities to Scientology. It made her angry that Colleen had such an experience in her dreams that could equate to Scientology, though it seemed to be worse considering they wanted to drain her blood.
While Blake wouldn’t put draining blood from people past Scientology, to her knowledge they didn’t actually go that far. And hopefully they never would, or they’d be effectively stopped and shut down before getting to that point.
“You were blind because that’s what they wanted you to be. People and organizations like that only want you to see the good, program you to only see the good, to believe you’re doing good. It’s not your fault for believing them because you never saw the things that would make you question what they were saying. And you never saw them because they specifically made you blind to them until you did see those things.” Blake knew that from personal experience. Even Adam’s vision of the White Fang had been enticing until Blake had realized they were actually terrorists and Adam wanted to kill anyone who wasn’t Faunus.
Sometimes it took something drastic to make someone see what was actually happening.
No, there was no draining of blood in Scientology, but get thrown in the Hole, or go to an RPF, or any of the retraining camps and you might as well be. The point was the same, basically. Well no. With the blood draining, she was going to be killed while still ‘giving to the Hand’ while Scientology just wanted to rebrainwash you into their fucking followers.
It did take something big to see the truth at times. Colleen had thought Danny was just too brainwashed himself by the monks from K’un-Lun that he couldn’t see the good that the Hand was doing. And that was what was worse, they did help kids! Got them into programs and scholarship...but to what end? To have their agents in high ranks to mask the truth.
“God, I thought I was over this shit but all these Dreams….”
She was ready to punch the punching bag again but Colleen at least managed to stop herself from that.
“I just want to live my life. To do the good I was told I was doing without the hidden reasons…..instead I’m thrown back into that bullshit where there’s no foundation because everything was a fucking lie.”
There were times that Blake wanted to ask Colleen about some of the more inner workings of Scientology out of her own curiosity. But she more than knew better to ask largely because it wouldn’t be anything good, and Blake got a good enough idea about those things from watching Leah Remini’s show detailing them.
“The Dreams have a way of reopening those wounds, even if the situations may be different between this world and the one you Dream of,” Blake commented. She knew that from her own experience. The White Fang and Adam were very different from Scientology and her ex-boyfriend in this life, but there were enough similarities that the Dreams had reopened those wounds for her.
“I know, and you can live that life. It will take time, but I know you’re strong and you can work through it and build the life you want to live. Both here and in your Dreams. And you aren’t alone in either world.” She eyed Colleen for a few moments. “If you want or need to work it out physically, fight me.” Blake could give that to her friend if it was needed.
Curiosity killed the cat and all that. But if Blake ever asked, Colleen would tell her. Though apparently Leah Remini’s show was good at detailing it. She hadn’t watched it herself but that didn’t necessarily matter.
“Obviously.” Yes, the comment was clipped because Colleen could see it all too well, but it wasn’t directed at Blake. Just at her own stupidity for not seeing it before. Well okay, she had recognized in the waking world the similarities. But she hadn’t expected her footing to be pulled out from under her all over again. To lose that foundation she had so desperately been working to repair.
And maybe Blake was right about the not being alone. She really only had Danny in the Dreams, well him and then Claire in some regard but despite it all, he wasn’t pushing her away. And there was Blake here and the friendships she was beginning to form here. If she ever let anyone in enough to really get into the Scientology of the matter and not just throw away comments like she usually did.
But at the offer of fighting it out, Colleen just quirked a brow before launching into an attack. She knew that Blake could handle it. They’d been training together for months now and if there was one thing that could focus her, it was the fight. Right now, it was all she really had until she got the chaos in her mind under control again.
The clipped comment wasn’t unexpected, and Blake knew it wasn’t directed at her, so she didn’t react to it. Blake had told Colleen about Leah Remini’s show, even though she’d most likely already been aware of it given how much trouble Leah had been causing for Scientology since she’d left the church.
And when Colleen launched into an attack without a word, Blake countered it easily. She knew there were times when things should be talked out, and times when something like sparring were the better options. And really, there wasn’t a lot that could be said that hadn’t already been said, so Blake had offered, and fully expected Colleen to take her up on it. Hopefully it would help Colleen work out some of the issues she had. Of course, punching one’s problems away didn’t exactly work, but at least it an outlet for the pent up emotions that Colleen was feeling. And it was a constructive outlet at least, in a controlled setting.