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Tweak says, "and that's all he'll every be."

Ton Phanan (wraith_7) wrote in outoftimerp,
@ 2012-09-11 13:25:00

Entry tags:

*closed, *complete, .location: hospital, martha jones, ton phanan

Characters: Ton Phanan, Martha Jones
Rating: PG for now
Trigger Warnings: Discussion of mutual trauma also Phanan sarcasm?
Location: Paco and Awanata doctors office apartments
Day and Time: Tuesday. June 28, middle of the night
Status: Closed, PM to join

One of the lucky benefits of the head injury that had resulted in the cybernetic face was just enough brain damage to keep Phanan from remembering the event. The obvious drawback here was that nightmares were just vague, fiery messes that made no sense at all and just sort of hurt. He liked to pretend he did not really notice the metal parts, or that he did not really care and most days that was more or less true. And on the bad days, the days it wasn't true he would just force on a smile, and let his sarcasm become a bit more bitter than normal and that would be that. And sometimes, on days like today, he'd just have nightmares anyway even though everything had been fine.

His remaining eye snapped open as he finally dragged himself out of it, lying frozen in bed for a long moment, suddenly, infinitely away of every piece of technology welded to his body. He imagined he could feel every wire racing up to connect to a tendon, ever circuit replacing brain cells, every bit of electricity that had replaced muscle function. It was a horrifying feeling, incredibly disconcerting and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

Instead he sat up slowly, hating that he had done this so many times now and was still terrible at dealing with it. The cool air struck the bare, sweat-soaked skin of his chest and he shivered, running a shaky hand through his hair and trying to avoid contacting any bits of metal. Vaguely he wondered if he had been screaming. His throat certainly hurt enough for it. Oh, that was nice. He did not bother turning on the light, and the eery red glow of his robotic eye did little to penetrate the darkness.

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-03 03:09 am UTC (link)

"Back at the Castle, I slept under the bed. Sometimes in my wardrobe..." Martha admits quietly. "Once in a sewer. Especially after a particularly bad one, and with no one around to keep me company, I had to go into hiding. It was like..."

She stopped talking suddenly. She wasn't sure she wanted to discuss the year. If he pushed, she'd share. But it was clear to Martha, as OK as she was during the day around her friends, night time was a very different story.

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wraith_7
2012-10-03 08:34 pm UTC (link)

Phanan nodded as her sentence trailed off. He knew what it was like. "Usually I just go run flight simulators and try not to sleep. The only other place to hide is the med bay and that's not usually very helpful."

It hadn't really been a problem here, at least in the old castle with its thick stone walls to block any sounds he made an a million different places to run to. But now it was just the two of them, both equally screwed up, stuck in a tiny building. Martha might have a network of friends she was able to reach out to for help, but he did not like sharing this part of himself with other people, even his best friend Face. Martha, though, that was different, that was someone who got it, who knew that bad things happened and you didn't walk away from them okay.

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-03 09:32 pm UTC (link)

Martha laughed self-deprecatingly. "I can't remember the last time I didn't have a nightmare. They're easier to bear when someone's with me. Eddie or Jack or someone. Not so traumatizing."

Her hand squeezed his again as she worked to overcome the emotion threatening to take her down. "Either way, if I were to escape mine by not sleeping, I'd never sleep again. And then I'd be dead. And I'd really rather not die from not sleeping. Also, it's easier to wake from a nightmare than it is from a hallucination."

Her tone was short and business like. As though she were lecturing herself on the right thing to do.

She turned on her side finally and looked over at Phanan. "I'm sorry that you have to go through all this shit as well Ton Phanan. But I'm glad there's someone else who understands where I'm coming from."

Because as much as she loved Jack and the Doctor, as much as they had been through shit.. hell more shit than she'd been through... they had the advantage of many many years to work or not work through this. Their immense age automatically made them just slightly out of reach for her.

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wraith_7
2012-10-03 10:58 pm UTC (link)

"I don't have as many now as I did at first, if that's any comfort, which it probably isn't." Phanan said, squeezing her hand back like he was terrified she was about to disappear and take all this with her.

He twisted his head to meet her gaze as she rolled onto her side, nodding awkwardly. "I haven't talked about this to anyone. They had me go through therapy at first, but I'm a doctor, you know? I didn't want to talk about it, so it was easy to lie and tell them what they wanted to hear without actually saying anything real. It just seemed stupid to talk about when no one was going to understand. So thank you."

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-04 04:57 am UTC (link)

"I imagine they do go away provided one has a chance to get used to them," Martha commented. "The problem is, before I have a chance to process one trauma, I'm subjected to another. When I got these," she remarks nodding to her arms, "They were not the first thing to put me in my condition. I was already in bad shape. That just made it worse. And then I was in that prison... and then... Eddie disappeared."

She flopped down again. "This transport? Maybe whomever's in charge here won't use me as their personal toy... I'd like to pick up the pieces, you know?"

Martha did bring his hand up to her cheek in acknowledgement to the rest of his statement. She felt bad talking about herself when he was the one with the nightmare. In fact, she hadn't had one yet tonight. Yet being the keyword.

"I wonder if the Powers That Be put us next to each other for this reason," she mused. "Either way, you're welcome in my room anytime."

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wraith_7
2012-10-04 03:30 pm UTC (link)

Phanan nodded, doing his best to put all that in the right order, along with what she had told him before about what had happened to her. That was a lot of sithspit to go through in a pretty short amount of time.

"Yeah," He agreed. Moving around without answers like this somehow just made everything so much worse. "I feel like I need to just sit still, and theres so much chaos here that it won't let me."

He ran his hand lightly along her cheek, just glad for the contact. "I don't know if I believe in anything like that - I mean, I've got a friend who can use a little bit of the Force and all but that's it - but maybe you're right. There are plenty of other doctors they could have stuck here but they didn't."

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-04 05:37 pm UTC (link)

Martha closed her eyes as his hand ran along her cheek. It felt nice. Safe. She willed back the tears that came to the surface, silently cursing the one that escaped.

"I don't mean anything all powerful like a god or something," she said quietly. "Lost any belief in that after my first ordeal. I meant whomever's in charge here. Ike or what have you. Someone brought us here."

She gave Phanan a resigned smiled. "We should try and get some sleep. Because knowing our luck, tomorrow will be the day the plague hits or something. And we can't solve that by throwing paper airplanes at each other."

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wraith_7
2012-10-05 12:40 am UTC (link)

Ton was not about to start judging her for that tear; he was dangerously close to them himself, to be honest, and crying was a lot more awkward to watch when the person doing it only had one working eye left. So he just brushed the stray one away with his hand and let it go without saying anything.

"Well whoever it is either has a sick sense of humor or was trying to be nice to us." He decided, adding, "Wish I knew which one it was."

He nodded, before asking in a voice that was more vulnerable than he would have liked, "You don't mind staying?" If she left he had every intention of finding some alcohol and getting irresponsibly, blindly drunk, but she didn't need to know that.

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-05 03:10 am UTC (link)

Martha was glad for his silence. It helped her not dissolve into a puddle of tears. She quickly pulled herself together.

"Of course I don't mind staying," Martha whispered. "I'm due a bad nightmare soon anyway. Perhaps this will stave it off one more night."

She focused on Phanan again and asked, "Would you like me to sing to you?" It sounded like it was out of the blue, but singing helped. It helped her at least...

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	wraith_7 2012-10-05 07:59 pm UTC (link)
	"I should warn you I can't switch this thing off," Phanan gestured towards his glowing eye as he spoke. It was creepy enough during the daylight, and in a darkened room it was much worse. "Sorry; I know its annoying." It was out of the blue, but he looked stunned and faintly grateful, rather than confused. "Alright. Thanks." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

notrosesshadow
2012-10-05 08:09 pm UTC (link)

"It means there's a nightlight when I wake up again," she shrugged. Not that that made it any less creepy, but he clearly hated the fact that he had all these prosthetics.

She was glad when he agreed to her singing. Because she needed to focus her brain on something else for a minute.

Martha began singing a quiet folk song her mother used to sing her when she had nightmares. Her voice shook at first as she struggled to find a key, but once she settled it was pleasent enough. Not good, but not bad either.

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wraith_7
2012-10-07 12:13 pm UTC (link)

Not that he wanted to think about it, but Phanan was fairly sure this was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him. It did not matter that Martha seemed a bit shaky or that he did not know the song. He was trembling, he realized vaguely, and there was not much he could do to keep her from noticing. At least he managed to choke back tears, which was something. He did not trust himself to speak, so he just lay there, listening quietly to her song.

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notrosesshadow
2012-10-07 03:54 pm UTC (link)

Martha raised herself up onto her elbow. Her voice got a little stronger as she did. Slowly, she reached out a hand and began running it through Phanan's hair. He trembled, but so did she, so it wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

The song switched over to Hey Jude as she smoothed his hair back from his forehead and continued combing her fingers through it.

Martha could feel her eyes wanting to close. Somewhere along the Na na na nas, she yawned. And slowly she lay back down, nestling herself against Phanan and continuing to hum. Of course there would still be pain, and nightmares, and other bad things. But mostly, Martha was comforted by the fact that she found someone who would understand.

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wraith_7
2012-10-08 01:00 am UTC (link)

Up until now Phanan had managed to hold it together but at the way she began running her hands through his hair he finally lost his last bit of self control. What was left of his face twisted up as tears began to escape, an ugly contrast with the unmoving metal fused to it. It turned a normal human emotion into something monstrous and wrong looking, each half throwing the other into stark contrast.

There was a lot he still was not going to say to her, like how much he hated himself and his existence most days, or how sometimes on missions it felt like it would just be so easy to slip for a moment, to drift into the line of fire or be a little too slow to draw his blaster. But the tears and admissions about how hard it was just to be alive were more than most people got, and as a result he did not really know how to say thank you or tell her how much he appreciated it all. So he just silently pulled her closer as she snuggled up against him, so desperately grateful she had heard him having that nightmare.

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