[reaction]
He's in the workshop when the memory hits, and thank fucking god, because if he had been anywhere else he's not sure what he would have done. He was in the middle of working a promising lead, so it hits particularly hard - the sudden blindness, the feeling he is not himself, the on-rails quality of a bad game only getting worse.
Vomiting, feeling terrified and worn in a prison of a room - these feelings are echoes. They are familiar. He had no desire to revisit them. This experience comes with shame, though, and while that echoes for him too, the shame he felt was different. Not from acts done to him, but acts he had not done.
Images and sensations he will think of later: the spill of worn clothes, evidence of lives, dripping from the closet like a loose tongue. The terror and instant rage when he saw the man at the door, and the heavy momentum of the brick swinging through the air. The cold slap of reality when another victim says, no. Cold, wet snow soaking into bony knees.
He came out of it with a gasp, which, outside himself, felt overdramatic but still necessary. He needed fucking air, and got as far as the door when another memory came sweeping over his head. The identity, the person he had been, that was starting to connect with him now. There wasn't time to acknowledge it, to wonder what he might say. Something else was coming.
He sank to the floor. The door was cool, solid, comforting. If this was happening, then, he would stay here. It did feel better to have a door between himself and the rest of the world.