Adam Samuels (adamsammy) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2012-10-29 00:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | adam, adam and carmel, carmel, day seven |
Not All Scars Are On The Outside
Characters: Adam and Carmel
Setting: Kitchen, noon
Carmel was finding it very hard to get herself going this morning. It was a familiar feeling from every time she’d ever taken a sleep aid. She’d needed it, but she felt like she was simply dragging her butt everywhere with her for the first couple of hours she was up. Once she got past that, she’d been up to her normal energetic self, she knew. This was at least a reason why she would never grow dependent on the pills, since she really disliked feeling like this.
She poured herself a second cup of coffee and wandered back to her room for a moment, shrugging on a soft purple sweater. The weather was really blah, and she wondered if she’d have to postpone their plans to grill out tonight.
Besides, the knowledge of someone dying trying to escape this place didn’t sit especially well. She’d heard about it, and it made her sick and cold inside. She sighed, pushing her curls back half-heartedly as she walked back into the kitchen.
Adam spent the morning with Wren, learning a little about how to help with the farm which he made a mental note to keep doing. Hopefully he didn’t kill anything. At least it was something they could work on together. If all else failed, he could just help out there.
He had to leave when it was time to eat though, stomach and diabetes forcing lunch on him, which meant he was in the kitchen trying to find something to eat, content with being alone. For the moment his guard was down, despite the rolling thunder outside.
Carmel smiled faintly to see someone in the kitchen. She remembered him faintly, she thought he was that guy that Becka was so keen on. She set her cup down quietly and started to slide past him to the
fridge. "Hey there, sorry. I was going to make some potato salad, is there anything I can help you with while I'm here?" she asked nicely.
He hadn’t heard her, not thinking anyone would be there, but then she was and she was a hell of a lot closer than he’d expected her to be. The small noise he let out was actually rather embarrassing, jumping back away from her without thinking about it, then swearing at himself for it. “No..I’m good.” It was slightly panted, heart racing as Adam tried to get himself back to normal.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry," Carmel said, reaching out and pulling back her hand before she touched him, automatically using caution. "I totally didn't mean to scare you. I thought you must have heard me come in." Though with this thunder rumbling over their heads, she supposed the sound of her entering and setting down her cup probably hadn't made a dent in anything. "You all right?"
There was a quick check, just to make sure his back was against the wall and not any open spaces, but already Adam was starting to get his breath back, his senses about him again. Shaking his head he tried not to blush but he failed, cheeks pinking. “No it’s...fine. I’m just...jumpy. I wasn’t...I thought I was alone.”
Carmel backed off calmly, going back around the other side of the island counter, using her cup as an excuse so he didn't feel bad. She picked it up, sipping slowly at her coffee. She had to wonder at the
slightly extreme response to the startlement. "I'm sorry, I should know better than to get so close without letting people know I'm there. I don't always react well either," she said sympathetically, making it no big deal.
“No? You yelp like a girl when someone catches you off guard?” Adam asked, slumping against the counter a little bit more and shaking his head. “I should be the one that’s sorry. You probably weren’t going to hurt me.” Which he supposed he couldn’t be sure of, but she didn’t seem like that was her intent.
"I've squealed before. Once I cried," Carmel said with a gentle smile, wishing she could give him a hug. "That was a long time ago, and I was mortified about it." It was always easier, sharing with someone when it was in part for their benefit. "And I promise, I wasn't going to hurt you. I'm not violent by nature, whatever my conviction might lead you to believe." She leaned casually against the counter. "But someone has hurt you?" she asked more quietly, tilting her head questioningly, willing to drop it if he reacted badly.
“I never cried,” Adam said, too quickly, but it wasn’t to prove he was better than her, just holding on to one of the few things he’d had left in prison. They’d never seen him cry. “I’m not either. Or...I don’t feel that way.” He looked at his hands, wanting to do something with them, which meant he was running them over his head, surprised when she asked her question and the look he gave her conveyed that. “Just...prison. It’s not...well it sucked. You can’t always watch your back.”
"Well, you're doing better than me, then," she said encouragingly. "Granted, Franklin felt horrible about it, and I was going through a lot at the time." It had been shortly after the attack, and he really hadn't meant to scare her. Sometimes she really did miss him, she thought, but then she smiled as the thought of her flowers suddenly intruded and cheered her out of the memory. She smiled faintly at his
surprise. "Yeah, prison sucked," she agreed easily. "But don't worry about your back here with me."
“What kind of a lot?” Adam asked, feeling more curious than he probably should have been, but he wanted to know. Just like he was curious what her smile about, but he wasn’t sure how to ask that question. “No, I doubt you’d be interested in what they...” Adam started and trailed off, ducking his eyes from hers. Half the attacks had been just to intimidate, but rape had always been a great form of intimidation. He felt his cheeks get warm at even the small admission, feeling like he’d just admitted to some massive weakness. Ducking his head he brushed at his cheek, a cut long faded, and he remember the nurse who’d been so determined for him not to have a scar.
Carmel tilted her head slightly. "I'd been raped the month before," she said after only a moment of consideration. "And I'd had a long day of dealing statements and lawyers and cops, when Franklin came in and scared the bejesus out of me." She offered the information easily enough, her tone gentle. She wasn't precisely sure, but she rather thought he'd been through a lot in prison, even without him saying so. Carmel moved a little further down the counter, closer to him but still on the other side. She gave him a sympathetic look. "I don't mind listening, if you want to talk about it," she told him. "I won't judge. If it helps, I did volunteer at a rape crisis center even before my own rape."
If her tone hadn't been gentle, he would have been upset at the implication. That said, he still felt exposed, swallowing hard as he nodded. "I don't know if there's much to talk about." That was a lie and it showed. "It happens. I...deal with it." Though obviously not very well. "Or...what can I even say?" He hated lying because he knew he was doing a terrible job at it.
Her eyebrows raised slightly. Her expression was faintly skeptical, and she could tell he was lying. It wasn't like he was terribly good at it, she thought, so it wasn't hard to tell. "There's always something to say about it, even if it didn't happen. I had a friend in this group I was in, and the attempted rape with her had devastating effects on her life. Worse in some ways than how my rape affected me," she said quietly. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's perfectly fine too. But if you ever need to, I'm a good listener, and I won't tell anyone." She tugged idly on a curl, thinking. "You could say just about anything." She hesitated, biting her lower lip and worrying at it for a moment before continuing. "Me? I usually start like this. I was working late one night after a catering event. I sent everyone home early and was cleaning up myself, when someone came in, knocked me over the head, and when I came to I was tied up and he was raping me." The tightness in the corner of her eyes, the faint flush of her cheeks under the duskiness of her skin, showed this still wasn't easy even after all this time, for all her voice was quiet in even.
Adam didn’t offer anything right away, one arm going around his body as he tried not not look at her. “That shouldn’t have happened to you,” he said because that was the only thing he was really sure about. “It wasn’t...the showers...” Adam couldn’t finish it. He’d never admitted to it. Not even when they’d found him broken and bloody in the showers, he’d never told what happened. What would would squealing about it do then? What on earth could it do now? “I don’t...you don’t want to hear it. There isn’t anything worth telling. What good would it do?” The words tumbled out of him.
The worst part about things like this, aside from the horror of what happened, was that she couldn't hug most of the people because they wouldn't like it. "That shouldn't have happened to you, either," she said gently but firmly. "And I do want to hear it, if you want to talk about it." He reminded her of others she'd met, though mostly women. So few men reported their rapes. "It might help you, to talk about it. Getting it out instead of spending so much energy keeping it inside." Her smile was soft and vague. "It happened, and it helps to acknowledge that. Ignoring it tends to end up having it eat you up inside."
“It’s not that bad,” Adam countered, though it did feel that bad. He didn’t ever talk about it and he did his best not to think about it. Her saying what she was saying gave him no choice though, no way out. Rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands he shook his head. “It’s prison, it happens. You can’t fix it.” Just like everything else in him that was so broken, and in that moment it showed, really showed. Giant cracks in a facade he was good at maintaining sprang up across his features. He seemed the victim from day to day sure, but here, Adam looked completely broken.
"Hmm." The sound was neutral, but she didn't buy it those words and it was obvious enough. She ran a hand back over her hair, pushing it back and giving him a frank look. "No, you can't fix it. But you can repair it. You can glue yourself back together as best you can. There will be scars and probably missing pieces, and it really sucks. Nothing is ever the same, and it won't ever be the same, not ever again," her voice rasped slightly, and she had to clear her throat. "Because even if no one else ever knows, you'll always know, and it'll always be there. It changes everything, and it stole something from you, right?" It was voiced as a question, but it was obvious how she felt. She reached out tentatively, very lightly touching his arm, prepared to be shrugged off and accepting that. "But it doesn't have to stop you from living life. I was still with my fiance for a long time after. We still had a life. In the end, I think it was him finding me that ended things. That, and my nightmares. Because even I'm far from perfect still. I'm not fixed. But I think I am somewhat repaired, at least."
“I don’t have any scars,” Adam pointed out, thinking of how he’d told Wren he wished he did. It would make it so much easier to explain. When she touched him the wince was there, but not enough for him to pull away. “I guess it did...I don’t know what, but something might be missing.” He glanced at her, if only for a moment before he was shaking his head and looking at his feet as well. “I have nightmares too.”
"Not all scars are on the outside," Carmel said simply. She did have physical scars too, not huge or overwhelming but she hated them, nonetheless. But it was the stuff inside that could hurt the most. She'd come to terms with most everything. She rather thought that, if she ever had the chance again, she could have a good relationship with someone. If they were prepared to accept her problems, anyway. She squeezed his arm lightly. "Talking or not, coming to acceptance with some things can make that missing part smaller, I've found. I'm almost normal. Not quite. But I think someday someone might like me how I am." She smiled encouragingly at him. "I took a sleeping pill for the first time in over a year last night, because I haven't gotten much since I got here," she admitted quietly, obviously unhappy with that fact.
She was right on that count, and all of Adam’s were buried deep. He hated it, that it almost made his suffering seem less with nothing to show for it. “What kind of things?” he asked, wanting to know what he needed to accept so he could sleep again, so he could stop jolting out of his skin for no good reason. “I haven’t been either. I was pleased with the two hours I managed last night, but then Becka had me up early because of what happened, and I’d stayed up late with Wren...” He trailed off, blushing in a way he obviously couldn’t control. It was just part of his coloring.
"That it happened. That it's part of you. That it doesn't make you any less because it happened," she told him quietly. "That some people, at least, will understand, and they can handle it, and they will accept you regardless." She'd met several very good people. It wasn't Franklin's fault he had his own nightmares over what had happened to her. People like Becka and Wu accepted her. "Yeah, the alarm the other day got me up after two hours, too. But don't blame Becka, she couldn't have known," she said gently. "If you mention it to Cal, he might be able to help. He was good to me when I went to him about the problem."
Adam made a noise with the next breath he let out, something close to a skeptical snort but without the push behind it. “I have a feeling it’s different for you.” Because if he stood here and tried to figure who might, it was hard to sort out. Kyle maybe, he’d been in prison, he knew how shitty it could be. Wren maybe. She might get it. She didn’t tend to judge. The idea of telling Becka made him sick to his stomach. How could he admit that to her when he’d tried so hard to seem like he knew what he was doing with her? He was supposed to add that into the fact that in moments she reminded him of the girl he went to jail for killing and pretend things would be fine? That was a bundle of not fine and he couldn’t even lie to himself and say it was. “She should have known, she knows I don’t...but it’s fine she was upset about what happened and then about us and...” He let out a breath, realizing he was starting to ramble and not actually breathe properly. “I talked to him. He said he could give me something and that he wants to do a sleep study.”
Carmel squashed the irrational feeling that surged in her, wrapping her hands back around her cup. "How is it different for me, Adam?" she asked, wanting him to explain exactly what he meant by that before she went leaping to any conclusions. "And how many times have you told her? Most people don't get it until they've known you for awhile and realize it's a very real thing." At least he acknowledged that Becka had feelings that needed to be addressed, even if there sounded like there was resentment there. She really didn't know what to think about that relationship, or non-relationship, or whatever it was. She rather felt that Adam was making a lot of assumptions about how people would react and feel about things, and that wasn't exactly healthy or even right. It was so easy, she knew, to be self centered when you hurt like this, but she'd always been the sort to look to others and put herself in their shoes. Adam wasn't quite the same. "I would take something, at least sometimes. I had to last night. I was about to pass out from lack of sleep. I wouldn't mind a sleep study, either, really."
Adam wrapped his arms around himself more and shrugged. “I think people would...know better how to handle it.” Because who knew how to handle what he’d been through? He knew what to say? No one probably. “She knows I don’t sleep. She said it when she woke me up. And I don’t think I helped her much. She got mad at me when I tried to tell her I didn’t think she was okay and then she was asking me all these questions about us which I didn’t really...I wasn’t ready to answer.” Especially not on no sleep. “I think I did okay, but...I’m not really good at that sort of thing.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not making sense. I should probably stop talking.”
"Why? Because I'm a woman?" Carmel said. "Or because I wasn't raped in prison?" Her hands tightened slightly on her cup, though she didn't move otherwise. "Because I can assure you that neither of those make one bit of difference." And she really didn't appreciate the insinuation that her rape was less or that people would understand more because of either of those things. She wanted to help but that didn't mean she wanted to open up herself to her situation being lessened because it wasn't his, or that she couldn't understand because she hadn't been in his exact circumstances. "Well, it wasn't like she woke you up in the middle of the night, is it?" she said, shrugging slightly. She honestly wondered a bit about him, because though she felt for him? She felt like he was defeating himself in everything before he even got into it. "Sometimes we have to answer things we don't want to answer. That's the caprice of Fate or God or whatever you believe. They never ask if you're ready, you have to make yourself ready, or step up to the plate and wing it even if you aren't." She smiled faintly. "I don't really mind."
Adam fumbled for a moment, not sure what to say before he shook his head. “No. I don’t...I don’t know.” He let out a breath. “It shouldn’t have happened to you. I think...people would just expect it given where I was.” Rubbing his hands over his face he moved a step away, not able to stand still much longer. He wanted to pace, if just to move, twitch showing in his hands as he tried to find somewhere to put them. “No it’s fine. She needed someone. She just didn’t seem like it was me after a while. And I feel bad about it.” He should probably check on her later now that he thought about it.
"Just because it might have been 'expected' doesn't mean that it was right. I think you're assuming an awful lot about other people and what they might think," she pointed out gently. "Just like because someone expects their parent to beat the hell out of them when they get home, doesn't mean that it's right or that people won't understand." She stayed still as he began to move, not wanting to perturb him any more than he was already perturbed. "Well, if you feel bad about it, maybe you should do something about it," she suggested mildly. "Maybe make it up to her, if you feel the need to." Though if he didn't want to, he shouldn't, she thought.
He listened to her, agreeing with her at the core of things, but it didn’t make it any easier to handle on his own. “I haven’t told anyone. Even...even there, when they asked, I just said nothing.” He nodded about Becka. “I will. I’ll talk to her. I don’t think it’s that bad, just not great.”
"Well, if you ever want to talk, you can talk to me," she told him. "I'm pretty good at listening, and I know how bad it feels." And how hard it is to open up, especially at first. "In the end, I think it helps. Rather than let it sit inside you, poisoning you." Because Cal was right, confiding in people helped, even if she hadn't quite done so completely yet here. She nodded, she would let him make the judgment call on that.
Adam felt himself flush, looking at her for a long moment before he nodded. "Maybe not...not here?" He looked around and sure for the moment they were alone but that might not last. Maybe it would help. Maybe it wouldn't hurt. Maybe he'd actually be able to say something because she'd been there too. "Thanks," he added after a moment. "Even if I can't talk. Thanks."
"No, not here," she said reassuringly. "One of our rooms, or another room we can close the door to. And whenever works for you." She could wait until he was ready. "Don't have to talk it all at once either. Just whatever you feel comfortable with."
Nodding along as she spoke Adam felt himself let out a small sigh of relief. He’d be fine with talking about this somewhere else, or trying to talk about it. “Soon,” he said with another nod.
"Just lemme know, yeah? I'll be there." She pushed away from the counter and headed to the pantry to grab the potatoes she was going to make into potato salad. "There should still be leftovers in the fridge from last night," she told him with a smile. "And I'm going to make potato salad, though it's better after it's been left to sit for a little while."
He watched her for a moment, then moved towards the fridge. “Okay. Yeah. If I forget...or stall, don’t feel bad about reminding me.” He found something in the fridge to eat, pulling it out to move towards the microwave.