InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "just like my last job"

Kat Warbler (sharkswithguns) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2013-02-10 18:25:00

Entry tags:

kat warbler, simon tam

Who: Kat & Simon
What: Simon won the 'who can I harass' lottery!
Where: Medbay
When: 3am-ish, China-time, aka sometime afternoon, Sunday, in Lawrence. wat.
Rating: Not low; Kat has weird disturbing imagery, and also swears.

Waking up from nightmares was becoming commonplace, as much as Kat hated to admit it. This was why she didn't sleep - the nightmares themselves, whatever. She could deal with them, it was just like a horror movie in her head, that was all. It was the waking up from them that made things harder - because the time between dream and full awareness stretched on for minutes, sometimes an hour or more, dragging her into dark corners of her mind and making things fuzzy and confusing and yet way too sharp and distinct, like someone had blurred pieces of a picture, and highlighted the edges of other parts of it, some distorted thing that made her panic.

In the moments after a nightmare, she was a monster again. In the moments after a nightmare, she found herself frantic and confused - looking for a gun, looking for a way out, because this wasn't what she wanted to be, she didn't want to be like this, she didn't want to hurt anyone, not really - but even so all she could think about was tearing into flesh and she was so hungry...

...and then the fog would lift, and she felt like an idiot. It wasn't real. She knew it wasn't, she knew better. But sometimes, she didn't.

So she took precautions. She'd left town, knowing Dark would likely have an opportunity to get to her, in times like these. She'd gotten rid of her gun. As much as she hated to admit it, as much as she hated the idea of disarming herself, in case another threat came along, she knew wasn't in the right sort of place to have one, and she knew first-hand how scary it was to know that someone who wasn't thinking straight had a weapon and might use it on themselves. John had taught her that.

She hadn't figured she'd end up like him, though.

Which... wasn't fair. She knew that wasn't fair. He hadn't exactly planned on being half-crazy sometimes, he hadn't asked to have his best friend die on him twice, on top of other issues he already had to start with. Just like she hadn't asked to be attacked by zombies and turn into one and then come back. Things just happened to people, sometimes. Bad things, things they just couldn't deal with very quickly, no matter how much they tried to. That didn't make them weak and it didn't make them morons.

Except, okay, it kinda did, at least in her case, because it was over and done now and she didn't actually want to eat people but sometimes she felt like maybe she did but that wasn't real, it wasn't real anymore, why couldn't she just get that through her head? Why couldn't she just ignore it, and move on? She was tired of all of this, tired of being stupidly neurotic and even more tired of trying to play it off and act normal. She just wasn't hungry, and she just wasn't in the mood to be around people, and she didn't know why there was a chair in front of the door, how'd that get there, weird, must've been something drunk-Kat thought was a good idea, yep, because sober-Kat would never do that, because Kat was totally and completely fucking normal.

And when she wasn't ignoring the issues, she tried to at least make light of them, make black-humored jokes about the effectiveness of the recovering-zombie diet, and you look good enough to eat, and just sheer unbridled flippancy about the entire thing, because that was what she did. She didn't do the needing help thing very well.

Which is why instead of waiting until she was sure it was a sensible hour, or getting any sort of permission or sending a message or anything like that, Kat found herself doing a quick mental calculation (weird o'clock in the morning in China was probably mid afternoon, in Lawrence, right?) and then teleporting from her hotel room to the medbay in the complex, hoping a specific and rather pretty doctor was on duty, because right now she just kind of needed to not be perfectly okay, and next to Bruce, who was gone now, and John (who she wasn't going to throw this on, he had enough to deal with, she wasn't going to make that worse), Simon and his sister had probably seen her at her worst, helped her not freak out more than she already had, talked her down and calmed her down, and he wasn't actively coddling her when they talked, or acting like she was a freak, which meant he was probably a decent enough human being that she could maybe kinda trust him. Probably.

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sharkswithguns
2013-03-03 04:26 am UTC (link)

It was nothing she hadn't already heard, or told herself, really - because she tended to bungee between the I'm not crazy and it's not stupid it's just a thing that happened and it'll go away and the this is stupid, just get over it, there's something wrong with you if you can't just get over it pretty regularly.

It was hard not to - when she felt like she was handling things well, it was easier to be more positive about it. When she wasn't, it just seemed really stupid and crazy. Still, it helped to hear it from someone else. For now, at least. She was pretty sure it would all be confusing and ridiculous later, again, but at the moment, it helped.

His points about taking things slow and eating things were pretty good, too, but at the moment eating was last on her priority list. Being able to wake up without tweaking out was a little bit more important.

She reached out with one hand to abduct a pen off the desk, fidgeting with it in that really intent way that was supposed to look absent. It was just a way to not be looking at him when she talked (not that she didn't want to look at him... okay, enough, Kat, come on).

"What about, I mean. When I wake up I'm not always entirely sure what's going on. Or, I guess, I'm pretty sure I know what's going on, but it's not what's actually real." The words were quick, almost rushed, and she glanced at him for a second, then started twisting at the pen with both hands, unscrewing it and taking it apart. "I mean, it's probably bad if I wake up and I think I'm gonna be eating faces for breakfast, right?" The pen in tiny pieces now, Kat shrugged, almost flippant again. "That's probably not a good sign."

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bigcitydandy
2013-03-10 07:53 pm UTC (link)

Ah, there it was. Another instance of really needing a psychiatrist and only having him around. And at that moment, he wasn't her doctor anymore. Because what Kat really needed was a friend. And that he could provide, even if he wasn't always the best at it.

"Maybe it sounds stupid, but what about leaving little notes around your apartment? Or pictures, you like taking pictures, right? Tape up things that might ground you. Notes to yourself about what's important, where you are, messages to remind you that you're going to be okay." It was probably the lamest advice ever given, but it was his first thought. It was something he did with River sometimes, in her worst moments. She had him to bring her back from the edge. To remind her that she wasn't alone, that she had him and Mara and plenty of the Serenity crew, and they were going to be fine because they were all together. Kat lived alone. She didn't have someone there, pushing her to remember that things would be okay. She'd need to push herself. It was the only way manageable.

"It may be bad," he added, offering a small but sympathy-filled smile. "But it isn't crazy. After what you went through, it's probably expected."

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sharkswithguns
2013-03-10 09:48 pm UTC (link)

>"Maybe it sounds stupid, but what about leaving little notes around your apartment? Or pictures, you like taking pictures, right?" - Kat nodded, shifting the pen pieces around on the top of the desk, glancing up - "Tape up things that might ground you. Notes to yourself about what's important, where you are, messages to remind you that you're going to be okay."

Kat nodded again, slowly, thinking. There was a whole wall of photos she'd taken, in her room - but it was all random stuff, nothing that really made any difference when she woke up. If she changed out some of the pictures, maybe that would help. She just had to figure out what would work, and come up with some kind of portable version, for hotels, like now, because China didn't have her exact apartment, and she'd still need something there...

"Doesn't sound too stupid, to me," she said with a shrug, "At this point, I'll try almost anything."

The note thing sounded a little harder to pull off, because how was she supposed to come up with something to snap herself out of crazy panic mode? She wasn't that good with words, that wasn't her thing.

"I really don't think I can write anything that'll work, though. Words are hard. Write me something." ...which was probably a bad idea, wasn't it? She was basically asking him to give her a thing to help her keep calm and, okay, it wasn't as if that wasn't kind of why she was here in the first place, and it wasn't like he and River hadn't already done that, once, but... it was still weird. Probably. "Kidding," she added quickly, backtracking on the unintentional weird, "You don't have to. I'll try the pictures thing, though. That's probably a good idea."

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