Who: Derek Hale Where: His cell When: At some point on Wednesday evening when he's alone What: Nightmares and Derek's way to deal with them Warning/Note: Italics = screwed up nightmares from his torture session, so it ain't pretty.
There's a tugging at his side that jerks him awake, but he can't move. Straps are holding him down to the examination table that he has been assigned to, and Derek realizes where he is. It suddenly dawns on him what's going on, and he doesn't have to lift his head and look to see what's coming. He hears another pair of footsteps and that's enough; he knows they're bringing in the materials. The knives, the syringes, the drugs. His body tenses immediately, ready to defend himself against what's a coming, but he can't. He's tied down too tightly, which makes his senses kick in overdrive...
...but nothing happens. He tries to shift, tries to draw out his claws, tries to at least bare the fangs menacingly as if to show them what he'll do if they hurt him again, but he can't. There's nothing. No shifting. No fangs, no claws. He tries, and he tries even if he remembers there's no use to his attempts, but the only thing he manages to do is distract himself enough for the blade to suddenly slice his skin open in one swift move. Derek thrashes - or tries to, anyway - but it just keeps coming. One, two, three. The cuts are never the same, sometimes short and deep, other times long and shallow, but he knows what they're doing. They're trying to prove a point; how much can an alpha take, even with the shit running through his veins that's preventing him from shifting? He doesn't know how long it lasts, doesn't know how many more times they split him open, but they must get their answer because suddenly it all stops. They say something he can't quite understand, sounding both amused and somewhat annoyed, before Dick Roman himself grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back. "Well, that's a pity. Looks like we need to start again, hm?"
Derek can feel his eyes shifting red, he can feel the change coming in his bones as the wolf prepares to take over. He can even swear he can feel some parts of his skin beginning to knit together as he slowly begins to heal, but there's suddenly a prick to his arm that catches his attention. The feel of the needle is nothing as it plunges into his vein, especially comparing it to the pain that he feels he's drowning in, but it's familiar. As much as he hates it, as much as he knows what's coming, for a minute there's just nothing and it's hard to not be relieved for it. There's no pain, no noise. It's a blissful sense of nothingness that dulls out everything he feels, and while it's pushing down the wolf and isolating it to a corner that he can't even dare to reach, he can't help but breathe in relief as he gets a momentary break from it all.
That break is short lived, though, and the pain comes back. It's overwhelming, and it knocks the air right out of him, and--
Derek opened his eyes, gasping as he woke up. He couldn't remember falling asleep, but as he sat up he moved as if the bed was going to grow straps and hold him down. The last few nights he hadn't been able to really sleep, considering he was worried about Lydia, and Erica, and essentially the rest of the pack, but it had somehow caught up to him all at once.
As he moved, he also suddenly remembered why he hadn't been sleeping. Looking down at his left hand, he noticed that the bruised knuckles were still not getting any better, but it didn't stop him from clenching his hand shut into a fist as much as he could. The pain was almost blinding, and he gasped for an entirely different reason, but it was still familiar. It made him remember he wasn't dreaming, and he was in the prison.
Like in his dream, though, he wasn't healing. Like in his dream the rest of his enhanced werewolf senses were gone, and he could feel a wave of panic set in as he remembered with frightening clarity details of the torture sessions. How he hadn't healed, how he couldn't shift. It was irrational, because he knew that this situation they were in wasn't the same and he could still technically shift, but it was still there. The helplessness, the sense of loss as the senses he was so used to were essentially nonexistent.
As if to prove it to himself that this wasn't the same, that he could still shift, he extended his hand and forced the claws to come out. As he had explained to Lydia, drawing out the claws wasn't a big shift in the grand scheme of things, but it was still rearranging the bone structure in some ways. Considering this wasn't the first or even second time he had attempted this, it was enough to make the bones crack, and as he finished making a point to himself, he shifted his hand back to normal but the pain had dragged him to his knees.
Fuck. FUCK.
A frustrated growl got stuck in his throat as he drew his hand close to his chest, using his other arm to hold himself up. when the room wasn't spinning anymore, he dug out the pills that Lydia had left him for the pain. Pills that he had refused to even consider, but now...
Now, he dry swallowed four of them in a blink. Was it smart of him to do it, considering his tolerance was essentially shit now without his enhanced metabolism? No. It probably wasn't, but he didn't care. He just sunk back into his bed and, as he waited for the pills to take effect, he just stared up at the ceiling. He just needed a break, he justified it to himself. He just needed to not feel anything for a little while, even if he knew what was coming after that blissful sense of nothing. All the problems, all the fucked up mistakes would still be there for him to deal with afterwards, but it didn't matter. For at least a few hours, it wouldn't matter.