Derek Hale (iamthealpha) wrote in zombieslogs, @ 2014-02-13 11:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | derek hale |
Who: Derek, with mentions of a few people in his life that make appearances in his hallucinations/nightmares, and a brief Tony appearance
What: Dealing with some side effects
When: This week
Where: Stark Naval Base
Warnings: Nightmares, hallucinations, memories of torture, angst
Derek was exhausted. Which lately wasn't a new thing, really, considering how little he had been sleeping the past few months, but ever since Lydia and Tony had taken him to the base after he essentially disappeared from the prison, he was just so completely wiped out. It didn't matter how much he napped, or how hard he would try to stay awake; ultimately he would find himself nodding off randomly or just sleeping for hours on end only to wake up tired once more. He knew people filed in and out of Lydia's room at the base, or the living room whenever he'd manage to go down the stairs, but grasping onto any kind of real lucidity was difficult at times. Maybe it was because he was just so fucking tired, he didn't know, but he just knew it was frustrating. He was supposed to be back in the base. He was supposed to be protecting his pack.
Except, he knew he wouldn't be any good to them like this. If Kate attacked, how would he protect them? Would he be able to even recognize if it was the real her this time if she showed up? That thought would always make him go cold. Because it would make him remember how easily he had believed that illusion. It had to have been an illusion, apparently no one had seen Kate but him that day, so what guarantee did he have that he wouldn't fall for it now? He was a liability for them, but he didn't know how to fix it. Especially when his thoughts would derail, and he'd find himself wondering if all this was just another illusion. Maybe Lucifer was still playing with him, and Christina hadn't really managed to get them back. Maybe it was his attempts to appease them both for a short while, and he'd wake up to realize he was wrong. That Lydia was just an illusion, that his family visiting were just works of his imagination.
Maybe none of this was real. Maybe everything was just in his head. The thought always made him uneasy to the point of anxiety pressing tightly against his chest, but he pretended that it didn't. He focused on the heartbeats he could hear, the sounds that surrounded him.
He focused on the reality he thought he knew.
"Tell me, Mr. Hale. What do you see?"
Derek doesn't speak, but it's not because he's trying to be brave or stubborn. He can't talk. His voice isn't working, his throat feels like it doesn't remember how to function. Words can't even manage to string themselves together. He can barely think, how does he expect him to talk?
The mask disappears, though, and all he sees are flames. They lick at his skin, and the pain feels like it's going to tear him apart, but he moves along the house - his old house - even if the floorboards feel like they're going to dissolve right under him. Cora is screaming and calling his name. She's begging him to help her, and FUCK she's crying, but Derek can't find her. He can't even call out to her, because he's choking on the smoke that's making it so hard to see.
Claws dig through his back, and Derek is on the floor at once. He can smell the blood even through the fire, and he can feel something piercing through his chest. Over, and over, and over, but the pain that he feels is nothing compared to what takes over when he manages to see who's standing over him.
"You did this," Laura sneers, the knife she's holding dripping with blood. His blood. Derek doesn't even realize that he's essentially swimming in a pool of it, because his eyes are on her and the way that she's glaring at him. The way that the disgust twists her features, as if he's the most repulsing thing she has ever seen. "You did this. You killed them."
"No, I--" But he can't even finish his words. His mother is laying dead a few feet from him, the flames wrapping around her like a blanket, and his father is next to her. And Cora keeps crying, before she's suddenly screaming, and--
Laura is gone, and the mask is back. The masked man is back. He's saying something, but Derek doesn't understand the words. He just sees the syringe, feels the needle piercing through his skin and the pain wrecking havoc through his body all in one shot. From his head to the tip of his toes, everything is hurting, and Dick Roman is suddenly smiling at him as he holds a knife. A knife that, if he could even manage to think, would realize is the same one that Laura had been holding. The knife that is still dripping with his blood.
"Are you dreaming again, Derek?"
"I don't..." The words were murmured feverishly as he startled himself awake, but he didn't finish because he suddenly realized he was on the couch in Tony's living room, a paperback book scrunched up in his hands. Looking down at it, he remembered he had been reading. He had felt fine, but then everything got foggy, and...
The pull he felt was so strong that he'd swear he could feel someone physically pulling him under. He felt like he was suffocating, like air wasn't getting into his lungs at all. Fuck, what was happening? What was going on?
"Growly, look at me." Derek blinked and barely noticed that Tony was holding onto his shoulder, as if propping him up. Was he shaking him? Everything felt distorted. The book that had been in his hands was gone, and as he looked around he spotted it in the middle of the room. As if he had thrown it, or--
"Focus, Derek."
Tony's voice snapped him out of his trance again, and Derek let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. His chest hurt. His body hurt, and Derek wasn't sure anymore as to why. A shiver overtook his body, so strongly that he could feel it rattling his bones and suddenly feeling as if he was freezing.
Freezing. Like when...
"'m fine," Derek mumbled, pushing himself up and passing past Tony before he could stop him to go upstairs. Fighting the sensation that was threatening to overtake him, but that he knew so well.
After all, it had been all he remembered feeling after he had been rescued from the torture chamber he had been kept in last year, and the thought alone was making him sick.
"Are you dreaming again, Derek?"
Yes, he thought. He had to be stuck in a nightmare for all of this to be coming back all over again.