#listen man I’m having a Week. don’t think too hard abt the psychology here bc I’m not.

[whumpacabra]

Session #1

Therapy, past trauma, crying, speech loss, angst, referenced nightmares, referenced past noncon, referenced past character deaths, implied past torture and captivity, dubious psychology by fault of the author

[Follows Hush]

East wasn’t sure what to expect.

This was a medical office unlike any he had been to in the last few months. There were two couches, plush with throw pillows, and a vibrant rug on the floor. The lamplight was warm, and the sun filtering through the blinds made the room feel less claustrophobic. The doctor - Judy Ahsan - was far from intimidating. She was a stocky woman, with a soft round face smiling up at him. She wore a long flowing dress, her silhouette mostly hidden by the floral patterned fabric.

“Easton Howard, correct?” He nodded wordlessly - maybe he should have asked Nathan to come inside with him. Maybe he should have told Nathan he wasn’t ready; he wanted Jackson here. (This felt too much like an interrogation.) “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You can call me Judy. I’m told you prefer East, is that right?”

“Yessir.” His voice was starting to feel impossibly small, out of reach, but he knew that silently nodding again would only make the stress in his chest worse. Judy sat on the couch opposite of him, a clipboard already heavy with paperwork as she uncapped a pen.

“Mr. Jackson has given me a basic understanding of your situation. I want you to know that you’re safe here, and anything you say here is just between you and me.”

“Anything?”

“Unless I believe you are an active danger to yourself or others, nothing you say here leaves this room.” Her dark eyes were gentle, so much like Jackson’s. “And if I do believe you’re a danger to yourself or others, Mr. Jackson wants you to know he would be responsible for you and your actions. No law enforcement will be involved if he can help it. Alright?”

“Alright.” He felt weak, a shallow echo of everything around him.

“Good. Now, you’ve been having trouble sleeping lately, correct?”

“A bit.”

“Given your situation I’m not surprised. Are you just having trouble falling asleep or are you waking up - bad dreams and the like?”

“Both. The dreams are worse.” Gritting out the words felt like pulling teeth. Why were words so difficult? Why did his chest ache with the way Judy’s eyes watched him?

“Do you want to tell me more about the dreams?”

He did. But his throat felt as though it had cinched shut, even breathing a thin whisper of air in his lungs. East stared at her, eyes begging, and somehow, she understood.

“Here, would writing be easier?” She removed some papers and held out the clipboard, which he took in shaking hands. His handwriting was a messy scrawl made worse by the shaking, but forcing himself to articulate the pressure in his chest, the shadows in the night - it was easier than he anticipated.

“Sometimes they’re bad. I don’t know I’m asleep and I’m back there and I never left.” He handed the clipboard back.

“You’ve been through something incredibly traumatic and dreams like that are normal for someone in your situation. Do these dreams wake you up?”

“No. Not those ones - I’m too scared to open my eyes. I think I sleep through the worst of it, but apparently my crying wakes one of the housemates who shares a wall with me.”

“Would it help if your housemate or someone you trusted woke you up from those dreams? So you could wake up, remember that you’re safe, and go back to sleep?”

East thought for moment, rolling the pen between his fingers. Jackson was the only person he trusted without hesitation. He tried to think of even Jackson waking him from one of those nightmares, and his stomach clenched with nausea.

“I don’t know if I trust them enough to do that,” he paused a moment longer before continuing to write, “yet.”

“Well, just keep it in mind. When you’re ready for them to help, ask them about it.” Judy took the clipboard back, using it to steady her own writing for a few moments before handing it back to East. “You said these aren’t the dreams that wake you - the flashbacks. Which ones do wake you up?”

East hesitated. And, at least in that, he was getting more comfortable. Hesitation in the bunker had always been his doom, but here he was allowed to process, to think before acting. But perhaps he shouldn’t have been allowed that, because now he considered writing a lie on the paper before him. But Judy was so soft, the room so cozy, safe -

“How much did Jackson tell you?”

Judy straightened, handing back the clipboard after reading his question. There was still softness in her eyes, but a clear strength as well.

“I know you killed the man that raped you. I know you suffered him for many years.” Her voice was clinical, but her words warmed as she continued. “I’m not here to judge you, East. I’m certainly not here to bring you to court. What’s done is done. I’m here to help you move on and grow beyond it.”

East chewed the inside of his lip until he tasted blood, familiar and metallic and clean.

“I killed other people. Before, for him. I dream…” He took a shuddering breath, the pen slippery on his sweaty grip. “I dream it’s Jackson, or Tierney, or strangers. I kill them for him and then I realize who they are and it scares me awake.”

He handed the clipboard back to her, worrying the tassels on a throw pillow while she read. East couldn’t stand to see her reaction, even if his imagination made it far worse than it could ever be. Safe. He was safe here. Even as Judy took a measured breath, he was safe. Probably.

“The people you killed, did you know them?” He shook his head. He didn’t think so. (Would he remember if he did?) “Why did he have you kill them?”

East shrugged, even as he scribbled the best answer he could muster.

“Fun, maybe. I don’t know - he wanted to make sure I still did as I was told.”

“Was that important to him? That you followed orders?” East nodded, almost tempted to roll his eyes. Of course it was important to his handler - it was worth killing for. “Was it important to you?”

East felt his heart stutter in his chest. Such a simple question, and yet…

He nodded, shame creeping up his throat. It had been important to the Wolf. That was how the Wolf survived - lesson number one: do as you are told without hesitation.

“Was it important to you because doing what he told you to do made things easier for you?” East wanted to hide, he wanted to find a dark place to hide and calm himself down because now he could feel hot, guilty tears sliding down his cheeks -

Judy held out a tissue box, nodding to the wastebasket in the corner.

“How do you calm down, when you wake up from one of these dreams?” East was so grateful she was changing the subject, though his eyes didn’t seem to dry as he wrote his response.

“Get out of bed.” He swallowed back a lump in his throat. “Sit under my desk.”

“Does that help you feel safe?”

“No. But it’s - ” He scratched out the word ‘familiar.’ “When I disobeyed him, he would hurt me, and I’d be left alone in the Box for a while. Dark, cold, cramped. It was a punishment.”

“Why do you think you hide under your desk to calm down after one of these nightmares then?”

“It’s…right. I don’t want to even dream about hurting anyone, so if I go somewhere like the Box it just feels…right.” East still sniffled, but the tears had mostly stopped. Judy read his response, scribbling down her own notes as she spoke.

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Isn’t telling me what to think why I’m here?”

“No.” A smile quirked at her lips as she took the clipboard back. “You’re here so I can help you think how you want to. But sharing what I think might give you some perspective, if you’d like.” He nodded with a shrug, feeling strangely tired. Barely an hour had passed. “I think you’re not going to hide under your desk as punishment for dreaming about following orders to kill people. I think you’re going there as a punishment because you won’t follow orders to kill anymore, and you know that.”

East furrowed his brow, trying to wrap his head around it. Judy continued, expression open.

“You said doing as you were told was very important - to the point of killing who he told you to kill. And these dreams are so terrible they wake you up because the idea of hurting people is so repulsive to you, even after all that time killing because you were told to…” She shrugged. “Maybe you’re not punishing yourself for your dreams. Maybe you’re punishing yourself because you know, if given the order now, you wouldn’t obey. Which is why it helps calm you after one of these dreams - you know you won’t kill someone because you were told to, so even in a place of punishment, it’s a reminder that you aren’t there anymore. That you’re your own master now.”

(…)

(Was he?)

[Concurrent to The Mademoiselle]

(Part of my Freelancers: Changing Tides series)

Taglist: @stargeode @sacredwrath

#whump #angst #recovery #therapy #past trauma #crying #speech loss #nightmares #implied past noncon #implied past torture #implied past captivity #freelancers #listen man I’m having a Week. don’t think too hard abt the psychology here bc I’m not. #I just wanna dissect my brain blorbo on a petri dish

[herotheshiro]

ok here to write an a3 opinion bc last time i aired my hot take on twitter i most likely got vagued abt so i’ll put it out here where i can’t find y’all’s vagues that easily lol. also tumblr is better for longer, rambling stuff anyway

i do like tsumugi a lot but like ... idk i think i’ve definitely cooled down on him since the first week or so when i started a3. and it’s mostly bc i tend to associate him w tasuku, and tasuku is like ... not good at expressing his feelings. and before i read act 4 in full i legit hated on tasuku fr bc i was so mad that he was so curt w tsumugi (sure sure i acknowledge both sides are at fault re: the mass miscommunications in that relationship but i was so surprised at how curt tasuku was when i had read all this stuff on twitter on how sweet tasuku was supposed to be towards tsumugi ! but alas doesn’t happen all the time). since finishing act 4 (more on this later) i realize tasuku prob means well but can’t verbalize it well sometimes but man it’s hard to completely get over your dislike for someone when it was previously so strong and also that’s psychology for you. but anyway bc i still have lingering dislike for tasuku and tsumugi is basically a tasuku apologist, the negativity gets put on him too whenever he’s like ‘ahaha tasuku means well !! :)” after a particularly harsh tasuku comment. i mean ik ppl can’t be positive and outwardly friendly like sakuya all the time and a3 needs a diverse range of personalities, but i tend to not particularly like stand-offish characters (see the characters i’ve most recently stanned: lance from voltron, jiro from hyp mic, kumon from a3. like my top 3 in a3 is kumon, tsumugi, and kazunari. you see the trend here)

another related aspect is that i have very strong feelings for tasutsumu as it was basically my first a3 ship but liber is not as consistent w their subtext as some other ships (i’m thinking sakyo/izumi and taiyuki here) so we only get scraps every so often ... as a result, there’s plenty of room for other ship subtext like tasuku/azuma which genuinely stresses me out like banri/tsumugi. the thing is i can easily write off banri/tsumugi bc i genuinely don’t think tsumugi would ever CONSIDER dating anyone significantly younger than him (so they’d have to be at least 20+ to tsumugi’s 24), like it wouldn’t even cross his mind even if banri flirted w him (also i have opinions on pairing the younger members (middle/high schoolers) w the older members (college to adult age) which is DON'T do that but i will refrain from going off here). but tasuku/azuma cannot be written off that easily bc it’s completely believable they’d date and yeah ik liber will never make any non-het ship canon but it still stresses me out man !! i was talking to my sis recently abt what would happen hypothetically if tasuku/azuma started dating and she was like ‘yeah it makes me sad bc i think tsumugi would legit become depressed’ and i’m like yeah bc it’s so heavily implied that tsumugi has feelings for tasuku that even if you didn't pair taks and tsumu up you'd still know that tsumu would be affected by tasuku/azuma somewhat. i mean i’m biased but i think tasuku and tsumugi make a great couple (even w all their bumps in the relationship road) so i'm like no @ any other tasuku/tsumugi pairing bc you know me and my monoshipping. also i'm weak to childhood friends pairings so ya

anyway was also reading some stuff on twitter abt how bad act 4 was written and remembering stuff i’ve also read before abt how bad tsumugi’s character is written (mainly bc his major developments are nearly 100% very closely tied to tasuku and so he doesn’t really have much of a personality of his own) and i’m like yeah that’s also partially why i’ve cooled down on tsumugi and winter troupe. i never particularly stanned winter troupe in the first place, but after the terrible writing job that was act 4 following the pretty well-written acts 2 and 3, i just can’t stan bad writing. and so i feel bad for tsumugi that he’s been cursed with all this and bc he has such low confidence he's just all "ahaha" at everything and i'm like 'please tsumugi. exert your confidence more...'

don't really have much of a finisher as i kind of rethought how i should approach winter troupe and its units while writing this but yeah i definitely don't feel as strongly abt tsumugi now as i did before. i mean i still lost it at the tsumugi valentine's unit announcement but ... idk. i definitely perceived tsumugi and tasuku differently starting out and canon doesn't super support my perceptions sometimes. i mean that's on me for delving so heavily into fanwork/thoughts before completely reading canon (for hyp mic i listened to most of the music and read the translations for official stuff and established my own opinions on the characters before looking at the fandom which i think helped a lot w how i consume hyp mic bc i'm someone who puts a lot of weight on others' opinions when i don't really have my own established lol) and i definitely should NOT be stressed out over fictional media like this but damn the hyperfixation popped out .... :(((

#rant #gaming #omg did i tag my last a3 post gaming too? i think i forgot i had this tag