Road to Recovery
Who: Orihime Inoue, Toothless, OPEN (particularly for V and Sanji)
What: Several days after the defeat of the aeon, as the city begins to pull away from the pole of chaos, Orihime finally starts to come around.
Where: Medbay - Northern District
When: July 1, 2012
Warnings: She might mention a few lingering memories of madness.
Notes: I will be slooooooooow because of burnout, but wanted to get this up. If you are okay with slowness, feel free to drop in and chat with her!
She wasn't exactly sure when she felt the first bright spot of clarity. All she knew was that when it appeared in the swirl of maddening images and feelings, she clung to it. Her memories were blurry and scattered. She remembered being aware of her friends...Lelouch's presence had been particularly easy to feel, as her Ashura...and the sounds of familiar voices. As soon as the secondary source of her mental anguish vanished, she blacked out, more as a means of self-protection than anything.
All that kept her hanging on was the sheer, raw willpower to survive. Death was never an option, or an escape from the soul-crushing insanity that was constantly battering at all that she was.
In that one moment of clarity, she'd felt the vacuum of someone's will trying to erase her from existence. But she also felt the braided will of others shielding her, one in particular very strong, and very close. She'd smelled roses.
Then the dizzying feeling was gone, and her breath left her in a quiet exhale as she was granted relief at last. The constant wrinkle in her brow finally eased as her tightened muscles relaxed. Instead of unconsciousness, she slept deeply. For how long, she didn't know, but the dark presence that had been hammering at her sanity was no longer there.
The memories were, however. She knew she wouldn't ever really be rid of those. The things she'd been exposed to were expertly intertwined with her favorite memories and her feelings for others. Her grasp of reality was brittle, and she saw things out of the corner of her eye that seemed to be lurking and scuttling, waiting to attack the moment she let down her guard.
At least the experience wasn't...entirely new to her? She'd suffered a lesser version of head-clutching madness when she had been exposed to that odd structure in the West that had made her see horrible hallucinations of her brother being brutally murdered and torn apart while he screamed to her for help. She hadn't thought anything could be worse than that.
She'd been wrong.
The smell of roses, at least, was familiar to her. She knew who had put them there, having spent many hours admiring V's garden. She clung to the simple sweetness of the scent, trying to banish everything else from her mind. If she didn't think about what had been done to her, she could at least lie still instead of sweat and shiver and make those embarrassing pitiful whimpers.
Her head lolled on her pillow as she gazed quietly at the brilliant scarlet blooms next to her bed. Her dark eyes rested on the shape of each cluster of velvet petals, a spiraling labyrinth that she could imagine herself in. No darkness. No terror. Just a soft, warm place with familiar scents and sounds. She could be safe if she crawled into that rose for just a little while...
Orihime's brow creased, the corners of her mouth drawing downward. She reigned her thoughts back in to something a little less crazy. She had to. After all, she'd been made an Angelii, and what kind of Angelii lounged around as a useless pile of crazy? She focused on the roses again, ignoring the maze her mind kept trying to layer over her efforts to study the flowers.
What: Several days after the defeat of the aeon, as the city begins to pull away from the pole of chaos, Orihime finally starts to come around.
Where: Medbay - Northern District
When: July 1, 2012
Warnings: She might mention a few lingering memories of madness.
Notes: I will be slooooooooow because of burnout, but wanted to get this up. If you are okay with slowness, feel free to drop in and chat with her!
She wasn't exactly sure when she felt the first bright spot of clarity. All she knew was that when it appeared in the swirl of maddening images and feelings, she clung to it. Her memories were blurry and scattered. She remembered being aware of her friends...Lelouch's presence had been particularly easy to feel, as her Ashura...and the sounds of familiar voices. As soon as the secondary source of her mental anguish vanished, she blacked out, more as a means of self-protection than anything.
All that kept her hanging on was the sheer, raw willpower to survive. Death was never an option, or an escape from the soul-crushing insanity that was constantly battering at all that she was.
In that one moment of clarity, she'd felt the vacuum of someone's will trying to erase her from existence. But she also felt the braided will of others shielding her, one in particular very strong, and very close. She'd smelled roses.
Then the dizzying feeling was gone, and her breath left her in a quiet exhale as she was granted relief at last. The constant wrinkle in her brow finally eased as her tightened muscles relaxed. Instead of unconsciousness, she slept deeply. For how long, she didn't know, but the dark presence that had been hammering at her sanity was no longer there.
The memories were, however. She knew she wouldn't ever really be rid of those. The things she'd been exposed to were expertly intertwined with her favorite memories and her feelings for others. Her grasp of reality was brittle, and she saw things out of the corner of her eye that seemed to be lurking and scuttling, waiting to attack the moment she let down her guard.
At least the experience wasn't...entirely new to her? She'd suffered a lesser version of head-clutching madness when she had been exposed to that odd structure in the West that had made her see horrible hallucinations of her brother being brutally murdered and torn apart while he screamed to her for help. She hadn't thought anything could be worse than that.
She'd been wrong.
The smell of roses, at least, was familiar to her. She knew who had put them there, having spent many hours admiring V's garden. She clung to the simple sweetness of the scent, trying to banish everything else from her mind. If she didn't think about what had been done to her, she could at least lie still instead of sweat and shiver and make those embarrassing pitiful whimpers.
Her head lolled on her pillow as she gazed quietly at the brilliant scarlet blooms next to her bed. Her dark eyes rested on the shape of each cluster of velvet petals, a spiraling labyrinth that she could imagine herself in. No darkness. No terror. Just a soft, warm place with familiar scents and sounds. She could be safe if she crawled into that rose for just a little while...
Orihime's brow creased, the corners of her mouth drawing downward. She reigned her thoughts back in to something a little less crazy. She had to. After all, she'd been made an Angelii, and what kind of Angelii lounged around as a useless pile of crazy? She focused on the roses again, ignoring the maze her mind kept trying to layer over her efforts to study the flowers.