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shadow_vector2012-05-13 12:04 pm
Shell Shock
PG
IDW
Red Alert, Ambulon, Rung
warnings for PTSD
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__wilderness__'s request: 13 May rebuilt Red Alert There's no canon evidence that Red Alert was at Babu Yar; if so he'd be just about the only functional survivor. It IS canon that he's one of Rung's longterm patients.
They probably thought he didn’t want to talk about it. They probably thought it was a kindness not to mention it, as if they didn’t notice that Red Alert had been downframed. As if he was just who he'd always been.
But he wanted to talk about it, perhaps endlessly, throwing words at it till it made sense, till he made sense. Everything seemed too big—ceilings too high, seats too far off the ground, faces at unfamiliar up angles. Everything bigger…except himself. His own hands seemed tiny, walking seemed a mass of disorienting input. Everything felt out of place, especially himself. Denying it, ignoring it, just made him feel even...wronger.
And the pain. It never left him, even though he knew there was no reason why it should. Some delusion. Some glitch. The parts that seemed to scorch white hot were brand new, off the factory replacements. But they seemed to capture agony, as though condensing it from the air.
He wanted to talk about what happened, the blast that had shattered his body, the acid attack he’d seen eat his armor from his hands. He could still see the gun falling from his nerveless fingers, black corrosion pitting his armor plates; he could still smell the stench of rust and scorched rubber. In his dreams, awake: it didn't matter. Sometimes he had to force himself to see through things, stare intently, trying to discern memory from the present.
“Well,” Ambulon said, looking up from the knee servo he’d been adjusted. “Primary control systems seem to be taking well.”
“That’s good?” A bland question, some vain attempt for conversation, for words, contact. Something to pull himself out of the web of pain.
A nod. “It was unlikely, but with a procedure this…significant, sometimes the control systems reject all of the new components.”
Red Alert subsided into a nod, waiting—hoping—for what seemed to him to be the next, logical question. How was he doing? He knew it wouldn’t happen, knew that no matter what they’d tell him what they’d told him before: it wasn’t real, he wasn’t in pain. The denial was almost as bad as the pain itself, dissociating him from reality, it seemed, as though pain shifted him just slightly out of phase.
Ambulon shifted the scanner to another relay, head nodding over another set of results. “Good,” he said. “Looks good.” He looked up. “You came to the best place.”
“Yeah,” Red Alert said, feeling somehow both huge and clumsy and tiny and fragile as he sat on the repair berth.
Ambulon unhooked the leads. “Be back to the war in no time.”
Great.
[***]
He lied. Or maybe only half-lied, if that made any difference. Red Alert complained of nightmares: he didn’t technically specify that he wasn’t recharging when they happened. But it was something they could understand, at Delphi. Or at least understand to know they couldn’t understand it, and referred him to this.
He fiddled with the controls on the panel in front of him, waiting for the secure transmission to link, then decrypt. A face resolved on the screen, orange and bismuth white.
“Red Alert,” the other said. There was a short flick of the blue optics down, as though scanning another screen.
Red Alert nodded, shifting in the chair. It felt too big, almost swallowing him, his knees at the wrong angle.
“The referral indicates you are having memory purges.”
“Yes.”
“Is that accurate?”
Red Alert twitched guiltily. “Why?”
A neutral shrug. “Mechs have been known to use…stories to protect their privacy.”
Busted. Entirely. And it likely showed. “Not really memory purges, no. Not that way.”
A nod, a sympathetic pinch of the browplates. “If I may. Babu Yar.”
A sound escaped Red Alert, almost a yelp of pain. “…yeah.” His mouth twisted. “Don’t say I’m lucky to have survived.” He’d heard that too many times, buzzing his audio even through the burning agony of the Gideon’s Glue, and all through his reconstruction. Lucky to have survived. Lucky to have lost his frame, his safety, all his friends. Lucky.
“How would you describe it?”
“I survived.” A shrug. “That’s all.”
“That’s never all, as much as we might wish it to be.” He shifted on his seat. “Things happen. We have responses—emotional, visceral. It’s what we are.” Rung tilted his head, prompting.
“Nothing. Survivor’s guilt, I guess. Why me.” A corner of his mouth tugged.
Rung shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“How do you know?” There was an edge to his voice, hostile, hurt.
A patient smile. “Because it came too fast. Real emotions aren’t surface.” He paused to tap something into the console: records. Red Alert—and his problems—were becoming a reality, part of his official record. Something slimy and horrible seemed to stir in his belly.
“I…,” He fought for control. “…Don’t know if it’s worth it. Not that me, surviving, and not others. Just…it hurts. Everything. Body. Mind. It all hurts. It doesn’t stop.” His hands wrung on his too-small thighs. He could feel the Glue, still. As though it had burned through the metal, catching his entire sensornet itself on fire. His voice crackled, small. “How is this living?” He dropped his gaze, feeling like his words betrayed everything it meant to be an Autobot: selfish and small and hopeless.
A soft tone, soothing, even over the hiss of the comm line. “That…we can work to answer. If you let me help.”
It was an offer, not an order. Red Alert felt his entire system quaver: choice, decision. He’d had none, since Babu Yar. Not his choice to be rescued, downframed, saved. He could hide in his frame, or take the risk. His hands clamped on the edge of the console, as though holding himself still in a spinning room. He knew Rung was watching, observing, evaluating. A ventilation rattled through his systems, raw and ragged, and he forced his new optics to meet Rung’s. “Yes. Help.”
And he felt a shrieking terror, like a banshee in his cortex, a scream of pain like the plains of Babu Yar, but Rung’s quiet, compassionate nod cut through part of it, quelling the worst of it.
“You’re safe,” Rung said, his voice a gossamer whisper. “And it’s real.”
“I can’t keep fighting it.” I’ll lose. I know.
“Fighting isn’t the best metaphor,” Rung said, calmly. “It’s not what we’re going to do.” Another pause, entering something into the records. Red Alert felt that twitch again, as Rung made what was wrong with him real, a diagnosis. It scared him, but it also consoled: It was real. There was something they could do.
And even that seemed like a revelation, the grip of pain and panic loosening. He nodded. It was all he could manage. But it was a start, and for the first time in a long time he felt a flicker—faint and weak but real nonetheless—of hope.
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