On the third day of Christmas
Dec. 28th, 2015 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsmy true love sent to me
three portents of doom
[Title] Last Summer
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Sayu feels like her family is hiding something, but there isn't anything to find.
Everything seemed like it meant something more, that summer.
Sayu asked why she couldn’t go and see Raito and Misa in their apartment. Just because Dad was throwing a fit about it didn’t mean she and Mum had to join in, did they? They liked Misa and they understood about normal human things like dating. She said all this and Mum just said No, like it was so obvious. Like no one sane would even ask the question. Sayu started feeling she must be missing something really obvious, because else everything made completely no sense. Only she didn’t know what she missing.
Not that she sat down and thought about it much. You’re not just going to start asking questions like Well, if my brother’s not gone off with his girlfriend then where is he? lightly. But she picked at it in her head anyway. Like if she kept her ears open, she’d pick up a clue. Like maybe she’d see him turning the corner ahead of her when she walked to school. Like she’d find a letter from him on the mat if she got downstairs first.
She was on the verge of failing maths. She should’ve been really upset about that. Okay, her grades never came close to Raito’s, but she was solid. She wasn’t a problem. She wasn’t messed up. But she, she felt like there was a clue there, somewhere in the extra worksheets and teachers telling her that they were concerned. She felt like saying, Hey, I’m concerned too. My big brother used to help me with all that stuff, and now he’s disappeared –
Of course he hadn’t, though. She giggles now when she thinks about how dumb she was. He and Dad were both there one day, and they explained how they’d talked, how Dad had come round, how Raito would stay living in the apartment with Misa, and no, Sayu couldn’t really come round, it was very messy and really, shouldn’t she be focusing on her studies right now?
There wasn’t any secret.
Or, if there was, she wasn’t going to be told it.
Dad was even more worn-out-looking than he’d been after the heart attack (something else they’d figured she didn’t need to know about, but she really isn’t that stupid). And Raito was…
Raito was no different. Still the same old smug, too-neat, too-clever pain of a big brother he’d always been.
You’d think having a massive row with Dad and getting kicked out of the house would’ve changed him more.
No. There was a difference. It was like he’d worked out he didn’t need the rest of them. He could get practically disowned and he would be fine. He would be fine wherever he landed.
Sayu remembers a while later she was crying and crying so hard her head ached. Of course. Of course he could walk away from them and be fine, while a lot of the time she was sick with terror at the thought of being a grown-up. It wasn’t the first time she’d cried through jealousy at him. But these tears felt like she was crying about something else, too.
[Title] Low-Grade
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Doug Rattmann is managing his mental health appropriately. The portents are all in his head.
Doug is making dinner and rationalising low-grade anxiety before it develops into another full-blown psychotic attack. Always a fun way to spend a Friday night, but kind of necessary if he's going to avoid the whole coming-out-as-crazy-to-his-workmates thing.
So it's a quiet night in with a well-cooked meal – focusing on the recipe steps helps, steps forward – and getting to bed early, and no alcohol because that will not help anything. He's chopping vegetables and remembering the cognitive behavioural therapy spiel. Identifying the warped thoughts. This is low-grade anxiety, though, so it's generalised nerves. Once he starts fixating on specific people or places or things as talking about him or watching him or out to get him, that is the next level up and he should be getting in touch with the nearest medical professional.
He's kind of fixating on Aperture Science Laboratories as... not out to get him exactly but something that doesn't feel right. Which is, okay, it's a symptom. But his life is pretty much all work at the moment, so it makes sense his delusions would link to his job. He's not going to go running to the nearest shrink as if he thinks every little moment of apprehension means he's going to snap completely. (Delusional about the delusions. Hilarious.) A pinch of salt in the water as it comes to boil. And being happy to eat is a good sign, too. He's only had the everything-is-poisoned-or-rotten freak-out twice in his life but it wasn't a good place to be. This is different. This is generalised low-grade anxiety and nothing more, he is fine –
No. Okay. No. He snaps a bushel of dry spaghetti in half – the crack seems to echo in his breathing more than it should, which is another bad sign – drops it into the boiling water. The vegetables hiss and spatter in hot oil. Gently stir-fry and stop them burning. Cooking also surrounds you with a bunch of really obvious metaphors. The general anxiety's kicking off again. Right. The world's still looking like he thinks it does to other people but every so often it feels like there are things out of the corner of his eye. If the voices start up, that again is a bigger warning sign and he'll take that as a sign to get some help. In the meantime, this isn't anything close to a psychotic break. He can't explain to the doctor Thing is, the stuff we work on is pretty reality-warping all on its own. The thing is, they ask you to consider being able to teleport, or what if there's a mind inside the computer looking back at you. That hefty non-disclosure booklet that formed part of his contract is not something you just forget. Also, he says something like that, there'll be talk about triggers and self-care and thinking about the most healthy environment. And he's worked damn hard to get this job. He's got a good position in a competitive industry pushing the frontiers of science and only a crazy person would throw all that away, right?
Something doesn't feel right but he's learnt the hard way that that doesn't mean anything. The oil spits. A chunk of onion is starting to smoulder.
[Title] All the Glasses Break
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kiyoko's dreams are different from other people's.
Kiyoko's always had scary dreams. Not nightmares, not usually. She doesn't wake up shaking and too scared to go put the light on but every other night there's something. Fighting or fire or people running through the streets. Bad things happening in her head that are real even though no one else talks about them.
Except when they do.
When she was really small, she'd say but what about the big fire? and people laughed and said oh, honey, that was just a dream. She dreamt of earthquakes before she knew what to call them. At school they thought she was smart because she knew stuff. Pretty quickly she stopped telling people she'd found things out from dreams. People always thought dreams weren't real. Some of them weren't. Some of them were just funny and she knew that they were only in her head. But most of them were real. You could tell. You would look at the room or the street or the city you were dreaming about and know.
By the time she was dreaming of the white light swallowing up the world she was old enough to know other people didn't dream like this. Even Masaru and Takashi and Akira didn't, and those three were more like her than anyone else she'd ever known. She told the grown-ups about the dreams, because they always asked her and wrote it down. All the glasses break, she said. Everything breaks. The light eats it all up. A big, a big bubble of light.
They didn't tell her it was just a dream.
She kept dreaming it, but it didn't happen. At first she felt sick all the time thinking about it, but after a bit she started thinking maybe it wouldn't actually happen. Like, maybe her brain had got it wrong. Not all dreams were the weird kind. And how could it happen, anyway?
All the glasses break. Everything else breaks. Just white light.
They were eating lunch and she was twirling one of her plaits round her fingers, and Akira got cross because it was the nasty lady on lunch duty with them and she told him off for spilling his milk. Kiyoko didn't like fighting. She was hoping she wouldn't start to cry. Takashi was looking like he was worrying about the same thing. Takashi cried quite a lot. Kiyoko was thinking about that and about not liking mushrooms very much and how she would be nice to Akira later because he was really getting upset about being told off. She wasn't thinking about dreams at all when every glass and plate broke itself into pieces.
three portents of doom
[Title] Last Summer
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Sayu feels like her family is hiding something, but there isn't anything to find.
Everything seemed like it meant something more, that summer.
Sayu asked why she couldn’t go and see Raito and Misa in their apartment. Just because Dad was throwing a fit about it didn’t mean she and Mum had to join in, did they? They liked Misa and they understood about normal human things like dating. She said all this and Mum just said No, like it was so obvious. Like no one sane would even ask the question. Sayu started feeling she must be missing something really obvious, because else everything made completely no sense. Only she didn’t know what she missing.
Not that she sat down and thought about it much. You’re not just going to start asking questions like Well, if my brother’s not gone off with his girlfriend then where is he? lightly. But she picked at it in her head anyway. Like if she kept her ears open, she’d pick up a clue. Like maybe she’d see him turning the corner ahead of her when she walked to school. Like she’d find a letter from him on the mat if she got downstairs first.
She was on the verge of failing maths. She should’ve been really upset about that. Okay, her grades never came close to Raito’s, but she was solid. She wasn’t a problem. She wasn’t messed up. But she, she felt like there was a clue there, somewhere in the extra worksheets and teachers telling her that they were concerned. She felt like saying, Hey, I’m concerned too. My big brother used to help me with all that stuff, and now he’s disappeared –
Of course he hadn’t, though. She giggles now when she thinks about how dumb she was. He and Dad were both there one day, and they explained how they’d talked, how Dad had come round, how Raito would stay living in the apartment with Misa, and no, Sayu couldn’t really come round, it was very messy and really, shouldn’t she be focusing on her studies right now?
There wasn’t any secret.
Or, if there was, she wasn’t going to be told it.
Dad was even more worn-out-looking than he’d been after the heart attack (something else they’d figured she didn’t need to know about, but she really isn’t that stupid). And Raito was…
Raito was no different. Still the same old smug, too-neat, too-clever pain of a big brother he’d always been.
You’d think having a massive row with Dad and getting kicked out of the house would’ve changed him more.
No. There was a difference. It was like he’d worked out he didn’t need the rest of them. He could get practically disowned and he would be fine. He would be fine wherever he landed.
Sayu remembers a while later she was crying and crying so hard her head ached. Of course. Of course he could walk away from them and be fine, while a lot of the time she was sick with terror at the thought of being a grown-up. It wasn’t the first time she’d cried through jealousy at him. But these tears felt like she was crying about something else, too.
[Title] Low-Grade
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Doug Rattmann is managing his mental health appropriately. The portents are all in his head.
Doug is making dinner and rationalising low-grade anxiety before it develops into another full-blown psychotic attack. Always a fun way to spend a Friday night, but kind of necessary if he's going to avoid the whole coming-out-as-crazy-to-his-workmates thing.
So it's a quiet night in with a well-cooked meal – focusing on the recipe steps helps, steps forward – and getting to bed early, and no alcohol because that will not help anything. He's chopping vegetables and remembering the cognitive behavioural therapy spiel. Identifying the warped thoughts. This is low-grade anxiety, though, so it's generalised nerves. Once he starts fixating on specific people or places or things as talking about him or watching him or out to get him, that is the next level up and he should be getting in touch with the nearest medical professional.
He's kind of fixating on Aperture Science Laboratories as... not out to get him exactly but something that doesn't feel right. Which is, okay, it's a symptom. But his life is pretty much all work at the moment, so it makes sense his delusions would link to his job. He's not going to go running to the nearest shrink as if he thinks every little moment of apprehension means he's going to snap completely. (Delusional about the delusions. Hilarious.) A pinch of salt in the water as it comes to boil. And being happy to eat is a good sign, too. He's only had the everything-is-poisoned-or-rotten freak-out twice in his life but it wasn't a good place to be. This is different. This is generalised low-grade anxiety and nothing more, he is fine –
No. Okay. No. He snaps a bushel of dry spaghetti in half – the crack seems to echo in his breathing more than it should, which is another bad sign – drops it into the boiling water. The vegetables hiss and spatter in hot oil. Gently stir-fry and stop them burning. Cooking also surrounds you with a bunch of really obvious metaphors. The general anxiety's kicking off again. Right. The world's still looking like he thinks it does to other people but every so often it feels like there are things out of the corner of his eye. If the voices start up, that again is a bigger warning sign and he'll take that as a sign to get some help. In the meantime, this isn't anything close to a psychotic break. He can't explain to the doctor Thing is, the stuff we work on is pretty reality-warping all on its own. The thing is, they ask you to consider being able to teleport, or what if there's a mind inside the computer looking back at you. That hefty non-disclosure booklet that formed part of his contract is not something you just forget. Also, he says something like that, there'll be talk about triggers and self-care and thinking about the most healthy environment. And he's worked damn hard to get this job. He's got a good position in a competitive industry pushing the frontiers of science and only a crazy person would throw all that away, right?
Something doesn't feel right but he's learnt the hard way that that doesn't mean anything. The oil spits. A chunk of onion is starting to smoulder.
[Title] All the Glasses Break
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kiyoko's dreams are different from other people's.
Kiyoko's always had scary dreams. Not nightmares, not usually. She doesn't wake up shaking and too scared to go put the light on but every other night there's something. Fighting or fire or people running through the streets. Bad things happening in her head that are real even though no one else talks about them.
Except when they do.
When she was really small, she'd say but what about the big fire? and people laughed and said oh, honey, that was just a dream. She dreamt of earthquakes before she knew what to call them. At school they thought she was smart because she knew stuff. Pretty quickly she stopped telling people she'd found things out from dreams. People always thought dreams weren't real. Some of them weren't. Some of them were just funny and she knew that they were only in her head. But most of them were real. You could tell. You would look at the room or the street or the city you were dreaming about and know.
By the time she was dreaming of the white light swallowing up the world she was old enough to know other people didn't dream like this. Even Masaru and Takashi and Akira didn't, and those three were more like her than anyone else she'd ever known. She told the grown-ups about the dreams, because they always asked her and wrote it down. All the glasses break, she said. Everything breaks. The light eats it all up. A big, a big bubble of light.
They didn't tell her it was just a dream.
She kept dreaming it, but it didn't happen. At first she felt sick all the time thinking about it, but after a bit she started thinking maybe it wouldn't actually happen. Like, maybe her brain had got it wrong. Not all dreams were the weird kind. And how could it happen, anyway?
All the glasses break. Everything else breaks. Just white light.
They were eating lunch and she was twirling one of her plaits round her fingers, and Akira got cross because it was the nasty lady on lunch duty with them and she told him off for spilling his milk. Kiyoko didn't like fighting. She was hoping she wouldn't start to cry. Takashi was looking like he was worrying about the same thing. Takashi cried quite a lot. Kiyoko was thinking about that and about not liking mushrooms very much and how she would be nice to Akira later because he was really getting upset about being told off. She wasn't thinking about dreams at all when every glass and plate broke itself into pieces.
