Nicholas Rush (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lottawork) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
applesaucedream2015-02-13 10:29 pm
lottawork) wrote in applesaucedream2015-02-13 10:29 pm
sound and fury drown my heart, every nerve is torn apart [open to multiple]
[warning: this dream deals with claustrophobia, hydrophobia/drowning, suicide ideation, mental invasion, alien abduction, and related medical squicks.]
where is the ship
Immediately Rush knows where he is, and the thought fills him with indescribable horror.
He would struggle but he can only drift without purchase, resist without means for resistance. He has no cognitive self-defense. His mind is flayed and open - they have stripped his neurological architecture bare and reassembled it with fascinated laziness, they have analyzed everything he is biologically, fundamentally, psychologically, they know his blood type and the sensation of a hammer slamming over his fingers in the steel mills of Glasgow and the disordered burst of sympathetic nervous overload that generates panic. They've shredded into his head, they've come shrieking into his silence; nothing can be kept in isolation as they eviscerate his subconscious, invade each molecule, unmake his construction, unbury his core, shear into what he cannot hide from them, intimately, with sleek, strategic tendrils of thought that are alien, malformed, wrong.
He is floating in a tank of ionized water in a spectrum of blue-silver-grays. He's kept nothing from them, save what they want to know most.
where is the ship
There is the weight of water pressing down and all around him, the dull tingle of cold against the bare skin of his neck, head, arms. The thing keeping him alive is wrapped around his face and rammed partially down his throat, a silver breathing apparatus clamped over his mouth, silencing him, muzzling him. He is floating in a tank of ionized water and wishing he could breathe the water, fill his lungs with blissful icy fluid and end the endless sequence of prolonged neural attacks. That language, their language, is high-pitched and chittering and utterly unintelligible, an irradiating aural torment that sluices into the layers of his brain tissue and strangles his dread into utter numbness, they will never allow him death, they will never allow him death, they will never allow him death.
He is floating in a tank of ionized water, freezing and alone and psychically paralyzed. One hand slams against the vitreous walls of the tank in frenzied, fruitless desperation, the distressingly impenetrable surface spread beneath his fingers. He hammers at his prison and wishes he could drown.
where is the ship
The water is ionized. The water is conductive. The water is transparent, and so is the glass. A silvered flare of bubbles flutters upward, darting between the tubes trailing out from the subcutaneous entry points beneath his clavicle. Every movement is hopelessly inhibited by the thickness of water resistance, pulling at his clothes and his hair as they fan out in slow drifts. He remembers breaking out. He remembers his prison shattering under application of blunt force and pressure, and he remembers tearing away the mess of tubing and the breathing mechanism and the telepathic entry point stapled to his head, and he remembers wriggling free, getting on a ship, getting out. He remembers this. He remembers it. He remembers Manhattan. It must have happened. It must have. So much has elapsed since then, that cannot all have possibly been manufactured. Unless he has simply never left, and they courteously let him believe otherwise. They could have distorted his perception of that. They're capable of it.
He breathes through a breathing apparatus in a tank of ionized water and his only defense is his hatred of his captors.
where is the ship
They leave him in aching silence. Time drags. It's impossible to tell its passing, until Rush can finally reconstruct his bearings, his physical position, his own name. He is floating in a tank of ionized water, and this time he has no escape. If he were allowed an open mouth, he would howl. If he could thrash at his confinement, he would slam himself into the clear walls with claustrophobic ferocity. All he can do, now, is knock an open hand feebly against the glass and wait for dissolution.
[ooc: this is a recurring nightmare for Rush, so just pick a date if you tag in for dream-y funtimes. For context: Rush has been kept on an alien ship for some time and he sure would like to get off that wild ride. The aliens that took him look like this - cw for unnaturally tall or skinny things - and he's being held in a thingy that looks like this - cw for people jars.]
where is the ship
Immediately Rush knows where he is, and the thought fills him with indescribable horror.
He would struggle but he can only drift without purchase, resist without means for resistance. He has no cognitive self-defense. His mind is flayed and open - they have stripped his neurological architecture bare and reassembled it with fascinated laziness, they have analyzed everything he is biologically, fundamentally, psychologically, they know his blood type and the sensation of a hammer slamming over his fingers in the steel mills of Glasgow and the disordered burst of sympathetic nervous overload that generates panic. They've shredded into his head, they've come shrieking into his silence; nothing can be kept in isolation as they eviscerate his subconscious, invade each molecule, unmake his construction, unbury his core, shear into what he cannot hide from them, intimately, with sleek, strategic tendrils of thought that are alien, malformed, wrong.
He is floating in a tank of ionized water in a spectrum of blue-silver-grays. He's kept nothing from them, save what they want to know most.
where is the ship
There is the weight of water pressing down and all around him, the dull tingle of cold against the bare skin of his neck, head, arms. The thing keeping him alive is wrapped around his face and rammed partially down his throat, a silver breathing apparatus clamped over his mouth, silencing him, muzzling him. He is floating in a tank of ionized water and wishing he could breathe the water, fill his lungs with blissful icy fluid and end the endless sequence of prolonged neural attacks. That language, their language, is high-pitched and chittering and utterly unintelligible, an irradiating aural torment that sluices into the layers of his brain tissue and strangles his dread into utter numbness, they will never allow him death, they will never allow him death, they will never allow him death.
He is floating in a tank of ionized water, freezing and alone and psychically paralyzed. One hand slams against the vitreous walls of the tank in frenzied, fruitless desperation, the distressingly impenetrable surface spread beneath his fingers. He hammers at his prison and wishes he could drown.
where is the ship
The water is ionized. The water is conductive. The water is transparent, and so is the glass. A silvered flare of bubbles flutters upward, darting between the tubes trailing out from the subcutaneous entry points beneath his clavicle. Every movement is hopelessly inhibited by the thickness of water resistance, pulling at his clothes and his hair as they fan out in slow drifts. He remembers breaking out. He remembers his prison shattering under application of blunt force and pressure, and he remembers tearing away the mess of tubing and the breathing mechanism and the telepathic entry point stapled to his head, and he remembers wriggling free, getting on a ship, getting out. He remembers this. He remembers it. He remembers Manhattan. It must have happened. It must have. So much has elapsed since then, that cannot all have possibly been manufactured. Unless he has simply never left, and they courteously let him believe otherwise. They could have distorted his perception of that. They're capable of it.
He breathes through a breathing apparatus in a tank of ionized water and his only defense is his hatred of his captors.
where is the ship
They leave him in aching silence. Time drags. It's impossible to tell its passing, until Rush can finally reconstruct his bearings, his physical position, his own name. He is floating in a tank of ionized water, and this time he has no escape. If he were allowed an open mouth, he would howl. If he could thrash at his confinement, he would slam himself into the clear walls with claustrophobic ferocity. All he can do, now, is knock an open hand feebly against the glass and wait for dissolution.
[ooc: this is a recurring nightmare for Rush, so just pick a date if you tag in for dream-y funtimes. For context: Rush has been kept on an alien ship for some time and he sure would like to get off that wild ride. The aliens that took him look like this - cw for unnaturally tall or skinny things - and he's being held in a thingy that looks like this - cw for people jars.]
no subject
The wide view he offers her of a universe slipping past isn't beautiful to her the way it might be to a human, but she regards it with a yearning sort of fondness all the same, drawn in by the sense of unrestrained travel. Though she frowns at his words, not seeing much sense in it. "What makes you think so?" she asks just as softly, looking up at him. "Surely its architects did not intend for it to travel towards its almost certain destruction."
no subject
"The race that built this ship, and many others," he says quietly, fractionally more stiffly, "were called the Ancients. They imbued many of their constructions with at least some degree of sentience. Knowledge. Learning." He hooks one hand over his shoulder, gripping the back of his neck with an iron pressure to constrain the rising undercurrent of anger, wistful gaze hardening into something more flinted. "When they learned to Ascend - that is, transcend the need for a physical body and transfer their consciousnesses collectively to a higher plane - they left much of their technology behind."
Rush breaks from his rigid stillness to pace forward, bracing both arms to grip tightly the railing overlooking the parallel spill of space. Pointless, self-righteous fury directed at an utterly apathetic race that neither knows or cares for him, or even for the ship they left behind, for the galaxies of technology they abandoned to an uncaring universe.
"They were a - callous race," he adds, staring fixedly at the cool illumination spread before him without focus. "Neglectful. To a destructive end."
no subject
"I know neglect," she says harshly and then steps forward stiffly, resting her hands on the railing. "The Time Lords were quite similar. I was considered obsolete and discarded for decommission long before the Doctor stole me to see the universe. They even attempted a similar process of ascension, and had they succeeded they would have left me, all my sisters and the rest of the universe to be torn apart by a horrifying Time War of their own making. But the Doctor and I stopped them." This is spoken with grim finality, both due to the memory itself and because she has no inclination to say more on the matter. She'd just like him to see that she understands his ship's ordeal.
"If by their abandonment, these Ancients made it truly impossible for Destiny and its sisters to fulfill their purpose or find a new purpose for themselves," she continues in measured, quiet tones, looking out at its slow progress through the cosmos, "then... then I think destruction would be preferable to endless, lonely wandering." The Doctor has taught her the concept of hope, to hope always and against all odds and she has seen the truth of that in Time itself, but for a ship a point of no more hope does exist.
no subject
Rush makes no claims for his own race's nature or even their competence - the Tau'ri are a wandering, investigative race, curious to a self-destructive fault - but they never committed any such crime of instilling creation with life and then deserting it to a dying universe. He wonders, fleetingly, if the amount of power one race wields is directly proportionate to their proclivity for generalized impiety. The Time Lords and Ancients sound as if they are conceptually separated by mere degrees - arrogant and pointedly avoiding the consequences of their own making.
"Perhaps," he answers, struggling and failing to capture adequate words to respond to the hollow horror of the TARDIS's neglected existence. "The crew I arrived here with - they weren't entirely content to see Destiny's mission to its end. Our universe lacked a race or individual capable of addressing the Ancients, or at least in any substantive matter." There had been instances, painfully sparse reports, naturally, regarding the self-righteous, too-sanguine challenger of gods who had Ascended and then returned despite the promise of knowledge, who had defied the Ancients and attempted to call them into action, but there is no true method of affecting a people dedicated to their own indifference, diplomatically or rationally or irrationally.
"I think yours was lucky to have you," he whispers, shoulders dropping from their tense lines of pointless frustration. "To make that end."
no subject
But there is nothing to be done about that, and it certainly isn't what she came here for. She finally moves her gaze from the pulsing display of unfettered travel to glance at him, offering him a small, sad smile. "I think Destiny must have been lucky to have you, to do what you could for it." Because whatever the crew's intentions, it's clear how dedicated he was to helping the ship fulfill its purpose. "I can't imagine most humans even caring." Or caring about her the way he has been, too. It's a rather novel experience, and surprisingly welcome and enjoyable. Now remembering what she is in fact here for, she begins to ease her hold on his mind by increments, carefully, testing the stability of the current measure of calm and quiet he has earned for himself.
no subject
Rush finds that unquestionably upsetting on some existential level he cannot fully quantify. He always made the unsuccessful effort to live as a force unopposed, in deliberate separation from the rest of his world and his race, an existence designed to be inherently lonely - but it was an active choice, not a consequence of the rest of his species' actions or inaction. He had striven for it and preferred it, prefers it now, largely, but it had been a reversible matter of circumstance.
The TARDIS has solely the Doctor, and so does the Doctor only have her.
He cannot fully fracture the melancholy her statement left him, but a fraction of it evaporates beneath the pressure of a tiny smile to mirror hers, a small, reluctant pull to one side of his mouth.
"Most humans have an absurd lack of focus," he answers. "Distractions are manifold, except in isolation. Destiny is - was - everything I had worked for." The shade of hesitation that inserts itself between words briefly scatters his resolve before it re-solidifies firmly in the next instant. "I regret not being able to do more. For her." He could not even offer complete understanding, being so frustratingly and conventionally human, but simply a willingness. And that, ultimately, had not been enough.
no subject
With a smile that now borders on a smirk, she adds conspiratorially, "Good pilots are rather difficult to come by. I should know." And that's all the oblique criticism of her pilot he's ever going to hear from her, and he had better not misuse it, or what she's about to offer will be swiftly rescinded. "I would like you to visit soon, once you're awake. There is a lot of work to be done. Any attempt to manipulate the rift must make use of my systems, so you had better learn more about me before meddling with them."
no subject
"Of course," he says with soft, grateful incredulity bordering on a stammer. "Of course. Any - at any point."
Though he recalls, with vague embarrassment, that a visit may have been required eventually in any case, for separate reasons entirely. "I confess that during my last visit I may have left in a less - conventional sense," he admits, smile sinking into something rueful and contrite. "Some of my personal effects were left behind, which was - not my intention."
no subject
"I'm quite aware," she points out, smile fading into her own form of contrition. "I'm sorry you were attacked under my care. It was inevitable that the party would attract someone dangerous, but I failed to detect the danger and protect you and my other guests adequately." She sighs, frustrated and disheartened by her error. She'd allowed the event in part to prove to herself that for all the rift's chaotic influence, she is still in control of her own interior dimensions, and that had failed very unpleasantly for Rush. Though technically, she isn't meant to be responsible for the vetting of visitors on her own; a pilot is vital to make such decisions. Unfortunately, the Doctor hadn't been all that cooperative about the party.
no subject
"In a way, I am grateful it happened." Though somewhat suspicious of the man's emotionally labile nature, Rush had been equally unaware of Durant's capabilities until more recent events were able to confirm their true, horrific nature. "I now have a much more - refined understanding of Durant, and hopefully a method of avoidance." There's very little to be done about their shared employers other than to maintain some measure of safe distance. Regardless, Rush can't possibly blame the man's transgressions on the TARDIS, particularly as all parties were given to understand it would be a neutral function.
"It was also," he adds, lightening the weight to his tone considerably, "not the first time I have passed out."
no subject
She's also not quite sure what's so amusing about repeatedly losing consciousness, but it's a better conversational direction than her regret, and she is pleased to note that he is now in a mental position to make light of an unpleasant situation at all and without her assistance. So she matches his lighter tone with a quirk of her lips. "Well, we shall not let that become a habit within my structures, I assure you. So you can come by any time to pick up your belongings and have a look around." Her voice takes on a quietly proud tone as she adds, "And you are sleeping quite normally and peacefully, now."
no subject
And any subset of dreaming is preferable, Rush has found, to reconstructions of his less enjoyable experiences.
"Thank you." One fingertip skims the edge of Destiny's railing in awed contemplation. "And for - before. That memory you found me in was not, as one may say, pleasant."
no subject
"Indeed," she agrees, taking one last assessing look at his emotional stability before reducing her own presence fully to that of a polite visitor. "I'm glad I could help. I would have liked to be able to do something more permanent for the state of your mind, but at the very least I shall keep an eye on you when I can." Meaning he's going to have that nightmare again sooner or later, but she doesn't plan on leaving him alone with it, when she has the attention to spare.
Though, speaking of attention, hers briefly drifts away in a prolonged blink and a faraway gaze before returning to Rush. "The Doctor is rather insistently demanding my focus," she sighs, faintly exasperated. He was doing some soothing calculations when she went to travel the telepathic current, but it seems he must have had an exciting idea or other. Not that that's a reason to repeatedly shout at her to 'power up already'. "I ought to see what he needs."
no subject
Rush drops his arms, acknowledges the TARDIS's required departure with a wry twist of his smile.
"Of course. Thank you." He tilts his chin slightly to indicate the mental framework of Destiny's structures. "I'll be certain to stop by once I've fully woken. I suspect it won't be long." Sleep has always been something of a difficult-to-obtain state of being, either completely unattainable or willfully denied for extended periods of time. Maintaining it is not a skill he ever developed, or ever wishes to.
no subject
"I look forward to your visit," she smiles, finding it difficult to estimate just how much of her he has the potential to understand, and therefore being all the more curious to find out. "Take care." Once more she glances at his memory of purposeful, limitless flight and then retreats, flowing away from his mind and the telepathic current altogether.
no subject
When her departure sparks nothing, no shuddering instabilities or intermittent plunges back into the memory of water contained in glass, Rush allows himself to relax fully, resting both elbows on the railing overlooking the scattered collection of space until Destiny's systems fade into the silence before waking.