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Whumptober Day 5: Dream Journal | Phobia
No. 5: “My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.”
Quivering | Dream Journal | Phobia
Babylon 5, post-canon, Londo, gen (700 wds)
This is the one I was having trouble with a few days ago. Set in some kind of nebulous fixit universe.
Writing down his dreams was something Dr. Franklin had suggested to Londo, in the aftermath of - everything. He had spent four years under the control of the Keeper (and he had no words to express how grateful he was to those who had freed him - to G'Kar and Delenn and Sheridan, who had recognized something was wrong and pushed hard enough to find out what; to Franklin and the Minbari doctors who had figured out how to get the infernal thing out of him). And now, he was back on Babylon 5 in the aftermath of it all, recovering in medbay and then in quarters provided for him. Not his old ambassadorial quarters; this was a simple Blue Sector room such as those provided to most mid-level station staff. He was not in a position to complain about it or even to mind.
Back home on Centauri Prime, he was officially dead, at least until they could all figure out how to deal with the ongoing Drakh situation and its fallout.
Here, he was ... something more than dead, less than entirely alive.
He wrote down his dreams in all their chaotic awfulness, using a journal Vir had brought him, a decorated and tasseled Centauri book-scroll, offered to him almost as if it was a kind of apology. (As if anyone he knew, Vir especially, had any justification to apologize to him now.) His dreams, like everything else, were a mess. After four years of drugging himself to sleep with brivari, or being dragged under by the Keeper, he was not even sure he knew how to sleep properly anymore. He dreamed lucidly, he dreamed while awake; his dreams were disjointed, miserable, terrible, and they seemed at first to come to him all the time, while he was waking or drifting in and out of an awful half-sleep.
Along with the dreams came the fears. Fears that he'd never had before, an unexpected touch on his skin throwing him into a full-body reaction, shadows in his quarters making him jump and panic.
Dr. Franklin told him it would pass. Compared to the living death of the Keeper's control, he supposed it wasn't that bad. It was just - exhausting.
And here, he had visitors. More often than he expected (or, in his heart of hearts, felt he deserved).
Sheridan, Commander Lochley, and even Vir had practical reasons to be there - planning and coordination, giving him information on Homeworld and the general political situation with the Alliance, and so forth. Medical check-ins with the station staff and Dr. Franklin were equally necessary. If they came at unnecessarily frequent times, if they brought food or drink, it was just being considerate, in their own way.
But - it wasn't just those necessary visits; it was G'Kar or Delenn, Vir or Sheridan, or even rarer visitors, people he hadn't thought liked him at all - Ivanova or Garibaldi and his wife when they were on the station, Ta'Lon ... coming just to sit and talk with him. They distracted Londo in ways that were less uncomfortable than the medical sleep aids, less reminiscent of past horror than trying to lose himself in drink. And sometimes, they just sat with him quietly when he was too tired to speak.
When they weren't around, he scribbled notes to himself, trying to distract himself from the waking dreams that crawled across the walls of his room, and in the process attempting to organize the chaotic nightmare of his recent life into something more coherent. It amused him sometimes to think of himself taking after G'Kar that way. Maybe they were inevitably destined or doomed to reflect each other in this as in so many other things.
(The one dream he had not had, that he could remember, was the one about G'Kar, the dream that had haunted him for his entire life, turning gradually from a nightmare into something very different, its horror worn familiar and comforting with time. He had other dreams involving G'Kar, but not that one. He didn't know what to write about that, if absence could speak more meaningfully than presence; he didn't know how to write about it at all.)
Quivering | Dream Journal | Phobia
Babylon 5, post-canon, Londo, gen (700 wds)
This is the one I was having trouble with a few days ago. Set in some kind of nebulous fixit universe.
Writing down his dreams was something Dr. Franklin had suggested to Londo, in the aftermath of - everything. He had spent four years under the control of the Keeper (and he had no words to express how grateful he was to those who had freed him - to G'Kar and Delenn and Sheridan, who had recognized something was wrong and pushed hard enough to find out what; to Franklin and the Minbari doctors who had figured out how to get the infernal thing out of him). And now, he was back on Babylon 5 in the aftermath of it all, recovering in medbay and then in quarters provided for him. Not his old ambassadorial quarters; this was a simple Blue Sector room such as those provided to most mid-level station staff. He was not in a position to complain about it or even to mind.
Back home on Centauri Prime, he was officially dead, at least until they could all figure out how to deal with the ongoing Drakh situation and its fallout.
Here, he was ... something more than dead, less than entirely alive.
He wrote down his dreams in all their chaotic awfulness, using a journal Vir had brought him, a decorated and tasseled Centauri book-scroll, offered to him almost as if it was a kind of apology. (As if anyone he knew, Vir especially, had any justification to apologize to him now.) His dreams, like everything else, were a mess. After four years of drugging himself to sleep with brivari, or being dragged under by the Keeper, he was not even sure he knew how to sleep properly anymore. He dreamed lucidly, he dreamed while awake; his dreams were disjointed, miserable, terrible, and they seemed at first to come to him all the time, while he was waking or drifting in and out of an awful half-sleep.
Along with the dreams came the fears. Fears that he'd never had before, an unexpected touch on his skin throwing him into a full-body reaction, shadows in his quarters making him jump and panic.
Dr. Franklin told him it would pass. Compared to the living death of the Keeper's control, he supposed it wasn't that bad. It was just - exhausting.
And here, he had visitors. More often than he expected (or, in his heart of hearts, felt he deserved).
Sheridan, Commander Lochley, and even Vir had practical reasons to be there - planning and coordination, giving him information on Homeworld and the general political situation with the Alliance, and so forth. Medical check-ins with the station staff and Dr. Franklin were equally necessary. If they came at unnecessarily frequent times, if they brought food or drink, it was just being considerate, in their own way.
But - it wasn't just those necessary visits; it was G'Kar or Delenn, Vir or Sheridan, or even rarer visitors, people he hadn't thought liked him at all - Ivanova or Garibaldi and his wife when they were on the station, Ta'Lon ... coming just to sit and talk with him. They distracted Londo in ways that were less uncomfortable than the medical sleep aids, less reminiscent of past horror than trying to lose himself in drink. And sometimes, they just sat with him quietly when he was too tired to speak.
When they weren't around, he scribbled notes to himself, trying to distract himself from the waking dreams that crawled across the walls of his room, and in the process attempting to organize the chaotic nightmare of his recent life into something more coherent. It amused him sometimes to think of himself taking after G'Kar that way. Maybe they were inevitably destined or doomed to reflect each other in this as in so many other things.
(The one dream he had not had, that he could remember, was the one about G'Kar, the dream that had haunted him for his entire life, turning gradually from a nightmare into something very different, its horror worn familiar and comforting with time. He had other dreams involving G'Kar, but not that one. He didn't know what to write about that, if absence could speak more meaningfully than presence; he didn't know how to write about it at all.)
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I really like that.
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