buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks
Apr. 29th, 2013 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
withmyshield[Tuesday evening - 4.29]
Sharon Carter is no stranger to stress. Like anyone, she has her coping mechanisms, and while they might not make a hell of a lot of sense, they work for her. Generally when the pressure is on, it's her natural reaction to push back.
She'd attacked her workout routine with frightening intensity through the healing process of her bullet wound. After the Thanksgiving debacle, she'd gone domestic and baked her way back to sanity; a diversion, a way to exert control over something, even something as banal as flour and eggs.
The question of how to ignore the giant clocks that are omnipresent and which now have less than 24 hours on them is hard enough without the fact that she's still not speaking to Steve. But so far there's no crisis on today, nothing to triumph over, no asses to kick, and Sharon's go-to for impotent rage [throwing herself into her work] isn't going to fly, either. She's feeling too antisocial even to maim holodeck projections, at this point. She's half a breath away from asking the computer for a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a pint of vodka to chase it down when she has one last better idea.
She takes the vodka anyway, just in case.
---
It never gets old, even though she knows it's not real: holodeck sunshine is just as satisfying to the senses as the genuine article. It's all a chemical reaction, endorphins and whatnot, so why should it be different? Sharon picks up a 36 inch white ash bat and slides the helmet onto her head. She squares off over the plate and turns to face the pitching machine.
"OK, go."
Sharon Carter is no stranger to stress. Like anyone, she has her coping mechanisms, and while they might not make a hell of a lot of sense, they work for her. Generally when the pressure is on, it's her natural reaction to push back.
She'd attacked her workout routine with frightening intensity through the healing process of her bullet wound. After the Thanksgiving debacle, she'd gone domestic and baked her way back to sanity; a diversion, a way to exert control over something, even something as banal as flour and eggs.
The question of how to ignore the giant clocks that are omnipresent and which now have less than 24 hours on them is hard enough without the fact that she's still not speaking to Steve. But so far there's no crisis on today, nothing to triumph over, no asses to kick, and Sharon's go-to for impotent rage [throwing herself into her work] isn't going to fly, either. She's feeling too antisocial even to maim holodeck projections, at this point. She's half a breath away from asking the computer for a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a pint of vodka to chase it down when she has one last better idea.
She takes the vodka anyway, just in case.
---
It never gets old, even though she knows it's not real: holodeck sunshine is just as satisfying to the senses as the genuine article. It's all a chemical reaction, endorphins and whatnot, so why should it be different? Sharon picks up a 36 inch white ash bat and slides the helmet onto her head. She squares off over the plate and turns to face the pitching machine.
"OK, go."
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 07:55 pm (UTC)"I don't," he mutters, and although she doesn't make a move toward him, he turns away from her. "I don't."
Get up and leave. She doesn't need to see this. You need to be alone. Get up and leave.
But he can't.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 09:10 pm (UTC)"Bert. Just breathe for a second, OK? I'm not going anywhere."
That might not actually be what he wants to hear, but it's about all she's got.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 10:02 pm (UTC)It takes him a full two minutes to get his breath under control and his heartbeat to slow. His brow is drenched in cold sweat and his hands are firm on the stone beneath him, head hanging.
"I don't know what's wrong," he says, finally, sounding exhausted and a little afraid. "All of a sudden I just... couldn't breathe proper."
He knows exactly what's wrong: he does this a few nights a week in his sleep, and it's not unusual for him to stay awake the rest of the night if he doesn't have the liquor on hand to put him back under. Once he was hollering so loud he woke Kate up. But sleep schedules are relative on the station, really, and he's been coping fine with it for the most part.
Nightmares are one thing, but this is quite another. In front of Sharon, out of the clear blue, and seemingly disconnected from anything but a bit of pique over that evening in the Sanctuary.
"You didn't put any spending money behind the 'you're not crazy' bet, didja?" he huffs, bringing his sleeve up to wipe his forehead.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 11:04 pm (UTC)"It's happened before, right?" Bert nods, apparently too exhausted to beat around the bush.
"Do your hands ever get numb, or do you feel like you're watching yourself from outside your body?"
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 11:35 pm (UTC)"Yes..." Bert pinches the bridge of his nose and blinks, finally coming down on the other side of the thing.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 12:19 am (UTC)"So, sometimes when a person goes through something really painful, or traumatic, afterwards they can have these flashes of panic -they're physical, like you're going to die. You see them a lot in soldiers who return home from war."
That and a lot of survivor guilt...
"They call them panic attacks, actually, which is pretty accurate from what I hear."
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 01:34 am (UTC)He knows he hasn't told her much since, not about the last few years of his life, anyway.
Gods. He sighs, and runs a hand over his face.
"Now that you say it. Soldier's heart," he mutters. "I knew men who had something like it back home. Old men." Bert smiles a little. "My grandfather's generation."
"Sometimes they'd have fits, hear things no one else could hear. I got one of the worst whippings of my life when me'n Thomas got caught setting off a bunch of crackers on the roof." He shakes his head, studies the callouses on his hands. "We wanted to scare the rooks off, hear the noise, see the birds fly, I don't know, but the noise gave the men in the retirement room down the hall the shock of their life. Thought Cressians had come back to bomb us all out of the castle."
He says Cressians the way someone from New York might say Martians.
Bert slowly turns back toward Sharon, pulling his legs up so he's sitting indian-fashion on the stone. There's a long pause while he looks around and fully takes in the scenery.
"New Yawk?" He's been watching a lot of movies.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 02:11 am (UTC)She remembers saying no people, but there is totally a pretzel cart somewhere nearby, and that is a smell that can't be un-smelled.
"I know there are breathing techniques that are supposed to help, unless that'd be too much like yoga for you."
It's really unfortunate that they haven't collected a psychologist somewhere along the way.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 02:21 am (UTC)Bert sighs, huge and heavy and rattling.
"Whew. That was quite an evening. I promise to never again make you get on a bunny boat with me."
He stands and ventures a few feet into the world.
"This really is something. Sometime when I'm feeling less deranged you'll have to show me around." That said, he thinks he needs to clock some time alone before he has any business having a parley with Klaus.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 02:52 am (UTC)Sharon stands up, not wanting to get caught sitting on nothing when the program stops. She's perceptive enough to know when she and her advice have overstayed their welcome. Truth be told, digging into Bert's problems has made her feel pretty differently about her own -it's probably time to go bury the hatchet.
In the end, she can't bear to turn it off.
"Computer, show me the door, please." It appears four feet to her right, scaring a pigeon.
"Hey Bert," she calls back as she's halfway out the door, and he looks up from inspecting the fountain. "We'll just try a different boat next time; the turtle looked like a stand-up guy."
no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 12:14 pm (UTC)He looks back, hands in his pockets.
"Have a good night, Sharon. Thanks."