- IC CONTACT POST FOR MASKORMENACE -

[slightlyoffchilt]

"Hello.

You've reached the direct line of Doctor Frederick Chilton. As I am not available at the moment, you might assume I'm quite busy with something pressing. State your name and business, and I will return your call."

Comments

[dragony]

In the moment I experience them for the first time, my body renders them as if they were "my" emotions. Once that method of input is removed, or what is there has expended itself, I can sever it; after that, emotions like that can resonate with sensations I feel after it, but they don't feel like me. So... for instance, in self-loathing, it's very easy for me to tell which part is me, and which is the existential crisis of an old friend bleeding in.

[ Her visible eye narrows for focus, but she's not looking at Chilton as she explains. ]

It's sort of... both, I suppose? If the sensation is very strong in that first moment, then "I" may not even be present... but once it passes, I'm me again. I'm sure I would have been a much different person without these powers at all, but it's hard to say by how much. I was still a child when they became like this.

[slightlyoffchilt]

So your identity -- at least, how you perceive your identity -- it had always been fragmented by other personalities.

[He paused, glancing down at his notes.]

Perhaps not fragmented in a manner of separation. Perhaps these emotions of others, emotions wrought from their personal experiences, perhaps those create a sort of mosaic where a void might have been. Ruka -- have you considered? What if you're a physical manifestation of the Jungian collective conscious?

[dragony]

I... I can't say I've considered that, no.

[ In part because she doesn't fully understand what he's getting at—part of it clearly went over her head. ]

[slightlyoffchilt]

Your experiences, convoluted and chaotic as they are, had provoked a unique environment that could have -- possibly -- evolved your neural capabilities into something that had previously only been a theory.

[Chilton maintains the soft sway of his therapeutic tone -- but make no mistake, he is excited by the prospect.]

Something that you have adapted to, in part because of your abilities.

[dragony]

[ She considers this, looking at Chilton now rather than the ceiling above him. ]

My powers have been like this since I was first ImPorted, more than six years ago now. It's not something I was born with, not in the way it's manifested in these two worlds. My heart was always my own in my hometown.

After I—

[ She starts to say, but she cuts herself off, focus turning elsewhere with a furrow in her brow, a hand rising without urgency to block her mouth. Weighing whether she wants to finish that thought. ]

[slightlyoffchilt]

After you... What?

[As if Chilton was going to allow that lapsed implication a quiet grave. He nearly leered at his patient, daring her to finish that thought.]

It might be a crucial piece of information, Ruka. It is astounding how self-realization is amplified when speaking of oneself to another, even if you've already suffered these thought processes.

[dragony]

[ There's a bow to her head, a slight inclination to indicate she's heard, but there's still a lengthy silence that follows.

From syllable one that follows, it's clear it's not something she wants to say; it is, in the end, nothing she's ever talked about before. ]

... After I lost that eye, and everything else, it was... it felt difficult to feel like myself all the time. It didn't even seem like a good idea at the time, but that's when I started utilizing static inputs. I could use that... sort of... familiar, unchanging emotional state, to ground myself.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Trauma is often the most appropriate catalyst. While some are understandably shattered by loss, whether that loss is so intimately physical or not, others manipulate the momentum for... Survival.

[He inclined his head, indicating that he considered Ruka to be associated with the second grouping.]

Bad things happen. Those bad things that happen to you reassert your authentic, original emotions. That must be incredibly frustrating.

[dragony]

I don't suppose it's very surprising, but it's much easier to work through foreign-borne emotions, than it is my own. They're finite. Even if they start very strong, that single input can't get any stronger. Regular human emotions, though, they can fluctuate from minute to minute, at the slightest provocation. Associations and reminders can unearth the dead long after they've been buried.

... I know that's what ordinary people have to deal with, their whole lives, but when you have two different senses of emotion, it's hard not to prefer the less painful one.

[slightlyoffchilt]

It's logical, if anything. I think most people in your position would opt for the less painful option -- if we're under the assumption that most people are rationally minded.

[Chilton's opinion on that matter was left obscured.]

Have you tried forgetting them? Relieving yourself of that baggage. There are a few psychic imPorts around here, Ruka, I have little doubt their moral qualms aren't up to starch.

[The suggestion in of itself wasn't advice -- he anticipated that she had already considered that, and was very likely against the proposal. But he wanted to observe her reaction, that was the whole point of the matter.]

[dragony]

[ There's a visible flinch in her expression: a recoil in the tensing muscles, a momentary baring of the very edges of her teeth. ]

The only thing permanent in my life is myself. If I wanted to erase that, I would have done it five years ago.

[slightlyoffchilt]

[Open acknowledgement of suicidal consideration. Ultimately rejected by Ruka, of course, but it was interesting that she pursued self-infliction rather than the alternative. An erasure of the memories of others that one had accumulated could be a type of violence, and she understood that.

What an empath, indeed.]

Quite the statement, given our casual propensity to not always die. Erasure in this context could indicate identity more than literal life.

[Which was more horrifying, and more titillating, in Chilton's opinion.]

Then moving onto the next solution -- compartmentalizing. You've already been doing that somewhat, by my observation, but what about creating psychological separations with greater purpose?

[dragony]

Psychological separations? [ She eases back from the more defensive posture of the last query--that sort of extreme tactic is one she's had to reject more times than this--a genuine curiosity in her tone. ] How do you mean that?

[slightlyoffchilt]

Consciously compartmentalizing -- doing so beyond instinct, rather -- ensures that the patient, namely you, engages greater control over the memories in question as well as your core identity. There won't be the same degree of that messy yet unintentional bleed through.

[A technique that isn't so foreign to, say, psychic driving with identity dissociation.]

How would that sound?

[dragony]

Sounds like it couldn't hurt. [ No worse than the alternatives, at any case. ] It's not just meditation, is it? That's not very effective, long-term, for me.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Medication... In addition to cognitive behavioral therapy, yes. I don't often suggest one without the other, not if the goal we have set includes getting some desirable result.

[He shot a smile at that, keeping the implication of additional sessions open ended.]

[dragony]

[ Ugh. ]

My physical health might limit the options, in that case. I have something of a weak heart.

[ Yes, there's some irony there, and yes, she knows. ]

[slightlyoffchilt]

Genetic, or something weakened over the psychosomatic symptoms of your clearly stressful situation?

[He was, at least, polite enough to avoid blatant mention of that irony.]

[dragony]

Closer to genetic, in terms of how long it's been that way, but I couldn't tell you if it was that for certain. No doctor has ever been able to tell me what's specifically wrong with it, or what causes its failures, or when it became that way. But, it's a condition I've had since I was a child—a much younger child than when I was first ImPorted to the City. To my memory, it's always been that way.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Something organic to your homeworld, then. So many of us were on the precipice of human evolution -- or so the statistic suggest.

But that presents a problem, you understand. I'm not entirely sure how modern psychopharmaceuticals will necessarily affect your neurochemistry. Especially since, at a genetic level, you -- like many imPorts -- aren't like the people born to this world.

[dragony]

Yeah. I get that one a lot, too.

[ Even among ImPorts, hair color outside the family of brown is exceptionally rare. ]

But, little harm in trying, right? Worst case, if I die, I'll probably come back anyway, and I doubt any side effects could cause my powers to be damaging to anybody else.

[slightlyoffchilt]

I'm not sure if death is necessarily the most likely outcome, Ruka. But the side effects may be... Unpleasant.

What if you were in a position where you were not dead, yet yearned to be?

[Oh like S3e12 for Chilton, fucking fuck fuck.]

[dragony]

Have you ever experienced the sensation of death, Doctor? Or of dying.

[ Spoken as if they are two separate things. ]

[slightlyoffchilt]

[Chilton considers them separate, at any rate.]

Dying. I have felt dying. [Twice, soon to be three times in his world. Soon to be four times, three more years into his world.] But not death, no. Never death.

Am I to assume you have experienced both?

[dragony]

Yes. Death only once, but dying... I wouldn't be able to count the number of times, or measure the frequency.

If I can survive past that, I'm not sure how much impact yearning could have.