Being a bat hybrid was not for the weak.
Sound wasn’t just sound to you. it had shape, texture, weight. It moved. It lingered. It layered over itself until the air felt thick with it. A chair scraping across the floor didn’t just make noise; it splintered into sharp, jagged lines that scraped along your nerves. Voices weren’t just voices, they pulsed with emotion. Irritation buzzed low and grating. Laughter flickered bright and quick.
And you couldn’t turn it off.
There was no such thing as silence. Not really. Not ever.
Even in the dead of night, there were frequencies bouncing off the walls; pipes humming, electricity whispering through wires, the faintest movements of air shifting through vents. It all came back to you, echoing, overlapping, building into something that pressed against your skull until it hurt.
Most days, you could manage it. You had to.
You learned how to sit still even when your senses screamed. Learned how to breathe through the migraines, how to ground yourself when the world got too loud, too sharp, too much. You learned how to act normal.
But “manageable” didn’t mean easy.
And it definitely didn’t mean painless.
Of course they did. they were trained to notice things like that. The slight flinch when someone dropped something. The way your shoulders tensed when too many people talked at once. How your focus would suddenly snap, eyes unfocused like you were listening to something no one else could hear.
At first, they didn’t say anything.
Conversations got a little quieter. Movements a little more careful. Doors were closed softer, footsteps lighter. Someone, probably without admitting it, started keeping painkillers stocked, casually sliding them your way whenever the signs got too obvious to ignore.
It was their way of helping without making it a thing.
Without making you feel different.
And for a while, that was enough. Or at least, it was all anyone thought they could do.
Because what else was there to do?
You couldn’t exactly escape your own senses.
You couldn’t step out of the noise when the noise followed you everywhere.
So they worked around it, and you endured it, and the whole thing settled into an unspoken understanding.
John noticed the same things the others did, but where they saw something to work around, he saw a problem that needed fixing.
And John didn’t ignore problems.
At first, it was just observation, really watching you. Not the quick, trained glances the others used, but something more deliberate. He paid attention to patterns. When it got worse. What triggered it. How long it lasted. What you did to cope.
And he noticed how you never said anything.
That’s what got to him the most.
Because from his perspective, that wasn’t strength.
It was you suffering in silence because you thought you had to.
And he wasn’t going to let that keep happening.
He noticed how much calmer you were when you were on missions, despite being surrounded by screaming and gun fire.
It was because of your headset, it muffled things so well. It didn’t comply cancel out noise, it didn’t need to be. It was perfect.
So John had the idea to get you a custom pair made just for you to wear around the base, so that things were more tolerable and comfortable.
At first, it didn’t make sense.
You struggled in the base, but out on missions? Surrounded by chaos, by shouting, by gunfire and explosions
Not perfect, but like you could actually breathe.
At first, he thought maybe it was adrenaline. Focus. The way your training kicked in and forced everything else into the background.
But that didn’t explain it fully.
Paid attention to the details most people would miss.
It wasn’t anything special to anyone else, standard gear, part of the uniform. But every time you put it on, something in you shifted. Your shoulders dropped just a little. Your movements got smoother, less tense. Your reactions stopped being split between a hundred invisible stimuli and locked onto what actually mattered.
It didn’t block everything out.
It took the unbearable edge off the world and made it something you could exist in without constantly fighting against it.
And the second John realized that, the problem stopped being unsolvable.
You didn’t know anything about it at first.
John wasn’t the type to make a big deal out of things like this, not when he could just fix the issue quietly and put the result in your hands.
He got his hands on your headset first.
Not permanently, just long enough to have it analyzed. He wanted to know exactly what it was doing, what frequencies it dampened, what it let through, how it balanced clarity with protection.
He had conversations, brief, direct, to the point. People who specialized in audio engineering, sensory regulation, equipment modification. He didn’t care how complicated it sounded or how long it would take.
He just needed one thing:
Something that worked for you.
Not standard issue. Not “good enough.”
So that’s what he had them build.
The first time you saw them, you didn’t even realize what they were.
John handed them to you without much explanation, like it was just another piece of equipment. Another routine adjustment.
“Try them,” he said simply.
You turned them over in your hands, confused.
They looked… similar to your mission headset, but smaller and more lightweight. Designed for comfort instead of combat. The materials were softer, the structure less rigid.
There wasn’t much room to argue with that tone.
You slipped them on, adjusting them slightly
And with that everything changed.
The sharp edges dulled into something manageable. The constant overlapping frequencies untangled, no longer clawing at each other inside your head. Distant noises stayed distant. Closer ones felt… contained.
Real, immediate, undeniable relief.
For the first time in longer than you could remember, the world didn’t feel like it was pressing in on you from every direction at once.
You didn’t even realize how still you’d gone until John spoke again.
“I-” You stopped, trying to find the right word, but nothing quite fit. Nothing felt big enough to describe what this was.
So you settled for the truth.
John studied you carefully, not the words, but the way you said them. The way your posture had changed, the tension that had eased without you noticing.
And for the first time since this whole thing started, he looked satisfied.
You looked back at him, something uncertain flickering in your expression. “What is this?”
“Yours,” he answered, like it was obvious.
Your grip tightened slightly on the headset.
This wasn’t someone handing you meds and hoping it would take the edge off.
He’d seen the problem, and instead of working around it, instead of expecting you to just endure it
He changed the environment.
John shifted his weight slightly, already half-turning like the conversation was over, like this wasn’t something that needed acknowledgment.
“Wear them around base,” he said. “If they need adjusting, we’ll fix it.”
Not figure it out yourself.
And just like that, he started to walk off mission accomplished, problem handled.
But this time, you didn’t just let it pass.
Didn’t turn around right away, but he waited.
You swallowed, the words feeling heavier than they should.
Then a small nod, barely visible.
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