Nightmares
(Sometimes, Mirror does remember something... it's never something pleasant.)
TW: A dream involving surgery, modification, and pain.
Everyone has nightmares, Tera maybe a little more then average, but steadily getting better as she worked through her trauma.
It was rare though that Mirror had a nightmare, and rarer still that both consciousness's had one at the same time...
"Monster! Killer!" Was screamed from the darkness, a mass of darkened shapes and scowling- angry faced, Tera in the middle, having been kicked to the ground.
It had been awhile since she'd had this particular one.
"Please... I dont-" Her plea is cut off by being kicked in the jaw, then the ribs... then; everywhere, everyone joining in, she feels her limbs snap, things break.
She could stop this, could easily fight back... but she deserved it...
She couldn't remember what it was exactly she did, but she'd done a lot... it could have been anything.
She was a monster. A freak. A test subject...
Test subject...
Test subject-
An experiment that just needed to be dissected and thrown away.
"Why don't we see what makes you tick?" Another voice, higher, colder, more robotic, the shapes of a crowd morph and twist into a large, almost infinitly expanding centipede, a garish suit of melting flesh stuck to its front. It was a drone... at one point.
The kicks transform instead into a whole body, searing and intense pain, Tera tries to scream but nothing comes out- it hurts, it hurts, and she doesn't know how to make it stop, it's worse then anything she's ever experienced in her life. Like being put in a meat grinder.
"Ooh po-or baby, flesh is always so much more. Tender, don't worry: I'm here to fix that."
Mirror... Tera? They?
They look down at a body that's unrecognizable, flesh interchanged with cold steel and copper wiring. It's wrong in too many ways, changed too much. The table is dead cold, the lights shining on them are searing, impossibly hot.
A thought: The army took most of it... what more could you take? In a voice they don't recognize... but they do, it's theirs? Or was...
Then more searing, indescribable pain, but they can't scream- it takes a moment to realize they can't because they didn't have a mouth anymore.
"I'll make you per-fect! So close already! Ju-st go back to sleep."
Oh. If only.
If only it could be as peaceful and welcoming as sleep.
Their vison goes dark as something important is removed- their eyes. Pain, white hot and searing before all they can feel is the stinging in their lungs and heavy beating of their heart but even that becomes nothing in the face of the feeling of being turned inside out.
And then being taken apart
And put back together again
And being taken apart... and again, and again and again-
All they want is for it to end.
They beg for it, silently, with no outlet.
The last thing they hear is the heart monitor make a shrill, long cry. And "Oops."
And they snap awake. Both of them, screaming as their heart thumps in their chest and several cameras on long, insect-like limbs jut out of their body, all the eyes closed before a loud and distorted screech cracks through the air, tentacles burst in every direction- agitated and and angry before everything curls up in a protective cocoon.
The cameras shift before they make a hologram of Tera in a fetal position, curled up on the bed.
...They didn't want to scare the others, looking too much like the thing they'd separated from.
