I want to be held... Allowed to cry in their arms and feel safe doing so... Feel comforted doing so.
I want to be squeezed so tight that my fear floods out of me. When was the last time I was held like that? The last time I felt safe like that? Perhaps as a child? But that feeling was fleeting and quickly lost as my world became unsafe.
I've relied on myself for so long, comforted myself for so long, held myself for so long, could someone else hold me again? Could I feel safe like that again? Will it be years and years like my mother? Comparatively she's had it worse... But is that just an excuse to undermine my own struggling? If someone is suffering more that means they should be tended to first yes? Push aside my own wellbeing for my mother. For my parents. A habit instilled in me from childhood. My mom will be alright... Can I complain for a moment, can it be about me? Can I lay my heart on the table and you look at it and tell me it's beating and it's worthy, without laying your own beside it and comparing your scars? I can look at them when my heart isn't already aching. When I can do for you as I wish you would for me. Where I tell you all that you are and hold you close, undivided attention on you.
But in this moment, could I bare my soul and have it not be compared in a competition of suffering?
Must I cry alone in my room alone again, and again after my dreams send me through convoluted situations that break my heart. I wish I could take my brain out and scrub it clean. Wring out the viscous ooze that muddles my thoughts and pulls me deeper and deeper into my own psyche and pitiful sorrow. And I know I know I know it's hormonal, but does that make it invalid? That doesn't stop the weight of existence and self deprecation that makes it hard to even get out of bed from clinging to my bones. That doesn't make it easier knowing the cause. It's still heavy. It's still uncomfortable. It's still hard.
Can I have a moment? Just a moment? Where I'm comforted when I feel unsafe? Perhaps it's childish, but there's a child inside of me that didn't have that comfort that they deserved. Can I be childish and cry in someone's arms? Burying my face in their being, clinging tightly to their existence? Can I have that someday? Can I be unashamed to ask for such comfort? To be able to simply walk up to them, snake my arms around them, and mumble my need for a moment's comfort without feeling the need to apologize.
You DONT see me dropping this a day late but. Day 4 of @rainstormcolors Super Rair Pair week! The fourth leechshipping fic to exist on a03, and I wrote it wit my lovely friend Charles Forestchurch @worldendercharles <3!
Summary: Reader has a nightmare which leads into a dissociative episode, teetering on a panic attack. But is grounded by their captain.
Author Notes: This is the first time I've ever posted my fan fic so it may not be the best and he may be out of character but oh well. The choppiness of the writing is intentional btw given the readers state of mind.
This is written with my OC in mind, who was trapped in, essentially, a psychic prison and experimented on prior to meeting Law and the Heart Pirates. So the "him" referred to in the second paragraph is the head scientist where she was kept. The mental episode written is a heightened/exaggerated depiction of my own experiences with panic attacks, Dissociative/Derealization episodes, and the hypersensitivity that sometimes comes with it. This is by no means an over-arching depiction of what these episodes look like for everyone, nor should you attempt to comfort someone in the way that is written here before knowing what is helpful to that person. It's just what sounds nice to me, hypothetically. This is fiction. It's hurt/comfort, baby, not a mental health article.
Tags: TW!Dissociative episode, TW!Derealization, TW!Panic attack, TW!Paranoia, TW!Mentions of self harm desire, hurt/comfort?, Possible OOC for Law (I head cannon him as selective with his physical affection, rather than completely anti)
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Gnawing. Biting. Tearing. Clawing. The edges of my brain begin to converge in onto themselves till I feel nothing at all. Overlapping, replaying, distorted. Overwhelmed by the sense of nothing and everything all at the same time. If I had the mental grasp or energy perhaps I would have thought that this is a state no human should ever be in.
Yet here it all is. For a moment I feel as though I may grasp something but, before any comprehension of the world around me filters through my mind, its ripped from me in the most violent manner. Why am I put through all this? Why am I here? Without moving an inch I feel like I'm fighting for any semblance of grounding. I’ve been here before. Over and over and over and over. A grip on my mind thats been there for an eternity. Before I met him and long long after. Tearing me from any normality or reality I held onto. Im cold. Im hot. Im sweating. Im shivering. Its hard to breath. Im falling. Im floating. Like a touch ghosting my skin, I feel it all over, yet not at all. Never fully connecting. Will I snap this way? Im not here. Im not there. Where was I? Where have I gone? Who was I with? Distant. All my senses highly sensitive in a hope to feel something, I hear it far away. A sound I cant quite make out. Louder. Muffled. Sharp in my skull, yet still nontangable. Louder Louder Louder. Turning up the volume before the record even starts playing. Then blasted.
Ripping me from my sheets, my body jolts up. Drenched in a cold cold sweat. Ringing in my ears. Hot streaks from my eyes. So loud yet still distant. Is something beside me? Eyes blurry. Should I focus? Should I focus? Threads interwoven. In. Out. In. Out. Over. Under. Over. Under. Soft yet still textured. Thwik thwik thwik thwik. Threads individually catching against my nails. Every hair on end. Sheets balled in my fists. Where am I? Where have I been? How did I get here? How long have I been here?
Fire! Lightning! Connection! Rejection! Warmth against my skin. Thousands of pin pricks down my spine, along my shoulder blades. Soft. Sharp. Leathery. My body pulls away from the sensation. Eyes agape, diggin through reality, searching, aching to focus. Reaching black watery eyes, animalistic, kind… Worried. Low beside me, crouched down, his soft fluffy white hands placed gingerly on the edge of the bed. Who? Who? Who? My chest feels heavy. Eyes break away from his, tracing the room. Where? Where? Where? Muffled speech. “Ca- -ou he-r me? -o you kn-w --ere y--- ar-?” Delicate, Ginger, As if I’ll shatter or snap. Warrented. Yet the pit in my stomach makes me sick. Skin feeling vile, lungs being torn ragged by quickened breath. Tighter. Tighter. Clawing. Tear it off. Tear it off. I need out of this skin. I need out of this skin.
Then Release.
A sound like a long blade cutting through the distortion clouding my senses. Smooth. Easy. Stong. The air shifts. The bear moves. Ragged breaths still tight in my chest, ease like waves on a beach. Each one easier than the last. A new warmth takes the place where the bear once occupied. Instinctively it pulls a deep breath through my nose from me. Something sweet like vanilla, bergamot, woody. The chaser of underlying antiseptic. Just a twing. I chase it. A safety. My eyes trail to the space he occupies, focusing on his. Gold shimmering in the warm light of my room, framed by dark lashes. Almost unreadable. Almost. There’s worry, but more so, a determination. A calm clarity held in his eyes that washed away my own disorientation. The blade slicing through the strings that tied me to my own head, his voice spoke my name. The air hung heavy, but now with a comforting warmth. Expectation of a hope answered; those outside the door still waited. Breaths almost even, though the soreness of a tight chest still lingered. With each inhale I was grounded deeper and depper to him, breathing in his scent. I needed more of him.
“...Captain…” A hoarse voice eeked out, it didn’t sound like my own, though it came from my throat. Perhaps I was leaning closer. Perhaps he was. But the distance was short when he came to place a gentle hand against my cheek. The touch felt foreign, and a part of me wanted to flinch away like I had Bepo, but it was warm. Oh so warm. So against the fear in my body, I followed the yearning, and leaned into the touch. His large hand cupped my face with ease, his fingers slipped behind my ear into my hairline like second nature. It didn’t take much to move my exhausted frame, so the slight tug forward sent my forehead onto his shoulder with a soft fwump. A warm hand pressed against my back gliding across it, finger tips tracing the ridges of my spine. Sweet caresses up. Vertebrae after vertebrae. Still holding me gently, he shifted up from his kneel on the ground, then smoothly next to me. The dip in the bed slipped me deeper into the crook of his neck.
Perhaps if I wasn’t so dazed I would have noticed the hitch in his breath as mine fanned against his skin. And perhaps if I had noticed that, I would have peered up at him to see the slight flush against his tan speckled skin. But I did not. Instead I just closed my eyes and breathed him in. I leaned into him as he draped my knees across his lap, turning to hold me tighter. No, I didn’t notice when or why the tension in the air dissipated. Nor the relieved crewmembers quietly closing the door to my room with a knowing appreciative smile to their captain. All that existed to me in that moment was him. Soon it would extend to my bed, to the room, then the ship, then the sea. But right now all I could hear was his breathing, all I could smell was his scent, all I could feel was his warmth, his heartbeat, one hand still tracing my spine, the other delicately playing with the hair on the back of my head. All of him grounding me to the world my mind pulls away, hidden in the mess of my own memories. Jumbled and disorienting. I squeeze him tighter, warm cotton under my fingertips, afraid he might somehow slip away. Perhaps he’s just a distraction in this moment, a comfort from an issue I must someday face. Or perhaps it’s something he will help me through understanding, that somewhere along the way our similarities, or even differences, will reveal something to me. But in this moment, he holds me tighter, nuzzling his face gingerly into my hair, whispering,
“Im right here… I’ve got you… I’m right here.”
Someday that may not be enough to keep the creeping darkness at bay.
