#vessel issues

[lighthouseharbor]

For anyone who actually engage with any of us: im sorry that the social skill/muscle has atrophied and we are now absolute crap at it. If we do or say anything that bothers you, please don't hesitate to reach out.

[leatawrites]

Lost in Translation

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 74,283

Warnings: Existential Crisis, Mental Duress, Mentions of Torture, Consent Issues (non-sexual)

Tags: Whump, mental and physical torture, grief and loss, conditioning/brainwashing, distorted memories, eldritch archangels, Gabriel fakes his death, vessels, post cage fic, amnesia, Sam has powers, grace, ambiguous relationships, vessel issues, Gabriel takes care of Sam, Enochian, angels are empathic and telepathic creatures, angst, hurt and comfort, recovery, rehabilitation, BAMF Gabriel, BAMF Sam Winchester, fluff, getting to know each other

Author Notes: This tale was written for the @spnsabrielbang. I had the pleasure of working with @lucathepanman who made the amazing art embedded in this story on Ao3. Go show him some love and reblog his art, here it is fantastic. Thank you so much to @brattyangel69 and @ladybrittany209 for helping me edit and shape this story.

This story has been such an experience to write and a thrill to participate in this event. While writing, this song really helped me kept going and really fits the story so well Lost in Translation by Marmozets.

Story Summary: When Sam’s churning soul was jammed back into his body after over a thousand years of being incorporeal, the wall of Death's design had never stood a chance against the changes Sam's soul had undergone to survive the Cage. Upon waking, Sam struggles with being able to cope with the drastic change from being ethereal to being part of the physical world and the strangers he is greeted with. His memories of the human world were absent upon waking within his body. Sam doesn't know how he had ever been part of the physical world, nor how to carve out a spot within it like the youngest archangel had managed to. His empowered soul was lost without the memories of his human life, and he was unsure who to turn to in a world full of strangers that tried to imprison him.

You can read the full multi-chapter story Lost in Translation with Luca's amazing art, on my Ao3 and find the opening for the first chapter below the cut.

Opening to Chapter 1 of Lost in Translation

Entering the Cage was falling. Sam remembered falling further into darkness and further into Lucifer’s clawing grace. Air was sharp and sliced through his flesh, while ice branded his soul.

Until he couldn’t feel his skin and flesh any longer, and it was only the bitter cold that wrapped through him. His body had left him, left his soul ensnared by frost-bitten grace that loathed it. His soul twisting bare within the void, seeing without eyes and hearing without the need for ears, free and raw.

It felt endless, and even now Sam wasn’t completely sure that he had ever reached the bottom. He only knew that he wasn't the same, that he was merely him in the purest sense. His soul was ripped from his body and left with the angry flares of grace that tore at him and then…

He was here.

The Cage wasn’t the same sensation as falling had been, but it wasn’t anything in particular and it wasn’t absolutely nothing. It was a blank slate, a void that time couldn’t reach, where reality was whatever its most powerful captives made of it. Sam had only known they were anywhere because of the screeches that vibrated through his soul.

The sound of Michael’s anger was a swirling, roaring heat that burned and tore at Sam's soul. Fiery grace ripped his sibling free from the soul that it had burrowed into, leaving Sam screaming at the inhuman speech and the feeling of being cleaved in two. The sensation and the horrifying realization of his disembodiment struck his consciousness fully then.

Sam could feel, hear, and see but had no skin, no ears, and no eyes. His soul was raw and absorbed everything without the need for his body. He tried to breathe, to move, but nothing was the same, not here. The overwhelming sensory input that he couldn't comprehend felt like a knife that jostled within his brain, prying at the cerebellum that no longer existed within the void. Sam desperately searched for reference or context, to find a sense of self amongst his new reality.

A dizzying train of thoughts coursed through him, trying to find an understanding, to process the surrounding void and the feeling of being free of flesh and bone. Sam felt himself shudder, the sense of touch and movement without skin or limbs jolted through him in shockwaves that cracked against his mind and the grace that refused to fully leave him.

He wanted to scream with the screeching voices that vibrated through him as the surrounding space shifted with the archangels’ wrath. He wanted to close his eyes against the sight of them free and fighting, terror striking him anew at the unblinking perspective that stretched out all around him at every angle. If he had a body or consciousness to lose, Sam knew that he would have, but there was no escape from the sounds he could hear echoing from everywhere at once or the feeling of cosmically charged heat and cold that blistered his free-flowing soul. He felt himself moving away from them, from the pain he didn’t understand how he was feeling and the sight of beings too massive and ever-changing for him to comprehend.

Sam’s soul skittered further away and deeper into the nothingness and sudden bits of everything that flashed around him. He could feel himself moving, but the archangels stretched and clashed all around him and took up the endless void that was under their control. Sam cowered under the shifting space, trying to move faster away from the living light that quaked the void but found he was unable to go anywhere despite the feeling of having moved.

There was nothing but what the archangels wished for in the celestial prison he had willingly jumped into. His soul twisted and screamed at each shuddering change of scenery around him, as images of distant galaxies streamed into his mind’s eye and painted the never-ending boundaries of the Cage. This was a place meant for them. A place made and built to house an archangel, not for a bare human soul to control or withstand. This place had been the archangel’s home for thousands of years, deep within the bowels of Hell, and Lucifer was well aware of how to use it.

Time held no meaning here, just as it held no meaning to the immortals. Sam tried to find his bearings, but there was no sun except for Michael’s grace and no rise of the moon except for the twinkling archangel that had inspired the night sky. Sam didn’t know how long they had been fighting and focused solely on each other. Michael seemed to spend an eternity hammering away at Lucifer, flaming grace and frozen fury colliding in a sea of contained disaster.

Sam tried not to think about his body, which was long gone by now, leaving him unable to turn his vision away from the eyes that glared at each other and the limbs that reshaped and changed just to rip and tear. Instead, he stayed tucked away from them with Adam, the two souls curled against each other as Adam's body deteriorated without Michael's grace, both huddled and swirling together, thriving on their shared losses. Their souls screamed in the void, but the sound was easily swallowed by the screeching archaic Enochian as the archangels' memories and thoughts streamed along the endless walls of the Cage, overwhelming the huddled pair of souls.

Continue Reading on Ao3

[lighthouseharbor]

Hiii ^~^ howre you doing? /nf

im so sorry no one's answer this in such a long time. Not many of the people who've been here have the mental bandwidth to answer because honestly we haven't been doing very well since the New Years and only briefly for a period in March have people felt well

:<

Theres been a LOT of social, financial, physical health and familial stressors as well as issues with the apartment and a lot of triggers from childhood and the military coming up not to mention having to drive anywhere from 4-8 hours, one way, for family obligations that we may be pushing the vessel too hard with. Since New Years we've had to travel once every month and it doesn't look like thatll stop till the end of Summer 🥲

thwre was also the day that Levi and Emi got harassed and threatened by that random guy who flipped over his car (that wasn't even touched) and that's got the vessel on edge. People find themselves looking around for the car when they're out of the house like he might come back and make good on the threats he made.

Personally though, I'm doing okay!! I've been making friends with some other people who are also staying at the Hub :]

[lighthouseharbor]

This last weekend we drove 5 hours (10 in total) to go help the Vessel's bio mom organize through her storage/office space so she's have more room to work and do things in there with. It was a LOT of things. Boxes upon boxes of things we had to move and carry and throw out or organize onto Storage Bins for her. The space looks much better, but the vessel is now burned out and I've been struggling the last two days to be able to do the things I need around the apartment and for our own goals and it's been difficult. I had to cancel stream yesterday and skate today in order to have enough energy for this Dental Appointment we have with the VA later on today.

The vessel is dotted with bruises after all the lifting as well, and the digestive track is also screaming it's unhappiness at the increase in cortisol. The blood test results came back and also said that it's iron levels were well below half of what a healthy normal range should be, so that likely is part of the struggle.

[lighthouseharbor]

Hiding in a bathroom at this graduation party because I'm tired of having to put on this mask of "Oh HI! So nice to see you~ omg how you've been? It's been AGES since I've seen you! (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)" and perform all these "roles" of "Non-Disabled Child", "Supportive Aunt", "Good sister", etc and it's exhausting

To make matters worse, the Bio Mother has been relentless with her comments of how "lonely" she is and how she "goes days without talking to anyone" and even tried to Low-Key Manipulate / Goat me / order me to stay an entire week. "

OH So you're staying with me for a week right?!" I couldn't help myself, so I responded with "Who said anything about a week?" And then she retorted with "I think my house is killing me"

She has GOT to stop with the emotional manipulation. This vessel is her *youngest* child, go bother one of the OTHER children who actually, I don't know, Live within an hour drive of you. We live 5 hours away by car, what is she thinking?

And she's always doing this. Tries to get us alone to emotionally trap us. It's NOT our responsibility to keep her from feeling lonely or bored. The vessel is here CHILD. Not her Partner. Not her retirement plan. Not her doctor. And not her caretaker.

Which reminds me. She keeps telling everyone at this party about this issue she's having with a lump near her groin but refuses to get it checked out by a doctor so it feels like she's just using it to try and Garner attention and sympathy from everyone; especially us and her sister. This is ridiculous.

I just wanted to see my/the vessel's sisters and nieces and nephews that we haven't seen in literal years, please, mother. Stop.

[lighthouseharbor]

So the other day, Emi and Dave got the CPS Foster Care Records back. There's a lot to unpack there. A lot of information we didn't know and a lot of long time questions were answered.

I'm sure Rose would have more to say on the matter. She was one of the people here back then when it was all happening.

It also has letters written by the bio mom and dad that were never delivered before. It brings up a lot of old feelings. But at least now we have the addresses of schools and houses that folk who were here back then were looking for and couldn't remember. They'll be pleased about that.

Meanwhile, I'm busy thinking about the notes and behavior analysis that they made. Apparently the Foster Mother described their behaviors back then as "bizarre" because they would run around like a dog. And apparently they were "rude" and "defiant" back then because they would give "cutting remarks" and "criticism" to the adults around them and didn't understand "normal social etiquette". They were apparently "ostracized by their peers" at the ripe ol age of 10 and "acted as though they didn't notice". Right. Tell me that just doesn't sound like the people of 2005 didn't know how to handle an autistic child.

But I'm sure it will be nice to have these records finally. Over 2 decades later.

[lighthouseharbor]

This vessel being unable to take pills causes a lot of hang ups on the medical department. For example, it has mildly severe anemia (low range around 20) and the doctor has been begging us to take the iron pills but they're too big! Solution? Buy liquid iron and do your best 👍

Luckily, the blood tasting iron medicine tastes decent in a glass of juice. Double points of the juice has a lot of Vitamin C.

But it is frustrating to explain to doctors that we cannot take pills. It's mostly psycho semantic but we can't help it. The best we can do is take a pill no larger than a birth control pill. And those things are tiny

Doctors think we're being babies about it. But YOU try and take pills using a Vessel that had a severe reaction to a pneumonia pill when it was smol and left alone and thought it was legit going to die. That coupled with the pseudo seizure from being sent To The Field back in the military days when it wasn't supposed to be due to new medication which resulted in needing a field IV. Fun times!

They've done tests on it, nothing physically keeping it from swallowing pills than its own survival mechanism and anxiety kicking into gear.

This is one of the main issues we have with trying to get medication for any mental health problems too. We've seen first hand how big they can get because Partner Vessel takes a shit ton of them. There is NO way the vessel would let us take any of that mess. It's frustrating but what can we do? :/

[lighthouseharbor]

WOW today is a shitty mental health day.

Thinking about getting Mituna here instead. He has an easier time working with the vessel's issues