The Straw That Breaks The Cat's Back

[millenyal_pink]

Who: Elle & whoever wants to find her
What: Finally reaching the end of her rope.
Where: Rivendell
When: Day two of being inside the walls
Warnings: Panic attacks, mental breakdowns.


They’re safe.

They don’t need to find their own food water, or shelter anymore. The injured parties are being taken care of. By all accounts, things are the best they’ve been since the group got stuck here in the first place.

Which leaves Elle in a weird place. She’s full of anxious energy and the need to do something. It won’t go away. But they can’t meet with the Green, Elrond is still healing the injured, and there’s no crisis to manage at the moment.

Sometimes Elle pats herself on the back for being relatively well-adjusted. Then times like this come where she can’t handle any amount of downtime and she remembers that she really is incredibly dysfunctional.

On their second day of being actually inside Rivendell she goes through her supplies and catches an all too familiar scent. Her breath stutters and her heart pounds in her ears as she instinctually looks around— but no. The smell is coming from a sprig of Athelas she had put in her belt pouch.

She brings the leaves up to her nose, inhales deeply, and tries not to cry. This has been the longest she’s gone without her pack in… well, since they formed. Every instinctual tug on their pack link is met with an empty silence. But she hasn’t truly sat down and tried to connect, yet. There hasn’t been time.

So maybe…

It’s probably a bad idea, but Elle doesn’t have anything to do with herself and her heart is aching. She wants to be with her pack— her family. Marcus’ scent is overwhelming her senses but he’s not even here.

So Elle finds herself a quiet, hidden-away corner, sits down, and delves deep into her own mind.

She isn’t sure how long it takes. She goes into a semi-meditative state. She’s only just barely aware of her physical form as she’s focused inward, focused on the parts of herself that haven’t known true loneliness in years. On the parts of herself that are bound to the people she holds dearest in the world.

She doesn’t just tug on her pack link, she follows that mental thread as far as it will take her. She's just hoping to find something-- anything. The smallest glimmer of connection that she can hold onto until she gets home.







Then the thread snaps.






Elle barely notices as she’s wrenched back into her body with a gasp. The only thing she can think or feel is alone alone alone alone alonealonealonealonealone—

They’re gone. They're gone.

Dread and fear and grief and nausea fill her gut as sobs wrack through her body. Where before it was an aching absence in the back of her mind, it’s now a painful wound. It feels like a part of her is missing. Like the pain of a phantom limb.

She loses awareness of her surroundings as her whole being focuses on the emptiness inside of her head.

This world doesn’t have the same magic she’s used to. It wasn’t built to sustain things like her. The combination of spirit and flesh aren’t natural to this place, and she can feel it warring inside of her as her spirit tries to connect to something that isn’t there.

She so removed from herself that she barely registers her own quiet screams of grief and pain.

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

For lack of organic reasons to be busy, Dan’s been making work for himself, coordinating a big party that he hopes will be a much-needed release valve for many of the harried, weary adults in Rivendell, squad or not. Elf magic has cleansed his body of infection, and though he’s still using a crutch, now that his leg wound is healing he’s up and about meeting new people and arranging supplies and practicing clavichord.

It’s left him not checking in on his people as much as he might have wished.

He hasn’t spoken with Elle since the incident with Price, and he realizes that only when he hears her pained groan bouncing around a hallway as he hobbles back from the kitchen. He picks up his pace, turning the corner to find her sitting there against a wall, looking at nothing and yet in some sort of profound agony that is evident on its face as grief.

He clacks his crutch against the floor as he goes over to her and kneels, hoping that the sound will alert her to his presence before he has to potentially startle her with physical contact.

“Elle-!” he says firmly, not harshly, choosing to speak between her screams so he doesn’t have to raise his voice to try and get her attention. “Elle! Elle, you’re here. You’re safe.”

[millenyal_pink]

Elle jumps back at the physical contact, hitting her shoulders and head against the stone wall. She instinctually curls into herself as her eye dart around to find the danger. Her vision isn't quite able to focus on anything, so she only sees the shape of a person in front of her.

Her lungs catch and she no longer seems to be able to draw a proper breath. Her hands dig into her head and pull at her hair as a static-like noise fills her ears. Any attempt to talk comes out as frantic, high-pitched exhales rather than anything resembling words.

She has two thoughts, now. "They're gone" and "I can't breathe."

[hallelujahjunction]

"Hey, hey..."

He places his hands over hers, letting her curl her fingers in her hair without prying them away, without trying to cage her, but maintaining contact. He feels like he's on the outside looking inwards, watching her struggle to breathe. He feels like he's either watching himself, the meltdowns he's had, or, more than that, watching as his little siblings fell apart under the weight of how doomed they all were. Fear serves you when it guides you away from danger; grief heals you when it processes a wound. Whatever's happening now isn't doing either.

"You can breathe. Just hold that exhale as long as you can. There's so much breath in it. You couldn't breathe out so much if you weren't also able to breathe in, right?" Dan's voice is usually very monotone, but there's a steadiness to it here that's remarkable, as if he's laying out the words like solid footing for her to stand on. "Your exhale is a fact."

[millenyal_pink]

Elle hears someone speaking and feels gentle hands on her own. She flinches back and hyperventilates even more for a moment, before minutely relaxing into the contact.

She can't really parse what the other person is saying, but it's low and comforting in a way that some part of her says is safe.

She doesn't know how to communicate what's happening. Hell, she doesn't really know what's happening in this moment. So she just shakes her head back and forth and curls forward, further into herself and slightly toward the person with her.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan takes the way she's curling towards him as a request to be held, and so he gently wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in, shielding her from the rest of the room with his back.

He's suspected something like this might be coming for a while, he realizes. Maybe not consciously, because if he'd be actually anticipating this, he wouldn't have left Elle alone without checking in on her more frequently. But he wasn't surprised to find her in this state, just concerned, because for all she does maintaining self-discipline, for her pretenses of adulthood and her mostly-successful attempts at levelheadedness, she's still a kid, far from home and far from her loved ones, and this situation still sucks.

Eventually, it was going to grind her down.

"Keep exhaling. You're okay."

[millenyal_pink]

She can feel steady breathing, now, and starts to match it. When she finally manages a proper inhale, she recognizes Dan's scent, and all put collapses into his arms. Her hands shift from her hair to Dan's back where she clings like it's life or death.

At one point, after the hyperventilation has died down, Dan will be able to pick up Elle speaking softly.

"They're gone they're gone they're gone they're gone," repeating over and over. Her brain is caught in a feedback loop and can't move past that one thought.

[hallelujahjunction]

"They're not here. They're just not here."

There's a big difference between gone and absent. Dan didn't learn that until Bunny went back and changed the timeline Dan grew up in to save Dan's family. Dan still goes through the same cycle each morning; he wakes up, he wonders whether his brothers and sisters are awake yet, and then he remembers in painful harshness that he isn't home anymore and every other person he loved died in pain. Only now there's an additional step, remembering that they aren't dead at all, only dead to him, locked in a timeline he can never get to.

Absent, not gone.

Having just counseled Cammie through the horrors of learning that things weren't well back home, that Cammie's loved ones weren't safe and sound in her absence but starting to die as casualties in a war that would not yield, he can't say that Elle's people back home are in one piece. He can't guarantee her that. But to recognize that the pain at this moment is hers, not theirs, puts it into her control. Managing sadness over the suffering someone else is going through is harder than managing the grief of not having them near, in Dan's experience.

The grief is still there, no matter what. But it's easier.

He rubs her back and pulls her in close. "I've got you."

[millenyal_pink]

"No," she corrects him. Suddenly it's important that he understands. Suddenly Dan understanding is the most important thing in the world.

She brings one hand to her head and taps it once before grabbing onto her hair again.

"They're--" her breath hitches. "They're gone. I can't-- I can't--"

Her breathing starts picking back up.

"Can't. Feel."

She stops talking because she's about to start hyperventilating again and she can't. She just can't.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia moves fast when she has to. She's more of a long-distance runner than a sprinter, but even the slowest Garou learns to compensate if they don't want to get dead.

So when she hears screaming -- pained and grief-striken -- and she recognizes the voice as Elle's, she's running toward it before she can even think "oh shit". The last thing any of them need, especially Elle given her self-identification as a diplomat, is a goddamned Frenzy.

If Elle is going to Frenzy, she hasn't by the time Stacia arrives. She swoops in and wraps her arms around the other girl, stroking her hair and making soothing noises.

"Shh shh shh," she says. "I got you. You won't hurt anyone who can't take it. Let it out."

[millenyal_pink]

A familiar scent cuts through the smell of the Athelas.

In her current state she barely recognizes it, but some part of her must because she just lets go.

She feels herself beginning to transform, but instead of to Crinos, she shifts into Feline and begins to fight savagely against the person holding her back.

All she can think is pack run danger run pack alone pack run.

Her mind feels more animal than human at the moment as her need to flee intensifies. Her sobs turn into shrieking yowls. Her claws try to rend the flesh of the thing keeping her from her escape.

[credit_not_blame]

Well, at least she held on to herself long enough for Stacia to arrive.

Stacia has to blow some of her Rage and shift before she can do anything else. Just because Elle is trying to flee instead of fight doesn't mean that a scared mountain lion can't maim or kill a human girl, and Stacia only heals as fast as any human would in her breed form. The result is an enormous cat being grappled by a terrifying wolf-monster, and Stacia really hopes none of their hosts are watching right now because none of this looks like something you'd want in your home.

She's also not sure how or if Direct the Storm on a Fox Frenzy (why do they call it a Fox Frenzy anyway, do all fox shifters - no, focus), but she's going to assume it make the target a "safe" place or else they're going to have to make some apologies for scratching up some walls. She holds on tight to Elle in spite of the yowling and scratching, snarling as she concentrates on picking a target that isn't her own flesh.

[millenyal_pink]

Elle feels whatever is holding her back get bigger and stronger, which causes her to panic even more. She redoubles her efforts to break free.

Then suddenly her attention starts getting pulled from just run to safety is this way. She doesn't know how or why, but she feels compelled to chase that feeling until she reaches that place.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia can't quite pinpoint if it's the feeling of the Gift catching or feeling Elle's movements change, but something changes. She turns Elle loose, rolling off of her and shifting to Lupus to become smaller while still maintaining her ability to heal.

There's not anyone between them and the clump of bushes she picked, thank goodness. Hopefully no one shows up before Elle gets there.

[millenyal_pink]

If Elle doesn't get to that clump of bushes over there, she might just fucking die. Those bushes are the only place of safety in the whole world and Elle needs to get to them, now.

She tears off, leaving the thing that was restraining her behind.

It takes mere moments for her to sprint over to them, and when she gets there she dives headfirst into them and curls herself into as small of a ball possible.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia takes a moment to breathe (and bleed, and heal) in the shreds of her and Elle's nice Elven dresses. She wants to give Elle time to calm down, but given how much a mountain lion screaming sounds like a woman screaming, she knows that they don't have a lot of time before someone (armed) comes to investigate. She rises to her feet and starts nosing through the shredded cloth, trying to put together enough that she's not going to be completely mortified talking to whoever shows up.

[millenyal_pink]

Now that Elle's in a place of safety she's able to calm down some. She's not screaming anymore so that's a start.

She's hit with a wave of exhaustion as she comes out of the frenzy. Her transformation back to her breed form is abrupt and inelegant. And now she's naked in a bush, which isn't the idea situation to be in.

"Fuck."

[myagents]

Seeing Elle in such poor conditions, Price ponders over what's the best thing to do. Intervening in any way would tempt him to do inconvenient things - which he did plenty of, as of lately -, on the other hand he's not sure who to call. He doesn't know how many people are aware of the incident he had with Dan and Elle's involvement, if he were to report that she's unwell they would speculate that it's his fault. Although they still would if they caught him near her. Besides, she is a very annoying person and she isn't worth the trouble, but she is a kid. Price won't hurt kids.

"Miss Bryant." he approaches Elle, doesn't touch her "Miss Bryant, can you hear me?"

He's already done with the situation before it even starts.

[millenyal_pink]

A voice in the back of her mind, the part that's still somewhat aware of her surroundings, asks 'why is he bothering?'

Luckily or unluckily, the rest of her is not in a state to process that thought.

The only physical sensation she's truly aware of are her fingers gripping her hair at the scalp. Everything else is a wash of sound and color.

[myagents]

"It's alright, Miss Bryant." he knows they are not trusthworthy words coming from his mouth, so he adds "I will call someone for you."

Price tunes to Elle's breathing pattern, and gradually slows it down for hers to match and become calmer.

[millenyal_pink]

She does begin to subconsciously match his breathing, which does wonders for helping her calm, even a little.

She manages to reconnect with reality enough to know who's in front of her and hear what he's saying.

"No--" she chokes out. She doesn't want anyone else to see her like this. It's bad enough literally anyone is, much less Price, but she'd prefer if it ended there.

[myagents]

"You need help, you can't be left alone." he hints a smile, still breathing slowly "It will be alright. Who would you like me to call?"

He hopes that at least it's clear that by offering to call someone else he's trying to put at more ease instead of forcing her to go through this when having him by her side all the time.

[millenyal_pink]

Don't leave me alone she wants to beg. Don't call anyone.

"Don't--" is all she's able to force out. "Don't."

She's not in full control of her body, but she is beginning to come back to herself. Her attack will be over soon and getting someone to help is just a waste of time.

[myagents]

"Alright."

Very reluctantly, he reaches for her hand, his own grip being extremely limp so that she can remove herself from that contact if she wants.

"It will be over soon. Breathe slowly." he emphasizes the slow breaths to keep her going along "Very good."

[diedforyoursins]

Even hidden away, it's not hard to notice Elle. Not by the soft sobs, but by the air of despair and grief, the feeling of a soul screaming with it. It's a heavy feeling. But when Kaworu finds her, he only approaches so much. Paused a few feet back, hands in his pockets as his looks down on her with something like sympathy, or curiosity.

"Can you hear me?" Not unkind, but not overly delicate either. "Is this more than you can bear?"

There's a distance there – not just the physical space, but a sense of disconnection. This is something he has no part in. Whatever it is, it's her own internal journey to take, her own battle to fight. All he can do is provide the option for a connection.

[poor_unlucky_girl]

It's amazing how dogs have this heightened sensitivity that allows them to perceive when something isn't right. Brown barks, keeping himself distant. He captures Jennifer's attention, prompting her to find Elle.

"Elle! Elle, it's me, Jennifer, are you alright?"