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wildestmods ([personal profile] wildestmods) wrote in [community profile] wildestlogs2022-03-30 06:50 pm

MEMORY SHARE ※ 1


MEMORY SHARE


It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking out from the gardens at the landscape passing by below. Taking a moment to catch their breath after a jog in one of the castle's larger magic rooms.

The squad is suddenly connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can prevent the link.

To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?

And if they were there, who was in theirs?

[ooc: So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can also be invisible until the memory is finished. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.

They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can sometimes control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Center Forward)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-01 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
“Better. How’s your head?” Dan is, in fact, quite glad for the distraction as, in the memory, he recites some epic poetry to lull his daughter to sleep.

Price mentioned not recovering from whatever Rowena did to him, and Dan worries. He doesn’t want to interact with Price, but he still wishes well for him. It’s not anger Dan feels, just defeat, having finally reached the limits of how he knows to interact with someone so committed to alienating others.
myagents: (alert)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-01 08:46 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm not sure."

By which he means it's killing him in every possible way.

"But I will be alright."

He won't, but complaining would be seen as a manipulation, and he is honestly tired of Dan.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Fingertap)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-01 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
In the memory, El asks for Dan to skip past the boring parts of the Odyssey and get to the monsters already.

“Did Jennifer give you her gift yet?” The options here are to watch this painful memory or make idle chatter.
myagents: (alert)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-01 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)
"A gift?" Price looks confused, why would anyone give him a gift? "No. I haven't seen her in a while, actually."
hallelujahjunction: (Default)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-01 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Dan feels relieved, and then guilty for feeling that way, because he suspects the safest thing for Jennifer is to avoid Price. Jennifer’s all too willing to make excuses for Price, and that makes her vulnerable.

“Yeah, she was making you something. Asked for my help but I was pretty hungover that day, so I couldn’t do much.”
myagents: (interested)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-01 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh. That is very nice of her."

He has a bittersweet feeling about this, because Jennifer seems to know what he had done and yet she cherishes him the way she cherishes everyone else, but he is aware that it must be because maybe she just doesn't know better. He smiles.

"She is a very sweet young woman."
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Washed Out)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-01 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
"She is."

Dan worries for her, just like he worries for Price. She has the latitude for forgiveness that Dan does, maybe even more, and Dan's aware that that's a road with a lot of pain and exploitation in it. It's one thing when he's doing it to himself; it's another watching someone else expose themselves like that.

"I wasn't really in sorts when I met with her. Like I said. Hangover."
myagents: (pretty)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-02 08:34 am (UTC)(link)
"She's surprisingly strong and profound. It's always a delight to speak to her."

She's not nearly as naive as she looks, although her optimism looks misplaced to the point of uncomfortable.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Hm)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-02 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"She's got a good head on her." Dan didn't forget the acute emotional intelligence she showed diagnosing the people in her life with their unspoken wounds.

-and yet her interjection into the dynamic between Price and Dan was still to insist that Dan 'fess up to something he'd supposedly done because Price was sad, and Dan giving Price slack because Price was sad was what ended with him in a river. That was the slack Price would use to hang Dan, given the opportunity.

"We might could have ended up with worse comrades out here."
myagents: (done with your shit)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-02 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
"Mh." he side-eyes Dan for a moment "She might however be too kind for her own good."

He knows damn well that this is what Dan is thinking, especially when it comes to Price. Not that this is something he disagrees with, being nice and compliant has screwed Price over way more severely than resorting to violence ever has. It's compliance that broke him, not rebellion, and although he likes Jennifer he will not be surprised if she suffers a painful fate. In fact, she might be asking for it.
hallelujahjunction: (Default)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-04 06:33 am (UTC)(link)
In the memory, Dan's daughter finally goes to sleep, arms wrapped around the pillow Dan had previously been using. That old version of Dan sits awake, drinking straight from a bottle, squinting at the fading light through the cracked car window.

This Dan sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Well, I hope don't no one here ever find out if she is or isn't too kind."
myagents: (angry)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-04 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Price smiles through an expression of pure contempt.

"I hope so too."

It's not him that Jennifer should be afraid of, it's people like Dan. He focuses on the girl, wondering what type of dreams would she have, what could have possibly gone through her head.
Edited 2022-04-04 15:03 (UTC)
hallelujahjunction: (Angry - Driving)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-11 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
Dan lets that slide off him. There's no point picking a fight with Price, no point trying to get Price's strange idea of who Dan is to line up with Dan's own self-conception. Let Price think what he wants.

He just wants out of this memory, and finally the world around them responds - only to, again, give Price a window into Dan's life with his daughter, another snapshot of their time together living in that car.

This time it isn't uncomfortably hot, but cold. Dan and El are huddled together in the back of the car, bundled up in several layers of clothing and sharing a blanket. The clothing has been taken down from the windows, and outside, it's the snowy parking lot of a strip mall. Dan looks flushed, sweating in spite of the chill. He coughs, not his usual smoker's cough but heavy, phlegmatic and in an uncontrollable fit, looking exhausted as it passes.

"We need to get a hotel tonight," El pronounces. "I'm worried about you."

"Just walking pneumonia. I get it every winter. It'll go away in a few weeks." Dan clears his throat and tries to breathe deep. He's barely audible, whatever respiratory infection he caught having carved out from his already quiet and ragged voice. "We don't got the money tonight."

"A few weeks?" El shakes her head. "If you let me drive, I can at least start us down south and get us someplace warmer. We shouldn't be up here this time of year."

"I ain't letting you drive." He bundles himself up tighter. "It won't stay this bad for weeks. I'll just have a lingering cough that long."

"You always have a lingering cough." El rests her head on his shoulder.

"Yeah, you're right." Dan sneezes into the crook of his arm. He groans and wipes his nose on a napkin from a McDonald's takeout bag. "Didn't realize it'd get cold this fast, didn't realize that case would take two months. Lot of things we might could have chosen different in hind-"

There's a knock on the window from a uniformed police officer. Dan sits up and slowly rolls down the window.

"Officer?"

"Hey, I just needed you to know, you can't sleep here." The officer, other hand on her holster, points to a sign under a lamppost that details that the lot is for mall patrons only.

El holds up the McDonald's bag. "We shopped here. We're allowed-"

Dan reaches over and squeezes El's shoulder, urging her to stay quiet. He coughs and clears his throat again. "Sorry, officer, we didn't realize. I'll just get over to the driver's seat and we'll be on our way-"

He descends into another coughing fit.

The officer waits for him to finish coughing before stating: "I didn't say you could go. I'm going to need your license and registration before I decide whether to let you off with a warning."

Dan plays it cool, but El suddenly looks terrified. Dan gives her a little squeeze to the shoulder again, trying to reassure her as he gets out of the car, goes to the driver's seat and fishes papers out of the glove compartment. The officer takes them and goes back to her vehicle.

"We're fucked," El hisses. She grips Dan's arm until her dark knuckles go pale.

"It's fine. If they take me in, you call Lionel and he'll get you set up with one of the packs around here until I get back out. Everything's okay." Dan pets her hair. "Don't panic. Don't panic."

"On your knees, hands where I can see them," the officer commands, gun drawn. "Suspended license for a DUI, failure to appear, firearm charge, warrant for a B&E - you've had a busy year, Mr. Sagittarius."

Dan locks eyes with El, as if to keep urging her not to panic as she starts to breathe quickly. She matches his gaze and nods. He holds his hands out and gets on his knees, coughing still; the officer calls for backup on her walkie so someone can come search the vehicle, and puts Dan in cuffs.
myagents: (deep thought)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-11 10:24 am (UTC)(link)
Price already feels uneasy on his own, but this scenario is painful to witness. It triggers him in multiple ways, but it's not safe to have a reaction. He couldn't even scream if he wanted. It's so strange how many similarities he shares with Dan when they are so different still.

He forces himself to turn around, squeeze his eyes closed and breathe deeply. What looks like a self hugging gestures is actually him clawing at his own arms.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Staring Into Space)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-11 10:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Dan's attuned enough that he sees the way Price's fingernails are digging into his shirt. He isn't sure what this is unearthing for Price, but he can sense the upset as if it were a cloud crossing over the sun.

This memory doesn't upset Dan nearly as much as so many of them could. This is just a picture of a bad day in a life with a disproportionate amount of bad days. He watches the officer press the memory version of himself against the side of the car and pat him down, watches a second officer come and turn out the vehicle and find a baggie of cocaine and an bottle of oxycontin in the pocket of the passenger's seat, watches El on the sidelines resisting the urge to pace and crying into her sleeves, and he thinks of how routine an indignity this always was. He got so used to it.

He doesn't want to touch Price, but he wants to let him know it's alright, and there really isn't anything alright about what they're seeing or the fact that it hits Price so hard.

"It's just a memory," he says lamely.
myagents: (angry)

cw swift mentions of murder, homelessness and prostitution

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-12 10:25 am (UTC)(link)
"I know." he replies calmly. Price is aware that this isn't about him, and isn't planning to get attention. Whatever Dan might do, he needs to watch out for. He can't help but fail to hold back a groan and whisper 'not again' when the memoryscape warps to show his memories. It's the same thing that Bunny saw:

"What the hell are you doing here?!"

The pasty white face of the case worker turns red, and his eyes radiate pure anger. That almost hateful glance is directed at a young man that is immediately recognizable as Aiden Price - he looks basically the same despite being thirty years younger - who is pouting back at him.

"I can't believe you're abandoning me like this."

His voice is already deep, but there's a different quality to it: it's not quiet yet, it's almost booming. The most assertive it has ever sounded.

"And I can't believe that you broke into my damn house, Aiden!" the case worker growls, visibly holding back "You need to stop following me, or I'll call the police."

"What?! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF ME!"

Aiden shouts, almost cries, but the man doesn't budge.

"Not anymore. You are a legal adult, and you followed a gifted children's program, you got all those degrees, I promise you'll find a job in no time."

"Easy for you to say, you are not overqualified for every job you apply for." he spits, willing to cut and make the other feel inferior for once "The money from the government is not enough to get a roof over my head, where am I supposed to sleep?!"

"At the homeless shelter where I took you."

The case worker replies like it's obvious, like it's not a big deal. The boy's voice breaks in response, becomes the quiet mumble everyone is used to.

"Why can't you just adopt me?"

"There are rules on this planet. Rules that I can't break, and even if I could, I don't want to."

Aiden lowers his head, stays silent for a moment before speaking again.

"...Is it because I killed my parents? You know what they did to me, I had no choice, you can't punish me for this too."

"Of course you're going to bring that up." the man shakes his head "It's not just that, what about the other kids?!"

"Why do you always treat me like a criminal?! It's not my fault that killing them was the only way to make you notice me!"

A moment of silence follows. The case worker stares at him with his eyes and mouth wide open.

"Listen...We tried our best to stop you from becoming a criminal, but clearly we failed." he says sternly, grabbing Aiden by an arm and pulling him towards the exit "All I can really do is hope that you won't get yourself in trouble, but even then it's too late for you."

"You're not supposed to talk to me like that..."

"You can't convince me, Aiden." the reply is accompanied with a scoff "You don't know how to distinguish right from wrong. That's why you will die in jail."

The door slams shut, leaving poor young Aiden alone.

Price forces a smile, looking defeated: "In case you were wondering if I was lying to you, here is proof that my case worker really did say that."

Seeing that the memory isn't stopping there, he does an apologetic gesture.

"This part will is likely to give you second-hand embarrassment. I apologize in advance for that."

His younger self is desperately banging on the door.

"Please take me in, just for tonight, I don't have anywhere to go. It's freezing outside!"

No response.

"Please, please, please!" he cries "I will clean, I will do chores, I will do anything! I can...I can do you that favour you need."

A click. Then the door opens, the case worker looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Favour? What the hell are you talking about?"

Aiden takes it as an invitation to come inside, and does so while explaining himself smugly:

"I know you're sexually frustrated. Everyone knows. I may not be able to pay the rent yet, but it's a payment you need anyway."

"Don't be ridiculous." the case worker growls and then shakes his head "Should've known you were just going to provoke me."

"It's not 'provoking', I'm trying to compromise."

"I will not let you sleep here, and for God's sake I'm NOT having sex with you."

"Why not?" Aiden protests "You think I'm not good enough?"

The case worker starts walking towards the comm pad to call the police, but his hand is quickly grabbed and pulled.

"I know that you didn't let me date and I don't have experience, but..." he brings the case worker's hand close to his face "I learn fast."

On that note, he wraps his mouth around a finger, trying to suck it suggestively. The case worker pulls away immediately.

"What are you doing?!"

"You know what I'm doing! Do you really think no one has offered me money for this yet? I always declined so far, but I think I might actually start, since I've been asked often."

The case worker stays silent, doesn't know how to react.

"It's a skill that I need to develop, anyway, you might as well take me off the streets and gift me a first time with someone that at least pretends to care about me for a night. Either that, or you're going to have to sleep knowing that you made me an easy target for all of kinds of predators and if somebody kills me then it's your fault."

"Aiden--"

"For all you know, someone could have already put their filthy hands on me."

The silence that follows is heavy, almost deafening.

"...But it didn't happen." the man's voice is harsh and downright merciless "Or you would have proven it instead of talking in circles. These manipulations will come back to haunt you, one day."

The current version of Price flinches, and so does the one in the memory.

"Right...I'm talking you into not letting me die. How evil of me!"

"You have damaged people, animals, and property repeatedly out of malevolence. You have been stalking me for two weeks and now you come here and have the nerve to say these things. I'm sorry, Aiden, but you're not a child anymore. You are legally responsible for yourself and there's nothing you can do about it to change that. I'm not your father and will never be."

With a push, the case worker locks him out of the apartment again.

The most messed up part is probably that current Price is almost proud of himself for not reacting to this disgusting memory, for not having feelings. God, why has he been so stupid in the past year? Everything is so much easier when he shuts off emotions and keeps going like a machine. He should have known better. It was too big of a mistake to let Dan know he can feel at the very beginning when with a bit less agitation, who knows, he could have been successful in not being seen as a danger.

That is his train of thought when having to rewatch one of the worst days of his adult life.
Edited 2022-04-12 10:28 (UTC)
hallelujahjunction: (Sad - Bridge of Nose)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-12 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Dan doesn't know if touch would be welcomed, and so he doesn't force it. He holds a hand out, in case Price wants to take it, and he takes a deep breath as he tries to wrest the world back into his memory, not Price's.

It isn't secondhand embarrassment that stings here, but empathy, watching a young version of Price desperate and mewling for support and care and, just like his adult counterpart, not grasping why that support and care that he should have been entitled to was being revoked. Unable to see past anything but his needs going unmet and the injustice of them going unmet. It tracks perfectly onto what Dan knows about Price. None of it surprises him, none of it shocks him; it just saddens him in its cruelty.

He doesn't know how much it helps, if at all, for Price to see how much he and Dan are alike, whether that makes Price feel shamed or unjudged. But everyone around here - including Dan - has been willing to make judgments of him, and all Dan can think of to offer is just a snippet of reprieve from that. So Dan tries to take the memory and he tries to show Price how none of these moments are the sort that Dan will cast him out for.

Dan doesn't want to deal with Price, doesn't want to keep being hurt in ways that spiral out of his control, but that isn't the same as judgment. He's sure it feels the same to Price. He hopes there's a way to distinguish the two.

So the next scene is in a hotel room with walls so thin that the slot machines on the first floor can be heard chiming, and Dan's in the bathroom mirror with pieces of tissue up his nose to staunch bleeding, shirtless, counting up forty dollars in ones and fives with pink, fading handprints around his neck and wrists. There's glitter streaked across his chest, and his upper lip is chapped, eyes still dilated despite the harsh bathroom light from whatever he took. He steals the hotel bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the toilet paper, the batteries out of the remote control, the towels, shoving them into a duffel bag that's falling to pieces.

"Ain't no shame in whoring," Dan says with a dark laugh completely devoid of humor, and yet still warm. But that's not the only thing Dan's seen that may elicit judgment, so Dan digs deep into memories he wouldn't share except that he knows no other way to try and connect with Price here, to reassure, and Price knows about Eliora anyway.

The side of an abandoned highway, at night, and Dan's covered in blood while El sits in the dirt breaking pieces of asphalt off the edge of the road. Dan's stripping off bloody clothing and tossing it into a roadside grave, bundling back up as he goes against the night chill, before he starts to fill in the grave. Tears are dripping down his nose.

"Are you mad at me?" El asks, defensive and not at all contrite.

Dan straightens up and tosses the shovel to the side. "El, you killed someone. I ain't angry, I'm devastated. That man had a family, he had hopes and aspirations, he's going to have loved ones out there wondering where the fuck he is for the rest of their lives- you can't just- you can't-"

"I didn't have a choice!" El screams. "It just happened-!"

"If you didn't have no control over your magic, you would have killed me a long time ago. You can control it, you just don't want to," Dan says, with the harshest tone Price has likely ever heard from him. El glares back at him, pure hatred in her eyes.

"What are you going to do? Kill me? Burn my bones and send me to the other side?" At first, El says it petulantly, but soon her face crumples. "I don't want to die- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you can't just get rid of me, you can't-!"

"Shh, shh," Dan goes to El and pulls her into his arms. "I'd- I'd never. I wouldn't never hurt you. I promise. I ain't...I wouldn't..."

El starts sobbing into his chest, and he rocks her slightly. "You can't hurt nobody again, El. Please. I can't force you but...you can't. You can't hurt people."

"I don't mean to," El whimpers. "I don't know what to do."

"I know," Dan says, tears of his own starting to fall. "I don't know neither."

To this day, Dan can't tell if he handled the situation with his daughter correctly, if there was any way to handle it at all. What is there to do with a violent child who can't comprehend or control their violence? He defused El's pain, but how many people got hurt or killed along the way as Dan refused to take drastic action? Eight? Wouldn't it have been better, objectively, to put one sad little girl down like a dog than to let her tear through eight people like paper dolls, ripping them to shreds with magic she barely understood?

How was Dan supposed to do that, when she was the only thing in the world he loved?

He didn't handle it well, but faced with the image of Price's case worker, Dan sees how the case worker's heartlessness spared no one. Price went on to enact violence on grander and grander scales, scaffolded by a military structure that incentivized callousness. Encouraged by systems that saw Price's intellect as a boon and his coldness as a perk, a system that wasn't alarmed by the unhinged way Price's moral compass could spin around away from true north.

"Life's complicated," he says, knowing that's painfully simple. "Ain't nothing I can see in these memories of yours that makes me think otherwise."
myagents: (concerned)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-12 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Price wants to take Dan's hand, and he even almost does it, but pulls away last moment. In his eyes it's surprisingly easy to read, 'you will hurt me again if I do'.

He stays silent as he watches the memory. El is of course similar to him in some way. He wonders if there was 'hope' for her or if they were the same under that aspect as well.

"Perhaps life is complicated, but survival is simple."

To a painful extent, honestly.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Fingertap)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-13 08:30 am (UTC)(link)
Dan doesn't look offended, just sad, when Price retracts his hand. He still doesn't understand what he did that hurt Price so badly, only that somehow, Price was hurt. That's enough to stir his sympathy.

"Survival explains a lot of things folks do, it's true." Dan bites his knuckle. "In some ways she weren't that different from you. She weren't that different from me, either."
myagents: (pained)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-13 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Price nods. He doesn't necessarily want to talk about this, but he's glad Dan is repaying the favour of distracting him. Yet the memory is insistent, he faces away in order not to watch it:

His younger self is crouching, almost laying in an alley completely covered in snow. In a container near him, smoke from an extinguished fire. What was burning is barely recognizable as two teddybears, ruined from the burning but visibly new, like they were bought recently. In front of him, an ashtray he stole from a bar with only a few coins in it.

Shaking in the snowstorm, with still forming tears freezing in his eyes, he reaches for his phone. The battery is dying but he has to make one last call.

“Please, please pick up...” he prays aimlessly, through several rings. “I’m going to die here...”

At last, he does receive an answer. A cold, merciless one, from his cold, merciless case worker.

“Aiden, I swear to God, I’m calling the police.”

“Please call them.” he begs feebly “Call someone...Anyone...”

“...Why?” the man asks flatly, completely unfazed.

“I...I think I might die, now.”

...You’re faking it, aren’t you?

Aiden stays silent. He wants to cry, he really, really, really wants to. He just doesn’t manage.

“I know you hate me, but...Can you please...Can you please be nice to me?”

No response.

“Just for this time, please...Please just comfort me while I--”

And then, he loses consciousness. Hearing this memory fills Price with this knowing that more than one person would rather have him die back then, it would be sad, it would be a tragedy, but better to see him die as a troubled kid with a shred of innocence left than being alive the way he is now.

"Perhaps dying there would have saved me some problems."

He tries to sound neutral but yes, this is why Dan's memory triggered him.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Thoughtful)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-13 11:27 pm (UTC)(link)
There's nothing to do but feel the weight of the tragedy, heavy like that snowfall, the twin injustices of someone Price cared for rejecting him so harshly and of society as a whole leaving people like Price to rot. Dan has, throughout his life, encountered the concept of the deserving charity case before, the idea that only the poor and sickly who are pleasant, easy to love, polite, are worth the necessities of survival.

Dan's often been that pleasant, police, lovable charity case. It's easier for him than it was for Price. Price didn't deserve to freeze anyway.

I'm sorry is too small, but Dan's face conveys all his sympathy.

He chuffs, but it's not a sound of scorn or mockery. It's just the sad sound of a sort of solidarity that he doesn't feel either of them are lucky to have. "I know that feeling."

Dan spent a lot of his time up until the Rig thinking of how life would have been so much easier had he just been the first of his siblings to die, instead of the one damned to outlive them all.
myagents: (concerned)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-14 10:39 am (UTC)(link)
"He had said that if I behaved, if I got in a special program, everyone would have wanted to adopt me." Price sighs, nodding towards the memory "By that time, I had not killed anyone in ten years, he isolated me and almost never let me befriend people because I was dangerous, so I studied and did everything he told me...But it was a mere contest to him, as soon as he gained money and publicity he just...Threw me away."

He's not sure why he's saying this. On a logical level, everyone is aware that he is capable of good behaviour and compliance, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to pull off certain schemes. Yet there seems to be another level on which no one can seem to understand it. That level that is too proud to accept that people like Price get abused too because somehow they feel that it would take away from their own pain.
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Curl)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-16 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
It doesn't escape Dan that Price went on to manipulate and discard others - his agents, Dan - as damagingly as this case worker did to Price. Dan's a devoted believer in the idea that hurt perpetuates; those that are hurt have a tendency to hurt others, as if pain is a genealogy that can be traced back through the generations. Price's experiences have only strengthened this worldview.

No one becomes a sociopath in a vacuum. When Price lashes out, when he pushes people into rivers and threatens them with knives and lobs allegations at them just to see if they'll react, it isn't because he tumbled out of the womb that way. It's informed by being cold, unwanted, abandoned, of having promises made and then broken on him.

"I'm sorry." Dan can't imagine discarding someone in his care like that; he remembers sitting up late into the night, drunkenly wondering if it would be better to burn Ellie's bones and remove her from the world to protect others, but he could never do it. Even considering it made him sick.

But Ellie was a child. Price is an adult now, a stunted, defiant adult who still refuses to take responsibility for himself. And that's why Dan has to keep himself at arm's length.
myagents: (clever)

[personal profile] myagents 2022-04-16 06:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Price almost flinches. He decides then to close off.

"It was a long time ago, it's fine."

It's not the brief context he provided that ruined his privacy, of course, but as nice as Dan acts now he can't forget how much effort it took to be vulnerable enough to say 'you are hurting me' and mean it only to have it dismissed. It's much different from crying wolf, that is easy, just like it is easy to stonewall and act unbothered (although the brain damage made it less easy because he's more sensitive now).

The problem with the latter option is the suspicion, the assumptions that he is up to something, and those increasingly annoying attempts to test him, like poking a caged animal with a stick and unitl it reacts and then being surprised when it does. It's not even a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario because every outcome is a portrayal of a symptom...And yet all the feedback that he's received so far has proven that being his professional and borderline robotic previous self is the safest solution, you know, the same that had him pushed around and told to drop dead whenever he spoke.

"Besides, I made sure he paid for that."

He smirks smugly, because he knows that it would make him the bad one in this story. The only way to not be treated like garbage for existing is simply to shut up and take it when faced with abuse or any violation, isn't it? It's what he's been told all his life, but just indirectly enough to say he is crazy and has a victim complex whenever he dares to point it out.

But Dan's interest is fake, it's disgusting, and Price will not entertain his warped idea that he is a listening ear. Dan just doesn't want to listen, he wants to be thanked for listening.
Edited 2022-04-16 18:36 (UTC)
hallelujahjunction: (Basic - Arched Eyebrow)

[personal profile] hallelujahjunction 2022-04-16 06:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Dan raises an eyebrow; he's sure Price did exact some revenge, and Dan knows there's no commentary he could have on the subject that would be received well. To disparage Price's vengeance would be seen as patronizing at best and hypocritical at worst, and there's no way Dan will ever encourage people to do more pain to others.

"I won't tell no one about anything I've seen here, for what it's worth."

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tw suicidal ideation/attempt

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Re: [cw: suicide talk]

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