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redshiftlogs2019-10-02 10:46 am
tenuefarfalla) wrote in redshiftlogs2019-10-02 10:46 am
Cho's open log for October (and September, if desired)
WHO: Cho, with a few starters for specific people. Also open prompts for anyone else.
WHAT: meal prep/serving/clean-up, walking various random animals through the city, morning five mile runs, reflection on just how flipping weird life is now, and misc.
WHERE: all over, really
WHEN: I'm fine backdating anything into the month of September, as I kind of vanished, and also doing anything through October. Basically, it's a two month spanning open log.
NOTES: I can't stand writing in action spam (takes my head right out of the writing), but I don't mind reading it. (Just please don't use tiny text for your brackets.) So if you only write brackets, and don't mind our styles not matching, you can write brackets and I'll write prose and we can still have some awesome CR.
A - mess hall kitchen
Being a cafeteria cook on an alien planet had never been any part of her ten year plan, but life has a funny way of turning tables on you. Cho has had the rug pulled out from under her often enough to know that the only way to survive it is to adapt. In that regard, her family has done her a huge favour with their neglect and disregard. She knows how to adapt. It's not always easy, mind you, but she can do it.
Making food for her fellow displaced refugees, it gives her a very concrete and tangible purpose. People are hungry, she feeds them. It's simple. It's easy. It's also yielding far more immediate and gratifying results than her work in the fish hatchery and bio-lad with Annie and Finnick, which is incredibly slow going, getting the place even functional.
This work is also putting her in the path of new people. Even if it's only to greet them in the mornings and evenings and ask them which of the hot food selections they'd like. She's learning to put names to faces, and feeling accomplished and appreciated, and it's wonderful. Doubly so when someone offers their time to hep her out, and triply so when they don't just want to clean and chop and fetch and carry, but are interested in learning. She loves teaching. She misses it. And while cooking is a far cry from biology, it's still some form of wisdom that she can impart.
[[OOC: If you want to assume that your character and Cho have seen each other enough to know names and bare basics about one another, feel free. If you would like to assume that they've already been helping her with meal prep and stuff, also feel free to do that. Or have them meet for the first time. Whatever works.]]
B - walkways - exercising animals or running (mornings only)
Cho's various trips to the upper levels while the power was out and her subsequent experiments have not netted her much useful information. What she has ended up with is a menagerie of various random animals who have all become far too comfortable with the idea of being brought their food and kept safe from predators for her to ever feel anything but guilty about releasing them back into the upper levels.
So they are her responsibility now, and while some of them are perfectly content to just stay in their little makeshift enclosures, some of them get fed up with her room, and want space. Which she provides in the form of walks. She really wishes that she had a dog. It would at least be something vaguely normal. Instead, she can be found at random hours of the day with varying combinations of cat, hedgehogs, sugar glider, chinchilla, lizard, and quite a few random bits of fur and fluff that don't quite match up with anything she's used to. High energy, though, hence the excursions at random times of the day, when they seem particularly restless.
---
The animals are not the only ones that need exercising. This place wears and grates and it ends up driving Cho kind of nuts sometimes. She's made a promise to not wander off without a buddy, but that doesn't mean she can't go anywhere.
So, sometimes, there are on animals with her while she goes wandering around the walkways on the safe levels. Instead, it's just her and her earphones, her feet eating up the miles as she hurtles herself through the concrete maze that's becoming depressingly familiar. While she might prefer to work out her excess energy someplace a little more private, she won't break her word, and so her morning runs end up taking her back and forth along the residential walkway, as she racks up the miles by retracing her footsteps over and over again in front of the common areas. At least, this early in the morning, it's fairly deserted.
Of course, if she does ever come across someone doing the same thing, well, they would qualify as not going anywhere alone, and would open up a lot of the rest of Anchor as an option for her workouts.
C - spa
It's not a patch on the ocean, but having a functional and clean large body of water to swim in is still doing wonders for Cho's sense of well-being. Not to mention, getting her hair properly cleaned, and the occasional mani-pedi when she allows herself that much time. She favors the area that looks like a Japanese hot spring, doing a lot of floating silently in the large communal area, her hair fanning out around her, floating on the surface of the water like an oil slick. it almost feels like being home, which usually ends up with a tight prickling in her chest and a lump in her throat, but she fights through that. It's good to miss something. It's far better than having nothing you care about.
Most of the time, she's silent, and anyone else arriving might not notice her for a while. Especially if she's tucked herself away in some corner, sitting in water that's shallow enough for it, but deep enough to leave only her nose and above out of the water. She can definitely see the appeal of this place for fun and relaxation, but most of the time, she's either steaming herself in slightly too hot water for homesickness, or swimming laps with the setting as cold as it will go... not that lukewarm is particularly cold.
D - observation deck
The more random detritus from random worlds that shows up to populate the landscape, the more Cho finds herself inexplicably drawn to the observation decks that look out over the desert. She doesn't have a desire to go and see most of it up close, and not just because she'd be on her own in a dangerous place, but viewing it from this distance is strangely compelling.
So she does, settling herself on a bench, or on the floor with her back leaning against a bench, almost always with the animal carrier containing a cat and a giant caterpillar. Sometimes she lets them out to wander, though the most the caterpillar ever seems to do is hang from the edge of her seat, viewing the world from his strange upside down vantage point.
! WILDCARD
Wandering around in general, hanging out in her room, any other location or activity that you're interested in that I haven't talked about. Feel free to either come poke me to plan something, or to just go for it here and we'll make it work on the fly.
WHAT: meal prep/serving/clean-up, walking various random animals through the city, morning five mile runs, reflection on just how flipping weird life is now, and misc.
WHERE: all over, really
WHEN: I'm fine backdating anything into the month of September, as I kind of vanished, and also doing anything through October. Basically, it's a two month spanning open log.
NOTES: I can't stand writing in action spam (takes my head right out of the writing), but I don't mind reading it. (Just please don't use tiny text for your brackets.) So if you only write brackets, and don't mind our styles not matching, you can write brackets and I'll write prose and we can still have some awesome CR.
A - mess hall kitchen
Being a cafeteria cook on an alien planet had never been any part of her ten year plan, but life has a funny way of turning tables on you. Cho has had the rug pulled out from under her often enough to know that the only way to survive it is to adapt. In that regard, her family has done her a huge favour with their neglect and disregard. She knows how to adapt. It's not always easy, mind you, but she can do it.
Making food for her fellow displaced refugees, it gives her a very concrete and tangible purpose. People are hungry, she feeds them. It's simple. It's easy. It's also yielding far more immediate and gratifying results than her work in the fish hatchery and bio-lad with Annie and Finnick, which is incredibly slow going, getting the place even functional.
This work is also putting her in the path of new people. Even if it's only to greet them in the mornings and evenings and ask them which of the hot food selections they'd like. She's learning to put names to faces, and feeling accomplished and appreciated, and it's wonderful. Doubly so when someone offers their time to hep her out, and triply so when they don't just want to clean and chop and fetch and carry, but are interested in learning. She loves teaching. She misses it. And while cooking is a far cry from biology, it's still some form of wisdom that she can impart.
[[OOC: If you want to assume that your character and Cho have seen each other enough to know names and bare basics about one another, feel free. If you would like to assume that they've already been helping her with meal prep and stuff, also feel free to do that. Or have them meet for the first time. Whatever works.]]
B - walkways - exercising animals or running (mornings only)
Cho's various trips to the upper levels while the power was out and her subsequent experiments have not netted her much useful information. What she has ended up with is a menagerie of various random animals who have all become far too comfortable with the idea of being brought their food and kept safe from predators for her to ever feel anything but guilty about releasing them back into the upper levels.
So they are her responsibility now, and while some of them are perfectly content to just stay in their little makeshift enclosures, some of them get fed up with her room, and want space. Which she provides in the form of walks. She really wishes that she had a dog. It would at least be something vaguely normal. Instead, she can be found at random hours of the day with varying combinations of cat, hedgehogs, sugar glider, chinchilla, lizard, and quite a few random bits of fur and fluff that don't quite match up with anything she's used to. High energy, though, hence the excursions at random times of the day, when they seem particularly restless.
---
The animals are not the only ones that need exercising. This place wears and grates and it ends up driving Cho kind of nuts sometimes. She's made a promise to not wander off without a buddy, but that doesn't mean she can't go anywhere.
So, sometimes, there are on animals with her while she goes wandering around the walkways on the safe levels. Instead, it's just her and her earphones, her feet eating up the miles as she hurtles herself through the concrete maze that's becoming depressingly familiar. While she might prefer to work out her excess energy someplace a little more private, she won't break her word, and so her morning runs end up taking her back and forth along the residential walkway, as she racks up the miles by retracing her footsteps over and over again in front of the common areas. At least, this early in the morning, it's fairly deserted.
Of course, if she does ever come across someone doing the same thing, well, they would qualify as not going anywhere alone, and would open up a lot of the rest of Anchor as an option for her workouts.
C - spa
It's not a patch on the ocean, but having a functional and clean large body of water to swim in is still doing wonders for Cho's sense of well-being. Not to mention, getting her hair properly cleaned, and the occasional mani-pedi when she allows herself that much time. She favors the area that looks like a Japanese hot spring, doing a lot of floating silently in the large communal area, her hair fanning out around her, floating on the surface of the water like an oil slick. it almost feels like being home, which usually ends up with a tight prickling in her chest and a lump in her throat, but she fights through that. It's good to miss something. It's far better than having nothing you care about.
Most of the time, she's silent, and anyone else arriving might not notice her for a while. Especially if she's tucked herself away in some corner, sitting in water that's shallow enough for it, but deep enough to leave only her nose and above out of the water. She can definitely see the appeal of this place for fun and relaxation, but most of the time, she's either steaming herself in slightly too hot water for homesickness, or swimming laps with the setting as cold as it will go... not that lukewarm is particularly cold.
D - observation deck
The more random detritus from random worlds that shows up to populate the landscape, the more Cho finds herself inexplicably drawn to the observation decks that look out over the desert. She doesn't have a desire to go and see most of it up close, and not just because she'd be on her own in a dangerous place, but viewing it from this distance is strangely compelling.
So she does, settling herself on a bench, or on the floor with her back leaning against a bench, almost always with the animal carrier containing a cat and a giant caterpillar. Sometimes she lets them out to wander, though the most the caterpillar ever seems to do is hang from the edge of her seat, viewing the world from his strange upside down vantage point.
! WILDCARD
Wandering around in general, hanging out in her room, any other location or activity that you're interested in that I haven't talked about. Feel free to either come poke me to plan something, or to just go for it here and we'll make it work on the fly.
no subject
When Cho hears Ben's voice, of course it's at a moment when she can't just rush over to the main door and meet him. "In here," she calls, her hands steady as she injects small does of genetic material into the nutrient goo in a series of Petri dishes. The hatchery might not be ready for a full cycle of fish yet, but the moment it is, Cho wants to be ready to go with the ideal species. "Down the hallway, first door on the right."
When Ben finds her, she'll be bent over one table in the middle of a large lab area, intently focused on the task at hand, and with a slight variation on the clothing he normally sees her in. Her scrubs are a little more functional, but no less comfortable than her workout wear, and they follow in the theme of coordinating colours. "you made good time. I'm almost done with this. Just give me a minute."
no subject
With that little self-critical pep talk done, Ben walks down the hall and into the door indicated, spotting Cho at once amidst the equipment under the bright fluorescent lights. She seems like she's doing something extremely delicate that can't be interrupted, so he moves into the room quietly and doesn't interrupt, coming over to a place where she'll be able to see him and then just leaning his hip against a counter and waiting, arms folded. There's no impatience in his body language, though. Ben had spent 14 years as a ghost. He's pretty immune to boredom at this rate, and patience comes easily.
Cho certainly looks like she knows what she's doing, wielding that tool to... do whatever she's doing to those little pools of goop in the glass containers. Ben watches, keen-eyed but silent, until she is done.
no subject
She carefully transfers the Petri dishes onto two shallow trays, and then opens the door of something that looks a bit like Frankenstein's interpretation of a countertop convection oven and places them inside. When she closes the door, she does so very carefully, and then leans down to peer in through the thick glass door. "Grow up big and strong, little wigglers. We're going to need you." Yes, she talks to her experiments. Always has. She's accepted that particular weirdness in herself.
Now, well and truly finished, she pulls the nitrile gloves off of her hands and retrieves the syringe, taking it apart with quick and efficient movements so she can pop it into the autoclave, which, coincidentally is on the wall close to Ben. "Sorry, transfer incubating fish embryos. They're kind of delicate at this stage."
no subject
"I'm good, yeah, how're you?"
It's interesting, watching her work. Ben doesn't know what she's doing - though judging by the location of the place, maybe something to do with fish? - but it's clear it matters a great deal to her. There's something nice about seeing people who care so much about their professions. And from the sound of it, she's growing something? Fish? Is it possible to artificially grow fish eggs?
His guess is confirmed when she says something about incubating embryos. He feels a little pleased with himself, that he had guessed right (sure there were a lot of context clues, but still).
"Looks like it. But it seems like they're in good hands."
Even with the talk he'd given himself about not being so biased, it's still a bit of a relief when she takes the gloves off and puts away that syringe. Hey, it's a work in progress.
"So - what's up?"
She had been the one to contact him, after all, and he doesn't know if she's got concrete plans for lunch or whatever so he just gently prompts.
no subject
Still, dreams can't hurt you. She'll be just fine. "You said we would talk later, and I didn't really know what later meant, but I figured... now is later? Maybe? I've been going over it in my mind. A lot."
no subject
He sinks down to sit on something - maybe some boxes, maybe a piece of equipment, maybe a chair. All his attention is focused on Cho, now.
"Sure. Sure, of course, we can talk."
It hadn't been the fun lunch he was expecting but he realizes there are certain obligations. If you go through something intense together, you can't just ghost the other person. He likes Cho. He wants to be here for her, if she's having a rough time.
no subject
no subject
But he'd been wrong. The thing she wants to talk about is his powers. And... yes, that makes sense. It was what they'd been discussing, when he told her they should talk later. He just hadn't really expected her curiosity to continue. He'd somehow foolishly dismissed it as an immediate reaction to the panic, something that would fade and not return.
His eyes widen slightly during the barrage of questions, but he tells himself that at least this is better than her asking him then when he was exhausted and bloody and caught off guard. She's curious, and he probably owes her some answers. Especially if that curiosity has been plaguing her ever since. Perhaps this is the best way to help her cope.
Still it's hard to keep up. He stays completely quiet, waiting for her to finish. But as she keeps going, her words shift just from questions to something else. The reason she'd asked if he had breakfast. She wants to draw some of his blood. To... examine something about it. Test it or... whatever.
There's a sudden coldness in his limbs, a numb sort of tingling that had risen up out of nowhere. Should he have predicted this? What is the right thing to do? Talking to Cho is one thing, but her drawing his blood indicates a fascination with his powers that goes beyond just wanting to have a conversation. She wants to do tests. She wants to do science. She wants to figure it out.
Ben is quiet for a moment too long, swallowing. Then, to buy himself time, he starts to at the very least answer her questions.
"The thing is - the things is, I'm not sure if that's... their world. They're- dreams. Maybe they're just... nightmares, and I'm only imagining they are different. It's hard to... remember details like whether it was cold or whether there was gravity. They slip away once I wake up."
He sits back, crossing his arms. Tries to make the gesture look casual. It's nothing wrong that Cho's doing, after all. In a way he knows he should probably find her curiosity flattering. But he holds those arms tightly across his chest, trying hard to ignore the little rustlings of panic in his guts. That's uncalled for. If he refuses to acknowledge those bad feelings they're not happening - that's the rule.
"I don't know if it's not doing anything to my body or if the something it's doing is just - repaired once I close the portal. When I feel their emotions it's sort of... muted. Underneath. The pain, um." A hard swallow, then, and he looks away from Cho's curious face. "The pain definitely... isn't."
Ben knows he can't really stall any longer. He could say he was afraid of needles and buy himself time. But that wouldn't change her desire to investigate. And she seems so interested. What would it really hurt? Sure, he's uncomfortable with it. Sure, he wanted to run out the door the minute she said 'blood draw'. But Ben has had a lifetime's training ignoring and invalidating his own discomfort. He now associates ignoring those things with doing what's right so strongly that actually saying no is... well. Pretty unimaginable to him.
He doesn't speak, just stands up and takes off his leather jacket, folding it over his arm and then draping it over the back of the chair. He sits back down again, and pushes up the sleeve of his black hoodie. It's the arm with the umbrella tattoo by his wrist.
This is all fine. It's easy. It's no big deal. He holds out his bare arm to her, offering for her to go ahead.
no subject
While Ben is peeling off his jacket, she retrieves and pulls on another pair of gloves. She does so with the same care she applies to the rest of her life, not letting the material pull too thin in any area in the process. She had a colleague at home who took perverse pleasure in snapping his gloves loudly onto his hands, seeming positively gleeful if he could make someone jump in the process. Cho has never particularly liked that approach. By the time he’s finished removing his clothing and rolling up his sleeve, she’s ready, with the smallest bore needle that will still be effective for a blood draw, and four empty vials to fit into the vacuum blood collection needle.
When Ben offers his arm, she takes it in careful hands. Elastic bands are useful, and they speed things up, but they’re also uncomfortable, and Cho likes to avoid using them if she can. Instead, she applies pressure with one of her thumbs to make his vein bulge enough that she’ll be able to get it with one stick. He seems… nervous? He must not like needles after all, and yet he's trusting her. As much as she hates the idea of causing him distress, that makes her feel good. She starts talking. "Human bodies are so amazing. Did you know that the components of your skin that allow you to feel pain and the ones that allow you to feel pressure are not actually the same thing? Ruffini’s endings and Pacinian corpuscles register pressure, and they’re extremely common, but there is a pretty big gap between the little clusters of free nerve endings that register pain. Relatively speaking, of course. So if you get, say, a paper cut, you’re definitely going to run over one. But for something like a needle, it’s actually possible to slip it in between the nerve endings so it doesn’t register pain." She’s been very gently applying pressure with the tip of the needle along his vein as she speaks, not breaking skin, just testing, and after one more poke, she sees the reaction she’s looking for. "So if you know how to see the micro-muscular response for pain, and you find a spot where it doesn’t register…"
Now she presses the needle into his flesh and into the vein, and as if by magic, though he should be able to feel the pressure, it shouldn’t actually hurt at all. It kind of is magic, as far as Cho is concerned. The magic of the nervous system. "Ruffini’s endings are also receptors for heat, but not for cold. Isn’t that interesting?" One vial has filled with blood, and she swaps it carefully for another, with practiced movements and steady hands, doing absolutely everything within her power to not jostle the needle at all and accidentally catch one of those free nerve endings she was talking about.
no subject
In some ways it is a relief that Cho keeps up a steady stream of talk, because it means that Ben himself doesn't have to speak - he doesn't trust his own voice right now. The break from questions is good, and the things she's talking about are interesting, actually. Of course, with his head in the place that it's in right now, he's mostly wondering whether Grace had been programmed with the knowledge Cho is spouting. She never tried to hurt, when she was putting the needle in. She was always sweet-faced and steady-handed. But it hadn't been a whole process like this. Maybe Reginald hadn't programmed her with that because it would take too much time...
Ben swallows, watching as the vials fill with blood. Probably, Cho will be able to tell from the speed of it, or just from holding his arm, that his pulse is going quite fast, now. But he's keeping all other signs of unease tucked away. They never helped, and he'd learned from a very young age that if he was perfectly still, perfectly quiet, perfectly well-behaved even when his body was screaming at him in distress, that he would get a word of praise or two. Not from Reginald, of course. The best Ben could hope for from him was a lack of irritation.
But that hadn't ever stopped him from hoping it would happen. From thinking and imagining and convincing himself that his father appreciated how well he could cooperate when he put his mind to it.
He puts in a huge amount of effort, to get his dry voice to sound neutral when he says, quietly:
"Sorry... my answers are so vague. About the dreams."
Ben wants Cho to know that he's not being deliberately uncooperative. It's important that she knows that.
no subject
When she's finished collecting blood, she applies a cotton ball over the needle site, and very very carefully withdraws it, smiling encouragingly at Ben. "There we go. All finished." She bends his arm so that the cotton is pinched in his elbow to keep the blood from flowing. "That wasn't so bad, right? You did really well. Actually-- hang on!" She scampers over to her bag, which is on a table far away from all the equipment, as she takes off and discards her gloves. When she returns her smile has grown, and she is holding out a closed fist with several lollipops clenched in it. They are all shaped like different fruits, and have the slightly mottled look of high quality organic candy. "Best part of going to the doctor, right? I never actually went to a normal doctor as a child, but every pediatrician I've ever seen on television has given out lollipops."
no subject
Then there is the other part of his mind that is beneath the water, that can't see or hear right through that haze of it. The part that curls in on itself in fear as she repeats, in such a cheerful voice, echoes of things he'd heard too many times before. Reginald, already turning away, saying crisply: We're finished now, Number Six. Done with him, and dismissing him from his presence. Or Grace, patting his cheek, smiling her bright too-wide smile and whispering That wasn't so bad, was it? when Ben submitted to whatever it was, that time.
Ben doesn't know himself well enough to see what is starting to happen and hit the brakes on this. He knows that he doesn't feel miserable. He doesn't feel much at all, apart from a sort of... hollow slowness. He takes one of those lollipops - a greenish one shaped vaguely like an apple - and says:
"I didn't, either."
Ben tucks the lollipop into the pouch of his hoodie, adds: "Thanks."
no subject
There's also still the problem of Ben not being able to remember his dreams. Cho smooths down the edges of the medical tape. "You know, We can't do anything about dreams, but we might be able to do something about your sleep? It's a pretty well accepted theory that if you wake up while still in the REM cycle, you'll have much better dream retention. Maybe we could use something from here to monitor your brain activity, and attach it to an alarm?"
no subject
He thinks about telling her about Grace. Swapping stories about their childhood doctors like normal people do. Klaus could make it an amusing anecdote, no doubt. Oh yes, didn't I mention our mother who was also a robot who was also the entirety of our medical care all our lives? But Ben doesn't have whatever it is in Klaus that makes it so he can just talk even when things are awful. That wonderful, beautiful resilience of his, that made it so he could survive so much and still find a quip to say. Right now, every word feels like an effort to dredge up. So he doesn't ask about this doctor who tended to her family or talk about his own past. He just nods.
Cho doesn't seem to mind his quietness, which is always such a relief for Ben, to meet people like that. He holds still as she bandages his arm, fingers idly moving over the medical tape after her hand moves away as she is talking more. About his sleep. Telling him you remember dreams better if you wake up during them. If she had paused, given him a minute, he might have said that usually, he woke up terrified from these dreams mid-way through, anyway.
But then she is talking about setting up something to monitor brain activity. Attaching things to him while he's asleep, set up to alarms, so she could find out more details from the dreams.
It's a reasonable suggestion. Nothing unethical or painful about it. It absolutely should not be a big deal. Ben's mouth is dry as he makes the sounds to say.
"Okay."
Agreeing to it, for the same reasons he'd agreed to the blood test. Because saying no is unimaginable, and he's sure she would ask why, and then he would have to lie or tell her things about his past that are depressing and gross and that she won't want to hear, and he doesn't want to bother her with any of that when it should all not be a big deal at all...
Ben had been idly smoothing that bandage with his palm, but now he is gripping at it, at his own elbow, hard enough his knuckles are white. Even though he had agreed, some of that hollowness he's been feeling this whole time had gotten into his voice. A little of that hauntedness had gotten into his eyes, and no matter how much he keeps telling himself it's not a problem, his body has decided it's time to disagree. Ben's pulse is racing now and his breaths come too fast, thin and small.
How old had he been when he first realized that electrodes and finding the right position to lie in not to get all tangled in wires was not a normal part of every child's bedtime ritual? Had one of his siblings told him or had he realized it on his own from reading books? Ben remembers the rare few times Reginald had come to get him all hooked up himself, instead of sending Grace or Pogo. How sometimes he had felt ready to burst, from what he saw as a sign of favor. How other times he felt confused shame, sure it was because he'd done something wrong and he was not being trusted.
Ben's control over hiding any external signs of his distress are slipping, badly. It's rather like a ball rolling downhill - once it's out of his grip, it all builds momentum at a startling rate.
no subject
"Whoa, hey." Curiosity is suddenly doused by a flood of concern, a tidal wave, leaving everything in its path submerged and inaccessible. Cho closes the gap between them quickly, placing her small hands over the top of Ben's, attempting to curl her fingertips around him and lessen the pressure he's exerting on himself. Her face stays steady and reassuring and open, features full of understanding and concern, and an offer of acceptance. "It's all right. It doesn't involve any needles. The needles are gone. They're not coming back. It's just a little adhesive pad. Ben. Look at me. It's all right. You're all right. I'm right here. I won't let anything bad happen."
She means in the lab. She means that, in here, he is safe with her. The same way he can watch over her in a fight, she can watch over him in the pursuit of answers. "I know it can be scary, being in places like this," she says, not sure what exactly he's used to, what it is about doctors or hospitals or scientists frightens him. "But I'm right here, and I'll keep you safe."
no subject
But self-consciousness and not wanting to seem like an emotional wreck aren't impulses strong enough to stop this momentum. His breaths only get quicker and louder and more unsteady as she reassures him, but not quite in the right direction. She thinks this is, relatively speaking, simple. That he hates needles and all she needs to do is explain the procedure.
The problem is that he knows the procedure. Probably better than she does at this point.
A part of Ben is tempted to get up and grab his jacket and just run out the door. Make his excuses later, perhaps by text. Keep his walls up and reveal nothing. But that would be cowardly, and cruel to Cho, who really hasn't done anything wrong and who is trying to be so kind. Ben thinks about the little things he knows about her - how she cares about people, how she worries about talking too much, how passionate she'd been in insisting that she would never hurt any of the animals in her care.
He feels caught, trapped, and the only way out is to talk. If only talking didn't feel like the most calamitous options to him right now.
"Places like this are where I grew up." His voice is so soft it's only just audible. "I'm not afraid of needles. I'm used to needles. I'm used to all of—"
Ben doesn't quite make it to the end of the sentence before his voice cracks and he lapses back into silence, hanging his head. Cho is standing so close and he can't bear to look at her. His head is aching and if he's not careful he's going to cry and he's already cried in front of her once and he cannot let that happen again. But there's no putting a stop to the trembling going through him. Stress chemicals or adrenaline or who even knows what is causing it. Cho would probably know if she took a sample of his blood.
He wants to say more. To explain he knows she wouldn't hurt him, that he trusts her, and that's the only reason he'd stayed this long in the first place. To tell her he's sure she doesn't let anything bad happen to people she's doing science on and this is not at all about her.
But something shifts in his chest and all he can do is gulp and gasp for air, and it never seems like it is enough. It's so stupid, why can't he just switch it off? He used to be so much better at forcing himself to switch it all off and sit patiently and quietly and do what he was told and be a model member of the Academy. So why can't he get over this stupid whatever when this perfectly sweet, harmless scientist lady is just trying to make him feel better?
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He has to calm down before he passes out. Cho knows from experience how disorienting that can be, and she doesn't want that for him. "No one here is going to hurt you." Though someone clearly has. No child should be so familiar with a lab space like this. The man who was his father, but not, who treated him like a curiosity. The man who should have protected him, not been the thing he needed protection against. "That's all far away. It's just us, you and I, and no one else can reach us." No one can perform experiments on him that he can't escape. "We're safe here, and every breath we take in, one two three, brings good clean air into our bodies, and every breath we exhale, one two three, carries away all our anxiety and our pain." As she counts to three she inhales loudly, and exhales just as loudly, as applicable. "We breathe in the positive energies of the universe, one two three, and we exhale the tension from our bodies, one two three."
Cho's own reasons for needing to know how to be mindful of her breathing to stave off a panic attack are incredibly different from what is happening to Ben right now, but she really hopes that the general theory is the same.
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Her words so help, piercing through the haze of fear that has no place here anymore. His father is dead and in another world and no one is keeping him here. He could walk out the door if he wanted, but he shouldn't have to, because Cho isn't going to hurt him. He knows that, even at the same time that every part of him is stuck in that remembered feeling of paralyzed helplessness. Ben screws his eyes shut tight, curling forward, pressing his forehead against his knees. It makes him feel safer, makes it easier to breathe along with Cho's words, instructing him, helping him through it.
Cho knows, now. He's past the point of no return; he's having a panic attack and he knows she can tell, that she's familiar with what that is. She must be, to know what to say and how to tell him to breathe and all the rest of it. So Ben... gives up. As soon as he's breathing slow enough that his head isn't spinning any longer, the tears start to fall. Cho might not see them, with how he is curled up, but she will be able to hear it, to see the awful way the sobs wrack through him. It's all so much more intense than he would have thought. The same way his reaction to those cameras was more intense - the same way even that his response to her on that first encounter was more intense than expected.
Ben doesn't get it. Has he gotten weak, in his old age? Or is it something to do with how completely he could avoid processing any of his bullshit as a ghost when he could always simply leave or fade away? Is it having a body again, now, in a place that's safe enough that he can start to actually deal with all of it?
Even as he's crying, he manages to choke out:
"Cho, I'm really really sorry, I didn't mean to — I wasn't gonna do this!"
He hates himself for this awful display, for all of it. And now that the words are coming, he wants to make sure she understands at the very least that this isn't him being afraid of her. That she's not responsible. Because that would make him a pretty shitty friend, if he let her think that. After all, she'd done nothing to him and he had acted like she was some monster, cowering like this.
"It's not you. I kn-know you're not gonna hurt me. I know you don't hurt the- the things you study. I just—"
But how could he finish that? What could he say, to make any of it make sense. He'd been monitored in his sleep a lot as a child and had his brainwaves and a dozen other things collected and recorded and analyzed as data by the same person who'd put him through some other, much more horrific experiments, so he could collect and record and analyze data?
(What would Reginald think about this data point? Ben Hargreeves, a broken mess, can't even get his blood drawn without spinning out? He would be so profoundly disappointed, and convinced that this was just Ben's weakness, his overemotionality and his inherent lack of anything good and worthwhile).
Sniffling wetly, Ben manages:
"I d-don't really - w-wanna do the sleep test. Can I- please. Not do it - after all?"
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All she wants in the world right now is for him to calm down, to stop hurting. "You haven't done anything wrong." More than that. "There is nothing wrong with you. You're not going to make me angry, or upset me, or disappoint me. You're not a subject to study, Ben. You're my friend. I care about you. Even if you decide that you never want me to even mention anything to do with biology around you ever again, you are my friend. That isn't going to change. We're not doing the sleep test. It's all right. I'm never going to make you do anything that scares you. I'm never going to make you do anything you don't want to do, and I'm never going to be mad at you for changing your mind. If you'd changed your mind the moment before we did it, I still wouldn't be mad."
She keeps rubbing the circles against his back, occasionally pausing in that to stroke his hair, and between all of her actual words, she makes soothing murmuring sounds at the back of her throat. "Let it out. It's all right. You're safe here. This is a safe place. You don't have to keep it all bottled up inside you. Just let it all out."
She isn't going to hurt him. She doesn't hurt any creature under her care, though they've already been over that, and at least he believes her. Their first sticking point. He'd been so firm on that issue, just like her. He's got such a good heart.
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She says it like it's so simple and obvious, that she won't make him do anything that scares him. But to Ben, it isn't obvious at all. Since he'd walked through the door, it hadn't even occurred to him that he could just refuse, and she would allow that. That thought, and the reflection it casts on the assumptions that are impressed deep into his mind, is an awful one. Ben sobs harder, humiliated by how fucked up his own brain is, and embarrassed that he hadn't prevented this from happening, and heartbroken over how gently Cho is treating him.
He doesn't know why it hurts so much, to be treated with so much care. To be told all the worst things he'd been imagining might happen actually won't. Ben sobs himself out, for a few long and awful moments, and when he is finally subsiding into hiccupy gasps, he sits up again. He tries his best to wipe his face off with the cuff of his hoodie, but he's flushed and his cheeks are wet with tears. He sucks in a slow breath, through this shuddering aftershocks of sobs, and lets it out slowly, does that again a few times before he says:
"I'm sorry. I thought. I could handle it. But I was wrong."
Ben forces himself to look up, looking around at Cho, wanting to see her face, to check that there aren't any signs there that her words are empty - or that maybe she wants them to be true, but underneath, she despises him a little bit. But he sees no sign of disgust or impatience in her, and his faces crumples a little, in mingled sadness and relief.
He had overestimated himself, and it had led to this whole mess. Ben is going to need to do some serious rethinking about his own apparently fragile mental state. He can't keep doing this, just having meltdowns all over Cho. She doesn't deserve that.
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The idea that he thinks he has to force himself to handle things for her benefit breaks her heart a little bit, but if she had to guess, she'd say it has very little to do with her. His adoptive father sounded awful, and raised his children as experiments rather than kids, and--
God. No. Their first sticking point. His assumption that anyone wanting animals for an experiment must want to hurt them, his relief when she'd blown up at him over it...
Her sadness flickers across her face as she makes a connection she wishes with every fiber of her being is not correct. "I'm not going to hurt you." She takes a little breath, a leap of faith, hoping that she's wrong about this, and that if she's wrong, it won't cause a rift between them. "And... I'm not ever going to ask you to hurt something else for my own curiosity."
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A smile that vanishes the moment Cho tells him she won't ever ask him to hurt anything for her curiosity. Ben's breath catches; he can see it in her face. She knows, somehow. He's sure of it. She's staring at him with so much sadness in her eyes, more than he'd ever seen there before. Cho had put two and two and two together: how nervous and quiet and strange he had gotten around the small animals they were capturing, how worried he'd been she was going to use them in an experiment that would hurt or kill them, what his powers are and how things must have gone if someone were to be doing experiments with their capabilities. When your abilities are tearing things to pieces, it's only logical you need something there to be the target.
Cho's dark eyes are sad and knowing and Ben drops his head forward, face crumpling with shame and misery before he hides it behind both of his hands. He had thought he was done with crying, but the sobs come back, and they're different this time - exhausted and noisy, because Ben can't even keep himself quiet anymore the way he had earlier. For the first time since he had come to this place, he wishes he were dead and a ghost again. Anything not to feel like this, to face this.
Ben has been trying, in tiny steps, to talk more, and more honestly, about Reginald since he came to this place. But never this. He had never planned on anyone knowing this. No one had ever known, aside from Klaus, and Cole, who always knows everyone's deepest darkest secrets the moment he meets them. Not Five, not Vanya, not anyone.
What must she think of him? Ben can't even remember the specifics of what Cho had said, when she was giving her impassioned speech about how animals didn't deserve to be tortured in the name of science. And now she realizes that Ben participated in that, that he really is a worse monster than she'd probably ever imagined.
He knows that any excuses he gives will sound pathetic and self-serving, but the pressure of shame inside him is threatening to swallow him up. Voice muffled by his hands, his whole body still curled in on itself miserably, he gasps out:
"I didn't- I didn't want to. He found out that- that it got harder for me t-to control my powers if I was hungry and so he would st-" Ben stumbles, sucks in a sharp breath, can't bring himself to say the word starve, "he wouldn't - let me have any f-food for as long as it took until I-"
She had seen his powers, when those zombies attacked them. She knew what he could do. He doesn't need to tell her for her to fill in the rest. Ben buries his hands in his hair, gripping it tightly, pulling until it hurt. All the excuses in the world don't make up for it. Nothing does.
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Even before that, the things she never shared, the things that she still would have kept hidden from every single soul in this place, if not for the fact that Cole can see right through you, she knows the things they whisper at the back of the mind. Cho has believed, possibly since her birth, that there is something monstrous inside her, that there must be if even her own family can just decide that they don't love her. Some part of her that is so ugly and broken that it must be hidden from the rest of the world, because when people catch a glimpse of it, she will lose them. This is Ben's. The way he looks is the way she felt when she realized that her best friend in the whole world could just turn off whatever affection for her he'd felt, once she was no longer entertaining, once he no longer had the free time for her. Cho has lived her life with the understanding that, when she no longer served her purpose, or when she stopped being entertaining, she would be discarded. That was the real life lesson instilled in her as a child by an unfeeling man who wanted to raise a perfect and obedient tool. He taught her that she is disposable.
She's too short. Not in a self-critiquing way. In a very real height differences are a pain in the rear way. She can't reach Ben. Not properly. She leaves for a moment, just a few steps away to pull over a storage container of empty test tubes. It's heavy duty molded plastic, and she knows already that it can take her slight weight. Standing on it lets her boost herself up onto the counter in front of him, wrap her arms around him, and pull him against her chest. "You were a child," she tells him, with as much weight and authority as her voice is capable of carrying. "Your only job was to learn about the world around you, and to be loved. He took advantage of you." She tries to keep him from pulling on his hair, from hurting himself. He's hurt enough over this, that's clear. It's the child in him she's trying to reach now, the scared little boy who just wants someone to love him, to be proud of him, to take care of him and make him feel safe. She shushes the tears, runs her fingers through his hair, not so subtly attempting to untwist the grip he has on it.
"You relied on him for everything, and he knew that, and he- he used that. He made you completely dependent, so he was your whole world, and then he set impossible standards for you to meet in order to be worthy of that place. He knew you'd give anything to make him proud, to hear him say that he loved you." Her voice is losing a little bit of its volume, getting a little bit thicker and quieter. Her childhood was nothing compared to his, she would never claim to understand what he had to go through, but she can understand the withholding of affection and praise as a tactic to train certain behaviours into children. It took her a long time to accept it, as an adult, but she knows now - it's called abuse. It doesn't leave a single scar, but it's abuse all the same. Ben had to deal with actual abuse, as well. He was starved and mistreated and only God knows what else by this horrible man without a shred of paternal affection in his entire body, and the true lasting horror, he was made to believe that it was his fault, that he was deficient in some way, and bringing it on himself.
She can hear Cole's words to her, from all those weeks ago, crystal clear in her mind as though he's just said them. She always can. They stay with her every moment of every day, give her hope, and strength, and a little bit of courage. "There is nothing wrong in you. There was something wrong in him. A monster wouldn't feel the way you do now, wouldn't be wracked with guilt and shame and remorse, even though none of it is yours to carry. You survived him. That's all you did. There's nothing you could have done to make him love you, because he-- he couldn't love. There was nothing you did wrong. He made you think that, because it made you work harder."
She shifts her hands from his hair to his face, holding both of his cheeks, trying to make him look at her. She knows she can't lie worth a damn with her eyes, they always give her away, and she wants him to see that she's not afraid of him. She knows what he can do, and his power would be terrifying in a less responsible person, but Ben does not frighten her. "I know what kind of person you are. You protect people who can't protect themselves. You forgive people their mistakes, no matter how many they make. You freeze around mice because you're afraid of hurting them accidentally." The last she says with a little smile. There are people without any powers who wouldn't be as careful as he is to not cause pain. She takes a breath, because this is emotionally exhausting, and she's not even sure it's working. She wishes she could take his pain away. He's so full of it, and he doesn't deserve it. She closes her eyes and her head tips forward until her forehead bumps against his. When did life get so very complicated? "I wish you could see what I see. I wish you could see how good you are." More than anything, she wishes she could find a way to stop doing this to him, to stop setting off these raw emotional minefields with her efforts, made with the best intentions, to make him feel better.
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He can hear it, in her voice, in the way she puts it. Cho isn't speaking theoretically.
"That... happened to you, too, didn't it?"
Not the specifics, obviously - but she'll know he doesn't mean that, because she hasn't got powers or any problem with labs. He means that her childhood wasn't a childhood, that she'd been molded, used, manipulated. Ben can just tell. He recognizes it in her understanding of him, her patience and sympathy. And he remembers little things she'd said about her family. Ben is sure there is much more, that she hadn't shared so readily. He is sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she knows what it's like to try to make someone love her who was incapable of love.
But when she says he'd survived Reginald, Ben's breath catches, a hiccupy, jarring thing. He had forgotten, that Cho didn't know. Didn't realize that it's not true.
He doesn't say anything yet, though, because she is holding his face, and it's all he can do to make himself raise his eyes and look at her. The shame and self-disgust and self-loathing are still filling him up, but there's no repulsion in her face, none at all. He listens to her description of him with shuddering breaths. The person she is describing sounds so good, but that can't be him, because he isn't good. He knows he isn't, all the way down to his bones.
Ben wants to believe her. He shuts his eyes when she touches their foreheads together. Maybe he can try, just a little bit, to believe her. It's all too much, too complicated and vulnerable, but he gives a little nod that he knows she'll be able to feel, and manages a small, quavering:
"Okay."
It's not much, not at all compared to all of her kind words, but it's the best he can manage for now. A simple acknowledgement, that he heard her. That he will try to absorb her words. Then, fervently, he adds:
"Cho - thank you."
It's still nowhere near enough. How can he even begin to express his gratitude, for kindness like this? It's so foreign to him. He doesn't know how to accept it, how to process it.
Now that the worst of that torrent of emotions is done, he knows he should probably move away, give her space. But it's nice, with her forehead against his, and so he just... stays that way. Swallows and steadies his voice before he says:
"I, um. Didn't. Survive him."
Might as well get this conversation over with, because he can't possibly feel any worse than he did a few minutes ago, and Cho ought to know.
"I - forgot you didn't know. I... died. When I was sixteen. It was—" A long, long pause, before Ben manages: "It was his fault. And... I was a ghost after that, for fourteen years. But when I was brought here, I was just... alive again. I don't know how."
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Then he drops his big news, and she freezes.
Cho's blood runs cold. It's an extremely unpleasant sensation. Her whole body feels leaden and foreign, the bottom dropping out of her stomach, her throat closing up. Her eyes begin to shine with un-shed tears, and her breathing turns shallow and heavy. They made him disposable, too, in a very literal way, and Cho's not sure she's ever felt more filled with rage in her entire short life.
"That-- asshole." There's not a single gentler word that she can use, that adequately expresses what she's feeling. She wants to tear him apart with her bare hands, and she's never even met him. She wants to grab him and shake him and scream at him, how could he not have realized what a gift it is to have someone as special as Ben vying for your love and acceptance? How could he not see what he was wasting? How could he do that to his children? He's dead, and she feels no regret for the loss of his life, and she doesn't like that she feels no regret, but there it is.
She wraps her arms around Ben, pulls him in tight, tucks his face against the side of her neck, and refuses to let go. She hugs him as tightly as she can, as though she can somehow reach back through the years if she's strong enough, and wipe away all that pain. If he wasn't already so close to the counter, she'd probably be in his lap. How amazing is it that he's been through so much, and still come out the other side of it such a kind and gentle person? What a miracle he is.
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