Dipper Pines (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
captainbuzzkill) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2017-12-08 05:40 pm
captainbuzzkill) wrote in legionworld2017-12-08 05:40 pm
Entry tags:
Red Sky At Morning
Who| Dipper and Mabel and Wash and a bunch of people
What| Dipper's breakdown and telling the truth
Where| Medbay and then down in the Hab Deck
When| Right after "After These Messages"
Warnings/Notes| cw: mental breakdown/panic attack, child distress
"Mr. Pines?"
The nurse keeps repeating his name but he doesn't really hear it.
"Mr. Pines, are you alright?" The nurse clearly is worried about his change in affect and pulls out a little light to shine in his pupils. "Did you take any hits to the head on the mission?"
"I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?" the nurse asks gently.
"She can't be gone. It doesn't make sense. She's, like, one of the smartest people on the team. Why would the Time Trapper send her back home?"
The nurse sighs. "I'm sorry, Mr. Pines, but I can't answer that question. All I know is that when I called ops to ask where she was for you like you asked, they said that she'd disappeared like some of you Legionnaires do when you're taken back home."
"But it doesn't make sense." Dipper's voice catches. "It doesn't make any sense!"
"I'm sorry, I don't know...ah. Maybe I should get Dr. Ry'kerr? It's perfectly understandable why you'd be so upset, and maybe talking to her would help --"
"IT'S NOT GOING TO HELP!" The scream is very shrill, but the crack in the air that accompanies it is booming. It echoes through the entire Medbay, loud enough that even those who haven't heard his yelling have definitely heard the thunder strike that accompanied it.
Dipper holds his hands to his head, squeezing it. He's starting to get one of the nasty head aches he gets when he's overtaxing his teke - which makes no sense. It's not like he's pushing it with his powers right now. But the head ache comes anyway, his face flushing as his blood pressure spikes. There's a throbbing ache in his nose that he knows is probably just a precursor to yet another teke-caused nose bleed.
The nurse backs away slowly, cautiously. She doesn't look scared of him so much as scared for him and isn't sure what to do next.
"It's not going to help," he repeats, his eyes welling up with tears. "It used to help, but it doesn't help anymore."
He thinks back to every time Pidge implored him to lean on his teammates, every time she promised he wasn't alone, even though his sister wasn't here like usual. They care about him. He has friends, he knows he does.
Except for when he doesn't. Because bad things keep happening and the good things keep getting taken away. Mabel came and went twice before finally staying - and who knows how long that will last. Wash got shot the one time and Pidge got robozombied and barely escaped dying or being rewritten forever.
And now Pidge is gone. And he might never see her again.
At least with Mabel, he knew she was safe at home, and...a part of him wanted her to stay there. But now Pidge is gone and he'll get to watch his sister - now his little sister - get hurt. Over and over. Probably until the light is gone from her eyes.
The world starts feeling like it's folding in on him and his eyes glow a blazing blue. There's another boom in the air, a pulse that matches his rapidly increasing heartbeat, then another. The third one shatters every bit of glass in the room. The fourth one starts bending the metal guardrails of the bed.
The nurse dives for the code button and a code grey security alert blares through the Medbay.
"Mr. Pines, you need to calm down!" the nurse calls out. "Someone might get hurt or you could hurt yourself! Please!"
The pulsing starts creating cracks in the walls - in the walls that once held all his drawings. He hadn't thought about it but they put him in the same room by sheer coincidence - or maybe it's not coincidence. This was the same room he was in after the Silent Horizon, too. The display-panel walls still have the cheerful, bright colors he'd picked out while recovering from the Yellow Lantern brainwashing, like they haven't been changed in all this time.
He suddenly realizes this is his room, a space they set aside for him to hurt in.
In this room, he scratched out a summer's worth of monsters - and a fake lifetime's worth of misery - with ink-stained hands. Tentacles of teke lash out and start gouging into those walls. During some of his rougher sessions with Dr. Ry'kerr, while putting his mind back together, she'd sometimes told him to play with clay. The gouge-marks on the walls look like clay that's had small fingers score through it. For a moment, he imagines that he can still feel it deep under his fingernails.
It's his special room to hurt in and this time there's too much hurt for it to hold. Because Pidge is gone. Because his sister is here to get hurt now, too, and Pidge is gone. Because he saw a kid get burned to death with acid, and was treated like a thing yet again, and Pidge is gone. The pulsing gets louder and the nurse dives out of the way just in time before the door to the room explodes outward off its hinges and the metal and glass wall that separates the room from the Medbay proper crumples like a soda can in a trash compactor.
Fortunately, no one is caught in the blast, but even in his current state Dipper's aware of the fact that someone could be. He's beyond being able to concentrate enough to use his flight ring, but his teke is reactive, responding to pure instinct, and tendrils of it pick through Medbay, carrying him away as his body dangles from them, giving the impression of a spider.
The Medbay fills with smoke from broken equipment and fires caused by electrical shorts, and in the hazy chaos, he gets away before the fire suppressing systems kick in and before any Legionnaires who were still in Medbay after the mission can stop him. His hat is left behind, half-shredded by his own powers.
He has to get away to somewhere in the open, somewhere where he can keep his distance from people until he can get this under control. Fortunately, one of the access points to the Hab deck is nearby. He blasts the door right off its hinges and picks his way through multiple hab spaces, ripping a trail through them like a tornado until he finds himself in his own hab space, serene and filled with redwoods - and then they start to uproot and explode. A maelstrom of grass and splintered wood and dirt starts to swirl around him, shielding him from the world, as he kneels in the air and rocks back and forth, hands squeezing his head, trying to hold in tears.
The telekinetic pulsing becomes rapidfire - matching his out-of-control heartbeat. He shakes and sweats and tries to make himself stop thinking that the world is ending. But it is. It's been ending. It ended back in Gravity Falls, when the town burned and the skies rained blood.
It never stopped ending and it never will.
What| Dipper's breakdown and telling the truth
Where| Medbay and then down in the Hab Deck
When| Right after "After These Messages"
Warnings/Notes| cw: mental breakdown/panic attack, child distress
"Mr. Pines?"
The nurse keeps repeating his name but he doesn't really hear it.
"Mr. Pines, are you alright?" The nurse clearly is worried about his change in affect and pulls out a little light to shine in his pupils. "Did you take any hits to the head on the mission?"
"I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?" the nurse asks gently.
"She can't be gone. It doesn't make sense. She's, like, one of the smartest people on the team. Why would the Time Trapper send her back home?"
The nurse sighs. "I'm sorry, Mr. Pines, but I can't answer that question. All I know is that when I called ops to ask where she was for you like you asked, they said that she'd disappeared like some of you Legionnaires do when you're taken back home."
"But it doesn't make sense." Dipper's voice catches. "It doesn't make any sense!"
"I'm sorry, I don't know...ah. Maybe I should get Dr. Ry'kerr? It's perfectly understandable why you'd be so upset, and maybe talking to her would help --"
"IT'S NOT GOING TO HELP!" The scream is very shrill, but the crack in the air that accompanies it is booming. It echoes through the entire Medbay, loud enough that even those who haven't heard his yelling have definitely heard the thunder strike that accompanied it.
Dipper holds his hands to his head, squeezing it. He's starting to get one of the nasty head aches he gets when he's overtaxing his teke - which makes no sense. It's not like he's pushing it with his powers right now. But the head ache comes anyway, his face flushing as his blood pressure spikes. There's a throbbing ache in his nose that he knows is probably just a precursor to yet another teke-caused nose bleed.
The nurse backs away slowly, cautiously. She doesn't look scared of him so much as scared for him and isn't sure what to do next.
"It's not going to help," he repeats, his eyes welling up with tears. "It used to help, but it doesn't help anymore."
He thinks back to every time Pidge implored him to lean on his teammates, every time she promised he wasn't alone, even though his sister wasn't here like usual. They care about him. He has friends, he knows he does.
Except for when he doesn't. Because bad things keep happening and the good things keep getting taken away. Mabel came and went twice before finally staying - and who knows how long that will last. Wash got shot the one time and Pidge got robozombied and barely escaped dying or being rewritten forever.
And now Pidge is gone. And he might never see her again.
At least with Mabel, he knew she was safe at home, and...a part of him wanted her to stay there. But now Pidge is gone and he'll get to watch his sister - now his little sister - get hurt. Over and over. Probably until the light is gone from her eyes.
The world starts feeling like it's folding in on him and his eyes glow a blazing blue. There's another boom in the air, a pulse that matches his rapidly increasing heartbeat, then another. The third one shatters every bit of glass in the room. The fourth one starts bending the metal guardrails of the bed.
The nurse dives for the code button and a code grey security alert blares through the Medbay.
"Mr. Pines, you need to calm down!" the nurse calls out. "Someone might get hurt or you could hurt yourself! Please!"
The pulsing starts creating cracks in the walls - in the walls that once held all his drawings. He hadn't thought about it but they put him in the same room by sheer coincidence - or maybe it's not coincidence. This was the same room he was in after the Silent Horizon, too. The display-panel walls still have the cheerful, bright colors he'd picked out while recovering from the Yellow Lantern brainwashing, like they haven't been changed in all this time.
He suddenly realizes this is his room, a space they set aside for him to hurt in.
In this room, he scratched out a summer's worth of monsters - and a fake lifetime's worth of misery - with ink-stained hands. Tentacles of teke lash out and start gouging into those walls. During some of his rougher sessions with Dr. Ry'kerr, while putting his mind back together, she'd sometimes told him to play with clay. The gouge-marks on the walls look like clay that's had small fingers score through it. For a moment, he imagines that he can still feel it deep under his fingernails.
It's his special room to hurt in and this time there's too much hurt for it to hold. Because Pidge is gone. Because his sister is here to get hurt now, too, and Pidge is gone. Because he saw a kid get burned to death with acid, and was treated like a thing yet again, and Pidge is gone. The pulsing gets louder and the nurse dives out of the way just in time before the door to the room explodes outward off its hinges and the metal and glass wall that separates the room from the Medbay proper crumples like a soda can in a trash compactor.
Fortunately, no one is caught in the blast, but even in his current state Dipper's aware of the fact that someone could be. He's beyond being able to concentrate enough to use his flight ring, but his teke is reactive, responding to pure instinct, and tendrils of it pick through Medbay, carrying him away as his body dangles from them, giving the impression of a spider.
The Medbay fills with smoke from broken equipment and fires caused by electrical shorts, and in the hazy chaos, he gets away before the fire suppressing systems kick in and before any Legionnaires who were still in Medbay after the mission can stop him. His hat is left behind, half-shredded by his own powers.
He has to get away to somewhere in the open, somewhere where he can keep his distance from people until he can get this under control. Fortunately, one of the access points to the Hab deck is nearby. He blasts the door right off its hinges and picks his way through multiple hab spaces, ripping a trail through them like a tornado until he finds himself in his own hab space, serene and filled with redwoods - and then they start to uproot and explode. A maelstrom of grass and splintered wood and dirt starts to swirl around him, shielding him from the world, as he kneels in the air and rocks back and forth, hands squeezing his head, trying to hold in tears.
The telekinetic pulsing becomes rapidfire - matching his out-of-control heartbeat. He shakes and sweats and tries to make himself stop thinking that the world is ending. But it is. It's been ending. It ended back in Gravity Falls, when the town burned and the skies rained blood.
It never stopped ending and it never will.
no subject
No. It would be. It had to be. They weren't going to let him down, not again. She hadn't been able to keep him from those awful people on the televised world, she wasn't going to just leave this alone.
Wash describes his power -- a bit like a templar, she thinks, does he even know? -- and the thought is disturbing. But it's necessary, in this case. Whatever reservations she has about choking off someone's origin of power has to be set aside for the moment, and she realizes that, even as her expression goes from horrified to grim. "Do what you have to. I'll protect you."
She slots herself in behind him as they move, allowing his armor to take most of the hits and ducking lower when a larger piece of debris comes swinging through. When she reaches her mark she crouches low to the ground. She was a small target before, but now? It'd have to land directly on top of her to hit. Not that that means she doesn't still keep her eyes on the chaos swirling around them.
Then, she hears Wash call out. Hopefully there's enough time between the pulse of negating energy and her rushing forward, leaping over fallen debris and, as soon as she's in range of them, casting out her barrier with everything's she got. A luminous, spiritual energy surges up and over them like a dome before vanishing, leaving a shimmering shield surrounding each individual.
no subject
He slows to a hover on the upper outskirts of the virtual tumble dryer of forest. He’s not worried about getting hit so much as expecting Dipper to not be thinking clearly. If a clump of sod – or a tree – hits someone, will it make the panic worse? Dipper likely has no idea who's who in this mess, if Robbie doesn’t with a bird's eye view. Wash is recognizable, and a Woman who might be Umbra or Marjara. Two smaller sentients are deeper in the chaos. One is Dipper, it seems impossible to control all this from elsewhere.
The adults start running in less than three seconds after he gets there, and Wash's plan clicks into place a moment before debris starts plummeting. Telekinetics are always so lousy with personal shields. Robbie steers himself towards the smaller people as fast as the flight ring will allow, but gravity and trees seem to be keeping pace and trunks smack him like a pinball on the way down, adding a hail of energy bubbles to the debris.
At least, he thinks as he thumps into a pre-made divot and uses the flight ring to press himself there, negating the rebound that would usually follow, the kinetic globules are good for cushioning impacts. Something lands across half the hole, and wriggling out will take time. “Dipper? It’s just us.”
There, now he knows Robbie isn’t squished. He hopes it’s equally true for the others.
no subject
Then the sounds of the debris falling stop and give way to something quieter - Dipper's panicked gasps and constant sniffling.
He sinks to the ground and Mabel sinks with him; they're still clinging to each other.
"I'm sorry. I didn't -- mean to." His words are broken up by rapid gasps and hyperventilating.
When they get close enough, he tries to explain.
"Pidge -- is gone -- and it's -- not fair. Bad stuff -- keeps happening -- and good stuff -- keeps getting -- taken away -- and I can't -- breathe. I think -- I'm having -- like a -- heart attack -- or something."
He knows Pidge not being around doesn't mean he's all alone now -- Mabel's here and look at the people trying to help him right now. But just like all the bad things that have happened, it almost feels like a personal attack by the universe, like someone's trying to punish him.
And he knows that, back in her world, Pidge is probably freaking out right now, feeling that way too, upset because she wants to help the Legion and her team back home. The thought of her being upset and knowing he can't do anything to help her or comfort her is making him freak out even more.
She's probably sad somewhere and he can't do a thing about it.
The Time Trapper is cruel and the universe is uncertain and unfair. And the prospect of it just...continuing to be that awful has taken over his entire brain and finally flipped a switch his brain has been threatening to flip for some time now.
"Everything -- keeps -- happening -- too fast."
He doesn't know it's a panic attack. He knows what panic attacks are but he and Mabel haven't had much in the way of health classes yet, for him to know the actual symptoms.
no subject
Mabel gasps in sympathy.
"She was your first girlfriend and you didn't get any closure! Dipper, that's awful! If I hadn't gotten to say good-bye to Mermando -"
Heck, she DID get to say good-bye, and she STILL wanted to erase her failed summer romance memories by the end of the season!
" - I'd be so upset, too. I wish I could bring her back right now -"
But she can't do that. She can't snatch anybody out of time. Just like she couldn't stop herself from being snatched out of time the last time she was here to attempt (and by extension, fail) to be a superhero.
" - I can't bring her here, but I can do this," she says, pulling out her stickerbook. How that fit under her turtleneck is a mystery nobody is in any state to question, let alone answer, as Mabel rifles through and selects the perfect sticker - a luminous, neon blue-green frog giving a thumbs-up, with the caption "It'll (probably) be okay!"
She breathes her intention into the sticker, and holds it out. "I can help you calm down, do you want to calm down?"
She'd slap a mood-altering sticker on an enemy in the heat of the moment, no question - but Dipper has the right to ask for help, not just have a shot of seratonin foisted upon him.
no subject
But he's still crying as he kneels there. Even though it helped his brain a little bit, the sadness still hasn't gone away. There's just too much of it, because it has more than one source. The way he feels has layers to it.
So he's still crying as he kneels there, silent except for the occasional sniffling.
"I don't think it worked all the way. But a lot of stuff doesn't work anymore. Everyone said seeing Dr. Ry'kerr would help with stuff and even that doesn't do anything now."
no subject
After half the goddamn world has finished plummeting to the ground, Wash takes a moment to get to his feet and take stock. The eye of the storm had kept Dipper and Mabel safe; he'd been close enough to it that the shield Marjara had made him hadn't been too badly wrecked; nobody seems to be screaming in pain or caught under something they can't get out of (yes, Robbie, he hears you); physical triage doesn't seem to be necessary.
So he takes off his helmet, locking it to his hip as he closes the distance between himself and the twins. Taking a knee beside them, he pulls them both into a hug, because Dipper needs it and there's no way he's separating the two of them right now. At least Mabel has taken care of the panic attack.
"There's no easy fix for this," he says, as gently as he can. There never is for grief - it either scars over eventually or it consumes you. Hopefully, for Dipper, they can intervene enough to tip it towards the former. "You need time." He's needed time to recover for a while now, and Wash damn well intends to make sure he gets it.
"I'm sorry." For everything, even what's out of his control, for the universe being relentlessly awful in general and to Dipper in particular, and because it damn well needs to be said and nobody else here has anything to apologize for.
no subject
She watches Wash and Mabel moving to comfort Dipper, and it seems they have it well in hand. She, meanwhile, is feeling just a little dizzy after a surge of magic that strong.
She lowers herself to sit on a piece of debris, panting slowly. Watching all of this unfold with a twinge in her chest.
no subject
Who’s there? Robbie.
Knock knock.
Who’s there? Banana.
Knock knock.
He goes through several rounds of bananas in his head as he raps his fist on the tree trapping him before telling himself the orange punchline. It’s followed by a couple of shave and a haircuts, as the bouncing energy bubbles fill up the space around him.
The redwood doesn’t so much as shudder until he starts in on the drumline of “YYZ”, or his best estimation of it, when the pressure of the bubbles and his own constrained bouncing cause the tree to shift just enough for a stream of bubbles and one Speedball to geyser out like so much shaken Coke.
The ring again lets him catch himself instead of pitching off into the distance, and Robbie sets himself down between Marjara and Wash and the twins. The hug seems uninterruptible on a physical level. “Therapy’s not a one size fits all miracle cure. You ever see that old I Love Lucy episode where Fred and Ricky try to make rice and it explodes all over the kitchen? – incidentally, where I got the idea for getting out from under the tree. Sometimes, the fix is messier than the problem. It’s not good or bad. It’s hard to deal when you only have an idea of how things are supposed to go.”
He looks around at the aftermath while he speaks. He doesn’t want to see Dipper’s or Wash’s faces right now, because he knows someone will be unamused with his flippancy. Looking at the ravaged forest, Robbie can practically see a similar scene of destruction, this one his, overlaid on the Hab Deck. He stares numbly at both the present and remembered tantrums and scrambled for positivity that is slipping further out of reach.
At a loss for how to contribute, Robbie crouches down beside the exhausted Marjara and asks softly, “Are you all right?”