Phil Connors (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goodweather) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2023-12-23 10:31 pm
goodweather) wrote in come_sailaway2023-12-23 10:31 pm
you keep asking why your work is not enough [open]
Who: Phil & friends
What: Village aftermath. Oh Brother
When: dec 24th through the rest
Where: infirmary, john's, bobby b's, others
Warnings: for the first header, village-typical horror; namely forced amputation and medical abuse, drugging, blood, discussion of patricide
i. because it is enough to exist in the world [infirmary, closed to darcy] (cw: blood, probably discussion of patricide, drugging, forced amputation, medical abuses)
ii. and marvel at it [texts]
iii. you don't need to justify that [atrium] (closed to venom)
iv. or earn it [john's]
v. you are allowed to just live [around] (cw: compulsivity)
vi. that is all most animals do [bobby b's]
vii. wildcard
What: Village aftermath. Oh Brother
When: dec 24th through the rest
Where: infirmary, john's, bobby b's, others
Warnings: for the first header, village-typical horror; namely forced amputation and medical abuse, drugging, blood, discussion of patricide
i. because it is enough to exist in the world [infirmary, closed to darcy] (cw: blood, probably discussion of patricide, drugging, forced amputation, medical abuses)
Phil heaves awake in a cot in a medical room. The pain is gone; a frantic grabbing reveals that his wings are back, heavy and solid, and he is in a medical room sitting in a cot, and there is still a badge on him, and he is in a medical room sitting in a cot with his wings still intact, and it doesn't matter that blood coats his neck and all the back of his head because all he can think is oh God not again, please not again, not again, not again, not again, not again.
When Darcy finds him, he's staring down at his lap, breath coming deep and fast and about two inches from outright dry heaving, gripping the sheets.
ii. and marvel at it [texts]
Texts go out to those he knows. Ava, Tayrey, Cass, Erin, Dimitri too; anyone close enough to him he can think of, on or off the excursion.
Alright?
iii. you don't need to justify that [atrium] (closed to venom)
He needs to find it. Needs to be with his friend again, needs to feel its comfort and its strength around him again, so bodily and intrinsic as it was, and he needs to feel a comfort deeper than kind words and a firm hug. He needs to know that he's safe. He isn't safe on his own.
As soon as there's time, he rushes into the atrium, the most open crossroads-point on the ship, and tries to listen for it.
iv. or earn it [john's]
For all that talk about the orchestra in the Village, he hasn't actually seen or touched a piano in a month. He's got to be so rusty by now.
He tries to slip back into it, but something in his head is all wrong; the notes are just fine, sure, if a little rough, but the colors, the musicality, it's gone. That's fine, he tells himself. Nothing a bit of practicing and relistening to his betters won't fix. Practice always fixes things. If you work at it long enough, mind the right techniques, it will happen. Has to happen.
He practices. Practices for hours. It's not pretty, but it's work, good work. He missed good work.
v. you are allowed to just live [around] (cw: compulsivity)
Phil and Darcy cannot be found without the other for all of Christmas Eve and into Christmas proper.
After that, though, he wanders, attempts to fall back into his routine. He reads, in the library or in a seat beneath the signposts; takes his coffee from Sand Dollars; eats decent food from the buffet like he hasn't had a full stomach in months; attempts to draw, sometimes. And preens.
... Preens a lot, actually. Too much. It borders on compulsive, how much and how aggressively he goes at it sometimes, leaving his feathers ragged and torn. Complete opposite of what he's supposed to be doing but he can't seem to stop. He can't stop touching his wings, always digging his fingers through the quills, feeling that they're there at all and there's no pain that wasn't his fault. Over and over. Real, there, real. Staying. Every mark he leaves, every barb he breaks, every quill he accidentally pulls out or snaps--his actions have consequences and they stay. Good. Good.
vi. that is all most animals do [bobby b's]
More than once, Phil drags himself into the cigar and whiskey bar. Heaves over to the counter to order a drink, slogs into a chair to cut a cigar, and just.
Sits. Stares at the same spot on the wall for the next hour until he's done.
vii. wildcard
(( got other ideas? lmk! ))
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The symbiote meets him. He feels it weave into his muscle and blood, its voice slotting neatly into the space it belongs to in his head; Phil pulls the trigger almost instantaneously on becoming one, teeth and tongues spraying out from his collar, talons hooking, feathers whipping together into a pair of long and heavy blades. The sheer relief that comes over them is heavy. Venom is stronger together. If someone wants to hurt them, it’ll be a fucking fight.
The symbiote can feel the reason for this immediately. If Phil is a house, then it’s never seen him like this before—it’s a disaster, like a hurricane had come through to rip off slate from the roof and blow out all the windows, furniture and paper scattered and splintered in the yard, and inside is worse. Welcoming Venom in is like putting a kettle on in a ruined kitchen that has a weird dark leak coming from the ceiling and whose table is missing two of the legs. … But at least the water and the stove still work.
Phil is scared and desperate and fragile and wrecked. He doesn’t have to be. At least as Venom, they can be strong. At least as Venom, they don’t have to be alone. He’s been so alone.
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If Phil's house is in disarray, then he will need mortar. If he needs mortar, it will be mortar. It can do this much, for him. It wants to do more, it wants to do everything. But it won't risk doing more than it should.
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An unintentional flash of a memory: an empty white room with padded walls, and the howling emptiness of isolation. An absent thought: Phil wonders how they would stick a number badge and enforce modesty rules on a puddle of goo anyway. A very silly image: two small googly eyes and a badge swirling in the puddle together.
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It finds the image of itself with googly eyes amusing. It wonders how they would make it look polite, in turn. Imagines itself stuck into one of those crystal decanters Eddie's bosses always kept in their offices.
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He can't seem to laugh, but the image of the symbiote in a crystal decanter to appear "modest" and "polite" is... deeply funny. (Light shines through the ruined slats of the house; somewhere, there's a broom.)
Guilt and self-hatred, heavy and dark, the overgrown ivy climbing through the window and choking out the kitchen. A flash of a memory of Darcy as she was in the Dome, seeing her after so long apart (They would've taken you from me), beaten and starved and vicious and his fault. Darcy, whole, their hair long, staring at him in the infirmary. Every inch and every ounce of his love and esteem and care and concern reflected back at him (them) in her eyes.
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It doesn't like the ivy. It doesn't like guilt. It's not something it understands yet.
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Stuttering images of white and blood and pain and pain and pain and pain and a singular flash of white-hot fury, a burning as sharp and clear as the sword of Michael from above. The symbiote knows, even without having seen the entirety of Phil's mind, that it is unlike anything that has been here before. Something new and terrifying exists here now. The symbiote knows that Phil has felt flesh give way under his talons and not regretted it. They did this to him.
... He will have to learn to live with it.
no subject
It wants to see it. It wants to see everything. Symbiosis is exchange. But it wants more than exchange. It wants trust, and respect, so it remains patient. It only knows this new thing, talons in flesh, is terrifying because Phil's fear is tied up in it. It reads the memories he gives it like letters, learns as much from his script as it does from the contents of it.
cw Everything village; imprisonment, medical abuse, forced amputation, drugging, patricide, etc.
All of it is there. Every memory of the Village. The breakfast, 2's stupid little entrance, the first time he was captured and the white padded room and Darcy screaming, and the thinning of his barrier between what's real and what isn't; being brainwashed, being released to spy on his friends; coaxing Darcy to the Dome, and both of them getting captured, and the endless endless endless endless looping re-amputating of his wings, and the months he spent lying in blood and stitches and pain pain pain pain. Struggling against the nurses and doctors who'd tie him down to the operating table, then fighting them in other loops, killing a few if he got lucky, screaming in fury and desperation and waiting for someone to find him somehow if he was just loud enough; a constant constant constant wish for the symbiote, the possibilities that open if he were just a little stronger. The needles, the hallucinations. So sick he couldn't eat. Giving up. The things they'd say to him--that flight was a privilege and his was revoked; he doesn't deserve his wings; that they'll only get him in more trouble; that he didn't want them annyway, so they're doing him a favor. They told him they'd give him painkillers if he behaved and then when he said he would they kept "forgetting" until he really could not fight anymore, until he stopped fighting at all from the start of the two-three-four-six day cycle until the end. Losing all track of time; every room was windowless. Brainwashed for the third time. And then the Dome. And Darcy having mercy on him. Making him whole again. The only thing missing is a giant void where his second brainwashing was supposed to be.
In the debris of the catastrophe, that white flash again. Willingness to kill.
CW: nonconsensual asexual reproduction(?)
A memory spills out of it in response, dropped when it sees the wings severed. The white lab, the glass container, the sample collectors. Alone, stolen. Chemically induced reproduction, five seeds, extracted from it. Artificial spawn, hostile.
It writhes in his mind, choking on his basement floor. It attempts to keep the its reaction contained to itself. If it lashed out, it would do it with Phil’s talons, Phil’s teeth. This outcome is inadvisable.
no subject
Alone. Stolen. Trapped in white labs and poked and prodded and—
2 never broke his ability of restraint, not really, could never bend what was stone, but he did break his desire to in certain places. Phil feels himself—themselves tense, their talons flex, and. And he doesn’t want to hold back anymore. He can’t always be toothless and approachable. Sometimes people need to feel like if they even touched them, they’ll get their necks snapped.
They’re not very far from it. A vision: the dummy on the sports deck will take anything they throw at it. Safe to lash out. Safe to breathe, together.
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In a corner of its own mind, it thinks of web swinging. It missed web swinging, missed the thrill and freedom of moving through the skyline like that. But this flight, the sensation of wind under wing... it scratches an itch.
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The only dissatisfaction is that nothing truly gives way under their onslaught. But that's just as well. This, this is safe. Nobody has to get hurt and nothing has to break. Venom grips the dummy's neck in between their seething fangs, digs their hands into the shoulders, and pulls as hard as they can, halfway between a roar and a growl. The shame of the world is that sometimes people die before they can receive all of the wrath they had coming to them.
The tide ebbs. The fire burns down. When, finally, the stress and adrenaline has burned into something manageable, they sit with its arm still in their mouth, teeth grinding back and forth over it. This is normal behavior. They're fine.
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It sits in the kitchen of Phil's house, content, ready to help with the rest of the repairs.
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... Although.
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