[ Sam's quiet curiosity at the rock turns quickly into a feeling of unease at the cell and the footsteps - it's different enough from the cells in the Raft that it doesn't pull at his own memory, but man nothing good ever comes from a cell and the sound of footsteps approaching.
The voice is all it takes for Sam to realize that this is not something he should be seeing, and he tries immediately to yank himself out of Damon's head and back into his own. But what'd happened with Shepard when she flashed back to dying, he's caught, swept up in the memories as Damon gets caught up in the instinctive response.
Quiet, small, unnoticeable, fear and pain and captivity, and it's - no, Sam doesn't want this. This isn't his, this is Damon's. It's not like with Bucky, when Sam'd seen flashes of similar things - things he still has echoes of in his own mind - when sharing the experience is something to remind Bucky that he isn't alone. Sam digs his heels in, trying not to let himself get caught up in what's buried deep in Damon's mind, but it's -
It's pain in his eye and he hadn't even seen the scalpel, it's fear, so much fear, lying on his back with someone else's hands in his guts, and Sam doesn't even have to be caught up in Damon's memories to know the way that smells, the sound of the slide of fingers over internal organs that should never have been out in open air. It's starving and delirium, the sound of screams - Damon's? Someone else's? - fury building and building and building and lingering even after it bubbles over in a crescendo of violence. And still fear, regret, detachment and dissociation, your mind has to be somewhere else because it can't be here, because you can't feel.
And that - that helps Sam try to get himself unstuck. That he knows, from even before the Nest. He runs his thumb over the coin in his pocket, feeling the ridges along the edges and tracing the shape of every etched letter in the word wings. Focuses on the feel of the ground underneath the balls of his feet, of the way the fabric of his pants shifts as he does, counts to seven as he breathes in and to eleven as he breathes out. ]
no subject
The voice is all it takes for Sam to realize that this is not something he should be seeing, and he tries immediately to yank himself out of Damon's head and back into his own. But what'd happened with Shepard when she flashed back to dying, he's caught, swept up in the memories as Damon gets caught up in the instinctive response.
Quiet, small, unnoticeable, fear and pain and captivity, and it's - no, Sam doesn't want this. This isn't his, this is Damon's. It's not like with Bucky, when Sam'd seen flashes of similar things - things he still has echoes of in his own mind - when sharing the experience is something to remind Bucky that he isn't alone. Sam digs his heels in, trying not to let himself get caught up in what's buried deep in Damon's mind, but it's -
It's pain in his eye and he hadn't even seen the scalpel, it's fear, so much fear, lying on his back with someone else's hands in his guts, and Sam doesn't even have to be caught up in Damon's memories to know the way that smells, the sound of the slide of fingers over internal organs that should never have been out in open air. It's starving and delirium, the sound of screams - Damon's? Someone else's? - fury building and building and building and lingering even after it bubbles over in a crescendo of violence. And still fear, regret, detachment and dissociation, your mind has to be somewhere else because it can't be here, because you can't feel.
And that - that helps Sam try to get himself unstuck. That he knows, from even before the Nest. He runs his thumb over the coin in his pocket, feeling the ridges along the edges and tracing the shape of every etched letter in the word wings. Focuses on the feel of the ground underneath the balls of his feet, of the way the fabric of his pants shifts as he does, counts to seven as he breathes in and to eleven as he breathes out. ]