Trapped in a nightmare

"You expected me to beg for my life...gods, that's so embarrassing for you," Katsuki laughed weakly, groaning as she stood up from the wall.

"This can stop any time you want," the king said, staining a handkerchief red with her blood as he wiped his hands. "I will give you one final chance, only because I am magnanimous and merciful."

"Those are some big words. You compensating for -?"

He grasped her bruised chin tightly, forcing her face up from where it was hanging, and interrupting her raspy quip.

"A name. Give me a name, or give me your last words, demon."

Katsuki let a slow grin pull at her lips, and stuck out her tongue.

her hands lay folded in her lap, motionless, not so much as a link of the handcuffs chafing against another.

"I am what they made me," she said. "that's all."

"Ms. Ashner - "

her eyes were flicking from the door, to the face of the man in the chair across from her, to the high window and the camera's eye blinking slowly next to it, and thence to the door again in minute motions.

"my name is Heron, sir."

"your name is Judith Ashner."

"no, my name is Heron."

"legally, if you'll remember, your name is Judith Ashner. Heron is the name that you were known as while in custody of the accused. although, if you would prefer - "

she swallowed, nervously, a quick licking of her lips in the dry air of the gray room. "it's my name. sir."

"all right, then, Ms. - Heron - " he fumbled for a moment with his notepad, short pencil in hand. "the court is aware of the - activities - of the accused and that your participation may have been under duress. it was also advanced that you may have been under the influence of mind-altering substances or otherwise in an altered state of consciousness when - "

"I did what I was told."

she spoke, cutting neatly through his stream of words, then fell silent again, re-crossing her ankles neatly in the soft prison slippers. the fringe of her cropped hair had begun to fall across her thin high forehead again, casting a shadow over her peaked brows.

"yes, of course, but what we do in fear of our lives and what we would have chosen to do given the choice - "

quietly she tilted her head a fraction, eyebrows drawing together, her stillness an interruption in itself.

"they made me," she said, "and they gave me to Mr. Resk. what else was I going to do?"

"by they you mean someone besides the accused?" the pencil scratched on the notepad.

she blinked, interrupting the pattern again of her checking between door and window and camera.

"the House. they taught me to fight."

for the first time now her hands moved, ever so slightly, chain clinking against chain, one set of scar-laced fingers tracing over the other.

"I don't answer questions," she said. "I'm not supposed to answer questions."

"Ms. Heron, I don't mean to distress you unnecessarily," he said. "this is a serious matter, though. you are aware that you are alleged to be associated with the death of twenty-two different people over the last seven years while in the accused's - employ?"

she licked at her lips again.

"I am what they made me," she said, "that's all."

Rating: Teen and Up | Warnings: blood, implied gun violence | Series: The Hellhound

Mack hissed, the pliers almost slipping between blood-soaked fingers, as she fumbled. Nausea burned up her throat as she managed to pull the bullet out, a solid piece of iron.

Fucking iron.

Mack was immune to the metal unless it was, well, actually inside her. (It was annoying, her body thankfully allowed for healthy levels of it in her blood.)

Y'know, I think one of the things that people get wrong with conditioned whumpees is their rules. Specifically, when a whumpee was in long term captivity/training and they later get released or escape.

Most people write them as latching onto a caretaker or new whumper, and begging for new rules so they know they're doing something right. A new set of laws to live by, a new framework to behave to.

And that's... not really how conditioning works.

Conditioning means automatic reactions. Your body doing something that was trained into you without consulting your brain first.

There is no decision making. There is no choice. The trigger hits, and you are immediately performing the correct action regardless of anything else.

You're told to kneel? Your knees have already hit the ground. You're supposed to be standing in one part of the house when a certain noise is made? You've launched into movement before you even realize what you heard.

These rules are woven into the fabric of your body. And they are insurmountable. The conditioning overrides emotion, internal conflict, hesitation, beliefs, wants... everything.

Your whumpee may very well hate what is being done to them, and after the moment has passed they're cursing themself and their whumper. They're still a person on the inside. And that person is still very much alive. Most of the time, they will have some level of awareness that what's being done to them is wrong. They'll be angry. They'll be hurt. And they will hate that there is nothing they can do about it.

But the next time that trigger occurs, the response still hits them exactly the same.

So now take your whumpee out of that situation. They ran away, were rescued, were sold. They got out. Now they're with new people, a new caretaker, a new whumper. Or they're on their own and trying to make their own way in the world.

But those conditioned responses are still there.

There's no turning them off. You don't just replace them with new rules. They are in your every fibre. They have been built into the very framework of who you are.

The next time someone says the word "kneel", your knees are on the ground again. No matter where you are, or who you're with. The response happens before you can stop it. If they don't know why, everyone looks at you like you're insane. And you feel like you are.

Deconditioning is an agonizing process that takes more effort than I can even begin to describe to someone who's never experienced it.

Every time they hit that trigger, that response will still be there. Over, and over, and over, and over.

Breaking those rules down takes YEARS. And it is a constant effort that the whumpee has to choose to undergo every single time. Progress is measured milimeter by milimeter. You're told to kneel, and you kneel. You're told to kneel, and your mind catches up with the fact that you already did it— but a little sooner than it did before. Then a split second sooner. Then as you're doing it. Then you feel the impulse just before your knees hit the ground. Then you have a split-second of resistance before you go down. On and on and on and on, inching toward progress despite the fact that you're fighting with all your might. And that progress is anything but linear.

You don't just start obeying new rules. You don't latch on to your caretaker's new way of doing things and drop everything that you were conditioned to do before. These rules don't just get replaced.

Conditioning is not a belief system. It's a flinch response. Programmed deeper than the instincts you were born with.

You can be ordered not to obey the old command, and moments later when the trigger comes, you will anyway. Because in conditioning, the action comes before the choice.

These rules, these laws of your existence, come above everything else. And if your new whumper wants to replace them, they are going to have to beat the new rules into you so often and so severely that the pain becomes stronger than the old conditioning. At which point, the newly desired response will very, very slowly start to take over.

You're not swapping out new rules. You're layering new, worse conditioning on top of the old. And your brain will spend time stuck in that split-second between both responses before one finally grows stronger than the other. And even then, the change will not happen quickly.