#depersonalisation

It starts small.

You’re standing in the kitchen, hands resting on the counter, staring at nothing in particular. The light feels too bright. The room feels… off. Like it’s been copied slightly wrong. The edges of things blur just a little too much, sounds come from too far away, like you’re underwater.

You blink.

It doesn’t fix it.

Your fingers curl into the countertop, grounding yourself, but your body doesn’t quite feel like yours. Your chest tightens. Breathing feels strange. Too shallow. Too conscious.

Something’s wrong.

“…hey.”

Her voice cuts through it, low and steady.

Sevika doesn’t rush over. She never does. She just steps closer, slow enough not to startle you, sharp eyes already taking you in.

“You with me, honey?”

You try to answer. It comes out weak. “I… don’t feel right.”

That’s all she needs.

Her hand comes up, warm and heavy as it cups the back of your neck, anchoring you. Not forcing. Just there. Solid.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, softer now. “I’ve got you.”

She shifts closer, close enough that you can feel the heat of her body, the weight of her presence. One of her hands slides into yours, fingers threading through, squeezing just enough to be real.

“Look at me, baby,” she says, gentle but firm.

It takes effort, but you do.

Her face is clear. Grounded. Real.

“Good,” she says quietly. “Stay here. With me.”

Her thumb starts brushing slow circles against your hand, steady rhythm, something for your mind to latch onto.

“Tell me five things you can see.”

You hesitate. Your voice feels far away, but she waits. Doesn’t rush you.

“The… the table,” you manage. “The window. You. The… the sink. My hands.”

“Good,” she says again, like you’ve done something important. Because you have.

Her hand tightens slightly at the back of your neck, guiding your forehead gently toward hers.

“Four things you can feel.”

“Your hand,” you whisper. “The counter. My shirt. Your… your thumb.”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Her voice stays low, even, like a tether pulling you back piece by piece.

She doesn’t let go. Doesn’t step away. If anything, she moves closer, pressing a soft kiss to your temple, lingering there.

“You’re safe, sweetheart,” she murmurs against your skin. “It’s just your brain being an asshole. It’ll pass.”

Your breathing starts to steady, slowly syncing with hers as she subtly guides it, her chest rising and falling against you.

“There you go,” she says when she feels it. “That’s better.”

Her hand slides from your neck to your cheek, rough thumb brushing soft across your skin, grounding in a different way now.

“Stay with me as long as you need, baby,” she adds, quieter. “Not going anywhere.”

And she doesn’t.

She just stands there with you, solid and warm and real.

I see out of this eye, but does it belong to me? Am I seeing myself?

Set while at the Jackson-Blofis house in the Hidden Oracle. I headcanon that Apollo deals with a lot of depersonalisation as Lester, especially in the beginning when this body didn't feel like his yet.

It's quite a feeling, to look in the mirror and realise that you recognise 'your' body, and yet it dosen't feel like yours, it dosen't feel like you.

Her consciousness was buried beneath a concrete blanket in her mind that smothered her so sweetly, and she couldn’t remember what was wrong with her. Something wasn’t right. Something that she knows, intrinsically, but it was buried beneath the blanket of cotton covered concrete that kept her head heavy on the cot.

Whumper came whistling into her room, twirling the keys around his finger. She turned her head with an effort, and stared at him as he came in. Her expression blank, and if she could look in the mirror, she knew her eyes would be dead, unseeing.

When Whumper took her in with his eagle eyes he stopped short, tilting his head like a child that doesn’t understand something. Or a dog, listening for a command.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

“You kidnapped me, asshole.”

Whumper pursed his lips as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He turned back to face Whumpee, crossing the room in three strides. Whumpee wanted to back up on the bed. She really did, but her body was heavy, her limbs as useless as trying to command somebody else’s body to move for you.

Instead she blinked up at him, gaze blank, expression unnervingly neutral. Though her heart, her heart leapt in fear as he crouched down to peer at Whumpee. His features showing his emotion properly. It felt like the universe was laughing at her.

“You didn’t sleep?”

“Not well.”

“I gave you a bed.”

“I told you I need meds. I will be more trouble than I’m worth.” Oh. Yes. That was it, wasn’t it? That’s what was wrong. She didn’t take her meds last night, after Whumper took her. The memory was a pressure against the middle of her forehead and she suppressed a groan. She already told him this last night, didn’t she?

“Meds… like.. to sleep?”

Whumpee’s dead eyes met his. “To function. I won’t have fun reactions to whatever the fuck you want to do to me. I need pills to be a normal human being.”

Whumper frowned. There was a split second glimmer that crossed his eyes before he lunged and grabbed Whumpee’s throat and slammed her back on the bed.

“Y’know, I almost believed you, you’re very convincing.” Whumpee’s hands didn’t respond when she wanted them to reach up and grab Whumper’s. Her eyes remained dead as she stared at him, though her heart pounded and her lungs screamed, and in the back of her mind she thought she was going to die. “The dead eyed—”

Whumper cut himself off as Whumpee didn’t move beneath him. Her mouth opened to get air but everything else about her remained fixed in place. Her eyes didn’t widen in panic. Her limbs didn’t fight back instinctively for breath.

Her mind was lethargic and heavy in her skull, her body surrendered to death with his hands around her throat. Whumpee blinked and it felt like enough of a stimulus for the rest of her life.

She was exhausted.

Maybe dying would be—

“What the fuck?” Whumper asked, sitting up and back on Whumpee’s hips. Whumpee coughed, her body clawed in new breath, but she didn’t struggle. Didn’t try to shove Whumper off. He looked disgusted. “Where’s the fight? The struggle? The fire I saw before? Where is she?”

“She,” Whumpee croaked, “is fully medicated and not in withdrawal.”

Whumper scoffed. “You can’t be in withdrawal after a day.”

“Tell that to my body, you fuck.” There wasn’t enough bite in her voice for it to be as venomous a retort that she intended. She just sounded flat. Emotions didn’t come easy without her pills. Emotions barely came easy with them.

Whumper glared down at her, his eyes calculating before he climbed off her with a sigh. “Stay there. I’ll be back.”

Whumpee turned onto her side and stared at the wall of her cell. A few blinks later the door opened again. It felt like a couple minutes, but time moved faster when she was like this, time moved faster and never notified her that it was continuing.

Whumper marched in, his footsteps heavy on the concrete floor. He grabbed Whumpee by the cheek and turned her flat on her back. Whumpee blinked up at him as he turned her head more to face him. He was on the phone to somebody. Whumpee didn’t ask. She didn’t particularly care.

“What medication do you take?”

Whumpee blinked at him. Then frowned, a slow, laborious thing. Whumper’s fingers tightened on her face, his eyes darkening. It pricked the same fear she remembered feeling yesterday, the panic in her heart that picked up the drumbeat, and felt so, so far away.

She told him, then.

“And the dosage?” He said after a beat. Whumpee told him. He patted her cheek harshly after she answered and said, “good girl,” before he turned and left.

Horror swirled in her gut, but the blankness of withdrawal drowned out every response that would keep her alive. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. It didn’t apply when her brain had to fight to keep her heart beating. Her lungs breathing. All other threats were secondary.

Right?

***

In the muddle of everything she didn’t hear the door open a second time. Didn’t hear the footsteps approaching. She felt hands on her again, turning her. She caught a flash of Whumper’s face and his grin as he said, “open wide!” and then her jaw was pinched open.

Wait, she tried to say, I can take them myself, but the words didn’t form with her tongue so thick and heavy in her mouth.

Whumper forced the pills into her mouth, and, despite the method, Whumpee swallowed gladly. Seemingly satisfied, Whumper sat on the edge of Whumpee’s cot with a bottle of water and held it out to her. Whumpee blinked at him.

“How long does it take to get you back to normal?” Whumper’s asked, his voice tight, speaking through clenched teeth.

“I’m more trouble—”

Whumper silenced her with a look. “How. Long?”

Whumpee tried to think. She really did. Without her antidepressants it was like her skin was stripped back and she could feel every nerve firing signals to her brain, leaving her naked and trapped beneath her senses, drowning in them, overwhelmed until her body went numb. A ghost of her hand reached inside her head and rooted around for the answer that Whumper wanted, her skull tight with the pressure of the search. An arc of blunt pain blinded her as she tried to think, landing just above her eyebrows and pulsing annoyingly.

“I’ll probably pass out soon,” she told him, pressing the pads of her fingers into her temple. “Uh, and uh, and then… sorry. I, can’t.”

The pain doubled and she closed her eyes against it, but it only seemed to draw the pain over her eyes, so she opened them again.

“To-tomorrow I’ll be, uh, I’ll probably n-not be very responsive either. It usually gets worse before it gets, um, y’know… it gets, uh—” she stopped, trying to think of the word. Oh my god, she knows it. This is ridiculous.

“Gets better?” Whumper offered with a cocked brow, looking at her like she was an alien.

She couldn’t reply after that look. She just nodded, lowering her eyes. Whumper groaned.

“So you’re broken for three days if you miss your meds?”

She was glad she didn’t take her meds now, because the word broken sliced through her and cleaved her in half, wrenching apart the side of her that was human and the other sick side. She lowered her gaze and nodded, swallowing, trying to get some moisture back in her throat.

As if he sensed her discomfort, Whumper uncapped the bottle of water and pressed it into her hand.

“It’s one of those sports ones,” he said. “My friend who got the pills told me you’ll be basically stupid until you’re normal again, so I don’t want you drowning yourself.”

The consideration was kind of sweet for a kidnapper. It made her want to get sick. No way was she going to commend him for one small thing. Especially because he was the reason she was this way in the first place!

Whumper sighed as he looked down at her.

“I wanted to have fun with you today…” He reached down and grabbed her wrist, turning it over on the bed. “You’re no fun when you don’t fight back.”

“Don’t touch me.”

He pulls out a knife and grins wickedly down at her. He brings it to the inside of her forearm and slices through the skin, watching her reaction.

The nausea is the first thing to come, not at the pain, she doesn’t feel it, her body is not hers anymore. The nausea comes like sudden inertia as she looks at her arm, the wound, the blood, feels it bubble up and cool, tracing down her arm like red tears. She knows it’s her arm, her body, and she can feel none of it.

“Fascinating,” Whumper purred, taking her chin in his hand. Her eyes met his and the nausea turns tenfold. “You really don’t feel things like this, huh?”

“I’m gonna throw up if you keep doing that,” Whumpee warned him, but it wasn't the thing that was actually curling that whirlpool of nausea in her stomach. No, it was the feeling after looking at the wound, as if Whumper just sliced through the fog of her numbness, like the first breath of air once she surfaced after drowning. The tears pricking the back of her eyes were less to do with Whumper, and more to do with that sudden, heart stopping relief.

It's wrong. She's wrong. Everything's all wrong.

Whumper laughed. “So I can still draw out some reactions. Interesting.”

He stands from the cot, touching his hand to her wound before drawing a line of blood on her cheek. She wanted to scream. She wanted to curse him and kick him, and bite. She wanted to push him away, take his knife and slam it into his gut.

Instead, she stared.

Blank. Unfeeling. Undead.

“Get some rest, Whumpee, you'll need it. You're going to have to make up for all the fun we’re missing out on.”

The tears only fell when the door closed, warm on her stone cheek. The meds dragged her eyelids over her eyes, and oblivion swallowed her whole.

_

For those who wanted to read: @whumpsick @paperprinxe