bakerstreet | Asylum Meme

[Canonically spent 6 years in a mental institution. Not a surprise that she'd return.]

[It had just been a matter of time before this happened, right? Trying to juggle being Peter and being Spiderman had eventually taken its toll, sending the young man on a downward spiral that seemed endless from where he was looking.

Anxiety and panic attacks, trauma, pure and utter exhaustion.

Peter didn't know how he'd ended up here. They told him he'd had a nervous breakdown. They told him he'd nearly killed the officer who'd tried to talk him down from that ledge on that rooftop. Peter couldn't recall any of it but he couldn't think of a reason why the friendly, clinical people in white attire should lie to him.

Sitting by the window, where he always sat, he seemed lost somewhere in his head. Someone said his name.]

Go away.

[hi! interested in a non-shippy worried dad Steve? no worries if not!]

[yes, I'd love a worried dad Steve. :D]

[yay! :D]

Even if he hadn't known, courtesy of a curt short update from Stark, Steve would've known from the news. It's not every day that Spider-man nearly... nearly ends himself, and the police officer who tries to help him.

It takes Steve a couple days to track down where he's being kept, and then he goes through all the required rigmarole to get inside. He'll have to trust the good will of the staff to not give him away. This is important.

"I'm not going anywhere, Peter," Steve says gently. "How are you doing?"

They've been feeding him a variety of pills to see which would help. All that's been accomplished is that instead of being restless and frantic, Peter's turned into a docile, apathetic shell.

They say he's 'better' now so he must be better. That he sees people who aren't really there is something he keeps to himself. Normally they go away when he tells them to but this one is more persistent.

Sighing softly Peter slowly turns his head to see which one of the hallucinations is being a pain. Normally it's May or Mr. Stark, sometimes Happy. A small frown appears when he realizes it's somebody else entirely.

"I'm better," he replies mechanically, still eyeing Steve suspiciously. "Why?"

Steve doesn't exactly know Peter well, but he knows enough. This is not him. This is a drugged up shell of a kid, and Steve's unease deepens. There are some decent people at this place, he's sure of it, but there are also some people who are lazy or misguided or simply... simply wrong.

You don't do this to a person.

Pills can be helpful in the right circumstances. The right dose, plus some counselling, can help someone feel like their old self again. Steve's not against pills; he's read up on treatment for various mental and emotional issues since he came to this century, with Sam's help. Partly for Bucky's sake, partly for his own. But you don't drug someone up purely so they won't cause you 'trouble'.

Steve drags a chair over to near where Peter is, and sits down, leans forward. Elbows on his knees. Not too close, because he doesn't want to spark Peter's aggression, which wouldn't be fun for either of them. Not too far away, because he doesn't want Peter to think he's scared. "Because you're a decent kid, and I'm concerned."

And you don't look better at all.

"I'm better," Peter repeats, gaze following Steve's movement, the motion of pulling up a chair, of sitting down. None of the others do that. They just stand there and whisper that he's no good, that he's disappointed everyone, that this is where he belongs for hurting that innocent police officer.

Too weak and useless to save anyone. Can't even save himself.

"You don't have to be concerned," Peter continues, trying to put a reassuring note into his voice but it still sounds flat. "They're helping me. Here. I'm fine.

"They lock the door at night so I don't accidentally hurt anyone? No need to worry, Mr. Brooklyn, I'm not going to hurt anyone. I promise."

Bryce isn't and has never been the picture of perfect mental health - but that's why she's a pretty good person to talk to Peter right now. She's been there; depression, PTSD, anxiety, traumatic flashbacks, waking up and being told you hurt someone else when you weren't aware of yourself? She's been through all that.

Honestly, she should probably be the one checked into a psychiatric ward instead of him, but here they are.

"Peter." She's not leaving, but she doesn't move beyond a step or two into the room. "How're you feeling?"

[Would you be down for a reply from a rando OC? it's cool if it's not your jam, tho. <3]

[happy to try and see what happens! also ty for checking first ♥ ]

[no problem! I know it can be real awk to mesh OC's and canon's sometimes, esp from a random person you don't know haha. And if it doesn't feel like a thing that's clicking, feel free to just let it go, no harm, no foul, my dude.]

Sometimes, life hits a point that it becomes necessary for Elliot to check himself into a place like this. Sometimes, everything is just too much for him to deal with on his own. He's familiar with the rigmarole of it all, and he's comfortable in it in ways a lot of other people that get dropped in here, unwillingly, aren't.

He isn't usually prone to being social, ever really, he's bad at it, but sometimes it's easier in a place like this. Full of people a little more on his level, in whatever way that may be. "That really what you want?" Because he will totally oblige if the guy really wants him to beat it, but he has a feeling that may not quite be it.

The medication they have him on makes it difficult for Peter to tell outside and inside apart. A tell-tale sign that something is outside is when that something continues to interact even after being told to go away or to shut up. Turning his head Peter stares blankly at Elliot, trying to figure out who this person is and if they've met before.

"Sorry, was just thinking out loud," is the quiet reply. "It's everyone's space, so..."

"S'okay. I get it." He shrugs one shoulder slightly. "I mean, my problem is more I can't get out of my own head, so you're kinda ahead of the game, from where I'm standing."

"You're new, right?" he settles against the wall and slides down to sit against it, looking over at him. "Are you... are you okay? I mean... with being here?"

[They say he's too dangerous to put in a normal prisons. His lawyer had been cut a deal; not that a defense lawyer had much of a chance to win the case with a client like him, other than to plead insanity. So Kisame has been sent to this asylum, which may as well be a prison. It wasn't so bad at first, like any other cage they'd kept him in...but then came the shots and the special "treatments" to try to cure him, thinly-veiled experimentation, like they did with the worst of the worst here. He hears it always ends with labotomization.

Which, truthfully, isn't dreadfully far from the state he's in now. His hunger for life, his thirst for the fight, that ache that comes and goes with seeing more blood on his hands. All Kisame has ever wanted was a worthy opponent. And now he's so doped and numb that all he can do is shuffle where they tell him to go. He can't even taste the food anymore, which might be a blessing. He can't even miss who he was...because who was that?]

A

[She should've never visited that camera shop.

Pearl had talked to her. And then all the memories came flooding back, everything she did in her past lives and every goddamn awful thing she'd done just to get some petty revenge. When you're struck with debilitating guilt, hallucinations of dead people, and PTSD-esque flashbacks of memories you never had, this is where you end up.

So this is what she is now: a fallen professional photographer in a fucking mental institution. This is it. She's hit rock bottom.

Fuck.

Sure, it's a "nice place," even if extremely sterile and heavily structured. But no one's gonna believe a woman raving about past lives, about her "sister" Scheherazade in 14th century Persia, or stealing herself (a baby) from herself (a mother), or making deals with bears. Rose knows a thousand and one stories, and now every single one of them's a lie.

"PTSD," they said, which isn't entirely wrong, considering what she'd seen only a day before visiting Pearl--but then they go ahead and tack on "insanity." Which she's not. And no one's going to listen to her, so the moment she notices someone approaching her from her spot in the institution's courtyard, she turns away and tries her damndest to ignore them.]

B

[Or, perhaps: you're seeing ghosts.

A dead woman. Red and pale, pale, pale blue skin, sunken and stretched across her bones. Empty and pearly-liquid eyes, and red spiderweb hair and red robes and red red red blood on them.

She's always angry, but not malevolent. Sometimes she's just disgruntled; sometimes she's so furious she looks like a lion. Sometimes she talks about how much better it is "over there," with all these trees and perfect nature and gray days with rain and fruit. She talks about how all the other adults wished they had died when they were little. She will talk about how she died if asked, but she will never tell why she came back. "I don't know," she'll say, but she looks like she does.

Maybe she's not very bothersome, but a ghost counts for "hallucination," and maybe she is. Either way--because of her, you're still here. Or maybe you got here yourself, and you just happened to meet her here.

Here she comes now. Rose looks solid, but she walks up through the floor as if there were stairs.] Hi. Got any stories? [From the day, that is. She's also apparently a gossip.]

[Patient. I mean there was a whole episode based around how she was institutionalized for six years, maybe it was true.]

The other patients don't like him, funnily enough, and Lucifer is completely baffled by that. He usually has a way with people, a sort of indescribable magnetism that, before he arrived here, drew people to him and happily so. He's charming for the most part, though perhaps a little overly exuberant for some and that may come off as a bit obnoxious. He's certainly not difficult to look at, having been created in Heaven and all, and that almost always helps to smooth any sharp points of concern some people might have upon meeting him. A smile here, a wink there and, generally, people got on rather well with him. Humans just aren't that complicated.

But in here everything's different. The other nutters -- Ahem. Sorry. Patients -- eye him with suspicion, skirt around him in the day room as though afraid they might catch the plague. He tries to smile at them, flashing some teeth, and they skitter away like frightened mice, as though afraid they might get bitten.

He doesn't get it.

What is there to be afraid of? Yes, he's the Devil - it's why he's here, after all, to be treated for his 'delusion' - but that's hardly a reason to be frightened of him. They don't even know him yet, not really.

Except, apparently, for the kid three rooms down from him who claims to hear the word of God. He has an especially strong dislike for him, going so far as to confront Lucifer in the hall leading out into the yard, spitting bile and platitudes and Biblical rage that Lucifer's heard too many times before but that sting no less for their familiarity. He doesn't entirely remember how the encounter ended except that at some point he'd grabbed the boy by the throat and pressed him up against a wall to silence him and then there'd been a jab of something sharp against his upper arm.

He hasn't been given clearance to be alone with the other patients since then, of course, not until he can prove that he's not a danger to himself or others.

"Can I come out now?" He calls out, leaning with his back against the door to his room, hoping that his voice carries through the padding enough to be heard. "I'll play nicely with the other children, I promise."

Edited 2018-07-14 22:33 (UTC)

His complaints aren't heard for a few days, but when they are...it's not by one of the orderlies.

Claire Stanfield has decided to make himself cozy here. This is his new domain; since his failed attempt at busting Huey Laforet from prison across the water, he was shipped back to his home country and locked up here.

Claire had cackled the entire way down the hallway, and the police escorting him hadn't known why, nor had they cared; people did that a lot here. How could they have known about all the lives he's taken? About his identity as Vino? It's just too funny to him that after all that, this is what they lock him up for.

So he's made himself cozy, learned the blindspots, swipes an orderly's key every now and then. Gets a few days in solitary when he gets caught, but how's that so different from how he normally lives? It's his world.

Like tonight, he just happens to be strolling by the solitary cells (perhaps out of nostalgia?), swinging the keys on a finger. The night security watchman, Joe, has to have fallen asleep -- and why not? The man's sixty, he deserves a nap. Anyway, he's walked past too many security cameras to not have been accosted by now. Though, how funny would it be if the orderlies found him in here the next morning? Assuming it's not occupied... He knocks on the small, circular window and peeks in.

Edited 2018-07-14 23:55 (UTC)

Hunched at the bottom of the door - and quietly playing some air-piano to keep himself amused, hopefully mostly out of sight of any surveillance - Lucifer tilts his head up at the sound.

"Alright, I've seen one too many horror movies for that not to be creepy," Lucifer drawls, too incapacitated by boredom and that hint of a sedative he suspects was in his dinner to actually bother getting up to look. He does, however, regard the window with a frown. "It's all very Grindhouse, I'll give you that much, but if you're wearing a Scream mask or something out there, I really wouldn't bother."

He's created demons in Hell. Actual, honest-to-God demons. There isn't really much on Earth that can easily frighten him. He sighs to himself. "Fine, fine, I'm getting up."

Dragging his knees up, back pressed into the door, he eventually manages to stumble up onto his feet, hands braced onto either side of the window for balance. He's shaky, sallow and paler than usual, especially in relief to the grey walls and the grey, hospital-issue pyjamas he's been made to wear instead of the suits he'd have preferred.

"Can I help you?"

The first thing Lucifer might discern is the same bit of grey around Claire's neckline, not the sickly, off-mint green the orderlies wore. Another patient.

"I can't hear you!" Claire mouths silently, pointing to his ear. Well, well, who's this handsome jack? Claire's sure he's seen him around before, but he doesn't know much about him... This could be fun, then. He grins and holds up the ring of keys.

The room was at the end of the hall. All the inmates of the asylum steered clear of it, even the one whose compulsion pushed them to pace endlessly, muttering to themselves, blind to the world around them. 50 steps down the hall, then they would turn around suddenly, as if they had hit an invisible wall. Rosiel counted the steps, head cocked to the side, eyelids falling heavy on peculiar golden eyes. 50 steps. turn. 50 steps. turn. The most current lap was interrupted when they ran into Napoleon. He was a little tall for Napoleon. The hand that had been endlessly brushing a strand of Rosiel's long pale hair stilled, and everyone started to laugh, one after the other.

He did not laugh. The orderlies told him he had to be medicated. That he kept on screaming a name, over and over, until his throat went raw. That it was pointless, that no one would come. That he was insane.

But he knew it wasn't true. He knew he had once been the Lord of Heaven. The brightest most beautiful angel of all. The one everyone coveted so desperately. He couldn't have been forgotten so easily. Abandoned so easily.

He remembered his greatness. He remembered, plain as day, massing his armies at the gates of Hell. He remembered the sound of breaking bones under his boots, the screams of the demons they slain, the fear in their eyes when they gazed upon the three-winged angel.

He remembered...

He wasn't to think of that name. He wasn't to scream that name. Or they would lock him in his room again.

"Praise be the Lord." A kid seemed to have taken a liking to him. He was next to him again, sitting close, too close, slowly petting his arm, the soothing action now painful, his mind seemingly stuck in an endless loop. "Praise be the Lord", he repeated. "The Lord be beautiful and glorious. Praise be..."

50 steps. turn. 50 steps. turn. Who was in that room? Rosiel kicked off the clunky shoes he had been assigned and pushed himself to a standing position. He walked down the hall, back straight, imperious in his rumpled white nightgown and matted hair, as imperious as he used to be, in his resplendent uniform, back in his palace in Heaven. "What a pretty girl", cackled an inmate as he passed by. He didn't bother to correct him. "Come to me, pretty girl. Let me pull your hair and suck your bones dry." 50 steps to the door. To a small window.

That's when he heard a voice.

"Come out?", he inquired.

The window was relatively high. Not meant for casual glances. Rosiel reached for it with one hand, then raised himself on tip-toe, to peer into the room nobody dared to approach. Through the medicated haze shrouding his mind and body he felt something stirring. Something like... recognition.

"Who are you?"

Lucifer tips his head back at the sound of another's voice. Replying to him? There are so many sounds in this place, so many disembodied voices calling out to one another at one time or another that it's difficult to tell sometimes.

"Don't you already know?" He sighs with something like disappointment, letting his head thump back uselessly against the padding of the door. "When you have a reputation like mine, you sort of expect it precede you."

There's a face at the window - Lucifer can't see it from all the way down here, positioned with his back to the world at large - but the security light that had been filtering into the room winks out of existence as the moment Rosiel tips onto his toes to peer through it.

"I'm Lucifer Morningstar."

Nails drummed on the small window, idly, the mechanical, repetitive sound accompanying a daydream, accompanying an attempt to remember something trivial, a song lyric, the name of the actor who headlined that movie, you know the movie that came out last week... the physical manifestation of a mind that wasn't quite anchored to the here and now.

But that name... that name stirred something deep within him, something in the pit of his stomach where the medication couldn't reach.

"Lu-ci-fer..." Rosiel repeated, rolling the syllables around in his mouth, trying to understand the shape of them. This wasn't another Napoleon, if Rosiel was what he thought he was, if that man was what he thought he was, then they would have to have known each other. He could feel it: this was familiar, this was personal, like the memory of salt poured into a gaping wound, a memory of pain and anger and...

Rosiel started to laugh, a soft chuckle, at first, then a throaty cackle. His voice was no longer curious, no longer playful. It dropped, lower, a venomous suppuration.

"Heaven and Hell. The victor and the vanquished. Both mortified by man." The nail have stilled against the glass. It was his heart, pounding, now. "How did you end up here? Where are the ones who fell with you? Where is my sister?" The last words are almost shouted, and the droning voices that filled the hall quieted.

Angel has found herself dropped in a psych ward, presumably because it isn't normal to claim to be a Chosen One of God's Reincarnation. Her social worker was "very concerned about [her] well being" and insisted that before she could be placed with a family, she "needed to get help for [her] condition", whatever that meant. They said she was delusional, but she knows they just don't understand. No one ever understands...

She wanders the hallways, bored and sedated which just feeds further into the boredom, when she hears a voice from one of the isolation rooms. It's a pretty voice, the kind that she thinks could convince people of things pretty easily in the right situation. She stops in front of the door and leans up on her toes to try to peek through the window. She's too short and pouts about it for a moment before sitting down, criss-cross-applesauce in front of the door.

"What's your name?" Her own voice is soft and silvery, but loud enough to be heard.

[that strange, bedridden lifer patient down the hall who you swear you've seen a specter of walking the halls at night.]

[Likely stuck in a facility being starved. Help him escape, or visit and gloat, if you dare]

[ Ralph is an android with some form and/or combination of emotionally unstable personality disorder and PTSD, and a history of violent behavior. Let's say it's a place to store unstable and potentially dangerous androids, while studying them to determine the cause of their software instability. One side of his face is brutally scarred.]

Ralph's pacing back and forth across the padded floor, his hands curled up into fists inside the straight-jacket, all there to stop him from self-destructing.

"What are they gonna do to Ralph, what are they gonna do?" he mutters nervously, shaking his head jerkily, reaching one side of the room and turning on the spot to walk to the other side. "The humans wants to hurt Ralph, he's sure of it, but he won't let them, no, he won't let them hurt him again..."

The memories of exactly what led him here are fuzzy at best, and it's debatable whether that's the medication or the trauma. Mostly, he remembers her. Dark hair, olive skin, eyes as red as rubies. Pandora. Even the thought of her name sends a shudder down his spine. She infected him, he knew it, even if no one else could see it, he could feel it. He had to get the poison out. That's what he remembers the clearest. Screaming at anyone who would tried to stop him from dragging the blade across his arm again that he had to get the poison out.

A suicide watch was what they'd called it, at first. But it didn't take long for the array of doctors, nurses, and mental health professionals to see the patterns in his medical history. His descent into the spiral before him was a well-documented one, after all. They kept him in the psych ward of the hospital for the first three days, but it was an easy decision to slip him into a full-fledged facility that was better-equipped to help in situations such as his.

The truth was, by the accounts of more than just one person, Trent belonged here, in this too-white, too-sterile facility that did little more than make his skin crawl. Despite all of his objections to the opposite, Lydia had her way in the end. Even Jonathan had agreed with the decision to pursue the initial 72-hour hold that led to him being placed here. And that, more than most things, made Trent wonder if it wasn't just spite driving his older sister's actions. Their baby brother had always been in Trent's corner, surely Lydia hadn't poisoned him against him, right?

Trent sits in an overstuffed blue chair in a common room sort of area in the facility. He's wearing a pair of white scrub pants, a light gray sweatshirt with a small piece of stark-white gauze peeking out from the sleeves on both arms, with only a pair of plain white socks on his feet. No shoes allowed, because something awful might happen if the right people got their hands on your shoelaces. He doesn't care, he's been here before, he even recognizes some of the people, staff and patients alike. People like him rotate in and out of places like this a lot over the course of a lifetime, and he isn't surprised to find himself here again. Even if it feels far too much like he was being thrown away and forgotten about, he tries to remember that isn't what it is.

At least, from anyone except Lydia's perspective.
His sister really is a giant twat sometimes.

He sits in the chair, knees drawn about halfway up to his chest, doodling nonsense pictures in a journal. He's supposed to be writing in it, but this is more entertaining and he's pretty sure writing is only suggested because people will use more feeling-words, like they're instructed to do in group. He knows they'll make their interpretations of his drawings anyway, so it all amounts to the same thing in the end. And he might write words later, for now, this will do.

She stood in the corner, watching silently as his wrist flicked from one direction to the other, drawing mindless doodles on an off-colored piece of paper. Her black leather pants, matching jacket, and layered jewelry stood out among the crowd, as everyone else was dressed in scrubs and sweats and white coats. It was a bright, almost airy existence that was contrasted by her olive toned skin, dark hair, and dark clothes. No one noticed her; she wasn't there to be noticed by them anyway.

"Ignoring me won't make me go away," she called out from across the room, as she pushed herself off the wall and made heavy, intent steps toward the cheap wooden table and overstuffed chair that he had made himself comfortable in. "Just like bloodletting won't make me go away. I told you - nothing will make me go away. I'm a ruthless hag in that way. I clinch onto what I like and hoard it all to myself."

If only she could get rid of that little bitch, Leila. Trent would be hers to play with as she pleased.

Pandora pulled out the cheap wooden chair that sat at the table next to him and lowered herself down into her with grace. The grin on her face was sure evidence that she was enjoying herself - enjoying the torture that shew as inflicting up on him and seeing him having gotten himself back into this place again. All because of her. She had warned him to do as she told him or face the consequences. Well, here he was. In the middle of the consequences.

"You're never going to get out of here if you just sit here and do doodle shit all day. I mean, not that I care. The longer you are in here, the longer you're away from that little sissy of a girlfriend and that maddening, obnoxious little rat she calls a dog. If you are going to have a pet, at least get a wolf or snake or something fun like that."

Edited 2018-07-22 21:07 (UTC)

He tensed at the sound of her voice, a feeling like the kind that comes with nails being scatched down a chalkboard shredded down his spine. Stubbornly, he refused to look up at her. Acknowledging her wouldn't do him any good, and he was here to make things better not worse.

The scrape of the chair across the floor was enough to steal his attention, unfortunately. The sight of her pulls something tight in his lower abdomens, a knot he'll never be able to untie at this rate. He's medicated, she shouldn't even be here.

"People in New York don't keep wolves as pets."

"Oh please. Just because they don't talk about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. People have lions and tigers as pets, don't they? A wolf is even better."

She had him; he was engaged. That made the corners of her lips turn upward and the sparkle of a smirk come to her eyes. The medication would not keep her away - maybe for a little while, but not forever. She knew him too well. He would never stay on it and that was the opening for her return and Jack's return and his demise.

"And everyone has snakes. Big, scaley snakes with little tongues and beady eyes that look into your soul and bring out all of that darkness."

[A patient.

River is a very special girl. A very bright girl. Because she showed such promise at such a young age, her parents sent her to a special private school. The Academy.

Unfortunately, this school was run by a cult for the purpose of turning the children into soldiers. Into weapons. Though the authorities broke up the school and rescued the students, no one is quite sure what went on there.

Now she's being treated for PTSD and what the doctors label as persistent auditory hallucinations. River is a telepath and an empath. So she really does hear people's thoughts, which is why she was recruited by The Academy in the first place, but try to explain that to the doctors.]

Asylum Meme

kylo ren { STAR WARS } ota

Dabi | BNHA

Rose/Thorn | Rose & Thorn | DC comics

Jacob Lands | oc | ota

Peter Parker || MCU || patient

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noooo poor spider-baby

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Kisame -- Naruto -- OTA

Rose Red | Ghost Quartet | ota (patient or hallucination)

Buffy Summers | BtVS

Lucifer Morningstar | Lucifer | ota

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cross-medium but similar canons? Let's hear it for "bible fanfics" ;)

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soldier blue | toward the terra

Todd the Wraith // Stargate Atlantis // OTA

Ralph | Detroit: Become Human | ota

Trent Suddath | OC

Re: Trent Suddath | OC

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River Tam | Firefly/Serenity | Open