Characters: John Hancock, Female Sole Survivor, Male Sole Survivor
Relationships: John Hancock/F!Sole, Past - M!Sole/F!Sole
Tags: Het, Gen, Mental Condition, Ghoul, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, Fluff and Angst, Synesthesia, Shaming
Summary: Jena had always known something was wrong with her.
A/N: This piece was written for the Fallout kink meme and for once it's not smutty, it's cute and fluffy lol
As someone fascinated with the inner workings of the human mind I thought I would give this prompt a go. This condition isn't considered a mental illness by any stretch of the imagination now, however in the 1950's in real life it was considered a mental illness and as with most mental illnesses back then you were condemned to an asylum for it. Now, while Fallout is not straight out of our 1950's it is similar, so in my mind it wouldn't be such a stretch for it to be considered an illness in the Fallout verse. Now I've got my technical mumbo jumbo out the way, I hope you guys enjoy :)
The original prompt was as follows: So, let's say SS had some serious mental health issues before the bombs fell, but they were keeping a very, very tight lid on them because they knew the stigma would seriously harm them and their family if it ever got out they were anything less than sane. Maybe the neighbors would have shunned them, or Child Services would've been called to take their babies, or maybe they just straight up would have been thrown into a terrible asylum. But the Commonwealth has more than its share of mentally ill people, and nobody seems to be making any effort to hide it! Nobody is getting locked up for this kind of thing anymore, and the SS feels, for the first time, relief. They no longer have to endure the stress of putting on a mask all the time, and they discover, to their surprise, that even when revealing symptoms, their companions don't reject them. On the contrary, the SS receives more emotional support than they've ever had in their life! I have a very slight preference for F!SS, but this can work with any gender SS. Mental issues can be anything the author!anon is familiar enough with. (Multifills would also be cool, but I would be happy to just get one fill for this) Shipping would be a bonus, but not required.
Jena had always known something was wrong with her. She saw the world differently, whenever she mentioned it people would look at her like she was insane. Maybe she was.
Right now this was all irrelevant because the entire world around her was clouded with pink and it was making her ill.
"Shit doll that looks bad, does it hurt?"
She grit her teeth, fighting the nausea pink always brought on. "No."
Hancock grasped her arm lightly and ran a hand over the wound.
The pink pulsed and she squeezed her eyes shut.
"How's that feel?"
"Pink."
"Pink?"
"Yeah, pink."
"I don't understand."
"Nobody does."
He helped her into a small shop, "Come on let's get you fixed up."
No one understood her - hell she didn't even understand it. Nate had hated it when she 'was weird'. She was working on an important case and had the radio tuned to the blues station, purples and yellows drifted around her, helping her concentrate.
She needed to crack this case - look at it from all angles. Nate wandered into the kitchen, switching the station, suddenly the calming colours were poisoned with reds and greens.
"Damn it Nate! I need those colours to concentrate, now you've covered it in red and green, how am I supposed to work with red and green?!"
The look he gave her said it all.
She was a freak.
Her own husband thought she was a freak.
She sighed heavily, "Just – just don't touch the radio ok?"
He nodded nervously and backed out.
The second time Hancock commented on her difference was when they were working their way though an abandoned building. There were locks and terminal around every corner, she breezed through even the hardest one.
"How is it you can manage every lock and hack as if it's nothing?"
She shrugged staring at the wall as she picked the lock, she could see the numbers, angles, tumblers on the wall, they clicked together in a perfect equation and the lock opened with a snick.
"I dunno."
He gave her a look ducking through the doorway into the next room. "Jena, don't be vague. You know I see through that shit."
She sighed, it was a burnt red colour. "I see the angles, equations, I just follow it until it comes together and the door opens. Hacks are like a puzzle, all the letters are there I just need to put them in order."
"And you see this in your mind?"
She shook her head, he lit a cigarette breathing the smoke out into the hall, she watched the purple float around inside the smoke, she grinned. "No, physically, I see it in front of my eyes, as solid as you."
He tipped his head to the side. "Fascinating."
She remembered the time Nate had called her a freak.
They'd just made love, she had sighed happily,
"We just made our son." She had whispered to him.
"What?"
A beautiful silver had appeared and intertwined with their blue and gold.
"There's never been three colours before. There was a sil-"
"Stop! Just stop." He rolled over, "Freak."
It had been barely under his breath but she had heard it all the same.
Tears filled her eyes, she never mentioned the colours to him again.
"There's a name for it."
"What?" She replied as she entered the house.
A packet of empty Mentats sat on the table and Hancock was holding a medical text between ruined fingers. He looked up at her over reading glasses - she tried hard not to laugh.
Glasses really didn't work without a nose.
"Here, look." He handed her the book.
Synesthesia is a neuropsychological trait in which the stimulation of one sense cause the automatic experience of another sense. Synesthesia is a genetically linked trait estimated to affect from two to five percent of the general population.
Jena looked up at him, shocked, "I'm not the only one?"
He grinned at her, "No doll, you're not."
She continued reading,
Contemporary models agree that synesthesia involved communication between regions of the cerebral cortex in the brain that are not otherwise connected in non-synesthetes-
"So my brain is wired wrong."
"No Jena. Not wrong. Just different."
She spent a long time explaining the colours to him - the numbers - the patterns. This was the first time she'd ever talked about it in detail to anyone. Hancock sat and listened with undivided attention, looking things up, drawing diagrams, asking questions.
Jen finally felt accepted, she would never be normal, no chance of that, but finally she no longer felt like a freak.
"What colour am I?" He asked later.
She grabbed his hand in hers, looking past his head as the colours appeared, "Orange." She replied, smiling.
"Huh. I thought I'd be black."
She shook her head, "No, black's not nice, it inks everything out, same as red. Coincidentally, red is the only colour that actually makes logical sense."
"How so?"
"The smell of blood makes my vision red." She smirked, "You know that saying, seeing red? Yeah, that shit actually applies with me."
He chuckled, "What other colours do you see with me?"
"Purple when you smoke - that's always been a calming colour with me. Green like grass when you fight - it's beautiful, like some kind of dance. Sometimes when you sigh it comes out a lovely aqua color." She paused briefly, smiling, "Oh and when I put on music - damn Hancock it's the most beautiful thing - I wish you could see it."
He turned and fiddled with the radio on the side table. "Describe it to me."
She spent the rest of the afternoon watching the colours and sharing every detail with him, hands joined between them.
He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand and orange exploded across her vision, intertwining with her gold.
She was always so worried about being normal, but sitting here with John, she smiled.
Who the fuck needs normal anyway?