Title: Vision
Description: When Goren departs from reality, Eames has an epiphany.
Author: Spring Haze
Disclaimer: L&O: CI and its characters do not belong to me, and I do not gain anything except entertainment from the use of said characters.
Author Notes: A short Goren-goes-crazy piece. This is a little departure. And it's a lot weird. Slightly AU, I guess, if you don't accept the premise that Goren could be struggling with mental illness. Also, this is not a very realistic depiction of mental illness in general, or typical treatment. Suspend disbelief starting... now.
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Eames doesn't recognize the white-washed walls that surround her. It is all foreign, all terribly strange. White walls are symbolic of institutional safety, but she feels deep fear as she peers one last time through the small window in the door of the locked hospital room.
There lies a heaving mind, a living thought. The physical world is meaningless to him now; maybe it never had meaning for him.
She, however, occupies a world where thoughts and ideas are exclusively valued for their manifest actions.
She hadn't realized this until she found herself watching his lively eyes, embedded in the most motionless mass of a body she has ever encountered.
She can't reconcile it. So she walks out in an attempt to escape.
The moment she leaves the building, she makes a fully conscious decision to fall back on her default reaction to stressful situations. Anger is crutch she uses whenever she is disoriented.
He never asked her if this was ok, if she would be fine moving through life without his odd gesticulating and his heavy steps behind her. He didn't even care. She was part of the physical world, and he only had need for the conceptual.
So, as she stands there on the sidewalk, stunned by the gauche brightness of midday, she lets anger fill her heart, mind, and body. Anger that he allowed himself to drift slowly down the path to restraints and anti-psychotics; anger at him for carrying the tools of his own demise with him wherever he went; anger at him for making it impossible for her to act to help him.
A giant cross, set on the roof of the hospital, obscenely reflects the noon sunlight. She stares directly at it and her pupils become microscopic; her vision is forced inward. Her lids close, and she succumbs to an image of Goren carrying the cross on his back, hunched over, until he collapses under its weight.
She moves involuntarily, reflexively. She must have gone back into the building because, when her eyes open next, she is surrounded by white-washed walls again.
This time, she is breaking down the door to Goren's room instead of peering cautiously through the tiny window. People are coming at her, she hears them yelling at her to stop. She doesn't stop, not until she is centimeters from his eyes, which are still twitching and blinking at events only known to him.
She rests her aching forehead on his, and looks into the dark pools before her. These are the windows that separate the corporeal from the ethereal. She can see through them, she can see into him. She will not allow him bear his cross alone.
Just when she thinks she is joining him in the intangible, she is pulled away by bodily forces. When she loses contact with his skin, she hears her name yelled by his anguished voice, and she sees him thrashing.
His movements are like his thoughts. They grow in intensity with each new impulse. Each spasm fills her with hope. And she knows, as she is being dragged out of the room by hospital staff, that he will someday follow her out.
They are the perfect collision of action and conception; the brute force of it will bring him back.
Description: When Goren departs from reality, Eames has an epiphany.
Author: Spring Haze
Disclaimer: L&O: CI and its characters do not belong to me, and I do not gain anything except entertainment from the use of said characters.
Author Notes: A short Goren-goes-crazy piece. This is a little departure. And it's a lot weird. Slightly AU, I guess, if you don't accept the premise that Goren could be struggling with mental illness. Also, this is not a very realistic depiction of mental illness in general, or typical treatment. Suspend disbelief starting... now.
************************************************************************************************
Eames doesn't recognize the white-washed walls that surround her. It is all foreign, all terribly strange. White walls are symbolic of institutional safety, but she feels deep fear as she peers one last time through the small window in the door of the locked hospital room.
There lies a heaving mind, a living thought. The physical world is meaningless to him now; maybe it never had meaning for him.
She, however, occupies a world where thoughts and ideas are exclusively valued for their manifest actions.
She hadn't realized this until she found herself watching his lively eyes, embedded in the most motionless mass of a body she has ever encountered.
She can't reconcile it. So she walks out in an attempt to escape.
The moment she leaves the building, she makes a fully conscious decision to fall back on her default reaction to stressful situations. Anger is crutch she uses whenever she is disoriented.
He never asked her if this was ok, if she would be fine moving through life without his odd gesticulating and his heavy steps behind her. He didn't even care. She was part of the physical world, and he only had need for the conceptual.
So, as she stands there on the sidewalk, stunned by the gauche brightness of midday, she lets anger fill her heart, mind, and body. Anger that he allowed himself to drift slowly down the path to restraints and anti-psychotics; anger at him for carrying the tools of his own demise with him wherever he went; anger at him for making it impossible for her to act to help him.
A giant cross, set on the roof of the hospital, obscenely reflects the noon sunlight. She stares directly at it and her pupils become microscopic; her vision is forced inward. Her lids close, and she succumbs to an image of Goren carrying the cross on his back, hunched over, until he collapses under its weight.
She moves involuntarily, reflexively. She must have gone back into the building because, when her eyes open next, she is surrounded by white-washed walls again.
This time, she is breaking down the door to Goren's room instead of peering cautiously through the tiny window. People are coming at her, she hears them yelling at her to stop. She doesn't stop, not until she is centimeters from his eyes, which are still twitching and blinking at events only known to him.
She rests her aching forehead on his, and looks into the dark pools before her. These are the windows that separate the corporeal from the ethereal. She can see through them, she can see into him. She will not allow him bear his cross alone.
Just when she thinks she is joining him in the intangible, she is pulled away by bodily forces. When she loses contact with his skin, she hears her name yelled by his anguished voice, and she sees him thrashing.
His movements are like his thoughts. They grow in intensity with each new impulse. Each spasm fills her with hope. And she knows, as she is being dragged out of the room by hospital staff, that he will someday follow her out.
They are the perfect collision of action and conception; the brute force of it will bring him back.