Ziggy Berman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadysided) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ximilialog2024-02-28 10:53 pm
shadysided) wrote in ximilialog2024-02-28 10:53 pm
[Open] in the wink of a young girl's eye
CHARACTERS: Canon Updated Ziggy and You!
LOCATION: See each prompt.
DATE: Just after the mission.
CONTENT: Ziggy canon updates... like... 2 decades. Shit has happened.
WARNINGS: Conversations/narration about mental health issues, addiction, and PTSD.
(Feel free to wildcard!)
I. Local Ohio Woman Threatens Civilians | Hallway
[C. Berman — no, Ziggy, her nickname is Ziggy — wakes up with a jolt.
Wakes up with a jolt somewhere she has not seen since she was 18 years old: the Ximilia.
She's in her thirties now, having drank maybe a little too much after a small, unfortunate backslide in the months following the breaking of a curse and the quitting of alcohol. Two fucking decades. It's been two decades of really bad choices and mental health as flimsy as wafer paper, and so... she doesn't quite remember things clearly yet. It'll come, with time: those memories of her coupla' years aboard the ship, which will no doubt be eerily clear, despite the distance.
But for now, she is dazed, confused, and mildly hungover when she stumbles out into the hallways of the Ximilia. She has a knife clutched in one hand, poised and ready to lash out if she needs to. In fact, someone who is tiredly walking the halls mere hours after their return from the mission will suddenly find a knife held up to their neck from behind. The voice that speaks is a little rough from a disuse and two decades of on-again-off-again smoking habits.]
Instead of trying to move, how about you tell me where the hell I've been carted off to?
[And why it feels so goddamn familiar?]
I don't know what creepy Sunnyvale mental hospital this is, but I'm out of here.
II. Far Away Thoughts | Kitchen
[So. Anyway.
She's gotten her memories back. Mostly, and with some unpleasant blurriness that still needs time to fade. She's in her thirties, and so much time has passed — time that includes becoming a PTSD-infested alcoholic with agoraphobia (lots of watching the same VHS movies every night after a fifth of Jack Daniels, or tail-spinning into guilt over Camp Nightwing and paranoia that the curse is coming to reclaim her). She's improved a lot since breaking the curse, for the record.
It's why she can sit in the kitchen to stare at a bottle of wine, instead of hoarding herself in a room decorated for a teenager who is into high School Musical. It's not easy, but she can do it. She just happens to stare at the bottle for an uncomfortably long time, unaware that she's even doing it. Force of habit, really; time passes just fine when you're zoning out into another world.
It also helps you not drink the thing you really want to drink, if you zone out.
One epiphany, belated, finally hits her:]
... Holy shit. I'm really here. Again.
... I can't believe this is really happening. Again.
III. Memories of a Different Life | Ziggy's Room
[It's funny. Back home, she still feels her skin crawl when she takes those daunting steps out of her home. It had once been a mental sort of prison, one she erected herself. And she had swore to herself and to her sister that she would start really living again. If only it weren't so fucking scary to do something as simple as meeting someone at a cafe, or walking your dog down a sidewalk.
But the Ximilia doesn't make her feel like that. Not really. Not with the memories she has here, still bleeding in so effortlessly and filling the cracks that she had only started mending back home. It makes her realize that perhaps her healing had started a long time ago, in a place she couldn't remember anymore: this station.
She stands in the middle of her room, taking embarrassing posters off her wall and grimacing at teenaged Zac Efron's face. Not just him, either. Somewhere along the way, young her had started really getting into the Jonas Brothers while staying here. How many Disney Channel original movies can one girl hoard?]
... Ugh. So glad I'm over this chapter of my life, suddenly.
[She rolls up a poster and throws it in a box.
Redecorating a little, is all. She stops to look at some little polaroid images and tiny letters on a corkboard — there's some lovey-dovey messages from what she can see is Finn's handwriting and unerring drawing skills. It's amazing how clearly she's suddenly remembering some of these moments in time; it's also a relief to know that at least she had some kind of teenaged childhood here, in a way. Especially when she thinks about the parallel childhood that happened the moment she returned home.
The door to her room is open, anyway; feel free to pop your head in.]
LOCATION: See each prompt.
DATE: Just after the mission.
CONTENT: Ziggy canon updates... like... 2 decades. Shit has happened.
WARNINGS: Conversations/narration about mental health issues, addiction, and PTSD.
(Feel free to wildcard!)
I. Local Ohio Woman Threatens Civilians | Hallway
[C. Berman — no, Ziggy, her nickname is Ziggy — wakes up with a jolt.
Wakes up with a jolt somewhere she has not seen since she was 18 years old: the Ximilia.
She's in her thirties now, having drank maybe a little too much after a small, unfortunate backslide in the months following the breaking of a curse and the quitting of alcohol. Two fucking decades. It's been two decades of really bad choices and mental health as flimsy as wafer paper, and so... she doesn't quite remember things clearly yet. It'll come, with time: those memories of her coupla' years aboard the ship, which will no doubt be eerily clear, despite the distance.
But for now, she is dazed, confused, and mildly hungover when she stumbles out into the hallways of the Ximilia. She has a knife clutched in one hand, poised and ready to lash out if she needs to. In fact, someone who is tiredly walking the halls mere hours after their return from the mission will suddenly find a knife held up to their neck from behind. The voice that speaks is a little rough from a disuse and two decades of on-again-off-again smoking habits.]
Instead of trying to move, how about you tell me where the hell I've been carted off to?
[And why it feels so goddamn familiar?]
I don't know what creepy Sunnyvale mental hospital this is, but I'm out of here.
II. Far Away Thoughts | Kitchen
[So. Anyway.
She's gotten her memories back. Mostly, and with some unpleasant blurriness that still needs time to fade. She's in her thirties, and so much time has passed — time that includes becoming a PTSD-infested alcoholic with agoraphobia (lots of watching the same VHS movies every night after a fifth of Jack Daniels, or tail-spinning into guilt over Camp Nightwing and paranoia that the curse is coming to reclaim her). She's improved a lot since breaking the curse, for the record.
It's why she can sit in the kitchen to stare at a bottle of wine, instead of hoarding herself in a room decorated for a teenager who is into high School Musical. It's not easy, but she can do it. She just happens to stare at the bottle for an uncomfortably long time, unaware that she's even doing it. Force of habit, really; time passes just fine when you're zoning out into another world.
It also helps you not drink the thing you really want to drink, if you zone out.
One epiphany, belated, finally hits her:]
... Holy shit. I'm really here. Again.
... I can't believe this is really happening. Again.
III. Memories of a Different Life | Ziggy's Room
[It's funny. Back home, she still feels her skin crawl when she takes those daunting steps out of her home. It had once been a mental sort of prison, one she erected herself. And she had swore to herself and to her sister that she would start really living again. If only it weren't so fucking scary to do something as simple as meeting someone at a cafe, or walking your dog down a sidewalk.
But the Ximilia doesn't make her feel like that. Not really. Not with the memories she has here, still bleeding in so effortlessly and filling the cracks that she had only started mending back home. It makes her realize that perhaps her healing had started a long time ago, in a place she couldn't remember anymore: this station.
She stands in the middle of her room, taking embarrassing posters off her wall and grimacing at teenaged Zac Efron's face. Not just him, either. Somewhere along the way, young her had started really getting into the Jonas Brothers while staying here. How many Disney Channel original movies can one girl hoard?]
... Ugh. So glad I'm over this chapter of my life, suddenly.
[She rolls up a poster and throws it in a box.
Redecorating a little, is all. She stops to look at some little polaroid images and tiny letters on a corkboard — there's some lovey-dovey messages from what she can see is Finn's handwriting and unerring drawing skills. It's amazing how clearly she's suddenly remembering some of these moments in time; it's also a relief to know that at least she had some kind of teenaged childhood here, in a way. Especially when she thinks about the parallel childhood that happened the moment she returned home.
The door to her room is open, anyway; feel free to pop your head in.]
no subject
It makes her angry that she had forgotten a relationship so important, for so long.]
... I have to admit, the growing took a longer time than it should've. In ways.
[Physically, no, but finding yourself is really hard when you don't try looking.]
... We did it, though. We broke the curse. The killing in Shadyside — it's over.
[And that is something she's proud of.
And it feels damn good to be proud of something.]