Change

Notes: Ibid.

.

.

The headaches come infrequently. Sharp and centered in familiar areas that don't give him the option to try and pretend he doesn't know exactly what's causing it.

They start at the back of his head. Where his spine connects to his brain. It spreads from there and feels like needles being jabbed into his head. His arms ache in sympathy as he expects the restraints to come out at any moment. To hold him fast and still in the chair as the drugs -goop? chemicals? who the hell really knew?- burn through him. Changing things in his mind in ways he still can't figure out.

He'd known, at the time, what could be done. What he could do with the amount he had. The things he could improve and the things he could change completely. A little jar to keep his hands steadier, a larger one to make him run faster, several more to make him stronger. To make the pain he felt on being hit fade faster.

Jar by jar. Adding more every chance he got so that he'd have a better chance to survive that hell. Injecting the neon green stuff in callously with no regard to what the hell he was actually doing. It hadn't mattered then. Not when it took more than he had to just keep living.

It had worked. He made it out alive but he's paying for it now. Paying for it in ways he can't figure out, because while he might not have been actually injecting that shit into his mind in that nightmare he was still doing something.

They run him through a complete physical. After sticking him in observation for a few days and poking at his head trying to figure out what was done to him. The short answer is that they don't have a single clue.

He's in perfect health according to them, and he got released not long afterwards. Released to an inquisition of questions he tries to answer without making himself seem like a total headcase. Drugs and general mind fuckery is the going theory when they're done with that and Sebastian doesn't dissuade them from that idea because it's true.

He lets the higherups figure that shit out and focuses instead on the paperwork the docs left him with. The numbers and whatnot that they'd been so pleased over had made his gut clench in dread. He'd half assed that shit and the numbers are better than anything he's ever managed before.

Better than when he was a cocky teenager with good knees and no idea what back pain actually meant. The numbers aren't anywhere near where they should be for a thirty-some year old man whose idea of exercise involved a sixpack and a couple of smokes on the couch. Not even close to what they are even when he gets his rank threatened by the bosses to shape up.

And he hadn't even been trying. It goes beyond that though.

Sebastian's never been a bad shot, but his aim is fucking phenomenal now on the range. Even the cheap one the department has with the pop up targets that everyone hates. He gets every one dead center, and doesn't even flinch at the specially designated civilian targets. Seeing them and recognizing them almost as soon as they start to swing out.

Which is funny because the last time he got a check up the doctor had been making some noise about him looking into getting himself some glasses. He'd been thinking about it too, because shit had been getting blurry and indistinct at a certain distance. But it's not like that anymore. The world is razor sharp and in focus no matter where he looks or how fast he turns his head. Hell, even the dark doesn't seem so dark anymore.

His hands don't shake at all even after holding position for too long. His arms don't feel tired at all even after an hour of constant shooting. In fact, Sebastian doesn't feel very tired period even though he's getting a hell of a lot less sleep than he should be getting. Not from nightmares though he's got enough of those, but just from him not feeling tired.

Small things and not so small things that add up to a hell of an advantage that most guys'd be happy about, but add up to a hell of a bad feeling for Sebastian when combined with the headaches.

He knows what he saw when he walked out of that damn asylum. Knows the back of Leslie's head all too well, knows the particular stride of Ruvik too. The things that happened in there are real in a way that makes him want to scream, because those things transferred over to the real world. They came back with him, and he's damn sure they came back with Ruvik.

Sebastian imagines a world with a Ruvik who is able to manipulate it, and he breaks into a cold sweat.

He thinks about it each time the headaches come, or each time someone compliments him on his quick reflexes. He thinks about it all, and hardly understands even a fraction of it but he dreads it anyway.

It's not over. Not by a long shot.

.

.