returnjourneylogs | I know the breakdown. Everything is gonna shake now someday

Passengers: Alex and anyone else interested
Location: Inmate Bunks
Date: After the SIM
Summary: Alex is having a small nervous breakdown, on top of the physical effects of dying in the SIM.
Warnings: Language

Once Alex had gotten back to his bunk, he'd huddled in on himself. It hadn't been easy to get back. He'd had balance issues, couldn't grab properly, was confused, and felt nauseated. He remembered dying in the SIM--being slowly eaten alive by the plant-life and fungi.

Was that what the people he'd killed had experienced? That increasing loss of self, as he'd consumed them? Alex couldn't quite remember--or rather, he remembered too much. Hundreds of memories fought themselves for space in his head, to make themselves heard. It was overwhelming, drowning out his own voice and sense of 'who' he was.

Who was Alex Mercer anyways? He wasn't a real person after all, was he? With a groan, Alex tossed his communicator out the front of his bunk, and curled up under his blanket. There were multiple senses--multiple voices in his head--grateful that his shapeshifting was locked in one shape at the moment.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Okay. Three weeks worth of killing. It's possible he'd actually done far more damage than Loki had both on Jotunheim and Earth, and far more directly than most of what Loki'd done. But some of it-- finding out a truth he hadn't expected, trying to fix things with violence and anger --was close enough to home that he can feel his pulse picking up.

So he takes a breath. Exhales. Picks somewhere to start.

"What do you mean by 'just trying to survive'?" He has a feeling he was wrong about the animal hunger. "If they weren't your enemies, what did you get out of consuming them?"

"Health, when I'd been damaged too much to regenerate properly." 'Alex' murmured. "I'm...not proud of it. I still hear them, when I close my eyes. Screaming in my head. I found the truth, regret it, wish to hell I could forget it. But I can't--so what am I? Now that I know exactly how it feels, what am I?"

Loki presses his lips together in an effort to hide how that description unnerves him. Hearing the voices of others in his head is something he can sympathize with, although he didn't have any part in putting them there. But it doesn't sound as if Alex had much of a choice, assuming he was even aware of what he was doing to begin with.

If he is just a virus-- if he isn't also some sort of combination of the original Alex and all the other people the virus consumed --then he's hardly sentient so much as piggybacking on the sentience of someone else. He wouldn't be a person at all, at that point, just an entity keeping itself going.

"I don't think a virus alone would have desires nor regrets, for starters. You must be something more complex than that, or you would never have wanted any truth to begin with," Loki observes. "And given my own experience during the event..." He lowers his gaze, biting back a shudder before he looks up again. "It wasn't like we were just sewn together. We were melted down and reformed like a blade. Something new made of the sum of our parts."

Tone gentle, he suggests, "Perhaps the same is true of you?"

"It sounds more like I'm Area X." Alex said quietly, after thinking a bit. "The virus basically plugs in and unlocks the Junk DNA in a being. It's chimeric, causing changes that can recreate sentience in within the cellular make-up." It was the easiest way to explain the virus without having to go into lots of technical terms.

But it had been said clinically, and like Alex was considering. He... He wasn't human. But that didn't mean he wasn't automatically not a person, right?

"Maybe," Loki nods, "It's not as if anyone really knew what Area X was either. Maybe it was sentient too."

He mulls over that explanation and feels it rubbing up against old prejudices. Ways of thinking he knew, logically, were cruel and self-centered. He'd improved upon them, or else he doesn't think he would've graduated, but he can still feel the same instincts activating at what Alex describes.

Maybe he should use that.

Loki takes a steadying breath, and begins, "I was raised as royalty in a society that already deemed itself far above all others. It was hierarchy all the way down, with clear winners and losers. So black and white, from the day I was first able to understand the differences between myself and others. I was truly convinced I was the best of the best. Or, near enough."

He gives a wry smirk, thinking on how Thor so obviously outshone him when, if nature held true, they should have been much more equal. Perhaps that should have been the first sign.

"But then I found out I wasn't part of that race at all. In fact, I was the son of our greatest enemy. In an instant, I was nothing." Loki swallows, shakes his head. "But even then, at my lowest point, I knew that wasn't true. I wanted to prove my worth despite what made me, but..." How to put this? "If I had worth, it was because of everything that made me, both nature and nurture, right? Even the bits I hadn't known about."

He reaches out, hesitant, and places a hand on Alex's arm. "What I'm saying is, I know what it's like to not know yourself. But I think there's little question that you have a 'self'. Which is a start." He offers what he hopes is an encouraging smile. "You're just a little earlier on in the process, I think."

Blue-eyes flicked to the touch on his arm, then to stare at Loki a bit. Mulling over what the other was saying. Pondering it, before offering a hesitant nod. "Alex was in foster care until he was 10, then he got placed back with his mom. Because he had a younger sister. He was more often then parent though, as they were in borderline poverty circumstances. School offered him ways out, and he left when Dana was 16ish. He had a Manhattan apartment, and a cushy job--when it all went south."

A bit about the life Alex had thought was his own for a long time. Then he's dropping his gaze, and snorts at himself. "My power's are locked, but I'm a shape-shifter. Not just into other people, but into various weaponized forms. Sometimes....it was easier to sneak around. Sometimes I had to fight my away through."

Loki isn't sure what 'weaponized forms' might mean, but he's starting to get the picture. Alex's experience with shapeshifting lacked the fun and experimentation that Loki'd enjoyed. It was about survival. A means to an end. And it muddled him to the point that he lost his original self.

Maybe he can get it back. Maybe not. But it will still be a part of whatever he becomes.

"It sounds like you'll have a lot to sift through. Not just yourself, but what you've done." His lips lift in not quite a smirk. "I've gone through much the same thing. And what I found, I think, is that getting out of the line of fire gave me a chance to put the pieces back together into...well, who I am now."

He glances around the dorm, shrugs. "This place is safer than most of our homes, from what I've heard. It will challenge you-- you're still living a life, after all. But it's...pared down. You have the time to work things out, here. If you're willing to take advantage of it."

Loki watches Alex's face, looking for signs that he's at least pulled out of the height of the crisis. "Are you alright, for now? I think you've earned some rest."

"Does taking advantage of it mean Therapy? Because I know the Devil's already tried to push me in that direction." It was the most Alex had sounded like his 'old' self since this conversation had started. But...he, whoever he was, felt like he wasn't quite in such a...state. He was a being, a person--right? Well, it was a place to start.

"...'m not good with thanks usually." But he nodded, and moved to pull himself out of the bed briefly. "I'm going to stretch a bit, then come back. Lots to think about."

That question probably isn't meant to be a joke, but Loki smirks anyway. "It doesn't have to. But it'll probably involve talking to people. Getting to know them and letting them know you, as uncomfortable as that can be." He shrugs. "And like I said. You have time. No need to rush if you aren't ready."

Loki stood with Alex and nodded. "Of course. I'll be on shift in here for a while, if you need anything."

I know the breakdown. Everything is gonna shake now someday

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