iniquiticity | (no subject) (Reply)

cw: childhood trauma, neurological damage, fear response, ironflint washington is a monster.

disclaimer: i don’t actually know anything about childhood trauma, so i apologize if this is off-base.

i think that alex no longer has the correct neurological response to fear. not that he doesn’t get scared anymore - actually i think it’s because he was scared so much as a kid, he just stopped being scared, in a bad way. he was put in so many traumatic situations (both that keep true aham canon like his mom dying around him and seeing his coucin hang himself, and ironflint situations like being in abusive foster families/shelters/orphanages, or being homeless or relentlessly mocked for his ragged clothes), that he just… no longer reacts to fear the way a regular human being might react to fear.

i agree, of course, that washington is terrifying. a lot of times i imagine it’s his calm that might terrify a real human, becuase i’m sure washingon has calmly discussed parts of his portfolio that are cruel and horrible (like making some specific subset of employees work just little enough that they don’t qualify for benefits) or just straight-up monsterous (dealing with, idk? gang leaders or african dictators?). and for alex and his messed-up brain chemistry, the reaction is not “holy fuck, this guy is literally talking to some african dictator and murdering people for resources and he’s perfectly calm about it, what the fuck, what the fuck,” as if a real human might be. instead it’s like “whatever, i’m not being threatened, sexually or otherwise, so i don’t care.”

and i think, for washington, this is yet another perk of him finding this fucked-up creature. he knows that many things he has to deal with are terrifying because the stakes are so high. for someone who knows all about his various horrors, the fact that alex is mostly bored by his discussions of cheap component acquisitions due to horrible factory conditions is a huge perk. he never has to say “don’t be scared,” or think alex is going home talking to anyone about how fucked-up his boss is. alex doesn’t care.

i imagine there are circumstances in which alex would be scared by washington, but i don’t know what they are. alex likes washington, and doesn’t really care he’s one of the most horrible creatures to walk the earth. washington is a source of an endless pile of distractions, AND will fuck him senselessly without any intimacy. many things that are terrifying to real humans, alex has been desensitized to. he’s has enough guns pointed at him, he’s been smacked around and abandoned, he’s been starving and hungry and eaten disgusting food, he’s been abused emotionally, physically and sexually. whatever the proper neurological fear response is has just been so overused that it no longer functions in situations where it should function.

i’ve been playing with some noncon ironflint situations in my head (i’m not sure if they’ll ever actually make it to a page), and i’m trying to imagine what that situation looks like. i mean, fear is an inherent element when you move to one thing you consented to (although, obviously there is very little vocal consent, nor does washington care), to another thing you no longer consent to. it’s all mixed together.