Radar O'Reilly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
incomingchoppers) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ph_logs2025-11-17 08:30 pm
incomingchoppers) wrote in ph_logs2025-11-17 08:30 pm
there's a stranger in my eyes again [November/post-event catch-all]
Who: Radar O'Reilly (incomingchoppers) & YOU!
What: Radar's fine. Everything's fine. :)
When: Throughout November
Where: Town Hall, the Leeds Estate, Baker Ranch, and the Temple
Warning(s): Some descriptions + discussion related to the Fears, especially Slaughter, Flesh, and Corruption; specific warnings will be on individual prompts/tags
all messed up with nowhere to go [Town Hall, OTA]
A bit over a year ago, Pumpkin Hollow's denizens were coming back from the Black Stag Casino. Radar in particular had just gotten pampered for a week straight in the VIP suites. He celebrated his twentieth birthday with his new girlfriend, a stretch of calm after the island's latest weirdness, and the newfound knowledge that lobster omelettes with goat cheese were really good.
If only the same could be said for his twenty-first birthday.
The Fears' hold breaks, the island slowly picks up the pieces once again, and Radar does what he does best to keep sane: he works. His former Town Hall coworkers see him scuttling around again just like old times, greeting newcomers and processing forms and popping up right where he's needed with anything that might make their jobs easier. Except... it doesn't, always. Forms get mixed up. Files end up in the wrong cabinet. Once, someone asks for a pen, and Radar absentmindedly hands over an ornamental cactus from Mr. Aberdeen's desk instead. Whenever someone corrects him, he just blinks, mumbles, "Oh, sorry sir," and fixes his mistake like nothing happened.
While manning the front desk one afternoon, he even dozes off. Anyone coming into Town Hall will be greeted by a gently snoring Army clerk, hat crooked and glasses shoved halfway up his forehead as he pillows his head in his arms. If they try to nudge him, he'll flail awake like a bomb went off, blurting, "Choppers!" before he gets his bearings.
"Oh, um." Clumsily, he fixes his glasses and adjusts his hat. "Hi. Can I help you?"
i stare at myself in the mirror alone [Leeds Estate, closed to Dahlia]
(cw: descriptions of war-related violence, gore, & body dysmorphia; emeto mention)
If you live at the Leeds Estate, meanwhile, you'll know exactly why he's been so tired.
He doesn't sleep.
Well, he tries, sure. Every night he goes to his own room, and every night like clockwork, two hours after he shuts the door, there's a quickly-stifled scream. (Radar got a lot of practice in Korea, not waking up anybody else with his own bad dreams.) He hunches over his knees with one arm around his bear, the other hand clapped to his mouth, tears streaming down his face as he struggles his way out of the latest nightmare. Battlefields. Blood everywhere. A hot rifle in his hands and a body on the ground that's only got half its head anymore, because of him. Someone peeling away chunks of his torso one strip at a time until he can see his own ribcage.
He can't stand to be touched, either. The guy who's always been so quick with a hug flinches when anyone so much as taps him on the shoulder. He shies away from everyone, even Dahlia, and can't bring himself to go to her room even on the nights Laios or Daisy aren't around. He misses her company so badly, but just the idea of her seeing his bare skin, let alone touching him, makes him want to throw up.
It's not fair. He was feeling so much better about -- about being him, and now all he can do is hide.
(He just wanted to look nice for her.)
it's hard to make friends when you're half in the grave [Baker Ranch, OTA]
When he isn't at Town Hall or the estate, he's out at Baker Ranch. Who knows what the animals might've gone through while the Fears were in charge? Maybe Radar would, if he listened, but there's been so much static in his ears ever since the island went back to normal that he can barely tell what human animals are thinking, let alone animal animals. So he just treats them with extra kindness anyway and lets the comfort of something small, simple, and fuzzy quiet his mind.
Sometimes, he keeps a teddy bear tucked under one arm while he works. It's not the same one he's been hauling around ever since Hawkeye and Phil won it for him a year and a half ago. This bear's even more worn and well-loved, its fur patchwork-thin, one eye missing, a ribbon that might've been white once tied in a little bow around its neck. One morning he walked into his room at the ranch and there it was, sitting on his pillow like it'd just stepped off the ferry from Korea, too: the bear he's had since he was a baby. Boy and he thought he cried a lot before.
That's the same day he just lays down in the grass for most of the afternoon to stare up at the sky. Some of the baby goats come over to investigate him and the teddy eventually. So do a few rabbits. So does Johnny Boy, even. He sits next to Radar with more rabbits in his lap, alternating between keeping watch and gently placing the occasional bunny on top of Radar's chest.
If you approach, the stone construct will turn to you, blink inquiringly, then hold up one of the rabbits. Hello. Would you like a rabbit in these trying times, too? Or perhaps a baby goat?
but i ain't dead yet, and i got something to say [temple, closed to Mulcahy]
And when that's not enough? There are also cats at the Temple.
Radar only saw Father Mulcahy briefly during the Fears -- he thinks; his time in the Corruption is especially blurry -- so he's got no idea how his friend is doing. Bad, probably. Everybody's doing bad. It makes him feel kind of guilty, knowing he's not just there to check up on the Father, but to talk to him parishioner-to-priest too. Because who else can he talk to about what went on? About the drums of the Slaughter, or the weight of the gun as he fired toward the Enemy? If he bottles it all up much longer he thinks he might burst.
So Mulcahy will find him sitting at the base of the Temple's tree, Christopher Mango cradled in his arms like a ridiculous furry baby. He looks up and tries to smile. "Hey, Father. Sir."
Christopher Mango sticks out a paw to lay it on Radar's cheek, juuuuust a little too close to his mouth.
wildcard
[plot with me/request a custom starter in the usual places!]
incomingchoppers) & YOU!What: Radar's fine. Everything's fine. :)
When: Throughout November
Where: Town Hall, the Leeds Estate, Baker Ranch, and the Temple
Warning(s): Some descriptions + discussion related to the Fears, especially Slaughter, Flesh, and Corruption; specific warnings will be on individual prompts/tags
all messed up with nowhere to go [Town Hall, OTA]
A bit over a year ago, Pumpkin Hollow's denizens were coming back from the Black Stag Casino. Radar in particular had just gotten pampered for a week straight in the VIP suites. He celebrated his twentieth birthday with his new girlfriend, a stretch of calm after the island's latest weirdness, and the newfound knowledge that lobster omelettes with goat cheese were really good.
If only the same could be said for his twenty-first birthday.
The Fears' hold breaks, the island slowly picks up the pieces once again, and Radar does what he does best to keep sane: he works. His former Town Hall coworkers see him scuttling around again just like old times, greeting newcomers and processing forms and popping up right where he's needed with anything that might make their jobs easier. Except... it doesn't, always. Forms get mixed up. Files end up in the wrong cabinet. Once, someone asks for a pen, and Radar absentmindedly hands over an ornamental cactus from Mr. Aberdeen's desk instead. Whenever someone corrects him, he just blinks, mumbles, "Oh, sorry sir," and fixes his mistake like nothing happened.
While manning the front desk one afternoon, he even dozes off. Anyone coming into Town Hall will be greeted by a gently snoring Army clerk, hat crooked and glasses shoved halfway up his forehead as he pillows his head in his arms. If they try to nudge him, he'll flail awake like a bomb went off, blurting, "Choppers!" before he gets his bearings.
"Oh, um." Clumsily, he fixes his glasses and adjusts his hat. "Hi. Can I help you?"
i stare at myself in the mirror alone [Leeds Estate, closed to Dahlia]
(cw: descriptions of war-related violence, gore, & body dysmorphia; emeto mention)
If you live at the Leeds Estate, meanwhile, you'll know exactly why he's been so tired.
He doesn't sleep.
Well, he tries, sure. Every night he goes to his own room, and every night like clockwork, two hours after he shuts the door, there's a quickly-stifled scream. (Radar got a lot of practice in Korea, not waking up anybody else with his own bad dreams.) He hunches over his knees with one arm around his bear, the other hand clapped to his mouth, tears streaming down his face as he struggles his way out of the latest nightmare. Battlefields. Blood everywhere. A hot rifle in his hands and a body on the ground that's only got half its head anymore, because of him. Someone peeling away chunks of his torso one strip at a time until he can see his own ribcage.
He can't stand to be touched, either. The guy who's always been so quick with a hug flinches when anyone so much as taps him on the shoulder. He shies away from everyone, even Dahlia, and can't bring himself to go to her room even on the nights Laios or Daisy aren't around. He misses her company so badly, but just the idea of her seeing his bare skin, let alone touching him, makes him want to throw up.
It's not fair. He was feeling so much better about -- about being him, and now all he can do is hide.
(He just wanted to look nice for her.)
it's hard to make friends when you're half in the grave [Baker Ranch, OTA]
When he isn't at Town Hall or the estate, he's out at Baker Ranch. Who knows what the animals might've gone through while the Fears were in charge? Maybe Radar would, if he listened, but there's been so much static in his ears ever since the island went back to normal that he can barely tell what human animals are thinking, let alone animal animals. So he just treats them with extra kindness anyway and lets the comfort of something small, simple, and fuzzy quiet his mind.
Sometimes, he keeps a teddy bear tucked under one arm while he works. It's not the same one he's been hauling around ever since Hawkeye and Phil won it for him a year and a half ago. This bear's even more worn and well-loved, its fur patchwork-thin, one eye missing, a ribbon that might've been white once tied in a little bow around its neck. One morning he walked into his room at the ranch and there it was, sitting on his pillow like it'd just stepped off the ferry from Korea, too: the bear he's had since he was a baby. Boy and he thought he cried a lot before.
That's the same day he just lays down in the grass for most of the afternoon to stare up at the sky. Some of the baby goats come over to investigate him and the teddy eventually. So do a few rabbits. So does Johnny Boy, even. He sits next to Radar with more rabbits in his lap, alternating between keeping watch and gently placing the occasional bunny on top of Radar's chest.
If you approach, the stone construct will turn to you, blink inquiringly, then hold up one of the rabbits. Hello. Would you like a rabbit in these trying times, too? Or perhaps a baby goat?
but i ain't dead yet, and i got something to say [temple, closed to Mulcahy]
And when that's not enough? There are also cats at the Temple.
Radar only saw Father Mulcahy briefly during the Fears -- he thinks; his time in the Corruption is especially blurry -- so he's got no idea how his friend is doing. Bad, probably. Everybody's doing bad. It makes him feel kind of guilty, knowing he's not just there to check up on the Father, but to talk to him parishioner-to-priest too. Because who else can he talk to about what went on? About the drums of the Slaughter, or the weight of the gun as he fired toward the Enemy? If he bottles it all up much longer he thinks he might burst.
So Mulcahy will find him sitting at the base of the Temple's tree, Christopher Mango cradled in his arms like a ridiculous furry baby. He looks up and tries to smile. "Hey, Father. Sir."
Christopher Mango sticks out a paw to lay it on Radar's cheek, juuuuust a little too close to his mouth.
wildcard
[plot with me/request a custom starter in the usual places!]
no subject
It wobbles so much it's barely a word at all. She feels what he's feeling; he hears what she feels him feeling, like sirens echoing off the mountains that surround camp, and hugs his bear even tighter. "I dunno if I'm even me anymore, sometimes."
How can he be? The Radar O'Reilly of three weeks ago would have pretended the rifle was jammed, or deliberately missed the shot to trick his CO into thinking he was incompetent. He would have said no thank you ma'am when Olivia offered to change him. But instead, he gave in. Twice.
no subject
"I think—"
She presses her lips together, thoughtful, face still wrinkled. Breathes in through her nose, then back out through her mouth.
"I think... every person I've felt, since it all ended, has felt something almost the same. These... these places, it's like they were designed to find the exact buttons that would make us do, or feel, or be the exact things we would hate the most. I've seen it in so many people. It all... it all looks a little different, or even a lot different, sometimes they're not even the same emotion—but the core of the why feels so much the same all across town."
Person after person, those she's actively tried to help and those she's simply stood a little too close to. The broad emotion changes, but the feeling doesn't, one of those strange nuances of how different people process things, filter through different lenses.
She cracks one eye open to glance his way.
"From where I'm lying, you're still you. You're just... a you that was forced to face the absolute worst circumstances designed to make you feel just like this."
no subject
He slides his fingers along the rabbit's fur, trying to focus on its softness. On the small, trusting animal who wouldn't be sitting on him like this if it really thought he'd hurt it. Radar sniffles.
"I guess I thought... w-with all the awful things that've happened already, well, they were awful, but I always got through 'em still thinking I was me. I thought I was getting good at it, you know? Figuring out who I was and, and staying that way as much as I could."
He can't help thinking of Hawkeye and his unshakeable moral core lately. Hawk never would've done what Radar did, in any of it. He's almost glad he hasn't had a chance to go by the clinic yet.
no subject
"If you'd really changed in some of the ways you're scared you have, I'm not sure you'd be scared of changing in the ways you're scared you have."
Maybe it's not really that simple. There were people who became what they feared even more literally than this, she's tasted the edges of those feelings in some places, but— sometimes the right thing to say isn't the whole, complicated truth of reality itself. Sometimes it's just about the person in front of you, and hoping you're picking the right words to help them.
"You're not uniquely terrible for breaking the ways it was designed to break you, Radar. I don't think anyone you're thinking of would've done much better, because as far as I can tell no one did. It got everyone just as bad."
no subject
It passes as she says the rest. He tries to make himself listen, really listen so he'll believe what she's telling him. What has he heard swirling around the town the last couple weeks? Pain. Despair. Anger. The whole town a post-op ward, only there's no physical injuries and no Dr. Freedman to call for the rest. Has he even heard a tiny flicker of happiness from anybody?
It got everyone just as bad, she says. Maybe she's right.
"I still wish I coulda done better," he mumbles. (Maybe there's a little flicker of anger at the edges there, lapping at the despair like a flame. What else is depression but anger turned inward?)
no subject
Alex turns her head toward him properly and smiles a tired, empathetic smile. "I know. That's pretty normal, too."
It's not the same for her, not really, her hell was so much... quieter, more insidious, making her doubt herself in ways she knew far too well. It feels less like she's learned some new horrible truth about herself than had the things she already knew affirmed.
"It's going to keep feeling bad. Even I can't fix that." Well, actually, she could, but— she doesn't think it would actually help. It'd be like Charlotte, not like Pike. "But it doesn't mean anything else about you."
no subject
But saying that isn't gonna help. Radar wipes his eyes, exhales shakily, and sinks into quiet for a while. Overhead, a few birds wing by, twittering to each other, unconcerned.
Softly: "It must've been awful, feeling everybody's feelings while we were stuck there."
no subject
Alex doesn't push. Some things are a lot easier to say than to actually internalise, she knows that better than most.
"...it— wasn't great. But it was also... it was complicated. In the place I was, nothing felt like it was supposed to. The auras were all wrong, sometimes even the thoughts I was hearing... I couldn't trust any of it. I kept trying to help and it... it just made things worse."
It's what's got her spending so much time walking around town trying to find people she can actually help. Prove she's not insane, that her abilities do what she knows they do.
no subject
Radar winces. "It feels like you're going crazy all over again, huh. And... you don't expect anybody to start messing with you like that. 'Cause most people don't even know you can do that kind of thing in the first place. So why would they know it's there to mess with at all?"
no subject
"Yeah. Exactly. I— I really thought..." That maybe people like Dr. Lynn were right, that after all these years she'd finally had it proved she was delusional the whole time and her attempts to help people were just... lucky guesses, if they helped at all. "...well, I doubted myself more than I have since I first started seeing these things. I've never felt more like I was going insane. Like— like I'd been wrong to think I could ever leave care."
Like she wasn't fit to exist on her own, to be independent, when she was still so clearly ill and out of her depth.
no subject
He said a lot of the same stuff to Dahlia not long after the Fears left. Obviously he's not gonna spill all of his girlfriend's worries to Alex, but -- if she's going around feeling so much of the island's pain, he hopes she can feel this part of the feelings, too, and know she's not alone.
The bunny scoots further up Radar's chest, nosing him just under the chin. "You're not crazy, though. You never were. And even if you were, well, most people here don't get mean over what's strange or funny about a person so long as it ain't hurting anybody. They wouldn't think you're broken and try to fix you. You'd be okay."
no subject
"I'm trying to hold onto that. When things like this can happen... anything I can do feels so much smaller, less— weird, and I feel like I was getting there. I was really getting there, and then this—"
The doubt is insidious, Radar's right about that. As terrifying as it was to be trapped in those halls, to feel out of control of herself, it's the doubt that lingers. Too familiar. He's also right that she's seen it in others. And she tries, at least, to take comfort in what she can.
"I've only ever used this to help people. And I'm still worried if they know I'm doing it they're going to hate me for it."