The Other Side

Deprivation

"It's not working, I don't know what I even did the first time to get it to happen." Jamie insisted. Maybe it was harder when he had someone staring at him like that. Namely Beth, who was oddly menacing despite the fact that she was only five feet tall. Perhaps it was the eyepatch. He knew it was rude but he really wanted to know why she only had one eye and a scar underneath the patch over her cheek and almost to the corner of her mouth. No one ever brought it up and it was probably a sore subject but it was kind of annoying him. Then again, a woman who survived whatever kind of violence that injury caused to stand there at her rank and be bossing around Demogorgons like she owned them was also probably not someone he wanted to mess with, or anyone did.

"Why are you staring at me like that?"

"I just-"

"Is it the eyepatch?"

"Not necessarily but-"

"If you have to know, I sustained this injury when I had to shoot my former partner who was an idiot and then shoot myself to make it look like I died. It was calculated but risky, still I took the risk and it paid off. The information didn't get out thanks to him and I lived. See? Not that exciting of a story." She sighed, "Yes, it hurt, yes I still have pain from it, yes it fucked up my jaw and mouth and I had some of my teeth replaced. I put the gun here under my chin so it would be likely to come out of my eye and never enter my skull." She motioned with her hand all like none of this was a big deal, when it should have been. He was trying to process how she had done all of this and came to the conclusion that if she wasn't worried about fucking up her own face to save a mission she really wasn't worried about fucking up his.

"Well I'm sorry that-"

"You aren't sorry and you don't care, it's fine." She cut him off. "Anyway, if you did it once you can do it again so we just have to create the right atmosphere and you're really not going to like it."

"I'm guessing I don't get any say in this at all."

"No, so we can sedate you or you can come with me and do it willingly."

He didn't know what it was she was thinking of doing because nowhere in any of that did she tell him and now he was terrified of a woman who explained all that like she'd gotten nothing more than a papercut. It was probably best he didn't keep pissing her off and just do what she said. Not only for his sake but Cordelia's as well. He got up from the floor where he had been sitting and brushed himself off.

"How do you know this will work?"

"I don't but it's the best idea I have so we'll give it twenty-four hours and if nothing comes of it we'll regroup and go back to the drawing board."

"Twenty-four hours of what?"

"Sensory deprivation in solitary confinement."

"Are you out of your bloody mind?"

"Explain to me what better way you think there is to focus enough to possibly project yourself to another world, with your mind, other than cutting out all of your senses and everything around you."

"I mean I did it before without-"

"Yeah, but now you can't and we need to hurry it along so...like I said, sedation or by choice. You're gonna hate it either way but maybe slightly less if you choose to comply."

He really didn't like her logic on this, and he wasn't sure if he liked her or not. On one hand it was admirable that she was so strong and smart but on another hand she was clearly not all there and some level of sociopath as well. Even Cordelia had alluded to that somewhat. Surely she was sane enough to keep her position at the base in the command and rank that she had so other people trusted her. Yet, literally no one who was in their right mind would handle Demogorgons like pets or even think to go into the upside down on purpose to fight Vecna. To be fair, she wasn't going in herself so that probably proved she was more sane than insane at that point.