The Academy: Ensnared

22. Mountain High

A/N//: Guys! I'm back! Thank you so much for being patient with me as I went through my hiatus and wrote way too much fanfiction. Read too much fanfiction. Struggled to keep up with work and college. Got my wisdom teeth yanked out of my skull (terrible experience). But overall, it was a good break, but I'm ready to get back into this bad boy. I actually had a burst of inspiration for a couple of parts and had to get started RIGHT away.

An Announcement from the Idea Man: -->Also @Sissy921 is a GOD SEND. She is the most beautiful, wonderful, perfect, most annoying motivator. Without her this chapter would have NEVER happened. :* too bad she sucks at writing :/

Back to the Author giving the notes: ^Facts (She totally hijacked the google doc, guys, but just. Let her. Lol She deserves it cause it's all true.)

Also. PSA. I'm terrible at this Twitter thing. That is all.

Well, without further ado, here is chapter 22! (Hehe. That rhymes).

#beautiful

Amelia

"Chris?" Amelia asked, her voice small as she looked into the dimly lit space. She could discern anything from it. No smells, no sounds, nothing. "Are you sure about this? That it will help?"

"I don't think it will hurt you, myshka," he said. His hand fell lightly on the small of her back, his thumb tracing circular patterns there. "But will it help? Would you be afraid if I said no?"

She shook her head. No. She wouldn't be afraid. Not really. She was just apprehensive, concerned, and above all else, tired. She hadn't been sleeping. Something triggered after Christmas, something that she was honestly coming to expect out of her life. More nightmares. And, fuck, was she tired of them. She'd had them for so long now, since she'd first started attending the Academy. They'd subsided once she and Christopher had started sleeping in the same bed together; both of their nightmares had found some resolve from that. But now? After Christmas when Erik has just briefly mentioned locking her away in a cage? They'd come back full force, but with a different focus entirely.

This time when she dreamt, it focused on that. She couldn't remember all of it, and for that she was grateful... But the worst of it all was the cold, chilling, deep-rooted fear that settled over her each time she woke up. It was as if the tendrils of the nightmare were still clinging on, trying to drag her back under. And she hated it.

Christopher knew of the nightmares, of course. They were dating. They had been for almost an entire month now. They slept in the same bed together. He was there each time she woke up with a scream falling off of her lips or tears rolling down her cheeks in hot, heavy streams. He was there for each panic attack that followed. He was there. He knew how they'd affected her, and together, they were trying to manage.

It was how he'd come up with this. Sensory deprivation. She'd agreed to it pretty easily, but as the day came closer to actually try it, she became more and more apprehensive.

She'd done some research on the whole thing, too. Sensory deprivation was used for relaxation. The Academy hadn't actually gotten the sensory deprivation tanks - otherwise, known as relaxation tanks - until about five years earlier when a professor brought them in. That professor was submissive. As a part of the curriculum for Dominants in training, Dominants learned from submissives that had become professors. They learned from them the ways to take care of a submissive while looking through the eyes of one.

This professor had problems with claustrophobia, which could become problematic with many scenes within the lifestyle. She'd discovered sensory deprivation tanks were incredibly therapeutic in treating her claustrophobia. She'd petitioned to bring them to the Academy and had succeeded. They were a permanent fixture there, and from her reading, she'd found that they helped many submissives just relax.