What sort of things cause Severus to disassociate?

There are not many things, which – considering his position in life – is rather fortunate. Severus dissociates in two ways. The first and easiest one to discuss is deliberate – while the other is intimately tied to his thousand-yard stare.

Deliberate disassociation generally comes into play when Severus is in an abundance of physical pain. He will retreat behind his occlusion walls and forcibly disconnect himself from what is happening. This is extremely dangerous and unhealthy, and has contributed to both his high pain tolerance and his extensive nerve damage over the years.

Severus will not allow himself to dissociate during Death Eater meetings in the Second War, but he did disconnect during the first, particularly when attacks involved women or children. It was a hard line for him that put him in the line of fire multiple times before he established enough of a position and reputation for himself to not be involved in such events.

Which leads us to his thousand yard stare, which we actually do see in Deathly Hallows with Charity Burbage. Severus was not unaffected by her predicament, but he could not afford to appear anything less than unmoved. He was low key disconnected at the time – focusing inward so that he could present an uninterested visage when really, everything about this situation stands starkly against his morals. Which, while gray in many regards, are starkly black and white when it comes to violence against women.

Severus pulls memories like these into a pensieve as soon as he can in order to disconnect himself from the volatile emotions they build up inside him, affording him the ability to function and – if need be – go over the memory and relay information regarding it without being affected. This is, very literally, due to self medicating himself into oblivion in order to cope, which is, in its own way, a sort of deliberate disassociation.

What can cause his soul to straight up ascend without his deliberate action is forceful, physical action while the other party is inebriated and he is in a position where he cannot fight back. This is very specific and has only happened twice since his father died, but it is notable all the same. Severus just shuts down and responds on autopilot because he cannot functionally cope in that situation if violence in turn is not a viable option.

concerning severus

Name: Severus Tobias Snape
Year of origin: 1979
Birthday: January 9, 1960, current age 19
Former house: Slytherin
Occupation: MLE Intoxicating Substances, Identification & Countermeasure

About:

Severus Snape was born into a broken home littered with violent upheavals and blackmails to which he had no awareness or control. He learned how to Occlude as a child and how to run and hide at the same time. He started training to fight in Muggle fashions at the age of twelve, started playing with fire both magical and mundane by the time he was thirteen and was mastering methods of cleaning, dressing and sealing deep wounds by fourteen.

Severus does not give a damn about the Death Eaters or their cause. Blood purity means nothing to him unless it is convenient for it to have a meaning. He is loyal to his friends and will do anything it takes to serve their needs and ensure their survival. Everyone else in between he will ally with, protect, and fight beside until such a time as it is no longer useful to do so. He will always chose his friends above everything else and it is incredibly difficult to win his loyalty. However once it is won, it can never be lost. Even if that person comes to hate him he will continue to show them the same fealty and devotion he does anyone else he has pledged to internally.

At nineteen, Severus Snape is already a bloodstained, PTSD ridden wreck of a survivor, stubborn enough to push on no matter what comes forward. Or what toll his soul will have to pay.

Applicable skills:

Combat; Severus is heavily trained in boxing, grappling and knife work. Improvised brawling techniques are also quite common (He will make good use of any weapon within reach)
Healing; Severus can set bones and dislocated shoulders without the use of magic; he can and will stitch wounds using nothing but alcohol and whatever happens to be on hand (ranging from needle and thread to fish hook and line if need be) he has a very high pain tolerance. He has an extremely advanced understanding of herbology and plant properties due to his relative mastery in potions, but cannot cure bites and likely will not try unless there is no other option. The most he may manage is to slow the spread.
Fire; via magical and muggle means, Severus is adept at both creating and controlling fire as need dictates
Cooking; Severus knows how to cook basic matters without magic and is aware of how to improvise meals and cook for substance (aka meals that are filling and keep you moving but aren’t necessarily healthy)
Running; This asshole is fast, agile and enduring. He can sprint for a fair distance and maintain a good long distance haul at a steady pace. He’s also very good at sneaking up on people.
Morally Ambiguous; Severus has lines he won’t cross. Killing and violence as a necessity to survive does not bother him as much as it should. He is protective of those who matter and will take any means necessary to see them through, and count them as justifiable. He has no qualms taking what he needs from the dead, no issue breaking into businesses and homes to gather supplies, and no shits to give about people’s sensitivities in these areas. Survival first, morals second.

Applicable weaknesses:

Reckless; With little to no self-value and a long standing willingness to die for the people who hold meaning to him, Severus is generally willing to throw himself into harms way to act as a human shield.
Violent; Severus expresses rage and frustration through violence against those he feels deserves it; while unlikely to be detrimental to the group, it may lead to him making very poor choices against Creatures
Shit Personality; Severus sucks in social situations on a good day, he copes with humor and sarcasm, he is quiet when people need him to speak and he says too much when they need silence or a simple word. He is blunt, realistic and no good with comfort. He gets twitchy when people he doesn’t know are too close and tends to stick to himself, which is no good when everyone needs to work together.
PTSD; Severus at this point has already buried Destin, committed acts of torture and murdered his father. He suffers mood swings, can be unpredictable, has debilitating nightmares and can become distant and detached from his surrounding situation in a very bad way. Though his compartmentalization skills are strong, he does labor under persistent feelings of guilt and anger, distorted ideology and self-inflected estrangement that only adds to his habits of shifting off by himself and doing things that can only be described as self-destructive.
Morally Ambiguous; Severus will kill a person rather than let them die slowly or ‘hope’ that someone can cure them – unless they matter to him. He’s at once detached and selfish in this regard. He won’t waste time explaining or justifying his actions because they upset someones moral principles. He’s an asshole, and he refuses to let himself or those he cares about die. Those he doesn’t care for he will protect and work beside until it is no longer convenient to do so. This makes him something of a loose canon which is never good in an apocalypse aftermath.
Coward; Severus will hide and do whatever it takes to survive, even if it means leaving people to die – unless, again, the typical caveat. If it is someone he cares for, he can go toe to toe with any damn Gryffindor on the bravery front. (Or stupidity front, but that’s moot.)

Connections:

To be determined via verse plotting; he starts with none.

When Did I Become Vacant

@defiantcharms continued from [x]

Of all the people to walk in on him after that damned fiasco masquerading itself as a ‘raid’ – Lily was the one person he truly wished it hadn’t been. She had seen him in the wake of rows with his dad so many times, but this was different. She’d never seen him after a wizarding brawl and she had certainly never seen him with his hands stained from another man’s blood.

The cuts and bruises on his face were well earned, the final acts of a desperate man. Her hands weren’t a balm this time, their soft and familiar care scalding his conscience enough that he reared away from her and held his hands up, red as they were, to stave her off.

“I’m fine Lily,” The words were rough, because he didn’t feel fine. Thinking back on that fight, on his own viciousness, he felt dangerously out of place beside her. He’d enjoyed that battle, and though the screams of innocent bystanders had tormented his ears he had survived the raid as he had each one before it, by maintaining his focus on the one person in it that he could hurt. An auror with a truly wicked temper, a sadistic tendency he used his position as a camoflauge for. He’d have made a great Death Eater, with his sick personality.

Severus didn’t regret killing him. Damn his hands, he had relished it. And now, now Lily was standing there, worried over him. The grim survivor of a raid gone wrong – horribly, horribly wrong. He didn’t even know who all was dead. The Dark Lord would call for them tonight, and they’d all pay for mucking this one up. Severus would get a good brunt of it, for ignoring damage control the way he had. He’d give them an impossible task to prove themselves, presuming he didn’t wipe them off the playing field.

Talk about your high risk, no benefit occupations. Death Eater was not an option he would recommend to anyone with a brain, that was for sure. Ah, but then again hindsight did have a propensity for being perfect.

“There was an accident at work,” He wasn’t technically lying; he did see being a Death Eater as more of a job than an act of loyalty at this point. A means to continued survival, and all that fun. “Jones got hurt pretty bad,” That, at least, would explain the blood on his hands. In truth, he was pretty certain Jones was dead. “Just – give me a minute to clean up, yeah? I promise – I’m okay.” His voice was low, reassuring and firm to keep her from worrying. The last thing he deserved at this moment was her concern.