hadriel_logs | Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

Entry tags:

Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Dreamwalker part 2 event
Where: In your dreams
When: October 14th-20th (the second log will go up on Oct 23rd, please keep the two weeks of the event separate!)
Warnings: All different kinds of dreams falling under the umbrella of Delight, Rage, Sorrow, and Hope.

This time, the weird stuff doesn't happen when you're awake- as a matter of fact, your waking hours are the normal ones. That's because you're forced to sleep by some unknown entity, getting more and more exhausted by the moment as night falls. Better make sure you're always around a soft pillow.

Once asleep, it doesn't get any less weird- your dreams will be influenced by one of the four gods that make up the first week. Something to make you smile, something to make you angry- or something that reminds you of your deepest regret or most vulnerable hope, they're all things that you're dreaming about now for some reason, no matter how hard you may try to pull away from them.

To make matters more complicated, there are others intruding on your dreams who definitely don't belong there, and while they may seem like manifestations at first, it becomes clear that these others are actually the consciousness of other members of Hadriel, getting some top quality exposure to your angriest, happiest, most sorrowful moments. Hope it doesn't get awkward when you see them tomorrow...

► This log covers October 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in dreams you don't die in real life, but if you somehow die in real life anyway, please let us know here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Maybe it’s the static you hear first or maybe you become aware of a faint, electronic haze. It’s the dull hum and blurry pixels of screens as one by one hundreds blink awake in the blackness that surrounds you. Some small like a cellphone or others massive like a billboard. They are incoherent at first, projecting nothing but a stuttering flickering mess of black and white until finally the feed starts. From an awkward angle Dr. Lee Rosen’s face looks out at you, frown set, the wrinkles of his forehead deep with determination. He’s recording his message from something small held within his hand. A camera pen. He begins to speak. Loudly. Firmly. And his message echoes in tandem from each screen, building and building in volume until at the last there is a violent shudder and the screens shatter and dissipate back into blackness.

The next time you become aware of yourself you will find yourself dressed in white hospital pajamas. You are behind bars in a sterile looking room of white walls, white sheets, and a small sliver of a window that looks out on a rec yard for your fellow inmates. Guards are posted along the fence and at the doors, and doctors weave their way through, taking notes now and again.

Welcome. You are now yet another inmate in the psych ward of a prison in upstate New York.

Now and again a nurse or a security guard might pass by. If you try and tell them you don’t belong here, that there’s been a mistake, they will most likely pass by as if they didn’t hear you. Or perhaps they will pause only to tell you that it’s all in your head and to remind you that your mandatory session with the resident psychiatrist is in an hour.

If you make the mistake of telling them anything about your life, perhaps in some desperate attempt to make it clear to them that you are definitely not supposed to be here, they will tell you none of the places or people you are talking about ever existed. That they are all figments of your imagination.

Here your only reality is bars.

You might notice at long last that in the cell across from you is the same person you saw on the screens at the start of the dream. He is arguing with a nurse who is threatening him that either he calm down or they will have to sedate him. His knuckles are white as he grips at the bars. The nurse repeats himself, “Sir. You have to calm down or we will be forced to intervene.” In response Rosen slams the heel of his palm against the bars and angrily stalks back to the far corner of his room. But he doesn’t remain there.

Instead he paces. Glaring at anyone who passes by and biting roughly into his lower lip. Now and again he runs his fingers roughly through his hair, digging his nails into his scalp before making an exasperated sound in his throat.

But all of it is pointless. There are still bars and you are both still imprisoned here.

Edited 2017-10-14 17:06 (UTC)

Well. This is uncomfortably familiar. Michael's never been to prison, but he's been somewhere close enough. This is just different enough to be strange, but it's still within the range where he can chalk it up to his usual nightmares.

He can feel that rising panic, that helplessness, like bile in the back of his throat. He can't be here, he has to get out, what's wrong with him can't be fixed, so there's no point in him being in a place like this. Unless they've finally figured out he's a lost cause, and that's the point. He's here forever, because he deserves to be. He is a danger to society, after all.

Michael doesn't tell the guards he doesn't belong. He doesn't try to explain that what landed him here is real, that it's not just all in his head. He's done this dance before. He knows how it goes. There's no point.

Unfortunately, it seems someone else didn't get that memo. "Don't bother arguing," he calls to the man across the hall. "Just tell them what they want to hear and eventually they'll leave you alone-" Wait. "Dr. Rosen?"

"Try being in here as long as I have before telling me that," Rosen practically growls his answer as he stops mid-step to finally take notice of Michael. "Telling them what they want to hear means pretending that I never existed." At least not in any capacity that matters.

After a beat he leans in, resting his forehead against the bars as his eyes tiredly examine Michael.

"They've taken everything else. They can't take the fact that I exist."

Something's definitely weird here. Michael's not entirely sure what it is. Things seem hazy, he doesn't remember much. But one thing that's clear as day is the offense he feels when Rosen snaps at him. Like he hasn't been here, too. He doesn't even know how long. It feels like years, like everyone just tossed him in here and forgot. Maybe they did.

"Well no, technically they can't." His voice is tired and curt at the same time. "But you keep it to yourself. Trying to fight them just makes you crazier, and all it gets you is extra hassle." Among other things. "What's the point?"

Rosen's eyes watch him, trying to piece together why it both seems to make sense that Michael is here while at the same time making no sense at all. He's even more puzzled by the fact that Michael sounds like he's speaking from more than just common knowledge. There's personal experience behind those words.

"How do you know that?"

Michael squints at Rosen through the bars. That... seems like a weird question. But he can't think of a reason not to answer it. They're both already in here, after all.

"Because I've been in a place like this before." Wait. Is that true? "Not a prison." His brow furrows in concentration, trying to remember. "Just something like it."

"Then how did you end up going from 'not a prison' to a prison."

The dream wrestles with Rosen's sense of logic here, trying to instill in him a sense that Michael should be there. And more than that, trying to convince him that he already knew that Michael was there all along, whilst at the same time the part of his brain the dream has not successfully sunk its fingers into grip on to the feeling that Michael is definitely an anomaly here.

"I don't know." Michael sounds frustrated, because he is. This is messing with his head, trying to remember something that's slightly beyond his grasp on a good day, but shoved even further to the back due to dream logic.

It should be obvious how he got here. People go from 'not a prison' to 'prison' by being arrested. But what was he arrested for? He tries to remember the place he was before this. He feels like maybe he was lot younger, but his brain skips over the inconsistent timeline. There are more important things to address.

He remembers being hurt and scared, and he remembers the sensation of being shoved, violently. He remembers feeling something in his head just snap like an old, dry twig. He remembers fighting back, grabbing someone by the shirt collar, the taste of blood in his mouth. Right, that would do it.

"I think I might've hurt somebody." But there's nothing beyond that. He doesn't remember the police, or the station, or a courtroom. "They don't just throw you in prison for that though. You get a trial, right?" He knows the answer to that. So why can't he remember?

"There's not always a trial." Rosen's voice goes quiet. "I didn't get a trial. So if you can't remember one, it might be the case that you didn't get one either."

Or Michael had gotten a trial and was either acting like he didn't remember, or his not remembering was indicative of an actual mental flaw that could be the real reason that he's hear to begin with. After all, it IS a psychiatric prison. So at the bare minimum at least a handful of the people here have to have actual mental health concerns.

It's just that something in Rosen doesn't feel convinced about Michael one way or the other.

He still feels like the black tulip that you find among the yellow tulips once they are fully grown, evidence that at some point a wrong bulb had gotten thrown into the mix.

Michael would be sorely offended if he knew Rosen was thinking about him as having a mental flaw. Sure, he has plenty of psychiatric issues, but still. He wouldn't be so against the black tulip comparison, though.

"Maybe, I don't know. Something's off." He doesn't even remember being transferred here. If he's missing memories, he's missing more than a few.

"Why wouldn't you get a trial, though? Don't you have to go to court to plead guilty?" Assuming that's what he did. "What happened with you?"

There's a beleaguered sigh at the question, and part of him is sorely tempted not to answer. Mostly for the fact that he's exhausted from living with this story on his back, replaying it only pokes holes in the minimal restraint he currently has on his anger and frustration.

"Do you know what being black-bagged is?"

Michael frowns. Well...

"Sorry, I work in a morgue." Worked? "That only has one meaning to me."

He thinks maybe it could also refer to being kidnapped? Since in movies they always put black bags over peoples' heads. But surely that's not it.

Well. Fair enough, Rosen has to give him that one.

"I think the DoD would have preferred it if I had been black bagged in your version of the term."

It certainly would have been an easier cleanup for them. No loose ends, all their crimes get wrapped away and buried with him.

"However in my case, it is something more insidious and politically motivated. I didn't get a trial because the courts are run by the same people who wanted me locked away. The crime I supposedly committed was against the United States Government, not a fellow citizen. So 'black bagged' means I was packed away and all evidence of my existence was erased from public knowledge."

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aroundthecoroner - 2017-11-25 11:45 (UTC) - Expand

Firo doesn't attempt to tell anybody anything. Instead, he watches, trying to pick up cues to see which prison this is, because it sure as hell isn't Alcatraz. Did they transfer him? While he was asleep? He likes to think he's a little more alert than that--and he acknowledges that he's probably not significant enough for any such measures.

In the course of his watching, he notices Rosen's little confrontation. Once the nurse has left, he pipes up, "You should know that that kinda stuff isn't gonna get you anywhere." Obviously. Firo assumes that, whatever the hell this place is, they're here to serve some kind of sentence. Shouting at the guards gets you nowhere, even Firo knows that.

He thinks a moment and wrinkles his nose in confusion. Aside from the weird voice earlier and aside from how different this place looks from Alcatraz... and aside from women running around the prison (!), there's one thing that stands out as strange. "What're you in for?"

You're not supposed to ask, though Firo's found that some people are eager to volunteer the information all the same. But that's not why he thinks he can get away with asking now; Rosen just honestly doesn't seem like the kind of guy who could give him much trouble, and he doesn't seem the type Firo'd expect to see in a cell.

Rosen doesn't answer right away, though he turns to look in Firo's direction. His expression is muddled, hints of his lingering anger and frustration with the nurse mixing with a sense of confusion. He knows who Firo is. But in the haze induced by the dream, he can't seem to place if he actually knows Firo from this place or from another. Was he in the opposite cell before?

"Doing nothing won't get me anywhere either."

He finally comes closer to the bars, slipping his arms through so he can rest his elbows on the crossbars. Sighing he decides there's no point to not telling. Maybe at least Firo won't answer him with 'none of that ever happened'.

"I tried to tell the truth."

Firo comes up to the bars to mirror Rosen's posture, and he cranes his neck as much as he can to try to get a look at the hall.

"Last I checked, people didn't get locked up for that. What'd they convict you for?"

Firo's not entirely doubtful, though. He knows that the police have ways of finding crimes to lock up dissidents for--he's old enough to remember Sacco and Vanzetti's trial and the mood surrounding it.

So maybe telling the truth is the real reason, but Firo wants the official one. Just to satisfy his curiosity. And to try to get a handle on what kind of prison he may have been transferred to.

He shrugs, "Look, pal, I'm in here too, so you don't have to be cagey about it."

Does Firo look like he's in any position to judge? Okay, so that's never stopped him from judging before, but still.

That wins a snort. "There was no trial and there wasn't any conviction."

Rosen chews at the inside of his cheek as he remembers it. His arrest had been almost immediate, give or take a minute, from the moment his recording had ended. He had been handcuffed, bundled into a car, and then within the span of a day he was behind bars and the government was doing its best to clear all records of his existence, his career, his work....Dr. Lee Rosen of the Department of Defense becomes Lee Rosen, mad man.

"This wasn't a criminal investigation, it was a clean up job."

He brings up a hand to push his glasses back up. He then asks in a less aggravated tone.

"Why are you here, Firo?"

Ah. Both of Firo's eyebrows rise on his forehead--that sort of plea bargain (he assumes it's a plea bargain) isn't unfamiliar to him. Rosen's situation sounds like it might be a little different from his own in that there weren't any actual crimes, which Firo supposes means Rosen got even more of a raw deal.

Somehow, that thought doesn't cheer Firo up at all.

He pauses when the conversation is redirected to his situation. "I guess they must've transferred me from Alcatraz..."

He frowns in concentration--why is he here? The whole point of Victor locking him up was so that Firo could keep an eye on Huey. Did he fail? Is that why he's here, so he can just rot away for the rest of his immortal life? Firo wouldn't put it past Victor.

Or maybe Huey got transferred and they moved Firo along with him. It's stupid that Firo doesn't know, whatever the reason, but there's no helping it. His mission is supposed to be secret, anyway, so there's no one he can ask for now.

He looks from the hallway to Rosen. "This isn't another cellblock on the island, is it? There's no way--it looks too different. And no offense, but you don't seem like you're enough of a pain to get sent there."

It's supposed to be the dead end for all the prisoners who cause too much trouble elsewhere, either through their own deeds (which accounts for the vast majority of the people Firo met), their high profile, or both. Firo's confident that Rosen's too physically weak (sorry, pal) for the reason to be the first one. Not compared to people like Ladd and Dragon.

"Alcatraz."

Rosen knows Alcatraz. Not in the way Firo is claiming to know Alcatraz but he knows about it. It's history. Because that's what Alcatraz is now. It is history. His eyes narrow and he chews on the corner of his lip as he rolls his thoughts around. When he speaks again his voice is hushed.

"Alcatraz is just a museum now, Firo."

And even if it weren't, the crimes people used to get sent to Alcatraz for are not the kinds of crimes that would land you in this place.

"A museum?" He wrinkles his nose and squints in sheer confusion. Come on, Rosen, don't just say random weird stuff--this situation is already strange enough.

"What the hell're you talkin' about? They wouldn't let anybody in just to gawk--that'd be a security risk. They're not that stupid." He pauses to fish for more ammunition to tell Rosen that he's completely wrong, but that pause instead reminds Firo that they have bigger fish to fry.

He bites his lip. Okay, shelve Alcatraz for now. "...I guess it doesn't matter right now, if we're not there. So where are we? It's still gotta be with the feds, right?"

The subject of Alcatraz will be revisited but Rosen is in silent agreement with Firo that there are more urgent matters at the moment.

"We're in a psychiatric prison in upstate New York. Not far from Binghamton."

So yes, its still the feds, but less Sing Sing and more padded walls and forced psychiatric evaluations.

It takes two seconds for Firo to tell himself that, yes, he really did hear that right.

"Come again?"

And it takes 1 more second after that for his face to darken and his fingers to curl into a white-knuckle grip around the bars before him. He resolves that he will strangle Victor when he gets out of here. Maybe Edward too, just for good measure. Despite his words to Rosen earlier about causing a scene, Firo looks like he might be ready to do just that.

His voice is flat when he speaks again, but the quick clip of his words might betray his anxiety. "You never really seemed like a headcase to me. So what's that mean? How long are we stuck here? How do we get out?"

He doesn't belong here. Normal prison, sure, he can't deny that, but a place like this? He's not crazy; he's just a generally bad person. A bad person who has shit to do that does not involve a psychiatric prison.

You never really seemed like a head case to me.

Lee actually appreciates that, Firo. When you are in this place long enough they start to get under your skin. Even the toughest of your resolve starts to develop little cracks for their words to sink into.

"I'm afraid I never figured that part out," Rosen says bluntly. There's no point in beating around the bush, is there? After all he is still in here. Had he figured out a way to get out he would be long gone. "And as far as I know the sentence is indefinite."

At least for him. He's still unsure why Firo is here, so he can't say how long they want him locked up.

"That's bullshit."

He can say that with absolute confidence, but then he falters and looks away. A lifelong criminal, he's always accepted that he might wind up locked up forever or even get the electric chair, but he was never prepared for this. He knows that if you're sentenced, you keep your mouth shut and do your time and listen to whatever your Family says about what else you should do.

He hasn't the faintest clue what a good gangster is supposed to do in a situation like this. ...Probably, they're not supposed to wind up in this situation at all. There's no honor or toughness about this.

He sighs and looks around to make sure nobody's watching. "...You tried to escape at all?"

He doesn't like it, but now it seems like it may be the only option. A risky one, but the only one.

"Outside this central building are a series of electrified fences, guard towers, and satellite buildings that house back-up security and armored vehicles."

So no, he hasn't tried escaping, and that may come across in his frustrated tone as he tries to paint a picture for Firo how the cards are stacked against them.

"But if you have a feasible plan, or something resembling a possibly feasible plan, then I am willing to hear it."

Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

Rosen | Rage | OTA

prison party!

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cw for hints of child abuse

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