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

SORROW

It's not a nice place, really-- but it's fitting, probably, to be under the Buckingham bridge for this. Construction work was being done there, but little white candles provide enough light to see by, illuminating the area with a warm yellow glow despite how dark it is. Amid the construction debris, the crates and timbers and corrugated metal fencing marred with graffiti, a space has been cleared. A small table has been set up on the left side, just a piece of wood held up with cinderblocks and lit with more candles. In the center of it, there's a helm with big curling horns like a ram's and a bottle of liquor and several paper cards that have notes written on the inside. The contents of these notes are similar-- i miss you and i'll never forget you and

you were a big bright shining star in this shithole of a town

other such sentiments.

Further in, there's an alcove made by the metal fencing, and a fire has been set up there, burning behind a stack of stones and a round wooden shield. In front of that, there are a few rows of benches, all as equally ramshackle as the table, barely more than planks on cinderblocks. If they'd had a body, it would've been a funeral pyre, maybe.

The place is empty, except for one person sitting on one of the back benches. Gren sits and stares into the crackling fire, shoulders slumped a little and-- though maybe it's just the way that the shadows cut sharp lines on his face-- looking a little on the haggard side.

The silence is broken only by the sounds of the fire consuming its fuel and the steady hiss of summer rain.

DELIGHT

[Gren will see the visiting person as Holly in this dream, his best friend and owner of the bar.]

A TV has been set on the corner of the bar, turned to a channel that's showing a Mexican telenovela. The main female lead swoons dramatically on the screen, overcome with grief and anguish over being unable to sway her father from his plans for her arranged marriage. Despite all her protests, poor Sofia will be married to wealthy Roberto whether she likes it or not, despite her true love for the poor but otherwise devastatingly handsome Diego.

Gren is sitting at the bar, drinking a lukewarm beer and watching the whole of this drama as it plays out onscreen. He's smoking a cigarette that, by the smell of it, doesn't contain much tobacco at all; after taking a particularly long drag on it, he passes it along. Can't be selfish with your kush, puff and pass is just good manners.

"True love's fuckin' overrated anyway," he says, while on the screen, Sofia clutches at her father's hands and begs for him to change his mind. "Fuck, she can just lay back and think of Mexico or some shit for a couple of years and he'll probably have a fuckin' heart attack anyway."

Sage love advice, courtesy of the murderpotato. Really, he should go into counselling, he's a goddamn natural. He slugs back some of his beer and wipes the foam off of his lips with the back of his hand.

"That's the real fuckin' American dream, right? Marry rich, wait for the bastard to die and then do whatever the fuck you want."

Gren is clearly both a scholar and a gentleman.

"If you got the tits to carry that kind of thing, anyway. So I'm shit outta luck."

He plucks at his shirt right over his skinny chest and sort of giggles at his own joke, just the right amount of drunk and high to be in a good mood.

At first, Bianca thinks this is her dream. The scent of fire and rain, the shabby urban bolthole veiled in darkness, gives this place a film noir quality that she gravitates towards.

Except this isn't Berlin - nor Fortalice, not even Chicago. This is a strange city; but that's not a stranger, there, on the bench.

She sits next to Gren, and silently offers a half-smile and a bottle of tequila.

He doesn't look at her at first, still too transfixed by the fire and the contents of his own thoughts. About how there should be a body to go with this funeral, but the disgusting secrets and guilty conscience of one man had robbed her of even this final fucking dignity.

Lily had been a good person, and she deserved better.

He turns his head when he sees the bottle in his periphery, and reaches out to take the offered liquor. He takes a swig, and tequila usually isn't his cup of tea, but beggars can't be choosers.

"It's all a load of shit, y'know?"

This, and the way she died and the fact that no one had given a shit up until they found her head on somebody's front porch. Invisible until violence forces someone to see her-- and even then, with the wrong face.

She doesn't know the details of this story, doesn't know the identity of Gren's big, bright shining star or how they died. But Bianca's unwanted empathy lurches in her hearts. She knows the story of waste and rage and unbridgable loss intimately. She knows how it ends.

"It really is. Here we are with our hearts still beating - it's positively obscene."

She plucks the bottle back, takes a long pull of her own and then offers it again.

"The whole universe is like this, dear heart. Wrong to its disgusting, pulsing core. One is supposed to say I'm sorry, isn't one? I am. Don't imagine I'm not. But those words are only moving air, Gren, and ...I can't move enough of it to matter."

"I know," he says, and he's old enough that it's true. He's too old to not understand that all the I'm sorrys in the world won't make a damn bit of difference. He appreciates it, though, as an expression of sympathy. When this had all been happening, he had been more concerned with Holly-- she had been Lily's sister, after all-- and he'd kept himself going with a gut full of guilt and impotent anger. Turns out that you can only stay angry for so long.

He'd blamed Bigby and the rest of the Fabletown government for not giving a shit when he'd told them for weeks that Lily was missing, for not caring enough to save her-- but he hadn't saved her, either. And the weight of that eats a hole in his stomach faster than the tequila ever will.

"But she deserved better than this. She deserved... she deserved a real fuckin' funeral, she deserved a little fuckin' dignity. They couldn't even let her have that fuckin' much."

"A person's real monument - their legacy, if you will - lies in the stories told about them. If we live after death, it's in the memories."

Bianca drinks again, and looks at Gren, sideways, unsmiling.

"Tell me about her."

It's partly for Gren's sake, and partly genuine interest. She's known Gren long enough to know it takes a lot to impress him. This dead woman managed that, and it makes Bianca wish she could have met her.

Stories, god, does Gren know about stories. He is a goddamn story, except now they're all off-script and it's a fuck of a lot harder to figure out what you're supposed to do when there isn't a narrative to follow.

When Bianca wants him to tell her about Lily, there's a part of him that wants to tell her to fuck off. But it gets fucking tiring, being so angry all the time, and from what he knows, she's one of the few people around who are at least as old as he is. Maybe she understands a little about what it's like to stand still while the whole world changes around you; while people die.

"Her name's Lily."

He takes the tequila back for a bracing pull from it. Talking like this is not one of Gren's strong suits.

"I met her when her ma won a bar off of an asshole in a card game."

Her lips twitch: not a fullblown smile, not even by Bianca standards, but it's a glimmer of satisfaction.

"Nearly all the best bars start out like that. I can already tell she made it into one of the best ones."

"It was a fuckin' dive in the Bronx, it weren't the best of anything."

He didn't go there because it was a great bar; it was an okay bar, maybe, but it had been run by Fables and both the old owner and the new one let him run up a tab. He didn't start coming there for the person behind the counter 'til later, anyway. Not until after their old ma got a soft spot for him-- solidarity, maybe, between two old monsters from Scandinavia.

"Lily didn't work the bar, anyway. Her sister did, after their ma died."

"Sometimes those are the best."

Bianca certainly doesn't present herself like a person who'd be at home in a grimy dive bar; this is deceptive, although her own establishment was determinedly classy. But she says the words softly, not wanting to drag Gren off the story.

"How did you become friends?"

"They didn't get along real well, but Lily would still stop in sometimes."

The two troll sisters had something of a rocky relationship, worse after their mother died. He'd gotten to know Holly first, mostly just because of how frequently he was at the Trip Trap, and Lily through her. Things were okay for a while, even if he had to be this weird go-between when she decided that she wasn't going to talk to her sister, and then Lily disappeared and everything went to shit.

"I didn't go out of my fuckin' way or nothin'."

It just sort of happened; after enough time and drinks and shared hardship, they grew on him. And, probably, he grew on them, too.

Bianca has to smile at that.

"Dear heart, you don't go out of your way for anyone. It's part of your charm."

Which is absolutely true: it's a large part of why Bianca likes him.

"Why did they not get on? I've never had family - well, only the kind I built for myself. I always feel blood is different."

Gren's probably not the one to ask about this, either-- he never had siblings of his own, and his mother has been dead for centuries. He's the last of whatever the fuck his kind is, so the only 'family' he's really had have been unrelated. Had been Holly and Lily, mostly.

"Just because you're related don't mean you get along real well."

And not getting along doesn't mean that you don't care, either. It's a complicated thing, family.

"Lily wanted to do her own shit and fuck anybody who tried to tell her anything. Couldn't get her to do fuckin' anything that she didn't want to do."

This is not the city he remembers. It's been a few years since he's been back here, but he doesn't remember this amount of construction; this amount of decay. It was almost like the New York of his youth, back before the big C had moseyed its way into his life and shaped him into the man he is today.

He certainly doesn't remember ever meeting the man currently slumped on one of the benches on one side of the bridge, watching the fire as if searching for some kind of answer there. It's upon seeing Gren sitting there that Wade suddenly realizes this is a dream, and not one of his own. His dreams probably would have held a lot more violence.

Silently, Wade makes his way over to where the one-armed man is sitting, slipping into a seat beside him and joining him in staring at the blaze. For once, the Merc with a Mouth is silent, save for a telltale click of a lighter as he lights a cigarette and takes a drag. He lets the smoke curl lazily out of his mouth before finally breaking the silence.

"Y'know, I almost forgot the way this city smelled in the rain."

It's unclear whether he meant that to be a compliment or not. Wade takes another pull of his cigarette before taking it from his lips and offering it to Gren.

Gren feels the bench shift a little when Wade sits; it's not a terribly steady thing to begin with, and Wade's a dense guy. He smells smoke, that particular bitter-sharp smell of tobacco that's distinct from the woodsmoke.

Wade shouldn't be here; he wasn't here, he wasn't around when Lily died. But Gren remembers the first time that people started hopping around in other people's dreams, and if there's anyone who's going to see this sort of thing, maybe it's best that it's him. He's seen ugly things about Gren already.

"What, like piss and wet trash?"

He takes the offered cigarette and takes a long drag. It's not as shitty as Bigby's Huff n'Puffs, but it still makes his lungs ache.

"Sometimes," he says, his breath all hazy with smoke, "I wish I never even came to this fuckin' shitstain of a town."

It's a general rule that people don't like other people poking around in their thoughts and dreams, least of all Wade. The last person who'd leafed through his memories had gotten a sword in the gut for her troubles. It stands to reason that Gren's the same sort of person-- the kind that keeps himself very much to himself. The fact that he merely accepts Wade's presence here; that he doesn't go off on him for invading his privacy sends a message that Wade's too weary to bother deciphering.

He sits back, watching the flames flicker and dance and cast twisted shadows on the concrete walls. It's a rather soothing sight, all things considered, and if you closed your eyes you could pretend the sirens and horns and general din of the city was drowned out by the patter of the rain.

"They always say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." A safe, noncommittal statement-- Gren seems to be somewhat lost in his own thoughts right now. Gently, Wade reaches over and takes the cigarette from between the other man's lips, taking another long pull from it before expelling the smoke into the night air.

"An' I was gonna say sewage and old newspaper, but piss and wet trash works just as well."

New York, the city of dreams. That's what some people call it, right? Some dream it is-- more like a cesspit, the place where everything rotten and broken collects to fester in its own filth. A place that takes anything good you put into it and makes it dirty.

Wade takes the cigarette from his lips and Gren lets him have it. Fair play, anyway-- he's stolen cigarettes from Wade's mouth before too. The acrid taste of it is still on his tongue, vivid even though this technically isn't real.

"This look like makin' it to you?"

Lily didn't make it. New York and humanity in general chewed her up and spat her the fuck back out and there wasn't anything left of her when it did. Holly's doing only a little better, clawing her way through the mire of bullshit with some of herself still intact. And Gren knows that he's constantly skating on that razor-thin edge, and it wouldn't take much for this place to swallow him up, too. It's a matter of time, most likely.

"She's dead and this fuckin' city took every last drop it could from her. Fuckin' eatin' us all alive."

Wade's alerted to the sudden change in mood even before Gren talks about "her". There's a belligerence and rancor to his voice, different from his usual tone-- the kind of tone one takes when they're angry about some slight or unfairness. Wade pauses in the middle of taking another drag, the cigarette arrested between two fingers, as he glances over at the other man out of the corner of his eye. Gren's face is tight and angry, his hand balled into a fist on his knee, as if raging at some inner turmoil known only to him.

"Who's 'she'?" He poses the question gently, not so much worried for his own safety as he is about Gren's blood pressure. "Who are you talking about?"

Wade doesn't know-- couldn't know, really, because even though he's in this fake dream-New York, he wasn't there when it happened. And this isn't a story that Gren likes to tell to people, there's too much shit to unbox in it. Rhys was the only one who ever got most of the story, and even he didn't get all of it, and he'd never tried to broach the subject to Wade.

Hard to avoid it now. Wade should probably know whose funeral he's at, anyway.

"Lily." Saying her name still hurts, but, then again, it's only been two years since she died, give or take. It'll keep hurting longer than that. "Her name is Lily."

If you're not going to use that cigarette, though, Gren'll take it back from you, Wade. Smoking is something, at least, for him to do with his hand.

"She's dead because... of a lot of shit, I guess. Mostly because nobody gave enough of a fuck to try to save her."

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get anyone to care enough to help her. He'd gone day after day to the goddamn business office and all they did was tell him to fill out a little paperwork and then show his ass the door.

Wade allows Gren to take the cigarette from him-- he figures Gren needs it more than he does, anyway. A chill ghosts across his skin, and it's not just because of the fact that it's practically a wind tunnel under the bridge. There's a lot that can be taken from Gren's reticence-- sometimes it's more about what a person isn't saying than what he is-- and Wade stares ahead at the arrangement that is, quite obviously now, some sort of funeral pyre.

"Was she your girlfriend?" Spoken gently, as if to a frightened or wounded and aggressive animal. Which is not exactly all that far off, considering who he's talking to.

There are a few moments when that question hangs in the air, and Wade's not entirely wrong-- Lily was important to him, just not in the way that he assumes. It's funny, though, and Gren can't help it when he sort of starts laughing at it, a low snigger that's maybe got a little bit of a hysterical edge. His girlfriend.

"Fuck," he says, once he has better control of himself again. "Fuck, no, she weren't my girlfriend."

She would've laughed if she'd heard that, though. Would've laughed herself goddamn sick. Gren takes another drag and huffs out the smoke.

"She's my friend's sister."

Wade stares at Gren as he chokes out a laugh that he's obviously been surprised into, momentarily shocked into silence by its strangeness. It isn't that it's pretty much the first time Wade's heard him laugh-- although that's definitely the case. It's that there's something altogether... unhinged about the sounds Gren is making now, like the involuntary whicker of a frightened horse, as if he's hardly aware of the sounds that he's making.

As if it's either this or bursting into tears.

Wade finds himself confused by Gren's correction, as well-- the death of a friend's sister doesn't normally elicit this much grief and despondency, unless...

Unless that friend was very important to you. Unless the sight of them suffering tore you up inside; made you wish you could do anything, anything at all to make things better again. Unless you felt completely helpless under the weight of their grief.

Wade finds himself thinking about Travis, and how Travis had done everything in his power to keep Wade sane and functioning after the deaths of Clementine and Jesse. He's pretty sure, without Gren even having to say anything, that the other man has gone through the same thing.

A short silence passes between them, punctuated by the crackling of the fire.

"...Mind if I ask how she died?"

Holly and Lily are the closest things to family that Gren had anymore-- had been, anyway. Her death was bad, worse for what it did to Holly, and worse still because of the powerlessness of it; the impotent feeling of knowing that she needed help and not being able to give it to her. Gren would've done anything to help her.

And then he did everything he could to help Holly, because Lily was her sister and it was more important to get her through it. After what happened at this funeral, after the fucking Tweedles trespassed and shot both himself and Holly-- he'd kind of thought that he'd finally just snap. He thought he'd just lose it, because how much can they take from one person, even after she's dead? They already took her life, her dignity, even her body, and after all that they couldn't let her rest peacefully. They had to take just a little more. It's enough to make a man want to scream from the injustice of it. They weren't supposed to be monsters anymore.

By now, the cigarette's burned down almost to the filter, and Gren flicks it over the fence and into the darkness.

"They found her head on the front steps of the Woodlands," he says. "They found the rest of her in the fuckin' river."

He probably doesn't really need to elaborate much more on the cause of death. Wade knows enough about that sort of thing to figure it out himself.

"She was in a lotta trouble and didn't want anybody's help gettin' out of it," he continues, because he knows if he stops he's never going to actually get the whole thing out. "She was strippin' at this sleazy fuckin' place called the Pudding N'Pie, and hookin' on the side too. The guy in charge of the whole fuckin' racket wanted her dead to cover some shit up."

His hand is shaking; sometimes, he wishes that he'd gotten to the Crooked Man first, so that he could teach him a thing or two about fear. So that he could give back just a fraction of the hurt that he'd inflicted on people like Lily and Faith. That'd be justice, wouldn't it? Monstrous justice, maybe, but even if the Crooked Man had been born human, Gren knew a monster when he saw one.

"Jesus."

It's really all Wade can say. What could you possibly say to a story like that? He wonders if it was quick; if the guy had drawn it out just to make her suffer. He wonders if it was just to cover something up, or if it had also been to get back at someone. Revenge. Punishing someone for someone else's failure.

He wonders if Gren had been the one who found her.

It's hard not to compare this story to Vanessa's-- how he'd found her in the gorilla cage at the zoo where he'd left her, because she could shapeshift into one of them and he'd thought she'd be safe. There was so much blood that the air stank with it, animal as well as mutant, and her killer had used some of that to paint his name across the wall of the cage. A warning. A taunt. He'd meant for Wade to find it.

He can feel Gren shaking slightly beside him, with rage or with grief or with some combination of both. He doesn't need to wonder what Gren had felt when he'd found out about Lily's death-- Wade knows perfectly well. Anger, mostly. Helplessness, too. Sorrow and regret. Mix well and serve chilled.

He sighs, settling back against the bench, his hand inadvertently coming to rest on top of Gren's. He hadn't meant to touch him, but it feels wrong to move it away. He leaves it there, the fingers gripping the other man's hand slightly in solidarity.

"I'm sorry, Gren. Seems like a cheap cop-out to say I know how you feel, but..."

A shrug. His life's not a basket of puppy kisses either. Gren of all people should know that by now.

Everyone, really, has had a shitty life in one way or another, to some extent. He and Wade have just had more than their fair share of shit, and that's just how it goes. Sometimes it's their own fault, sometimes it isn't, but either way, and you just have to take it. It hurts and it sucks and the universe is a cold, uncaring void and then (probably) you die.

Wade has an idea, though, of the fucking mess that's churning around in his gut, anger and grief and guilt-- even though he could blame Wolf for never saving Lily, he didn't save her either. The knowledge of it eats at him, burns a hole in his stomach and there isn't enough liquor that he could pour down his throat to stop it.

Unintentional or not, Wade's hand is warm on his. He doesn't let very many people touch him, but it's sort of comforting, and he shifts his hand under Wade's palm to grip it back. He turns his face away, towards the fence, and feels it go all hot and tight and his throat get thick and he hates this. He doesn't want Wade to see the way his shoulders shake or his breath shudders or how hard he has to screw his eyes shut. It takes a few long, shaky breaths to get himself back under something like control.

"They got rid of her before we could get her," he says, and his voice only cracks a little. "That's why there's no fuckin' body."

Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

Gren | OTA

[Sorrow]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Sorrow

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)