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ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴅᴛᴇᴀᴍ ᴏғ ʜᴀᴅʀɪᴇʟ ([personal profile] hadrielmods) wrote in [community profile] hadriel_logs2017-10-14 09:52 am

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.
ishotyouuu: (profile shot)

Sorrow

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-10-22 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
murderpotato: (My touch is black and poisonous)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-10-22 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
ishotyouuu: (just got a lot on my mind)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-10-24 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
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."
murderpotato: (Burn my lungs and curse my eyes)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-10-24 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
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."
ishotyouuu: (what do you think audience?)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-10-26 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
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?"
murderpotato: (Just a dime-store poet)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-10-26 03:54 am (UTC)(link)
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.
ishotyouuu: (so what's going on with you)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-10-29 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
murderpotato: (This is my smolder.)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-10-30 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
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."
ishotyouuu: (so what's the deal?)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-10-31 02:19 am (UTC)(link)
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?"
murderpotato: (I only shoot up with your perfume)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-10-31 06:43 am (UTC)(link)
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.
ishotyouuu: (I wanna hold your hand)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-11-08 02:53 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
murderpotato: (Apologize for collateral damage)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-11-08 04:33 am (UTC)(link)
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."
ishotyouuu: (havin' some self-esteem issues)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-11-15 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
Wade remembers the first time he'd seen Travis cry, how it had surprised him. Though enough time had passed that he was able to see the depths hidden under that cocksure assassin's demeanor, he'd thought Travis was too swept up in testosterone poisoning to even think of crying in public. To see him unabashedly break down the way he had was a shock to Wade, and he can't say he doesn't feel a bit of that same surprise now.

This sort of loss has hurt Gren; gutted him in ways that even an ocean of alcohol can't numb, and Wade would be lying if he said he didn't sort of understand that feeling. The unfairness of everyday life. The grief of losing someone special. The wish that you had been taken instead.

Still gripping Gren's hand, Wade reaches out with his other hand to grip the other man's shoulder in an attempt to lend Gren just a little bit of his warmth. For once, he's without words. It would only spoil the moment. It's just the two of them here, on a cold New York night, reopening old wounds that haven't fully healed yet.
murderpotato: (Digested them with wolf intestines)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-11-21 05:56 am (UTC)(link)
All Gren wants, at the end of the day, is for the people that he cares about to be safe and happy. Gren rarely gets what he wants, though, either by his own fault or because of things well outside of his control. He isn't very good at saving anyone, but well... he is the monster.

Wade's other hand rests heavily on his shoulder, and he's not sure what it is about that touch that sets him off. Maybe it's because it's kind, and he's never been good at accepting kindnesses. Maybe it's because it's gentle, and, for all that it's a stupid fucking metaphor, he feels like he's got a glass heart in his chest. Either way, Gren hunches in on himself and pulls his hand out from underneath Wade's to bring it up to his face. The shaking is back and it's worse this time, long shudders that go through his whole stupid body.

One hand isn't enough to hide his face or how splotchy and red it's gotten, but he tries anyway. His throat feels like something's gotten stuck in it and when he tries to take a breath, he makes a noise like a wounded animal. He can't grit his teeth hard enough to make it stop. There's wetness on his palm and down his cheeks and he hates this, he hates everything about this. He hates the noises that he makes and how his entire chest feels like a giant raw wound, worse than when he took a goddamn shotgun slug to it. He especially hates that it's happening in front of Wade, all this unignorable ugly sobbing.
ishotyouuu: (c'mere and gimme a hug)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-11-29 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
It's not pleasant, the sound that is coming out of Gren right now-- he is not, as they say, a pretty crier. It's the sort of sounds a wounded animal would make, after it had been hit by a car or attacked by a predator, attempting to limp away to a place safe and secure but unable to keep from letting the entire world know that it had been hurt. It sounds like something unused to making such noises; someone who had borne the pain for as long as they could but couldn't stop their emotions from escaping this time.

His hand feels empty and cold without Gren's to hold. Before Wade realizes what he's doing, the hand upon the other man's shoulder slowly settles on his back, rubbing in gentle, tight little circles as Gren gives full vent to his grief, pangs of empathy lancing through his chest with every single sob that escapes the other man's throat.

He doesn't say anything. There's nothing he could say that would make this any easier. All he can think of to do is just stay with Gren; to weather the storm raging inside him until it finally burns itself out.
murderpotato: (I only shoot up with your perfume)

[personal profile] murderpotato 2017-12-26 04:35 am (UTC)(link)
Gren's not much of a pretty anything, and especially not a pretty crier. His face gets all red and splotchy and scrunches up in a way that's definitely unattractive as he tries to smother it. The noises that he makes are ugly. Everything about him is ugly and raw and painful.

Wade's hand is warm and gentle on his back, rubbing slow circles as he hunches further. He's almost bent in half, like that's the only way that he'd be able to hide the mess that he is right now. Gren would give any goddamn amount of money to not be here right now, to be anywhere that he could do this stupid wounded animal bullshit without Wade watching. That's what makes it worse-- that Wade can see him like this, crying and shaking and weak.

It stops, eventually, as all things do-- sort of peters out into exhaustion, until Gren feels like a wrung-out cloth. Eyes stinging, throat sore, still shaking a little from both the effort of crying and trying to contain it. He doesn't want to uncurl yet, because that means that he'd have to actually face Wade and he's not sure if he could do that when he looks like this. After Wade's seen him like this.
ishotyouuu: (just standin' around)

[personal profile] ishotyouuu 2017-12-26 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
He can feel Gren trembling underneath his hand, and something about it-- about the vulnerability and the vain attempt to rein the tears in-- causes Wade's heart to squeeze painfully inside his chest. Gren looks naked like this, eyes reddened and still moist from his outburst, his lips pressed tightly together, shaking with the effort of holding back another outburst the way someone might try to stave off vomiting. Wade can't say he doesn't know what that feels like.

For once the Merc with a Mouth is completely silent as Gren's crying sniffles to a close. To draw attention to Gren's loss of control would be to cause him no small measure of embarrassment, he knows. He merely keeps his hand positioned on the other man's shoulder, giving it a squeeze to indicate to him that-- in some small way-- Wade understands what he's going through. That there will be no judgments should Gren decide to face him like this.