hadriel_logs | 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

That's not, um... [He isn't sure what to say.] I guess.

[A lot of adults have tried, or will try, to tell him how he feels about his mom. How he should feel about his mom. They're never right, though. He won't even figure it out how he feels until he's an adult himself, but whenever an adult tries to put words to it, they always miss something. It's very complicated. He knows that even as a child.

He also knows that he can't trust his feelings. He'll never be able to, really. He can feel it when she uses her magic to alter the stuff in his head, but she's done it so many times that he can't tell which way is up anymore. He loves his mom, yes, but he doesn't know if he loves her because he loves her or because she told him to. He doesn't know if he wants her to touch him or if he wants it because she tells him he wants it. Either thing is bad, but they're both a different kind of bad. The thought of loving her on his own, after everything she's done to him, makes him feel like the room is spinning. But the thought of not loving her when she's the only person he has to love isn't much better.

It's complicated, and it occurs to him that Abigail is trying to give him advice without really knowing the situation. She's never even met his mom. She doesn't know what it's like, even if her dad was broken too.]

She's not sick. Sick people either get better or they die. And they don't want to be sick. Nobody wants to be sick. She's just a bad person. [He stands, picking up the chunk of brick again. Blood trickles down his leg.]

But you don't get to say that. She's my mom, not yours.

Not always. My dad was mentally sick, and that gave him bad thoughts. It didn't make him die.

[Abigail knows that isn't entirely true. His sickness led to his crimes, which led to the FBI investigation, and eventually to Will shooting her father.]

He didn't get better either. He got worse, and he started to control me, trying to make me think like he did. He killed people. He killed my mom. He tried to kill me. He was so sick that he thought killing me was an act of love.

[She does think of her father as a bad person. A monster. And as a victim too. It's all so complicated. She hopes something she says will get through to this kid. That his life can be better.]

I don't know what kind of person my dad was. If he was bad or if it was all his sickness. I'll never know. It's too late for him. It's not too late for me though. I have a chance to have better now. It's not too late for you either.

[Hannibal taught that she doesn't have to be her father's daughter anymore. He gave her a second chance. Maybe she can give this kid one, and without going to such extremes.]

It might not even be too late for your mom. Why do you think she's bad? What does she do?

[It might not even be too late for your mom.

Some part of him cracks opens at her words. He remembers things that haven't happened yet--his interviews with the police, reading Mom's testimony in the court transcript years after the fact, changing his name so that she wouldn't find him when she was released from prison after barely more than a decade. In some ways, his life synced up with hers. Foster care as a kid with special needs like his felt on par with a prison sentence. He moved to New York to start over around the same time she was released, the first time he was really able to do anything for himself. He hasn't seen her since CPS picked him up after they were tipped off by his teacher, but he doubts her life has been more of a struggle than his own. Hell, he's still picking up the pieces thirty years later, and by now, he's accepted that he always will be.

She got off easy. He's not sure what an appropriate punishment would be, even, as an adequate price for destroying his life, but Abigail's right. It's not too late for her. It should be, though. Why does she get a second chance? That's not fair.]

Who cares about being better? I'm never gonna be better. [He says this with the authority of someone who can see into the future. Somehow, he knows this is true.] If your dad killed people, he was a bad person. Once you're a bad person, you don't get to be not bad anymore because you can't just undo stuff. I don't get to make the rabbit alive again just because I'm sorry about it.

[He gestures at the fence he tossed the rabbit over. He does feel a little bad about it, but mostly, he's angry. He wants to kill another rabbit.]

The only good thing a bad person can do is just die 'cause then they won't do bad stuff anymore. I think you got it backwards about how it's too late for your dad but not us. It's good that he's dead and maybe we all should be dead too.

Killing isn't always bad. Cops kill people. Soldiers too. Even God kills people. He dropped a church roof on thirty-four of his worshipers in Texas while they sang at him.

Abigail isn't sure what she wants to accomplish. Maybe give him permission to think about killing his mother, if he does. She didn't consider killing her father when he was alive; she was too far under his control. When she looks back on her past, she wonders if she could have saved those girls and her mom from him.]

You can't bring the rabbit back, but you could have given it meaning. Honoured its life.

[She shakes her head.]

If you're dead, you can't honour anyone. All the bad stuff is just that. Bad.

[She thinks about suicide at times and wonders if she could make all her pain go away. The one thing that stops is her that all the girls her father killed so she could live, the girls she helped him kill, would have meant nothing.]

Do you think you're a bad person? Have you killed people?

[Someday, he'll agree with her about killing being more complicated than he's making it out to be, but right now, it's his singular universal truth. The world is easy to sort into black and white, at least so long as it exists outside of his household.]

Who cares about honoring it? It's already dead. It doesn't know.

[It's the next set of questions that gets him, though. Has he killed people? No, he hasn't, and he won't. Not in the way that she means. That's not enough to make him a good person. It's not even enough to make him not a bad person.

But he doesn't want to talk about that. He doesn't know how to talk about it, and he's not going to try, not with her.

He squirms for a moment, picking at his leg as he tries to think of a more graceful way to answer her question without raising any red flags, but he doesn't know how. He's too distracted. His heart is racing and Mom is going to be out of the shower soon and who even is this girl, asking him questions like that? Acting like she knows stuff? It's not fair. None of this is fair. He wishes he had saved the rabbit so he could kill it now instead. He wants to hurt something.

So he hurls the chunk of brick at Abigail and darts for the back door, not stopping to look if it actually hits her or not. He slams the door behind him, ending the dream.]

Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

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cw: suicidal ideation

Re: cw: suicidal ideation

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