Event Log: Dreamwalker

[hadrielmods]

Who: Everyone!
What: The Dreamwalker event
Where: In your comfy bed and your sleepy head.
When: May 16th-26th
Warnings: Good dreams, weird dreams, bad dreams, straight-up nightmares. Please remember to tag for warnings in the header if things are going to be bad!

Have you been having trouble getting a good night's sleep? Tossing and turning, unable to rest those tired eyes? Or maybe you don't sleep at all, and never have. Not to worry! For a little while, you'll have no trouble at all falling asleep - in fact, as night falls, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with exhaustion whether you want to sleep or not. Lay down and rest your weary head, friends. Everyone could use a little extra sleep.

But what will your dreams bring? Something happy, images of a perfect day? Something hopeful, something you've wanted for a long time? Maybe you'll dream of anger, of the face of your worst enemy. Or maybe - just maybe - you'll have a horrific nightmare, and wake screaming, covered in cold sweat.

Not before others have time to see it, though. As you sleep, as you dream, the other residents of Hadriel, friends and enemies and people you've only met once, might find their way into your dreams. Or you might find your way into theirs - and then have to deal with someone's else's nightmares, or hopes, or anger. For the next ten nights, you'll find yourself either a host or a visitor, and no matter how you try you won't be able to stay awake once night falls.

Sweet dreams, Hadriel. Don't let the asshole fear gods bite.

► This log covers May 16th-26th.
► 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!
► You can't die in the dreams, but if you somehow manage to trip and fall and kill yourself getting out of bed, please report it on the death post.

Comments

[circumitus]

"Yes, I do..."

There's a moment in which Rey casts him a sidelong glance, but then she sees the man who created her instead, and anger boils in the pit of her stomach all over again. The same rage that bubbled over in this point in history, in which she had assaulted him for the sole violation of bringing her back from the dead. Such a heinous crime.

Guilt follows that rage, and Rey shifts her head, casting her gaze off Nick.

"It's... really hard to talk to you when you look like that," she confesses. "No offense, but I just keep wanting to smash that face in."

No offense, technically. Since it's not like it's Nick's face, after all.

[synthedick]

"Oh." He clears his throat and gets to his feet, a hair embarrassed that he'd managed to forget what he looked like for even a second.

"Sorry about that. Not often I find myself in a completely different body. Guess it's better you'd rather smash his face in than mine."

[circumitus]

Despite everything, Rey scoffs.

"Honestly, your actual face already looks like it's been beaten to hell as it is. No need to wreck it even further."

Is that Rey being a smartass? Why yes, yes it is.

[synthedick]

A smartass is better than the alternative if you ask Nick. He glances back to her over his shoulder.

"I suppose it has seen better days. Better nights than this, too."

She did try to hurl a bed at him only a short while before, after all.

[circumitus]

Mind, Lucas isn't exactly an unattractive man. But when you've such a negative association with a person, it's doesn't matter how pretty their face is. Hell, Rey can hardly even stand her own at the moment, and she doesn't have to be the one looking at it.

"Think I prefer it on its days, for better or worse." Yes, Nick. Rey would rather look at your ugly mug than her father's pretty one. That's just how things go.

She heaves a sigh, folding herself so her forehead rests over her knees. This way Nick can't see her face, and Rey doesn't have to look at his.

"If this is supposed to be some damned nightmare, I really just want to wake up right now."

Better than worrying about flying off the handle when she sees her father all over again.

[synthedick]

As much as Nick appreciates that his face is preferable to that of her father, the fact is that he still looks like the man, and they're still trapped in the dream.

He has one more glance at Rey to make sure she's all right, then turns from her, watching the window again. He'd rather keep her from having to look at him for too long.

"Did anything like this actually happen?" he asks, knowing he's pushing the envelope, but wanting to help. "Maybe if we can figure out how it ends, we can get out of here."

[circumitus]

"How it ends..." Rey almost laughs, but what she makes is a bitter scoff. "How it ends is me ripping my father's skull in half."

And she'd rather avoid doing that when she knows now that it's Nick, not her father.

What she says also opens some other questions, though. She sighs.

"He, unfortunately, gets better. Being able to put himself back together from shit like that and all." Casual shrug. Not too weird. Her life isn't weird at all.

[synthedick]

Though she can't see it with his back turned to her, Nick grimaces anyway -- Rey's method of problem-solving when it came to her father was grisly, to say the least.

"Guess some folks just can't stay dead," he mutters to himself. "I assume we're not going see if that's how this ends this time around. There's got to be another way, even if it's just to wait until morning."

[circumitus]

Rey's problem solving skills leave something to be desired, to say the least.

"Probably runs in the family," she returns darkly. Just how many times had Rey herself died only to be revived, and experience pain all over again? A lot. "I can think of another way. But you're not going to like it."

No speculation. This one is fact.

[synthedick]

Nick crosses his arms, turning back toward Rey, but keeping his face turned from her. If she's thinking of splitting his skull open, he's not exactly warm on the idea.

"I'm listening."

[circumitus]

No, he's not. He can't. Because Rey knows that the second she reveals to him what her plans are, he's going to object.

She looks down at her shirt. Like her face, it isn't bloodstained as it should be. It's wrong. This dream, or this memory-- it's all wrong. And she has to make it right. At least restore some of the natural order of things.

Rey stands up, and moves towards the window. The city streets and towering buildings outside remains a blurry vision, with black shapes moving up and down the walkways. She pauses before the scene, taking it all in.

That's when she reels her fist back, and throws her knuckles against the glass. It shatters, as does parts of the rainy world beyond this prison.

[synthedick]

He's motionless as he watches Rey cross the room, save for his eyes watching her; it's not until she reels back that he tenses, ready to stop her if he objects to this solution as much as she thinks he will.

And then she slams her fist into the window, cracks trailing up the glass that remains in the frame and onto the horizon beyond. The streets and buildings fracture, distort as the nightmare buckles from her influence upon it.

His brow knots as he casts his eyes back to her. "Rey?"

[circumitus]

Pain wrecks through her whole body. As the glass breaks, a piece of herself does as well. A gash appears in her forehead. Stab wounds in her chest and stomach emerge.

"Yes," she says through clenched teeth. "This is how it's supposed to go."

Sort of.

As she hurls her fist into the window a second time and breaks more of the glass, so does her own skin, blood pooling down her white shirt, now ripped and bloody. Whatever is happening, it seems that she's connected to her own environment that she's now destroying.

The black hole in her little universe reveals itself more through the cracked pieces in what had once been a window overlooking Old Chicago.

[synthedick]

The glass from the window breaks more beneath her fist, shattering and splintering up into the frame of the window and the ceiling above them. Nick takes a step toward her, his eyes trailing to the blood that's staining her shirt. As she breaks the world around them, it seems she's breaking apart of piece of her mind, as well.

Rey was right. Nick doesn't like this. "Rey!"

[circumitus]

This wasn't exactly part of the plan, but it's happening now. There doesn't seem to be any going back, given the physical state she's made herself.

As she goes for one more blow against this place, her legs go numb. She loses feeling in her limbs, cracked with red veins coursing under her skin, under her perfect, pretty face she hates so much. She crumbles to her knees, her hand grabbing the windowpane but not stopping her fall.

Rey opens her mouth then, but all that comes out are chunks of blood. That, and some glass, coupled with teeth.

Dream world does not like being fucked with, it would seem.

[synthedick]

"Shit." The world seems to shift beneath Nick's feet. It could be vertigo from suddenly being seven feet tall, but it's more likely the fact that everything around them is crumbling, the dream only as held together as its host... and considering said host is spitting up chunks of glass, blood, and teeth, it's easy to see it's not going to hold together for much longer.

That might not be so bad for Rey, who simply has to wake up. As for Nick, he has no idea what happens to someone who is simply a visitor. The gods never are very clear on the consequences for their actions until it's too late.

Unable to sit by and watch as she suffers, Nick bolts to her side, hoping the floor doesn't vanish beneath him like the city beyond the window.

[circumitus]

The city, the house, even Rey herself seems to be unraveling around them as all Rey can do is grab onto the window to keep herself upright. And then Nick once he reaches her side. Her free hand slaps over her mouth, bloody cracks all up her hand and arm as she stifles more coughing fits of glass hacking up from the back of her throat.

The world shakes. Walls tear down into the black nothing of her shattered mind. The shards churn within her insides and boil. More dark red chunks spit out from her mouth, bubbling between her fingers, and onto the floor beneath them before slipping away into the darkness.

She can't stop it. Can't warn him. There's nothing she can do but slowly let herself and her memories fall apart.

And then she's falling.

And falling.

Falling.



That's how it's always been, hasn't it?

Always falling, forever.



Until the whole world just

stops.



She's landed face-first over the floor in Nick's spare bedroom, having smacked her head against a dresser. As a bruise forms over the side of her face, she sees that Old Chicago is gone. No more house, no more Nick that looks like her father. The blood and glass and teeth and cracks are also gone.

What remains is an insane reality that she doesn't want to be a part of, and yet isn't done with her. Not by a long shot.

[synthedick]

Nick awakens with a start, bolting upright from the couch -- he stumbles as his legs tremble, his synthetic body still coming back online. It takes a moment for his brain to process what's happening, what's already happened; he'd been asleep. It was a dream, something as foreign to his artificial form as a natural heartbeat.

It wasn't his dream, though. The gods had said they'd be forcing folks to share dreams, to experience them and all the emotions they stir together. Nick realizes belatedly that he should have taken that threat more seriously. His sensory receptors readjust to the sudden change: he's home, on his couch. It's the apartment he shares with Rey. He can still feel her in his grasp, the world around them falling apart with her.

There's an emptiness in his gut he needs to settle before he can think about anything else, an unsettled churning that won't let him think. Straightening his coat, he takes a few, quiet steps over to her door and listens carefully, trying to determine if she's asleep on the other side. He'd rather not crack the door open to find out, but he wants to know -- he needs to know she's in there, and that she's okay.

[circumitus]

While Rey may be as okay as one can expect her to be after such a thing, what Nick will hear is a loud thud followed by a groan, and a muttered "Son of a bitch" on her end as she cradles her head.

As she works on trying to sort her consciousness between reality and nightmare, at least she's no longer suffering any bouts of bloody coughing fits or shattering into actual pieces and falling.

This is about as intact as one can ever expect a waking Rey to be.

[synthedick]

At least she's in there, and likely in one piece. That's good enough for him.

He decides to tiptoe away for now, see if he can't make a round of the city now that he's awake. They'll talk about this later, Rey -- if there's anything that one can be sure of, it's that Nick will always want to talk.