hadriel_logs | Event Log: Dreamwalker

Entry tags:

Event Log: Dreamwalker

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.

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Ronan.

[ Gansey’s face is full of worry, fear fracturing an expression that, outside of his dreams, is always so calm and put together. Gansey’s mask isn’t even close to sitting in place right now. He’s genuinely struggling with this; in his unconscious mind, he knows the certainty of his own end.

Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to run. Every instinct screams at him to, and so he does, obeying the urge for flight. He keeps looking over his shoulder, keeps fixing on Ronan to make sure he’s with him, and even as he does, he’s aware of the creature closing in.

It’s not exerting itself, like Gansey is. He is out of breath and sweating, his legs weakening beneath him. The darkness around them seems to close in from every side, oppressive in its approach. Gansey lets out a strangled sound when he turns again, and sees the creature almost within arm’s reach, and he snatches at Ronan’s wrist. ]

It’s not going to stop. It never will, until it takes me. We can’t keep running. I can’t.

[ And then he stops, and pleasure seems to rise from the creature in a wave. Gansey shudders at the sight of it, but he plants his feet, fills himself with resolve. ]

You go. You have to leave me. It won’t chase you when I’m gone.

Fuck you!

[Ronan reaches for him, tries to yank him further back by brute force if necessary. This is not a reality that he can live with, even if it's a shadow of a dream, and Ronan stubbornly plants his feet in the ground, his resolve resolute even if his voice is breaking.]

I'm not. You can't ask me to.

[It's too close now, there's no way that they could escape from it now that it's this close. Ronan is scared, and it's a feeling he knows intimately well, but he's scared for Gansey too, which is something he feels less often. Gansey is usually the reasonable one, Gansey doesn't wind up like this. Gansey can't wind up like this.

His voice wavers and he shakes his head again as it descends upon them, quiet and hellish.]

Gansey-

[ Gansey can feel it, with all its terrible cold. It bears down on him like it always does, with something that isn't quite breath but still puts the hair on his neck on end. Under normal circumstances, he would be panicking now. He would be on the floor, curled up, waiting for it to be over.

But he can't let it have Ronan. He can't let Ronan die. He isn't looking at the monster because he's looking at Ronan, and he moves to take his shoulders. ]

You have to. Ronan, you promised me. I can't let it have you.

Trust me, and you'll be okay.

[ A faint smile. It's so dark now that the smile is hard to see, and oblivious looms above them, waiting inside the hood of a creature that now seems bigger than both of them. It fills the room. ]

I know what I'm doing.

I don't care about me!

[Part of Ronan instinctively shrinks away from the creature, but he's mostly just focused on Gansey in front of him, telling him to just let him die, like it's the right thing to do. Like he's somehow okay with this, when Ronan knows that Gansey has been terrified of bees, has stayed up late nights with him because he couldn't sleep, when Ronan knows that Gansey isn't as brave as this.

It's a ruse, and he won't let it happen. It can't happen- Ronan's expression crumples and he reaches for Gansey's hand, wrapping his fingers around it and squeezing tight, tighter, unable to let go of him. Not for this.]

-I can't do this alone, Gansey, you know that. [His voice trembles. It's waiting.] None of us can. Not without you. Please.

[It's waking up to a night horror sliding across the floor, it's driving toward a cliff and fighting with the urge to brake or not, it's walking outside one morning and finding Niall Lynch's head smashed into unrecognizable pieces on the driveway. Ronan isn't built for this, and after everything, he can't handle the loss the way that Gansey seems to think he can.]

[ Oh, Christ, the way his face falls -

Gansey can't bear it. His heart stutters, because he knows that look. He's seen it before, had seen it written all over Ronan's face the day he found Niall Lynch's body. That face means loss.

This is a dream, Gansey tells himself, except that dreams have always been real to Ronan Lynch. Except that it's not really a dream, anyway, because Gansey's fears have never been irrational. This faceless creature is a monster that isn't real, but the thing it represents is real enough.

Ronan tells him that they can't do it without him, and all Gansey can think is that they'll have to. That he doesn't have long. That he's known that truth since the day he heard his voice over a recording in April, and that he'd stopped running from that fate the day he went into Cabeswater's cave.

This is a fear that has to be faced. He has to find it in himself to be that brave. ]

What if you have to? There's no way this ends without my death. It has to be me.

I never wanted you to see this.

[ Ronan knows Gansey better than anyone. He knows his fears, because he's seen the results of them. But despite that Gansey has always tried to be strong for him. ]

All you can do is die with me.

[ Gansey's voice seems somehow smaller now, weaker and less solid, now that the darkness is oppressing all around them. His fingers tighten on Ronan's, squeezing them back. He doesn't try to pull away. ]

Do you think that's what I want? You're my best friend! I want you to live.

I just-

[It's happening now. It's taking Gansey and there's nothing Ronan can do, no amount of posturing or screaming or attacking this monster can save him. Ronan finds himself helpless and desperate to do the one thing in this world that's impossible to him.

He inhales shakily, blinking away the wetness behind his eyes. How many times has he dreamed about Gansey's death, since he knew about it? How many times has he thought that the worst would happen and watched it play out before his eyes? This is no different- but it is different, because it's the real Gansey before him, asking him to let him go.

Ronan can't do that. Gansey was all he had after his father died, and Gansey had helped to rebuild him. Without him now, what would he do?

It's just a dream. It has to be. They have to wake up from this, both whole, both alive. Ronan can't accept any other possibility, and that knowledge is the only thing that allows him to slowly loosen his grip on Gansey's fingers.

Nothing is ever just a dream to Ronan.]

-it won't be like this. When it happens, it won't- I'll save you.

[He takes in a deep breath and forces himself to fully let go. He doesn't have another choice.]

I promise.

[ It's a promise that breaks Gansey's heart, because it can't be kept. He's known his fate for a long time. Everything kept pointing to it. Hearing his own voice on the radio that night, drawing the Death card in Blue's house afterwards. Having Blue herself confirm that she'd heard his voice that night.

And even if none of it had been true, there had been that feeling, all his life, that he was running from the death he'd escaped seven years ago. He's been living on borrowed time ever since. He's always felt it, on some level, and always feared it. This is the fear that keeps him awake at night.

It's the fear that makes this nightmare familiar. Darkness grows. Gansey's close to waking, he knows it. He knows it, because he always wakes right before oblivion takes him.

Ronan won't be able to save him. None of them will. All Gansey wants is to shield them from it. Ronan is stronger than he knows. He has to be. ]

It's all right. Let me save you.

Remember. This time isn't real.

[ Gansey isn't sure which of them he's saying that to. In the seconds that follow, though, he loses sight of Ronan. He loses sight of everything, when the creature's darkness wraps itself around him like a shroud. If Ronan is still there, he'll see not darkness over taking the dream, but darkness swallowing Gansey, and then pulling him from it.

After that, Gansey wakes, his eyes wide and his face covered in a sheen of sweat. He's shivering and his throat has a raw quality that tells him he was screaming at some point. he can't remember when. He sits up, putting his head in his hands, and trying to shake off the impulse to sleep. These dreams are exhausting. He needs to stay awake. ]

[Even if Gansey doesn't believe that Ronan can save him, Ronan does. There's simply no other alternative for him, no way that this doesn't come out as Gansey&Ronan&Adam, the three of them, the way it's always been. Saving Gansey isn't a desire, it's a necessity, and Ronan plans to follow through with everything he has.

That doesn't make watching this hurt any less. Seeing Gansey be pulled away from him, shrouded in black, feeling the last brush of Gansey's fingers as he's pulled away- it's too much, and Ronan's breath catches in the back of his throat when Gansey finally fades from view.

Without the dreamer, the dream collapses around him, shrouding him in darkness, and Ronan wakes with a gasp shortly afterward. He doesn't move quite yet, stays quiet and still, as if there was a monster still in his room and it would kill him if he moved. Ronan exhales quietly, inhales again, and slowly pushes his blankets off of him.

Gansey won't want to talk about it, he knows. He doesn't really want to talk about it either, but it's imperative that he knows for sure that Gansey is at least still breathing, and so Ronan wrenches himself out of bed and pads quietly across the floor of his room, opening his door with a soft creak. He doesn't make a move to leave the room though, just looks across the living area and toward the couch that Gansey is always sleeping on these days, watching the other boy move to press his face in his hands.

Ronan doesn't speak- he doesn't need to- but he watches Gansey all the same, silent and still, like a ghost in his own doorway.]

[ The darkness always leads to waking. In fact, it leads to Gansey jolting awake, throwing himself out of a dream that horrifies him. That's how he is now, still breathing hard like he's outrun something terrible, and pushing cold sweat out of his eyes.

He doesn't exactly feel better when it's done, but he feels that he has his panic under control, and that's really what matters. He drops his hands to the bed, and casts his eyes up to the room around him. That's when he sees Ronan, hovering in the doorway. The sight of him makes Gansey start at first, until his mind puts together that he is now outside of the dream and this is not a part of it.

This is something more.

Since he considers there to be little point in putting on a pretence after what the two of them just shared, he leans his elbow on top of the couch and his head on his hands. ]

I'm sorry you had to see that, Ronan. It's not what I wanted.

Are you all right?

[Ronan disregards the apology immediately- he doesn't want it, Gansey doesn't need to give it, and so it's useless. Instead, he focuses on the question, on how Gansey is asking him if he's alright even though he'd come out here to check on Gansey in the first place. Gansey is sitting there and looking up at him, sliding everything back behind his expression again, just so he can be concerned about someone else.

Ronan remembers the dream. He remembers the shake in Gansey's hands, remembers the abrupt decision and difficult acceptance of his own fate. It had been hard for Ronan in the dream and it would be hard for him in reality- but that's not what this is about.

Instead, he shrugs, leans a shoulder against the wood of his doorframe, and stares at Gansey without pulling away, his gaze quiet and insistent.]

You knew. [There's no guilt in his tone- Ronan has been down this road, gone through this scenario, experienced all of this before, and he's leveling the playing field now. It's his fault maybe, for not saying anything sooner- just like it was his fault last time- but there's never a delicate way to bring it up and he hadn't wanted another fight.

Maybe he was a fool for thinking he could avoid Gansey's fate in Henrietta just because they weren't there anymore.]

This whole time, you knew.

[ Gansey sighs. His hand scrubs briefly through his hair as if he's intending to make it sit better. It's still a tousled mess, but it's the best he can do. Anything to delay this conversation, which, realistically, can't be delayed any longer.

He should have talked to Ronan already. As soon as he shared the dream with Adam, he should have known this was a possibility, and acted first. He hadn't, because of course, he's always been a coward when it comes to this sort of thing. Addressing his own fears, making it clear that he's only human. That he's nowhere near the strong, flawless leader that he pretends to be.

The least he can do is give Ronan the truth. He looks around, the steel on his face a cover for how vulnerable it makes him feel. ]

Blue saw my spirit on St Mark's Eve. She told all of us, that day in the helicopter. The truth is, I think I knew before that - when I heard my own voice, on that recording. There's only one reason a spirit appears on the ley line on St Mark's Eve.

It's just taken me a while to accept it.

[It's information that Ronan is familiar with. He's known about Gansey's destiny for a long time now, and for awhile, he'd agreed with Adam to keep it from him. it left a bitter taste on his tongue and he hadn't wanted to, but Adam thought it was for the best, and Ronan knows that Adam is a little more delicate with people than he is.

It wasn't quite a lie, but it wasn't quite honesty either. They'd torn themselves apart on their secret, and the whole time, Gansey had known anyway. It haunted him, as it haunted them, until everything came crashing down in that nightmare.

Ronan forces himself not to look away when Gansey speaks and keeps his unnerving stare right on Gansey's eyes when he opens his mouth to reply, his voice half a mumble from sleep still.]

I'm not going to let it end that way. Parrish won't either.

[ Gansey lets out a breath, and a smile touches his lips. That resilience is not unexpected. He'd met with it from Adam, too, though Adam had been less stoic. That's to be expected. Ronan is nothing if not firm.

And Ronan knows loss better than any of them. Gansey can feel his heart twisting at the thought. Ronan and Adam are like his brothers, both of them. And Ronan has already lost enough family. ]

That's what he said, too. I shared the same dream with him.

[ Thank you, Fear, for making this secret impossible to keep. Gansey leans back, his eyes still on Ronan. ]

I told him that he might have to. This has already happened, Ronan. Blue saw it happen. Time only moves the way it does for us because that's how we perceive it. You've seen how Cabeswater can change that. This is...

This is those words, written on the stone in the forest. You hadn't written them yet, but you would. Not every fate can be changed.

[Ronan doesn't know which is worse- the fact that Gansey seems so right about this and that he'll actually die, or the fact that Gansey can't break out of his logic long enough to believe him. When have Ronan's dreams or Adam's powers ever operated on logic? Cabeswater operates within certain constraints, but those rules can be broken- Ronan knows they can. Didn't they resurrect the bones of the dead in the cave? Didn't Niall Lynch create an entire family from a dream? Didn't they find a living woman who'd been buried for hundreds of years?

But this is where Gansey draws the line, and because it's here, when it involves Ronan and his promise to protect him, it makes it worse.

To his credit, Ronan's expression doesn't change. He's cold, a ceramic figure rather than a person as he shrugs, pulling back into the shadow of his doorway.]

I don't care.

[It's simple and flat, and Ronan weighs the thought of continuing this conversation before deciding not too- everything has already been said, and Gansey is going to believe what he wants to. Ronan knows the truth of things, and he knows what he'll do when the time is right.]

I'm going back to bed.

[ Gansey bites back a sigh, knowing that he’s lost this battle. Ronan isn’t listening to him. It’s not much of a surprise, really. He’s not sure how well he’d listen to this from one of them, either.

But this is Gansey’s life. This is what he’s been afraid of for a very long time, and he’s only just beginning to come to terms with that. To hope that it could be any other way would be a step backward, and he needs to go forward. He needs to be ready for this. What he has to hope for is that when the time comes, they’ll be able to cope with reality. Both Adam and Ronan have been warned for it now. Maybe that means they can prepare, even if they’re not ready to accept.

So he nods, and cuts a small figure on the couch while he does. The gods’ influence has been pulling him to sleep of late. He’ll try to stay awake this time, which is an interesting reverse of his normal behaviour. He just doesn’t want any more dreams. ]

Okay. I’m sorry you had to see it, Ronan, I really am.

Goodnight.

[He doesn't know if he can respond to the apology in full- partially because he thinks that Gansey has no business apologizing to him about nightmares, and partially because it just feels wrong for Gansey to apologize to him in the first place.

This is a bad note to leave Gansey on, and Ronan doesn't really want to leave, but it's hard to even look at him right now without remembering Gansey's hands on his in the dream, Gansey telling Ronan to leave him behind, and the cold, anguished sense of inevitability. He doesn't want to think about Gansey accepting his death- he doesn't want to think about anything like that at all.

So he sighs in the end, faltering back. Ronan doesn't intend to sleep either and he's sure that they both know it, but it's easier to pretend that he is.

In an unprecedented move, he leaves the door to his room open- just in case.

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Event Log: Dreamwalker

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