( log two | Event/Post Event | no room to breathe )

[dedikated]

Who: Kate + whichever unfortunate saps run into her.
What: Dream aftermath
Where: The clinic ; The bar ; random other places in Hadriel (aka wildcard option)
When: During and just after the event.
Warnings: Terrible experimental writing, many a reminder that Kate's username is not just for show, guilt complexes, blood, vomit, alcohol and probably a whole lot more.


1. C L I N I C
[ There is blood everywhere.

(On the floor on the walls on her clothes her hands--)

Her spine is rigid (inflexible like the bodies of the dead the dead all of them dead) when she wakes, shot upright in her bed as if electricity courses through her. Kate tears off the blankets with the urgency of someone trying to remove acid soaked rags from their skin, darts to the bathroom before her shaking legs give out, and collapses into the bath.

Water washes over her (when did she switch that on) from the shower head above and her nightclothes cling to her skin, stick there until she begins clawing at the hems to try and yank them off.

(Blood goes down the drain. Swirlswirlswirl it would be such a pretty pattern if it didn't stink of death and decay-) and she doesn't cry because (she never cries, as though her tear ducts haven't worked since she was an infant and in pain with skinned knees) the water scalding tracks down her bare back and across her face is enough wetness for today.

But she shakes and she vomits over the side of the tub and onto the clothes she'd thrown in a soaking pile and her hands claw against the porcelain and when she pulls back

(-red dripping never ending)

there's more.

When she leaves the shower (not clean yet, never going to be clean, never was in the first place), her head is spinning from the heat and the smell of bile and stomach acid lingers in the room, bringing more of it up before she manages to stumble out and into the coldness of her apartment and collapse on the floor, too tired (too wrecked) to get to the chair.

(Tick tock goes the clock)

And suddenly it's an hour later and her skin is dry

(and her hands are still so red-)

and her phone is blaring music (an alarm she never normally needs to hear) because it's time for work.

(It's time to let people put their trust in someone with more blood on her hands than the gods themselves.

A stupid decision, really. Who had ever heard of a reformed killer?)

So she gets dressed. She burns toast. She throws breakfast in the bin and hops on the nearest roof to head to the Clinic. She blocks out the sound of her inner monologue screaming obscenities in the whistle of full speed free-running and enters the Clinic through the office window. There is filing, cleaning to be done.

(There are people who will need patching up after their escapades in the caves, she knows

and her hands are still so red-

-Blood on your hands never really goes away. You wear skin coloured gloves or bleach your skin to pretend it never happened.

But it never really goes away.)

She picks up a bar of soap instead of a pen and scrubs scrubs scrubs as if she thinks it will make any difference. She swallows down lumps in her throat when someone enters the building and shakes her head like a cat shaking off water and pretends that her hands are clean. Pretends that there aren't visions of pools of blood and corpses swimming in her head.

(Just like every other day, right? The intensity doesn't change the course of action. Focus on things that aren't the blood and you'll be fine.) ]

2. B A R
[ Kate doesn't feel any more human

(because, of course, she isn't. Doomed to die sooner for the benefit of running faster and playing with obscure powers that should never have been hers. She is not the analyst who requires them-)

but she can pretend, for a few hours, that the dreams haven't completely shaken her to her core. That there is no war in her mind reminding her that repression of the issues is not dealing with them. She can hide those things behind indifferent looks and flat eyes just like before. Use words to keep them locked up from anyone who might see her and use alcohol to lock them up from herself.

One drink, the strongest you have in larger quantities than should be recommended.

She selects a stool at random and glances around, like she's actually here to interact. Because acting like nothing ever happened is far better than hunching into herself and hearing are you okay again and again. And the privacy of her own mind is all she really wants right now, after ten days of being plunged into the fears and anger of the minds of too many people. So she sips her drink and nods a greeting to the next person who passes by her seat. ]

3. W I L D C A R D
[[ bump into her while walking about. Find her apartment and crash it. See her stuttering outside the caves because food vs holy fuck I do not want to see blood for the next twenty years. Or figure out something else and hmu at windlicht ]]

Comments

bar;

[liquid_serpent]

[Liquid took a seat next to the woman and ordered himself a drink. Most of the other stools were taken up with other people, so this was the only free seat available. He wasn't usually one for idle small talk with strangers but being friendly to the locals was normal, right? He offered her a small nod, as he received his beer and sipped it slowly.]

Enjoying the view?

[Liquid was almost useless at small talk and was threatening to make a fool of himself. Why did social interaction with the opposite sex have to be so hard?]

[dedikated]

[ That's... one way to introduce yourself. But at least it's easier to talk to a stranger than the list of people who appeared in her mind during these last few days.

She shrugs and runs her finger through the condensation on her glass. ]

Looks th' same as usual.

[liquid_serpent]

I wouldn't know. This is only my first time visiting this place, since I didn't even know this place had a bar. [He had only been visiting his residence and the coliseum and park recently. Sharing a drink with others were the last thing on his mind recently. Not when he was plagued by bad dreams.]

Have you been plagued with bad dreams lately? It seems everyone else I've spoken to has.

[dedikated]

[ But alcohol and coffee are the foundations of destroying bad dreams.

... Or at least pretending they don't exist.

When he asks that question, her jaw gets just that little bit tighter. ] ... Strange ones. [ It's a lie that she's going to go with. ] Don't recognise a lot of it. Almost like they were never mine in the first place.

[liquid_serpent]

[Liquid nodded. He could relate to that having strange dreams the past few nights himself. Strange or rather disturbing.]

Do you believe the gods are tapping into our dreams making us have them in the first place? I've come to understand that this place is not safe even during when you're asleep.

[It feels like a violation of privacy.]

[kickingand]

[ Dean knows why he's here, knows that he can feel the night crawling up under his skin and laying waste to his mind in a way he can't shake loose from.

Even so, Dean is familiar with nightmares, knows them so well they're like lovers and yet Dean can taste these a little too clearly. They've been sharp and dark and tinged with the kind of blood he can't escape from and so all he wants is whiskey. Booze. Liquor. More of it than he can stand. It's all he can think about, dropping into a bottle and never coming back out again because Hell is never fun and Purgatory is always his best friend and everything else muddles until there's nothing but confusion.

And so it's the bar he escapes to, waving off the bartender but begging them to leave the bottle behind before he glances around the room and takes in the sights. He knocks back an immediate drink and begins to move to his own corner where he earns himself a nod of welcome from a woman he pases by. ]

You here for the party, too?

[ Sarcasm. Dean's other best friend, so utterly acquainted with the habit that now seems as good of a time as any to do nothing more than pretend. ]

[dedikated]

[ Dreams don't often stay in Kate's mind. It's rare she wakes up with images dancing in her head and even less likely that they're as chilling or realistic as the ones Hadriel pulls out of the deepest recesses of her brain. Honestly, she doesn't know how else to cope with the blood she keeps seeing on her hands and smelling in the air.

(Scrubbing her hands until they were dry and raw didn't work, clearly.)

So playing normal and obliterating her liver it is! ]

Yeah, I bought the cupcakes. [ Sarcasm she can deal with. Sarcasm works well. ]

[kickingand]

[ Dean would likely have even more nightmares if he led a more Human Lifestyle - as it stands, he's usually lucky with four hours a night. Stark paranoia is a thing he lives with every day, the usual blade under his pillow evidence of that, though it only counts when he's not too busy staying up all night Hunting.

But booze and Dean are as intertwined as Dean and his family, an addiction he faces because he has nothing else to dull the senses. This is just another day in the life, him and his whiskey, and finding himself at the bottom of a bottle is truly, nothing out of the ordinary. No matter the nightmares.

He still cracks something of a grin at that, lifting his bottle in a cheers-style-motion. ]

Somebody had to. And it sure as hell wasn't gonna be me.

[dedikated]

[ Not that anyone would want to eat her cupcakes if she did actually cook any. It would likely result in food poisoning.

She tilts her glass at him out of habit to the motion. ]

Not in th' habit of donning an apron? [ Hey look that mental image slightly amused her. There was a quirk of her lips and everything. ]

[kickingand]

[ They could make cupcakes together and poison everyone. It would be lovely. But Dean practically snorts at that, just making one of those 'are you kidding me' faces, head canted to the sideways. ]

Do I look like a kiss the cook kinda guy?

THIS IS GOING TO BE TWENTY KINDS OF TERRIBLE /cackles joyfully

[dedikated]

[ If she didn't already despise the caves for all the wasted time and fighting she did to find out that there really was no unturned stone holding an exit to her home, Kate hates them even more now for the sheer panic in her chest when she considers needing meat.

(Sure, she could go to the shops, pick up something from there. She's relatively certain the Gods just replace it and don't actually want to give them all food poisoning...

But at the same time, she wouldn't trust God provided meat as far as she could throw it.)

She spends too long standing outside the caves, trying to talk herself into visiting the dark tunnels and avoid subsisting on a totally inadequate diet until her brain stops coating her hands in blood and flashing image upon image of dead bodies.

(Marc, dad, mum all in pools of the red stuff; auntie Reg and uncle Joe whose bodies were prone and bloodless on slabs-)

Breathe. In. Out. The blood does come off, Kate. You know me and Dagny got your back. But Jon isn't here, he can't take over when she needs to split and hide in the back room until everything goes away. Dagny can't sit with her and patiently go through everything until the nausea stops coming in overwhelming waves.

There's no one here she feels comfortable turning to. How does she explain this to anyone here? Yes, I spend half my life organising a building full of bloodied injured people and the sight of the stuff makes me want to vomit. That would go over excellently. Who could possibly trust her to do the job she actually truly cares about if they knew that?

Who could possibly trust her to even survive in Hadriel if they saw her shaking and hyperventilating almost every night since the nightmares began and she kept attending her duties, kept pretending everything was alright?

Her hand finds her bag, feels the weight of the weapons inside it and she tries to forget that, eventually, she'll have to spill the blood of whatever beast she claims in order to produce meals from it. She shakes her head clear, breathes until her lungs prick, and steps in.

One step at a time. Don't think about what may or will happen.

She doesn't even notice Shadow until she's nearly walked on top of him. ]

Shit--! [ Shadow you're really easy to miss in this place ok. How the fuck does she play this? It's not like she can easily forget that he stood and watched Marc die as she froze up, again. It's not like the phantom pain of gunshots through her leg and torso have completely disappeared.

So, in the end, she says the only thing that seems at all adequate: ] Hey.

[dedikated]

Need food. You? [ The small talk feels like pulling teeth, but it's better than nothing. Far better than silence, where her mind can have full control of the direction of things. She folds her arms tight against her torso, completely still.

Why here, of all places? And why Shadow of all the people here? What exactly does a person do after everything they've seen of each other's subconscious?

Her eyes rest on her boots. They're much easier to look at, right now. ]

bar - brief description of the violence in kate's rage dream

[unfollowing]

[Emily is here for coffee. With some booze. Because Christ is she done with this shit.

All she intends to do is make herself something good and head straight back to the house, but she catches sight of Kate -- and their gazes meet, however briefly -- and it all comes back. The woman with the eyepatch, the talk of those hits, the knives in the shoulders--]

You want coffee? I'm making some for myself anyway.

[It's easier to talk coffee than ... that. And wendigos. And--]

It's not like it'll be an undue burden to make more.

yo o/

[dedikated]

[ The look on Kate's face is held between so many things. There's the flash, the gut-punching shock of guilt she feels remembering what Emily had to witness; the rushing heartbeat that comes remembering running from that beast - the wendigo; the cold, still heavy rage at the pit of her stomach because Julia's face is still hovering in the back of her mind; the terror she feels at realising that there is a part of her, no matter how deeply buried and unlikely to strike, that ended up capable of doing those things without orders, and...

the wave of relief. That Emily really isn't a wendigo, that this kid is physically alright, and that she's still managing to speak to Kate. ]

Yeah. Extra whisky. [ She leans her elbow on the bar and cups her chin in her hand. It isn't quite the picture of relaxed casualness, but it's a good attempt. ]

[unfollowing]

[Look, Emily's seen some shit. She's... well why lie, she's disturbed by the torture shit (she didn't look, covered her eyes in the dream, just looked at Kate), but she's not quite as ready to hate her, given the knowledge the dream shared with her.

Did Kate want any of that shared? Emily wouldn't have wanted that, if it had been her. Then again, how much does she really know?]

Cool.

[She crosses to the coffee and all the stuff Delight gave them to go with it (thank you, Delight!!), and starts it all up. Then she goes to get the whiskey, setting it next to the machine as it brews the grains.]

I did get bitten, before coming here.

[Why not just address the elephant in the room, right? And it's easier to start with her own dream than Kate's, somehow.]

[dedikated]

[ The sudden confession gives Kate pause, leaving the machine to supply the only noise between them. She blinks, runs her tongue against the back of her teeth, and finally manages to come up with something more appropriate than mute staring. ]

Ah.

[ Yeah. Maybe not that much more appropriate. ] So, that-- [ Actually, she'll hold off on asking about the other kids in the dream, for now. ] They're real? Where you're from? [ Alright, it's not exactly the question of the century, but those beasts were completely foreign to her world. She can't even recall fiction that used the name wendigo. ]

[unfollowing]

[It's easier to stare at the coffee machine. Looking at Kate for too long is-- jesus, she looked so intense in her dream, so casual about murder, so--]

Yeah. Fucked up, right? [Emily shrugs. This is totally not a big deal. It's a huge deal.]

le bar, of course.

[bekommen]

[Nick doesn't just pass by - she takes a seat at the stool next to Kate, raking her fingers through her hair in agitation as soon as she sits.]

Whiskey, neat.

Where else do you drown your sorrows

[dedikated]

[ Oh. It's... She remembers that dream, the girl and her father singing songs and driving around. One of the few that let her wake up with a warm feeling and no urge to panic, ]

Hope Delight can stock enough alcohol. [ The comment comes with a glance at the other patrons, with the knowledge that this place was already popular enough for drowning sorrows on any normal day.

She doesn't mention the dream, because it isn't her place. Because Kate wouldn't want hers to be acknowledged by perfect strangers either. ]

[bekommen]

Yeah, well. Just think happy thoughts, I guess.

[Nick remembers her from the dream, too, but that doesn't stop her from throwing back her entire drink at once.]

That's what we're here for, right?

[dedikated]

[ Alcohol has been historically good at the happy thoughts. Or at least at pushing down all the sad ones until the hangover comes. She takes a rather massive swig of her drink. ]

I was just here t' get drunk. [ it's a bad quip that doesn't really sound like a quip at all. ]

[bekommen]

Right. I forgot, we're in a bar.

[Said with an edge of sarcasm and a shrug.]

Well? Go on. Ask me about it.