foolishwren | 70. [DREAM/DREAM/DREAM/DREAM]

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70. [DREAM/DREAM/DREAM/DREAM]

_{[So while the rest of Johto alternately panics, cries, or rushes around trying to capture as many of the soulstealing insects as possible, there are dozens of souls floating around in that dream limbo, drifting in and out of each other's slumbering thoughts and visions. Whether it's nightmarish flashbacks or just those dreams where you're at school taking a really hard test, and then Dracula shows up, and then everybody's naked ... anything is possible when it comes to what people see in their sleep.]

[But what appears in the darkness in this particular spot in the spaceless, shifting mass of dreaming souls... is a door.]

[It's old, and covered with boards and bolts, rusted near-through in some places. The lock is broken-- mangled and half-melted and wrenched out of the keyhole. The only thing on it that doesn't look ancient is a scrap of torn notebook-paper that's taped up on it at roughly eye-level. It reads only a single phrase:]}

Fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh.

_{[More importantly, though... the door is ajar. Through the gap come the scents of rust and metal-- and something organic, fleshy-- and a low, deep hum of industrial machinery. It's not a door that anyone in their right mind would want to go through. ... But for anyone who may have stumbled this far into the dreams of their fellow lost souls, either in flight from some other nightmare or just pure, wandering curiosity... there's just no other place to go but through the door.]}

_{[Go on. Open it. After all.... it's only a dream.]}

[ooc: SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG, GUYS. Thanks for being patient! If you commented on that planning post, there's something spooky planned for your character to do here so please feel free to tag or not tag as it pleases you!]

~*~

[ooc: This is the IC post for what was announced over here! Even if you didn't comment there, feel free to participate! I'm still happy to whip up Silent Hill scenarios for folks!]

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[He picks that one up. And... can't go back. Must go forward! He tries the door closest to him.]

_{[The door opens! AWESOME!]

[Too bad the hallway it leads into is even more decrepit than the chapel he's leaving, but... it's the only way forward, and there at least doesn't appear to be anything dangerous... wait a second.]

[Voices. Far away... but loud enough to be heard even from where Ken's standing, shrill, and raised in anger.]

[One of them should sound... very, very familiar to him, as muffled as it is...]}

NO! I'll never understand!

--! [there's a moment of recognition, where he wonders why he hears someone he knows in a place like...

this, but he looks around a few moments before moving toward the voice because she sounds mad.

And that worries--scares--him a li--lot.]

_{[Yes, it sounds mad. It sounds very mad.]

[The hall beyond is dark and dingy-- lined with dusty old paintings and filing cabinets... old things put away to languish until the church had a place to put them. It's narrow and a little twisty, but easy to navigate. And the voices-- there's more than one-- are getting closer.]}

Alessa! I did all of this for you... for all the innocent. Isn't this what you wanted?

I was SEVEN! I just wanted to stop HURTING! And then you show up and take away the ONE PERSON who EVER gave half a shit about me! Who didn't USE me! How the FUCK can you say you did this for me?! You-- you're no better than HER. Remember HER, Claudia? Remember when she used to tell me she only hurt me because she loved me so much?!

_{[The other voice pauses, clearly shocked. When it speaks again, it sounds... almost hurt.]}

... Alessa, she wasn't...

Shut up. Just shut the FUCK up. I'M not the one who forgot what it was like... that's YOU, sis. You don't love me... no more than SHE did.

I know it is cruel... I know you are suffering... but can you not see that it is for the greater good that I do this? Can't you see how it hurts me to have caused you so much pain? I would not have done it if it were--

I hate you.

...Alessa--

I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!

_{[The outburst is shrill and about ten times louder than either of the speakers had lifted their voices to before, the voice cracking from the sheer power of the emotion behind it. It reverberates even down the hallway Ken is going through ... and it's followed by another hurt pause before the second, unfamiliar speaker continues.]}

... it saddens me ... that you have become so immature. To see you like this... struggling against fate, brainwashed by that pathetic heathen who took you from us ... oh, Alessa, it would be so much easier if you would just trust me and let this happen... You've fallen so far...

Not as far as I'm about to.

.... Alessa? What are you---ghkk!!

_{[It's as a door looms into view at the end of the hallway that the arguing voices degenerate into beastlike snarls and pained, half-muffled sounds of struggle. ... Are you sure you want to go through that door, Ken...?]}

[Um.

Yes.

Because he's going to slam that door open, sick to his stomach and terrified by what he's hearing, worried enough to drop the respect that he normally treats everyone with because IT IS NOT THE TIME FOR MANNERS.]

Heather--!?

_{[The sight that Ken stumbles across is... not pretty.]

[The room beyond the door is another chapel-- smaller than the other one, and... more twisted. The golden beauty that had characterized the one he had arrived in, even despite the desecration, was gone. An organ at the end of the aisle is malformed and distorted, as are the pews, the walls... everything is streaked rusty red and brown.]

[And in the middle of the floor, Heather Mason is on top of a woman in a navy-blue dress, hands clamped around her throat.]}

[Ken has this awful problem of freezing up when he's scared--he did it when his mother died, he did it when shinjiro died, he did it when minato died (and when minato was going to fight nyx on his own, but that could be partially attributed to the fact that he could not stand), he did it when metis attacked him.

Yeah, this is one of those moments, where he allows a few terrified beats to pass before making a stupid decision and moving toward heather again, unable to make words 8(]

_{[Sob Heather wouldn't want you to see this, Ken...]

[But she doesn't hear, or even NOTICE, the frightened boy behind her-- so lost is she in whatever blood-tinted world she's in right now as she strangles the life out of her childhood friend. Her little sister.]

[The white-haired woman's eyes are popping, her mouth gaping like a fish's as her body instinctively tries to draw breath-- but before her struggles weaken and fade entirely, she seems to... fall apart.]}

... What? ... WHAT?! NO!

_{[Heather's low, violent growls turn into a shriek of outrage as the neck she's wringing softens and runs tight through her fingers-- nothing but dust. It's soon followed by the rest of the pale woman, until Heather might as well be kneeling on a broken bag of sand.]}

NO! NO NO NO! I was supposed to KILL you, god DAMN IT!!

_{[She claws at the sand in a furious rage, pounding her fists into it-- but it's like trying to attack water. Useless and unsatisfying. Giving up almost immediately, she surges to her feet and yanks a gun out of her pocket-- with hands stained blue with paint-- aiming straight ahead at the warped walls at the end of the room. Her cry of anger was already turning unintelligible-- less spiteful words and more just a fierce, inhuman howl of rage.]

[She fires. It's a waste of bullets, but she doesn't even care. She hates this place. She just wants to HURT it. In any way possible.]}

Edited 2011-06-28 07:25 (UTC)

[At this very moment, Ken doesn't care what she wants him to see or do, or anything.

Because Heather's rage doesn't scare him one bit. The fact that Heather has a gun and it is shooting at things scares the life out of him, though. Because those can misfire and hit somebody and they will die.

He has bad experiences with guns.

He's not a person who touches other people often. It makes him uncomfortable, but he's grabbing Heather's vest, suddenly so aware of how much smaller he is than her, suddenly very aware that there is so much about her that he doesn't know.

But he's not afraid of her. He just doesn't know how to ask her to stop when he is so, so familiar with that kind of rage.]

_{[When she feels the tug on her vest, she whips her head around to see what it was that was daring to interrupt the havoc she was wreaking.]

[There is something foul about her face-- dark flickers of something not human, a shadow of something bestial and wild. Her eyes gleam-- not with the hot determination he's likely seen a hundred times before, but with an almost sick orange light, blazing like there's a fire lit somewhere in her eyesockets. Her teeth are gritted, lips peeled back over them like a rabid dog.]

[For just a second, Ken is looking at something that is Not Heather. It's older and angrier and even more than it is angry, it's hurting.]

[But then it melts away when she sees the boy behind her, leaving her brown-eyed and surprised-- the snarl etched on her face dissolving into bewilderment ... and a little shame.]

[She lowers the gun.]}

... Ken? ... What're you...

[Well, first and foremost he's shaking, though it's with relief that heather is still in there somewhere.

And then he is leaning his head on her side.]

... Please stop.

[And he feels like a child, powerless and useless--but please stop 8( He's scared for her 8(]

_{[She's still there, all right... her anger is directed at everything in this place, but it sure as hell isn't directed at her friends. She hadn't had any idea the kid was there and, sickeningly, how much he might have seen. God, he's shaking.]

[She pauses, then drops the gun and kicks it away from herself with one foot, kneeling down cautiously and stretching an arm out. She's not sure if he'll want to take it, so she's not reaching FOR him directly...]}

... Sorry.

Sorry, I'll stop.

_{[The fire isn't GONE, not entirely-- there's still something just a little off, as things often are in dreams-- but she's the Heather he knows again, at least...]}

[it's almost silly how he won't show how he feels for himself, for his mother--but in this dream, it's an almost unquenchable need to try, to do what he can, to make Heather feel better.

Because he knows those words. And he knows when he felt those words--whether he said them out loud or not--there was a sick feeling of emptiness that came with them. So he doesn't care about anything else. For now he shakes his head and (even shaking, even scared, even so uncomfortable with touching someone else at all) if she lets him, he hugs her.

Because she would do it for him. Because he can't fix anything. Because he can't say anything to make it better, and he can't think his opinion would mean anything to her.

He just doesn't want to turn his back on her.]

_{[Damn straight she'd do it for him. Which is why she returns the hug, wrapping an arm around him and holding the kid close. She's just glad that he didn't... run away or... or SOMETHING. Like a lot of people might have, walking in on that little berserker fit she was having there...]}

Hey-- hey, it's okay... It's all right.

_{[It occurs to her, in a flash of dark irony, that right now she probably looks like exactly what Claudia wanted her to be. Comforting a child, holding him close... like in all those paintings of Saint Alessa, the Holy Mother, the God of Snakes and Reeds.]

[But that's not the way it is. She's not doing this because it's what Claudia wanted... but because when she looked down at Ken-- god dammmit, she saw Alessa for a second. Or rather, the child that Alessa once was.]

[And she's sick of kids having to be scared of things like this. ... Even if she might be that thing, right now...]}

[He's still shaking all over, hands clenched in the fabric of her shirt.]

You're going to be okay, right?

[It doesn't take a genius to see that Heather is not all right, now. But maybe if he doesn't let go he can keep her from losing it completely, like he had.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, he could help the one adult who'd respected him as a child. He doubted it, but maybe.]

_{[Ken you are hurting her heart--]

[She holds him tighter, and is vaguely aware that the brightly-lit church around them is sort of slipping away into shadow as she speaks.]}

Of course I will... of course.

I'm sorry.

[He's sorry that she's hurting? He's sorry that he's scared? He's sorry that Heather had to feel that rage that he knows makes him sick? Or maybe he's sorry she didn't get a chance to kill that person.

It doesn't matter. He's just glad Heather is not going to break apart.]

... It's okay, kiddo... you don't need to apologize for anything.

... I'm sorry.

_{[... Not for what she did. But the fact that he saw it.]}

You shouldn't have to hurt.

[Ken believes it, too, and he hates that she has.]

... No one should.

But that's life.

_{[She understands the sentiment... hell, she understands it better than Ken may think... but that was still the mindset that led Claudia to try and hasten the end of the world... to kill Harry Mason and force her former friend into as much mental and physical anguish as possible. Lamenting the unfairness of the hurt was understandable, but... as far as Heather was concerned, it wouldn't get somebody anywhere to dwell on it.]

[Still, she holds Ken tighter. Now they're just sitting in darkness, not unlike the void that was there outside the door.]}

[He shakes his head. His mother was the best person he knew. She'd struggled until her last moment, dying to protect him. Mitsuru's father had died trying to stop the chairman killing everyone in SEES. Minato had suffered and died because they hadn't been strong enough to fight Nyx.

And now all of SEES hurt. Wasn't that enough hurting 8( for srs.]

Why're you so strong...?

_{[That's the thing about the world... there's never enough hurting. When even the people trying to STOP all the hurting wind up deliberately hurting others to DO it... you know you live in a fucked-up universe.]}

... Sometimes... suffering makes people strong.

... You either learn how to deal with it, or you go under... and I refused to let that happen.

Walk on rocks with bare feet long enough, and the skin gets tougher.

[All the people calling out to Nyx, wanting to die... Too bad he ain't there in canon to understand that.]

[He refuses to let go of Heather. Because if he does, he might watch her slip between his fingers, like Minato, like Shinjiro, like his mom.]

_{[Don't worry, Ken, she's not going anywhere... one thing that Alessa Gillespie had wanted but Heather Mason had never was to fade away... the time for that was long over.]}

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70. [DREAM/DREAM/DREAM/DREAM]

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THIS ICON DOES NOT FIT THE MOMENT

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