foolishwren | 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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.]}

70. [DREAM/DREAM/DREAM/DREAM]

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