Never Lie, Never Sin, Tell Us What A Mess We're In [Open to Multiple]

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie stares at the door to her cell. There is something different about it today. She's having a little trouble placing it, but she knows there's something off. It's concerning. She has been so clear about what ROMAC needs to do to keep everyone else safe from her, and the suspicion that they're messing up somehow makes her very, very nervous.

It's the locks, she realizes after a few moments of intense scrutiny. That is what's wrong. There are supposed to be five, but she only counts four. That can't be right. Melanie approaches the door with a little frown on her face, her fingertips hovering a few inches from the metal, wary of the shock she'll get if she actually touches it. Her hand flits from lock to lock like a hummingbird. Now there are six. How are there six? She counts again, baffled to find that the number has halved itself to three.

She tries to count again, but this time, there are none.

Now she does reach out to touch the door, she can't help it - she can't believe it. They can't have taken the locks away. They're important. Hasn't she made it clear how incredibly important it is that they keep her in here?

The door does not shock her. Instead, it swings open beneath her hand, smooth and silent.

Melanie presses her lips together, her mouth a thin, disapproving line. She doesn't like the thought of leaving her room, but someone has to be told about this so they can get it fixed. Keeping her movements slow and even, as if she's trying to sneak past a group of hungries, Melanie carefully steps out into the hall to look for help.

Comments

[peacefulexplorer]

"Sorry, no, you're right," Daniel amends hastily. "Let's uh, let's try that first."

Her violent refusal of the idea isn't all that surprising. It's an admittedly horrible idea, however much Daniel is disturbingly okay with putting himself through it. Still, after her firm veto, now wouldn't be a tactful time to introduce the conversational hurdle of oh by the way it wouldn't be the first time I've died horribly, so Daniel keeps quiet.

"Sorry," he says again, a little sheepishly.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie doesn't look entirely appeased - what an awful thing for him to suggest after everything they've been through already! - but she does shift more of her focus to the book. She has to turn the pages with a bit more care than usual, but she remembers it well, and it doesn't take her too long for her to find one of the nice, descriptive passages about the garden starting to wake up in the springtime.

Focusing proves to be a bit trickier. There are moments where she thinks things are changing, that she's making a difference: a brief whiff of fresh, growing things, a snatch of improbable birdsong. But the nightmare has a good hold on her, and there's nothing she can do about the distressingly solid look of her dilapidated little cell.

She frowns down at the page in frustration, then lifts her head to give Daniel a pensive look. "I think I could do it if my eyes were shut," she says, absently running her palm over the page. She chews her lip a moment, feeling unaccountably shy, then asks, "Could you read it to me?"

[peacefulexplorer]

"I, uh." He stares at her, both taken aback and oddly touched. "Um. Sure, okay."

He takes the book, handling it with a delicacy he ordinarily reserves for the most fragile of artifacts, and peers at the faded lines of text. He's secretly a bit terrified he might tear one of the brittle pages.

After a few moments of shuffling around in search of a pleasant-sounding passage (and a then a few more than necessary as he fully comes to terms with Melanie's suggestion), Daniel coughs a little in a poor attempt to mask nervous anticipation and starts reading:

"At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then -" He breaks off to squint fiercely at the paled printing, then continues haltingly - "Um, then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson."

[all_the_gifts]

"Thank you," Melanie says as he takes the book. She pulls her knees up to her chest and closes her eyes, waiting.

She's used to being read to. It takes two hands to manage a book, and they were never allowed more than one hand free during class. Any reading had to be done aloud, by the teacher. The first book Melanie actually held in her own hands was one that Miss Justineau had illicitly stuffed down the back of her wheelchair, and she'd barely had any time to enjoy it before the base was overrun.

Daniel isn't quite as good as Miss Justineau, but that's all right. The book is old, and the lighting is bad, and what he's doing is good enough. Melanie focuses on his voice, deliberately ignoring everything else, and just listens.

The first changes are subtle. There's a shift in the quality of the air into something more fresh and sharp than the stale atmosphere in the basement. Then, blades of grass begin to poke their way up from the floor, first colonizing the seam where the floor meets the wall, then rippling over the concrete like a thick, green carpet.

Things escalate from there. Cinderblock walls are replaced by stone, which is rapidly overrun with ivy and roses. The grass is joined by patches of flowers, like the ones Miss Justineau brought into the classroom to show everyone what spring really looked like: daffodils and crocuses and several riotous clumps of campion in 'every tint and hue of crimson.'

Melanie doesn't dare open her eyes yet. She can still feel the oppressive weight of ROMAC's tower over her head. "Keep reading," she urges.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel can feel something shifting imperceptibly but it all seems oddly peripheral, subtle flickers of an environment reshaping itself. He returns his focus to the book and tries not to stumble over descriptions of irises and white lilies and clusters of roses growing over the sundial. The book is old, the ink discolored, the pages almost crumbling beneath his fingers no matter how gingerly he handles them.

But he can tell Melanie's idea is working as the horrible soft grays gradually sharpen into the eponymous garden's predominant green. He nods at her suggestion and continues:

"Fair fresh leaves, and buds – and buds – tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air."

Daniel takes another breath and gets a lungful of said garden air which, after the stale, trapped feeling of the tiny room, feels like a blessing.

[all_the_gifts]

It's working. She knows it's working, and she feel a sort of… easing, of the pressure above her. Magic, yes, that's what she's doing. Working magic. Her fingers curl as if she's gripping onto a curtain, some last barely-tangible barrier between where she is and where she wants to be.

When Daniel says 'garden air,' she yanks.

The weight of the tower falls away, and bright sunlight lands on Melanie's face. She loosens her hands and cracks open first one eye, then the other, a grin tugging at her lips.

She's sitting on a stone bench, now, and there's a wide blue sky above her, framed by the walls of the secret garden. The flowers are all in full display, and there's birdsong and the faint hum of insects in the air. Melanie stands up on the bench, moving aside a low-hanging branch of wisteria so she can get a better look at the place. It's so beautiful! Whether it's strictly accurate is another matter - some of the plants that Melanie's imagination provided would definitely be more at home in a rainforest than an English garden - but it's a far sight better than the place they left behind.

"We did it!" she exclaims, hopping down off the bench.

[peacefulexplorer]

One minute they're both sitting, Daniel hesitantly reading out the passage and the air shivering with the strain of the words, and the next they're - not.

Daniel looks up, mouth open, the book almost entirely forgotten. The sunlight gleaming down at them is a welcome contrast to the dark and derelict building, a complete tonal about-face. Melanie's recreated the titular garden, blending the description on the pages with details Daniel assumes came from her own head. The effect is striking, if not strictly botanically accurate.

He closes the book and carefully tucks it under his own arm - it must have traveled with them through kinetic necessity since Daniel had been holding it at the time - and stands to better observe their startlingly beautiful new dream setting. He quickly decides that he vastly prefers it to the building they were in before. Both versions. For a few minutes he can only stand and stare in silent, appreciative wonder. Melanie's enthusiastic reaction returns him to the present.

"You did it," he answers, smiling. "You did this with your mind. Which is really...wow. It's, it's incredible, really."

He's not lying. The attention to detail, while not what Daniel would call conventional, is stunning - and unconventional has never equated to anything bad in his mind. It demonstrates an ability to think beyond common confines, a freedom of imagination Melanie clearly possesses. She's a bright kid, which, as Daniel soon remembers, makes her real world situation all the more sobering. He can't understand why someone with this much intellect and creative energy would be locked up, would want to be locked up. Her potential is astronomical. And she very obviously loves books, only serving to endear to him more.

[all_the_gifts]

"You helped," Melanie says, transferring her grin up to Daniel. "It would have been a lot more difficult if you hadn't read to me." Maybe not impossible, but she wanted to get them both out of there sooner rather than later. "And now we know dreams can be changed if you think hard enough about it." She's still not certain how often she's going to be dreaming, but this seems like useful knowledge to have either way.

Especially if you're having a nightmare.

Melanie looks around the garden, admiring the vivid colors. A few implausibly-patterned butterflies make their way past. "Should we explore?" she asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

[peacefulexplorer]

It's wonderful to see her happy, elated and smiling and not the perpetually wary child he first met wandering in the halls, but the joy upon seeing Melanie's excitement is soon tempered by a stab of regret. However much he's glad she's more at ease now, this is just a dream and sooner or later she'll have to return to the waking world which, as Daniel is beginning to understand, won't be as easy to escape as reading aloud from a book.

He refuses to let his grin fade, however. For the first time she seems to be completely open and delighted to explore this new space, and he won't spoil that for her.

"Sure," Daniel replies, tightening his grip on the book for safekeeping. He has no idea what they may even need it for, but he's not about to put down potentially useful items where he won't be able to find them again. "Love what you've done with the place."

He's also retroactively grateful that allergies are no longer an issue for him. The amount of vividly colored flowers is almost overpowering.