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applesaucemod) wrote in
applesaucedream2014-10-30 06:02 pm
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Entry tags:
- character: daine sarrasri,
- character: desire,
- character: gabriel,
- character: iman asadi,
- character: johnny truant,
- character: lucifer,
- character: peeta mellark,
- character: spike,
- character: sunshine,
- dropped: alianne,
- dropped: calliope,
- dropped: charley pollard,
- dropped: dana cardinal,
- dropped: daniel jackson,
- dropped: illyria,
- dropped: jane eyre,
- dropped: julian bashir,
- dropped: lucy saxon,
- dropped: seth,
- dropped: the doctor (12),
- dropped: the doctor (8),
- dropped: topher brink,
- dropped: zagreus,
- party post,
- retired: aziraphale,
- retired: bee,
- retired: crowley,
- retired: melanie,
- retired: peter vincent
Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.
The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.
The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.
[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]
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Julian leans his head against his chin. "So that's why you call me 'Jules,'" he says thoughtfully, this time more to the fox, who is obviously the quieter side of his personality that Julian often has trouble tapping into. "Not just because you really know me, but you are me."
"Ascended?" Julian asks, then quickly, "Sorry." It felt... rude to interrupt a conversation between another man and his other self.
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"You met me," Aliyah murmurs. "Not in exactly this shape, perhaps."
He acknowledges her with a final scratch behind the ears and glances back up at Julian. "See, she's just...a part of yourself, externalized in a physical shape. Well, as physical as it can get in dreams, anyway."
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"Wow," Julian says, eyebrows high on his forehead after he listens to Daniel's explanation. "That must have been quite the experience. Well, I'm... glad you're not dead. You're not ascended anymore, though? You seem and act human enough, at least. You have your body back, after you reached a higher existence, or are you still... Sorry, no offense," Julian adds. "It's really none of my business, but it isn't everyday someone comes back from the dead."
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"No, I, I got, um. De-scended, I guess is the word for it. Twice, actually. Well, I died more often than - you know, it's, uh, I'm sorry. It's kind of a lot, I know."
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Julian shakes his head and smiles. "Don't be sorry, I asked, didn't I? And it's not too much. It's not something I've heard before, granted, but I'm somewhat used to strange. It sounds a bit complicated though. Ascending, descending. Do you retain anything from these experiences? The memories, or at least any benefits for all your trouble?"
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'Trouble' would be putting it mildly. The slow dissolution of his body while his internal organs bled out of his disintegrating pores is an experience that remains, unfortunately, stubbornly seared into his skull. At least the second death prior to Ascension had been a matter of quicker, marginally less painful bleeding-out.
"Not the first time, anyway. The second time I had to descend on my own, so I retained more memories. Not enough for anything solid - all that knowledge of the universe is locked away in my subconscious somewhere, I just can't access it. But I do have some...senses, perceptions of things I might not have otherwise. It's how I saw Lucifer for what he was before he admitted it."
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He tries for another smile but it just comes out pained, a twisting grimace on one side of his mouth, and he has to look away. Aliyah makes a low, sympathetic rumble and flops down to drop her head on his lap. He absently unbends his knees and stretches his legs out to accommodate her. Julian's addressing of the whole thing, mildly clinical and strictly third-party in his outlook, helps, if only slightly. It achieves that scientific distance that Daniel himself no longer has access to.
"Saved my life a few times. Made me a target in others." And darkened him, perhaps irreversibly, to know that the godlike beings he once revered for their potential power and knowledge were content to watch entire galaxies wither under oppressive megalomaniacal cosmic reshaping, simply because they thought themselves above the act of physical interference.
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Julian is quiet for a few moments, aware of Daniel's presence nearby, still little more than a shape in the darkness, and of Agamede's more tugging presence in his lap. He can hear in Daniel's voice that unnamed emotion when someone speaks about something that is too much a reality for them.
"I'm sorry," he says, realizing he's said this before, but he does mean it. "I can't imagine this is something you like to rehash over and over again. I do that sometimes, and it's not the best of habits. When I can't understand something or why something had to happen, I take it apart from the inside out, even if it might be the worst possible thing for me to do. I do it to myself," he adds with a humorless chuckle. "There's always that question of why, though. What could I have done to save this person? What equipment could I have had that might have helped me find a cure for this population before I was too late? What could I have done that would have made me less of a target for this attack?" How many research projects did Julian have still active, projects that didn't even mean anything anymore, research for people that couldn't be saved anymore? More than was probably healthy. But there were also the times he'd had to make decisions about those who didn't want to be saved.
((I lost this post about six hundred times. It's a mess. Arg.))
no subject
He falls silent, lets the two of them wrestle their existential demons for a moment. He's gathered that they're both of them people who have built themselves around who they can help, what civilizations they can save. Peaceful, largely, and trying to build peace in galaxies where that was simply not in their nature. And when the galaxy or universe at large are to blame for things like that, it's only too easy to take all the guilt and possess it into themselves, internalize it, feel responsible for what they may not have been able to prevent either way, and steep themselves in self-blame because it only seems fair.
"We muddle our way through," he says finally, looking down at Aliyah as he strokes her, softly, requires something to do with his hands to grind away the knotted anxiety. "And if there's...anything I do remember from when I was Ascended, it's that we can't judge ourselves on a criteria of success versus failure. If we judge ourselves at all, we do it by the strength of our conviction and, and how we chose to face the things we couldn't possibly win against every time, regardless of whether or not we failed."
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"Easier said than done," Julian muses after a moment of silence with a humorless chuckle. "What's the ancient saying? 'We are our own worst critic?'" He glances over at Daniel. "Not sure I can say this to someone I met all of a few hours ago, but you seem to have more strength of conviction than nearly anyone I've met. You seem to be doing much more than simply muddling your way through, though I'm sure you can't see that. We rarely can."
"Well," Julian says suddenly, almost brightly, slapping his hands on his knees. Enough of that then. "Here I am, stuck in a dream world being hunted by something dangerous that wants to eat or possibly murder me, and not helping either of us by making you relive experiences that can't possibly be pleasant in any way. I am, it turns out, not very good in these situations. Should we run again or continue stay hidden? Can one even fight a possibly horrific mystical dream creature? I have no with to die here, even if it does end up with waking up. Do you have any ideas? Because I'm clear out, and you have much more experience with strange worlds and dangerous situations."
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He says nothing about any of it. The technicalities of their situation are more important, and less densely complicated than philosophical discussions about success, failure, and the hypothetical weight of the human soul.
"I don't know," Daniel says truthfully. "We can go further in, maybe, see if anything comes of it. It's...entirely possible that there's nothing after us at all, just a, a dream-specific emotional response to the setting."
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"Going deeper in certainly sounds just as awful as going back out and staying in place, but at least then I feel like I'm *doing* something constructive. Shall we?" He offers a hand up to Daniel.
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"We're gonna have to watch our step," Daniel cautions, dusting himself off and peering without much result into the semidarkness. "Aliyah can see well enough to let us know if we're about to walk into or off of anything but we won't get much warning."
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"I suppose it'll have to do," Julian muses, reaching out in front of him. It's already nearly impossible to see, and he figures if they go farther back, he will most likely lose sight of everything. EVen with enhanced eyesight he hardly has any sort of night-vision. But again, taking action feels at least... useful, somehow. "I'd say good luck to us both, but that doesn't sound particularly as optimistic as it did at first thought," Julian says with a light tone he doesn't exactly feel.
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Aliyah butts him on the knees, just hard enough to make him wobble and he bites his lip, immediately contrite. Morbid humor's easier when one's died a half dozen times and a dozen more in dreams.
Wordless, he stretches one hand out to feel against the cave wall, smooth and cool and disconcertingly solid, and uses that as his guide in the dark. A few steps forward at a time, then a few more. Aliyah moves a half step in front of him, wary and tail swishing.
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"But this fact doesn't make me any less keen on experiencing it. So for now, I'll do my best to stay alive." Julian isn't sure how much his best is worth, but it's dark and he can see Daniel even less than he could a minute ago. He can still see Agamede, but even more so, sense her... feel her nearby, like a tug on his heart. It's somewhat reassuring, knowing that at the very least he can't lose her completely no matter how dark it gets.
no subject
There's a long stretch of silence (or perhaps he just perceives it that way) in which he can hear nothing but the whisper of his fingertips brushing stone, the dull crunch of footfalls over gravel and rock floor, the padding of Aliyah and Agamede, the soul-creatures Daniel just has to assume are close by since he's essentially flying blind. Completely blind, in fact; when he lifts a hand in front of his eyes to test his vision he can't make it out at all.
Aliyah growls a short warning but Daniel still stumbles and smacks into the wall when he comes up against it. He immediately begins running his hands over it, searching for an indication of a fork, a turn, anything. But the wall simply curves seamlessly around to form a perfect semicircle.
"Dead end." He lets out a small grunt of frustration, sorely tempted to kick the wall in a useless, annoyed gesture. "We should probably turn around before -"
He stops when the words are punctuated by a dull rumbling, the groaning weight of the stone overhead making its heretofore unknown instability explicitly clear.
"Uh-oh."
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"Damn," Julian says at Daniel's proclamation, and sighs as he comes up behind him. "Well, so much for that idea. At least we'll be heading back towards the light! I'm turning around now, going to follow the opposite wall in case we missed a turn-off somewhere."
But that idea lasts all of three seconds when the rumbling begins. In the darkness, it seems deafening, as if it is the only thing that exists.
"Damn!" Julian says again, because maybe it will help. This is it, isn't it? This is where he finds out what it's like to die horribly in a dream and wake up on the other side. Even knowing that there is another side though, Julian's body won't let him just stand still and accept it. His body is screaming at him to survive even as his brain is screaming that it will all be over soon if he would just stop struggling and let himself awake up already.
"I guess we're running again!" Julian says, raising his voice to be heard, letting go of the wall's safety and beginning to sprint. "If we don't make it," which seems a bit pessimistic, but Julian feels like he can't really be blamed for that, "It was truly a pleasure! Even some of the running and almost dying bits!"
everything has just gotten awful (warning for daemon separation stuff)
- and a rain of dust and heavy stone collapses, directly in front of him, and Daniel has barely enough time to retreat before getting caught in the downpour but -
- but Aliyah doesn't.
There's a horrible wrenching pain in his chest, his limbs, everything as she flees the showering collapse of stone, pulls away down the passage, farther than they should be separated he knows this, he knows this is bad, this is bad this is very very bad. And Daniel hurls himself toward the rapidly building pile of rubble and tumbled rock, straining to make it through before the passageway is blocked completely, ignoring the sharp fragments of stone as they come pinwheeling at him, desperate to reach at her. He can hear her cries, knows she's in just as much pain as he is, but they are separated by a wall of stone and a trembling cave and Daniel can't vocalize, can't scream, can't speak, just grasps uselessly at the hiss of dust, trying to shovel away the mass of heaped debris.
Re: everything has just gotten awful (warning for daemon separation stuff)
The collapse of stone from the ceiling hits just behind Julian's feet, and he cowers for a second, crouching as the rocks, dust, and debris fall behind him, around him, on him. He coughs, unable to breathe, choking... this becomes more of a concern than the rocks that are hitting him, smashing into his shoulders, arms, and back painfully. He is unaware of where Daniel is, if he's even alive, when a large chunk hits the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. The darkness becomes a different kind of dark, quieter.
It is Aliyah's sounds that wake him, an unearthly sound of pain that Julian is sure he won't ever be able to forget. Agamede is calling his name over and over again, her teeth sharp against the skin of his arm as she bites him, hard, to get him moving. Julian isn't positive how long it's been when attempts to sit up, unsure if he was unconscious or simply stunned, but it couldn't have been too long as the cave still seems intent on collapsing. He gets up, still unable to see, and puts a hand to his head. The side of his head and face wet and warm, which explains the dizziness and nausea that overwhelms him for a few seconds nad leaves him unable to move for a few moments. His body pangs with every movement, every breath, and he gags. But he is alive, and therefore still in the dream. Nothing to do but force himself into a standing position, wipe what can only be blood from his eyes, and do something.
"Daniel?!" He yells over the noise and through the dust that still seeps into his ears, nose, and mouth. It is Agamede who says, "He's trapped on the other side! They're separated, Jules, they shouldn't be separated, they need to be together!" She is absolutely hysterical, and Julian feels his way over to the rock. "Daniel, get as close to my voice as you can!" he yells again, hoping that Daniel can even hear him at all. "Agamede, get Aliyah as near as possible!"
Julian begins to try to dig the wall out, not sure if Daniel is really on the other side, still alive, or trapped underneath, but he has to try, damn it! Even if he ran now, he would survive what, for another few minutes? He can't just leave with Daniel trapped, separated from his soul. He has to do something, anything, even if it means nothing in the end. It seems a futile task, considering he can't see what he's doing, but he continues to pull and tear at the rocks all the same. Aliyah's cries are getting worse, and from what he can tell, Julian isn't going to make it. The whole rest of the cave is going to come down on him any minute, surely.
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He can't think, can't move, can't process or feel or anything, just lie in tortuous concavity while the blinding skid of pain receptors fire off, repeatedly, and he listens to Aliyah cry.
Some distant part of him registers Julian's voice. An even more distant part accesses the itch, the need to get back to Aliyah and, miraculously, seizes on it. Movement aches (everything aches), movement is an exercise in pain tolerance and grinding slowness (the pain is constant), movement is spasmodic shift through air that is denser than Daniel remembers (Daniel, he can remember his name and its individual syllables now, he must not forget again), movement is a slow and terrible effort to push through the viscosity of his pain and his absence of thought.
Speaking is harder.
"Ju -" Daniel gets no farther. Aliyah's cries reach a piercing, tearing peak, Daniel's heart wrenches in its cavity, one hand leaps out toward the rubble, but unless his reduced sensory inputs are playing havoc on him, the entire cave is shaking again.
"J -"
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Julian is still needlessly pulling at the rocks in front of him until the very last moment when everything comes down around him. He curls up crouching, one arm uselessly over his head, Agamede clutched tightly to his chest with his other hand, and Aliyah somewhere just between his body and the stone wall that separates her and Daniel. All Julian can hear is the roaring, and then everything goes silent and still. Julian doesn't remember anything after that.
tw: daemon separation, death
Snaps.
The thing.
The thing.
The -
Aliyah.
is gone.
He can't feel her heartbeat in synchronous panic to his, he can't feel the chaotic swirl of her pained desperation to return to him, he can't hear her calls, he can't feel her terror he can't feel he can't feel he can't feel himself
everything dims
and he is alone
when the ceiling falls he cannot close his eyes and he does not protest
it will not matter one way or the other
Aliyah is gone
--
Daniel awakes in a surge of sweat and panic, clawing at his chest in fearful revelation. Even once he registers it was a dream, it still feels horribly like some deep and vital part of himself has just been irretrievably lost.
Re: tw: daemon separation, death