Can't Stand the Distance, Can't Dream Alone [open to all]

[applesaucemod]

The sleeping rifties might have a difficult time realizing they're dreaming this evening, in part because tonight's dreams are atypically vivid, even compared to the rift's usual efforts. Perhaps that is because it's drawing so heavily from the memories of the dreamers, themselves, and using that information to recreate their home worlds in stunning detail. And that is the real reason the dreamers might not be eager to accept the unreality of the situation: the situation is one that many of them have been hoping for for months or even years. In their dreams tonight, the rifties are going home.

Perhaps they arrive in the same moment that they left. Perhaps months have passed at home, or they might even find themselves arriving before their departure point. But those are small details when compared to the overwhelming realization that they're back where they belong.

They're not alone. Many dreamers will find the rift has given them a companion for the return trip. Well, an uncomplicated return home is probably more than anyone could have hoped for, anyway. And for the unwitting visitor, perhaps another universal displacement will be easier to bear with the addition of a local guide.

[ooc: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome, and dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Also at the players' discretion: when their character arrives in their 'home universe,' and how many (if any) locals they'd want to run into.]

Comments

[anguiform]

Well this is... different. Or rather, it really, really isn't.

This is the body he-- or rather she¹-- wore ages ago. Literal ages, in fact. Not so long after the Garden. She remembers this body; she'd first had it when she was busy worming her way into the court of Sargon of Akkad² and for some time after that. It had been a good body; long of face with sharp narrow eyes and a build that Crowley can retroactively appreciate would have made her a hell of a basketball player. But what on Earth is she doing in it now?

Last Crowley checked, she'd been in an alternate universe Manhattan in a more or less male body, certainly not somewhere in the scrublands outside what she's fairly certain is the city of Babylon. Time travel? It's a possibility; the Rift did drag her and Aziraphale four years into the future, but surely any travel backwards in time wouldn't stick Crowley back into the appropriate body.

Bloody weird is what it is. She wrinkles her nose, and then wrinkles it again when the motion brings it up against the short veil she's wearing, weighted with beads of gold and lapis. Ah, yes. No sunglasses in... well. Whatever year this is. Looking down, she sees bare feet (still snake-skinned on their soles) and the fringed hem of a brightly-coloured skirt, and strapped at her waist, a broad-bladed knife. All the trimmings, then.

Not knowing what else to do, she sets off towards the city, running through the events of the past few days in her head to see if she can pin down any possible cause for her apparent time-travelling. She's knocked out of her contemplations as she walks by the sight of an unsettlingly familiar figure some way off. A huge, dark man kitted out in a soldier's gear, quite as alone as she.

She can always tell Aziraphale, even if she didn't already know the shape he's in. There's something about the angelic presence animating the flesh that makes it immediately apparent who he is, and all Crowley can think for a moment is thank fuck she's not alone.

'Oi! Angel!'

And, oh, that's weird, different voice; she'll have to get used to that all over again.

¹ Demons, like angels, are genderless beings. Accordingly, Crowley has never felt especially attached to any particular gender, and has therefore as a matter of course just gone with whichever pronouns people seem most likely to prescribe her in any given body.

² And susbsequently getting to know his daughter Enheduanna, whom history would actually remember, unlike old Sargon. She'd been rather enamoured of her at the time, and in retrospect realised that Enheduanna was just a slightly more pronounced example of why Crowley really quite admired humans.

[bibliophale]

Aziraphale startles¹ at the burst of English, coming so soon after he'd tamped his down, and he blinks over at Crowley. Likewise, he can always tell the demon, especially with her being so very snakelike in these early days.

"Oh," he says, trying to downplay his relief. "Oh, hello." He smiles sheepishly and approaches her, noting how much he clanks in this day's garb - what he would give for a good sweater! though maybe not in this heat - looking her up and down. "Bloody strange state of affairs, isn't it?"

She is - goodness, she is attractive. Aziraphale notes this uncomfortably. When all this had happened before, he hadn't yet learned to notice such things, and really, he only barely notices them now. It's not so much that she is aesthetically pleasing (though that certainly plays a part) as it is that it's Crowley, a Crowley he'd never been able to properly appreciate before, what with them being at odds all the time. They'd had their share of, well, questionable encounters even in those early days, though it had been a rather confusing time, what with the heated emotions and all². He'd never had an opportunity to... enjoy her company.

"Do you think the Rift did this on purpose?" he asks, doggedly pressing on. "I mean, it's rather a large margin to miss by. Some sort of off-color joke?"

¹ Rather an amusing sight in such a large, imposing body.

² You know when you're fighting your sworn enemy all close and sweaty and full of passionate energy, and you get your wires crossed and you accidentally end up having all the wrong feelings about it? No, Aziraphale doesn't know anything about that either. He certainly does not.