applesaucedream | A Time to Rise and a Time to Fall [Open to Multiple]

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A Time to Rise and a Time to Fall [Open to Multiple]

Greta dreams of falling (again, and again).

The path ends abruptly. Maybe there never was a path, only a deceptive stretch of ground, free of any undergrowth, that looked like it could be one. Either way, she's left standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, looking down at the leaf-strewn forest floor far below her. A small rock tumbles down, as if for the sole purpose of illustrating the length of the drop. It seems to take ages to reach the bottom, clattering off exposed roots and finally thudding to the ground.

There's a roaring in her ears like a great wind, but it isn't the wind. The earth shudders beneath her feet. She reaches out wildly for something on which to steady herself, knowing even as she does so that she'll miss; she always misses, it's so stupid. Maybe she deserves whatever comes next.

But she doesn't miss. Her hand closes around something - not a branch. An arm? Whatever it is, she isn't letting go.

[ooc: whoops, Greta's dropped into your dream. Or you've dropped into hers. Whether you want them both to be in her giant-plagued forest or in a setting more familiar to your character is up to you. Poor Greta's just gonna have to roll with it either way.]

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Oh. He didn't like that. Well, he does look to be at that age where boys like to pretend they don't need looking after, even if they probably do. Perhaps she's slighted him.

Or perhaps it's more than that. It's hard to get a good look at him in this poor lighting, and it's hard to judge what's normal when you're both from different worlds... but he does have a sort of rangy, stray-cat look to him. As if he's used to not being cared for, to the point where even a kind word is regarded with wariness. Greta feels a sudden rush of sympathy for the boy. He's clearly not all right, and he just as clearly doesn't want her to pat him on the head and give him a biscuit.

So she folds her hands neatly and offers him a faint smile that she hopes he'll find bolstering. "I'm sure we'll be fine. The giant can't reach us here." After a beat, she tries, "You did well to make this staircase." She's grasping at straws, not quite sure what magic phrase will make him feel better, but she means well, and her gratitude is genuine.

Shit. Shit.

"No, I didn't," he barks, harsher than he wants to, on autopilot, fuck shut up she's trying to help you shut up, "I wasn't even supposed to be able - this is all I can make, you... you can't understand." He lets out a huff of a sigh and stops briefly, putting a hand over his eyes. Shut up. Slow down and fucking account for yourself, and then most of all shut up.

"I'm sorry," he says. "These dreams are bad for me. I... a lot of bad shit keeps - I'm not my at best right now."

Does he even have a best?

"I'm just glad I could help you," he says, a little calmer now, he hopes audibly sincere in spite of his weary resignation. "But if we can get out of this house that'll be for the best."

Well. At least that's not wholly ominous.

Greta stiffens at Johnny's sudden outburst, but she doesn't flinch, and she doesn't snap back. She just pushed him too far, struck a nerve without meaning to, so he lashed out - not unlike a stray cat. It's not his fault. So she does the only thing she can, at this point: quietly waits for him to calm himself down.

It's not very encouraging, this news that he isn't as in control of the dream as she'd thought, and that this house (if there is indeed a house beyond this staircase) might not be any safer than the Woods were.

"Right," she says, keeping her voice calm and level, not wanting to upset him or make him think he's upset her. She considers their options, then says, "We could head back up. The giant might have moved on."

So she'd go back to facing her nightmare because he can't face his. Johnny sighs softly, turns and casts the glow of his lighter as far as he can.

"I don't think we could, actually," he says. "Things have a way of... moving around." The house, the dreaming... neither of those structures are exactly stable. "I have more, um - flexibility, here," he adds after a moment, continuing down. "It'll be okay." ~~Will it?~~

He says nothing for a few more steps, then he says, "My dreams are usually better when I'm not alone, so. That's something."

"I see." Greta looks up, seeing nothing but inky blackness. She doesn't think they've climbed so far that she couldn't still see some light from around the edges of the door, if the door was still up there. Johnny is probably right, then.

She resumes following him down the stairs, trailing a hand along the wall. The smoothness is interrupted by the occasional root, but she doesn't find the shifting textures as off-putting as the sharp drop on the other side of the steps.

When Johnny allows that her being here might improve things, Greta smiles fleetingly. "Anything I can do to help," she says.

What can she do? He wants to tell her something but he just bites his lip and nods to acknowledge it. It's sweet of her to offer and he wants to like her company, but there's still something, just tickling at the edge of his awareness. Something about her that's making him - he can't even put a name to it. It's like he wants to push her away but why, why would he want that? It doesn't make any fucking sense.

He's interrupted from percolating over this bullshit by a sudden shift in their surroundings - abruptly, they've reached the bottom of the stairs. Now they're in an expansive dark room, much like ones he's dreamed about before. Great. If they can just find a door - or hell, even a wall. There's no walls here anymore, just big, dark, empty space. He could make a door, maybe, if there was a wall.

"Okayyy," he says hesitantly. "Well, this is... progress, maybe." He starts to creep out into it. "Stay close," he advises, trying really hard not to sound totally shit scared.

She's not sure if an enormous, empty room is an improvement over a staircase, but at least she no longer has to worry about what a disaster it would be if one of them tripped. Of course, she can easily exchange that for the worry of what might be beyond the faint circle of light that Johnny's producing. There's no furniture or fixtures - she can't even make out any walls. If the floor wasn't so smooth, she might just as easily guess that they were in some kind of massive cavern, and not a house at all.

"Don't worry," she says, her tone just a bit dry, as she wraps her husband's scarf more snugly around her neck. If her only other option is 'wander blindly out into the dark,' she'll definitely be sticking close to Johnny. "Is there anything we ought to be looking for?" she asks, glancing back over her shoulder. The stairway has already been swallowed up by the gloom. "A particular way out, or something?"

"No particular way, no," he murmurs. "Anything would do." Really, a wall would do, if they could find one, but he doesn't want to have to explain that right now. He wanders further into the darkness, trying to quell his own fears, slow the pounding of his heart, but he's so sure, he's so sure something terrible is going to happen, something will find them, that thing that lives in the darkest parts of his memory, or in the house (and really, what's the difference), or anything else, there's so many monsters in him, really, why does he even try to help anyone when he's so poisonous to the touch.

And then, whether to justify his fears or simply summoned by them, he hears something, the scrape of a footstep, too distant to be either of them. He halts sharply, stretching out an arm to stop Greta, and listens, holding the lighter out and around, wishing the glow reached further.

No more sounds for now, but that doesn't mean anything. He can only hear himself breathing faintly.

"Don't move," he whispers, and takes a few cursory steps, not getting too far from her, just - testing. Will it echo him? Will it show itself? (Did he imagine it?)

Nothing. For a long time, nothing. Finally, warily, he turns back to her, he needs to tell her something, tell her to keep an ear out, but he shouldn't have turned, obviously, that was enough. Hands grasp him from behind, knocking the lighter to the ground - miraculously it stays lit, casting a dim glow over him as he's tugged down to the floor, one hand around pressed over his mouth and the other on his throat. He screams, muffled, flailing out to get a hit in, and in the faint flickering light he sees the outline of a too-familiar face, the glint of those eyes and white teeth in a predator grin - Zagreus, waiting for him of course, hovering in the shadows, and he walked right into it.

He writhes and struggles wildly but it's not enough, the hand pressing too hard around his throat, forcibly against his mouth and his nose, he can't breathe, he just prays Greta will do the smart fucking thing and grab the lighter and run, Zagreus doesn't care about her, doesn't have to know she's there, and if Johnny's snuffed out then she'll be free of the house too, probably, maybe let into something better, something that's hers, minus the giant.

Edited 2015-01-25 03:18 (UTC)

Greta's brow furrows a little as she begins to belatedly suspect that Johnny has hardly any control over the dream. The darkness could have been taken as mere simplicity - maybe it's easier to control a little circle of light with nothing beyond it - but that's not what this is. There's something out there, she hears it as clearly as he does. Something that Johnny didn't invite or create. They are not safe here.

"Johnny…" she murmurs uncertainly when he moves away from her. What is he trying to do? Protect her? The light he carries must be a beacon to whatever is out there, and there he goes, as if to make sure it's only him illuminated. It's a selfless gesture, and considering how uncomfortable she made him earlier, she really can't help but be touched by it. What a brave young man he is.

He turns back toward her, and she starts to step forward, and then everything goes terribly wrong. Johnny is seized from behind - she can hardly see the person behind him, only a glint of white teeth and a curly hair - and his candle falls to the ground, and even in the dim, guttering light she can see that he's being choked. He struggles uselessly, arms flailing wildly, and she can't less this happen, she can't, she won't.

Greta's not sure how she ends up behind the struggling pair, her hands tearing at the scarf around her neck - the only thing she has - and then twisting it around into something thin and strong. She barely knows what she's doing, she can't think over the sound of Johnny's muffled screaming, all she knows is that she can't let this happen. It's as if her arms don't even belong to her as they toss the length of scarf over the attacker's head until it catches beneath his chin and then pull, hauling him back with all their strength.

No, no, no - why doesn't she run, can't she sense how dangerous a thing she's trying to fight, but no she's strangling him with her fucking scarf, and miraculously Zagreus actually yields, pulled back, hands at his throat - enough for Johnny to deliver a sharp rabbit-kick to the gut, pull himself out from under. Greta tugs hard enough that the monster actually crashes down to the ground, and Johnny doesn't wait around to see him get back up. He sweeps up the lighter, seizes her arm, and bolts. He's still gasping for breath, not strong enough to run very far, and already, too soon, he's stumbling, tripping over himself until he goes down, letting her go and dropping onto the floor. Fuck. Fuck, he'll be coming after them, he must be-

-no, no. Stupid. If it were him, he would have said something, he would have warped and twisted the dream so they couldn't escape, and he wouldn't have been downed so easily. Stupid, crazy little Johnny. It wasn't him, it was never him, just the version he carries around in his head sometimes, coiled to spring on whoever he's with. Fucking great.

He sets the lighter down gently, covering his face with one hand, before splaying them both out on the floor.

Stupid again. Trapped by horizontal thinking. You don't need a wall, idiot. All you need is a surface.

With a weary, miserable huff of breath, he opens another trapdoor and hoists himself down without a word to Greta, trusting her to follow.

The world tilts dizzyingly - he's sliding out from a wall now, sideways, not down - he lands on hardwood. Everything is blindingly lit here, bright, cheerful daylight pouring in through broad, welcoming windows. The house, still, but the upper part, the part the Navidsons actually lived in. This is okay for now. This is better than what's in there.

He curls over himself on the floor, breathing slowly.

It works, it actually works. The man - the monster? - falls to the ground, and the next thing she knows, Johnny's taken her by the arm and is hauling her off, scarf trailing from her other hand like a banner. He's alive, he's well enough to run, but not for long - he back down on the floor a few moments later. Greta drops into a crouch beside him, wanting to rest a hand on his back but wary of touching him at all. "Johnny?" she tries.

His only response is to open a door in the floor, another trapdoor not unlike the one he first opened in the Woods. When he drops through, she follows - and the world tilts around her. The floor has somehow opened into a wall, and she lets out a startled little hoot as down becomes sideways and she lands on a hardwood floor.

At least it's bright here. There's sunlight streaming through the windows. It feels considerably safer than the place they left behind.

But Johnny's still curled in on himself, and she can't let that keep happening, either. Greta sits down next to him with a sigh and a rustle of skirts, then cautiously rests a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right," she says softly. "You're all right, Johnny."

No it isn't, no he's not. He's already trembling when she touches him, and that sends a harder jolt through his body, though he doesn't pull away. There it is again, that tug of discomfort, why, just because she's reassuring him? Christ, don't be an asshole, Johnny.

"I... I'm sorry," he murmurs. He feels too hot suddenly, so he lifts himself up, nudging her hand off gently so he can strip himself of his hoodie. Beneath is just a t-shirt, and she'll be able to see his scars, but whatever. She's already seen the worst of him.

"He wasn't real," he says softly, staring at the floor. "He was just - in my head. If he was real he would've-" He closes his eyes and tilts his head for a moment, clenching his jaw. "What you did, it wouldn't have worked. He's too powerful. Listen." Finally he looks at her, and he feels a twist in his gut seeing her worried, pitying expression. "If he ever see him again - ever - just run. Don't talk to him. Don't get near him. Okay?"

He breaks off and looks away again, shivering in spite of his heightened body temperature.

Oh, dear. She frowns when he nudges her hand away, and then has to suppress a gasp when his scars are revealed. What's happened to him? The poor boy. Greta presses her lips together and resolutely tears her gaze away from his arms when he speaks to her, focusing on his face, instead.

Honestly, she didn't get a very good look at his attacker, and she's not sure she would recognize him if she saw him in the light of day. But she nods anyway. "I promise."

Johnny turns away from her, as if ashamed, shivering visibly in the bright sunshine. Once again, she doesn't think - ever since he dropped her hand, he's been shaking her off every time she touched him, so why would things be different, now? - she just can't stand to watch him sit there and tremble like a kicked puppy. So she scoots close enough to wrap an arm around his hunched shoulders. He feels too warm - does it sicken him, making doors in dreams? - and she gives his shoulder a brisk little rub and tsks under her breath. This really has been a far greater ordeal than she wanted - especially when all he was trying to do was help her.

He catches her, looking at his scars. Doesn't matter. They are shocking, and she - worries about him, so of course she'd-

What is she doing, what is she doing.

This is not any kind of hug he is accustomed to receiving. He accepts hugs from the people he sleeps with, or friends when he's drunk, or from the TARDIS, who - well that's complicated, he respects her, cares about her intensely even though he can't very often see her and can't possibly understand her, and there's something maternal in it too, maybe, like when she's protected him from-

That. That's what this is. Greta - not because she looks like her, sounds, acts or treats him like she did, but simply by an intangible, intrinsic element, by her very nature and attitude - reminds him of his mother.

He jerks away from her sharply, backing up against the wall, bracing there like he expects her to hurt him.

She isn't going to hurt him.

And she never meant to hurt him.

Part of him still believes that.

"I - I'm sorry," he says shakily. "I - you just-" What the fuck can he say here? She can't be much older than him, she might even be younger than him, fuck if he knows. But she's so insanely maternal, the touches and the offers of comfort and the questions after him, god, fuck, he doesn't know what to do with that, or how to even address it.

But he has to address it, he can't just leave her hanging, spurned after she's just trying to help him.

"You just," he starts again, quietly, avoiding her eyes. "I'm sorry, it's weird. You just reminded me of my mom."

She really should have seen this coming, and she winces in self-recrimination when Johnny all but throws himself against the wall to get away from her. Too much, too soon, and when he was upset on top of everything else - she should have just restrained herself.

"I'm sorry," she says, her words tumbling anxiously over his own apology, "I shouldn't have--" she cuts herself off, she's doing it again, she just needs to stop and wait for Johnny to tell her whatever it is that he's trying to say.

When he finally does, her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "Oh. Oh, I…" she considers apologizing again, but isn't certain if she should. It seems rude to presume that's a bad thing - to think ill of Johnny's mother - when she never met the woman and doesn't know the first thing about her (except, perhaps, that she's been absent for long enough to give Johnny the air of general neglect that he seems to carry with him). "I see," she concludes instead, watching him with wary concern.

But that's a lackluster conclusion. "I'm sorry if I've upset you," she says quietly. "Or if I've been, er… weird."

"It's not your fault," he says quickly, waving a hand. "You couldn't have known."

He feels a little better, having found the source of his bizarre reaction to her, and having now spoken it, though it isn't much of an explanation for her. He runs a hand self-consciously over the scars on one arm, wishing now that she couldn't see them.

"It's just, um..." He shakes his head, half-laughing, a brittle sort of sound. "I mean I think that's probably a good thing. Like it should be a compliment."

He doesn't know how to begin to have this conversation. He gets up instead, shaky-limbed but stable, and drapes his hoodie over his arm.

"Let's go outside," he says. "I need to get out of this house."

Greta watches him rub the scars on his arm - burns, if she isn't mistaken - and thinks about the instinctive way he'd jerked away from her, as if she herself had burned him. And all because she reminds him of his mother? He'll have to forgive her for suspecting it's not a compliment at all. She resists the urge to repeat 'probably' with a dubious lilt, but she does give him a look that conveys, I'm not an idiot, as she gets to her feet.

"Good idea," she says aloud, brushing off her skirt and untwisting the scarf until it looks like a scarf again and not an impromptu garrote. She loops it once around her neck, loosely, because it looks as if it might be too warm outside for scarf weather. Then she heads for the door - a mercifully normal sort of door, for a time period far later than her own - and pulls it open, admitting a light breeze and a smattering of birdsong.

Not bad. "Well, this is an improvement," she says lightly, stepping out into the fresh air.

Well he meant in the general sense, didn't he. He knows she can see well enough what's going on, he's not being very subtle on top of her not being an idiot, but if they can just get outside, maybe that will be better, maybe he could think straight.

She finds the door with ease and it's a mercifully simple process of just stepping out. As much and as ironically as he is and indoor person, it is kind of nice. The fresh air makes him feel a little lightheaded, the sun and general pleasantness make him feel distinctly out of place, but he'll take it.

He sighs and sits down in the grass once they've made it a reasonable distance from the house.

"So, uh," he murmurs, rubbing at his face and speaking through his hands. After a moment he looks back at her. "You can ask, if you want. I don't really know where to start."

It's grating to him, the idea that he has to now talk about this, but he owes her that, doesn't he.

And just when she'd resigned herself to not prying into Johnny's affairs, he's inviting her to. Greta blinks down at him in astonishment, then gives her head a little shake. "I don't… you don't have to tell me anything." She poked at a sore spot and was rightfully rebuked; he doesn't owe her a detailed explanation of where it all began.

Is respecting his privacy too close to protecting him? If her mothering him is the problem, maybe being a little less pitying would be easier for him to bear. But she still can't bring herself to ask him about a woman whose memory sends him skittering into corners.

She sits down as well, not next to him, but near him, facing the opposite direction so she can see his face if she looks at him sidelong and watch for any more unpleasant dream creations sneaking up from behind. "I am sorry her memory pains you," she finally says, because it seems a fair assumption and also doesn't demand an explanation.

The response surprises him and he's not entirely sure why. He glances over at her, taken aback, even though she's right, isn't she? He felt like - everything he just put her through, and the way he keeps reacting to her gestures of affection, it's all so unfair, he had to owe her, but - but he doesn't.

The fact that she's answered rightly, dismissing the offer of explanation, is almost too perfect. He doesn't even know what his mother would have said. He doesn't know anything about her, not really, not how she would have handled his insecurities, his fears, anything. It's a gaping black hole in his life.

"It..." he starts to say and is surprised to feel his throat thickening, nooo let's not do that. He swallows with some difficulty and shakes his head. "It's okay. Thank you for... for helping me."

He can't keep it down. Comes fucking crawling back up like an animal dying to get out. He shudders involuntarily, feeling himself weaken, he doesn't want to do this, not in front of a stranger, not when everything's already so fucking weird, but it's too late, when he inhales it's sharp and audible, and impossible to mistake for anything but a prelude to a sob. She's too far away from him to grasp for a handhold, so all he can do, pathetically, is pitch over, half fetal, trembling, reaching, his hand stuck into the grass.

For a few moments, she thinks things are finally taking a turn for the less painfully awkward. Johnny seems to accept her dismissal for what it is - she thinks he looks rather relieved at being let off the hook - and she allows herself to relax a little.

But there's something off when he speaks, a tell-tale thickening in his voice, oh dear, oh no, she hasn't been a mother that long but she still knows what an impending sob sounds like. She watches, stricken, as he curls in on himself again, wanting so badly to reach for him and knowing how badly he'll react if she does… but then he reaches for her.

Greta can't refuse that unspoken plea. She all but scrambles over the grass, tripping over her own skirts in her haste to close the distance between, take his outstretched hand, and pull him over to her. What can she say? No words come to mind, so she just wraps her arm around his shoulders and holds him close, letting him cry into her husband's poor, abused scarf.

This time he doesn't shiver away; this time he welcomes it, lets her pull him in, wraps his arms around her in response. He hates this; he hates it, the heaving of his shoulders, his entire body wracked, the noises he's making - how fucking pitiful, in front of a stranger, clinging to her no less. But she knows how to take it, how to hold him, it's awful how instinctive it is. How long has it been since he had this? Really, really had it? He doesn't want to think about it. He learned not to cry when he was nine (at least not when anyone could see); learned not to trust when he was seven (when they took her away). He feels the sting of the oil on his skin like it was fucking yesterday and remembers how she held him afterward, the only time he can remember anymore, but she's gone, long gone, gone in her letters, gone before he'd let her go.

His voice gives out after a moment but his body keeps quaking, and he stays there, huddled nearly in her lap. No idea what comes next. He can't bear the thought of looking up again, wiping his eyes, trying to carry on like this didn't just happen. He wants to stay here, as long as he can, maybe until he wakes up.

Oh, poor Johnny. She still has no idea what to say to him. Really, there's nothing to say. She knows grief, and she knows loss - mothers, in particular, are lost so often that it can be hard to appreciate the individual tragedy of yet another motherless child - but she doesn't know Johnny's story well enough to know how to soothe this specific ache.

So she holds him, occasionally lifting a hand to cradle the back of his head, smoothing back his hair. He needs this. Maybe not from her, not really, but she's here and she's willing so she'll just have to do. "It's all right," she murmurs quietly - it's not, but it's the tone that matters more than the words, the tone that says 'don't be ashamed' and 'you're safe.'

Even after Johnny's gone quiet, he makes no move to pull away, instead remaining curled against her. So she keeps her arms around him, for as long as he needs.

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A Time to Rise and a Time to Fall [Open to Multiple]

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oblique references in child abuse, tw just in case

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