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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Greta nods, a little bemused but mostly reassured: soap was part of the plan, anyway, so this just means she won't have to rummage around for anything extra. Once the washcloth is as rinsed as it's going to get, she gives it a brisk rub with the soap.

"This might sting a bit," she warns, probably needlessly, before she starts washing out the wound as gently as she can while still getting the job done. "And no, we're not." She glances up to his face, brow furrowed, before returning her focus to the job at hand. "You said they could follow you to your… resting place." Is there any way to say that phrase without making it sound like some inhuman thing's lair as opposed to the closest thing to a home he has? "I don't suppose there's anywhere you could go where they can't follow you."

Another rinse of the washcloth, another careful wipe-down to clear away the soap. That's as clean as the wound is likely to get. She hands the Balladeer another folded-up washcloth to press over the wound while she tears up a hand towel for more bandages. What options do they have? There was the memorial, and before that, the gallows, and before that, the Woods...

… Wait.

Greta freezes mid-tear, looking up at the Balladeer. There's some sort of important revelation hovering at the edge of her awareness. "How are we both in your world in the first place?" she asks. "I was… I was in the Woods before I met you at the gallows." Did the Rift bring her here? Why would it do that?

The Balladeer hisses as the washcloth meets his shoulder, but holds himself still to let Greta work. Resting place, he needs to work out a real name for it now that there's other people involved. That makes it sound like he's some kind of subterranean monster. "No. I follow them more than anything." Unless someone shoots a president there, he's not likely to just hop to a new location.

He takes the second cloth and presses it over the wound. "Were you?" He HAD been wondering that - he'd asked her how she got here, he remembers, but then Guiteau came along and they both got caught up in all this. "I don't know. This..." He frowns, brow furrowing in thought. "This shouldn't happen. This doesn't happen, random people getting caught up in this. Sara Jane had a point, I don't talk to people outside of them."

"And we were in Manhattan - we met there." She finishes tearing up the hand towel in a few brisk motions, mind attempting to race and managing more of an excitable limp. Why is thinking so difficult? She frowns as she rewraps his shoulder. "So… either the Rift decided to bring us both home, and--and changed its mind to bring me here, or…"

Or? There's another option. There has to be. And it's just there. She ties off the last bit of bandaging, her gaze going distant as she straightens and gives the Balladeer an absent-minded, maternal pat on the head (all done, there's a good lad). There was some other situation, nothing like this one except for the part where it didn't make any sort of sense. Greta turns back toward the bathroom door, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead as she thinks.

Giants. Everything was giant. And there were those cats.

"Dream!" she says, whirling back around in excitement. "We're dreaming, it's all--that's what this is!"

The Balladeer gives her a slightly bemused smile at the pat, then turns to inspect his shoulder, touching it cautiously. Yep, still stings, but a careful shrug hurts less than it did before. He can move all he needs to; he'll just have to make sure not to sling his instrument over...

"Wait, what?" He turns to face her, brows raised almost to his hairline. "A dream? I - I guess that's not actually much weirder than everything else," he mutters. Why not a dream? "How did you get in my dream?" It must be his, after all; she didn't know about any of this.

Greta considers his question for a beat, then shrugs. "I don't know. This has only happened to me once before. The Rift?" That seems like a safe enough guess.

Anyway, the 'how' doesn't seem as important as what they're going to do with this information. "If it's your dream, maybe you can change it," she suggests, retrieving his shirt from the tub and handing it to him. "So we could go anywhere at all. We wouldn't just be limited to your usual places." Right? She honestly has no idea how this works, and her last dream experience didn't exactly strike her has malleable. But it hadn't seemed like her dream, either, whereas this time, it's clear enough who's in charge (so to speak).

That makes as much sense as anything.

He takes the shirt, turning it over to frown at the bloodstains soaked through one side of it. "Right..." he says thoughtfully, running his thumb over the darkened cloth. Maybe it's a nightmare. "Right. That makes sense. I would never have thought to try that, but - "

There's a pounding at the door, and without thought he grabs for her hand and pushes again. He doesn't know where he's going; he's never been anywhere but his usual places, and of course Manhattan now. So he just aims away, past his 'resting place' and sidestepping anything that looks familiar.

The blackness lasts longer this time, and feels heavier, but when they emerge they're ankle-deep in water, standing on the bank of a wide, unknown river. The sun is high, and all that's visible around them is the bright green of a forest - not a Wood, but more wild at least than Central Park. The Balladeer stumbles a little in surprise - that water's cold - but then laughs in delight as he looks around them. That's it! He's done it! "I have no idea where we are right now!"

Greta starts when someone pounds on the door. The Balladeer's hand closes around hers, and she sucks in a breath as she looks for where she set down the scarf - it's there, by the sink, just out of reach, but before she can even try to grab for it, they're somewhere else entirely.

It's just a dream. It doesn't matter. It isn't even real; the real scarf is safe in her apartment. There's no cause for her to be upset. Still, she presses her lips together tightly, relieved that the darkness hides her expression.

She staggers a bit upon landing, both pulled by the Balladeer's stumbling and by the sudden tug of a cold current around her ankles. Goodness. It's a good thing they didn't show up a bit deeper in the river; they might have been bowled right over. "You did it," she says, a bit breathlessly, as she looks out across the river, then towards the nearby shore. It's not the Woods, but it is a wood, and that puts it well above the other places they've been. She slogs up onto the little strip of rocky beach between the water and the undergrowth. "They shouldn't be able to find us here."

She has no idea if that's true, actually, but maybe saying it will make it true.

"No!" He's breathless with relief and pain all at once, sharp cold lancing up and down his arm. "They shouldn't. How could they?"

Slower, he turns to follow her to shore, staring up in amazement at the sky and the trees. It's not such a feat; this IS just a dream. If he ever ends up back home, he doubts he'll be able to replicate this for real. But it's nice to have for now. The Balladeer finds a rock and sits down, his shirt still crumpled up in one hand.

"Should I...try to wake up?" he asks, unfolding it to stare again at the bloodstain, then at his shoulder. If he imagines himself better again, will that work. "Or you could? This looks nice, but it doesn't look like my dreams are always the safest place."

Greta watches him out of the corner of her eye as he speaks, privately wishing he'd put his shirt back on now that they're out of immediate danger. Is he really not the least bit embarrassed? Then again, considering the company he kept, perhaps she shouldn't be surprised. Propriety seemed to be in short supply, generally speaking.

"How?" she asks. She can't quite remember how the last dream ended, or if she was at all responsible for waking herself up, but she remembers enough chaos to guess that 'being startled' won't cut it. "I suppose I could pinch you, but I doubt that compares to getting shot."

She also doubts her own dreams would be much safer. The memory of that cliff's edge yawns open in her mind, and she gives herself a little shake to dismiss it before crunching over to where he's sitting. "And what happens if I wake up and you don't? You're just left alone with that lot?" She can't say she likes that idea. At least if she's here, she can remind him that none of this is real.

Speaking of. She nods toward his shirt. "May I see that? I want to try something."

It's true that he's not especially shy, but more to the point, the Balladeer isn't sure he wants to walk around with blood-soaked cloth tacking to his one arm. It's gross, Greta.

"I could try falling?" he suggests, glancing up and scooting over a little to offer her room on his rock. "I think that's supposed to work. I don't have much experience with this, though - lucid dreaming." Don't worry, he's not implying that he's never dreamed at all before. He sleeps. In his horrible underground lair, of course!

He glances down at the shirt with a slight start, as if he'd briefly forgotten he had it, then turns to hand it to her. "I'm alone with them all the time anyway," he reminds her with a faint shrug. "And those ones are real. I'd manage." Sure, he's already gotten shot, but...well, he hadn't known it was a dream then! That's new!

...he does have a realistic expectation of how Greta will take that suggestion, though, so he adds, "Or you could just come bang on my door."

"No," she blurts, more sharply than she'd intended. Neither one of them is falling. But she shouldn't have snapped, and she lets out a little huff of self-recrimination before sitting down beside him. "Sorry. I'd just... rather neither of us died to get out of here." That's all that little outburst was about. Right.

Greta takes the shirt and turns it over between her hands until she has it by the bottom hem, avoiding the bloody sleeve. "I suppose I could do that," she allows, though that still leaves the question of how to wake herself up without drowning herself in the river or asking the Balladeer to kindly bash her upside the head with a rock.

For the moment, she has a different sort of experiment in mind. "Right," she says, eyeing the shirt critically. "Close your eyes." This is still his dream, and she's guessing it won't work if he's watching and doesn't expect it to. But if she's got the shirt, maybe she can change it. If she just concentrates very hard, and believes she can do it...

Greta shuts her own eyes and listens to the ambient sounds of the forest. She could almost believe herself to be at home, taking her own washing off the line: crisp and clean, stains removed and tears all mended. Basket by her feet. She tries to picture it as clearly as she can... and then she gives the shirt in her hands a single, brisk flap, the cloth snapping tidily.

Cracking open first one eye, then the other, Greta checks the shirt. It's clean. A closer examination of the sleeve reveals a neat row of stitches. "Look," she says, giving the Balladeer a nudge and grinning. "I fixed it!"

The Balladeer looks a little taken aback by her outburst. He certainly hadn't meant he'd go throw himself off a building; there's non-fatal falls to take.

But okay, she's obviously got some kind of plan in mind. He closes his eyes obediently and leans back, favoring his hurt shoulder and taking a deep breath. The sounds of the forest are all still wonderfully foreign to him. Central Park may be the closest thing to wilderness he's spent a great deal of time in, and well, he's not really laboring under any misconceptions about that. Wherever they are, there are no car engines, no voices besides the two of them. Just the sounds of water and wind and birds singing in the branches.

He blinks back to awareness when Greta nudges him, and looks to the shirt before meeting her grin with one of his own. "Greta, that's amazing!" He reaches out to take it, peering down at the neat stitches. "Oh, wow, look at this! Looks just like it did before!"

He starts moving to shrug it back on, then pauses, glancing down at his bandages. Healing an arm is pretty different from stitching up a shirt...but hey, what's he got to lose? "Okay, let me try. What did you do, imagine it?"

It looks, she realizes, like her own handiwork - as if she'd actually taken the time to sit down and sew up the tear, herself. The dream method certainly wins in terms of speed, though. She lifts her shoulders in a pleased but bashful shrug in response to his praise, cheeks flushing. "Well, there was no reason for it not to work. But I'm glad it did." Especially since the only reason for it to work was 'why not?' It's not as if she spends every night lucid dreaming and bending events to her will. This was her first time even trying to alter things.

"And yes. I just tried to picture things how I wanted them to be, as clearly as I could." It doesn't seem like the sort of thing she could do for his injury, though - she's not the one feeling it. "I'm sure you can do it," she says, figuring a little encouragement won't hurt. "You got us here."

He nods at her encouragement. "Okay." This is definitely going to happen.

The Balladeer shuts his eyes and rolls his shoulder, even though it hurts, trying to think of how it had felt before he got shot. This might actually be easier if it were his hand, terrible as that sounds. He thinks about his hands a lot more than he does his shoulder. But he uses his shoulder too! He carries his instruments over it! Once it's healed, he'll be able to do that again. It'll be whole, no blood or broken skin -

He cries out in sudden pain, clutching at the bandages. "Oh god, that hurt!" But it doesn't now, and he can move and stretch his arm without any issues. The healing process is maybe supposed to hurt, right?

Greta watches him sidelong, curious to see if there will be any visible change (she assumes her observations wouldn't make any difference regarding whether it works or not). Perhaps the bandages will drop right off, or disappear entirely.

She's definitely not braced for a cry of pain, and she startles almost to the point of toppling right off the rock. "Are you all right?" she asks, laying a hand on his back, the gesture serving both to comfort him and steady herself. "Did…" she trails off as he moves his arm freely. It must have worked. She releases a breath, then takes back her hand so she can start undoing the bandages. He won't need them anymore if he's fully healed, and she rather wants to check for herself.

"That was certainly dramatic," she mutters, faintly scolding, though there's a smile tugging at her lips.

The Balladeer grins. "I try!" The world's a stage and all that, right?

The bandages unravel to reveal healed skin! It's not quite exactly the way it was before; it's red and irritated and obviously new. On the bright side, the scarring that probably should have happened does not seem to be present. The Balladeer tilts his head to look at it, then pokes it with his other hand. "Wow. Would you look at that?"

Oh, honestly. Her smile widens even as she tsks in disapproval and gives him a very light whap upside the head. "You might attract bears, yelling like that." Doubtful; these woods don't seem quite wild enough for bears. Or perhaps not so doubtful, now that she's put the idea into his head. Whoops.

But his shoulder provides an excellent distraction. Greta hums pensively, resisting the urge to prod the new skin directly and instead letting her fingertips come to rest an inch below where the wound used to be. "Does it hurt at all?"

"It's a little sore." The Balladeer's flexing his hand carefully, making sure everything works as it ought. This is only a dream, of course, but he's still got a professional musician's wariness of hand injuries. "But more like I worked it too hard than got shot in it. Doesn't matter, doubt I'll feel it in the morning anyway."

Can there be bears here? Obviously his subconscious has no problems with throwing him into danger, but he's never even seen a bear before. "As long as it's not another person with a gun," he decides. Bears at least won't monologue about why their attempt to eat you is actually morally justified.

"I should hope not," Greta says, wrinkling her nose as she gets to her feet. She doesn't think his injuries would pursue him into the waking world - it's not as if her last odd dream experience had her picking enormous hairs out of her clothes in the morning - but she's hardly an expert. And she hesitates to put anything past the Rift.

And oh, dear, she really has put the idea of bears into his head. "This doesn't seem like the sort of place for bears," she says, even as she scans the trees for any tell-tale patches of dark fur. "But compared to Mister Booth, a bear would probably be sweet." At least bears only attack for sensible reasons, like protecting their young. Booth had just seemed arbitrarily nasty. She gives the Balladeer a pensive look. "Are they often like that? Or were they, before you came through the Rift?"

Greta, the man has literally never seen a bear before. Bears are exciting!

Bringing up Booth is usually a good way to completely sidetrack the Balladeer now. "He's always like that," he says contemptuously, "but the others weren't. Not always. Most of them will usually tolerate me being around, even if they're not friendly. But...I got in a fight with them, right before the Rift took me. It was..."

He falls silent for a second, grimacing. "...it was worse than usual."

"With all of them?" She doesn't even know how many assassins that adds up to, but even if it was only the three she's met so far, that's hardly fair. Did they just gang up on him, then? How awful. Greta frowns down at him, worried despite the fact that he evidently survived whatever it was. He didn't have a scratch on him when she first met him in the Park, after all.

Well, not that she'd noticed.

"Are you all right?" she asks quietly, wondering if they actually did some damage before the Rift intervened.

"Yes," the Balladeer admits, glancing away sheepishly. There's definitely a lot more than three. Enough that most people would have hesitated to provoke them, but... "I didn't think they'd actually attack me. It's like you said, they need me."

He'd thought so, at least. No, no, they DO. Since when are the assassins good at realizing what they need, as opposed to just what they want? "I'm fine," he assures her, shoulders hunching in on himself a little. It's true; he's not hurt. He didn't even have a bruise. It's just that his memories of his last moments there are oddly blurry, and that isn't something that happens to him - not in his own world.

It isn't hard to imagine the Balladeer provoking them. But it isn't hard to imagine the sort of violence they'd inflict on him, either, now that she's seen both of those things firsthand. And there's really no question of who'd have the advantage if it came to a physical confrontation between a group of armed, unstable murderers and a--a bard.

He doesn't look fine. Well, how could he be?

Greta hesitates, then sits back down beside him. She doesn't want to pry, and she doesn't know how to comfort him, but she does want to offer something. After a few moments' thoughtful contemplation of the river's surface, she finds herself saying, in a ludicrously light, conversational tone: "I fell, right before the Rift got me. The giant was there, and I…" she trails off into a quiet, humorless laugh. Regroups. "Clumsy of me. But at least the Rift timed things well for both of us."

"Fell?" The Balladeer lets the word slip out without entirely meaning to, twisting about to look at her. His first thought is something small, but her tone makes it clear that this fall was...significant, to say the least. Things often are when giants are involved.

He turns back to furrow his brows at the river again, not pressing the point. Maybe he just doesn't want to know for once.

After a few moments, he agrees in a soft tone, "Pretty lucky."

That makes two of them. She never really saw what she was falling towards or how far away it was, only the cliff's edge receding (and receding, and receding). Maybe she would have landed in a lake or something. Maybe she would have been fine.

She tries not to think about it.

But she isn't sorry she mentioned it. He gives her no reason to regret bringing it up. She just feels a strange, sad sort of kinship with him. When he looks back at the water, she lets out a slow breath.

"… How do we wake up?" she murmurs after a moment. She'd like to, she thinks. "If this is your dream, can you just… kick me out, or something? Not literally," she hastens to add. And it's not as if she required an invitation to get here in the first place; he seemed as surprised by her arrival as she was.

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