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

[andhiswife]

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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[andhiswife]

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.

[singthesong]

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?"

[andhiswife]

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?"

[singthesong]

"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.

[andhiswife]

"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?"

[singthesong]

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."

[andhiswife]

"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.

[singthesong]

"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.

[andhiswife]

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."

[singthesong]

"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."

[andhiswife]

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.

[singthesong]

"Not sure," he muses, looking around and up at the sky as if a way out might present itself. He rarely recalls his dreams; lucid dreaming is entirely new territory. "I wouldn't know how. I definitely didn't try to pull you here to begin with." He'd rather she hadn't been dragged into any of that at all...though her presence is a comfort.

How to kick someone out of his dream? He might have considered pinching, or maybe trying to startle her, but even if he had the heart to try that now the Balladeer is sure that the gunshots completely qualified. "We could just wait. We'll have to wake up eventually."

[andhiswife]

"It felt like an accident," Greta says with a little nod. "I didn't try to, er, land here." That might be too telling a choice of words, and she winces briefly. Best to change the subject.

"Pity you left your instrument behind." That might not be the best change of subject, but then again, if she can fix his shirt, and he can fix his shoulder, how hard would it really be for him to just make it reappear? "What was it? Maybe you could bring it back."

[singthesong]

"I can do that." It's really probably not much different than how he'd typically get an instrument back home - it's not as though he has a locker or something he can safely keep them in until he needs them. If he actually put one down anywhere, he'd never get it back. So when he needs a different one, he just...gets it.

The Balladeer casually reaches down on the other side of the rock and produces the banjo, as if it had been sitting there all along. "I know how to do it with instruments already," he explains. "It doesn't work anymore when I'm awake, but I guess that'd be too easy."

[andhiswife]

Well, then. She'd expected it to be doable, but not that easy - not as if pulling instruments out of thin air is something he's done many times before. Though now that she thinks about it, where would he keep them if he's always traveling through time and space? His subterranean den resting place? But then he'd have to keep popping back there whenever he wanted to switch instruments, and… you know what, she's just not going to question it right now.

"Not a guitar, then," she guesses, resisting the urge to give that drum-like head a curious poke. She's familiar with its odd, twangy sound from before, but it's not like anything she's heard outside of this strange dream. "Could you play something? Maybe something that isn't about murderers?" That would at least pass the time, and goodness knows how much of that they're going to have before they wake.

[singthesong]

You see, the problem with subterranean dens is that they're full of vermin. Also, moisture is terrible for instruments.

"It's a banjo," he explains, shifting to give her a better look at the instrument (and totally poke it if she wants, he doesn't care). "They're traditional American instruments, kinda folksy." Which explains a little bit about what just happened back there with him and Guiteau.

He starts playing a tune, not putting words to it quite yet. "I have a few instruments back home - each of them takes something different."

[andhiswife]

"Banjo," she repeats, an incredulous smile tugging at her lips. That is quite a name. Since he's angling it towards her invitingly, she reaches out to give the head a cautious tap with one finger, eyebrows rising at the curious, almost metallic sound it makes. Then she draws her hand back to watch him play. She's never watched someone play an instrument from such little distance before.

It's an odd song, whatever it is. Less like what he played before, more meandering and vaguely mournful. "And are they all stringed ones, like this and the guitar?" It's a little difficult for her to talk over the music - her inclination is to fall into a near-reverent silence and just listen - but he seems to be treating the whole process much more casually than that, and she doesn't want to seem like a complete bumpkin.

[singthesong]

The Balladeer is completely at ease with talking over his own music. Lots of his conversations happen this way. "Yes," he responds, keeping up the playing. His hands move easily along the strings without much apparent effort, like second nature. "It's easy enough to play them and sing. It has to be portable, too."

Maybe now that he's got a little more freedom, he could learn to play a few more? He could do a lot of things. "I'll have to show you, once I get a few more. Not in a dream, I mean." That'd be easier, but the banjo is good enough for now, and playing is more relaxing than rambling on about mandolins and ukeleles.

[andhiswife]

Yes, the singing - that would rule out anything breath-powered, though he could still play a drum or a bowed instrument, she supposes. Goodness, how many does he know? Maybe once you've learned one, it's easier to pick up on the others.

"I'd like that," she says, pleased and a little surprised by the offer. She's not a complete stranger to various instruments (given the orchestra that used to follow her around), but it's been years since she's had the time or opportunity to devote her full attention to them, if only temporarily. Even now, she falls silent in favor of watching the way his hands move. He makes it look so simple and easy.

[singthesong]

Maybe this is just one of his many mutant abilities. We'll never know until he actually decides to try picking up something else.

He returns her smile, eyes dropping to his hands for a moment. He doesn't really need to look at the strings, but it's just...interesting, making something up entirely out of the blue. This isn't any song of Greta's; he made sure of that before he started. After everything that's happened already, it's better to keep things light. "I always really did like playing," he confesses, "I don't mind that at all. But it's different doing it just for fun. And singing songs that aren't about murder."

[andhiswife]

A faint line appears between her brows as she looks up from his hands to his face. Is he really saying that he played nothing but murder ballads before? She wants to think that impossible, but this dream has upended her ideas of what does and does not fall within the realm of possibility (at least as far as his universe is concerned).

"I hope you were able to play for fun before," she says, trying to sound light but unable to fully mask an undercurrent of concern. Bad enough to be forced to revisit the same places over and over and deal with the same unpleasant group of people without also being limited to one little list of songs.

[singthesong]

The Balladeer just shrugs. "Sometimes. But someone would always be after me for something before I'd really ever get a chance to enjoy it." Or they'd just steal his instruments when he wasn't looking to sing their creepy love ballads with, not that he's naming names, John Hinckley Jr. Point is, even when he has downtime, he never gets a whole lot of peace.

"But it doesn't matter now." It does, maybe, a tiny bit. Manhattan's going to be a fresh start, though!

[andhiswife]

It's hard to imagine the Rift as truly benevolent, regardless of how handily it times its extractions. But it's also hard to deny that it seems to have done the Balladeer an enormous favor. Maybe he'd be better off refusing a return trip home, should they ever figure out how to reverse things.

"Well," she says, folding her hands in her lap, "I promise not to interrupt."

[singthesong]

The Balladeer is trying not to think about any possible return, himself. He's not sure if it would be worse to have a choice or not. Can he just willfully abandon his work? Is that right?

He puts it out of his mind, smiles at her, and begins to sing the song. Worrying won't help anything.

[andhiswife]

Greta cants her head a little as he begins to sing, the melody drawing her in with its vague familiarity - it reminds her of some of the simpler folk songs from her home - but then stopping her at arm's length with its odd progression. She wants to find it comforting, but can't, quite.

Of course, the refrain doesn't help. Has your mama been gone too long? She hasn't been gone a week, but she still worries about how her little family is faring. The littlest, in particular. How is her son supposed to do without her? Aren't there enough motherless children out there without consigning him to the list as well?

She keeps her promise not to interrupt; she won't spoil this novel opportunity for the Balladeer. But her smile fades, and her hands are no longer folded so much as clenched together.