applesaucedream | Ark Awaits [open to multiple]

He is awake.

He doesn't have a body, and he remembers dying - again - he remembers slipping out, Tim unable to keep him there in spite of his hardened insistence that he wasn't going to let it happen, he remembers all of that, but he can't account for himself now. All he knows is he's awake.

Jay clings to that awareness as hard as he can. He doesn't know where he is, if it's a where at all, if he's alive or if this is just the suspension of afterlife, but he's still conscious, he's still him. Formless and adrift in the void. No arms to reach, no hands to grasp, but he tries, tries to stretch out fingers and hold onto something, even if it's just the continued knowledge of self, of me, Jay, I am Jay Merrick, and no one is going to miss me.

Even as an abstraction he can't escape his bent toward bleak self-deprecation.

There's something pulling at him - or maybe he's the one pulling, hauling himself into a defined space, someone else's space, still abstract, but not formless. He knows this sensation. A dream. He's dreaming. Or someone else is dreaming. He's just a stowaway.

Easier to hold a shape in a dream, though, and it doesn't take long before the memory of a body fills in the gaps, and there he is again, eyes that see, senses more or less intact - looking down at his arms, his hands, his legs and feet. Hand over his face and through his hair. All here. One piece.

He looks up, focus drawn naturally to the dreamer.

[Jay is free-falling through the dreaming, and if you want, he can get scooped up into your dream! The 21st is the current IG date at the time of post, but feel free to date your entry later as that changes. Will add a closing date at some point, when I have that figured out.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jay chokes on a sharp inhale as the cat picks him up in its fucking mouth, it doesn't matter what kind of attitude it's operating under, he's still in its mouth. He hisses air back out through his teeth, twisting and wriggling through force of habit and a characteristic lack of concern for bodily wellbeing. He's already dead so fuck it.

"What do you want?!" he says again, desperation turning to anger. "What the fuck am I to you, why can't you just leave me alone?!"

Not that he's particularly upset about being removed from the kitten's purview, but he wouldn't exactly trust any of these creatures as far as he could throw them.

The cat huffs a sigh around him and very deliberately does not bite down. You are inconvenient, it replies, because he would not understand a real answer -- and because it does not owe him one. I do not want you at all, it admits testily.

It does not think to pretend to walk from one place to another, to maintain a comprehensible impression of space. They are in the presence of the kitten, and then they are not. They are alone in a void, and then they are not.

Where did you get that? asks the cat that has joined them.

Jay twists in the ginger's mouth, startled by the new 'voice', and looks at yet another cat that he hasn't seen before. "Oh, christ," he groans. "How many of you are there?"

Part of him recognizes that he actually stands to learn quite a lot from this experience, information he could potentially pass to others if he can make it into their dreams - information that might, perhaps, prove useful to people more capable than he.

But he's so fucking tired of looking for clues and searching for answers that he can barely even focus on that as a goal, not even as incentive for survival.

If you're going to ask questions, ask real ones, sighs the ginger cat. Really, must these little creatures be so impenetrably linguistic? I don't know what you're asking, and I don't think you do, either.

The new one chirrups. It can help with this! As many as there need to be, it says. Really, it's very simple. Give him here? Give him here.

The ginger cat seems to consider this, or maybe its mind is off on some other problem altogether, because it doesn't reply for a stretch of time that might be a moment or might be hours (it can't be bothered to know the difference). You have to put him where the kitten can't reach or he'll just be taken away again, it points out.

Oh good, let's pass him around like a goddamn party favor. Jay wriggles uncomfortably as the ginger one takes its sweet time deciding what to do with him, but there's not much room for him to move, what with all the teeth.

"Why am I not dead?" he says bluntly, frustrated. There, is that real enough for them?

If a cat without pupils could roll its eyes, the spotted cat surely would. Of course I won't let the kitten have him. Gimme.

The ginger cat heaves yet another sigh, the biggest one yet, and lowers its head to spit Jay out on the...void. You're mine! says the new cat, all but bouncing over to give him a fond little bonk. That's the answer, I'm not just saying that. You're alive because you're mine.

He's not alive, objects the long-suffering ginger.

Jay lets out a frightened yelp as he tumbles out into nothingness, then a soft grunt as he lands on nothingness. He's just picking himself up on shaky legs when the new cat bounds over and knocks him down again.

"That's it?!" he demands, sprawled and looking up at the spotted cat with pure indignation. "What, do you do this to everybody you kill?"

The spotted cat scoffs at that. Of course not. What fun would it be if you were all the same?

It lays down, one paw across his legs, and rumbles to itself in satisfaction. Now, where to put you... it muses, dipping its head down to rub its face across him. The ginger cat, for its part, is gone -- simply gone.

Jay stiffens as it rests a paw down on him, pinning him more or less to the 'floor', such as it is, and he struggles even as it bends down to nuzzle him. He spent enough time around cats growing up to know that's a territorial thing as much as it is affection - this cat is fucking marking him.

"Get off!" he growls in protest, squirming beneath it. "What do you want?"

He asked this of the kitten, and it wanted to kill him. It asked this of the ginger, and it didn't want him at all. This one is the only one who's shown any sign of having a reason to keep him. That doesn't mean it'll answer him. He knows, and it terrifies him deep down to his bones to think about it, that it's very possible there is no reason, that he was just an arbitrarily selected chew toy, that he will be trapped here with these smug, cryptic assholes batting and pawing at him for literal eternity. The weight of this thought is so great he actually stops fighting, just curls up beneath the cat, lying very still.

Up one side of him, down the other -- he has the stink of the kitten on him, still, inasmuch as that's a real thing. You, you silly thing, it says. I want you, and your friends, and your enemies, and people you've never met --

It sighs contentedly. Come along, it says. I know just where to put you while you wait.

After all, it wouldn't do for the kitten to have him again before it's time for Jay to play his part. Where it takes him now, no one will find him...or at least, no one who isn't meant to.

Ark Awaits [open to multiple]

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a very delayed existential crisis

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