Hello Darkness My Old Friend [Open to Multiple]

[has_a_horn]

The world is dark and there's a war in heaven. The blackness of the scene is deep, lit only by the graceful, inhuman figures of his brothers and sisters. They dance viciously, hands clasped around long silver blades, slashing as they turn and evade. They bleed light and die like a star going supernova. Gabriel stands trembling, watching. If it wasn't so horrible, it might be beautiful.

He's wearing the same vessel he has been wearing for so long now-

Briefly, the scene shifts. He's kneeling before this vessel, a hand cupping the slightly stubbled chin. He'll shave properly, when he takes it. The man smiles, nods. It looks so sincere.

Gabriel smiles back, in awe of him.

-except he can feel the weight of his wings, the power contained there, his own potential for destruction. Behind him, they sweep up at least twenty times his height, closed in and tight against each other, a gigantic extension of his own horrified posture. Next to any of the rest, he would look so small like he is now. Inconsequential. Still, they'll want him to join in, soon. Michael will come looking, or Lucifer. Enough will have died that he will be needed on one side or the other.

He wonders if this slaughter is really what God wanted, then chastises himself for thinking it. He should fight for heaven, for God. Another supernova lights up the black canvas. A triumphant shout echoes back to him along with a ghost of bright piercing pain. How can they deny the feeling that quakes through them with each death? Is he the only one?

He can't bring himself to take a single step forward. Instead, he drops to his knees and prays. The sounds of his prayers rend the air around him, harsh, beautiful, and useless. No one turns to him, and God isn't listening.

He searches for something, any feeling in the darkness that isn't this, isn't here. When he feels something, he pulls on it like a lifeline.

[[ooc: Gabriel has passed out following events that will be happening in this thread. He doesn't have control over his dreaming, and chances are he won't know he's dreaming most of the time, so expect horror, and expect him to take over the dream.]]

Comments

[wildmage_daine]

"She sounds nice," Daine offers, aware that it's not enough - that she's disappointed him by not being this 'Fauna.' It bothers her, perhaps more than it should. She just wants to help him, like he helped her before, with Yuri. Yuri.

Sitting bolt upright as this more recent memory presents itself, she exclaims, "You helped me stop Yuri when he got out of his cage! He was a bear, and I managed to get him to the park, and then you found us and knocked him out. Remember?" She hardly dares to hope, given that he doesn't seem to remember her at all, but having to face down a rampaging werebear seems harder to forget. "And then Romac captured us. I was able to get Yuri out, but..." her face falls as she realizes that it hadn't even occurred to her to try and get Gabriel out, too. Given how he can teleport, she figures he wouldn't have needed the help - but the ugly truth is that she just hadn't thought of him. She'd been too focused on Yuri and herself.

"I'm sorry," she says, staring down at her hands. "I should have come for you, too."

[has_a_horn]

"It's alright. It is." He smiles up at Daine. He doesn't remember her or Yuri or any of it. He might feel different about it later, but for now he's willing to offer her any forgiveness she asks for.

In the next moment, his face contorts in pain and he crumples forward, curling in on himself. He moans, and light starts to seep out of his pores - his Grace, seeping out from underneath his skin. "Fauna. No, no, Daine. I'm sorry."

And then, everything disappears. Gabriel, the hallway, the city. He's woken up, leaving her behind in his dream scape.

A few minutes later, Gabriel returns. For a few moments, they're standing in a vast landscape watching two men who are, in turn, watching a burning city on the horizon.

Then, they're back in the hallway. Gabriel is surrounded by his own shed feathers, and he looks back, clenching his teeth in pain as he looks back at his own ragged wings. He doesn't even bother to collect them this time. "I think this might be a dream."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine shakes her head. It's not all right, and his forgiveness isn't worth much if he has no idea what she's talking about because he doesn't remember anything.

When he slumps forward, Daine reaches for him instinctively. There's light pouring out of him again, too much for her hands to contain, and she squints her eyes against the sudden brightness. "Gabriel? What's happening?"

And then he's gone. Everything's gone. She's surrounded by just... nothing. Daine turns in a circle, or tries to, but it's impossible to tell if she's really moving when the view is the same in every direction. "Gabriel?" she calls, but her voice sounds strangely muffled. "Gabriel!"

Nothing.

In a panic, she takes hawk shape, her wings beating frantically as she tries to escape, but there's no distance to cover. She might as well be hovering in place. She drops to the ground, panting, and then realizes that at least there seems to be a ground of some sort. Shifting into badger shape, she tries to dig, but whatever surface she's on seems to bend and flow around her claws. She leaves no mark.

Nothing.

Daine's still in badger shape when Gabriel returns, bringing a welcome change of scenery with him. Her claws sink into dirt, and she lets out a relieved whuff as she rakes through it. The ground is distracting enough that she barely glimpses the burning city before they're suddenly back in the base again. Blinking, she takes human shape again.

"Gabriel!" She almost wants to throw her arms around him in relief - and to make sure he doesn't go off and leave her again - but the state of his wings stays her. A hug would probably just hurt him. She settles for resting a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh." Relief swamps her again; she'd much rather this be a dream than reality. "Good." Well, good for her - Gabriel still looks awful. "What happened to you?" she asks, picking up a feather before she can remember it might not be a good idea for her to touch them. Nothing terrible happens - honestly, it just looks like an ordinary feather, if overlarge - and she sets it down in front of him before reaching for another. If he doesn't have the strength to gather them up, she can.

[has_a_horn]

He responds tersely, painfully, "I woke up." That's about all that he's going to let her know.

He barely even remembers who she is, but he does know that she doesn't have the tools to help him here. All that he can do is make sure that she is safe if things go wrong with him. He hunches his shoulders forward and several large pinion feathers fall from his wings, their ends tipped in blood. The hallway, once cluttered with all manner of detail - trash, dust, little cracks in the concrete, now seems less defined. Except for the occasional door, there doesn't seem to be any detail at all.

He takes a few deep breaths before he speaks again. "Leave them," he says, meaning the feathers. "You should go."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine frowns as it belatedly occurs to her that he might be having as rough a time in the waking world as he is here. What's happening to him? What could send a demi-god into such a state?

Does Romac still have him?

She adds a few more feathers to the growing pile in front of him, her hand shaking. "You got away, didn't you?" she asks. Not that he seems to remember anything, but this is important. "You're not still in one of their cages...?" She knew she'd been wrong to forget him. Mithros, what if he's still trapped there? This is all her fault.

She's automatically reaching for another feather when he tells her to stop, and then she fists her hands in her lap. "I should've helped you," she says miserably.

[has_a_horn]

A cage, he thinks. Yes. It's not just a room they've thrown him into. It must be a cage.

"No." He responds firmly. Whatever trouble he's in now, he knows that he doesn't want to get this girl involved. Not when she's already gotten out safely herself. Only...not so safely, because she's escaped only to be pulled into his mind.

There's no telling what could happen to her if he loses control while she's still here. She could be lost in some limbo forever, or her mind obliterated. With a force of will, he tries to push her consciousness out of his mind, but it doesn't even begin to work. He's fighting a war on too many fronts.

He huffs out a breath, frustrated and frightened that he might be starting to panic. "I got away," he lies, "but I'm tired. I need you out of my dream."

[wildmage_daine]

She doesn't believe him - surely it would take more than being tired to prompt a nightmare like this. Then again, things didn't go so well last time she ignored someone else's wishes because she thought she knew better and wanted to help. At least she had good reason to believe she could handle an angry bear, but whatever's going on with Gabriel is well beyond her experience.

"All right," she agrees with some reluctance. "But I don't know how to leave." Even when he'd woken up, she was still stuck despite her efforts to escape. Frowning, she adds, "I think something pulled me here."

[has_a_horn]

"Just go!" He growls out in frustration, his wings bristling, his voice vibrating low and inhuman. For a few moments, the only impression he gives off is that of a cornered and injured animal lashing out. He drops his hands to the ground and digs his fingers in. The concrete gives way easily, as if it's made of sand.

Quickly though, his manner changes as he forces himself calm. He smooths his hands over the concrete, his eyes shut tightly as he takes a few deep breaths. His heart races, panic radiating out into the general atmosphere. "Daine. I can't get you out. Not now."

It takes a few breaths before he can speak again. "You said you could patch me up? I think...I don't know. It might help." He can't bring himself to look at her. It won't heal anything, or get him out of that white room, or get her out of here, but it might give them both something to focus on in the meantime.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine flinches a little at the outburst, but then thinks that maybe she should've expected it. She knows, better than most, how creatures can react when they're hurt, frightened, and trapped. This is different, of course: an injured hawk might scratch or nip her, or cuff her with its wings, but she's guessing it'd be far worse for her if Gabriel lashed out in earnest. They might only be dreaming, but this is his dream, not hers, and she doesn't like to think about what hands that can crumble concrete could do to a human body.

Her heart rate quickens, and it takes her a moment to realize the panic she feels isn't entirely hers - it's coming off Gabriel in waves, like the fear that stormwings bring into battle. Taking a deep breath, Daine pushes the panic aside, a task made easier by far too much practice facing off against stormwings. She'll be no use to Gabriel if she can't keep her head, and if she can't help him somehow, she's in trouble.

"All right," she says, automatically lapsing into the low, soothing tone she'd use with a spooked animal she was trying to settle. "We'll just have to wait a little while before we try again." Maybe it needs to be a joint effort, with him trying to push her out while she tries to leave.

His suggestion that she patch him up gives her pause - she'd made the offer before she'd known that the base was abandoned, and hadn't he said it was no use? - but only for a moment. At least they'd be doing something, and she might feel a bit less helpless than she does, now. "The medics' room is close by. Some of their stuff might still be there." She frowns a little as she gives him an appraising look. "Can you make it? Elsewise I could go and come back with whatever I find there."

[has_a_horn]

"Of course I can make it," he grouses. Though, when he goes to stand up, he stumbles and has to brace himself against the wall. "Shit. I can. I may need some help." Then he just has to laugh through the pain, because needing help seems like an understatement at this point.

He stands, bent over, his hand still propped against the wall. He laughs until he starts coughing, then looks across at her. He knows he's deteriorating fast, losing all of his Grace, but he needs to keep going. "How close by?"

[wildmage_daine]

The effort he has to pour just into standing up is alarming, and Daine wavers uncertainly between the urge to help and her worry that she'll only hurt him if she tries. When he admits that he needs the assistance, though, she steps forward to take the hand he isn't using to prop himself upright (or as close to 'upright' as he can get).

"It's just down that side corridor, maybe ten yards," she says, gesturing to said corridor's entryway a little ways down the hall. She starts to sling his arm over her shoulders, then hesitates. "I can just carry you, too, if it's easier."