The Tomato in the Mirror

[applesaucemod]

Spring is in the air, and monsters are in your head. It will be hard to run from your fears tonight, though -- for you see, you are the thing lurking in your nightmares. Whether it's something that goes bump in the night, a ferocious animal, or even a person you find intimidating, you have become that which frightens you. Anyone who encounters you in this dreamscape will see the shape of you nightmares, and should you look into a mirror, well....

Dreamers will find themselves in an oversized funhouse whose twists, turns, and intersections turn it into a maze. There is no entrance and there is no exit, only branching hallways, tunnels, and ladders that divide and rejoin in baffling combinations. By the look of it, the funhouse has been here for years, slowly falling into decay as its lights burn out one by one and the bright paint chips and fades. The machinery, however, is still working, still ready to surprise these new guests. Hallways end suddenly in long, steep slides back down into the depths, floors lurch under dreamers' feet, and entire corridors spin horizontally. Elsewhere, dreamers might become lost in the mirror maze or get dropped into a vast ball pit.


[Mod note: Usual dream party rules are a go: apply the dream's transformation to your character(s) as you see fit, and decide for yourself whether they will remember these experiences in the morning. Both members and non-members are welcome to play all characters on this post, including those which are not currently part of the game's cast. Have at!]

Comments

[theoldgirl]

When the TARDIS slips into the dream, she finds herself forcibly integrated into the funhouse before she even has time to resist or brace herself. One of the corridors now opens into her console room, but it is visibly sick and decaying. Everything is covered in dirt and dust, the railings are rusted, the glassy surfaces milky white and blind. The only light comes from a shining white column of pulsing energy that is winding upwards through the carcass of her console. Its source is the withered dead body of her pilot, curled around the roots of the console like a child seeking shelter. The writhing energy casts unsteady, ghostly shadows on large stone arches protruding from the walls like bones.

She's become the Doctor's tomb, and in her own slow death her interior dimensions have collapsed until only the Console and Cloister Room remain, merging grotesquely. When she realizes this, she wants to recoil and flee, but she only succeeds in letting out an unearthly howl and a gust of wind that rattles the dead ivy leaves on the ground. In her horror and panic, the dream has her trapped.

[fucking_ebay]

To say that Peter is not thrilled with this dream would be an understatement. Yeah, it's got good atmosphere; something like this could make a brilliant theme for a show...if it didn't also make him feel like he's about to contract tetanus just from walking around. Add in the part where he's become one of the walking undead, and he's more than ready to wake up and be done with this. Somehow, though he'd meant to ask Gabe to wake him up, they'd got separated before it could happen.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and strolls along a corridor to nowhere in particular, minding his step after a section of the floor yanked itself out from under him a few minutes ago. When he comes upon a room glowing with a different kind of light, it doesn't occur to him that this might be something different from the rest of the funhouse...not, that is, until he's wandered inside and spotted the dessicated corpse on the floor.

"...Well, shit," he says after he's gotten over jumping and gasping and so forth in surprise. Glancing around uneasily, he turns to make a hurried exit. It's just a dream, but that doesn't mean he wants to stick around.

[theoldgirl]

As caught up as the TARDIS is in her horror, she can't fail to notice the other mind entering, and that makes her come to her senses somewhat. She's still too dismayed by everything else to be upset specifically about the identity of the intruder, or care at all that he's here, and she makes another, a little more collected attempt at fleeing the dream.

When that fails, an almost inaudible wail of frustration rings through the room. Why can't she just leave, why is she forced to be confronted with this, to feel the Doctor's death in her walls and in the broken down heart of her console? Seeking any escape from this at all, she tries to go for a humanoid projection, and at least that works.

She appears by the door, the dream thankfully not messing with her usual physical form as well, though she can't make the effort not to make it look as drawn and harrowed as she feels. Though now she probably does have to acknowledge Peter, so she gives him a look that's too weary to be effectively condescending.

[fucking_ebay]

It's not a sound, exactly, that makes Peter's hair stand on end and hastens his steps, making him stumble against the railing on his way to scamper back down the stairs. Whatever he's stumbled into, he really doesn't want to be here -- and when the form of a woman appears in front of him, the fact that it's someone he normally can't stand barely registers.

"Go, go!" he snaps at her as he draws up even with her in the doorway. Whatever this place is, he apparently doesn't wish it even on her.

[theoldgirl]

What is he even... "Go where?" she demands, both confused and irritated. Even if she went somewhere else in the dream, she'd still be here, she'd still be this. So she doesn't budge.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter's set to run out the door and keep running, but when she doesn't turn to come with him he comes to a confused stop in the doorway, reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder and push her along. "Whatever the hell this is, we don't want to be here," he says. Really, he thinks, that should be obvious.

[theoldgirl]

Finally it hits her just how terrified he is, of her, and although she couldn't care less about his opinion, too much of her nature revolves around being hospitable, reliable, a safe place. It's appalling to be seen like this by anyone, to cause this sort of reaction, and she feels disgust at herself rising in her.

"This is me," she nearly shouts, shaking off his hand, misery shining in her eyes. She's too upset to even consider that she shouldn't give anyone she trusts as little as Peter any information about her true nature at all. "I can't be anything or anywhere else!"

[fucking_ebay]

To be fair, the one time she was perfectly hospitable for him, Peter didn't like her butterflies. This, however, is something on an entirely different level.

"What do you mean, it's you?" he asks, seriously confused. For all that he knows she's not in the least bit human, and for all that he's been told she is, in fact, a time machine, he still thinks of the TARDIS in terms of the woman he's looking at right now.

[theoldgirl]

"My control room," she snaps, bristling at having to explain her pain in words. "This is what I look like, only... dying. But I can't... the dream is preventing me from changing it!" An attempt to do so only elicits a brief flickering of what little light there is, and a faint wheezing from the console.

"I don't want to be like this," she adds, wishing he would stop being quite so horrified and repulsed by her.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter flinches, half expecting the wheezing room to collapse on them. It's...her. With a control room. She is the control room? He stares stupidly at her human-shaped construct for a few long moments. "...God, that's really fucking weird," he concludes at last. Giving his head a quick little shake to clear it, he adds, "It's not just you."

[theoldgirl]

That declaration really isn't helping to make her feel better, Peter. But at least it reminds her what an ignorant git he is, and feeling familiar irritation at him is almost a welcome distraction from her horror. Though it's interrupted by confusion at his next words. "What do you mean?"

[fucking_ebay]

He's glad to be of service not even considering that she might not realize she is just really fucking weird in general.

"I mean it's another one of those transformation deals," he informs her, more a bit pleased to have the upper hand for once. "Only it's not cuddly little animals this time."

[theoldgirl]

"And I'm not able to leave this time," she protests, because that's really what matters the most here. She doesn't care what the telepathic current does to the dreamers, as long as she can opt out, which should never be this difficult for her. Why have all her recent visits to the dreaming been so awful? She's distraught with the notion that her very last source of enjoyment and diversion in this universe seems to be getting ruined for her.

But at the same time she's considering the information he gave her and taking a closer look at him. She'd been too distressed to pay any significant attention to him, and his mind doesn't feel different anyway, but now she suddenly realizes just what she's talking to here. "Is that why you are a vampire?" she asks disdainfully.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter opens his mouth to say that she can just join the club (it's not like he ever gets a choice about these dreams), but her question quite effectively shuts him up. He'd nearly managed to put his own transformation out of mind.

"Yes," he says tersely, not pleased to be reminded. "It is. And your boyfriend is Death at the moment -- see a theme?"

[theoldgirl]

She might have a few things to say about vampires, and none of them kind, but Peter just continues to be perplexing. "My-- who? Do you mean the Doctor?" She arrived at that guess after several leaps of imagination and metaphor, okay. She wouldn't have thought he was even here, feeling his mind safely tucked away in his bedroom. But if he is, she can't let him see her like this.

[fucking_ebay]

"Gabriel," Peter corrects her impatiently, woefully ignorant of their shared feelings about vampires. Not knowing he's bringing up another sore subject, he clarifies, "Short fucker, wrecks people's flats?"

[theoldgirl]

Oh. Him. Instantly her expression, her entire bearing changes, becoming closed off and defensive, as though that would keep out the hurt of thinking about him. "We are no longer close," she informs Peter haughtily.

"And you would do well to watch yourself around him." For all that she disdains everything about Peter, she hardly wishes death on him. Who knows how much it really takes for Gabriel to decide someone deserves to die. Her voice is tinged with bitterness when she realizes, "His appearance here is a fitting one."

[fucking_ebay]

Peter stares. Here he finally stops being afraid of one of them, and the other starts trying to get him started again. Of the two of them, too, the TARDIS hardly seems the more trustworthy considering she set him on fire on several occasions.

"Thanks," he says sarcastically, "but of the two of you, one's an angel and the other's a psychotic ship-thing. Granted, he's a shitty angel, but the principle holds."

Yep, just assuming she knows. Maybe he shouldn't do that, what with how Gabriel doesn't seem to want that information getting out.

[theoldgirl]

She might be surprised to hear that Peter knows what Gabriel is, if the rest of his words weren't so infuriating. Why does she ever try to help this ungrateful, detestable human? She ought to just leave him to Gabriel's mercy.

"Fine," she snaps, glaring as though she's going to set him on fire for real this time for calling her psychotic and a thing. "I don't care what punishment Gabriel may devise should he decide there is something damnable about you. That is what angels do, according to him."

[fucking_ebay]

Peter seems to have realized he might have gone just a tiny bit too far and takes a step back, looking at her like he's expecting her to do something violent. This attitude is more in line with what he generally expects from her...but her insistence on this point is still weird. He wants to scoff at her, but for all that he's decided to trust Gabriel, it really doesn't take much for doubt to start seeping in around the edges again.

"...What do you mean, 'damnable,'?" he asks, still watching her like she's a snake poised to strike.

[theoldgirl]

Normally she would hate being looked at like that, would want him to understand that she'd never outright hurt a human, no matter how much she may detest them. But right now she's too caught up in the stress the dream is causing her and her anger and pain at Gabriel to effectively restrain herself.

"You will have to ask him that yourself," she replies coldly. "His definition of what is just and right escapes me. I don't believe humans deserve to be tortured and killed for their flaws or for what they do to each other."

[fucking_ebay]

He's known from the start that Gabriel is absurdly powerful and kind of a dick, but in recent times Peter has been reassured by the notion that an archangel is supposed to be one of the good guys. He frowns at her, trying to reject it. "I don't believe you," he says, though his tone speaks more of not wanting to believe her.

[theoldgirl]

For once she wasn't foolish enough to expect anything approaching reason from Peter, so his stubborn reply mostly slides off her without irritating her further. She hadn't mentioned it for his sake anyway, not really.

"I don't particularly care," she informs him with a poor attempt at haughtiness, still too emotional to seem properly disdainful. "I warned you; if he turns on you now like he did on my friend, it isn't my responsibility."

[fucking_ebay]

This is seriously not what Peter wanted to hear tonight. Isn't it enough to get yanked into this shithole and shoved into a vampire body without having the TARDIS try to tell him he shouldn't trust the guy with whom he was discussing a potential threesome just a few minutes ago? Never mind that Peter doesn't want to have a threesome with Gabriel; the angel brings Peter's number of friends in this world up to a whopping two, and he doesn't want to give that up now that he's finally decided to accept the friendship.

"It's a nightmare," he decides uneasily. "This is all just a nightmare, and I'm dreaming you up saying this." Not how it works once they've established this is a shared dream, but fuck that.

[theoldgirl]

She almost snorts in disbelief at the extent of his stupidity, but ends up just letting out a frustrated huff of air and rolling her eyes sardonically. "Then I wish you all luck in 'dreaming up' something more pleasant than this conversation," she retorts, dripping contempt. "But I'm afraid we are both quite real and quite stuck in these horrifying shapes until the dream dissipates." And Gabriel's cruelty is real too, but she's done talking about that.