applesaucedream | [open] Locked within a room of memory, locked up away with no light of day

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[open] Locked within a room of memory, locked up away with no light of day

Seth sits in his bed, back against the wall, facing the door.

This is not his current room. No trace of the sleek, clean style he favours. No decorations, no furniture at all except for the bed. The walls are brick and stone, the floor dirty cement, the air musty and heavy, with just a hint of smell from the sewers coming from the toilet in the corner. There's a constricting feeling of anxiety and dread, his attentions focused on the heavy, bolted door.

There used to be books and writing equipment at least, but they took that away before they returned him here. They even took away his nice blanket. It's funny the simple things you get attached to when there's nothing else.

Any moment now, he knows, one of the rebels will come through that door and discipline him. Tell him he'll do as they say, or else. He wonders what it is he did this time. There's been quite a few times over the more than three months they kept him here that he didn't want to do what they told him to.

He's had this dream before. He doesn't quite know it's a dream yet, but it'll soon come to him. And while it's not a nightmare that makes him wake with a start and a strangled scream, it's the sort that weighs heavily on him the entire following day, like a weight on his chest, making it hard to breathe, making any small room feel like a trap.

The door opens, and someone steps in, the door closing heavily behind them.

[This is a recurring dream for Seth, so he can have a different visitor on different nights. If you tag in, merely pick a date.]

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Seth takes a step forward, then stops. "And how do you intend to get there? Specifically, past the guards and outside the base?" Cause if he could just 'go to IHOP', maybe he would've done so already? Or did Andrew miss the 'dungeon' bit?

Andrew gives the question the serious consideration it is due. "Run, I should think," he decides. "What sort of base is it, anyway? Can't say I've seen this one before."

"The rebels. And what do you intend to do if they shoot us?" Just, you know, to make sure he's got this whole 'running' thing planned out. Since he obviously hasn't. How did he even get here? Is he a prisoner, like him? It might explain the apparent mental imbalance.

"Very few people will actually shoot you when they can just point guns at you and bark demands," Andrew points out. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Now, are you going to come or are you going to stay in here with your bed and your smelly toilet?"

'Very few', that's still not very comforting. But it does bring him some confidence to know they're unlikely to kill a valuable asset. It gives him a little upper hand - they care what happens to him, but he doesn't care about them.

He turns his back on Andrew for a moment, but only to crouch down and reach up under his bed, taking a pen. He pockets it, straightens, gives a nod, then heads for the door.

Andrew cranes to see what Seth's retrieving -- some hidden treasure, apparently, though what's worth hiding means different things to different people. He grins at his new found friend's acquiescence to his brilliant plan, bouncing on the balls of his feet and taking off for the door at a brisk walk.

"So rebels," he says. "Which rebellion, exactly? What planet are we on?"

Seth stops dead in his tracks. Right. Door's open, sure, but he's suddenly pretty sure he doesn't want this guy tagging along if he's going to make a break for it. Presumably this guy recently arrived?

"Earth. New York," he answers tersely.

'Tagging along'? Andrew is clearly going to lead him to safety. Never mind that he has no idea where he is and has simply fallen into the general swing of staging a rescue wherever he happens to find himself with someone in need of rescuing.

"Really?" he asks, brow furrowing with his thoughtful frown. That sounds familiar, but the surroundings still aren't. "Rebels against what, though? Tell me they do have a cause."

Seth is having more and more trouble imagining how this guy would even get in here. This isn't a part of the base where unauthorised people just wander in. Is he being messed with? No, this seems far too random for that. But then...

"Oh," he says, it finally hitting him. He buries his face in his hands for a moment, then runs one of them through his hair. "This is a dream."

Mental imbalance is always an option. Andrew might have been a fellow prisoner with a few screws loose; he's been that before in a few previous lives. But no, Seth's more solid guess is the correct one.

"...Oh." Andrew deflates a little as he looks around again at their surroundings. "Oh, that does explain things, doesn't it? I was wondering how I'd got here. It's been a few hundred years since I've had a bout of amnesia quite that intense."

Well, at least Seth can calm down a little now. Not that he really does. The urgency ebbs away, but the anxiety definitely remains. Hard to get rid off in this location.

"I need to get out of here," he says, stepping out the door, heading down the corridor, concentrating. The next door he opens and steps through becomes the front door of his apartment, and he steps inside. This is a lot more welcoming, although not particularly warm. A bit sterile and dark, definitely a guy's apartment, but it's safe.

"That's what I've been telling you," mutters Andrew, who's been more than a little frustrated at Seth's hesitance to follow him to safety. Even now he's doing it wrong with this materializing doors to nicer places business. Andrew is brought along for the ride (probably because he insists on following close behind -- it's not actually much of a 'ride'). Uninvited, he stands in the doorway and casts an appraising gaze over what turns out to be an ordinary human apartment. "I take it you're a rifty," he says.

"Got it in one," he answers, getting out a bottle of vodka. He doesn't bother with a ice, or tonic, or even a glass. Seeing as this is a dream, he's not even sure it will work, he's just hoping the placebo effect will dull a little of his anxiety.

He's not inviting Andrew in, but then he didn't invite him into his head either, and he's here anyway. Nor does he indicate he should leave either, Seth just drops down onto his couch and opens the bottle, taking a drink.

"Funny thing to dream about," he comments mildly -- too mildly. "The rebels having a dungeon, that is. Can't imagine where that'd come from."

Andrew watches Seth for his reaction. Is this a random dream, detached from reality? That's not actually his first assumption, but he wants some indication from Seth.

Seth snorts derisively. "If you can't imagine that, you don't know them well enough," he answers bitterly. "That wasn't a dream, that was a memory."

Andrew didn't even have to go looking for something subtle, here. On one hand, he probably shouldn't share too much, on the other, he's always eager to turn people away from the rebels.

Andrew clucks his tongue and finally steps inside, shutting the door on the remains of the hallway. "Maybe I don't," he admits cautiously. "They must have had a reason, though -- no, scratch that, they must have had an excuse."

"They did," Seth answers, not too keen on oversharing, taking another drink and watching Andrew. "I was useful to them. Be careful about being to useful to a group like that. Especially if you might change your mind about wanting to help."

"Why are you drinking?" asks Andrew. "It is a dream, remember."

Perturbed, he starts making a circuit of the flat, looking around for anything interesting. He doesn't like this. He's had his suspicions, but what Seth is claiming is more extreme than he'd expected to uncover. "You didn't try to go to ROMAC, did you?" he asks, probing for reasons that would have at least some reasonable basis.

"It makes me feel better," he answers truthfully. And it is, a little bit. Tricking his own brain into relaxing. Of course, any of it is sort of outweighed by the conversation, but nonetheless.

"I tried to leave the city," he answers bitterly. "Be careful about that, too."

"Believe me, I have been," replies Andrew, deliberately opting not to say 'we have been.' "They weren't quite who I was worried about, though. How do you mean, 'useful'? And how long did they have you down there? Can you tell me any names?"

Seth narrows his eyes at Andrew. Asking an awful lot of questions for someone not giving anything in return.

"What's your power?" he asks in return.

What? He told him his name, didn't he -- wasn't that giving him something? Andrew pauses and gives Seth a surprised look. "Who says I've got one?" he asks, voice suddenly half an octave higher. Can Seth see that he does somehow?

"I say," he answers, though really he's going off Andrew's voice and intuition more than anything else. "And none come through the rift wot aren't changed by it."

Well, he could admit that the rift apparently gave him the ability to become pregnant despite lacking the correct orifice...or he could go with the one that feels like an actual power. Andrew makes a face, reading between the lines and seeing that he's going to have to give a little information if he wants to receive more. "I split," he replies. "Into smaller me's. What about you?"

"If we were in the waking world, I could take that power off you, stick it in someone else. How's that for useful?" he answers, with raised eyebrows. Lucky for Andrew, that doesn't sound like a power that would be particularly useful to Seth, nor a high target for power-stealing in general.

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