jonathan worth (dierache) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-06-03 22:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | irene adler, moriarty |
Who: Iris and Jonathan
What: Dreams! Take 2
Where: Dreamland
When: Earlier this week.
Warnings: None.
Things were not all roses in Jonathan’s dreams, not by a long shot. Worry that he might be forced to deal with Moriarty while he was unconscious had kept him up, and when he did fall asleep, slumped on the couch with a notebook across from him, it wasn’t to be invited into pleasant fantasies.
At least he found himself in the city, and not embroiled in a nightmare. It was neutral ground in his head, thought it had a tendency to be unpredictable and dissolve. For the moment it seemed stable, but strange. Fog had descended on the pale backdrop of buildings and shadowy people, enough fog to make the park he was looking into seem as if it went on forever. Streetlights were barely able to pierce the fog, and he could only see a short way in. A steady stream of shadows walked in, and some could be seen meeting by trees before walking off together, disappearing into the murk.
A sound, sharper and more real than anything else he could hear, made him turn. “Hello?” Fear gripped him, the fear of dreams, nonsensical and overwhelming. Something was out there, hidden by the grey shroud smothering the street.
The mist assembled in the middle of the street and parted as she walked over the pavement in his direction. Nonexistent light shone on the soft waves of her hair, swept up and perfectly coiffed, and on the creased lines of the curve-hugging black satin dress. She wore it well, without hesitation, and walked in the otherwise restraining knee-length material as if it was no hindrance whatsoever. She could have come from a sedate evening party, if it was not for the fact she was missing shoes of any kind. Her attention was behind her, and then down the street, and then on him. The gaze was the same color as the mist. “Hello.” She recognized him as she gazed, but she hadn’t thought to fear yet. “You’re the one from the road.”
The fear faded into nothing when she walked out of the murk. “So are you,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore.” He found the fact that she hadn’t turned to run right away oddly heartening. Funny how one’s perceptions of a positive reaction could change so quickly. He was nondescript in black, wearing the same gloves he’d had on when she saw him last.
She stopped at the curb, a good distance away from him. She didn’t shift her weight, or sigh, or look nervously around. She just stopped. “I didn’t come on purpose. I tried not to come. Nothing works.” Her lashes drooped as she cast her eyes down. She made the effort, however. “Did you come on purpose?”
“I didn’t mean it so seriously,” he said, watching her as she looked down. “And no. I was sort of hoping I wouldn’t be here at all, to be honest.” He didn’t move closer to her, since he didn’t want to spook her right back into the fog.
“Where is here?” She looked around, to not look at him.
He smiled faintly. “The city. It’s better than it could have been, though.” He paused. “I could go.” He had no idea what it would do, leaving her alone here, but just seeing her look everywhere but at him was enough to make him want to.
“You mean wake up?” She looked him in the eye for the first time, and tilted her head.
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I’m usually not very good at just...waking up when I don’t want to be dreaming. But I could try, if it would make you feel better.” He inclined his head toward her. “Ella said you didn’t want me in the apartment again.”
“Ella,” Iris said, blankly. She was not so alert here as she was waking. Perhaps it was the expecting--always expecting. Her eyes focused, even through the mist. “Ah. I told her...” she trailed off, shook her head. “I want to feel safe in the apartment. I do not think I will, but I want to try.” She lifted her hand, and to illustrate, slid her palm over an invisible box a foot in front of her. Enclosed. Safety.
“Thus, I can’t be there,” he concluded. So she really was scared of him. Great. “You deserve to feel safe in your own home.” He shook his head after a moment. “Anywhere. Where ever you are. Even here.”
Long stare. “This is your place.” She brought her arms close in the first sign of humanity she had shown yet, hugging her bare elbows. Another quick glance around, and then back to him. “I’ve hurt your feelings.” An observation, not quite daring to give him an opening of sympathy or regret, but it bordered there, on the edge of her voice.
He smiled a little. “That implies a lot of intent,” he said. “I’m just not used to being someone who inspires terror, I guess.” Down the block, a door opened, and a pair of shadow people ambled out of it. They seemed to turn their way, though it was difficult to tell if that was actually the case because of their lack of features. Their gaze was palpable, however; in the way of dreams, it was easy to tell they were staring. After a moment, though, they turned away and moved on past the boundary of visibility.
She stiffened a little at that, though not without some self-awareness. “I wouldn’t say terror.” She heard the sound, which was not muffled by the mist as the rest of it, and flicked her gaze his way to observe his reaction. For her part, Iris pretended not to be disturbed by the gaze, though he was close enough to observe her expression, and it was not so cool as the pose she had placed her limbs in.
His gaze darted back to her. “Don’t mind them,” he said. “They’re harmless.” A few more shadows passed by, in a group this time. The whole aura of the dream was altogether different from the last time Iris had been there. Indeed, it almost seemed like a different place entirely. None of the shadows seemed to be travelling alone, as if they themselves were made nervous by the fog. He knelt down to pick up something glinting on the ground, and stood up with a silver ring between his fingers. “You know, it’s funny. You talk about terror,” here he flicked the ring away, down the street, as if it was nothing, “I was worried I’d find him here.”
Unconsciously, Iris shifted a little closer to the familiar--Jonathan--and away from the unfamiliar shadows. She turned her head and watched the ring glitter and then disappear in its high arc. “Why did you throw it away?” she asked, wistfully. Iris liked things that glittered. She was distracted enough that she didn’t comprehend the last thing he said until a moment later. “Who?”
“Because it doesn’t belong to me,” he said, watching it roll down the street without hitting a single crack before it, like everything else, was swallowed by grey. “Moriarty.” He glanced up. “He’s not here, though.”
Iris stopped moving toward him, but at least she didn’t shy back. “If he comes, then I’m really going to start screaming. I’m not Irene.” She licked her lips. “I don’t think I’m Irene.” Her knuckles went white as she gripped her arms a little closer.
“I don’t think I’m him,” he offered in a vague attempt to soothe, watching her tighten up and get smaller. “Do you ever see her when you’re dreaming?” He glanced up the street.
She seemed surprised. “Irene? No, she doesn’t sleep without me.” The conversation seemed to veer from side to side, and Iris seemed far less focused and intentional about what she said here. “She’s awake when I’m awake. Moriarty isn’t like that?” she asked, anxiously.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know much at all about any of this. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work.” He paused. “I know he’s there, but that’s all.” He started moving down the street. This particular subject wasn’t exactly his favorite, and he began walking as if he could leave it behind that way.
Iris followed after. She felt the fog and disliked the clammy fingers it ran up the back of her shoulders where the dress stopped. It wasn’t quite as if he was escorting, but she followed along nevertheless, bare feet silent. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere else.” Specific answers, in a place like this, hardly seemed to matter. He’d walk, and he’d get to be somewhere else, and that was all there was. He waved his left hand in a short, definite gesture. The fog blew away from the city like it had never been there at all, like a cloth being pulled by a magician from some wonder it was hiding. But then the city started to go with it, turning ashen, and then disappearing altogether. Things grew dark, dark as they could get, but a light appeared to keep everything from totally dissolving into blindness, following them at head height. “Your friend Micah is protective of you.”
The changes didn’t frighten Iris. Her dreams flexed and changed a lot, and though she didn’t know that she was dreaming in the way that he did, there was a certain accommodation for her surroundings she didn’t have when she was awake. Her appearance remained the same. “Micah is protective of everything he cares about,” Iris prevaricated, looking around for something besides darkness.
He smiled a little at that, since he doubted Micah threatened everyone who mentioned her, but said nothing. The darkness went on for some time before halting at an edge. Past the edge there was the first visible thing in the darkness-a massive waterfall rushing into a gap in the dream. It tumbled down and down to no apparent bottom, and it made none of the sound that a waterfall of its size should. Jonathan sat on the edge of the cliff over looking it, peering over the edge. The ground there was smooth and wet, cold and slick, like stone, though it looked no different from the dark ground they’d just been walking on.
Iris remained standing in the black satin dress, looking cool and remote and incongruous as she looked over at the tumbling water. Her toes flexed, gripping the ground, and having looked her fill, she retreated another step. “There are no people in your places,” Iris observed, looking at him again.
He tipped his head back, looking up at her, dark eyes cool. “I guess I never think to add them in,” he said, confirming that everything was as deliberate as it seemed, and he was likely this lucid in his dreams most of the time. “Do yours have many people?”
“Add them in?” she echoed, without apparent comprehension. She shrugged. “Sometimes. At least some of the time.” She looked at the waterfall. “You made it?” She didn’t know what to think of it.
He made a soft sound. “Can’t think of any I’d want to add,” he said. “Made it? I suppose you could say that.” As far as he was concerned, the waterfall had just been there when it had needed to be. He hadn’t really been thinking of a waterfall-he’d just been curious about what was out here, past the city he was familiar with. To him, it was pretty obvious what he’d spent the last few days thinking about, so the waterfall wasn’t much of a surprise. He pulled his legs back up over the ledge, sitting cross-legged. “When you’re dreaming, don’t you ever wish you were somewhere unfamiliar? Somewhere more interesting than the same places you spend your days?”
Without his lucidity, she just gazed down into his face, looking for something besides the absent remoteness. “I never wish anything while I’m dreaming,” she admitted. “I’m just there.” She pointed at the ground. “Like just being here.”
He pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t let it be like that,” he said. The light beside them snuffed out at the end of the sentence, and for a moment they were in total darkness. Then the light came on again, but it had taken the form of a streetlight. The light seemed to fill in the lines of everything around them, drawing the city back in with shades of black and sodium yellow, before everything filled in like a painting, gained reality again.
The total darkness scared Iris stiff. She let out a little sound of surprise and fear and by the time the lights came back up her eyes were shut tight and her arm was up in front of her as if to ward off something coming. As soon as there was light to see, she turned around blindly, found a doorway, and ran through it.
An oblong stone sarcophagus on a white marble floor dominated the room that she fled to, and passing shadows, outlines of people dominated by the details of their clothes and height but not their expressions, filled the room, circling around glass cases. The British Museum.
He gave chase, if for no other reason that he worried she might find something she really wouldn’t want to see. He was struck by surprise when he skidded to a stop in what had to be a museum, and a place the definitely wasn’t his. He turned, looking for her. “Iris?”
Outside of the normal bounds of his own dreamscape, everything about him seemed to come into sharper focus. Whatever control he had over his own dreams clearly extended to himself in them as well, though whether he was aware of how distant he was in them was arguable. Torn loose from that, he was considerably more vibrant, his very form seeming more immediate.
She was not in the black dress. She blended well with the crowd, slacks, loose hair, a vague smile, even a little pamphlet of which the wording was impossible to read. She looked up at a stern statue of Ramses in black stone, and then at him when he spoke. She seemed more secure in his dream than in hers. By way of greeting, she took several steps his direction. She still wore no shoes.
“Jonathan. Glad you came by. Here is better. See the people?” Lifting a hand to indicate the crowd in a sweeping gesture. She didn’t seem to realize that they had just come from his to hers, the cohesive movement from place to place wasn’t necessarily hers by conscious choice. A woman that was all lines and a sharp diamond necklace worth several thousand walked past him.
He watched the woman go by. “I see the people, but they lack personality.” Or faces, really, so he didn’t see how they were much different from the ones in his dream. These at least had clothing and some defining characteristics, but still. “You’re a fan of museums.” He couldn’t help but smile a little at how much more at ease she seemed.
“They are good places to meet,” she said, giving him a smile that was unfamiliar, but was clearly meant to be the kind she offered friends. “Safe places to meet.” She didn’t argue with him about personality; Iris didn’t judge people by their personality immediately.
“Safe from what?” he asked, looking up at the statue of Ramses, looking in that moment as if he was guarding the place from intruders. At some point he had picked up a pamphlet of his own, and he flipped it around with his fingers, unthinking.
“A lot of things,” she said, intentionally letting the smile melt into mysterious. As in most dreams, the letters weren’t letters, just garbled script with the impression of information. “Crowds are very safe places.”
“Easy to hide in,” he observed, accepting the lack of readable script without blinking. He walked around her, toward the door, looking out. He wondered if this was a place Iris came to often-if she always ran to it, away from something else.
She didn’t answer, and the courtyard beyond was different than the one the British Museum truly boasted, somehow. There wasn’t time to acquire, however, as the crowd abruptly became thicker and thicker, streaming out past the stern Ramses and then past him, pushing and shoving until there almost wasn’t room to breathe--or dream.