Hurt you in ways you can't describe; go back to the start now Who: Darklis, Rina, NPCs Where: Sleepy-land When: Sleepy-time Warning: Disturbing theme
Blood. It was brighter than she’d have imagined. Almost like the fabric of her mother’s favorite dress, bright and vibrant against the paleness of her hands. And so warm. She imagined that it was trying to flow off her hands and back into the body that she had her hands pressed to. No, she didn’t wish the bullet back into the gun that she had dropped the second after the bang had caused her ears to ring. She knew that it’d needed to be done, he’d needed to die before he could continue his work against her people. One less in the world. One less to do the bidding that shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t that she was trying to stop him from bleeding out on her, if she was then she’d have turned to her magic, just that she wanted there to be less blood. Too much, far too much, and it was getting everywhere. Still flowing out onto her hands, staining the ends of the shirt that she was wearing.
And his eyes were open. She remembered when they had been beautiful to her. Clear blue with a little sparkle when he laughed, small wrinkles having started at the corners from all of the squinting he did over his papers. Now they were blank, empty. Better than the harshness that had taken them over whenever he looked at her. And his face was smooth, relaxed. No hard lines. No frowning. A bit of blood was flecked on his lips and chin though, marring the image. Once she had closed his eyes it was on his eyelids as well. Ah well, a killer like him couldn’t have a flawless appearance. There had to be little imperfections or it just wasn’t right. Kyler hadn’t looked peaceful when she died; neither could he. “I’m not sorry for doing this,” she confessed, her voice strong but quiet. Leaning down she kissed him lightly. His lips were still warm though the heat was fleeing. A few moments and it would be gone forever. “You deserved it for what you’ve done. I just wish that you hadn’t done any of it. I loved you so much.” She would have stayed for him alone. But he had been blinded by power, by her body’s betrayal and he had turned to things that shouldn’t have ever been there.
Smoothing back his hair, every bit as blond and soft not as it had been on the day she married him, she kissed his closed eyes, tears flowing down her cheeks to drip onto his face. A moment of peace and silence where nothing was loud, no one was screaming, there was no pain right in that moment. Until she felt her heart start to crack and sobs leaked out. Here she was kneeling in the middle of a street that she thought needed to be full of people. Now there were footsteps, but not enough, they were the people coming for her. She expected that. If only he hadn’t stepped out then she’d have been able to get to the church and go back like her mother and cousin. But she’d stayed to help, stayed with him, and this was the result. He was growing cold on the ground, her hands were covered in blood that shouldn’t have ever been there, and there were hands gripping her. Voices shouting but they were dull and muted, like they were coming from very far away and through a wall. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from him. “Varick...”
Rina closed her eyes and everything tugged a little. When she opened her eyes there was blood on her hands. Brighter than she’d have imagined. Almost like the fabric of her mother’s favorite dress, bright and vibrant against the paleness of her hands.
Darklis, just leave it alone. Her own curiosity combined with concern for Rina’s welfare had lead her to the bedroom door. She didn’t need to go inside to know her sleep was not easy. The unconscious could emanate anxiety just as well as the conscious. The only difference was that the latter could voice their concerns far more coherently. She already said some dreams should not be seen by anyone but the dreamer. That had never been something the Azraelan believed. Even as she started back down the staircase, she found herself arguing the case for family’s personal business versus what she usually considered to be public property. Dreams were ammunition, and when one had that it should be used. For the better, sometimes. Sometimes that ammunition helps. She had unravelled nightmares before. Why could she not do it again? Because Rina doesn’t want me in her head and I’m respecting that... Well. Trying to. Curling up in her pod chair, Darklis rested one hand on her copy of the Gormenghast trilogy, the fingers of her free hand drumming her frustration out against her thigh. It didn’t count as an invasion of privacy if she didn’t quite step completely into the dream, right? Right. Exactly. Rina didn’t even need to know she’d been there. She wouldn’t remember.
Tilting her head back against the inside of the chair, she let herself go far too easily. So many years of practice, and - There you are. That feeling, that raw emotion, was not wholly unexpected. She was an empath, but in the dream world it still seemed to hit her like a brick to the face. And why was she wearing a Nazi uniform? Blending in aside, she was female and physically seventeen. She was too short to be a Stormtrooper. Teenagers might have been welcome in the Hitler Youth, but she was sure the Nazis were sexist enough to leave women in the hospitals where they allegedly belonged. And I just can’t stand this shit. Turning her full attention back to what seemed to be a disturbingly real world, Darklis took a few steps forward. “Rina.” Why she was keeping her voice low, she wasn’t entirely sure. “Rina, look at me.” And not at the dead guy. He wasn’t going to get any more alive.
His eyes were open. She needed to close those and her hand began to move to do as she wished when she realized that there was a noise closer than anything else. A familiar and yet unfamiliar voice that knew her name. No, her mind denied, a frown forming on her face as she turned. This isn’t right. This isn’t how it happens. This isn’t right. Right was this continuing as it always did until she ended up being gripped by all those hands that would pull her away to the place she did not want to go to. But had to because she could not hurt them just to free herself. She had already done enough damage. She had already killed Varick. Crimson blood all over her trembling hands. Cooling as time passed but still far, far too warm and too recently inside of veins that it was never meant to leave. Lifting her eyes she recoiled at the sight of someone in Nazi uniform. Someone whose face was as vaguely familiar as that voice. Blinking, Rina tilted her head. Since when had women been allowed uniforms like that? Only the guards... there was no camp here. No, not right. She doesn’t belong here. “I had to,” Rina told her quietly, hands still on his chest. The gun was next to her. Someone would come and pick it up, point it at her while they shouted to know why. At least they were supposed to. But everything seemed a little different with the addition of this woman Nazi who she almost thought she knew. Darklis. “You’re not supposed to be here.” Rina’s hand moved to close Varick’s eyes without a thought, her body so used to the motions that she always went through in this dream that she could do it without thinking. She’s my cousin, a vampire. But not yet. That was supposed to come in the time after. “You’re not a Nazi. I don’t know you yet.” She was messing the dream up, things had not been observed or thought and there was only so much time before they would come to drag her away. Her eyes went back to Varick’s still face, the tears beginning to well. “I’m not sorry for doing this.” The words had to be said, she had to kiss him, feel the cracks start to form. She looked back at Darklis, again sensing that similarity that was still so wrong. “I just wanted to go home.” Her voice was going to break, this was so much more than she ever spoke in this memory. Dream, memory, the two were practically one and the same.
It was not the first time Darklis had come across a dreamer who looked less than pleased to see her. It was, however, the first time she’d received that reaction for reasons she assumed had more to do with her state of dress rather than what her presence often entailed. And while she could just as easily point out that it was Rina who somehow managed to subconsciously dress her in this uniform, she couldn’t deny that it was possibly more suited to her than the civilian clothing. She was a soldier, after a fashion. “I know you did,” she answered, automatically stepping further into the dream than her sense of ethics was telling her she had any right to. In actuality, she knew nothing about the event in front of her, apparent era aside. She could have entered this nightmare in time to miss the pigs flying, for all she knew. But she was finding it difficult to imagine Rina injuring anything. Even in a dream. “No, I’m not,” she agreed. The oddly casual nature of her body language rather singled her out from anybody else... and meanwhile her moral compass was still telling her to mind her own business. And yet. “Again, no, I’m not.” The moment she was near enough, Darklis pulled the gun towards her with the toe of her boot. “But you know this is a dream, right? None of this is--” Real. Trying not to close her eyes against the realisation that at least part of this had been real at some point, she palmed the gun. She was willing to bet that if she were to hold another of its kind in the waking world they would be a match. The weight, the feel of it. Shit. “Rina, none of this is real. Not for now. And now? You know me.” The hint of urgency that seeped its way into her tone was there for two reasons. The first being that she just realised she had successfully shifted completely into this dream without truly noticing, which was a significant mistake on her part. The second being that if this was honestly crafted from a memory, it would be harder for her to meddle with. And only Rina knew what happened next. Oh, and they were in Nazi Germany. Couldn’t forget that part.
Her name was Darklis and she was her cousin, but she had not known her here. She knew her in the future, after all of this in a time where she was not overrun with people being threatened with death for something that they could not control. In a time when Varick would be nothing more than dust in the ground, or wherever they had put him. And Darklis could not have known that she had needed to do this. That she relived it over and over again, every last moment from pulling the trigger to feeling his blood all over her hands. It was all as real to her now as it had been the day that it happened. Horrifically real. Terrifying. Haunting. She was starting to shake. As for what was said about her being in a dream, all of it not being real... it felt real. Terribly real. The blood was slightly sticky and cooling, her knees ached from how hard she had hit the ground after Varick fell. Such a slow fall. Her body had ached to catch him, but she could not force herself to even move. Not when she was the one who had made him fall. The pool of blood had stopped spreading out, the body under her hands was cooling. “This is how it happened,” Rina informed her. “Exactly how. He tried to stop me.” A door slammed in the distance. “He’s killed my people, he’s helped them. He stopped caring after I couldn’t give him what he wanted and he was going to stop me from leaving. I had to. He deserved it.” The tears were spilling as she kissed his eyelids and smoothed back his hair, unable to stop the motions that were so deeply ingrained. Rina’s voice was breaking, the tears refusing to stop. “You don’t want to know me now, Darklis, there’s nothing good about me right now and I can’t help anyone. I’ve tried so hard and they just keep killing them.” People had died. She had indirectly helped. Varick had forced her to go back to the hospital despite her objections. Such terrible things that she could not stop. Rubbing the tears out of her eyes she looked at Darklis, hearing the sounds of feet coming. “Now I pay for what I did. Just as it was. It’s real because it happened.” The police officers did not even seem to register Darklis as one of them grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up. If she was not an angel then that hold would have bruised. “Because I killed him. And I’m not sorry that I did it.” But that did not mean that her heart was not figuring out how to shatter all over again when she looked at the corpse lying on the ground. “Varick...”
How long had Rina been keeping this dream on a loop? Since it happened? This wasn’t something Darklis would ever fully understand. She’d never had recurring nightmares and what she did dream about always ended up on a canvas. Then she had stopped dreaming altogether at seventeen; she didn’t exactly have a wealth of experience in the subconscious dealing of her own trauma. But this is not real. It was becoming something of a mantra, regardless of how well she knew that this would be as real as the dreamer believed it to be. Jesus, even the blood was making her hungry. It made her resent the fact she was actually awake and sat in the living room. “If he didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t have done it - you did the right thing.” She itched to drag Rina away from that body. Or the body away from her. Not only was it doing nothing for the angel, but if he was as big a bastard as she was saying then he did not deserve further attention post mortem. He had no right to be such an important part of this. “Bullshit.” Darklis wasn’t an expert at giving open displays of sympathy. “If there’s nothing good about you you wouldn’t be crying over someone who did not deserve the air he breathed. God knows I would not have been that kind to him.” A bullet? No, he’d never sleep willingly again. Insomnia, micro naps, coma. Perpetual dream-state. Krueger, eat your heart out. Darklis had been doing it for longer. “No, it happened once, that doesn’t mean it needs to keep happening.” This needed to stop. Cocking the gun, she raised it to aim at the figment grabbing Rina. “You can stop this. You know it’s a dream, snap out of it.” The Azraelan in her pointed out she could not shoot a human. Not in the head. Except she could. She just really wasn’t supposed to. But this human wasn’t real and she’d feel better if he did not have hold of her cousin. Which was the only reason she really needed. Squeezing the trigger, she was a touch unnerved by how genuine the recoil felt. Rina fired it... She hated nightmares crafted from memory. It was only ever okay when she did it. To people whose welfare she wasn’t concerned about. And as much as Rina’s heartache was echoing throughout this dream - screw Varick.
The right thing. Of course it had been the right thing. If she had done the wrong thing, if she had killed an innocent, then she would not have kept her wings. An angel could not kill someone without a reason or they became a Fallen. Rina would never be one of the Fallen. Worse than demons almost because at least they had started out good. Varick started out good. A human version of the Fallen, only there was no special word for it. Nazi. “Don’t swear, Darklis,” Rina said automatically when she heard the word. And no, there was nothing good right then, just... “I’m crying because he’s my husband and I just killed him.” Though she knew, deep down, that she would have cried no matter who it was that she had shot. It would always be in her head, her heart - Rina was not the sort of person who could handle killing others. She did not fight against the hold she was pulled into, just like she never had, but then something happened that was not right. Something that did not belong there. The gun fired again and it was not in her hands. It was different, it was wrong and it should not be happening. The hold on her released and she stumbled, staring back at the man who had grabbed her. He was falling. There was more blood... “This isn’t right. No one shot him. No one else died.” Just Varick. “He isn’t supposed to die! There isn’t supposed to be anymore blood!” Her bloody hands pressed to the side of her head as she tried to wrap her mind around the change, the absolute wrongness of it and everything was changing...
The blood was gone. Varick was gone. She was standing in a house that was empty but for her and Darklis, who still did not belong there. The windows were broken, books and clothes scattered on the floor. Signs of a struggle. There had been times when this was the happiest house in the world but they’d passed years ago. “I come here a lot,” Rina told Darklis as she leaned down to pick up a book. A child’s book, very well-worn, about raccoons. Jakub had always wanted her to read it for him and she could remember the words all in the right order. He said that her voice was soothing. He had been such a sensitive child and he had never taken to the changes as well as his siblings. “This was Jakub’s favorite. Always ‘Aunt Rina, read it to me!’ Even when he was ‘too old’ for bedtime stories.” A quiet laugh as she started to pick up the house. It was not right that they had destroyed it so. It had to look like it had so that when they came back... they never come back. They die. All of them. Starved out skeletons or burned, poisoned... Neil had probably taken the longest. Or the heartbreak from what happened to his family would have done the damage. This was no easier than killing Varick over and over again, but at least there was no blood on her hands. “Jakub was fifteen. Franz was eighteen. Anneliese was twelve. I was at the hospital when they took them, and this is what I came back to. Varick told me.” Her smile faded, eyebrows knitting together as she gathered up broken shards of glass, the one right there slipped and opened a line of red on her hand. “He didn’t care. His voice was blank when he said it. Because they’re Jewish and they don’t matter.” She pulled the shard of glass from her hand and pressed it against her dress. “Why are you here? This pain isn’t yours.”
We’re in her own personal hell and she is concerned about my language. “That’s what I said,” Darklis stated calmly. She had killed him because he had no right to everyone else’s air. That he was also Rina’s husband was, as she saw it, immaterial. People did what they had to do - humans, vampires and angels alike. I shot the sheriff. Because he’d had hold of Rina and, yes, she was just a little protective over her. She had been brought up to look after the people who were supposed to be her own, even though they mostly hated her. And yet she instantly felt guilty. She was adding potential trauma into a situation - dream or not - that was traumatic enough. Hands automatically raising in the air at Rina’s words, Darklis kicked the floor with one perfectly polished boot, raising her eyes again to witness the whole dream shift. The gun was gone from her hand. This house had been destroyed. Her hand automatically moved to tear the red band from her arm. It had no right being there. Removing the headgear she’d barely noticed she was wearing, she tried picking off the emblem. When that failed, she turned her impatience to the one on her chest. Shot down again by attention to detail. Rina’s subconscious was a fan of good stitching. Righting a chair, Darklis sat herself down while she listened to what the angel had to say. She needed to. The words were adding a significant weight to her stomach. She averted her gaze when Rina stopped smiling, jaw setting at Varick’s reasoning. And humans thought vampires were monsters? “Because I have to be,” she answered once she found her voice. Her hands had busied themselves with pulling out the pins that had been keeping her hair up. “Some pain cannot go ignored.” The arm band, hair pins, jacket and beret were folded into an odd kind of bundle and set aside while she undid her top buttons and pushed back her sleeves. There, now she was a scruffy teenager of a dream-Nazi. It didn’t make her feel better. “You come here every night?”
She noticied from the side of her eye that Darklis was attempting to do away with her outfit. Ah, yes, a Nazi had no right to be in this place. Nor did a Nazi uniform have any place on someone related to her. It had been bad enough with Varick. Her actual blood kin? Closing her eyes as she picked up the frame that held a photo of the whole family, she imagined the dress that Neil’s wife had enjoyed so much. Spring green, loose-fitting and complimentary to her eyes. “Better that than a Nazi uniform,” Rina murmured. And why did Darklis say she had to be there? The only person who had to be there was her. And she did not even enjoy it or choose to be there. It was more chosen for her when she closed her eyes. “More or less,” the angel agreed with a nod of her head as sat on the floor, legs crossed while she sorted through ripped papers. Some of these had come out of a book. Those had come from Anneliese’s diary; she recognized the handwriting. If she acknowledged that this was a dream then why did she not wake up? Because I can’t. It hasn’t all happened and it isn’t over. It’s just a little different this time. She wished that Darklis was not there, but she was far more solid then everything else. Almost like she had always been there. Which was impossible. “I came here almost every day that I could get away from the hospital instead of going home. The last day I came... It was the day before... what you saw.” Her neck twitched. All of this information was not supposed to be in her head yet, she was not supposed to know what happened to Neil, the children... “This is my brother’s house.” Rising she pulled a chair over next to Darklis, holding the picture so that the younger-appearing woman could see it. There were little scratches all over it from the glass and it was black-and-white but still. From left to right she named them, as much for the benefit of Darklis as to hear their names. “My mother Lynde, our cousin Elin, Anneliese, Franz, my brother Neil, his wife Joan, Varick and I.” Before everything had gone wrong, as evidenced by the smiles and the fact that Varick had his arms around her. “Before mother and Elin went home. They wanted me to go with them, but I couldn’t leave anymore than Neil could.” Her voice was strained. “What you saw happened the day that I got a letter from Neil telling me that he was going to kill himself because his family was dead.” The photo rippled and shifted into that letter. Rina had held the actual letter for two hours, reading it over and over again until the words were burned into her memory. These were things that she could talk about, think about, when she was asleep. When she was awake her mind refused to accept it all and the twitches came, the stammering and the panic attacks that no angel should have. Her eyes went up to Darklis’ face. “You should leave before it gets worse.”
A brother. Rina’s brother. Which made him Darklis’ cousin as well. Her mind’s eye was filling in spaces on an imaginary family tree. It seemed so strange to put faces to names that it had never occurred to her might exist. Her world - her human world - had not existed outside of the Romani settlements. Why should it? She had always supposed her great-grandmother to be dead, for instance, because the life expectancy had been low in any case and she simply wasn’t there. That she was an angel and had simply moved on was not something she could have imagined. But the picture - they all seemed so happy. Varick almost looked sweet, though her mind was not letting her acknowledge that. Her face had set in a solemn frown, an odd sort of barrier between her own thoughts and Rina. This wasn’t right. Automatically, she closed her eyes against the letter. It felt wrong to even accidentally read it. It was not addressed to her and, selfishly, she did not want to see the reasoning behind an angel’s suicide - the idea of which was wrong on multiple levels. Bad enough that Rina could recall the letter itself in so much detail. “What? No.” Darklis’ voice was smaller than she’d expected it to be, the surprise registering on her face before she became annoyed with herself and cleared her throat. “I’m not stepping out of this until you do. You know this is just in your head, Rina, you can turn it off. Turn it into whatever you want. Anything.” Please. She wasn’t sure she was prepared to see what ‘worse’ entailed.
Rina saw that look on Darklis’ face. Why was it so surprising to suggest that she leave? Had anyone else entered into the dream who did not belong there then Rina would have said just the same thing. It was something that she went through, no one else. Maybe others had gone through their own version of it while they were still alive but unless they were some sort of long-lived supernatural they had likely died by now. Darklis had been alive then, but she had not been there. Off doing who knew what. Therefore this was not something that she needed to be exposed to. “It’s no less real for just being inside my head,” Rina pointed out as the letter dissolved. Nothing happened in her dreams that had not really happened. They were just memories that happened to take place within her dreams instead of just what she consciously controlled. Did that make them any less real? “What I want is for it to have never happened, but that won’t make it so.” Rina’s eyes were bright as she pressed her palms into her knees. It almost seemed worse in a way to be here and know what happened without it happening. And if she had known before then was there anything she could have done about it? Angel or not she was still only one person. She could not even imagine a world where this had not happened, not even in her dreams. It had become that integrated into her being. “But since that can’t happen... why should I dream differently? I think I told you not to come here. You didn’t listen to me so there seems to be no reason why I should listen to you.”
“But far more destructive that you continue to let it manifest,” Darklis shot back. She hadn’t meant for that to sound quite so frustrated, but she was. Most dreamers stuck in nightmares wanted out. This was the first time she had come across anybody who was aware they were only dreaming and would not take the chance to leave what they were facing. It made no sense. But it was true that she could not give Rina her family back. It was also true that, with Rina’s help, she could craft a dream that almost made it seem like they were. Or attempt to. It was leagues from her forte, however, and somehow she viewed it as cruel. Especially if, the next night, she was just going to come straight back here. If Darklis had the time and patience to babysit, she would probably try, but not if every night would be like this. She had never imagined an angel could be as stubborn as a godforsaken mule, either. “Actually, I told me not to come here. Because you said some dreams should only be seen by the dreamer. Had you specifically forbidden me not to be here, this might be a different story.” No, it wouldn’t. “But as it stands, I reacted to the wave upon freaking wave of anxiety that you’re dishing out right now.” Funny how trying not to swear made her sound her apparent age. Darklis hated it. She hated this dream even more. “And do you have any idea what this is doing to you? I mean really doing to you.” She wasn’t going to wait for an answer - not even from the Angel of the Mentally Unbalanced and Wrongly Accused. Actually, that was partly why she wasn’t. “You’ve been having the same dreams for... fifty-plus - no, sixty-plus years now? That alone is going to royally screw with your mind. And you might be stronger than most of those I’ve shared dreams with, but this will eventually destroy you. Though I apologise profusely if my giving a damn is an inconvenience.” Slumping back in the chair, Darklis stared at the ceiling and chose not to acknowledge just how much she appeared to be acting her apparent age. And they hadn’t even gotten to the good parts yet.
‘Let it’. As though every time that Rina closed her eyes she made a conscious decision that yes, today she was going to dream about all of the horrible things that had happened to her family. To her. No, it simply happened that way and she... never stopped it. Because there was no point. It would just happen again as it always did. Though having Darklis say those things was... different. Until now no one knew what Rina dreamt of. Oh Elin and her mother suspected, but not even Elin with her telepathy could see all the same things that haunted Rina’s mind at night. “Then I may not have told you, but I did warn you my sleep was uneasy.” Had she known that Darklis was just going to get pulled into this then she would have chosen to sleep under a bridge. Better to wake dirty than knowing that someone else had been witness to the horrors of her past. Although... Rina’s hands wrung themselves together when Darklis mentioned that this was screwing with her mind - it was, she knew that - and that she, well, cared. It’s still not her place to be here. But she was. Because she cared despite only having known her a few days, having simply taken her word that they were family and... “I don’t know how to make it stop,” Rina confessed, sliding out of her chair to kneel on the floor, arms around her stomach. Her dreams were not easy. Not peaceful. Once upon a time they had been, yes, but no longer. And what if her dreams became some semblance of better and she forgot everything that had happened? Someone had to remember her family and the people who had died; even Varick. Her palms suddenly felt slick, hot, but she refused to look at the blood that she knew was there again. Choking back another sob she lifted her face, peering through loose locks of hair at Darklis. She looked younger than her, quite a bit, but she was older... as old as her mother at least. “If you won’t leave... how do I make it better?” So you don’t have to see.
“And that might have worked if I was capable of following my own advice.” The little voice in the back of Darklis’ head that had told her she was supposed to stay out. That same voice was now singing ‘I told you so!’ at an infuriating pitch. “Feel free to kick my ass when you wake up.” She probably deserved it to an extent anyway, though just how much she deserved it was difficult to say right then. She was still trying to get her head around why Rina was apparently willingly going through this. It was no secret that Darklis did not like nightmares that were not of her own creation. They didn’t belong in people’s heads. It was wrong. Nobody was supposed to - Houston, we just might have a foothold. ‘Might’ being the operative word, she reminded herself as she eyed her cousin on the floor. “You’ve already acknowledged it’s a dream, which is further than most people get.” Most hoped it was a dream, or were too buried in their subconscious to realise that what they were apparently looking at was a physical - and maybe even metaphysical - impossibility. It wasn’t far enough, though. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Rina had a really goddamn strong grasp on her memories. Which was just fine when you weren’t trapped in Nazi Germany, playing the same series of events over and over. It was stitched together better than the damn emblems were stitched onto that jacket. Sliding onto the floor, Darklis crossed her ankles underneath her. How did she make it better? Good question, really. She wasn’t really in the business of letting other people actually fix their dreams. There’s a first for everything. “You need to stop practically willing this cycle to continue, you’re clinging onto it like it’s a security blanket when it’s anything but. Don’t think about what comes next, thing about what you want to come next. Anything but this period in your life.” She paused, borrowing one of Rina’s blood-soaked hands. “And think about it really damn hard. Or just enough for me to loosen the seams...” Wiping blood onto her index finger, she stuck it in her mouth, automatically pulling a face. “Because your subconscious thinks blood tastes like metal.” Which she guessed it used to. Vile. She’d take fangs over a pulse any day.
Why did Darklis insist on continuing to swear? “When my nephew swore I washed his mouth out with soap even though he was sixteen and bigger than me,” Rina muttered. Darklis was older than her, yes, but she looked younger and she really had a problem with her tongue. It bothered Rina to hear her talk like that and she was certain that she had expressed that opinion at least once before. Possibly twice. And yes, it was a dream, she knew it was a dream. But for whatever reason that did not make it easier to change anything. Maybe it made it harder. Or maybe it was all inside of her head. Of course it’s all inside of my head. That’s sort of the point. “I want you to stop swearing, if I think hard enough about that will you?” Almost a joke. Hey, she had almost managed to make a joke in a dream and that never happened. Could have something to do with the fact that blood had just been wiped off of her hand. The blood never got wiped, or cleaned in any way. It was always just... there. Until everything changed. “Blood does taste like metal to someone who doesn’t drink it regularly.” Nothing was changing. Her thoughts were sort of just... still. She was supposed to be trying to think of something that she wanted. Her mother. Elin. Ravensbrück. Ah, no, no she did not want to think about - the blood was gone and she was standing, a green triangle on her chest. No one else was there, just her and Darklis and the empty space between buildings. Her face fell as the emotions washed over her. “I d-d-didn’t mean to do that.”
Darklis blinked. “What did I even say that was swearing? Also, ew, and I double dare you to get past the fangs.” Though if Rina managed to draw her own blood, there stood the possibility that she’d end up being the most chilled vampire in town. Really not thinking about that because it’s weird. Yeah, no, no accidental tasters from angels. Who were also family. Focus. On the dream. On the dream that she could almost feel the edges of around about the time Rina developed a sense of humour. “Think about it hard enough and I’ll dance on the table-top.” Seriously. Darklis did not care as long as the scenery was changed to something decidedly more user-friendly. “I’d forgotten it tasted like that,” she answered absent-mindedly, mind seeking purchase on something. Anything. Come on, just give me one loose thread. So she could yank it out of place. And she’d nearly had one before all entries seemed to block up and their surroundings changed yet again. Now she was standing, openly frustrated and glaring at her attire. “The SS. Really? Is your mind trying to tell me something? Because I’d love to hear it.” She had been too short to be a Stormtrooper and she was too skinny to be an Aufseherin. They? Were stocky bitches. Who needed to be burned at the stake and - “Where are we? Wait, no, don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. Think about something else.” A beat. “And give me your hand.” Because the moment Darklis had the chance she was tearing this scenario apart.
Had Darklis really dared her? Rina had never really done the whole dare thing but she knew what it meant. And she was not tempted to see if she could get soap past her cousin’s fangs. Okay, so she was, but just a little. A little and the thought was yanked away from her at the scenery change. Practically everything was gone, except for the barest hint of an awareness that this was a dream. Because Darklis was not a member of the SS. “My mind might be trying to tell you that it knows you’re not supposed to be here,” Rina informed her, words nearly catching in her throat. “Ravensbrück,” she answered anyhow. “The camp they took me to. Murderer.” She tapped her triangle. Then she untwined her fingers and slipped one into Darklis’. Cold, icy, vampire. But it was more positive contact than she was used to having in her dreams and it gave her a start. Blinking she tried to focus her mind on something that was... not this. Or anything dealing with Germany. Germany was the problem. It had always been the problem and always would be, she knew that. She had always known that but acknowledging it was something else entirely. Meadows. She was thinking of a meadow that she had once taken a picnic in with Elin. “I like meadows. Better than here. They did things.” Her free hand touched the back of her neck, tears springing back to her eyes. A feeling of helplessness, fear and she shifted to press her face into Darklis’ shoulder. “I never wanted to die.”
Darklis raised an eyebrow, one hand poking at the tight knot her hair was pinned into. Again. If she could choose one thing to hate about the dream world it would be what the dreamer’s subconscious chose to dress her in. Right now, Rina was topping that list. Next to the one vampire who somehow managed to get her in just a towel. She had made him pay for that. “So your subconscious figured out I was here before you did?” Because she’d definitely been wearing that Nazi uniform before Rina noticed her. “That sort of explains the SS uniform,” she deadpanned, refusing to let her creeping anxiety register in her expression. Her cousin did not need to see or hear any of her reaction. Right then she was certain it would do more harm than good. She was also biting her tongue over the idea of Rina being a murderer. They said murder, Darklis said trash disposal. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Except it did not amount to the same thing. But they needed to not be here. Squeezing her hand gently, she pointedly thought about anything other than her knowledge of modern history. Constantly feeling for cracks in a world that Rina had rather expertly built proved to be quite useful in that department. So much so, she almost missed what was said after ‘meadows’. Any cracks she noticed shifted further out of her reach again. Darklis bit her tongue before she swore, though the following sense of fear immediately dulled any frustration she had. As did the unexpected contact. She didn’t actually know how to be truly comforting or reassuring, she just rolled with whatever situations she was put in. It was part of the reason her attending high school was laughable. The only proof she’d have that vampires weren’t to be feared was her refusal to eat the kids. Negated by her insistence that most of them needed educating in the supernatural. Here? She was supposed to be helping. Instead she found herself blinking at Rina’s head. “Hey,” she tucked a stray lock of hair behind Rina’s ear. “Nobody wants to die. I’m already dead and I’d rather avoid it. You’re allowed to be scared. Even fifty, sixty-plus years later. You just can’t let that fear rule you. I know for a fact that you’re better than that. You deserve better than that.” Darklis attempted to clear her throat of the lump she insisted was not really there. “You’re also at risk of making me tear up, and that is not a pretty sight. So what were you saying about meadows?”
Rina was afraid. Terrified. Dream or not everything still felt as real as it had when it had actually happened. And here was where things had actually happened to her. Remembering that it was a dream was getting harder and harder as she heard the familiar sounds start up. Crying. Screaming. She clutched tighter onto Darklis as she started to shake, pain starting up at the back of her head. “People do want to die,” she half-whispered. Gaunt faces streaked with blood, but no longer tears because those were a thing of the past that no one really had the energy to shed anymore. Not even her. Except she was, her face was wet with them. “Because death is better than what we face every day when we wake up.” Were woken up. Had never slept in the first place. Made no difference one day to the next because everything was always the same. Or worse. Usually worse because if it was just the same then you could get used to it and there was no getting used to this. “Lynn asked me to kill her. I couldn’t, didn’t, but she asked. Wanted it. Said that being dead was better than seeing what they did... meadows.” Yes, meadows. It’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s a dream. Darklis was there and it was a dream because if it was not a dream she would not be there. Could not be there. Her cousin had not been one of them no matter how she was dressed. If she could think about meadows then all of this would stop. She would not see anyone shot, she would not feel anything dig into her scalp and no one else would have to die. It could be over. Blissfully over, even if just for a short time. Her fingers dug into the material of Darklis’ outfit and she drew in a deep, shaking breath. “We saw a rabbit that day. And a hawk. And we had fresh strawberries that we picked ourselves, Elin and I... your hair is like hers too. She was never here. She went home.” A beautiful place far from the stench, darkness and pain that this place just had ingrained in it. “I think I was as young as you look.”
“No one wants to die,” Darklis repeated, voice steady despite the noticeable flinch at the changing ambience. She was not prepared for this, and she would be the first person to admit it if asked. She considered this to be her realm, that much was true. Or the realm of her house. As a vampire she had been raised fighting in it; everything else had come second. She could not get her head around the idea that she was being made to feel more than just a little uncomfortable in it. “They just want the pain to stop.” They thought they wanted to die because it was the only option available to some. Or the easiest option. If truly given the choice, everyone would choose to live without the pain than die because of it. Blinking away the red film that clouded her vision, Darklis slipped her other hand into Rina’s in favour of putting her arm around her. Yes, she was used to nurturing fear in the dream world, but everything she created was still somehow within her own understanding of the world. It did not reach such a scale that could still not truly be fathomed when the statistics were in the pages of history books. She created horror, but it was never real. It merely pushed the right buttons, as did many other weapons. So no, she would not acknowledge that she was crying. Listening to Rina talk about the meadow and Elin and strawberries, she closed her eyes. The idea being that when she opened them again, this godforsaken place would not be there. The moment she saw an opportunity to do so, she pulled the whole damn structure down. Now whether there was actually a meadow there when she looked again was a different matter. Well, no one’s screaming. No, they were shouting in Norwegian behind them. One voice was Lenhard, no more than a few metres away, which was confusing for all of a moment. She’d never known who the other person was because they’d never left that barn. They weren’t in Norway either, but she had not been able to speak English yet, the other Azraelan did not speak Romani and he never excluded her from conversation. Not even when he was chiding her for her colossal tantrum. Wasn’t a tantrum. She’d just wanted to see the sun for the first time in - Pay attention. “Alright, I admit that I don’t know where we are. But it’s a meadow...” Sort of. Even Darklis’ grasp on her own memories had a touch of the surreal to them. Nothing looked quite right. And she was fairly certain she had made up the butterflies. “The colours are too bright,” she murmured, staring at their surroundings with a critical eye. “I think I tried too hard.” Sure, with good reason, but the fact remained the end result kind of sucked. But at least she was back in her pyjamas.
“They want the pain to stop and death is the viable option so they would choose that.” That was choosing death in Rina’s eyes. And she? Did not blame them even a little bit for wanting to end it all. She had lived through it every bit as much as they had, potentially more than some because she had felt their pain in addition to her own, and there may have been some point... yes, that was it. Her grip tightened on Darklis as she realized that that was why they were here. Here, right then, was that brief moment of time - that brief little flicker that likely hardly counted in anyone else’s view - when she had given up. When she had decided that it was all just too much, it was never going to end, she was never going to just die and she had wanted to follow in her brother’s footsteps just this once and take her own life. “I was going to kill myself.” She forgot how to breathe for a moment and in that moment everything changed. But she was not the one doing it. It was not a normal change, a flow of events into the next, it was a jerk and a tug and suddenly she was somewhere that she did not know. Her clothes were different, more like what she had been wearing when she went to sleep, and the blood was gone. But the tears were still there, the feeling that acknowledged that she had given up. The worst part of the entire dream was quite possibly that. “I like the butterflies...,” she sniffled it out, pulling one hand free to wipe at her face. “Where are we?”
Oh, there were so many things Darklis could have said to that. That choosing death was still not the same as truly wanting it. That there had been moments when she would have chosen it herself had she had the courage. But she hadn’t. Instead she had been forced to choose to live, albeit without a pulse. Technically, she supposed that counted as some kind of euthanasia. Somehow she doubted Lenhard would appreciate that observation. She wouldn’t have blamed him either. She did not appreciate it herself. And she had been too preoccupied to give any real reaction to Rina’s declaration. What was she supposed to say to that? That it was unfortunate but understandable given the situation? Darklis did not know how to comfort. Not really. That Rina seemed to have only just made that realisation only made her feel worse about not knowing what to do. But no - the dream. She needed to concentrate on the dream before it fell apart and they ended up back in that damned camp. “Yeah - I don’t think those were there originally.” Little additions made to make the place seem more pleasant. But if they worked then they worked. “Um. I think - I think it’s Austria. I was in my fifties, so... the 1880s. I’d ask him,” she angled a thumb over her shoulder, “but he’s only going to finish that rant and then sit on the floor.” Her sleeve was used to try and wipe her own bloody tears away. Darklis hated crying. “The colours are actually right,” she mused, the corner of her mouth tugging into an odd half-smile. “This was what the world looked like after several months spent indoors and no fae blood.” Like someone had turned the contrast up. “And that’s Lenhard, my sire.” She shifted somewhat guiltily when his lecturing stopped. “I had pitched a fit until he let me come outside... Without fae.” It was a good memory regardless. “But I can add whatever you want to it. So can you, for that matter. This is still your mind.”
Now why were Darklis’ eyes... oh. Rina ducked her head and looked away, biting at her lip when she realized that the vampire had been crying. She was going to have to apologize for that once she had a firmer handle on herself. Making herself cry was one thing, but making a cousin cry was something quite entirely different. Whenever she made Elin she felt guilty for days. A feeling that was, admittedly, not helped at all by the fact that Elin felt guilty for letting her see her cry and it turned into a sort of never-ending cycle that was just... a headache, basically. Turning, Rina regarded the other vampire. Darklis’ sire and therefore the one who had saved her from a demonic-blooded husband that she never should have had. If not for the knowledge that this was a dream then she would have thanked him. “Why did you want to come outside without the fae?” Rina asked, curious. If she remembered correctly the the fae-blood was what allowed vampires to walk around in the sunlight without weakening. She was almost certain it was a myth that they would burst into flames when the sun touched them, but she was also certain that it was not good for them. She did not want Darklis doing something that was bad for her. “I like the colors, but I wish there were...” Her eyes cast about the meadow, a genuine smile lighting her face at the sight of a small patch of strawberries that quite possibly had never been there. If she could focus on this, just forget everything else, then it would stay this way. “If it’s a dream then you could have one.”
“After months spent hidden or in the dark, wouldn’t you?” Darklis had a feeling the answer to that question might be a yes. “I mean, sunlight will weaken and eventually kill us - Lenhard had to literally order me back inside eventually - but I was kind of desperate. Like when you’ve been under the water too long and finally find the surface... Which, okay, sounds melodramatic, but I never adjusted to being nocturnal at all. Especially not when I’m always awake.” She shrugged, wriggling bare toes in the grass. “There weren’t as many things to keep me occupied as there are now, but I painted and drew a lot.” Somewhere there was a Gabriel’s nightmare captured on canvas, exactly how she had created it. She suspected her sire had it, but then she always did. Because on more than one occasion she had been proved right. The smile on Rina’s face automatically brought one to Darklis’, though that idea made her blink. “Eat one?” She stared at the strawberries. “But it’s... human food...” And she couldn’t remember what they tasted like. Which, she immediately realised, did not matter if Rina could. But. But the idea of eating human food was just weird. In all her years of moving through the dreams of others, it had never occurred to her to attempt something like that. “You go first.” As though she was a child being dared into a haunted house. “They’re your strawberries.” It was true. They came from Rina’s head, not hers.
“Yes, but the sun doesn’t harm me.” Rina had, in a way, done that after her time at the - we are not thinking about that! It was a sharp thought and she actually twitched at the force behind it, palm going up to press against her forehead. She was not going to think about that then, but she did know what Darklis meant. Only it seemed more like it was dangerous and unnecessary. Which the vampire was likely fully aware of, or had been made aware of by that sire of hers, so she did not need to hear Rina repeat the sentiment. “I’d like to see something that you’ve drawn or painted, if you don’t mind. I’ve never been the most artistic but I do so love seeing them.” That a member of her family, her cousin, was artistic was truly a delightful thing. It may have been a dream but she still felt the uncertainty coming from Darklis at the statement about eating a strawberry. Laughing, feeling better than she ever had in a dream, Rina moved to kneel beside the strawberries before plucking one and taking a bite. It tasted as delicious as the last strawberry she remembered eating had. She was almost certain that had been with Elin and for a moment she heard the sound of her other cousin’s voice. “You’re going to stain your shirt!” Frowning she turned, surprised when there was no one but Darklis. Shrugging she picked another strawberry and offered it to Darklis. “It won’t hurt you.”
“Didn’t do much to me either.” It didn’t really have the chance to, because after half an hour, Darklis had been ordered back inside again. She had sulked like a bona fide teenager, but she’d done as she was told. The idea of Rina seeing her paintings made her inexplicably nervous, though. Which was ridiculous, she realised, because plenty of people owned her work. But while she could not have her own nightmares, she could still paint them. So much of her work was merely a series of variations of the same moment in time, too surreal to fully match its predecessors, with emphasis on different aspects. Granted, the chance Rina would understand what she was looking at was minimal - though she’d heard the rather strange theories of others - but it still somehow felt like the equivalent of, well, this. Dream-walking. She really needed to paint something more cheerful. If she could. “I don’t mind. There’s a lot of it around the house. Uh, somewhere.” How many people kept their trauma framed on the wall? Exactly. “Though I should probably warn you, it tends to be a little... warped. My portraits and still life are okay, though.” ‘Okay’ translating roughly as ‘safer for others to view’. Rina had already established that Darklis had some kind of mental issues, she did not necessarily need to see the proof. Now I know that voice wasn’t Lenhard. Glancing over her shoulder to look for the speaker, her eyebrows raised when she only saw the figment of her sire. A figment she immediately dismissed. As fond as she was of him, he did not need to be there. She was just going to accept that the comment about someone staining their shirt had come from Rina’s own mind. The strawberry that was held out for her was given the strangest look, though. “You say that now,” she muttered, accepting the fruit with a childish pout. There were actual mechanics to be figured out here. The last time she had eaten actual solid food, her teeth had been quite different. She couldn’t just bite into it the way Rina had done. It was a fat strawberry and there wasn’t room between her - Jesus, it isn’t even real. Eat it already. In answer to her own mild frustration, she chose to stuff the whole thing into her mouth rather than look like she was savaging it. Fangs and food just did not mix. For... more than one reason. Laughing slightly, she covered her still-full mouth with one hand. “Chewing’s weird.” With fangs. They kept clicking against her bottom teeth. “This? Is officially one of the strangest things I’ve ever done.” A beat. “God, that’s sweet.” Blood was never that sweet unless the donor was diabetic.
Good, Rina would have to look for this art and see what it was like. Part of her almost expected something to be inherently wrong with it. Not that she doubted the skills that Darklis might possess so much as... well, she had known many people in her time who had been artistic and had something rattled loose in their mind. Their artwork tended to either be heart-breakingly beautiful in ways beyond understanding or twisted in even more. She could not blame them. To express what they felt, heard, saw, or remembered like that was something that she wished that she was capable of. Maybe then her dreams would not be twisted in this way where only help from someone else could get her somewhere that was not... terrible. “I liked to let the people I looked after in Germany, from before, draw and paint. There was one boy, Eric, he made the most beautiful paintings of places he couldn’t have seen. And a girl who used only charcoal... the faces were dark but she cried a lot.” It was okay to talk about the things that had happened before. If she did not focus on them, but instead on the taste of the strawberry and the fact that she was in a sunny meadow with Darklis. None of this had existed in Germany. Or if it had she had not known it past the few times with Elin. “Don’t be such a child,” she chided when Darklis just eyed the strawberry. Though when she popped the whole thing into her mouth she could not keep from laughing at the sight. “It looks funny,” she agreed, taking another bite from her own strawberry. “But the sweetness is why they’re good. And that voice.” Because Darklis had heard it as well, Rina had seen her look. “That was Elin. Her hair’s a lot like yours. I’d say that you should meet her if not for the fact that she won’t come back to earth again.” Some would call her the smart one. “Would you like another?”
“It’s a good outlet,” Darklis agreed. “The mind can only deal with so much on its own.” Humans and other races had the benefit of their subconscious working to come to terms with certain issues while they slept, though. They woke up and it was a new day; sometimes everything seemed better. Sometimes it seemed worse. Azraelans had one monstrously long day where the light was broken up by periods of darkness of varying length depending on the time of year. They were consciously thinking through their problems. It wasn’t always enough. But not every Azraelan is cracked. “I have to admit that my work is often like playing ‘spot the childhood trauma’. Though not all of it looks traumatic. Only I ever know what I’m painting.” She paused. “Lenhard once called me the original surrealist. When the movement was first recognised in the twenties. I still have that letter somewhere.” A tangent. She was going off on one. And she had no idea why she was concerned over whether she had strawberry stuck in her teeth when this was a dream. “To someone who lives on blood, those are incredibly sweet,” she pointed out. She hadn’t even thought those taste buds still worked. They probably don’t. Are we forgetting how not-real this is? No, but she wasn’t just dismissing it because this was still Rina’s mind she had created a temporary sanctuary in. She did not want it to collapse before the angel had the chance to fall into a proper sleep. “I can’t say I blame her. If I could, I’d lock myself away in the house with a good blood supply... But I’m condemned to high school.” And really, she couldn’t see why she shouldn’t eat another except for the fact it was just weird. It didn’t stop her from picking one and skewering it on one fang. Rina ate strawberries. Darklis murdered them.
The mind could only deal with so much... yes, Rina agreed with that. When it came to the minds of mortals and those who had once been them, which meant that Darklis was included because once upon a time she had been human. Her mind was something else and its way of dealing with things was... actually not that much better. If she sat down and put thought into it - which she could not really do without this or that sort of breakdown - then she would realize that her mind was really not all that different. “I’m sorry that there is trauma in your past that finds its way out,” Rina said more to herself than to Darklis, though she reached out to tuck a piece of her cousin’s hair back. “Surrealist... If I look and don’t understand you should explain for me. I’d rather know the truth instead of an idea that my mind conjures up because it is preferred.” And if anything would allow her to help Darklis, if she could, then it was knowing what was wrong. Or not wrong so much as just not right. Cousin or no, older than her or not, Darklis was still one of her charges. Even in a dream she could remember that, very nearly sense it as though Darklis was really right there. She can’t really be here... it is just a dream, and in my dream she helped m. Something was wrong with that thought, just a little off, but Rina shrugged it off. It’s just a dream. One where she was beginning to almost feel a sort of ease instead of the guilt, terror and pain that she tended to associate with sleep. Very nearly like she remembered dreams being once upon a time. “I never went to high school. I was too old when we came back from Celestia and now it’s rather pointless.” Had Darklis just skewered that strawberry? Yeah, looked like. “Thank you for this.” Something was happening that had not in a very long time, she felt as though she was falling asleep when she knew that she already was sleeping. “It’s nice to feel at peace.”
Darklis just smiled. Everyone had their own trauma. Some was more extensive than others. At least she had an outlet. It was far too easy for her to downplay any of her own issues - she did not see them as important as those of others. They were things that had already happened and could not change, and she was firmly of the opinion that her death had just immortalised most of her problems. That she had likely added to them since was not something that ever crossed her mind. She gave something of a nervous laugh at the idea of explaining her work. It was something she had done all of once, then never bothered again because it had earned her an incredibly strange look and she did not mind that people saw what they wished to see. Most still believed she was some kind of tormented artist anyway. “I’ll see what I can do.” Though the explanations people were looking for probably required a psychiatrist and extensive knowledge of her background. Answers like ‘It’s a portrait of my father’ did not seem adequate. “And yet they’re still sending me.” When I’m almost twice as old. Watching Rina’s face for a moment, Darklis smiled. That was an expression she recognised, though not one she saw all that often. She brought it about even less. “Don’t mention it. You deserved this.” Needed. Deserved. Same thing in this instance. She was feeling strangely at peace herself as she watched her cousin fading away, drifting into a deeper sleep. Time to vacate the premises. If she got reprimanded in the morning for invasion of the subconscious, then... No, she completely deserved it.