luke henry ; robin (notjustsidekick) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-12 20:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | dream, robin |
Who: Luke and Tristan
What: Depressing dream times.
Where: Luke's mind.
When: After this happens. At night, obviously.
Warnings: SAD. ;__;
It was late and the air outside was undoubtedly cold, yet he’d only hauled himself over the edge of the balcony and quietly unlatched the window to let himself back inside his room a few minutes ago. Things were already back to their normal routine out on the Seattle streets, even after darkness fell on the city, but there was something so very wrong about that palpable sense of moving on. Why couldn’t everything just stop for a day or two so he could have a chance to catch up? The apartment had become a place to avoid, because he didn’t know what to do and it was easier to avoid rather than the alternative. Luke wasn’t very good with sympathy, and he had no idea what he was supposed to say to Thomas without making things worse. Death was not something he knew very well, not like a lot of the people he knew did, so he'd stayed out late to patrol the streets and purposely chose fights that were more difficult in order to exhaust himself during the past few days. He wouldn’t sleep otherwise.
Alfie’s funeral hadn't been easy, and he tried his best to avoid thinking about it as he slipped into bed, which only made him think about it more instead. The last funeral he’d been to before this one had been his grandfather’s, but that was when he was still young and his memories of it were hazy at best. He finally fell into an uneasy sleep, his body forcing him to recognize that he needed rest. The dream was slow to form, bits and pieces coming together through a foggy sheen of grey until it solidified and became something recognizable. New York City was where he’d been raised and Central Park was painfully familiar to him, even as it was now - cold, grey, and lifeless; the trees bare and a heavy silence hanging over everything in sight.
Luke found himself sitting on the edge of one of the many bridges in the park, dangling his legs over the side. The ground below seemed impossibly far away, enough so that a fall would likely kill him rather than just leave him a little bruised but otherwise fine. There were people down there too, way at the bottom, and even though he couldn’t see faces they somehow seemed familiar. He knew they wanted him to jump and join them, but some base instinct kept his hands curled firmly around the railing. “Leave me alone,” he told them, his voice somehow carrying all that distance - but if anything the feeling of them coaxing him down only intensified.
Tristan slipped into another dream, this one already grey and foggy, but his presence intensified it, causing the greyness to pull together into a misty rain that hung in the air instead of falling to the ground, like being suspended in the middle of a rain cloud before the drops fall. He didn’t recognize the setting around himself, and he didn’t care, all the streets and landmarks slowly shifting around him until he was walking through Seattle. The park in the middle of the dream though, where he could feel the dreamer sitting, was still mostly Central Park. Only now there was also the stage from the park in Seattle where Tristan and Alfie had sit to watch the music on New Year’s Eve. The band there now played sad songs, soft and old-sounding, phrases pulled from Tchaikovsky’s symphonies slowed down into dirges.
He found the dreamer sitting on a bridge in the middle of the park, and walked toward him without making himself known just yet. With the bridge being so high, it took him a while to get to the top, his sadness making the walk even longer. Peering down toward the ground, Tristan saw the people there slowly begin to turn on each other. Hands began to grab and pull each other down in slow-motion, and somewhere someone was shooting a gun into the mass of people. It was the gunshot that made Tristan startle and drew the dreamer’s attention to him.
Luke tipped his head up towards the sky just as the misty rain formulated above him, and several seconds passed in anticipation before he realized it wasn’t going to fall. That made him frown, because he wanted it to rain even though he couldn’t fully sort out why. The people below him weren’t leaving him alone as per his request, not that he’d really expected them to, but his attention was averted when the thick silence was replaced by music; old-sounding songs that reminded him of grandparents long since gone and very young days he could barely remember. It didn’t seem strange that there was a stage and a band where there had been nothing before, just as it didn’t seem strange that the bridge was so high when it really should have been quite low instead.
The music made him feel sad, spreading with alarming speed and wiping out any chance he had of pushing it down and burying it like he usually did. In the midst of that the people who wanted so badly for him to join him had suddenly changed - it was something he felt at first, their longing warping into something darker - and when he looked down he saw those strangely familiar figures turn on each other. Why, he didn’t know, and Luke yelled at them to stop before his voice was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
He flinched, nearly losing his grip on the bridge’s railing, and his head turned sharply towards an unfamiliar man who stood with him on his bridge. The violence continued below, and he was almost certain he could smell the sharp scent of blood that stung his nose and made his eyes water. “They’re dying,” he told Tristan warily, gesturing down without shifting his gaze. “But if I go down, I won’t be able to get back up.” He hesitated. “How did you get up here?”
Tristan blinked at the dreamer - at Luke - and when he spoke, his voice was rough, as if he’d been screaming all day. “You can’t stop them from dying. They’ll die, and then they’ll leave you all alone. They always do.” That seemed to be the cue for the rain to fall, slow but steady, and soaking both of them quickly. The sound of it mixed with the music, the combination strange and melancholy and while it was soft enough to not drown out their words, it didn’t fade away either. He didn’t answer Luke’s other question - it didn’t matter how he got there, just that he was there.
The people below the bridge suddenly stopped in their bloody chaos and looked up, directly at the two of them. Tristan stared back. “They always go away,” he whispered, and it was true, the people fading until there was only churned red mud below.
You can’t stop them from dying. It was something he’d heard too many times in the past year, and no matter how hard he tried he could never prove it wrong. “People keep telling me that,” he said as the rain began to fall, but he didn’t move from his spot or even attempt to keep himself from getting wet. “But I can stop them from dying. I’m just... too late. Always too late.” The pain was palpable, a sharp pang in his chest, but he couldn’t remember why it hurt so much just yet. Despite the melancholy air the rain created as it mingled with the music, Luke found it strangely fitting. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, shifting his weight until he found a solid enough balance.
He was startled when the people suddenly looked up, feeling as though they were standing mere inches away instead of all the way down at the bottom of the bridge. “No, wait...” Luke reached out with one hand as though that alone could close the distance between them, but the people faded away until they were gone completely. He swung around and slipped off the railing, his feet connecting solidly with the ground as he faced Tristan with a frown. “You made them leave. Why did you do that?” He needed someone to blame, and aside from himself the only other person around was this stranger.
Tristan’s voice remained soft, but it was intense, certain beyond any sort of doubt. “Because that’s what people do. They leave. Or they die. And you can’t stop them.” The entire dream grew darker, as if the tiny bit of unseen sun was disappearing, things dim and oppressive. Through the gloom came an even, hollow sound, sharp and certain and growing closer to them. He found that he knew what, or rather who, it was going to be, and it made him hold his breath as he waited.
When Alfie finally stepped close enough for the two of them to see, Tristan gave a shaky sigh and turned toward Luke. “You knew her too. I can’t create people like this on my own.”
The man - Tristan - was right and Luke knew it, but that only made him angrier. He had to believe that not everyone was going to leave, that even if he couldn’t save everyone there was still reason to keep on fighting. It was hard to believe all that, though, when the rain soaked through his clothes and into his skin while the music kept on playing. Even the darkness began closing in, dull grey slowly becoming thicker and taking any glimmer of hope along with it. “If that’s true, if everyone just leaves or dies... what’s the point? What’s the point of anything?” He took a step forward but came to a halt at the sound, searching the gloom in anticipation of whatever was coming.
Every bit of anger vanished when Alfie came into view. He stared at her as though afraid that she might disappear if he dared blink even once, unable to force any words past the sudden tightness in his throat for a long moment. “I knew her,” he echoed in agreement, wincing at the past tense. “She...” Luke shook his head, unable to find the right words. She’d been more than a friend, but beyond that he couldn’t think of anything else. “You knew her too. So you’re... real.” He said it uncertainly, just realizing that he didn’t actually know how he’d gotten to be on a bridge in the first place. “What’s happening? Alfie... is she really here?” There was undeniable, pitifully weak hope in his voice as it rose towards the end.
“There’s... I don’t know. I don’t know what point is.” It didn’t hurt him to admit it. Ever since Alfie died, other than a few moments where Wren managed to break through the fog he’d put himself into, he’d slipped back into the cynical feelings he’d had just before he’d left Musings.
Tristan shook his head and had to swallow hard several times before he could speak. “She’s not real. None of this is.” He paused, biting back a sad sound. “She didn’t make it out when the Reavers came.” It didn’t stop him from staring at her, though. She looked just like she was supposed to, tailored and put together, whipsmart and with the hint of a smile she always had when she was laughing at him. He took a few steps toward her and reached out to take her hand. “Stop frowning like that, Tchaikovsky. You’re too young to be so pessimistic,” she said when he touched her fingers.
He smiled for the first time in days, weak and shaky, but sincere. It was exactly what he’d wanted to hear since he saw her face appear out of the dark and gloom. “Stop being so frustrating and maybe I’ll stop frowning at y--” he broke off, choking on the words and leaning in to hug her tightly as the rain fell harder.
The man said none of this was real, but it certainly felt real. Luke wasn’t a lucid dreamer, could never remember anything particularly interesting about his own dreams, not even when they were nightmares, so the fact that this was indeed a dream didn’t click right away. “I know,” he said sharply, wondering why he was even talking to this stranger who’d brought rain and darkness with him. “I know what happened to her. I know she’s dead.” He hated that word, but there wasn’t any other way to say it. Deceased, gone, passed away - they all meant the same thing anyway.
He wasn’t expecting her to speak. For something that wasn’t real it sounded just like her, and if he hadn’t known better Luke would have thought that it was just one big mistake and Alfie was really alive. It seemed like she knew this man and he knew her, but if it wasn’t real then how could he trust anything he saw? His throat tightened again and he took a step back towards the bridge. Alfie was gone. He wanted her, the real her, not some stupid vision or whatever it was. He didn’t even understand what was going on, but it was slowly starting to fit together. “Is this a dream?”
Tristan couldn’t help clinging to this false Alfie for several long moments, the rain continuing to fall. “You should have kept your security with you, stupid stubborn woman. I was fine where I was.” His voice was barely a whisper, but it reverberated on the wind, carried to Luke as if it was meant for him to hear. “You would have been safe if they’d been with you.” The Alfie in his arms patted his shoulder and pulled away enough to look at him, giving him a smile but staying silent now.
He turned at Luke’s question, not wanting to look away from Alfie, but his attention was caught. He looked Luke in the eye, sadness written across his face as the rain let up just a touch, hanging in the air with no regard for gravity again. He didn’t see any reason to argue it, so he simply nodded. “It is.”
For some the realization that this was a dream might have been comforting, but for Luke it was the exact opposite. Lucid dreams on this side of the portal weren’t exactly a good thing, and this was the first one he’d had since crossing over. If this man, the one who knew Alfie, was real... that meant he was trespassing on his dream. The rain, the people down below disappearing, and Alfie - this stranger had brought them, hadn’t he? If Night Terror could hurt people in their dreams, maybe this guy was something similar. Something less fatal, maybe, because the dream was just sad; not dangerous.
He was about to respond, feeling the edges of the dream begin to blur strangely, but Tristan’s whispers finally caught up to him. Should have kept your security with you. You would have been safe if they’d been with you. Which meant they hadn’t been. Where, then, had her security team been?
With him. With this stranger.
Something inside Luke snapped. “You,” he snapped, glaring at Tristan with anger that balanced on the edge of becoming anguish. “She sent her security team to be with you, didn’t she? Of course she did - and now she’s dead.” Luke turned to the not-Alfie, momentarily forgetting that it was just an image and not really her. “You told me you were fine, Alfie. I told that girl you were fine too... why didn’t you protect yourself? Don’t you realize that people need you? Now you’re gone, and this... this isn’t even you.” He was yelling at a dead woman who just looked at him, probably a creation of his subconscious or the stranger in his dream. His eyes stung, and he wished it would start raining again.
The dream shifted around them so suddenly when Luke’s words went harsh that the center of gravity was skewed for a breathtaking few seconds before righting itself again. When it did, they were standing in the churned up mud below while the dreamworld Alfie remained on the bridge, looking down at them. Tristan was standing directly in front of Luke, a scowl still edged with deep grief on his face. “Stop it. She may be your Alfie here, but if you want to take out your anger on her, do it when I’m not around.” He paused, face revealing just for a moment how deep his own sadness went. “And I told her to leave me where I was. I was safe enough at that point. But did you ever try telling her not to do something once she got it in her head? I didn’t even know her that long, and I know it was impossible.”
He looked back up at the bridge where Alfie stood and watched them, her elbows on the railing as she leaned forward against it. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed softly, painfully, like something was being torn from his chest. “Fuck. Just... wake up so I can get out of here.”
Part of him recognized that he was taking his anger out on the wrong people, but he could always turn it back on himself later. Luke blinked and looked down at the mud, feeling another flash of anger that his own dream was being changed around him and he couldn’t do anything about it. For a moment he hesitated, seeing the sadness in the man’s expression and realizing that it was a lot like his own, but it passed.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” It was a childish thing to say but he didn’t care. “This is my dream. You’re not even supposed to be here. I can--” He made the mistake of glancing up at Alfie and stopped abruptly, because real or not she didn’t deserve his anger. Of course she wouldn’t have listened when Tristan told her to leave him. She never would have sacrificed someone else’s safety for her own. That was why someone should have taken it upon themselves to look after her. Someone like him. Luke fell silent for what felt like hours, unable to come up with any objections.
“Why do I have to wake up for you to leave?” He bristled at what he imagined to be an implication that this was his fault, when this stranger was the one who’d done all this in the first place.
Tristan returned the bristling with a tired glare and a clipped tone. “Because that’s the way it works for me. You wake up, I move on. Hopefully to someone that won’t have her lingering in the background.” He gestured up toward the bridge where Alfie still watched them, trying to make her leave by wishing her gone. His heart wasn’t completely in it though, so she remained. Her attention made him uneasy, and he tried to focus hard, searching for a stray thought that could be twisted into a nightmare to wake Luke up.
“Well. I’m sorry you ended up in my dream, then.” Luke didn’t have the energy to make his tone entirely hostile, but it wasn’t fully apologetic either. He seemed to have settled somewhere in between. Even if he knew that the Alfie looking down at them wasn’t real, he couldn’t make her go away any more than Tristan could, which meant that waking up was the only way to make all of this go away. Apparently dreams were sometimes just as bad as reality, but the problem was he didn’t know how to wake himself up. Usually he just... woke up. There was no effort involved. “I don’t... know how to wake myself up,” he said helplessly, and it was clear that he didn’t want this dream to continue any more than Tristan did.
Alfie’s presence had pried loose the thoughts he’d tried so hard to keep locked up, the ones that involved the Reavers and how they killed; stemming from that was a deep-seated fear that if Alfie could have died then anyone could have - Wren, Quinn, Thomas, or even himself. While he was focused on trying to will himself awake, which wasn’t working, he forgot about trying to keep those dark fears under wraps.
Tristan could feel the fears slipping into the dream and nodded grimly, mouth set in a thin line. He twisted the passing thoughts into ‘reality’, forming first into a trio of three, only one of whom he recognized. Wren... From under the bridge, he heard the strange quick shuffle that he’d been able to hear outside the studio that night.
He turned away from the three there, knowing what was going to happen as Reavers began to appear, and he couldn’t watch someone he actually knew and cared about get torn to pieces. The rough bite of fingernails into his own arm as a Reaver grabbed it was almost a relief. No matter who this kid was, there was no way that he would be able to sleep through four people being torn apart in front of him. The Reavers wouldn’t be able to hurt Luke himself, but there didn’t need to be any injury to him to wake him up. His brain would do it just to escape the horror.
Luke froze, a slow sense of dread creeping over him when he heard that familiar shuffling from beneath the bridge. He’d seen far too many Reavers and what they’d done to their victims during those terrible days, and when he saw the three people he was now most terrified of losing he knew what was going to happen even as he took a helpless step forward. “No... not them, please.”
His words were useless. The Reavers attacked Thomas first, then Quinn and Wren; Tristan was last. There was nothing he could do to stop it and the knowledge that it was a dream slipped away, replaced by a suffocating horror that kept building even as the edges of the dream began to blur and fracture, like cracks spreading in in glass before it shattered. It didn’t take long for everything to go dark, not when he was faced with the sight of the people he cared most about being ripped apart, and he jolted awake violently rather than simply fading from the dream back to the waking world.
He sat up in bed with an anguished cry, blinking back the tears that he refused to let fall and trying to bring his breathing back to normal. There was no chance in hell he was getting any more sleep tonight.