Danny Torrance (redrumredrum) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-05-19 16:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, the magicians: eliot waugh, ₴ inactive: dan torrance, → week 013 (body swap) |
Who: Eliot Waugh and Danny Torrance
What: Danny arrives in Derleth
When: Early Day 2
Where: Fourth Floor Showers & Dexter Hall
Warnings: Language, Ghosts, Reference of Abusive Father, Mention of Alcoholism & Limb Loss
Status: Complete
Eliot would have set up on the second or third floors where the other abductees of Derleth were not housed, but after hearing about voices there on the network, he decided those floors were empty for good reason. Why take his chances? It took the first day for the fourth floor residents to understand that the showers would be on while Eliot was in there. Faucets that were turned off would be turned back on by some invisible force. Eliot had only made himself appear once, and he still wasn’t sure how he accomplished that. It took several hours after the first day, before Eliot thought he could tolerate the dryness of campus and turn the showers off. Day two there was much less fighting. Eliot turned all the faucets of the shower stalls and had the bathroom steaming once more. The leprechaun, one of the few that could see him, brought him a sad excuse for a tub-- a large plastic bin. Eliot undressed, carefully removed the straps of his prosthetic arm, and laid it over the rest of his invisible fairy clothing. Most people would see the plastic bin, the water in it, but not Eliot himself. They would not see the way the bin was just large enough for Eliot to sit in, knees sticking up out of the water, which he hugged to his chest with one and a half arms and did his best to relax in that position. And that was fine, if ever so slightly humiliating. No matter how he had tried to dress up the water and make it feel nicer on his pale, fragile skin. Eliot was still a tall Dan would have been more concerned about waking up in a strange place full of strange people and even stranger messages if it hadn’t been for Tony. In fact, when he opened his eyes and found himself in an unfamiliar corridor (OVERLOOK?!) he nearly panicked. When he realized he was half his height, his hair longer, and his fingers small, a surge of terror rushed up through his chest and blared red warning lights in his mind. But an instant later, Tony joined him. And it was like being embraced by an old friend. Because Tony was an old friend, albeit a complicated one, and Dan knew he could trust Tony. Tony never lied to him. Not as a child and not as an adult. Tony was his compass. So when Tony told him to calm down, Dan—or more accurately, Danny—calmed down. This was not the Overlook. This was not a place controlled by the True Knot. And while he felt like there was something wrong (VERY WRONG) in this place, it wasn’t the same. Not exactly. But that didn’t mean there was time to waste. He needed to learn what he could as quickly as he could. He needed to determine if this was a dream (NOT A DREAM, DANNEEEE) or if it was something else. And for that he needed to harness the calm he once had as a child. He could feel his shine more clearly than he’d been able to as an adult and he let it guide him. He walked slow, small steps down the fourth floor corridor towards the bathrooms. He paused outside of the door, fingers raised to the handle, and hesitated. Is it safe? Danny looked deep inside of himself. Into the floating darkness where Tony lived. And waited for an answer. “Safe,” Tony said from his internal shadows. Danny walked into the bathroom and made his way to the showers. It was humid. The dampness in the air stuck to his skin and made him hot under his sweater. Then he saw the creature—man??—in the bin. Fear jolted through his body and he took a step backward. Eliot’s attempt at pretending he was in a nice, high end sauna that was tastefully decorated with a mimosa at his side came to an abrupt halt when he heard the door to the bathrooms open. The footfalls that came with it were too light, and when Eliot opened his eyes he saw, potentially, one of his worst nightmares. A child. A child that was clearly looking back at him. “Oh fuck,” he said. “You can see me?” Eliot looked down at himself. Undressed and in his terrible improvised bathtub, he was not about to stand up. So he was stuck, sitting in his tub, helpless to reassure the child in front of him that the pale man with zero facial hair wasn’t some kind of goddamned nightmare creature. He tried to hold up his hands, show they were empty, but he only had one. What was left of his other arm followed out of habit, but that probably wasn’t going to make the kid think he was any less terrifying either. His left arm went back to his side self consciously, still holding up his one good hand. “Most people can’t see me,” Eliot said. “How about, I just stay right here where I am, okay? Right where you can see me and I promise not to move from here.” He spoke slowly, gently. Eliot was good with children. He had raised a child. And the expression on his face was immediately soft. Gentle. “I’m Eliot. Did you just get here?” Danny could feel his heart beat faster in his chest. He stared at the man-creature with wide eyes, frozen in place only because it—him??—didn’t get up. But it wasn’t so much the man in the makeshift bathroom that frightened him so much as the memory of other things in bathrooms. Bathrooms were dark places. Dangerous places. Liminal, thin spaces between worlds. Lots of terrible, horrible, rotten things happened in bathrooms. And as such lots of terrible, horrible, rotten things remained in bathrooms. And Danny could always see them. Like Lorraine Massey, the woman in Room 217. The crazy woman who tried to strangle him. The woman who’d followed him and his mother to their new home after the Overlook. The woman he’d put in a— BOX! SHOULD I PUT HIM IN A BOX, TONY?! “No, Danneeeeee,” Tony replied from the darkness, hovering somewhere between his stomach and the back of his mouth. The creature spoke. Danny blinked. He hated bathrooms. Bathrooms were the reason he started drinking. No. You were the reason you started drinking, Dan. Bathrooms were just an excuse. And his internal monologue was correct. He was his own problem. Nothing else. “I can see you,” Danny said. And then it occurred to him to explain himself. Because he wasn’t really Danny anymore. He just looked like Danny. “Don’t tell him,” Tony said in Danny’s mind. Adamant. So Danny didn’t tell Eliot. “Y-yes. I just got here. I’m … Danny.” He tugged at the hem of his sweater. “Are you hurt? You don’t look well.” Eliot could see that Danny was still nervous. He put on that gentle tone adults do when trying to explain something difficult to children. But this was just fucking unfair. Fuck. “Well, Danny, I am a little different this week,” he started gently. How the fuck was he supposed to explain Derleth to a child? Did Danny even get the paper airplane? Would he have read or understood the letter if he did? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. “This is a really weird place. And sometimes it can be a little confusing.” Eliot swallowed. He couldn’t leave the kid alone, and he went through a checklist of how they were going to get through this day together, let alone the rest of the week. “My arm doesn’t hurt though,” Eliot said, doing his best to reassure him. “I think it happened a while ago.” Think, because Eliot had no fucking idea really. He didn’t have memories of his fairy self’s past. “And I look pale because I’m a fairy. But I don’t have any wings. It’s not that kind of fairy. You must be special to be able to see me, Danny.” He smiled, but any adult would pick up on the real worry behind his expression. “Did you need to go to the bathroom? I could get dressed and… if you’re okay with it… I could walk with you? So you don’t have to be alone? We could maybe get something to eat? There’s a cafeteria with all kinds of food.” Fuuuuuuck. “Or, I could see if there’s another adult around? If you’d rather be with someone human, like you.” Danny found himself in a quandary. A right pickle as his mother used to say. ‘Now, now, Danny. I seem to have locked the keys in the car again. That’s a right pickle, isn’t it?’ Of course, Danny always figured out a way to solve those little pickles, right or wrong. Because he could. He could solve problems much better than his mother ever could. Bless her for trying. But life had never been kind to Wendy Torrance. It had never been kind to any of them. But least of all her. The only good one of the lot, she was. The only one with heart. This feels wrong, Tony. You said he’s safe. Shouldn’t we tell him? Tony didn’t answer in words. He didn’t have to. Sometimes he could answer in feelings or in pictures. Images he planted in Danny’s head. When he was a young boy he often had difficulty discerning the images and their meanings. Sometimes he couldn’t remember them at all. But later, as an adult, he had a better understanding. And he didn’t black out (EXCEPT WHEN YOU’RE DRINKING, DANNY-BOY!) quite as much. Danny listened to Eliot and nodded. He believed him. He didn’t need Tony to tell him that this man was telling the truth. Danny just knew. “I know you’re different. You’re usually—” Danny cut himself off. Maybe he shouldn’t mention what he knew or what he could see. It wasn’t always safe to tell people about his shine. That’s what Dick used to say. “I don’t need to go to the bathroom.” The heat was sweltering. If he’d been in his adult body it would have been almost unbearable. But children were resilient in ways adults weren’t. So while it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t the worst thing. “Can you leave the showers? Don’t you need them?” He’s nice, Danny thought to himself. But Tony didn’t respond to that. Psychic. Maybe even a traveller? But even travellers couldn’t see fairies without some kind of a deal. Something else, then. Eliot hadn’t thought about warding his thoughts as a fairy, it hadn’t been necessary among the other abductees at Derleth as a magician. With Danny around, he was going to have to start, if only to protect him from the kinds of worries a child should never be faced with. “I can leave. The dry air just doesn’t feel very good on my skin this week.” Eliot chose his words carefully. Saying the lack of humidity was low grade painful might be too much information for a child to handle, even a special one like Danny. Without meaning to, Eliot turned all the faucets off. Fae magic. He hadn’t even been trying. The steam still hung in the air, but as moments continued to pass the air became lighter. Easier for others to breathe in, at least. It was a tiny display, but Eliot had even surprised himself. “How about you wait over on the other side of the bathroom while I get dressed?” Eliot said. “Then we can get something to eat. How does that sound?” Danny tried not to think about it because if he thought about it he’d think he was crazy. Because his mind was too old to believe in things like fairies. Even though he knew there were (OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE, DANNEEEE) things beyond his own comprehension. But because he wasn’t in his adult body and because Tony was there—big and bright as day as though he hadn’t left him for years when Dan drowned himself in the bottle—he didn’t think about it. He just accepted it as truth. Later, when he had time on his own he would battle with the matter of his conscious thoughts vs his subconscious beliefs. “I am a little hungry, but…” Danny turned his attention back to the bathroom door. No. That was fine. That was safe. Not the door. But where? He glanced down at the floor. His shoes were wet. The tiles were wet. A bit of mold was growing in the grout. Beneath. He didn’t know what it was, but he felt it. An energy or a darkness. Not like the floating darkness that Tony inhabited. But something more terrifying. Something bad. Something Dick would have warned him about. If Dick were here. But he wasn’t. Danny would have sensed if he was. “I don’t want to go downstairs. It’s not safe for me.” He paused. “I don’t think it’s safe for you either. But I don’t know. It’s confusing.” Still, Danny turned his back on Eliot to give him some privacy. But he didn’t take his gaze off the floor. He hoped it didn’t come up through the tiles. Whatever it was. Someone had written on the network about hearing things on the second and third floors. So Danny was possibly very special. He could see fairies, hear whatever the fuck was going on on the floors below when no one else had even known about it until this week. Eliot put on his prosthesis in a hurry. It wasn’t comfortable but it probably looked less upsetting that way. At least the clothing was easy to put on. Not much more than a glorified potato sack with fish net detailing. Eliot would be over wearing beige or brown for some time. “Okay, you can turn around.” Eliot approached Danny carefully and knelt down in front of him. He was still his same six-foot-two height, perhaps slightly more slender than his human form. His good arm was braced on his knee for balance. “I know this place is strange and… I want to sugarcoat it but, yes, it can be scary. Sometimes things are scary. But, no one is going to let anything happen to you. We only just found out about the second and third floors yesterday but as far as any of us can tell, all the bad stuff is trapped there. The rooms in this building? Have powerful, powerful magic on them that even I can’t break. If things ever get too scary, you can hide in your room, or in someone else’s room, okay? But I think… whatever that bad stuff is? I think someone sent it to their rooms and they’re not getting out any time soon.” Eliot stood up slowly and offered his hand, long nails and all. “I think it’s an ice cream for lunch kind of day,” he tried. “What do you think?” Danny liked Eliot. It took him a few minutes to get used to his appearance, but it was Eliot’s presence which he liked. His aura. It was soothing. Relaxing, almost. And it felt truthful. Danny tried not to intrude, but he’d never really been good at blocking out the voices and the feelings. Especially as a child. And while he had a more measured control as an adult, suddenly being thrust into the body of his younger self—when the shine had been much stronger—was a challenge. He wished Tony would help him with that. But Tony was quiet. Because Tony knew that he didn’t need him right now. He turned around and tried not to laugh at the potato sack outfit which felt so wrong for this man-creature. Fairy or not. Danny thought it was too plain. But it was also a bit comical. And he smiled, but only a little. Then his expression returned to its stern serious gaze. Why did Eliot feel like he had to sugarcoat (NOT LIKE PICTURES IN A BOOK) the situation? Because Danny was young? Or because something bad had already happened? Danny wished he could ask, but Tony warned him not to tell anyone the truth. Not yet. “You don’t scare me, Eliot. I’ve seen scarier things.” Danny reached out and took Eliot’s hand, half expecting it to feel slimy like (THE WOMAN IN ROOM 217) glue, but it just felt wet and warm. “I like chocolate ice cream the best.” Once Eliot was ready, they left the fourth floor bathroom. Danny was tense when they made their way down to the third and second floors, his fingers clenching around Eliot’s hand, but once they reached the ground level he was much more relaxed. And when they were outside he felt even better. Even if the air in Derleth did feel a little off to him. He double-stepped to keep up with Eliot’s longer stride, keeping a careful eye on The Green as they walked toward Dexter Hall. He frowned. “Stay away from the squirrels,” Tony told him from the darkness. A few minutes later they were in the cafeteria. “Is it always like this here?” Eliot was not eager to go into the woods himself. Not until he knew more about them, and not while he had what he thought was a child in tow. Instead they walked carefully around the overgrowth and Eliot put himself between the woods and Danny. They walked through the cafeteria and into the kitchen. Eliot didn’t stop by the makeshift little bar he and some of the others had put together, as it was obviously no place for a child. “No, it changes from week to week,” Eliot said with a sigh before forcing a reassuring smile. “But whatever happens, there’s me, there’s other nice grown ups here I’ll introduce you too… when they can see me or hear me again… Fen. I will introduce you to Fen. She’s a very nice lady.” Once in the kitchen, Eliot let go of Danny’s hand. He opened up the walk in freezer and hefted up a large drum of chocolate ice cream of one of the counters, struggled to pull open the lid with one hand, and then searched around until he found the spoons and handed it to Danny to eat straight out of the carton. “Don’t make yourself sick,” was his only real warning. “...Anyway, when things change next week, you’ll have all of us around to help you.” But Danny saw the bar, haphazard and simple as it might have been. He saw it and he felt a sickening sensation in his stomach. Not because he craved the alcohol. His younger self had never touched the stuff. Swore to himself he never would touch the (MEDICINE) stuff. But he felt sick because he knew it could be a problem. It could be a problem for him later, if he wasn’t like this anymore. And for a moment, and not for the first time, Danny wished he could stay this way forever. Because as bad as things had been when he was a child, things only got worse later on. Danny the boy had strength and heart and character. Dan the adult had the same angry tendencies that good ol’ Jack Torrance had. He was better off a boy. Maybe then he could do things differently. Oh, he would do so many things differently if he could. “Is Fen a fairy too?” Danny took one of the spoons and stuck it into the ice cream. It was frozen hard and he had to dig around a bit to make a divot. Then he took a bite and listened while Eliot explained how Derleth worked. Well, at least explained it better than the paper airplane and the voicemail. “I can help you, too.” Then he turned a very serious stare on Eliot. “I can help put them in boxes if we need to.” Them? He said the word without even thinking about it. But somewhere in his mind Tony nodded. Them was right. “No, she’s my friend.” Eliot found a spoon for himself and stabbed the ice cream with it. It took a little digging for him but he managed to scoop up a bite. “She’s one of the few people that can see me this week.” He watched Danny carefully. Danny who could see him. Who had seen things scarier than him. Who could sense something on the second and third floors. Eliot couldn’t completely discount his offer, even if he couldn’t understand it. “What do you mean? You’re going to put the scary things in a box?” Eliot asked. He hoped his fairy anatomy didn’t come with the same level of fuckery as say, a dog, and he was accidentally poisoning himself. The ice cream tasted different to him this week. He didn’t get as much pleasure from it. At least Danny seemed to like it. “Only if I have to. It’s not easy and it makes me really tired. But if they get out…” Danny cut off his sentence and stared down at his spoon. His reflection was warped and twisted like a Dali painting. He turned the spoon over. He could feel a heaviness come over him and for a split second he thought Tony was going to show him something big. Something bad. But Tony didn’t. And it was then that Danny realized it wasn’t just the eerie feelings from the dormitory floors that were bothering him. It was the entire campus. No, not the campus. The residents. Everyone was so loud in their heads. So much noise. So much internal confusion. He scrunched his forehead as though he had a brain freeze. Then he clenched his eyes shut to a count of ten. When he opened them again he sighed. Then he stuck the spoon back into the ice cream and scooped out a hefty serving. More than he could fit in his mouth in a single bite. “I don’t think we should open those doors. There are dark places here. And there are so many people who—” (CAN’T CONTROL HIM) (HELP) (WOOD IN MY FINGER!) (WHERE ARE THEY) Danny shook away the thoughts. “This was a bad time to come here, I think. Everyone is really … upset. That makes me tired too.” Eliot frowned. Fuck, had Penny picked up on other people’s thoughts that young, too? No wonder he’d grown up to become such a dick. (Well, Penny-40, and…) No child should have to deal with any thoughts but their own. If he were himself, there were things he could do to help, but the patches weren’t great. Especially if Danny were a prodigy of some sort, he had to have some real power to manage what he had so far. Eliot couldn’t just let the kid suffer like that. “How about we make a deal,” Eliot said. He was a goddamned fairy. If anyone could do anything for Danny, it was him. He had power, he just had to ovary up and fucking use it. He could do this. He had to. Holding out his hand, he concentrated. Something to block out the voices for Danny. Just the voices of the other abductees. Just the scared, confused thoughts of other residents, while leaving Danny perfectly able to see and defend himself with the rest of his power. Something to keep him from getting too tired. Eliot closed his eyes and focused. “I’ll make you something to help with the voices. Something you can wear or take off whenever you want to so you don’t get too tired.” In his hand, Eliot willed magical energy to design such a thing for him-- in the shape of a friendship bracelet, the kind kids made each other and with some goddamned color-- to appear in his hand. “And in exchange…” Eliot didn’t really want to ask Danny for anything, but, “...I don’t know if you still have any baby teeth in that mouth of yours, but if you lose any I’m calling dibs this week. The Tooth Fairy is just so greedy.” It was more or less a joke, to keep the mood light, but Eliot sort of hoped Danny didn’t lose any teeth because he had no idea if that meant he had to actually keep them for the spell to work. The Fairy Queen always kept creepy shit like people’s teeth. The friendship bracelet felt solid, and Eliot offered it to Danny. Danny wiped the chocolate ice cream off the sides of his mouth with his sleeve. In retrospect, that was a very childish action of him, but he was on a mysterious college campus with a horrifying forest, haunted floors, and fairies. He supposed he earned himself a bit of chocolate on his sleeve. And it made his facade more believable. Maybe Tony had suggested it in his mind while he was trying to block out all of the voices. Then Eliot did something that really shouldn’t have surprised Danny, but did anyway. He used magic. Or, at least, he used something that appeared to be magic. There were different words for things like that in his world. And while Danny had seen many miraculous events and abilities in his time, he wasn’t certain that he would have qualified any of them as magical. Although, what Rose the Hat had been able to do was close to it. And perhaps, if Danny hadn’t wasted so much of his life trying to block out the shining, he might have been able to do something similar. But still. To see something appear out of thin air was nothing short of incredible. Even to a man who locked up ghosts in his head. A deal. An exchange. He should have been more wary, but Derleth was loud. Danny turned his head to the side as though looking at someone else—another invisible entity—for permission. Then he turned his attention back to Eliot and took the bracelet, slipping it over his small wrist. Quiet. Mostly quiet. Danny sighed and smiled. “Thank you.” He leaned over the carton of ice cream and spooned out another large scoop. “You remind me of someone I used to know. He was a nice person. You’re nice, too. I hope we can stay friends.” Which was true. Danny did like Eliot. It was an instinctive feeling. The kind that told him there was more to a person than what he could see and sometimes what he could feel. And Danny had a vague feeling, as he often did, that they might have had more in common than they appeared. He licked the ice cream off the spoon. Then he set it down. He’d had enough for the time being. Eliot was right. He shouldn’t make himself sick. “Why am I here? Is it because of the bad things?” He paused. “Normally Tony tells me these things. But Tony doesn’t know.” Eliot smiled. Even his teeth were different and that was sometimes strange to be reminded of whenever his lips moved over the new shape of them. Eliot went to get a paper towel, got it wet and allowed himself to fuss slightly over Danny, wiping his mouth, blotting his sweater. He had to be very careful with his new manicure, and having only one hand to do normal, every day tasks took adjustment, but he managed. “Just promise me, if you do ever see another fairy, you will never, ever make a deal with them like that. This was a special case. You should get me or another adult, but preferably me. I’ve dealt with fairies before.” When Eliot was satisfied and it appeared Danny was full up on ice cream, he put the lid back on and sat down with a sigh. “We don’t know. We still haven’t really learned why any of us have ended up here. ...Tony is your imaginary friend?” Eliot asked. Danny kept himself very still while Eliot fussed over him. It was strange experiencing that kind of mothering again. No one had worried about Danny in a long time. His father (TAKE YOUR MEDICINE!) had never really been the fathering sort. And while his mother cared for him, she’d also been a bit afraid of him. Because as a child Danny knew things that he wasn’t supposed to know. That no one was supposed to know. He was glad she didn’t get to see what he became. Like father like son. But it was nice to be worried about again. It was nice to be around someone who cared. Even if that care and concern potentially came from a place of fear. Derleth is not like the Overlook. Derleth is not like the Overlook. He repeated it over and over in his mind. But somewhere in the darkness Tony was watching him. Silent. And even though he didn’t show Danny anything, Danny didn’t think he agreed. Tony was being cautious. Danny should have been more cautious, too. “I promise not to make deals with any other fairies,” Danny said. Then he made a face. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned Tony. But it felt safe to tell Eliot that much. “Kind of. Well, no. That’s what I was always told to tell people. Tony is…” Complicated. “Tony tells me things. Sometimes he shows me what’s going to happen.” Eliot was making a calculation. “I thought Tony sounded extraordinarily wise. Usually Imaginary Friends are terrible about just making things up.” Eliot picked the ice cream back up and walked it back into the freezer. It gave him more time to ponder the nature of Tony. Was Tony the source of Danny’s power? Was Tony a creature hitching a ride on Danny? Was Tony dangerous to Danny? That last question, was ultimately the most important part, and one Eliot didn’t know how to answer. He would need to get more information first, without risking Danny. When he came back out of the large freezer, Eliot grabbed their spoons and took them to one of the industrial sized sinks to rinse off and wash. Some of the residents were good about cleaning up after themselves, others were wretched. It was still close to the beginning of the week and so Eliot didn’t have to ignore any dishes piling up in curious areas of the kitchen. The skin around his nails was dry. Grow a clit, Eliot. He was just going to have to adjust now. “You want me to introduce you to the other adults here?” Eliot offered. Maybe Eliot wouldn’t introduce Danny to everyone, but enough people that Danny would have enough people to be aware he was there and to look out for him. “That’s because Tony is older than me,” Danny said, very matter-of-factly. And it was true. Especially when he’d actually been a young boy. Tony was always older. Sometimes not so much older. Other times very much older. As a child Danny couldn’t really understand. Even as an adult it was confusing. But then Tony didn’t really visit him much during his adult life. For various reasons. Many of which Danny hoped he’d resolved with his peculiar future alterego. Danny glanced at Eliot’s fingernails and felt a little bit guilty that he’d taken the man away from the showers. He thought about saying something, but that might have been a little too intuitive for a child. Even a child who was ‘special.’ So Danny didn’t mention going back to the dormitories. But also because he didn’t want to feel the (BAD THINGS DANNEEEEE) foreboding emptiness from the second and third floors. He nodded. “Yes, I would like that very much. But maybe we don’t mention Tony to everyone. Not yet anyway.” Danny grabbed onto Eliot’s hand, wrapping his small fingers around Eliot’s quickly drying palm. “I’m ready. Let’s go.” And for a brief moment Danny thought he saw Tony standing further away, in the shadowy corner of the kitchen. But then he was gone. |