abraxaslogs | Tʜᴇ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇs sᴀʟᴛʏ ᴡᴏɴ'ᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀʀʀʏ ɪᴛ ɪɴ? (open)

At the edge of the horizon, beside a seventy-foot tall marble-carved statue temple, there’s a shitty little gas station open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There’s nothing really special about the place.

If you were to go inside, you would probably see the same boring components of any other perfectly normal gas station across the forgotten backroads of God’s country: Shelves packed with off-brand chips, cookies, potted meats, and pickled curiosities. Walls decorated with beer advertisements and windows filled with broken neon signs. A notice board covered in dozens of missing persons posters. A pot of coffee brewing in the corner where that bloodstain keeps reappearing no matter how many times we clean it up. The steady mechanical hum of a frozen drink machine that hasn’t been serviced since the Reagan administration. Random pockets of icy cold air that seem to move about of their own accord.

And of course, that family of mutated raccoons living in the crawlspace behind the grease trap. Well, we think they’re mutated anyway. At the very least, they’re inbred to the point of genetic deformity. The alpha (a muscular, three-foot-tall son of a bitch named Rocco) has been caught multiple times chewing on customer’s tires. So far, he’s been run over on at least three different occasions. Yet he keeps coming back, stronger and dumber than ever.

When it comes to upkeep, the gas station aims for “good enough” and usually misses. A faded wet floor sign sits atop a large crack in the foundation by the cooler where layers of sticky spill-off have formed a miniature tar pit, preserving countless insect corpses as well as the occasional small rodent. One of the doors on the cold drink case is held together with nothing but duct tape and prayers. And the smoke detector may or may not be an old frisbee. Year after year the health inspector, through some divine intervention, pure laziness, or simple old-fashioned bribery, has signed off on the business, kindly turning a blind eye to the “good-enough” fixes and a blind nose to that overwhelming aroma that hangs over the gas station.

Were you to answer nature’s call during your visit to the gas station, you might see the bathroom cowboy. He's sort of an urban legend around here, only ever appearing when you’re alone and unsuspecting. Some people say he wears a long leather duster jacket, bandanna, jeans, chaps, and boots with spurs. Some say he wears nothing but a black Stetson cattleman, checkered boxers, and ornate tribal tattoos. Some folks have witnessed him handing out balloon animals or playing the harmonica; some claim that he sings to them with the voice of a southern angel while they’re busy doing their business.

Should you be lucky enough to see the cowboy who haunts the bathroom, don't worry. If he's real, he’s harmless. And quite polite, to boot. Customers have reported a spiritual high after meeting him, and old Bob Hoover credits the encounter with curing his gout. Honestly, the cowboy doesn’t seem so bad, especially compared to some of the other things you may encounter.

( Curious passers-by that stop in to check out the Horizon's one and only gas station will likely find Jack behind the counter reading a book, or may catch him in the middle of one of his other regular tasks — sweeping, mopping, knocking down wasp nests from the roof overhang, chasing raccoons away by yelling gibberish at them while wielding a broom. Typical stuff, really.

One might also find him in a fugue state standing in the middle of a room or the parking lot, staring at nothing in particular, completely unresponsive. If you catch him in this fugue state, it's entirely possible that he will begin to manifest whatever he's hallucinating into reality — could be massive spiders, could be a bipedal deer, a sandwich, Slenderman, a bunny, the Rake, Elvis, an elephant the size of a purse dog, an eldritch abomination, his best friend, his stalker, or any other conceivable thing you'd love or hate to see manifest before your eyes.

Feel free to browse, make a purchase, stumble across a ghost, or initiate a conversation. Alternatively, write up one of your character's memories to inflict upon him — including any thoughts or feelings they may have been experiencing at the time. Jack will live out that memory as if he were them, having no control over this gift nor any idea of what actually triggers it. He has a questionable verbal filter; odds are good he'll blurt out commentary on what he's just seen before he can stop himself.

For an extra spicy twist, characters can unwittingly feed him a memory and then watch him accidentally hallucinate-manifest aspects of into reality around them without warning or explanation. )

Edited 2022-09-28 21:53 (UTC)

[ Well, that's familiar in all the right ways, somehow. The shitty gas station out in the middle of nowhere. People online talk so much about liminal spaces, but this one Claire can't help but agree with. There's something gas stations, isn't there? And this place looks straight out of a grainy mystery tv show, or maybe a weekly pseudo-spooky podcast.

Either way...

Claire's checking it out. Thanks, whoever decided to make shitty and vaguely creepy gas station their entire personality. You so clearly need therapy, but Claire is digging the vibe.

She spends a few minutes just idly browsing before making her way to the register with a candy bar in hand that looks like it's gonna taste like shit - and that's just how gas station candy bars should be, to be honest. ]

So. What's the deal? Am I forking anything over for real or are we just being creepy mimes about the transactions? 'cause my French accent sucks, heads up.

[ She leans her elbows on the counter, arms loosely crossed. Looks into the clerk's eyes.

And keeps looking.

And looking. ]

Ooooookay. If this is a bit, I think it's already played itself out.

[ Nothing.

Yeah, dude very much needs therapy. ]

... hey buddy, this is the perfect moment to go 'gotcha'. Like I might punch you for good measure anyway, but...

[ A beat. Dude is just standing there, still. Claire stands up straight. ]

Right... shit.

[ Is this some Singularity related creepiness or does she need to start hunting for salt? ]

( Don't worry, Claire. Jack has a therapist. He's totally in therapy.

It's just not really helping.

Actually, it's probably making things slightly worse...

Take, for example, the way he stares out at nothing in particular while she talks like he's some kind of creepy fucking mannequin.

The thing about the Horizon is, it's not the same thing as dreaming. As it turns out, when you have a weird condition that basically acts as waking narcolepsy, you can still fall into your own weird equivalent of "sleep" even in this dreamscape.

He "dreams" he's exactly where he is. He's in the gas station. There is no Claire, though, and his eyes are instead pointed down at a book — but the words are strangely blurry, and he can't get a fix from them. Movement shifts out of the corner of his eye, and he spends a long moment debating the pros and cons of actually looking at it.

It's probably best to ignore it.

In the Horizon, outside of Jack's head, a shadow graces the outside of the glass gas station door. It's in the shape of a man... almost. It's clad in a trench coat, but one very different from the comforting tan she might like. Its arms are too long — they must be six or seven feet easy; one of them hangs down by its shins, while the other raises to the glass and begins to gently stroke its fingernails along the pane.

Jack's eyes flicker faintly, but he's otherwise unresponsive. )

[Altaïr makes a point of exploring the Horizon, learning about this strange landscape and making guesses at the kinds of worlds other Summoned come from, to create domains in their image. The knowledge may or may not come in handy down the line, but he's driven to learn it, to know.

He notices the temple but doesn't pay it much mind. He's seen ones just as big. The gas station, though, that causes him to slow and change his path. He's never seen anything like this, in the Holy Land or elsewhere in this world. His gaze darts around the setting, taking it all on, trying to gather what everything is for.

The stations beneath the strangely lifted ceiling are obviously of some importance. He lifts a gas pump gingerly, as if he's never held one before and isn't sure how to hold it (because he hasn't and he isn't.) He leans in to sniff the edge of it, head jerking back when his finger finds the trigger and a bit of gasoline squirts out. He certainly got a whiff of that.]

This is a very poor beverage.

( Jack's usually one to zone out while he's at work — which... he isn't, but the experience is close enough to his subconscious mind that he forgets things sometimes. Forgets that this isn't real, forgets about Abraxas, forgets that the people who wander by might not actually know what a gas station is.

Granted, there are a few entities that wander by back home that don't know what a gas station is, but it's a significantly less frequent phenomenon than Abraxas.

In any case, he isn't zoning out today, and when he glances out the window to see a figure outside, it doesn't occur to him that the guy might be confused. Instead, an alternative and perfectly reasonable explanation comes to him — one that has him lifting off of his stool to round the counter and poke his head out of the door. )

Hey, sorry, but I'm not legally allowed to let people huff gas anymore. Sorry, you're gonna have to buy it and take it off premises for that.

Edited 2022-10-15 02:15 (UTC)

[Altaïr seems unperturbed as he lowers the device, though he doesn't put it back just yet. He hasn't figured out the mechanism or its purpose, and curiosity burns brighter than any other emotions at the moment.]

I doubt there are laws in the Horizon or the ability to enforce them.

[Not that he'd care much if there were. He lifts the pump again, finger off the trigger this time, and peers into it.]

What is 'gas'?

In the-

( He echoes dumbly, confused — for all of two seconds, before it comes rushing back into him.

Damn it. How does he keep doing that, how does he keep forgetting?

That's a rhetorical question, he knows how, it's just a little mortifying every single time it happens. )

Oh. Right.

( The Horizon. If he looks a little deflated, don't worry about it too much. )

Um. Gasoline is like... a fuel source? It's a chemical liquid used to power up machines, mostly. It's terrible for the planet but humanity is more concerned with selfish capitalism than the o-zone layer, which is like the most depressing job security possible, but what can ya do? ( A beat. ) Also, don't drink that. You'll die, or... whatever the Horizon equivalent is, I guess.

[Altaïr isn't sure what he's said to set the man off balance, but he can live without knowing unless it becomes important. He's more curious about the gas.]

Fascinating.

[He understood about half of those words actually, but he gets the gist of their overall meaning.]

I did not intend to. I thought it clearly spoiled. [But it turns out he's just not the one who would need it. Although.] Is there anything in the Horizon for it to fuel?

( Well, Jack thinks, gas is just kind of spoiled fossils. He's not wrong about that. )

Not really. ( He admits it with a nonchalant shrug. ) I've seen some people drive cars, but it's not like they need gas since everything's, like... fake.

( A beat passes; he glances between the gas pumps and the machines behind him, then back again. )

Hey, have you ever had like a Slurpee? You might like that a little more, since it's... actually edible.

[What's a car— He wants to ask it, but the man moves on too fast. He tries not to display his peevishness; it's not likely that he shaped his domain for the purpose of inspiring and answering questions.

He pauses before answering the question presented to him because. Well. What's a Slurpee?]

I have not.

Okay, cool.

( He jerks his head toward the doors. )

Come on, it's on the house.

( Because... everything's on the house. Because it isn't real. Whatever, it's the gesture that counts.

At any rate, if Altaïr follows, he'll catch Jack on the tail end of pouring him a blue raspberry Slurpee. He pops a straw in, then holds it out expectantly.

It'd be a lie to say he isn't absolutely fascinated by the prospect of watching someone have their first frozen sugar drink. )

[That one he can at least gather from context.

Altaïr does follow, and raises an eyebrow at the unnaturally blue drink. It looks more like paint has been mixed into the liquid than berries or other ingredients; surely the ingredients were meant as pigments, not flavoring.

When the cup is handed over, he looks at it skeptically. Sniffs. And finally takes a sip.]

...what is this?

Legally, we can't call it 'Blue Raspberry Slurpee' since that's patented, and it's technically... not that, but.

( He shrugs a shoulder. )

It's close enough. It's the Mexican knock-off brand. Baya de Trueno Azul doesn't sound as catchy. Mostly because the locals can't pronounce it.

( Frankly, they barely speak coherent English in his hometown.

For a slightly clearer explanation: )

It's just food coloring, sugary ice, and raspberry flavoring.

[Ah. So it is some kind of pigment.]

What makes the coloring this bright?

[He takes another sip. It's not bad. Overly sweet for his taste, but not bad.]

This is a common beverage in your world?

( If the Horizon isn't your jam, Jack can also be found in and around Castle Thorne. He spends most of his time at the Library, but it's entirely possible to catch him anywhere they serve coffee. Alternatively, and more alarmingly, he can be caught wandering the castle halls in a sort of fugue state — people with a keen eye might rather accurately peg it as a subtle variation of sleepwalking.

If you catch him in this fugue state, it's entirely possible that he will begin to manifest whatever he's hallucinating into reality — could be massive spiders, could be a bipedal deer, a sandwich, Slenderman, a bunny, the Rake, Elvis, an elephant the size of a purse dog, an eldritch abomination, his best friend, his stalker, or any other conceivable thing you'd love or hate to see manifest before your eyes. Alternatively, write up one of your character's memories to inflict upon him — including any thoughts or feelings they may have been experiencing at the time. Jack will live out that memory as if he were them, with no control over this gift nor any idea of what actually triggers it. He has a questionable verbal filter; odds are good he'll blurt out commentary on what he's just seen before he can stop himself.

For an extra spicy twist, characters can unwittingly feed him a memory and then watch him accidentally hallucinate-manifest aspects of into reality around them without warning or explanation. )

Edited 2022-09-28 21:51 (UTC)

[In one of those iterations of Jack Townsend staring off into space, there's a devil. Just casually across from him, staring.

Lucifer doesn't want to say he's taken time to observe Jack because it gives the man too much undeserving attention, but he's seen this fugue state enough by now that he can read the signs well enough as they come and go.

Eventually, he may check in and ask if Jack's annoyed Yennefer enough to drive her insane.

That is not this moment.

He's present long enough that he's certain Jack will have some understanding--minor or otherwise--that he may have been there. But then he's fluttering away with his wings before Jack ever has enough cognizance to process if he was ever really there at all.

This will, likely, become a pastime of his.]

Edited (shut up don't judge me) 2022-09-29 02:35 (UTC)

( He dreams, or hallucinates, or whatever that strange... venn diagram center mass is for somebody like him. Whatever you call it, his mind is out there, seeing things that aren't there and completely missing the things that are. Bits and pieces of it snag on his short term memory, but most of it sifts through his fingers like sand in a hurricane, leaving only the sparsest grains behind. Just enough to make him ask the question: what the hell?

In this particular instance, just as his pupils begin to narrow and focus begins to return to them, he gets a flash. One tiny, fleeting moment of actual visual recognition, gone too fast for him to confirm whether or not it was even real.

His head whips around from side to side in a paranoid flurry of searching, but there isn't a single fucking trace of proof.

Under his breath, a frustrated: )

Stupid Satan.

( Real or not, that guy is so annoying.

He goes back to reading his book. )

[ Rhy is a frequent nighttime wanderer of Castle Thorne, and has been since he got here. For a while, it was better, after Kell was Summoned too. But the peaceful nights are gone once more, and now the horrible things he's seen in Nott, the thought of war, the realization this isn't even it yet, all keep him up with a vengeance. Kell tries to get him to go back to bed so often, it's lost all meaning and effectiveness. The potions don't do much good either, and he doesn't like to take too many of them, or he won't be as sharp the next day, when he needs his concentration for his work.

So he does what he often does when he finds himself staring up at the ceiling in the dark for too many hours on end. He pulls on some loose trousers and a robe, and he goes for a walk.

Usually, the castle is empty. Occasionally, there are guards and the rare servant who has to work at night for one reason or another. Sometimes, though, he'll run into someone else in a similar boat.

Rhy immediately assumes that is the case with Jack, when he turns a corner and sees him ambling down the opposite end of the hall. ]

( It'll swiftly become apparent to Rhy that Jack isn't just on a sleepless midnight walk. Kind of the opposite, actually, in at least one way. He's standing stock-still at a T intersection. He looks neither left nor right, just straight ahead, or perhaps a little down toward the floor. Arms hanging heavy by his sides, chin dipped gently. Eyes open, but they keep flickering periodically — the briefest snatches of what should probably be happening under closed eyelids if he were in REM sleep.

And then, quite suddenly, the sound of trickling water fills the otherwise silent corridor. Subtle at first, barely a drip, but steadily louder.

Before them, water begins to flow along that T-intersection like a slowly burbling creek. Incrementally more, from a barely-there trickle to a constant, heavy flow, until it's practically a small stream. Jack stands there a few feet from it as though he's on the edge of the shore, watching the water flow. )

[ Rhy has nearly reached him when the sound begins; it gets louder as he approaches, and he thinks for a moment that Jack might be carrying a cup or bottle of something that he hasn't noticed, or perhaps he's dropped it somewhere nearby, since there's no other apparent explanation. But it becomes quickly obvious that Rhy's attempt to find logic in what's happening has come up against a stubbornly confusing realization: the water is filling up the hallway much faster and with more volume than could be possible if it had been until now contained.

Is Jack accidentally casting a spell? By now, Rhy's realized he's asleep, familiar enough with the concept of sleepwalking even if he's not used to actually encountering it.

He has no idea what to do in this situation, if startling Jack will be dangerous. But the water is not exactly... great. ]

Jack? [ Rhy calls, cajoling at first, softly as though he's trying not to wake him even though he is trying to catch his attention. ]

( The gentle sound of his name isn't going to cut it, it seems. Jack doesn't respond, doesn't move — though his eyes flicker quickly beneath his eyelids as subconscious recognition filters through him.

The water doesn't stop — but it doesn't get dangerous either, exactly. It's not a raging rapid, not a rushing river, but it might qualify as a particularly overweight creek. A bloated stream after Thanksgiving? It definitely falls somewhere in between the two points on that spectrum.

A few more short seconds pass, and then a new challenger approaches.

Floating lazily down the stream is a feathery white figure. A duck? A swan? Obviously some kind of water fowl, paddling its little webbed feet and dipping its bill beneath the water, lazily shivering the droplets off again.

Until it sees Rhy, at which point it freezes stock-still.

A long moment passes. The bird makes direct fucking eye contact.

And then it honks, aggressively lurching forward. Not a duck. Not a swan. It's a pissed off mother-flipping goose, and it has spotted prey. As we can see, Jack Townsend has truly horrifying nightmares. )

[ It seems there's no escaping getting the hem of his trousers wet. Rhy tries to step away from the flow of the water, but it rises all around them, and he still needs to get to Jack.

That's when the water fowl decides to rush him, with a loud and aggressive honk, beak opening wide to show its horrible little teeth.

Rhy has never been in such close proximity to a goose.

He yelps, splashing toward Jack in a most undignified manner, shooing the creature with general arm movements as though that's supposed to banish it. ]

Whoa! Stop that!

[ Whatever Jack is doing, he's summoning weird things in his sleep, and he needs to be woken up. Rhy is less gentle about it this time, grabbing his shoulder when he reaches him. ]

( It's clear Rhy is unfamiliar with the threat level he's dealing with here. One does not simply banish a goose. It takes all that arm flapping as a challenge and honks again, flapping angrily right back.

If Rhy thinks waking Jack up is going to save him, well... good news and bad news on that front.

The water does begin to ebb, to slow, to fade as Jack's eyes snap open wide and startled. His head whips around to take in the scene — where he is, where Rhy is, the fact that he's in the middle of a hallway, and- )

Ah! Goose!

( He cries, flailing and backpedaling in an attempt to put Rhy between himself and the gander. Obviously, the goose still very much exists, and it thirsts for the blood of its enemies. Or, like, bread or something. )

[ The goose was unexpected, sure -- but what is also unexpected is its owner(?) waking up and then trying to hide behind him. Rhy grabs him on instinct when Jack's sudden dive behind him throws them both off balance, and they're lucky not to fall on top of each other into the water.

The goose lurches forward, making an awful amount of noise, beak snapping threateningly. ]

Get rid of it! [ Since the goose itself isn't listening, this is aimed at Jack. ]

( This really shouldn't be so high up on his list of most alarming ways he's snapped out of a disassociative state, considering the sheer quantity of unbelievable things he's seen and experienced. And yet... Anybody who judges him has never looked directly into the gaping maw of a goose and seen those horrible little teeth. It's like looking in Pennywise's deadlights or something. )

How?!

( He demands, absently gripping at Rhy's arm for stability as the guy nearly knocks him over. Shoes squeak on the floor as they Scooby Doo themselves into a serviceable sprint. The goose is not to be deterred, and holy shit those things shouldn't be able to waddle this fast. )

What do you want me to do? Find a bigger fucking goose? I'm not really a bird guy!

( Which is to say, Jack is normally a brave individual. It's just that there's a line between bravery and foolishness, and he'd like to think he knows exactly where that line ends.

Geese. )

Dispel it!

[ Rhy shouts at him like it's the most obvious thing in the world. He keeps looking over his shoulder. The bird is gaining on them. ]

Didn't you summon it in the first place? Just-- undo it!

What?! No, I- Wait- really?

( That makes him falter, makes his running slow to a jog while the cogs grind in his mind. God, this is exactly why he started looking for a tutor, Lucifer was right. Manifesting stuff on accident hasn't been a huge deal, but that's a tiny little dinosaur. What if next time it's not a goose, what if it's like a face-eating leopard?

Fuck.

Okay, he did this, he needs to fix it.

He stops. Turns. Watches the bird charging forward at him, and- shit, shit, shit, shit, how does he do it? How does he turn it off?

He has absolutely no idea why it flies out of his mouth, but the first thing he can think to say is: )

The power of Christ compels you!

( Which doesn't actually banish the goose, but does make it stop in its tracks and stare at him with its head cocked judgmentally.

Not gonna lie, this is a new low. Getting judged and found wanting by a fucking goose that he summoned. )

Oh, fuck off.

( Apparently those are the magic words, because the goose fucks off of this entire plane of existence. )

[ When Jack abruptly stops and turns, Rhy skids to a halt as well, having to step back in the same direction because he'd nearly left Jack behind. He watches, wary, trying to decide if he knows anything that would work against a goose. Mostly, he knows fire magic-- but he doesn't actually want to cook it. Maybe catch it. Or make it go to sleep or something. He does know a spell meant to calm people and make it easier to sleep, but--

Oh.

Jack's shouting profanities at the goose does the trick. Apparently. ]

I... can't believe that worked.

Ronan can do an awful lot of things while unconscious, but sleepwalking isn't one of them. He's wandering these dark corridors because he's waiting for a certain someone's return and he's got nothing better to do in the meantime. Anyway, it makes him look productive, like he's on patrol, and that's useful these days. It's important to stay important.

He can tell there's something off about Jack the moment he rounds a corner to find the guy sort of staring into space. He's got a pretty good idea by now that Jack's missing a few screws, and maybe he ought to leave the guy to it. There's something about the way Jack's standing, though, that makes Ronan pause. An odd familiarity to Jack's stance. It makes Ronan think inexplicably of Bryde, which chills his spine and also roots him in place. Something in the air is shifting, the kind of electric charge that usually precedes a lightning strike or a surge in the ley line.

Or a dream.

(( Would you like the worst dream? ))

For all the ways that Jack and Ronan are likely complete opposites, they seem to have a few things in common. Their ties to sleep, for one. The things they pull from their dreams, for another.

But maybe the more relevant thread here is that nightmare. The worst nightmare. One that Ronan dreamed about, one that is Jack's reality — has been since not long after he got his first diagnosis. Fatal Familial Insomnia, the slow, permanent evacuation of sleep from his existence. Life expectancy doesn't usually make it past two years, and toward the end it breaks down all your mental faculties. You hallucinate. You black out. You stop being able to differentiate fiction from reality.

That turned out to be a lie, and though the real diagnosis came with a much longer lifespan, unfortunately the uncertainty of his own reality remains the same.

You do sleep. If I had to guess, you probably sleep more often than an average person, but your sleep is extremely shallow, and often intertwined with hyper-realistic dreams and sleepwalking so convincing that those around you would have no reason to believe you’re not awake. It’s a very specific form of trauma-induced parasomnia. The symptoms include long periods of lost time, advanced drowsiness, occasional dreamlike states, unexplainable episodes that don’t make any sense, often worse at night.

His therapist probably thought that was meant to be comforting. Maybe it some ways it was, but considering how fucked up his life is, how bizarre, all it really means is he can never be sure if he's actually experiencing something, or if he's doing--

Well.

This.

Standing stock-still, eyes open, flickering at nothing every now and again. There's no reason to assume he's sleeping — not him, not anybody looking on.

Sometimes when he dreams, he dreams other people's memories. He lives them, he is them, he feels the same fear. Ronan probably never should've gotten close, proably shouldn't have stuck around, because Jack sees it.

A few feet beyond Jack is a window. The glass has gone dark and black from night, reflective in the torchlight now enough to act almost like a mirror. In it, despite the fact that the angle's all wrong, people who happen by will be able to see a young man standing in that reflection.

Ronan!

Ronan's expression sharpens instantly, the difference between a blade sheathed and a blade drawn. Abraxas has frequently thinned the wall between imagined and real, dream and waking. For Ronan, the situation is mostly ideal, but for anyone in his vicinity, it can be a little unpleasant — or a lot deadly.

He recognizes this dream. Of course he does. No other haunts him more frequently, lingering in the back of his mind even when he's had a string of successes. He's a good dreamer. This is the dream that reminds him it's possible to be too good a dreamer.

Ronan approaches Jack cautiously, unsure of the consequences of interrupting an episode like this. A waking dream. He doesn't want to accidentally send the poor fucker into a permanent coma or some shit.

He spots his own reflection in the window. Ronan, and then Ronan again, observing the first from a slightly wrong angle. The Ronan who'd shouted Ronan! doesn't quite look like the Ronan watching him now. The memory is younger. Still a boy. The Ronan of the present is a grown man, no matter how much he likes to pretend otherwise.

"Whose dream is this?" Ronan wonders aloud. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but it's possible he had. Kylo has been rifling through his memories so thoroughly, it's possible their session has started without his noticing.

Jack would be a strange addition to the experiment, though.

"Hey, guy," Ronan says to him more directly. They've met before but names might just confuse the situation right now. "Are you doing this, or me?"

For that one moment, horrifying and gossamer, he is Ronan.

And then he isn't. He's Jack again, beginning to stir restlessly, his sleeping mind floating slowly toward the surface again.

Slowly, not completely. He hears hey guy, and he remembers the mirror. He remembers seeing the mirror, he remembers being in the mirror — and he is. Beside Ronan's reflection, that too-young boy in the window glass, another pale young man stands blinking and confused.

He looks out through this wrong angle of viewing and sees himself, motionless in a hallway. He sees Ronan standing beside him out there, he sees Ronan in his peripheral vision here, and- what the fuck is happening right now?

Are you doing this, or me?

Doing what?

What is he doing?

He reaches out for reasons he can't explain as though compelled, uncertain fingers gliding slowly forward toward the glass. Fingertips touch down, and the surface beneath them ripples like water. Distorting the image of them to the real Ronan, distorting the image of the real Ronan to him and to this younger version.

The one beside him turns to ask, are you doing this, or me? but the mouth movements don't match the words, and the sound is backwards.

"Okay, cool. This has been sufficiently fucked up, but I think I'm gonna... go now."

He pushes his hand through the mirror. It sticks to his palm, adhered suddenly like glue, like a fly trap, like he's the fly.

"Shit, shit, shit shit shit shit-"

He rips his hand back.

The window shatters. The sound breaking glass startles him awake; he jolts violently, sucking down the sharp breath of someone abruptly and unexpectedly roused, eyes wide and startled, heart hammering too quickly for the three or four seconds it takes his mind to process reality. Where he is, who he is, what just happened.

Well, that's weird.

Ronan doesn't share Jack's distress, however. The nightmare — while it is certainly his worst nightmare — is a lot less terrifying when Jack's in it. In fact, Jack seems to be getting the brunt of it, with an identity crisis stacked onto Ronan's pre-existing existential crisis. Ronan isn't sure whether to be sorry, though, since he's pretty sure Jack's the one hacking his brain right now and it's fucking rude of him to be doing that without consent.

"Shit, man."

He can sympathize, at least. It sucks to be a dreamer with no control over their dreaming. It's not so long ago he was in that position, himself.

Ronan nudges a fallen shard of glass with the toe of his boot, chiding, "You really shouldn't go digging in my head. That'll fuck you up. You're lucky something hungry didn't get out."

Things are fuzzy, the way they always are when one is abruptly wakened from a dream. His brain feels sluggish, two beats behind, slow to process — though the Pulp Fiction shot of adrenaline straight to the heart is doing wonders to help clear that up pretty fucking quick. Wide green eyes dart quickly toward the window (or lack thereof), the glass on the floor, then back to Ronan.

He doesn't know what that means — don't go digging in his head. Doesn't even realize what he's done, what it is.

All his disoriented mind can think to blurt out is, "Was that real?"

The glass on the ground seems like evidence, except there's no fucking way.

Tʜᴇ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇs sᴀʟᴛʏ ᴡᴏɴ'ᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀʀʀʏ ɪᴛ ɪɴ? (open)

Iɴ ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀᴅ, ɪɴ ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ, ɪɴ ᴍʏ sᴏᴜʟ - ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏʀɪᴢᴏɴ

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I ʜᴀᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ᴀ ᴡʜɪʟᴇ - ᴛʜᴏʀɴᴇ

you wasted life

judging u

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I THOUGHT I TAGGED THIS ALREADY???

mood