logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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The lantern looks like a purple glass flower. It's rather pretty, to be honest. The person attached to it, slightly less pretty: just a tall, gangly old man with shaggy hair and one blind eye. "I'm trying to see what everyone is acting twitchy about," he says. "But it's not really any better from up here. It looks like people are jumping at nothing."

-Whoa!

[ daylight doesn't know how jo has the strength to tug him along but he chalks it up to, of course, his ailing frame just breaking down some more. he's honestly surprised that she's willing to hold him, given how broken down and leaky his entire body is starting to become.

he finds himself trailing after jo, a little dazed and unsure of how to react. but only for a few seconds. when he gathers his wits and realises what's happening, he tries to stop them both in his tracks and figure out what's going on. ]

Jo- Jo- What's wrong? Is something happening?

"Yeah, I know. She's had a rough shot at life. She's probably better off here than where she was."

At least here she can be cared for and treated like an actual child, rather than someone's discarded project. He keeps having these stray, wayward children cross his path and while he can't save them all, he does try his best to give them a better future. Hard to say now if he's ever really succeeded in doing that, though.

He certainly hopes so for at least one of them.

"I'll find her. Where did you see her last?"

[Rosinante spends much of this - what had Robin called it? An event? - actively hoping to avoid Mary. Once he became aware of the particular nature of his hallucinations, he tried to keep away from most everyone, really. Those hands drag around more than people. They've sorted through his memories and fears and selected some of the worst to bring to the forefront of his mind. Things he hadn't forgotten about, never will, but things he at least had established control over and had tried desperately to move onward from.

The last thing he wants is to snap, to lash out, at someone he wants to protect. And he doesn't want her to see how much some of the visions make him suffer, because how can she have any faith in him if she sees him at his most vulnerable? But toward the end of the week when he hears from the Soldier that Mary hasn't been doing well at all either, he figures, to hell with it. At the very least, he can try. Let that stubborn determination he's always had have a go at overpowering illusions of headless corpses and islanders with torches. He's stronger than this, whatever this is.

It takes some searching, and he's slower at it than he might have been under the weight of everything he's seeing. His feet move like lead, he grasps on to his lantern for fear the hands might wrench it away, and as the ash drifts from the end of his cigarette it leaves streaks in his vision like falling snow or drifting strands of silk. Fuck this whole goddamn waking nightmare. But Mary's voice cuts through it, coming out of the Town Hall, and he listens for a moment before sighing and making his way in.

No makeup today, it's too much effort. His left arm is still bound up in a sling from where he was nearly crushed by the debris of the ferry wreckage. He looks tired, but he's here, and Mary is dancing.]

Hey, kiddo. Found some friends?

"He's a total wanker," Crowley says, because this is a helpful thing to note right now. "But does he say how she kills them? Not like she has a magical 'kill' button----does she?"

Crowley really should read the network more, he thinks. But reading. Ugh.

[ she's blocked by something hard and unyielding that doesn't feel human, although the voice that addresses her certainly is. she's shoved several feet back, somehow still remaining upright in spite of the force of the shove and the source responsible, and her hand traces over the spot where he'd pushed her as she works for her breath, looking back up at him. her own eyes are wild and fearful, and angry. ]

Oh, you're not? Because that sure looks like a knife in your hand.

[ not to mention the arm, clearly capable of being a weapon of its own if wielded by someone who knows how to use it. ]

"The benches by the bonfire," the Soldier answers. "That was a few days ago, though. She's probably moved somewhere else." I mean... of course she's moved by now. That was a very dumb thing to say.

The Soldier hesitates, then asks, "Do you know why she thinks that?" It will understand if Rosinante doesn't want to share, as Mary's story might have been said in confidence or be too personal for Mary to want discussed, but there doesn't seem to be any harm in asking. Less than 30% risk of punishment from Rosinante.

She nods- Will didn't say it- Robin said it herself.

"She... something like that. She uses music to control the forest spirits to go to all explored areas and kill everyone they come across." That ominous sound she heard back when Winters died. She visibly shudders and shakes her head, "I don't know if it's a button or what but- the forest spirits kill us when she orders them." She visibly looks pained and angry at the same time.

"She said that spirits don't always listen to her so I wonder if any of the resets ever failed..."

[That's a reasonable fear, and one he hadn't considered, so he gives a nod of acknowledgment. It depends entirely on how souls, or whatever they are, are gathered to be brought here. Perhaps they're snatched away abruptly on their paths to another afterlife, in which case the ferry's destruction has spared them a lot of agony. Perhaps they go on to be nothing at all, which doesn't sound so bad to him either. That's all he had truly expected, and he had made his peace with it in those final moments of breath. But it's speculation only until one of them manages to wrench an answer out of Robin and those are the sort of questions she often doesn't like to answer.]

Right. The third is Aziraphale, who I've met briefly. If I'm understanding correctly, he was there trying, perhaps naively, to minimize damage.

[But at thousands of years old, how could someone truly be naive? It's part of an act, he suspects. The Aziraphale he met in person, kind and genuine and a little too trusting, can't be the full story. Or perhaps living for such a long time requires a certain amount of ignorance to avoid insanity.]

Meanwhile, Crowley conducts himself on the network rather... poorly.

[ grizz is used to being in a place that makes no sense. he's used to being apart from people he cares about. he's very much not used to hallucinations, to not being able to trust his senses, to his mind playing tricks on him like this.

and it is tricks, it isn't real, it isn't, he knows that — but it's so difficult to tell what is and isn't real without someone else there to tell him, especially in a place as continously dark as this one.

so he seeks out others. he seeks out people he's come to trust and care about.

like ambrose. ]

"Sounds like a winner, that one," Crowley says. "She could use them to help us, help herself, but instead she uses them to kill. How helpful of her." How human.

He looks out over the town. It's so dark here. Always so dark, so small. He's spent so long in London, living among the lights of the city, among its ever-buzzing energy. The slowness of this place drives him absolutely mad.

"Does she expect us to trust her? To like her? Does she think she's going to make us with her little army of murderers?"

[ grizz isn't okay, not by any stretch of the imagination. he knows that it isn't real, yes — but it's becoming increasingly difficult to remember that when his senses are screaming at him that it is, it all is.

he's used to being in a strange place, cut off from everything and everyone. he's not used to being unable to trust his senses.

but someone talks to him and he tries for a smile. (it's closer to a grimace, really.) ]

Not really. [ he won't make a big deal out of it, though. ]

[There's a knife? When did-- oh, there is a knife. There is, in fact, one in each hand. (Well, shit, don't remember pulling that out.) The Soldier pauses to stare at its own hands with a frown, then takes a step back and puts the knives away.]

Still wasn't attacking you.

( ambrose isn't used to being afraid. it's happened before, it'll happen again but he doesn't like it and he doesn't want to be afraid but he is. he genuinely is which is why the door to his room is cracked but ambrose is burying his face in his hands, eyes clenched shut because if he can't see anything then nothing's going to scare him.

he's tired of seeing the faces of people he cares about falling apart, of hearing voices screaming at him, of feelings hands grabbing at him. he just wants it all to stop. )

Ambrose?

[ the door is cracked open, but grizz still knocks — but he can see ambrose with his face in his hands and maybe that's another hallucination, but maybe it's not. ]

Are you all right?

( he knows that voice but he doesn't want to look just in case grizz's face is melting or if there are...things coming out of his skin like he's seen in other instances. )

Grizz?

( he waits for an answer, resisting the urge to peek. )

Is that you? Just you? Nothing else?

[ still breathing hard, elektra surveys the man, tension held in her body as she determines whether or not he's telling the truth, or if he's going to attack her now. the knife she'd pointed out isn't the only one he's holding, but he seems surprised to be holding either of them, and then steps back and tucks them out of sight. she still doesn't relent, muscles coiled tight and ready to spring into action. ]

Okay. You weren't attacking me. Then why were you following me?

Stone?

[ Kettara shifts back, ears flattened. This doesn't make sense. There was fire, there were bodies on the ground. And now there is nothing except the endless fucking dark that is Beacon. She can't smell anything but the trees. ]

I don't understand.

Days ago, yeah. Who knows where she is now, then. Well, as long as she hasn't wandered into the forest, or somehow been dragged there by all these intangible hands with their seeking, string-spinning fingers, he'll find her. The place isn't that big.

"I do," he replies. "But it's not my place to share it." He'd had to bargain for that information. Had to promise to her that no matter what he learned, he wouldn't hate or fear her, and wouldn't abandon her like others had done.

"She's lucky here. A lot of people care about her, I've noticed."

I was-- walking.

[The way she's holding herself makes it think run and fight and accept punishment all at once, and trying to reconcile the three urges makes the plates in its arm shift and stutter. The Soldier steps back again, ducking its head, hair half-hiding its face. That's what it had been doing, it remembers now: walking with its head down, hyper-focused on the electric whine of a saw that wasn't really there, missing the presence of another fucking person. So sloppy.]

I didn't see you. Until you swung at me.

[ Sorry, if he had to be miracling anything up right now it'd be an arsetonne of wood for a brand-spanking new ferry. ]

I'm sure you've had some recently. Shall we, then? To the house?

Possibly. I'm wondering if there isn't anything slow-acting, but the last thing I remember that might have affected everyone was the meteor shower. I don't think that's it...

...Perhaps it's a glitch?

Yes, because I thought you were going to die!

[ His eyebrows raise in hopelessness. ]

Don't make me consider what it would be like to be alone. It's bad enough we might only have a handful of years left, and I...

[ There's a voice that tells him he's a coward, and he can't tell if it sounds like Gabriel's or his own. ]

So you decided to kill yourself because you thought I might die? Are you completely stupid?

[Translated, this would mean that Crowley would probably do the exact same thing because he, too, is completely stupid.]

If one of us is going to make it through this fucking town, angel, it's going to be you! I don't care what it takes!

"There are. Good people here," the Soldier says slowly. "People who don't want a little girl sad, no matter what she is." Honestly, it always assumed that death would be better than life, but more along the line of "an end to suffering" than "finding people who actually care". Maybe she's lucky the same way the Soldier is, in that way.

Of course, they still have to deal with the fucking nightmares and hallucinations. That isn't great. But right now, the Soldier might even consider that worth it.

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EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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( prompt: hellhound?! )

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come here | look violence is a-ok if she goes there

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works for me!

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wildcard near the end idek

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the end.

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