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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We still have to get back.

[Not that Crowley isn't suddenly finding some reasons to like being here.

Just not the part where his friend and him are hallucinating every five minutes]

Yes.

Tomorrow, dear. We can talk about that tomorrow, isn't that what we agreed?

[ He can't even properly distract Crowley for one night.

He ghosts a finger over Crowley's hip. ]

Won't do if this doesn't heal.

[This is one of the differences in their worlds of origin- in their stories. Bruce has killed someone, and like an ouroboros he felt the truth of what he'd done, the weight of it, begin to eat him alive. He'd done it out of fear, because he'd been provoked- encouraged even. But the reasons hadn't really mattered. What was the point of making this vow to himself if he could be forced to break it? If he'd been so easy to manipulate? He'd begun to disintegrate in the aftermath- destroying his family's home, firing Alfred, hurting Selina, and for what? The selfish desire to lose himself completely. To try and outrun the bottomless darkness.

Perhaps that's why they're standing this way right now- a pair of counterpoints trying to measure the other. Not for the first time, Bruce considers that he's looking at himself. There's something about the shadows beneath his eyes and the way he holds a room that Bruce sees in himself. They use similar tools and skillsets. They have similar habits.

A red bat rests on the stairs.
Behind Todd's back, in the empty air, Bruce hears her voice. I was never yours to lose. He doesn't look away. He takes a small step to the side instead, pivoting only an inch, enough to lessen the sense of a standoff. To angle himself towards the stairs and by extension, the hidden entrance.]

It would set a precedent, don't you think?

[There's something almost conversational about the way he presents it.

But there's a pause too. A moment where he visibly weighs what he says next. It's a gamble he's uncomfortable with, he doesn't have a full understanding of the odds and Bruce has been careful about the information he collects, who he shares it with. The admission that he's been looking for a mine at all has only been shared with one other person. Until now. It begs the question- why does he make this exception?

Bruce watches him. Watches his hands and his face.
It reminds him a little of the first time he jumped off the edge of a rooftop. The fear of falling, the necessity of trusting his own judgment. This is also a leap.]

There's a sample of plutonium here.

[At the very least, he watches, eyes following Aziraphale around the kitchen. (What if I told him. Huh? Would that make you talk to me?) He's not sure he can... but hell. Maybe he can work out a way. Aziraphale's a technician (Sort of.). Maybe he'd be able to... help somehow.

The thought makes him shudder, dredges up hallucinated half-memories of what actual technicians did to the Soldier, memories of the table with straps, the needles and lights. Technicians don't help. For a moment, the angel doesn't look like himself, but a short man with round glasses, not fixing coffee but filling syringes, and he has to put his head back down in his hands again until he can control his breathing.]

Not real. Not fuckin' real.

"I know what's happening," he sighs. "It just... it gets in deep and it gets harder and harder to realize each time that it's happening again."

Not that he has a full and complete understanding, of course. But he did ask Robin on the first day of all of this what the meaning was, and she offered suggestions that do make some sense, when taken with the grain of salt that every word she types has to be taken with.

"We're hallucinating because of something the spirits have done. Something Robin says usually is temporary. All of this will stop," he says, mostly to remind and reassure himself. It's become something of a mantra he has to repeat regularly as he finds himself more frequently losing his grip on reality.

"The bodies, the shouting, the hands - to me, they're different. Smudged in dirt and holding weapons and tools. Or long, contorted, with puppet strings."

[Crowley's gaze becomes very serious at the touch of Aziraphale's hand on his hip. He is, of course, not inexperienced, but has he's complained to Aziraphale before, Lust was always a boring sin with humans. He's never longed for it like he does with the angel.]

Are you going to harp on my leg all night?

[He straightens up out of his fighting stance, crushing the ice-axe in his hand. The shattered pieces fall to the ground and melt almost instantly. He's fully prepared to summon another one should this be some sort of ruse, but for now his optimistic nature wins out and he has faith she's finally seeing who is truly in front of her.]

Yes. Are you with me now, Kettara?

[He hopes this is Kettara anyway.]

I was hallucinating earlier, surrounded by people who are no longer here. I thought it was only affecting me but... What were you seeing?

Will it get you to take care of it?

[ He burns under Crowley's gaze, and feels his breaths deepen. ]

You know. I do like your gait. Wouldn't want for it to change.

[ Yes, he has been looking at the swishy hips. How could he miss the swishy hips? But you're welcome, Crowley. That's your confession. ]

Soldier, dear?

What are you seeing?

[ He puts down everything at once to go attend to Bucky, not sure if it has anything to do with him or not, or if this is at all any help. ]

I have been taking care of it. I've got you. I've even got a healer come in to look at it every day. It's on the mend, angel.

[If only he would stop walking on it and falling on it every other day.

He moves himself over Aziraphale a little better, his leg out of the way.]

So you like my gait, then?

[ Oh, of course he'd take it this way. Better than having to talk about escaping, he supposes. ]

You've got a very... unique ambulatory pattern-- alright, Crowley, alright. You have a nice saunter.

I like it.

[ There's a whole list of things he could say he likes about Crowley. He'd like to write them down on little slips of paper and shyly offer them to Crowley one at a time. ]

Anything else you'd like to share?

[Crowley carefully looks at the angel, lying under him in this bed. Giving him a very careful once-over, a bit like he's looking a him for the first time.]

[ Oh, that gets him to swallow a lump in his throat. ]

Oh, lots. In due time, I think.

[ He brushes a little of the hair at Crowley's temple. ]

But I-- I've missed seeing your eyes, I think. Since you've started wearing glasses.

[ Like, two thousand years ago. ]

Sergeant. Fuckin'. Sergeant, okay. Serial number 32557038. Soldier's not talkin' to me right now.

[It comes out muffled by hands, flesh and metal, before he can let his fucking brain trip him up again. He shudders, suppressing the irrational and ridiculous urge to get up and hide behind the couch. The plates in his arm ripple and grate on each other with mental discomfort made noisily physical.

Right on that fun little confession's heels is the slightly more normal plead:]

Please don't ruin the coffee just for me. That's gonna be the only good thing about today.

"Snails with buttons already on their shells. Bred to be. A literal biological cell phone." The Soldier shakes its head, having a hard time believing it, but having no reason not to. What about the Soldier's normal experiences (Our experiences ain't normal, pal, come on.) would seem equally strange to Rosinante? "Where the rest of us come from must seem very strange to you."

It's just a long-limbed old man, with skin so colorless it seems to pick up the purple tint from his lantern. Harmless-looking, really, if maybe a little too tall and skinny. His expression is surprised, but then calculating. "Hallucinations? Is that what's got everyone so twitchy?" That. Explains a lot, actually.

"Not bred with the buttons on, I don't think, those must be added later - but it doesn't matter. Yes, the point is, the little I've heard of Earth makes it seem incredibly foreign."

And he'd ask more, but it's so hard to concentrate right now. The others at those tables, they're whispering about him, aren't they? That's one of them, grown. One of those monsters. All he can do is tune it out and remind himself that none of it is real, it can't be. He knows it isn't. And as soon as Soldat is back over at the table here, he'll cut them all out completely.

"You making coffee over there?" he asks after a long, slow draw from the cigarette. "Smells good."

( well, he can't see the snow. he can't see anything. that's not the point, he still knows it isn't snowing. and that the bonfire doesn't give off much in the way of heat anyway. he frowns, before crouching to get a little closer to the small, shivering ball. )

We should get you somewhere warm. Inside. ( Matt knows it's a hallucination, he's just not sure how to broach it yet. he's trying to feel out how intensely it's affecting him. )

That makes a little more sense. "I'd offer to help explain more things. But I don't think my experience is what everyone else's is. I might make it worse." (Happy, Sergeant? "Happy" would be overstatin' things. But good on you to say it, anyway.)

"And yeah. I rediscovered coffee the other day. Best thing in the universe. Even better than cigarettes." Rosinante gets an actual smile-- well, half-smile, but still.

"Dunno about that. It's good, though." Anything with caffeine is fine by him, and there's something comforting about a nice, hot drink. He's just as happy with tea, and this place stocks both, so at least he has that to fall back on if he gets cut off from his nicotine. Not at all the same thing, but life isn't very pleasant without at least a few small vices.

He doesn't quite manage to return the smile. After endless days of hallucination, his ability to put up facades seems to have diminished slightly, and right now the whispers sound like they might turn violent at any moment. He takes his cigarette between his fingers and grips it tightly, and draws his coat up higher around his shoulders with a shrug as if he can somehow hide within the feathers. Let the voices gossip; he isn't here, and truly, neither are they.

"Where - uh, on Earth, where are you from?"

Perhaps. [It doesn't get a rise out of him. Not the implication, not the threat, not the question. Vanitas wiggles the bottle again and Bruce takes the signal for what it is- he isn't getting that back anytime soon.

A different approach then.

Bruce's head lifts, up towards the glasses dangling overhead. Not what he's looking for. He leans back and then crouches, looking beneath the bar instead; that's where he finds them. From the railing above them, a ghostly hand grabs at one of the cocktail glasses and throws it- sending it singing through the air until it crashes against a wall. Bruce stands back up in just in time to see the pieces splinter. To his credit it does make him pause for a moment.

It doesn't last. He sets two shot glasses on the wood ahead of him and brings his bottle closer, unscrews the cap.]

Can you get the one over there? It says 'cacao.'

[ Bruce is strange.

Maybe that's what keeps Vanitas orbiting him like some dark star, never quiet drawing near, but never drifting far enough away to lose his trajectory. He isn't without feeling, like a Nobody without a Heart. Neither is he just dark or light. There's nothing even that remarkable about him— not like Mary, or that angel, or even Riku.

He doesn't rise to Vantas' needling, but neither does he walk away. He turns his back on Vanitas, instead, and he doesn't have the moment to let the irritation rise at being disregarded so blatantly before Bruce is speaking to him again. Vanitas lowers the bottle just a little and frowns. He hardly notices the way some of his momentum fizzles in the wake of this unexpected development. ]

That wasn't an invitation.

[ But he doesn't seem to have much of a choice. From his left, nothing gives him a good push, and Vanitas lets himself stagger into it, instead of trying to fight it. When he rights himself, it's to come eye-to-eye with 'Cacao'. He considers pretending he didn't see it. He considers forcing the matter. Maybe smashing the bottle in his hand over Bruce's spine, just to hear to shatter.

But curiousity wins out. He pulls the 'cacao' down and puts it next to Bruce's elbow, still holding the first bottle in his fist at his side. ]

It's very nice to not be afraid. Everything is just distracting rather than disturbing, and the Soldier is good at ignoring distractions. "Okay, better than cigarettes that I don't have. Because I'm not bumming more off of you. When there's a limited supply." Coffee is slightly easier to get ahold of.

"I don't remember," it shrugs to the question. "Crowley says sometimes I sound like I'm from New York, a place in America. I speak Russian more naturally than anything else, so I might be from Russia. And my last mission was in Washington DC, another American place. How much about Earth do you know?" As in, did a single one of those places mean anything to him.

"So maybe it's more like a really fucked up warning?" the Sergeant takes away from that, brows going up a little. "Beware the hands, before they start actually grabbing you and your stuff?"

He could almost even see that, somehow. If it didn't come with a giant helping of "fuck your brain, here's some personal history you never wanted to remember".

Speaking of, there's another flare of blue light from somewhere off to his left, and for a moment Kuai actually, literally disintegrates in front of the Sergeant. He makes a futile gesture to grab the floating, glowing bits left-- except Kuai is still there, and probably gets poked in the shoulder or chest by a metal arm attached to a startled supersoldier.

Thank you.

[Sometimes the best thing to do with confrontation is to side-step it. Many of Bruce's opponents have been larger than he is. They have been stronger or greater in number, and he'd had neither speed or surprise to make up the difference. The only thing left to do is endure it and wait for an opening- to redirect momentum that he can't create himself.

Vanitas goes stumbling away from him and Bruce doesn't follow him with his gaze because that too is a careful decision. It preserves his sense of privacy and extends the assumption of trust- as if he knows where Vanitas is going and anticipates his return. It isn't strange then, when he appears back at his side.

A hand comes out of the dark and pushes at the back of one of his legs- the force behind it is strong enough that his knee slams into the bar. He thinks that will probably also bruise, and doesn't reach for the bottle. He looks inside the mouth of his bottle instead, then at Vanitas again. At the creme de cacao.]

We need to pour some of that into each of these. Approximately three-quarters please.

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EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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