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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Crowley immediately leans against the human soldier person. His leg aches and can barely hold his weight at all. He's been using it far more than he should and far more than it's been patched up for. The daily healings that Lunafreya has given him haven't been enough to fix what's happened to it.

Hastur has vanished. It was easier when Crowley knew where he was. Maybe it's what the human soldier person said. Maybe it's just an illusion----imagining the person who killed him appearing here. Maybe it's worse than that. Maybe he is here. Hard to tell.

"Good for quick escapes," he says.

"Pretty," the Soldier counters, and starts heading for the village, rather than the cabin. It can drop Crowley off at the Invincible, where he can eat and recover and be watched over by half of Beacon.

"They're not pretty," Crowley says, petulantly, folding them back up into hammerspace. "They're remnants of being an angel."

To Crowley, they're really just a sign of his Falling. Demons with their large, black wings showing off how impure they are. He doubts the human soldier person would understand.

He leans heavily on the human soldier person as they walk. He can swear he sees hands in the woods, reaching out to him. More hallucinations?

You'd be surprised, Crowley. The Soldier might not have dark, damaged wings, but it does have a metal arm given to it by an organization that used it to kill people. Maybe not quite the same, but still. There's some potential parallels there.

"You might not think so," it says with what would be a shrug if it wasn't supporting Crowley. "Doesn't mean I can't think so."

Perhaps that's why they've become friends.

"Yes, you can think it, but you're still wrong," Crowley replies, tartly. "Scary, frightening, demonic. Not pretty."

His eyes dart out to the woods as the human soldier person basically carries him towards the town. He can't wait until his leg is functioning again, he hates being so...so...well, the word impotent isn't right, but it feels a bit right right now.

"Do you see the hands in the woods?" he asks. "Or is that another hallucination?"

"Yes, of course, you're very scary. But I can be afraid of something and still like it." No, Crowley, you're really not. Sorry, man, there's not much anyone could do at this point to make the Soldier afraid of you and your very fine wings.

It sighs just a little at the question. "The hands are the most common hallucination for most people. They grab onto things, push people around. They kept pushing people into the Chair, when I saw them. Or trying to stab people. I see a couple between us and the house right now, but they're just crawling around right now."

"Yeah, but----I mean, what the actual fuck though," Crowley says, watching the hands grope towards them from the woods. "Hands? Images from the past? This----this has to come from somewhere! Someone has to be doing this to us."

He turns his head towards the direction of the Lighthouse. The light is on, glowing.

"Do you think it's her?"

"It could be. But I can't imagine why. I spoke to her, finally-- she refused to punish me for the ferry," the Soldier says. "And got upset with me for making her feel badly about being mad at me. That doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do this." It's not entirely certain in this analysis-- it's not used to gauging people through text alone, and she could certainly be projecting a false persona. But usually cruel people are happy to mete out punishments.

"So she got mad at you because you made her feel bad about being mad at you," Crowley says. He lets out a humorless laugh. "Sounds like Someone else I know."

He hasn't even tried to talk to God since he arrived in this place. He doubts She was listening before, but he's doubly certain here.

"Maybe she knew she had this in the works," he says. "Didn't want to punish you alone because she was going to punish all of us."

"She said I should help rebuild the docks," the Soldier explains. "To make up for what we did. You could be right, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, unless she doesn't make sense." Also possible. "It could be related to the world. None of us are native here. We could be reacting badly to some compound here."

"No, I've had a few bad trips in my time," Crowley says. He turns to the human soldier person. "Woodstock. Anyway, this is nothing like that. This is too real, too persistent. This is far more than just a bad trip."

He doesn't know what it is, but he doesn't like it at all.

"And I can't block it out. I can't use my abilities and make myself tell what's real and what isn't."

"Then ask someone," the Soldier says seriously. "None of us share hallucinations. They're all just ours. So if you see or hear something that doesn't make sense, or that frightens you-- or makes you worry about someone else--" Since Crowley is so specifically Not Scared, and all. "--ask someone if they see it, too."

"But you see the hands," Crowley says, gripping a little harder. "They can't be real, too, can they?"

"Not the same hands," the Soldier says, shaking its head. It doesn't grip harder, because it's possible if it did it might hurt the guy. Metal arms are tough. But it does stay steady. "You don't see the ones I see, I don't see the ones you see. You should stay with people. At the Invincible, or with Aziraphale. You can ask each other."

"I don't stay with people," Crowley says, because that's his usual default response to being told to stay with a group. "I'm better on my own."

But maybe not with this. Maybe being able to know what's real or not will require people to help him, like the human soldier person is suggesting.

"But this is why you needed your fear removed."

"Yes. I kept seeing the Chair. The one that wiped me before every mission. Or handlers, actual handlers with actual punishments, actual technicians trying to do experiments." It shakes its head, hard and sharp, as if shaking that away. "And these Words, in Russian, one at a time. I don't know what they are, but they felt dangerous, and each time one more came it got worse. I didn't want to find out what would happen when they finished."

"Do you remember the words?" he asks. "Aziraphale could translate them---figure out what they mean. They could be something else related to your past."

"I speak Russian," the Soldier reminds him with the faintest hint of amusement to its voice. It fades immediately, though, as it explains, "They're nonsense. Things like 'rusted', 'seventeen', and 'furnace'." It purposefully goes out of order and skips around, and makes sure to speak in English, just in case (though it usually speaks English around Crowley, anyway). If there were any fear left, it's pretty sure it couldn't say them even that way. There's still a faint shiver of unease somewhere buried deep, even now. "It feels like the order and the language both matter. The more of them there were, the worse it felt."

"Like a code," Crowley theorizes. "Or a password."

He thinks of the many spy movies he and Aziraphale watched in the 1960's. How spies were woken up by a series of words said in a certain order. Is this like that, or is that just another piece of movie magic?

"We'll figure it out," he promises. "Besides, they can't get you here, remember. You're out of their reach."

Even after a terrible scare like that, Crowley is still trying to make the Soldier feel better, more safe. That's more kindness than it deserves, surely. It's enough to let it put the unease aside and smile a little. "I know." Even if it is moderately sure that if it hallucinated the whole set, something awful would still have happened, it feels like talking about it won't help anything. "And you're out of hell's reach, even if you see things that suggest you aren't."

Crowley gives the human soldier person a dubious look. "Hell has a long reach."

He wonders how many people from Hell work with HYDRA. He imagines more than a few, considering what they've done to the human soldier person. He'll stop them all. They won't get away with this.

He looks out to the woods, where hands reach out for them. It's like something out of a nightmare.

"Is this how it's going to be now? Nightmares and visions from the past?"

Why are you so cute and protective, Crowley.

The Soldier doesn't sigh, but it absolutely wants to. "I hope not. There wasn't anything like this last month... and before that there were tombstones, but we missed that. I read about it. And the flowers with their smell, that brought the Sergeant out. It's like things happen for a short time, and then go away again." Really, it doesn't understand this place at all.

"Like tests," Crowley says.

He looks back out to the hands.

"Or punishments. How very Hell-like of them all."

Aziraphale doesn't deserve to be here. He could understand being here, if this were Hell. Maybe even the human soldier person, for his past (even though Crowley would argue it isn't his fault), but not Aziraphale. Not the little girl he met at the party. No, this place is something else, something more dangerous.

The Soldier snorts once. "Regular punishments like this would almost makes me miss being electrocuted. Almost." They're at the bonfire now, at least, and the dark bulk of the Invincible is up ahead. "What could something like this be testing for, anyway?"

"Resilience?" Crowley theorizes. "Sanity? Hard to say."

He looks back to the light of the Lighthouse. He scowls at it.

"I'm still going with punishment."

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