I dreamed I had a name...

[_fredless]

Who:Winifred Burkle and YOU
What: Her Headspace
When: Anytime After Friday Evening
Where: Fred's Room (She won't be leaving it)
Rating: TBD (Darker themes present including slavery and torture)

Comments

[zone_of_truth]

Sweets, frankly, finds this whole thing fascinating. He's a psychologist, after all -- getting an unbidden look into the mindscapes of the rest of the castle is almost like a dream come true. He wants to wander around taking notes, finding out what makes everyone tick.

(In some instances he did, but that's besides the point, and he's not about to tell anyone.)

This trip to this room isn't for research, though. This is just to see a friend who he hadn't heard from since the announcement that Lorne had gone home. Sweets is going to miss him to, miss the element that he brought to Caritas, but there's always the chance he would be back. Some people always came back.

First he knocks. When there's no answer, he slowly pushes it open, and what he finds isn't what he expects. In fact, it makes his heart drop to his stomach in a way he hadn't expected.

"Fred?" She's standing in the corner, writing on the walls, and he slowly makes his way forward, placing one hand on her arm gently, not wanting to startle her. "Fred, are you okay

[_fredless]

Fred continues her scribbling, tracing out another view of the collar that's still sitting around her neck -- few new notations getting scribbled underneath. At the sound of a voice she hesitates, working her way from one word to the next to the next. The entire process feels elongated, as if she's not especially intimate with certain words anymore. Voices, even.

In fact, she seems to settle on the notion that it's all in her own head, not even bothering to look over her shoulder.

"I'm not really in the mood for conversation right now, there's too much to do. So you all need to hush up."

[zone_of_truth]

"Fred," he repeats softly, just wanting to pull her away from the wall and get her to look at him for a second. He thinks that maybe if he can break the trance there might be some way of getting her to snap out of it and realize where she was.

It is a long shot, but Sweets thinks it's worth taking. He tugs a little more insistently on her arm, trying to get her to turn around. "Fred, look at me."

[_fredless]

She stills at the physical invasion, but for the moment? She doesn't pull away. Instead she stares down at the limestone rock in her hands, the edges dulled and sacrificed to wall after wall after wall.

Stone to stone, but there's so much that hasn't been said yet.

"Fred isn't here...she's there." The walls. The phrases. She looks at the words, and can't remember writing them.

[likethetragedy]

Elektra had been lost in her room all day. Not that she could be sure herself if it had been a day or not. Wandering through it (especially that last level) had thrown off her sense of time completely. Elektra does know one thing for certain: regardless of how long she had been stuck in there Fred was supposed to be coming on Friday. There was no way in Hell she'd let the other woman walk into thatThe second she finds an exit, Elektra bee lined for Fred's, not even bothering to change out the tank top and gym pants she wore to bed. Maybe for once she'd be lucky and beat Fred before she could head over. In her sense of urgency, Elektra forgets to knock on the door. She simply opens it and steps on inside until it hits her just what she had walked into

[_fredless]

She's still writing.

She hasn't stopped. The cave continues to accommodate her, stretching further and further back to make room for every word. Every stray thought. Every confession.

Her chin ticks slightly at the voice, some sliver of recognition there. Then, quietly.

"...I'm not doing anything. Anything. That's the point, isn't it?"

And then once against she's furiously scribbling on the walls.

[likethetragedy]

"No," she answers softly. Her eyes are wandering over the writings. After a minute of reading, she glances away. What she is reading is incredibly personal. Elektra felt she had no right to discover it like this. Frankly she couldn't picture Fred saying any of that aloud.

"You're writing-" She breaks off. She doesn't want to mention specifics aloud even if they were out there for the world to see. "... and sharing things. Do you want to share this? If you don't... if it's making you do this..."

She'd scratch off, break the walls, anything. Some things were better left unsaid.

[_fredless]

She can't look at them -- not with that voice. There's too much understanding there. Too much compassion. Did she want do share these things? Or did she want them never to have happened at all? There's too many befores and afters to account for. There's not room for them all in her head.

Finally.

Quietly.

"...if I don't share them, does that mean it never happened?"

[breakmychest]

Spike had to get out of his room. It was weird and unsettling in a very disturbing way, and he couldn't deal with it. Also, he'd been on a loss for a little while, and he needed to check in with friends. Both of these meant going to find Fred.

He didn't expect that her room would be even worse than his.

"Fred?" He approached the woman cautiously, looking worried. He didn't know much about her time in Pylea, except that it had been bad, but this... this had to be from that. And he needed to get her out of here.

[_fredless]

There's so many things to say...

She'd forgotten, really. Just how many things there are to say. Here fingers are raw with them. At the name she hesitates. There's meaning behind it. A sense of weight. Whoever they are, that person has place.

Her gaze flickers to the pool, the images that occasionally reflect up through it.

"I had a dream, once. I had a name too."

[breakmychest]

He's close enough to touch her now, and so he does, hesitantly putting a hand on her shoulder.

"You've still got a name. You're Fred. And this..." he waves a hand around. "This isn't real. You're in the castle. It's doing things, my room was..." he trails off, glancing around the walls. There's a lot written on them. Too much for him to read in one go, but what he sees is enough. "Fred..." His hand tightens on her shoulder. "Did this... did this happen to you?"

[_fredless]

She pulls away, hesitance marking every but of air put between them. As if she waiting for the inevitable punishment to follow. She looks confused when it doesn't come, eyes drifting back to the stories scribbled on stone.

"...it happened to her."

[justcharles]

Charles couldn't help it, he was curious. He'd visited the bedrooms of a few of his closer friends within the castle, but he hadn't seen Fred in some time. When he enters her room, he's struck by the sight of it. "It's like the cave in Pylea..." he thinks to himself as he rises from his chair. He takes a cursory glances at the scribbling on the walls, troubled by what he sees. When his eyes finally find Fred among the gloom, his heart breaks. He rushes over to her, crouching to get a better look at his friend.

"Fred? What's wrong?"

[_fredless]

She's stopped writing for the time being, her hands tracing over the words that are already there. They go so high. She wonders how anyone could get that high. At the voice she hesitates.

"They keep doing that. Coming through here, looking for Fred. It doesn't make any sort of sense."

She looks at the cave walls again.

"...they don't even know who she really is."

[justcharles]

Charles gets on his knees, examining her writing. Talking about the life she had as though it was something foreign and strange.

"I know...I know they don't. But I do. I didn't mean to, but I saw it all. Your youth, your entrapment and slavery, and how hard you struggled to make something of yourself after you were freed. You are more than this. That you survived at all is proof of that."

[_fredless]

Pure terror seems to settle over her as Fred scurries backward, Back and back still until the cave wall prevents her from going any further.

"...you were in my head?" The words are broken, unfinished with real pain threading one to the other. "What do you want with my head?"

They could have her body, they could even take her voice with their rules and their silence. But if they finally took her mind? There wouldn't be anything left. What if there wasn't anything left?

Late Sunday/Early Monday

[spongetastic]

Once Charles told him that everyone's room was a construction of their minds, Peter knew he had to check on certain people. And the person who immediately came to mind for him was Fred. And even though Charles said it was just the castle, Peter still had to repeat the same thing to himself before going in.

Because once Peter was inside, it was that much harder to believe it wasn't Fred's mind. Peter approached the girl slowly so as not to alarm her.

"What are you writing?" he asked gently.

Re: Late Sunday/Early Monday

[_fredless]

Her voice is quiet, hushed and a raw as her fingers. She doesn't look away from the cave walls.

"...everything. I'm writing everything."

[spongetastic]

"I see." Peter reached out to touch the girl's shoulder. "Do you recognize me at all?"

[_fredless]

She doesn't answer him. She can't. Instead she just turns his own question around.

"Do you recognize me?"