Nightmares and Dreamscapes

[clockwork_doc]

Down in the Never-Ending Hallway, one of the resident room doors is rattling. Anyone who looks at it will discover it's Room 88. The reason for the rattling is both simple and complex. The resident of said room, one Dr. Emmett Brown, has been hard at work most of the day on his flux capacitor designs -- Aubrey's little computer lesson the other day

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[cookiesandhugs]

Gladys hasn't been able to sleep. She's regretting coming to Chicago, because here we are again, the itch driving her positively mad. So she's wandering the halls.

And she comes upon a door behind which it sounds like there's a storm brewing. Which confuses her. A lot. So naturally she opens the door, having no sense of privacy whatsoever.

Nice going, Gladys. The wind blows her back and rain gets in her eyes, as she fights her way in. "Hello?!" she calls, trying to push her way into the room. "Hello?! Anyone there? Hello?!"

[clockwork_doc]

Doc can't hear her -- he's still asleep, and the dream he's having is not pleasant:

He's back on Andrew's operating table, clamped down with thick bands of some undefinable metal. The Fae is standing over him, holding that clockwork mockery of a heart and smiling in that way that makes him look like a serial killer. Doc's sweating, whimpering, terrified. "No, Andrew, please. . . ."

"But this will make you work better!" Andrew says, caressing the scientist's face with his free hand. The action is not unfriendly, and somehow that makes it worse. "The heart you currently have just won't do." He gently sets down the new model -- the model he'd forced Doc himself to build, the model Doc had desperately hoped never to complete -- and picks up his scapel. "Now just lay still. . . ."

And the blade enters his flesh and it hurts IT HURTS AND HE'S SCREAMING FOR MERCY

Doc screams into the storm raging around him, tears spilling from under his closed eyelids. "NO! NO, STOP! PLEASE! LEAVE ME ALONE, LEAVE ME ALONE!!"

[cookiesandhugs]

Gladys can hear the screaming, and it's a voice she knows she recognizes. Not that it would matter to her anyway. She pushes into the fray even harder, swinging her arms wildly, trying to use them as leverage to move forward. She can feel it, the pain, it itches so much it hurts. She's screaming too, just screaming nothing at all, trying to find Doc in there. It sounds like he's being attacked, but she can't see anything, nothing at all.

"Hello? HELLO?! DOC?! WHERE ARE YOU?! WHO'S THERE?! DOC? DOC!!! DOC, WHO'S ATTACK YOU? WHO'S THERE?!" She can't find him at all, and she's panicking just a little, overwhelmed by the storm and the pain and everything else.

[clockwork_doc]

Lucky for her, her voice manages to penetrate through Doc's consciousness a little. His head jerks to the side, both in the dream and in real life.

"HELP! PLEASE!"

Then he dissolves into full-on sobbing. Which turns out to be a bit of a good thing, since it means there's more concentration on the rain and less on the wind, weather-wise. The storm calms a little as Doc curls up on his bed, crying as the dream forces him to relive the operations, his desperate run through the Hedge that ripped his life away. . . .

"Help me. . .please help me. . . ."

[firsttoletshow]

Between the mental loud of the nightmare and the physical loud of the hurricane, Alanna is drawn to Doc's room as irresistably paperclip to a supermagnet. Not that she wants to be closer to it -- the nightmare gets louder every step closer, and anyway, it's Not Polite to intrude on personal areas of the brainspace, especially when people don't have the option of blocking it out.

Of course, in this case, it's probably not as bad because it makes it clear how important it is to get him out of that. Or something. Alanna doesn't think about consequences or intrusions when hearing things like this. So she makes her way to Doc's door, and starts banging it with her fist in an attempt to wake him up. There's a psychic nudging in that direction as well, but it's faint and may not make an impression amidst the nightmare -- projecting is probably her weakest area.

If it doesn't work in under sixty seconds, she's going to open the door, but she can at least try to be polite. Whatever polite is in this case.

[clockwork_doc]

Yeah, there's no way this poor girl is waking him up in less than a minute. Doc's dream is a bad one -- full of all the pain and terror his life in Arcadia dealt him. He does actually feel the psychic nudge, though.

Unfortunately, all it makes him think of is the Hedge, with its varied shrubs and trees and vines, all covered with those thick Thorns. . . . The kind that rip at more than flesh -- they rip at your soul, making you forget your life. . . .

Just like he forgot his, desperately running running running as the Thorns tore at him, taking more and more of his soul, more and more of his thoughts more and more of what made him HIM

Doc twists away from the door, crying in terror. "No! No, I don't want to forget again!" he cries out. "Don't make me forget again!" I just got my memories back. . .

[stonebluesorrow]

Zel finds the fact that there's a door rattling in the Never-Ending Hallway very strange. But he's also the cautious sort and prefers not to rush into things blindly.

Still, Zel reasons that there aren't many things that make doors rattle that are truly dangerous, so he walks up to the door and pounds on it, swearing under his breath as he accidentally splinters some of the wood.

"You okay in there?" he calls.

[clockwork_doc]

Pounding loud enough to splinter the wood? That actually wakes Doc up a little. Not enough to fully pull him out of the nightmare he's been having though, unfortunately. The wind and rain die down a little, at least, so it's not as violent in there.

"What -- who's there?" Doc yells, retreating to the far side of his bed. His brain's still half-convinced he's back down in Andrew's basement, and whoever's pounding must be one of the Fae, come for something he's making. "I'm working as fast as I can, I swear! Don't hurt me!"

[stonebluesorrow]

Zel arches a brow at that. "What the Hell are you on about? I'm not gonna hurt you! What's wrong?"

Why would he think anyone here's gonna hurt him? Zel wonders.

[clockwork_doc]

The rain pouring down on him starts to wake Doc up a little. Foggily he realizes he's not in Arcadia anymore, he's still in his room in the Conrad.

His very wet, very windy room in the Conrad.

Doc blinks a few times, startled. What -- how -- Great Scott, did I do this? he thinks, staring around the wrecked room. I -- I don't even remember -- Quickly he banishes the rain and the wind before they can do any more damage.

He remembers there's someone on the other side of the door and slowly gets up, making his way squishly across the carpet. "I'm sorry," he says, opening the door. "I -- was having a nightmare." And apparently causing a small-scale hurricane at the same time.