Dream's Office Hours, 3/22

[game_of_you]

The professor is in. He appears to be modifying a map that looks very old, and isn't written in a human alphabet.

[OOC: Heading home to deal with family stuff. On SP at least some of the time until 4, gone from then until 8 or 9, and then back with a vengeance.]

Comments

[notstakedyet]

Angel stopped by, looking worried.

[ooc: going to lunch, then on slowplay until tonight m'self. Just establishing him here. Reply whenever.]

[notstakedyet]

"You'd be the one to know," Angel said, but even as he said it he could feel the dream that he and Isabel had shared.

[game_of_you]

Dream walked straight toward the dream, watching the action flicker between what looked like half a century ago, the present, and, perhaps, the future. "This feels right," he said, nodding at the hotel lobby. "Do you recognize this place?"

[notstakedyet]

Angel nodded. "Hyperion Hotel. I lived here back in the 50s."

He glanced up towards the balcony on the second floor. "If you could call it living."

[game_of_you]

"You were stagnant," Dream said. "It seems as though you feared yourself and the world, in equal measure."

[notstakedyet]

"Well yeah," Angel said with a non-committal shrug. "That and the wallpaper."

[game_of_you]

"Wallpaper has driven many men to madness," Dream said, apparently totally serious.

"But -- I think you know this is a place that matters greatly to you, past and, if I read this right, future." Dream rubbed his chin. "Though truly prophetic dreams are rare."

"Why does this place remind you of your friend?"

[notstakedyet]

Angel frowned. "This place doesn't remind me of L - "

He swallowed the name before he could say it.

If Dream looked carefully - or, perhaps being Dream he needn't have to be careful at all - he might notice faint shadows flickering in and out behind Angel. All of whom were people Angel knew, but not all belonged to his memories of the hotel.

[game_of_you]

"But Logan is here," Dream said simply, gesturing to the shadow in the lobby where Logan Echolls flickered in and out of sight. "This is your dream, Angel. In some way, you wished him here."

[notstakedyet]

Angel laughed, shaking his head. He didn't even look in the direction Dream was pointing in. "No. No way. I'd never wish Logan here."

[game_of_you]

"But he is here," Dream said, pointing to the spot where Logan stood, back to the wall, face neutral. "You know why."

[notstakedyet]

"No," Angel said, sharply. He mounted the staircase to the second floor, taking the steps two at a time. He still didn't look in Logan's direction. "He doesn't belong here!"

[game_of_you]

In a flash, Dream was at the top of the stairs. "But he is here," Dream insisted.

He glared. "If you wish my opinion? This dream, and Logan in it, exist because you fear and desire the same things now that you feared and desired then. They will not leave you."

"This is, of course, not your greatest fear," he said. Behind him flickered a suggestion of Angel's nightmare from the detention in the fall; the wrath of a just God.

[notstakedyet]

Angel fell back a step. He shook his head.

"No. None of that is true. None of it!"

[game_of_you]

Dream raised a hand, and the hotel lobby fell away, leaving Dream and Angel back by the banks of the pond. Only flickers of the dream remained "Very well, none of it is true," he said. "But all of it is, as well. My realm is made of stories, not lies."

He held out his hand. "Come. We should go back to Fandom."

[notstakedyet]

Angel hesitated. Even though the landscape had changed, he looked in the direction Logan had been standing in.

He wasn't there.

Angel reached out for Dream's hand without a word.