but is this real

[dia_f]

Characters: thesamename, dia-f, noneedforheroic, jemerite
Date: During the event.
Summary: Dreams.
Warnings: Dot's is gory.

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Dot

[nelsangue]

It is like some nightmare to her; her dreams are often blood and death, all the things she has seen since she was seventeen but this is like something from those disturbing sketches Leonardo produces from his study of cadavers.

But she does not flinch, does not feel ill, pushes onward even as she wonders why exactly she is here, how she stumbled into this and it is that, the unfamiliarity that has her nervous, casting her eyes about for anything useful, for an escape. Everything is too loud in her ears from her breathing to the slight rattle of metal weapons to the florins still in her coin purse even to the creak of her leather boots.

Eagle Vision is useless in this when there is nothing to see and when she does not know what could be there. She wonders just where she is.

[[ooc: if this isn't okay let me know and I'll fix it |D]]

[dia_f]

There is no escape, the swelter of the room makes that clear, the tang of copper in the air, the press of humidity. There is no escape, and the room is watching Ezio in kind.

But there is only one invader, there is an endless number of them. There is no one target. They are all Dot, indistinguishable from her because they are made of her flesh, her cells. They carry her memories, her name, her laughter, and her cruelty, her madness.

And they are all confined together in this room, bound by the black necklace that is chained around the sleeper's throat.

The cycle is beginning again, cracks webbing through the walls, blood dripping to puddle on the floor, and the creatures from the walls are growling. You're intruding. You are not one of us.

[nelsangue]

The heavy layers of her robes make her sweat and she rolls her shoulders, the robes sticking in places, hair plastered to the back of her neck as she pauses to look again, to breathe.

The sounds catch her attention and perhaps against her better judgement - she should know better, is old enough and battle-scarred enough to know much better - she goes to the wall, to the cracks. The hand covered in metal and thickened leather reaches out to touch. She looks at her hand and yes, the glow of blood with the Eagle Vision before she touches again. A throwing knife is removed from where she keeps them sheathed at her waist to test the wall and see just how solid any of it is and if it is actually alive about her.

[dia_f]

The wall bleeds for her, soft and fleshy, the flow of it beginning to come out in wet burbles, spraying a fine frothing mist. There is a hush from the creatures beyond, watching with a focused intensity, but they soon begin to whisper to one another, an indecipherable hiss.

(The jagged edges of the cuts and cracks: teeth, bared and waiting, hungry. There are eyes watching, from the windows and from the lighting in the ceiling.)

Behind Ezio, there is a beating on the wall with renewed fervor, like a body being thrown against it carelessly, over and over again.

Rude

[no_hometown]

Sephiroth may be eight years old, but it would be hard to mistake her for anyone else: that hair, those eyes. In this time period, she is the only one who looks like that, no Remnants yet, no pieces of herself strewn across the world, any clones that might be in existence still kept a secret.

Something about this scene is familiar, and it draws her in. She appears beside Rude. Whether she moves too fast to be seen or whether she teleports, it doesn't matter, as the result is the same. She studies the tracks of the tanks, the trails left by the jets in the sky.

"There's a war, isn't there?" There's an excitement in her tone. She asks the question the way another child might ask after a festival.

[noneedforheroic]

She wasn't expecting anyone to speak to her, that wasn't normally how these dreams went. She was a solitary sort of woman, even when she was with Reno, that was almost like being alone.

She turns quietly to look at the child, and no, she can't mistake her for anyone else. Something twists inside her chest, makes her wonder if she could kill that child, with nothing but her bare hands and her certainty that it was the right thing to do.

"Yeah," she agrees, a furrow in her brow, wondering what this dream is meant to be, what her subconscious means for her to do, if anything at all. "It's what they're getting ready for."

[no_hometown]

She nods, pleased by this. She has no self-consciousness, and she doesn't hesitate to speak to the woman openly.

"I'm not allowed to fight in the war. I'm not old enough. You have to be fourteen to test into SOLDIER." This seems unfair to her. "When the professor brings SOLDIERs to the laboratory for me to fight, I always win."

She peers up at Rude, curiously. "You're not a SOLDIER. Are you in the army?"

[noneedforheroic]

Rude's eyes move back towards the warships and the aircraft carries. Most of them were destroyed in Sephiroth's rampage, the rest wouldn't be hanging around Costa del Sol like this, they had patrols to carry out, supplies to ferry back and forth for the refugees.

"I was," she decides. "You aren't missing much."

It doesn't surprise her to hear a tiny Sephiroth talk about fighting like that though and it makes her stomach twist again. It was such a thin facade of control. Why had they let her grow into an adult? That was something that should have been murdered in the cradle. She sighs.

"You wanna go get me some cigarettes, kid?"

Dot

[mellifluently]

It takes her a moment to realise where she is, what the room she's in is made of. Flesh, everywhere, breathing and living. She swallows a scream, a stifled noise in her throat, taking a step backwards and tripping over her feet. She crawls back into a corner, trying to get away from the horror, but the floor beneath her and walls behind her are the same. She screams again, tears beginning to spring to her eyes, and she scrambles frantically away again. In the centre of the room, she curls in on herself, and hides her face in her knees.

[dia_f]

Can you feel us? We can feel you, can hear your screaming and taste your fear. The air moves quietly all around her, the steady inhale and exhale of breath. It's a pity that Mahalia moved from the corner, it would have enfolded her so so comfortingly--(smothered her until she could not breathe and made her one of them.)

There is something scrabbling at the floor beneath her, trying to claw its way up.

[mellifluently]

She can feel that the room's alive, can feel that it knows she's there, that it doesn't want her there, that it isn't safe. Knowledge of fear only breeds more fear, and her limbs are almost frozen with it, spine cold and breath only coming in shallow gasps. Something moves beneath her, beneath the floor, and she screams again, unlocking limbs from her protective huddle to move away, staring at the floor where she'd been.

[dia_f]

The 'wooden' floor creaks under her movements, a harsh peel of laughter, and the scratching continues, fingernails clawing from beneath. From beneath and from above, from all around.

Something which sounds much more like a fist connecting with the barrier begins, however, insistent and forceful, a series of cracks spreading in the space between the two windows. The plaster is caving to it, puckering into a jagged little mouth of broken pieces that will be breached in no time at all.

Jackie

[ebony_bone]

She comes into this scape of dark and grey, and is lost for a moment, her own dreams usually such rich shades of colour. There is guidance in the shadows, quiet urge and need, and she steps through, compelled.

She sees the carnations as the sprout, the only colour, muted as it is, eyecatching in the shadows. She watches, breath caught in wonder, as they climb and climb, hesitant but still stretching onwards. As those delicate flowers cry for protection, she sees the hands that reach out to shield them. They are her hands, she knows, and she is there. Her fingertips are gentle over the petals, coaxing them to stay in bloom, offering strength.

[thesamename]

Spatters of blue continue to drip onto Dominique's hands, as light as snowflakes, the flowers swaying in an almost peaceful little dance now that they have been saved from toppling completely.

Colors bleed, in and out, sometimes vibrant but more often almost ghostly, shapes flickering in the distance. A whistling sound rises up from the darkness, almost like the gleeful shriek of sea-birds, but almost certainly human made. It comes with the rolling in of gray clouds, thin and wispy but of lighter shade than the blackness they've covered over.

The blue teardrops become heavier, joined by shades of purple. Rain sent to see the flowers grow, and even if that strange noxious buzzing has not ceased and twines strangely with those long searching whistles, the little pink flowers give a breathless laugh, jeweled with liquid and drinking deep despite uncertainty and pain.

[ebony_bone]

The sounds are strange to her, disconcerting in their constancy, but she is not afraid of them, or of the approaching clouds. She stays where she is, sheltering the flowers, watching the blue and purple that falls on her skin, the colours that come so brightly and then fade again.

The flowers laugh, and she smiles gently, leaning down and disrupting the rainfall briefly to brush her lips over one of the blooms.

[thesamename]

The petals are relaxed in the rain, in open bloom, and though their scent is faint--(secretive, perhaps)--it is pleasant. At such a close distance, their color is steady, a dusky shade, yes, but it does not flicker and fade, holds solid.

Pull away, however, and they flutter once more, drawn back into chaos and inconstancy.

For a moment, the buzzing grows louder, the hum overtaking the squeal of bird calls. It hurts, and everything throbs darker, then harsh and bright, no quiet place between shadow and whitewash. The bursts of color that lurk around the outer edges of the gray spotlight where the flowers grow are agitated by it, their colors dragged into brightness to contrast the dark and the light, but the effort is too much for them and their appearances grow briefer--(their joyous whistling stops entirely, replaced by murmur of desperation and restlessness.)