(no subject)

[specifythepoint]

WHO: specifythepoint and the dreamers!
WHERE: In your dreams. No, literally.
WHEN: The night of 4/5-4/6
WARNINGS: Dream imagery? Nightmare fodder?
SUMMARY: Arthur accidentally uses his powers. Shenanigans ensue.
FORMAT: As preferred! Just tag in!

Arthur is almost acutely aware that he's dreaming, which is rare, because Arthur hasn't really dreamed much in the past few years. Exposure to Somnacin, it does something funny to brain chemistry. While Arthur would claim he understands it, he only really does in a abstract, unchemical sort of way. The point remains that he doesn't dream naturally very often anymore.

Are there dreams in limbo was the question that he had asked Dom, once upon a time, after Mal's incident. Dom had said something about dreams not mattering in limbo. But after fifty years, he should have known. That's the kind of thing someone remembers, when they dream lucidly. So this, does this make this place not limbo?

Arthur doesn't like the connotations of it.

Comments

[meowminx]

Selina was looking for Helena. Big one, little one. It changed from moment to moment. The one thing that stayed the same was that her daughter didn't remember her.

The worst of Gotham and the City tangled in her mind. Rooftops, alleyways. The hospital. No hope in Arkham. Almost poetic.

Helena wouldn't recognize her. Any of the monsters could pose as her mother. And Clayface...

She moved faster, racing through the darkest parts of the strange hybrid city of her dream.

[specifythepoint]

Arthur wasn't exactly sure where he was, but this wasn't any dream of his. The first gunshot went off three minutes into the dream, a projection falling after it attacked him.

The fact that he didn't know who he was connected to didn't help his nerves, but he shook it off and began to run, and that was when he met the dreamer.

It's hard, for first time dreamers, to recognize it. But Arthur wasn't a first-timer and this wasn't the usual dream. He didn't pull out a gun - that's a good way to attract unwanted attention - but instead stared her down. A woman. Beautiful, as he pulled her into an alcove.

"Calm down."

Arthur hated nightmares.

[meowminx]

She didn't know him. But she didn't know everyone in Arkham. She wasn't a patient.

"Are you security?" He didn't look like an inmate, but that didn't always mean a whole lot. "I'm looking for my daughter."

She should have worn her costume for this, she thought. And then she was. Oh right. She had put it on, hadn't she? But she hadn't cut her hair and it wasn't fitting quite right under the cowl. She'd fix it later.

[specifythepoint]

No, Arthur almost said, but Mr. Charles had worked, damn it. He was the intruder here.

"What is your daughter doing here," he asked, moving her through Arkham. It was enough of a maze that it was almost perfectly designed for mindcrime. Arthur took note - it would be worth it to replicate this in the future.

If there was a future.

[meowminx]

"She's lost." Or was taken away. Or given away. Selina couldn't quite remember at the moment. "They'll be after her."

She could hear the laughter. The Joker always stood out, but there were others.

[specifythepoint]

Arthur spun at the laugh, sharply looking out into the dream. This is why he hated nightmares. People always had the worst parts of reality tucked away, and distorted. He pulls a gun from his back holster, and hands it to her, and then reaches back to pull another one. Dream logic. Eames was better at this.

Arthur would pull his own teeth before he admitted that to anyone.

"Here," he said sharply. "We'll find her."

Why was he doing this? Maybe because it was a dream. Things and reasons sometimes got fuzzy, in dreams.

[meowminx]

And the worst part was the nasty bits of reality Selina knew didn't really need the distortion.

"Thank you," she replied, holding the gun like she was ready to use it. And maybe the world wavered between blueprints just a little bit less.

[viced]

The world of dreams was loud. A green haze filtered over everything, shapes emerging from the clouds mist, before retreating back within. Whirrs and hisses escaped, incomprehensible save for a few words that came from the darkness.


--BRANE-- --BULK--

THE STARS ARE DOWN

100. THE STARS ARE DOWN

BRANES IN THE BULK--

It repeated, in a mantra, and Mitchell was in the middle of it. What made the voices would flash into reality before escaping, blenders, toasters, toilets. If it was mechanical, it was speaking, and Mitchell was in the middle of it all. Hands on his knees, in a classic meditation post, he was stuck listening to the shit the machines kept pounding into his head. The mantra. The stars are down. There are many branes in the bulk.

--THE ONES WHO WALK BETWEEN.

[specifythepoint]

From a nightmare to this - this wasn't Arthur's night. He looked around for a moment, unsure - the stars are down, what could that possibly mean? But he was used to this kind of thing - it was just how some dreams went, especially unstructured ones.

He didn't know how he got caught in the second level of the dream, he didn't remember, and it bothered him a little. He needed a kick.

But then he saw Mitchell in the middle of it. "Mr. Mayor."

[viced]

This was...new. Very new. Normally it was the clamor and call of machines, from one minute to the next, unless he smoked a bowl before bed, and then it was usually worse. It was like revenge for getting a spare minute to himself, he'd have worse dreams. Weed and TM. Go figure.

The voice though, it was normal. Painfully normal. For a moment, he was sure it was someone familiar, maybe Kremlin, or Bradbury, but the voice didn't call him 'boy' or 'boss'. Nope, it was someone new.

He opened an eye, and just looked at the guy for a minute, before pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Oh fuck me. Okay, who are you supposed to be, huh? You can control what, water or some shit? Is this a new trick?"

[specifythepoint]

Arthurs eyebrows raised, and then descended. Any minute now, projections would recognize him. "This isn't a trick," he stated mildly, looking around. "I just thought I would say hello after we met the other day."

It was a trick, to let him think it was normal. To make him believe that Arthur was a projection. Don't bring up the word dream. Rules to survive by.

[viced]

Mitch looked at him, and then he looked back at the rest of the machines. "Uh, yeah, it fucking is!" he pointed to the toaster that darted into vision and back out.

"This is my goddamn dream. Believe me, I know when I'm fucking dreaming, and now is one of those times. So either I'm dreaming about a random guy I spoke with on the network," there was a pause, the barest, slightest of pauses, before he continued. "That's not likely, by the way, or you're a new one of them. Please tell me I'm not going to fucking wake up to the city drowned."

[specifythepoint]

Arthur wasn't pleased but it managed not to show on his face. Doesn't he ever get a break? No? After Mal shooting him and the Inception job he never should have taken (better risk Cobol than another Dom Cobb ride to hell) this was just fucking perfect.

Suddenly the dream shifted, quickly, too quickly, and Arthur was surprised at that. A street in Paris, near the warehouse, down to every last detail. There was the bakery he would read the newspaper in before going to work. There was the annoying kid on a bike who would try and steal his croissant.

"I don't know what you mean by one of them," he said. He was a decent architect, and a better dreamer, but this, this kind of thing didn't just happen.

[viced]

Mitchell blinked, and looked around.

"Fuck me sideways!" he exclaimed, looking from the man to the street, and then back to the man. "Fuck me I know something's weird if my dream just went from normal to..." he trailed off, emphasizing the landscape in a wide gesture. "This!"

Mitchell hadn't had a normal dream since the accident. They were filled with the siren songs of machines now, the whispered promises of 'those that walk between' and that the stars were down. The branes in the bulk. Every goddamn message on repeat, it didn't stop. Eventually, he swore it was actually going to send him over the edge.

[favorsthebrave.livejournal.com]

"I went down to St. James' Infirmary, saw my baby there... Set down on a long white table, so sweet, so cold, so fair..."

The jazz drifts out through the open back door into the still air of a New York City summer night circa 1930; Lack Gandor is sitting on the back steps of the club, in his shirtsleeves with a drink in his hand, head tipped back to listen to the noise from inside. There's cigarette smoke in the air inside, tough guys sittings around tables drinking and smoking and playing cards, and the singer's voice rising over all of it.

As far as Luck is concerned, this is a good dream.

[specifythepoint]

This is the kind of dream that Arthur would choose for himself - well, maybe a little more contemporary, but the same sort of atmosphere. He's dressed for the occasion in a shirt and waistcoat, his jacket presumably waiting at the door with his hat.

He knows the dreamer by intuition, and takes a careful seat nearby, to watch and listen and hope that this doesn't turn into something else, and takes a drink.

[favorsthebrave.livejournal.com]

If things are going to go pear-shaped, they're not headed there in a hurry; the band plays mournfully on, and for a while Luck seems content to sit and listen and nurse his drink. He's on his own ground and more relaxed than he'd be anywhere else, so it takes him a while to notice that he's being monitored...

...but he's on his own ground, so notice he does, eventually.

At length he picks himself up from the back steps, and makes his unhurried way into the club; nobody stops what they're doing, but the tough guys take notice when he passes, and some of them move to let him by. He stops for a moment at the bar to set down his glass, and the bartender tops it off without being told; a few words, a smile, a respectful nod from the bartender and Luck moves on, working his way around the room, pausing for a moment to watch a poker game in progress, and - finally - finds his way around to slide into a chair opposite Arthur.

"I don't think I've seen you around here before," he observes.

[specifythepoint]

Arthur manages to keep his face still; years of training in the military make it not only possible but habit. Usually dreamers don't recognize an intruder consciously; instead it's their projections that zero in on the oddness of a dream. Unless it's Eames. Eames is good at flying under the proverbial radar.

"I'm new," he says briskly. "You're sharp," he adds after a moment. Carry the conversation out. Arthur would rather have that than get shot. Again.

[favorsthebrave.livejournal.com]

The comment gets a faint and vaguely self-deprecating smile from Luck. "I ought to at least be able to keep up with what's going on in my own place," he says, and then he puts down his drink and extends a hand across the table.

"Luck Gandor."

[specifythepoint]

Arthur shrugs just a touch. "Some people wouldn't keep up. Some people would just leave it alone." That isn't a recommendation. He takes the proferred hand and shakes it. Luck Gandor. He makes a note of the name.

"Arthur," he offers.

IS IT TOO LATE TO TAG IN... 8[

[iknowyourfear.livejournal.com]

It isn't his dream. Not really. Terrance Ward rarely has his own dreams, and like most things, he blames it on his father. It's as if when he sleeps, the heads of those dreaming around him open up, yawning wide to allow his dormant mind to meld with theirs. It's always the bad ones, though. The nightmares. Those are the ones that welcome him, as if the dreamscape recognizes him for what he is-- exalted son of the dream lord, the demon king, the ruler of frightened dreamers.

It's a house this time. Someone's childhood home, maybe. He doesn't know how he gets there, but he's on the porch now, trying the creaky old doorknob. The air is unnaturally still, thick with ill omens and fear. Somewhere in Terry's apartment building, back in the real world, someone is sweating in their bed. Back in the dream, he's pushing the door open, waiting to see what waits inside.

The human mind is twisted. The things he sees rarely surprise him anymore.

NEVER TOO LATE

[specifythepoint]

What's waiting inside is Arthur, getting up from the bed, looking impeccable but annoyed. What is going on, he doesn't know. Whatever it is, these are too many dream layers for him to be under with Somnacin: it's been three, this is the fourth, and Arthur is extremely displeased, as evidenced by the sour expression on his face.

When he looks up and sees the teenager, he inwardly braces. Teenagers have strange dreams - all those hormones coursing through their system, it makes for odd brain chemistry - so he hopes that this isn't a real teenager but rather a self-projection. Unlikely, but Arthur can hope, can't he?

is lj finally working now... 8[

[iknowyourfear.livejournal.com]

Terry hesitates in the doorway, surprised maybe to see Arthur. He doesn't recognize him -- they only spoke over the Network, after all -- but you don't get to be Nightmare's only son without knowing what should be in a dream and what shouldn't. And as many messed up things as he's seen on the dreamscape before, he can still tell when something is out of place. This isn't the dreamer.

His eyes narrow faintly. There's a defensive tension in his posture. He's in his element here, and not afraid to fight, if it comes down to that.

"You don't belong here," he says flatly. "Who are you?"

SOB SO LATE...

[jinglejangles.livejournal.com]

It's pretty similar to the nightmares Cygnus usually has. He's marrying Sara, the dark haired girl perfect in a white dress. They travel around on their honeymoon, and he promises they'll live happily ever after.

He wakes up in their bed, alone, the sheets already soaked with his own blood. This time, he isn't surprised, and turns to see Sara staring out the window. Cygnus isn't sure why he bothers to get up, but he figures he deserves what's coming.

Sara turns around and it's his mother, make up streaked and ruined and her eyes wide with madness. She grabs and shakes his shoulders, paint-chipped nails digging in hard enough to add more wounds to the ones all over his body. She's screaming at him, and he ignores the spittle dotting his cheeks. How she's furious and disappointed in him for daring to die before he had slaughtered thousands of Chronosians.

Cygnus is too tired to be scared this time. She was just an angry ghost.

I AM THE MOST LATE I'M SO SORRY.

[conflagrations]

Johnny's dreams are fast and bright and hot and loud, a tangled up jumble of sensations, so vibrant they each bear an edge of the unreal.

For the moment, Johnny is standing on the edge of the roof of the Baxter Building, flames licking up his legs and torso while he looks down on the city. Everything is as it was in the early days, when he'd just gotten his powers, before the world had come to pieces under the tidal wave. These are the things Johnny misses.

In a moment, he'll jump off the edge.