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| The Fool and The Hermit; Tag: Dreamer | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 12 2011, 05:45 PM (410 Views) | |
| Derek Addams | Nov 12 2011, 05:45 PM Post #1 |
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September 21st, 9:27 P.M. ___________________________________ Long day.... Long-ass fucking day.... Derek tossed the jacket onto the chair as soon as he opened the door. He hadn't felt this tired in a long time. He hated all the "dressy" clothes he was wearing. He'd borrowed the suit from Warren. Apparently they were on their way out, anyway, so he figured taking one wouldn't be all that bad since they were on their way to Goodwill, anyway. And he needed one if he was gonna sit in on the Trial... The testimonies had been presented. People who had seen that day, people who had been hurt. He could honestly say that he was glad that he was never called to the stand. He was more shocked that Cyclops, his Boss for three years who had always stressed secrecy on the nature of the school, had just outed everyone within it as not only mutants, but he was also convinced that by revealing that he was Cyclops, the next logical choice the public would take would be to assume everyone else there was an X-Man. He smirked as he remembered the one bit of humor in the day. Upon the announcement, he'd counted backwards from five as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The trial was, after all, being televised. On cue, his phone began to vibrate. He left the courtroom, the buzz becoming almost audible. He didn't need the ringtone to know who it was. Once outside the murmurs and arguments of the trial, he clicked the green button, and from thousands of miles away, from Nashville to New York, Danielle Mercer, maiden name Danielle Addams, screeched across the line at her little brother as he recoiled from the decibel level that echoed across the relatively empty hall. His eyes actually went crossed for a moment. "WHAT THE FUCK DID HE MEAN THE SCHOOL GOT FUCKING BLOWN UP!?!?!" "Nice to hear from ya, too, sis... I gotta get back..." he answered placidly. "I'm in the courtroom, I'll give ya the finger if ya keep watchin..." "Don't you fucking dare I will kick your ass you said you were working at that school so does that mean-" CLICK. That was about as much of a break he was going to get that day. He quickly returned to his seat for the rest of the proceedings. The testimonies were setting off some rather unpleasant chain reactions. Thoughts of religion and holy war. The one thing he found a similarity between the Apocalypse and the Purifiers was the twisting of the same religion toward a means of genocide. Having been caught in the crossfire twice now, it was making him ponder the nature of the very religion he'd heard preached all around him growing up, but had eventually just turned away from. He didn't lose his faith in God, more like he'd lost his faith in the congregation. Not that any of it mattered, anyway. He'd done enough in his life to convince himself that he was almost beyond redemption at any rate. And now he was home... it was a temporary one, but it was a home, no less. He stared at the bed as he unbuttoned the white collared dress shirt and tossed it onto the jacket before taking off the image inducer that hid his usual plethora of bruises. He'd put it on to make himself less conspicuous in the court, but with Scott's revelation, he figured he wasn't going to be needing it for a while. His mind was pretty much on autopilot at that point. The queen-sized bed, empty as it was, had never looked more inviting. He pulled his shoes off with his feet as he walked and fell face-first on top of it without even bothering to change his pants. His hand was beginning to throb again. He figured he must have torn the cut open at some point in the day and would have to change the bandage soon. But right now, he was just too tired. He turned onto his side. As much as he hated to admit it, the comfort of the bed had to come with the fact that more expensive. His better sense told him not to get used to it or he'd get "spoiled". It was like a huge bed of cotton. He could feel himself sinking further and further into the cushioning of the mattress and pillows. He could feel himself getting heavier before the cloth and bedding gave way to air. And then he was falling. Through the bed, through the pillows, headfirst, twisting and turning. It was a sensation of both sinking through water and falling through air. His body went limp, and his eyes remained closed. Finally, the descent slowed, and he opened his eyes, greeted with the view of the ceiling of his suite in the Worthington Complex. Everything seemed a bit grey, like the morning of a heavy fog. He wondered if he forgot to pull the shades before he crashed and he was still a bit tired. But when he sat up, he realized there weren't any shades to begin with. The whole side of the wall was gone, taking both the windows and blinds with it. The entire apartment was exposed to the world making his breath visible as tiny white flecks leaked in from the opening. It was snowing in his room. Or so he thought, until he realized that the flecks weren't melting, and were more grey than white. Ash... He patted the bedding, seeing the dust rise as the flecks in the air continued to fall. His gaze returned to the grey and foggy scene outside. He could see some individual fires here and there across the cloudy skyline, tiny bits of black smoke and orange fire. But there were no sirens, no screams, no shouts for help. Just a melody that rang through the air in the tones of a song he knew he recognized, but couldn't quite remember. He got to his feet and slowly crossed the room to the opening. He couldn't see anyone in the street, just the road, the sidewalk, abandoned cars, all covered with a layer of soot and ash. "Time for breakfast..." he mumbled, monotone and blank before he turned away from the sight to the door on the other side of the room. |
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| Dreamer | Nov 15 2011, 04:28 AM Post #2 |
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Dreamer did not own a television set, let alone an Internet connection. The Morlocks didn't really go in for that sort of thing, and she couldn't really say that she missed it. Mostly, she relied on Callisto to bring her news of Topside. That's how she knew that Alex Summers, otherwise known as Havok, had been revealed to the public to also be War, the Horseman of Apocalypse whose nanites had recruited a mutant army and caused unfathomable destruction, and was currently being tried before the World Court for crimes against humanity. That's also how she knew that his brother Scott, otherwise known as Cyclops, had outed himself and the rest of the X-Men on national television, and that the Xavier Institute had been razed to the ground. Really, for a paraplegic hermit living deep underground, she was kept surprisingly well informed. But while Callisto had an uncanny knack for being at the right place at the right time to learn what she needed to learn, she couldn't be everywhere, and she didn't always talk about what she knew. So much of what Dreamer knew about the world she learned from a decidedly less typical source: her infrequent visitors to the Dreamwalk. Who had been somewhat more frequent lately, granted: both Rogue and Rahne Sinclair had visited in the last week. Dreamer assumed that was a side-effect of her visit to Xavier's back in July, when she'd met the two women in person: it was much more common for people she knew to wander onto the Dreamwalk in their sleep than for strangers. On balance, Dreamer thought it delightful; after all, the thing she most missed about her former life was the ability to interact with people. That was complicated enough before the Purifiers had come along to disrupt everything, now between the Morlocks' migration to yet another new location and the injury to her spine that left her paralyzed, such interactions had become far more than complicated. (Admittedly, her newfound ability to travel the physical world in her dream form offered compensations... but still.) So when she became aware of a new visitor on the astral borders of her realm, she was eager to greet him. She recognized her visitor as Derek, an employee of Xavier's she'd met briefly while she was there. The dream setting he'd constructed was also depressingly familiar, at least in its broad strokes: apocalyptic, ash-strewn, grey and charred. There was a lot of that sort of thing in the dreams of those who had survived the Apocalypse, especially now that Summers' trial was bringing back old memories. She didn't recognize the specific setting, but a quick mental probe remedied that: Warren Worthington's apartments, where several survivors of the Purifiers' attack on the Institute were apparently holed up. The same probe turned up a related fact that she and Derek had in common: apparently, both of them had been "converted" by War's nanites during the Apocalypse. That was interesting; she hadn't met many others who'd shared the experience. As he headed for his bedroom door, mumbling something about breakfast, Dreamer took her cue and opened it, pushing a cart before her which she populated with his favorite breakfast foods, as well as a plate of gherkins as a private joke. "Room service, Mr. Addams, courtesy of Beautiful Dreamer's post-apocalyptic resort and spa. Tell me something: why doesn't anyone ever dream about colorful apocalypses? Why all this dreary grey?" With an extravagant gesture, she dyed the ash covering everything a riot of color. "There. Isn't that better?" |
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| Derek Addams | Nov 18 2011, 07:48 PM Post #3 |
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Derek wandered to the door, the visions of ash and destruction were just as they were. It had been like that for a while. Everything was cold, everything was grey. Lately, it had always been like this when his mind relaxed and the visions of sleep overtook him. But today, something was different. As he reached for the doorknob, it suddenly burst open and he was greeted by a woman as grey as the sky and ash that permeated the room. "Room service, Mr. Addams, courtesy of Beautiful Dreamer's post-apocalyptic resort and spa. Tell me something: why doesn't anyone ever dream about colorful apocalypses? Why all this dreary grey?" "What?" He didn't realize that in this place (although to his credit, he wasn't even aware it was a "place"), his thoughts were his words. And he was more concerned by the sudden and noticeable change in the atmosphere as the ashes became a multitude of colors as they began to paint the room. "Looks like a Cosby sweater..." It was one thought, followed by several others. "Room service?" He glanced at the cart. Fluffy French toast, perfectly browned sausage links, scrambled eggs with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese, and beside the plate, a bottle of maple syrup, a glass of milk and an equally tall glass of orange juice, and... "Pickles?" "Wow... Warren's gone all out..." he muttered. He reached for the plate and then it hit him. "Or, he doesn't want me leaving the room, either... Thanks." He smiled blankly at the woman, whom he realized was still monochrome. That was weird for him. Although he wasn't yet aware that he was dreaming, and although the landscape had been a few moments ago, grey and ashen, it was still in color, as all his dreams were. It made her something of an "anomaly" in his dreaming subconscious, a point of focused interest. She seemed familiar somehow, but at the moment he couldn't place the name. All around, the flecks of color continued to fall. "Now it's lookin' like Alice in Wonderland..." On cue, a white rabbit quickly rappelled across the opening to the apartment, oddly enough wearing a red bodysuit and a sword strapped to it's back. Derek briefly glanced at it, then casually turned back to the woman. "So... you live here, too?" To be honest, he was glad for the company, and was hoping whoever this lady was, she wasn't there to yell. "You're a mutant?" It would explain her somewhat "off" appearance. "Are you like Cess? A Metal Lady?" In his haze, he'd probably accept any answer she gave him. |
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| Dreamer | Nov 20 2011, 03:33 PM Post #4 |
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"Yes, pickles. Gherkins, to be exact," Dreamer clarified as she took one off the cart and popped it into her mouth. "Not to everyone's taste, but me, I love 'em. Don't get many down in the Tunnels... last time I ate one in the real world was at your former home, when Callisto and I were there. And unlike Xavier's, Dreamwalk gherkins don't give me heartburn unless I want them to. Better all around." She ate the first one greedily, then savored a second one gradually while Derek slowly worked through his thoughts on the setting where he found himself. She chuckled at Derek's conjured White Rabbit, then lightly touched the man's memories to interpret his questions. "Yes, you could say I live here. And no, I'm not at all like Cessily, but yes, I'm a mutant; we have that much in common. Something else as well," she added casually as she entered the room, sprawling on the indecently comfortable bed. "I was a convert as well, back during Apocalypse. Like the infamous Mr. Summers... Alex, I mean. Your employer's brother, yes? It's a small world." She gestured outside to where her physical body had appeared, as it was during Apocalypse, her deformed face clearly marked by War's nanites. Though the figure was a significant distance away and obscured by the falling technicolor ash, the details were still clearly visible in the strange way of dreams. Not that she wanted to brood on her experiences as one of War's servants; truthfully, she preferred not to think about that time at all. She'd considered wiping her own memories of it more than once, but she'd tried that after the Flood and it hadn't really worked in the long term. Unlike the others whose memories she edited, her own memories had a way of coming back relatively quickly. She would have to deal with it all eventually, she figured, so why not now? But that was easier said than done. And judging from Derek's memories of Apocalypse, Dreamer suspected she was far from alone in that respect. "Anyway... welcome to my domain, Mr. Addams. Derek. Bruiser. Whatever you prefer to be called. It usually takes new arrivals a while to get acclimatized to the Dreamwalk, but in the meantime just let me know what would make your visit more enjoyable. I can conjure pretty much anything you can imagine here... it is a dream, after all!" Just to illustrate her point, the bed morphed into an elephant underneath her and she continued to lounge on top of it, the room somehow able to hold the huge creature despite not seeming to change size, in the paradoxical logic of dreams. |
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| Derek Addams | Dec 3 2011, 06:25 PM Post #5 |
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Derek listened to her, his face becoming a hazy mix of fascination, confusion, and amusement. She talked about things he'd only heard off-hand as he was cleaning, a silent worker amongst the crowd of mutants at Xavier's. "Morlocks... Callisto... Marrow..." A brief flash of four figures appeared in the room, in the corner near the door. One was the eye-patched woman he'd later learned was Callisto, the leader of the Morlocks. Another was the pink-skinned and jagged Marrow, fighting against the two restraining her: Derek, wearing only his blue Scooby Doo pajama pants with the brown paw prints on them, and the other, a very dark-skinned Josh Foley. It was considerably out of date, and faded as soon as it had served it's purpose of jogging Derek's memory. "Morlocks... where Marrow came from..." She went on to explain that she was a mutant, and that she was also a convert, like him, back when War attacked M-Town. He glanced outside to see a woman, disfigured and looking a bit burnt. His eyes became washed with white, His brown irises almost completely vanishing behind an eerie glow as his pupils became foggy. The veins in his skin began to protrude as his skin began to darken, the visible bruises being the worst collection of the spider-webbing patterns across his skin. The colors of the ash were beginning to fade as his breath quickened, and there, next to the marred vision of the woman bedside him, was a duplicate of Derek's own image, twitching on the ground with a face full of rage. The image was on fire, but Derek clearly knew that he was never set on fire in that attack. "Anyway... welcome to my domain, Mr. Addams. Derek. Bruiser. Whatever you prefer to be called." The changes in his appearance disappeared as soon as she broke his focus from the vision. The haze in his mind was beginning to clear a bit as the woman in black-and-white began to explain things. She was talking about a "Dreamwalk". He said it aloud as soon as he thought of it. "Huh?" And suddenly there was an elephant in the room. And not just in the metaphoric sense, there was an "actual" elephant in the room. The absurdity of it all told him that she was telling the truth, and was able to snap him to some sense of lucidity. "A dream...?" He still felt fuzzy.. but it was more like the feeling he got when he was drunk than an absolute abandonment of sense. His mind was putting the pieces together as his psyche began to tune into his subconscious. "Wait..." he asked of the woman. "This is a dream?" A fervent need began to rise in his mind, and without so much as a second glance, he turned and dashed for the edge of the open wall at an impossible speed. It was instinctual, his mind's need for a respite from the horrible memory that had been plaguing him. For the briefest of instants, he looked like he was clad in black leather, and his hair was just as equally impossibly long, and flowed like liquid. There was a handle on the right side of the opening. As soon as he clenched it, he was back to his "normal" appearance. Grunting, he pulled the handle as the entire wall seemed to slide as the motion caused bits of plaster to fall down around him. The new wall had no windows, no way to see out into the carnage beyond that apartment, that although it was large to begin with, and still had an elephant within it, seemed to be getting smaller. "Too depressing..." Came his explanation. He didn't want to remember it... it just always kept coming up and he couldn't get away from it. He glanced up at the woman, who, although she was riding a full-sized elephant in an apartment that now somehow seemed like the size of an efficiency hotel room, was still glancing down on him as if everything was perfectly normal. His tray of food was even still up there. He glanced at the elephant and reached out to touch it. It felt real enough, but then again, in dreams a lot of things felt and looked real. "At least it's not pink..." On cue, it's skin turned a light pinkish color. He just smiled before he looked up at it's still-monochrome passenger. "You're... Really here, aren't you?" He asked as everything she'd told him began to connect. "In my dream? No... wait... you said I'm in yours?" |
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| Dreamer | Dec 5 2011, 01:35 AM Post #6 |
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Apparently Derek was acquainted with Callisto and Marrow, judging from the memories that emerged when Dreamer mentioned their names. That was no real surprise, given that Marrow had been living at the Institute for a while before its destruction, and Dreamer's own visit there with Callisto had not been the Morlock leader's first time. The particular image was a fight, which given Marrow and Callisto was not too surprising, and a quick probe into Derek's memory made clear that it was relatively ancient history. "Yes, those Morlocks," she agreed. "Though Marrow is... well, let's say her connection to us is not quite as strong as it once was." After a few minutes more of entertaining hallucinations, her visitor's waking mind began to engage. "Yes, close enough," she replied to his question. "You can think of it as lucid dreaming, if you like. The world is your oyster here, Derek; anything you can imagine will manifest. People, places, things. And, well, me. I'm called Beautiful Dreamer... a bit of a self-indulgent name, I suppose," she added with a shrug, "but it was my husband's pet name for me, and I've been reluctant to give it up. This is the Dreamwalk: not my dream, precisely, but my realm. I do enjoy visitors, though. The Tunnels get so dull without them." She dismounted the now-pink elephant, arriving on the ground beside it before sending it off to graze in a jungle now visible through the apartment's bathroom door. "And you," she added lightly as she browsed his superficial memories, "are Derek Addams, invulnerable X-Man and keeper of the Institute's physical plant. Or you were, anyway, before it was destroyed. And keeper of many memories you would likely be happier without," she added, "of Apocalypse and other things. Or am I wrong?" It was a rhetorical question: here in her realm, she was not wrong about such things, though her visitors didn't always agree with her. "Many of which you seem intent on manifesting here," she noted, looking around the remnants of Apocalypse. "I can get rid of it, by the way. Both from our current environs, and from your memories, if you prefer. You do seem to be having rather a lot of difficulty adjusting to it all... especially now with the Summers boy's trial stirring up old memories. Just say the word, and all the things you've never told anyone can be gone from your own mind as well." She laughed heartily at her own offer. "Oh my, I do sound rather like a demon from a B movie, don't I? Don't worry, dear, there are no strings attached. Believe me, I have no interest in your soul, even if I believed in such a thing; my own is quite dingy enough to satisfy me. It's just my way of thanking people for visiting me here in my realm, a gift more lasting than oneiric feasts and dancing girls. Or dancing boys, I should say," she added as she browsed some rather more pleasant memories. "Including... oh, is that so? Well, good for you. Do let Kelrian know his sister is alive and well, will you?" |
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| Derek Addams | Dec 8 2011, 08:03 PM Post #7 |
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Derek listened to the woman's explanations with a mixture of suspicion and amusement. The fact that she seemed to know so much had to mean that she was some sort of telepath. It made him a bit nervous. He knew that people in dreams were already susceptible to all kinds of suggestions, and he wasn't exactly the strongest when it came to mental attacks. He considered the woman as she excused the elephant to his... jungle bathroom. She went on to explain that this was her "realm". So it was her own slice of the Dream World, then? The speed at which she was talking made it a bit hard to keep up. She reminded him of one of those fast-talking socialites from 50s movies. The monochrome was probably enhancing that, but her mannerisms were making it even more noticeable, and he couldn't help but smirk. Then she went on to explain another talent. Memory removal. His eyebrow arched immediately as he crossed his arms. She went on to explain that it was something she did for volunteers as a "thanks for visiting", but the premise still sounded sinister. "Oh my, I do sound rather like a demon from a B movie, don't I? Don't worry, dear, there are no strings attached. Believe me, I have no interest in your soul, even if I believed in such a thing; my own is quite dingy enough to satisfy me. It's just my way of thanking people for visiting me here in my realm, a gift more lasting than oneiric feasts and dancing girls. Or dancing boys, I should say," she went on at her mile-a-minute pace as Derek crossed to the bathroom door to inspect the jungle. It seemed to stretch on for miles, and the pink elephant was still there. "Including... oh, is that so? Well, good for you. Do let Kelrian know his sister is alive and well, will you?" "Huh?" he turned back to her as his brow furrowed a bit. "So.. you know about me and Kel, too?" It was then that Derek remembered the last time he saw Kel. It was in this room when they were sharing it for that week. Just the two of them, in that bed, that was now a pink elephant, which for some reason, reminded him of India rather than Africa. It was a chain of thoughts that added up to an image of Kel riding, or rather, dancing on top of the pink elephant wearing what appeared to be some skimpy Indian dancer's garb. Kel + Bed turned pink elephant = Indian Harem Dancer Kel. It was an image that, although he enjoyed the eye candy, the fact that he had someone with him seeing it as well caused his entire body, rather than just his face, to turn beet red as he slammed the jungle door shut. "Uh..." Derek cleared his throat. "Y-yeah... Ya know..." He scratched his head. "Maaybee... We should go somewhere..." He looked around the room that was beginning to look more and more like a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. "We should go somewhere I can focuntrate..." Real word he just made up. He walked over to the cart that Dreamer had pushed in. His own plate had actually reappeared on it somehow. Remembering what Dreamer had said about being able to conjure up anything, he decided to give it a shot. "Is it really just as simple as imagining it?" He tried to think of another place. Somewhere pleasant he dreamed about. When he looked at the door, he realized it looked like it belonged on an elevator. He also noticed that next to his rather well-dressed companion, His own combo of khakis and a tank top seemed a bit out of place. "Think I got just the place." he smirked as he pushed the call button. A train whistle blasted through the room, shaking it. As the door opened, a blue light flooded the room, revealing Derek to be wearing what appeared to be wearing something resembling a black tuxedo, but with the usual assortment of straps and buckles that went on his "club gear" accenting it. It was the kind of thing he normally wouldn't wear, but didn't feel at all as stuffy and confining as he usually found such things. The bruises were still there, they were such a natural part of him by now that they simply remained. His hair had also taken a nicely combed back appearance as the light faded, revealing the interior of a softly lit train car. He smirked and took his place behind the cart and offered Dreamer his arm. "Well, then, shall we?" He pushed the cart ahead of them and led her in. The car itself looked like a classic passenger's car he'd only see in old Western movies. There were a few other people in it, talking amongst themselves, or quietly sitting alone, all dressed in old-fashioned clothes. At the other end of the car, however, was a woman with black hair with white streaks reminiscent of the bride of Frankenstein singing into a microphone as a blindfolded man played the piano as soft lounge music filled the air. Outside the window was a dark night sky, pocked with the shining skyline of an amusement park. "This place keeps showing up in my dreams a lot..." He explained as he led her to a booth and offered her to sit first. "It's weird though..." He nodded toward the window, unloading the cart before he kicked it back toward the rainbow room, the elevator doors closing behind it. "Last time, the train had reached the park and stopped. That was a long time ago, I think." |
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| Dreamer | Dec 9 2011, 09:58 PM Post #8 |
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"Oh, you'd be surprised what I know about you, Derek. Pretty much everything, if I put my mind to it. Don't worry, though, it's nothing I haven't seen before, believe me." Then they were joined by a third figure, Luce's brother in a harem outfit, and she shook her head with an amused chuckle. "OK, maybe that last part was an overstatement: that, I've never seen before. I was a more innocent woman then," she added with a chuckle, then noticed how embarassed he seemed. "I'm just kidding, Derek. No reason to be embarassed: I really have seen everything up here. Or in here. Or whatever the right term is: even after all these years, I've never been sure." He still seemed hesitant, and she considered bringing the Kelrian construct back just to reassure him. She dismissed the idea almost immediately, though. This wasn't a situation like Rogue and Kyle, after all; Derek and Kelrian didn't depend on the Dreamwalk to let them interact. Besides, Derek seemed to take care of the situation on his own just fine, shifting the setting to something new and different. She took his arm as he led her into an old-fashioned train car. "Mm," she replied musingly to his explanation of the scene's back-story. "So, what's the significance of it... any thoughts? I'm afraid that's one thing I can't tell just by looking into your memories, but if there's one thing I've learned from my nocturnal visitors, it's that recurring dream images always mean something." She gestured out the window before adding "You a fan of amusement parks?" |
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| Derek Addams | Dec 9 2011, 10:36 PM Post #9 |
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He glanced out the window. "Well... sort of..." "They were always fun... anytime I got to go..." he wistfully glanced back out the window. Her question was a simple one, but also deeply personal. "I never got to go to many, but they were always fun..." He propped his foot up on his seat, resting his arm on it as he toyed with the food on the table in front of them. Visual proof that as hard as he tried to act or even "dress" like a gentleman, his puckish and informal nature would always win over any facade or "air" he tried to put on. "As for that... I dunno..." He glanced out at the lights of the amusement park in the distance. "I was happy, back then... maybe that's it." He was talking off the top of his head by then. "Sometimes when I dream, I'm already in the amusement park, riding impossible rides... like that rollercoaster that goes right into the water and right back up again without ever slowing down..." He smiled at her. It felt a bit weird to talk about it, but hey, if this was a dream, why not? "But as for this..." he gestured to the car around them. "I haven't been here since it stopped at the park..." He considered it for a moment as he reached for one of the gherkins. "Pickles, right?" He pulled one out and wiped the excess juice on the rim of the jar before taking a bite. It tasted like a dill pickle. Having never tried one by that specific name, it was the only taste his mind could come up with. "It's... a train..." He stated the obvious. "It's a journey..." His mind was beginning to haze over as his voice became monotone once more. "I thought I'd reached the destination... but I didn't..." |
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| Dreamer | Dec 12 2011, 10:12 PM Post #10 |
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Dreamer shrugged and took a drag from a cigarette holder she hadn't been holding a moment earlier. She blew a single perfect smoke ring that softly settled on top of Derek's head like a crown. "Only 'destination' is death, kid, and we all get there soon enough. Y'ask me, amusement park's not a bad stop on the way; dunno why you're in such a hurry to pull away." Still, the train was starting to pick up speed, which just went to show how much attention kids today paid to their elders. Which, given the mess their elders generally made of things, Dreamer could hardly blame them for. "On the other hand," she mused, leaning back in a train seat as it morphed into an overstuffed chez lounge, "train rides can be fun, too. Back when I did book-signing tours, they had me on trains criss-crossing the country for months at a time; stopping at every whistlestop town with a bookstore in it. Hated it at first, staying at cheap motels and spending half of every day on trains, but after a while I sort of got into it. Better view than on an airplane, that's for damned sure. And I got to do a lot of sightseeing." She tilted her head in curiosity as a pygmy marmoset climbed over the back of the seat in front of her, then smiled as her power identified the memory that image was from. "This little guy, for example, I met on a trip to the Denver Zoo... they were letting visitors handle 'em. His name was Clyde." This was unusual for her; she didn't usually wax nostalgic about her life before the Morlocks. Maybe it was a side-effect of her visitor, who seemed the sort to never let go of his own past. "How about you, Derek? If there's nothing you want to forget, maybe there's something you want to remember?" |
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| Derek Addams | Dec 19 2011, 06:34 PM Post #11 |
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The sight of the cigarette immediately made Derek want one, and of course that's when he saw that he already had one resting between his fingers. He took a drag off it as he listened, his brow furrowing just a bit. Her words made him ponder what she'd been through. Granted, his outlook on life hadn't been much better at some points, but he still had to believe there was some other goal to life than becoming compost. But he kept listening. She'd said earlier she missed having outside guests, so he figured the polite thing to do was lend her an ear... or was it a head? She sounded like she had a pretty eventful life, as well. Traveling the country, seeing the sights. He'd done his share, but it was mostly his one-way ride from Nashville to New York. And that was mostly hitch-hiking. He tapped the cigarette into a nearby ashtray as he smirked at the tiny creature climbing down to the table. He'd never seen anything like it, but it was cute. He'd always had a bit of a weakness for small, cute animals. Then came the mention of her offer again and he folded his hands over his mouth, the smoke from the cigarette drifting around his face as she asked if there was anything he'd like to remember in place of forgetting. The idea of tampering with his memories still seemed a bit off to him. He contemplated it heavily as the smoke began to curl off the small embers and take shape, turning purple in color as tiny insect wings blew back the rest of it's former appearance. It was a purple butterfly. Easy enough to identify. Something he'd like to remember. It was from his childhood. His family had visited a sort of "butterfly farm". His mom's idea. He was... four? Five, maybe? It was one of the few times that all four members of his family had done something together. There were butterflies everywhere, flying about, landing on them. At one point, he must have have four or five of them on him all at once. Given that he was riding on a dream train with a phantom passenger, he couldn't help but also remember a fitting quote he'd heard. It was from a game that he was now convinced was responsible for the imagery of their car. He couldn't remember the exact wording, though. "I dreamt I was a butterfly, flitting through the air, in every sense, a butterfly, with no sense or memory of being a man. But when I awoke, I was myself, and not a butterfly." He paused as he took another drag, the smoke producing yet another one, this time orange in color. "Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly, or is the butterfly dreaming that it's me?" He chuckled. "Not 100% accurate, but yeah. His hands returned to their folded position over his mouth as he tried to figure out the best way to say it. "It's not that I don't appreciate your offer, but, I really can't. It's... too important." He sat up again as he rested his hands on the table. "Even if I tried to forget the events of that day, even if I forgot that Havok was War, I'd find out eventually. Hell, I'd probably rediscover it right after I woke up, considering where I am." He glanced out the window at the disappearing lights of the amusement park. "And it's... too important to who I am. Where I am. My past, my being an X-Man, why I'm fighting, why I'm trying to be better, all of it comes back to that day... and that man." It bothered him, it really did. All of his questions and musings over every possibility and aspect of that day had also come with the vague realization that he was beginning to skate dangerously close to the edge of obsession. "So... yeah... I need to keep it with me. Even if it does cause me grief, I have to deal with it. For the longest time, I thought I was over it, but I wasn't. I just didn't deal with it. There was no way for me to. There was nothing to fight, no way to avenge, nothing to go after and beat down like I usually did because everyone responsible was either dead or a victim." His brow furrowed again as he sighed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he prepared for what he was sure was going to be yet one more person out of the many already present dozens telling him he was an idiot. "And before you start lecturing, yes, yes, I know he was just as much a victim as I was, you were and everyone else was, but honestly that knowledge is just making me feel even worse about it. And honestly, if someone does feel better about their own suffering knowing that thousands of people suffered just as much, I think they're an !@#$%%%." A weird black box covered his mouth as a strange white noise spewed forth in place of the word he was going to use. It was what made him acutely aware that it was the first time he'd actually used a harsh swear the entire visit and he wondered if the anomaly had come from him, or Dreamer. "Sorry..." he added. "It's been a long week. But my point is: I get it. I get it and it still doesn't help. I still need to hear the whole story. What happened, why it happened..." A trace thought crossed his mind. And why I survived... |
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7:34 PM Jul 11