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[never_very_good]

This office is slick and modern; well-appointed but not cluttered. There’s a massive white desk, with a comfortable, large chair behind it, and a smaller seat on the other side. Above it is an unfamiliar logo-- a large white circle with a rectangular piece bitten out. Everything is strangely lit from unlikely angles, the whole room crisscrossed by dim blue shadows. When you look for the edges of the room it seems to bend, blurring in a way that suggests it’s not all there; an imperfect reconstruction from distracted memories. Perhaps that’s why this mundane place seems so ominous.

A little further down the wall, about a yard from the end of the desk, a wide picture window breaks the white plane. Frankie Dalton is standing beside it, staring down at something you can’t quite see, from where you are.


[ooc; all threads are different instances of the dream, and what you see below will vary by person <3 so feel free to tag on in! May be slow, will backdate forever and ever and ever. ilu.]

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[eiremagic]

Eden takes a careful step in - she doesn't like dreams, she inherently doesn't trust them, and the fact that she's asleep next to the person who is having this one makes it only a little better.

"What are we watching?" she asks, sliding in next to him.

[never_very_good]

Frankie sort of squirms a little, not away from her, but clearly uncomfortable having company here. He doesn't tear his eyes from the window, doesn't answer except to shake his head slightly, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

Below, safely away on the other side of the glass, is a sea of people. An army, in fact; and that's more than a figure of speech. The nightmare swells the ranks so there are hundreds, thousands, wild-eyed with sunken, abraded cheeks, all being drawn by hunger towards a central point.

A small group of people-- humans-- stands in the center of the horde. One of them is, of course, Edward Dalton.

[eiremagic]

Eden takes a quiet moment and finally looks down at the sea of people, all hungry. She recognizes Edward - from the one time he was in the City, and from the fact that he looks like that Todd Anderson kid. Her eyes open a little wider.

"I don' have to see this," she says, but she's not looking away, either.

[never_very_good]

He doesn't answer immediately, but after a moment Frankie pounds on the glass, rage contorting his features briefly. The glass doesn't budge, doesn't so much as crack; and the slow advance beneath plays out in silence. Ed never looks up (and with good reason.)

"I'm supposed to be down there," Frankie finally says quietly, a note of anguish in his tone.

[eiremagic]

She turns to watch the scene, watching Frankie's brother go to what certainly will be his demise, because she knows armies and she knows that there will be no surviving what is about to happen.

"This is how you die," she says, and it's so matter of fact that it doesn't even register for her as a potential part of the nightmare. A part of the problem about prophesizing her own death at age six is Eden's inability to feel sympathy for anyone else who doesn't know how they die.

"Frankie."

[never_very_good]

He nods.

"Doesn't matter," he says curtly. It's a lie, but not as much of one as it would be for most men. Frankie's scared of dying; it's an inevitable part of living, he knows, and he's come to think that's part of why he turned when given the opportunity, part of why most people did. That's the one thing he hates about having his life back-- he knows it's only temporary. And, he knows, his is more temporary than most.

It should be ending, right beneath them. But at the very least it should be ending well, a death that serves a purpose. Instead he's here, and Ed is going to be torn limb from limb by creatures too starved to be called men.

He's perfectly safe, and helpless.

[eiremagic]

"Don't be daft." Eden might have impulse control issues, but Frankie is one giant mess of guilt. Guilt over things he won't tell her about, over things she never pushes to learn about, because she has a past she doesn't talk about, too. She never says anything about Danny, who found her. They are masters of keeping silent.

"Of course it matters. This is the only thing that does matter." Saving a sibling. Eden didn't do what Frankie did, and her little brother died.

[never_very_good]

He chews at his lip again for a long moment, eyes still fixed on the nightmare below them. It advances in slow motion, drawing out his discomfort.

"I'm terrified of dying. Fucking terrified," he admits quietly, because in some ways-- right now-- that's the worst part.

[eiremagic]

She reaches for his hand, but doesn't grip it. Instead she offers it, if he wants her comfort, right now.

"As long as I'm next to yeh, I won' let yeh die." It's not much. But it's as much as she can offer to him.

[never_very_good]

It would mean something-- would mean a lot-- if he wasn't stuck in the dream. As it is he takes her hand, but only in a vague, reflexive way; a motion expected of a motion, without any real agency.

Below them, the swarm has finally descended on Ed and his friends, pulling them down beneath the rush of bloodlust.

[eiremagic]

Eden doesn't look away. She watches, even though maybe she shouldn't, because there's nothing else to do.

[never_very_good]

Frankie's dreams don't have much more to offer. And you won't get any more out of him before the dream fades; though it takes some time. As distant as it ought to be, as buried in the sea of tearing teeth and yellow eyes, each moment of his brother's agony is painfully visible.

And once Ed is gone... so is Frankie, off to other troubles in his mind.

[fatespoken]

Amory isn't sure when he'd manage to wander in, but that's the rule of dreaming, isn't it? Everything's in media res when you dream, always slipping in through blurs and into midpoints with your eyes half-closed. Then everything snaps to clarity. But he knows that even now, with details too lucid to fit a dream, that it is a dream, for dreams with a character too vivid to be called dreams are what he endures week by week back home.

This isn't home, and he recognizes nothing in the immediate scenery. Not the large chair, the white desk, nor the logo hung above the desk. Strangers are commonplace in his dreams; however, there's something he recognizes here. Someone he recognizes.

Amory observes Frankie Dalton, as he leans against the opposing side of the wall within a shadow.

[never_very_good]

Frankie Dalton, unfortunately, isn't much to observe right now. If he notices Amory's presence, he doesn't acknowledge it; just stands, fingers gripping the edge of the windowsill, staring at whatever is below him.

If Amory comes close enough to share the view, he'll see a small room just slightly lower than them. A girl is pacing back and forth, skinny arms folded against her chest, a look of terror warring with rage on her face.

[fatespoken]

He knows, by Frankie's stillness, that this is a dream of memories. It's as if his posture caries his true age in its silence, juxtaposed with the intensity of his expression that Amory imagines, as Frankie stares down below; the tension in his fingers say as much. This is the City and this a curse, and so a dream must be a nightmare, stripping the core out of fear and pain until it's condensed into a caricature--biting, sensational caricatures like cheap, haunted-house tricks. It'd be wise for him to linger in the background, leave the man to his own reflection without the prying eyes of an intruder. Amory wouldn't have to say anything to intrude.

And Amory cares enough, thinks of Frankie as enough of a friend to consider him over his own curiosity. Or at least, he tries. He remains in the shadows for the longest while, watching, keeping his breaths quiet in the still of the room. Amory runs a tongue against dried lips and reaches into his pocket to check if his smokes had made it with him, for later when he exits this dream and tumbles into the next. The motion disrupts a pocket full of change; heavy, metal coins banging into each other, breaking the silence.

It could have been intentional.

[never_very_good]

"Not here for your entertainment," he says quietly, without looking up, words tinged with a bitterness that has absolutely nothing to do with Amory's presence, and everything to do with Alison Bromley, caged like an animal. Any minute now. He wonders, what will it be like to see himself?-- To watch as an outsider his biggest mistake, the crowning failure among so many?

He shifts his weight to cross his arms.

[fatespoken]

"There's no where to go. All the doors are closed," he replies, impassively, leveling his gaze toward the back of Frankie's head. Slowly, though not hesitantly, Amory walks toward the other man, approaching him as unobtrusively as he can manage, until he stops a few steps away from his backside. Enough room to be an observer, enough space for Frankie to have some measure of privacy.

He doesn't ask who she is, but his curiosity can't be hidden. Amory studies her intensely.

[never_very_good]

"Nowhere for her, either," he answers, the words drawn out on a low breath. Alison leans against a corner and lets herself slump to the floor, never once looking up. Maybe that's for the best; Frankie's not sure he could stand to make eye contact with her.

[fatespoken]

He draws his hands into his pockets, continuing to observe with an expression fixed at indifferent. Who was this girl? What is her connection to Frankie Dalton, and why is she trapped? Literally? Metaphorically?

"Who is she?" he questions.

[never_very_good]

"Alison Bromley." His lip curls up in a cracked grimace, pulling back from his teeth. "She's dead."

[fatespoken]

"An old girlfriend?" he raises an eyebrow at that, going first for the lighter implication of Frankie's expression. He can, of course, think of an answer far more terrible; a normal course for the pessimistic pathways of his mind.

[never_very_good]

He snorts dismissively, still staring at the girl, fingers twitching faintly on the window sill. "My brother works for her father. When Ed..." He shifts uncomfortably. "Bromley and I both wanted to get him back. Asked me to do him a favor."

[fatespoken]

"What does she have to do with the favor?" he questions, curiously. There's no sense of judgment in his voice or in his demeanor, only interest on a personal level, as he joins Frankie beside the sill. She's pretty and caged in like a bird. That's all he can discern from this distant a perspective.

[never_very_good]

"Didn't wanna turn. Ran, when everyone had to." Frankie's waiting, chewing at his lower lip. Any minute now, any second, he ought to be coming through the door, impossible as that is. One might think it would give him some peace to think that if he's up here, he can't show up down there... but this dream isn't about that, it's the creeping anticipation, the suffering of waiting for a foregone conclusion.

[fatespoken]

"Had to, or be labeled cattle?" he replies dryly, humor absent from his voice. To Amory, Frankie's word seems too terrible to be an actuality, or at least to imagine: a nightmare, even for Amory who is far too acquainted with nightmares. "This girl important to him? Or is she dinner?"

[never_very_good]

The little twitch of his lip isn't a smile, isn't a frown... just a nervous tic. Strange, how these things didn't bother him at the time. "His daughter, he wanted to... keep her close, y'know?" Frankie runs the tip of his tongue over dry lips. "Didn't do much good."