Passive Dream Recording | The Box

[notachickenhawk]

Sender: Tobias
To: Everyone
Subject: Passive dream recording
Warnings: Torture, PTSD, hunting


You fly on auburn wings high above the field, looking down at it. It's far below you, and yet you can clearly see the rats scurrying in the grasses, the rabbits hopping into their burrows as your shadow passes, and you know you could swoop down and kill them in an instant. All of them, if you really wanted - the mother and her babies. You can almost taste the meat and blood and fur - but no. You're not hungry right now, and better to let them grow so you can hunt them later.

You turn, wheeling up towards the sky. There's a forest nearby, and you have a destination. You tilt your wings downwards until -

Wham! You slam into what feels like a glass window. Shrieking, you try to go around it, to find where the edge is and - and you hear a teenage girl's voice.

"You are obviously not a leader. You are not even second-in-command. You are a nobody." The voice makes you panic more than the words, and you kick off of the 'glass' to try to dive towards the field and -

Wham! There's another 'wall' - floor? - beneath you. You push off again and panic, trying to find the exit -

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Four more walls, making a cube. You're trapped. You're trapped and you know it's closing in and you can hear the girl laughing. It's a dark chuckle, and you know what that means. You're in the box again. You're in the box again and you know what that means, you know that she could pull you back to reality once again and cause you pain and you're panicking. You flutter around the box, trying to find something, some exit - but you know it's useless.

"Demorph!"

<No!> You shout it wordlessly, struggling against the inevitable. You reach up a wing in front of your face and see - a hand? But it's also a wing? It doesn't make sense, and you hear a gruff man's voice - older, raspy, cold.

"What good is it?"

What good is it anyway? You're going to die here, you're going to die and no one is going to help you and all you can see is your wing/hand and the blue sky and you tense your body, ready for the pain and -

Blackness.

Comments

[->Action]

[xenamorph]

[What. The hell. Was that?

On the one hand, she knows exactly what that was. She knows so much about the situation, could never miss that morph, she knows that voice- the voice that still makes adrenaline and an urge to hurt dance through her veins, the voice that sets every hair on end with pure rage just hearing it. But... it was clearly from his perspective. Not hers. Why was she having his dreams?

She takes a few moments to calm down, she doesn't even want to ask at first- but then she hears the ruffling of feathers. He was leaving.]

"Tobias."

[It comes out as a whisper, and it sounds more shaken and urgent than she meant it to.]

[notachickenhawk]

<Rachel?>

[He looks back at her, wings closing from where he was about to go fly off. She shouldn't be awake.]

<Go back to sleep, it's... it's fine. I just got hungry.>

[It's a thin lie and he knows it, and he knows that she knows it. He just... doesn't want to worry her.]

[xenamorph]

[Hungry. In the middle of the night.

Like hawks are so well known for.

She sighs. Yeah. Yeah, she probably should. It's probably nothing. She probably shouldn't push. She should probably just-]

Did you just have a nightmare?

[She sits up in bed as she says it, staring straight at him.]

[notachickenhawk]

[Dammit.]

<... Yeah.>

[It's reluctant, but he's not going to try to hide it from Rachel. They all have nightmares.]

<Just didn't want to bother you. You need sleep.>

[xenamorph]

... Yeah. 'Cuz I had it too.

[Pointedly, she clarifies.]

Your nightmare. I was dreaming your dream, Tobias.

[Was this something that happens here? Could people see her dreams? Oh, she hates that. A lot.]

[notachickenhawk]

[What?]

<What?>

[No really, what? Oh he hates that. He hates that a lot. They can bond more over how they both hate it so much.]

<... What did you see? How much did you see?>

[xenamorph]

I heard her voice. While she was tormenting you.

[She doesn't clarify who, but she probably doesn't have to. There's very few people who could elicit that level of violent seething bitterness from her, and only one was relevant to the nightmare Tobias had just had.]

And some other voice. A guy I didn't recognize.

[Okay. Calm. Stop freaking. He doesn't need you freaking.]

Are you okay?

sender: Flowey

[your_best_friend]

But nobody came.

[After a few moments...]

Except, someone will always eventually come.

[notachickenhawk]

[It takes a while. He doesn't respond immediately, between trying to calm down and... actually looking at the journals. But eventually, he does respond.]

For good or bad.

[your_best_friend]

I speak from experience when I say that nobody coming is worse than someone bad coming. Because you at least have someone to take things out on~.

But enough about that. It's way more likely someone good will come. The world is filled with a lot more Frisks than Floweys.

[Given the use of the two names as metaphors, Flowey means there's more good people than bad people. Of note he used his own name to describe bad people.]

[notachickenhawk]

Not sure if I would describe it that way.

But you never know. There's a lot of bad in the world, too.

[He's going to protect it, but... it's got people like his aunt and uncle.]

[your_best_friend]

I'm well aware, but let's be real here. Over eight billion people live on the surface in my timeline. It might be the same for whatever timeline yours is. Of course there's a lot of bad people in there, but why choose to ignore all the rest?

I know I'm not really good at interpreting dreams. I barely even go to sleep myself. But there was a way to escape that... invisible cube thing.

Determination.

[notachickenhawk]

They didn't give up. In the end, I needed help.

There was only one other way out if they didn't give up.

Sender: Maedhros

[holdshisown]

[He has to take a few moments to compose himself after seeing the dream. It brought to many of his own bad memories to mind and he does not trust himself enough to act rationally before he's got his breathing under control. Before his hand stops shaking...]

Are you alright, child? Are you in nedd of aid?

[notachickenhawk]

[It takes a while for him to respond, to see the journal and realize what it's for and that someone else besides Rachel's seen his dream.]

[... Oh yeah, the elf guy.]

It's just a dream. You should go back to sleep.

[holdshisown]

A dream it might have been, but not just a dream I suspect.

[He has enough such nightmares himself to know that, unfortunately.]

Besides... I do not sleep much nowadays. I doubt I'll find rest again for quite some time. If there is aught I can do to help ease your mind I would not mind it. It can do one well to speak of such things with those who's had... similar experiences.

[notachickenhawk]

... Maybe. I don't know. The people I'm used to talking to about it are all going through similar things and we don't want to bug each other with that kind of stuff.

[holdshisown]

From what I've gathered you're all still in the middle of your struggles. It's not the best mindset to be in when talking about them...

[notachickenhawk]

It's not, no. But we can't stop fighting.

Sender: Kazuma 兆麻

[nailed_navigation]

That's an rather unpleasant dream, but what does Demorph mean? Are you a shinki as well? A god's heavenly beast?

[notachickenhawk]

[Again it takes a while to respond, and partially because he's cursing the fact that someone - him? someone else? - said that word.]

There's nothing heavenly about me.

[nailed_navigation]

Hm. You are only objecting to the heavenly aspect then.

Do masks have any meaning to you?

[notachickenhawk]

Not unless it's Halloween, no.

Also I have no clue what a shinki is. It sounds like a toy.

[No that's a Slinky.]

[nailed_navigation]

[Oh Boy, here's another person unfamiliar with the term of Shinki. At this rate Kazuma should have the job description printed on a buisness card to hand out.]

A shinki is a soul that has been gifted with a name from a god and can take on various forms such as animals or common household items such as a nail or an earring.

Your dream had felt a bit to familiar to me.

[notachickenhawk]

Gods definitely aren't real where I'm from. So no, it's not that.

[Very powerful aliens that might as well be gods? Yes. But not gods.]