Log: Complete

[noh-dancer.livejournal.com]

When;
Rating; PG-13 for language
Characters; noh_dancer Scarab, bitingnightmare The Corinthian
Summary; Discussions of Nightmares, dreams, severed heads and kings?
Log;


Due to the weather few people milled about the outside of The Coliseum, but that didn't diminish the ruckus inside. That place was always busy, filled with people drowning sorrows, but mostly laughter. It was a place you could go to to forget, where people didn't ask question or beg for your name. As usual though the white-haired nightmare was outside, sucking on a cigarette as he was wont to do when alone. It was nice to think the nicotine could dull the senses, including the one that picked up on the ticking.

Scarab's steps were silent even as she hurried down the street. She could see the lights from the bar ahead, but that only served to make the shadows beyond throw sharper angles..to seem more like they were hiding things best left unseen.
She could see the lights picking out the white blaze of The Corinthians' hair ahead, and felt a little reassured that soon she wouldn't be alone...at least for a little while.

A sound, whether real or imagined, made her pause and look over her shoulder once. Movement...barely..but it was there, just beyond her field of vision. Logically she knew there probably wasn't anything there, but it made her uneasy, and instinctively she flexed her maimed right hand.
Damnitt, I'm jumping at shadows, she chastised herself mentally and then turned to give her friend a tight smile.
" Thanks...can I bum one of those?" she asked nodding at the cigarette.
She had been running on nothing but strong tea and nicotine for too long, and her own stores of smokes were depleted.

He saw her out the corner of his teetheyes, even under the darkness of those shades. A bit spooked wasn't she, though the nightmare wasn't sure why, but he assumed they might be talking about this problem in particular. He offered the pack of Mild Sevens to Scarab and pulled out his lighter too.

"Sure," he nodded, "you okay?"

The obvious answer was 'no', but it didn't hurt to ask.

" Thanks...I've been a lot worse." She answered, choosing to address the mild tone of curiosity in his voice as concern.

In fact she wasn't ok. She was exausted.
After nealry four straight days of fighting sleep until she ended up passed out at the kitchen table over field notes and photos, she'd had what could arguably the worst dream of her entire life.

Arguably, because during subsequent days ( and an unreasonable exaustion despite her abilities to activate an endorphin implant to keep her going in combat situations) she had started serial dreaming.
Each time it was as though she were picking up where she left off...only things were starting to change and warp now...

" Mind if we stay out here for a minute?" she asked while moving to lean agianst the wall out of both fatigue and the desire to have something solid at her back.
" I don't feel much up to people just now."

"Liar," said the nightmare but with the faintest of smirks. It was fairly obvious to him that Scarab wasn't doing too well, why else call for.. a private meeting.

"No, that's fine," he shook his head, smoke blowing from his eyes. The Corinthian stuck the pack and lighter away after handing off a lit cancer stick. "I guess if you need to hear yourself think then that's not the place," he upnodded over his shoulder, gesturing to the bar.

"So what's up," he asked coolly.

She gave him a raised eyebrow, and an expression that said 'Wanna bet?'

" This...might sound a little nuts, but I figure you are used to crazy talk. You have to be when you live here"
She took a draw from the cigarette, and considered how to put things.

" You know a bit about dreams, yes? I mean, you know where they come from?"

"Yeah, I am one if I haven't made it clear before," he said to Scarab with a puff of that cigarette. Despite what Morpheus had said he still harbored the belief that he was a nightmare, and not a man.

"Lay it on me," urged The Corinthian, close to using the name she revealed to him, but since they were in public... "Scarab."

She gave him a tired smile.
Most of the reason she kept her real name a secret was habit...in the world of espionage someone knowing your real name, be it friend or foe, meant death.

The discomfort with many people knowing stemmed from such a deeply ground survival sense, and she was grateful for that tiny sense of security.

" I've told you about my...nightmares." She hesitated on using the word, simply because it was a little strange to identify her bad dreams, and the man who stood before her with the same word.

She pushed her hair out of her face, and kept her eyes on the ridiculous sign hanging abover her.
" They are getting worse...but more than just that, they are ...damn I don't know how to explain it."
She shut her eyes briefly in irritation at her lack of ability to properly state her meaning.
" They feel like they are somehow...not mine. Does that make any sense?"

Not that he was already accustomed to his nature having that negative connotation. He let the notion roll off him, content to except that it was a natural necessity for the waking world, all their waking worlds. When Scarab explained her problem further though, the nightmare arched a brow in concern.

"What makes you think they aren't yours," he asked seriously.

Her red lensed eyes snapped up to look into the darkened glasses for a moment before she remembered herself, and looked away.

" I can't really explain it...but it feels like someone is trying to -I guess 'hack' is the best way to say it- into my head."

That someone being seven feet tall and possessing a stygian helmet fashion sense.
" Why do I get the very bad feeling you aren't going to tell me this is all a result of PTSD?"

"It could be," he exhaled away from her face. The thought that someone could *hack* into her dreams wasn't particularly a new one, but it took a great mind and lots of effort to do such a thing. Whoever it was had to be within, or connected to the city, else His Lord would have dealt with the false dreamweaver already.

"If they *are* being hacked..." The Corinthian started before bringing his shielded gaze back to her red one. "I'd have to take a look at you, if what happens there is different from what you've been dreaming, that'd be your answer," he nodded. This was assuming the dark mirror wasn't a manipulative liar, but those days were gone, right?

" What do you mean by 'take a look'"? She asked with a raised eyebrow and not a little curiosity.

If it wasn't PTSD, maybe there really *was* something The Corinthian could do to help?

"I mean take a look," he tipped his sunglasses down to reveal just a sliver of the white teeth that made his eyes. "If it's a natural dream then it shouldn't be any different now, unless you're dreaming of the idea that someone's fucking with you," clarified the nightmare almost with an air of Dream King to his words.

"If you want to," he amended with a slight huff of the cigarette before tossing it aside. Few ever voluntarily wished to experience their nightmares again.

" What, right now? Here?" She asked with a little bit of surprise.

If it helped, she would grin and bare the reliving, but she wasn't too keen on being made possibly very vulnerable in a very public place.

"Wherever," though the second he suggested that he regretted it. The Corinthian didn't want to take it to their apartment... but prioritizing his comfort level over her plague of nightmares was a bit selfish wasn't it? Rrrr, there was also the issue of dream rot, and *if* there was someone rearranging her construction they could easily trace it back to their place.

"C'mon," he reached for Scarab's hand, meaning to lead her to the end of the block, around the corner and away from the thumbs up.

The first eyebrow was joined by the second.

Not so much for the ease with which he seemed to be able to root around in someone's head, but the voluntary invitation to touch him.
Maybe she was projecting a bit of her own paranoia, though.
Not everyone had trouble distinguishing casual touch with an attempt to gain the upper hand by restraining one of hers.

"Uh...Ok." She blinked once and took his hand, following him down the street.

To any bystander it might have looked like the white-haired one was picking up the brunette for a joyride, especially when he led her down an alley. Mind, the neighborhood here wasn't horrible, it was sort of the lower end of middle class urban living. The brick walls were clean, the ground free of coffee or blood run off from the pipes. Thank god those curses were over. When they entered the shadows between the buildings he released her hand.

"It's not going to be pretty," The Corinthian said to her casually, but she should have already known that right?
" I figured." she responded with a small sigh, and after cashing her cigarette, tossed it away into the street.

" ....What's going to happen to me?" she asked with a little note of concern. She really did want to trust him implicitly, honest!...but old habits die hard, and she wasn't very comfortable with the thought of being voluntarily made so vulnerable.

Scarab did believe he wouldn't try to hurt her while she wasn't able to fight back ( if such was the case) but being human made her a little apprehensive about the unknown.

"Everything you fear, everything you hate, whatever makes you guilty," he listed a few things off the top of his head, "it's a little different for everyone."

She could see the executioner lumbering towards her if that was the case, she might see her friends dead and blood on her own hands as evidence that she was responsible due to some inaction, she could see what made her bend to the will of the Noh in the first place, anything that stained her soul black, she could just as easily see a fear of spiders manifest in a swarming web of eight-legged freaks with multiple teeth eyes. What she would not see were the manipulations, the blocks rearranged by a third party, because The Corinthian was a pure phantom, clear mirror.

He approached her, fingers pinching the arm of his sunglasses. "No hard feelings, okay?" He said to her, just to make sure as he pulled the shades from those mouths.

She offerred a smile in reassurance that she was aware she'd asked for this, so being angry at him for showing her these things would be unfair.

A part of her had always had trouble *not* looking him in the eye because it was her best method for reading people....now though, she understood why he had warned her agianst it, and it had nothing to do with personal comfort.

There wasn't a percibtible shift between reality, at least not to her. In the space between one blink and the next she could see Frederick where The Corinthian had been...Frederick looking down at his feet with his hands covering a wound in his chest.
She felt herself freeze up inside, and started to rush foreward to catch him when he began to fall.
She did manage to catch him, but as he looked up at her she could see him asking questions with betrayal in his eyes.
The image changed and she knew she had a blade in her other hand. Her katana...the same sword she had killed Daniel with.
She dropped the blade quickly and hugged Frederick, whispering how sorry she was, how she didn't mean it.
The image blurred and ran with her tears, and became Daniel looking at her with confusion and hurt.

Scarab felt ill, and couldn't help the tears flowing freely.
My fault...all my fault..

She shut her eyes and held Daniel, then Frederick, then Daniel agian ( the image kept changing).
Then the scene moved all together and now she was back in the restaurant, sixteen years old, and holding her best friend Seico as the girl stared back with dead eyes.

"I'm sorry!" she said, finding her thoughts were turning to words without her knowlwdge.

Vaguely she felt that this wasn't right, this was not the present, but the image was changing agian before she could get a handle on herself.

Now she was alone, on her knees, and her hand was a mass of torn flesh and shattered bones.
She could see Alex on the Cathedral's wall...hung on rebar.
Sorrow turned to fear, then to panic as she looked behind her and saw the hulking figure of the Pyramid Head. He was bending down, taking hold of her collar, raising the blade in his other hand...

" STOP IT!"



In order to quel any suspicion from the waking world he attempted to back Scarab against a wall, one hand on each side of her as he stared intently into her eyes. Perhaps they looked like a couple sharing a moment of grief, or they were arguing about betrayal, and maybe, just maybe he looked like a predator with those sharp teeth eyes so close to her skin, hovering above her for he was after all about nine inches taller than her. Seeing himself in her nightmares came as a surprise, but the image of his body torn apart on a rebar did not faze him, not even when she asked to... He resisted the urge to grab her face and hiss that it was her duty to see everything to the end. That was not the nature of this nightmare, in a 'controlled' environment.

Seeing the appearance of the Pyramid Head though... *that* piqued his curiosity enough to allow the dreaming to continue, to see its next move. Was it the culprit, he wondered, fellow nightmare horror.

"Scarab," he said her codename, choosing to bring her out of the state slowly lest she rip herself away from it in a moment of confusion, incapable of telling the waking from the dreaming.
Velated Angelus: Reality fell rather than returned.

One minute it was Pyramid Head, the next The Corinthian baring down on her.

She sucked in a breath quickly because it felt like her lungs were frozen just now, and she hadn't remembered to breath in ages.
The nausea was still there, though, and shakily she shoved Alex out of her way just in time to turn and puke.
Hands braced agianst the wall, and tears still streaming down her cheeks she briefly entertained the thought of passing out, but figured Alex had seen enough of her weakness without her making it worse.

" Tha... That was wrong." she panted, then sniffled ( and hated herself for it) and tried agian.
" That wasn't right. N-not what I have been dreaming..."

Stepping back and away from the place where she vomitted she scuffed to a cleaner part of wall and slid down it to bury her face in her hands.
Fuck you, you son of a bitch.. .She thought, feeling it better to keep in the anger sense it wasn't really directed at Alex anyway.

Still...it rubbed her wrong to have him see her like this...


Tears he expected, a shove, he expected that too, but the vomit.... well he was glad she gave him a shove for letting it spill. He set the shades back on his face immediately and went to her side, but did not touch her yet, should she still be reeling from her nightmares and consider him to be her violator.

He said nothing to her, not to agree or refute her statement. He wasn't privvy to the programmed dream, and he did not want her to know right away that he saw *everything*, knew all that she said (indrectly). It wasn't a weakness to him, it was what happened, and it happened to everyone, else what was the purpose of his existence? He searched the area for something, anything to ease her nausea, her vulnerability. All he had to offer was his shirt. He knelt beside her.

"Do you need anything," asked The Corinthian.

" I need to k-kill something." She growled, with her hands still over her eyes.

She swallowed and raised her head enough to swipe angrily at her tears.
Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly and leaned her head back agianst the wall.

...." Maybe another cigarette...." she ammended and opened one bleary eye to look up at him ruefully.
Goddamn but that sucked.

"I'm not going to cut you or anything...or puke on you." The last she added as an afterthought, but the bitterness still colored her tone.

" That's a hell of a talent, Cori" she remarked, choosing to call him by something a little closer to his true
name.

They had rats in the area, maybe the clop-walking pirate cat that John wanted to sacrifice so much, but The Corinthian wasn't one for mindlessly killing animals so he made no suggestion. he did make good with the cigarette, offering another to her and plucking one for himself. He flicked the lighter, sparking both ends. Puff.

"Better not," he said with the cigarette wedged between his teeth, "the puking part."

Cori... What a name, he didn't like the way John said it the first time, but he grew to like it secretly. To everyone else he 'tolerated' the name. "It's a job," he said to her with a nod, "you sure you don't need anything?"

" Nothing that you can give me" She replied and closed her eyes to lean her head back and take a long draw off the cigarette.

She was still shaken, and maybe not in the best frame of mind to be thinking about what could help the guilt, or the fear...A thought flitted through her mind about what he must think of her now?
In a few seconds The Corinthian had seen every dark secret, every fear and every bit of bad shit her life had to offer.

No one knew her *that* well and it was a bit unsettling to realize he could now know her far better than she would ever know him.
Fuck I'm pathetic.

" So what's the verdict?" She asked with eyes still closed. Best to get on with things and not dwell too long on this.


Yes, that was true, and probably not something he could hide from her for long. He saw her secrets, maybe not all of them, but the ones that had made an impact on her life. Scarab was intuitive however, was she capable of seeing beyond a nightmare, beyond *a thing* doing its job? It didn't help that he was in need of an attitude adjustment on occasion, as Faye had already stated.

"Someone's fucking with you," he gave the obvious verdict with a drag, "I'd say it's the helmet thing, but I could be biased."

And the question was... how could it do such a thing. To his understanding the Pyramid creature manifested its horrors in the city's version of the waking world. That was how it terrorized the subway. "That woman, I saw a woman with it last time," he offered to Scarab.

She opened her eyes but still kept her head back. It was easier to breathe like that.

The devil.
" The bitch? She said she was done with me. That she would leave me alone..."
Of course that didn't mean anything. The woman could have been lying after all.

Great. A whole new brand of fucked up to deal with.

" I..I could hear thier thoughts when..well...when *it* happened. She really thinks she's making people pay for sins, and the demon- " Another sign of her unsettled emotions. She had slipped badly enough to give voice to what she mentally called Pyramid Head- " is a weapon. Her weapon."
Scarab frowned and looked down at her maimed hand. Flexing it meditatively she felt a creeping sense of unease.

"Bitch, sure," said The Corinthian in a cool tone. He wasn't completely certain that the woman whose name he did not even know was involved, but it was she who queled the monster, before he could engage it in combat, tch. "She calmed it down real easy," he offered to Scarab even though it seemed like she was already familiar with the pair's behavior and habits.

"I can.... I can try to stop it," said the white-blonde, hesitantly.

It was true, nightmares were his realm, his territory. Self-proclaimed messiahs and their demons shouldn't meddle with dreaming affairs, then again this wasn't *their* dreaming. "I'd have to talk with someone first," yes *that* someone too. In another place Dream would sort out the messy issue, The Corinthian had closed a breach only once in his life. Morpheus was the only other one he knew with the proper experience.

His tone more than his words made her look at him. Granted she was looking at his glasses, but the intent to have his attention, and to read facial expressions remained.

"If trying to stop it would mean any kind of repurcussion for you, then no thanks. This is my problem."
She had a pretty good idea who 'someone' was too, and didn't like him one bit. Morpheus was always talking down to The Corinthian, as though he were lesser than the self-proclaimed *memory* of a god.
Morpheus pissed her off.

" I'll have to talk to the bitch, I guess..." she commented with a frown, and looked away in hopes he wouldn't see the shudder that ran through her.

"It's nothing, the issues we have are personal. They don't affect matters of the dreaming."

That was a big fat lie, but he said it so coolly as if it naturally rolled off the tip of his tongue. They'd both interfered in the matters of mortals for personal reasons. Still, misunderstandings and differing beliefs between them *shouldn't* change their sense of responsibility when it came to dreamshakers, he thought.

"And he's no longer My Lord," The Corinthian said, offering a small smirk, if only to ease *her* reluctance, "you can think of him more as my father." And everyone knew how fathers and sons behaved.

"...... Do you really think that's a good idea," he asked Scarab with a quirked brow. Even with the glasses she probably knew his face was saying: I think not.

She gave him a deadpanned look that said ' uh-huh, surrrre they don't affect the dreaming'.

The look changed into slight alarm, then a struggle to wrap her head around the 'father' reference.

" Wait, hang on. If he isn't your lord, do you still think of your new lord as a father?"
Internal censor is officially out to lunch.
Granted she had just relived the worst moments of her life, and even had some oh-so-fun new additions to display her fears to a man ( nightmare?) whose opinion she cared too much about to see her at her worst, but does that warrant the asking of terribly awkward questions?

Yes. Yes it does.

Still, the father reference made a bent kind of sense in her head. It explained a lot of the strain she had seen between the two up until this point.

She shook her head a bit, waaayyy too many mind-fucks for one day.

" I think it's a fucking stupid idea to seek her out, but if she's fucking with me, I want to know at least.
...I can figure out how to stop her later..."
And on my own. I don't want to see you or anyone else hung on rebar...I may have failed at protecting the people I cared abou in the past, but I won't now.

Riiight they don't affect the dreaming, they don't meddle, one of those don't shit where you eat sort of things. Mmhmm.

He arched a brow over her alarm regarding his relationship with former dreamlord Morpheus. Yes the nightmare could admit the... what was the somber man now anyway, that he had molded him on the dream shores of Corinth, before Orpheus came into his life. Their relationship was that of creator and creation, his relationship with *Dream* was master and servant. Why were they talking about that anyway??

"No," the nightmare replied quickly, "Dream is my master."

It was a complicated series of events, really, that didn't need an explanation right now. He caught on to her need for subject deviation and gave the woman a stern look behind his glasses. "And it's not the problem at hand."

Hrm, Scarab was awfully bent on finding Alessa. He had already forgotten that she'd survived being impaled, sort of.... But was confronting Alessa worth the pain, worth the price of more nightmares?

She shrugged and held up her hands in a gesture of surrender.
Ok, ok...complicated or a touchy subject, either way he had caught her at the attempted distraction.

" Not like I really *want* to be within the same city as that evil child...woman...whatever, but I have a bad feeling this is going somewhere farther than dreams."

She sighed, and felt so very tired.

" Isn't death supposed to be 'eternal rest'?" she asked half-rhetorically, and in a very small voice.

"What do you mean," he asked Scarab, regarding her feeling that it was a matter beyond just dreams. He puffed on his fresh ciggie and blew the smoke three ways to the left.

The Corinthian arched a brow over her question. He had few words for that woman's realm, because he respected her and at the same time feared her, not that he would admit to such a thing. He huffed softly and averted his gaze from Scarab's red one briefly.

"Not for everyone," but the nightmare didn't explain anymore than that.

She took a long drag off her dwindling cigarette, and frowned.
This all related to her sense of deja vu'. At least that's what she called it. It was more like an instinct that had been honed by years of ingrained paranoia.

" I just...have a bad feeling."
Seeing his confusion, she made an attempt at elaboration.

" Pyramid Head has killed a lot of people. How many do you figure he haunts, or checks in on, or fucks with...or whatever the hell is going on with me?"

"Too many for him to be haunting the waking world and the dreaming without pulling himself inside out," said The Corinthian, interest piqued again and maybe for the wrong reasons. He hid this behind his ever cool gaze.

"I think you're being targeted specifically," he suggested, "I don't know what for, you're right only she might know."

But talking to the creature's master.... He shook his white head. "Come on, at least drink something," the nightmare rose up and offered a hand to her. A drink of water or hell, bourbon, at the pub might be the best thing before going to war.