http://handsomejack.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] handsomejack.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] tampered2008-07-10 11:02 am

Log: Complete

When; Early Thursday Morning
Rating; R (For graphic imagry)
Characters; The Corinthian [livejournal.com profile] bitingnightmare and Captain Jack Harkness [livejournal.com profile] handsomejack.
Summary; Jack's nightmares are curious things indeed
Log;

Jack was asleep.

He'd slept more since he returned from saving the universe and reality, just generally tired from the emotional whiplash. Terror, joy, sorrow. Yes, sorrow.

Ianto had given him the packets left by Blue, including the letter and Jack realized that he'd returned just too late to see his friend off to war. It couldn't be helped, he knew this but still, it was hard.

Watching Godzilla's battle yesterday had been, well ... epic to be honest and Jack had stayed up on the roof he'd found for himself for quite some time after the chaos had eventually ended. Deciding against waking Ianto, who had been busy himself with the little aliens, Jack had cleaned up a little and eventually hit the shower and his own bed.

By himself.

Without Ianto's anchoring presence in the bed beside him, Jack knew he was courting nightmares. Well a nightmare anyway but it didn't stop him from closing his eyes and slipping off into sleep.

Curious.

Rather than a battlefield, his usual dreamscape, Jack found himself in a very old fashion, almost Victorian light nursery. He couldn't tell if he was small like a child or if everything around him was oversized to make his adult self seem child like.

Probably a bit of both.

Sitting in the middle of the room, Jack looked around at the dolls resting against the walls. One was Tosh, dressed in a sweet, ruffled little pink dress. She was sitting on the floor next to a teaset, her stocking covered legs with their cute little shoes straight out in front of her. Tosh would probably laugh if he described her but he never would, because where he could see flesh, her face, her hands ... she was a rotting corpse.

Over in another corner was a man, dressed just as neatly, like a doll and in a greater state of decay. Over in another corner, two clowns were placed as if they were playing with each other, chunks of rotting flesh painted with grotesque clown white, bright smiles slashes in blood across their lips.

In another corner, a pile of toy soilders lay. Only the 'toys' were actual soliders, broken and bloated in death, knocked over as carelessly as if by a child.

Jack sat quietly on the floor, his legs crossed. He was dressed in simple flanal pajama complete with little booties on his feet. That amused him, in a dark manner.

In his hand he held a building block. Made of wood, lovingly carved, he stared down at the sightless eye that had somehow been fitted into the block of wood. He was building with these blocks, which held eyes, lips, noses, mouths. All of organic origin, all harvested at the moment of death and woven into his play toys.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
"Can I play," asked a voice that wavered between a child and a full grown man.

Perhaps the brunette dressed in a padded gray jacket had the same problem as Jack himself. Either he'd become a child or he was the same size as the Captain. Either way, he'd come through the door, whether there was a door or not, and he watched Jack from a sliver of light that shadowed the features of his face. His feet were bare and grains of sand from that peninsula trickled from his toes.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
"No. I want to play with that one," he shook his head and pointed at the doll dressed in pink, her skin left rotting, "and maybe that one." He pointed to her companion piece, perhaps melted beyond recognition.

The boy didn't even wait for Jack's permission before he reached out to take the toys as if they were his own. It was Jack's dream, but this boy was faster. One step ahead. He didn't get very far though. The second his fingertips touched the little Japanese doll blood bloomed from a wound in her side, quickening the rot till she was nothing in a matter of seconds.

"....." The boy started to laugh. Hysterically.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
The boy could only point and laugh at Jack as if this were the funniest thing in the world to him, or maybe he only thought Jack was playing along. However when the other man screamed, really screamed, the boy in the padded jacket froze. He stared at Jack, almost a mirrored image in youth, then he started to cry. He cried for Jack's terror and the sudden realization that he'd broken their toys and the tears he wept weren't clear and salt but opaque and made of blood. The red stained his face in weeping till he no longer even had eyes but pitch black holes drooling red among the ants.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Looking for its mum? That wouldn't do. The boy with bleeding holes for eyes whipped around as no child could, his hand slashing out to cut the gas-masked thing with his fingernails. They were going to be taking things at his pace.

[ooc: I have a .38 revolver taken apart all over my comp desk lol.]

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
"I've had enough of this," said the boy whose hair quickly paled to a snow white while teeth grew out to line his bloodied eyelids.

He paid little mind to the ghosts from Jack's past, seeming almost sheeping that he had let his control go so awry. Of course that was expected, the Corinthian had been in a bad way since Boy Blue's departure and it was the unfortunate dreamer who had to deal with it. He wasn't the only nightmare who could control dreams though, and the one who embodied dream himself was the one the phantom feared most. Anymore and this dream could quickly become another strike against his professionalism, or lack there of.

"Get the fuck out." He caught the fairy by its claws, taking the cuts to his hand with ease before he forced the creature into his eyemouth, eating it in bits and pieces as nightmares with teeth for eyes were wont to do. There wasn't any pleasure in it, considering how it was only a dream.

Cori took a look at the thing and even if this was Jack's perception perhaps that thing would see what he truly was too, a piece of existence that mortal minds couldn't see, and truly such a sight was reserved only for the Endless, Creation, Gods, and the brief moments when a mind transcended reality. He was forcing it to retreat with his own god awful stare, as if it were nothing but Brute and Glob. THen he glanced to Jack.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 10:53 pm (UTC)(link)
His eyes narrowed, moreso at Jack's words than his dream itself. Broken bones, rotting flesh, blood, torture, rape, all of that was common place for a nightmare's work department. But to hear Jack talking back to him, well the Corinthian couldn't say he didn't see it coming. He was, however, unprepared to meet the circumstances.

Firstly, he ignored Jack's other statement. "Sometimes they're broken to begin with, and you're just the linch pin," said the nightmare, perhaps referring to both of them.

He was aware of what was happening around them, of the disembodied head and the flashes of pain, the burning shouts, and all of it meant nothing to him. It wasn't angry enough, not dark enough, not displeasurable enough to make him ignore everything else going on in his own mind. Sometimes he thought he couldn't tell the difference between a dreamer's thoughts and his own, but Jack was making it rather clear.

"You're not one to talk," said the Corinthian who knew better than to argue with the dream projection of a sleeper, but he had a stubborn streak.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-11 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
One of the things the Corinthian hated most was being wrong and having it pointed out to him in such a succinct manner, on his own turf no less and on what should have been his own terms. Jack just knew him better than he thought. It came from being acquainted with each other for months. That was a concept the nightmare had a hard time grasping, being who and what he was and where he lived (alone) for the majority of his second life.

He watched Jack's subconscious mingle with his conscious, paralleling words with images in a fluid and more natural way. Without the Corinthian's attempt at forced manipulation. He did narrow his teeth briefly at the mirthy howl, but Cori didn't say much. Object lessons were his function after all, even if he shared that trait with some other less savory individuals.

"No," he replied regarding arguments and hurt, still firmly planted on his feet, his boyish features gone and replaced by his usual appearance of jeans and a t-shirt as Jack's nudity was replaced with leather and cotton. He watched how he wielded the guns effortlessly, how easily he'd metaphorically gotten over his earlier pain. But Cori couldn't even fathom getting over Blue's disappearance, not this soon.

"Dream on," said the phantom, coolly and casually, in that tone he used when he knew he was defeated but couldn't bare to admit it or open up just as Jack and every other dreamer did. He was a cheater after all, the one-way mirror. He could sneak into anyone's most secret and private place but refused to let anyone into his.

"I'll see you around, keep saving the world hero," Cori said half-heartedly with no sarcasm as he turned to walk away.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-11 12:51 am (UTC)(link)
For a brief moment his normal and natural (if one could call it that) self returned. Cori raised a hand then shrugged.

"You should've seen the first time I died," he remarked though he wasn't abut to show it to Jack. It was supposed to be his parting words when he noticed the pie materializing in his way. The nightmare was turning into a dream again, or rather his role in this dream was coming to a close. Maybe not.

"What do you want," he asked the pie.

[identity profile] bitingnightmare.livejournal.com 2008-07-11 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
In the Dreaming pies had just as much sentience as nightmares and gargoyles and gardens. Asking the pie came naturally, just as naturally as getting pied in the face. Not once in his 2500 years of existence had he ever ever been smacked by a key lime. Fists, guns, swords, clubs, undead clay men, sure. But a key lime? No.

Briefly he turned to sneer at the Captain, cream and what not hanging from his face. It took only a wave of his hand to wipe the mess away, as it was only a dream pie, which didn't necessarily mean that it doesn't count. The Corinthian knew better than to dismiss dreams from reality. Whether he got the hint though remained to be seen. His sneer turned into narrowed eyeteeth, then he stepped forward again, into thin air.