Dreamwalker Meme

[quantum_defender]

Dreamwalker Meme

 

Surprise! Either the monster of the week has done something to you or just by random chance, you can walk into other people's dreams. Whether it's full walking and interacting or just observing, that's up to you. The question is, what will you do with the knowledge you've gained by walking through someone else's sub-conscious thoughts?

1. Tag in your pups.
2. Either give a start with what your pup is dreaming about or use the RNG at Random Scenario Meme/Nightmares Meme to come up with a dream. It can be as serious, kinky, fluffy or cracktastic as you wish.
3. Tag other pups to walk in their dreams!

And remember, Luna sees all and is secretly judging you >_>

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[white_buster]

[Emeric, my beloved brother, he turns to me - ]

[His eyes search me, uncomprehending.]

Aa, ma puce, mon frere...

[I embrace him, calling him by the pet name we both called each other when we were small, cradling his head on my shoulder. Pauvre petit. But I am here now, I'm in this dream with him. I know of it. And I will reassure him when we wake that I am alive and well, that it was only a nightmare.]

Shhh, mon frere. Only a dream. I'm here.

[silverpleather]

[Puce. That was one of the reasons I was sure, so sure that Enter was in fact Etienne, somewhere inside. Maman, she used to call us her petites puces, because we jumped around so much, or so she said.]

[From this guise, it doesn't sound like a mockery or an insult. It sounds like I always imagined my beloved brother to sound, once he'd grown up. If he'd gotten to grow up.]

[He puts his arms around me and I feel like I'm coming apart.]

Eti... [My voice is trembling, growing higher in pitch.] Eti, oh, Eti, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't save you... I'm so sorry I lived...

[I'm small, suddenly, such is the way of dreams. My arms aren't around Etienne's shoulders, but his waist. I'm back in my child-like body, frail and tiny.]

[white_buster]

Shhh, shhh, shhh.

[I am small too, now; such is the way of dreams. I match my brother always; that is how it should be, how it must be.]

[I embrace him; we are laying together, and I wrap my arms and legs around him tightly, holding him close. My heart is breaking with his.]

Shhh, it's okay, Emi, Emi, I'm here. We're safe. We're both alive, Emi. We'll fight. It's alright. You'll wake up, and we'll both be alive, and we'll fight again, just like we always do.

[But I don't think my words will reach him.]

[And now I am terrified by that prospect, and what it might mean, and I begin sobbing, too.]

[silverpleather]

[He seems so calm at first, when he's small with me, when we lie down, when we're entangled like we always used to be... like we always should have been... How we should have died, instead of me off in Masato's lab, trying to convince 'Jin-san' to come to the party...]

[His words mean nothing to me. More dream-talk, more empty promises, more falsehoods and unreality. I'll wake up, sure I will. And I'll still be in this stupid body, I'll still do all of my thinking and feeling (not physically, though, never that) through an avatar.]

[And Etienne will be dead.]

[He starts crying suddenly and I tighten my grip on him and hide my face against his neck and cry with him, because I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.]

[My dreams have never gone this way before.]

[white_buster]

[We cry until we are out of tears, and then because this is a dream, we cry more.]

[The sun sets, the moon rises; I have a background awareness that the cycle is repeating over and over, though I don't visually note it. It represents time passing.]

[Passing us by.]

[Emeric isn't calming; he clings to me desperately, as if he fears never seeing me again.]

[I'm beginning to be truly upset.]

[This isn't how it was supposed to go.]

[And now my hands are gripping through Emi's arms.]

[silverpleather]

[I should have seen this coming, knowing it was a nightmare, some new freakish demon brought up from my subconscious to toy with me, my brother alive and well and perfectly normally average. Because as sun and moon cycle increasingly fast, as time passes in this weird dream-space that feels like the subdimension and looks like the subdimension until I realize it's not, it's the whole world in darkness, it's Vaglass having won... We get older, no. Etienne gets older, and he keeps holding on to me, and I look older, sure, but I'm fading away.]

[I scramble away from him when his hands go through my arms and I hold my hands up in front of my and my fingers and palms flicker and then he's right there, standing, his hair is white again, it makes him look much older than he must be. But I know, somehow I know he's my age. No... The age of my avatar, which even now is failing. Too much strain. And as suddenly as I have the thought, the ground cracks and the glass coffin holding my eleven-year-old body rises out of the ground between us. Separating us forever.]

[I fall to my knees and hold my head and try to hold myself together with flickering digits and feeble prayers. Why, why won't I wake up? What is taking Jueki so long?]

[white_buster]

Emi pushes himself from me, and the horror of his intransience is only multiplied by his refusal to let me touch him again. The time of this mirage passes us by, years evaporating between us, and I feel age, I feel pain, sinking through my bones and skin, digging its claws into me. I'm aging.

Before me, Emi grows only more transclucent.

And then the ground rips in half, and a body in a casket, peaceful as Snow White, neatly laid to rest, rises from it. The body is a boy - mine? Emi's? I cannot tell. At that age, we were indistinguishable, one from the other. We only began to dye our hair when we grew.

As it is either of us, the peacefully sleeping corpse in its bright glass box is as utterly out of place in this world of irregularity and sharp, painful edges, as a flower or a tame animal might be. This is a world of nightmares.

Then again, my brother, dead?

Perhaps this casket is in fact the most well-suited element of this whole nightmarish experience.

I run around its end, challenging the splitting, rocking earth until my speed outpaces its crumbling disintigration. I sprint to Emi, crashing into him, wrapping him in my arms tightly enough to crush him.

"Mon frere, what is this place?" I am no longer convinced it is a mere dream. And I am not convinced I know how to wake from it.

[silverpleather]

The ground is crumbling, I look up with both hands tangled in my hair and wait to watch the casket fall again, to watch it shatter, my little body with it, and I wonder if I kill it, will I finally wake up?

Etienne, if indeed he is Etienne, comes towards me again, defying the attempts of the splitting earth to keep him from me. Running, full tilt, and when he slams into me, it slams my avatar back into a moment of permanence and I grasp his arms when he all but screams at me for an explanation.

I gape at him for a moment, a sob catches in my throat and makes me choke. I pull him close again, put my arms around his shoulders, thread my fingers in his strange white hairs.

"My worst nightmares, mon Eti." I say weakly. I look up, over his head. I recognize that building, it's a block away from the EMC head offices. It's a burnt out shell, here. Vaglass has won. "Where I lost you and I still can't win."

[white_buster]

I glance over my shoulder, at the casket, as the tremors in the ground begin to crack and splinter its glass. The body inside - mine? - looks so peaceful. Deceptively so.

I clutch Emi tighter, distressed as my fingertips begin to dig through him once more. He pets my hair; I kiss his neck, pressing close, trying to hear or feel his heartbeat. I can do neither. He is cool in my arms, as though he is not alive at all.

Am I certain this is his nightmare? Or mine? My Emi is right here, but I cannot reach his heart; I cannot even hear it, an extra bit of painful symbolism for which I resent this dream very deeply. I cannot cheer him, I cannot save him from his tears.

I will still try.

"I am here, frere. We have not lost each other. We-- We will wake. We will wake in each other's arms, just like normal. Wake up with me! Wake, please wake!

"...It is only a nightmare."

It has to be.

[silverpleather]

I laugh weakly at his assertions. I can't feel him, not properly, but this is a typical aspect of my nightmares, the fear that I will never again know what a gentle touch, a sweet hug, a careful kiss really feels like. That I will be stuck playacting in this fake body forever. It's either that, or having to relive thirteen missing years, start over again from eleven.

His words are so heartfelt. So meaningful. For all the dreams and nightmares I have had about my brother, he has never assured me that we would wake up together.

"Ah, if only that were true." I whisper, mostly to myself. "If only I still had you."

I close my eyes and sigh and speak out loud, sure now that this dream is just a crueler-than-usual nightmare. "Come on, Jueki. Aibou. Switch me back on. I'm rested... Please."

[white_buster]

Emi sounds desperate, but it's the despondency in his laugh, in his soft whisper, that shake me the most.

The dream's noise - the roar and crash of the world collapsing around us - is unimportant, seemingly muted, as Emi's words confuse and worry me.

Jueki? Aibou? Emi doesn't have friends whom I don't also have. These are not names I've ever heard, however.

"Emi...Emi!" I shake him by the shoulders, watching his eyes with real fear in mine. I wonder, for the first conscious time, why his hair is the wrong color. Why his gear is silver, not black.

"Emi, who are you speaking to? Emi? Qu'est-ce que tu racontes?"

[silverpleather]

Of course nothing comes of it, it's not like they can hear me. I don't know if my body has any capacity for speech left, so it's not as though I'd start talking in my sleep. I might not even technically be asleep. With my avatar shut off, I'm not at all sure exactly how I am left without it.

But it does pull a response from my poor brother, who starts shaking me, staring into my eyes, demanding explanation. Of course, he wouldn't know, and I smile softly and stroke his white hair out of his eyes.

"Your hair looks very nice like this." I assure him softly. "It suits you."

I swallow. "I wish you could meet him. Masato has protected me since I lost you. Do you remember? Do you remember Jin-san?"

[white_buster]

I don't know what's wrong with my brother, but it's something serious. Is he caught in the dream's illusions more deeply than I am?

Is he seeing some illusion instead of me? No, that's impossible, he's called me by name...

"Emeric," I interrupt. My voice is intent and scared. "Emeric, what are you talking about, beloved? We've never known a Jin-san, Emi. It's the two of us, Hiromu-kun, Yoko-chan, Ryuu-san...don't you remember? There's no Jin-san, Emi."

[silverpleather]

He's still clinging to me, frowning, his voice has a sharp edge to it that doesn't suit him, my dear sweet brother. I realize it's fear, and wonder if that's how I sound when I'm scared. I make up my mind not to ever let Hiromu hear me sounding like that. I'm sure Masato's already heard it, but I don't like it at all.

"Yes, of couse, 'iromu, Youko-chan, Ryuuji-san... But... No, Etienne, mon frere, I mean before. Don't you remember, before Vaglass? Before Messiah? He worked with the Commander, with Youko-chan's mother. You must remember..."

I shake my head and lift a hand to cup his chin, searching his eyes. "Etienne, what is the matter with you? You are not generally like this. So frantic. It's a dream, cher, just a dream. I'll wake up, and you'll rest again. Don't fret. It kills me when you're upset." I know I'm not making sense anymore, that he's just a figment of my own imagination. But he feels awfully real, especially his terrible fear, and it makes my heart ache. I do believe the avatar has been shut off for too long and I'm beginning to develop cabin fever from the inside of my own head.

[white_buster]

Emi's making less sense by the minute, and I'm really and truly afraid by now.

He explains in detail, and I don't know why he's so fixated on this scientist that we haven't seen in thirteen years, that he's now saying has been with him? And he's speaking in the singular?

"Frere...what do you mean you'll wake?"

It pains me terribly to do so, but I release him, stepping back, and I raise my Sougan Blade (when did I get that? No matter) in a reverse-grip guard.

"Frere...who are you, really?"

Because there's no way that this is really my twin, my Emeric. It is impossible, but it's true.

[silverpleather]

I don't know what took me so long to figure it out, but suddenly he's got a Sougan Blade, and he's got a Morphin Brace on his wrist... The opposite wrist from all of the others... And his hair... And his uniform...

I hang my head. What a cruel joke my subconscious is playing on me today.

Etienne as a Buster. Etienne in my place?

"You're dead, my beloved brother." I inform him sadly. "At least... You are assumed to be. We're not sure. How could we know? You went... You were with our parents, Hiromu's parents, everyone, at the party, when the center was teleported. I was... elsewhere. With my aibou, Jin Masato-san."

I reach behind myself, draw my Morphin Blaster from it's holster, and hold it up, nonthreatening across my open palm. "I'm Kurosawa Emeric."