tunicaintima | Supernatural AU for Roland

The same-

[His head jerks up quick, surprised. He'd forgotten anyone else, for a second, was here. It's a second more, maybe two, before he replies.]

I think there are more doors in this hall. I think there's no need to fixate on that one.

Huh? Yeah, but...

[But he asked. He turns around to look, and there are quite a few doors. Maybe they should keep searching, for whatever the heck it is they'll find.

Then Firo's head snaps back around.]

Hey! You're just sayin' that to distract me, right? So it was important!

Was it?

[He puts fists on hips that were, until this moment, not much more than indistinct shapes leading to probably-legs. Now his edges are less blurred, sharp and narrow hips lent a little more bulk by the outline of something buckled around them. The shadow himself is too busy sounding annoyed to notice.]

In that case, why don't you tell me just what it is I'm hiding? You seem very sure!

[Firo blinks, confused by the sudden definition in the shadow. Is he doing this on purpose?]

You know something! You wouldn't get all offended if you didn't--I was just askin'.

Just asking is not what you're doing!

[He bows his head, lifting a hand to rub his blurred fingers against a brow that isn't there.]

We need to keep going. Maybe that will tell us more about this curse we're under, if that's what it is. Do I have your permission for it, or would you rather keep interrogating me for knowledge I don't have?

[In spite of himself, Firo stiffens and finds himself quieted in the face of what he reads as anger. It takes him a moment to shake it off, reminding himself that this weirdo isn't a leader, isn't even part of his pack. Still, his voice hasn't quite recovered its steadiness when he responds.]

Keep goin'.

[Firo slouches, shoving his hands in his pockets. His words are firmer now.]

'Cause you can tell me what you know while we walk.

[He has to know something. But perhaps unfortunately for Firo, they now come to another door, one with faint sounds of music leaking from beyond it.]

[He stands in front of it a moment, head tilted. Listening, thinking on it]

If I tell you that tune was never heard in this place. Is that enough? Or would you have me 'know' something else?

[Firo, on the other hand, finds the music very familiar and blushes as soon as he hears it. This isn't good. He needs to get them out of here.]

If you're gonna be such a killjoy, how about we just quit it with this place and--

[The door opens on its own. The view sweeps across a crowded bar to zoom in on... the slightly stained bar counter. Exciting. But then the 'eyes' through which they're seeing creep up to alight on the young woman behind it, a red-haired lady in a suit. When she's about to turn to face the viewer, the eyes snap back to the counter again.

Firo is resolutely staring at the floor.]

[Roland puts a hand on the frame and leans closer, as if that will let him see anything other than what's in front of them. He makes a thoughtful noise, a noise that's forgotten, at least for now, to be frustrated, one that's forgotten to be scared.]

Does she have a name? Or were you ever brave enough to find out?

Edited (nitpicking) 2016-11-22 20:03 (UTC)

[Firo turns bright red and backs away from the door.]

Sh-shut up! A-a name has nothing to do with being brave!

[He turns on his heel to march away from the door. Nothing more to see here! Despite hounding Roland about the other door just a moment ago, Firo hardly wants to go through the same thing now.]

Hm.

[Roland watches the boy walking away, then peers in the door again as if that'll make it decide to play the scene out a little bit further. It doesn't, of course. What's done is done. He follows down the hall.]

Did you at least get yourself the memory of her face? Those are easier to lose than you might think. Heavier loss than you might think. Harder to get back, once gone.

[Firo frowns back at him over his shoulder.]

I'm not gonna forget her face! I'm not that dumb.

...A-and it's none of your business anyway!

Dumb? Time takes what it takes, no matter how clever you are. Do you really think I was warning you against being dumb?

[The next door rattles and, as the shadow approaches, opens with no fanfare at all. The view looks up, and up. What it looks up into is blurry, indistinct - the building, the figure up in it, her dress and most of her face. What is clear is the window, the way she leans through it. That long golden hair, spilling out. Perhaps, if he focuses, he can see a smudge of gray where her eyes ought to be.]

[The shade, watching, makes a violent gesture. The door doesn't just shut this time, it slams, and he backs up, feels what passes for his shoulders press up against torchlight spread over the opposite wall. His hands over his face, that's another odd and impractical gesture; the shade of his hands dims those blue spots that are not his eyes, but his form being what it is, he doesn't need eyes to see. He doesn't have eyelids to try and shut.]

[Firo hunches his shoulders to hide his face and is trying to think of a retort when the next door flies open. Firo relaxes slightly when he sees that it's nothing he recognizes, only to jump at the dramatic dismissal of the image.

So what was her name? The snide question dies on his lips.

Annoying as this guy is, Firo doesn't want to twist the knife in necessarily, no matter the reason he seems so affected by the simple imagine of a lady. Maybe if Firo ignored this guy's thing, he'll leave Firo alone about Ennis.]

Hey. We should stop lookin' at these things. We're obviously not finding anything that's gonna fix this.

['This' being the curse tying them together. Firo's more concerned about what else they'll see behind the doors than getting rid of the curse now.]

[The shade spends a moment in looking at him. Through his hands, of course, useless things. No questions, no prompting about- about her - and so letting her slip from his mind is a little bit easier. Making even that vague blur slip from him hurts, but what else is there to do? What else is there?]

[It's an important question the boy's raised, after all. Certainly more important than anything else. The shade's hands drop. His shoulders straighten out.]

Should we? Can we? Walking through minds is a tricky thing, the path governed mostly by whim. But I guess it's your mind too, isn't it? Alright. Where else would you have us go?

What's it matter about minds? I'm just gonna leave--

[Firo turns on his heel to march away and do just that, but smacks into... something. He staggers back and looks at the air. That's all that's there, but he knows from the smarting on his face that he ran into something as stubborn and hard as his own head. More cautious this time, he reaches out and feels an invisible surface blocking their way back.]

...You've gotta be kidding me.

Backward? Can't go back, boy. The trick is to use the mind, not work against it.

[He's straightening up now, perking up. The girl behind that door isn't gone, but it's easier to focus.]

What paths do your mind normally go down? Think of whatever it is you think when you get too lost in memory. Distract yourself.

Distract?

[Firo eyes him skeptically. He doesn't get lost in memory, not that often. It's a conscious decision on his part, because there're a lot of times he doesn't want to remember--namely, the days he spent before turning, back before he had a wolf pelt and pack to keep him warm and before he had fangs to hunt.

So when he's asked to think, all he thinks is get me out of here. That should be enough, right?

The place obliges. The tower shakes and seems to fall around them, the stones dissembling and fading into light. When it's too bright to see, Firo squeezes his eyes shut--

--and then opens them to see a street, with people all around them.

The tower, now in full repair, looms only a short distance away. Firo doesn't notice, too busy gaping at the people all around them. All picked from his or Roland's mind, he realizes that some of them look familiar, but he can't tell why.]

[ooc: I figured we can both kind of fill in the details for the place they've constructed. Since it's a mindscape thing, I was imagining something Gilead-ish with stuff from their present smooshed in with it.]

[If he looks around far enough Firo might find the shade hunched over in the nearest deep shadow. The question of whether all that light would effect him the same here as it would outside their minds would seem silly to him, silly enough that it's not worth wondering it. Light is what it is and he is what he is, and he'd been weak enough before all this started, anyway.]

Hm. Fairly done. Does this picture work a little better for you? Are you ready to keep moving on yet?

[Because, so far as the shade is concerned, all this is just window dressing. The thing to do to leave here is just the same as it ever was. But if making it look differently keeps the boy moving then it was worth the time it took to do it.]

[Firo turns around and frowns at Roland, exasperated. Why isn't he more annoyed by what's going on? Firo can't yet accept that they're just stuck here.]

No! We're just somewhere else, we're not out of this weird place yet! We need to find a way to get out.

[Time for something else. Obviously using his head didn't work--not that he's too shocked--so he'll have to use force. His plan is simple: just keep breaking things until he wakes up back home. He turns to the nearest building, looks the door up and down, and tries to kick it in. Like before, it opens all too easily, and he falls right into it.

It's not a building on the inside. Instead, it's a woods--the woods that they meant in earlier, actually. Firo freezes when he hears a very familiar howl not too far away. So they're not home (and it's not the right time of day; in this new place, it's the dead of night rather than the morning it was back home. But Firo doesn't realize that yet). But maybe this is the real world--at least it sounds like his pack's here, and that's promising.

He takes off running in the direction of the sound.]

Come on!

[The shade notes that the boy actively wants him to stay nearby, now. Mayhap he thinks they'll only be able to get out of here together.]

[He keeps up easily, of course. Easy to do when you don't have to run, and when so much of this place is so dark already.]

Looking for another memory? It would find us, you know, if you let it. Yours would, anyway.

A memory?

[He glances over long enough to see that the shade is still there. Between breaths, he responds:]

You don't get it. That's my family!

[The howling is getting farther away, so Firo skids to a halt, crouches down, and in an instant there's a wolf wiggling out of his clothes. He can run faster like this, and now the smell of the deer they're tracking is sharper to him.

He lets out a little yip of joy when they crest the hill and see the pack up ahead, cornering a buck. Firo's too excited to notice yet that, just as with the memories before, this is way too familiar to be real.]

[And then the shade gets it. The boy can't feel all this as he can. He isn't thinking. Thinks they've escaped.]

[Well. You can't tell a person - especially a young person - a thing like that. He'll have to find out for himself. So the shade doesn't answer, only follows as silent as he'd have to be if they had in fact escaped, and he watches.]

[In swift, coordinated movements, the pack brings down the deer before Firo gets close enough to join them. The excitement in the air is palpable as they congratulate each other and the 'boss'--a grizzled old wolf with a scar over his eye--invites the others to share in their catch.

Firo yips to get their attention, but there's no reaction. It's only when he sees 'himself' mingling with the pack that he realizes what Roland already knows; he freezes in place a few paces away.

Even so, he can't keep his tail from wagging just a little as he watches. Maybe he's not truly experiencing it right now, but it is a good memory.]

[The body language of a dog - or a wolf, or most anything which doesn't communicate as a human does - is a mystery to him, so after deciding he can't figure out how the boy's taking it, he turns his attention to the scene ahead.]

[After a second, he starts to really pay attention. He never has before, out in the physical world, not to anything that doesn't register as a danger. As with the boy himself, the shade realizes he doesn't know how to read this.]

This was important?

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