deercountry | forget everything you saw

[ The massacre in the church. CW: woman penetrated by razor wires and torn in two (timestamp to skip: 4:00-4:50), people crushed and ripped apart, gore, stabbing, religious violence, regular violence.

This can go any number of ways for your character. If they stick with Rose, they die when Dark Alessa touches them. If not, they have to avoid the spooky girl and deal with the horrors around them until Alessa's vengeance is completed. They can come away with Christabella's ceremonial knife or a boatload of gore. ]

You are bound tightly to a ladder, the rungs dig into your back just as the carefully knotted ropes that bind you there dig into your arms and your legs, and your chest. You can do nothing but watch in horror as the events play out before you. As your mother—Your mother?—falls to her knees; as dark blood gushes from the wound; as the crowd cries out for her to burn. You can only struggle against the bindings as the church falls into darkness, an echo of a siren sounding in your ears like the warning it is, and can only cry out as the floor opens up like a gaping maw and devours the wood that had been piled up high for your burning.

No matter what you do as the chaos unfolds, there’s no completely blocking out the horrors. There’s no ignoring the wet sounds of bodies hitting the ground and the walls near you or the shrill, pained screams of those men and women trapped. Worse yet, there is no ignoring the sense that someone is watching you closely.

If you look around and dare to take in the violence, you’ll spot her before Rose cuts into the ropes that bind you: beneath you, at the bottom of the ladder, is a little girl. Her long, dark hair is matted and her pale, cherub face is streaked with blood and ash and she watches you with a burning hunger in her cold, blue gaze. You have something she wants and she will do whatever it takes to get it.

[for a moment sansa thinks she's fallen into the massacre at the twins. then she realizes that it is not in fact her mother on the floor, but a woman she knows from somewhere else. the rest clicks into place; sharon's memories on the network, the book she had been reading, the wood for burning. she lets her arms go slack and shouts.]

Rose!

[it's not sansa's voice. rose somehow cuts the ropes, and there's a little girl...something in her gaze reminds her of the white walkers in her dream. sansa scrabbles backwards, grasping for rose. part of her thinks of arya, of jinx, of alayne stone. she shouldn't give up on this girl because she unsettles her, but she doesn't think she has a choice.]

Rose, we have to leave!

[ Rose scoops Sansa up like she weighs nothing at all and holds her tight to her chest. Her clothes are stained red, still wet with blood, and she presses her lips to her daughter's head. ]

Shhh, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. [ She whispers relentlessly as if her voice could drown out the sounds of horror and chaos erupting around them. ] It's just a bad dream, baby.

[ She moves them away from the edge of the balcony and tries to lower them both to the damp, musty floor. ]

[sansa doesn't bother struggling out of rose's arms. her limbs are still weak.]

I'm not frightened, but we need to run. I think there's something coming after us...

[she flexes one leg and then the other, trying to shake some life into them, and grasps rose's shoulder to peer over it.]

Here, I can keep watch, but you have to keep moving. We might be faster if you set me down.

[ Sharon had paid no heed to the fresh, unfamiliar thrum of energy under her skin for too long. She thought it was related to the exhaustion she felt. Between the early morning chills that left her doubling up on sweaters to the mid-afternoon weight of this month’s humidity, the blood effects of this month made the strange, vibrating irritability just another thing to push herself through.

It wasn’t until she started to faint that she realized there might be more to it and, by then, it was already too late, swept up by shadows and deposited onto the sandy earthen floor of the arena.

It’s the deafening roar of the crowds in the stands that startle her to her feet. Despite the haze of sleep-induced confusion, Sharon knew almost immediately where she was. She’d been to the Gate before, had even fought in the arena before, but back then it had been of her own accord. Now she stood, wide-eyed, without her leathers, without any weapons, before absolute strangers. It felt like one of those nightmares she’d had as a kid, the ones where she’d show up to school without her shoes.

Except it wasn’t a nightmare.

A voice boomed through the coliseum, dictating terms to a battle she’d never agreed to. To the death. Her heart rate picked up as dread found a home in her belly. That dread turned cold when she finally pulled her gaze from the many faces peering down at her from the stands closest to her to the other side of the arena. D stood out among all the bright, warm tones around him and her heart stuttered in her chest. Finally, she found her words. ]

What——No! [ Her face pinched with rage, teeth bared, as she pulled her shadowed gaze from him to search the stands for anyone she could speak to, leader or announcer or someone with weight in this stupid place. Finally, she yelled. ] I didn't agree to this, I refuse!

[ She wasn't afraid to die. Hell, she would die willingly if it was necessary. But she wouldn't fight D. She cared too much about him and she wouldn't give this crowd the satisfaction of forcing her into it. ]

[ Her daughter is a well-spoken child but not quite this well-spoken. Rose looks into her daughter's eyes with a searching gaze, worry pinching her brows together. ]

Sharon, baby, I... [ How can she explain to her daughter that the chaos and death erupting so close to them both wasn't a danger to either of them? Still, her grip on her loosens. ] We're safe. No one is going to hurt you again.

[ But as she speaks, a small, stained hand grabs a hold of the balustrade and Dark Alessa pulls herself up and over. Rose isn't shocked to see her daughter's dark twin and something about that other child's gaze makes her release her hold on Sansa. ]

[sansa stumbles forward, reaching back for rose's hand.]

Please. I think––

[what does she think? she can't sense anything except what's right in front of her. the girl reminds her of the wights in her dream.]

We have to get far away before anybody comes to see what's happened here, and I don't think that little girl is...alive.

[she tugs on rose's arm insistently.]

Edited 2022-09-09 23:02 (UTC)

[ Sharon had been on edge since the moment she’d slipped through the cracks of one Trench into the crumbling version of another. Her mind kept stumbling over similarities. The dense, choking fog was different enough from the one in her memories that she could push it to the back of her mind. It was the same with the buildings that seemed to be disintegrating away as if the years had come and gone and had eaten away at their facade until there were just shells of them left. Even the monsters that haunted the shadows, that hid in dark corners or waited in alleys. She could write all of that away. Trench had always been a little bit like Silent Hill.

She eventually came across a tiny little group garbed in drab greys and looking worse for wear but surprisingly chipper for the situation. She’d initially felt such a wave of relief to have found more people that she ignored the warnings that now seemed so big and bold and in her face. They’d had a reverence to the way they spoke when mentioning this world and something about the fervent passion they had rung alarm bell after alarm bell in her mind until they spoke of their sanctuaries.

It was then all of the excuses and distance she’d built up between all these similarities to the horrors of Silent Hill fractured and fell into one another. The fog, the crumbling buildings, the monsters. They hit her one after another now. She couldn’t hear what the group was chatting about now through the rush of blood in her ears. One of them asked her something. She shook her head. She stumbled back. She turned her heel and ran.

She ran down vaguely familiar roads, bounded around corners, and dashed through tight alleyways. She ran until her lungs burned and her legs ached and then she ran some more. She ran until she was certain she was alone. And then she pressed her back into a broken brick wall and slid down it until she crumbled on the ground.

The panic that she’d been swallowing down since her arrival here hit her like a ton of bricks and there was nothing she could do to stop the sob that escaped her except to slap her hands over her mouth in a desperate attempt to muffle to sound. She wanted to scream but feared the attention it would draw so she just sobbed into her hands. She sobbed and shook and rocked and clung to herself, barely aware of her surroundings. ]

[ She lets Sansa take her hand and grasps it gently but firmly; tightly. The moment she tugs, she nods her head. ]

Baby, I don't think we can leave but... I'll get us somewhere else, okay? But you have to promise to never look away from me. No matter what you hear. [ Even now, Alessa's vengeance is relentless. People continue to scream, some of them shrill, and bang their hands on the doors as if they would open them. And Dark Alessa continues forward. Her manic expression remains firm but there's a twitch to her lips as she realizes that Sansa is trying to get away from her.

Rose is already pulling Sansa down the transept stairs, leading her away. The stairs are slick with gore but Rose's grip is tight and her steps are careful and she looks down at Sansa every other breath to make sure her eyes are on her. ]

[It was very easy to get lost when exploring this mysterious other world. Between the fog and most of the town being in ruins, she couldn't find any familiar places to take shelter. It was lonely, frightening and nerve-wracking. So Scorpia wandered around carefully and doing what she could to avoid monsters in order to minimize her risks and conserve her energy.

These movements eventually brought her to a certain area by chance. Scorpia realized she wasn't alone over here - and that the other being wasn't a monster. It was a person, huddled over and crying by a wall. All of Scorpia's caution went out the window as the tall scorpion woman rushed over to her aid.]

H-hey! Hey there! What's wrong? [She tries to sound soothing as she approaches her and tries to assess her condition by looking her over.]

[sansa walks briskly on the balls of her feet, trying to concentrate her chakra there. she doesn't know if that will do anything in this..dream? but if it were a dream, she could do anything...]

I promise you, I'm not frightened of the rest of it.

[sansa has seen death and blood. perhaps this is more gruesome, but it's also better deserved.]

Is there somewhere we can go to be rid of her?

Though he lacks context for a great deal of what's going on, Duty pays attention when he cannot do anything else. The room is locked shut with no one getting out. Most people are dying; it couldn't happen to a nicer cult.

Once the ropes are free, Duty doesn't stay in his mother's arms. Things are far from okay, and closing his eyes and hugging it out doesn't solve their problems. He picks up the knife where Rose dropped it, and leads the way out the way she came. Down below, most of the space is occupied by sharp razor wires, but the wire doesn't seem to target them. Good since a knife can do little against sharp razor wires controlled like tentacles.

The little girl stares down from the balcony where they just were, not upset or angry but intense. Great, he thinks. However, he doesn't talk, so as not to draw additional attention to them. The little girl has seen them, but he's less sure about the being at the center of the razor wires. As softly as an exhausted young girl's body can move, he moves.

( This isn't the first time that Peter's been brought into some kind of nightmare world. Deerington had its times, and Trench has transported him into horrific places once or twice — when he first looks around, wide-eyed and trembling uncontrollably, he thinks maybe he's back in the Tower, in the Sleeper Farm.

But no, this is something... different. Different but eerily similar to the city, almost like some mirror version of it. But despite that fact, it's impossible to make sense of where he is; buildings crumble inwards, the fog is thick and black and burns to breathe in. Thunder rolls and ripples ominously overhead, and cracks of lightening split the air in random intervals.

When Peter thinks of Hell, it's something like this. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe this is where he's supposed to be. Where he's always been leading towards.

But then he hears people calling out through the gloom to anyone who passes by, voices a rising wail, hoping to draw attention — mentioning the Old Ones and the Nightmare. Those sound too much like Trench terms. And then he hears Sodder's name, and he's frozen in shock for a few long moments, before hurrying away. Maybe he should try to find out more about whatever the fuck's going on, but he's always flinched away from it, even back in Deerington. He'd seen Sodder for himself once, in a hospital. He'd never wanted to see her again. He never really wanted to know the truth. Never wanted to face it.

So Peter's moving away from the small hoards of townspeople, heart pounding, head spinning. This isn't Hell — at least not his own personal one. This is... something still connected to Trench. He just has to find the way back out. There's always a way back out. ...And Paimon will protect him until he can find it; he can feel the demon there, its ancient spirit crackling with awareness and alarm. Sometimes random objects around Peter lift or are sent flying through the air from the demon's energy pulsing so loudly.

He doesn't know how long he wanders through the devastated remains of the city, arms wrapped tightly around himself, keeping close to the broken walls of buildings and alleyways. His clothing's filthy, lungs aching from breathing in the thick, polluted fog. And he almost doesn't see the person crumpled on the ground and crying into their hands. Maybe it's Paimon who senses something familiar and alerts him to it, but all of a sudden Peter finds himself just staring right at the person, eyes wide. He hesitates at first, but then slowly moves a little closer as he realises it's someone crying — sobbing so hard it looks like it hurts. A young woman.

Wait... Is that— )

Sharon?

( Some weird, awful mixture of relief to see someone familiar and horrific alarm snaps in Peter like a string pulled past its limits. He's immediately rushing forwards, kneeling down close to her as she rocks like that, lifting his hands but not touching her just yet. She's bad off, really bad off, he can tell that right away as his horror grows. )

God, Sharon— C-can you hear me? It's Peter. I'm Peter.

[ Whatever Sansa is capable of in Trench doesn't matter much within this twisted version of memory, stuck with the skills and abilities of an exhausted nine-year-old. Her mind is her best weapon.

Rose doesn't have the time or the energy to consider the strangeness in her daughter. Still, she was aware, distantly in the mind of this memory of Rose, she was conscious of the unignorable differences. She keeps moving forward even after a body, shredded and barely recognizable for the human it once was, hits the wall not far from them; she shifts herself to block the body from Sansa's view. It didn't matter if she wasn't frightened, she was her daughter and Rose would protect her from the horrors of this as much as she physically could.

She doesn't slow even as she scans the open space of the church. Alessa's razor wires and the bed took up the center of the space, held up by a stem of metal and rust, but the burnt girl paid neither of them any mind; she was busy with the throng of people pressed up against the west end of the church. Rose spots a door near the back, to the left of Alessa, and she makes a beeline for it, wrenching the heavy, wooden door open and pulling Sansa in with her. She slams it shut behind her, pressing her back against it.

The room beyond is dim and humid and lived in. Modest, jewel-toned dresses hang on a metal clothing rack near a single twin-sized bed covered in a moth eaten blanket. There are a pair of candles melting down on a simple, wooden desk covered with books, though only one is open. A painting hangs above the desk of a woman in white, her arms outstretched towards the heavens. ]

[sansa slips into the room, finally grimacing at the blood on her shoes, if only because it made running harder. she attempts to stamp it of as if she were stamping snow of her boots. she recalls septa mordane telling her to go to her room and bar the door, and scans the room for a chair or something to bar the door with. even then she had been taller, stronger than this body is now. she glances back at rose.]

We should bar the door.

[and then a small, tired smile.]

Thank you. I'm glad you're with me.

Bar the...? [ Rose blinks at the suggestion, surprised it came out of her daughter's mouth, but grabs the sturdy wooden chair that sat by the desk and drags it over to the door, propping it up under the handle until she's certain it'll hold. She doesn't believe anyone will try to enter but hovers near the door just in case anyone dares to try.

The sounds coming from outside have dampened considerably, though every now and again heavy thumps and desperate cries assault their ears. Rose looks at Sansa. Her expression is tight and worn and searching. ]

I'd never leave you, baby. No matter what. I—I searched for so long to find you. I was so worried.

[sansa's smile softens, widens. she embraces rose with sharon's arms.]

You did well. You're a wonderful mother. As strong as––[sansa's own lady mother. she can't say that.] anyone could ever wish.

[ The moment she hears Scorpia's heavy footfalls, Sharon tries to scramble back, one hand pressing up against the broken wall to pull herself back to her feet, blue eyes wide with fear. She almost can't process the tall woman's words, mind addled with panic, but the soothing way she speaks seems to get her to pause. She blinks up at her clearly attempting to catch the panic and shove it away. ]

I—I—[ Her words get caught in her throat as she takes in another gasping breath of air. ]

You're not gonna—You're not gonna take me to them, are you? [ She feels like she's nine again, trying to hide from the men in old, dirtied miners gear. ]

[ Mother not mommy. Rose returns the embrace and runs her fingers through her daughter's (not her daughter's) long, dark hair. She holds Sansa to her tightly. ]

You're not Sharon, are you? [ There's a tightness in her throat, a sorrow and a pain she can't stuff into the back of her mind. It's not accusatory but it is gently knowing. A mother's intuition is rarely wrong. ]

[sansa smiles sadly. perhaps she should have tried harder to sound like sharon, but she'd scarcely had time to think.]

I'm a friend of hers, a guardian spirit. I've come to help you both. I swear on my life, by the old gods and the new, that I mean the two of you no harm. She's safe. You saved her.

Edited 2022-09-12 21:46 (UTC)

[ She kneels down before Sansa, hands on her shoulders, to better look her in the face. It felt a lot like standing before that dark version of her daughter; there was something older in her, foreign and unnatural but just like she did with Dark Alessa and Alessa, she accepts it. ]

A guardian...? [ She doesn't understand it but she accepts it, even as she fears it; fears the loss of her daughter that she's fought so hard to protect. ]

And she'll——she'll come back to me? She's no——[ Someone knocks at the door. It's a tiny sound made by a tiny hand but it's not forceful or angry and they don't try to pull the door open. Rose turns her head sharply, watching warily. Waiting. ]

Let me in, Rose. [ The voice is the same as Sansa's current one, as young Sharon's, but firm and... oddly older and more commanding than a nine-year-old should ever be able to sound. ]

Rose follows after, calling after Duty, her voice strong and tight and full of the concern and worry only a mother could hold for their child during such a hectic, horrifying situation. The last thing she wanted for her daughter, after everything in this place, was for her to witness Alessa's brutal vengeance on the Brethren but her daughter seems driven and focused. More than she thought could be possible.

"Sharon, baby...?" The burned girl in the bed at the center of the chaos looks their way but it lasts a single moment, her focus returning to the cultists still panicking and pushing against one another as if they could escape with just enough distance. The dark mirror of Duty's current form leans over the balustrade of the transept balcony, her gaze cold and focused, and pulls herself over the edge, tiny feet pressing into one rung of the ladder after the other, slowly returning to the ground floor.

A good glance around the back wall of the church will reveal heavy set doors beneath each balcony. If Duty knows anything about churches, he might know it leads to the sacristy. If not, well, those doors lead somewhere else and the more distance between him and that child, the better.

[sansa nods, sad-eyed, her mouth tugging to one side in a gesture inherited from her own parents.]

Sharon will be fine. I'm sorry for the trouble. You mustn't let in the other little girl...

[she shouldn't be able to sense them in here. it affirms sansa's instinct that this girl is dangerous, and sharon and rose must be protected from her. nevertheless a part of her wishes she could perhaps try to talk to the girl, and find out what she wants, perhaps convince her to go elsewhere and live her own life. it is perhaps what margaery would have done. and yet sansa eyes the desk, wondering if rose could move it, and if they would have to take the chair away to slide it in place.]

I think she wants to hurt us.

Edited 2022-09-13 01:19 (UTC)

Memories don't work quite the same way as life. In some ways it's more like a dream. Duty still leans into his experiences because spy work still applies. Expectations and meeting them. Guiding people without being hamfisted. Admittedly 'small child runs away from scary ass shit' isn't a hard sell. Shouldn't be, he thinks. Fight or flight or freeze. It's option two.

He doesn't know exactly which terms of endearment this child usually uses. It wasn't covered in what he read before showing up. Hopefully the memory, like a dream, allows some leeway.

"I want to be safe, Mama," he says. The exhaustion and child's voice add to the performance.

Duty continues on then, aware of the slow inexorable progress of the other child in this strange game of tag, toward another set of doors. Out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps with the razor wire construct if not the little girl. It's a long game, so much as he can stretch it. Delay delay delay.

[Scorpia comes a halt a few feet away from the girl, noticing the way she seems to react to her approach. She does have enough self awareness to know that some of scorpion features might seem a bit intimidating to others. And her words further full Scorpia with concern for this girl and what she could have gone through.]

N-no! No. [She raises her pincers to try to make placating gestures.] I'm not bringing you to anyone. At least not to anyone you don't want to go to. I'm just one lost scorpion gal who wants to help. Are you hurt?

[She tentatively tries to step closer.]

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