Catch All

[frogfear]

Who: Willow Rosenberg (frogfear) and Others
What: Closed Starters in the comments for now (Open to come!)
When: January - February
Where: Around Trench

Content Warnings (individual threads also marked): claustrophobia, nightmare with bloody dark imagery, severed body parts, torture racks, dark forest, possession, surrealism, unreality, CLOCKS THAT SHOULDN'T BE THERE, death by broken neck, death of a magic animal/person in animal form

Comments

Feb 20th, For Maul

[frogfear]

Sleep hasn't come easy for Willow for quite some time. Most of it, she writes off as the stress and worry of the last several months making it harder to settle, and the rest because she blames on leaving her body and becoming a wolf when she sleeps. Dreamwalking helps stave off the pressure of exhaustion even if she didn't quite consider how much of an intrusion it would feel like to jump in as part of someone else's dream.

For the most part, she stays home when she sleeps, or at least close to home. More and more often, however, she finds herself getting restless, and wanting to roam. It feels natural to take to the woods that seem to stretch out endlessly behind the big green mansion in Gaze.

There is danger in these woods, of course. There's no shortage of monsters, it seems, but they are fairly easy to avoid. They don't seem to regard her as a human, and her stronger senses make it far easier to avoid them.

She's been out most of the night, choosing to stay away from home longer than usual in hopes of forcing herself to get a little more sleep, and the sky is just beginning to lighten. The snow is beginning to pick up, blanketing the woods in silence as she slips quietly through the trees, when she pauses suddenly, ears alert and turning to try to catch even the faintest sound, and sniffs the air. She's not entirely sure what it is, but something doesn't seem quite right.

[survivalthroughhate]

Something has been bothering Maul about what he saw in the blood zealot's torture center when he'd seen Willow there. At the time, he'd been much more concerned about getting out, but since then he'd had time to reflect on what he'd seen. That wolf which had been absorbed back into her....that was no Omen. It was something else and he's been determined to find out.

He sets his cult with the task of researching. Sure, he could do it himself, but what's the point of having a bunch of devoted followers if they don't obey his every whim? He takes the opportunity to get some much-needed sleep as they spend a few days scouring the archives of Trench to find out what is going on. It's been a busy couple of months for Maul and he needs his rest, no longer being a young twenty year old Zabrak the way he was more than fifteen years ago.

What they come back to him with is very interesting, how apparently the wolf is Willow, some strange magic that allows her to shift forms when she's asleep. Maul's not sure what to do with this and mulls it over but then he runs into the Chocolatier. The being offers him a vanilla chocolate, and as bad luck would have it, Willow is the first one he sees afterwards. All conflict he's felt at the thought of getting his revenge on her causing problems with his friends disappears. All that matters is the death of one of the witches who cursed him.

He waits for the perfect opportunity, and when the blizzard comes, he knows it is time. Not many people will be out and about right now with how cold it is, which means there will be less witnesses to what he is about to do. It also means it might be some time before Willow's body is discovered. Once he finds Willow out in the woods, he waits for the perfect moment to strike. On silent feet, he stalks the wolf, the hunter now becoming the prey of a far more dangerous predator.

[frogfear]

It's not a sound that's caught her attention, as she stands stone still under a tree. All she can hear is the sound of the wind and the flakes of snow hitting the ground. It feels particularly quiet in the woods, but not unnaturally so. She had seen in Deerington too how snow can bring a peaceful quiet with it, even in a heavy storm.

The wolf sniffs the air a second time, looking around, trying to spot any signs of trouble. Leaning into the wind, she can smell plenty, even the smells from home. With the wind at her back, though, she can only smell the woods around her.

Still, she has the troubling feeling of being watched and it feels important to listen to that instinct even though she's quite aware it might simply be her own anxieties at play.

The storm is getting worse anyway, and she doesn't really want to be out when it reaches its height, so she trots off towards home, unaware that the danger is anything more than perceived.

[survivalthroughhate]

Maul follows the wolf, able to keep up fairly easily even if the beast is swift and has a very large amount of stamina. All that matters right now is to kill her. It's an overwhelming and encompassing thought in his mind, very reminiscent of the way he used to be back when he would be sent to kill someone for his master. There's a reason Maul describes the way he was back then as being an assassin. He had a "mission mindset" where nothing mattered but succeeding in his goals.

His kills in both Deerington and Trench have been far more personal but now he's been brainwashed into that mindset again. He'll achieve the goal here and then....well, the chocolate won't allow him to think that far ahead.

When he sees Willow starting to head for home, he knows he can't wait any longer. He gets ahead of her, making sure it's in an area that's thick with trees and brush so it will be harder for her to run off when she sees that it's him. He waits for her to enter this part of the woods. Then he'll do what he's meant to do: kill.

[frogfear]

The trot turns to an easy lope as the storm begins to kick up. The snow starts coming down harder and thicker, making it more difficult to see and smell. The wind whistles through the trees with an eerie howl, and through it she thinks she hears the rustle of some moving not far from her, and it spooks her into a flat out run.

She dashes through the trees and the thick underbrush, heedless of the racket she's making as she goes. It's slower going, but it feels like the more direct route.

She bursts through into a clear patch and freezes as she finally catches his scent on the wind. She goes stone still, as the fur on the back of her neck begins to rise.

She lifts her head and sniffs the air, trying to pinpoint exactly where he is so she can decide what to do next. She thinks she could outrun him a short distance, but probably not that far. She could try to run, but she doesn't think she can get far enough before he would catch up, like he almost did that day nearly a year ago when she and Radar galloped full tilt through the street in Deerington to the safety of TRUST.

Her hackles go up and a low, rumbling growl rises from her throat in a desperate attempt to warn him to leave her alone. This is different from Deerington. Simply escaping isn't an option this time.

He is between her, and the safety of the grounds of the mansion.

He is close.

cw: death by breaking someone's neck

[survivalthroughhate]

Maul waits for Willow to come nearer. He can hear her warning growl, which he ignores, and can hear the sound of her paws carrying her nearer to him. He waits, silent, until she is close. Then he steps out right in front of her, almost close enough that he could have touched her as she passed by if he had wanted to.

He uses the Force to pull her right into his grasp, grabbing tight hold of her furry body. Despite any wriggling around or snapping jaws that make be coming his way, Maul moves forward with his plan. He places both hands around her neck and twists it sharply to the right until he hears her neck snap. She's dead within moments.

Maul lets the wolf's body drop back to the ground and it's only then that the haze of the vanilla chocolate lifts from his mind and he's forced back into reality with a very rude awakening. No! No no no no no! He didn't want to kill Willow and had given his word that he wasn't going to. Now he has broken his promise, something that make a crushing sensation feel like it's pressing down upon his mind. Maul's thoughts crank into overdrive. He knows after the network post he made and the drama that had resulted from it that no one will believe this wasn't deliberate and on purpose. He's fucked this up but good.

If nothing else, people need to be warned about this. He can at least do that much. He stumbles out of the clearing as the falling snow washes away any footprints he might have left and heads for home, knowing that he's reached a very low point. After everyone he cared about has believed in him, stuck by him through everything, he's gone and betrayed both them and everything that he'd learned from them, all the small ways he'd started to become a better person.

cw: death of a magic animal/person in animal form

[frogfear]

He steps out in front of her, and the growl turns into a snarl as she bares her teeth. He's too close - far too close, turning to run would just expose her back to him and give him even more of an opportunity to strike than he already has.

Ford's teleportation talisman is tucked safely in the palm of Willow's hand as she sleeps warm in her bed, with the blankets pulled up to her chin, she's kept it close, even in the house, just in case. It doesn't matter. She can't use even blood magic in this form anyway.

Sinking realization hits hard that this was a mistake - it was reckless to go out on her own, even in this form where she is far faster and far more alert to her surroundings, and the consequences of that choice are going to be dire.

Willow thinks of Tara, of Ozpin, of John, and the rest of them - her family and friends that she loves so much. Even if it's only Oscar and Ozpin in the house that she's called family to their faces so far, she loves the rest of them as well.

They might not be here, but they help her dig deep. She cannot - she will not - go down without a fight.

She launches herself at him, a mass of bristling fur and fangs, even as the Force takes hold to guide her straight to his arms. It's not lost on her what's about to happen, and this time, she feels the same undercurrent of rage and power simmering deep within that rose in her as she made her threat on the network.

She gives into it, and something snaps inside her and so does she. She turns into a flailing mass of teeth and claws, ripping and tearing at any part of him she can possibly sink her teeth into, but it's all cloth. She fights with everything she has to try to twist in his arms. She just needs to get at his throat, and this will be all over once and for all. She will make good on her threat. She will kill him, and she will obliterate whatever's left, even if it means lingering in this form over his body so she can end his squid form over, and over again.

Except she doesn't. His hands find her neck, and it's over before she even has time to process what's happening. The body drops to the ground as he releases it, and after a moment, it begins to glow with the same soft golden glow it did when it absorbed back into Willow's body the night he saved her from the Sleeper Farm. It follows him for a time, through the trees, as though haunting him for what he's done. As he reaches the edge of the forest, it merely dissipates into the morning light.