Someone Kick Me Out of My Mind [L Lawliet, Open]

[hearthebell]

Who: Lazarus Sauveterre (L Lawliet) and YOU
What: Dreamwalking!
When: Following the events of Fated Leviathan, where most of the people he's on good terms with perished. He's playing the odds and trying to find a way, in dreams, it all could have turned out better, or at least with a lower death count.
Where: His body is technically in Cassandra, but for roughly the first week in March, your dreams are fair game. Either that or choose one of my starters, no harm no foul. I worked hard on them!
Content Warnings: Drug use to induce sleep, intentional evasion from detection while on sleep drugs. Various probable types of dream-violence and disturbing scenarios, including tiger attacks, environmental exposure, and nuclear detonation and fallout. If new prompts bring new content I'll update this.



[It was astonishing. It was visceral, and horrific, and then it was over. The carnage and receding waves were quiet enough, but there was a roaring in the ears of the survivors, or maybe it just sounded that way to the man who was perfect at his job in every way and still failed to keep those he tried to protect from death.

He leaves his things, taking only the clothes on his back and his anxiously bobbing orca whale omen with him when he starts off at a brisk pace toward Trench from the ruined aftermath of the beach's battle. He wants distance from it, and his steps take him to Cassandra, where he takes care to ensure that he's able to sneak into the Pale Sanctuary and conceal himself to swallow a fistful of herbs, and fall, and slumber and brace and dream in the way that he can take hold of the power he couldn't, there on the beach when the fighters were falling.

The tents are in their rows, the waves rear toward the sand. The players are arranged like chess pieces before him, and he can nudge Paul one way, Chara another, playing with Palamedes or Kaworu. They are just pieces, just pawns, but the arrangement could make all the difference, in the end.

The waves crash; the pawns die. L scrabbles in the sands of the dream, forgiving and elastic, rearranging them and bringing everyone back.]

Again!

[And there they are, back, affable and fierce in different measures. Yuri has made cake; Gideon is training by the waves.

More die, this time, including those that L saw alive and well when he left. Among them, a certain orange-haired and cheerful volleyball player is lying motionless and pale on the blood-stained sand.]

Again!

[This time, he moves his position. This time, many of the same die, and he does, as well, a casualty to shrapnel piercing through the tent.]

Again...

[And so it goes, for a hundred, a thousand iterations. L is tireless and determined, but some resource is waning, and his omen tugs at him, concerned for his sanity.]

No, Lycka, I...!

[She knows better, as she tends to in cases like these. Her jaws pull him by his jacket from his own dream into another, and this is where his fixations end, and something else entirely begins.

Who are you? What are your dreams like? If this Paleblooded, lost soul has chanced into your unconscious visions, what might he find, as his body languishes in Cassandra and his omen picks up the pieces of his fragmented mind?]

1. The Wild Jungle

[The air around you is heavy and humid. Unseen in the dense bush, the circle of life is rapid and repellent. Thrums and screeches announce the arrival of swift death, in various measures that one might or might not notice. A jaguar's kill, the soft extinguishment of a beetle, and they all weave themselves into the teeming tapestry that surrounds you in this quintessential rainforest.

You might be standing to fight, or running away. It doesn't matter, because a thin man with shaggy, dark hair who looks wide-eyed and younger than he should is beside you, closer than either of you want. He hands you a blunderbuss, an old weapon with a flared muzzle.]

The infrasound is what does it; the tiger is the voice darker than night.

[And, in fact, a growl chills and freezes you, splitting your chest asunder with a sound so low that your ears don't register it, but the atoms of your body react with cold, foreboding dread.]

2. The Stormy Desert

[A crack of thunder splits the sky above you before you've managed to recognize your dream's locale. You might hope for rain; so do the scorpions and long-tailed mice, the snakes in their dens and the cacti in their proud and stoic stature.

It won't rain. You can wish, and cry, and curse, but only the thunder will growl and thrash. The lightning may strike, so watch your head; stay low to the sand and find shelter if you can.

If you do, along the side of a cliff facing the west where the sun set rosy before the clouds rolled in, there is a young man with sunburned cheeks. His eyes are red, as though he's been staring at the sun, or it's been raining somewhere private and inward.]

I've been collecting scorpion venom. What for, I don't remember. But I have so much. What's the point of finding a cure when everyone is already dead?

3.The Grimy City

[The crowds are mostly faceless; when they aren't, they're grotesque, likely to sport the visages of rats or roaches rather than anything remotely humanlike. They actively shove you and trip you, doing their best to jostle you toward the entrance of a subway, and no matter how strong you are the impulse is incredibly difficult to resist.

You walk (or tumble) down the subway stairs. The tollbooth is manned by a young man with unruly dark hair, who seems determined to hear his headphones in spite of your desire to gather the attention of the one human-seeming creature in this dream.]

What? No, I can't hear you. Speak louder, please, I'm losing you!

4.The Nuclear Wasteland

[A brilliant flash lights the daytime sky; you might be blinded, or perhaps you had the good fortune to blink at the time. A roiling cloud rises in the sky, top-heavy and triumphant, blossoming into boiling and dusty vapor that will fall back to earth and condemn everything still living.

Perhaps you're staggering. Perhaps you're already feeling the fallout on your hair and shoulders. Perhaps you are sitting, forlorn and accepting, as the sirens blare and the screams fade. Regardless, someone has seized you bodily by your upper arms, hauling you into a shelter, spinning the vault's circular lock and wrapping you in a desperate embrace.]

I'm so glad. I thought you were lost... I thought I was the only one left.

[And he holds you, and holds you, with those frail and thin arms that clutch with the strength that only a dying or very guilty man might possess.]

V. Wildcard

[What did you dream about? If L is there, let me know and prompt this option to the moon and stars!]

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

[With anyone else, there might be space for denial. There might be a sliver of doubt for Paul to negotiate with, for him to refuse. But it's Lazarus, with his thrumming canted gearwork genius, and if he couldn't find the alternative-

(There was nothing anyone could have done.)

Paul is silent as he's pressed close by slim (wasted) arms, his own finding their way around Lazarus' back to circle loosely. He is a machine with slit hydraulics, all his motive force leaking out of him; he is a cut-string puppet, tossed aside by a weary child. There should be a sense of feeling in him at this revelation, he thinks. He reaches for one, for anything at all.

In the distance, the horizon rolls like waves.]

How long have you been looking?

[The question surfaces from some black-surfaced well, unanticipated and unbidden. It seems important. It must be, for him to ask it.]

[hearthebell]

[That horizon looms, and threatens. For now, L just holds, the best anchor he's had in... what? Hours, days?

He doesn't know how to answer Paul's question, and for a moment, his sunburned face just stares. He takes a slow, deep breath, as if testing what his body can do somewhere, before releasing it carefully for the very same reason.]

However long it's been since the Leviathan was vanquished, Paul.

[He's not sorry. He's seen a thousand iterations; though he doesn't say so, it can probably be inferred.]

Knowing was most important to me. I couldn't help you, and... now I understand better, why. That counts for something.

[terriblepurpose]

Not so long.

[Lazarus' breath draws Paul's along in near-sync, without conscious thought needing to intervene. He remembers clear, still water, black drifting sand settling. He remembers ripples over smooth grey stone. He remembers warm rain, a cloak draped over a bowl of ash.]

When we met, I was doing the same thing. Trying to solve the past.

[His Winter Mournings, lashed together by bloodied hope. The fortuitous impulse to stop, instead of hurrying past a stranger. A pair of hands that had tied a tiny noose, that would one day turn to solving Paul's locked dreams, that would one day hold him here. If fate goes one way, does it also go the other?]

I never found a way out.

I never find a way out.

[hearthebell]

[The physical connection that comes with their Bond is truly a double-edged blade. What forced L to feel death at other times allows him to feel this kind of blissful synchronization. He craved it for a lifetime (albeit a short one), never finding what he was looking for, but this is real, and true, and now.]

That's good.

[It means there's time, he doesn't say. It means that whatever happens, you can't blame me for obliterating myself. If that happens, anyway... it started, at least, with the very best intentions.]

Doesn't it all depend on what you're looking for? Maybe this is where you're supposed to be, right now.

[And L, too, by extension. Lycka kicked him for a reason. Lycka didn't want him to wake up mad, and neither does Paul, surely.]

[terriblepurpose]

[It's a thought that aches hollowly as Paul stays settled against Lazarus, breathing slowly. The rainless storm rages on, the sands still shift, the unsteady world spins on, but here, perhaps, Paul is where he's supposed to be. At least right now.]

Do you think so?

[His voices rustle like paper leaves as he adjusts his boneless slump into a slightly more self-supported curling, past caring and self-consciousness. He might as well stick his fingers in his mouth to suck, instead of sinking them into the front of Lazarus' shirt.

His stilsuit is more comfortable to the touch that it looks, nearly organic, blood-warm. It bends with him like a second skin, and he does not think of sharks.]

Do you know?

[hearthebell]

[Paul's presence and the physical contact that comes with it is grounding and tethering. Though L's exposed skin is sunburned and tender, he's as covered as he usually is, so that essentially means his face, his hands, his neck down just past his jutting collarbones.

Even if he was covered with horrendous burns, third degree, skin sloughing away painfully, he'd probably linger here, selfishly soaking up something positive and gentle through touch.]

I think so.

[He confirms what he can, honestly. Of course he doesn't know, unless Paul is asking something else, in an extremely oblique way. Something about the man he names The Captain, perhaps, with eyes that devour light and a detached coldness that can mend or destroy with little more than a thought?

He responds to Paul's curling into himself with discreet pity. Unthinking, his arms go around him, outfitting him with a bony shell in addition to his stilsuit.]

What I know is that... if getting out means getting through, you've always possessed the resilience that requires. You're not going to spend your life running away, and you're not going to die so that others can stand on your shoulders and build on that death. You'll meet things head-on, and survive.

[Even the dangerous things; even the things that are blackly charismatic, that play on your need for approval and your hunger for acknowledgment and prestige.]

What would it take for you to turn away, or to let someone else meet those things head-on? I ask... trusting you, but still needing to know where a limit exists.

[Or whether it does, at all. What is he dealing with, with a man who would be called God?]

[terriblepurpose]

[Lazarus' arms feel real around Paul's back. They feel heavier than they are, more binding. They feel like echoes of his own arms, nervous systems entangled across space and through the dream.

He says I think so, and Paul is grateful that he doesn't lie. He is grateful that he is still himself, as honest as clarifying acid, as truthful as a skinning knife. You'll meet things head-on, and survive, and he's right. Paul does, he will.

He asks about Paul's limits, and something cold curls against the aperture of his brain stem in his skull. His mouth tastes, for reasons he does not understand, of caramel. It sticks between his teeth.]

I don't know, yet.

[Truth over solace in lies, Paul thinks, the abyss of it cold and endless beneath him, but as long as he keeps drifting above it, he can bear it. As long as he thinks of a warm, inexorable hand on his other shoulder, heavy with promise.]

I look, and I can't see them. I look in the ocean, and I look in death, and they're not there, but they must be.

[Like the sheets of rain that will not fall, hushed and vast.]

Will you help me find them, Lazarus? The limits?

[hearthebell]

[The aching truth and realness of dreams is a blessing and a curse to palebloods, perhaps. Someone who desires those things while balking at their glare in the waking world might be tempted to dream too much and too deeply and cleave to it others cleave to shelter and love.

Paul being here reminds L of what he's trying so hard for.]

I have to.

[He blinks, seeming surprised that Paul even asked, given how obvious that is.]

It's not your fault. Most people are too close to themselves to see their own limits.

[He's so good at finding things, he thinks, because he's not too close to anything at all.]

I'm also not the only person looking out for you.

[Just maybe the most paranoid.]

[terriblepurpose]

It's not my fault.

[Words returned in soft wonder, as gauzy as lesser dreams than this one. Paul discovers his eyes can close, still, so he closes them. He listens to Lazarus' heartbeat, that red-shelled tidal pulse.

He hears it from other voices. He reads it in other hands. He feels it on his back, in his hands, in the myriad throbs of myriad other hearts.]

I know. I see you all. You're there. You're there for me.

[There to watch over, there to absolve, there to cradle him in a dozen arms and soothe him in a dozen voices, and it's all for him. It's not his fault, they tell him, and who is he to say no?]

Am I here for you?

[Under his skin, light traces his bloodstream, dances in flickering sparks at the tips of his fingers and in the curve of his throat.]

[hearthebell]

[The burden of responsibility weighs heavily on Paul, leaking into nearly every aspect of his life. Gentle exoneration might be what he needs from the various individuals who have taken on delegation roles, gladly and out of genuine affection and respect for the teenager who seems always to have some deep thought or some pressing duty.

L understands how it is, because deep thoughts and pressing duties are his raison d'etre. Paul's part of that now, too, because Paul deserves a future that doesn't run charred into the ground.

Paul still has that chance.]

I'm the wrong one to ask. I'm not an easy person, to be there for.

[He'd come to Cassandra with a mission, or at least that's what he'd told himself. He'd left something else behind all too gladly, as well as other survivors. Had Shoyo cried alone there on the beach? He doesn't know; he was too busy numbly swallowing as many sleeping herbs as he could so he could steep in the abyss and obsess over it.]

That's also not your fault, Paul.

[terriblepurpose]

[Lazarus' hands had fashioned a noose when they first met, when left idle with string. Paul thought that this dream might be another of the same knot, and he'd wondered, as he did then, who it might be for.

He draws himself up inside Lazarus' arms, pushes back with one flattened palm on Lazarus' sternum so that he can look at him. The lightning has left his eyes. They glow a color that Lazarus of all people, with his depth and breadth of knowledge, will know: Cherenkov blue, physics' ghost, the drowned light of nuclear fission.]

Yes, you are.

[Paul looks at him with fascination written everywhere it stays legible beyond the creeping spread of that light through the tracery of veins around his eyes, bleeding through the thick artery of his tongue now visible behind his teeth. He reaches out for Lazarus' burned face with flaring fingertips that cast no shadows, but stops short.]

You think you want so much. [The choir says, in the resonance of the deep ocean trenches, wondering.] You think you need so much. You think I don't know how to give, and you don't know how to take.

[Lazarus is here for him. He came to the desert for Paul, in his wanderings - his hermit, his wise man, his mentat - to give of himself, whatever the price. To fetch back the deep and terrible knowing for Paul, so he could take the fault from him, and Paul's heart hangs like a star behind the dark bars of his ribs.]

Lazarus. Why don't you dream of rain?

[Paul smiles, like someone who knows a wonderful secret. He looks out towards the desert, the way that he sees it, a wilderness of unblossomed possibility.

He waves his hand. The sky opens and falls in great silvered sheets, crashing into the sand like the sea itself, and Paul still smiles, even as the hot scent of scorching metal floods the air almost as thickly as that of blood-warm salt-rain.]

[hearthebell]

[L stares for a moment at the hand at his very center, resting on his heart's bony shield. For a moment it looks odd and alien, but perhaps only in the context of anything at all being so near him, so willing and even intimate in its engagement. For many, "platonic" would mean an inoculation forever against intimacy... but such a person must not know that intimacy isn't only reserved for lovers.

Such a person must not know much at all.

He swallows the thickness in his throat, meeting Paul's overbright radiation eyes with his own that are still slate, still liquid dark in in the cloudy desert and so very tired. The only light inside of them at all comes from Paul, those flecks of mesmerizing, fatal blue.

He blinks, feeling seen, again, in the way that makes heat creep into his already scorched cheeks. The trick, he wants to say, is telling yourself often that you need nothing at all, and want nothing at all, until you believe that it's true, because something that's starved long enough is never hungry again.

He doesn't say it, but it lives restlessly in his liquid-dark eyes, shrinking from the blue light and curling up where there are no stars.

Already wide eyes stretch rounder at Paul's question. Oh, he means it so mercifully, doesn't he?]

Paul...

[The storm, for all the nourishment and quenching it promises this parched land, was always a perilous thing, and now, that roaring has found them.

L stands and tries to haul Paul to his feet alongside him. Higher ground will be a must, shortly; the downpour is coming down so dense and thick that it's actually a challenge to stand and remain upright.]

Come on!

[I don't dream of rain, because drowning always came too easily to me, and loving what would sink and silence me. That's why; that's why.]

You have to!

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul comes to his feet at Lazarus' urging without hesitance, that slight, kind smile still upon him despite the lashing violence of the rain. When Lazarus charts a direction towards high ground, Paul is a ready follower, easily guided, and in the darkening downpour he is as faithfully illuminating as a lighthouse.]

I'm with you.

[His voices are gentle and endless. They shouldn't be audible in the thrashing tumult of rising waters, but they shouldn't be at all, so what is one more barrier breached?

(He is not himself. He is something else, sometimes, more and more. His body twists on a borrowed bed, pulsing infinitesimal cell-slitting unlight that casts no shadow.)]

And you're all right, if you're with me.

[There is water at his knees, slick and black. On its surface float the lunar-disc strands of ever-seeking fungi, of limitless, colonizing growth. The ambient warmth of the desert, what there was of it, is gone. It's cold here, as cold as the depths of the last dark place that Paul bled light in. But there are no monsters here, no gaping maws and ancient yearning hungers.

There's just him, and Lazarus.]

I won't drown you. [Soft, unfurling.] Do you believe me?

[hearthebell]

[At least Paul isn't putting up a fight, or insisting that the rain is the friend as it pools around their ankles and grows, by the second, more difficult to walk through. As thirsty as the sand is, it grows saturated quickly. Little burrows fill, and soon they will be swimming for their lives with all the little lizards and mice.

"Just a dream", after all, isn't only that for a dreamwalker. It's more, and so very fraught.

There's a plateau in view (because where on Lazarus' map wouldn't give him some way to survive?) He leads Paul along like a kite on a string in his sure and ethereal reverie, feeling down-to-earth and grubby in comparison. He's already thinking of where they might go, and what they might do if the rains don't stop before the plateau is covered. Lycka's still nowhere in sight, splintered away from his soul by this ordeal.

Whoever, or whatever, Paul is here, L is committed to scrambling and working and double-covering bases.]

Climb.

[A curt command, and he starts, pressing a hand into the clay-like rock before following shortly with one of the beaten sneakers on his feet. Anything to get away faster from the water and the floating fungus.

Just one step up, he looks back at Paul and hears his wholly earnest claim.

What does one say when he trusts no one, really, believes no one, really, is all right with no one, really?]

I... believe you'd never try to do that.

[Another handhold. Paul can follow; L can find and test, ginger and slipping against the pelting rain.]

[terriblepurpose]

[From an abstract remove, Paul watches Lazarus climb the way he works every puzzle: swiftly methodical, without the burden of such indecision as wrecks Paul on its rocks. He sees his course and takes it. It's a preoccupying thought that slows Paul's reaction to the order to join him, but then he is at Lazarus' side, fingers hooked to a thin outcropping.

He looks at Lazarus with eyes that subside at the answer. He answers with voices that turn inward in communion with each other, self-reflection turned to self-echo.]

But I did, didn't I?

[His stilsuit is water-heavy, sopping, but it's no obstacle to his ascent. He finds handholds and footholds as easily as scaling a ladder, this plateau not so different from the grey cliffs of Caladan.

He always loved the storms more than the calms.]

I drowned you, when I died.

[hearthebell]

[Even in dreams, L can't shrug off the limitations of a body that runs on sinew and will and not much else. It's not long before Paul has caught up to him; if Paul's pace remains steady he'll be overtaken entirely.

L continues to climb, dogged and determined to make up for what he lacks in nimbleness and strength.

He doesn't expect Paul's question, though he probably should. His hand slips, nails digging in, and he slides a few dizzy feet before he catches himself and regains his hold. Panting and shaking with adrenaline, it's a moment before he can answer.]

You're not the one who walked away from that drowning; I did.

[Only to lie down and slip under at the Pale Sanctuary, but L takes full responsibility for that more metaphorical drowning. He takes full responsibility for most of what's hurt him; even if an attempt on his life was blatant and intentional, he's always understood why it was made.

Mistakes happen; pieces get taken to serve a greater end. His admiration for the game eclipses his need for altruistic love or acceptance, or else he'd have lain down a long time ago.

He reaches up for another hold with a hand that has a few ragged and bleeding nails. Can Paul feel them in the dream? Have they shown up on his body in the waking world?

He starts to climb again.]

Drowning, I can abide; I just hate to lose.

[terriblepurpose]

[Leaving Lazarus behind would be intolerable. It would defeat the purpose of any of this, of all of it, a purpose that glints inside Paul's blood like the alchemical miracle of bronze. There's something to prove here almost in his reach of understanding, something about synergy, about mirrors.

But he can't help him climb. Not in any way that would help beyond his hand reaching out to steady him when he slips, and waiting for him when he hesitates, waiting for him as he regains those precious lost feet. The water still rises, seething with yearning for their heels, but they're still ahead. Just.]

So do I.

[His hands do ache. His body throbs with exhaustion under the radiant light, the suffusion of both in his blood easing one and dimming the other. There's a clarification in pain that he's learning to use, since it seems that it's one of the few things this world is generous with.]

I didn't want to lose. I didn't want to lose any of you.

[Less light, as if the rain at this height is enough to dim it. Paul hugs against the plateau and looks at Lazarus with wide, discernible eyes no longer lost in illumination.]

Come on. Almost there.

[hearthebell]

[Willpower can compensate for physical weakness, here; dreams, after all, are driven by mental strength over muscle and brawn. Willpower is also a finite resource, however, and slipping here might mean that in his exhaustion, it's starting to flag.

Fortunately, pain invigorates him the same way when he's so near his platonic Bonded. He can outlast this flood; he redoubles his efforts, not speaking for the moment, because he needs his breath for upward motion.

At the top of the plateau, he rests for a moment on his elbows, his face close to the rain-pelted rock. When he has the breath again, he speaks.]

Lycka will be able to see me up here, at least... that's my hope. We keep getting separated in the jumps.

[terriblepurpose]

[The rain is harsher here, elevated and exposed. Paul kneels at Lazarus' side and tips his head back as he waits, his eyes closed against it, and his eyes ache with its relentlessness.]

Do you think she'll be able to see me, like this?

[No one ever sees me, but he could be wrong. He has wanted, does want, so badly to be wrong. There is nothing so lonely as not being seen.

So he turns, still gleaming, to his guide.]

Would she have found us, without the water?

[The question comes to him unbidden; it weighs on his tongue like a teaching, though it isn't one.]

Would we rise, without the flood?

[hearthebell]

[He covers his face with his hands. The light, dim and stormy as it is, is too bright; he is tired, he wants it to cease and fall away like so many rags and ribbons.]

Of course she will...

[As though it's presupposed, absurd to even consider otherwise. He reaches for Paul with thin fingers, holding him around his wrist.]

The flood was necessary, I'm nearly certain.

[Or else how could she swim? He thinks it's true; he wants it to be, as the rain continues to pelt down.]

It's your dream, so you should be OK, whatever happens to me.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul's hand curls over Lazarus' circling fingers, anchoring them in place - or capturing them, depending on interpretation, and he should be able to decide. He should already know, by instinct, by reason, which it is.

Does it matter which, when they take him to the same conclusion? He thinks that it should matter; he thinks that he should know why it does. But Lazarus says whatever happens to me, and Paul's grip tightens convulsively, blue plasmic light flickering in his veins.]

That's not true.

[His voice is worse; the words are even more so, the abstraction of his dream-tugging blood tattered with slicing urgency.]

Why would you say that? Why would you say that?

[He's clinging hard enough to hurt, and he knows that because it does.]

[hearthebell]

[The emotions are so large, here, that they are nearly beasts, huge and incredible and potentially very destructive. L's eyes widen and he instinctively pulls away, but not hard enough to break Paul's grip on him.

It's the grip of a boy afraid of losing someone. It moves him, though he can seem to be made of stone at times. Paul has a way of doing that.]

Because it's true!

[Sharply, almost harshly.]

There's a beach. It's beautiful and terrible. That's my home dream and I have to get back to it, or...

[He struggles for a moment, with how to balance gentleness and urgency.]

I know how all of this works. I could replicate it all, except I didn't expect to leave my dream the moment I did.

[The memory of something hot, getting hotter, hurting before Lycka threw him and saved him.]

If I don't get back there, I won't wake up. I'll drown, Paul.

[Probably, he'll slip into a coma and last as long as his body does, taking in no food or water, tucked close to the wall under a short couch in an infrequently used chamber.]

I'll make it, alright? But you have to... let me, you have to let me.

[terriblepurpose]

[The more that Lazarus speaks, the less of Paul that can be seen. It's not only the blossoming return of obscuring light alone that veils him, but an alteration of expression, a growing still remoteness that refuses recognition even more than the proliferation of fungi.

But then Lazarus turns to reassurance, to coaxing, like Paul is a child being unreasonable, and some brittle flaw reveals itself in the forming mask as it cracks and falls away - and there he is, a child being unreasonable, his mouth twisted around the shape of unspoken no.]

You have to come back.

[But what comes forth isn't denial, or a plea, or the desperate, forceless command of someone without any power to enforce their will through it. It's a flattened statement of fact, like an omen, like a grim prognosis.

Paul releases Lazarus' wrist, and something ripples as a shadow under the gleam of his blood, roils across the whole of his hand. He pays it no attention.]

[hearthebell]

[L squints against the rain, wondering for a moment if the Sun has slipped from behind the clouds and made a home in Paul, here to blind him while attempting to light his way.

Stop; you don't have to damage this, and us. You can make something whole by healing it, however counterintuitive it feels.]

I aim to. My guide has found me again.

[Sure enough, a dorsal fin cuts through the floodwater. He turns with one more backward glance at Paul as she darts closer to the plateau, the water so high now it's almost lapping at the top.]

Trust me?

[Paul can spare it, he thinks, the corner of his eye catching that strange, squirming shadow in Paul's hand. Paul can spare the gentle grace and let him leap.]

[terriblepurpose]

[Lycka's silhouette recalls the last dreams for Paul, the harbingers of the destruction that brought this storm upon them. He traces her cutting through the waves and thinks of how she bore him up in water, pulled him time and again back through an open door to the waking world.

And Lazarus would be there waiting when he came through it.]

I trust you.

[It's a trust he's earned crouched at Paul's side, a pale gargoyle keeping watch over his nightmares and the things in them. He let Paul dive. Paul owes him the same. He curls his hands into fists over his knees, and braces for the plunge.]

Tell me when you find the door.

[He bows his head under the rain, his hair falling sodden across his pale blue gaze.]

May you swim in strange waters.