OPEN log; and forgive us our trespasses

[paterelohim]

Who: Chuck Shurley and YOU
When: anytime from May 23rd onward
Where: your character's dreams
Summary: Dream-creeping for absolution of guilt and plague relief.
Warnings: TBA

[Chuck knows there's only one way to really cure people of this disease. He starts creeping into dreams, starting very early Wednesday morning. It's as easy as going to sleep and slipping quietly into a dream, even if he doesn't recognize the dreamer, as naturally as if he were an extension of their own subconscious.

But he isn't nice about it.

They get nightmares: called up images of whatever festers at the dark center of their conscience. A vivid recollection of what's keeping them sick, so He might learn about it, make them confront it, and talk them through it like their own personal Yoda or Jiminy Cricket.

They might find themselves caught in it, only for a hand to reach out to them and yank them from the horror into a much calmer dream- Chuck's hand. They might have Chuck standing beside them, watching the horror, only for it to melt away. They might find themselves sitting on a couch with him, watching the memory on TV. There are a thousand possibilities.

No matter what, all the dreams will (hopefully) end the same: with Chuck slipping away, having given them (hopefully) some internal forgiveness and the kind of absolution that only comes from God.]


((OOC: so obviously, Chuck is wandering through giving out absolution with his God-powers. Every thread might NOT end in total forgiveness or absolution, depending on the severity of your character's guilt AND how cooperative with the conversation your character is- but everyone who comments WILL at least show improvement of symptoms. Unless we OOC-ly work out something else, I would really strongly prefer that your character NOT remember that Chuck specifically was in their dream.

If you comment, please put their name and the date/time in the subject line, and describe the source of their guilt in the comment. Chuck will show up in an already))

Comments

Christina Nickson; May 23rd

[worldhaditsway]

[This was once a beautiful town.

You can tell that just from the bare bones of it. A ruined carnival sits on a beach that looks like it's been torn apart by a hurricane and waves lick across the destruction as tenderly as a lover's hand, as boats burn in the harbor. Piers lay shattered, the wood splintered and reaching up like the bones of a dozen soldiers reaching to God for salvation before their lives were ended. Cracks line the middle of the streets where the earth moved and attempted to rip the entire city apart to cast into the depths of hell, only to stop and say not yet. Everyone has fled. It's empty, a ghost town, a shadow of what it used to be.

A path of destruction leads to what used to be a church. The broken beams heaped together to form a makeshift pyre that forms a misshapen cross. The body of a boy is lashed to it, held together by wires that might well have been torn from the discarded organ. In place of nails, his hands are pinned by thick, ugly pieces of jagged stained glass. His bloodied head is bowed and in his chest, an elegant dagger is buried to the hilt.

All around him broken pews lay circled, like outdoor theater seating. On one of them sits a girl.

She wears a white dress and her blonde hair is in curly tangles. She has bowed her head and she is praying, tumbling over the words so fast they're just a blur. She recites every prayer she knows by heart, because for all that she is a monster, a bastard child of a demon most foul, she was raised to know these prayers- more than likely so that she might live to see the folly of them.

Her voice cracks halfway through the 23rd Psalm and she stares up at heaven with eyes watery with unshed tears.] What's the point? Why would you ever listen to me?

[paterelohim]

[Somewhere else is a man, picking his way through the wreckage as easily as walking up bleachers, his hands in his pockets. Chuck walks up to her quietly, sitting down a little ways down Christina's pew and folding his hands contemplatively. It's a long moment of utter quiet before he speaks.]

I don't think he really listens to anyone. It's not just you.

[worldhaditsway]

[Christina blinks a few times in vague recognition, but then turns away, as if she's ashamed that anyone else is actually sitting in on this.] Yeah, that's completely reassuring. Jesse died for a God who didn't care who actually won that night.

[paterelohim]

Well, you know, at least he's in good company.

[He's not looking at her- at least staring at his hands gives her that thin film of privacy.]

I mean if you think about it, all the good soldiers ever... every martyr... Personally, I don't understand why people take it personally. It's not like God is ignoring just them because they kicked enough puppies to deserve it, you know?

Jubilee; May 24th

[thelittlestbub]

[There are things she doesn't remember. She remembers running from LA, and telling Angelo they'd meet up in the Rockies. She remembers getting off the bus. She remembers Angelo telling her to run.

And she remembers hearing him scream as they crucified him. She remembers the feeling as if her hands were set on fire and then plunged into arctic waters of her own hands being staked to that cross.

And she remembers, standing over his grave and being told he can't spend eternity there because he was a mutant. She remembers having to stand over his grave as he was dug up, and watch him rise out of the ground after being in it because of bigots who didn't even get his name right. (Torres? TORRES?)

She's sitting on a cliff, near a very large mansion, with a huge lake below. The wind is blowing her hair and she's cradling an urn in her arms. Her hands are bare, and she's staring at the round scars on her palms. Crucifixion scars. Scars Angelo should have had... but he'd died.]

You told me, once, that you and the Elf talked. About how being a mutant reinforced your faith, because how can these powers be anything but a gift from God. You're full of shit, Ange. You're just... full of shit. Gifts aren't meant to tear apart families. They aren't meant to get you killed....

[She can't continue, tears sliding down her face. It shouldn't have been him in that urn. It should've been her. But he'd told her to run, and instead of standing with her friend, she'd run.]

[paterelohim]

[A voice sounds from nearby.]

Maybe it was a gift to him.

[Chuck some ten feet away, dressed for a funeral, hands in his pockets.]

What Galileo had was a gift, but it didn't do him many favors.

[thelittlestbub]

It's not a gift when you have to pretend to be dead, so your mother won't hate you.

[Angelo had done that.]

It's not a gift, when you can't even have a grave because of something weird in your genetics.

It's not a gift, when...

[The scenery changes... Crosses, hundreds of them. Containing mutants, including herself... crucified. All of them. They wear signs. some declaring that god hates evolution. Some saying that mutants are abominations.

Jubilee's hands start to bleed.]

[paterelohim]

[He looks at it with the slightly odd detachment of many dreams, like the two pieces aren't quite meeting in the middle. It's a horrifying scene, to be sure, but as much light as this casts on a lot of Jubilee's damage, it doesn't explain the situation at hand.]

You feel guilty about this?

Marco; May 25

[guerrilla_morph]

He will never forget the mountain summit.

The wind is impossible, pushing and whipping it's way in every direction, the air heated by Dracon beams firing at the Hork-Bajir - except it is only illusions, holograms projected by the Chee as an attempt to throw the Yeerks' scent off on the real Hork-Bajir valley.

And there he is, a mighty mountain goat, staring down at his mother and Visser One, one entity now.

He remembers the day when he and Mom talked about the New Hampshire license plate, or when she taught him the important lesson "it is easier to cry than to laugh". He remembers the time when she made him soup, how she tells him that she loves him forever. But Marco remembers Visser One, the woman who let him and his friends loose on the Blade Ship. He remembers the hammerhead project, with her telling his "Yeerk" to control him more.

< I love you, > he whispers and he lunges, to take Visser One out once and for all, to take out his own mother, she is just one life, one life against millions.

It is the right thing to do. The only way out.

[paterelohim]

Marco makes contact. There's no Jake to intercept him, no savior from above to take that choice away from him and give him the mercy of not having to kill his mother. No. Here he actually hits her and Chuck watches, standing off to the side, unseen in the middle of the war and pandemonium, and watches a child murder his mother to save the world.

There's no slow motion- not to him, at least. To Marco, maybe, time might slow down at the moment his rams' horns slam into Visser One's stomach, when she buckles almost in half and screams in pain. Maybe he will remember every millisecond of running those extra few steps and slamming to a halt with his hooves just edging over the cliff-brink. He might, but Chuck sees it at normal speed: a ram slamming at full speed into a small woman's stomach and sending her bleeding form flying off a cliff with nothing to catch her fall.

She seems to fall for an eternity, shrieking and terrified, before a single crack pierces through the chaos and brings nothing but silence. The instant Visser One hits the ground, unseen, everything and everyone around them melts away - the Hork-Bajir, the Chee, the Yeerk ship and Visser Three arriving soon and the Animorphs starting to converge in horror. It all vanishes in an instant, leaving only Chuck, Marco, and the silence.

When he starts stepping down the mountain, his footfalls and few displaced pebbles tumbling seem to echo hugely in the quiet.

Pretend this is a mountain goat icon

[guerrilla_morph]

She's gone.

Both of them: gone. It's over. The game is done, Marco as the winner.

So why does he feel as though he lost everything? What is it called, when a victory isn't a victory? Oh right: pyrrhic victory. That's what this feels to Marco.

And who wins, in the end? Visser Three? He's still alive. But the Hork-Bajir, the Chee, his friends, they are all alive -

where are they? Where is Jake and the others?

The silence is far more dangerous than the noise of death from above. Marco turns and he sees a man. Older man, with a beard and all. Boring, plain guy who probably spends more time in an university than his own house.

Marco stares at him through the eyes of the goat, unblinking as the man walks down the mountain, heading toward Marco's direction.

okay fine :|a

[paterelohim]

Chuck continues to wend his way down the mountain, until they're on the same level ledge, then stands there across from him, wind whipping around them. It's heart-breaking, what he sees here.

After a moment lapses in silence, he frowns at the goat, expression melting into earnest concern. "Marco... why are you crying?"

Frau, May 26/27

[ibreakrules]

[The darkness had swallowed Frau a long time ago. After the vicious fight with the empire that resulted in the death of all Frau knew, all of the sky pirates, the scythe had begun to consume him. The loss of those he cared about had turned him away from God. To the twelve year old Frau, God was dead. Forever he would hold himself at a distance.

And then Bastien had reached out to him. The pain in the ass bishop that had finally reaches through the barriers Frau had built around himself. Only Bastien had fallen to the darkness. A darkness almost as black as that which coiled around Frau. Once again Zehel's skeletal form was covered in red. The red of blood. Only this time it was the blood of someone Frau cared about.

Like Teito. According to him, Frau had failed. Somehow Ayanami had gotten his hands on Teito. Taken him, altered his memories, and brainwashed him. All because Frau hadn't been able to protect the kid.

And, in the process, Frau had failed in his other duty as well. He'd failed as Zehel. With Teito in Ayanami's hands, five of the seven seals had been broken. That too was Frau's fault. It bore on him heavily even though in his time it hadn't happened yet. But it would. It would...]

[paterelohim]

[Chuck does just enough dream-creeping to see what he can see, and then spins something beautifully familiar around them.

Purgatory. Chuck's washing glasses and Frau's checking his NV, and neither of them seem to notice that outside it's raining upside-down. Dream details.]

Was it really your fault?

[ibreakrules]

[Frau glances up from the NV, a little bit startled. He blinks at Chuck for a moment, confused.]

Was what my fault?

[paterelohim]

That stuff, all those people. [He gestures with a dishrag while going through the list.] Bastien, Teito, that scythe.

Sheila, May 26th

[gavesugar]

[The mildness of Sheila's illness has kept her from seeking out absolution; she figured that it would soon dissipate on its own. Sleepless nights have finally led her into fevered dreams.

Within them, she shivers wildly.

It's the face of her brother she sees, lingering there in the mist, an axe stuck straight through his face.]

[paterelohim]

[A hand touches her shoulder, and the scene changes messily to a restaurant in Siren's Port somewhere, and Chuck sitting there in a suit while sirens blare outside.]

Hi, Sheila.

[gavesugar]

[And what can Sheila do but scream at the suddenness of Chuck's touch? She screams. Loudly.]

I...Oh!

[She scrubs a hand across her face.]

I am sorry.

Jacob, May 26th

[corks]

[Life and death go hand in hand.]

[Jacob knows this. He knows this extremely well, due to his position back on the island, as a man (being? myth? even he doesn't know himself, after all these years) who is part of something that ties him to the rest of the world through golden threads and strands that only he can see and understand.]

[Yes, when there is life, there is death, and he stands, back on the island, a figure of white against the blue sky. And around him, lying discarded on the beach like worn toys in a kid's room, almost looking like they were all in a dream that would last forever and ever, are all the bodies of those whose deaths he was responsible for.]

[Because he had brought them to the island- without their permission, without their consent. He had brought them to prove a point against his brother, and they had all died. They all had failed to prove that point that Jacob so vehemently believed in, that people were inherently good and wouldn't resort to violence.]

[He turns away from the scene, but as far as the eye can see, there is a man or a woman or a child on the ground in front of him. Every single one of them dead. And it's his fault it's his fault it's all his fault. But that isn't the thing that gets to Jacob, oh no. Because as he casts his gaze over the beach around him, he sees two skeletons lying together which are much, much older than anything lying around him at the moment.]

[Oh, he knows those two well.]

[And, just like that, the wise man who stood at center of the spider web of the world is gone, and there's nothing but a child left. A child who was forced into a position he never wanted. And then he was left alone to deal with the weight of the world on his shoulders without even a sign or a way for him to follow. Out of everyone he brought to the island, he's the one who is most lost of all.]

[Life and death go hand in hand. And Jacob knows this. But knowing isn't always the same as accepting.]

[paterelohim]

[Standing in the midst of all that death, that child, yes, and looking as alone as the most far-flung island, the solitary eagle without a mate, a baby in a dumpster. Alone.

Out of the woods come whispers, phantoms. Voices hissing harsh judgments, gossiping with the vines and playing a discordant game of Telephone, broken voices rasping brokenly. It unmistakeably calls for Jacob. There, by the treeline, stands a man, bearded and solemn. Even as he gazes at the child it's obvious he's not real- in the same way Christian wasn't, and Yemi, and Locke at the end.

He looks at the child gravely.]

Jacob.

[corks]

[Jacob turns, expecting to see his brother walking out of the jungle, smiling that smile that the brother he remembered from when they were children never wore. But it isn't. There is no black smoke, no deathly apparition of people who had died on the island. Just a man. A man he doesn't know.]

[He snaps back to attention, and turns to look at this odd element with scrutiny and confusion. It's rare when Jacob doesn't understand what is going on, and this is one of those times. He frowns, feelings of frustration rising up in his usually calm mind. It is quite clear that he burns hot under all that outward coolness.]

Who are you?

The Doctor; May 27

[universaljanitor]

[Time. Time and Space and the Medusa Cascade. A young boy standing and staring into the very depths of the universe, knowledge and wonder filling every inch of his mind. The vastness of everything laid out right in front of him. Some are inspired, some run, and some go mad. Standing at the edge of the cliff, toes curled over the edge, a neverending abyss of knowledge and pain and wonder and love. Anything and everything that ever was and might and will be laid out ahead like a bottomless, twisting road.

That's what it's like in the Doctor's head. Thoughts and memories piled on top of each other, laid over one another delicately, so close they seem to touch and mingle, to mix and blend and yet they're separate, the slightest breeze able to carry one away. It's a mess of knowledge, of what he's learned of space and time, of wars and cultures and the names of all the stars in the universe. On the control of gravity and all the five billion languages he speaks fluently. There's so much crammed into every nook and cranny it's surprising anything can be added. And yet, there's still room. In some, unexplained way, there's still room.

Room enough for a planet, of hills of waving red grass, of skies of burnt orange, trees covered in shining silver leaves. Every time the wind rustles through the forest, they catch the color of the sky, and it looks like a beautiful rush of fire sweeping across the land. In the distance, surrounded by a sparkling, pristine bubble, is a city of spires and towers, nestled between two snow-capped mountains. A diamond in the middle of an expanse of rubies.

And there the Doctor stands, brown hair wild, brown coat with it's blue lining flapping in the breeze, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants, trainers denting into the grass, tongue being chewed between his teeth. The light of twins suns lights his skin, and as he shifts, just barely, it's as if there are others behind him, nine other faces, bodies, shifting as he shifts, each a fraction of a second behind. Afterimages, ghosts in the wind.

He doesn't dream often, because his dreams are full of fire, full of death and destruction, of faces he can never see again, of regrets and fears and all the pain spread in his wake.

The calm won't last. That much he knows. He always knows.]

[paterelohim]

[Chuck has to take some time with this one, sorting and searching and sifting the grain from the chaff just to find what he's looking for without overstepping and seeing too much. There's so much to see in there, and there's still room at the inn. Of course there's room- it doesn't surprise him in the least. Of course there's still room. Immortal minds are nothing like human ones. Human brains are only meant to go so long and hold so much: they strain, they filter, they start binning names and faces and high school geography to hold onto work details and grandchildren, and eventually they run out of room. A mind meant to go for millennia and longer is different. No filing cabinets here, no limited organ of neurons and straining axons struggling to process too much input, few limits. There are rooms and halls and gardens, there are worlds, lifetimes, ages. Sometimes, there are universes.

They're bigger on the inside. Chuck understands.

Soon enough he sees what he needs to in the tumble of memory, fire, smoke and diamond dust around the Doctor. Soon enough he's slipping out of the TARDIS itself, wonderful metaphor that she is, and running to catch up to him at the cliff-edge.]

Doctor! Hey- wow. [Stopping short next to him with a short-breathed gasp.] This is Gallifrey?

[universaljanitor]

[Sometimes, he finds himself wishing it wasn't so. That he wasn't one of those beings cursed to such a long life. That he hasn't had to sit by and watch time pass, to stare at the people he loved, the people he traveled with and see their lifetime ticking by, to stand watch as they seemed to wither and die right in front of him while he simply moved along, decades passing as seconds, centuries as minutes. Getting lost in the hurtle of time and coming back hundreds of years later, mindless and forgetting, for a moment, that this meant everyone he knew and loved was gone.

That he was alone.

Which is why it's strange, to him, to find someone so new to his life coming up to him right now. Someone he's had such a strange relationship with, in his months in the Port. Someone he's seemed to click with at some times, and rub the wrong way in others. So his head tilts towards Chuck as he approaches, brow pinching just barely in suppressed confusion.

But who is he to pretend to understand his subconscious? It's surprised him time and time again, brought up little threads of memory he'd glanced over at the time, woven them together to create brand new epiphanies, to help him make sense of the world and what he was sticking his nose into.]

Gallifrey. [He smiles, unguarded and open for just a moment, staring out at the citadel in all it's shimmering glory, the way a breeze shakes the trees, the glimmering red of the rising sun catching on their leaves, making the hillsides shine like a forest on fire.] The Shining World of the Seven Systems.

[He takes a step back from the edge of the hill, and there seems to be a house behind him, a little ranch where two children had been playing. But as he turns, it vanishes. As he turns the entire scenery seems to fold up into itself, an inky blackness creeping forward, rushing in from all sides towards that glistening city. But before even that is overtaken, the glass of the dome shatters, black smoke rises up, and on the ground around it, broken and abandon, lie warships and the hundreds of thousands of Daleks and Time Lords who lost their lives.]

It's gone now. [He stops at the doors of the TARDIS, fingers trailing over her wood, the seam of the door] I just finished telling you that, didn't I? [He pushes inward, and as he turned, held out his hand to pull Chuck in, he was all black leather, big ears, and a dopey grin. Piercing blue eyes too old and too young all at once.] C'mon.

[And then it was gone. Pinstripes, just sort'f brown, and a long streak 'o nothing instead.]