fandomtownies | Rey's warehouse- Thursday morning

Entry tags:

Rey's warehouse- Thursday morning

Yesterday had sucked. Today wasn't starting out much better.

Rey had slept more or less out of exhaustion, waking up after nightmares somehow feeling even more exhausted. And she still felt that thing around her, even if she hadn't managed to catch it again. She knew it was there. She didn't know what to do about it, had no idea whether or not her own powers were part of what was happening, and she was starting to realize how much of everyone else's emotions she was picking up. This was super fun.

So since she was up ungodly early again, she'd gone to the warehouse to work it out. It was early enough that the woodchucks weren't a problem yet, giving her a chance to really throw herself into the obstacle course. Because that was what today was gonna be, apparently.

[Expecting one but open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yesterday had definitely sucked.

Yasha hadn't slept much at all, and what sleep she had gotten -- in an alley in the warehouse district, which she didn't really remember stumbling into -- had been awful. She was exhausted but also on edge, so she'd picked up on the sound of someone approaching without really having to try.

And maybe being around other people right now was a bad idea, but she also just didn't want to be alone, which was why she was knocking on the door to the warehouse without really knowing who was on the other side of it.

That dismal wisdom score was a pain in the ass in multiple ways.

Rey stopped, only now realizing that she'd been doing this long enough to be out of breath.

"Yeah," she called, hopping off the course.

There's been a time when jumping off something high up would feel not smart, and now she just, like, did it.

Yeah, Beau was like that too. Though Yasha was a long way off from even having a clue that it might be possible for her to have actual functional wings someday so it was a good thing that nobody was going to need her to leap up and catch someone in midair and then take a ridiculously dramatic and romantic flight over a waterfall -- anyway.

She thought she remembered this warehouse now. Maybe?

"Hello?" she called tentatively. "It's -- can I come in for a little bit?"

"Of course," Rey said, walking towards her and giving her a little smile. "Is everything okay?"

Not that anyone was okay this week, apparently.

Yeah, the look Yasha gave her was pretty clearly is anything, though?

"I -- sorry," she mumbled. "It's just ... everything is weird and I just felt like ... for a little while at least, I didn't want to be by myself, you know?"

"I completely understand," Rey told her. "Honestly, I wouldn't mind the company, either."

Less time to think when you were around someone, right?

In a darkened warehouse.

In a darkened warehouse with nightmare creatures that thrived in darkness, even!

"Thank you," Yasha replied, and she sounded like she meant it, but there was a note of uncertainty there, too. Blame her heightened paranoia from being extra on edge since yesterday.

"You want to sit?" Rey offered, gesturing to the cluster of crates that sort of served as seating.

Yasha started toward the crates, then stopped and shook her head.

"No. Um. I mean, thank you, but I think I'd rather ... rather not be too still right now. I'm tired, but." She gave an awkward little shrug.

If she could at least pace or something, she figured it was better than sitting still and having more time to think.

"Also okay," Rey assured her. "We're also very good at not sitting in here."

As evidenced by the giant course.

If she'd been feeling more like herself, Yasha might have made one of her utterly deadpan jokes about thinking the course was just for decoration or something like that.

She nodded instead. "I almost want to try it myself, just to see," she admitted.

Even if she fell on her ass a lot, it might keep her sufficiently distracted? Okay, not really. Not when the lack of lighting in here had to make it a playground for those Night Mares. But she could hope for a second, right?

"It's complicated," Rey warned. Because it was built by Anakin Skywalker, who'd taken it as a challenge.

"It's something to do," Yasha replied, starting toward the course and looking almost sheepish about it for a moment. "It's probably more Beau's thing than mine --" because she was the brute-force, 'just hit it until it goes down' half of their wrecking crew -- "but I don't mind giving it a try."

Except that made her think about how much fun it was to tag-team some large, possibly poisonous, almost definitely chompy monster with Beau, and with the rest of the Mighty Nein, and that in turn made her think of Molly, and --

She stumbled toward Rey as the memories started to take hold again, one hand outstretched like she thought she was about to fall.

Rey reacted, moving to keep her from
falling, but in that same instant it was like she knew this was coming on again, like she should have sensed it before.

This week.

A flash of light, then the sound of thunder.

People all around her: the people she grew up with, people from her tribe. Gustav and Desmond and the rest of the carnival. Molly. Beau, Jester, Fjord, Caleb, and Nott. Rey and the others who'd come to help rescue her, and the few people she'd been starting to know here. All of them were facing away from her, though.

Darkness again, then another flash of light, illuminating what looked like a rock pedestal with a figure atop it that seemed to be familiar, though she wasn't sure how. She didn't know who it was, only that she knew them, and that didn't seem to be a good thing.

Everything went dark again, dragging out just long enough that she wanted the next vision or dream or whatever it was, but nothing -- except for the growing awareness that searing pain was shooting up her arms.

She looked down, and the only thing she could see was dull, bluish-purple flames curling up her arms, burning all the way down to the tips of her fingers.

Another flash. Bodies surrounding her. So many bodies: creatures, people, children, monsters, just dozens and dozens of corpses carved up and torn apart. Looking down again, she didn't see the flames any more. Just blood. Fresh, bright red blood, dripping steadily from her arms onto the ground. Drip, drip -- far too loud, and the only thing she could hear.

A flash, yet again, and she was standing atop the precipice of a mountain, soaked to the bone and feeling each peal of thunder from the raging storm as it vibrated through her entire body. That was Xhorhas down below, she was sure of it, even though all she could see was little glimpses here and there from the arcs of lightning that crackled across the sky.

Cold, shivering. Barely able to see from the matted hair that fell down into her face, but just able to make out a humanoid form that seemed to be reaching out toward her.

She should run, she should go, but --

Another bolt of lightning and it was gone, but now she could sense a presence behind her. She turned and walked toward it, and --

The bodies, again. Mangled and lifeless, covering the entire mountain range as far as she could see. That figure again, but now his curved horns and wings were illuminated by the light from the storm, along with the yellow eyes and the sly grin that he turned on her before he shook his head and walked away.

Your anger is beautiful to behold, Orphanmaker.

Fear welled up in her throat and her heart felt like it had turned to ice in her chest. She felt a powerful impulse to move toward the corpses and gave into it. Reached toward the nearest one and turned it over: Mollymauk, his face contorted into a grimace of pain. Another one: Caleb. Then Beau, Jester, Fjord, Nott, Caduceus. Liam, Rey, and Karolina. Everyone she knew from here, even the regulars at the flower shop that she'd never spoken to outside of work.

Everyone who'd ever crossed her path and that she'd let into her life, even a little bit.

With an anguished little noise she looked up again, and there was that horned figure, still shaking his head in apparent pity as he walked away. Another flash of lightning, another peal of thunder, and she was thrown out of the vision or dream or whatever it was, as abruptly as she'd been pulled into it.

Exhaustion crashed into her again. "Fuck," she muttered, hoping this wasn't like last night and Rey hadn't actually picked up on any of that. "I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

[OOC: To give credit where it's due, these dream sequences were adapted from Critical Role campaign 2, episodes 20, 46, and 60.]

Rey had caught way, way more of that than she probably should have, and she wasn't good at keeping that sort of thing off of her face.

"Are you all right?"

It was an easier question, since Rey still didn't know how much of this was her.

Yasha flinched back a few inches, wishing more than ever that it wasn't so easy for people or weird island phenomena to mess with her head. That made it really difficult to deflect attention away from herself, for one thing.

"I'm ..." There would really not be any point in lying, even if she was any good at it. "No. But I'll manage. I've had that dream before."

"That's a lot," Rey said gently, because it was also another thing to have that dream in the middle of the day and have someone else be witness to it.

Yasha sighed. "Not -- not all at once, though." She did actually try to meet Rey's gaze this time. "And not usually this exhausting."

"This week's apparently just been blowing all of these things up for us, I think," Rey said, sympathetic and also mad at the world.

"I don't like this place very much sometimes," Yasha muttered. "Did you -- actually see any of that?"

"It was like I was there," Rey said, apologetically.

This wasn't the first time, and it felt like an intrusion she couldn't control.

Well ... she hadn't exactly thrown Yasha out immediately, so that was a good sign, maybe?

"I don't suppose it's worth hoping you could make much more sense of it than I can?" she joked weakly.

"You don't know?" Rey frowned.

"No."

Yasha looked down at her hands and fiddled with her gauntlet for a moment.

"I feel like I should. I feel like I definitely did something but I don't know what it is."

"Do you want to know?" Rey asked carefully.

"I'm not sure I want to," Yasha admitted. "It's bad, whatever it is."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rey's warehouse- Thursday morning

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject