open dream logs for Eleven & Koizumi

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

WHAT: dreams and nightmares
WHO: Itsuki Koizumi and the Eleventh Doctor and You!
WHEN: between 2/27 and 3/1.
NOTE: the dreams will be customized to the individual who tags in. Make a top-level comment stating whose dream you want and any preferences you may have about the dream, and I'll respond by setting the scene.
WARNINGS: triggering and content warnings for: violence, war, depression, verbal abuse, possible gore and possible mental breakdown. will edit with any further warnings.

Comments

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

She flows right through him as he gets her armor off and gets her to lay down on the bed. The undercurrent of tension and worry in the dream increases, though Koizumi doesn't show anything. He moves back - oblivious to Lin's second presence in the dream - and quickly searches the kitchen, coming back with several items he hopes might help.

Sitting on the bed beside her, he gently sponges her forehead with a damp washcloth, trying to determine whether she can focus. "Lin. Lin, can you hear me?" The other Lin is unresponsive, and the dream surges with a sense of grief and foreboding.

He bends down quietly to feel her pulse.

[steelweb]

What in-- "Koizumi, don't!" she commands, again trying to grab his shoulders and pull him back, but her hands sink into him without any sign of resistance and she jerks away as if burned. He gets up and leaves the room, oblivious to her, and she stares, wide eyed, first at her hands, and then at the room. Her room. She knows what's coming. If there's some way to stop it, she has to try. But nothing she touches has any substance to it. Or maybe she doesn't.

She swears vehemently as he returns, but there's nothing she can do. Ghost, or dream, she's helpless, listening to her own breathing grow ragged and halting on the bed. He calls her name, and she responds automatically: "Koizumi, I'm here! Get away from her!" Nothing. He can't hear her.

The breath of the Lin on the bed fails, and Koizumi checks her pulse. She knew the outcome already. She was gone. She remembers, barely, the moment when her spirit stretched and broke from her body. It's what comes after that she fears.

How long was it before she killed him? Seconds? Hours? She has no way to guess, and no way to change the outcome from here.

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

Koizumi tries to find her pulse for several moments before his eyes widen in horrified realization. He sits frozen for several seconds - while time in the dream slows to a crawl - before his hand moves desperately to her chest feeling for a heartbeat. Nothing.

There is a long, quiet moment, with only the sound of his breathing as it begins to go ragged. The dreams picks up a frantic, despairing feeling as the ambient lighting grows darker. There's a sensation of suffocation, being unable to breath, as he takes in what's just happened. Then he leaps into action, quickly straddling her and moving his hands into position over her chest.

He begins CPR, motions quick and confident, despite the frantic feeling and the terrified look on his face. He continues this way for several minutes, though tears begin to stream down his face as he works, and the atmosphere takes on an inexorable, helpless feeling.

Long after it becomes clear this isn't working, that she's too far gone, he collapses - his breath to her turns into a kiss as he lays hunched over her, sobbing soundlessly. The room quietly turns hollow and oppressive, as he thinks about who they are and what they mean to each other. There have been so many missed opportunities - so many things he'll now never get to say.

His mouth breaks from hers, though he remains bent over, head falling to the side as he sobs, next to hers. He doesn't bother with anger, or pleas, or denial. There is simply grief, and loneliness - there is a hole in his life he never even knew he had, until she had filled it. Now it is vacant again, and he is alone.

[steelweb]

This is new. Normally the vision would fade as she had, and return, hard and sharp-edged, with the taste of blood on her tongue and the feel of her fangs piercing flesh. This... This isn't hers. It isn't something she knows, and it isn't how she would have imagined it.

The clarity of his emotions as he begins to perform CPR is almost too much - too strong - and she rocks back a step, raising her arms as if assaulted. This isn't her memory, made clear, it's his. His dream, his senses feeding the sensation, his distress...

For a long moment, she just watches, stony-faced, her jaw working, as he tests, tries anew, and then swiftly goes to work attempting to revive her. There's no reason for her to hide her feelings: no one can see her, here, and there is no one to judge. It's a reflex. A coping mechanism, as much as anything. A way to keep herself clear-headed and in command while dealing with things. Maybe it's the intensity of his desperation and its descent into despair. Maybe it's realizing just how deeply his care for her runs. Maybe it's the shock of seeing that kiss... Maybe it's the sensation of her own emotions echoing his care so closely. But whatever it is, she lets the mask disintegrate.

Fine tremors run through her, and Lin folds her arms close, looking away. Suddenly it's far too intimate, even if she is one of the participants, in a strange way. She can't even comfort him. Or protect him. She can't tell him what a bad idea it is for him to be so attached to her. Or how much she finds herself wants....

She shakes her head, shifting to head out the door. If this is his dream, she's not sure where she could go, but presumably the rest of the apartment is out there. She shouldn't have seen this in the first place.

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

Suddenly Lin sits up with a motion that is very violent and completely unexpected. She doesn't really even cover the intersecting space - one moment she's dead, just lying on the bed, and the next her fangs are buried in Koizumi's neck.

Koizumi's eyes widen as her teeth sink into him, his body tensing, frozen, a look of utter surprise on his face. Several long moments pass with only the sound of drinking blood. Then Koizumi's body slowly starts to relax. His eyes close, and he wears a peaceful expression as tears of joy run down his face.

He can feel the pain in his neck, and his mind is starting to go dark, but that doesn't matter to him right now. She's alive - that is all he can think, his mind numb with shock and relief, as his body slowly leans forward against her and he drifts off into nothing.

[steelweb]

The sudden motion and sound are too much to ignore and Lin whips back around, hands twitching with the need to do something. She's killing him. Again. And yet again there's no way to touch him, to help him, to deny the creature that was her the satisfaction of bleeding him dry. Shaking, she steps forward on drunken legs, her nails biting into her bare palms as she resists the urge to try and put her fist through the vampire's face, right between those raging, inhuman eyes tinged red with the blood lust. He thinks she's alive - he's so dizzily happy and grateful - and she can't even tell him the truth of it.

She hangs her head, trying to focus on her breathing, sinking her hands into her hair and tightening them into fists that tug just enough to be painful. There's nothing she can do about this. Not right now. Her heart's hammering so fast. It's not real right now. It's in the past. She can't fight it. Adrenaline tries to convince her otherwise. It's already done. She could try till she goes mad and nothing will change. Breathe and let it pass by.

The darkness gathers, blurring the edges of the room, erasing the door, slowly closing in on the trio on and around the bed. Finally... Thank the spirits, it's over. It's over. Now she can wake up.

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

The scene fades out, and there is a sensation of falling. After a time, they emerge into another scene - blurry at first, but it becomes apparent they're in the basement of a house neither of them will forget long before the scene moves into focus. At first, there is just the chair - the chair and the feelings of panic and doom that accompany it. The rest of the room slowly becomes clear, though the chair remains more solid and distinct - shrouded in an aura of malice that manifests in the dream as a layer of shifting shadow, impossibly resisting the lighting.

The concern for Lin Koizumi had been holding is overwhelmed as he staggers away from the chair, very nearly ill at the mere sight of it. He begins to climb the stairs, fighting nausea and having trouble standing. His newly restored wounds sear through him, throbbing in concert with the ambient pain and malice.

The door opens, and a lance of panic shoot through Koizumi that has nothing to do with his wounds or his aversion to this place. He doesn't want Lin to see him like this - that is made clear as he fights through the pain and nausea and tries to stand tall, though it is clear he would fall if not for the railing.

The door at the top of the stairs opens, and time slows as it reveals Lin standing there.

[steelweb]

No... Oh not this place. Not for him. She had thought, had hoped... no, she'd deluded herself into believing that he hadn't gotten all the way down here. That he hadn't seen... not in person.

Her own dread and renewed guilt meld seamlessly with his panic, and she takes a few steps back, uselessly raising an arm against the wave of malice. Nausea twists her stomach, but she bites down on the urge to retch and retreats from the scene of so many of her own nightmares. This time she doesn't have to watch the traps trigger, watch friends narrowly avoid injuries. But watching Koizumi struggle up the staircase is arguably more difficult. It wasn't that he'd hidden it particularly well. It was knowing that he hadn't been up to his usual standards of obfuscation and yet she had been so wrapped up in herself that she hadn't made the connection.

Following him up the stairs, she automatically holds herself to be able to brace and catch him should he fall, even though she instinctively knows she wouldn't be able to here any more than she had been able to affect him in that damned bedroom. She still wants to protect him.

A grimace twists her lips. She knows what's coming. She knows it all too well. The door handle turns above them and she looks up, clutching hard at the rail. Now it starts. And all she can do is hope that they won't be put through the whole episode.