+ Let's go for a dreamwalk! + [OPEN PLOT CATCH-ALL]

[mviw]

Who: Everyone who wants to participate!
Where: The Mindscape (and elsewhere in reality, if specified)
When: September 6th through September 8th
Rating: PG-13 to R for potentially disturbing, violent, or dark subjects.
Summary: Thanks to an explosion on the third floor, every time a person falls asleep, they enter the Mindscape...

The Story:
Plot information is here!

Comments

[postictal]

Tim's eyes settle upon the fish lady that enters, though he's quick to avert his gaze and hastily press the heel of one hand to his temple, trying to ward away the headache that's probably going to follow. She doesn't...look like anything he's seen before. The doctor that enters doesn't acknowledge her in the slightest, and his heart sinks. Just...Tim going crazy again. He was supposed to be doing better. He wasn't supposed to be seeing things like this not anymore.

The doctor bears a cup of water and a small plastic container, the clipboard currently pinioned between elbow and hip. The memory has scratched out their face until it's nothing more than a vaguely twitching mass of black scribbles. Everyone with a face, reduced to facelessness. Like the tall man.

"Make sure to drink all the water this time," the doctor says, holding out both cups. "You tried swallowing them dry last time, remember?"

Tim nods. He peers into the plastic cup before grimacing at the trio of white tablets and gulping them all down, chasing them with the water provided. They settle in his stomach with a taut clenching in his chest, and he has to settle down onto the cot again with his hands wrapped around his abdomen.

"How are you feeling, Timothy?"

He shakes his head, grimacing.

"I know it doesn't feel very good, but eventually we'll...we'll get it right."

[ngah]

This is... definitely weird. The kid seems to see her, but the doctor is acting like she's not there at all. What did this kid do to get locked in prison, anyway?

She isn't able to identify the pills he takes, doesn't know the first thing about medicine. He must be sick, though, and his gripping his head and, after, his stomach, causes her to assume he's in some sort of pain.

But he saw her. He saw her even though the doctor couldn't. And she can't even see the doctor, their face completely scribbled out. Undyne waves a hand in front of the doctor's faceless head, but there's no reaction.

She turns back to the kid. Timothy, they said his name was.

"So, Timothy," she tries. "What'd you do to get locked up?"

[postictal]

The look he shoots her is one of utter terror in response. He doesn't speak - not right away. He gives his head a firm shake, gripping at his head tightly with one hand, the fingers curled into his hair hard enough to almost pull it out. Why's she still here? His delusions never look like this. Paranoid delusions. He knows the word for them now, since he started listening at the door. They think he can't hear them when they talk about him, but he knows what they are now.

Paranoid delusions.

But this doesn't look like paranoia. How would he know if it was, though?

"Are you seeing something now?" says the doctor, tone sharpening. "Timothy?"

He shakes his head, but the doctor shifts their weight, their chin tilting downward. He quails beneath a skeptical glare that doesn't exist for anyone but him.

"You need to be honest with me. We're trying to help you."

Undyne gets one more nervous glance before finally - reluctantly - his head bows and his shoulders slump.

"Are you seeing something now?"


Tim nods.

[ngah]

Oh, great. Now she's someone's hallucination or something. His hesitant, resigned nod makes her grimace. But it's almost true. He's the only one who can see her right now. She doesn't... feel fake, but if she's all but invisible, how can she argue her case?

"Hey!!" she snaps sharply, but not at Timothy. At the doctor, and she tries to grip onto their shoulder, but... her claws go straight through in a way she did not expect, and she stumbles forward, completely stepping through them. Like a ghost.

She's not a ghost -- she hangs out with them sometimes, but she's never been incorporeal before. She thinks, anyway. She backs away again, eyes wide, staring at her hands. She tries to punch the doctor, but her fist never connects, clipping through like she's discovered some kind of awful glitch in real life.

Is that this kid's sickness? Seeing things? She stares at him, distress clear on her face.

"Hey! I'm real, Timothy! I'm not fake!!" she insists, but she doesn't look like she's sure. She's never been so unsure of that in her life. For the longest time, she knew who she was. Where she stood, what she wanted, what she needed to do. After meeting that human, after losing her friends, her job, her home, she's felt like nothing she does matters.

She's never felt that so, so strongly and materially than she does right now. She looks at Tim, desperate.

"Tell them I'm real!" she demands, jamming a claw in the doctor's direction.

[postictal]

What isn't real can't hurt you. What isn't real can't hurt you. What isn't real can't hurt you.

The fish lady's webbed hands, undoubtedly clawlike, scythe through the doctor's coat as though she's nothing more than a ghost. She can't be real. If he squints his eyes shut and shakes his head and waits for the medicine to work, to fix him like they said it would (is medicine magic? we know that it's not) but he still flinches when she tells him to tell them she's real.

What isn't real can't hurt you.

"What's it doing right now?"

What isn't real can't hurt you.

He glances at her once more - nervous, blindingly terrified - and then back to his feet, bare and cold against the floor.

"She..." He has to wet his lips to try again, his voice tremulous and quavering. "It - it says to tell you it's real."

"You know it isn't real." The doctor's response is immediate, and stern. "You know that. Don't you?"



Another pause.

Another nod.

[ngah]

Undyne stares at him, eyes wide, but she doesn't feel panic. She doesn't feel her SOUL sinking in her chest, when he nods, confirming she's not real. She doesn't feel growing horror in the pit of her stomach.

She feels nothing at all. Which is appropriate, considering she's apparently not real.

She lets out a shuddering, held breath through her fangs. Her eyes narrow at... not at Tim, or even at the faceless human doctor, but at the air between them.

It's fine. This isn't really something she could've predicted, but... does it even really matter? This is probably a stupid dream or something, and struggling against something that's ultimately pointless seems like a lot of energy she doesn't feel she still has in her to expend.

She doesn't have the determination left to insist she's real. That she's not an "it". That she has a will and a mind and a physical body, even if she doesn't seem to have any of those things right now.

She gives up. She folds her arms. She backs up into the corner of the room -- not much movement needed for that, considering the tight quarters -- and slides down the wall to the floor.

"Fine," she says, defeat in her voice. "I'm not real. You got me. I'll just be over here, not being real. You can figure out how to fucking get rid of me, punk, 'cause I ain't gonna help."

[postictal]

"Good." The doctor's tone is brisk. She turns her attention back to her clipboard for a moment, denoting the specifics of his prescription before she sighs, sounding more or less resigned. "We might have to try upping your prescription. I know that's not any fun, but I really think this is the best option we have."

Tim doesn't protest. He's too busy staring at the shape in the corner of the room, paralyzed with indecision. It reminds him of -

It reminds him of him. Of how he can get. Is that what this is? Just some...extension of who he is, some hateful fragment that doesn't want to exist?

The doctor realizes she's not being listened to, and sighs again.

"Timothy." The word is stern.

His gaze snaps back to her.

"You were getting better."

His mouth opens and closes soundlessly, and he stares at his feet in concession to that point. She's right. He was getting better. And he's messed it up again. He keeps messing up, no matter what he does. He tried really hard this time, and even that wasn't enough.

"We'll just have to try harder." Tim nods out of miserable rote. Try harder. Like he hasn't been trying. Like it doesn't feel like there's nothing left of him to be trying any longer.

She doesn't even ask him to describe it. She thinks it's just his friend again. And before long, she's closing the door behind her, and he's gone back to staring at the fish lady in the corner, quietly terrified. He has to wet his lips several times over before he can venture the trembling question - and when he does, it feels horribly like he's breaking some venerated rule.

"...why aren't you going away?"