entrancelogs | you pray to stars that can help you get by

Entry tags:

you pray to stars that can help you get by

Who: River Tam and others TBA (semi locked - see notes)
Where: Hiding around the grounds, roaming hallways and in her room.
When: Late evening/night of the 8th
Rating: pg-13/will revise as needed
Summary: The spike in arrivals push River over the edge, breakdowns occur. Run into her wherever your character may seem more likely to be!

Notes: Mostly to keep from getting flooded but also because it's likely that River will just...run away/ignore your character if she doesn't already at least like them a little bit, I'm locking this to relatively close CR. If you're unsure if that includes your character, just send me a PM or PP and we can work it out.

The Story:

It starts off slowly at first, a quiet whisper in the background of every other noise and feeling that echoes through her mind. The problem is, this time there's so much more. It's too much all at once and it drives her out as far as she can possibly go. The tree line of the woods seem like the safest bet, it feels right though she can't explain why, and so she runs. It's a desperate sprint, there's no two ways about that, and when she reaches the edge of the forest she grabs the nearest tree trunk as though it will help her.

There's still not enough distance between her and the screams of panic and fear, the stress and anguish and everything in between are pressing into her every thought uninvited and she never stays still for long. River doesn't run the whole time, in fact at times she seems almost to be in a trance like state. Sometimes she crawls along the grass, touching, scrabbling and searching for an unknown item. Sometimes she just takes slow, measured steps and stares out right ahead of her, eyes glazed over and unfocused. Mostly though, she just finds a spot to hide and cradle her head until everything goes quiet enough for her to find somewhere else to repeat the process.

It doesn't get any better as the evening goes on. She's sure it's calmed down enough for her to venture carefully back inside again, but the moment she steps through the doorway it's deafening. In the initial confusion disappearing back outside doesn't even occur to her. Instead she makes another break for it, picking a random hallway and quietly rushing through. She can't get lost here, it's easy enough to gravitate herself to a certain voice or feeling and find her way back, but she is trying. Every turn is made with closed eyes, pausing at mirrors occasionally to press her hands against them and shout foreign sounding curse words their way. Not that it matters, she could yell until her voice goes and the voices still won't go away.

And eventually, exhausted and confused and more distressed than ever, she manages to make her way back to the room she's claimed for her own. She gets as far as the door, all but dropping down as soon as she gets inside, and it's not until she pushes the door to that she huddles up into a ball, presses her head forward to rest on her knees and cradles her head in her hand.

Too much for one day, evidently, because exhausted and confused she may be, but there's still enough energy left in her that when she looks up and sees 'bad day?' written in the mist of someone's breath she starts screaming at the top of her lungs, backing up against the wall and staring with horror at the message left for her.

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Sherlock wanders. It’s becoming habit, a way of working out the noise in his head which grows ever so much louder when he’s alone in his room, sitting and trawling the networks for something, anything of use. There’s little enough, at least on the surface, but he stores plenty of it away all the same. The walking helps him sort, and it saves him from the constant bombardment of familiar stimuli. It doesn’t work like scent-saturation, not a bit. He never grows accustomed to it. It only grows steadily more distracting, steadily more maddening as time goes on.

The walking isn’t, to that end, a perfect solution. It suits, it’ll have to, but the halls are noisy too, the gardens still noisier, the whole of it a cacophony of input and no path along which to narrow his perception of it. That is, of course, until the screams.

They jolt Sherlock out of his thoughts with a start, all the more surprising for their familiarity. A voice is distorted by the sheer power of a shriek, but elements of it always remain, always. And so where normally he might have hesitated to intervene, hesitated to pass the threshold, he steps inside, rapping gently on the door frame to announce his presence.

The letters on the mirror. Yes, he sees, and he sets his mouth into a thin line.

It’s cruel. It’s cruel, and he knows that sort of cruel. He knows it intimately, what it’s like being laughed at, toyed with, and the unexpected burst of sympathy that floods him is unexpected and unwelcome. He dislikes it. It has to stop, and so he has to try to help.

“Come away,” he says, stepping in front of her at a distance and holding his hands up palm outward. Empty. Unarmed. “Come along. I’ve covered mine. No thorns. All on my own, far from the rest. It’s quiet.”

It takes a moment for her to even register another presence. She knowsin the loosest sense of the term, she can hear his concern and feel his thoughts whispering along with everyone else's. he's somewhere in there and she's aware of that much, but it doesn't piece together properly until he steps into her line of vision.

Her first instinct is to shy away, scrabble back and grip at her head a little harder. She doesn't scream again, just lets out a low moan and shakes her head as she points a shaking hand to the mirror.

"It follows and pokes and prods and it has no right! She can't- she can't help it, she's never doesn't choose never chose who asks for needles and straps-" She keeps blurting out words, voice high and strained as she tips her head up enough to look at him properly, but she can't quite make herself stop with the string of half formed thoughts that almost make sentences, "They followed around and now they laugh and laugh and they think she can't hear but she knows can't cover their tracks they leave behind gorram MESSAGES!"

She stops, finally, but only because she lets out a loud, frustrated sound and reaches around until she finds the rarely worn boots that have been abandoned in her room for days. Sherlock probably shouldn't let himself get in between her and the mirror, because she hurls the shoe in its direction before covering her face with her hands.

"She can't hear anything, she can't hear it there's too much."

"No, I know." Sherlock has covered his own for a reason. He'd meant to study them, still means to, but mirrors are supposed to reflect what someone is, not what they could have been, under other circumstances. The words are his, they have to be, but...

"They laugh. He knows, something always will. His room is away from the rest, hundreds away; it's quieter. A bit. Perhaps." He does mean it, despite the obvious discomfort in the set of his shoulders. Usually he's on the other end of this. Usually he's the one going mad, and he doesn't know how to fix it then, either, not without the needle or a case.

All that ever helps is distractions, and while she probably doesn't need more stimuli, perhaps she could use focus, to help drown out the rest.

"He has hundreds of investigations in his head; perhaps he can recount a few. Share methods." A matter of practicality, not pity. He worries, he does, but not that. Never that. Pity implies superiority, and he knows he's none, not in this regard. Besides, he'd not want any himself, and he doubts she does either.

The mirrors themselves hadn't been of much concern to River, at least not until now. The people begin them had been bothersome, an extra layer of static to try and ignore, and the concept of stealing faces didn't sit right with her, but until the message on the mirror she had never been all that concerned. She hasn't even bothered to cover hers - it's not like she spedst much time in here anyway. The room isn't hers, it's on loan, an the simple furniture and lack of anything beyond a bed and a closet reflects that much.

Now all she can focus on is the person behind the mirror though, and when the boot only bounces off and lands on the floor without leaving so much as a crack she gets up off of the floor. A stream of expletives follow from about five different languages, and it's all directed at the mirror and the people that they hold. She can't tell if she's angry or afraid any more, but somewhere in there she hears Sherlock's words and tips her head slightly to look at him.

"Hundreds away?" For a second her voice is so fragile and small - it's definitely fear she's feeling, there's no mistaking that, and she just stares at him. It's just a second though, maybe two, and then her toys is lost, she's gazing just over his shoulder instead, and then her whole body tenses. "I didn't ask for this they push their way in uninvited and they're all so confused, can't think can't hear, can't- can't can't leave how do we get out?"

It's as close as she can get to accepting his offer, moving in towards him and curling her shaking hands into fists. She stands at his side, pauses, and then steps outside of the room. She halts, looks left and right, then turns sharply to face him. "She doesn't know the way."

“Mmm. The numbers. Not many people on his floor, and he took a distant room.” Sherlock follows her to the door, nodding up the hall towards the staircase.

“Floor nine. Room 221.” A number with meaning. Sherlock is not at al superstitious, and no doubt she’ll sense that, but it’s a number that means home, and there is little enough of that to cling to in this place. It’s a warm number, nostalgic, even if more bitter than sweet just now.

“She hasn’t called them in,” he adds, as reassuringly as he can though he’s not entirely certain how much he believes that. Do they bring it on themselves? If they just tried slightly harder, if he let his defenses down just that much further—

Pointless thoughts. It never worked before, and he never asked for any of it either. “The ghosts, or any of the rest. She didn’t ask, but nobody else did either. They aren’t for her.”

Except perhaps the ones in the mirrors. But there, it seems, there’s a ghost for each of them. That joke has been played on everyone here.

"Nine two two one. Nine, two two one. Nine. Two. Two. One."

She carries on much like that as she starts walking down the hallway in a rapid place, occasionally stopping to stare at the mirrors that she passes and in some points crossing to the other side of the room to give them a wide berth. She doesn't want to look at them, lest she see another message, but she can't quite help it. She's curious, too curious, and that's half the problem.

She turns abruptly, frowning a little but not quite looking at Sherlock. She's unfocused again, listening for once instead of just letting things unfold in her mind, and then she just wraps her arms around herself and starts walking again, a little faster.

"Hurry, hurry, they're following. They're still watching, they watch because it's funny but it's not funny it's just sad." She drags a hand through her hair, gripping slightly, and she's still shaking but trying very hard to ignore it as she picks up the pace. "Please, they know where we go. Are the mirrors hidden?"

"Covered." Sherlock follows, patient, keeping easy pace on long legs. He lets her meander. The more he permits the more he can read from what she does. It stings. It aches. Another might have laughed, might have been unnerved, but Sherlock recognizes patterns, sees what once was, what could still be, is reminded. Understands -- not completely, never that, but well enough.

"Hidden." He falls silent, trailing along, thoughtful. She tugs at her hair and he feels his own fingers ghost through his own, nails running along the scalp, fingers curling and pulling to ease out the tension. Habits. Old habits. He knows how that feels too.

"If John were here he'd tell her stories big enough to drown it out." The words are quiet with conviction. They don't need any more volume to be true. "Never gets the important bits right, but people like his stories."

A great deal more than they like the truth of any matter, which is all Sherlock knows how to tell when it comes to recounting his cases.

"Will try to make do in his stead."

It occurs to her briefly that she should just break them all, shatter every mirror from here to Sherlock's room and be done with them all for a little while, but as soon as it appears the thought is dismissed. It would hardly be permanent, she's sure that she can't have been the only one to try it by now, and at any rate the truth of it is that she's far too tired for an effort like that. There's too many mirrors and she's just one girl, and it's been a very long day.

Instead she just turns sharply on her heel, keeps walking backwards at a fairly steady pace but watches Sherlock for a moment. John. John is important to him, very important. John is smart, not like them but in his own way. She'd like to meet him perhaps, if the circumstances could be different somehow. It's not a smile that crosses her face, she's still upset and distressed and that won't change any time soon, but there is a slight softening in her features. Subtle, but if anyone would notice, it would be Sherlock.

"He'd tell stories just to drown out the laughter for a while?" Objects mean very little to River, but actions, gestures - they're everything to her, and this one in particular means more than he can know. "They'll follow. Listen. Still laugh, still point and mock even with their sight hidden."

"Mm. Loud ones. Gunfire. Baying hounds. Bombs. We'll smash them." The mirrors, the voices; both. Everything wrong. There are plenty of problems that can't just be smashed, but the ones in one's head can at least be broken up into manageable fragments, for a while.

Still he follows. It's not long now. The look she gives him, the shift in expression registers, but he's not said more than he meant to. On the contrary, he thinks she might be the only person who could understand what he means to say. That he and John are inseparable is not an unknown, though. The way they're tangled up in one another is a matter of public record.

"Here." He pushes open the door, into the little room with its covered mirrors. Scraps of paper are pinned to the walls, each with notes, cryptic and odd, often only a word or two, some underlined repeatedly, some with simple drawings. On one of the bedposts hangs the hat, the ridiculous, despicable hat, some sort of joke -- the rooms tailor themselves to their owners, he suspects, but they don't always do so kindly.

Still, it has come in handy in one sense. He picks the hideous thing up and balls it around his fist, striding to the mirror and giving it a sharp blow. Pain radiates from knuckles to wrist, bones jarred, but the impact is satisfying. The crack all the more so, the clink of broken glass falling from underneath the sheet to the floor. He turns it face-down, unwraps the hat from about his fist, and shakes the throbbing out of his hand. The hat, in a fit of ridiculousness, some attempt at... what? Lightening the mood? He sets it atop her head, the silly thing, and thinks of John. Stick to ice. Maybe for the best, maybe, but sometimes he still feels the pull to try.

Castiel is unaware of River's predicament until she screams. Tired, drained, unnerved by the recent increase in unwanted activity and company, he has withdrawn to his room, rarely used for its intended purposes, to regain some strength and focus. He's been meditating for hours, mind calm, Grace a pulsing force within his vessel. Despite his slow fall, he still has plenty left. Enough, for now.

The angel's mind is closed off to outside influence, no senses stretched beyond his room to keep watch over his charges as he is usually prone to do. Dean is hidden from him anyway due to the sigils Castiel himself burned into his ribs, but that's not bad. Dean knows how to call for him in case of an emergency.

River doesn't.

The scream hurls him into action before he can stop himself, wings flying wide and blade slipping into his hand as he arrives in her room. Castiel is a soldier. He reacts fast to a perceived thread - and he has his back turned on the mirror before he first shards of it hit the floor, thin silver blade protruding from the broken object.

The room is filled with shadows cast by Castiel's wings. Castiel leaves space between them, even as they seem to curl around her, to shield her. Even his blade lies forgotten, and he will later chide himself for such carelessness.

For now, it's hardly important. For now, only this charge matters.

At first it's not Castiel in front of her. At first, it's just another reason to get away, get further back, get safe. She pushes backwards until her back hits the wall, and when she can't go back further she keeps moving, shuffles sideways until she's wedged into the corner where the walls meet.

"It's here, it's here it's watching me I can see them, make them go I don't know how to make them go," she mumbles under her breath as she brings her shaking hands to her head, grips hard at the back of her neck and presses her forehead to her knees. Curled in the corner, she finally turns her head just enough to look at him.

The mirror is broken. It's broken but she can still hear them, and when she moves her gaze from Castiel to the mirror behind him she sags slightly. Her hands loosen and she sits up, drops her head back against the wall and shakes it. "It didn't work. It didn't work, didn't work, didn't work it's not working how are they still there I can hear them laughing!"

And suddenly she points, shifts from sitting against the wall to kneeling as she raises a shaking hand to the mirror, to the space where some of the message is still visible, just day?, and she screams again.

Castiel lets her scream, not even flinching back as he reaches out. His fingers press against her forehead, firm and sure. Wings rustle, and with a rush of hair they push outside, through the fabric of space until they tumble onto the beach. The landing is a little unstable, considering that Castiel's wings are hardly strong enough to carry the both of them anymore.

The important thing is getting his charge away from what's trouble her, as far away as possible. There is too little space here. He would have taken her to the top of a Tibetan mountain given the choice, but he needs to work with what he has available, and this is everything there is.

"Look into my eyes."

It's not a request. His voice isn't barking orders, but it's firm, and his eyes are too blue, filled with Grace as he opens himself for her to reach, a safety blanket that will allow for her to shield herself from everything, at least for a short, little while.

It's just them. No mirrors, not even other people. Just wavelengths, perfectly attuned.

It's unexpected when the surroundings suddenly shift and change. They're on the beach and she knows what's happened, he did it once before, it's just hard to process that right now. She's slightly unsteady, reaching forward but reeling back to right herself almost straight away. Her head snaps up to meet his, and for an instant she's wound too tight, too tense, and she can't hear anything but the rushing of blood in her ears and can barely see enough to recognise Castiel's face.

Her hands ball into fists, and she even draws one back, but she does look into his eyes. She's still so tense, still moments from snapping but she looks all the same, and it's enough. It's not instantaneous, she can't quite make herself unclench her fists and she just can't stop shaking, but she keeps staring all the same. It's hard just to stay still but she does it anyway, and the longer she looks the more effect he has.

"There's so many of them." It's just a whisper, a painful strained mumble with no connection to anything, and as she looks into the too bright eyes and the voices and emotions start filtering out, she takes a few heavy gasps for air as though she'd been holding her breath. "Too many, too many, can't keep them out."

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you pray to stars that can help you get by

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