[OPEN] Like the echos in your mind you try to leave them all behind...

[radiopalkiller]

Who: Philip ( radiopalkiller ) & OPEN
Where: A nightmare! That country whose name he doesn't remember anymore! The mines!
When: 3rd to 7th of October, aka. event time (with bonus thread for the week after)
Rating: PG-13 and neighbouring ratings
Summary: Home sweet home! ...Sort of.
The Story:
[ OOC INFO: Open to all, prose and comment spam welcome. Here is a summary of all the days:

#1: Philip will wander the tunnels aimlessly and try to process that he's actually stuck in his own event.
#2: Philip will wander the tunnels deliberately, make a tentative transmission and spend most of the time murdering dogs with zest and That Unsettling Little Spark (TM) in his eyes.
#3: Philip will casually look for tools and spend most of the day sitting by the lake.
#4: Philip will get impatient, look for tools in many more places and gather supplies to make a huge bomb which he hopes will blow open the door to the incinerator, the path he knows leads to the last part of the mines.
#5: A brief public service announcement, followed by broken sobs.]

Comments

[righteously]

Walks out the door right into rather solid chest of a man who might be cuter and more cuddly under better circumstances, but in this case? Wired and tense as he is, covered in dog blood and spider guts and dirt and god knows what else? In this case his first reaction is to jerk, to try and ram Philip into the wall just as soon as his reflexes allow it.

Which isn't as bad as it could've been considering he's been bashing things to death with a pickaxe all day.

[radiopalkiller]

Philip didn't have time to pocket the radio in his hand, but hearing it clatter to the floor takes care of that. Along with the pickaxe and his breath, which the impact with the wall knocks clean out of him, otherwise that scream would have been embarrassment enough.

But better prepared is still ill-prepared, at least for this, at least for something that tears him right out of the mine and pulls him into the Shelter, staring wide-eyed without seeing at the memory of pale, infected flesh and teeth stained red, snapping at his neck.

Panicked his arms push against the attacker's chest, way, way too close, and he draws up his knee sharply, anything, anything to get away.

[righteously]

Yep, that'll pretty much do it. Turns out Philip doesn't need to do anything, anything to get away- all he really needs to do is aim one bony ass British knee at Dean's groin, and he's free as a bird. The air blurts out of his mouth in a wheezing grunt, and all that pressure pinning Philip to the wall drops away instantaneously to the tune of a pickaxe hitting the ground.

"Jesus-" Dean drops down to one knee, an arm wrapping around his stomach. Seems like the split second it took to realize who exactly it was he was pinning means nothing in the grand scheme of things, because his badassery is wiped away before he can act on the info.

A man can slaughter a mine full of dogs, but taking a shot to the dick overshadows all things.

"I wasn't stealing your purse, you friggin' soccer mom!" He rasps it out as aggressively as he can manage, but in actuality carries all the strength of strawberry yogurt. Seriously, who even does that?! That is just- that's just wrong and- oh god his kidneys are shutting down aren't they, no it's just a testacle in his lung it's totally fine.

[radiopalkiller]

Less dramatic, but he'll take it. In fact, he'll take the first second he can't feel the pressure on his chest anymore, and stumble into a run, out into the corridor, into the mine tunnels of concrete, where his Tuurngait vision of terror doesn't seem to make any sense.

Sharply the voice that follows his steps turns him around, and the panicked look on his face--

"Dean?!"

The panicked look on his face is no less wide and frantic, and only darts between the tunnels in front, and the hunter lying a few steps behind. Between what Philip thought was there, and what is slowly revealing itself to be there right now, only the hallucinations felt different.

"Christ..."

The hallucinations felt different, and this is cold steel cutting into reality, leaving it raw just long enough to see all its layers, and freeze with the sickening feeling that asks, Where am I? What is going on? Is this really happening?

Philip breathes it out slowly and shakily. And has to acknowledge that his new surroundings leave him far shakier and on the edge than he originally thought.

[radiopalkiller]

!!!

Right, and then there was something else.

"Ah--"

Just a small, tiny, other thing, really, but he should probably--

"Christ..."

He steps closer to the door and looks down at Dean awkwardly.

"...Dean? Are you, erm-- Sorry... about that."

[righteously]

Yes, that's just fucking peachy. Let Philip have his internal reveries and debates over reality and hallucinations and post traumatic stress. Meanwhile, Dean's just going to wheeze a bit on the floor while his body forcibly ejects his balls from somewhere in his sternum.

Awesome.

Now he gets the picture.

He shoots Philip the most glaring stink-eye he can manage given the circumstances, then braces a hand on a rock to try and lever himself into a half-standing position. Hoo boy.

One breath at a time.

"Yeah, no, I bet." A grunt, and he more or less manages it. Mostly by one strong arm on the wall, half hunched over himself. "You suck. Anyone ever tell you that? You just... really... ugh."

On the bright side, it's done a wonderful job of making him temporarily forget about the event, the dogs, the whole crappy thing.

[radiopalkiller]

"Not in this particular context," he mumbles, and rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

After the initial shock, as well as the initial shock after the initial shock, Philip finds himself sort of, uh, buffering, while he's trying to gauge if he's looking at an occasion to feel gleeful or guilty. Don't let that thought linger on your mind for too long, but Dean Smith was sort if right. It does look kind of funny, actually.

"Look, I'm sorry, I- I'm sorry, for a second I thought you--"

...were somebody who knows about the Infected, which isn't actually the case anymore, emphasis on anymore, emphasis on after all this time we're finally here, I could finally show you, and it doesn't mean a thing to you anymore.

Philip wonders if Castiel told Dean about the tunnels.

"I'm sorry," he repeats flatly, and leans against the wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

[righteously]

It crosses his mind to ask what particular context, until he promptly decides he really doesn't want to know, and happily shoves that thought into the trash bin of his mind.

He can't be irrationally pissed about the whole thing, running around with shit attacking you for hours on end can get the best of anyone. Normal, rational people don't typically knee their attackers in the groin, for what it's worth, but Dean's not exactly pegging Philip for the hunting type. Or the fighting with any real sense of dignity type at this point, either.

He expresses that sentiment, and his general displeasure at the whole situation, with one long, flat, annoyed look in which the keywords are most certainly relevant.

"Whatever. Look, we need to move. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are spiders here the size of my friggin' head. Are you any good with that thing?"

He nods towards the pickaxe.

[radiopalkiller]

Everything Philip knows about hunting he knows from Dean. From the moment he first held a gun, to every single lesson about warding off the supernatural with the powers of common kitchen condiments. In theory, and in practice, and sometimes in more practice than he asked for. He's usually not half bad at it, actually, because there's something to be said about the driving force of an ever-looming WHAT IF; what if he'd been stronger, faster, better prepared, what if he hadn't been so afraid, what if he'd just brought a bloody gun, what if Philip could prove to himself that there's a scenario in which he survives.

...But of course then he's only half good at it, and no matter how much Wonderland (and everything before and between) has changed him, no matter how much he's been taught, in the end he's not a hunter, he was is was is a physicist, and no matter how long and hard he swims, he will never not be out of his element. And down here the fear choked him long before any monster could.

"You don't use that for the spiders," he says with a resigned sigh, and pushes himself off the wall. When he shoulders the pickaxe the gesture isn't skilled; only practiced, and weary.

"They hate the light. That's why they're usually not in the main tunnels. If you get to any of the excavation sites... well, the flashlight's done the trick so far."

He reaches into his pocket and takes a few slow steps on the concrete. On second thought, no point telling Dean about the beef jerky, that's beginner's level, the one where your hands are still shaking, and you need something to distract the bastards before you take a swing. Although--

"Just. If you run into any dogs later, finish them quickly, or they'll call for backup. And if you run into one of the worms, just run."

That said with all the emphasis of someone who knows that running usually isn't in the Winchester guide book for getting yourself and your loved ones killed.

"There's also a storage room, at the far east end of that tunnel, should be pretty easy to fortify, if, erm... if you need to get anyone to safety. Not sure how much that's possible, but it's probably your best bet."

By now Philip is standing a few steps away, at the intersection of concrete tunnels leading around corners, off into different directions, different parts of the mine. Because, and this is the important bit here:

"...Anyway, I'm not-- I've got to... check up on something. I'll, erm, catch you later."

And that's where Philip turns away from Dean, in the somewhat vain hope that they can say their goodbyes for now, while pretending he just picked all that info up in the last two days, because there definitely aren't any more questions anyone could ask about it at all.