+ Am I asleep or awake? +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: In their dreams
When: 3/20/14 - 3/27/14
Rating: PG-13?
Summary: A catch-all log for what dreams are available for people to walk through at night.
The Story:

♥ As of Wednesday, the 19th, all beds in the Mansion (no matter their style or cultural/temporal origin) have been replaced with swinging beds.

♥ But starting Thursday, the 20th, sleeping in the new beds induces vivid dreams, and characters sleeping at the same time will be able to walk into each others' dreams. If a character is a spoilsport and doesn't sleep in the swinging beds, he or she doesn't get to dream walk.

♥ Characters will be able to dreamwalk until Thursday, the 27th.

♥ Leave a description of your characters' dream (or dreams) in top levels on this post so others can comment and walk into their dream, if they choose to go exploring other people's dreams!

♥ Questions? Please ask them over here at the FAQ post for the event! And have fun!

Comments

Ellen Dreams

[justrunsasaloon]

1. Heaven Sent

Ellen's callused hands brush over the waist-high wheat, watching it sway in the breeze. She wanders through the large field, a dog tromping along with her. Occasionally, the dog growls and disappears to chase something, before coming back and looking smug and accomplished.

In the distance, a white clapboard house stands against the bright blue sky. High scudding clouds offer no relief from the bright sun. But the temperature is just cool enough for long sleeves.

Ellen stops at the edge of the wheat field, watching the house, before turning back into the field, the dog at her side.

2. Hunting

She's done the research, she's found the problem. Carrying a heavy bag, Ellen walks through the cemetery. This is the part she dislikes: burning the bones. Still, it has to be done. She flashes her small light over the headstones in the newest part of the cemetery. Not where she wants to be.

She wanders toward the older part of the cemetery. Looking over her shoulder, Ellen keeps an eye out for cops, and for the spirit she's going to put to rest.

3. Bill

The roadhouse looks different. Not quite so dark and anonymous as when the boys show up. Instead there are more lights, the windows are open, letting in the warm spring air.

Bent over the pool table, Ellen laughs and nudges her elbow backward, trying to take her shot. There's a tall, broad man with light hair bent over her. He's blowing air into her ear.

"Bill! Knock it off!"

"What, can't take your shot? Hurry up Miss 'I can take you at pool'." His laugh rumbles around the roadhouse. He takes a sip of the coffee sitting on a close by table. "C'mon, I wanna play, darlin'."

The balls clack together as Ellen takes a shot. "Stop calling me darlin', you jackass."

He grabs her around the waist, grinning. "Make me."

BILL

[cowhouse]

Okay, so... This is a little weird, this whole other people's dreams thing. Not that a whole lot about Wonderland screams normal, but this supreme invasion of privacy thing is seriously pushing it, and if Jesse could he'd probably opt right out; he knows how his own dreams are and how he'd feel if somebody just randomly popped into one and it's not something he'd do on his own.

But as with most things in Wonderland, he's not getting much choice in the matter. At least this one, whoever's it is, isn't completely batshit insane. Nope, this one is just... Chill. Way more chill than the dream he'd been having, and yo... He'll take it.

One minute he's at the condo and the next he's... In a bar. For a second he wonders if maybe he'd been sleepwalking and wandered into the one on the fifth floor- because this place has an almost familiar quality to it- but once the figures standing at the pool table shimmer into view, he realizes why.

"Uh... Yo." The cigarette he'd be enjoying in his own dream vanishes as he takes a step forward, and he makes a face as he glances down at his now empty hand. RUDE. Shaking it off, he peeks up at the figures again. Awkward...

"Ellen?"

[justrunsasaloon]

She takes her shot and sinks a ball. She pauses, like she's pretty sure she heard her name. Ellen looks around, her eyes skipping right over Jesse.

"Something wrong, El?" Bill asks, leaning on his pool cue.

"No, just... trying to beat my husband's ass at pool." She puts her cue down. "Getting a beer, you want one?" She asks, sauntering toward the bar.

"Yeah, I'll take one." He says, walking around the table.

Ellen walks over to the bar and pulls out three beers. "Jesse, how the hell...?" She pushes one in his direction.

[cowhouse]

Jesse's about to call out to her again, but stops when it becomes apparent she can't see him. Well that's... Even weirder. Awesome. He almost leaves it at that, and is about to turn and head for the door- because like hell he wants get his voyeur on in Ellen's head- but then she addresses him and he takes another step toward the bar instead, frowning.

"I don't know," he admits, curling his hands around the edge of the counter and leaning into them a bit. "I just sorta ended up here. I was trying to--" Trying to get into Jane's house through the back door, but he doesn't wanna get into the fact that his own mind won't let him see the inside of his dead girlfriend's house right now, and so:

"Go out for a smoke, you know? I was at my old place back home," he adds, hoping it'll lend some credibility to his somewhat stilted explanation.

...SUBJECT CHANGE YEEEEAH; he reaches for the beer, though he doesn't take a sip just yet.

"Uh... So... That's your husband?"

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen doesn't believe him for a second, but she's not going to argue with him. She won't do that to folks that she likes, and she likes Jesse. He needs a hand now and again and she wants to be one he turns to. But, she doesn't press, because she knows too many who would back the hell off.

Ellen's eyes are soft when she looks over and sees him bending over the pool table, moving one of her balls out of place. "I see that, William Harvelle." She calls, gathering up their beers.

"Yes, he's my husband. He... He was killed when JoAnna Beth was little." Because she hadn't been 'Jo' then. Not yet. That had happened after.

"Come on. Bill, this is Jesse, a friend of mine. Jesse, this is Bill." She hands her husband his beer and he drapes an arm over her shoulders, tucking her into his side.

"Hi. Nice to meet you."

[cowhouse]

"Oh, shit... I'm sorry." He looks it, too, that slight duck of his head and too-quick chug of his beer. It's still... He's still not 100% on this whole dream creeping thing, and his eyes discreetly scan the area to check for any signs that his presence is messing with what seems like a pretty nice dream.

He snaps out of it when Ellen introduces them, though, offering the dude and nod and then, belatedly, his hand.

"Hey, yeah... You too." He's... Not really sure what else to say, and there's an awkward pause while he makes the decision to stop being a freak about this and just roll with it. He recovers quickly enough, craning his neck to check the place out again while he settles on what he hopes is a harmless topic for conversation.

"This place is awesome, did you guys... You know, like set it up? Back home."

[justrunsasaloon]

"You known Ellen long?" Bill asks, while Ellen puts her balls back where they belong.

"This is Bill's parents' place. We just help out now and again." Ellen admits, picking up her pool cue again. She bends over the table. "Stop ogling." She doesn't look back.

Bill sips his beer and doesn't stop ogling. "Take your shot and quit complaining." He nudges her knee with his pool cue.

2. Hunting!

[wheresmrb]

She may be looking for cops and spirits, but is she looking for angels?

This girl is! And she found one already! He was sleeping in a box in the ground, like a flower! Which was funny, because this angel isn't a flower, even with the rose-petals all over!

They dug the angel out of his soggy hidey hole, which let her finally work on sending it to sleep, which is what Ellen will find her doing in this funny stone garden!

The little, yellow-eyed girl kneels beside the body covered in red petals, stabbing it poking gentle little kisses to his heart, like a good little girl, humming a cheery little song in her distorted, high-low voice.

"Good girls gather, gather, gather..."

[justrunsasaloon]

The song shouldn't, but it does draw her in. She pulls her gun, and a bottle of holy water, creeping forward.

"What the hell -?" Ellen hisses in. She can't believe the carnage that she's almost able to see, thanks to the failing light. She drops her bag of tricks and holds the gun up. "Back away from the corpse."

[wheresmrb]

The girl looks up at the noise, Eyes wide, but she doesn't pull out her needle or move away. She's a good girl and a brave girl and she can't leave the angel! But she's shaking, she's scared, the bad lady has a bad toy and she can't see Mr. B.

"N-no! I can't! Go away! GO AWAY!"

She tries to sit straighter, to slow her trembling and to sound brave and authoritative:

"If you don't, you'll be SORRY!"

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen's warning shot goes wide. Child or not, she's seen some pretty twisted demons and various other spooks. Doesn't mean she wants to hit the kid. She's never been very good at that.

"I said, back away from the corpse."

Ellen isn't playing.

[wheresmrb]

She shrieks at the gunshot, and ducks low against the ground beside the corpse, but she's still got a hand on her extractor in the corpse. Her eyes are wide and full of fear and she shakes her head.

"No! You're bad! Go away!"

She shuts her eyes and throws her other arm over her head, curling close to the ground and close to the extractor.

"MR. BUBBLES! HELP ME!" She cries.

The graveyard is silent.

[paper_knight]

And then, suddenly, it isn't.

A deep, echoing bellow fills the air and an armored hulk crashes through the walls of a nearby mausoleum, head lamps glowing red.

3

[lightgunhustler]

"I almost feel like I shouldn't be watching this."

Jo finds herself sitting at one of the tables nearby, as though she'd been there all along, and yet she knows that she hasn't -- the scene is a new one on her, in some ways, but a part of her remembers it from when she was small, or at least something like it. Her father being affectionate and playful during the short time that he was home, making her mother smile instead of work on those worrylines she cultivated the entire time he was gone.

She pushes herself out of her seat, watching warily as she begins to circle around the pool table, getting a better look at the versions of her parents standing there. The roadhouse is almost unrecognizable for how bright it is, but she remembers a time when this was the usual during the warmer months. It's been ages. More than sixteen years since her father died and this place has heard that kind of laughter.

"This can't be--" She stops herself short before she says anything more, frowning. "Dad? Can you hear me?"

She doubts it. It's lucid enough that she remembers going to sleep. This can't be real. It has to be a dream.

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen jerks around, nearly hitting Bill in the face with the pool cue. Or she would have, had he still been there. But he faded, because her awake mind is stronger than her dreaming one. And Ellen knows that Bill is dead.

"Jo? What are... How did you...?" Ellen waves around, unable to articulate many things right now.

[lightgunhustler]

"I don't know."

It hadn't been her choice to show up here; she remembered that she had gone to sleep not all that long ago -- a rarity these days, to be honest -- and next thing she knew, she found herself here, a strange and not-quite-accurate echo of home.

"... didn't mean to interrupt."

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen walks over and hugs her daughter. "You didn't, Jo." She whispers. "This... was before I was even pregnant." She waves to the roadhouse. "Most things are the same. Your daddy was a lecher at the time." Ellen teases Because why shouldn't she?

"Well, since we're in each other's dream or what the hell ever... beer?" Because Beer solves things. Especially in dreams.

[lightgunhustler]

"Hard to imagine."

She'd never even begun to picture her father as being a lecher of any kind, but hell, she'd been too young to know what one was. She smiles at the joke regardless.

"If it's a dream--" God, was it? How did that make any sense? "Can we even drink?"

[justrunsasaloon]

"Was a time, kiddo, when it was just me and your Daddy. Nothing and no one else to worry about." She shrugs. "He looked, I teased, and usually we scammed folks out of a lot of money."

She grins and opens a pair of beers. "If it's a dream, my dream, we damn well better be."

1

[quis_ut_deus]

Being a creature who neither sleeps nor dreams himself, Michael has nothing of his own to add to Wonderland's collective dreamscape. Neither is he normally interested in what goes on in human minds while they rest, but on this occasion he notices an abnormal degree of crossing over between the sleeping residents. It seems Wonderland is up to something again.

He isn't after Ellen's dreams in specific when he decides to investigate, but she happens to be asleep when he does, so he takes the opportunity chance offers. She's less likely than most to react negatively to his presence or to jerk awake as soon as she notices him.

"Hidden aspirations of becoming a farmer, Ellen? "

Assuming John's form even in dreams - it's familiar to him, now, and he needs one - Michael takes another look around. It's quieter than he would have expected of a hunter's dreams. There's not a single zombie in sight.

[justrunsasaloon]

She doesn't even stop in her wandering, somehow knowing that Michael will just fall into step with her. This is her heaven, a place of peace.

"No. This was home. Before the roadhouse, before Bill." She admits. "I always felt safe here, a little kid's dream." Ellen smiles a bit as the dog brings her a stick and then goes racing after it when she throws it. "Don't get me wrong, there are devil's traps in the parlor, cold iron in the land, dead man's blood arrows in the umbrella stand, but it was peaceful."

She still loves Bill, but this was always her Heaven.

[quis_ut_deus]

As long as Ellen doesn't expect him to follow behind her, they'll be fine. Michael is satisfied to fall in alongside her and give the illusion of equality for now. However aggressive he can be, he's not often motivated to disturbing peaceful admiration of his Father's work without good reason. Not being the one in the lead while in someone else's dream doesn't quite fit the bill.

"If it was safe and peaceful, it's thanks to those measures, not in spite of them."

Call him no fun and a stick in the mud if you must, but remember to call him practical as well. He believes in taking reasonable precautions where justified, these days. If only Heaven had thought to take the same approach before everything had fallen apart...

"Is this what you're hoping for, then?"

[justrunsasaloon]

She keeps going through the field, tossing a stick for the dog. "We were going to bring Jo back here, some day. Bill was going to hang up the hunting and we'd just be... people." Ellen knows that isn't possible. Once in the life, you never really leave it.

She finally stops and stuffs her hands into her pockets, looking at him. "I don't know what I wanted. This place is the most peace I ever knew in my life." And she hadn't known it until it was gone... typical. "So it makes sense that I'd end up here. I wanted peace."

[quis_ut_deus]

Michael nods but doesn't comment on their once-future plans. He's watched many of their kind, and he knows as well as Ellen does that hunters don't just stop hunting. Even if they could bring themselves to forget about the monsters out there, you can never make the monsters forget about you.

It's all a bit of a moot point now, anyway. Bill, Ellen, and their daughter are all quite dead.

"Did the boys ever bother to tell you about their little foray into Heaven?"

The boys. It's entirely too casual a way to refer to the Winchesters, but it's how Ellen knows them. Perhaps she'll appreciate the effort to avoid dehumanizing them. It's not exactly wrong to call them boys, either: Michael's far older than any human that's ever lived. They're all children to him. Privately, though, he'll never think of Sam and Dean as anything but the vessels.

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen's eyebrows rise at him calling the Winchesters 'the boys'. She thinks he might have strained something doing it. Well, he's an archangel, he'll be fine.

"No. They didn't." She starts walking again. "Doubt they went quietly, though. Them boys are too damned stubborn to die, or stay dead." She knows them too well. Hell, if she'd had the choice... No. She'd do it all over again. Just maybe with a few more pounds of nails.