asgardmeridiem | OPT-OUT EVENT LOG: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

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OPT-OUT EVENT LOG: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

Who: EVERYONE that stayed in Asgard
What: the Dream a Little Dream mingle log
When: Day 515 ( Sept. 25/26 )
Where: all across the city!
Rating: PG-13. Anything higher than that should be taken to a private log, please!

Day 515 ( Sept. 25/26 ): Progress through the ice blockade will be slow and narrow, as they can't possibly hope to clear the entirety of the forest that has been buried under Thiazi's black ice. Now that they know the source of her magic's corruption, it might not come as a great surprise when cracking open the ice unleashes a strange burst of magic.

At the halfway point between Utgard and Asgard, a pulse of energy will move through the entire city, immediately putting every mortal it touches to sleep. This part of the curse is mandatory and your character must fall asleep; the dream effects of it are not mandatory, and can be played with at your discretion. During this first wave, Travellers will be granted a brief dream - that does not belong to them. They will see, from the dreamer's point of view, every hope and goal and aspiration that the dreamer wishes to complete before the end of days. Whether it's simply confessing their love to an old friend or saving their home planet or perfecting an Asgardian pie, your character will see someone else's ideal resolution before Ragnarok. More on plotting this below!

Upon waking, the Travellers will be plagued with the indistinct whispering of several voices overlapping one another and a slight headache. Both symptoms will gradually increase over time until it reaches incapacitating pain and nausea. The only way to assuage the symptoms is to find the owner of the dream and either maintain physical contact for an hour or discuss the subject of the dream until a full confession has been made. After that, the symptoms will fade and the Travellers will be free to carry on with their day.

There will be other pulses of magic at random throughout the day; these are not mandatory and you can feel free to have your character experience as many or as few dreams as you wish. All dream-sharing will cease by the end of the day, as the blockade progresses past that centre-point of magic.

[ OOC NOTES: This is the mingle log for the Dream a Little Dream opt-out event! Random pairings have already been sent out, but you guys can still feel free to plot with each and pair up anywhere you like. Please remember that these dreams are meant to be positive; details can be found here. Please put [OPEN/CLOSED] along with the time and location in the title of your comment. Let us know if you have any questions! ]

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Scars are distinctive and personal things. Marks left behind by things that they survived. Tris regards this one with a cautious curiosity - she's never seen one like it, and chances are she never will again, either. The knowledge that Ellie could have turned into some mindless, murdering thing sits heavy in her stomach, spreads and unfolds like the leaves of a plant. Tris swallows, listens.

No wonder they'd been so protective of each other. Still are. No wonder that after Ellie fell, she never saw Joel reach the top of the canyon either. In her mind, the scene of her mother running out onto the street to draw away the soldiers repeats itself when Ellie talks about Tess' death, but she shoves the memory away to focus on something else instead.

"Wait. Why are the soldiers and the people trying to find a cure killing each other?"

That doesn't make sense. It's what everyone should want, isn't it? To find a cure? Why would they have to rebel to keep looking for it? Isn't there enough in that world that's out to kill humans already?

"Because nobody in the city trusts the military anymore. I had no idea how bad it was until I actually got out of it. They weren't giving people their rations, they weren't telling them the truth about Infected getting inside the walls..."

Ellie trails off, because this makes her so uncomfortable, and she doesn't feel that she knows everything.

"But yeah, you'd think, right? The Fireflies are rebels. They're the only other armed force in the Zones. ... other than people like Tess and Joel, anyway. They're talking about bringing democracy back, fighting for the people. That sort of stuff."

Shrugging, she shakes her head. "Anyway, ask Riley about it, she knows all about this stuff."

Suddenly, Tris realizes how much the things that she was taught about her city were right. Things do fall into chaos. Everything does go to hell. Tris bites her lip and looks away, not wanting to think about it - the military, the rations, rebels, people who agree to smuggle human beings, and then, well, David. How quickly the world falls apart when things go wrong, and what people are really capable of.

But she has to know.

"So... what did you do then?"

"We just... kept going." She makes a helpless gesture, of sending something off into the ether. Ellie sets her jaw, takes a breath, and looks over at Tris.

"When I was bitten, I wasn't alone. Riley was... she was there. She got bit, too."

Ellie grips Tris's hand tighter, slowly looks away, down into the streets. She has no trouble keeping her voice steady, but she doesn't sound like herself. She sounds like she's telling a story about something that happened to somebody else. Flat, distant.

"So it's not like either of us had anything to go back for."

Tris looks at her, trying and failing not to let the shock show. Riley and Ellie got bit together, but Ellie was immune, and Riley... wasn't. Not a difficult bit of math to do, but it hits no less hard for it. She squeezes Ellie's hand.

Words fail her. She waits to hear what happens next.

"Joel was kinda... fucked up after Tess died." She goes on in that same flat voice, fixing her eyes on a point of concrete, though it doesn't seem like she's seeing it. She's gotten good at removing herself from it. "I guess we both were. He's lost a lot. ... he had a kid, before the outbreak. A daughter."

Ellie shrugs her shoulders upwards, shakes her head, and sighs deeply.

"So... he really didn't want to be stuck with me, he only kept me because Tess made him. He even tried to hand me off to his brother once, I guess his brother used to work with the Fireflies- but then he backed out at the last minute. There were a couple of times we met up with other people, other survivors. That didn't always end well either."

The thought of Sam and Henry sticks in her throat, and she swallows past it. "A lot of times I didn't think we were gonna make it. We started in spring, and when I showed up here, it was almost spring again. We were still on the road. Joel said we got there. That we found the Fireflies, and their lab."

She can only barely imagine what it'd have been like. There's no version of this story possible in her world, but on the other hand, she can picture the people, and the pain. To be stuck with someone who reminds you sharply of what you've lost forever. To meet people only for it to end terribly, time and time again. And the rest of the time, not to meet any survivors at all, just miles of nothing and monsters and ruin.

"So that dream... that's what you hoped would happen when you got there."

"Yeah, that's what I hoped. ... but that's not what Joel says is going to happen."

She picks at her fingernails, scratching across her knuckles. It's a nervous little motion she makes when she's stressed, worried, scared. Tris has seen it before.

"He says there's a lot of people like me. But they can't do anything about it. They've stopped trying to figure out a cure."

Tris had time to grow distrustful of anyone. Blanket suspicion that everyone has their own agenda, because everyone has something that they want, and so her kneejerk response is you think he's telling the truth?- it's plain for Ellie if she looks for it, how Tris starts to say something and then stops. Looks down, biting the inside of her cheek.

"What do you think?"

Ellie's got a feeling of her own in the matter, that much she can tell. On the other hand, after what she's heard and seen of the guy, all Joel wants is to keep Ellie safe, but safe isn't always the right thing to be.

At once, it's both terrifying and gratifying to hear the suspicion in Tris's voice. Ellie digs her nails into her skin until the bite of pain lets her think clearly.

"I don't think he's telling me everything," she admits, quiet. She doesn't precisely think he's lying, but-

"He doesn't like talking about it. ... and when I came here, we were pretty close, but he wasn't like he is now. It's like he got ten times more paranoid that somebody's gonna get between us, or that I'm gonna get hurt. I think something happened in there. Something bad."

Something bad. Tris has a bad taste in her mouth immediately as it crosses her mind that not all scientists who say they want the best for people actually care about people. It's hard not to think of injections and cold metal tables and reclined chairs. Images of the inside of her skull up on a screen. Her stomach turns while her mouth presses into a thin line.

"Maybe. Not all doctors and scientists are good people." If Ellie was somewhere like the Erudite labs, Tris is pretty sure what she'd do.

"Marlene wouldn't let them do anything," Ellie mumbles, but even as she says it, she wonders. According to Riley accounts, Marlene is even more ruthless than Ellie thought, and that's saying something. The first time they met her, she threatened to shatter Riley's kneecaps just to prove a point.

Hell, Ellie had actually shot at her over that one.

"Joel says she was there."

That she was happy to see me again.

Something about that bothers her. When would Marlene tell Joel that? She's not exactly the sentimental type- but now she's tying herself up in knots.

Tris looks over at her friend who doesn't really sound that sure of what she's saying, her brain racing to work with what she's got.

"So I guess it'd be her call what they did," she says quietly, thinking out loud. The people who seem to be calling the shots aren't always actually the ones who do. That, and she knows too little about Marlene to make any calls on her character.

"Well, she is their leader. At least she was in Boston."

Maybe she doesn't call the shots in Salt Lake.

"... but anyway, the Grey Lady said that I could be the cure. That it's possible. So I don't think Joel and I found the right people. We just... have to figure it out from here."

It doesn't answer her question, but it's what she's held onto.

"He doesn't want to keep going. I don't blame him."

"Yeah. After all that..." She trails off. It was a long road for both of them, longer than she's ever been on.

"But, I mean... can you let it go?" Just stop looking? Tris isn't sure she could, but then, she isn't in those shoes. She knows for sure that the right thing to do is to try and save the world, to try and get people the cure so that everything can be mended, if it's possible. But the right thing isn't always everything that matters.

Fingers opening and closing, Ellie shuts her eyes, taking a deep breath as she presses the heels of her hands into them. The long pause before she answers gives away her state of mind. But even so, she comes up shaking her head, a sort of wry, knowing smile on her lips, serious and composed.

"Tess and Riley died for this. They weren't the only ones. I can't give up. Not after everything."

A deep breath. She returns that same smile without thinking about it. "I don't know if it helps any, but... I couldn't either, if it was me."

Having the possibility of fixing something - of maybe helping other people so that they don't have to go through the same terrible things, and just leaving it behind? No way.

It makes her smile, and she lowers her hands, ducking her head.

"Yeah, it kinda helps. ... I feel like a selfish asshole either way, but there's no way to win. Riley says I shouldn't worry about what I should do, and just do what I think is right."

"Yeah? I think so, too." She bumps her shoulder against her friend's. "Joel's probably gonna be against it, but... I dunno, sometimes I think there are things you just have to do."

The bump makes her grin despite herself, and Ellie bumps back, then leans in and sets her cheek against Tris's shoulder, shutting her eyes. She's not especially affectionate, not physically, which means this is really weighing on her.

"Joel can deal with it."

"Yeah. He'll live."

Tris still isn't used to any kind of casual physical contact, so all of this is very strange for her. She tenses when Ellie settles against her, and has to make a conscious effort to not sit there like she's made out of brick. It gets easier from wanting to comfort her friend somehow.

"I'd go with you."

Touching helps quiet the pain thumping through her body and head, she's figured out. If nothing else, it accomplishes that much.

"I know you would," she mumbles, eyes still shut. Even if she knows, it's still causing a little lump in her throat. She wishes she could.

Ellie realizes with a sudden, horrible pang that she's going to miss Tris, when all of this is done. She's going to miss her just as much as she misses Riley. It's kind of scary, realizing how much she cares, because she knows what she can lose.

Tris is thinking along much the same lines. Knowing, at the same time, that the last times she was home she didn't even remember makes it worse. If she hadn't met Ellie, she isn't sure where she'd be. Her throat closes up a little at the thought, distorting her voice as she replies.

"I guess we don't get to choose where we go back to in the end." And even if she could, she would never forgive herself for running and leaving her friends at home behind.

"We don't get to choose a lot of what happens," Ellie whispers back. It's one of those things that makes her sound impossibly older, like she's used up everything.

The next part sounds much more like her.

"All we can do is choose how we want to deal with it. Me, I'm gonna fight for all I can get."

"You'll probably go and start a fight with as many of the gods as it takes." She smiles as she says it, because that's Ellie all over. She wants to believe they'll find some way, but isn't sure she can yet.

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