[OPEN] And I'll dream each night of some version of you

[closureisformovies]

Who: Alice Dyer (closureisformovies), Samama "Sam" Khalid (huntingtruths) & you!
What: Alice and Sam arrive back from their canon update
When: Early May
Where: Around, locations in prompts
Warnings: Reference to gun violence; typical horror protagonist things; specifics in headers. Magnus Protocol Spoilers up to Episode 40.
Notes: Open prompts for both Alice and Sam will be down in the comments! Body of the post is meta/closed to Sam.



It's just her luck, really. Goes to talk to some spooky external— thing and don't even die because it's dangerous, oh no, that'd be too logical. She was prepared for that risk. Getting accidentally shot by her overeager bodyguard she didn't ask for? That's the level of absurdity that her life is made of, these days, so of course that's what happened instead.

(Gwen Bouchard, when she fucking sees you again...)

The memories hit when Mortanne welcomes her back and with it, the fact that Sam was here, too, the first time, so if she's here again, then surely— maybe— she almost doesn't dare to ask but she does and Mortanne says yes, and, well, after that it's all she can do not to cry with relief.

She's alone on the ferry, except for ferryman. It's the most nervewracking few minutes of travel of her life and she spends it shifting from foot to foot, scratching at her arm, pulling at her hair—nervous, scared, anxious, excited, she doesn't know. She just knows that Mortanne wouldn't lie. So she pays her fare, steps off the boat, and then stands on the dock to wait.

She's not going anywhere until he turns up. She doesn't care how long it takes.

Comments

[skeletonkeay]

Few places better on this island to drink and smoke than the Oak & Iron, save for maybe Empty Pockets. Alice likely knows she'll find Gerry occupying a chair at one of the outdoor tables there for nearly the entirety of any Tuesday that isn't too cold, drinking a beer and puffing away at his "dinner". (A joke, he insists. He'll eat a real meal. Probably.)

And there he is when she arrives. He perks up immediately. "Alice! Where the hell----" Oh her hair. He notices it instantly. It looks incredible, which can only mean one thing. "What's wrong? What happened?"

[closureisformovies]

Her face brightens the second he spots her.

"The better question might be what hasn't happened—" is the largely unhelpful immediate answer, she'll elaborate in a minute. Right now she's bust going for the hug, breathing very real relief that he's still here to be found. The last few months have been so... lonely. "Christ it's good to see you—"

[skeletonkeay]

"You too, damn." Gerry hugs the absolute hell out of her, slowly rocking side to side a little without thinking about it. "Just glad you found your way back."

[closureisformovies]

"Never been so bloody relieved to get called to the headmistress' office," she jokes, meaning, of course, Mortanne's office. She squeezes tight and doesn't resist the rocking motion at all. "We got called back, I dunno why—I mean, obviously we didn't die the way we thought we were gonna but then all this other shit happened and you were right, you were super right that our world must be just as fucked as yours."

[skeletonkeay]

"Oh Christ," Gerry groans, pulling back. "Alright, so, clearly drinks are in order. Wanna head inside?" He thumbs back at the Oak & Iron.

[closureisformovies]

"Yeah, yeah—drinks sound good. You would not believe how little time I've even had to hit the pub lately." Beat. "Actually you probably would. Ugh."

She drags her hands down her face and then back up through her hair, huffs, and then gives his arm a quick tug as they head inside to get those drinks. As always she eyes out the best, back corner-iest free table for them.

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry knows exactly which one she spots as soon as she does and makes a beeline for it, waving to a server. The gentleman knows them by now and knows what to bring, so Gerry just goes to take a seat rather than worrying about ordering.

"Want to jump right in or wait till the beer gets here?"

[closureisformovies]

Her answer: "My best mate from home got eaten by a computer."

There are many categories of best mate. Gerry's one of them. Sam's also one of them. Colin was another. He'd been at the OIAR second longest after her and it still doesn't feel right without him.

"Actually strictly speaking it was a server rack but computer's quippier."

[skeletonkeay]

"Holy shit." That actually gets an eyebrow raise out of Gerry. Challenging to do. "This is going to sound like a mad question, but. Why?"

[closureisformovies]

"Not as mad as I wish it was, actually." She props her chin on her fists. "It was 'cuz he attacked it with a crowbar. Freddy didn't like that much. As for why he attacked it with a crowbar, I'm pretty sure the computers are evil and didn't like that he was close to figuring 'em out."

Yeah she realises that doesn't explain much.

[skeletonkeay]

Honestly it explains more than she thinks. Gerry nods solemnly. "Yeah, they'll do that."

This is hardly his first rodeo.

[closureisformovies]

"Maybe you could share with the class then 'cause I still barely understand it and I've been pouring through his notes for weeks. I mean— I knew he thought they were listening to us, and I knew it was driving him kinda... nuts, but I didn't think..."

She didn't think it'd go that south that quickly, let alone that the computers were actually capable of devouring a man whole.

"...the system read out a file about it after it happened. It broke him down into component pieces like— like the fucking recipe from Fullmetal Alchemist, for fuck's sake. I woulda laughed if I didn't wanna cry. And throw up."

[skeletonkeay]

"Computers watching and listening is pretty standard modern day Eye stuff," Gerry begins. "I mean, there's definitely enough fear around government monitoring and data privacy that it'd be enough to feed off of. The eating is new, but honestly it sounds like whatever you all have going on is a different flavor of Fears than what we had, and these things really don't care for it when you snitch on them or figure them out. They tend to torment people just long enough to farm as much fear as possible out of them, then gruesomely kill them or mysteriously disappear them so they can farm fear from anyone who knew 'em."

[closureisformovies]

Alice's nose wrinkles. "...it's been doing creepy things ever since. Teeth appearing in keyboards. Hands out of screens. Hell, it was printing pictures of Colin's face for a bit."

Thank god it's stopped doing that. She might have actually lost it if it kept happening. She's been lucky that her computer hasn't been afflicted by the same body horror weirdness that Celia and Gwen's have.

Still. Definitely fits with farming the rest of them for what it can get.

"It's definitely still listening to us, sometimes it spits out cases like it's responding to stuff we've said, but we can't turn the system off. It's running twenty-four-seven and we don't know what happens if we just stop filing cases, except that it's probably bad. There's this... back end part of the system only the boss has usually access to, that's apparently tallying up the metrics the cases are ranked on for... something."

[skeletonkeay]

"If it's anything like the Eye, it's looking for information, and it's not going to tell you what until it's too late," Gerry warns. The server doesn't even look at them weirdly when he drops off their drinks, used to this kind of talk out of Gerry, at least.

"The thing is, a lot of these Fear traps are designed to make you feel helpless. Getting the hell away is usually the smartest choice, at least up till a point. Don't investigate, don't fight back, just up and leave. But if it's taunting you with having killed someone, it's... probably too late to get a clean break. Hm."

With a clink from the pewter ring he's wearing, Gerry taps his finger on his glass, thinking. "Typically at that point, the best countermeasure is to get a different Fear involved. Not sure how yours work in that regard. It doesn't seem like your Fears are the same fourteen we had. The Eye wouldn't be caught dead doing Flesh stuff. Huh."

[closureisformovies]

"I dunno where to even start with that. Or— okay, I sort of do, but it's not much help. We sort stuffed into these... four categories. DPHW. We don't know what they stand for. Whatever they do stand for I think they were translated from the system's original German, but we don't know what the original was, so that's also useless. Closest I've got to a definition for any of them is that to get 'W' up it asked for more... Bonzo? Which, apparently, is Mr. Bonzo. Because that explains so much."

It does not. It explains absolutely nothing and she's so fucking tired. She takes her drink and takes a swig.

Beat.

"...y'know, a couple of times Celia asked about sorting the cases into bigger groups. When she first got the job she asked about a search system, said something about... looking for every case about— meat? Or being buried alive. Then she said something similar the other week. Didn't really understand what the hell she was on about at the time, but then Sam said some stuff and now..."

[skeletonkeay]

"Huh. Just four. Interesting. Explains the overlap... Have you figured out what the general vibe of each category is yet?" His nose wrinkles. "Do I even want to know what Mr. Bonzo is?"

At the mention of Celia's categories, though, Gerry sits up a bit straighter. "Yeah, those are--- those are some of the Fourteen. Meat is the Flesh, buried alive is the Buried. Did she mention any others? The dark, unfathomably huge spaces, spiders, disease, being watched, anything like that?"

[closureisformovies]

"How do you not know what Mr. Bonzo is? Y'know, creepy guy in a suit they used to trick celebrities into thinking was a forreal children's mascot? Until that serial killer got caught dressed as him? Apparently he's been popping up in the cases recently but honestly, no, besides him getting a high 'W' rating I dunno what the patterns are. Every case gets rated from 1-10 in each, but I never used to pay it much mind."

Used to be she just filed her cases and forgot about it for the sake of her sanity but these days... well, she's been paying a little more attention but not enough to tie it all together yet.

"I think she did, yeah— dark and disease, at least? And she was helping Sam with all that Magnussy stuff. And Sam— okay, he got thrown through this portal thing by Celia, long story, but he said it popped him out in this other universe. So..."

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry stares at her for a long moment. He'll revisit the stuff about Sam and Celia in a minute, this is serious. "...Are you--- talking about Mr. Blobby?"

[closureisformovies]

"What?" Deep, deep squint. "No? His name's Bonzo. What kinda name is Mr Blobby? I mean I guess he is kind of... blobby... but— no?"

[skeletonkeay]

What the fuck.

"Okay, wait, hang on. What does he look like?"

[closureisformovies]

"He's like— dark yellow with red spots and purple details? Like his tie and hat and nose and stuff."

She sort of mimes the hat and nose.

[skeletonkeay]

"Okay so yeah like a miscolored Mr. Blobby. God, the multiverse is fucking weird. And one of the Fears latched onto that as a monster? What kind of Five Nights at Freddy's shit is that? Ugh." Gerry rubs his face, grumbling.

[closureisformovies]

She throws her hands up. "Five nights at fucking what now? The murders didn't actually happen at Fredbear's y'know, Chuck E's just toed the line on copyright infringement like it was a sport."

[skeletonkeay]

"What."