( open )

[evasives]

WHO: cassian, helena + YOU (ota!!)
WHERE: dreamscapes and new amsterdam, maybe elsewhere
WHEN: throughout ic march & early april
WHAT: dreams! cooking! it's a catch all!
NOTES OR WARNINGS: several warnings - will note above each header for specifics but many dreams involve blood and death, please be aware of the individual warnings! starters in the comments.

( hit me up if you want anything else specific: communism @ plurk, romanitas#5368 @ discord, or pms! or wildcard me, i'm easy. )

Comments

( helena ) dream: an impalement

[sestra]

( cw: massive amounts of blood, impalement injuries, potential references to self harm, poor medical treatment )

[ you wake up into a dream, in a child's bed, though the details of that are blurry other than feet hanging over the edge of the mattress. something compels you to go downstairs, and when you hit the bottom floor, it's barefeet in blood, trailing along the hallway towards a bathroom, the door opened just a crack. from inside, there's muttering, "i'm not beth. i'm not beth." ]

[ when you open the door to the bathroom, it's full of blood. helena is standing at the sink, and scattered on the countertop are bandages and medicines, all manner of things she's pulled out of the cabinets. the floor is stained and splotchy with blood too, her gloved hands are a mess, there's ripped rags tossed carelessly all around. on her back are actual angel-like white wings - small and fluttering and hazy, but also splattered red with blood - visible only for a moment before she turns around to look. the front of her paper thin camisole is just as bloody, making it clear she's been cleaning up her own injury nestled in her lower right abdomen, still bleeding out from the shitty job she's done at playing nurse. this mess is all her own blood. ]

[ she raises a finger to her lips. ] Shhhh.

[chocolateries]

[ silena moves on instinct, following the sounds and then the trail of blood. there's a very dreamy quality to everything; the blood could be paint splotches, all the lights are haloed like the soft lighting of a movie from the 40s, and there's an angel in the bathroom.

silena yawns and rubs her eyes as the wings shimmer away and helena turns, shushing her. she rubs her eyes again. ]

What're you doing in my bathroom?

[sestra]

[ silena slowly comes into focus, not the child she was expecting. she lowers her hand and frowns, looking around the room like she's making sure the set up hasn't changed from familiarity. no, it's still the same one she wrecked. ]

This is not your bathroom.

[ to be fair, she doesn't know whose bathroom it is. she'd never even gotten the little boy's name. ]

I need to fix wound.

[chocolateries]

[ silena's forehead wrinkles as she looks behind her, back into the hall. is it... it is not her bathroom. she shakes off the lingering confusion that makes her head feel like jelly, trying to peel back the layers of the dream. ]

What wound? There's a lot of blood.

[ like a lot a lot. that time kovacs was impaled a lot of blood. ]

[sestra]

[ her hands are still gloved and bloody, and she gestures downward at her abdomen with one of them, the blood already seeping through her bandage and her camisole something awful. she has not done a good job sealing it up, but nor does she seem terribly concerned about it. ]

I was stabbed. With bar. [ impaled, she was definitely impaled. ]

[chocolateries]

Oh. Like Kovacs.

[ suddenly helena's blasé attitude about the impalement makes so much more sense. kovacs is a baby. ]

Do you... can I help you, please?

[sestra]

Yes. Only no drugs involved.

[ kovacs is definitely a baby, even in their memories. ]

Do you know how to fix? Last time, took few days to stop hurting.

[chocolateries]

We could go to the store to get a tylenol?

[ if this were silena's dream, she could offer nectar and ambrosia (though that would be dangerous, but also a dream), but right now all she can offer is hitting up a convenience store once helena stops bleeding.

moving forward, she picks up some of the gauze to press to helena's abdomen. ]

How'd it happen?

[sestra]

No. I do not want to be traced into store.

[ she is fully prepared to bleach every single drop of blood and every counter top here after she's finished. there's a reason she broke into a house instead of anywhere else - that and the message she wanted to get to sarah. ]

[ helena hisses when silena applies the pressure, but it doesn't hurt nearly as much as actually getting stabbed, so she doesn't complain. ]

My sister stab me. But I was not knowing she was my sister then.

[chocolateries]

You have a sister?

[ is this the information to take away from this? maybe not. maybe she should still be focused on someone impaling helena, but it seems kind of pale in comparision to helena's SISTER impaling helena. ]

I have a sister, too.

[sestra]

Yes. Her name is Sarah. She is my twin.

[ she adores her sister!! her sister who stabbed her! and then later shot her! listen. their origins are not happy but... it's a work in progress. helena is just happy for this potential for a real family. ]

Who is your sister?

[chocolateries]

I have a bunch.

[ she'd been thinking about lacy, her baby sister, but she doesn't doubt drew would impale her. they hadn't gotten along particularly well. ]

There's Lacy, she's the youngest, Amandine, Pippa, Lennon, Esme, Hanna, and Remy. And Drew, I guess.

[ how many of them survived? hopefully remy and esme got to ransack tiffany's before they had to go back to camp. silena pushes it out of her mind, remembering lacy's twin blonde pigtails underneath her helmet is too much right now and she doesn't want to summon the memories of her siblings into helena's dream. ]

[sestra]

You have many many sisters. You are oldest?

[ doesn't she? hadn't sarah tried to tell her the others were like sisters too, not just clones? it's hard to think of them that way just yet; she's barely come to terms with having a twin. ]

I have niece also. My pleminnytsya. I want to see her again.

[chocolateries]

Drew's the same age as me. [ but silena had been at camp longer so she had been the head of cabin ten. and drew hated it. there had been others, who had left to attempt a life or gone on a quest and never come home, older siblings that showed her the ropes so she could pass on the knowledge to her younger siblings.

lacy was only eleven! ]

Pleminnytsya? [ french may no longer come naturally to her but silena's melodic voice forms the unfamiliar word with grace, almost perfect. ] Sarah's daughter? What is her name?

[sestra]

[ you know what. she never asked how old silena was?? or maybe she can't remember?? she knows her friend is a teenager, always placing her around seventeen, eighteen. ] How old is this?

[ she smiles a little bit over silena's pronunciation of the word. ] Kira. She is sweetest girl. I only meet her one time so far.

[ will sarah let it happen again?? verdict's still out. ]

[chocolateries]

Seventeen. I'm eighteen now, I guess. My birthday was Valentine's day.

[ she carefully attends to helena's wounds, still, making sure it's clean and not bleeding. her hands are sure and practiced, enough time letting lee and michael drill the basics of first aid into her that she is at ease with the blood on her hands. ]

How old is Kira?

[sestra]

[ helena hisses as silena cleans the wound, but she isn't bothered by any pain that comes of it. she's pretty sure nothing could be worse than the actual impalement itself. ]

You had birthday in this place? [ did she celebrate??]

[ she hums, thoughtfully and from the latest twitch of silena's working hands. ] She might be seven. Or eight.