( catch all )

[leaderboards]

WHO: Carolina + others
WHERE: dreamscapes, around New Amsterdam
WHEN: july 2512+
WHAT: a catch all log
NOTES OR WARNINGS: general space marine ptsd; will update with anything else.

currently have one open dreamshare! will match prose if you feel more comfortable and feel free to hit me up if you want to plot something else: eflat or streetsongs#5551 or pm

Comments

open dream (cw: isolation, death, ptsd, etc.)

[leaderboards]

[ if dreams can be summarized by feeling alone, a sense of isolation weighs this one down. it begins in a hallway, bland and militaristic in its construction, the sort of place that should have continuous activity. not only is there no one else in sight, but there are no sounds in the distance, no sense of people working just out of sight.

carolina feels out of place in civilian clothing, but something stops her from making herself more comfortable, from hiding away in her armour in this dream like she can't in the waking world. the one concession to comfort she allows herself is her hair: far longer than it is in new amsterdam, long and loose around her shoulders.

her head is up, her steps driving her forward with apparent confidence so she must be going somewhere. whether or not she finds that place right away (or at all) varies. but she's trying, looking for doors as she follows the unnaturally silent corridor along.

she doesn't seem to notice an interloper right away, the initial silence of the hallway muffling any noise they might make to announce their arrival. should anyone choose to stay, the curious can follow along quietly, just watching or eventually catching up to make their presence known. but carolina's attention is initially elsewhere:

A | one door takes her to a bunker, bathed in the red light of an emergency alert system. it takes her a moment to identify the room, her memory not initially filling in the appropriate blanks, but once she recognizes it, she's quick to turn back to the hallway.

B | a large automatic door takes her onto the ground level of a spacious training room, sometimes intact and bright, sometimes what she imagines it looks like after the ship it was aboard crashed: panels missing from the walls, sections of the floor buckled, lit by a hole high on one wall and a few weak pot lights still shining from the training floor.

C | one of the more benign doors takes her to an empty hotel room, plainly furnished and bathed in the glow of neon signs from outside the large window on the far side of the room. it's harmless, really, but Carolina still visibly tenses before she turns to leave.

D | another door leads to a dimly lit room, the chair in front of the desk empty and a video projected on the wall. it's perpetually looping home footage of a woman in military fatigues, muted. if she still thinks she's alone, Carolina lingers here, pauses before she crosses the room to the abandoned work station; on the desk sits a pistol and a pair of glasses. she reaches for the glasses, but stops herself before she can touch.

E | this time, the hallway ends abruptly, instead opening up into an alleyway in New Amsterdam. it's overgrown, next to buildings that have taken serious damage from the recent monster invasion. it's almost too normal and Carolina is palpably unnerved.

F | the lights don't come on in this room until Carolina and her guest have stepped inside. sometimes it's just eerily still, twelve unique suits of power armour frozen in the position their owners died in. other times, the edges of the room are filled with cameras and other equipment found on a movie set, although there's not a crew to be found. either way, the door behind her isn't opening again, so Carolina's going to have to cross the room to find another way out.

G | this small, airtight door doesn't really look like it should lead outside, but it does. outside and onto a snowy mountaintop, where whatever bubble of quiet that's been hanging over the dream pops. it's noisy out here, but it's all just wind, filling every silence, whipping her hair across her face, filling her vision with flurries. ]

( ooc: will match prose if you're more comfortable. also, feel free to chain a few options together or simply have your character catch up to carolina in the hall! all of these have the potential to get pretty dark, so if you have any concerns or want to plot out things going "i s2g this canon is technically a comedy" directions, lmk. we absolutely can! )

HERE WE GO AGAIN - D lol

[championofsnark]

Hawke is getting so used to these moments that when she opens her eyes into it, she doesn't have those few moments of uncertainty. She simply sighs and rolls her eyes, waiting to see if she can recognize anyone in it. She thinks she sees someone heading into a door and the head looks familiar, so she follows her in.

"Oh good, it's you," she says once she recognizes Carolina. She doesn't notice her reaching for the glasses, instead she focuses her attention on the woman in the looping video. Hawke narrows her eyes. "It's a bit spooky, only silence. Is there a sound up button around here?" See, she's gotten so used to modern slang that she knows what to ask for and everything!

oh heck yeah

[leaderboards]

Before Carolina has a chance to be properly startled by someone joining her dream, Hawke speaks and puts her at ease. It's not a stranger, then, but one of the few people in New Amsterdam that Carolina has grown to genuinely consider a friend. If anyone's going to watch her subconscious haunt her with this room, she's glad it's Hawke.

"No buttons. This facility was mostly voice controlled, just a few terminals here and there," she says, looking back at Hawke to give her a soft, weary sort of smile. "But since this is a dream, I can probably just..."

Carolina closes her eyes as she talks, focusing on the memory of the video, of watching it when she was younger, a teenager who just wanted to feel close to one of her parents, who poured over every video of Allison she could find. That's better, she thinks, than thinking too much about the loop the Director had the video on in this room.

"— that thing down, you're going to make me late."

The video and the sound don't match up, at first, and even Carolina has to admit that that's not exactly a reassuring development. But as she watches, focuses, static fills in the gaps until the words meet up with the movement in the video.

"Don't worry, you'll see me again," the soldier in the video promises and that tired, sad smile of Carolina's is back.

She doesn't exactly need to breathe in a dream, but she still takes a deep breath before she offers, "This was my mother."

[championofsnark]

"Voice-controlled, how fancy." Hawke is only slightly on top of tech. Barely. Limping along. But she's fairly comfortable in her ignorance too. Some things just are. Carolina seems to be able to control her dream so Hawke steps over to her friend, watching this new version. The strangeness of sound and video not syncing up perfectly is odd, but she can still get the gist of it.

She also picks up pretty quickly that this is someone important to Carolina before she speaks. There's something loving about the memory, the type of thing someone has remembered many times. Hawke flinches when she says you'll see me again, because yeah, obviously if she came back someone would be playing this clip over and over. Poor thing.

It becomes much more poor thing when Carolina gives context and Hawke's eyes move to her quickly, startled. "Shite, I'm sorry." Because she's already guessed this story didn't end well. They might be from very different worlds with tech, but they aren't when it comes to tragedy.

They're friends, in Hawke's eyes, which is why she doesn't hesitate to reach over and place a gentle hand on her shoulder. "She's lovely. She also looks like she could kick some arse."

C

[braveoff]

[ It's actually a bit surprising to Drake, once he sees Carolina, that this is her dream and therefore likely her world. He'd expected something more... futuristic looking? Their armor looks like something out of a scifi movie, but the couch could be from his first apartment. He can recognize this as a hotel, and can also tell she's uncomfortable here for some reason.

He should probably wait and see if anything happens, but she's leaving -- will he be stuck in here without her? Should be follow? The rules aren't defined, even for someone as used to this phenomenon as him.

Finally he calls to her, curious and a little concerned. The last dream of hers he ended up in was pretty terrible, after all. ]

Carolina? Where are we?

[leaderboards]

[ carolina doesn't notice drake until he actually addresses her, so there's a flicker of surprise on her features before she can catch herself. but she stops, turns to face him, respects drake enough to give him a clear answer. ]

A long-stay hotel on Chorus. [ a planet she's mentioned enough for drake to know she's spent a great deal of time there. ] This is where I was living, before we turned up at that music festival.

[ it's very clearly a living space for one person, so she'd been there alone. ]

[braveoff]

Oh...

[ It must have been while Wash was recovering. Was he still in the hospital? Drake looks around and it's clearly a single space, not enough room for two. That must have been an adjustment for her, he thinks. ]

By yourself?

F

[hardwearing]

[ Wash has never been here, doesn't have this memory for himself, and so is confused by the familiar suits of armor surrounding them. She's also never told him what happened, not that far ahead, not in enough detail for him to figure it out. The reason she's so protective, the ordeal they shared.

He watches her pull at the door and suddenly notices that there are cameras all around, in the shadows at the edge of the room, though it's as silent as it was a moment before.

This doesn't make any sense. ]

What's going on?

[ It's as much to himself as her, as he moves to examine one of the familiar, if long-lost figures. ]

[leaderboards]

[ of all the people she wants to acknowledge this room's mere existence to, wash is pretty close to the bottom of the list. because that means thinking about how she got him trapped in the original room, how bad of an idea it probably was to bring him to this set when he was still recovering.

(when she was still recovering, too; even in her dreams, she can feel the cold sweat on her neck, the tension in her body, something tight in her chest that makes her want to lock herself up somewhere and cry until she's exhausted her emotions into quieting.)

but wash is here and the door is locked and carolina's not sure how guilty she's going to look if she forcibly wakes herself up now. it's hard to keep the aftershocks of a nightmare from the person you're sharing a bed with, they've both confirmed over the last few months.

so she swallows hard, steps toward the middle of the room, tries not to look too closely at any set of armour. wash knows her too well not to know when she's upset, but she still tries to keep her voice as even as she can. ]

It's a movie set, just a morbid one. A friend of ours was... trying to tell a story about Project Freelancer.

[ about very specific people from freelancer, but she's not clarifying until wash asks. ]

[hardwearing]

[ The 'cast' as it were is... strange, if someone were telling a story about Freelancer. And the poses are even stranger. Wash's expression furrows in confusion, as he looks back to her from where he was examining Ohio. ]

Why them?

[ And he doesn't quite understand how it's morbid just yet. ]

for cassandra

[leaderboards]

[ wherever this is, it's a far cry from the megacities that the displaced have found themselves in: just a small handful of people and a pair of buildings, nestled safely in a valley between rocky hills and an expansive body of water.

halfway up one of the hills, far enough away for a little peace and quiet but close enough to still know exactly what her friends are up to, carolina is sitting in her armour, leaning back against a rock. beside her, she has her helmet off, using it to prop up a tablet that's playing a movie of some sort. her subconscious can't be bothered to put any detail into that, so the images are indistinct, the dialogue nonsensical.

in fact, it's easier to make out the loud argument happening outside of the bases below, despite the distance. the debate has something to do with a tool that's been misplaced, but the armour-clad soldiers involved argue in circles, referencing a whole host of grievances that have nothing to do with the missing tool. they've obviously been at it for a while.

as far as dreams go, carolina likes these ones, when her mind lets her have the reds and blues bickering over who knows what. sometimes they're arguments she remembers, sometimes she's not sure if they really happened or not, but they're on brand enough she doesn't question it.

there's a "shut up," "no you shut up," exchange that has carolina closing her eyes for a moment, losing a fight against her smile as she listens. it's only when she opens her eyes again that she realizes she's not alone in her dream— which at least does a little more to smother her smile. ]

Please tell me you have people you wish you didn't miss, too.

[ cassandra does seem the type, after all. ]

[stabsbooks]

[ Cassandra hadn't even tried to figure out what it was Carolina had been watching on her screen. Eavesdropping on the argument happening down below had been much more engaging from the start. She's sitting nearby with a furrowed brow, a small frown of concentration on her face, as she listens to the voices carry through the canyon. ]

I cannot even tell what they are debating.

[ She pauses. ]

I do not think they know what they are debating, anymore.

[leaderboards]

Probably not. They're terrible at staying on topic.

[ it's a complaint, something that genuinely frustrates carolina on the whole, but she misses having them to complain about here. just misses them, period, and so her tone is that of a woman torn between rolling her eyes and a wistful smile.

one of the soldiers shouts over another one with, "That's not what you said last week!" and prompts carolina to dryly add, ]

They've been at it for years.

for ephemera + freelancers

[leaderboards]

[ carolina is nothing if not a creature of habit and it means she tries to keep her workouts on the most consistent schedules possible. there are small variations week by week, but since the monster invasion, she's doubled down on making sure she's not letting herself become complacent.

just because a threat's not constant doesn't mean it won't still kick her ass if she's not prepared for it. nor can she count on a threat to spare wash and maine by chance; she needs to make sure they're prepared, too.

so this is part of their routine, her teammates readying themselves while carolina's attention is the other way, arms up beside her head as she readjusts the pins keeping her bangs out of her face.

which means there's little in the way of warning before someone approaching catches carolina's attention and she gives them a little nod, hands dropping as she greets, ]

Ephemera. Glad you could make it.

[requiemshark]

[ So. They're doing this. Ephemera's more than half convinced it's going to blow up in his face in some mysterious, horrible way, but he still shows up. He's dressed in his regular workout clothes, his hands carefully wrapped and a hood pulled up over his scars.

No armor. That felt like a step too far. Maybe one day, if they don't kill each other first. ]

Yeah.

[ His tone is flat, a little tense. He exhales slowly, forcing his hands to unclench. ]

Sorry. I'm trying.

[hardwearing]

[ Wash is caught off guard by Ephemera joining them -- Carolina didn't tell him, and a quick glance to Maine confirms that he didn't know either. Well... it's okay with him, but he has to school the surprise off of his face. He drops the leg he was stretching and turns to greet the other man himself.

Ephemera sounds tense, and that's not surprising, but what he says next is. That he's trying. And Wash certainly knows what that's like. He smiles faintly and steps forward, lifting one hand in a wave. ]

Good to see you.

[ It's the truth. Even if his nerves are a little on edge, his paranoia wondering if Ephemera just took the invitation to learn their fighting styles better, he isn't going to begrudge someone who's trying to get along. Who wants something more than bloodshed between them. Maybe if Ephemera's around them more, he'll understand better. ]

Try not to kick my ass too hard, okay?

Wildcard dream

[requiemshark]

[ It's one of the quieter dreams this time. He knows it's a dream because his family is there, in their armor but with their helmets off. They're in a cargo bay on some planet that got torn to pieces in the war but somehow kept on trucking, Insurrectionist territory without any Insurrectionists left alive to hold it except for them, the cockroaches who betrayed every cause they ever swore to. They're with Charon now.

It keeps them alive. It keeps them out of UNSC hands and whatever would happen to them there. Ephemera tries not to think about it too hard.

The memory plays out, stuttering and stopping in places. Going fuzzy in others. His brothers and sisters are checking their gear. Barrows is digging a bullet out of Rodriguez's arm, Rodriguez bitching and snarling the whole time except for the times when the pain hits him -- then, and only then, does he go utterly silent. Sniper tricks, Ephemera remembers. Rodriguez could go still like a dead man and keep it up for hours, for days at a time. Whatever it took to get a shot. It's better that he's talking now, even if it's only to bitch at the rest of them.

The others are working on their gear or sleeping a little ways away. Everyone except for the captain, who's walked a little ways away to talk to a small woman in brown armor. Their helmets are off. They stand very close to each other. Sometimes Hunter puts his hand on her arm. Sometimes the woman lets him.

Ephemera sits on the floor of the Pelican's cargo hold, watching the others. His sketchbook rests on his knee and he taps a pen idly against his greaves. He has to be careful not to crush it when he's armored up like this. He tried talking to the others earlier, but they can't hear him. Their conversations loop around, stuttering and stopping in turn. Sometimes the moment goes fuzzy.

He exhales. He watches it play out. And then he realizes someone else is there. ]

Don't break it, okay? Just...let me have this.

[leaderboards]

[ she's standing beside a pelican. it's the first detail carolina registers about the dream, which means she doesn't have to imagine anything but her armour for herself, the way she's most comfortable. the dream's either hers or someone whose seen her plenty in armour before anyway.

the clarification about whose dream this is comes when she identifies nearby armour. someone she fought years ago, someone ephemera told her about, when she showed up in one of his dreams of them before.

but connie wasn't there that time. she is now and carolina's a step closer to her than she was when ephemera speaks and she reminds herself not to interfere. ]

Of course.

[ it's soft, sincere. she knows what it's like to miss a found family, to cling onto the most vivid of dreams about them because it's something. it aches, but sometimes there's something nice about it. the hurt in dreams isn't always so painful, in her experience.

carolina turns to move toward ephemera as she tugs her helmet off and tucks it under her arm, stopping just before she could step onto the pelican. ]

Can I—? [ she gestures awkwardly toward the floor of the cargo bay. ] Would you mind if I stayed for a little while?

[requiemshark]

[ She's on his good side, at least. Ephemera eyes her for a moment, then exhales slowly and lets some of the tension go. What would it get him to start a fight here, in this moment? He wants to go to his people, to reach out and touch them, but he cannot. They're so close and they don't hear him. They don't see him. Nothing he does here will matter. But if he breaks it, the dream will end, and he thinks that would be the worst possible thing.

He exhales slowly. The picture on his sketchpad stutters in and out. Changing every time he looks at it. ]

Okay.

[ He watches his family, the memory playing out. Rodriguez bitching, Barrows's voice soft and steady as he deals with the bullet wound. Hunter and Connie talking in the distance. Standing close. ]

I didn't know her well. Not really. But I liked her.

aerie au backplay | for maine

[leaderboards]

[ technically speaking, carolina has already congratulated maine exactly as much as she's obligated to, in the form of a carefully worded statement on her warbler account, tagging him and adding a few of the more interesting original designs that made it into the final showing at the quarry. it may very well have been copied and pasted from another designer's statement to some past victor, but it's appropriate enough with the media attention this quarry has garnered and few people would think too much about it.

but carolina does think too much about it, because she's liked maine's company in the time she's known him and she knows him far too well to ignore the fact that he's never responded to a quarry like this before. his behaviour in the arena was one thing, but there's still something not quite right about the interviews he's given since, something that makes her just as conflicted as popular opinion on whether or not it was a truly successful showing.

she'd meticulously planned an arena meant to break maine, but that wasn't what she thought it would look like.

it's an uncomfortable sense of guilt that keeps carolina from seeking him out in the days immediately following his victory, when she's busy with reviews of her own anyway, and he has plenty of attention from other sources. only when things start to quiet, focus swiftly turning to the next moon's quarry, does carolina force herself to sleep for a full seven hours, take a morning for herself, and stop at the liquor store on her way to maine's residence.

even on a day off, carolina looks as meticulously put together as she does when she's working: a dress and simple makeup, her hair pulled back in a practical, low ponytail. the only real change is in her low-heeled boots, a quiet concession to the fact that her legs ache after a week spent more or less continuously pacing in front of video monitors in the high heels she usually wears.

at another time, she might have let herself in, gotten to his door to knock if nothing else, but today, she buzzes from the exterior of his building and waits. ]

[bloodbathing]

[ Coming back from the Quarry is always difficult for Maine. He always wants it to continue. Always tries to drag it out as long as possible while still keeping it entertaining for the masses. Always tries to delay the inevitable moment when he has to relinquish his power. (Because it's his power. His. He shouldn't have to give it up. It belongs to him; it's a part of him; it is him.) The first few days after his victories are always a unique brand of torture, but this time is … different.

This Quarry was different. This one was just for him.

He reads Carolina's Warbler post repeatedly, memorizing every word, every letter, and every piece of punctuation. He stares at the designs intended to kill him, and he knows what they really are. They're brilliant, and they're beautiful, and they're gifts for him. Just for him. They make the awful powerlessness bearable. They make him feel a little less like he's coming apart at the seams. But he doesn't see Carolina at any of the media events, and she doesn't come to see him privately. He doesn't get it. Did he mess up? Did he fail to understand one of her creations? Did he disappoint her?

He drags himself through one event after another, his body so slow that it feels as though he's wading through molasses. His thoughts are sluggish, and he acts mostly on impulse. What words he manages to form are short and growling; most of the time, he can't form them at all. People look at him with awe, an even mix of fear and wonder. When he looks back at them, he pictures all the ways that he could end their lives.

They let him go home eventually. It's a place not far from the Volary, a mark of the favor he's gained among the elite. He locks his apartment door, and he sits. And he lays. And he sits. And he lays.

Time … passes, he guesses. He doesn't know how much. His body starts feeling a little less heavy; he starts feeling a little less slow. He flexes his hands and wonders how soon he can go back into the Quarry. Then he thinks of Carolina's gifts and her lack of contact, and he feels heavy all over again.

The buzzer drags him to his door. He hits the intercom, and… ]

…

[ Shit. He needs to say something. Needs to form words. He rests his forehead against the wall, gives himself to the count of three, then manages to get out, ]

Yeah?

[leaderboards]

[ the static of the intercom greets her and although she can imagine maine frustratedly reminding himself to say something on the other end, carolina waits for him to get the word out before she actually responds. ]

It's Carolina.

[ not "it's me," or a greeting without announcement, because there's room for ambiguity there, especially over the intercom, and she has no desire to have to clarify.

she's still not really sure how this is going to go, but if it goes sideways, carolina wants it over as soon as possible. ]

I'd like a few minutes of your time, if you're not busy.

[ it's not a question, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for carolina. the fact that it clearly gives him control over where those few minutes happen is out of the ordinary; she'd prefer it be in his apartment, but if he wants to do this in the lobby or outside or somewhere else entirely, she'll accept that. ]

for wash

[leaderboards]

[ wash disappears into the shower and maine leaves not long later, after confirmation that he'll be back, and carolina hates herself a little for feeling relieved, for being glad the conversation is over, for not knowing what to say so badly that she gave up.

at least it's over. she scrubs the already tidy little kitchen spotless while wash showers, letting it keep all of her attention until he's on his way into their bedroom to redress and she follows, looking uncertain as she lingers in the doorway. ]

Hey, I... Thanks. For trying to help.

[hardwearing]

[ Wash takes a bit longer in the shower than usual, despite intending to keep it quick. His mind keeps going back to Maine tensing up at the mistake of contact and what he could have been holding back. He feels like maybe he shouldn't have left Carolina to deal with it, shouldn't have walked away from his friend but he just hadn't known what to do. The unraveling of reality should be something he knows how to help someone deal with but he doesn't. There might be nothing that will help at all and that scares him. He knows how he put himself back together and it wasn't healthy, wasn't... something he wants to remember. He shudders despite the heat of the water, remembering.

When he gets out and goes to change he's decided he'll dress and go back out and see if Maine wants him to make anything to eat, that's a start. He'll try again.

But Carolina comes to the door and speaks candidly, and he just knows: Maine's gone already. It's not necessarily either of their faults for not knowing how to help him but Wash is overwhelmed with the need to do better. He just doesn't know how. ]

I made it worse. He's gone?

[leaderboards]

I made it worse first.

[ it's quiet, tired. wash was already walking into a messy situation and maybe she didn't prepare him well enough for that, when she was just so relieved to see him. that wasn't fair of her. ]

He needs a little time to process things on his own, I think. We'll see him later.