comeclosercomeclosercomeclosercomecloser

[returntous.livejournal.com]

Who: Mabel, Integra, and possibly her merry gang
What: NIGHTMARES
Where: Mabel's apartment
When: Veerdi (Friday), midday
Notes: Taking place because Mabel has been noticeably AWOL due to horrible nightmares.
Warnings: t-tentacles? And HORRIBLE NIGHTMARES

The first day Mabel stopped talking to everyone, she coated her walls with as many self-made wards as she could think of. Get out. Go away. Keep out. Leave me the fuck alone. They don't work.

The second day, she had covered those with x'ed out circles. After that, she stopped counting the days. Her Sharpie ran dry. She used another. Her tape ran out. she started using glue.

In the first dream, she's sitting at a campfire, surrounded by other children. "The Tree Man comes when nobody's looking," she explains. The other children listen rampantly. The fire dances in a breeze she can't feel, scattering shadows over the eyes of the others.

"He comes for you in the dark, he comes for you during the day. He waits for you to see him, and when you do, you can never escape. He'll follow you to the ends of the earth."

A white girl, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, raises her hand as if she was in class. "But why?"

Mabel smiles. They were all listening to her now, giving her the respect she never got in school. This was her story, her place. The trees around them all sway, all except for one. "Nobody knows. Once he sees you, he will never stop chasing you. Once he catches you, you'll never leave him again."

"That's stupid," another kid says. Mabel recognized him. He used to kick the back of her chair all through fifth grade. She holds up her hands, smiles, and watches her fingers begin to change, bones piercing skin and reaching out like branches. The unmoving tree begins to writhe.

"You are broken. You cannot be fixed."

When she was a child, the dead would comfort her as much as they would claw at her. They would slip between the walls and clatter across the ceiling, hide her from view and pull her away from danger. No dead seeped through her walls now, nipped at her ankles or dug into her flesh. There was no real danger here.

She covers the walls anyway.

In the second dream, she's walking along the edges of an outdoor party. The lake gleams in reflected moonlight in the distance, Chinese lanterns glowed in red rows above her head. Snippets of adult conversation drifted her way as she walked on through.

"...such a shame, her father..."

"...and you know, she's such an odd girl too, the stories her mother tells..."

"...why do they let her near other kids at all, she's obviously not well..."

A hand grabs her wrist, and spun her around to face a small boy. A cousin, one of them with a J-name. She could never get them straight. "Operator, operator, operator! Mabel there, operator? Can Mabel play?"

Mabel lets out a shriek, and swats at him. Laughing, the boy dances out of the way. "Operator, operator! Calling out to Mabel, operator! She doesn't listen, does she?"

"Brat!" Spinning on her heel, Mabel marches away. One of the lanterns was sitting on the ground, and she snatches it up.

"Don't go into the dark!" the boy calls. "The operator's waiting!"

She ignores him, stalking towards the lake. The lantern bounces against her thigh, the cheap paper tearing. Angry at it, she sets it down with a huff and stares at the lake. It was nice and quiet, all the way out here. She can't hear the party at all.

When she turns around to check if it's still there, her shadow rises up. Towering over her, she watches as it bends down and swallows her whole.

She covers the door with paper, plastering it over and over. She doesn't bother to lock it. After all, locks didn't work.

Comments

[suninhades]

The way Integra lets her investigating agents work - relative free rein of their time - it is not immediately apparent that Mabel is, in fact, missing. She notes it, like she notes every instance of not seeing someone when she expects them in passing, but the reality is that cases are difficult and cases are long and sometimes, people just don't come in for a few days, either to sleep it off or because they're that entrenched in work.

She reminds herself to ask after the other woman, calls and hears nothing back, then gets busy, and then it's to the point where she's the only employee who hasn't checked in on a mandatory callback. When Integra looks up just how long it's been, and notes that Mabel's CiD is still apparently functioning, she decides it's time to go looking.

Integra and Dean walk there, hour and politeness be damned, and even from the courtyard she can tell something's amiss. "Her windows look blacked out," she says, half to herself - it's not as if she imagines Dean could miss it.

[wearyheadtorest]

"Yeah." Dean's already scowling at said windows, his sense of not-liking-this growing by the minute. It's true that Integra doesn't keep everyone on a tight leash, and it's true that the nature of their work means sometimes they just aren't around--but they are eventually. They may be a lot of other things but for the most part, Hellsing agents are responsible, loyal, would follow Integra's orders.

The ones who don't wash out, that is. The ones who cut it, who belong.

Mabel had struck Dean as one of those. And for her not to follow a simple order like check in was worrying enough, without the continued silence from her end, without her CiD still being active, and without this.

"I can't tell if it's to keep something out--or in." Either way he's worried now, enough to head straight up there, and the look he gives Integra makes that plain.

[returntous.livejournal.com]

In the third dream, Mabel finds herself walking down a long hallway, wearing a dress she hadn't own since she was four. It's dark, which was funny, because she remembered this hallways always being very bright. She should be reaching the stairs soon, but the hallway just goes on and on. Someone had been drawing on the walls, and that was not going to make her momma happy. She always liked how clean this place was.

Mabel traces her fingers across each letter, trying to sound them out. U, o, y, d, n, u, o, f. She stops on the f, frowning at it in concentration. That just couldn't be right. Uud? Noof?

When she turns around again, she's found the stairs. She stands at the edge and peers down, even though her daddy always told her not to go near the stairs by herself. There was someone coming, she could hear them.

She's awake. Or she's not. Every time she opens her eyes, she sees that twisted mural plastered on her wall. Every time she closes them, she sees those darkened stairs, hears someone approaching. She's herself, huddled in the corner of a dark room. She's four again, waiting for something long and black to come up the stairs.

[suninhades]

"She could be contaminated with something," says Integra, and simply by them being who they are it's clear she doesn't mean some kind of disease. Ghosts, possessions... things that come for the very heart and soul of you, crawling out of the darkness. "But I can't imagine why she wouldn't tell us, if she were able."

Meaning she might not have been able to. Integra doesn't waste time getting closer, and she runs one palm over the apartment door, seeing for any reacting from the alchemy runes etched into the black leather of her gloves. "Do you hear anything?"

[wearyheadtorest]

Dean is silent for a few long moments, and still save his lean closer to the door. He even holds his breath to make sure he can listen as closely as he needs to. One shoulder is braced on the door, one hand behind his back just in case he might need his gun.

He doesn't hear anything. Out of force of habit, he inhales deeply as he straightens up. He doesn't smell anything, either, no sulfur, nothing to suggest demons.

He looks over at Integra, grave, shaking his head. "Not a damned thing. Doesn't mean she's not still in there."

[returntous.livejournal.com]

She's in a room with no exits. Where she once had a window, a pieced together mural of giant eye stared in. There's a doorknob, but the doors been swallowed by wards so scribbled together incomprehensibly, incapable of working. Her floor is littered with the metal spines of notebooks, empty rolls of tape, and broken pens. Her ceiling is bare, only because she couldn't reach it.

The far wall, once housing a small collection of notes and schedules, now contained the project that had consumed her waking moments. A tall body, a blank face, and twisting limbs that stretched across all four walls, reaching for her bed. One day they were going to reach her, progressing in length inch by inch. One day they were going to eat her up.

Mabel sits in the middle of her bed, arms locked around her knees, eyes black and empty. He was going to eat her up.

[suninhades]

It's not just the covered-up windows that seem out of place; it's a feeling, an unsettling aura that's more than just the disturbing silence that sits where a young woman should be.

Integra unholsters her side arm and a flashlight, stepping back from the door and taking a front position. She looks at Dean. "Open it up."

Mabel might not be alone.

[wearyheadtorest]

"Yes, Sir," he replies, stepping back, gun at the ready but lowered. As ordered, he gets the door open, one hard kick near its center bashing it open.

He steps back again, only enough to let Integra through, remaining at the door's side to follow her in once she's stepped through. He squints at the darkness beyond, not seeing any immediate threats. Nothing's coming at them.

So far, at least.

[returntous.livejournal.com]

Mabel sits on the bed, criss-cross, hands resting on her knees as if she was meditating. As a last resort, she had drawn on them too, smudged black rings that couldn't be seen in the dark, trailing up her arms, under her shirt, and anywhere she could reach.

Mabel sits on the bed and stares at the figure she'd created on the wall, eyes black, not moving. Occasionally, her eyelids move up and down, much too slow to be called a blink. She doesn't seem to be aware that anything about the room has changed.

There's nothing in there but the shell of a body she's retreated into, and the threatening, reaching figure she had created on the wall.

[suninhades]

Even as she clears the front room, Integra feels slightly startled - she doesn't recognize any of the symbols on the walls, the floor, everything. "Wards?" Her voice is hushed. Someone did all this, painstakingly - and if it was Mabel, she isn't well.

Finding nothing in the living room or kitchen, she faces the hall. "Ms Albans, are you here?" Not shouting, but forceful, making her voice carry. She doesn't drop her guard.

[wearyheadtorest]

Dean follows Integra's lead, both in entering the premises and in conduct. "Mabel?" he calls out. His voice is as calm and even as possible, not betraying any of the worry he feels.

A glance up at the walls--good Lord, what's going on here? He thinks maybe he recognizes a couple of the wards, but he's not sure, and he's not going to spare the time to figure that out right now.

"Mabel? Mabel, it's Dean, are you here?"

[returntous.livejournal.com]

She's in that long hallway again, staring into an open door. Someone's calling her name - it's her mama, probably, she's in trouble - but she can't step away from the door. Something inside it is whispering to her, whispering just for her.

oneofusapieceofmefleshmadehollowhollowhollowmadefleshjoinusjoinsusRETURN

She reaches out with a small hand, and watches pale, twisting branches wrap around it tight, swallowing her arm up and pulling her inside -

Mabel wakes up screaming.

[suninhades]

The heartbeat that the screaming begins, Integra is moving, shoving open Mabel's bedroom door and looking, aiming at -

- a mural?

There isn't anything there, it's just drawings, horrifying ones in their ominous simplicity, highlighted in pieces by her flashlight. For a moment she just looks, bewildered, trying to discern an attacker - but it's just Mabel.

[wearyheadtorest]

John taught Dean well. He's right there, right behind Integra, but he doesn't get in her way or get underfoot as she enters the bedroom. He, too, takes in the drawings, the condition of the room, confused.

He's further confused by the fact that he doesn't see anything in there for Mabel to be screaming about. It's not a good sign. It's not a person, nothing whose head he can kick in to solve this.

He stows his gun as he moves slowly toward where Mabel is, careful not to make any sudden movements. And he doesn't touch her to get her attention; he lowers himself to a crouch, carefully, putting himself into her line of sight.

"Mabel? What's going on?"

[returntous.livejournal.com]

She's not in the hallway anymore, not watching fingers like white worms pull her into blackness, but she's not quite here yet either, hands over her face, eyes peering through fingers. People are speaking to her and they aren't dead, confusingly enough, nothing is clawing at her face. The picture on the wall has stopped moving.

Mabel drops her hands, eyes darting back and forth between Dean and Integra, human again and feeling like the child she'd left trapped in her nightmares. She has no idea when the last time was that she ate or drank anything. She's not sure she can uncross her legs without falling right off the bed. She knows these people, she knows they're safe, but she's having trouble remembering why or how.

When she speaks, her voice is raw and croaking. "Is this real now?"

[suninhades]

Integra lets Dean handle Mabel - he's got a gentler touch than she does, enjoy that, everyone - and she moves to the window, pulling at it to get some damned air in the room, before she starts looking for a light to turn on. "Yes, it's very real Ms Albans, no one's heard from you for over a week."

So her boss and her co-worker game looking for her. Armed. Like you do. "What is going on here?"

Because something is very clearly awry, in this apartment.

[wearyheadtorest]

Dean can't help thinking Sammy was always better at this than he is. But Mabel's his friend, and he'll give this his all.

"Hey, so." Little smile, he's trying to be reassuring, ease into the questioning. "I saw all the wards on the walls. Nice work. What are you keeping out? This is real now; you're with me, and with Integra, and we can help."

[returntous.livejournal.com]

Little clicks of information fall into place, cutting through fog with hard facts. Hellsing. Dean. Integra. Sir Integra. The shadow on the wall wasn't real, and it had never moved. She had made it herself. She wasn't five, or twelve, she wasn't at home or lost in the woods.

Her arms were covered with smudged ink. When had she done that? Why had she created such a large, pieced together image of something she never wanted to see again?

"I got..." Rubbing at one of the crossed out circles on her palm, Mabel chews on her lip. "I got some bad shit in my head. The nightmares, they just kinda... took over. They - they were just nightmares, right?"