recolle | [OPEN] ❁ don't let it get the best of you, you'll make it out alive

[OPEN] ❁ don't let it get the best of you, you'll make it out alive

WHO: Fawkes and YOU!
WHERE: All around Recolle during the nightmares/fog event!
WHEN: Various times in the month of October!
WHAT: Nightmares, fog encounters, and etc.
WARNINGS: Will be attached to the headers of various top-levels within!

Threaded | Flat

[You're standing outside, and though the air around you isn't dark or otherwise obscured, it's still somehow impossible to make out clearly what all is surrounding you here. It seems as though it's some kind of amphitheater, though, with a sort of clearing in the middle and some sort of barrier all around you in the distance; there are flashes of color and little hints of movement that suggest something is out there, but no matter how far you might walk toward it, it never comes any closer or gets any clearer.

The center of the clearing, however, is entirely in focus. There's a raised platform, round, raised up perhaps five feet off the ground — high enough that you'd have to jump or climb to scale it, but not so high that you can't see what's happening atop it from your vantage point on the ground.

Oddly, nothing seems to be happening on it. Fawkes is standing there, alone, seemingly paralyzed; the position he's in doesn't look comfortable at all to be holding himself still in, but rather like something he'd been transitioning through when someone abruptly told him to freeze.

As if on cue, a frightened voice in the distance rings out: don't move, Kurama!

In the moments that follow, Fawkes's gaze meets yours, and the whites of his eyes are visible even from this distance.

A few seconds later, a different voice chimes in — lower, silkier, and infinitely more dangerous: why not move? You're such a masochist; I'll bet deep down you want to feel it, don't you?

If you decide to approach, Fawkes's alarm and agitation will only increase — but really, what else is there for you to do right now, but that?]

[One minute he's navigating through the fog, heading for home, and the next minute he's standing on a rooftop in what is clearly a city at night; the sky is clear, and the full moon overhead is huge and foreboding.

Strangely enough, there's a hospital bed joining him on the rooftop, still implausibly hooked up to machines with wires and tubes even though the places that those connections lead are nowhere to be found. It's simply there, and so is Fawkes, and he's holding something in his hands, and his shoulders are starting to sag as he listens to the person in the bed as she talks to him, too low to hear without getting closer.

If you do choose to draw nearer, you'll start to see that it's a middle-aged woman there in the bed, with pale, translucent skin and wisps escaping from the low ponytail she's got her hair tied back into. The sheets are pulled up over her knees, and she's got her chin lowered, staring at her hands where they're folded in her lap.

You're the one who did this, she says softly, as the formerly steady rise and fall of Fawkes's chest abruptly stills.

A moment passes, and nothing is said, and that seems to ignite the woman's ire; her head flies up, and her expression is twisted into an awful scowl as her red-rimmed eyes fix directly onto Fawkes.

You did this, you parasite! she shrieks. You mother-killing monster! You did this! You did it to me! I never asked for you!

He's biting his lip now, so hard that the skin is starting to turn white. The woman in the bed gestures violently to the object in his hands.

Use it! she snaps. Use it, you coward! Take responsibility!

He looks down at the shattered mirror face, at the jagged remants of glass raising their sharp edges toward the sky. He closes his eyes, and the moonlight shifts and refracts off the scattered edges, and when he opens his eyes again, the smooth solid face of the mirror is restored.

Do it, his mother hisses, and he nods, lowering himself slowly to one knee and setting the mirror down on the ground in front of him before extending one hand toward its face.

Overhead, the moonlight starts to look altogether too bright, and the reflecting face of the mirror starts to shine.]

Threaded | Flat

NIGHTMARE - ARENA (cw: sadism, torture, bombs)

FOG - FORLORN (cw: parental maltreatment, terminal illness, thoughts/themes of suicide)