trans_9 | Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

Nighttime.

Or, at least, what passed for nighttime on the meatship.

A time when most of the crew was already fast asleep, dreaming away pleasantly throughout the night.

...Or, perhaps not. For you see, tonight, something particularly strange is happening.

Now it is not all that unusual for someone to have a nightmare, especially not on the ship.

Yet tonight, no one will sleep easily, for the Nightmare King deems it so.

Everyone's dreams will have a tinge of horror to them. Nothing so out of the ordinary to rouse one's suspicions, but at the same time, no one is left out.

Pleasant nightmares, meatship.

[ooc: And thus begins the start of the Nightmare King's spree of insanity. He's starting out subtle, of course. The nightmares won't be anything more than your run of the mill bad dream, but he is giving them to everyone. Posting in isn't mandatory, but if you want to have fun with your character's nightmare, go right ahead.]

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"Most members of the crew are being affected by nightmares induced by the being currently bound in the ship's city level." The kitten's tail flicks slightly, betraying an unhappy feeling hidden in the complete poise of the rest of her. "I have only been able to efficiently interfere in a few of them."

"Certainly, brave knight." Deft hands went to the laces and joints of the armor. And the fruits of the trees were not nearly so sweet as what happened at the roots.

"You are welcome." Roxie offers Kang a small nod, though there's a questioning element in her expression as she sees how self-ordering the draconian's dream-world seems to be. "However, this is very unlikely to be the first such incident."

Rhiow was silent for a few long moments. "Thank you," she said, with difficulty. She wasn't sure she wanted any of her crewmates to witness... this. It hadn't exactly been a fine hour for her, no matter how she had come out of it at the end. "I think I'm going to wake up now, if you please."

She opened her eyes to the high arched ceiling of Grand Central Station, an eerie echo of her dream. Then she sat up and began to wash furiously.

"I'll keep that in mind," Kang glanced around, stepping out of the way of another draconian as he ran by. The dwarves were on the retreat.

"I'll make sure to warn others, as well, just in case."

Nori's head whipped back towards Julian when he started screaming, briefly alarmed before she realized what he was doing. Well, that was great, if this was his dream, anyway. She felt like it was her dream here, though, so after rolling her eyes she turned back around and attempted to ignore the noise Julian was making for the moment, settling on pulling a bookshelf away from the wall. If she were going to hide a secret passageway escape from a dream, bookshelf would be where she'd hide it.

In reality, Gauron's asleep in one of his lofts down in the city. In his dreams, however, he's headed back down to Weapons and Possessions, to take another look through their contents - strange, because his dreams haven't involved being on the ship since about a month after he got here.

When he gets back into the meaty portion of the ship, that's not the only thing that's strange. The walls have a sickly look - a yellowish tinge, a translucence to their outermost layer of skin. The faint scent of pestilence and decay lingers in the eerily vacant corridors - one he recognizes well; it brings back memories of his childhood, spent in the Cambodian countryside amongst the stench of dead bodies. There's another scent, too - one he can't place, but that he knows he's picked up recently.

Almost before he realizes it, he's through the main area of Weapons and Possessions, and in the hangar instead. He's drawn almost inexorably toward one of the escape pods; as the doors slide open, he can see a version of Earth through its canopy, and somehow, he knows it's his own - though that's far less important than who's inside it. Waiting for him are his adopted twin daughters, Xia Yu Fan and Yu Lan.

"It didn't take long for their lies to fall apart after all," Yu Lan remarks, glancing meaningfully past him back at the ship's rotting interior.

"Sensei, let's go home, before they try to drag us down with them." Yu Fan is smiling slightly, in seeming relief that he's still all right.

Even in dreams, however, his instincts are still sharp. Trapped in a small, enclosed vehicle with the likenesses of the only two people he trusts in the world? That's got "trap" written all over it. "You two go ahead. There's a few things I want to grab out of Weapons and Possessions, and I need to arm Codarl's self-destruct sequence."

"It's already done," Yu Fan replies.

Yu Lan gets up and starts toward him. "Come on, Sensei, we should--" She stops when he draws his gun, aiming it unhesitatingly between her eyes.

"Sorry, but you know the drill. Now go on, and I'll catch up with you back on Earth." If they ran into him unexpectedly in a place like this, he'd expect them to take the same precautions, after all.

Yu Fan snorts. "If anything, we should be the ones holding the gun to your head. How do we know you're really our Sensei?"

"You're the one who's been cooperating with the liars and idiots and weaklings aboard this ship," Yu Lan continues. "They're pathetic, all of them, but you're still playing along."

Gauron couldn't help laughing aloud at that. "You think I give two shits about them? I'm only playing along because they're convenient. This way, they're there if I need a shield. And when they fall apart, I can still climb over their corpses to come out on top. I'm not in any hurry for this to end, though - I've been just about everywhere on our world, but this? This is an adventure, and the more I can bring back from it, the better."

Abruptly, there was a slurping sound behind him, and he realizes too late that the girls had been just a distraction. He glances back over his shoulder; there are blackish-red veins starting out all over the floors and walls. They twisted into a likeness - a half-exploded, half-melting one, like a poorly-plastinated corpse - of Stacy's humanoid form.

||Gauron.|| And when it tried to speak, its entire face twisted and writhed; its voice cut in and out amongst mechanical-sounding static. ||VI... olence against crew me--ers is not permitted. You ha-- received a Vi-Vi-Violation. You have 1 Violation. 15 Vi-- --ults in Punishment.|| The last word, however, was perfectly clear, and full of malicious glee.

When he glances back, the girls are gone; at least that left him with only one enemy to face down. "Understood," he ventures, holstering his gun; however, the thing before him didn't seem at all placated, and as the clotted vein-tentacles slither toward him, he notices they're tipped with sharp spikes.

However, there's nowhere to run. More blackened tentacles are already writhing out of the walls to intercept him, stingers dripping with venom, and he can't shoot his way through all of them - it was a hell of a long way to the mecha hangar, where he might stand a chance. But it isn't in him to give up, and he realizes there's one more thing he could try that might actually help.

He takes a deep breath, trying to remember how the wider dreamscape of the ship felt, as though he could enter it on his own, or the memory would at least carry his message a little better, and yells, "Roxie!"

The tentacles were getting closer, and after a few seconds, there was no sign he'd been heard. He was running out of options, and the best one left was to toss a grenade into the mass of tentacles, hit the deck, and take off once it had detonated. It buys him more space than he expected, but still not enough, and he soon finds himself dodging tentacles by uncomfortably narrow margins. There were only so many of them he could shoot, and even when he tosses the second grenade - the only other one he had on him - it's nowhere near as effective. The tentacles quickly rush back in to fence him off from the newly-made clearing, and when he tries to vault over them, one catches him by the ankle and brings him crashing back to the floor.

"Roxie!" he yells again as the tentacles close in. Even in such hopelessly tight quarters, he manages to dodge several of them and hold a few more off before the sting of one finally lances into his chest, right next to his shoulder; he's all too aware of the grotesque sensation of it injecting something solid beneath his skin.

He awakens with a jolt, his shoulder still throbbing, and finding himself hissing belatedly, "Roxie - hey!" Slightly embarrassed, he opens one eye, finds himself still in his loft - but the pain still lingers, as does the blunt, bitter, vague not-scent in the back of his sinuses that he only now remembers from the last time he'd approached the Nightmare King's domain. When he pulls open his plantsuit, though, there's not a mark on him - well, aside from the multitude of scars that were already there.

Just some piss-poor attempt at freaking me out, he decides as he lies back down, staring up at the ceiling for a moment while he decides on his next course of action.

Hal9000 changes to look like Brother Eye--it's not much of a change, to be honest. The red eye is already the same.

And seeing it again leaves Jaime feeling like he did when he was first starting out, scared, alone, like he doesn't know what he's doing...

You failed them, Reyes. Do you wonder what he'd say to you, if he could?

There's B5, still behind the field, the glass, his mouth moving, as he tries to tell him something important--just like before.

But as Jaime looks, he can hear him, just B5 and B5 alone.

He's a broken person now, stuck in the red room. The red room with it's red sunlamps, and kryptonite on standby for the rare times he's strong enough to try to make a move.

But he's not strong enough, anymore. He hasn't been for a while. He struggles against his restraints every now and again, but he knows it's over, he knows he's failed the world, failed everyone in it, failed his friends and allies, the people he loves.

And he's failed him, the one that he knows is coming to visit him today, like he does every day. He's failed him, and if he hadn't, it would not be this way. He blames himself for what's happened to his visitor--to someone he once cared for--stills cares for.

Sure enough, the door opens, and Superman walks into the room, with something clutched in one hand, a small case.

"We did it, you know. Without you. We fixed everything. Now, no one will care if you're gone, so today's the day. Today's the day we say goodbye."

Mournful blue eyes look up at Superman, eyes that match, and the battered superhero says, "This isn't you. There's still good inside you--"

"Of course there is. That's why I did all this. I fixed it. I needed his help, and all it took was giving away all the soft parts of me, the parts that needed to be gone to make myself stronger, but I fixed it. All it took was me realizing that Luthor was right all along."

"You're ruling them through terror," says the prisoner. "Through fear. That's not the way--that's not your way. You did so much for the world. You always were so unselfish and brave, and you did things the way that was hard, but was still the right way. That person is still inside you, it's--"

Superman smacks him viciously in the face, nearly breaking his jaw, careful not to get too far into the red sun's rays.

"That person was weak. And you never loved me the way you were supposed to."

"I always--I always--"

"Too little, too late." Superman takes a deep breath and then gets out the case. There's a vial of something lined with lead, and a syringe lined with it, too. "But I do still care about you, you know. I wanted to make this easy. It'll only hurt a little, I promise. Luthor wanted me to break your neck because there's no use for you anymore, but I couldn't do that to you. There's a sedative, and then something to shut down your heart, and kryptonite to make sure it sticks." Superman tilts his head at him. "That means I'll feel it too, a little. I figured it was right that way. This is what has to be done, but I do still care. I do. So it'll hurt a little for me, too."

"Please, there's still a chance--still a chance we can fix this, the world needs you now--needs--" There's a gasp as the needle goes in. Even though it's just a pinch, he knows what it means. He starts breathing faster, trying to catch his breath.

Superman drops the needle and the vial and then drops to his knees in front of him, embracing him, knowing that especially now, his prisoner won't bother trying to hurt him to escape--he just wouldn't bother hurting them anyway. He cares about him too much.

It hurts. The kryptonite's effects are deadened by being in such small amounts, but it still hurts to be that close. It's right, though. Superman knows this isn't nothing, killing this man.

"Still good in you--still--" he whispers.

"Sssh. Sssh, just let go now. I'll take care of everything, I promise. You fought for so long. It's not your fault you got out of touch, that you didn't realize what the world needed. It's okay. You can rest now."

Badumpbadumpbadumpbadump.

His heartbeat is slowing. Slowing down, beat by beat, starting to skip beats.

Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump.

whispers Kal-El.

"Just let go now, Kal," Superman says, resting Kal-El's head on his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat slow, gritting his teeth against the pain--both from the kryptonite and from the emotional blow. Tears trickle from the corners of his eyes.

Badump...

Badump...

Badump.

Baaaaaaduuuump.

Silence.

Kon pets the hair of his former mentor one last time before pulling away from the red lights, away from the sting of the kryptonite in his blood, and he crawls forward across the floor, and still bowed to his knees in respect, looks to the man standing in the doorway, the bald silhouette that's been there the whole time.

"It's done. I did what you wanted, dad. Like I told you--I'd do anything to make you proud," says Kon, the new Superman, the Superman the world needs. One that understands his place, one that humanity can control, and one that obeys the man that knows what's best for the world implicitly.

"Such an obedient boy," Luthor says, walking in, and placing a hand on Kon's head. He looks to the body of his former enemy and smiles. "I couldn't ask for a better son."

Kon is still crying when he wakes up, and to his intense embarrassment, he can't seem to stop. There is, of course, the terror of the dream, of an uncertain future, the fear that he'll become that horrible, terrible person, but the part of the dream that was the worst was watching his mentor die, hearing his heartbeat slow, the desperate look in Kal's eyes, those assurances that there was still good in him...

Never mind letting him down--if he was the one to kill him, he'd either want to die, or everything good inside him would already be dead. Even when it's just a dream, it's not easy to watch the man you love like a father die--even if that man doesn't love you back like you're his son.

I won't hurt him. Never. Never ever. I won't hurt him. Never...

Never. He'd never hurt Kal. Never.

Kon curls on his side away from his girlfriend, and bites down on his pillow to try to keep the noise down as he calms down, to keep from waking her up. It'll be a long time before he can stop and go back to sleep.

"Okay...so why can't we just get rid of the Nightmare King and then free you?" He had a sinking feeling he knew what the answer would be, but it never hurt to ask, right?

There was more yelling from Julian, but to no avail. So maybe this was Nori's dream. ...so why was it even possible for him to even have that thought if this was Nori's dream?

Why would they have kids? Why would they look happy together? They were never happy together. Why--

...why is she pulling on one of the bookcases?

"What the hell are you doing?"

Sleep isn't usually as comfortable as it was back home, but tonight is especially restless. Her dreams are bad, but Cassie finds it hard to get too upset over them now. She's already seen half of them happen in real life –– Diana, Donna, Kon –– so a second run through doesn't seem quite so harsh as the real thing.

Cassie comes out of sleep in a moody silence, reminding herself that they're fine. She's fine. She's not alone.

But Kon, of course, is a bigger concern, especially when she can near him sniffling in the dark. When she realizes he isn't glued to her, she gropes through the dark to figure out where he is. Her hand lands on his shoulder.

"Kon?" she says, propping herself up on one elbow. "What's wrong?"

"It means the crew has people watching over them," says Aang. "I'm holding him back, long enough for you to fight him. I've been trying to keep him out of your dreams as best as I can."

"Because things go back the other way. Avatar Roku helped me figure it all out."

More drawing.

"Right now, I'm shielded, but if he gets destroyed or banished, it will hurt me, too."

Liiiike so.

He looks over at Sokka, his expression sad. "I have to stay there as long as he does, so he stays trapped. But the moment he's defeated, I'll die, Sokka. Avatar Roku says we're connected through the seals and all his pain will be my pain in an instant, and since my body's stuck in the Avatar State, it'll hurt the Avatar Spirit itself. Not enough to kill it, but enough that--"

A deep breath.

"Enough that my physical body will probably die just so it's protected. Because the alternative is this."

One last drawing, and despite just being a doodle, it's the most horrifying.

"If it doesn't die, it'll be driven crazy," he sits down on a little mound of snow, clutching his staff in his hands. "I can't let that happen."

He reaches out and slashes decisively at the doodle with his staff, and then looks at the snow, batting the staff back and forth between his hands thoughtfully.

"If it happens anyway, and I go crazy rather than die, I made Seer promise he'd kill me. I don't know if the Avatar Spirit will survive if there's no Waterbender being born for me to reincarnate to, but it would be even worse for the Avatar Spirit to go on a crazy rampage and be insane. And--and I figure even if it's the end of me, it'd be the end of me in a few reincarnations anyway, right? There'd be no Airbenders left for me to reincarnate to. This is just...happening sooner."

Even though he's avoiding Sokka's eyes, he talks about it so casually, the end of an enduring part of their world, of himself. But then their world itself has supposedly ended, hasn't it? What difference does it make now, if the Avatar dies with it?

"All the past Avatars agree with me that it's the right thing to do. We can't destroy life when we've protected it for so long, and if the Avatar itself goes out of balance, it has to end."

Sucking in a deep breath, he finally looks Sokka in the eyes, his gray-eyed gaze calm.

"I'm not scared. I know you'll be okay if you look after each other, and I know you and the others will bring our world back, and make it better without me. There was a time before the Avatar once, and now it just means there'll be a time after me."

Aw, crap.

"Nothing," he totally, totally lies, and wipes his face on the blanket. "Not crying at all, nope. Totally bein' manly and not crying like a little girl over a nightmare."

That was the worst lie ever. Cassie edges over to him and puts one arm around him, leaning against his back.

"Kon," she replies, sympathetically. The you-are-an-awful-liar is just implicit and doesn't need to be said aloud. "It's okay, it's not real. Do you want to talk about it, or...?"

"No."

No, he doesn't want to talk about it.

But he reaches for her hand and brings it up to his mouth to press a kiss to it.

Then he says, "I don't wanna be a bad person, Cass. I don't wanna ever be like him."

That should clue her in enough to the nature of the dream, without him explaining the details. He doesn't want to talk about the details.

She starts to nod, but realizes it doesn't mean much in the dark, so she mumbles a mmhmm and buries her nose against his neck for a moment.

"You won't be. You wouldn't, and even then, I wouldn't ever let you," she says.

That's when he turns over and wiggles to face her in the dark, presses a gentle kiss to her lips, and buries his face in her neck. Wrapping his arms around her, he traces his fingers gently against the naked skin of her back.

This, right here is the place where he can be himself. He can be weak, he can be scared, he can be sad. Only in this little place right here, because the rest of the time he tries so hard to be good, to be strong, to be the kind of hero he should be. He's Superboy--he's not allowed to be scared of anything. Superman isn't scared of things. Superman doesn't cry. Superman doesn't worry about losing his way and becoming evil. (Or so Kon thinks).

But right here, he can be just be what he is. Right here, in the dark, with his face buried against her neck, and her skin against his, and the smell of her hair, he can just be himself. Scared and sad and wishing his nightmares of being bad weren't weighed so heavily in the genuine possibility of losing his way (Black Zero, brainwashed by Luthor, the Titans of Tomorrow--how many ways can he go bad?)

All the rest of the time, he's the cocky, smartass, occasionally moronical, brave moron that he is, all the insecurities and worry about who he'll become tucked away and hidden.

He's safe here, though. He's safe with her.

She gets a sleepy nuzzle, and strong arms holding her closer.

It didn't matter how many nightmares about his future and himself he had, as long as he each time, he could wake up with her in his arms.

"Thank you." Roxie glances to the side, staring off at nothing in particular. "I should go."

She hadn't seen it coming. She'd never thought he would be so cowardly as to shoot a man in the back. To take losing so disgracefully. To take losing her so disgracefully.

How wrong she'd been.

But Mal had seen it, and he'd quickly put himself between Inara and harms way.

The bullet caught him square-on, and with a loud grunt he'd collapsed.

Inara stared in horror, her mouth dropping open and she completely ignored the whirl of sudden activity that sprouted up around them. She was at his side in an instant, not caring about anything but him. Tears welled up in her eyes and she fought to keep them from spilling down her cheeks. "Mal, you...you ben dan! Why did you do that?" she demanded as she pressed her fingers tightly against the wound . "You’re going to be alright. Do you hear me? Malcolm Reynolds! Don't you dare close your eyes!"

She watched, feeling as though her heart was breaking into a thousand pieces, terrified that he wouldn't continue to fight. "'Nara…” He looked like he wanted to say more, but a spasm of pain wracked through his body.

Unable to hold her tears back anymore, just as it seemed like she was unable to keep him from bleeding, the tears fell.

There was so much blood. So much it was staining the green grass around them a crimson red. "Mal, don't you dare..." She choked on a sob and shook her head. "Mal, I ... you can't leave me," she whispered, leaning in toward him. "You're going to be Okay..." She knew she was lying though, and the look Mal gave her let her know that he knew too. Each breath he took just sent a fresh wave of red blood streaming through her fingers.

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

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