trans_9 | Beyond the Walls of Sleep

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Beyond the Walls of Sleep

Slowly but surely, the nightmares have been chipping away at the mental defenses of the crew.

Even those who attempt to stay awake to avoid the nightmares find themselves too on-edge to completely concentrate their defenses.

And the Nightmare King has not been idle during all this, no. He has been slowly feeding off the crew, gathering his strength so that he may yet break free from his prison.

And he now uses that new found power, reaching out to affect the minds of the crew even in the waking world. Even those avoiding sleep will find themselves drifting in and out of their nightmares, bringing everyone a taste of despair.

After all, no one can escape the grasp of the King of Nightmares.

No one.

[ooc: OH NOEZ. As you can guess, the Nightmare King is getting stronger. As such, the crew will start experiencing waking dreams. These are much more subtle than the normal nightmares, however, and are more so depressing and surreal than actually brain-breaking. Mostly they would be miserable versions of the character's normal life, or perhaps even their life on the ship.]

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There's a hole in the roof, where the rain comes in. Jamie's tried to patch it, but it never seems to stick. He's not very good at repairs - his hand lacks the dexterity it had when he was younger, due to the accident.

He survived Culloden. Lived through the aftermath, but for what? He has no wife, no children. He can barely support himself, let alone anyone else. It's only through the kindness of what's left of his family he has a roof over his head. It's pity, more than anything else.

He hasn't touched the bagpipes in years. He can't play them anymore. He just lives his life, day by day, and keeps trying to patch the roof.

But it wasn't likely that she was going to let her closest friend feel resigned to this fate. Katara herself was not looking at her best, considering what she'd seen in her dream, but she was still going to try and get people out of theirs. When she came upon Jamie patching his roof, she approached him, looking a little worse for wear, and a chain still on her left wrist.

She put a hand to his shoulder, looking concerned. "What are you doing, Jamie?"

"Be careful," Jamie replies absently when he feels the hand on his shoulder. "Ye don't want to fall." He doesn't answer the question, as to him it's pretty obvious what he's doing. He continues to try and put the shingle in place. It looks as though it was fashioned badly, and already has the beginnings of a crack where he split the wood too thinly.

He's having problems grasping the nails as well, the first two fingers of the hand he's using sticking out at an awkward angle where they were broken and didn't heal properly. He's trying to use the other fingers, but it's difficult to do that and avoid smashing the broken ones with the hammer.

After a moment, though, he looks up and frowns. "Wait. What are ye doing on my roof?" He peers at Katara, and doesn't seem to recognize her. "Do I know ye?"

Katara sighed. She hated to see him like this: Jamie was a usually such a bright, energetic person, and to see him resigned to patch a hole in a roof and not doing anything much else. Still, while she was doing this, she felt she may as well give him a hand. She balanced herself perfectly on the ladder (she WAS practicing in Will's gym), but as she was about to give him a hand, she saw his fingers and had to stop. It didn't even matter that he didn't know her immediately: even she knew people forgot temporarily, she had, after all. But there was no way she'd allow him to be content with this future.

"Is this really you Jamie?" She asked. "Think about it. Are you really destined to stay in this house patching a roof with broken fingers? You're better than this, I know you are. wake up."

"It's going to rain," Jamie says, dully. "I have to try and fix this." Frowning in concentration, he tries to hammer the nail in and hits his finger instead. There's visible pain etched on his face for a moment as he cradles his hand against his chest, and it lingers in his eyes as he looks at Katara.

"What else am I supposed to do, K..." he breaks off, looking confused. K? Who's K? "Lass. I'm sorry, ye reminded me of someone for a moment."

And why is she telling him to wake up? "I'm not asleep..." There's a pause as he looks around. "Am I?"

Katara sighed and leapt up to the highest part of the ladder. She opened her pouch and inhaled sharply as the water flowed to the part that needed thatching. She exhaled, and the water that was pooling about the area started to harden, and then it was clear that the area had now been frozen over: much like the time Katara had repaired a hole in the ship by freezing a cover over it.

"Katara," she said, staring him in the eyes. "I'm Katara, and you're Jamie. You and I are good friends. And for that reason, I won't let you stay in this place."

She gave him a hug. "Please wake up Jamie. You're better than this."

Jamie is startled - nearly enough to lose his grip and fall off the roof, but he manages to catch himself with his good hand. "Och, that's impossible!" He stares at Katara and - for the first time that she's ever seen - makes the sign of the cross. He shakes his head, then.

"I canna be friends with ye. You're some sort of w..." He's going to say 'witch', but what comes out instead is, "Water-bender." He stops, frowning deeply. "Water-bender?"

He stares at Katara again, but it's different, this time. Not the superstitious horror that he had a moment ago. This time, it's more as if there's some piece of a puzzle he's trying to fit into place. And then she hugs him - and the dream finally starts to break at the edges.

"K-Katara?"

Katara had an idea of what he was going to say, but she decided to wait. If he would think what she was doing was magic, than he probably had forgotten about the Doctor, and she would have to try and jog his memory if necessary.

Luckily, it looked like he was starting to regain his memories too.

The hug, apparently, was what was starting to make him remember, and she gave him a smile amidst a few tears running down her face. She wiped her face hastily.

"Yes, its me. Are you starting to remember where we are now?"

"We're on Stacy," he replies, and the dream fractures completely - the cottage with the hole in its roof vanishing and replaced with the familiar squishy walls of the ship.

Jamie looks down at his hand. His hand is as whole as it was before he was caught up in the dream, the broken fingers normal once more. He flexes them experimentally, just to make sure, then looks back up at Katara. He tilts his head slightly as he gets a good glimpse of her face.

"Och, lass, have ye been crying?"

Edited 2010-02-10 00:46 (UTC)

"Yeah," Katara said, glad he's been shaken out of it. The idea that Jamie would have a wasted life wasn't one that sat well with her, and she wouldn't have allowed him to be in that dream anymore than he had to.

But when he noticed her crying, it wasn't like she had any way to hide it, and she needed to talk about it a little. She was still looking visibly shaken and paler than usual.

"I had a dream too," she said, "Only it was what my life would be like if Aang hadn't been in the iceberg. The Fire nation took over everything, and they came for us and...I knew I would never see my people again. They took me too. I was a slave. Without Aang I never traveled the world, so I never had a master to teach me. There was no way to defend myself."

She looked at her hands, sighing. "If it hadn't been for Sheena coming by, I wouldn't be here right now."

Jamie doesn't say anything immediately. Instead he wraps his arms around her in another hug. He can't say that it's going to be all right - frankly, he's not at all sure of that at the moment. But if he can offer her a little bit of comfort, it's the least he can do after she's rescued him.

"I'm glad Sheeana was able to help ye, Katara. I...don't want to think what would have happened if she hadna done so."

"I was starting to lose my hope," Katara said, "But that won't happen again. I shouldn't have let myself get overwhelmed by that version of my life. I won't let it happen again."

Though she still stayed in the hug, because she was really glad to have Jamie back.

"I have a lot to thank Sheeana for," Katara said, "And I'll start by making sure she doesn't have to intervene in me getting fooled again. The king is getting stronger. I have to step up my game. I'm just glad you're okay."

Jamie gives Katara one more quick squeeze, then lets go. He nods unhappily. "Aye. I felt like I had lost my hope as well."

There's an uncomfortable thought that occurs to him, then. "Katara? If Sheeana had to rescue ye and if ye had to rescue me...how many of us do ye think are trapped like that at the moment?"

Katara, despite looking deadly serious, was glad for the hug, as what she'd seen had been harder on her nerves than she was willing to let on. It was embarrassing enough that her teacher had to get involved in the first place.

"Anyone who can be taken over by that dream would be vulnerable," Katara said. "Which means we're going to have to depend on the crew to help themselves out, just as they're going to have to do that when the Nightmare King strikes again. But I will do what I can, and I'm betting you will too, won't you?"

He nods emphatically. "Aye, of course I will. How could I not help the others?" He'll do whatever he can, as soon as he's able to figure out they're dreaming, and not, say, in the Sensoriums.

But how is he going to know that? Jamie frowns as he tries to puzzle this out. "Did ye see anything odd before ye found me on the roof? Anything that gave ye a clue that something was wrong?"

"Yeah," Katara said. "People in the thrall of a dream are usually going to have a kind of shimmer around them, and when you get near them you wind up getting pulled into the dream. Be careful Jamie: your dream was pretty harmless as far as he danger, but mine wasn't, and my mental state was pretty jarred too. There's no telling what you're going to find."

She took his hand a moment. "Just be safe, okay?"

"A shimmer. Aye, got it." He purses his lips for a moment - and though he understands that the other dreams may be more dangerous, he seems confident he can handle it.

"Och, don't worry, Katara. I'll be fine."

"I hope so," Katara said. "You know I worry."

Heck, she was worried about herself too. If she could still be messed with, there was a lot of training she needed to catch up on.

"Aye, I do. Ye wouldna be Katara if ye didn't, I don't think." Jamie gives her a brief smile. "But we'll all get through this." Somehow, at any rate.

"I just fear it'll get worse before it gets better," he says out loud, without really meaning to. He realizes he has, a moment later and sighs. "Och. I canna let myself think like that. It's not going to help anything."

Katara smiled politely at the comment. Hey, fussing over people had its drawbacks too: her nerves were pretty fried worrying about everyone else. "Getting through this," of course, meant something a little different to her. The Nightmare King still had someone she cared about, and she would go through hell and high water to get him back.

Which was what colored her last comment. "I disagree," she said. "You HAVE to imagine the worse: that's what the Nightmare King is going to do. His goal isn't to just give us unpleasant things to think about: he wants to be freed, and if that happens, just think about how much worse we'll ALL be?"

That had a way of keeping her up at night.

"Isn't that what he wants?" Jamie points out. "To imagine the worst so we're even more afraid?" It seems that all he's been doing is wondering and worrying - and not sleeping. Patience is not one of his strong suits, and he's out of what little he had to start with.

He folds his arms against his chest. "I'm verra tired of playing his games. Why can't we go and do something about it already?"

"I think what he wants," Katara said, "Is for us to continue what we've been doing since we've found out about him: having one group trying to fight him, and the rest of the crew scattered doing other things. The Seer never said, 'the magical department can handle the king,' He said EVERYONE needs to do their part and unite against him. Just because we want to beat him doesn't mean we can by sheer will alone. You want to start fighting him, try facing your fears first. Those are going to be the thing he'll go for first."

She shook her head. "If it were that easy, we would have done it by now. But he's been hacking at us slowly: he still wants to escape. We can't let him, or we'll be in worse shape than we've been the last few weeks. We have to try new things."

"I've been trying to face my fears," Jamie says crossly. He's been doing that and meditation and anything else he can think of. "It doesna seem to be working." At least, not as far as he's concerned.

He sighs, dropping his arms. Katara's got a point about trying new things. Unfortunately, he's not sure what would work, if what they've done isn't working yet. "Aye, we do. But what?"

"There are still a lot of things that we fear," Katara said, not appreciating the tone but ignoring it for now. "I found that out too. We might not be able to even hurt him until we can get to him when he's vulnerable. That might be when he's trying to actually break the seal that's been keeping him in."

Katara shrugged. "You could ask the Magical Department. I'm still trying to gain all the information I can from them, and then there's talking to other people who might have new ideas. I tried to do that a few days ago, but it didn't work out so well."

Jamie frowns, but he knows Katara has a point. "I would hope not, but...ye may be right."

He rubs at his forehead tiredly. "I'm sorry if I sounded like I was snapping at ye. It's not your fault this is happening, and I shouldna take it out on you."

Katara talked to someone else and it didn't work out so well? Curious now, he asks, "What happened when ye talked to the other person?"

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