MISSION: THE SLEEPER

[ximilian]

● ● ● M I S S I O N   3 . 1

INTRO • MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN • IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT • FYI

// INTRO. beam us down!  

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. We’ve got your next mission ready, but I was asked to give you the file a little bit in advance so you could prepare better… so here it is. I don’t think I can delay the teleportation machine more than a day, so early tomorrow morning it’ll be time to go. The situation in Kilnan is a little strange, so I’ve prepared an antidote for you just in case. Pick yours up from the infirmary before you get going. It’ll only work once, so be careful. The orb is somewhere in the castle… I trust you’ll find it. Good luck.

Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.

The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.

For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —

But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.

Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

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// PART I.MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN  

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.

If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.

1.0   Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.

You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.

These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.

From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.

2.0   Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.

Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.

3.0   When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?

4.0   There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.

5.0   Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.

6.0   Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

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// PART II.IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT  

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.

7.0   At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.

8.0   As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.

Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?

9.0   The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.

Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)

NOTE: These strong memories might also draw you into them as yourself from that time, so someone wandering into this re-lived memory might find you there as a child, a teenager, a young adult, or perhaps someone with the same or a different face — whatever you were at the time of the memory.

10.0   Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.

And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …

The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.

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F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of November.

• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.

• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.

• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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▶ NAV

Comments

8.0 —

[lateness]

Ah. Well, that's lovely.

[ The Doctor doesn't speak the whole time he trails Alina at a polite distance, hands folded behind his back, taking in the dreamscape memory like any tourist ought to: with utmost respect.

The memory is ultimately a warm one, even while it may be laced with a wistful kind of sadness the Doctor knows well from experience. The bittersweet moment of innocence, something pure, and something lost — oh yes, these are the feelings that make rather persistent bedfellows. It is also interesting, he thinks, to see what a much younger Alina might have been like. His little bird before she could fly.

And he's surprised, too, to find that her beginnings had been so fragile and unsure when she shines as brightly as she does now. He won't soon forget the breadth of her power in Braccia, how it had saved him at the time, the Doctor with all of the recklessness of someone with absolutely no plan but a whole lot of gumption — and luck, it seemed. ]

Horrible of this Ana Kuya to punish you for having a bit of fun though, eh?

[ But then, the Doctor has never liked rules anyway. ]

[peasant]

[ it is lovely, alina thinks, in the way faraway dreams are. like a forgotten scene from a life she's long since left behind, a lost moment frozen in time, when the only magic in the world was this: mal's hand in hers, and the endless possibilities for their future. she watches the frolicking feet of those child they once were, now, so innocently unaware of what their lives would become.

what her life would become, still so certain there was an escape for them, if only they could run far from this place. who could have known there were greater cages awaiting her than keramzin's lonely corners? alina hums her agreement with a distant, fading smile, grieving these fleeting moments of carefree, childish happiness. before war had worn it at the edges; before kirigan had stolen her hope for freedom.

baby bird who loved flying, before she grew into little bird. little bird, who learned the betrayal of having her wings clipped. ]

Oh, she didn't always punish us. [ she casts the doctor a sidelong look, sky. ] Only when she could catch us.

[ a rare occasion, if the quick feet of girl and boy are any indication, their giggling chiming like bells in the distance. alina already knows where they must be headed — that snow-bathed meadow, a safe haven even in the biting cold of winter. ]

Ana Kuya did the best she could to help us survive. I don't blame her for that. [ she toes off her boots, tugging on the doctor's hand without warning, drawing him down the steps into the fresh-fallen snow. gracelessly, too; at the last step, she nearly tumbles over into a mounting snowbank, a laugh puffing out of her in a cloud. despite the chill in the air, her fingers remain unnaturally warm. ] We didn't make it easy on her.

[lateness]

Ha-hah — of course. Always did seem the clever sort, I suppose you had to start practicing somewhere.

[ The Doctor is content to continue watching the dreamscape from their current vantage point; sometimes one doesn't need to do or be any more than that, a quiet observer, but Alina's got other plans. Snatching his fingers in hers, she pulls him along and makes him an active participant in this world of memory she's kept for herself until now.

The Doctor, honoured really, is happy to play along, and he shuffles after her with a grin and joined laughter, squeezing her hand in return. It's cold in that crisp, clean way that winter is, but in a dream none of that really matters. They won't catch colds and the wet won't affect them when they wake. (If they wake, but the Doctor isn't thinking about that just yet.) It still feels very, very real though.

He lets out a puff of breath too, watching it condense into a cloud of fog before he loosely gestures towards the direction the smaller Alina and her friend had dashed off to. ]

Now, I'm assuming the two of you are not getting caught this night.

[peasant]

No, not this night. Not until she finds our footprints tomorrow morning.

[ not until she had gotten herself and mal tangled in kirigan's woven web and the threads of alina's own fate, but — she shovels the thought aside. her deal with the orb will unravel some of that tapestry, will let mal remain as free as he is this night as alina squints at that tumbling over into snowbanks.

— and what glows behind those two orphans, like a specter neither of the children noticed. it doesn't belong in this memory, alina knows; her mind has only dreamed her amplifier into the dreamscape's trap, but there's no denying its familiar silhouette. the shape of the stag is unforgettable, its antlers spiraling toward the snowy skies, those knowing eyes trained upon her and the doctor. one of her childhood drawings made real, before she had ever known there was truth in myths.

real, but here. real, but dead, something haunting and ethereal in its gaze. she turns away from it and the faint ringing that fills her ears — that will fill the doctor's too, when his fingers curl against alina's. gently, she tugs him away, down into snow that reaches their shins, as though she can lead them both away from that ghost in her past. ]

Maybe not too clever. We never stopped getting in trouble. [ never stopped attracting it, in truth. she carries on, light-hearted despite the sinking pit in her stomach, hoping against hope that it serves as a distraction. ] The time before this, it was because I pulled a letter opener on a bully.

[lateness]

Now, what was that? Just now, with the glowing and the shape and the antlers —

[ Somehow it didn't feel like it belonged in this particular idyllic memory, and yes, the Doctor has to shake his head a little like the fading ringing in his ears might spill out that way. Of course he'll follow Alina wherever she wants to take him — unlike his usual penchant to be absolutely bossy and take over an entire exploration on his own, everyone else be damned, this ... isn't his place to wander. Dreams are a very personal, fragile thing, and only if there's danger would he consider donning his (figurative) bossy hat.

He does have a slightly unnerved feeling about that stag creature, though. So. Perhaps the bossy hat may very well come into play sooner than later. (And come to think of it, he really could use an actual bossy hat, but that's another thought for another time.) ]

You did what? [ Ah, yes. Distracted, just as she planned. It works for a moment, anyway. ] Suppose it worked, then?

[peasant]

Hm?

[ it hums in her throat, a questioning lilt that becomes the very embodiment of playing dumb. but no amount of willful ignorance can erase it from her dreamscape; the stag stays firmly rooted, as snowy as the flurries of white that blanket around them.

stubborn, alina affixes her eyes to the tiny trail her past self has carved out in that icy blanket, stretching her fingers to collect crystallized snowflakes in the basin of her palm. it's a coward's strategy, she knows — looking away from the damage she's caused, refusing to face the blame that surely shines in that stag's eyes. perhaps only alina might have been a sacrifice in the name of ravka if she had run far from it, if she hadn't lead kirigan to them both — two powerful creatures he could slaughter and bleed dry for his own gain.

that guilt burns heavy in her throat, a scorching and poisonous thing, as her fingers twitch uneasily against the doctor's knuckles. ]

For awhile. [ the corners of her mouth wilt into a frown, somber. ] There's always another bully somewhere. That's one of the first lessons I ever learned.

[lateness]

There is. [ The Doctor agrees, his own voice and expression solemn to match. He's had plenty of long years of experience getting to understand that sentiment. Bullies exist across the entire cosmos in some way or form, some creature or race or ruler wanting to subdue another. Much of the time it isn't fair, and much of the time someone or something else is hurt in the process.

But that's why the Doctor, who has taken it upon himself to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves, does what he does. It's the least he can do, and in some way he hopes it might scrub clean the damage he'd caused in the past too. Oh, he is far from having a spotless record — you live this long, see so many lives, and you make some ... horrible mistakes along the way. You spend the next several regenerations trying to make up for it then.

His hand squeezes Alina's, just a little, and he offers her the slightest of smiles a little empty of amusement but possibly hopeful instead. ] I think it's one of the first lessons we all learn, no matter where we're from. But we can't let that bring us down, eh? Always got to be ready with a letter opener for whatever comes at us.

[ He squints at nothing in particular, thoughtful for a beat. ]

Well, that could use a bit of work. Maybe a little less stabby.

[peasant]

Then you'll be relieved to hear I didn't stab them. [ a sniff accompanies her correction, only a smidgen defensive. ] I threatened to stab them.

[ her expression can't be scolded or worn down into something apologetic. it's no different than what a cornered animal might do, after all — even rabbits know to bare their teeth against prey. even birds know to fluff themselves into appearing as a larger, looming threat than what they truly are. there's no shame in surviving the dangers that lurk in the dark, no apology to make for fighting back against the boots that would have crushed them into submission beneath their heel.

fortunately, she doesn't add i hit my commanding officer once, too. no need to earn a disapproving look from the doctor. her frostbitten fingers squeeze around his, instead — a small show of gratitude for his own understanding, for the hopeful spark that always seems to accompany him. ]

Shall I work on blinding them next time? Since we're working on strategies. [ she stops at a clearing, releasing his hand to dig her own into the snow, cupped within her palms — and melting slowly into the gaps between her glowing fingers. ] We're going to be meeting more bullies than just Cheri, aren't we?

[lateness]

I suspect that we are, yes. A good blinding might do the trick. How does it work anyway, the light, eh? It's nothing like I'd ever seen, not from human hands anyway.

[ The Doctor stoops across from Alina, reaching out to fold his hands gently over hers, concealing the glow beneath his own fingers like he might be able to understand her power through touch, and perhaps partially to let her know that whatever might be out there and whatever might happen, she wasn't alone. With whatever solid presence he could provide, he was there too.

He stares into the glow of her fingers and it's with admiration. The only time he'd ever glowed like that ... well, it isn't something he'd willfully do, not without knowledge that doing so meant giving up some of his own life-force; his regenerative power.

He isn't sure if Alina's power means she, too, can heal ... but it's fascinating. Brilliant (no pun intended). And no, he wouldn't presume to think that their future would stop at threats like Cheri and the Lionetta; whatever else exists in this new universe he hasn't yet explored, he doesn't doubt that there are greater dangers.

Why else would the Ximilia gather the individuals that it has to get the job done? Somehow, it doesn't feel like a coincidence. ​]

[peasant]

[ light floats through the crevices, the sparse gaps between their fingers like a persistent sun, shining through gauzy curtains, refusing to ever be fully obscured. alina smiles at the sight it creates, glowing a soft buttery-yellow in the doctor's careful hands. words have never quite been her talent, but she returns the gesture with a squeeze — silently tracing her thumb over the backs of his knuckles, appreciative. drawing invisible lines, writing the sentences she can't speak without tripping over her clumsy tongue, into his skin. ]

Old stories say everything was made at the heart of the world. If you believe them, my light comes from our connection to nature. [ a sliver wedges itself into alina's retelling — something doubtful, despite the whimsical thought of such a myth. maybe it is the hidden truth, but the world has never been so kind as to make those innocent dreams believable. they're always stained, always doomed — like living saints, like stags created from fingerbones. ]

We call those who have lost that gift otkazat'sya. The abandoned. [ orphans, without the tether that binds them to nature itself. as though they're somehow lesser. the thought doesn't sit well with her, the purse of her mouth twisting, before it smooths out. ] Every Grisha has their own bond with nature. Blood and bone. Fire. Water and wind.

[ her hand shifts, a deliberate wisp of light shimmering across the doctor's knuckles like northern lights. ]

You've seen mine. It's less impressive compared to Healers.

[ — in alina's mind, at any rate. the whole of ravka would beg to disagree, but she can't help but envy that gift. something ordinary, but still so capable of bringing its own light into the world, with no grand destiny beyond stitching wounds closed and soothing sore aches. ]

[lateness]

Well. [ His voice is soft, and he listens to her words with interest, even if he might not understand the context of it — not fully, anyway. One of the many, many beautiful things about learning some other world when you're quite alien, yourself. (And of course, when you're the only one of your kind, you're alien to every world. Not always a bad thing — but maybe a bit lonely.)

Still, one constant thing does make itself known in all of her explanations, even within all the legend and wonder and magic. ] Everyone's got their talents, don't they, hey? The incredible ones, the brilliant ones ... things like your light, and their fire and water and bone, just as you've said.

[ The Doctor watches said light play across their fingers, a warm glow illuminating the edges of Alina's jawline, her cheeks, her nose — and he can only imagine how that glow must highlight his own features too. Like holding a very small sun in ones hands. Marvelous. ]

I wouldn't say yours is less impressive than anything, not by any stretch of the imagination. All those men and women surrounding us, and you found us an escape. [ And without killing any of them either, which is the important bit. Not a fan of killing, never was. ] You saved us back there, in Braccia, saved my life, and that's no small thing.

[ And maybe it is putting a whole lot of meaning and pressure on her when she'd much rather be just like everybody else, but he doesn't think that'd be particularly fair of him either. The Doctor's always gravitated towards people with potential, people who do wonderful things, and could do wonderful things more. And he's had a good feeling about Alina from the start. His little bird.

But for now he hopes she knows how grateful he is for what she'd done. ]

So. A 'Grisha', then? Don't think I've heard that word before.

[peasant]

[ it doesn't feel like enough.

one sin to balance the others, in a long list of her regrets — her naivety, above all else, so willfully blind as she had walked into the darkness. letting herself become lost, unable to see beyond her own selfish desire for acceptance. and who had paid the price? mal. the stag. marie. herself, and so many others. when she blinks, she sees novokribirsk behind her eyelids — the nightmare that it had become, swallowing innocents in seconds.

because of the darkling, yes. but because of her, the stupid create who had let herself be kept like a captive animal. if not for her foolishness, how many might have survived the terror he had plunged them into? her lips tremble, a dying attempt at a smile that shies too close to shaken to be sincere. ]

Of course I saved you. I wouldn't leave you behind.

[ maybe it undercuts her accomplishment, but it remains the truth. matter-of-fact, like it had been expected from the start, even if alina knows well that not everyone chooses compassion over cruelty. of course i saved you. of course i would save you again. and again, and again, because it had been the right action to take. because it's that refusal to leave a life behind for her own selfish gain that separates her from aleksander. because —

she can count on one hand the number of souls that have been kind to her. she watches the light play over the angles in his face, the point of his chin, the highlighted softness in his eyes — impossibly warmer, beneath such bright light, and finds that her bleeding heart calms itself. if only for awhile. if only for now.

lightly, she nods. ]

Named for Sankt Grigori of the Woods, one of Ravka's first known Healers. And our patron saint of doctors. [ the corners of her mouth curl faintly, wistfully endeared by the coincidence. ] Grisha is a better namesake than what the world would choose for us. Witches, abominations, baby eaters — all of the horrible things people are called when they're too different for the world to accept them as they are.

[lateness]

I could tell you half of people would simply run off, and I wouldn't blame them — fear is a natural feeling and it's well within someone's rights to find a place to hide for themselves. [ Everyone's capable of being brave, of course, and everyone has their reasons. At times of need, many will step up and uncover things about themselves that they never knew, maybe with a surge of bravery they don't realize is locked within them. He's seen it. Of course that isn't everyone, because some let their fears fill their mind until there's nothing but panic left. Panic and despair and an instinct to run. The Doctor has learned since not to hold something like that against them.

Well. Most of the time, anyway. ] But then there's the other half, the half like you, and like me, who don't leave people behind.

[ And quite frankly, he can see that strength in the whole crew of the Ximilia. The ones running this entire enterprise, they've certainly picked their heroic types, the determined, the ones with just enough desperation in their hearts to keep them from running off in the opposite direction. Undoing a regret is a great motivator, that's for certain.

Nevertheless, Alina's explanation, particularly about doctors, is met with a quiet, and delighted: ] Oh — [ and followed then with a more solemn nod, and a slow forming expression of disgust for a name like 'baby eater'. He knew a race of baby eaters once, very rude creatures, didn't quite like them much. And, it turns out, they didn't care for him either. ]

Now. I suppose we should see what your smaller self is up to, hey? And maybe you could explain that thing we saw earlier, the glowy thing.

[ Don't think he's forgotten that bit. ]

[peasant]

Aren't we all running from something by being here?

[ their pasts. the corpses of their mistakes, unable to come to terms with making peace with their own personal destruction — their devastation. alina has never much invested her faith in saints, absent as they had been, guardians that had never shone a favorable light upon her and mal — but she knows what they all must be searching for. salvation. absolution. and, above all else, an escape from the waking nightmares that wait for them in their worlds.

what is their bargain with the orb, if not fleeing by a different name? making running away sound honorable? alina's guilt insists as much, a heavy stone dropping into the pit of a hollow stomach, as she looks more closely at her choices. all she's been doing is running, hasn't she?

the doctor provides a distraction from sinking into her own dread, eyes snapping back to his. the shining glow in her palms subsides, slow and steady, like a sun descending on the horizon — though she immediately misses the warmth it had offered, once faced with the doctor's (frustratingly) impeccable memory. a chill settles into her bones as she takes a trudging step forward, kicking up snow, and tries to lightly joke, ]

Glowy thing? The only glowy thing is right here in front of you, Doctor.

[ you know. her. ]

[lateness]

[ Not unkindly: ] I know what you're doing, Alina, and if it bothers you so much you can tell me so right now. But I'm curious about that thing, and I think it haunts you in way that things do in dreams and memories.

[ There's a certain crack in a wall, a rift in time, that follows him around. It's filled with light and it's filled with an ominous presence and a threat that looms over him and anyone who might travel with him. It had originally been something else all together, attached to the soul of a best friend, but it's different now. It still follows him around, though.

So he gets it. He does. He knows what it's like to be trailed by something that haunts, only it seems as though Alina knows more about her ghost than he does about his. ]

And if I can help, I'd like to.

[peasant]

You can't. [ it comes immediately on the heels of his offer, brisk and defensive. clumsy, in how it crushes any fragile hope for rescuing her. there is no sparing her from the darkness that rests behind her eyes, the shrieks that haunt her dreams, as a city drowns beneath a swirling sea of shadows. even if there were — it's her burden to carry. her reminder of lives that hang in the balance, should she fail to wipe away the regret that had desperately led her here. ] No one can.

[ and no one should try. that path only ends in more chains, another person shackled to the fate she carries like a cross fastened to her back. like mal, like the stag — sacrifices set upon a pyre that should be hers and hers alone. she isn't so selfish as to condemn the doctor to the same consequences. ]

You might be the Doctor, but you can't fix this. You can't fix me.

[ as doctors are destined to do, finding cures for what ails her — but what treatment is there, when what's fundamentally wrong is her? alina's arms cross over her chest, protective, though she doesn't draw away from him. ]

Morozova's stag and I were destined for each other. I can't explain it, but I've always known it would be a part of me. Deep down, I could sense it was more than a myth. [ her fingertips tap against her chest, that coiling gut instinct that had been present after every dream, every drawing of its crisscrossed antlers. ] But I couldn't save it. I couldn't —

[ she cuts herself off, a shaking breath webbing through the frosty air. ]

You're not under any threat from it. It's not going to hurt us.

[lateness]

Oh, well, that's not what I was afraid of.

[ — of it being any sort of threat in this dream, of it hurting them, hurting her. If anything, it feels like a hovering, glowing ghost of sorts, but at the very least he's got a name for it now: Morozova's stag. Strange how some things can become quiet, unseen companions, destined for each other.

He won't comment about whether or not it's necessary to fix her, about whether it's possible at all if her protests are true. (He doesn't think they are anyway. In his experience, very, very few are beyond saving or help, and it's that small sliver that he clings to like a lifeline and Alina isn't forgone by any means.) But whatever he says, it wouldn't amount to meaning much, not if she doesn't believe it herself.

So, for now, a question: ]

It was real once, then? This stag?

[peasant]

Once.

[ a traveling itch overtakes her fingertips, an urge she fails to temper — as if possessed by the urge to show him how impossible it would be to save her. to fix what's already been broken, when she's been sliced by the fragments of her own shattering spirit.

her fingertips flit to her collarbone, brushing a cold burn like icicles over the ragged scar tissue there, where antlers protrude through soft skin. monster. murderer. there are many names he could call her, once he realizes she's carrying the stag's corpse with her like a morbid memento of her failures. and wouldn't he be right? it wasn't her hand that felled the stag, but it was her who led it to them both — sun summoner and stag alike — to the slaughter. ]

Some Grisha claim amplifiers to strengthen their power. The stag was meant to be mine.

[ was. a destiny that had been stolen from her, a right she hadn't been allowed to claim, a freedom that had been taken. her fingers slip and fall, fisting into the sleeves of her shirt. rather than share those secrets, she mutters, quiet, ]

It didn't turn out the way I thought it would.

[lateness]

Oh, Alina.

[ The Doctor's eyes go to her fingers and follows the way she traces her collarbone over the smooth, unmarred skin as it transitions into a horror of pointed antlers and scar tissue. Like human and beast have merged into one and none of it was quite right, it's an unusual sight, to be sure, but the Doctor has been to so many different planets, and has seen so much, he's hardly going to flinch at the sight.

His expression does change, though. From curiousity and attentive comes a quiet stillness, and concern. He isn't sure what it means when she says that the stag was meant to be hers, but he gathers enough from her confession, the uncertainty in her voice, that this particular union was meant to be different, maybe even look different.

He lifts a hand as though to reach out and touch the amplifier, as she'd called it. But he hesitates, fingers kept still and in mid-air. ]

Does it hurt?

[peasant]

[ a flinch ripples through alina's expression, though she represses her urge to shrink back. it slices, still — nearly as deeply as the amplifier locked into her bones — to hear the self-pity, to witness his uncertainty.

she's felt so close to breaking, these days. the doctor's hesitation, like he believes her to be one misstep away from shattering, is only an unfortunate reminder of the little cracks showing through her veneer. ]

Not in the way you think.

[ no, the true hurt is more than skin-deep, rotting beneath layers and layers. set in the marrow of her bones, where the hurt of aleksander's betrayal resides. coursing through her blood, each time she has to force herself to look at that monstrosity in the mirror, all gnarled scar tissue and protruding antlers. as though it isn't enough to be wounded, she has to live with the evidence of it on her body, like a map to all the ways in which she's been hurt.

all the ways in which her freedom has been denied, her power shackled. leeching aleksander's influence away might guarantee that is her own to control, once more — but what could ever possibly heal all the lasting impressions left on her? scars never heal, after all — they only fade until you can pretend them away. ]

You can touch it. [ a show of trust. the curiosity is there, open in his eyes — but it lacks the gawking of children looking at exotic animals, the maliciousness of poking an injured creature through the bars of its cage. ] It won't make a difference.

[ it can't hurt her — but it's as potent a reminder that a single touch is just as incapable of mending her. ]