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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Comments

[bossily]

[She knows he isn't angry with her, and she takes no offense. Quite opposite, it delights her to hear that edge in his tone. To know that he's more willing to drop those walls around her now, to show her this side of him. The pain is practically radiating off of him. She'd see it even if she didn't know him as well as she does.]

No, you can't.

[She meets his eyes as she speaks, only hoping that he can see the love and adoration there.]

You can't keep us safe. It's our decision to travel with you, Doctor. And our fate, no matter what it ends up being, is so special. And do you know why?

[She pauses, the corner of her mouth curling upward into a smile.]

Because you love us enough to allow us to choose how our stories with you end.

[She thinks of his next face, and all the things he did to try and bring her back to life and keep her that way. She knows the darkness that's within him, the lengths he'll go to in order to keep her with him.]

Trying to protect us means you would have to go against everything you believe in. And at the end of the day, you're the Doctor. You'll do what you've always done, find someone that needs you to make everything better. And you will. You'll move on and start a new chapter, one that will be just as fantastic as the one before it.

[She knows he'll move on past her, that there will be countless other companions after her. That thought makes her happy, fills her with a sense of contentment. He shouldn't be alone. Every lonely monster needs a companion, and she knows that he thinks of himself as the worst monster in the entire universe.

But she won't let him feel that way here. Not now.]

[lateness]

[ 'Trying to protect us means you would have to go against everything you believe in.'

He isn't sure he believes that; he isn't sure that he can. Why wouldn't he want to do his best to protect those he takes on into his wild and often dangerous adventures? Why wouldn't he want to protect the people he loves? And he isn't above admitting how selfish he can be — specifically about the people who become important to him. It's a very human-y emotion, he'll say, probably a result of being around them so much — but without it, without them, he's always worse off. He knows that. Of all the things he's learned over the years, that lesson means the most to him.

The Doctor feels a little like he'd been pulled into two places at once, his mind occupied with the memory of losing Amy and Rory, and Clara standing beside him, speaking to him, trying to talk him down from whatever ledge he'd tried to climb onto.

Now — now he really looks at her, really sees her, and those glassy eyes of his close, drawing tears down his cheeks. (Humany wumany.) His voice sounds small, almost like a child's when he says her name, voice breaking. ]

Clara.

[bossily]

[It's almost as if she's influencing this place, this moment in time that she's been let into. It's a shared space at the moment, but this belongs to him. Still, things shift slightly here and there as she feels the intensity of her love for him burn brighter. Fragments of constellations he's brought her to shine around them, and she swears she can smell the hay in the barn he had hidden himself away in as a small boy on Gallifrey. She had crashed into his life then, wanting to comfort him. And even still, when he's so much older, she takes no issue with comforting him still.

Just as he's weak to her tears, she finds his make her feel a desperate need to fix the problem. His voice cracks and her heart shatters along with it, but she never loses the smile on her face.

She just wipes at his tears before rising up on her tiptoes. Her eyes close as her hands slip behind his head, fingers threading through his hair. She guides him to lower his head so her forehead can press against his. Her nose bumps against his in a hint of a nuzzle, gentle affection meant to help ground and tether him to her.]

You listen to me. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this. We're always going to be afraid. I told someone once that fear is a constant companion. That fear can bring us together.

[And oh, she wishes they could be closer, but she doesn't think that's in the cards. That she doesn't deserve it. Doesn't deserve him. Tears slip free from her eyes now, and she's grateful they're in a position where he likely can't notice.]

It's okay to be afraid, Doctor. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of losing the people you love. Afraid of the man you think you've become. But don't you dare ever forget that fear doesn't make you cruel or cowardly. Fear makes you kind. And it's fear that's going to bring you home.

[Her fingers knead against his scalp and press slightly, her forehead more firmly pressed against him.]

And if you remember nothing else, know that the stars and I, we're always going to be your home.

[Her voice is thick with emotion, and she has to take a moment to swallow. Maybe they're both broken. But that's okay. They can put one another back together again.]

[lateness]

I am afraid, Clara. [ It isn't easy to admit, but he does now. ] I don't think I've ever stopped.

[ And it is good, he distantly thinks. Clara's right. She must be. It's advice he'd given Amy once, too, he remembers — even when the thought of Amy twists an ache in his chest that won't ever go away — it's the fear that keeps humans human, keeps all of them from becoming mindless with anger and hate, cruel and cold, like the Daleks.

He'd had a home once but he'd run away, and even before then, he was going to lose it to war and destruction. He'd been without any sort of sense of place until he'd found it in the friends he'd met, taking them on in the TARDIS with him. Floating in some orbit he'd tried to create for himself. In the people he'd let into his hearts, their faces and their laughter and their bravery seared onto them, faces like Clara's, he can feel it. Home.

And why wouldn't anyone want to cling onto that with all their might? (Even make deals with unknown stations to collect orbs to do so?)

His face is wet with tears but the very real feeling of Clara's touch, her forehead touching his, noses close, her hands keeping him anchored to her — it all buoys him from floating off into some lonely depth, until he can feel life return to his own limbs. He hadn't even realized just how lifeless he'd felt until her, how lost, how willing to be lost he'd been. He moves now to wrap his arms around her small frame and pull her in as close as he can for a hug. ]

You are my home. [ He says this to her even while he's buried his face into her hair, and then repeats it again, voice softer still. ] You are my home.

[bossily]

[When he pulls her in close, she lets out a shaky breath. There's a laugh through her tears, almost giddy with delight at hearing those words.]

Always. [She promises, knowing that it's not something she has any right to reassure him of. But she always will, because that's what you do when you love someone. You find a way to always be exactly what they need.

With his arms wrapped around her, she feels safe and nearly invincible. It's a shame she isn't, but that doesn't matter now. He finally is at a point where he feels connected enough to her to see that she's his home. It's taken a while, but they've finally reached a point where he feels comfortable saying it.]

No matter what happens, I will always be your home.

[She pulls out of the hug just enough to look up at him with tear filled eyes and a dimpled smile on her face. She loves him so much that it hurts. And it's with all the fondness in the cosmos that she teases him gently, wanting this nightmare to shift into something more of a dream for him.]

Daft old man. [There's a pause, and she adds on,] My Doctor.

[lateness]

My Clara. [ He responds without hesitation, glancing down at her with equally watery eyes made reddish from the sting of his tears.

Yes, he probably looks quite the sight, all soppy and wet and full of that emotion, his hearts still sore, but at the end of all that, they're just a little more hopeful too. And it's a beautiful thing to feel it all, even the bad bits (particularly knowing that at the end of all of this, some way he might get to undo some of those especially bad bits), and to see that beautiful emotion written in Clara's features, reflecting back at him. The warmth of her smile feels like a blanket, and he too feels like he could take on the entire universe just for it.

He lifts a hand to touch her cheek, mouth curving into the faintest of smiles, the first since he'd ended up reliving one of the worst days of this face's life — and it's because of this woman. This wonderful, beautiful, impossible woman.

And then he huffs a breath of amusement, slightly embarrassed now that the intensity of the moment's passed. He scrubs at his face, at his tear-tracked skin, wishing she hadn't seen him at his lowest — but that's not entirely true either, is it? She already had, once. It was another life ago, in a snowy Victorian England, but she'd been there too. Just like now, she'd managed to pull him back to himself. ]

I'm sorry you had to see this.

[ The nightmarish memory, he means, of course. ]

[bossily]

Sorry?

[She laughs in near disbelief that he'd need to say that. But then, he doesn't know all the things she sees in their future. All the sides of him that she has seen and has yet to see. She won't spoil him, of course, but in that moment she wishes she could tell him everything. ]

You shouldn't be sorry. I won't allow it. What you can do though, is tell me something.

[She's still smiling, warm and content. This memory is awful for him, but she's grateful she could be here for him.]

How long before you met me did this happen?

[Because it had to happen before. And although she can vaguely remember her thousands of other lives, her echoes that are a part of her, there's no strong memory of this.]

[lateness]

Yes, of course, anything.

[ The shift in his mood might seem sudden, almost manic, but with Clara standing by his side, the Doctor feels himself coming back from the echoes of despair of re-living this memory, each passing second just slightly less cutting, less sharp. It could put a spring in anyone's step, really.

Right up until the moment when she asks him that.

Ah. ]

— before I met you?

[ Well, that's a bit of a ... complicated answer, he thinks, at least that's his immediate reaction. The months of darkness, moping, being cared for by some very old friends of his ... and meeting her. Meeting Clara — again, when he'd met her twice before. The governess; Souffle Girl; the impossible mystery he'd been trying to solve in the background of the orbs and this station and meeting Clara here. ]

Time's funny. Passes you in the blink of an eye, but sometimes it can be so — agonizingly slow. [ Just another one of his non-answers to fill the time, but after all of this? No, he owes her a proper answer.

He takes a breath. ] I don't remember, truth be told. I think it was years. Could have been months. It was all darkness until I met you. [ He shakes his head. ] Another you — the same but different.

[bossily]

[Her eyes close as his answer sparks a memory. Her echoes aren't something that she generally sits and thinks on. The memories are within her, but almost feel locked away for her own good. Some sort of mental defense mechanism. But every so often something slips through those repressed memories and comes to the surface.

This is one of those occasions. It's not something that plays slowly so she understands it completely, but a burst of emotion that plays out all at once.]

The one who found your Tardis on a cloud? You gave her a key, didn't you? She must have been special.

[A tear slips free from her eye and slips down her cheeks. It's different than her tears from before. This one surprises her, and her eyes go wide as she reaches up to wipe it away.

Where had that come from?]

[lateness]

I did. [ The Doctor remembers that moment, on the cusp of remembering just who he was again when he could have lived more years hiding away on that TARDIS hidden in the clouds. Easily. It was too easy, then, to sink into that endless sadness and the abyss of guilt.

I never know why. I only know who. Said as he folded a small silver key into her hand, wrapped her fingers over it with his own.

What's this? she asked, those big brown eyes trying to make sense of it all, shiny with tears.

Me, he remembers saying. Giving in. ] She pulled me back into the light. Dragged me right out, I should say, which only seems fitting, considering. [ Even in Victorian England, Clara Oswin Oswald was bossy. ] But it was you. Wasn't it? It was Clara, but it was you.

[bossily]

She was an echo. A part of me.

[She wishes she could remember things better, but she's sure that it's for the best that she can't remember vivid details.]

One that led you to me, I wager.

[It really sinks in right then how convoluted and out of sorts their shared timeline is. She apparently meets him in Victorian London before he shows up at the Maitland's door. There's a question in the back of her mind, wondering if this is how things with River.

Falling in love with a Time Lord apparently means having to disregard human notions of the flow of time. She's finally in a place where she's able to do that with ease. So much so that this topic doesn't upset or bother her. So what if he met another Clara first, and gave her a key first? She was still Clara, a fragment of herself. It just goes to show he's always been taken by her. She's been his home for longer than he realizes.]

[lateness]

An echo. [ And here is the part where the Doctor has to piece together just what that means, with all of the ... ah, evidence he'd collected some time early in their meeting. After River, it only made sense for him to do his due diligence and research. But perhaps it's starting to make sense — well, maybe. Somehow, over the course of their history together, she remains perfect for him in every way — like pieces of a puzzle slotting together. ]

Yes. I suppose it was. Just like Oswin, though I never did get to see her face; only heard her voice, but it was your voice. It was you. You and souffles and what you tell me every time. [ Every time he'd ... lost her.

Run, you clever boy ...

He won't lose her again, though. Not this time. He gently touches her cheek, a little he needs to reassure himself that she isn't a part of this horrible dreamscape, but that she's real. After Amy and Rory, after losing Clara twice, he doesn't think he has it in him to repeat that hearts-shattering pain, not for one more time. ]

[bossily]

[There's almost a shy smile on her face as he touches her cheek then, like she can't believe they've finally reached this point. He hasn't confessed anything, hasn't kissed her, hasn't done anything other than finally admit that she's his home. But that means so much to her that it's almost overwhelming.]

Come on, my clever boy. Let's run.

[There's doorways to other dreams, with the very distinct possibility that perhaps Clara could let him in her own. She trusts him and has nothing to hide. You know, except for the fact she dies. But surely her own mind wouldn't betray her and let him in on that little secret.

Her hand seeks out his, fingers threading together. She's willing to follow him into the dark, into the farthest reaches of the universe. But she knows that he's just as willing to follow along after her, heading off for a change of scenery. He doesn't need to be here any longer.]

fin.

[lateness]

[ That's it, the Doctor doesn't say, in a moment of uncharacteristic quiet. He's just got that soft sort of smile on his face when she speaks.

But she's right. There's nothing left to be said of this dreamscape and this nightmare — and he doesn't need to be convinced that it's time to go. Because it is time to go (and whether or not the station and all of this orb collecting really can undo this moment in history without the sort of world-destruction he's worried of, he still has every intention on investigating). It's time for the next part of this adventure.

Their hands linked, he follows Clara out of this dream and into the next — whatever that might be. Unsure what to expect, the graveyard he was so familiar with starts to lose detail like it's being smudged out, and then a new scene begins to form around him. ]