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 Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 11:38 am
24 Hours
24 Hours
24 Hours
It was all he could remember at first as he stirred from his sleep. He actually slept rather decently for once, and hated the slow groggy shift as he tried to wake up from it. He realized, at first, that this wasn't their room and although they seemed to be sleeping on the floor - it was not his old room, either. The ground was dirt, the walls were dirt, the ceiling was dirt and all of it was pitch black. He accepted this as normal for just a moment and started to close his eyes again, hoping to get more rest.
His eyes shot open as it came back to him all at once like a massive wave crashing down on his head. He shot up from where he was resting and screamed. A rare reaction from him, but he felt this most certainly warranted it. Seeing Noah at his side. Not the Noah he knew but an emaciated Noah that was covered in vegetation, he shouted somehow louder and his voice cracked.
He shuffled to the farthest wall from Noah and pressed himself tight against the wall. The things they'd done. The look in his eyes glazed over as he remembered the dream up to this point. He had been happy in it as a horseman - but as a hunter he was horrified. They saw and did - so many horrible things, Perfectly natural to a horseman, but to someone who was a human, at least, once upon a time... he dry heaved a little.
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Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 4:28 pm
Noah jolted out of sleep at the scream, disoriented and still confused from what Alice had revealed to him. He was a hunter dreaming of being a horseman, and the shock of recollection was still rolling through him. He opened his eyes into the awareness that he was still dreaming. Seeing Cor pressed up against the wall, wild-eyed, he reached out to him and was brought up short by the appearance of his own hand, bony in the dimness, very much inhuman. Cor - no, Al, it was Al - had wings, but he was otherwise much more human-looking than Noah was.
He wasn't a horseman, and he pressed his thin hand to his mouth, suddenly horrified at the memories of the things that other self had done. Entirely normal for a horseman, but to human sensibilities they were disgusting. He thought of what he'd been happily eating not so very long ago and swallowed hard to keep the nausea in check. He'd better think of something else, and quickly.
"We -- we have to figure out how to wake up," he said, hearing his voice come out with a strange dry buzzing edge. He tried to ignore that, for the sake of his own sanity. Something else occurred to him suddenly, and he bit his lip. "It is you, isn't it?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 6:46 pm
Al flinched away from the offered hand, terrified out of his mind at the skeletal thinness. It was like waking up next to your worst nightmare. But it wasn't.
It wasn't.
He assured himself over and over again that it wasn't.
He wasn't wrong, it was Noah regardless of his shape. It was Noah and he wasn't dead. He only looked it.
He hid his face with his hands somewhere along the way and without looking asked the darkness, “Are you my Noah? The not… …the non-mummified one?
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Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 6:52 pm
"It's me. I'm not - I'm not like this." Noah's hand went to his throat, making sure none of the vines on him were twined around it. Mercifully, none were.
Al was repulsed by him, by this body. That was okay. He was repulsed too.
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Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 9:13 pm
Keeping his face covered, Al scooted closer to Noah and slid his almost too muscly arms around him and hugged him close to his chest.
Don't think about it.
Don't.
He rubbed his back. “I'm sorry.”
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Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 9:32 pm
Noah curled up against Al, holding himself just a little away from his partner so that his ribs wouldn't be felt. "It's okay," he said miserably. "I'm freaked out too." He didn't give himself too much time to think about it, and went on, "What do we do now?"
Dionaea. His eyes widened a little in the dimness. Their daughter, who wasn't real, but she would still be here for as long as they were in this dream. His feelings about that were deeply conflicted. He still felt a deep love for her, except that that love was part of the dream, birthed from the memories of that other life that was all wrong. She was his, theirs, and she wasn't. He rested his head against Al's shoulder and took a shaky breath and found that he couldn't get any of those thoughts out of his mouth quite yet.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 1:28 am
Al didn't allow Noah to hold back for long, pulling him even closer into his embrace. Sharp bony edges or not, he was still his Noah. Even if looking at him was painful. He looked just the right amount of Noah to make the whole thing even more unsettling. He looked like himself... but near death.
"I don't know," Al conceded to Noah's question.
He moved away finally to start crawling out of the tunnel, "We should check on-" s**t.
He got his head in the main space, just enough to see the small too-thin child hunkered down nearby with her favorite stuffed creature. She had heard them screaming and was struggling to get up the courage to check on her dads. She looked like she was dying, too. He didn't really remember her that way. He didn't even really think about it at all, in fact. The desire to check on her in the first place a residual knee-jerk of Cor. One he was regretting as she approached and asked, "Are you fighting?"
Al had gotten stuck on his wings, again, only this time he had no idea how to control them.
"Noahhh," he pleaded as the little girl was coming closer and closer, looking exactly like she wanted a hug.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 6:36 am
Noah rolled off the bed and let the residual memories of the horseman he had been show him how to tuck Al's wings so that he could get out, and then slipped out himself. "We're, we're not fighting," he told the little horseman child, and squashed down one instinctive reaction to let another take its place so that he could hug her without flinching too much. "Your das have had - a bad dream. Everything's going to be okay."
Everything was not okay, and the skeletal feel of the child in his arms made him a little sick, but he couldn't help wanting to comfort her either, one set of memories and instincts in direct conflict with the other. He didn't look at Al yet, not wanting to confront his reaction.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:31 am
Dio flopped her little body against Noah's with a comforted sigh. She believed Noah, he has never lied to her. She was sure he was incapable of it. Cor though, Cor was the one they went to for sugarcoating bad things, like needing a checkup. Still, something unsettled the little foal and she pulled back a little to point at Al, frowning. "Is daddy sick?"
Al was hunkered by a wall, clutching his face in silent horror as the two skeletal forms came together in an embrace and spoke to each other. They were one and the same. People he'd loved, but now looked as though they were on the verge of death. There was nothing he could do about it. Even as he reassured himself over and over again that they were fine and meant to look like that. It was a very difficult thing to get past once, let alone twice. But he tried to push it down.
"Daddy... daddy is just a little unwell."
Dio immediately reached out in his direction and gave a wiggle, clearly wanting to comfort him.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:39 am
"He's not feeling very good right now. It might take him a little time to feel better," Noah said, and had to take a moment and a deep breath to deal with the inner conflict again; this was utterly wrong and horrifying, this was entirely normal and he was quietly proud of her for her desire to help.
He looked over at Al, silently pleading with him to hold on.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:01 pm
Al reached down and tore a long strip of cloth from the side of his loincloth. It was barely keeping him modest in the first place. He wrapped the strip around his face, blindfolding himself.
"Daddy is just a little dizzy and needs to cover his eyes until they steady," he lied. He opened his arms out blindly, because it really pained him to see her struggle the way she had. Wanting to hug him as badly as she did.
Dio squirmed more violently in Noah's grasp, clearly desiring to get to Cor.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:07 pm
"Okay, you can give him a hug," Noah said, mostly to warn Al that it was coming, and let Dio go so that she could hug Daddy, and hoped silently that it wouldn't cause Al to panic.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:10 pm
Al braced himself for the hug, half expecting something horrible that might end him.... then her dainty little arms encircled his neck and hugged him. He froze. Yes, she was thin and frail, but he hadn't known her touch to be any other way. He craned his neck a little to pull her off her feet the way he had - the way Cor had - a million times and swooped large arms around her, holding her back. The look on his face contorted painfully.
Why. Was all he could repeat in his thoughts. WHY.
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:21 pm
Noah stayed kneeling, and watched the strange-familiar sight, and watched Al's expression change from nervous preparation to something closer to anguish, even as he held the little girl. This was still a dream, and he didn't know if he hoped they remembered or forgot.
He got up after a moment and came over to join the hug, his chest aching with something that felt a lot like loss.
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