"All that we see or seem..." - November 4th, 1888

[mouthbreathing]

Date: November 4th, 1888
Time: 12:30 AM
Location: Second floor hallway
Characters: Warsman and ultimately Robin Mask, but also open to everyone! [OPEN/CLOSED]

Summary: Warsman reacts less than positively to the fungus' spores and finds himself overwhelmed by paranoia in the hallway, taking it out (aggressively) on those around him- including the one person he trusts more than anyone.
Warnings: Event-related horror, violence.


In the hallway, Warsman staggered.

The fear beat against his skull in a brass knuckle one-two, and in between the thuds he could feel his own heart kicking at his throat like a frightened horse. His head had been a dreamy hurricane of stranger's faces and jeering voices only a few minutes before but now he wasn't sure if he'd even opened his eyes at all. What time was it, even? Deep down, he knew he was at Aungier House- he knew he was in the hallway- he knew he was by his bedroom--

But there were so many shadows, so many dark gaps in his vision for things to hide in while he was distracted, and he'd seen so many things in his dreams... he'd spent so many years wrestling (boxing) that it seemed inconceivable to imagine a world like the one he found himself in now that wasn't about to turn on him. More alarmingly, he felt slow and stupid, as though he'd been drugged, and that thought only frightened him all the more; he hadn't had a sensible thought since he'd awoken. If he'd awoken.

He fell drunkenly against a wall with tendrils at his back, but his senses were almost totally self-absorbed. All he could hear was the harsh, shallow sound of his own breathing, that metal ko... ho... sigh that seemed to haunt him day and night and that now commanded his full attention in its inhumanity. But if all he could hear was himself, didn't that mean that just about anything could creep up on him? And with the state he was in, he was perfectly, painfully vulnerable.

Something flickered in the corner of his vision. Warsman's eyes flared a searing red through the darkness and he rounded on it fiercely, fists raised. "Show yourself-!" His voice cracked like old china.

Comments

[gentlemanliest]

Robin was used to dreams of implacable noise and panic and fury. Even the most fierce and iron-willed of soldiers would, at some point, find themselves waking with wracking cries, drenched in sweat. But this was his first in years- and more disturbing than any he had ever had before. Searing hot pain in his chest and his vision fading in a dizzying flurry of bubbles. Eyes going dull and bloodshot as every vein erupts- he could feel the prickle of each- and bleeds out. Bitter cold and a spreading numbness that crept up over his body until there was nothing left of him but the sound of ringing metal. He awoke in a frenzy, clasping at his body through the quilt to make quite sure that it was still there, that he existed.

With heavy legs, he forced himself to his feet. He couldn’t stay in here. The darkness was oppressive and lighting a candle wasn’t a task that he trusted his hands, trembling and damp and fading from- no, they were real. He flexed them, making each finger move separately before allowing himself to be convinced of their existence.

It was the sound of a door opening and closing that made him look up and, to his shame, he did so with a short gasp. Warsman? He needed to see him. Maybe doing so would ease the flood of unfamiliar images and sounds reverberating through his ears.

Robin paused by the door, only for a moment to rake a hand through his hair. His mask. How foolish of him to forget it. The thought slipped unbidden into his mind and then away again before he could fully register it as alien and he opened his door without stopping to consider it.

“Warsman?”

[mouthbreathing]

This voice, though-- of all the voice he'd heard between these walls, this voice he recognised.

Warsman froze.

He'd dreamed of Robin, of course; he'd understood his presence even when the sounds and images had reached a crescendo of confusion, and even if he hadn't been able to make sense of the gleaming helmet (mask, he wants to say, but that doesn't make any sense at all) he'd known it was Robin behind it and it had been a comfort. Now he wasn't so sure. When everyone in the house knew that he was closest to him, it made it all too easy for someone to trick him with the man's voice. And, more than that, how could he even guarantee that he wasn't still dreaming? He hadn't been dreaming the others, but maybe this time-

He took a tremulous step forward. "R-Robin...?" He didn't have the strength to resist. His voice quivered in the steamy night air and for a moment he thought he saw it create ripples, but his eyes remained steadily fixed on the source of his voice- on the man in the doorway. He could just see the edge of his nose, the strong line of his jaw...

But that wasn't right, and for some reason he was back to the image of the knight's helmet, a helmet he couldn't see and whose absence only frightened him all the more. "N-no... no, I'm dreaming..." Russian now. Warsman didn't care. He put his hands to his mask, pressing hard against the glassy eyes as if breaking them might free his sight.

[gentlemanliest]

Warsman's was a shape that he'd seen in his dreams but, in a way he couldn't place, there it had been tinged with a deep sort of sadness, loss almost. Maybe a loss more tangible than he had felt when Sir Lati- father had passed away years ago. Seeing him here, in the flesh and not a flickering after-image of sensation and colour, soothed him enough to ease the drumming of his heartbeat in his ears. Enough to take in his surroundings, at least.

Robin gave a short, horrified gasp and shoved the door open the rest of the way, scraping the floor's new thin, fleshy layer of fungi back in the process. Like skin peeling back to reveal dark, visceral muscle and beneath that the bone and... no, he had to focus. The sweat that had started to bead at the back of his neck rolled down his spine. Hysteria would serve no purpose but to disturb him further.

He took a breath and tried again. "What in God's name-"

No, I'm dreaming.

Russian. It was only now that his eyes moved back to his companion and he realised that his steps were unsteady, his voice trembling with fear and uncertainty. Robin took a tentative step forward, holding up both hands. "Warsman, this is real. I'm real."

Who was he trying to convince here? Warsman? More likely, himself.

[mouthbreathing]

Warsman flinched beneath his fingers. It wasn't that he hadn't remembered that Robin was fluent- he just hadn't expected it of the Robin-shaped man wavering in and out of his vision. He hadn't, in fact, expected any sort of interior truth to it at all, and now he'd born witness to it he wasn't sure how to process it anymore. If he could so perfectly mimic him in all the most important ways, if he could sound like him as well as look like him-

He'd stepped forward. Warsman sucked in a breath, frozen by his own indecision. He could stand and fight- he could run- or he could trust the gentle peace offering in those upturned palms and back down now.

He wasn't in any place to trust.

A drunken mirror, he took a great, uneven couple of steps towards Robin. "Y-you're not-" Warsman shook his head, still clasped in one hand, as though he might be able to rattle the words into order. "You're not right! You're lying!" Now both fists were engaged, raised ready to strike the second we was close enough to take a swing. With the wriggling set of his vision he was more likely to miss than to hit, but he couldn't just stand by while some creature misused Robin's shape.