Dream 03 → Fire Down Below
Mar. 25th, 2010 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
irregularWarnings: Situations of peril. Spoilers for Ken's backstory, but nothing you don't know by Episode Four.
Dream Effects: INTERACTIVE.
Notes: Aside from Ken himself, the figures in this dream all resemble the same young Japanese man. Ken knows who this is, but he isn't saying. The men will not reply if spoken to and are quietly menacing, but not overtly aggressive. They just like stalking people.
This is how Ken dreams of fire.
He never knows how he came to be there - not in the dream, at least. Lying on concrete with the reek of petrol clinging to his clothes and his hair, he opens his eyes on flame.
The building is burning. Catwalks, gantries, machinery: all burns. Flame licks at the windows of the warehouse, at the very walls: he can feel the heat on his face, hot and oppressive as the air of a kiln, hear the roar of the fire in his ears. It deafens him, it leaves his head ringing. He can feel the heavy, heated air burning in his lungs - get out, damn it, got to get out of here before he chokes--! The smoke, thick and black, burns his sinuses; It gags him, blinds him with tears and sends sweat pearling up acrosss his brow, his back...
Ken springs to his feet, the breath catching in his chest; he can think of nothing but the need to flee, but he never runs for the doors. The doors are blocked, or blazing. There's only one place he can go and that's up.
Up.
He sprints for the nearest stairway just before a burning beam scythes down from somewhere above him and crashes to the ground where he had been lying. Ken looks back, then runs again, the treads of the stairs shuddering against his feet. Everything burns - flames lick at the gantry he runs across, and it yaws violently beneath his feet, chunks of debris rain from above, and that is burning too. The breath burns in his lungs.
After a time, he becomes aware that he is searching. Searching for something, or someone - the catwalk gives way beneath his feet, and the scream is choked off in his throat as he throws himself desperately forward, snatching at stairway or girder or anything that will arrest his fall-- Panting, he hangs from the broken walkway for a while, before pulling himself up and struggling on...
And, after a time, he becomes aware of the figures, looming through the choking smoke. Circling, and growing ever closer.
All he can do is keep moving. Keep moving forward because maybe, just maybe he will be faster.
Dream Effects: INTERACTIVE.
Notes: Aside from Ken himself, the figures in this dream all resemble the same young Japanese man. Ken knows who this is, but he isn't saying. The men will not reply if spoken to and are quietly menacing, but not overtly aggressive. They just like stalking people.
This is how Ken dreams of fire.
He never knows how he came to be there - not in the dream, at least. Lying on concrete with the reek of petrol clinging to his clothes and his hair, he opens his eyes on flame.
The building is burning. Catwalks, gantries, machinery: all burns. Flame licks at the windows of the warehouse, at the very walls: he can feel the heat on his face, hot and oppressive as the air of a kiln, hear the roar of the fire in his ears. It deafens him, it leaves his head ringing. He can feel the heavy, heated air burning in his lungs - get out, damn it, got to get out of here before he chokes--! The smoke, thick and black, burns his sinuses; It gags him, blinds him with tears and sends sweat pearling up acrosss his brow, his back...
Ken springs to his feet, the breath catching in his chest; he can think of nothing but the need to flee, but he never runs for the doors. The doors are blocked, or blazing. There's only one place he can go and that's up.
Up.
He sprints for the nearest stairway just before a burning beam scythes down from somewhere above him and crashes to the ground where he had been lying. Ken looks back, then runs again, the treads of the stairs shuddering against his feet. Everything burns - flames lick at the gantry he runs across, and it yaws violently beneath his feet, chunks of debris rain from above, and that is burning too. The breath burns in his lungs.
After a time, he becomes aware that he is searching. Searching for something, or someone - the catwalk gives way beneath his feet, and the scream is choked off in his throat as he throws himself desperately forward, snatching at stairway or girder or anything that will arrest his fall-- Panting, he hangs from the broken walkway for a while, before pulling himself up and struggling on...
And, after a time, he becomes aware of the figures, looming through the choking smoke. Circling, and growing ever closer.
All he can do is keep moving. Keep moving forward because maybe, just maybe he will be faster.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 09:28 am (UTC)Tearing his gaze from Youji's face, Ken glances about himself - at the flames, at the figures looming up through it - and he swallows. They will come no nearer, he knows, but still... Anxiously, he looks back up at his friend. Though even Ken knows that what he is saying makes no sense, he looks almost as grave as he does just plain fearful.
"Youji," he says, "this isn't... I've been here before. It's just how it works. You have to climb and I know it doesn't make sense. But there's no other way out. There just isn't."
He scrambles to his feet and, without waiting for permission, leans heavily against Youji as much to keep his balance as for the reassurance his friend's presence offers. He's still, much to his embarrassment, shaking, and he closes his eyes briefly as he forces himself to calm, concentrating on evening out his breathing. For a moment he does nothing, simply stands and counts his breaths - one, three, six--
He pulls away as Youji makes to move forward, stumbling after the man as he picks his way cautiously through the flames. Youji doesn't know where he's going, that much is obvious but with the stairs - those stairs, anyway - out of the question, there's nothing for it but to look for another way up.
(The figures follow, quiet and patient. They have all the time they need.)
"A warehouse," Ken corrects him. "But you've got to go up. It's... just how this works. I'm sorry."
no subject
Date: 2010-04-01 11:12 am (UTC)So climbing it is. Is it possible to latch a wire on to the rafters, bypass the floors (and individuals lurking therein?) and just climb up? But no; the smoke impairs his vision and it's getting harder to breathe; harder still the higher they go.
"I wish it wasn't that way," Youji mutters, more quietly, as he begins walking the perimeter of the room, looking for the staircase. "You know smoke rises, right? Not that it will matter once the room is full, but I'd like to not deliberately go looking for death, if it's all the same to you."
Something snaps in his mind after that tirade, and he looks back at Ken. Eyes narrowing.
"How much do you know about this setting?" he asks neutrally. If he knows the only way out...? But if he's wrong...
no subject
Date: 2010-04-02 03:10 am (UTC)"We're not," he says, "supposed to be able to get out--"
He breaks off, coughing.
There are no doors in the warehouse - Ken knows this in his blood. He's checked, checked dozens of times, he's been here often enough to know it for a fact. No doors, and the only windows are small, set high in the walls. The only way out is to climb - to break a window, or try and find a way to the roof. Smoke rises, and it's getting hard enough to breathe down here: Ken coughs again, wiping at his eyes with his bandaged hands. It's no choice at all, but it's the only one there is - unless, of course, Youji really wants to burn.
Ken doesn't. He'd rather choke. Rather climb until he was sure he was high enough that the fall would kill him, and jump. It had been horrible enough the first time, and he barely remembered it...
He swallows. Says, "I know it's supposed to kill me. I'm meant to die here, Youji. That... that's why there's no door."
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 03:33 am (UTC)He nudges Ken towards the perimeter of the room. Overexertion probably isn't a good idea, but staying still was even less so.
He didn't really want to acknowledge Ken's final statement, but his curiosity is piqued. And he has a feeling he needs Ken lucid and thinking straight in order to make his way out.
He stopped at a staircase, and just sighed. "Well, if you do die here, somehow you recover long enough to really annoy the hell out of me sometime in the next three years," he says. "Any ideas what we'll find at the top?"
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 01:26 am (UTC)Youji's right, though, and he covers his nose and mouth with one cupped hand for a lack of anything better to do it with.
He says, "Okay." And follows.
The flames roar all about them as they pick their way across the baking, cracking floor: behind them something vast and heavy falls with a loud whumph, sending sparks flying through the air and Ken winces, hurrying to catch up with his friend. Youji doesn't know where he's going, but then Ken can't say he's any surer on that himself - all he knows is that they've got to climb, that whatever's waiting for them at the other end of the maze of shuddering catwalks and stairways strung above their heads like a great steel cobweb, it has to be better than this. Anything would be better than to burn...
Though Youji hesitates at the foot of the stairs, Ken doesn't wait. He pushes past him, clambering quickly up the first few steps, only stopping short and turning back when he realizes that Youji isn't following.
"No," Ken admits, letting his hand fall from his face. "I don't know. We've just got to go up. And..." He hesitates. Wonders, for a moment, if he wants to admit to this at all. "I said supposed to. Something happens and I don't. I'm supposed to die but I don't and I think they--" He gestures vaguely about him at nothing in particular, "--don't like that."