Encounterlogs
Victorias Odd Encounter Sr Castiel 250204
Victoria finds herself in a dream dominated by a malevolent dream stalker intent on feeding on her life force by trapping her in a world built from familiar settings twisted into something sinister. The Alley, her own bar, becomes the stage for this surreal experience, its familiar atmosphere replaced with details subtly wrong, objects and people distorted into mocking reflections of reality, creating a persistent sense of wrongness. Victoria, aware of the disparity but unable to pinpoint the source, confronts this altered reality with a blend of recognition and unsettling confusion. A series of encounters with the bar's patrons, all of whom bear twisted, inhuman characteristics, heightens the dread, culminating in her face-to-face confrontation with the source of the distortion: a monstrous figure with a grin too wide and a presence that smothers the room's air. Despite its attempts to ensnare her further, she resists, her defiance manifesting in a refusal to succumb to the eerie charm of the dream.
As the narrative unfolds, allies enter Victoria's nightmarish world, attempting to wrest her from the dream stalker's grip. Among them, a figure resembling an important person from her life manifests with dual intent—protection and aggression—revealing the personal stakes involved. The climactic battle between this wolf-like protector and the stalker shatters the illusory confines of The Alley, forcing Victoria and her rescuer, Juniper, toward an escape. This confrontation, fraught with violence and a palpable sense of loss, underscores the depth of Victoria's connections and the strength derived from them. The ordeal concludes as both women awaken in the real world, shaken and bearing the physical marks of their dream-bound struggle, yet safe from the dream stalker's reach, thanks to the intervention of Victoria's spectral defender whose final act of defiance ensures their freedom. Left in the wake of their ordeal are relief, exhaustion, and an unspoken grief for the hinted sacrifices made within the dream, symbolized by the fading howl of a wolf—a sound mingling victory with sorrow.
(Victoria's odd encounter(SRCastiel):SRCastiel)
[Mon Feb 3 2025]
In a serene master bedroom
This room combines rustic decor, warm lighting, and a welcoming atmosphere that invites relaxation, making the space the perfect blend of nature and warmth. Walls are created of rich wood, and the main feature within is the bed.
A large bed with a frame made of oak dominates the space and is covered in several plush blankets, making it the ideal place to curl up and unwind. A fur throw has been laid at the foot of the bed, and several fluffy pillows rest against the headboard that is made from the same oak, featuring a black velvet backdrop.
It is afternoon, about 12F(-11C) degrees,
(Your target is attacked by a dream stalker who subjects them to their greatest fantasies in the dream world in order to keep their body passive while it's energies are fed upon. They need to, possibly with the help of allies entering their dreams, resist the temptation long enough for other allies to find them or for them to wake up.
)
Victoria should know this place. It, the Alley, hums with low, steady energy, the kind that fills a room when the night has stretched long but hasn't yet slipped into quiet. The air is thick with the scent of alcohol, smoke, and something else that doesn't belong - not quite rot, not quite perfume, just a cloying, sticky presence that lingers too long at the edge of awareness. Dim neon light bleeds across the cracked countertops and scuffed wooden floors, casting deep shadows that don't always stay where they should.
The jukebox in the corner hums out an old song, something bluesy, soft, the lyrics half-swallowed by the murmur of conversation. But beneath it, beneath the worn-out melody and the clink of glasses, there is something else. A low, distant sound, just barely audible - the crackle of fire, the faintest echo of screams, stretched thin and distant, as if carried on a breeze from somewhere impossibly far away. No one else reacts to it. No one else seems to hear.
The bar is busy but not full. The usual types are scattered across the booths and stools - drifters, regulars, faces that come and go, some with stories, some without. At first glance, everything is exactly as it should be. The neon light flickers in the same places it always does, the ceiling fan churns lazily overhead, and the shelves behind the bar hold the same half-empty bottles they always do. But something is wrong. The differences are subtle, but they are there.
A man near the end of the bar turns his head too slowly, as if his body forgets to follow the movement until a second too late. Two women sitting in a booth by the wall laugh at something unheard, their faces too similar, too symmetrical, as if stamped from the same mold. A row of glasses hangs above the bar, but they arent the ones that should be there. The old mismatched set, collected over years, is gone. In its place, identical tumblers gleam under the neon glow, polished to a mirror sheen. The taps gleam too brightly, untouched by the years of grime they should have collected. The walls- were they always that color? The deep, bruised blue looks right, but the memory of them being something else tugs at the edges of thought.
A man with salt-and-pepper hair nurses a drink at the bar, his fingers drumming against the counter in a slow, deliberate pattern. The rhythm is familiar. Almost too familiar. Across the room, someone laughs, and the sound comes half a second too late, like an echo pretending to be real. The air is too warm, thick with the scent of something metallic under the layers of whiskey and old leather. A cigarette smolders in an ashtray, but the smoke curls the wrong way, twisting downward instead of rising. Someone stands near the jukebox, one hand resting against it, their head tilted like they're listening to something no one else can hear. Their face stays turned away, just enough to keep their features hidden, just enough to make the shape of them seem... unfinished. The music skips, just once, a hiccup in the melody. No one reacts.
A drink slides across the counter with the sound of glass against wood, but for half a second, it doesn't leave a reflection on the polished surface beneath it. The neon signs in the window flicker again, and for a fraction of a moment, their glow stretches just a little too far, casting light where it shouldn't reach. In the farthest booth, near the back wall, someone stares with eyes too dark, too deep, like twin voids swallowing the dim light around them. They don't blink.
The ice in a glass shifts with a soft clink, melting too fast. A clock ticks somewhere, but the hands don't move. The room breathes with a low, ambient hum, steady, rhythmic, as if the walls themselves inhale and exhale in time with something unseen. Somewhere, the jukebox croons a final note before the next song starts. The fire, the screams- still just beneath the sound. Still only for one set of ears.
The Alley is familiar. Her bar is wrong.
Victoria stands with fingers flexing at her sides, and a distinctly disturbed expression. She knows this place. She knows it down to the grooves in the floorboards, the way the air clings too close on humid nights, the rhythm of conversation punctuated by the scrape of chairs and the occasional burst of sharp laughter. The Alley is hers, or it should be. But it isn't. Her eyes move over the room, cataloging details, cross-checking memory against reality. The glasses are wrong. The walls are wrong. The neon glow stretches too far, bending in ways it shouldn't, and she watches the light crawl over surfaces like it has a mind of its own, before she draws a measured, slow breath.
She doesn't react, not yet, choosing instead to do the one action that seems the most familiar to her. She drops herself into a seat, and flicks her gaze between the patrons around her, the hint of a frown on her lips. Without hesitation, her fingers tap a rhythm on the bar's top only familiar to her.
The sound of the jukebox curls lazily through the air, wrapping around the soft murmur of conversation, the clinking of glass, the occasional drag of a chair against the floor. The track playing is familiar, something old, something meant to be background noise rather than a statement. But beneath the easy blues melody, that other sound persists- just out of reach, slipping between the notes, threading itself into the rhythm of the room like it belongs there. The distant roar of fire, the wail of something too human to ignore but too far to be certain.
The Alley breathes around Victoria, alive with its usual occupants, yet something about them wavers at the edges. The man at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink, wears a face she knows- only she also swore she saw that exact face, with the same sloped nose and weary eyes, on a man seated in a booth near the door. A woman laughs softly at something, her hand resting against her companions wrist, but when someone gaze flicks to her fingers, they seem too long, stretching slightly before settling into something normal again. The details resist scrutiny, slipping into place just before she can grasp whats wrong.
The neon glow drapes itself across the surfaces, painting the space in restless color. It catches in the sheen of the bottles behind the bar, making the liquid inside gleam in ways it shouldnt- redder, darker, the kind of shades that feel thick and viscous just to look at. A bottle tilts slightly, only to right itself before it can fall. The register clicks open without prompting, revealing an orderly row of bills, each marked with symbols that shift when she blinks.
Someone speaks her name.
It isnt strange, not in itself. She knows people here. They know her. But the voice doesnt quite match the speaker. The bartender- was it Sam tonight?- stands behind the counter, his mouth forming the shape of her name, but the voice that reaches her ears is just a half-step off. Too smooth, too low, like it belongs to someone else entirely. Did she even have a worker named Sam? Or was it always Sam?
The Alley stretches, not physically, but in the way dreams distort space without warning. The far corner seems farther now, the walk to the back door longer than it should be. The air holds steady, not stifling, not wrong, but carrying the weight of something unseen. The rhythm of the place continues as always- drinks are poured, laughter rises and fades, the jukebox hums on- but the undercurrent persists.
This is The Alley. She knows it. But it isnt.
The jukebox crackles. The song skips- no, not skips, repeats. One phrase looping, looping, looping- until it suddenly doesnt. The fire fades, the screams are gone, and the next verse picks up as if nothing happened.
Victoria taps her fingers against the bar, the motion rhythmic, grounding.
Someone else joins in, echoing her beat a second too late.
They are waiting.
The sound of the jukebox curls lazily through the air, wrapping around the soft murmur of conversation, the clinking of glass, the occasional drag of a chair against the floor. The track playing is familiar, something old, something meant to be background noise rather than a statement. But beneath the easy blues melody, that other sound persists- just out of reach, slipping between the notes, threading itself into the rhythm of the room like it belongs there. The distant roar of fire, the wail of something too human to ignore but too far to be certain.
The Alley breathes around Victoria, alive with its usual occupants, yet something about them wavers at the edges. The man at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink, wears a face she knows- only she also swore she saw that exact face, with the same sloped nose and weary eyes, on a man seated in a booth near the door. A woman laughs softly at something, her hand resting against her companions wrist, but when Victoria's gaze flicks to her fingers, they seem too long, stretching slightly before settling into something normal again. The details resist scrutiny, slipping into place just before she can grasp whats wrong.
The neon glow drapes itself across the surfaces, painting the space in restless color. It catches in the sheen of the bottles behind the bar, making the liquid inside gleam in ways it shouldnt- redder, darker, the kind of shades that feel thick and viscous just to look at. A bottle tilts slightly, only to right itself before it can fall. The register clicks open without prompting, revealing an orderly row of bills, each marked with symbols that shift when she blinks.
Someone speaks her name.
It isnt strange, not in itself. She knows people here. They know her. But the voice doesnt quite match the speaker. The bartender- was it Sam tonight?- stands behind the counter, his mouth forming the shape of her name, but the voice that reaches her ears is just a half-step off. Too smooth, too low, like it belongs to someone else entirely. Did she even have a worker named Sam? Or was it always Sam?
The Alley stretches, not physically, but in the way dreams distort space without warning. The far corner seems farther now, the walk to the back door longer than it should be. The air holds steady, not stifling, not wrong, but carrying the weight of something unseen. The rhythm of the place continues as always- drinks are poured, laughter rises and fades, the jukebox hums on- but the undercurrent persists.
This is The Alley. She knows it. But it isnt.
The jukebox crackles. The song skips- no, not skips, repeats. One phrase looping, looping, looping- until it suddenly doesnt. The fire fades, the screams are gone, and the next verse picks up as if nothing happened.
Victoria taps her fingers against the bar, the motion rhythmic, grounding.
Someone else joins in, echoing her beat a second too late.
They are waiting.
does not turn immediately. She keeps her fingers moving against the bar, steady, deliberate, as if the rhythm alone can keep her anchored. The tapping that echos hers crawls under her skin, only shown through a subtle shiver. She exhales slowly, watching the bottles behind the counter in the mirror's reflection. The liquid inside still gleams too dark, too thick. Her head shakes, as if to clear her vision, and the unsettled expression upon her features only grows deeper. Finally, she speaks without another look around her. "You're being too obvious." Victoria Victoria One leg is crossed over the other, letting the heel of one boot dangle idly, and her grey eyes narrow to near slits. "Why?" she whispers, almost to herself.
Victoria does not turn immediately. She keeps her fingers moving against the bar, steady, deliberate, as if the rhythm alone can keep her anchored. The tapping that echos hers crawls under her skin, only shown through a subtle shiver. She exhales slowly, watching the bottles behind the counter in the mirror's reflection. The liquid inside still gleams too dark, too thick. Her head shakes, as if to clear her vision, and the unsettled expression upon her features only grows deeper. Finally, she speaks without another look around her. "You're being too obvious."
One leg is crossed over the other, letting the heel of one boot dangle idly, and her grey eyes narrow to near slits. "Why?" she whispers, almost to herself. (fix)
Rhythmic tapping echoing past her own stops, abruptly and quietly. There is silence that reigns over the bar now, in that moment, stretching on in an endless abyss of nothing that resides just past the fogged windows of the place she owns, but also does not - where land is claimed by another here. The unerring, eerie make of the whole place does not fade in the slightest - and no reply comes to any questions she's asked yet. No, the bar is bustling with activity in its facsimile of normalcy. As well as it can within the confines of a dream she's beginning to understand.
People that she thinks she's familiar with, upon closer inspection, are more hollow than she initially may have thought. They have mismatched eyes, mismatched fingers, their count off and wrong. Some have digits upwards of ten in a single hand, whereas some have none - all shifting with each glance, and never the same twice. Their skin does not move in the slightest, no emotion is there in actuality. Every smile is an empty shell of a thing - delivered without creases, and laughters over shared glasses are without mirth.
What breaks that silence is the record scratch of another song that plays - this time in reverse, and Victoria, finally could perceive the very thing that she only glazed over several times earlier. A man, simply dressed, with a face of slate stretched over his head like a too-short, too-tight mask. His eyes are entirely void, black and sunken, and they have been upon her for a long time, now, set on her own gaze from where he resides in the far booth of that infinitely expansive distance.
"Because there is nothing you can do about it."
The answer is more chilling than it has any right to be. More physically, in fact. The tone of his voice, one of shrill chries and an echo of a hundred different tones both men and women, child and elderly, frail and strong - they are a whisper over the din of the bar, and delivered without his lips moving at all. Heard from right beside and up to her ear as if that is where he spoke them even if he remains so far away. The ashen colour of his skin, the ashen color of his hair in a haphazard mess, the ashen color of everything that he wears - it signifies him as a man of gray, of sooth, of dust. This creature, whatever it is, is a stalker and a predator, and it wanders the edge of reality with terrifying acuity.
Today, Victoria apparently pulled the shorter straw of who he would hunt.
Exhaling, Victoria slowly reaches to lift a glass from the bar. he watches the liquid inside swirl, watches how the reflection in the surface warps, stretching wider than the rim should allow. Her grip tightens, and she lifts her chin, leveling a stare toward the man that only serves to drop upon studying his features, return to the liquid she swirls around inside the glass with flicks of her wrist.
"Is that what you think?" Her hushed, hissed response is given, not to the hollowed-out people playing their parts around her. Not even toward the man himself, simply spoken with defiance woven into the undertone of the words. Her eyes return to him, with the wrinkle of her nose in displeasure.
Another long, lengthy pause ensues. This one is more palpable - this one, it cuts. Everything, everyone has come to a stand-still around Victoria. There is nothing within her bar that is animated any longer - and within that motionless world, a blot of ashen hue, her stalker, smiles. It's an off-putting thing, going from ear-to-ear, widening with each second that passes in the world it has built of her own memories, of her own connections to this place. It could do worse, surely, it might, too.
And yet, he merely dispels the notion, without any overt motion. People crumble. Made of ash as they are, they drift and scatter at once to the floor, followed by the furniture, all save for the bar that she resides within, and the booth that he occupies in the far distance. It's an empty floor, stricken with all the filth of everyone that has occupied this seedy bar so far, as well as gathered piles of ashes. Not even clothes remain of the facade of people that had been seconds ago.
Rows upon rows of teeth lay there within his mouth, sharper than daggers, each locked intensely within one another with twisting, gnarly edges. The sockets of his eyes baring witness to actual void, they seem to be placing more of his attention on Victoria without fueling any creation of his, warped or otherwise -- and that is precisely when her monster deigns to rise. Leave his booth.
But he is not there in the moment of his exit. He's behind Victoria instead, hands on either side of her, set upon the counter top, with his body, far too tall to the point she only makes it to his midsection while he's standing. In closer proximity, the illusion of his presence is gone just like the dream she was enduring. This is a monster, in make, in creation, in purpose. With long limbs that shouldn't be present in a human physiology - jointed in places there shouldn't be. So thin and frail, skin and bones, with each ligament, each sinew, each tendon countable beneath ashen skin.
"No, that is not what I thnk."
Two whispers, at once, they speak behind each of her ears without the creature lowering itself to her height at all. His obscured face, still in that frozen-solid grin, peers down from above her shaded with shadows and grim contours. His throat moves, where a neck too long for comfort is host to a prominent adam's apple that moves in a long, dry swallow. The sort that one would make if they were parched or starved, drooling inward - and outward, where thin seams of black ooze out from the corners of his jagged smile.
"That is what I know."
Victoria's breath catches in her throat, a subtle tremor threatening her composure, but she forces it down. Her hands clutch the counter in front of her, nails digging into the wood, and she doesn't dare turn around. The words he speaks, sickly sweet and poisonous, sink into her skin, curling around her spine like a chilling embrace that leaves her unable to move in that instant. She can feel his gaze like a physical thing, crawling up her back, burning through the fabric of her being. Yet, she doesn't flinch. She doesn't let him have the satisfaction. Instead, she forces her voice out, low and measured, every syllable a deliberate act of defiance.
"What do you want?" Her words feel strange in her own mouth, almost foreign, like she's tasting them for the first time. Her posture stiffens, shoulders square. There is a moment, just a moment, where the shadow of doubt flickers. But only a moment. She swallows the fear that threatens to rise in favor of more words, a bluff given in a tone much too light. "You have no control here."
Some shrill sound emanates. The sound of breathing. Methodical, wheezing, nearly geriatric - perhaps because this thing is old, but it isn't heard only in her ears. It is heard everywhere with the intake of that breath, grinding like glass upon glass as his chest rises, and in their proximity, she can feel him press against her - towering so far high up. Should she look up, she'd see those hollow sockets transfixed upon her form, the etched, carved smile on his face seemingly larger, with more teeth included and as if there is more hidden beyond if he only could smile larger, in spite of his mouth dominating nearly more than half of his decrepit, sunken face.
If she doesn't, the hands simply laid upon the counter from around her are enough of a display. Thin, long digits with several joints flexing, repeatedly, gray-claws tap tap and tapping upon the wood in a soft display of imitation. Her melody, one that she knows so well, repeadly in perfection back to her with both hands. Thinness of his wrists extends to musculature that shouldn't be present so low upon his forearms but higher up, sinewy and off- with skin flaked off in parts to reveal the tender, yet rot-gray flesh beneath pulsating with whatever passes for a pulse within this decrepit creature's veins.
A long, thin strand of black slowly extends. Some sizzling liquid that lands on her shoulder. He's drooling, visibly, starvedly, swallowing copious amounts of it with each stroke of his throat to no avail, as if there is a dam broken within his mouth and he has to work twice as hard to not shower her with his anticipation of devourance. "You are wrong." The voice whispers again in a voice that doesn't belong to him. His mouth still doesn't move - picks and pieces the voices from her mind, ones she is familiar, ones she has heard in passing. It's all a mixture, of feminine and masculine, amalgamated.
The thing smiles even more with his next choice.
"I have all the power here," His pick is a rougher voice, stern and fierce, near wolven in a man's make, delivered with a perpetual bite like he snarls each word. She'd recognize it near immediately, as something that some other man, the one that the voice rightly belongs to - not of this world, would say. "Who the fuck do you think you are to stop me from a meal? You should just sit when you're told like a good dog and wait your turn to get eaten." Whatever rise he'll get out of her with it, it brings immense pleasure no doubt - because another wheezing breath is taken and released in a shrill noise that is of the actual creature's, belonging to it, to the thing that has no real voice of its own.
One of his hands rise, and two impossibly thin, impossibly sharp fingers seek to capture Victoria's jaw from either end, hold her, squeeze to sink against her cheeks. His touch is pure, raw cold - no heat whatsoever in it, like he toys with a frail and fragile thing that could snap if he dared to touch her with a fuller grasp. That unopening mouth - it does open now. Slowly, quietly, widely - like an endless maw dripping vitriolic venom past jagged teeth, drooling over her shoulder from so far up above in his abysmal height. There is vast void within that jaw, an intent to devour everything and anything -- another thing, so very, eerily similar to her.
Yet all that spills through it is a mocking laughter, wheezingly shrill.
The sound of that wheezing breath fills the space, a suffocating weight pressing in on Victoria, but she sits still, stoic, other than her chin which tilts upwards as narrowed eyes stare. The chill of his touch as his fingers curl against her jaw is as cold as death itself, yet she forces herself not to shrink beneath it. The pressure on her cheeks isnt new, nor is the grotesque display of his form, but its the voice, those voices, that scrape across her nerves, that make her blood run cold.
"Is that it?" she spits, her tone sharp, cutting through the grotesque symphony of his whispers. "You think this... this attempt of yours is enough to break me? You think you've won?" One hand lifts, brushing away the distasteful display of hunger that's landed itself on her shoulder with no hesitation despite the sizzling sound heard when it hits her flesh. "I'm not your meal," she continues, her voice steady, unwavering, "and I'll never be. No matter what you do, no matter what you say."
The monstrous laughter in his throat rings out, and she feels it rattle in her chest, but she doesnt let it break her resolve. "You have no power here," she whispers, now with quiet conviction, her eyes narrowing, her lips curling in a defiant sneer. "Only the illusion of it." Despite the shiver that runs through her when she looks upon him, she attempts to keep her outward visage calm. Still, she subtly draws her nails over her wrist, pinching slightly. "You're dreaming, Vic. Wake up..please wake up," she seems to beg herself. She makes no sounds, only her lips move to form the words which betray her outwardly calm exterior.
Bony fingers retreat again, leave her face- settle on Victoria's shoulders instead. They hold her still, while flexing digits tap against her shoulder despite her resistance and attempted composure. He's breaking into her, shattering the vestiges of her psyche - he knows this, he feels it, in the tantalizing scent of her slowly freezing blood. The thing that haunts her, it wheezes out another breath - then begins to lower itself, closer and closer...
Until one more motion spins her where she sits. Too swiftly, and it is as if the world revolves in her presence, everything but a blur - sunken eyes of pitch-black void gone with it, so is he, the monster, when he's interrupted her in the crucial moment of her self-plea to wake up. The hand that presses her against the bar is one of flesh and bone, calloused digits and a strong grip on her shoulder.
Yet it is the same voice that haunts her, and the visage that bleeds into her is exactly of what she fears. A crease is harsh upon a stern brow, a cut mien with a harsh jaw setting his lips into a thin line of worry, all beneath green eyes that stare into hers with narrowed intensity. Every bit the wolf, warm to touch -- and even just that alone is enough to seep an inkling of warmth to her. To the point, it actually invades her pack bond, traverses a singular emotion.
'Peace' it calls, comfort, it amalgamates with worry.
"Victoria? What did I tell you about dozing off on the job?" His voice masks his worry, stern in delivery, capped with a sigh while he lifts to his full height proper. The whole world is as it ever was around her from this very moment that she's awoken, and everything is more than a little hazy in the periphery of her eyes with the fog of sleep slowly drifting off of her senses. "Take as many days off as you need, I'll take care of the bar. Christ, how many times have I told you? Just make your drinks and go home, not like we get anyone other than alcoholics at this time of day." Still stern, still with a hint of worry hidden even though he doesn't show it, that lean, blade of a man draws away from her, with a rag that he's stolen off the counter to throw over his shoulder, and step around her - to tend the bar, to tend to the few people that line the stools. Someone asks for one of her elaborate drinks -- he pours them a beer and tells them to fuck off to the Succubus if they want something better, instead.
Victoria freezes, every muscle locking in place as an intense stillness overtakes her. Her chest tightens, a desperate gasp stuck in her throat, and for a long stretch of agonizing seconds, she can neither breathe nor speak. Her lips move in vain, opening and closing as if trying to force out words that refuse to come. When her senses finally sharpen, she recognizes him, his voice, his figure standing there before her, and her heart sinks into a cold, suffocating pit. "You're not real," she breathes, her words barely a whisper, a tremor of disbelief slipping through.
Her vision blurs, and the weight of the moment threatens to consume her. She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes, her head jerking from side to side as if trying to shake off the impossible image before her. Still, she cannot tear her gaze away from the man who stands behind the bar. The weight of grief, mixed with disbelief, etches itself into her features, her expression vacant and shattered. Finally, her voice cracks, unsure and faint. "I should," she begins, the words lingering with uncertainty. "Go. I mean." There's a hesitation, and she allows one other sentence, one that seems painful to say aloud. "You left us."
"The fuck?"
A brow shoots up at the exact moment she says those last words with hesitation. His eyes cut towards her, with his own modicum of disbelief, and while he passes the wrong order to yet another paying customer who doesn't question it in the slightest like they're used to the treatment, he sets his hip against the bartop at his portion. The rag at his shoulder is pulled, then chucked aside in favor of folding his arms. His tank top stretches over taut muscle while he levels a stare upon Victoria.
"Do you have a fever or something? I'm right here." A pondering, weighing pause therein lingers, and several breaths pass in inspection, in observation. Again, that pack bond verifies, it tugs at her heart, seeps through her veins. Beneath the acrid acid of hunger, of what it tries to mask, there is a twinge of worry to rise with it. For her. One step, then, and he sets a hand on the counter behind her, leans closer to lift his hand. The back of it finds Victoria's forehead, while his eyes are scant inches away. A dark-green hue like jade, searching the gray storm of her eyes.
"Is it the moon?" His words, quieter, are posing a question almost warily, still steel-edged but wondering. "Didn't you get through the new moon alright? I thought I told June to stick close and look after you this month what with the Temple acting up." Only once he's decided that she doesn't have a fever but only a cold sweat does he retreat to stand up instead of bend to her height, but skepticism is all too real, all too natural in his eyes, and he decides. The option to deny isn't even given to her, he has all the power here. "Nevermind. Don't go anywhere, Vic. You're gonna stay until I know you're doing good."
Is it real? Was it all a bad dream? Had she truly fallen asleep on the counter because of some ailment? Of course she had. This is what she wants to believe. This is what Victoria wants. With him, there is a whole pack. With him, there is safety, there is noone to deny them, no one to dare standing up. Just his presence alone is a soothing, comforting thing, like a pillar, a savage thing that'd rake through hell and beyond just to keep them safe, keep her safe.
Beyond, in her periphery, everything is as it should be. The bar is perfect, the colors of the walls, the furniture, the filth-caked floors and the oil and alcohol stained tables are where they always were. People hold no dismaying qualities like weird hands or too repetitive faces. Only thing is, something is wrong. Or is it not? The jukebox plays its music in the background, just a simple melody lost in the background, with a soft vocal that invites people to drink away their sorrows. Yet what is it that she can't place her finger on?
Is it because the melody in the music is the one she was tapping?
Is it because his scent, instead of oil, is of blood?
Is it because the windows are too fogged to see outside?
No, it couldn't be any of it. It was all always like that. Even that gray-scale, gangly creature of a man that sits right behind on the customer's side of the bar on a stool with his arms folded on the counter, supporting a beer, smiling his all too wide knife edge smile -- watching the two of them, is normal. He's a regular, he's always been a regular, like everyone here that you know.
Absolutely nothing is amiss to you.
Everything, is as it should be.
Victoria's heart races, but she doesnt show itdoesnt let him see how deeply his proximity, his touch, cuts through her. She stays still, her muscles tense beneath his scrutinizing gaze. His hand on her forehead feels like ice, but the moment she registers the coldness, her own skin prickles. The concern, the wariness in his voice it makes her breath hitch, but she forces it down. She wants to pull away, to push him back, but the pack bond pulls at her. It always does. Dean she murmurs, just barely audible, her voice shaking. he weight of his words sinks into her chest like lead, the command, the undeniable authority in his tone. 'Stay until I know you're doing good' ,and somehow, the thought of defying him feels like a threat, not just to herself but to everything she's trying to keep intact. Her gaze shifts, flickering around the bar, desperately searching for something, anything solid, anything she can hold onto.
Her hand instinctively brushes her forehead, but her fingertips come away wet with cold sweat. His scent, blood, not oil, clings to the air, suffocating in its familiarity. It draws a frown, as she tries to place something weighing on her mind. She forces herself to meet his eyes again, before another look around herself, trying to steady fingertips that now tremble upon the bar.
That careful glance does not subside. It remains on her from the corner of his eyes while he turns ahead again. His features are entirely wrought with a hard-hewn visage of contemplation, even while he works upon the bar again. His hands, in their lingering silence, takes hold of his rag to start wiping down excess spillage on the heavily tarnished wood of his seedy bar. Because it's his bar. It was his bar, always. The work-area is scattered with art supplies here and there. A sketchbook is never far. Something he was working on earlier, probably - half-open.
In it, in the hint of a page open, is the image of her sketched, sleeping against the bar. It looks like he was busy with that before he woke her, while a gothy chick worked with their patrons. She's on break now, sitting on a stool of her own near the break room, smoking a cigarette. Yet, beyond it all, his eyes constantly skip over Victoria. Furtive glances that are trying to assess what's wrong without prying.
Until it does.
"I get it." It's sudden, when whatever has dawned on him does. Those green eyes, they drift away from Victoria slowly, and instead of focusing the totality of his cumbersome attention, he lays them on that creature, the thing that clinks the edge of his glass upon his teeth that won't open, spills beer onto his gray clothes where alcohol is soaked up into him without stain. Hollow eyes, bereft of pupils or eyes, seem to turn onto him anyhow, flit between the man that gives him an accusatory glare, as well as Victoria.
"You're doing something to her."
And that's what ends the near jovial attitude and demeanor of Victoria's assailant and captor both. The unmentioned threat that comes with the words - nearly snarled, with teeth bared, too sharp and elongated in slowly rising bile of wrath. Bony fingers lower his glass down onto the bartop, and, for whatever reason, the grayscale creature, it sets a slow hand on the counter, pushes back and off his stool to stand up to that massive, towering height with a heavily palpable wariness. The echo of a voice that's warped and compounded within many is comes from all around. In confusion, and maybe even a twinge of fear.
"What?"
Victoria attention snaps to the sketchbook, half-open, the page revealing an image that hits her with the force of a hammer. The sight of herself slumped against the bar, asleep, strikes her with a chilling mix of violation and sadness. He had been watching her. Even while she slept.
The weight of it hangs in the air until his voice breaks through, pulling her gaze away. Her eyes land on something,someone familiar, yet terrifying, standing there in the periphery. A figure she had wrongly written off as just another patron. Her lower lip catches between her teeth, the instinct to retreat rising. She stands abruptly, flicking her gaze nervously between the two of them. She glances toward the doorway, a brief hesitation before she faces the man again. Her voice, though soft, trembles with a mix of confusion and fear. "What?" she repeats, her tone a mirror of the dissonant sounds she's heard, the ones that seem to distort everything around her.
"What?"
He repeats, a third voice to their confusion, yet his is bereft of it. As the patrons, so meticulously fashioned, or maybe not - perhaps actual denizens of this dream world that Victoria was sucked in are pulled astray from their drinks, cast wary glances, ones that eventually culminate to standing up and retreating, practically escaping -- SRCastiel wanders. His stride is careful, not quiet, but he might as well radiate the totality of his wrath now in his gaze, in his posture. The low growl that stalks, it is accompanied by the fall of his shadow traversing the wall at his back. One that of a monstrous wolf that wouldn't even fit in here had he shifted.
"He's doing something to you, right?"
It's a steel edge to his stone, the sharply bitten voice of his savage in the hoarseness of it while doesn't lift, but tears out the panel to chuck it aside that separates the patrons from the bartenders, to step outside. "You're sweating, you look weak- you feel weak." Because of course he feels it, as that pack bond flares yet again. A two-way street to her state. On her side, from him - all that Victoria can feel is a blaze, a bonfire nestled in an abyss, raw wrath of a near primordial beast dawning upon the gangly thing that takes another step back, fully receded into its shell of silence where it makes no sound. Something that Juniper can feel, too, as soon as she arrives into this dream - fully aware of herself as she is not influenced by the thing that stands stark in the middle of the off-putting facsimile of The Alley.
"You get out of here first, Vic. I'll see you at yours."
A partial shift, crack of bone, his hand is half-claws, blackened skin up to his elbows that rake aside over the counter he circles, severing a deep gouge. The nigh-infernal look of his eyes is that of a burning fury, an all-consuming hunger, of devourance. The gangly creature towering so far high up, it begins to lessen, starts to crouch as if preparing to leap upon the man approaching it with a palpable aura of starved hunger. It leaps with a wheezed hiss, long, bone-thin wrists aligned to put clawed hands forward while strands of its own hungry saliva connect an opening jaw of knife-like teeth upon a haunted and gaunt face.
Before it can connect, there is claw and fangs exploding.
The half-portion of the bar is jarring with the sound of breaking bone first, then a figure that tears through the shape of man, straight into wolf, one massive, one pitch-black as if to devour any light felling upon him. It's green eyes are the only thing of note that give it an inkling sensation of intelligence while it looks and feels every bit the monstrous form it has taken, where elongated fangs far too large for a mouth to fit in, split the very maw of it ear to ear - clamp upon the gangly, massive creature from the half and drive it into the ground with a vicious snarl and a throathy growl - as if to devour it whole.
Dust grows, ash swirls, occupies nearly half the bar erring on the side of conflict where there is nothing but the sight of flashing claws and teeth agleam, fighting bone and dust and flash of putrescent-scented, fell dream magic and manifestation.
The wolf probably will not win this, but it may very well be the only opportunity Victoria has to really wake up from this cruel nightmare hellbent on playing with her mind, intent on locking her in this dreamworld. That door from which Juniper burst in seems to radiate light, something the foggy windows do not let through as with any other glimpse of the outside. It speaks of salvation, of release -- barely within reach.
(fix) "What?"
He repeats, a third voice to their confusion, yet his is bereft of it. As the patrons, so meticulously fashioned, or maybe not - perhaps actual denizens of this dream world that Victoria was sucked in are pulled astray from their drinks, cast wary glances, ones that eventually culminate to standing up and retreating, practically escaping -- the lean, inked-up man wanders. His stride is careful, not quiet, but he might as well radiate the totality of his wrath now in his gaze, in his posture. The low growl that stalks, it is accompanied by the fall of his shadow traversing the wall at his back. One that of a monstrous wolf that wouldn't even fit in here had he shifted.
"He's doing something to you, right?"
It's a steel edge to his stone, the sharply bitten voice of his savage in the hoarseness of it while doesn't lift, but tears out the panel to chuck it aside that separates the patrons from the bartenders, to step outside. "You're sweating, you look weak- you feel weak." Because of course he feels it, as that pack bond flares yet again. A two-way street to her state. On her side, from him - all that Victoria can feel is a blaze, a bonfire nestled in an abyss, raw wrath of a near primordial beast dawning upon the gangly thing that takes another step back, fully receded into its shell of silence where it makes no sound. Something that Juniper can feel, too, as soon as she arrives into this dream - fully aware of herself as she is not influenced by the thing that stands stark in the middle of the off-putting facsimile of The Alley.
"You get out of here first, Vic. I'll see you at yours."
A partial shift, crack of bone, his hand is half-claws, blackened skin up to his elbows that rake aside over the counter he circles, severing a deep gouge. The nigh-infernal look of his eyes is that of a burning fury, an all-consuming hunger, of devourance. The gangly creature towering so far high up, it begins to lessen, starts to crouch as if preparing to leap upon the man approaching it with a palpable aura of starved hunger. It leaps with a wheezed hiss, long, bone-thin wrists aligned to put clawed hands forward while strands of its own hungry saliva connect an opening jaw of knife-like teeth upon a haunted and gaunt face.
Before it can connect, there is claw and fangs exploding.
The half-portion of the bar is jarring with the sound of breaking bone first, then a figure that tears through the shape of man, straight into wolf, one massive, one pitch-black as if to devour any light felling upon him. It's green eyes are the only thing of note that give it an inkling sensation of intelligence while it looks and feels every bit the monstrous form it has taken, where elongated fangs far too large for a mouth to fit in, split the very maw of it ear to ear - clamp upon the gangly, massive creature from the half and drive it into the ground with a vicious snarl and a throathy growl - as if to devour it whole.
Dust grows, ash swirls, occupies nearly half the bar erring on the side of conflict where there is nothing but the sight of flashing claws and teeth agleam, fighting bone and dust and flash of putrescent-scented, fell dream magic and manifestation.
The wolf probably will not win this, but it may very well be the only opportunity Victoria has to really wake up from this cruel nightmare hellbent on playing with her mind, intent on locking her in this dreamworld. That door from which Juniper burst in seems to radiate light, something the foggy windows do not let through as with any other glimpse of the outside. It speaks of salvation, of release -- barely within reach.
Juniper bursts in, indeed - radiating worry and a blazing anger at whatever's sunk its claws into Victoria. She is purposeful, determined, focused, ready to fight and defend and then -- hesitation, felled upon her like the force of a high speed collision that knocks the air out of her lungs. Whatever nightmare she expected to be confronted with, it was likely the dark and gangly thing. And yet, there is more here than that. A different sort of nightmare. Loss and hope collide together - grief and relief tango and muddy her purpose. A tremor overtakes the blonde woman, like she fights a primal instinct within her that yearns and reaches out to join like to like and a throaty sound is made that turns almost into a howl of pain, though nothing has yet touched her. This expulsion of energies and feelings gives her brief respite, watching the two forms becomes tangled in dust and ash. The other, more palpalpable and oh so important pull of the bond comes from the brunette woman who becomes weaker by the moment and she snaps to it while she gets to her side. "Vic," she says with as much an even and commanding tone as she can muster with her familiar warmth. "It's time to go. We need to go." Hazel eyes fall on Victoria, trying valiantly to ignore what keeps pulling at her attention and distracts her from her goal.
There's a weight to Victoria's gaze, an undercurrent of regret and grief clouded by confusion. It might have kept her rooted to the spot, but then Juniper speaks, and the shift is immediate, her attention snaps toward the blonde, pulling her from the fog of her own mind. "We need to go," she agrees in a weary version of her usual tone. It holds none of the strength or clarity she usually possesses, but the urgency in it is unmistakable.
Victoria's hand reaches for Juniper, fingers brushing in a silent plea for reassurance, for the connection that grounds her. Her eyes flick to the door, her body already moving toward it with a last lingering glance backward.
It's like a jarring brick that slams the wolf, because that pull of the pack is felt, the swirl of emotion and distress. Enough to distract him, enough that the massive wolf stretching the limits of his presence within the confines of the bar, is reeling back because of that one moment of lapsed judgement. A claw tears out one of his eyes, raked it through - and his pain goes to both Juniper and Victoria. Then, with it, a sheer anger. Not towards them, but towards this thing that had dared to do it.
His paw swipes to slam the gangly, ashen monster against the far wall, but he doesn't give chase. The other monster in the room, the wolven kind, it bleeds from gashes, cuts, fur matted already from the conflict - yet he's dished as well as he's got. Blood and bile, lycanic venom traverses low from his perpetually snarling maw that remains low-hanging upon a few sinews, far too wide and horrendous, ever poised to devour anything and everything. Yet, it doesn't move from guarding them - creates a very real and palpable wall between Victoria's captor, and her, along with Juniper.
A green eye turns upon them for a moment while the dream stalker starts to claw its way out of the hole he was shoved within, and within the savage glimmer of malice - there is almost an order that mirrors that of Juniper's. Just, without being put to words, but to a low snarl. His head tilts towards the door, tells them to leave, to leave it to him. The usual. He'll handle the monsters, keep the terrors at bay, devour the things that go bump in the dark for his pack. Whatever dreamworld this is, it is a confusing, confounding one - and much, it seemss, has yet to happen here - or they simply never will...
Maybe he won't even exist, after this ordeal, conjured up by sheer intent to keep Victoria here forever in a lull and haze. When Victoria glances back at him, she'd see that her stalker has risen. Drooling viciously, in approach to get past the giant cut of wolf meat in between, yet finding little opportunity to do. With how that single green eye narrows, and how his maw is a little wider, one might mistake the monstrous wolf to be smirking - before it turns the whole of his attention on the battle. One step, where his back grazes upon the ceiling - another, and he's running, tearing through the bar, the furniture -- colliding with the monster, as another monster, and slamming a hole through the far wall and into the ether of nothingness.
Lost, within that abyssal void of a nightmare peeking through the gap he's made.
Victoria's hand would find Juniper's - warm and solid and most of all, coursing with life. The familiar scent of the blonde woman wafts in their nearness, their bond pulses with understanding as they share their grief and their strength. And moving with her, trying to exhibit more confidence and control than she may have, but definitely more than Victoria possesses right now, she grits her teeth against the onslaught of pain, anger, and other familiar spices from the dull connection that still seems to spark between this version of a green eyed monster and what's left of his pack. "He's got this," she says softly to Victoria - the words tinged with a grief she is unable to veil. "And I've got you."
The bond of the pack pulls at Victoria, and the pain she feels isn't her own. It's his. The visceral agony of a claw raking through an eye, is immediate and suffocating. It fills her chest with heat, that sharp, suffocating anger, it doesnt belong to her, but she feels it as if it's her own. She wants to fight, wants to stay, but there's no time. Shes caught in a fog of confusion and fear, but Juniper's presence, his will, overrides everything else. He'll handle this. He always does. With that said, she nods to the blonde, clasping her hand tightly and pulling her through the door with what little strength she has left.
Ordeal, for all those that were involved. Painful, perhaps - melancholic, rueful. There is much misery here, much sadness - it is a veil that the monster of a wolf has left behind. Far in the darkness, there is a decrepit groan, a painful yelp -- a war that wages within the darkness they cannot see. Whatever prevails, there is first a shriek that's bone-chilling, blood-curdling, as if deciding the victor.
It's immediately cut short with a snarl.
Followed by a howl, one that echoes, wrathful and hunger-filled, sorrowed and pained, yet with vigor boundless as if the very meaning, the note of his call is one that beckons the very moon to descend closer so he can get his poisoned teeth in it. With it, one last echo of a bond traverses through Juniper and Victoria. Resolution, confidence - feelings of victory - and more than anything, relief. Not for himself, that much is felt, but for their current escape. It is a wilting emotion, slowly consumed by a cold absence.
When they pass through those doors - it doesn't exist anymore.
It never did, exist in the first place. It was but a dream - a nightmare of sorts, maybe, but one that Victoria would wake up from in her own bed, in her own house. Her sheets entirely covered in her sweat, and blood from her palms for squeezing them so hard to the point of unintentional self-injury. Juniper would no doubt find herself in a similar, albeit lesser state. Her travel to the world of dreams was brief and short - even if there is a heavy note of lingering sadness swelling within her breast with or without her desire. Sprawled over Victoria, in her attempt to reach in and protect her from the harms that would've befallen her.
It's too late for morning birds outside, but still, some birds do chirp. Maybe the cry of an eagle, as it swoops down to hunt something. It is the very woods of Haven they're in, after all. Some other calls of beasts and animals - keen to their senses, filtered out as usual whenever should they regain their bearing and wake up in the near-evening hours. The existence of that stalker isn't present here, nor prevalent. It might be alive still, it might no be, it is not for them to say - but it is a surety that they will be left alone from its vices.
Someone made sure of that.
As the narrative unfolds, allies enter Victoria's nightmarish world, attempting to wrest her from the dream stalker's grip. Among them, a figure resembling an important person from her life manifests with dual intent—protection and aggression—revealing the personal stakes involved. The climactic battle between this wolf-like protector and the stalker shatters the illusory confines of The Alley, forcing Victoria and her rescuer, Juniper, toward an escape. This confrontation, fraught with violence and a palpable sense of loss, underscores the depth of Victoria's connections and the strength derived from them. The ordeal concludes as both women awaken in the real world, shaken and bearing the physical marks of their dream-bound struggle, yet safe from the dream stalker's reach, thanks to the intervention of Victoria's spectral defender whose final act of defiance ensures their freedom. Left in the wake of their ordeal are relief, exhaustion, and an unspoken grief for the hinted sacrifices made within the dream, symbolized by the fading howl of a wolf—a sound mingling victory with sorrow.
(Victoria's odd encounter(SRCastiel):SRCastiel)
[Mon Feb 3 2025]
In a serene master bedroom
This room combines rustic decor, warm lighting, and a welcoming atmosphere that invites relaxation, making the space the perfect blend of nature and warmth. Walls are created of rich wood, and the main feature within is the bed.
A large bed with a frame made of oak dominates the space and is covered in several plush blankets, making it the ideal place to curl up and unwind. A fur throw has been laid at the foot of the bed, and several fluffy pillows rest against the headboard that is made from the same oak, featuring a black velvet backdrop.
It is afternoon, about 12F(-11C) degrees,
(Your target is attacked by a dream stalker who subjects them to their greatest fantasies in the dream world in order to keep their body passive while it's energies are fed upon. They need to, possibly with the help of allies entering their dreams, resist the temptation long enough for other allies to find them or for them to wake up.
)
Victoria should know this place. It, the Alley, hums with low, steady energy, the kind that fills a room when the night has stretched long but hasn't yet slipped into quiet. The air is thick with the scent of alcohol, smoke, and something else that doesn't belong - not quite rot, not quite perfume, just a cloying, sticky presence that lingers too long at the edge of awareness. Dim neon light bleeds across the cracked countertops and scuffed wooden floors, casting deep shadows that don't always stay where they should.
The jukebox in the corner hums out an old song, something bluesy, soft, the lyrics half-swallowed by the murmur of conversation. But beneath it, beneath the worn-out melody and the clink of glasses, there is something else. A low, distant sound, just barely audible - the crackle of fire, the faintest echo of screams, stretched thin and distant, as if carried on a breeze from somewhere impossibly far away. No one else reacts to it. No one else seems to hear.
The bar is busy but not full. The usual types are scattered across the booths and stools - drifters, regulars, faces that come and go, some with stories, some without. At first glance, everything is exactly as it should be. The neon light flickers in the same places it always does, the ceiling fan churns lazily overhead, and the shelves behind the bar hold the same half-empty bottles they always do. But something is wrong. The differences are subtle, but they are there.
A man near the end of the bar turns his head too slowly, as if his body forgets to follow the movement until a second too late. Two women sitting in a booth by the wall laugh at something unheard, their faces too similar, too symmetrical, as if stamped from the same mold. A row of glasses hangs above the bar, but they arent the ones that should be there. The old mismatched set, collected over years, is gone. In its place, identical tumblers gleam under the neon glow, polished to a mirror sheen. The taps gleam too brightly, untouched by the years of grime they should have collected. The walls- were they always that color? The deep, bruised blue looks right, but the memory of them being something else tugs at the edges of thought.
A man with salt-and-pepper hair nurses a drink at the bar, his fingers drumming against the counter in a slow, deliberate pattern. The rhythm is familiar. Almost too familiar. Across the room, someone laughs, and the sound comes half a second too late, like an echo pretending to be real. The air is too warm, thick with the scent of something metallic under the layers of whiskey and old leather. A cigarette smolders in an ashtray, but the smoke curls the wrong way, twisting downward instead of rising. Someone stands near the jukebox, one hand resting against it, their head tilted like they're listening to something no one else can hear. Their face stays turned away, just enough to keep their features hidden, just enough to make the shape of them seem... unfinished. The music skips, just once, a hiccup in the melody. No one reacts.
A drink slides across the counter with the sound of glass against wood, but for half a second, it doesn't leave a reflection on the polished surface beneath it. The neon signs in the window flicker again, and for a fraction of a moment, their glow stretches just a little too far, casting light where it shouldn't reach. In the farthest booth, near the back wall, someone stares with eyes too dark, too deep, like twin voids swallowing the dim light around them. They don't blink.
The ice in a glass shifts with a soft clink, melting too fast. A clock ticks somewhere, but the hands don't move. The room breathes with a low, ambient hum, steady, rhythmic, as if the walls themselves inhale and exhale in time with something unseen. Somewhere, the jukebox croons a final note before the next song starts. The fire, the screams- still just beneath the sound. Still only for one set of ears.
The Alley is familiar. Her bar is wrong.
Victoria stands with fingers flexing at her sides, and a distinctly disturbed expression. She knows this place. She knows it down to the grooves in the floorboards, the way the air clings too close on humid nights, the rhythm of conversation punctuated by the scrape of chairs and the occasional burst of sharp laughter. The Alley is hers, or it should be. But it isn't. Her eyes move over the room, cataloging details, cross-checking memory against reality. The glasses are wrong. The walls are wrong. The neon glow stretches too far, bending in ways it shouldn't, and she watches the light crawl over surfaces like it has a mind of its own, before she draws a measured, slow breath.
She doesn't react, not yet, choosing instead to do the one action that seems the most familiar to her. She drops herself into a seat, and flicks her gaze between the patrons around her, the hint of a frown on her lips. Without hesitation, her fingers tap a rhythm on the bar's top only familiar to her.
The sound of the jukebox curls lazily through the air, wrapping around the soft murmur of conversation, the clinking of glass, the occasional drag of a chair against the floor. The track playing is familiar, something old, something meant to be background noise rather than a statement. But beneath the easy blues melody, that other sound persists- just out of reach, slipping between the notes, threading itself into the rhythm of the room like it belongs there. The distant roar of fire, the wail of something too human to ignore but too far to be certain.
The Alley breathes around Victoria, alive with its usual occupants, yet something about them wavers at the edges. The man at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink, wears a face she knows- only she also swore she saw that exact face, with the same sloped nose and weary eyes, on a man seated in a booth near the door. A woman laughs softly at something, her hand resting against her companions wrist, but when someone gaze flicks to her fingers, they seem too long, stretching slightly before settling into something normal again. The details resist scrutiny, slipping into place just before she can grasp whats wrong.
The neon glow drapes itself across the surfaces, painting the space in restless color. It catches in the sheen of the bottles behind the bar, making the liquid inside gleam in ways it shouldnt- redder, darker, the kind of shades that feel thick and viscous just to look at. A bottle tilts slightly, only to right itself before it can fall. The register clicks open without prompting, revealing an orderly row of bills, each marked with symbols that shift when she blinks.
Someone speaks her name.
It isnt strange, not in itself. She knows people here. They know her. But the voice doesnt quite match the speaker. The bartender- was it Sam tonight?- stands behind the counter, his mouth forming the shape of her name, but the voice that reaches her ears is just a half-step off. Too smooth, too low, like it belongs to someone else entirely. Did she even have a worker named Sam? Or was it always Sam?
The Alley stretches, not physically, but in the way dreams distort space without warning. The far corner seems farther now, the walk to the back door longer than it should be. The air holds steady, not stifling, not wrong, but carrying the weight of something unseen. The rhythm of the place continues as always- drinks are poured, laughter rises and fades, the jukebox hums on- but the undercurrent persists.
This is The Alley. She knows it. But it isnt.
The jukebox crackles. The song skips- no, not skips, repeats. One phrase looping, looping, looping- until it suddenly doesnt. The fire fades, the screams are gone, and the next verse picks up as if nothing happened.
Victoria taps her fingers against the bar, the motion rhythmic, grounding.
Someone else joins in, echoing her beat a second too late.
They are waiting.
The sound of the jukebox curls lazily through the air, wrapping around the soft murmur of conversation, the clinking of glass, the occasional drag of a chair against the floor. The track playing is familiar, something old, something meant to be background noise rather than a statement. But beneath the easy blues melody, that other sound persists- just out of reach, slipping between the notes, threading itself into the rhythm of the room like it belongs there. The distant roar of fire, the wail of something too human to ignore but too far to be certain.
The Alley breathes around Victoria, alive with its usual occupants, yet something about them wavers at the edges. The man at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink, wears a face she knows- only she also swore she saw that exact face, with the same sloped nose and weary eyes, on a man seated in a booth near the door. A woman laughs softly at something, her hand resting against her companions wrist, but when Victoria's gaze flicks to her fingers, they seem too long, stretching slightly before settling into something normal again. The details resist scrutiny, slipping into place just before she can grasp whats wrong.
The neon glow drapes itself across the surfaces, painting the space in restless color. It catches in the sheen of the bottles behind the bar, making the liquid inside gleam in ways it shouldnt- redder, darker, the kind of shades that feel thick and viscous just to look at. A bottle tilts slightly, only to right itself before it can fall. The register clicks open without prompting, revealing an orderly row of bills, each marked with symbols that shift when she blinks.
Someone speaks her name.
It isnt strange, not in itself. She knows people here. They know her. But the voice doesnt quite match the speaker. The bartender- was it Sam tonight?- stands behind the counter, his mouth forming the shape of her name, but the voice that reaches her ears is just a half-step off. Too smooth, too low, like it belongs to someone else entirely. Did she even have a worker named Sam? Or was it always Sam?
The Alley stretches, not physically, but in the way dreams distort space without warning. The far corner seems farther now, the walk to the back door longer than it should be. The air holds steady, not stifling, not wrong, but carrying the weight of something unseen. The rhythm of the place continues as always- drinks are poured, laughter rises and fades, the jukebox hums on- but the undercurrent persists.
This is The Alley. She knows it. But it isnt.
The jukebox crackles. The song skips- no, not skips, repeats. One phrase looping, looping, looping- until it suddenly doesnt. The fire fades, the screams are gone, and the next verse picks up as if nothing happened.
Victoria taps her fingers against the bar, the motion rhythmic, grounding.
Someone else joins in, echoing her beat a second too late.
They are waiting.
does not turn immediately. She keeps her fingers moving against the bar, steady, deliberate, as if the rhythm alone can keep her anchored. The tapping that echos hers crawls under her skin, only shown through a subtle shiver. She exhales slowly, watching the bottles behind the counter in the mirror's reflection. The liquid inside still gleams too dark, too thick. Her head shakes, as if to clear her vision, and the unsettled expression upon her features only grows deeper. Finally, she speaks without another look around her. "You're being too obvious." Victoria Victoria One leg is crossed over the other, letting the heel of one boot dangle idly, and her grey eyes narrow to near slits. "Why?" she whispers, almost to herself.
Victoria does not turn immediately. She keeps her fingers moving against the bar, steady, deliberate, as if the rhythm alone can keep her anchored. The tapping that echos hers crawls under her skin, only shown through a subtle shiver. She exhales slowly, watching the bottles behind the counter in the mirror's reflection. The liquid inside still gleams too dark, too thick. Her head shakes, as if to clear her vision, and the unsettled expression upon her features only grows deeper. Finally, she speaks without another look around her. "You're being too obvious."
One leg is crossed over the other, letting the heel of one boot dangle idly, and her grey eyes narrow to near slits. "Why?" she whispers, almost to herself. (fix)
Rhythmic tapping echoing past her own stops, abruptly and quietly. There is silence that reigns over the bar now, in that moment, stretching on in an endless abyss of nothing that resides just past the fogged windows of the place she owns, but also does not - where land is claimed by another here. The unerring, eerie make of the whole place does not fade in the slightest - and no reply comes to any questions she's asked yet. No, the bar is bustling with activity in its facsimile of normalcy. As well as it can within the confines of a dream she's beginning to understand.
People that she thinks she's familiar with, upon closer inspection, are more hollow than she initially may have thought. They have mismatched eyes, mismatched fingers, their count off and wrong. Some have digits upwards of ten in a single hand, whereas some have none - all shifting with each glance, and never the same twice. Their skin does not move in the slightest, no emotion is there in actuality. Every smile is an empty shell of a thing - delivered without creases, and laughters over shared glasses are without mirth.
What breaks that silence is the record scratch of another song that plays - this time in reverse, and Victoria, finally could perceive the very thing that she only glazed over several times earlier. A man, simply dressed, with a face of slate stretched over his head like a too-short, too-tight mask. His eyes are entirely void, black and sunken, and they have been upon her for a long time, now, set on her own gaze from where he resides in the far booth of that infinitely expansive distance.
"Because there is nothing you can do about it."
The answer is more chilling than it has any right to be. More physically, in fact. The tone of his voice, one of shrill chries and an echo of a hundred different tones both men and women, child and elderly, frail and strong - they are a whisper over the din of the bar, and delivered without his lips moving at all. Heard from right beside and up to her ear as if that is where he spoke them even if he remains so far away. The ashen colour of his skin, the ashen color of his hair in a haphazard mess, the ashen color of everything that he wears - it signifies him as a man of gray, of sooth, of dust. This creature, whatever it is, is a stalker and a predator, and it wanders the edge of reality with terrifying acuity.
Today, Victoria apparently pulled the shorter straw of who he would hunt.
Exhaling, Victoria slowly reaches to lift a glass from the bar. he watches the liquid inside swirl, watches how the reflection in the surface warps, stretching wider than the rim should allow. Her grip tightens, and she lifts her chin, leveling a stare toward the man that only serves to drop upon studying his features, return to the liquid she swirls around inside the glass with flicks of her wrist.
"Is that what you think?" Her hushed, hissed response is given, not to the hollowed-out people playing their parts around her. Not even toward the man himself, simply spoken with defiance woven into the undertone of the words. Her eyes return to him, with the wrinkle of her nose in displeasure.
Another long, lengthy pause ensues. This one is more palpable - this one, it cuts. Everything, everyone has come to a stand-still around Victoria. There is nothing within her bar that is animated any longer - and within that motionless world, a blot of ashen hue, her stalker, smiles. It's an off-putting thing, going from ear-to-ear, widening with each second that passes in the world it has built of her own memories, of her own connections to this place. It could do worse, surely, it might, too.
And yet, he merely dispels the notion, without any overt motion. People crumble. Made of ash as they are, they drift and scatter at once to the floor, followed by the furniture, all save for the bar that she resides within, and the booth that he occupies in the far distance. It's an empty floor, stricken with all the filth of everyone that has occupied this seedy bar so far, as well as gathered piles of ashes. Not even clothes remain of the facade of people that had been seconds ago.
Rows upon rows of teeth lay there within his mouth, sharper than daggers, each locked intensely within one another with twisting, gnarly edges. The sockets of his eyes baring witness to actual void, they seem to be placing more of his attention on Victoria without fueling any creation of his, warped or otherwise -- and that is precisely when her monster deigns to rise. Leave his booth.
But he is not there in the moment of his exit. He's behind Victoria instead, hands on either side of her, set upon the counter top, with his body, far too tall to the point she only makes it to his midsection while he's standing. In closer proximity, the illusion of his presence is gone just like the dream she was enduring. This is a monster, in make, in creation, in purpose. With long limbs that shouldn't be present in a human physiology - jointed in places there shouldn't be. So thin and frail, skin and bones, with each ligament, each sinew, each tendon countable beneath ashen skin.
"No, that is not what I thnk."
Two whispers, at once, they speak behind each of her ears without the creature lowering itself to her height at all. His obscured face, still in that frozen-solid grin, peers down from above her shaded with shadows and grim contours. His throat moves, where a neck too long for comfort is host to a prominent adam's apple that moves in a long, dry swallow. The sort that one would make if they were parched or starved, drooling inward - and outward, where thin seams of black ooze out from the corners of his jagged smile.
"That is what I know."
Victoria's breath catches in her throat, a subtle tremor threatening her composure, but she forces it down. Her hands clutch the counter in front of her, nails digging into the wood, and she doesn't dare turn around. The words he speaks, sickly sweet and poisonous, sink into her skin, curling around her spine like a chilling embrace that leaves her unable to move in that instant. She can feel his gaze like a physical thing, crawling up her back, burning through the fabric of her being. Yet, she doesn't flinch. She doesn't let him have the satisfaction. Instead, she forces her voice out, low and measured, every syllable a deliberate act of defiance.
"What do you want?" Her words feel strange in her own mouth, almost foreign, like she's tasting them for the first time. Her posture stiffens, shoulders square. There is a moment, just a moment, where the shadow of doubt flickers. But only a moment. She swallows the fear that threatens to rise in favor of more words, a bluff given in a tone much too light. "You have no control here."
Some shrill sound emanates. The sound of breathing. Methodical, wheezing, nearly geriatric - perhaps because this thing is old, but it isn't heard only in her ears. It is heard everywhere with the intake of that breath, grinding like glass upon glass as his chest rises, and in their proximity, she can feel him press against her - towering so far high up. Should she look up, she'd see those hollow sockets transfixed upon her form, the etched, carved smile on his face seemingly larger, with more teeth included and as if there is more hidden beyond if he only could smile larger, in spite of his mouth dominating nearly more than half of his decrepit, sunken face.
If she doesn't, the hands simply laid upon the counter from around her are enough of a display. Thin, long digits with several joints flexing, repeatedly, gray-claws tap tap and tapping upon the wood in a soft display of imitation. Her melody, one that she knows so well, repeadly in perfection back to her with both hands. Thinness of his wrists extends to musculature that shouldn't be present so low upon his forearms but higher up, sinewy and off- with skin flaked off in parts to reveal the tender, yet rot-gray flesh beneath pulsating with whatever passes for a pulse within this decrepit creature's veins.
A long, thin strand of black slowly extends. Some sizzling liquid that lands on her shoulder. He's drooling, visibly, starvedly, swallowing copious amounts of it with each stroke of his throat to no avail, as if there is a dam broken within his mouth and he has to work twice as hard to not shower her with his anticipation of devourance. "You are wrong." The voice whispers again in a voice that doesn't belong to him. His mouth still doesn't move - picks and pieces the voices from her mind, ones she is familiar, ones she has heard in passing. It's all a mixture, of feminine and masculine, amalgamated.
The thing smiles even more with his next choice.
"I have all the power here," His pick is a rougher voice, stern and fierce, near wolven in a man's make, delivered with a perpetual bite like he snarls each word. She'd recognize it near immediately, as something that some other man, the one that the voice rightly belongs to - not of this world, would say. "Who the fuck do you think you are to stop me from a meal? You should just sit when you're told like a good dog and wait your turn to get eaten." Whatever rise he'll get out of her with it, it brings immense pleasure no doubt - because another wheezing breath is taken and released in a shrill noise that is of the actual creature's, belonging to it, to the thing that has no real voice of its own.
One of his hands rise, and two impossibly thin, impossibly sharp fingers seek to capture Victoria's jaw from either end, hold her, squeeze to sink against her cheeks. His touch is pure, raw cold - no heat whatsoever in it, like he toys with a frail and fragile thing that could snap if he dared to touch her with a fuller grasp. That unopening mouth - it does open now. Slowly, quietly, widely - like an endless maw dripping vitriolic venom past jagged teeth, drooling over her shoulder from so far up above in his abysmal height. There is vast void within that jaw, an intent to devour everything and anything -- another thing, so very, eerily similar to her.
Yet all that spills through it is a mocking laughter, wheezingly shrill.
The sound of that wheezing breath fills the space, a suffocating weight pressing in on Victoria, but she sits still, stoic, other than her chin which tilts upwards as narrowed eyes stare. The chill of his touch as his fingers curl against her jaw is as cold as death itself, yet she forces herself not to shrink beneath it. The pressure on her cheeks isnt new, nor is the grotesque display of his form, but its the voice, those voices, that scrape across her nerves, that make her blood run cold.
"Is that it?" she spits, her tone sharp, cutting through the grotesque symphony of his whispers. "You think this... this attempt of yours is enough to break me? You think you've won?" One hand lifts, brushing away the distasteful display of hunger that's landed itself on her shoulder with no hesitation despite the sizzling sound heard when it hits her flesh. "I'm not your meal," she continues, her voice steady, unwavering, "and I'll never be. No matter what you do, no matter what you say."
The monstrous laughter in his throat rings out, and she feels it rattle in her chest, but she doesnt let it break her resolve. "You have no power here," she whispers, now with quiet conviction, her eyes narrowing, her lips curling in a defiant sneer. "Only the illusion of it." Despite the shiver that runs through her when she looks upon him, she attempts to keep her outward visage calm. Still, she subtly draws her nails over her wrist, pinching slightly. "You're dreaming, Vic. Wake up..please wake up," she seems to beg herself. She makes no sounds, only her lips move to form the words which betray her outwardly calm exterior.
Bony fingers retreat again, leave her face- settle on Victoria's shoulders instead. They hold her still, while flexing digits tap against her shoulder despite her resistance and attempted composure. He's breaking into her, shattering the vestiges of her psyche - he knows this, he feels it, in the tantalizing scent of her slowly freezing blood. The thing that haunts her, it wheezes out another breath - then begins to lower itself, closer and closer...
Until one more motion spins her where she sits. Too swiftly, and it is as if the world revolves in her presence, everything but a blur - sunken eyes of pitch-black void gone with it, so is he, the monster, when he's interrupted her in the crucial moment of her self-plea to wake up. The hand that presses her against the bar is one of flesh and bone, calloused digits and a strong grip on her shoulder.
Yet it is the same voice that haunts her, and the visage that bleeds into her is exactly of what she fears. A crease is harsh upon a stern brow, a cut mien with a harsh jaw setting his lips into a thin line of worry, all beneath green eyes that stare into hers with narrowed intensity. Every bit the wolf, warm to touch -- and even just that alone is enough to seep an inkling of warmth to her. To the point, it actually invades her pack bond, traverses a singular emotion.
'Peace' it calls, comfort, it amalgamates with worry.
"Victoria? What did I tell you about dozing off on the job?" His voice masks his worry, stern in delivery, capped with a sigh while he lifts to his full height proper. The whole world is as it ever was around her from this very moment that she's awoken, and everything is more than a little hazy in the periphery of her eyes with the fog of sleep slowly drifting off of her senses. "Take as many days off as you need, I'll take care of the bar. Christ, how many times have I told you? Just make your drinks and go home, not like we get anyone other than alcoholics at this time of day." Still stern, still with a hint of worry hidden even though he doesn't show it, that lean, blade of a man draws away from her, with a rag that he's stolen off the counter to throw over his shoulder, and step around her - to tend the bar, to tend to the few people that line the stools. Someone asks for one of her elaborate drinks -- he pours them a beer and tells them to fuck off to the Succubus if they want something better, instead.
Victoria freezes, every muscle locking in place as an intense stillness overtakes her. Her chest tightens, a desperate gasp stuck in her throat, and for a long stretch of agonizing seconds, she can neither breathe nor speak. Her lips move in vain, opening and closing as if trying to force out words that refuse to come. When her senses finally sharpen, she recognizes him, his voice, his figure standing there before her, and her heart sinks into a cold, suffocating pit. "You're not real," she breathes, her words barely a whisper, a tremor of disbelief slipping through.
Her vision blurs, and the weight of the moment threatens to consume her. She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes, her head jerking from side to side as if trying to shake off the impossible image before her. Still, she cannot tear her gaze away from the man who stands behind the bar. The weight of grief, mixed with disbelief, etches itself into her features, her expression vacant and shattered. Finally, her voice cracks, unsure and faint. "I should," she begins, the words lingering with uncertainty. "Go. I mean." There's a hesitation, and she allows one other sentence, one that seems painful to say aloud. "You left us."
"The fuck?"
A brow shoots up at the exact moment she says those last words with hesitation. His eyes cut towards her, with his own modicum of disbelief, and while he passes the wrong order to yet another paying customer who doesn't question it in the slightest like they're used to the treatment, he sets his hip against the bartop at his portion. The rag at his shoulder is pulled, then chucked aside in favor of folding his arms. His tank top stretches over taut muscle while he levels a stare upon Victoria.
"Do you have a fever or something? I'm right here." A pondering, weighing pause therein lingers, and several breaths pass in inspection, in observation. Again, that pack bond verifies, it tugs at her heart, seeps through her veins. Beneath the acrid acid of hunger, of what it tries to mask, there is a twinge of worry to rise with it. For her. One step, then, and he sets a hand on the counter behind her, leans closer to lift his hand. The back of it finds Victoria's forehead, while his eyes are scant inches away. A dark-green hue like jade, searching the gray storm of her eyes.
"Is it the moon?" His words, quieter, are posing a question almost warily, still steel-edged but wondering. "Didn't you get through the new moon alright? I thought I told June to stick close and look after you this month what with the Temple acting up." Only once he's decided that she doesn't have a fever but only a cold sweat does he retreat to stand up instead of bend to her height, but skepticism is all too real, all too natural in his eyes, and he decides. The option to deny isn't even given to her, he has all the power here. "Nevermind. Don't go anywhere, Vic. You're gonna stay until I know you're doing good."
Is it real? Was it all a bad dream? Had she truly fallen asleep on the counter because of some ailment? Of course she had. This is what she wants to believe. This is what Victoria wants. With him, there is a whole pack. With him, there is safety, there is noone to deny them, no one to dare standing up. Just his presence alone is a soothing, comforting thing, like a pillar, a savage thing that'd rake through hell and beyond just to keep them safe, keep her safe.
Beyond, in her periphery, everything is as it should be. The bar is perfect, the colors of the walls, the furniture, the filth-caked floors and the oil and alcohol stained tables are where they always were. People hold no dismaying qualities like weird hands or too repetitive faces. Only thing is, something is wrong. Or is it not? The jukebox plays its music in the background, just a simple melody lost in the background, with a soft vocal that invites people to drink away their sorrows. Yet what is it that she can't place her finger on?
Is it because the melody in the music is the one she was tapping?
Is it because his scent, instead of oil, is of blood?
Is it because the windows are too fogged to see outside?
No, it couldn't be any of it. It was all always like that. Even that gray-scale, gangly creature of a man that sits right behind on the customer's side of the bar on a stool with his arms folded on the counter, supporting a beer, smiling his all too wide knife edge smile -- watching the two of them, is normal. He's a regular, he's always been a regular, like everyone here that you know.
Absolutely nothing is amiss to you.
Everything, is as it should be.
Victoria's heart races, but she doesnt show itdoesnt let him see how deeply his proximity, his touch, cuts through her. She stays still, her muscles tense beneath his scrutinizing gaze. His hand on her forehead feels like ice, but the moment she registers the coldness, her own skin prickles. The concern, the wariness in his voice it makes her breath hitch, but she forces it down. She wants to pull away, to push him back, but the pack bond pulls at her. It always does. Dean she murmurs, just barely audible, her voice shaking. he weight of his words sinks into her chest like lead, the command, the undeniable authority in his tone. 'Stay until I know you're doing good' ,and somehow, the thought of defying him feels like a threat, not just to herself but to everything she's trying to keep intact. Her gaze shifts, flickering around the bar, desperately searching for something, anything solid, anything she can hold onto.
Her hand instinctively brushes her forehead, but her fingertips come away wet with cold sweat. His scent, blood, not oil, clings to the air, suffocating in its familiarity. It draws a frown, as she tries to place something weighing on her mind. She forces herself to meet his eyes again, before another look around herself, trying to steady fingertips that now tremble upon the bar.
That careful glance does not subside. It remains on her from the corner of his eyes while he turns ahead again. His features are entirely wrought with a hard-hewn visage of contemplation, even while he works upon the bar again. His hands, in their lingering silence, takes hold of his rag to start wiping down excess spillage on the heavily tarnished wood of his seedy bar. Because it's his bar. It was his bar, always. The work-area is scattered with art supplies here and there. A sketchbook is never far. Something he was working on earlier, probably - half-open.
In it, in the hint of a page open, is the image of her sketched, sleeping against the bar. It looks like he was busy with that before he woke her, while a gothy chick worked with their patrons. She's on break now, sitting on a stool of her own near the break room, smoking a cigarette. Yet, beyond it all, his eyes constantly skip over Victoria. Furtive glances that are trying to assess what's wrong without prying.
Until it does.
"I get it." It's sudden, when whatever has dawned on him does. Those green eyes, they drift away from Victoria slowly, and instead of focusing the totality of his cumbersome attention, he lays them on that creature, the thing that clinks the edge of his glass upon his teeth that won't open, spills beer onto his gray clothes where alcohol is soaked up into him without stain. Hollow eyes, bereft of pupils or eyes, seem to turn onto him anyhow, flit between the man that gives him an accusatory glare, as well as Victoria.
"You're doing something to her."
And that's what ends the near jovial attitude and demeanor of Victoria's assailant and captor both. The unmentioned threat that comes with the words - nearly snarled, with teeth bared, too sharp and elongated in slowly rising bile of wrath. Bony fingers lower his glass down onto the bartop, and, for whatever reason, the grayscale creature, it sets a slow hand on the counter, pushes back and off his stool to stand up to that massive, towering height with a heavily palpable wariness. The echo of a voice that's warped and compounded within many is comes from all around. In confusion, and maybe even a twinge of fear.
"What?"
Victoria attention snaps to the sketchbook, half-open, the page revealing an image that hits her with the force of a hammer. The sight of herself slumped against the bar, asleep, strikes her with a chilling mix of violation and sadness. He had been watching her. Even while she slept.
The weight of it hangs in the air until his voice breaks through, pulling her gaze away. Her eyes land on something,someone familiar, yet terrifying, standing there in the periphery. A figure she had wrongly written off as just another patron. Her lower lip catches between her teeth, the instinct to retreat rising. She stands abruptly, flicking her gaze nervously between the two of them. She glances toward the doorway, a brief hesitation before she faces the man again. Her voice, though soft, trembles with a mix of confusion and fear. "What?" she repeats, her tone a mirror of the dissonant sounds she's heard, the ones that seem to distort everything around her.
"What?"
He repeats, a third voice to their confusion, yet his is bereft of it. As the patrons, so meticulously fashioned, or maybe not - perhaps actual denizens of this dream world that Victoria was sucked in are pulled astray from their drinks, cast wary glances, ones that eventually culminate to standing up and retreating, practically escaping -- SRCastiel wanders. His stride is careful, not quiet, but he might as well radiate the totality of his wrath now in his gaze, in his posture. The low growl that stalks, it is accompanied by the fall of his shadow traversing the wall at his back. One that of a monstrous wolf that wouldn't even fit in here had he shifted.
"He's doing something to you, right?"
It's a steel edge to his stone, the sharply bitten voice of his savage in the hoarseness of it while doesn't lift, but tears out the panel to chuck it aside that separates the patrons from the bartenders, to step outside. "You're sweating, you look weak- you feel weak." Because of course he feels it, as that pack bond flares yet again. A two-way street to her state. On her side, from him - all that Victoria can feel is a blaze, a bonfire nestled in an abyss, raw wrath of a near primordial beast dawning upon the gangly thing that takes another step back, fully receded into its shell of silence where it makes no sound. Something that Juniper can feel, too, as soon as she arrives into this dream - fully aware of herself as she is not influenced by the thing that stands stark in the middle of the off-putting facsimile of The Alley.
"You get out of here first, Vic. I'll see you at yours."
A partial shift, crack of bone, his hand is half-claws, blackened skin up to his elbows that rake aside over the counter he circles, severing a deep gouge. The nigh-infernal look of his eyes is that of a burning fury, an all-consuming hunger, of devourance. The gangly creature towering so far high up, it begins to lessen, starts to crouch as if preparing to leap upon the man approaching it with a palpable aura of starved hunger. It leaps with a wheezed hiss, long, bone-thin wrists aligned to put clawed hands forward while strands of its own hungry saliva connect an opening jaw of knife-like teeth upon a haunted and gaunt face.
Before it can connect, there is claw and fangs exploding.
The half-portion of the bar is jarring with the sound of breaking bone first, then a figure that tears through the shape of man, straight into wolf, one massive, one pitch-black as if to devour any light felling upon him. It's green eyes are the only thing of note that give it an inkling sensation of intelligence while it looks and feels every bit the monstrous form it has taken, where elongated fangs far too large for a mouth to fit in, split the very maw of it ear to ear - clamp upon the gangly, massive creature from the half and drive it into the ground with a vicious snarl and a throathy growl - as if to devour it whole.
Dust grows, ash swirls, occupies nearly half the bar erring on the side of conflict where there is nothing but the sight of flashing claws and teeth agleam, fighting bone and dust and flash of putrescent-scented, fell dream magic and manifestation.
The wolf probably will not win this, but it may very well be the only opportunity Victoria has to really wake up from this cruel nightmare hellbent on playing with her mind, intent on locking her in this dreamworld. That door from which Juniper burst in seems to radiate light, something the foggy windows do not let through as with any other glimpse of the outside. It speaks of salvation, of release -- barely within reach.
(fix) "What?"
He repeats, a third voice to their confusion, yet his is bereft of it. As the patrons, so meticulously fashioned, or maybe not - perhaps actual denizens of this dream world that Victoria was sucked in are pulled astray from their drinks, cast wary glances, ones that eventually culminate to standing up and retreating, practically escaping -- the lean, inked-up man wanders. His stride is careful, not quiet, but he might as well radiate the totality of his wrath now in his gaze, in his posture. The low growl that stalks, it is accompanied by the fall of his shadow traversing the wall at his back. One that of a monstrous wolf that wouldn't even fit in here had he shifted.
"He's doing something to you, right?"
It's a steel edge to his stone, the sharply bitten voice of his savage in the hoarseness of it while doesn't lift, but tears out the panel to chuck it aside that separates the patrons from the bartenders, to step outside. "You're sweating, you look weak- you feel weak." Because of course he feels it, as that pack bond flares yet again. A two-way street to her state. On her side, from him - all that Victoria can feel is a blaze, a bonfire nestled in an abyss, raw wrath of a near primordial beast dawning upon the gangly thing that takes another step back, fully receded into its shell of silence where it makes no sound. Something that Juniper can feel, too, as soon as she arrives into this dream - fully aware of herself as she is not influenced by the thing that stands stark in the middle of the off-putting facsimile of The Alley.
"You get out of here first, Vic. I'll see you at yours."
A partial shift, crack of bone, his hand is half-claws, blackened skin up to his elbows that rake aside over the counter he circles, severing a deep gouge. The nigh-infernal look of his eyes is that of a burning fury, an all-consuming hunger, of devourance. The gangly creature towering so far high up, it begins to lessen, starts to crouch as if preparing to leap upon the man approaching it with a palpable aura of starved hunger. It leaps with a wheezed hiss, long, bone-thin wrists aligned to put clawed hands forward while strands of its own hungry saliva connect an opening jaw of knife-like teeth upon a haunted and gaunt face.
Before it can connect, there is claw and fangs exploding.
The half-portion of the bar is jarring with the sound of breaking bone first, then a figure that tears through the shape of man, straight into wolf, one massive, one pitch-black as if to devour any light felling upon him. It's green eyes are the only thing of note that give it an inkling sensation of intelligence while it looks and feels every bit the monstrous form it has taken, where elongated fangs far too large for a mouth to fit in, split the very maw of it ear to ear - clamp upon the gangly, massive creature from the half and drive it into the ground with a vicious snarl and a throathy growl - as if to devour it whole.
Dust grows, ash swirls, occupies nearly half the bar erring on the side of conflict where there is nothing but the sight of flashing claws and teeth agleam, fighting bone and dust and flash of putrescent-scented, fell dream magic and manifestation.
The wolf probably will not win this, but it may very well be the only opportunity Victoria has to really wake up from this cruel nightmare hellbent on playing with her mind, intent on locking her in this dreamworld. That door from which Juniper burst in seems to radiate light, something the foggy windows do not let through as with any other glimpse of the outside. It speaks of salvation, of release -- barely within reach.
Juniper bursts in, indeed - radiating worry and a blazing anger at whatever's sunk its claws into Victoria. She is purposeful, determined, focused, ready to fight and defend and then -- hesitation, felled upon her like the force of a high speed collision that knocks the air out of her lungs. Whatever nightmare she expected to be confronted with, it was likely the dark and gangly thing. And yet, there is more here than that. A different sort of nightmare. Loss and hope collide together - grief and relief tango and muddy her purpose. A tremor overtakes the blonde woman, like she fights a primal instinct within her that yearns and reaches out to join like to like and a throaty sound is made that turns almost into a howl of pain, though nothing has yet touched her. This expulsion of energies and feelings gives her brief respite, watching the two forms becomes tangled in dust and ash. The other, more palpalpable and oh so important pull of the bond comes from the brunette woman who becomes weaker by the moment and she snaps to it while she gets to her side. "Vic," she says with as much an even and commanding tone as she can muster with her familiar warmth. "It's time to go. We need to go." Hazel eyes fall on Victoria, trying valiantly to ignore what keeps pulling at her attention and distracts her from her goal.
There's a weight to Victoria's gaze, an undercurrent of regret and grief clouded by confusion. It might have kept her rooted to the spot, but then Juniper speaks, and the shift is immediate, her attention snaps toward the blonde, pulling her from the fog of her own mind. "We need to go," she agrees in a weary version of her usual tone. It holds none of the strength or clarity she usually possesses, but the urgency in it is unmistakable.
Victoria's hand reaches for Juniper, fingers brushing in a silent plea for reassurance, for the connection that grounds her. Her eyes flick to the door, her body already moving toward it with a last lingering glance backward.
It's like a jarring brick that slams the wolf, because that pull of the pack is felt, the swirl of emotion and distress. Enough to distract him, enough that the massive wolf stretching the limits of his presence within the confines of the bar, is reeling back because of that one moment of lapsed judgement. A claw tears out one of his eyes, raked it through - and his pain goes to both Juniper and Victoria. Then, with it, a sheer anger. Not towards them, but towards this thing that had dared to do it.
His paw swipes to slam the gangly, ashen monster against the far wall, but he doesn't give chase. The other monster in the room, the wolven kind, it bleeds from gashes, cuts, fur matted already from the conflict - yet he's dished as well as he's got. Blood and bile, lycanic venom traverses low from his perpetually snarling maw that remains low-hanging upon a few sinews, far too wide and horrendous, ever poised to devour anything and everything. Yet, it doesn't move from guarding them - creates a very real and palpable wall between Victoria's captor, and her, along with Juniper.
A green eye turns upon them for a moment while the dream stalker starts to claw its way out of the hole he was shoved within, and within the savage glimmer of malice - there is almost an order that mirrors that of Juniper's. Just, without being put to words, but to a low snarl. His head tilts towards the door, tells them to leave, to leave it to him. The usual. He'll handle the monsters, keep the terrors at bay, devour the things that go bump in the dark for his pack. Whatever dreamworld this is, it is a confusing, confounding one - and much, it seemss, has yet to happen here - or they simply never will...
Maybe he won't even exist, after this ordeal, conjured up by sheer intent to keep Victoria here forever in a lull and haze. When Victoria glances back at him, she'd see that her stalker has risen. Drooling viciously, in approach to get past the giant cut of wolf meat in between, yet finding little opportunity to do. With how that single green eye narrows, and how his maw is a little wider, one might mistake the monstrous wolf to be smirking - before it turns the whole of his attention on the battle. One step, where his back grazes upon the ceiling - another, and he's running, tearing through the bar, the furniture -- colliding with the monster, as another monster, and slamming a hole through the far wall and into the ether of nothingness.
Lost, within that abyssal void of a nightmare peeking through the gap he's made.
Victoria's hand would find Juniper's - warm and solid and most of all, coursing with life. The familiar scent of the blonde woman wafts in their nearness, their bond pulses with understanding as they share their grief and their strength. And moving with her, trying to exhibit more confidence and control than she may have, but definitely more than Victoria possesses right now, she grits her teeth against the onslaught of pain, anger, and other familiar spices from the dull connection that still seems to spark between this version of a green eyed monster and what's left of his pack. "He's got this," she says softly to Victoria - the words tinged with a grief she is unable to veil. "And I've got you."
The bond of the pack pulls at Victoria, and the pain she feels isn't her own. It's his. The visceral agony of a claw raking through an eye, is immediate and suffocating. It fills her chest with heat, that sharp, suffocating anger, it doesnt belong to her, but she feels it as if it's her own. She wants to fight, wants to stay, but there's no time. Shes caught in a fog of confusion and fear, but Juniper's presence, his will, overrides everything else. He'll handle this. He always does. With that said, she nods to the blonde, clasping her hand tightly and pulling her through the door with what little strength she has left.
Ordeal, for all those that were involved. Painful, perhaps - melancholic, rueful. There is much misery here, much sadness - it is a veil that the monster of a wolf has left behind. Far in the darkness, there is a decrepit groan, a painful yelp -- a war that wages within the darkness they cannot see. Whatever prevails, there is first a shriek that's bone-chilling, blood-curdling, as if deciding the victor.
It's immediately cut short with a snarl.
Followed by a howl, one that echoes, wrathful and hunger-filled, sorrowed and pained, yet with vigor boundless as if the very meaning, the note of his call is one that beckons the very moon to descend closer so he can get his poisoned teeth in it. With it, one last echo of a bond traverses through Juniper and Victoria. Resolution, confidence - feelings of victory - and more than anything, relief. Not for himself, that much is felt, but for their current escape. It is a wilting emotion, slowly consumed by a cold absence.
When they pass through those doors - it doesn't exist anymore.
It never did, exist in the first place. It was but a dream - a nightmare of sorts, maybe, but one that Victoria would wake up from in her own bed, in her own house. Her sheets entirely covered in her sweat, and blood from her palms for squeezing them so hard to the point of unintentional self-injury. Juniper would no doubt find herself in a similar, albeit lesser state. Her travel to the world of dreams was brief and short - even if there is a heavy note of lingering sadness swelling within her breast with or without her desire. Sprawled over Victoria, in her attempt to reach in and protect her from the harms that would've befallen her.
It's too late for morning birds outside, but still, some birds do chirp. Maybe the cry of an eagle, as it swoops down to hunt something. It is the very woods of Haven they're in, after all. Some other calls of beasts and animals - keen to their senses, filtered out as usual whenever should they regain their bearing and wake up in the near-evening hours. The existence of that stalker isn't present here, nor prevalent. It might be alive still, it might no be, it is not for them to say - but it is a surety that they will be left alone from its vices.
Someone made sure of that.