And you don't seem the lying kind. A shame that I can read your mind.

[happytobleed]

Who: Castiel and OPEN
Where: In his head
When: Days 83-88
What: Several dream options, including action, horror, comedy and exploring the city.
Warnings: One of these has a body horror element. It's the last one and I've labeled it as such.
Notes: Most of these will be recurring dreams for Cas and multiple replies to any of them are welcome. After the first two nights (83 and 84), Castiel will be aware that dreams are being shared, but he may still forget it while he's dreaming due to wonky dream-logic.

Memory-based dreams are open for characters to remember seeing during the event, even if they don't tag here to interact with Cas and if you want to play your character remembering themselves in Castiel's place, that's fine, too.

Give me a dream and a day in the subject and if there's anything specific you want to do, just let me know!


1. Purgatory Fight Dream
Castiel is running. He can't remember why, but the gray forest stretches on forever and all he knows is that if he stops, he'll die. Looking back isn't an option, so he has to have faith that his companion is keeping up.

That's when a figure slams down in front of him and he skids to a stop. And now they fight.


2. The Laugh Track Family Dream
Castiel walks into the oversized, over-stylized kitchen to mild applause and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I got a C on my science fair project. My life is over." He flops dramatically into a wooden chair.

Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air looks up from the table where he's shuffling around empty envelopes. "I told you that Gabriel wasn't a science experiment." A laugh track sounds.

"You obviously haven't been in his room." This time, the laugh track is a roar and they pause to allow for it before continuing on.

Lois from Malcolm in the Middle walks in just as the stovetop timer starts to sound. "Dinner will be ready soon. Can you get your brothers and sisters down here, Cas?"

Castiel gives the 'camera' a flat look. "I don't even know all of my brothers and sisters." The laugh track explodes.

3. The Crystal City (Days 85-88 only)
Now that Castiel knows that they're sharing dreams, he's got a bit more footing here. He can do this without whatever is forcing it on the others. He should have no problem with this and yet, he's not sure whose dream this is and the more time he spends here, the less it makes sense.

He walks briskly through the endless streets, slipping through faceless crowds with purpose until he finds himself on a now-empty pedestrian overpass, his coat billowing in the wind as he takes in the view of the shining city. It's almost blinding and he's never seen anything like it, but whether it's the future, another world entirely or simply someone's television-fueled dream, he still can't tell.

After a moment, he turns to the companion who hadn't been there a moment ago as if they'd been there all along, the logic of the dream clouding his ability to think about it clearly.

"I don't know what to make of it."

4. Body Horror Dream
Castiel feels sick and he wobbles forward, leaning heavily on the bathroom sink. He looks in the mirror and he can tell that his vessel looks terrible. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin is discolored.

Let us out.

Suddenly, he feels like he's going to throw up. The closest he'd ever felt to this was the morning after he'd been binge drinking. He presses his hand to his stomach and it... kicks? It's almost akin to pregnancy.

Let us out, Castiel.

Shaking, he lifts his shirt and there's a hand stretching through the skin of his abdomen.

Comments

1.

[foundacause]

This? This is not Hell. Meg can't place it but she knows it isn't Hell. At least no part of Hell she recognises. Her legs ache, her chest burns, she feels like she's been running forever. Has she been running forever? She's not sure. Where is she? Why is she running? What happens if she stops?

She grips her angel blade tight in her hand, the blade is stained with blood. Whose blood? Who has she been fighting with? Why is there endless grey? Why can't she stop running?

[happytobleed]

Glancing back at Meg, Castiel remembers who his companion is and then it's as if she's always been running with him. Of course. They're trapped in Purgatory together. Why...?

It doesn't matter why and his mind glosses over the details until he feels satisfied. The creature--the Leviathan--comes at him and he raises his own blade, ready to defend Meg, who's always been here with him.

"Stay behind me."

[foundacause]

Hang on. He's defending her? What is she? Some kind of damsel in distress? Even in his dreams (not that she's aware it is a dream) she refuses to play the pretty little princess to be coddled and protected.

"Yeah right. Not happening Clarence."

Instead she gets between Cas and the Leviathan and beheads it, kicking it's head away from it's body to buy them a little time.

"Come on! Let's keep moving!"

[happytobleed]

He doesn't think of her as a damsel, but that doesn't change his instinct to keep the people he cares about safe.

As soon as the thing is beheaded, he nods at her, taking off again. They need to keep running. There isn't time to stop and catch their breaths. That's how you die here.

[foundacause]

It's never-ending. Relentless waves of monsters. If it's not Leviathans then they have vampers out for blood or gorilla wolves or every form of nasty they've ever crossed - well save for angels and demons - maybe that's the saving grace, that little silver lining. Or not.

Meg's exhaustion really begins to show as she shut's up. A quiet Meg is never, ever a good thing.

2

[venatical]

Dean bursts into the kitchen and strikes a pose in the doorway, holding his hands out.

"Honeys, I'm home." Of course, he lives next door. The mixture of applause and laughter lasts until he shuts the door behind him and swaggers in, wearing a pristine letterman's jacket.

"Aw, Cas, are you still pouting over this science fair thing? I told you you weren't going to win." Dean opens up their fridge and starts to root around it, and Uncle Phil gestures uselessly behind him.

"I know it's a bad day when I agree with Dean." The laugh track kicks in, and Dean turns around with a sandwich and a smile. "What was the winning experiment?"

When Dean talks, his mouth is full. "My brother, Sam."

"No, the experiment."

Dean stops, gesturing with the sandwich. "My brother, Sam. He had a vision of a tree falling on the judge's car, and she was so thankful she made him the winner."

The laugh track sounds again as Dean drops into a seat across from Cas.

[happytobleed]

Castiel opens his mouth and closes it several times before swallowing thickly and staring at Dean with wide eyes.

Phil and Lois share a knowing look and Lois indicates with her head that they move to the living room. "I think we might want to leave the kids alone, don't you think so?"

"You want to know what I think, Lois?" He gives Dean a menacing look. "I own a shovel. That's what I think.

The laugh track goes wild as she nods and pulls him forcibly from the room, despite his obvious physical advantage.

Castiel continues to stare until it becomes mildly awkward. "Hello, Dean."

[venatical]

What an adorable little weirdo. So Dean's best friend and neighbor has a staring problem, so what? He's completely unfazed, too busy giving Uncle Phil a wave at the shovel comment and then going back to the stolen sandwich.

"Blink, man, blink. You don't want to have to go to the opth... opthomotron again."

Oh, what a comedy of errors that had been. The laugh track rolls. Dean reaches over and jostles Cas's shoulder, trying to shake him out of his stare.

"Hey, you're not going to hold it against me that Sam won, right? You know I don't care about this stuff."

[happytobleed]

Castiel shakes his head, exaggerating the motion as if he's gone through the Disney Channel Acting Academy.

"Of course not, Dean. I would never hold anything against you. Why would I... um..."

Cue the laugh track as he shakes his head.

"Gabriel might be hurt, though, so we shouldn't let him press against you, either." His eyes go wide. "I mean hold it against you. Against you."

2, not at the same time as Dean though

[hung_garian]

As if on cue - probably summoned by the laugh track - a very teenage Gabriel skateboards down the stairs and into the room, blowing an unreasonably large bubble of bright blue gum.

"Someone say dinner?" He pauses to allow for an audience reaction; as he does so the bubble, instead of bursting, detaches and floats off up towards the ceiling where, perfectly logically, it becomes a balloon. He hops off the skateboard, kicks it into a corner and drops down into a chair at the other end of the table, at which point he seems to notice Castiel's presence for the first time. He grins, wide and ominous and strangely déja-vu inducing.

"Hi, Castiel."

[happytobleed]

Castiel crosses his arms, frowning severely at Gabriel and ignoring the bubble and the indoor skateboarding as if those are simply normal facets of his life.

"You lost me the science fair. I hope you're happy." As if on cue, the laughing follows up after the tiniest pause.

[hung_garian]

"Told you you shoulda taken your boyfriend instead. Check under his nails sometime, you've got a one in five chance of re-discovering penicillin."

Cue the laugh track once again, despite that not actually being funny. It wouldn't be a proper sitcom if the jokes were any good, after all. He rocks back in the chair at a highly improbable angle, trying to see what's for dinner, and makes a face demonstrating exactly what he thinks of it.

"Grown-up food again? Really?"

He snaps his fingers - because why wouldn't he still have all the powers of an archangel, right? - and magics himself up a comically large mound of jello, with a side of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. He tears a leg off one (it screams, though perhaps that's just Gabriel out of the corner of his mouth) and dunks it in the jello before eating it.

"The science fair doesn't count for shit anyway. Don't sweat it. And if it keeps bothering you, let me know who did win and I'll fill their locker with poprocks and coke."

[happytobleed]

"I don't have a boyfriend, Gabriel." He glares at Gabriel as if he's killed Castiel's firstborn or wiped his computer's hard drive.

"No jello until you finish some real food." Lois chimes in without bothering to turn around. It's all so normal and they're just a normal family, magic and all.

With only the briefest of pauses, Castiel swipes his leg out to kick Gabriel's chair out from under him.

Of course that's when Lois does turn around. "Castiel!"

1

[dowhatisays]

Charlie doesn't know how he got here. Only that they're running, and they have a damn good reason to be. His heart is beating a storm, and there's a rock in his shoe biting him at every step, but he can't stop yet. He knows this, better than he knows his own name.

"The fuck are we going?" He can just about wheeze it out between running.

[happytobleed]

"The portal that only works for humans." Castiel only turns back long enough to yell. "We've got to find it so we can get you back to Earth, remember?" He doesn't question why he has to reiterate what feels obvious.

They need to figure out where the portal is, because he needs to get Charlie home. They've been friends a long time and that exit won't work for Castiel, but it will work for Charlie, so that's his priority if he can even find it again.

Keep Charlie alive, get him home. Everything else is secondary, including his own survival

Just as he's having that thought, a man-shaped creature leaps out from behind a thick tree, growling loudly.

3.

[perfectantidote]

Cas is sick of it, truth be told.

He started out not minding the pull into another's dreams, welcoming the reprieve from his own unkind mind, memories, impressions, fears. But by now he's tired. They don't dream of pleasant things, either, and he should have expected that.

At least here, now, Castiel's dream - is it Castiel's? Is it his own? What is it? - is uneventful, and Cas finds himself drifting, mortal mind slipping into the reality of the dream with ease.

"Can't you feel anything about it?"

[happytobleed]

"Does it matter? Anything I feel is just part of a dream." He turns back to look out at the city again as he speaks. "It's a city. It has people and technology. Some are praying, some are dying, some are hurting each other... just like any city."

The individuals give him nothing, save for the residents of Kore he's found here, but the city feels alive, despite that. It feels real, even though they all know it can't be.

2, naturally.

[tryingitall]

"I'm already here!" Balthazar's voice comes from one of the cabinets under the sink. The accent is unmistakeable, but it's higher-pitched than usual, and when Lois opens the door, visibly puzzled, it's clear why that would be. He looks about eight years old.

"What are you doing in the cabinets, honey?" The laugh track ripples uncertainly as the little angel scrambles out.

"I was playing hide and seek with Virgil, but I think he forgot about me." Balthazar dusts himself off and bounds over to latch onto Cas' arm. "But maybe that's for the best."

[happytobleed]

Castiel gives Balthazar a fond look. They have a big family and he tries not to play favorites, but he doesn't always succeed where Balthazar is concerned, perhaps because he believes that the feeling is mutual.

"Maybe he gave up. That's a pretty good hiding spot. Don't you ever get tired of winning?" Laughter erupts. Castiel's inability to accept anything below perfect is a running joke, after all.

[tryingitall]

Totally mutual. Little Balthazar wants to follow his brother around like a puppy, sometimes to the detriment of the rest of Castiel's social life.

"Kind of. Winning hide and go seek means I just spent hours stuck between the wastebin and the oven cleaner." There's a scattering of laughter, and when it trails off, he adds: "Maybe I should come up with a new game."

[happytobleed]

"I'm sure you could, too." Castiel gives him a small smile. "You could be the next Gary Gygax."

He ruffles Balthazar's hair and then sneaks his hand into the jar of cookies on the counter.

Without anyone looking, he gets a "Don't spoil your appetite," which he ignores in favor of grabbing a cookie each for himself and Balthazar.

"You and I could play something."

Dealer's choice!

[servingmichael]

Thinking 3 or 4. /evil laughter

[happytobleed]

FOOOOOOOOOUR /more evil laughter

[servingmichael]

Raphael doesn't know where he was before he steps through the wall, through solid wall like it's smoke, something like when they fly but slower. He was in someone's head or dream - he was still finding his footing, still unsure of what was going on - when he saw Castiel.

If he was behind Castiel, it wouldn't be as bad, perhaps. But he's not, he's perpendicular to his younger brother, watching as he pulls his shirt up, seeing that hand stretch out.

It's instinct, to want pull his sword from his shelve, to want to cut whatever is out and destroy it. Something deep seated in Raphael, something he has only rarely felt.

Fear.

"Castiel?"

[happytobleed]

Castiel's head turns up sharply.

"You're not real. You're not really here."

He can't be because Castiel killed him and now he's paying the price.

Castiel shakes his head, black lines visibly crawling over his face as the voices rise to a dull roar that only he can hear.

"No!"