Slings and Arrows

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dante_icon.gif delia2_icon.gif

Scene Title Slings and Arrows
Synopsis To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end. — Dante's accidental nap in his car ends with questions after a visit from a tone deaf Horatio.
Date September 30, 2010

Gun Hill Road


The loud thrumming of rain on the windshield first sounded defeaning to Dante, as he sat with his arms wrapped around himself under his trenchcoat, scowling as he waits for the tow truck. But the shimmering, orange glow of the streetlamp through the windshield is hypnotic, and soon the thrumming lulls him to sleep, the severe frown slackening as his chin bumps against his chest.

Phones ring and voices yell in the busy Company headquarters, and Dante is hunched over his desk, his hands in his hair. Laid out before him are crime scene photos, grotesque and disturbing, along with case reports that seem to be written in gibberish. The stack of papers is enough that one would expect them to slide off into his lap at any moment, but they stay there instead, taunting the man with a horrified look on his face. "It doesn't make sense!," he groans to no one in particular, "Why the fuck doesn't it make sense??"

From her desk in front of the assistant director's office, a young redhead hangs up the phone and tilts her head to look at the horrified man. Slowly, she gets up from her dresk and grabs a file, meandering a few stations away to speak to someone who oddly, doesn't have a face.

She's smiling and chatting to the faceless gentleman in a rather animated fashion, her lips as crooked as they always are in the picture. What picture can't be placed, just that he's seen her face somewhere in a picture before. "Okay Bob, I'll get those reports to you right away!" When she steps away from the desk, the faceless man turns into someone with the face of Bob Bishop. What is he doing at a desk out here? He has an office.

As the young woman passes by there's the distinct scent of lavender and mint in her wake. She's not dressed for the office, or maybe she was a moment ago. Now she's in bare feet with a white sundress on. It's made of cotton and it's sleeveless with thin spaghetti straps holding up the bodice.

Dante mutters to himself, his dark hair sticking out between his tightly clasped fingers as he tries to stare down the gibberish on the papers, as if willing answers out of them. When that lavender wafts by his nose however, he blinks and turns to look over his shoulder. The wheels of his office chair don't damage the grass and flowers underfoot as he pushes away, and a warm breeze blows up the grassy hillside. The office is gone, and in its place is…well, it's the exact pastoral hillside from the Sound of Music. Dante's gaze on Delia is severe and suspicious, though everything else about him seems relaxed. Glad for a distraction from his nightmare.

"Who are you?" he asks, still reclining in his black chair, dressed in suit pants, a blue button up shirt, and a loosened red-and-black striped tie.

With a frown, the young woman turns around and surveys her surroundings. Instead of answering the question she gives him a rather suspicious expression, complete with narrowed blue eyes. They look too familiar. "Where am I?"

Austria.

Turning around again, she leaves her back to him and stares up at the mountains. "The hills are alive with the sound of music~" She's a horrible singer. THe sudden image of a gray wigged man, crying as he sits at a desk appears next to Dante. It's Beethoven and he's lamenting over that voice. The deaf composer, allowed one thing to listen to. Cruel fate has brought him here to be deafened again by a young woman with fiery hair that is quite lacking in relative pitch and unable to discriminate between notes.

Dante jerks in surprise. Not at the man sitting next to him, but Delia's singing voice. Confusion matches his suspicion, and he looks over to Beethoven beside him, though he shakes his head. "Shit, I'm in the wrong class. This is auditions, isn't it?"

Beethoven nods, wiping his eyes and crying out between sobs. "The musical is ruined! The lead woman can't hold a note, and our sets are nowhere to be found!" Sure enough, there doesn't seem to be any plywood or painted metal anywhere among the greenery surrounding them. A lightbulb almost appears over Beethoven, mid-sob, and he looks to Dante expectantly. "You'll have to help her out. Up up, and remember your lines!"

"Uh??" Before he knows what's happening, Dante's being dragging by his arm up to his feet, and pushed towards Delia. Not suspicious now, he simply has that deer-in-the-headlights look that so many teenage boys are so good at giving pretty girls. "Ummm…what musical are we doing, again?"

When Delia turns around they're in a graveyard. She is in Elisabethan clothing with a beard and mustache, Dante is dressed similarly but holding a skull. "Alas poor Yorick…" she utters under her breath, through clenched teeth. "Come on… Remember your lines…" Turning toward the black theater, she grabs the skull on her hand and turns toward him with a flourish.

"Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well Hamlet; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy!" Her words are pantomimed with grand gestures as though she were performing for a queen or king. "He hath borne me on his back a thousand times— "

Pausing again she turns toward him and tossed the skull up into the air. It swirls and twirls toward him in an off-white blurry ball.

Deer-in-the-headlight, and as Dante turns towards the theater, eyes wide, a spotlight swings around and lands directly on him. He puts up a hand to protect his eyes, blinking and faltering after Delia's encouragement. "Uh umm… Four score and seven… no wait…" Looking over to Delia, he hisses, "What play is thi—ow!" The skull bounces off his shoulder and lands on the theater floor, having turned into a softball. "This is what they mean by suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?" he mutters, running at his ruffled shoulder.

"Lupinetti! Throw the ball!! Throw it!!" The floodlights over the ballpark turn on and without moving her feet, the entire geography and the redhead herself slide away from Dante until she is up on a pitcher's mound and he's in the outfield. With a baseball at his feet. There's a player on the other team rounding first base, on his way to second.

"Pick up the damn ball and throw it!!"

His team mates are yelling at him, the coach is furious. The player on the pitcher's mound, a fiery redhead with a little smirk on her face, blows a pink bubble and snaps it back with a loud pop! She turns her back on him again, her Jersey has a black curve of foreign letters that would spell something if Dante knew how to read. As it is, he can't recognize any of them.

Dante is blinking again, but this time from under a baseball cap. Looking out to second base, the man's smile splits into a grin. Stooping, the man wastes no time in hop-skipping forward, his body moving in a practiced, fluid motion as he whirls his arm over his head, flinging the baseball in a wide-arc overhead. The player on his way to second seems to be picking up speed, certain he can beat the throw… But he's wrong, as the second baseman snags the ball out of the air and neatly tags the runner out.

Fistpumping joyfully, Dante joins his team in running back towards the dugout. He even swings by Delia, a grin on his face and some gum tucked in his cheek as he gives her ass a hearty pat. "Good pitching. Ready to win this thing?"

"Win what thing?" The world swirls around them and suddenly, they're back in the office. The young woman is dressed in suitable apparel and giving him a rather suspicious glance. She flips the folder onto his desk and turns to walk away as she's called.

"Ryans, you're wanted on line one… something about an order that wasn't placed?"

Turning toward Dante, she offers him s rather apologetic smile. "I'm being paged, see you around the water cooler. Maybe you can tell me about that thing that you were ready to win." With that, the sound of her high heels clipping toward the desk echoes.

"The game last night," Dante says, after only a brief moment of hesitation. He's still smiling though, the elation of success making him seem to glow. He takes the file from the girl, looking from her curiously down to the papers within the folder…and his eyebrows raise quickly. "Holy…this is it! There's the rustling sound of papers being flipped before Dante tucks the folder under his arm, and takes off running after Delia. "Wait! Where did you get this?"

But, as happens whenever you run in a dream, the hallway just starts getting longer.

It also feels like you can't run fast enough.

As Dante pursues the young woman, she seems to be getting further and further away. The clip of her heels is tapping at an off rhythm and much too fast for one pair of shoes. Then there's the beeping, that awful sound that seems to just be getting closer.

The young woman stops and turns around to look at Dante, staring at him as though he should be remembering or doing something important. But that beeping just keeps getting louder and louder. Just as he reaches her, she looks up at him with a smirk.

"They're here~"

Clunk

Dante's focused look turns to one of worry, as Delia looks back at him, his lips parting as he prepares to call out to her. She only gets a brief look of the confusion on his face before there's that CLUNK.

The car shakes as the hook snags on the chassis of Dante's car, and he jerks awake with enough force to smack his knee against the steering wheel. Immediately, he's holding his injury and hissing in pain, leaving him in an awkward position when the tow trucker driver comes to knock on his windshield. "Hey, buddy! You Lupinetti?"

Sitting up in bed with a gasp, Delia fumbles around in the darkness until she finds her housecoat. Easing out of bed, she hears the beeping noise and even the clunk of the tow truck as it starts hefting the car.

Five floors above street level, the redhead peers down through the rain. She's invisible in the darkness, but she can see the car down below, even the man getting out of it. Hearing the driver call out his name, she tilts her head and furrows her eyebrows just a little before easing back slightly against the wall to keep watching.

It was an accidental jump, somewhere she didn't mean to go. Had he not woken up, Jaiden could have found her in something of a coma at daybreak. "I need my anchor…" she whispers to herself in the darkness. With one last look to the street below, she narrows her eyes slightly to catch a glimpse of the man from the dream. Delia's just too far away to get a good look.

With a long sigh, she turns back toward her bed and slips into it to join the man already sleeping there. Snuggling close to him, she slips back into a deep slumber and plays it safe, flitting between his head and her own.

As the tow truck pulls away, Dante sits in the driver's seat and rubbing at his face, frowning in deep thought. Who was that girl in his dream? She seemed so familiar… Ah well, it'll come to him eventually, he's certain. And for now, he'll try to get back to sleep.

Too bad that's impossible while being hefted along by a tow truck. Sorry Dante, you'll only get to sleep after you get home tonight.


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