Participants:
| Scene Title | Wrong Turn |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Three people come together in dreaming in an unexpected realignment of priorities. |
| Date | December 26, 2009 |
Dreamscape
The Rookery hasn't changed much.
Buildings have burned down without being rebuilt; one or two look likelier than ever to cave in and collapse out've their slouches into shambles across the broken street. Loud neon signs still buzz and hum over dirty windows that advertise wares rarely witnessed in public elsewhere. Scantily clad hips roll and tongues flick; multiple venues offer guns and liquor behind barred windows without a license to sell either.
The shadows between swaths of neon are long and the alleys are dark. Here and there a rat swollen fat with the spoils of low society skitters between pedestrian feet and writhes down into the gutter, naked tail whipping pale in its wake. Vomit and whiskey and garbage and grease and seawater and smoke — the streets are filled with every manner of human stink. And it's cold.
Steam rises into a fog from gaps in the street. It drifts in lulls about the gutter and stirs after the passage of a man in a black coat who pauses to squint at something in an alley on his way to continuing onward elsewhere, scuffed shoes scraping over icey concrete.
He's the last. Once he's gone, the streets are empty save for the rolling scamper of a rat nosing after a damp paper bag. The only other movement is the electric sizzle of signs and the slow rise of fog from the sewers.
Till there's footsteps. The sound of small feet running, soft panting followed by a hastily and instinctively uttered 'oof' when a hip connects with a long since overflowed garbage can that sends it skittering, preceding the person who ran into it from out of an alley way. Abigail looks behind her as hands reach out to grab the wall and steady herself, afford one moment of garnering stability and to see if who's pursuing her has dropped back or got hung up somewhere. Her cheeks are dirty, tears making clear paths over the high angles of her face, dirt staining the pink expensive jacket that hangs open around her and blonde curls greasy and lacking the shine and bounce that normally decorate her head.
Satisfied that she might have lost whatever it is, and misplaced sense of security that will inevitably come to be - as with all the dreams that include the rookery and it's hosts - her downfall, She darts out into the street, canvas keds striking the pavement and driving her onwards, white skirt and shirt beneath. "Our Father who art-" falls from her lips as the little gold cross at her neck sways and jumps with each step.
The rat startles from the hollow tin beat of the trash can, claws scrabbling in its fat haste to clear the curb. Soon it's gone too, leaving Abby to pray all on her lonesome.
For a beat, things don't seem so bad. For a beat, the air is still and the wavering buzz of a current through noble gas is near soothing in its mundane familiarity. There are no footsteps in pursuit; no breath hot on the back of her neck. Even the whores grinding amidst red lights and feather boas are gone. Abby notices whether she wants to or not, her focus drawn inexplicably to bear on displays and devices she'd normally shy from given the chance.
Then the lights go out.
Just one overlage XXX, to start. It flickers once and dies, followed shortly by two more, and then the street lamp. The rest fall in a shuddering, dissonant wave, smothering light and sound down into the rustle of the lone paper bag, pounding adrenaline and the whisper of Abigail's own voice in her ears.
"No. No, no, no, no, no" Prayers stop as Abigail alters her direction at the first flicker of street lamp giving out, then the next. Keds slap against pavement again as she tries to keep up with the dying light but it fails and plunges her into the dark. No dancing whores or garish lights from windows. Heartbeat rev's an almost deafening quality in her ears as she stops in place trying to remember which way led to the docks. Which is to say that no way leads to the docks really, the island is unto itself and floating along in the river with the city of Manhattan never in reach.
A hiding place. It strikes her mind and down she kneels, hands feeling out for the ground gingerly, shuffling crablike sideways to find the curb as quick as she can, and then a side of a building. Find a door unlocked or an Alley with a dumpster. Hands brush over fur, a snap of teeth as one of the fat rats takes offense to the blonde and her searching hands which elicits a scream from Abigail that is smothered moments later. Find a building, find a door.
Yes. A radar pulse of blue light sketches once through the pitch The Rookery has fallen into, probing. It penetrates crumbling brick and traces white hot lines along steel girders and rusted piping winding underfoot. The climb of it up the hand Abby's finally braced against the curb rises like venom through her bloodstream — strips muscle painlessly away to expose the network of spindly vessels climbing back away from translucent bone like ivy in reverse. It envelopes her arm, her chest, her skull, pausing over every delicate detail in its cold seethe down her side, around her waist and out through one leg to continue on down the street.
When it's finally gone, it's replaced by a new sensation: worse, rather than better. The sixth, instinctive sense that she suddenly has company in tandem with a pair of irises lighting unholy blue in the black at her back.
Pale lids clamp shut over blue irises, head and face turned in towards a shoulder as if the very act of doing so, the inwards thoughts of 'you can't see me' negate the act that the blue eyes that flare in the darkness are doing. Fingers grip the curb tightly and when that foreboding sense settles in, Abigail rockets forward, feet taking the curb, landing on the sidewalk and stumbling towards an inevitable building.
"Leave me alone." A desperate scream from the blonde in the dark as hands pat along the wall till she comes to a door. Delicate fingers close around the doorknob into the establishment, pushing, turning then laying into it with a shoulder with a sense of urgency that only those in the dream could understand or those who watch a horror movie and sense the despair. The pretty girl running from the monster, going for the dead end. Over and over her shoulder goes against the material of the door and pleading to be let in.
What joins the distort of darkness and demonic blue is not light, at first. It's a sound, the fall of something metal against asphalt, a repetitive canter, the distinct rythm of an animal's lope, striking like steel on rock. Distant, barely a thunder's echo from somewhere far away, but gaining a preternatural amount of ground until the sound is enough to fill ears, the ground shaking underfoot with each strike of hoof to ground.
The flood of radioactive vision strikes up the newcomer, the beast's leg flaring dull black where its flesh is and strong white bone otherwise. Shies back with a toss of its head, allowing oppressive dark to fold back in but not before it's long face can be lit up, and a horse's head looks like an evil thing in this light, with shadows for eyes and the unusual spiny jut that spirals up from between them, as solid as gold.
The sound of rustling movement as its rider dismounts, and there's a sudden flare of light, sparking bright, as quick and insubstantial as fire but better than the choking dark. It comes from the point of a long blade dragging against the asphalt, spitting sparks and illumination.
"There's nowhere I can't see you."
Deckard's voice eminates from the dark with flat affect, as unmoved by Abigail's failed effort to flee as he is the oppressive pitch of a moonless night. He could be at her ear for all that he hasn't moved; his voice is at her ear. Both ears. It touches through the door under her fingers and drones tangible in her viscera — and that's where translucence begins to bleed out again. Everywhere.
He watches from where he is, content to study her struggle in patient isolation until the sound of hoofbeats draws his attention slowly back out onto the street. It's invisible for longer than it should be — longer than it would be in clean light, but even in dreams, abilities have limitations. Flint can only see so far, and the look that rings into his spectral eyes when Logan and Steed flood into range of recognition probably fails to flatter. Muddy disinterest as much as dislike lends him a chill that outright anger would be harder-pressed to accomplish — just visible around the hard angles of his long face in the monochrome light that seems to stick even once sparks have smothered cold.
The scene is gradually painted in shades of grey to counter black and white bone, yellow sparks the only real source of color amidst flickers of blanched blue.
Ragged nailed hands clap up over he ear when flint's voice rakes across her. Shoulder against the door turns to back as Abigail slides down with knees bending till she's huddled against the wood grain of the portal, tears restarting their path down her cheeks. "Don't touch me" Even as black, blue, purple come into being, staining the side of her face like a handprint vivid in it's starkness and highlighted by pale skin.
The hoofbeats are mistaken for heartbeats, each strike of the hoof on the ground in tune with each fourth of her heart as it flutters in her chest. Logan is a familiar sight in dreams and though he's riding a steed and brandishing a sword it only incites more fear in the blonde. Flesh parses out, bone seen beneath, the beat of organs within. Logan, Abigail. Knee's quake in their strangeness, the delicate lines of kneecap placed between thigh bone and the two of the lower leg.
"GO AWAY!" She yells as sparks fly, bones visible in parts. "Go away Logan! Please don't hurt me" One hand gropes in the darkness near her, hands closing around the stock of a shotgun.
His own eyes are as bright as cut emeralds, brilliant without the sharp glow that comes with dreaming apparitions or even reality, although it's a minor detail of difference. It's the only true amount of colour, his skin greyish in the low light and gleaming sword a dull bronze as opposed to the glimmer of gold that had struck up its length at that flare of sparking. The animal behind Logan seems as insubstantial as smoke around the gleaming of its bones, the ringlet white of shoed hooves standing still and obedient on the road, it's whiteness made sootier in the shades of grey.
Logan focuses a sharp look on Abigail, incomprehension in his features for a moment, as if perhaps he didn't recognise her. His attention switches towards where her hand clasps onto the length of a shotgun, which is something he does understand, and points the sword in her direction. "Avast," is a curt order, made imperiously, before the swing of the sword angles towards what he can see of Deckard. "And get behind me."
Deckard's skin is waxen in the dark, pallid grey without luster or color to call its own despite the health that gleams bright in his eyes and cuts muscle solid as iron through the hard line of his shoulders and jaw. He's tall and strong, dark of hair and too light of eye when he steps forward out of obscurity and seems to solidify further from the murk.
The absence of light here lifts just so with the movement, soaked from its creep through the street into the detailing of fine pinstripes and the glitter of what is surely a switchblade turning over slender in his fingers. X-ray vision's influence ebbs; demonic blue concentrates and flares harsher still in his glare.
"J'ai besoin de toi."
The knife flicks open midstep, and Deckard steps again, even, steady and already near nose to nose with the point of John's blade.
I need you. She longed to hear that from him, wanted to hear that from him again before the day with Francois. Fingers close around the shotgun and lift it, stock settling comfortably against her shoulder, barrel pointed towards Logan even as he's beckoning her in old english.
"Fuck off" The tone of a small frightened girl even as one hand is pushing at the ground causing the rest of her to rise, back still against the door and the pink wool and leather dragging across it. The safety is turned off, shotgun primed even as it swing towards Flint in all his ghostly pallor. "Don't touch me" Even as she speaks those words, the shotgun trembles, wavering minutely as she swallows down fear. "God help the both of you" Lower lip trembles, getting in on the act as the canvas covered feet are planted. "I don't need you, I don't need you Flint" The sword is eye'd though and the blonde starts to slink sideways. Towards Logan yes, but not behind him like he's ordered her, trying to keep something at her back at all times. Terror soaks her eyes.
Wavery cuss words in his direction gets a raised eyebrow— but she's moving, and that seems to be the thing of importance. Sword aside, choice of transportation also, there is little to Logan that isn't predictable upon the sharpening of detail. The cinch of his waistcoat, the back a glossy red and the rest of it pinstripe black to match fitted trousers, boots sharp to the toe, his shirt of black silk and open at the throat, more an exchange of texture between matte darkness and the slicker, oily shine. He's whole and healthy as well, if lacking Deckard's height.
But he has a bigger blade. So. It twirls once in hand, an arc of blurred gold before it shwwingss back into place with skill he doesn't have in reality.
There's something there, a name, that makes Logan's eyes narrow in suspicion, but it seems to be shaken off more or less in favour of sticking to the script. "Fear not, my lady," is casual reassurance, Logan edging a step to the side, experimental. "This won't take very long." The sword is brought around again, over head, and coming to clash down where it would come to slice throat from shoulder.
The sword cleaves in, as swords do, nearly to the spine before it's stopped short. There is a scrape of blade on bone — a dry, chalky nick — and nebulous light renders itself electric blue in a ripple out from the point of entry. Skull and scapula are made distinct in tandem, and then on down through shined shoes into the street. Cold flesh readily fills back in after its passage, and Deckard exhales the same smoke and ash drifting sluggish from out around warm metal in a slow breath.
"I would have thought by now you more than anyone would know better than to poke your sword around in my business." It's impossible that he's able to speak, with a sword hacked through it and ash dabbling off the fork of his tongue that never seems to settle on the pristine black of his suit. When he inhales again, spine and shoulders lifting as in life, his lambent eyes drift deliberately back to Abigail.
The sound of the gun discharging reverberates through the air, makes Abigail's body shake with the discharge of the shell and the loosing to the pellets within as the sword comes down on Flint. It's not aimed to hit either man, in between, meant to scare and frighten.
Abigail primes the shaking gun again meeting Flint's luminescing gaze and then trying to catch Logans. "Stop it" It's barked out, stresses on the appropriate syllables from whence she comes. Away from the wall she steps, little shuffled steps forward with the shotgun nosed ahead of her and ready to fire off it's second carge. "Stop it"
When the blade stops short, seems to stick for a moment, consternation tenses Logan's expression, before he's ducking minutely along with the sound of the gun going off. The sword draws out, just a few inches, grinding its metal edge along bone with a sickening scrape. "Why?" he asks of the woman without looking at her, clear gaze fixed on Deckard's as much as it steers towards the woman featuring in tonight's theatre. "He'll only hurt you. You can see it in his bones. Pull the trigger again with better aim, Abigail."
He knows her around the same time he's saying her name, a jerky glance her way and the distinct impression he's been caught, in some way. Knows him, too, mouth curling in a sneer about what he more than anyone should know. Jaw setting, Logan draws the sword out without particular mercy, drawing through flesh and against bone, angling it so that the blade's sharp tip catches the older man's jaw on the withdraw.
For all that Deckard had been making some idle, sideways progress tracing long fingers up the flat of the sword's shaft and does not flinch at the shotgun discharge past a slow blink, he is jarred somewhat out of his sedate composure by the blade tip catching him one last time under his narrow jaw. His head tips back on its hinge, further freeing clumped soot and ash on its way to tumbling free of the wedge-shaped mess Logan's made at his throat. It's all terribly loose and dry, still drifting when the wound sets to sealing itself gradually over.
Flint swallows once the flow of ash has ceased, the only trace of its outpour curling ghostly in the air around him, hazing over the vacant cast of his glare. There is none to be found on his lapels or in the scruff around his jaw. He stands immaculate, and as if to counter Logan's accusation, any lingering glimpse of radiative blue closing itself out into grim but corporeal black and grey.
"Cela vous dérange si je fume? Only one left." The latter, evidently, is noted towards Abigail with a subtle narrowing at the corners of his inhuman eyes. There are two of them.
"He'll hurt me less than you've hurt me" The trigger is pulled, Abigail's teeth bared, jaw set and tight as she aims for Logan's middle, bracing herself for the kickback of the gun. Courage winding itself up her spine as she focuses on illuminated green eyes instead of worrying about the illuminated blue ones.
"He'll only cut out my heart. You'd sell my soul and my body for a song"
She doesn't understand that French, not in here and not in the real world and for all that she's just up and gone and shot at Logan, she's keeping the gun still between her and Flint.
Gold moves fast enough to dislodge all of the discharged ash from Deckard's throat, an ear-splitting sound of metal striking metal as Logan moves the blade in his own defense when Abby rounds her weapon on him. It never touches the shotgun, however, only blurring to send buckshot pinging off in every other direction that isn't expensive silk and less expensive flesh. One piece lodges into brick, another skims the asphalt between Abby's feet. The unicorn several feet over —> there snorts in contempt.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" is good old fashioned Saf Lundun exasperation as opposed to his former regal pronunciation, bright green eyes blazing as he steers a look at her. This isn't in the script! Not even a little bit. "I'm protecting you. Try that again and I'll split you open just for him myself, you worthless bitch."
A glance to Deckard, then back to her. "My lady," is belated correction.
Flint is patient. This is a Deckard who has spent long nights waiting in dark alleyways, senses primed and alert for the next unfortunate misstep. This is also a Deckard who has more than simple firearms experience by way of vestigal genetic memory.
Having faded somewhat back into the semidark while Logan and Abigail trade lead shot for vitriol, Flint turns his right hand subtly out to accomodate the black iron weight of the sword thickening long in his grip. Borne of the switchblade's more delicate sheen, it is without grace — notched and unwieldy-looking despite the drifty balance at its end once his left hand has wound in under the bind of the right. And when Logan glances his way again, it will be in the nick of time to see the blur of it arcing up after the pretty hollow of his jaw.
When does Lgoan protect her. He's never protected her. The gun reloads by itself, more shells chambered without much thought needed or physical action to do so. So when there's a blade coming down towards Logan, the shotgun is lifted up high enough to sight on Flint and forefinger curls around the trigger. It's a heartbeat, not even two and a quick pull.
Just like that, shell casing is enjected and pellets are winging their way towards deckard. The gun soon following as it's flung towards the x-ray visioned man. She's flinging herself that way as well, palm out to press Logan back and out of the way of the oncoming blade. "STOP!"
Stop means little. Stop stands against physical actions such as a swinging blade, the blast of a shotgun, Abby's hands out and pushing the Brit back and out of danger as much as objection manifests in resistance for but a moment. Despite himself, he doesn't let his hands come off the hilt of his blade, nor does Logan risk bringing the blade up to do as he threatened the woman. He moves, instead — pivots on one slightly raised heel in the same momentum as Abby's shove but only to veer back around and into range of Deckard's sword.
It could be heroic, if not for the overt anticipation in the younger man's features, in bright eyes and speed. The golden sword arcs around even quicker, coming around in a trajectory that will lay itself in one pinstripe clad arm. If there's one thing— one of the things— Logan is bad at, it's stopping.
Ashen blowback retches out of Deckard's far side in a sizzle and spit of silty debris, clouding noxious into shadow that fades at its fringes before it has time to take hold in the icy street. Still the sword comes — aim slung off balance enough that it sweeps through air rather than Logan's skull. All the same, the proximity is such that both of them catch the brunt of what arcs off the end before it can roll over to reset. Warm liquid spatters across their midriffs black as pitch and of similar consistency — blood muddy with ash.
The lance and swerve of Flints eyes are like twin targets set deep in their sockets, but its his arm that takes the brunt of John's targetted riposte. Once again, the blade slices through meat and is stopped by bone, this time the pair of long ones braced through the length of a forearm raised in thoughtless defense. A return back sweep of Deckard's blade snares in low in search of knees male or female, left to right and down, and this time when the bronze sword withdraws, it's thick with a claggy mix of soot and gore.
It's been too long since she's felt that, the wash of blood, in the real world but not so here. Slender finger come down on Logan's shoulder after he's swept around her so that she's behind him like he ordered and she's trying to tug him back, try to avoid the dance with the blade as Flint keeps going. Nothing seeming to stop him.
"Home, Come home. I invite you, I'm allowing you in" She's warm at his back, lips at his ear even as the sword arc and clips her left leg, threatening to tear her grip away from his shoulder. "Home" She closes her eyes and thinks of Louisiana, of the white and purple, green bedroom with it's curtains and the cicada's outside.
There's a vicious clang of metal meeting metal, golden sparks spraying as elegant blade clashes against grey iron. The swords flip together, tangling in a circle before breaking apart, Logan going back a step and bumping gracelessly into where Abby is standing behind him, hand on his shoulder and voice catching in his ear. "What?" is distracted, eyes on his foe and blade up in a defensive kind of angle, other hand out. If he was hit by Deckard's sword slash, it's impossible to tell, face free of pain and clothing too dark to really make it out.
Except on Deckard's sword, which has the oily shine of rusty fluid collected from either only Abby or the pair of them. His face is mildly spattered with the ashy, tarry liquid of Deckard's own bleeding, inevitably on his clothing but unheeded. Things are changing, slightly, the sound of summer crickets overtaking the oppressive silence of the mock-Rookery, a summer wind catching on gentle curtains, and one world struggling to overcome another.
Logan's back is tense, uncertain and skittish, and as much as he puts a hand out back towards Abby, the other wields his bronze blade singlehanded, and brings it up as if to carve a trench from Deckard's navel to his nose.
In Deckard's frame of reference, the two of them are fading.
Ghastly blue translucense regrips The Rookery with renewed vigor, painting entire buildings in shades of blue and black where others warm under flickering bars of neon. He's bleeding. Less and less a monster and more a man, Flint is betrayed by his own gradual clarity of perception when nerve endings begin to fire in hot tandem with the ache behind his eyes. Blood splutters from his nose, more red than black. It leaks from an ear; runs in oil slicks down his neck and through a ragged crater in his side where some shot stopped and the rest of it kept going. For an instant too short to be certain of, he seems puzzled by the weight of the sword in his hand, and especially the unicorn —
And then there is something solid and cold slicing up through his belly. The sensation of first person disembowelment is unfamiliar for all that he's seen his fair share of innards, and briefly he stays standing with John's sword imbedded in the catch of his sternum. Then he starts to fade and fall, intestines ahead of him in a slippery loop in the glimpse of motion that precedes his rejection from this world. The sword clangs and clatters solid after him. He hears no crickets.
She can't watch, can't witness the gutting of Flint - of her heart in a sense- as she buries her face in Logan's neck - as much as such would not happen in real life - and endures just the sounds that the sword makes as it rends through flesh then connects with the islands terrain, competing with the cicada's and crickets. " Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."
The smell of blood replaced by grass and pie, burning wood from a fire all carried on the breeze. Pavement spattered with black oily liquid that pours from flint is replaced with hardwood, green braided carpet and eventually white walls and the bedroom of a young southern woman untouched by time. "Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me."
The gold cross glints above the door that stand between them and flint, solidifying and cutting off the man from view. "Restore to me the joy of salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." an invocation whispered into Logan's ear. Not for his benefit but to help make them travel there faster, to santuary. To Butte la Rose of the mind.
Logan's dark clothes, Eurotrash shoes, and golden short sword are all out of place in the comfortable bedroom in Louisian, southern warmth and comfort, soft edges of bedsheets, pillow, in contrast to the definite angles of the cross. Black-red leaks down the length of glimmering gold, runs towards the hilt, gathers at his knuckles, and soaks silken sleeve and drips onto that green braided carpet.
He also has no sheath with which to put it, so rather awkwardly, the weapon tilts on down to place its point against carpet, creating further bloodshed, before abruptly turning towards her, lanky limbs abruptly awkward in contrast to his prior grace. Shoulders tense under the angles of his jacket, the deeper green of his gaze darting around distrustfully before settling on her.
"I wasn't really going to cut you up," he decides to inform her, other hand tucking into a pocket.
Bright red drips down her leg to the floor to add to the discoloration and blight upon the room. Once safe there and no longer a trace of the rookery in the room, she's peeling away from Logan to throw open the bedroom door and peer out. The scent of Bacon, fresh bread, even Coffee rolls in on the influx of air to adjust to the change in pressure in the room.
"You would have" Automatically spoken to the pimp, former-pimp. Which brings about an abrupt stop by the blonde as she realizes that Logan is still there and whirls around with surprise. "Hokuto…" Not a question, accusation as she flits to the window next, looking out into the summer that waits beyond the window.
"You," is flippantly tossed back, chin angling up and accusation just as clear in tone and posture. "'I invite you', she says. 'I'm allowing you in', she says." Logan takes a step closer, sword coming up, gleaming red against flawless gold and angling it as if he might touch it to her face. Never does, remaining maybe half a foot away as he considers her, expression going back into something more neutral. Flicks a glance towards the sword as if studying his own warped expression in it, before—
He settles it back on one black-clad shoulder. "If you want to know what I would and wouldn't do, Abigail, then I invite you in. Feel free to take a look around should you ever find yourself," a hand raises, taps his temple, "in the neighbourhood." More or less a bluff—
This was a wrong turn anyway. "Shall I see myself out?"
She could throw him out with just a thought, make him fade away like flint and the rookery did. Her own chin rises even as the slice on her leg slowly closes up of it's own accord. In here, she can still heal. Only in here. Maybe some day she won't when she finally accepts, finally gives it up in heart and not just in truth.
She almost tells him that he can disappear with the intention to make him do just that, but standard southern manners to a man who had tried and succeeded in protecting her long enough to trigger her sanctuary to come into being. "I'll walk you out. How did you get in here-" in her dream "in the first place?"
"You said it. Hokuto. I was trying to find something." And even Logan isn't sure if he did or not, for all the conviction with which he'd driven the sword at least three times into Deckard's flesh. Almost too easy to be the real thing. Meanwhile, as he speaks, things change - subtle differences, at first, his eyes losing that avid, gem-like quality and diluting back into glassy pale, and healthy white of his skin becomes more sleepless.
He's not carrying a sword anymore, either, hands brisk as it checks the rounds in the silver revolver he's coming to hold instead, elegant waistcoat replaced with a more sedate, near dour two piece suit. The gun is put back into its shoulder rig, jacket parting enough now to display the blood soaked navy shirt beneath, for all that Deckard never struck him so severely.
A bruise to his jaw, as well, matted red streaking through the gold of his hair. Sensible black shoes carry him forward to follow her out, giving no explanation for this transformation — if he even notices it himself. "It won't happen again," is bitter and sardonic.
"I don't know why Hokuto sent you into my dreams. She gives me a warning first, before she sends someone. If I'd know, I would have been sure to make it more hospitable." The door is opened, hallways beyond and the promise of food fresh in the air. Down the hall, soft blue walls with portraits that hang, family pictures of the Beauchamps as she remembers them hanging, over the years the change from infant to adult, no detail left out thanks to her recent visits home.
"I'll talk with her. Make sure she doesn't accidentally make yo take a left at albaqurque next time" No sarcasm, no anger, just a promise to keep him from doing something so distasteful as ending up in her dreams.
"Thank you, for saving me" Credit where it is due as they approach the front door and the sounds beyond of the city that doens't match what was seen out the window in her room.
"Hokuto's a fucking wreck, my dear," Logan says to her back as he follows, eyes on his feet as opposed to her. "No. She opens the doors but I choose which ones, and she's barely got the strength to do that." The sound of the city has him steering his attention up, before he's skirting around her, taking the scent of urban rain, of cigarette smoke, and the coppery scent of blood with him as he goes.
Presses a bloodied hand to the door and glances back at her at that 'thank you'. Uncertainty has his brow furrowing, before he gives her a stilted, "Yeah, well," and leaves it at that before he's shouldering his way out into misplaced urban environment.
Hooves make a steady clop clop clop as his faithful steed steps up to the door, a little disgruntled at being left behind but loyal as ever. Golden feet, horn and tail, pristine white otherwise, Logan gives the animal a look of great uncertainty before he's moving to climb up aboard it anyway. Thighs clamp on the snowy sides, hands tangling in elaborate mane like spun gold. How do you drive this thing?
"Help save the world again and everything back home falls apart" She'll find answers, somehow, somewhere.
Is he riding a unicorn? She opens her mouth to say something, then thinks the better of it and instead of talking, all he gets is the door. A resounding slam as she wings it closed and Louisiana fades for him like the city fades for her. Get back in your own head Logan.
The unicorn is self-driving, apparently, or perhaps the slam of the door spurred it on — either way, he leaves as he began, with the thunderous fall of hooves that eat up space and time with supernatural speed, until Logan has galloped out of her head well and truly. Whether into his own, or that of someone else's, is an uncertain horizon.