castle_perrault | [open: tw for blood, mind fuckery, suicidal ideation] I guess it's over now

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to the moon

[open: tw for blood, mind fuckery, suicidal ideation] I guess it's over now

Before:

He just needed something fun. That's what he's been telling himself. After nights of various unpleasant dreams being hijacked by his friends, and then being forcibly shoved into everyone else's weird nightmares like a far less fun version of the Matrix, Watts needs a break. He's not helping Sans with his science. He's not trying to wander the castle and have conversations with people that more than likely are annoyed by him. He just... needs some stupid harmless fun.

And when there's no gaming consoles or wifi in the castle, you have to get a little creative.

Apparently, Neil's codes aren't completely useless in the castle. Sure, he can't reset memories, disable speech or taste, turn off his visibility, or even lure out mementos, but he still has some skill with manipulating data.

He's found a nice little private space in the lounge, and passersby may find him focusing very hard on a patch of air in front of him. Literally a patch, it seems to jut out from the rest of the air, shimmering and shuddering in front of Neil's hand. Eventually, it grows and morphs, changing colours... and in another instant, there's a tabby cat letting out a loud meow as it's suddenly dropped from the air back down to the ground.

"Haha, yes!" Neil gets down to his knees, scratching behind one of the cat's ears. The cat surveys him and lets out another mew.

"Hm... not exactly up to my usual standards, but I'll have to make do. Now, what else can I try..."

After:

Neil's still in the lounge... it's just that now there are more of them.

There seem to be a literal crowd of scientists slouching around the lounge, leaned back on couches, staring out windows, walking in place. They're all mumbling to each other, some of them more clear than others. One of them smiles at a double of himself as you walk past.

"Well, I suppose I had a good run."

The other stares back at him. "Not good enough, it seems."

There's one that has cornered another Neil against the wall, constantly slamming his fist into the doppleganger's gut. "It's how people blew off steam before FPS were invented," he reassures you with a grin.

Still more snippets can be heard if you push through the crowd. "We always succeed, because we're awesome." "The geezers just keep getting crazier..." "I'd be screwed either way."

In the center of the group is Neil. The real one, not buzzing in and out of existence in bursts of static, but... he still doesn't look good. He's curled up on himself, nails digging into the floor, feebly coughing and hacking as blood dribbles down his jaw and onto the collar of his shirt. A few copies of the same woman stand around him, looking down at him with the same mixture of annoyance and apathy.

"Tell me what you see." One says, holding out a pill bottle. She takes off the cap and holds it upside down. Nothing falls out.

"Shut... just shut up." Neil mutters hoarsely, and another one laughs, answering in his own voice.

"'Shut up' isn't my name, you know."

He tries to pull himself away from them, crawling along the floor.

"Why are you working so hard for this? 'All this trouble, just for some girl.' That's what I thought you'd say."

One of them finally turns to look at you, and moves so she can block Neil from view. "Get out. This ain't a movie and you're no hero. You're just being a moron."

There's more coughing from behind her, but Neil doesn't seem to be trying to move anymore. There's no point, is there? He's fucked up enough here already. And he didn't want to be here anyways...

"Why would you waste time like that?"

Yes, why would he? Being here isn't doing himself any good. He's not going to fix his machine, he's not going to make any advances... all he's doing is running out his clock.

Might as well let the batteries die a little early.

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"I will not. Stand aside."

She knows this room and has spent time in it before. Never has it looked like this, as she thinks a nightmare must. She does not know how it came to be filled with spirits, some violent and all strange, but now, she does not care. That is Neil, lying helpless upon the floor, bleeding from his mouth.

If the spirit will not stand aside, she will try to push it away or step around or, if she must, walk through it. She will not leave Neil to suffer.

The woman just smiles slightly, but instead of moving, she seems to flicker for a moment and reappear a few feet to the left. When she speaks, it's in Sans' voice.

"I can do it too."

At least the 'spirits' are cooperating, even if they're getting more unsettling by the second. They don't seem interested in bothering her, more focused on the collapsed man before her.

Tauriel turns quickly at that voice--but Sans is not here. This is meant to distract her, and she does not have the time.

She drops to her knees at Neil's side and puts a hand to his shoulder. He is pale, far too pale. "Neil, can you hear me?"

He tries to speak, but is silenced by blood slipping back into his throat. He gurgles for a moment, forces himself to cough it up, and then turns out-of-focus eyes on her.

"Tauriel?" He's pretty sure that's her voice, anyways. She's too blurry to properly make out. His glasses are laying on the ground a bit away, one lens cracked. Another one of the women picks them up, musing to herself.

"You know, it's really hard to see your eyes when you wear these. I guess that's the point. Isn't that right... Dr. Lorenzo von Matterhorn?"

"Return that," she commands the spirit, then turns her attention back to Neil.

"How were you wounded?" Her speech is fast, but gentle all the same. "Is it safe for me to carry you?"

If he has broken bones, she will leave him where he lies and bring healing to him here. If not, she does not want him to be among these spirits any longer than he must.

The spirit doesn't listen to her, just continuing to spin them by one of the arms in her fingers.

"He has really nice eyes, you know. No one at school believed me. The most brilliant shade of green... he could have been brilliant. But he just cheated through his entrance exams. He loaded paperwork on me. He did nothing but coast through life! I mean, what's the point of caring?"

Her voice suddenly changes back to Neil's.

"'Not our client, not our problem.' 'It's not like he's real anyways.' 'Worse comes to worse, we can just reset.' Why would you waste time like that? Why would you waste time like this?"

He moves over to his other side, glaring down at him.

"You may as well just kick the bucket now. There's no point in you continuing on like this. You're useless to me."

Neil has his head turned to the side. He doesn't answer Tauriel.

Edited 2016-03-20 19:25 (UTC)

"Ego," she says sharply to the spirit as she rushes to her feet. She seizes the eye-glasses from the spirit, or tries to, then returns to Neil's side.

"I am going to move you now. If the pain becomes too great, tell me."

Oh, this is...this is so not okay that Sans is going to need to sit down and have a long, hard think about new levels of "not okay" to describe this.

Especially after recent events in the castle's collective subconscious, Sans has to give himself a hard rap on the side of his skull to check to see if he's dreaming. He doesn't wake up, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. And even if this is a dream, he's not about to let it go on. Not even just because it's familiar enough to send a very physical chill up his spine.

So Sans takes in the twisted, gruesome scene around him with a falsely casual air, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. It's easy enough to pick out the real Neil, and he is obviously not having a good time. At last, Sans nods up at the...illusion? Clone? Ghost?

"never claimed to be anything else," he says, smiling his most charming smile. Then he simply blinks himself behind her and hastens over to check on Neil. Sans kneels down to carefully shake one of the human's shoulders. "hey, pal, what happened?"

Neil doesn't know nearly as much Elvish as he should, but he does know the swears, as he's constantly relayed them to Eva between giggles when she was attempting to watch movies. Thinking on that makes a pair of data projections appear on the nearby couch. Neil is holding a bucket of popcorn over the side of the couch, away from Eva, nearly laying on top of him in her efforts to reach the snack.

"Stop cheaping out, you stupid owl!"

"I told you, Eva! No popcorn until you name ten characters."

"Easy. Dumbledore, Hairy Feet..."

Neil looks at Eva, now smirking at him with a look of pride. "Oh, ha ha. I meant real names."

"Fine, fine. Gandalf, Bilbo, Fili and Kili..."

The other projection is distracted by watching the two squabble, and so allows Tauriel to snatch the eyeglasses from between her fingers. Neil squints up at the elf, and slowly tries to nod, letting out a shaky breath.

"Y...yeah. Okay."

God, Neil can only hope he's dreaming. At least if this is a dream, he can wave it off, pretend it was all based on lies. Just a stupid fear he has. Just like his fear of heights, he has a fear of getting sick. Pretty wimpy for a guy who talks as big as he does, right? Let's all share a laugh at the clown, right?

Right?

The woman looks behind herself in shock, but lets Sans move on without any interference. Neil lets out a soft moan as his shoulder is gripped, blearily blinking up at who he thinks is Sans. Even without his glasses, he can make out a skull grinning at him. He tries to grin back, but his lips are wobbly and his teeth are stained with red.

"Nothin'. Was just... trying something. Was s'pposed to be stupid."

"It's always just a joke. His name screams 'joke' anyways," one of the other Neils points out. "Dr. Neil Watts. Ironic, since he isn't the brightest bulb in the socket. Did I ever tell you I let my partner help me cheat through exams?"

She barely hears the speech behind her; even were she listening, she would hear no names she knows. All of her attention is upon Neil.

With the greatest care, she turns him upon his back. Her lips press together as the blood he has lost becomes easier to see.

He wears a long white coat, and so into it, she places his eye-glasses. Her fingers brush strange material and a too-smooth bottle, but she does not waste time wondering what they are.

"I am going to lift you now," she tells him, still speaking gently. If he does not protest, she will do so, then turn to leave the room.

There is indeed a lot of blood. He must have been like this for a while, if the mess of glitches didn't make that obvious enough. The blood has leaked all over his right shoulder, staining it pink. And he may still be coughing up more... it's getting hard to tell for him, anyways. Everything is blurring in and out.

He doesn't protest to the movement, though, even if being picked up directs a spotlight in another corner of the room, highlighting one of the women dancing with another Neil. Occasionally, she asks in a very quiet voice: "Why are you doing this?"

He never answers.

She pays no mind to the spirits. There is only one person worth her attention now, and that is the man in her arms.

Long strides take her from the room, and, she hopes, the spirits. Else she will need to find a way to banish them, and she does not have the time for that.

"How did you come to harm?" she asks again, still softly.

The spirits don't follow, and seem to fade the farther away Neil gets from the lounge.

Her voice is soft, and it hurts to admit that he'll have to keep on lying to her. He avoids eye contact.

"'s nothing. Just... worked too hard."

"Neil Watts. Age: 29. Showing symptoms such as hemoptysis, head pains, difficulties breathing, and some difficulties with activity. Possible case of-"

"God, will you just shut up already?" Neil silences his doppelganger before launching into another coughing fit.

"yeah, well, if you'll take a word of advice, i wouldn't try it again."

Sans has seen some truly disturbing things in his life, but being surrounded by this crowd of bitter clones still has him on edge. Not to mention the sight of that blood. He's more used to it than most monsters...but that isn't exactly saying much. And he has a lot less experience with fixing bleeding humans. It's not what he's for. He can at least get Neil off the floor, except...can he? Sans remembers when he'd demonstrated his powers, back at the party. The doctor had seemed to be in pain, for a moment. He doesn't want to risk that now.

With a faint growl of frustration, Sans tries to *CHECK to see if he can get any clearer idea of the state of Neil in that moment - just how low his HP is, and whether he's actively getting worse. Focused as he is on that, Sans sounds more than a little distracted as he answers the copy. "what's wrong with being a joke? jokes are great. your partner sounds like a pretty cool person."

Her frown returns when he speaks. "Neil, I am no fool. You are plainly--"

A gasp escapes her, cutting off her words, when she hears just how young he truly is. He is a human, so she does not think he is a child, but he must be newly of age.

"Lie still," she tells him, her voice still gentler than before. "Where is your room?"

"Guess... not."

It's not really the fault of his experimenting. It only got out of hand because he was weak in the first place. Weak and out of the one thing that's kept him going this long. Not that he's going to admit to that.

He could almost laugh at himself. He's on the verge of death and he won't tell a single soul about his illness? Eva was right. He is a moron. A moronic asshole who's too stubborn to even save himself. Someone like him would not be missed.

"It actually says that, right here." One of the Eva's brandishes a clipboard. "Would not be missed."

God, he never should have introduced her to that stupid game.

The check shows him the same slightly injured soul Neil had before, only a bit dimmer now. His HP is at a dangerous point, but at least it doesn't seem to be depleting. The one thing that is concerning is his mental state. It's a little hard to tell, but the clones seem to be actually coming from his own subconscious. Even if Sans can't sense that, the wince he wears when the doppelgangers continue speaking might give it away.

"Don't... bother with 'em."

"Oh, that's right. Why would you bother with us? 'It's not like he's real. He's just a program, you know. Worse comes to worse, we can just reset.' I wonder if you'll change your tune when you turn out to be the copy. Because," the copy continues, turning his attention back to Sans, "his life is definitely a joke. And dying alone, without a single friend? Without a single concerned coworker, without his family, without the partner he keeps insisting is just an annoyance? That's the punchline."

He has no idea what shocks her so intensely, but he doesn't have time to figure that out, because suddenly, she's even quieter, and he has to strain to hear her. He obeys her, staying as still as possible, but he does nod his head over to the right.

"Down at the end of the hall."

Edited 2016-03-21 03:39 (UTC)

"Tell me if I am moving too quickly," she says, and begins to walk as swiftly as she can.

It is plain she does not have much time, but she also cannot chance making him worse through being careless.

"It's... 's fine."

"White lie," an Eva quietly says as she hurries along beside him. "That's what you call it, right?"

Neil doesn't even have the strength to talk back to them anymore, just shivering as his eyes start to droop closed.

"God... think I'm gonna... pass out."

She slips a look to the spirit, but says nothing. This one seems helpful, and so she will let it be. She will also slow her steps a small amount.

...Though keeping to the slower pace is difficult when Neil next speaks.

"Stay awake," she tells him, trying to sound as calm as she can. "If you need, I will speak and you can listen for my voice."

Edited 2016-03-21 16:15 (UTC)

It's not just helpful. As it walks beside them, it keeps shooting worried looks over to Neil, hands curled in fists by her sides.

Neil just gives a nod. He's too tired to talk, but he might be able to listen. Tauriel can say whatever she wants to say, and he can put up with it.

The spirit chuckles softly. "Wow. I think this is the first time I've heard him at a loss for words. He never keeps his mouth shut, not even when he flubbed his lines in that school play."

Tauriel pays little attention to the spirit. As long as it is not harming Neil, she will let it be.

"We are soon to reach your room. When we do, I will lay you down upon your bed and check you for wounds. Once I know what has caused you this harm, I will fetch herbs from Grune's garden. She has been letting me grow healing plants there, which is very kind of her. I have found some in my time here, though I have yet to discover athelas."

And that is something that worries her, for its need seems to grow by the day.

"I don't think you'll find the wounds. This isn't something external. It's... something he's been dealing with for a long time. He just won't tell anyone." The projection laughs again, but this time, she sounds sad and bitter. "He won't even tell me."

"Dammit... Eva..." Neil tries to look for her, but his head is spinning too much, so he just gives up. They'll be in his room soon. That's what matters.

As she carefully opens the door (it is difficult while still holding Neil), she asks him, "Is that true, Neil?"

Wounds she can cure. Sickness of the body--that is far harder.

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