dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

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[thisvorlunatic]

He goes to sleep.

Uncomfortably.



Long sterile halls painted a faintly sickly shade of off-white, lined with anonymous doors. He's wandering through ImpMil, looking for something. He can't remember what it is, but it's very important that he find it. Someone keeps screaming. Maybe they'll know where to look. He tries to follow the sound, but keeps circling the same corridors, over and over and over again; every door he tries leads him back where he started. None of them are labelled, and they move when he's not looking. The bastards.

Finally he turns away and starts heading in the opposite direction. The screams echo louder and louder. "Will you shut up!" he yells. "Can't you see I'm trying to save you?" But the anguished howling continues unabated. The next door he tries is locked. He pulls and pulls, but it won't open - it's stuck.

Miles becomes frantic, certain that what he's looking for is on the other side. He runs his hands all over the door, looking for some secret button or weakness he can use to pry it open. While he's not paying attention, the handle melts away, leaving the door a featureless panel. He slumps against it, weeping.

(It's around this point that he starts making unhappy noises in his sleep.)

[isthisart]

Linya is still awake.

She touches Miles's shoulder and jostles him gently.

[thisvorlunatic]

In the dream, he has just gotten up again and started pounding his hands against the door, which whispers to him in Ser Galen's voice, bargaining that if he breaks all his fingers, it'll give itself a handle again and let him pick the lock with the bones. But when he tries, they just splinter further, again and again until there are no bones left to try. The door starts laughing at him. Somewhere, the other voice is still screaming, the one that sounds just like his own.

He comes awake with a stifled whimper, head swimming with images of the blood-smeared door and his broken hands.

[isthisart]

"Miles?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Linya?" He blinks a few times. "Urgh... that was even worse than head polo. I'd like to go back to not remembering my dreams, please."

[isthisart]

She drops her hand from his shoulder now that he's quite awake. "Try not to have any of those after I've gone to sleep myself."

[thisvorlunatic]

"If I had any control over them, I would happily make that promise."

[isthisart]

"Yes, I know." She sighs. "Head polo?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh... at Dagoola, one of my brighter officers was decapitated by plasma fire in front of me. My dreams have run with the theme a few times, most memorably the time I was playing polo against a bunch of dead Cetagandans using his head as the ball."

[isthisart]

"Somehow I had imagined learning about what you did while you worked being a happier occasion," she remarks.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sorry."

[isthisart]

"It's okay."

She sighs.

She strokes his hair, just the once, not beyond the bounds of what she might be moved to do for even a particularly deceptive brother-in-law who'd just had a nightmare.

[thisvorlunatic]

He smiles sadly at her.

[isthisart]

She is tempted into one more pet, and then she goes and sits on her chair again.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles sighs and looks at his hands and sits up, lest he fall asleep again.

[isthisart]

Since Galeni is still asleep, Linya is politely not singing. She has instead been passing the time...

braiding her hair.

She unties her most recent effort and finger-combs out the braid and starts over.

[thisvorlunatic]

[isthisart]

Braid, braid, braid.

"Apparently Galen stole Mark nine feet of some lady's hair from a collector," she murmurs. "To practice on."

[thisvorlunatic]

"And what did Mark think of that?"

[isthisart]

"He can see why you like braiding."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I wonder if he can. ...I suspect so."

[isthisart]

"Can - see why you like it? Is it very complicated?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Reasonably complicated, yes."

[isthisart]

"Well, now I want to know."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well... there's the 'your hair is soft and nice to play with' aspect, and there's the 'spending time with my wife' aspect, and there's the challenge aspect, and there's the accomplishment aspect."