open / you can get used to anything over time

[brushoff]

Who: Dorian Gray & OPEN!
What: investigation, poking a fissure, putting together some clues
When: the month of August
Where: Milton

Content Warnings: will edit if needed

milton house / ota
Dorian has poked around Milton House before. He poked around it before the recent nonsense, when he and Chloe were trapped in there, trapped in Enola's grief with all those damn corpses in the basement. But he hadn't spent time exploring the house afterwards. He doubts he'll find anything. But Dorian Gray is absolutely the sort of man to go poking around a haunted house, even if it's not possibly haunted.

He first spends his time tramping around the grounds, exploring to see if he'll spot anything of use. The house itself is remarkably dilapidated—he'll have to go into it eventually, but he's not particularly fond of the idea of doing it by himself. Dorian is well aware of just how limited this place has made his immortality. He'll have to proceed with caution, a wild rarity for him. Fortunately, there's someone else approaching.

Dorian is bundled up, covered practically head to toe, with only a little bit of skin showing—it's twilight, but it isn't properly dark. He takes comfort in the fact that it'll only be a month or so until he feels like himself again...but God, can't it be September already? Where there's actual night? And it doesn't hurt to exist? He moves his ski goggles to the top of his head, so that the person approaching can see who exactly it is standing in front of the house.

"Care to join in on a little investigation?"

community center / ota
Dorian is lounging at a table in the community center, notebook in front of him. The page is covered in his neat, precise handwriting. He won't stop anybody if they're nosy or want to look over his shoulder. The text on the notebook is all speculation, a list of facts he has and theories about them. And all the facts, theories, notes, are about Enola.

(Side note, it truly is aggravating how Dorian manages to lounge in a way that looks great. This is the sort of man who's perfected the art of looking like he doesn't care and looking like he's just relaxing, but he's relaxing in a way where he hits the light perfectly and there's just enough of his chest exposed from his not-buttoned-all-the-way shirt, his legs look great, etc. This is a man who has perfected the best way to sit to make himself look attractive, the goddamn peacock.)

Anybody approaching gets a little nod and a, "Here, come on over. Are you one of the people who had an odd dream that then led to gaining a supernatural gift?"

fissure / ota
"I don't see what the problem is," Dorian says, as he looks over the fissure, looking at the green gas slowly emerging from the depths. It is a damn lie, he knows exactly what the problem is. There's a low-grade sense of fear in the back of his brain. He needs to get away from this, he doesn't want to be here, this thing is wrong.

But the low-grade sense of fear is just that: low-grade. And for the moment, Dorian can overpower it.

"How deep do you think these things go? I'm halfway tempted to find a pinecone and just chuck it down that fissure, simply to see what happens."

Comments

milton house

[bigbaddy]

The second Dorian lifts those ski goggles, Bigby looks thoroughly unimpressed. Not even necessarily because of any reputation Dorian may have, but more because--

"You look like a damn snowman."

Ah, apparently it's just the other's clothing he's judging in this moment. Only briefly, though, because there is what the other is saying to consider.

And that consideration makes him raise a half-curious, half-sceptical eyebrow instead.

"Besides, what kind of investigation are you talking about?"

[brushoff]

"Terribly sorry that the mere act of the sun touching my skin makes it feel like it's on fire," Dorian sarcastically responds.

Fuck you, dude! The ski goggles are a medical necessity! An ugly medical necessity, but a medical necessity nonetheless. Dorian will grumpily suffer through a lack of fashion if it means that he can get a break from his Darkwalker powers.

And anyway, there are more important things to talk about than the fact that the sun makes his skin hurt. Dorian casts a look to Milton House as he muses,

"I want to explore inside the house. I doubt it's changed since the last time it appeared in our dreams, but who knows. Maybe something's different now."

community center;

[powersuited]

Snow isn't the kind of person who will read over someone else's shoulder, but she does observe Dorian in his currently assumed element, especially as a frequent fixture at the community center herself. Right now, she's busy with her own responsibilities, mostly duties she's taken upon herself to fulfill — ensuring the center is well-stocked with things like blankets, coats, and important layers, especially as the weather starts to definitively turn autumnal.

At some point, it does feel important to check in on him at least — and not just because they haven't formally met, and Snow feels uniquely compelled to introduce herself to anyone presently a stranger. Call it the mayor in her, still lingering despite her no longer holding the position here.

What she isn't expecting is for her to address him first, and her somewhat startled expression betrays her initial surprise.

"What?" No sense in not being honest, she thinks, dissolving into a shrug of one shoulder. "Well, yes. Didn't... didn't most people here?"

[brushoff]

"Yes, but mine was hijacked halfway through via the Darkwalker," Dorian dryly responds, "so mine didn't go exactly like how she had planned. Humor me. What was your dream like?"

It's obvious to Dorian that whatever these gifts were, they were given by Enola. It's also obvious that what happened to him and Chloe wasn't expected. The more he learns about how things should have gone, the more he can learn about Enola...and the more he can learn about why his fun little gift turned as sideways as it did.

Community centre

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe hasn't had as many years as Dorian to practice her attractive sitting poses, but to her it's an employment skill so she comes damn close as she slips into one of the chairs opposite him.

“Hey there, love. I can't believe you hang out here. And studying, to boot! I don't think that's going to endear you to anyone enough to make a difference.”

That must be why he's doing this, right?

Re: Community centre

[brushoff]

"I am a university dropout, thank you very much," Dorian lightly teases, as he looks over at Chloe with a grin.

"But no, this isn't studying. It's...collating information, so to speak. I want to make sure that the next time Enola draws us into some bullshit, I know enough about her to call her out on it."

Re: Community centre

[desperate_times_right]

“That's more than I've got,” says the high school dropout. “You're still the nerd, here.”

What he's actually doing does make more sense. “She doesn't usually give us a chance to say no, but it's not a bad idea. I have three powers, if there's stuff you want to know.”

[brushoff]

"I suppose the first thing to ask is about your dreams. Obviously I know how the last one went," as they're both weird Darkwalker vampires now, "but did you get any notice for the first two? And was she there for all of them?"

[desperate_times_right]

“The first one I remember hearing her voice in the static from electronics on the nights leading up to it. That first one came during a seventy-two-hour aurora! She wasn't in the dream, though, that I remember.”

She’d only made the connection because the voice had promised her power.

“The second one I don't recall hearing from her at all, but I was already pretty cross with her by then so maybe I ignored it.”

[brushoff]

Interesting....

"But she was in ours," Dorian muses. "I remember it—she was confused that everything went to hell. I wonder if this means she's grown stronger from when you first arrived to now."

[desperate_times_right]

“There was also a shared dream about the Darkwalker, back before we knew what it was.” She’d been pretty new then and it had freaked her out. “I don't think it did anything, though. To change people. It happened before Enola started doing that.”

[brushoff]

Dorian makes a little noise of acknowledgement. A shared dream of the Darkwalker first...now that's interesting. He frowns slightly, thinking things over, before continuing the conversation.

"So here's what I have for the timeline. The first people arrive here. The Darkwalker gives everybody a big scary dream. Enola then decides to give people less scary dreams, some of them with supernatural abilities. The Darkwalker decides to barge in on one of her dreams, changing a handful of us in retaliation."

He pauses a little before, "That still doesn't answer my first question: what brought us here in the first place? Because I really don't think it was Enola or the Darkwalker...and I also really don't think whatever brought us here, brought us accidentally."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe thinks for a bit. “Yeah, it's like… everyone died in the autumn, I think, then a few weeks later we started to show up. I got dropped here just in time to miss the Christmas pig, and the Darkwalker dream happened on New Year’s. Not long after that, it killed an Interloper in person for the first time. We got our first 'gift' a few months later.”

It definitely feels like that's all related.

“I still think it's her who did all of this to us. She's always beaming 'good job' into our heads like a fucked up kindergarten teacher. Besides, we saw her memory, right? Fog-induced guilt nightmare or what-fucking-ever. All of the dead Interlopers were there. She said she’d caused it, and I don't think she just meant the fire.”

That makes her mind snag on something else.

“You know, I think maybe she tried to give people powers before. Locals. I had a dream around Halloween last year about that house, that a girl named Beatrice had been accused by other kids of burning it down by magic. She called herself a freak. I know a guy here who got the fire power from her and it can be hard to control it.”

[brushoff]

"She could have caused it. Or she could just be blaming herself. I could see her doing that, in a sort of 'I failed to protect everyone' sort of way. She certainly seems like she puts pressure on herself to keep us all safe."

Chloe's not wrong with her 'fucked up kindergarten teacher' diagnosis, though. No matter what, Enola desperately wants them all to keep going, to not give up.

The mention about other powers, though....

"It's a shame we don't have a hospital or anything like that here. I'm not averse to doing a little breaking and entering to grab some medical records."

[desperate_times_right]

“I don't know if setting fires with your mind was something doctors here were equipped to deal with, anyway.”

If this had cropped up at home, Chloe doubts that she would have gone to the hospital about it.

“Methuselah was there, but he never seems to want to tell anyone anything unless you go on one of his little trips.”

[brushoff]

With zero hesitation, Dorian says,

"And I am absolutely not going on one of his fun little trips where you end up dying in the woods. God no. I love myself too much for that."

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah, I don't trust him either. One of my mates went on a trip with him and got attacked by wolves.”

The scars had been pretty cool.

[brushoff]

Dorian winces at hearing about Chloe's mate. No matter what, he absolutely does not want something like that to happen to him.

"Has anybody gone on one of those fucked up little field trips and come back in one piece? I suspect the answer is 'no,' but I simply want to make sure."

[powersuited]

"It was... about a year ago, now," Snow admits, though even to say so out loud feels strange, a more damning admission than she was initially prepared to make in casual conversation. In some respects, a year isn't really that much time for a Fable, especially not those whose story has carried them for centuries. It is a reminder of how long she's been stuck here, with no signs of getting home soon.

"Well, it was after a storm had been building for three days, here," she adds. "I was running through the woods. Fast. Faster than I ever thought I'd be capable of. Every sense, every aspect was heightened. I could feel everything so much more intensely, and when I woke up... it had all lingered, from the dream."

In the months following, she'd learned to control her instincts, tamper down her senses — mostly with Bigby's help — so she's less overwhelmed now than she used to be, but it'd still been a learning curve, in more ways than one.

[desperate_times_right]

“None that I’ve heard of. That's the guy who learned the name of the Darkwalker, though.”

She does wonder sometimes if he'd felt it was worth it.

[brushoff]

There's a moment's pause before Dorian muses, "I wonder if Methuselah would have ever told us that thing's name on his own. That old man is hiding things from us. What specifically, I don't know."

[brushoff]

Dorian listens. It's when Snow is finished that he raises an eyebrow to lightly point out, "And let me guess. She didn't say what had happened. She didn't say 'oh, by the way, you can turn into a wolf now' or whatever the hell you can do. Enola showed up in the dream and then left you on your own."

It's obvious from Dorian's tone of voice that he's not the biggest fan of Enola. He shakes his head, letting out an irritated little huff before continuing.

"Things like that are how people get hurt."

[desperate_times_right]

“Probably not. Bill might’ve, once we found him.” He’d had to deal with the Forest Talkers alone for a long time.

[brushoff]

"You know, I don't think I ever talked to Bill," Dorian shrugs. "I arrived a month or two before all that business with the bear. Suddenly turning into a vampiric monster who hates the sun distracted me a little from what was going on with other things."

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah, I didn't talk to him either.” Yes, she had gone along with his plan to raid the caches, but that had all been second-hand. “He’s where most of those dogs came from. The mountie’s dog got a bit friendly with Bill’s dog.”