prelude

[singmod]

January 1st 2015

Do you remember yesterday? What is tomorrow?
How will you face this quiet apocalypse?
— Raphael van Lierop.

As the old year falls and the new year begins, the skies fill with light. An Aurora comes on the last day of December, and with it the usual signs of it: the ethereal noise, the cracks and pops in the air, the stuttering of electrics as they struggle to power on and then blare and flicker. It is, as Interlopers have come to know, business as usual — in terms of the Auroras within this world. However, something a little different happens this time.

Interlopers will fall asleep all over the town of Milton. Even the ones who fight sleep and try to stay up into the small hours of the night will find themselves drifting off for a short while — as if their eyes just feel too heavy to keep open, and their minds slip into a deep kind of quiet darkness without their realising. And at first, there is nothing — nothing but the quiet dark. Something peaceful, almost.

A dream comes.

The first thing you notice is blood in your mouth, the cold in your bones, the deafening din in your ears — as if you are caught in static and the sound of howling winds through pine trees. You are afraid. At first, you do not know why. You find yourself on your knees in the snow. The skies are filled with green light, the air is thick with smoke. And then the realisation comes:

This is the ending of all things.

You look up, to the sight before you: a huge, shapeless shadow. Towering above you, over you. A head peers down at you: a cluster of three wolf skulls, eye-sockets glowing green and terrible, and their three open maws, dripping with more green. The sound it makes is unnatural, you cannot put it into words. The darkness draws in, you are so cold, so tired.

This is the ending of all things.

It is so hungry. You are so tired. The world falls away, you cannot see the stars, the dark hiding them from view. Were they even there to begin with? Or did they go out? You have forgotten. And you know, you know—

This is the ending of all things.

The skies glimmer, licks of strange, colourful wisps curl above — a voice screams out your name, from the static and winds. Through the noise. A woman’s voice. You have heard this voice before, in the lights and noise. Do you see? What could be? What you could become?

Can you hold on? Please. A hand grips your shoulder, but as you turn — the dream ends.

For some, they snap into waking with a shout or cry. Some will shudder awake to find tears in their eyes. All over Milton, the Interlopers wake: shaken, unsure, afraid. They will awaken to the dark: the Aurora is gone — slowly fading from the night skies into an otherwise calm and clear night.

It is a new year.

Comments

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach was still a little wary of the pirate. Men like that didn't change and he'd show his true colors eventually. But he wasn't about to punish the man for no reason and Edward had helped get him out of his restraints when they'd been tied up together, so for now he was merely keeping a close eye on him, which was not so easy when someone else in the town was parkouring around the rooftops.

So he took the seat offered, looking more restless than usual. Fingers tapping his sides or anything that was close by, head snapping far too quickly at any noise that was nearby. "You had it too?" He wasn't sure if he was relieved or more worried it hadn't just been him experiencing the nightmare.

[jackdawvision]

"Aye, and couldn't sleep neither afterward." He went back to his work, which was mostly just trying to repair the damaged siding. It was clear that he'd had some experience in quick repairs, but that had been on a wooden ship, and this wasn't entirely the same. Besides that, a carpenter he wasn't, so instead it looked like an enterprising amateur had not quite gotten it right.

Still. He was trying, that had to count for something.

"You're all right?" Edward asked, glancing briefly backward at Rorschach.

[moralabsolutism]

"Think the whole town experienced it?" If the two of them had, that likely meant there were others. Just what kind of being was powerful enough to send a nightmare to every person in the town? The thought made Rorschach shiver, though it was easy to pass it off as just being cold.

"Fine," Rorschach said in his usual growling monotone when Edward asked him how he was doing. But he'd said that far too quickly and automatically for that to be the truth. It was just a coping mechanism for the broken vigilante. If he said he was fine, no one would take too close of a look and see just how bad off he really was.

[jackdawvision]

"No doubt they all did." If Rorschach had seen it, and if Edward's own dream had been too vivid to be forgotten easily, then it stood to reason it wasn't just an ordinary dream. But what could creep into a person's mind like this, save for a Piece of Eden, an artifact that once belonged to Those Who Came Before? Edward shivered at the thought, and hoped that it wasn't that.

He watched Rorschach for a long moment, after that answer. Then he stepped aside and said, "When I was younger, after a nightmare, I'd head out and try to find something to do with my hands. There was always something, on a ship—repairs to be made, weapons to check, and one time I caught a fellow trying to sneak more rum than he was allowed to have." He flipped the hammer in his hand around so the head was pointed towards himself, then held it out to Rorschach, handle first.

"You could probably do a better job with this siding than I could," he said, cheerily. "At least it'll be something to get your mind off of it."

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach recognized being given the hammer and set to work as a coping mechanism, a way out of dealing with his emotions without having to examine them too closely. His usual method usually dealt with going out and hitting people but that wasn't exactly an option here at the moment. Hitting something with a hammer sounded like a pretty good substitute to him. It was still physical enough. He accepted it wordlessly, swinging it around experimentally to get the feeling of wielding it.

After a moment, he looked around. "How?" Look, he'd never had to do home repairs back in NYC either because that was the job of the landlord to figure things out and later on because he lived in a slum that he only stayed in to sleep. He wasn't about to figure going about the upkeep of such a place.

[jackdawvision]

That...was a very good question. Edward's knowledge was rudimentary and limited to ship repairs. He hired somebody else for home repairs on his own mansion, and when he was younger and poorer he'd been too young to be counted on to reliably repair anything. So this was maybe a very bad idea.

"Just get this plank into position and hammer it in," he said, after a moment spent contemplating how to do this. "Should fit in well enough even without nails, with enough force. I'll find the nails later." Which was an adorably optimistic thing to say, but then Edward could be shockingly optimistic sometimes.

[moralabsolutism]

No nails? Somehow that sounded like fake news but Rorschach wasn't about to question the man's plan on how to do things. If nothing else, at least whacking at something with a hammer a good amount of times was bound to make him feel just a little bit better at the end of the day.

He examined the position the plank was supposed to go into, fit it into place, and then swung the hammer with a mighty lot of force behind the action. This was only going to end well for both parties involved with these "house renovations..."

...They'd be lucky if the house was left standing at the end of it all.

[jackdawvision]

They're doing so good at this. Clearly this will work and the next interloper to move in here will be so grateful to them for this. Clearly.

Edward took a seat again, and watched Rorschach keep swinging at the plank. "See, you've got it in hand," he said, with great pride, basking in the thought of a job well done at the end of this.

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach's life had always been defined by violence, ever since he was a kid and having to fight off the neighborhood bullies. It wasn't the healthiest coping mechanism, but sometimes, it really was just as simple as hitting someone or at least something until you felt better.

(Someone really needed to get this man to therapy for some actual strategies that would work.)

He kept up the task of hammering at the board. For someone so short, there was a lot of muscle hidden beneath all those layers, and it showed as he kept whacking away at the board. Then he stood back for a moment to survey his work. That looked right to his eyes. Not that he'd ever done anything like this before but there was a first time for everything!

[jackdawvision]

Hell, it looked just fine to Edward's eyes either, although he figured he might have to find some nails to ensure their fine work stayed in place. Where he could find any in this godforsaken place, he didn't know, but hey, he was good at searching even without his second sight.

"Hornigold would be proud," said Edward, wryly. Years after killing Ben Hornigold, he'd long since stopped holding onto his grudge against the man, stopped trying to erase the friendship he'd had with him before Ben turned against them all. He missed him, sometimes. He missed them all, sometimes. "He'd have some pointers to give, but proud. You'd have..."

Edward paused a moment, as if remembering who he was talking to. Then he shrugged, and continued, "You'd have liked him, I believe. He used to be a pirate, then he took the pardon and turned pirate hunter. Stayed that way till his death." Best not to mention Edward himself killed him.

[moralabsolutism]

"Sounds like he found one way to achieve atonement." Edward wasn't wrong there. Hornigold did indeed sound like the type of man Rorschach would have enjoyed being around or at the very least tolerated. There were very few people Rorschach outright just liked. He was far too prickly and angry for that. But people who did their best to make up for their past wrongdoings? He could at least see why they did such a thing, even if he was unsure they could ever balance out the scales.

He finally finished hitting the board in and stepped back to look at his work one last time. He had no idea if this is the way it was supposed to look but the vigilante thought it didn't look half bad. And if it all collapsed five minutes after he and Edward left the place, shhh, no one needed to tell them that.