Little House In the Darkness

Little House In the Darkness
Date of Scene:	15 December 2012
Location:	Castle Oblivion
Synopsis:	Part 5 of Hobo with a Shotgun TP. Don't worry. Be happy.
Cast of Characters:	Will Sherman, Riku
Tinyplot:	Hobo With A Shotgun

---

Will Sherman has posed:
Time seems to pass oddly for the pair. Will has managed to finally get some sleep, though he can't do so for long, the boat wasn't very comfortable. In fact, he stands up, stretching to get a kink out of his back when...

A shore starts to become visible. The shore is nothing special, it's a shore like any other shore with a cliff facing above the actual beach. There are a few natural pathways up, but above the sea was a house. An old house... Victorian style, which seemed to be straight out of the Seventeen hundreds.

Will freezes, looking at the house for a moment. How long had it been for him? He hasn't had to face these memories in years...hundreds of years really. It was a reminder of the first set of people he'd had cared for...their house was where he...learned to be.

As the boat lands, Will pauses...afraid to get off at first, but finally drops a foot carefully into the sand. Almost as if he were waiting for it to swallow him whole.

Almost immediately, a scene plays out. Memories straight out of Will's head come. Will, unchanged, lays face first in the dirt. Not a stitch of clothing on him his hair a wild mess...and no hat. A group of people come from the house to check on the boy.

"See, I told you I wasn't lyin' momma." a young boy says to his mother, who is warring clothing completely dated than to what will currently wares. Will wasn't exactly with the times himself, but these fashions were hardly close.

The older woman, leaning down to try and rouse dream Will, shakes her head. "Lars, so get some blankets from the house! Quickly! We need to start a fire and fast...he's cold." she says, an obvious fear in her voice that the child in her arms might be dead.

"Heh...I don't remember this part too well...I always wondered how they found me. They told me in the clothes I had on me." he says, "I wonder why."

Riku has posed:
Another day/week/ month? on an Endless Journey. Riku actually looks forwards to the sight of land now. It breaks up the monotony of endless ocean and keeps him from sinking back into his thoughts. He wasn't exactly somber, but after he had stopped telling stories he remembered the reasons why he was on this boat in the first place and slipped back into pensive silence. When land appears-- and Will steps out onto it tenatively, Riku practically vaults out of the boat to be free of it for a few minutes.

He should know better than to be so eager, but he was filled with a restless energy now that the apathy had past. He looks at the memories play out before him, but the houses only look like houses to him-- very old but still as unfamiliar as new houses. He stays near the Will take came from the boat.

"People do that." he says quietly. "Just little lies that they think won't hurt anybody." he snorts faintly. "Sometimes they really don't. When is this for you, Will?" he blinks, then recalls something that he was told it seems like a lifetime ago. "All the way at the beginning?"

Will Sherman has posed:
"...Yeah. At least, for me...as Will." he says, Walking towards one of the pathways up...

Even though it was his old home...the corrupted stone of the lands of darkness, the cracked and sometimes crater like beach..

The darkness that surrounded the place...all of it gave it an odd feeling. "I washed up here...these people took me in, raised me as their own."

As they turned a corner however, the scenery changed, the slope up seemed like they were going up a mountain. A young figure, with long dark black hair and fur for clothing is walking up the cliff ahead of them. On his left and right are two others like him...there is a strange aura to them. The one to the right was a young woman. Beautiful, long blue hair, a dress that ran down to her legs. To the left was a younger man. "Father, I'm on your side about this slight...but really, maybe we should avoid getting into it with Lord Odin."

"Nonsense! He owes us...ME an appology. To think he thinks he can interfear in my domain without reason...Hel may tolerate it, but I will not."

The woman with the patience of a saint sights, resting her hand on the man's shoulder. "Please, try not to let this escalte too far." she connects...

Then the scene vanishes, back to what it was before. "I...what?"

Riku has posed:
"And.. somebody spliced the film." Riku blinks several times, looking up the mountain and then across the 'beach' of the corrupted stone beaches of the realm of darkness. He looks at Will but he looks like they have just as much of an idea as he does.

Hopefully no other movies get added to the roll. He didn't think he could take another assault of memories from his lost home. Riku tenatively takes a few steps forwards, looking around as he moves farther into the island.

Will Sherman has posed:
AND THEN THE LONE RANGER.

Only not. "Man...I haven't been to this place in years...and it's..." he sighs a little, "And of course, someone is messing with the visions or whatever." he comments. Once more, they come onto a scene, Will, dressed in what would be considered normal clothing is walking with a young man, "So when do you leave, Lars?" Will asks, "Next week. Gonna move to the big city, there are lots of jobs there, maybe even make something of myself." Lars responds before Younger Will rolls his eyes, "Yeah...I hear ya, but what about Mom and Dad? You know they need help runnin' the household come summer again."

"You got that, Will. Anyway, I won't be gone forever, I'll come visit!" to which poor will gives his 'older' brother a hug. "Alright. Well...you better come back." he comments, "Geeze Will, no need to get mushy on me..." he pauses, "Will...you still don't remember anything?"

"Nope." he hums, "Well, mayb-..

The scene is cutt apart. Flames. Flames everywhere, the landscape is nothing but flames...broken bodies, dead people staring up...and you think these are the lucky ones. A tall powerful man, with a mighty hammer falls, before fading into particles of light, the young man from earlier and a tall powerful looking man, now missing his right eye, are having it out.

However, before the image can fade a powerful voice calls out, "ENOUGH! I am putting an end between this fight between you Aesier." And then the land returns to normal...

Will looks Horrified.

Riku has posed:
This is about the equivalent part where Riku bolted so the teenager edges a few steps into a position to start running should he need to.

The shearing memories are disorienting and he's trying to make sense of them but it seems so chaotic. Two stories clashing for dominance. Two stories with nothing in common except a single thread. Riku feels like he's been struck in the head and then the stomach by the scenes of death and fire and carnage. It's alright as long as he can partition it out in his mind as something distant, something that has nothing to do with him or anyone he cares about.

Something that happened to-- Riku grimaces, trying to keep the contents of his stomach in one place as it lurches up into his throat. And suddenly-- GREEN HORNET.. only not. Only a teenager whose has seen very little actual violence with an overactive imagination trying not to lose his lunch, for whatever value of cookie tossing there might be in this time warp. He looks at Will in a faintly accusing way. "What the-- what's going on now?"

Will Sherman has posed:
"I..." Will thinks for a few moments, then..

"Loki. These must be Loki's memories..." he pauses, looking at Riku. He looks guilty, he's not trying to hurt or traumatize the boy but...these things...he can't control them. He frowns, trying to keep his mind clear...maybe it was based on his own thoughts right...he just had to keep himself focused...think about his own life, not worry about Loki.

He steps forward, opening the door to the house...

The inside is old...dusty...abandoned for years, or at least seems that way...walking inside leads to a memory...

Will is sitting on a couch, a man that looks a lot like a doctor is kneeling over him, speaking to him. "...won't see morning, I'm afraid Will Sherman." he says, before the door behind them bursts open. It is a older man, and Will moves to him quickly, giving him a tight embrace, "I'm sorry Lars..."

"It's not your fault Will...we both knew it was going to happen some day...but Will...you still look..."

"Unchanged? I...I know. The doctors don't know what to make of it. But..."

"I know...lets go see her okay?"

"...Right."

The scene fades away...

"...The first person I cared about, she took care of me when I first woke up, and I lived with her until she died. She was so kind...her husband was too, infact he named me. He...he got ill about the time Lars moved, and he never recovered."

Riku has posed:
And maybe for the first time, Riku looks at Will and doesn't see the annoying, often frustrating, sometimes terrifying, magical cataclysm that he has come to associate with Will Sherman. He hasn't really had any context, any reason to think about what two hundred years really means.

It's a far away thing. A shadow on a shadow on a shadow-- sort of like Riku's concept of Manhattan. A series of snapshots of places important to the people he likes, not an actual place. There is a loong-- loong drop as his mind, even around the very edges, starts to grip something like that sort of time. A fine tremor runs along his hand to his arm and across his shoulders as Riku has the impulse to run. To turn away from this ancient and withered house and just run, and run.. and never stop.

The teenager swallows very hard, trying to make his voice not shake as the scene fades away. He doesn't meet Will Sherman's eyes.

"I'm .." and his voice trails off. He's sorry? Stop saying stupid things. Riku listens to the silence for awhile. "I'm-- going to look around a little bit. If that's okay. I've been on the boat so long, I don't exactly want to sit down." he laughs humorlessly. "Hey. Maybe we can chase the elusive idea of food."

Will Sherman has posed:
That's Will's clue to nod at Riku. "Yeah...go ahed. Kitchen is to the right. Go into the pantry there...there...might be food? I mean..." he shrugs, "Time doesn't have any meaning here, and last time I checked this place was being used as a bread and breakfast." he pauses, "Bed and Breakfast. Right." Will says distractedly, and starts walking up the stairs. That was until a woman entered from another room of the house. Walking slowly along the bottom floor of the house, passed...

The street? Suddenly it was a street in New York. The woman was a blonde haired beauty, a younger woman, carrying a purse under one arm and a coat wraping her from the cold winter day, she moves to come up the stairs...which were not concerete.

"Will! Come on, we're going to be late!" she says, as a more familar Will steps out of a appartment building. His hat, newer by comparison than the tattered thing he wares now sitting on his head, "Yeah yeah...wouldn't miss sunday mass for the world dear..." he says, moving to take her hand as they walk down the steps.

If Riku looks up at Will now, he has already turned away, running away from the image...which was already fading back into a house.

Riku has posed:
"and.. damnit will." Riku mutters to himself very faintly. Wasn't that phrase how all this got started? He looks towards the house that is? Was? -- eh. Dream/Vision/Voodoo physics are not exactly his strong point here.

All he knows is that if the heartless come back (and they will) -- it would probably be better if they weren't separated. So he tries to cut his way across the phantom terrain and run after him. He isn't even sure he's running after the right one! -- But it's a stupid thing to do. It seems he does a lot of things like that lately.

Will Sherman has posed:
Will's trying to keep himself together. He was seeing too much of the past here...it was upsetting to say the last. He rests a hand across the wall, trying to stead himself. Riku wouldn't have much trouble finding him...it was a large house, but it wasn't a mansion. It was just a rather large home...

Will is already opening a door...this room, this room was familar...

How many years did he spend here, it was comfo-

This isn't the room Will wanted. Inside, inside was the young man from the earlier immages, held in place with some sort of invisible bonds. The younger man, the one that tried to convince him to think clearly when dealing with Odin, jerks up in pain.

"To keep the peace of the Aesier, your punishment is to be bound by your son, strapped here for all of eternity, Loki." says the voice. Oberon, stepping from a stone watches as Loki's own flesh and blood dissipates, turning into a living set of chains, binding Loki to three rocks.

"And you will suffer the pain you inflicted on the mortals for the rest of your life.." said as a snake is hovered above him, dripping venom on his eyes.

tHowever, the young woman, throws herself at Loki's side, bringing a cup to shield her husband.

"Sigyn, you can not protect him forever...he will have to suffer for his crimes..."

"It is you who do not understand! What do you plan on to accomplish here than to drive him mad!?"

"It is more than he deserves...it is by your hand he is not dead in the first place...but stay here with him then, if that is what you want. His wrath will consume you too, if he is released."

Will shuts the door violently, and falls back into a heep, breathing heavily by the sight...

Riku, however, may notice...a similarity between the two women in Will's life.

Riku has posed:
Riku stares with pale fascination at the images, then at Will. He is jolted out of his reverie by the violent SLAM of the door. He tries to make sense of the images. The mountain, the people fighting-- and now.. now the punishment. Not 200 hundreds. Not a thousand years. Forever and ever-- and ever-- with a snake dripping poison.

Riku leans hard against a wall. He sort of just-- it's another box in his head that these things just sort of put a hammer to and smash flat. Loki, whatever he was-- was just an evil voice to him. An absolute scream of hatred and pain echoing in his head. Riku clings onto other images before he thinks about how evil the rest of the fae had to be to stand there and let something like that happen-- except for Sigyn.

Except for that lady. He frowns a little, blinking as he finds another connecting thread between the violent and chaotic images.

"will..?" He takes a long time to say this. "These stories. Memories.. whatever. They were trying to tell me something. Something I was.. I was blind to. What if they're doing the same thing here? I thought--" "..there's something really eerie about these stories slamming back and forth."

Will Sherman has posed:
Will, slowly raises himself to his feet...

He doesn't answer right away... "Maybe...they are trying to tell me about...it." he says, looking down inside. "About Loki..." he speaks...

"I don't get it...I never saw anything of Loki's memories before...never...I never knew he was there.." he lets it hang there.

"Uh...right...pantry right? Lets...lets go there." he says, shaking. He puts his hands into his coat pockets, trying to hide his hands.

He walks back to the stairwell, with or without Riku, and leads him to the pantry.

The kitchen opens up into a large field. No...not a field, a graveyard. In Upper manhattan, it was a small affair, the gravestones taken care of.

Will stands there, staring at the Will with a slightly more beat up hat. The clothes were starting to look right. Will stands, talking to the Grave yard...telling Melody about what had happen that year.

Of course, a dark figure approaches Will, breaking him out of his story.

A tall man with a Tophat and a cape, waring a mask stands over Will. "Sorry to interupt, good sir...I was sent here to investigate an outragous claim...and I do rather dislike it when people try and play on others." he says, tiping the hat forward, "You know the lady there has been dead for over seventy years?"

Will nods, "Yeah, I know. I burried her." which causes something to happen to the man in the top hat, something that you are sure is a rare occurance, a look of surprise... Will offers to walk with the Boss...

Will turns to go into the Kitchen, but the memory lingers...for Riku anyway. Near one of the other headstones, is a very familar blonde haired woman. She stands there, looking right at Riku.

Right. At him.

Riku has posed:
Riku stares back at her, brow furrowed. He doesn't look away to look for Will because if he breaks eye contact, he isn't sure if the echo will collapse or not.

He isn't sure what he's really actually doing.Some part of him doesn't care. What does any of this matter to him? --but that voice has gotten quieter and quieter over the days (weeks?) they've been in the Realm of Darkness. He was starting to let go of the idea that they would ever escape here. He wouldn't have to face the world outside-- so what did it matter if he DID care?

If he DID listen, just for once, to himself instead of what he thinks someone else wants? -- And so, Will or No will, he just sets out across the graveyard towards the blonde woman.

" ..Hi." he's still isn't used to doing this. Riku braces himself for whatever weirdness might come after this, suddenly nervous. But something has to be better than nothing.

Will Sherman has posed:
The woman turns to look at Riku.

There is...age in those eyes, not unlike Will...but there is even more. There is also a kindness, a deep kindness that is impossible to fake. "Good morning." she says, "Relitive to the memory you are seeing, Riku." she says, knowing his name, "Before you ask, I know more about Will than...possibly himself." she says, not haughty, but with a warm smile.

"My name is Sigym...but Will only knows me by Melody." she says, very politely, and turning to give Riku a better look. "No, I am not the real Sigym, I am...a reflection of her will and desire. I will spare you the details of what happened to her...but she desires to protect Will...despite it being beyond her ability to do so now...Loki's cage is dangerously rattled."

"He stirs...and..." she pauses, "His power currently comes from that. Loki is the source of his magic, but..." she looks at Riku, "He has a power he hasn't tapped into yet...the creation of the seal to keep Loki in human form created...a special kind of person in Will."

"It only took me...no, the real Sigym years to see that...and by then..."

"Well..." she sort of blushes..

Riku has posed:
Riku thinks he really shouldn't be the one hearing all this. He rubs the bridge of his nose and sighs. "I--" He doesn't even know how to parse statements anymore. She's Sigyn, and Melody, and not. Okay. So she's NotMelody! but she's talking to him. AT him really because he can only imagine the look on his face at this point. If Sora or Reize had this sort of gears-burning, smoking puzzlement expression he would make fun of them. Riku tries again.

NotMelody!-- who is important to Will, who is 200 hundred years old and-- some sort of living magic who feeds ducks, is telling him that the source of everything Will has been doing to help and protect people for that 200 years, is based on Loki who is a god, or a fae, or-- possibly that doesn't matter either way because he's a guy who lost a battle with other gods and got punishment by having the all knowing jerks of all mythology drip poison into his face until he went crazy. Riku takes a breath as he can almost literally hear the springs SPROING in his head at this point.

He divorces himself from the entire thing, and detangles it. Story wise. Sigyn wants to protect Will. She can't directly do this. Will is a cage for Loki. Loki is a bad guy. He may not always have been a bad guy. It's pretty certain the people who drove him crazy were not exactly GOOD guys. Something about Will is a power that isn't Loki. "..Why are you telling me this? " Just-- not going into the implications. Just-- too much information. "How-- what can I do? I've already screwed this all up."

Will Sherman has posed:
"Do you think he would listen to me? When has he ever listened to anything negitive about a person...or something for his own benifit?" NotMelody says, "I love him with all of my heart, but the man is dense sometimes, even more when it comes to his own needs." she pauses, "I even had to put the mo-Look, that's not important." she says, blushing again.

"Because he needs to realize this...he needs to understand where the power comes from...he needs to face this...and to stop it from happening again, walk his own path. His poweris that of the seal, the more he draws on Loki...the weaker the seal...but if he realizes his potiental.."

And then... "Also, I'm a *goosehonk*ing ghost image. I mean, seriously, you're lucky you got me and not like...Puck. He'd just throw cryptic statements and play jokes on you while laughing in your face." she says, a bit more...New Yorker to her tone, "Anyway...if you want to fix things...maybe this whole thing is just your subconcious telling you how to fix it." she waggles her fingers, "OooooooooOoOOoOO." she says with a serious face, "You can't blame yourself forever...no more than Will can be trapped by the past...Maybe when Manhattan is returned...he can find me and see the truth for himself. But right now...he needs a friend."

"Failing that, a guy with a guilt complex who asks too many questions and has a bit of a sassy attitude." she says, with the sweetest smile she can muster.

She starts to fade..

Riku has posed:
Riku laughs. It's just so-- startling, but at the same time he sound know better. When Will is around, and apparantly his girlfriend (wife?) is even worse than he is at mood whiplash. So after the initial laugh and disorientation of being fishslapped by a ghost image who is somehow hiding a goose on her person.

Riku rubs his eyes and shifts his feet, crossing his arms. "Lucky, huh? Oh-- yeah. I've been ALL kinds of lucky since I met Will." he chuckles faintly and says quietly. "Anyways. I wish I could have met you.-- or have-- or-- at least not this Puck guy, whoever he is. " Riku nods. "I'll tell him. Even if you are a ghost image whose a smart aleck."

Will Sherman has posed:
She smiles, "I loved him...love him alot. I only pray that he understands why I had to leave him..." she says as she fades, "And thank you...I will like to meet you too. I am sure, when we do, you will have had grown." she says, that smile...it is beautiful. Even as a single tear falls down her face.

"No go...and find out what Oberon has done...and how Will was created." She speaks, a faint whisper...

"You'll know what to do when the time comes...or make it up as you go along."

Riku has posed:
"That's what I usually do.. for good or ill." Riku almost-- but no. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't try to keep her from leaving. He doesn't know why, but he believes her. They will meet again, and-- maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Riku closes his eyes and turns away from the graveyard, trying to make his way out of the echo into the larger container of the house and find where Will has gone off to.

Will Sherman has posed:
The image fades, and there is a pantry again...

Which leads into a pantry. A pantry which Will is trying to reach up and grab something.

He falls over, somehow manages to land on his feet, holding what appears to be a box of Granola bars.

"This is better than my hat." he mutters, opening a box and fixes one out. He hasn't seemed to have noticed Riku yet, or that he was talking to someone else...

Will,instead sharply turns around and about smacks into Riku face first. To which he offers up the box. He's already munching on one, as if nothing is wrong.

Which means everything is wrong.