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Time to sleep. Everyone has to: Jack drifts off in the location of his choice, and -- like all Lost -- enters into his own Bastion, his dreamscape of choice.
Of course Jack's Bastion looks something like a theater. Blue light glows behind the black curtains that he parts to enter it, and he pads down hallway after catwalk after backstage crossover, all painted and draped in various shades of black. He's comfortable here, as he runs a hand along one of the walls, the charcoal flowers he leaves behind glimmering faintly metallic against the matte paint, and he doesn't have a clear destination in mind.
A subtle crackle, a hiss. And then a pop -- quite loud -- from behind one of the curtains; when were there ever so many curtains? The stage seems to expand, and rows upon rows of curtains separate Jack from the front of the house. The velvet whispers against itself.
Jack freezes, and shimmers out of existence - not that he could be easily seen, as dark as it is back here - before pushing one curtain carefully aside, and then another, and another. Following the sound.
Listening to the velvet whisper as it moves.
Above him, a light flickers, and the sound suddenly slots into his brain; he recognizes it in that moment. The pop was the sound of a light blowing out. green, yellow, red it flickers.
green, yellow, red
Of course, stage lights don't flicker like that in the real world, but dreams? Dreams have their own special logic.
The velvet whispers, brushing each against each: she said she lost her fix on her target
... waiting we can see how well your arrow does...
fully-prepared and equipped
light or mid-level weapon, Androvich?
He speaks in a foreign language. He speaks our name. He curses.
"...What the fuck..." Jack whispers, and his movements through the curtains get a little more hurried. He doesn't need to get out of the Bastion, or wake up yet, but he sweeps the fabric aside as if that will somehow give him a better view.
Every time Jack touches a piece of the velvet, a scent drifts across him: not the smell he expects of velvet, but something else. A little dusty? A little like... wood smoke, settled on cloth. A little like very old linen.
No, they are living, the voice whispers.
they are living, another voice answers.
Hmm. Bad. Don't like that, a third voice sighs.
"Who's living?" He clearly doesn't expect a response, and he pushes through the curtains even more quickly now, even if it will take him onto the stage (is there even an Onstage here, in his Bastion? guess he'll find out.)
The curtains part, and the next moment answers Jack's question: he finds himself On Stage. A thousand lights flood the stage, even though none of them land on his Light-Shy body; the contract silences his footsteps.
The last curtain whispers: They're... our. Kindly ones, I suppose. Nearest analog.
And above the theater seats, a tiny light glimmers. It pulses white, like a distant star, and then explodes outward in gouts of shimmering light and fire, forming itself through wheels of flame into a strange body which hovers over the theater seats.
She's nearly seven feet tall with multiple pairs of large wings, one pair gently pulsing, keeping her aloft, the others folded to cover portions of her otherwise-naked body. Her skin is a fiery orange, gleaming and faceted like gems, and her face -- the human one -- is covered by a wing, but Jack can tell there's a human face under there, a woman's, her hair flowing out like a black river around her head. On either side of that face are the head of a lion and an ox, with the face of an eagle currently hidden from view behind her.
The legs of this form still look mostly human, but with hooves instead of feet, and when she breathes in, the slits of gills lift and fall again along her jewel-fleshed throat.
Her arms cradle a limp humanoid body wrapped in linen, making the scene into a Pietà wreathed in lambent, ribboning flame.
From every corner of the theater, a million whispers coalesce into two words: FEAR NOT.
Jack flinches and stumbles backward from the explosion, covering his face with his arm to shield it from the burning light.
"Jesus fucking Christ -" he shouts, probably aggressively enough for him to wink into existence again, and he blinks the lightspots away from his vision as he squints at the figures.
"What the fuck?"
Jack's shouting and his revelation seem to startle the angel, and the brightness of the light overwhelms his eyes for a moment, burning his retinas. He covers his face, he covers his eyes, and as the wings of the angel, folding and unfolding, cover and reveal her, he sees only the vague shape of a woman's face. He can't see past the burning light, though.
And as he snaps into wakefulness, startling himself out of his dream with his shout, the angel -- the woman -- speaks. Just one word, a thunderous thing, voices upon voices, but he knows he knows that layered voice.
"JACK?"
His eyes open, he finds himself pulling in a single, sharp breath, as a voice he knows he knows fades from his ears.
He fumbles for the light on the table next to his bed, and again for a scrap of paper and something to write with. Gotta get it all down before it fades.
As he finishes off the last bit, underlining familiar voice three or four times, he tries to think back to where he's heard it before. Focusing on that might help keep his brain away from the thing the voice was coming from...
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