Closed RP: UnCat, Reilly, and Nightmares on the Roof

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

It was not nearly so cold at night, now, but Catelyn didn't notice the difference--she did not feel cold as others did. All it really meant was that now the grounds stretched out leafy green and dotted with flowers, all rendered silver-bright by the moon.

She liked to wander on the roof, until she found a spot whose view she preferred, where she would sit and think or sometimes just stare, watching a world whose peace still seemed to her something like a gift. She did not miss sleep so much, not anymore--as she was, she got to see a side of the world most of the living could not regularly inhabit. She'd learned to tell the hours by the position of the moon, and the stars if there was no moon, but more than that she knew what each hour felt like; the subtle ebb and flow of nighttime, so different from that of day.

She'd found a likely spot near the Astronomy Tower--it was the highest point of the school, and offered an unsurpassed view--and currently she was sitting on the edge of a parapet, her feet dangling off it rather like a child, humming an old lullaby she'd sung to Rickon not so long ago. Well, she was trying to hum; with her half-ruined voice, the result was not wholly successful, but it was an oddly peaceful sound for all that.

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[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

Reilly had woken abruptly from his latest attempt at sleep. Once he'd slept off the exhaustion of the ordeal he'd had just before his arrival, very few of his nights had been restful.

Of late the dreams combined elements of an attack by wild dogs - caused, he was certain, by Damien Thorn at his Sorting - with elements of a tight, confined space, dark and cold, with stone walls and floor. Nowhere to escape from the dogs. How much of that was post-death trauma and how much supernatural harassment by Thorn, he was unsure.

But to combat the claustrophobia, fresh air seemed just the ticket, so he climbed stairs until he arrived on the roof, and wandered around enjoying a view literally as big as all outdoors. Then he heard the scratchy humming, and tensed into combat mode until he found its source. He resisted an urge, with Anna so much on his mind lately, to drag her off the parapet, a safe distance from the edge.

"Catelyn?"

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

By now, Catelyn really shouldn't be surprised to find other people on the roof. Every so often there was a whole crowd up here--people who, for whatever reason, couldn't or didn't sleep. Even so she jumped slightly, startled, and nearly lost her balance when she turned.

"I would say you frightened the life out of me, but that would be a rather bad metaphor," she said, laughing quietly and swinging herself off the parapet. She didn't think he'd ever used her proper name before, but it pleased her more than not--so few people here used it. "Can you not sleep?" From all he had told her, it would not at all surprise her if he suffered from nightmares and insomnia.

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

His breath caught when she wavered, but once she was safely on the roof he relaxed again.

"Not well usually, thank you. Dreams. Tonight's feature involved the walls closing in on me, so..." He held out his hands to indicate the expanse of open air around them. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you; I can move on if you'd rather have peace and quiet."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

She winced. Before her death, during the war, she'd had all kinds of nightmares--one of the few advantages to perpetual insomnia was that she need not suffer them now.

"No, no, stay--it is good to have company." Fortunately it hadn't rained lately, and she made her way across the stonework easily. "Do you often have such dreams?" Catelyn herself had never been one for small enclosed spaces; she could well understand the horror of such a dream.

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

He nodded. "I often have bad dreams. The actual content varies, as does the severity. Some nights they're mild enough I do get a few hours' sleep in. And you? Do you sleep well? Not tonight, obviously, but..."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

A few hours...that was not nearly enough. Surely there was something that could be done for that?

"Oh, I don't sleep," she said. "Not since I...came back. I come up here almost every night, while most of the school is asleep...it's almost like a different world, at night." She looked at him in some concern. "Have you been to the hospital wing? There must be something they can do, that you might sleep properly."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"Not yet, no. I'm not at all sure they - that is, it may not be -" He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Some of the dreams are perfectly natural, I think. The prison, the beatings, my death. But some of them - I think some of them may be a 'gift.' From the King of Spades. I've had those dreams since he shook my hand at my Sorting. That's a matter I'm not ready to involve anyone else in yet, not until I know more about him."

Thinking of Divination class reminded him of something else. "Have you had any more contact with the Queen of Diamonds? I chanced to meet a rather buttery fellow the other day who introduced himself as her twin. Jaime Lannister. What might his arrival bring, good or ill?"

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

That made her pause. The King of Spades...ah. That would be...much, much more difficult than an ordinary nightmare.

"I do not think I would either, were I in your place. Clearly he is possessed of some magic the rest of us do not know, if he can do such a thing." And what a way to get to him, too...this King of Spades must know how to find a person's vulnerable spots, which did not help anything. Even here, unfortunately, things were not nearly fair.

She jerked herself out of her half-reverie. "Jaime? I ran across him as well, and...I do not know, in honesty. He has changed greatly, or so it would seem--losing his hand seems to have altered him. On the one hand I am tempted to believe he's lying, but Jaime Lannister did not strike me as the sort to have any great skill at dissemination." She frowned. "That was always more his sister, the Queen of Diamonds--I have not seen her since I wrote you, fortunately."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"I may have found another ally on that front, one with some genuine power. A third doppelganger emerged from the Popcorn Room a few weeks ago. His name is Merlin - a name you may have heard the native-wizards here use as an expostulation. He is quite a legendary wizard, even in the wider world, though I think most there believe him a fiction. Where his interests lie I do not know, but the King of Spades was also in the Popcorn Room at the time, and Merlin seemed to find him as disturbing as I do."

Reilly nodded. "Precisely. Lannister frere seems open and honest enough, and disdainful of his sister, but then again she is his twin. They share blood and bone. It's difficult to imagine that bond ever truly breaking. He did say he had sworn to cause you and your children no harm."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

Merlin.... "I think I may have heard the name, yes," she said. "I did not realize it meant anything, however. You say he resembles both you and the King of Spades? I had thought the idea of a...a doppelganger odd, but I have run into one myself. As with you and the others, the likeness is not exact, but it is close enough as to be quite unnerving. Is he powerful then, this Merlin?"

There was a bench not far along the roof--remnant of some long-crumbled statuary--and she made her way toward it, beckoning him to follow. She did not tire of standing, but on the whole she preferred to sit, and if Reilly was as tired as she was sure he must be, she thought he would not protest.

"As to Jaime...I would not be surprised if there has been some rift with his sister. She is...I hesitate to say mad, but perhaps it is the right word: a highly specialized form of madness. Some part of him may always remain loyal to her, rift or no, but...the fact that he has sworn to do no harm is comforting." She looked at him curiously. "He told you this? He said he was sworn to do us no ill?"

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"Extremely powerful, according to legend; but legends that old tend to grow in the repeating." He followed her to the bench and sat beside her. "You have? I thought this phenomenon confined to the four of us, but if others have duplicates as well...What is she like, this double of yours? I don't recall meeting such a person."

Reilly nodded thoughtfully, reviewing what little information she had given him about Cersei. "Megalomania, perhaps? You did say she was once a literal Queen, and Jaime made mention of her 'fumbling about' politically. As to Jaime - so he said, but just the bare fact. Nothing of who he swore this to, or why, or on what terms. Still, I was pressing him for reassurances, and that's better than nothing."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

She smiled. "If his name has survived so very long, then the legends must be in some part true," she said. "The stories that survive are the ones that have the strongest and truest origins. If he too is disturbed by the King, he might very well help you." Catelyn had never met Damien, but she knew well there were people and things at the school far more malevolent (and powerful) than Cersei Lannister.

"My double, if you can call her that...as I said, the likeness is nowhere near exact. She is taller, and her hair and eyes are different, but her face...she is some younger than me, but so far as her countenance is concerned, we might well have been twins." 'Have been' being the operative words; nobody could mistake them for such now, not with the scars. It had been almost unendurably difficult, seeing what amounted to her former face worn by another. "I think something very terrible has happened to her, at some point in her past--she is wary, and seems to hide a great deal. I met her up here, actually, one night months ago." Again she smiled, very slightly. "There are many here who cannot sleep."

She paused, thinking of Jaime and Cersei. "Megalomania, yes. She was hungry for power, for as much of it as she could hoard, or so I thought her. It was she as much as her son who started the war, however, now that I think of it--Joffry ordered Ned beheaded, but his mother did not stop him. I am beginning to realize that she is not nearly so clever as she thinks, and without Jaime...well, even slight reassurance is better than nothing. I did not speak long with him, but he was quite civil to me--and startled; he did not at first recognize me. His main wish was to see if the Hospital Wing could not do something about his missing hand."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

Reilly smiled wearily. "Yet another insomniac, eh? That does suggest...trauma. This school's students do seem to run to it, don't they?"

"Not clever. Yes. Jaime did not say as much, but his whole attitude toward her was - dismissive. As though, even with whatever she's done, he still can't quite take her seriously. His hand...certainly I understand the wish to be hale and whole again, but I worry...What was he like before he lost the hand? Rather too perfect physically for his own good, perhaps?"

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

Reilly chuckled. "I'm not usually so steeped in Biblical lore. I've been reading religious texts a great deal since I arrived, looking for answers to - well, to many questions really."

He gave her description some thought. "Once I would've said creatures like that were bogies to frighten children, and the demons of the Bible too. But since arriving here, I've met so many beings...Catelyn, I came across someone here I think is a literal demon. If you meet a perfectly ordinary looking man with yellow eyes, I beg you do not engage with him. I think he wants to trap people into bargains for their souls, if he is what I believe him to be; I know that failing that he relishes human suffering, both watching and inflicting it. He did mine, certainly."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

Catelyn stared at him. "Yellow eyes?" she asked. She had not seen anyone of that description, but then she did not usually haunt the castle when it was busy. "You believe he is a true demon?" Her only concept of a demon was of something like an Other, and the thought...well, she would have shivered, if she'd been capable of it. This castle...on the one hand, it gave people like them a chance for some kind of peace, but on the other, it let in both demons and people like Cersei Lannister.

"I had thought Hogwarts would be safe from such creatures," she said--having no idea just who or what Damien Thorn was, and so not knowing that worse than a demon was already here. "What did he say to you, that made you think so? If it is not private, that is."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"He's only just lately arrived. He calls himself Phil, a nice common mortal name. From the general hubbub at his Sorting I should guess I was not the only one to find him disturbing." He winced. "He said - without my having told him anything personal of myself - that he had seen Anna in Hell. That she blamed me for her to suicide."

Despite his chill, he chuckled at himself. "I owled a man claiming to be an angel, he'd put up posters about the Hogwarts Metaphysical Club. He wrote back that suicide is not an automatic ticket to Hell. I found it curiously reassuring, given that I don't even know this person."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

((Bedtime for me, I think))

Catelyn gave his hand a light squeeze. "He knew," she said quietly, and shook her head. "The things he could see in some of us, if he chose...I wonder that the school allows such creatures."

Now that was interesting...she knew well Camilla was no angel, but she had not suspected there were truly any at Hogwarts. "He claims he is an angel? I know next to nothing of this world's religions, but I would think such a thing as an angel might counter a demon." One would hope, anyway. "And...well, it is not outside the realm of possibility that your sister herself might come here." She was not without hope that Robb would be here someday--Robb who was dead, and Bran and Rickon, who hopefully yet lived. It was the blessing and the curse of this place, really, that it could call anyone it chose.

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"So do I. But the school seems to have no rhyme or reason to who or what it Sorts."

He nodded. "I think of that often. Not always in the kindest terms to myself. If I of all people was granted a second chance, then why not Anna? Or Boris, or Marie? There seem so many more deserving of this."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

"I do hope that it balances--that for every demon, every evil who comes here, something good will follow. There has to be a balance, or anarchy will follow." There always had to be balance--Lord Beric knew that, when he resurrected her; knew that he would have to die in her place. "Perhaps those who truly deserve it will come here to keep the equillibrium."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"Balance. That was the hardest thing for me to learn, early in my career," he said with a sigh. "At Port Arthur I thought I could prevent the outbreak of war altogether. I found out the hard way that whatever force it is that drives wars won't be diverted from its course by any one person - too many pressures in too many places ready to explode. It was hard to accept that the best I could hope to do was help make sure our side kept up or bettered the balance of power."

He shrugged. "But then, I was very young then. Doesn't everyone think they can change the world at that age?"

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

That gave Catelyn pause. She'd never thought about it that way before--she'd always assumed the war could have been diverted if Joffrey hadn't ordered Ned executed, but perhaps it would have happened anyway. If it hadn't been Ned, it would have been someone else--Joffrey would only have killed some other poor noble fool, sooner or later.

"Sometimes they can," she said, still thinking of Joffrey, and then of Robb. "And not always in good ways. Those with noble purpose rarely come to good ends, I've found."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

Reilly chuckled. "No indeed. I have Lenin and the thousands that died for his noble dreams to hold up as an example of that. You know, my coup plot went off the rails when a lone shooter tried to kill him before I had my people in place - but she didn't succeed. Lenin ended up with severe head injuries, and he tried to run his empire while confined to a sickbed. He ended up with a slow, agonizing crawl toward death, almost two years' worth of suffering. I'd say it was a fitting revenge, except that he still managed to carry on decimating the country."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

"You spoke of her, I think," she said. "The woman whom no one would have expected to do such a thing? It is a strange thing, to think that sometimes people will feel driven to acts they might never otherwise have contemplated."

She thought about this Lenin, trying to rule a nation while crippled, bedridden--such a man would not be fit to wield power, not in Westeros. Westeros historically had a rather terminal policy toward rulers who could not, in fact, rule. The shattering of House Targaryen was evidence enough of that. "I would think, in circumstances such as that, it would have been much kinder to put him out of his misery."

[sidney-reilly.livejournal.com]

"Or in her case not so strange at all perhaps, given how little power she had to begin with. Once the Bolsheviks stripped that away, what but madness was left for her?"

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. "As for Lenin, yes, probably it would have been kinder to him. But it was a sudden, shocking jolt for the Party; they thought they were dealing in purest theory, and suddenly it was brought home to them with a bullet that they were really in a cult of personality. They had no prince in waiting, no able lieutenants, no mechanism for installing a new leader at all. The best they could do was lavish medical care on him and hope he held on until they could find someone."

[ex-ladyston.livejournal.com]

How little power...Catelyn knew all about that one. She'd never wielded power herself; what influence she had in life had always been over either her husband or her son. Not until she died had she gained anything like authority, and all she'd really used it for was to hunt down anyone and everyone connected with the Lannisters.

She looked at him--was he growing tired? She no longer remembered what it was to need sleep, so she couldn't really tell.

"Did they?" she asked. "Find someone to replace him?"