bakerstreet | Insomnia

Insomnia

the i n s o m n i a meme
It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?

i n s t r u c t i o n s
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o p t i o n s

01 • FEAR.

Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.

02 • HUNGER.

Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.

03 • PAIN.

Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.

04 • SOLITUDE.

For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...

05 • DISCOMFORT.

Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.

06 • PENSIVE.

Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?

07 • SADNESS.

Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.

08 • ANGER.

You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.

09 • RESTLESS.

You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.

10 • WILDCARD.

Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.

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Ariadne never slept well in Fae. How could anyone, when the place was so wildly unpredictable, so inclined to surprise and devastation. Admittedly, she'd begun to sleep a bit better, now that she had a constant companion. Nevertheless, the nightmares were still harsh and the waking reality was still severe.

More than anything, though, lately Ariadne's mind had been wandering to a certain impossibility. The impossibility of escape. She was hardly a fatalist. But over the last couple of years, she'd put the notion out of her head.

So why had it come back to her recently?

She couldn't say.

All she knew, as she rolled onto her side, staring at the forest that surrounded their little oasis, was that there was some story, some dimly remember fable that explained how to get out of this place. And that she ought to be doing more to find the answer. It just kept gnawing at her.

Finally, she let out a soft sigh. "Agent?" she asked softly. "Are you awake?"

"I'm awake."

You couldn't have told that from the way he was turned onto his side, resting to face the forest as much as he was able to. He was starting to sleep with his back to Airy now, at least, able to trust her to that degree. That was marked improvement from when he'd first arrived in this place.

And, as usual, sleep eluded him. Usually it was the nightmares, but tonight? It was just the quiet gnawing of a past that didn't want to take its talons out of him.

At least he wouldn't be awake alone.

With a soft grunt, he turned, seeking Airy's figure out in the darkness.

She turned at the same time, facing him, with her arms tucked under her head to cushion her head. Her hair was loose, coiling around her. She smiled when she saw his face. After spending so long by herself, she would absolutely never take having another face for granted again.

And he had a very nice face.

"I can't sleep," she confessed. "My mind is awake, so all of me seems to be awake. And I..."

How was she going to finish that sentence? She didn't know when she started it. She paused for a moment.

Two moments.

"I don't know," she finally said.

He tried not to snort, and failed miserably. "Well, that is what happens when your brain is awake, yes," he replied in a patient sort of tone, raising a brow at her. Ah, he should go easier on her, though. Clearly she wasn't used to having people around, communicating with them.

The snark just slipped out on reflex. Too used to his teammates, perhaps, even now.

"...but yeah, I know what you mean," he finally added, reshifting his own arm under his head in much the same fashion. "Sometimes it's hard to just shut it off."

Ariadne didn't think that the 'it' he was talking about really related to the thoughts chasing each other around in her head. Still, she appreciated the kindness. She knew how hard it was for him to be here. Harder even than it was for her. His world was much bigger. After living with so much space, it was impossible, no doubt, to be so confined.

"I'm thinking," she said quietly, brushing her hair back, off of her neck. "About escape."

She never talked about it. Because she absolutely never thought about it. Not any more. She'd given up on that a very, very long time ago. For her own sanity. It was only since his arrival that...

"I feel like I've let you down," she said. "Not taking escape more seriously."

It's so easy to forget she's not human, sometimes.

The thought drifted past absently as she spoke, and Wash almost immediately scrunched his face in disapproval. "Well, don't. Obviously you'd want out of here as much as I do, and you've already tried most everything there is to try, right? I can't blame you for not having the same...er...gusto, as me."

Enough time in a hopeless situation and you just accept it. That much? He understood plenty.

"There's nothing more important in all of creation than hope," she said. In particularly special way of hers that was entirely and totally genuine. She had a talent for believing things other people would immediately consider contrived. "And I'm afraid that I may have been...unintentionally battering yours."

Even if every single thing he tried, she'd already tried--and failed--thus far. Telling him that, perhaps, wasn't doing him any favors.

It was counterintuitive, but she was beginning to question her methods, a little.

"So...first of all...I think I owe you an apology."

"You really don't."

It was laughable that she could think these were acts inspired by hope. This was nothing but a caught animal in a trap, time ticking down to when he decided to finally bite the bullet and chew off his own leg. Metaphorically.

Slowly he started to move, propping himself up on one elbow now that they'd abandoned the pretense of trying to sleep.

"Do you know what a contrarian is?"

The term didn't exactly exist in Valeria, but she got a sense of it at once. "Someone who enjoys being contrary, starting arguments?" She sat up as well, pulling her legs up against her chest, resting her chin on one of her knees.

Secretly, she loved it when he taught her new words.

It always felt good to learn. Especially in a place like this.

She tilted her head slightly. "Which one of us are you about to call the contrarian?"

That provoked a laugh, a sudden smile in the dark. "Me. Definitely me."

But it was a good guess on her part. It deserved a little insight, after all this time stuck here together, and Wash let the smile on his face temper slightly.

"For so long it was me against the world, so...I decided to be against the world right back. It made sense. Hurt the people who hurt you, stay on your guard, don't let anyone get close. And whatever you do, never let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Getting out of here at this point would be almost purely out of spite. Hope? Has nothing to do with it."

She listened quietly, a little line forming between her eyes as she tried to understand. The words themselves made sense. And she was even sure she knew other people who felt the same way. It was just...contrary. Yes. Contrary to Ariadne's entire approach to life.

What a sad way to live.

Poor Agent.

Ariadne stood up, walking over to his side of the oasis. She moved slowly, like she was approaching a feral dog. At least, she was reasonably sure he wouldn't bite. Holding her hands out in a gesture of surrender, she sat down beside him. "If you could escape, would you still want to?"

As she edged closer, he finally began pushing himself upright to sit. May as well, if they were going to keep at this for a while longer.

Far from looking ready to shoo her off, he nodded to the space beside him. Gradually, week by week, the measure of space around him he was willing to share with her had grown. Now she could plant herself right beside him and he wouldn't mind it.

Not entirely. There were still Bad Days but those were hardly her fault, and he knew it well enough.

"...escape a prison here, to run back into one there. Tough choice, I've gotta say." A wry smile tilted the edges of his lips.

Even if she didn't understand idioms well, she did understand irony. And, yes, she understood what he was saying.

What was going unsaid, though, was the second choice was at least a prison where he had the chance of breathing the same air as his...well...his whatever-he'd-left-behind.

She pulled her legs into the lotus position, resting her palms on top of her knees. "My people used to sing songs about Fae. They were passed down through the generations. Embellished, probably. That happens in an oral culture. I've been thinking about one of them lately. Wondering if...if maybe there's more to it than I thought."

"What about it?"

It was the first he was hearing anything about a song, and, while it seemed inconsequential...what else were they going to discuss, but possible ways to get out of here? What they might do if they did?

The rest didn't really matter as much.

"Well..."

She hesitated. Mostly because despite what he said, she was still convinced in the power of hope. And she didn't like the idea of giving it falsely. For all she knew, it was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And yet, it could be something.

"I've been thinking about the lyrics a lot and...I've started to wonder if there's a message in them. A message about...a way out?"

"Song lyrics."

He stared at her a moment in faint disbelief before lifting a hand, rubbing at his eyes. Right. This was what it had all come to. Maybe he shouldn't have ruled out having a psychotic break after all.

"Alright, I'll bite. What are the lyrics?"

His incredulity wasn't subtle. Fortunately, Ariadne was used to it, by now.

She stared off into the dark sky, beyond the canopy of trees surrounding their oasis. When she first arrived in Fae, she tried to map the stars. Before she learned that they seemed to move around whenever it suited them. Like bored lightning bugs.

"It doesn't translate terribly well," she admitted. "But it goes something like this: And when you're ready and it's time to go, join the two halves of the sacred tree to make a whole."

It was much prettier in the original Alastrian.

Ariadne turned to look at him. "I was wondering if maybe the word 'whole' didn't actually mean 'whole.' As in complete. But instead meant...'hole.' Like a...tunnel?"

This had the smell of 'ancient prophecy' on it, like something the Sangheili might have come up with. Given that both were alien cultures, perhaps it made some weird sort of sense.

"Does it translate the same in your language? Where those two words could be mistaken for one another?" he pressed, one hand reaching up to rub at his jaw thoughtfully. Weird or not, it was a lead. They currently had zero of those.

Even a farfetched idea was worth trying, at this point. Like seeking heat signatures in the desert.

"Well, that's just it," she said. "It's a bit complicated." The Alastrian language was extremely difficult to learn for non-native speakers. Mostly because it had a circular kind of logic. Words could mean two entirely different things based on intonation, hand gestures, or pitch. "The words 'whole' and 'hole,'" she did her best to pronounce them differently, "are related. They're sort of considered antonyms."

It was all too much to get into. To explain the language, would mean explaining all of Alastrian culture. Ariadne could barely understand some of the nuances herself. She'd been very, very young when she lost her people.

Her father could have explained it. Easily.

No point in dwelling on that, too much. It would only make her heart ache.

"There's a possibility," who could say how slim? "that the poet who came up with the song was being clever."

It made sense and didn't, at the same time. Easier to just let it go, nod, and assume she knew what she was talking about, here. Linguistics had never been a specialty of his.

"If it's that hard to puzzle out, how clever could they really be?" he groused for a moment, wrinkling his nose as he considered the possibility. "Alright, so for starters, what tree are we talking about here?"

It sounded like a new destination to make their way towards, whatever it happened to be. Another hopeless push towards escape? Why not.

Ariadne shook her head. "I don't know. That's the only line about the tree. And there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of trees in Fae." Speaking only, of course, about the parts of it she'd actually seen. She knew there were still corners of it she'd never visited. Probably more corners than she ever could visit in her lifetime. Or several.

She turned to look down the line of her shoulder at him, silhouetted by the small campfire they kept between them most nights. From a certain angle, it looked like his profile was outlined in gold.

A funny thought. Apparently, she was in a lyrical mood.

And still an apologetic mood too.

"I wish I had anything else to offer, but it's just that. One line of poetry. One that may or may not mean anything at all."

"It's something. That's always better than nothing."

Something about that sentiment seemed to amuse him briefly, before he shook himself away from it. A good point of distract was the way he'd just noticed Ariadne was staring at him, like she was observing something fascinating in his face. She stared at him a lot, come to think of it, but the poor girl had been here for however long all by herself, with no other contact.

He'd probably have stared too, were he in her situation.

"So we start looking for a tree that looks...I don't know. More 'sacred' than the rest? You'd figure with a line like that, it'd be easy to tell apart from the rest."

Seeing as Ariadne thought of every tree sacred in its own way, she wasn't surprised that the line was vague. It would have been more understandable in Elvish. The Elves were very clear on which trees were special and which weren't.

The irony that it had been an Elf who put her here wasn't entirely lost. Since there was nothing she could do about that, though, she let it go without remark.

And then there was another thought, one she wasn't ready to voice yet: What if it didn't literally mean 'tree' at all? Trees were the symbol of so many things in so many different cultures. They were the symbol of life, in some. The symbol of adulthood, in others. Even the symbol for marriage, in still others.

No, better to start with something tangible. Agent liked having a quest. Something to move him forward.

"I think the lines all date back over a thousand years," she said. "Possibly more. Alastrians have an oral culture. Unfortunately, my generation didn't have an official storyteller to continue the tradition."

Elves, magical trees...it was all a little too 'Lord of the Rings' for his liking, but what choice was there? Wash let out a quiet exhale of breath, fingers lifting to rub at the shadows under his eyes.

"Well, if anything else that seems like it could be even remotely relevant comes to mind? We'll see if it fits. In the morning, we can start our search."

Hell. Sleep was now a distant prospect, Wash understanding that a new lead meant that was all his mind would be occupied with for the foreseeable future. But there were worse things to focus on, worse ways to be kept awake at night with one's thoughts.

It was strange how quickly she'd come to understand him. But there it was: He proved her thoughts completely right.

So a quest. Why not? They had absolutely nothing to lose and potentially a world or two to gain.

She nodded slightly. "We should probably attempt a grid method search pattern," she said. "Since Fae is so..." Incalculably enormous? At least they had one landmark going for them. "We can start at the cliffs." She pointed in their direction. She never could north, south, east, or west in Fae, since they were completely unreliable. But those cliffs had always been there. "And work our way inland."

Some combo of 4 & 6?

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