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Those aren't magic fingers.

WHO: Ariadne & Dean, Open
WHAT: Old pals, catchin' up on fun times at the mall!
WHERE: Bridgeville Mall, starting off at some massage chairs
WHEN: Week Four
NOTES: Anyone at the mall is welcome to join them. Should be pretty tame, but there may be body horror if they violate the terms of their role.

Dean had stopped somewhere around the end of week two asking why the events in the mall were what they were. He'd now seen Spider-Man 3 six and a half times, so he just assumed this was just some level of Hell he hadn't been privy to before. He wasn't enjoying himself, per se, but as far as Hell dimensions went, the mall wasn't that bad. It was inconvenient, sure, what with the little head pictures and random rain (and the monsters outside), but for a change, he wasn't surrounded by death and no one was depending upon him. He missed his brother, but he was also grateful Sam wasn't trapped there with him. As much of him that wished Sam would rescue him also hoped his brother would just move on. Dean could survive here - the food court alone was enough reason to stay.

And there were other reasons. He'd met a few decent people over the course of the month, though he couldn't tell if they just came and went because it was surprising how few "real" people he'd actually met. He'd considered the mall could be some kind of stopover on the way to real Hell (or maybe even Heaven), but if that was the case, Dean couldn't tell why he hadn't been sent on his way. Though to be fair, maybe whatever made that choice didn't know what to do with him. Dean certainly wasn't conventionally "typical".

So it was a bittersweet surprise when he ran into Airy again a full three weeks after they arrived. He was eyeing up a vending machine near one of the banks of massage chairs, weighing the satisfaction he'd gain from either a bag of hot Cheetos or Reese's Pieces when he saw her rounding a corner. He abandoned his critical decision to wave her down.

"Hey! Airy!" So maybe he sounded a little more exuberant than was strictly necessary, but Dean was growing bored (and a little lonely), so a friendly face brought him more joy than he wanted to admit to himself.

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There was no one in the multiverse who loved the new and novel more than Ariadne. But even her unending supply of curiosity was starting to wane, after three weeks wandering the same hallways. She'd made a few furtive attempts to leave, to be sure. But all of them had ended in an abrupt return to the confines of the mall. The air just didn't smell right out there. She wished she had a more firm and concrete way to explain it. All she could settle for, though, was the way the hairs on the back of her neck rose whenever she caught a whiff of the outside.

So she'd started inventing ways to keep herself from getting stir-crazy. Thanks to a few kind strangers she'd met over the last three weeks, she had clothes and boots and a lovely bag to carry over her shoulder. And because she didn't want her skills to atrophy, she'd started to fill the bag with little items she'd borrowed from the stores without asking, when the too-friendly clerks' backs were turned.

Nothing terribly thrilling. A pretty rock. A kerchief. A kitchen knife. In her experience, anything could prove useful at any time.

She smiled when she caught Dean's scent and saw him by one of the glass boxes of food. At least, she assumed it was food. It had words like 'chewy' and 'cheesy' and the like. She hadn't managed to get them to work yet.

"Hello," she said, dipping into a curtsy before she could stop herself. Old habits. But you didn't curtsy to a friend, did you? She tried to cover it by checking the laces on her boots.

Dean interpreted Airy's little dip as a near fall and he reached to catch her. But she seemed to regain her balance, so he just stood there, awkwardly trying to cover his reaction. He ended up just folding his arms across his chest. Super cool. Yep.

"How have you been?" It seemed strange to need to catch-up after only a few weeks spent in the exact same building, but he'd seen and done so much since he'd first made her acquaintance, they may has well have been old friends reporting in.

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Dean understood her vague gesture. He was feeling a bit cooped up himself (at least when it wasn't raining from the ceiling). But other than missing his car, he didn't mind the environs of the mall. He'd found a few out-of-the-way places to where the "patrons" and "employees" didn't bother him.

He was glad she wasn't injured, though, and seemed no worse for the wear. For Dean, often that was all there was to be thankful for.

"Still making friends everywhere you go?" The question was meant as a joke, but one of those not-really-very-funny ones that really just end up being questions.

She frowned a little, reaching into her bag to pull out the walkie talkie she'd picked up. "There isn't anyone inside of this," she explained, not sure if Dean had this sort of device in his world, "but sometimes, there are voices. Coming from somewhere away from here."

Not terribly helpful voices, she supposed. But it was a fascinating change of pace.

She only hoped that her message might still somehow find a way to her aunt. But that didn't seem likely somehow.

In fact, she couldn't even begin to assess the probabilities. The variables were unreal.

He smiled, withdrawing an identical walkie-talkie from his bag and waggling it at her. "It's like a phone." He frowned a bit as he said it, intuiting that if a walkie-talkie was confounding, she probably wouldn't recognize a telephone either.

"You know, like a letter but with your voice. And it's instant." he didn't know of any better explanation, so he figured a demonstration was in order. He pressed the button along the side that opened communication and spoke into it.

"See, Airy? It's just a..." He let go of the button and finished in regular conversation. "...communicator. But it only works for anyone who has one." There were plenty more caveats, but he didn't go into them.

[ooc: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I'm dumb and I just accidentally deleted your comment above :( I have re-posted the text below. Ugh, much Monday, many fail.]

The strange man she'd spoken with the other week had attempted to explain it all to Ariadne, but she had to admit that it made a lot more sense now that she saw what Dean was doing. A clever device. If not a little clumsy. The Elves had something similar. Telepathy tiles. Which, unlike these things, didn't share the messages out loud with anyone who happened to be passing by.

But Alastrians and Humans weren't much for telepathy, anyway. It was an adequate substitute.

Clearly invented by Humans.

"I tried to reach Aunt Lysia on it," she admitted, tucking it back into her bag. "I guess it doesn't reach that far."

[ooc: No worries!]

Dean shook his head. "No, but you can use it raise help here." It's a small consolation certainly, but better than nothing. "So if you need me, just press the button and call." There was a terrible Steve Perry joke just waiting in there, and Dean was grateful Airy wouldn't be able to call him on it (heh). He moved on.

"But don't worry. I'm sure you'll get back your aunt soon." He wasn't sure. For all he knew, they were already dead and their loved ones had mourned them and moved on. But he was a very capable liar who was used to consoling people under the worst circumstances, so he did so reflexively.

She wasn't at all convinced of it, but then again, she wasn't looking to be. Ariadne didn't believe in telling pretty lies. The ones she told were generally downright ugly. So she just smiled absently and gave him a little nod. Hope was good. They had that, at least.

"I think there are maybe twenty or so like us here," she said. "You know, not going around like this..."

She let her eyes go hazy and did a reasonable impression of the glossy-eyed patrons and customers with nothing to say. "Have a wonderful day," she said in a flat, empty tone. Then she blinked back to herself and shrugged. Still no good word for them, whatever they were.

He laughed at her impression. It was another example of her acting talent, a fact Dean filed away for later. As he wasn't a very good actor, it was good to know one should they find a need.

"I've only met a few." His smiled waned a bit because, of those few, he'd only met two of them more than once. It was more evidence for his Hell's Waiting Room hypothesis, certainly, but the news was less heartening if it meant he and Airy were passed over for whatever was happening to everyone else. However, if what was happening to everyone else was they were going outside to be monster chow, well, that was all right. Relatively.

"Can I ask you a question?" He hated when people said that, and he didn't wait for a response, rather forging on to the aforementioned question. "Do you get the feeling we're waiting for something?"

The mall gave him the same sensation as a bus terminal (though with notably urine-stench-related nausea). It was the feeling that a lot of travelers had passed through but no one stayed long.

It was a thoughtful question and Ariadne decided to give it a good deal of thought before she answered. But, of course, the second he asked, she already knew. Slowly, she nodded. "It feels like..." Oh. How to do this while still pretending to be his friend? She mulled over the most remote of kingdoms she'd visited, selecting the absolutely worst one. "It feels like Ruatha," she said. "In the days before the Red Dragon crossed the border. When the whole kingdom was under siege. Everyone was just waiting for the bottom to fall out."

Which was how Valeria felt now. But, of course, Dean would know that. And Ariadne didn't like to talk that way about home. As if there wasn't any future left.

There was a future. There were one million eight hundred and ninety six possible futures. And at least a few of them were perfect.

"Yes," she said. "It does. But what?"

Well, that was the question, wasn't it? What the hell was happening? And there was another competent: why them?

Dean felt like a terrible failure for not knowing. He flopped down into one of the Magic Fingers chairs, resting his chin on his fist and doing everything short of out and out pouting.

"If Sam were here, he'd figure this out." He smiled wanly at Airy. "You remember my brother, right? Big, doofy, moose-like?" He waffled for a moment, the sibling rivalry within him stopping him from elaborating on more of the factual adjectives he could attribute to his brother, like "brainy" and "helpful in these kinds of situations."

Honestly, it took everything in Ariadne's power not to ask what 'moose-like' meant. Did he have antlers? Probably not. More likely, it was just a figure of speech. Ariadne was terrible with figures of speech. But best not to ask. She would know what her dear friend's brother was like.

She squatted down on the floor, in front of one of the other chairs. Her ill-gotten booty clanked in the bag. "It's like a new kind of torture, I think," she said. "The worst part of being in a dungeon is always the waiting. Listening to the sounds of other prisoners on the rack. But here? Here, we don't even know if they have a rack or something worse. Our imaginations can conjure up anything and we just...don't know."

Psychological warfare. It was a curious concept.

But who was waging war against them? The Red Dragon was the greatest monster in Ariadne's life, but as far as she could tell, no one knew who he was. This was something--or someone--new.

Her intimate knowledge of torture sent a chill down Dean's spine, and he looked at her, seeing her suddenly anew . It was if she'd come into focus. For such a close friend, he barely knew her. (But really, that wasn't too different from his actual long-term relationships.)

Perhaps it was more than coincidence that had brought them together in this place. Maybe they really were being tested. He felt the urge to turn and give the finger at the ceiling but he resisted. Instead, he dove deeper into their conversation about their unknowable circumstances. "Do you think we're driving this? Like whatever this is responds to our fears?"

He hadn't seen plain evidence, but as part of Dean's Generic Theory About What The Fuck Was Happening, it made sense. There was something lulling and innocuous about the mall while at the same time, it was clearly sinister (hello, Tobey Maguire's emo bangs). And the vague, unformed monsters stalking them didn't attempt egress as far Dean knew, so they were an empty threat to anyone who had half a brain. In his opinion, Airy hit the nail on the head - whatever was going on had to be motivated at least in part by their imaginations.

She thought she sensed a change in his pulse, but she couldn't be sure. Indeed, her own imagination was definitely playing tricks on her. Not to mention the fact that the abilities she relied upon so heavily back home were failing. She was beginning to distrust herself, which was, indeed, a horrifying thing.

"I suppose it's possible," she said. "But wouldn't that also mean that the opposite was true? If we weren't afraid, things would stop being scary?" She paused. "Of course, I don't know how you go about convincing yourself not to be afraid."

Whistle a happy tune?

That felt too facile. No matter how much she enjoyed music.

Dean wasn't sure if he agreed. Fear was a powerful thing, and even if he could he convince himself not to be afraid of one thing or another, some new fear always rushed in to take its place. He'd even died a few times, so he was no longer afraid of that in and of itself, but he never stopped fearing the absence his death left in the world. And even if people stopped being afraid of the obvious scary things, like fog monsters, more mundane fears would eventually take over and they could be stalked by giant past due notices and tooth decay or whatever normal people were scared of.

But Airy had made a good point. If the mall was feeding off things they were afraid of, it'd have to do a hell of a lot better than monsters and weird patrons as far as Dean was concerned. He was annoyed, yes, and definitely bored, but not scared. He was troubled that he had no way of reaching his brother, and concerned about what was happening without him back in what he thought of as the real world, but not actually fearful.

Ah, well, back to the drawing board.

"No, you're right. It's too simple to be the case." Sullen, he plonked a few quarters into the chair and leaned back into it as it began to pulse in a soothing manner. His next words carried a hint of vibrato. "At least we're not alone with these automatons." He managed a weak smile at her, more grateful than he was letting on that they'd met. They could make a good team if there was actually something to team up against.

She wasn't entirely sure what Dean was doing with his arms, but she figured it must be something perfectly normal in his world. Even if it looked rather awkward, to her.

Well, most Human rituals were fairly awkward, if she was being honest. She still couldn't understand corsets. Or shoes with high heels. But it was apparently what you did. At least according to Lady Adriana. And Ariadne knew better than to argue with her.

"I'm all right," she said, her voice chipper, in spite of the growing sense of restlessness plaguing her. "I'd really like to go outside, but..."

Her hand fluttered a little. A gesture without meaning and without shape. Which pretty much summed up the outside world right now.

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Those aren't magic fingers.

Airy/Dean

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THIS IS AIRY'S COMMENT THAT WAS ACCIDENTALLY DELETED FROM ABOVE