“Excellent! Oh, this is going to be fun!” he claps.
“Now, here’s what I think we’ll do. For as long as you’re able to, I’m going to take rounds of sneaking around your mind, and you’re going to try to catch me. We don’t need to do this all today. So long as you’re willing, we can keep having these lessons. And once you’re able to catch me a few times in a row, I can teach you the next part.”
“Oh, there is one little snag. Obliviously, having a mad god sneak around inside your skull has the potential to move all of your furniture half an inch to the left, so to speak. After our sessions, you may have your ears turned up so high that you start seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. A temporary side effect… hopefully.”
Because that's why he's asking for help in the first place, isn't it? He doesn't ever want his brain and his ears getting that messed up again. Before Radar arrived on Marrow Isle, he could always count on his senses to tell him the truth, even when they told him stuff nobody else thought was real. The idea that his ears or eyes might get screwed up permanent like that --
A cold lump forms in his stomach, and he has to take another gulp of tea to try and heat it up. It doesn't work too good.
Smaller, he asks, "Am I gonna know what's real and what's not? If that happens?"
“I don’t know. It differs, from person to person.”
He leans in.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Radar. I think you’re rather the pleasant sort, and I tend to like that more often than I don’t. But I’m a Daedric Prince. I don’t get what I want, I get what I am, and what I am is madness. With me, there will always be risks. But sometimes those risks are for things you would be much better with than without. Am I clear?”
...He's right. Isn't he? You take risks all the time if it'll mean something better. Maybe it's just easier to take those risks when it's somebody else's life in danger; maybe if this weren't gonna possibly destroy the only thing Radar truly likes about himself, it'd be easier still.
But sometimes, months after meeting him at Mr. Rambo's barbecue, Radar still catches himself humming the eerie song Nyarlathotep played in Dr. de Kuiper's head. He stops whenever he notices what he's doing, but not before his stomach does a nauseous swoop. I think if he was gonna notice me, he would've already, he said at the time. Maybe he has.
And if one of the demons or Nyarlathotep gets ahold of him and Radar can't protect himself, well, then his head's definitely gonna be screwed up permanently.
So he drains the last of the tea, sets his cup back on the table with a decisive clink, and says, steady as he can, "Yes, sir."
He doesn't so much as get a chance to put the cup down before butterflies swallow his vision and he's plunged into darkness.
There's something following him in the darkness, something flipping switches, turning knobs, pressing buttons while the music plays. Something daring him to follow it through the darkness, if he's got the courage. Something that cackles and mocks him.
(Author's note: Wear headphones and close your eyes for best results)
Radar gasps, whirling around. Squinting doesn't do a darn thing in a darkness this absolute, but he squints anyway, puts out a hand like he's fumbling toward the latrine during a blackout. The music warps around his head and tunnels through his ears. It's so distorted that it's no help at all -- he thinks he's going to put his foot down in one spot, and stumbles suddenly when his foot doesn't connect with the floor for another three inches.
goodnight, i rene goodnight ʇɥƃıupooƃ 'ǝuǝɹı 'ʇɥƃıupooƃ
Where does he go? Who's following who?
Where do you want to be? Fever murmurs in his memory.
He doesn't know any of it yet. Radar tries to listen, head spinning with each sideways yank of the dials, before he squares his shoulders and wobbles toward what he thinks is the sound of laughter.
His eyes gradually adjust to the darkness, and slowly but surely, a series of arched hallways come dimly into view. His vision swims like he’s seeing it through water, depths unpredictable and shapes distorting, but it still provides more clues than the initial blackout.
In addition to the laughter, he keeps catching the sound of footsteps, sometimes echoing from places where it shouldn’t be possible for footsteps to be. Is… is the sound coming from the ceiling?
The visuals disorient him, but it's not as bad as the sounds skewing and skipping in weird places. Radar's used to his eyes misbehaving ever since he got his first pair of glasses as a toddler; sometimes, he thinks, that's why he got such good ears to compensate.
But now that he can sorta see where he's going, Radar touches a palm to where one of the walls ought to be. He misses the first time, corrects on the second, inches along in anticipation of the wall or the floor dropping out from underneath him at any second. He stops when he hears the footsteps above him. Holds his breath. Cocks his head, just a little.
Where do you want to be?
It's a crazy idea, but the whole point of talking to a madgod is that he makes you go a little crazy, right?
Cautiously, Radar lifts a foot and plants it against the wall to see if he can walk straight up toward the footsteps.
Wait, has the gravity been pointing downward all this time? A step or two along the length of the wall and he’s skidding down along it, only barely managing to arrest his fall by the friction of his feet. He still hits the ground rather unceremoniously, but things are clearer down here, the music a little less distorted. It still echoes through the halls like a bad dream, though.
Radar yelps, flails as he skids down the wall, and thumps against the ground with his left shoulder taking the brunt of the tumble. Groaning, he pushes himself upright. His glasses got knocked askew in the fall; quickly, he straightens them and clambers to his feet, absently kneading his shoulder as he readjusts his bearings.
Okay. Okay. He gives his head a brief, violent shake like he's trying to shoo away a fly. Now what?
sometim
es i live in th
e country
some
times i l
ive in town
The nightmare of the gala started to change, he realizes, when he thought about home. When he decided that was where he wanted to be. The hospital faded and grass started to grow. So... so maybe...
"I want more light," he whispers. "I want to be home."
Grass begins to grow through the cracks in the stone. The ceiling begins to crumble, showing patches of blue sky. The music shifts and gains a new hum, coming from somewhere beyond the now-ruined walls.
Radar laughs, a quick, giddy sound that blends with one of the crackly ruptures in the music. He tips his head back and closes his eyes against the sun. Listens harder to the new swoop in the melody. He swears he can even hear the grass growing as it rises and rises through the stone.
And then he sprints straight for one of the biggest cracks in the wall.
The stone crumbles in front of him, and he's in a field of tall grass now, under an endless blue sky. There's a farmhouse in the distance, and that's where the music is coming from. It's no longer the crackling of an old phonograph, but the fuzzy warmth of a radio, and he can here the distortion of someone fiddling with the dials.
Not just any farmhouse, but the O'Reilly farmhouse. Home. Really, truly home, like he's pictured it for years. The heart-cracking joy of it, and the triumph of finally hearing the dials spin, collide with one another, and Radar whoops so loud it echoes as he races across the familiar field.
Grass this high should be a pain to slog through, but it parts like he's ten feet tall. It even starts to bend in advance before long, forming a path that ribbons ahead to the front steps. Radar takes them two at a time as soon as he gets there, laughing as he barrels through the front door.
Ma? he almost calls on reflex before he remembers.
"I didn't know it'd work!" Breathless, grinning so bright he could light the whole farmhouse, Radar presses a hand to his hat and laughs again. "I-I remembered something Fever said when we were stuck at the gala, and how sometimes I could make things change if I just thought about it, and -- !"
And here they are. Here he is, right where he wants to be.
"I should never wonder for a moment if she's my darling girl. Wise in madness, that one. So, you already knew a little, more than I thought. You've found your way out of the darkness, to the place where you want to be. Now comes the tricky part- we need to teach the intruder a lesson. And that means chasing them down when they run back into the confusion of the in-between. Before we do that, though... set a while, and fiddle with the radio. Let's make sure you know how to put things back to where you want them to be."
Still beaming, Radar plops down next to Sheogorath and scoots close enough to the radio to reach the dials. This part oughta be easy, right? All he has to do is...
...the first dial he touches doesn't budge. Huh.
His brow knits. He gives the same dial another yank, harder, but it only moves a hair's width to the right in response. "Aw, c'mon," he mutters to himself, and tries a few more of the knobs, one right after the other, as the music keeps humming along.
(That's always been the nature of his ears. He can sort through what he picks up, he can navigate what he oughta respond to and what he ought to let pass by, but he can never quite control what he hears in the first place.)
“Now, now, you’re letting yourself get hung up over the idea of twisting them too far in the other direction. You have you give them a good, solid turn, and not be afraid about the possibility of having to correct yourself.”
Huh. Radar pauses, frowning at one of the dials. He frames it lightly between thumb and forefinger. "I thought I was turning it pretty hard already."
But was he hesitating, like Sheogorath said? Yeah. Yeah, he was, he guesses. Somewhere deep in his chest, the anxiety of messing up so bad that he permanently ruins his hearing still flutters. So... okay, maybe if he just ignores that, like he ignores all his other useless anxieties whenever the choppers come, and just -- takes a deep breath, and...
He twists the dial.
This time, it moves, and Radar winces as a squeal of feedback hits his ears.
How he handles it: not well. Not at first. All Radar does is clap his hands over his ears, like he's forgotten altogether that he's the one controlling the noise. That he can do more than react; that in this, he isn't merely a receiver.
Five seconds' worth of his ears ringing almost as bad as they did when Mendel messed with him, though, and he remembers. Oh. We're inside my head. If I want it to stop, then I'm the one who's gotta do it.
Grimacing, Radar peels one hand away from his ears to touch the dial again. Slowly, slowly, he inches it the other way, closer to where it was before, and some of the screeching begins to dim.
Not even a little. It's like an earworm that squeezes in between the gaps in the song, or immediately thinking of a purple elephant as soon as somebody says don't think of a purple elephant. The anxious fluttering gives his ribs a good solid whack and sends the vibrations all the way up to his fingers.
The dial twitches too far again. Radar winces, scowls, and mutters, "I wasn't nervous til you said something about it."
"Ah, but it's only me whispering in your ear now. Imagine what it'd be like with one of the demons, or ol' Nyarly. It's better to learn how to shore yourself up before the next wave comes crashing in. And oh, it'll come crashing in."
The earworm is accompanied by a tingling running up and down Radar's spine. It makes him feel like he's at risk for a shock with each touch of the dial.
Sometimes, doing what's best for your favorite mortals means being unkind in the moment. You have to prune back some of that hard-won growth to make sure they don't get stunted.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chiming
no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 02:57 pm (UTC)From:“Now, here’s what I think we’ll do. For as long as you’re able to, I’m going to take rounds of sneaking around your mind, and you’re going to try to catch me. We don’t need to do this all today. So long as you’re willing, we can keep having these lessons. And once you’re able to catch me a few times in a row, I can teach you the next part.”
“Oh, there is one little snag. Obliviously, having a mad god sneak around inside your skull has the potential to move all of your furniture half an inch to the left, so to speak. After our sessions, you may have your ears turned up so high that you start seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. A temporary side effect… hopefully.”
no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 06:05 pm (UTC)From:Because that's why he's asking for help in the first place, isn't it? He doesn't ever want his brain and his ears getting that messed up again. Before Radar arrived on Marrow Isle, he could always count on his senses to tell him the truth, even when they told him stuff nobody else thought was real. The idea that his ears or eyes might get screwed up permanent like that --
A cold lump forms in his stomach, and he has to take another gulp of tea to try and heat it up. It doesn't work too good.
Smaller, he asks, "Am I gonna know what's real and what's not? If that happens?"
no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 01:56 am (UTC)From:He leans in.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Radar. I think you’re rather the pleasant sort, and I tend to like that more often than I don’t. But I’m a Daedric Prince. I don’t get what I want, I get what I am, and what I am is madness. With me, there will always be risks. But sometimes those risks are for things you would be much better with than without. Am I clear?”
no subject
Date: 2024-11-18 03:58 am (UTC)From:But sometimes, months after meeting him at Mr. Rambo's barbecue, Radar still catches himself humming the eerie song Nyarlathotep played in Dr. de Kuiper's head. He stops whenever he notices what he's doing, but not before his stomach does a nauseous swoop. I think if he was gonna notice me, he would've already, he said at the time. Maybe he has.
And if one of the demons or Nyarlathotep gets ahold of him and Radar can't protect himself, well, then his head's definitely gonna be screwed up permanently.
So he drains the last of the tea, sets his cup back on the table with a decisive clink, and says, steady as he can, "Yes, sir."
A deep breath.
"I'm ready."
cw: mindheckery, link contains brief mention of suicidal ideation
Date: 2024-11-27 02:59 am (UTC)From:There's something following him in the darkness, something flipping switches, turning knobs, pressing buttons while the music plays. Something daring him to follow it through the darkness, if he's got the courage. Something that cackles and mocks him.
(Author's note: Wear headphones and close your eyes for best results)
no subject
Date: 2024-11-30 03:11 am (UTC)From:goodnight, i rene goodnight
ʇɥƃıupooƃ 'ǝuǝɹı 'ʇɥƃıupooƃ
Where does he go? Who's following who?
Where do you want to be? Fever murmurs in his memory.
He doesn't know any of it yet. Radar tries to listen, head spinning with each sideways yank of the dials, before he squares his shoulders and wobbles toward what he thinks is the sound of laughter.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-01 04:07 pm (UTC)From:In addition to the laughter, he keeps catching the sound of footsteps, sometimes echoing from places where it shouldn’t be possible for footsteps to be. Is… is the sound coming from the ceiling?
no subject
Date: 2024-12-01 07:44 pm (UTC)From:But now that he can sorta see where he's going, Radar touches a palm to where one of the walls ought to be. He misses the first time, corrects on the second, inches along in anticipation of the wall or the floor dropping out from underneath him at any second. He stops when he hears the footsteps above him. Holds his breath. Cocks his head, just a little.
Where do you want to be?
It's a crazy idea, but the whole point of talking to a madgod is that he makes you go a little crazy, right?
Cautiously, Radar lifts a foot and plants it against the wall to see if he can walk straight up toward the footsteps.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-01 08:11 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-12-01 09:10 pm (UTC)From:Okay. Okay. He gives his head a brief, violent shake like he's trying to shoo away a fly. Now what?
The nightmare of the gala started to change, he realizes, when he thought about home. When he decided that was where he wanted to be. The hospital faded and grass started to grow. So... so maybe...
"I want more light," he whispers. "I want to be home."
no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 12:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 03:05 am (UTC)From:It worked.
Radar laughs, a quick, giddy sound that blends with one of the crackly ruptures in the music. He tips his head back and closes his eyes against the sun. Listens harder to the new swoop in the melody. He swears he can even hear the grass growing as it rises and rises through the stone.
And then he sprints straight for one of the biggest cracks in the wall.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 03:27 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 04:19 am (UTC)From:Grass this high should be a pain to slog through, but it parts like he's ten feet tall. It even starts to bend in advance before long, forming a path that ribbons ahead to the front steps. Radar takes them two at a time as soon as he gets there, laughing as he barrels through the front door.
Ma? he almost calls on reflex before he remembers.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 04:50 am (UTC)From:“Well now, that was quicker than expected. You almost seemed like you knew what you were doing.”
no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 03:31 pm (UTC)From:And here they are. Here he is, right where he wants to be.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-04 05:03 pm (UTC)From:"I should never wonder for a moment if she's my darling girl. Wise in madness, that one. So, you already knew a little, more than I thought. You've found your way out of the darkness, to the place where you want to be. Now comes the tricky part- we need to teach the intruder a lesson. And that means chasing them down when they run back into the confusion of the in-between. Before we do that, though... set a while, and fiddle with the radio. Let's make sure you know how to put things back to where you want them to be."
no subject
Date: 2024-12-06 12:46 am (UTC)From:Still beaming, Radar plops down next to Sheogorath and scoots close enough to the radio to reach the dials. This part oughta be easy, right? All he has to do is...
...the first dial he touches doesn't budge. Huh.
His brow knits. He gives the same dial another yank, harder, but it only moves a hair's width to the right in response. "Aw, c'mon," he mutters to himself, and tries a few more of the knobs, one right after the other, as the music keeps humming along.
(That's always been the nature of his ears. He can sort through what he picks up, he can navigate what he oughta respond to and what he ought to let pass by, but he can never quite control what he hears in the first place.)
no subject
Date: 2024-12-29 07:58 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-12-30 01:39 am (UTC)From:Huh. Radar pauses, frowning at one of the dials. He frames it lightly between thumb and forefinger. "I thought I was turning it pretty hard already."
But was he hesitating, like Sheogorath said? Yeah. Yeah, he was, he guesses. Somewhere deep in his chest, the anxiety of messing up so bad that he permanently ruins his hearing still flutters. So... okay, maybe if he just ignores that, like he ignores all his other useless anxieties whenever the choppers come, and just -- takes a deep breath, and...
He twists the dial.
This time, it moves, and Radar winces as a squeal of feedback hits his ears.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-30 01:42 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2025-01-01 09:56 pm (UTC)From:Five seconds' worth of his ears ringing almost as bad as they did when Mendel messed with him, though, and he remembers. Oh. We're inside my head. If I want it to stop, then I'm the one who's gotta do it.
Grimacing, Radar peels one hand away from his ears to touch the dial again. Slowly, slowly, he inches it the other way, closer to where it was before, and some of the screeching begins to dim.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-15 07:01 pm (UTC)From:The suggestion of jitters is, of course, not helping with jitters.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-16 02:49 am (UTC)From:The dial twitches too far again. Radar winces, scowls, and mutters, "I wasn't nervous til you said something about it."
(Liar.)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-17 07:06 pm (UTC)From:The earworm is accompanied by a tingling running up and down Radar's spine. It makes him feel like he's at risk for a shock with each touch of the dial.
Sometimes, doing what's best for your favorite mortals means being unkind in the moment. You have to prune back some of that hard-won growth to make sure they don't get stunted.
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