Test Drive 01

[cognitivus]

ɢᴇᴛ ᴄʟᴜsᴛᴇʀᴇᴅ

A Sense8 AU Sandbox

IN THE BEGINNING

It doesn't happen all at once — the world does not reorient itself and thrust upon you seven other cluster mates. No, it happens in stages. Snatches at a time. Moments, sometimes individually, sometimes in sets of two or three. Maybe you're reading a book, and you notice someone sitting beside you on the couch. Maybe you're surfing, and suddenly there's a second person on the board. Maybe you see them in passing, or maybe you both stand there, face to face, equally confused, wondering how you can both speak the same language when one of you is from Middle Earth and the other is clearly in Tokyo.

There's time to talk. Time to figure it out.

Unless, of course, there isn't. It's entirely possible that your first meeting is not during a calm, cozy, collected moment. Maybe you call on one of your sensates during a time of need. A fight, a chase scene, a moment of public speaking in the spotlight. A time when you're truly out of your depth, and you need someone with a particular, complimentary set of skills that can step in on your behalf.

It's time.

warnings : violence, psychological horror

GETTING STARTED

WELCOME TO THE CLUSTER!


On this TDM, don't worry too much about your official cluster pairing. This is for either workshopping different combinations, or different characters. If, in the end, you find you really like a certain combination, simply be sure to ask to be in the same cluster as the folks you've threaded with! For now, worry instead about playing out first meetings. It could look a little something like this:

Tag in with your character name & canon.

Set a scene by providing a variety of moments other characters can witness and jump into.

If you're going to tag into the same prompt someone else has already tagged into, consider making it a group thread; the premise eof this sandbox revolves highly around multi-person interactions. Don't be shy! These are your cluster mates, after all.

Or, if you're feeling especially daring and dramatic (and let's face it, we all are):

Set up a scene from an impactful moment around your intended canonpoint.

AU it to your heart's content. Maybe things go exactly the same as they did in canon, or maybe with a sensate cluster influencing things, it begins the path that deviates things wildly from the canon we all know and love. It's entirely up to you!

---

NETWORK USAGE

Communication via text is still very possible!

Through the magic of the powers of the human mind, that group text across universes still totally exists. Maybe it appears as an actual text chain to you, or maybe it's freshly dried ink on that magical scroll that keeps writing itself the more messages are exchanged.

Whatever the case, your mind retains the communications written down by your cluster, and all correspondences to one another are visible — unless otherwise stated to be private, of course. Create a prompt on your top level with some inbox action, and do a little lowkey texting!

Be sure to specify if a thread is private, otherwise you may have a handful of other folks chiming in with their opinion on your back-and-forth exchange at any time!

---

ANYTHING ELSE

Check out the info page for details, or post to the enable me please meme with information about characters you're considering bringing in! If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me below, or on plurk!

Comments

Will Graham | Hannibal

[cognitivus]

( open top-levels to follow; highly down for group threads. reach me on plurk at paingravy if you need me! )

small moments;

[cognitivus]

A fleeting glimpse or a short exchange, hardly even a conversation.

He sees the members of his cluster for the first time in innocuous places; your character suddenly finds themselves:

In a seat in his classroom, as he gives a lecture — likely with gruesome images on the projected screen behind him.

In the passenger seat of his car on the long, long drive to Wolf Trap, Virginia.

In a mirror, while he's brushing his teeth.

In the middle of the road late at night, immediately after waking up from sleepwalking.

Anywhere else, wildcard me.

larger moments;

[cognitivus]

It's late; he's exhausted. The commute home from Quantico is long, the workday had been long. None of these facts stop him from pulling the car over the moment he spots a stray dog on the side of the road.

He spends an hour earning its trust, with chunks of sausage bought at a nearby convenience store. Patient, endlessly patient, tossing bits out until the poor guy gets closer, closer, close enough to tentatively allow Will to pet him.

After that comes the lengthy, dedicated process of giving the dog a thorough bath in his own bathtub, soaping him up, rinsing him out, repeating it twice more before he's clean. Brushing out his coat. Checking for ticks, and fleas, and anything else. Drying him, feeding him, crating him safely — before introducing him to an entire pack of other dogs. A half-dozen of them easily, who all settle in comfortably around him while he finally, finally lets himself sit, and rest.

He can also be found:

At a crime scene, about to Do His Thing.

Meeting with his new therapist.

Sitting alone at his desk in his classroom, far too late after everyone has already gone home.

Anywhere else, wildcard me.

[aperturesubject0001]

Sometime around the new dog's first rinse, something orange moves in the corner of Will's vision. Deer hunter orange -- don't shoot me orange that's also I can't disappear orange.

Chell is outside. It's taking her a second to process that.

She steps away from Will and the bathtub, not towards, until she reaches the edge of the porch and can put one hand on the whitewashed railing. The look in her eyes is not unlike the dog's on the road: wide and unsure but hopeful, somehow. She's dressed in an orange jumpsuit, like a prison inmate, but no inmate ever wandered around barefoot with those springs attached to their calves.

After a long moment of staring at Will, and the dog, and the way breezes sometimes make their hair move, Chell lifts a hand to her chin and signs, Your dog's really cute.

[cognitivus]

He's not a stranger to seeing things that shouldn't be there. People that shouldn't be there. Some cases are like that, some stand out in his mind more than others and they leave a lasting sort of impression.

But she doesn't fit. Not exactly. Some features fit the Shrike profile; some don't. Right height, right build, right hair, wrong everything else.

He handles it with more calmness than most people might. Hesitant but steady; uncertain but curious. His fingers are still buried into Winston's fur when she begins to sign, and it's instinct for him to start in with, "Oh, I don't-"

Understand sign language — except that he stops himself short, because he... does. He does. It translates in his mind with perfect clarity. Another thing Will is intimately familiar with: the landscape of his own brain, and when something within it has an external source. This understanding did not come from him. There is no source for it, yet he's accessing it.

Damp fingers press to lips; hand extends outward. Thank you?

He's puzzled by it, but-
It could be a fluke. Some things are found commonly enough they're easy to pick up on. Thank you, finger spelling. It does not explain how he was able to understand your dog's really cute.

He looks at her, and he doesn't understand her, he doesn't understand why he does understand her, but he doesn't feel threatened by her. He doesn't feel afraid of whatever... this is. He feels-

Like something that has been lacking an integral piece is about to have that missing piece finally slotted into place.

[aperturesubject0001]

No, you don't, she signs back, blinking. She's very certain of what he was going to say, and equally certain that he meant it. Not in the usual way, where she assumes most people don't know how to sign. It's like -- it's like she can feel the not-understanding somewhere.

But he understood her.

There's something else, too. Like a limb waking up from falling asleep. Something she didn't know was numb is prickling.

This is a dream, she adds, but she looks unconvinced. Must be.

[cognitivus]

As much as he'd like to say there's something surreal about this, there isn't. It's odd, unusual, and unnaturally comfortable in an instinctive way, but it feels all too real. The smell of grass, the wet fur under his hands, it's all tangible and tactile and real — and yet.

He shakes his head slowly.

"I don't think so," it's a low, speculative murmur — to be honest, his dreams are usually far less pleasant. If it were, it would have to be hers — but he's almost certain this woman has never been here before. He'd remember her, he's confident of that.

All of that, of course, being aside from the logistics of sharing a dream with a stranger — it would have to be that, because everything in him is telling him she's not of his own making. With him, but not from him.

Winston looks up at him, head tilting. Calm, but confused. He idly scratches behind damp ears, and that seems to be enough to content him.

[aperturesubject0001]

How would you know? You're something I made up in here. She taps her temple -- then frowns.

Unless they pumped a hallucinogenic in here and didn't mention it. Ugh. Have you seen a big red button around?

[cognitivus]

Unless they pumped a hallucinogenic in here — Will's brow furrows, his fingers stilling in Winston's fur again. That's a concerning statement to just casually toss out into the wind, Chell. When he makes to stand, Winston takes it as his cue to hop out, immediately shaking off wet fur, sending a spray of water out all round him. Will tips his head away automatically, but he's far more preoccupied by this new wonder playing out.

"Hallucinogenics? Are you being drugged? Do you need help?"

That's a no on the big red button, apparently.

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh, man, you wouldn't believe the things she can be casual about.

She flinches in surprise when Winston shakes, and then looks down at the dark spots of water appearing on her jumpsuit. Would that happen in a hallucination? Would everything feel so normal?

No, no, I'm fine. Probably. She waves that off. Help would probably jeopardize the test, anyway. Who are you?

big canon moments: the marlow crime scene.

[cognitivus]

Sirens; the rushing of bodies — uniformed bodies. Body on the floor. A crime scene, hectic, like a kicked wasp nest. In the center of it, there is an island of stillness. A man stands with his eyes closed, unmoving, likely strange to witness for anybody just tuning in for the first time. Most of these officers have seen him do this before.

None of them have experienced it with a first-person point of view, but his new passenger is about to. Maybe they join him right before it begins, or maybe they join him in his imagination, vivid, real, as he strides forward from the darkness outside of the house to stare through the illuminated kitchen window, detached, empty, hollow. Maybe they only join in time to see him brutally kick open the door, pull out a gun, and unload two clean shots into the man running down the stairs.

"I shoot Mr. Marlow twice, severing jugulars and carotids with near-surgical precision. He will die watching me take what is his away from him. This is my design."

And so it unfolds, thirty seconds of brutality that only end once Will notices that he is not alone by the burglar alarm, staring down at Mrs. Marlow's lifeless eyes. So enraptured is he in his imagination, it takes him a long moment to process what he's seeing, and to begin to come back to himself. Join him!

big canon moments: first kill

[cognitivus]

His car pulls up to a nice suburban family home in Minnesota. The intention here isn't anything drastic, just a conversation. Just a chat about a missing address on some paperwork — which is why it's such a startling change in tone when a balding man bodily shoves his wife out the front door and slams it closed behind him again, leaving her to bleed to death through the slit in her throat on the front stoop.

Will doesn't remember going from the car to the doorway — he simply is, from one moment to the next, and then he's kneeling in a rapidly growing pool of blood, staring down at a woman as she dies, feeling himself die with her, feeling tremors begin to run through his body, trembling through his hands as he reaches for her throat, for her grasping fingers, as he tries to stop the bleeding, as he-

As he remembers the girl, the still-living girl, the daughter that this man has been murdering clones of.

Something else takes over, old instinct propelling him forward, gun suddenly in hand, foot slamming against the front door to bang it open, and from here on...

From here on, time seems to slow down.

He pulls the trigger.
Or maybe someone else does?

See.
See.

[brandingproblem]

He tastes panic like copper on the back of his tongue. It's not his but it's also his. It's not coming from him. But it is coming.

Kuba raises his head, cocking his square doggy face at him, and Clint is only vaguely aware. Because he blinks, swears he was only blinking, and then he's--

--got blood-slicked hands making the vice grip on the handgun that much more precarious.

He's aware of someone beside him, but there's a tall man with a knife to a young girl's neck, so Clint gets his priorities quickly in line. (There is no danger from the man beside him.) (He simply knows this.) There's panic and motion and movement. And someone with less honed reflexes might have more hesitation. Someone with worse aim might inadvertently hurt the girl.

Clint's never had a problem with either of those. His hands still, his aim raises, his finger pulls the trigger, once.

The man's head snaps back, and his arm pulls. The knife slides through her skin like butter. Not all the way across her throat, but enough, but enough along the pulse for him to know she may die very quickly.

It pulls his attention. The man is dead; he is certain without having to check the way the body starts to fall backwards and slumps in the kitchen corner. The girl collapses on the floor, and he knows his hands are already damp with blood, but she needs pressure now. The panic is starting to become his fully, because he is not going to let an innocent girl die on his watch, he won't. His eyes snap across the kitchen as he expertly holsters the weapon, looking past his companion, and snatches up a hanging dishtowel. It's not the most sterile option, but neither are his hands.

"Okay," he says quietly, half to himself, half to her gasping and choking and struggling, "okay, I got you, gonna get you help." Blood soaks the towel instantly as he presses in hard, but he's got a better grip this way. He doesn't know where he's getting help from. (There's someone else, isn't there? Calling an ambulance? There was a shot fired. Someone else has to do something here or he's going to watch her slowly bleed out--)

[cognitivus]

Despite what he does for a living, Will Graham has not personally watched a lot of people die. He comes in after the fact. He comes in when things are crime scenes, when the bodies are lifeless, or when the only thing that remains is photographs. He comes in after. He doesn't have to see the moment of.

But Mrs. Hobbs dies in front of him, grasping for him, and he can feel every scrap of her fear, her terror, her life slipping away. The begging she'd be doing inside her own mind. The adrenaline. The sheer, unadulterated panic of knowing that you're going to die. He felt it. He felt it, and he held her, and he watched the life leave her, and he felt the life leave himself, and then —

And then he had to force himself to keep moving, because there's a girl inside, and because the world does not stop for death whether or not Will Graham is the one experiencing it. He's trained. He's trained for this. He always knew it was an inevitability, and he's readied himself for it as best as one possibly can, he's a consummate professional. He-

Is on autopilot, disassociating his way through a panic attack, his body is moving itself and he is watching from the outside.

No.

Wait.

That was true for a moment, and then it wasn't. It's not himself he's watching, but it is, but it's someone else behind the wheel, and he knows behind the partition he could be behind his own eyes again but he isn't, because this man is far more capable of handling this moment than he is, this man knows what to do, this man—

Is inside him. Is him. Isn't him.

The words that come from his lips are in his voice to everyone around him, but not to him. And the man watching this scene unfold is sharp enough to notice the difference in speech, in body language, in action.

But there's no time to dwell on it.

Hannibal slips his hand around Abigail Hobbs' throat, and Will sits back on his haunches again, firmly tethered to his own body once more, as everything that unfolded in the last twenty seconds plays and replays and replays inside his mind, waiting for him to process it for real, like a skipping record.

He raises his eyes and, still shaking, looks directly at Clint. He knows, in that way that Will Graham connects dots and pieces together seemingly impossible puzzles and draws conclusions he can't quite explain, in that way that Will Graham simply knows things, that this man is about to become everything to him.

But he cannot find words, is still speechless, still feels blood on his hands. In this moment, he is Mrs. Hobbs and he is Abigail Hobbs and he is Clint, and he is—

turning his eyes to Garrett Jacob Hobbs, whose eyes are open and lifeless, and yet they affix onto Will. Both Will and Clint will see the corpse whisper to him; see... see... a hushed breath from the lips of a dead man.

— and he is Garret Jacob Hobbs.

[brandingproblem]

Sometime in the moments seconds minutes eterneties lifetimes instances of his hand that is not his hand but is his hand around a girl's neck, there is a man that he doesn't know but immediately recognizes, and then he is no longer on the floor on his knees.

He watches the man watch the scene with an odd calm, no, passivity? No? With a certainty that is calming in its own way. There is no longer blood on his hands. He's him.

Whatever that's worth.

His companion, [friendallylovesoulmateheart] looks at him, directly at him, and in this moment is the first he feels a true crack in his own composure. He's not meant to be seen. Why is he still here? Why is he here at all? What the actual fuck is he doing in Minnesota?

Will. Will is shaken, shaking, and Clint can see the way things are flashing before his eyes, seeing these victims, being these victims in a way he's not sure he could articulate if asked. The corpse speaks. It can't. It's a corpse. Garret Jacob Hobbs is dead as an entire doornail. But there's a ghost of something that might be a smile, pale lips, see--

He crouches on the other side of the girl's body, attention honed in on Will, makes him look. "Focus."

Kuba makes a huffing noise, and when Clint looks askance--

--he's back where he should be, dog wiggling his body with a well-worn rope to tug on bumping against Clint's knee.

[cognitivus]

His eyes snap to Clint again, severing his connection to the dead. Severing his connection to every member of the Hobbs family. Planting him firmly back inside his own mind, rather than leaving him adrift to spiral endlessly outward through three separate storms. He's never been more grateful to anyone for anything in his entire life.

And then Clint is gone, and the sirens are wailing, and Will drags himself through a blurry reality as they load her into the back of an ambulance and as he answers questions with a numb kind of stupor. He cannot afford to think about the helpful hallucination for a while. Not if he wants to pass any kind of scrutiny. It's okay; he's nothing if not well-versed in faking his way through sanity, through normalcy.

It's days later when the world's gone quiet that he finally stops. Sitting on his front porch steps, breathing cool West Virginia air, smelling grass, watching the sun sink low in the sky, Will closes his eyes...

And searches his mind.

He finds doors. Most of them are closed. One of them is open. None of them were here before. Tentatively, carefully, he nudges that door open wider, and he slips through it to see what exists on the other side.

[brandingproblem]

When they aren't hunting, things can be shockingly normal. They're all human at the end of the day. Frank can live off cans of whatever happens to be cheap and around for months on end, and Clint can live off of literally whatever he's allowed to have, and they would both be fine.

But they don't have to live that way. They can shop for actual fucking groceries. Like real people do. Easier when it's Clint; he's a collar and nobody looks at him twice for running errands. Might look twice if the Big Bad Punisher pushes a squeaky shopping cart around, though.

He's looking at boxes of dog biscuits. Wonders about Kuba's health, if maybe he should pick up something a little leaner. But something changes. Something's different.

He doesn't raise his head in alarm, but his eyes slide over where he gets that sensation of being watched. Nobody should be watching a collar. Their eyes should pass over the hunk of metal locked around his neck and then pass over him right after. He puts one box back as an excuse to look up.

[cognitivus]

He's no stranger to the concept of stepping into his mind and coming out somewhere else, but it's never been — like this. It's never taken him to another world, another life, to another mind entirely, someone still thinking and breathing and separate from him, but not separate from him. It's...

Overwhelming. Unbelievable. Incredible. Terrifying. Awe inspiring.

Will's eyes aren't affixed on Clint; they're trailing around the store taking in every detail, lips parted faintly in his wonderment. The different brands. The different people. The — collars that he's only just starting to notice on certain people, and the way they keep their eyes downcast, and the way some people aren't wearing them, and —

Then to Clint, finally, with a furrow in his brow.

"They're not making eye contact with anyone," he says — and it's a question. A statement and a question. Is that against a rule? Are they not allowed? The other collars, he means. Not that he's the biggest fan of that himself either, but it's... different.

[brandingproblem]

It’s a question and not a question at the same time. Clint’s brow matches Will’s furrow, still not looking directly at him. There is a part of him that thinks that, maybe, just maybe, this is someone else, someone different, someone who isn’t talking to him.

Futile, he knows. He knows it intrinsically, and he’s not sure that he likes it. It feels...intrusive? No, but it doesn’t, is the thing. But it’s strange, and he’s not sure what to do about it. It’s the same man from what had felt like a dream that he knew wasn’t a dream. It’s Will. And he knows Will. But he’s never met Will. But…

If he’s being spoken to, he can speak back. Anyone can speak to him if they so wish. Frank’s never told him not to speak to anyone; he would never order such a thing. He dares, at last, to look askance.

“You look better this way,” he says, which does not answer the question-statement. He means not covered in blood and panicking and dissociating literally out of your body, is what he means. But also: “Do you wear contacts?” Since he’s not wearing glasses right now.

His voice is quiet, though. He does hate this, this back and forth that makes it harder to get used to the idea of being a full person, being who he could be, is allowed to be, around Frank versus what he has to be in public. He knows Frank doesn’t like it, either, but it’s easier this way. Fewer eyes, fewer questions.

[cognitivus]

It's such an absurd thing, isn't it? Out of all of the things they could be talking about, out of all of the questions, all of the things they could be asking each other, it's why don't they make eye contact and do you wear contact lenses? Maybe it's just that the bigger question feels —

Something. It feels like an answer in and of itself. It feels too big to have an answer. He knows, innately, somehow, that Clint doesn't hold that answer in his mind anyway, and so asking it seems pointless. They're both at a loss.

"No, I--" He gestures vaguely toward his face without actually bothering to lift his hands much higher than his sternum. "Nearsighted. Not- enough to need them all of the time, just... sometimes."

When he's driving. When he's trying to do everything in his power to avoid making eye contact with thirty or forty people at once. When he'd really rather not be having a conversation with somebody who is, most likely, a stranger — or worse, isn't one.

"I think..." he says slowly, head tipping to the side ever so slightly, "That where I come from and where you come from may have very different social customs surrounding- that."

A nod at Clint's throat.

For starters, the fact that he and so many others are wearing that in public, in a grocery store.

[brandingproblem]

Clint hesitantly brings up a hand near his collar. Doesn't touch it. Finally, at last, he properly looks at Will. "...You're not from Canada." Not a question. Statement. He knows this. But the idea that someone is from a culture where this has different social customs just sounds like Canada. Where they don't have the social customs. They don't have collars.

He almost asks about the railroad, but this is not a place to bring that up. He sets the box of dog treats in the cart and makes a point of glancing around, makes sure he's not in the way, keeps himself as pressed to the shelves as he reasonably can. Glances at Will again, then looks distantly not at him again.

"How did you find me?"

[cognitivus]

That nearly startles a laugh from him — Canada? No, no he's very much not from Canada, and the puzzlement that passes across his features, while brief, is all the confirmation Clint needs. Are the rules surrounding slavery different in Canada? It would make sense, he thinks, in a bizarre way. It would line up consistently with the disparity between America and its neighbor, their values, the political landscape...

This is-
Baffling. Impossible. There are some very well-educated people who would be overcome with the idea of studying the point in history where the trajectory of things began to skew, people who would have a thousand better, smarter questions than Will does right now. His concern isn't with the alternate histories of parallel universes, though.

A far higher priority to him is the connection.

"You left the door open," he says, as though that will make any sense at all. It does, just... maybe only to Will. "Although... the fact that there are doors at all is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around."

[brandingproblem]

"Door..." He doesn't really know what that means. He left...himself? Open? He left something in his head open? Like when you don't eject a USB drive? Like when you don't put a password on your wifi?

"So it happened? That happened." He didn't look. He didn't go looking up information, didn't turn on the news, didn't ask Frank to borrow the laptop to look at the idea of murder in Minnesota. He picked up the name. Not sure how he knows the name. Like he flipped through a psychic rolodex and... "Garret Jacob Hobbs."

[cognitivus]

That happened; he nods, a little sideways, a little jerky, but an affirmative. It happened; unquestionably, repressively, life-alteringly. It happened.

"Dead," he says, as if that were ever any question — Clint put a bullet directly through his skull. It would take some kind of insane miracle or someone absolutely superhuman to survive something like that. But more relevantly, "His daughter lived. Thanks to you."

All credit where it's due: it was Clint that saved Abigail Hobbs' life. Will cannot reliably say whether or not he'd have pulled the trigger himself. He'd like to think so, but it would've been seconds later. Long enough to make a difference. Long enough for a deeper cut. He'd have hesitated. Clint didn't.

[brandingproblem]

"I didn't question what was happening." Which is baffling in hindsight. "Something was happening, and I saw the situation, and I acted accordingly. I got the impression you needed help."

Clint shakes his head a little, pushes the cart. "Listen, if we're going to talk, you can come with me, okay? I can look like I belong to you if need be. If you've...got questions, I can try answering. Unless you're as confused as I am."

But Will found him through a door. So. Maybe Will's the one with answers instead.