77th_emo_earl | [For the Winchester Brothers] Not Doing a Lunatic Dance Yet...

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[For the Winchester Brothers] Not Doing a Lunatic Dance Yet...

Continued from Here

Titus tilts his head a bit and rises as Dean stands up. "Your brother knows much about this matter of trouble? He would not think me mad once I described to him these frightening circumstances?" he asks. Considering the kind of hereditary madness that seems to run through the Groan line, it's likely something he's concerned about, even if he doesn't know what's the cause behind it. "I am not adverse to it: in something like this, I suppose that I need all the assistance that I can obtain. Lead me where you will."

So, continued from the night of the Morgoth attacks. Shall we go for a Titus-Dean-Sam arrangement?

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"True," Sam allows, chewing on the inside of his lip. "Huh. So probably not your classic demon, right?" He says to Dean, before looking back at Titus. "Personally? No, I don't think you're insane. Can you think of anything else about what happened, though? Maybe-" He glances over at Dean, not quite nervously. "Maybe tell me what happened, from the beginning. Just so I can hear it from the horse's mouth."

Not that he doesn't think you're good at this or something! No! Not going that direction!

(He may be a little obscurely paranoid in the Dean direction at the moment.)

"It is not an easy tale to tell: I was in my room, putting pen to paper in order to write a letter of farewell to my friend Ahiru, a girl who had been almost as a younger sister to me. Master de Bergerac had recommended that I write it in order to ease my spirits," Titus relates.

"I had paused, wondering how this could have happened, how she could have vanished, and I tried to take comfort in the thought that perhaps she had merely found her way home to her own world. But then a voice spoke out of the darkness of the room, an unpleasant voice, which claimed that it had taken her. I challenged the voice, telling it to unhand her. It mocked me and I gave it an angry retort: instead it laughed at me, and that is when my hand moved as if pulled by invisible strings which another controlled. My hand opened a drawer of the desk and drew out a paper knife, which it started to stab toward my free hand. But somehow, by an act of the will, I forced my hand to obey me and I dropped the paper knife.

"After that, I could not bear to be solitary any longer, nor could I bear to sleep in case I should dream something horrible, and so I descended to the kitchen where your companion discovered me."

Dean shrugs at Sam the first time - it's been a while since they've dealt with "classic" demons, so he wouldn't be at all surprised, and he doesn't seem to be now. He, too, looks back at Titus - when Sam casts another, weirder glance at him, he's met with a raised eyebrow from Dean, but it's pure and simple puzzlement. It's a weird vibe he's picking up from his brother, not from Titus, and his eyes switch back to the other man to give him his attention but, uncharacteristically, the elder hunter doesn't add anything.

He's glad of the extra details, too, and when Titus finishes up, Dean not only corrects casually - "Brother." - because if that doesn't get out there, people tend to think the wrong things; but he also cocks his head slightly to one side and seeks clarification. "The voice came from somewhere in the room? Like, you heard someone speaking to you?" Beat. "Not inside your head?"

He'd glanced doubtfully to Sam at an act of will - there were only two people Dean had ever met that had been able to overpower being possessed by a demon by sheer act of will, and it had taken far more incentive than stabbing themselves in the hand with a letter opener to do it.

Sam nods minutely at that glance, in silent agreement that he has his own doubts about possession, between the description and Titus' ability to break free of it at all. His ears have also perked up at the same detail Dean noticed.

(In his own head, Sam is just observing that he is no longer assuming that 'de Bergerac' is the historical one, and that this is probably a bad sign.)

Titus shakes his head. "Nay, the voice came from without, as if some invisible man had crept into the room and had started to mock my grief," he replies.

He looks from one to the other, concerned, even worried, hoping that this makes sense to the both of them and that he isn't confusing them, or weakening his case for his sanity.

"Huh." Dean sits back a bit from his reflexive lean to brace his elbows on his knees where he's sitting on the edge of his bed, features thoughtful. He doesn't look in the least confused, at least not with the basic premise of Titus's tale. He looks like he's flipping through a mental rolodex of possibilities - which is exactly what he's doing.

"And you're sure you didn't smell anything? Nothing like rotten eggs, or... like... you know how everything smells after a bad storm? Nothing like that, not even a little? Take a second and think about it." He glances at Sam, giving the slightest shrug; he doesn't know.

Definitely chewing on his lip now, and Sam makes a brief move as if to get up and pace, but it's quickly aborted with a slight wince. Not the time for pacing, perhaps. He doesn't want Dean to get worried about anything, not if he wants to make a campaign for getting out of the house at all in the near future.

Sam watches Titus with one eye, and mouths at Dean, Some kind of spirit manifestation? Vague, but it could be somewhere to start. Maybe.

He pauses, thinking for a long moment, then shakes his head, lifting his hands in a small shrug. "Nay, I smelled nothing out of the ordinary, nothing except the damp of that night, since it was a rather close and muggy one."

Dean doesn't look at Sam, not directly, but he both nods and gives the signature worth a shot shrug. More obviously, he nods to Titus and mentally ticks off the box beside the next question on his Find Out What This Is list.

"How long you been in that room?" If he hasn't been there long it might be a thing with the room; if he's been there quite some time, that's not as likely.

Sam, meanwhile, goes for both a notebook and a book, flips the book open and starts writing fast in the notebook, though one eye is still on both Titus and Dean, clearly listening to the answer to this question.

"I have been dwelling in that room since this autumn past: I had been dwelling in a dim room on the north side, but a kind girl helped me to move to my present lodgings because my room at the time lacked fresh air, which had made me ill," he replies. "I have been there perhaps some eight or nine months and I have never noticed anything strange there until this night."

Dean glances over at what Sam is doing, but doesn't interrupt Titus. Instead, on the end of the kid's answer, Dean tags a clear aside to his brother - "Anniversary?" - before returning full attention to Titus.

"Was there anything in the room when you moved in? That you kept, I mean? Or did you bring it all with you?"

Sam jots that down, and asks, "By the way - where is this, in the house? What floor, what wing..." Because whatever it is, they're going to need to go look at it. And adds, to Dean, "What kind of a night was it, that..."

So many questions, but Titus is only too willing to answer them if it helps him to find a cure for this situation. "There was a chair, a desk, a bed and a wardrobe in the room when I arrived. When I was well enough to remove my things from my old room, I brought in the same clothes that I had had in my old room.

"My current room is on the third floor, in the southern wing, and the window faces due south: it is quite well-lit in the daytime and at night as well, if there is a full moon."

Dean, perfectly capable of carrying on two conversations at once as long as one of them is with Sam, flicks one glance to his brother - "Dunno." - then smoothly transitions back to Titus.

"Mind if we take a look? We might see something you didn't notice at the time. What with the aborted stabbing and all."

Sam jots something down. "I'll find out," he says, and then sets the notebook aside. "Might be important, who knows." He examines Titus, and after a nod to agree with Dean's suggestion, asks, "Just to be clear - nothing like this has happened to you before?"

"Nay, I do not mind in the least: the more pairs of eyes to examine this, the better," he says, stepping aside and lifting the latch on the door. "But, no, this has not happened to me before: there were no demons nor spirits nor gods nor angels in Gormenghast, and so I have had no experience with anything of this nature."

Dean lets Sam take point on the questioning for now, focusing instead on carefully levering himself back to his feet. He never stops smirking, but it's a more laborious task recently than it has been most of his life, and he only tunes back into the conversation once he's ready to start walking forward.

"Lead the way, kiddo." Dean prompts, reaching to take over holding the door open so the trio can pass into the hallway.

He was mostly making sure you weren't mental, Titus. Or that something followed you here, that is true. On the other hand...for the moment, he'll put the notebook down and stand up himself. "I think that's it, without seeing the room itself. We should...do that."

Another one of those slightly odd glances at Dean.

"Very well, if you gentlemen will follow me," he say, stepping through the door and beckoning them to follow him. He'll lead the way down the hallway and around a corner, then down another hallway, leading to his room. He'll open the door and step aside to let them enter first.

The room within is comfortable, but not lavish, and a bit untidy in a lived-in way. A few clothes hap-hazardly draped over a chest and a pair of riding boots dumped over under the bed. There are a few books scattered on the desk, as well as an ink-splattered sheet of paper. A quill pen is lying on the floor where he dropped it, and the chair is tipped over.

Dean flips a hand idly at Sam's glance, and tails the two of them down the hall. When he slips past Titus and into the room, the change is immediate, and most akin to some kind of hound searching a field for a scent trail; if he had mobile ears they'd be perked up and focused forward, his eyes bright and intent, and he is actually sniffing the air - though subtly. He moves forward and mentally separates the room into a grid, and begins poking around opposite Sam.

Since the typists already know what actually happened, it's safe to say there's nothing to find; no sulfur in the air, no marks on the walls or floor, no hexbags hidden behind a book or under the bed. Dean does his best to turn the room upside down, though, putting things back where he finds them for the most part unless or until Titus protests. Dean has never been the one with finesse.

If Titus doesn't stop him, though, he'll end up standing next to the discarded quill, wishing he could crouch down to examine it, and looking for the knife that had been mentioned before.

Sam follows Dean into the room and does his own poking around, wondering if he should be able to - he doesn't know, sense something or something. For the moment, though, relying on his eyes, and catching nothing out of the ordinary. Eventually, he straightens and follows Dean's eyes to the quill.

"Where's the knife you were talking about?" he asks, voicing that particular thought. "The one that tried to stab you?"

Erasing previous candidates in his mind and trying to sort through potential new ones, but of course it could be something entirely new they've never seen before, that's always a possibility.

He looks down beside the desk. "It has fallen down behind the far side of the desk. It is here on the floor," he says, pointing to the knife, as it lies on the carpet beside the desk.

Dean raises both eyebrows and bends to look where Titus is pointing; his eyebrows frown a bit, then, and he sighs softly. Crap. Instead of being able to just crouch down and go at it, Dean lowers himself stiffly to one knee and shakes the sleeve of his henley down over his hand so he can reach to pick up the knife without touching it to his skin. He just stays where he is on the floor while holding it so both he and Sam can look at it, turning it to try and figure out what kind of metal it is, if there's anything unusual about it, before his eyes trail back to bounce between the floor where it ended up and the desk it came off of.

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[For the Winchester Brothers] Not Doing a Lunatic Dance Yet...

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