AN ~ Yeah…. I've been gone for a good while. I got engaged and my life has been entirely upside down, but I think I can start to make some time for writing this again. Still gonna finish it. Still really enjoying it. Let's go. (Also, the name of this chapter got cut off when I uploaded it. The full name is "And I Cringe - I Don't Smile - As I Sit There on Trial… " )

…

The whipping of a dust devil engulfs the dry plane in a cloud, sending a mare in the far corner into a tizzy. She rears and tosses her head upon seeing the miniature twister between her and her herd mates. The older, more experienced mares stare at her. A couple pin their ears for just a second before returning to their rather dry grazing. As soon as the sandy storm disperses, she gallops back to the other side of the pasture and she nearly collides with the eldest mare and her foal while skidding to a stop. Hazel eyes watch with an air of amusement, something not shared by the older man off the young boy's right shoulder. "Don't be shocked if her's is born dead," he spits, pointing the neck of an empty beer bottle towards the chestnut Peruvian.

"Why?" asks the child, picking up his head from the fence post."Stress kills - especially the potros. She's always fretting. Running and startling. If she doesn't kill her own baby doing all that, one of the other yeguas will for acting too wild 'round theirs.""Why would they do that?""She's acting dangerous. Could hurt their bebés. Ella es demasiado salvaje."

"How do we make her stop?"

The man shakes his head. "

Ella viene de un mal lugar. When animals aren't treated right, they don't act right."

"We treat her right." The child's nose scrunches at the thought of what someone could have done to make a horse act like that - make her hurt her unborn, though he isn't sure how she can hurt a baby that isn't born yet or how a baby could die before even having lived.

"Your dio's not going to want to keep that one, Augustus. She's too much work. Not worth the effort it would take to straighten her out. Once her potro's old enough, he's probably going to sell her off again. Maybe even bottle feed it if it survives just to get her out of the pasture sooner." Young Augustus scowls at that, turning to give his father a pointed look.

"Sell her to who?"

The man shrugs. "The next poor sod who thinks she's worth something. We can't waste our time on nags like her,

hijo." Augustus turns back to appraise the plucky young mare. From what his uncle had said, she was only five - young compared to some of the others on the ranch. She's pretty, too. At least… he thinks she's pretty. She's a rich chestnut adorned with flaxen mane and tail that blends with the parched summer grass. The mark on her face stretches from crest to snout but splotches over to the right to cover her right eye. It's the asymmetry, his father had said, that makes her "ugly." Augustus likes her eye-patch, though. He'd lovingly been referring to her as Le Parche, even, though not out loud as of late."Do not name her," he'd been chastised by his uncle shortly after bringing her home and hearing him use the address with his mother. She'd smiled at it… no one else did. He thinks the name to himself as he watches Le Parche trot back to her lonely side of the pasture, shooed away by the angry snorts and pinned ears of the other yeguas. They stand between her and their young, little faces with big eyes that become all the more large in fright upon Parche's flamboyant approach. She's turned away again and again before finally settling into her corner and taking to her isolated grazing. When his father speaks next, there's a tinge of sympathy in his voice… but only a little -too little for a child to even catch.

"She'll be happier someplace else. Someplace without other caballos. If she won't be taken by her own kind, it's probably best for her to be alone." After a moment of silence he clears his throat and chuckles. "That's what we'll do to you if you don't behave." Before Augustus can turn entirely around to face his father with wide eyes, a boot comes sailing over his head and plants itself directly into the older man's right temple. His father almost crumples around his assaulted face.

"No te atrevas a decir eso!" cries the indignant growl of his mother. She'd dropped a bale of hay just to remove her own shoe, scattering the reeds across the loose soil.

The edges of this memory smear like watercolor, voices fading into one another as it loses its solidity. Delta watches on from his invisible station just behind the young Augustus as the child is brushed away into nothingness. He is then left alone in an endless wash of blotched gold, orange and brown. It's a strange sort of silence here. His very breath echoes endlessly into a void beyond his range of vision.

"That was… illuminating." The intrusion startles Delta - more so when he realizes that the voice is both familiar and unfamiliar congruently. He can't pin-pont its origin among the emptiness, the reverberation bouncing it from every which way until reaching a sudden and dizzying hault. "You know how to pick 'em. You, generational trauma and emotional turmoil run together like muddy water through a storm drain. At least the rain is relaxing to listen to, though." The alpha whips around over and over, unable to spot anything or anyone in the cloudy hues. "Figured this was… less startling. Sorry." With a puff of what looks to be cinders and ashes, a figure… well, it walks through Delta. It's a vaguely human shape, one made from shifting pieces - forms of innumerable people morphing constantly in place while still keeping the human structure until finally coming to rest on a face and a form that Delta is unable to place. To his knowledge, he has never seen this man before. He's broad-shouldered, strong and lean; taller than average and fair skinned. His head is topped with a mop of ginger hair, longer at the crest and neatly trimmed everywhere else. His jaw is strong and chin lightly cleft under a slight, scruffy beard. And that's the oddity of it… of him. He's as clear - perhaps even clearer - that even Sinclair would be in a shared dream. "Do you prefer to be called Delta?"

The thought of wondering who this man is crosses his mind and not a second later, he smiles weakly. "My name's Cavan, but I prefer Cave. How about you? Delta or…?" The Alpha merely cocks his head. "You know… You can… talk here, right? It's a dream. You can do almost anything you want if you're aware enough." Is Delta aware enough? He's never been able to conjure a voice before so he imagines it's not that simple of a science. "Fine, then just think it. Like you do with your friend. I'll get it."

In that case, Delta thinks very briefly that he likes 'Del.' Sinclair started it out of nowhere and the larger Alpha never corrected him as it was the closest thing to an actual name he'd ever had - something given out of care… a nickname over a designation. "Del it is, then," the man chimes with a smile. With a flourish of his right hand, a folding chair materializes out of the splotchy nothing and Delta is actually relieved to see that it's blurry and constantly shifting as the things in his dreams are supposed to. He wouldn't much fancy the idea of this… creature to be omnipotent enough to create clear constructs here.

'Who are you?' Delta wonders, brow furrowing under his helmet which he just now realizes is on. Absent-mindedly, he reaches up and touches the brass dome which dissipates under his fingertips."That!" Cave barks with a grin. He points at Delta suddenly and nearly jumps from his chair. "Right there, you just did it." Did what? "You controlled something here. Your brain put that helmet on your head and you took it off without hardly thinking. You have more control than you think, big guy."

'Answer my question please. Are you… One of Augustus's memories?"

Cave rocks in his seat, biting his lower lip in thought. "Mmm… Kinda. Little bit of you, little bit of him. Your two brains together sorta invented me in this space."

'Why?'

"The human mind can create some weird fucking coping mechanisms under duress."'

'You're… A coping mechanism?'

"Of a sort." The man leans down, resting his elbows on his knees and looking more pointedly at the deformed man before him. "Someone to talk to, I guess? Vent to? I mean, you're surrounded by people who you see as fragile mentally and you don't want to unload on them, but who does that leave saddled with the burden?" The man mimics a gun and faux fires it in Delta's direction.

The larger man scoffs. 'My feelings aren't a burden…' he thinks. To that, Cavan sighs.

"More than you think, actually. It's good to let it out so shoot, big fella. Blab about whatever comes to mind, whatever bothers you." The alpha's mind fills with static, pressure, unreadable garbage that he can't even begin to sift through. He has more questions than anything, especially looking upon the crystal-clear facade of… whatever Cavan is. The larger man's face scrunches and he takes a few steps back, still unable to "voice" a response. "Mmm. Maybe I came on a little too strong. Lemme restart." He clears his throat and readjusts in his seat so that he grasps a more relaxed, approachable posture. His new position is more open and less direct. "My name is Cavan. I live in your head. I want to help you not have a mental breakdown. Capiche?" This time, he speaks maddeningly slowly - insultingly so. It causes the alpha to scrunch his misshapen nose.

'My name is Delta. I own this head. I am not a neanderthal. Capiche?' He thinks this very pointedly and in a facsimile of the same tone Cavan used.

The other laughs. "Cheeky for a lab experiment."

'Personally, I prefer "Unethical Scientific Breakthrough''.'

"Unethical is a bit of an understatement, don't you think?" the other stands and the chair he sits on vanishes as soon as it is no longer in contact with him. He spins around at the watercolor wash that continues to bleed and fade from tones of orange and yellow to those of gray, blue and black. "I mean… Look at the state of this place."

'Would you believe me if I told you it wasn't usually this messy?'

"Oh yeah. It's usually much worse, I know. Nightmares, visions from another man's head, hallucinations. Your brain is quite the "Scientific Breakthrough…" If the intent was to find out how much you could poke and prod at a human being and have him retain a vague resemblance to functionality."

'Right,' Delta muses, watching as the bleeding colors begin to amass at his feet in pools. 'You're in my head.' Cavan makes two finger guns, clicking his tongue with a smart grin. 'As much as I want to believe that you're some… magical or psychological trick here to help me,' the larger man starts, cocking his brow as thoughts he knows he didn't voice can be heard echoing infinitely in the empty. 'If you're coming from mine and Augustus's heads, I don't think you'll be very helpful.'

"You'd be surprised. A lawyer and the adoptive father of a psychologist in the making. That's a pretty damning combo. Do you have any idea the kinds of mind-games a lawyer has to play? And your boyfriend's no slouch on that end. Quite. The. Charmer." Cave tosses a sly smile the other's way and Delta blanks.

'No!'

"But that's what you want, isn't it?" Without even thinking of formulating a reply, Delta throws up his hands, spins around and marches off in the opposite direction, no destination in sight with only the desire to get away. The colors have become a wading pool blanketing the entirety of the endless expanse and reach up to his knees. It makes his exit much less graceful but that is the least of his concerns. Behind him, he hears Cavan chuckle. "Where the hell are you going?" Again, he gets no reply, not even the beginnings of one. The alpha continues to march through the deepening mire bleeding into the canvas wrapping. The skyline darkens with the pallet below in unison. A few yards in front of Delta, Cavan re-materializes as though painted into existence. "You know, I can just follow you. Forever."

'Not forever,' Delta corrects with a snort. 'I'll wake-up eventually.'

"Eventually," the other parrots. "But for now, you're stuck with me." Though this is unequivocally true, the alpha pays the statement's logic little mind. His brutally-trained one-track-mind has little trouble keeping his momentum, but grapples more than anticipated with spoken word - something that hadn't previously troubled him. Maybe he's been around other, verbal people too long… "I thought you accepted having feelings for him," Cave continues on his previous inquiry, walking backwards with hands tucked loosely into jumpsuit pockets. "Or was that little confession the other day just a fluke?" Images of that moment play nonconsensually before his eyes - images of a stunned Augustus staring back up at him, mouth agape and face roughly the color of a beat from cheek to eartip. Cave whistles. "You got a pair on you, though. I have to give you that. The look on his face." Another chuckle. Delta hates the sound.

Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it.

"I gotta wonder, though: Why him? I mean, sure he's charming and not bad to look at in the face, but…" Cavan stops that thought and eyes Delta up and down. "You know what? I think… uh… You balance each other out." Delta allows the man an unamused glare before returning to his locked gaze on the endless horizon. "Oh come on, big fella. You have to know that you aren't necessarily a looker up-top. Let's not kid ourselves. Those plasmids didn't just do a number on you, they did the first hundred." The Big Daddy stops with a slosh of blackened liquid now around his waist. To his left, Cavan stands unbothered by the rising levels and merely stares almost dumbly with an out-of-place, easygoing smirk. It's as if he's unaware - or perhaps uncaring - of the insult he'd just tossed the larger man's way. Aided by the man's buoyancy, Delta grabs Cavan by his upper arms and, with a quick and impressive heave, tosses the man about a foot away into the wash. It's such a sudden action that Cave can do little more than utter the beginnings of a yelp before he's consumed by the now choppy drench. It only takes a moment for the now disheveled man to surface, but when he does Delta is a tad dismayed by the speed at which he regains his humor. "That was fair," he laughs. The larger snorts.

'I don't want "fair."'

"Ooooh," Cavan chastises. "Very unbecoming of everyone's golden boy." Delta gives his body an exaggerated once-over.

'It's brass, actually.'

"You're funny."

'You're not.'

"Ouch… But also fair. Starting to see why Ol' August likes you now, though." He picks himself up entirely and smooths his soaked hair out of his eyes. "Seems to have a thing for big, sarcastic lummoxes."

'Last time I spoke to him, that "thing" didn't extend to me.'

A bark of a laugh escapes the redhead as he eyes the water now creeping up to his chest. "Oh, believe me, It does. It certainly does. That's not the problem." Delta knows the problem. He isn't going to sit and have a figment of his imagination relay things to him that he doesn't need to be clarified. Delta swings around with a slosh only to find his already mangled features slammed sharply into a cold, flat surface. This elicits another chortle from the other. The larger refuses to dignify it with eye-contact. "You should watch where you're going." Where he was going hadn't been anywhere in particular which means it certainly wasn't Rapture, but that's where he is. Again. It's a dark corridor with flickering wall lamps whose yellow illumination casts the wooden wall paneling in a sickening hue. It stretches infinitely onward in both directions and is barely large enough for Delta and Cave to walk side-by-side. Oxidized metal doors lay at even intervals on each side of the path and the faint hints of blue from underneath each one is the only indication that something else may exist beyond the windowless din now presented to them.

"Just until you wake up, right?"

Once more, Delta doesn't respond. Darting eyes spy the fluid details around him and prod him to approach one of the gateways under which the neon lights beckon from what he can only assume is a portal beyond. However, when his hand reaches out to interact, the seemingly corporeal shape of the hatch becomes dust under his fingertips - disturbed silt at the bottom of the ocean. The dust flutters down to the molded carpet floor and fades as if it were never there to begin with. Delta's swollen brow furrows and he turns to the adjacent door and pensively extends his hand. Once more, the path fades into nothing, taking the light with it. Not missing a beat, the Alpha reaches for the door not far down the hall out of a desperate need for confirmation and, indeed, comes to the same result. With that experiment swiftly ended, he backs up into the center of the cramped tube, now minus a little of its uniformity. With nothing else to take in, Delta's eyes wander back to Cave's. The humor that once graced them is gone and replaced by a blank stare that might be able to see down to the very end of the near ceaseless span - a cold look that somehow already felt alien on the face of a man Delta hardly knew. There's a flick in his attention that finally indicates to the larger man that Cave's focus is on him, but his continence is resolute.

The larger does a spin in place, slow enough to take in the corridor once more. The length in either direction is so immense that it merely converges into a black dot in the center of his vision when he looks down either direction. Delta looks back at the spot on the wall where the first door had been and squares his shoulders. He catches a glimpse of Cave reaching out from the corner of his eye - perhaps to caution or dissuade him - but its too little too late even seconds into the Alpha cocking back an armored bicep and slamming plated knuckles into a rotten wall. The force required to break into the material isn't much - as Delta hadn't believed it would be - and so a new point of entry forms from the more violent egress which the Big Daddy chooses to partake in - that which involves more punching, grabbing and tearing until creating a hole large enough for him to wiggle was way through.

"I'm not… what?" he hears Cavan chuckle out uneasily as Delta forces himself into the next room. Said room is much more abstract than his dreams usually produce with not just the appearance of objects remaining loose, but also their positioning. It's slow enough of a transition to where the big daddy isn't at risk of a table tripping him out of nowhere, but the oil paint fluidity creates a disorienting, almost psychedelic smear from one spot to the other. Faceless human forms shift from place to place, partaking in different activities. One moment, the vague outlines of two people chat at a dinner table and the next the very same lean back on a sofa. What they say is an auditory blur. What strikes him more potently, however, is the room itself. Abstract, yes, but there's… something else within. Warm light, bright wood, cottage fabrics of homely patterns - no metal.

Cavan makes his way through the breach whilst humming an unfamiliar tune. His expression is once again vacant with a greater emptiness now gaping out from his gaze. It isn't a distant gaze, however. Its presentness shines as it follows the shifting figures across the room. His brows furrow deeper and deeper, though. He tracks apparitions and turns his head from side to side gradually, his ear following one at a time as they dart and then vanish. Very quickly, Delta comes to realize that he doesn't belong here. Though they are unintelligible, the Alpha notes that the voices are of two constants - a man and a woman. They say nothing. He feels nothing. And yet… there's a hot, salty gathering on Cavan's lower eyelid that he's just barely able to subdue with a deepening scrunch of his brow and clenching of his mouth.

The apology just barely crosses his mind and Cavan's eyes are drawn to him.

"Don't be…" he breathes "... It's just a ghost…" He perks a tad, lips twisting into a facsimile of a smile, though Delta can appreciate the effort. "Besides, even if he was still around, he probably wouldn't remember any of this anyway."

'That's… sadder… don't you think?'

Cave snorts. "Subjective, I guess." Delta swiftly and awkwardly shoves himself back through the hole he made and into the infinite corridor. It remains about as he left it, though he is less daunted. So little so that he merely looks at another door and cocks back, throwing his fist into the wall as the door turns to dust beneath his knuckle. Another hole made, another room invaded and this one doesn't make him feel any less unwelcome. The pallet is similar but this one is minutely less obscured - the figures within now more in-line with the usual people in his dreams. A few men, a few women… They're washed in warmth and voices dripping with honey, though they remain unintelligible. It's delayed, but Cavan joins him and stands at his right with a dreamy look, less distressed.

'Who are these people?' Delta thinks, getting a tinge of butterflies in his gut when one of the male figures laughs heartily. It makes him jump. When he looks down at Cavan, though, he finds that the welling has returned with a vengeance and the man is almost powerless to a single stream staining the redness of his cheek.

"Like I said," he replies with a contradictory amount of resolve. "...Ghosts. Forget them." He looks over Delta's shoulder and grins. "Well… most of them." Delta follows Cavan's eyes and finds, standing in the far corner of the room, an all-too familiar figure. He's nestled amongst the group as though this were a lavish party and in that he's never looked more at home. He's sharp, though… his appearance is more concrete and recognizable, setting him apart from the empty visages he looks to be chatting with. His debonair grin flashes lazily across rosy features that look to be made of oil paint… like he's walked straight off of a canvas. It's a flattering rendition, too - dashing waistcoat with trousers to match over smart, shiny dress shoes. He has his figure, of course. Delta hasn't known him to lack it, but that doesn't detract at all from the amount of heat now rising up through his chest. "Ahhh…" Delta's companion breathes, eyes widening a little but retaining a smugness the larger man only glances at once and then refuses to dignify any further. Cavan scowls but keeps his grin. "There's no shame in this, Del."

'He seems to think so.' Delta absentmindedly grips some of the loose suit material on his legs.

"Yeah. People are complicated. So's the world. Right and wrong seems to be ever-changing and hard to navigate. Some things… we know they're wrong. They're horrible and their wrongness never goes away, but other things…? Like love? That's a jungle all on its own and it's something that people need to decide for themselves… but a lot of people… most people… they let the world decide." Delta takes a tentative step, rounding the false Augustus with soft, somber eyes. The hazel stares past him, smile unwavering… until a quake rocks the very foundation. The faceless figures scatter like rats and the image of the man before him begins to bleed like oil into the floor just before another quake erupts and jostles Delta against the wall.

For a brief moment, his and Cave's eyes meet and the lack of understanding from the other sends a jolt through the Alpha's system just as another, greater rumble collapses the world around him to make room for the real.

And the first thing he feels is burning.