The young man runs, his feet tracing circles along the curves of the round and spinning time machine. Ponies glare menacingly and bare their wooden teeth. He pays them no attention as he watches the dust glitter through the moon-silver air and watches until it turns into dirt and watches the dirt turn into capes along their wooden saddles.

He runs so that his footsteps are the only sounds in the area, and so that each echo is allowed a mate. It is, all in all, the jarring effect of looking through a mirror into another mirror or perhaps just staring up into the sky too long while repeating one word over and over again like a mouthful of ooze.

The carousel itself is silent as he continues to chase circles around it, pointedly ignoring the sonar of his soles as it beckons without a voice for him to mount. The night is also frozen, waiting and willing him to disappear into its shadowy caverns as it shudders against each slap of the pavement.

Jack Sawyer has no taste for things that do not breathe, though. He wants only living tissues within the grasp of his slim, scrabbling fingers. Those miniature limbs are currently clenched into fists, his teeth matching their intensity and pressure. A light sweat beads across his forehead. He is obviously fatigued, but those steps never slow.

Jack’s got things on his mind and demons in his hands, but he’s not willing to risk giving in at the moment. He’s still unsure about the state of justice here.

"You're up late, my love. You know you can get into trouble in a place like this after dark?" The voice familiar- low, smoky, and at the moment insinuating.

She's sitting side-saddle on a much-gilded stallion, his dark eyes flashing and his mane flying. Her dress is a sort of dark finely-patterned sundress, hiked up almost obscenely over her white thighs, bike-booted legs crossed demurely. Her hair, left to fend for itself, tumbles over her shoulders in a maddened race against itself, and Moira runs a hand through it to push it out of her face and flashes Jack a smile.

Jack blinks, those green eyes full of thorned vines slithering closed for a moment. He turns the curve once more, placing himself on the opposite side of the carousel and finally allowing his steps to slow.

The echoes become dull and lifeless, no longer pulsing along with the rapid slur of his heartbeat. His hands choose to light a cigarette, left pulling out the ugly little bic and the right a Marlboro Red. The little plastic cartridge emits a dirty spark, enough to light the paper, then rushes back home to his back pocket. The cigarette is pushed between his full lips.

Jack is currently in a state of great panic, he supposes. After all, someone who should be dead is sitting rather placidly upon a horse that most certainly is dead, and both of the latter seem to be grinning at him in the most disconcerting manner.

He takes a long drag, considering. There is a pistol in his jacket pocket, like always. That hadn't seem to have done the job. Hmm. He wonders if he is in shock, decides against it, and then begans to consider if it might be a dream.

"Trouble's what I live for." He pauses, still not quite able to see her from his position, though he hasn't stopped walking. "How was the afterlife?"

"Oh, it's as dull as ever," Moira replies offhandedly. "You travel some, you booze some, you pretend you can sleep. It's generally the same everywhere." Her teeth are sharp behind her taut smile. She tilts her head to one side, grey eyes on his hands.

"You do seem to, don't you? You see, then, we practically have something in common. Come sit with me," she adds, inviting him and his cigarette and patting the saddle beside her. The horse is a large beast, plenty of room for two.

Jack is wary, his pupils pinpricks within the great and creeping rainforests of their irises. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth for a moment, smoke crawling between those lips in great and hazy loops, like the caterpillar from Wonderland.

He is familiar with vampires, has even met a ghost in his short life, but this is far too eerie to be mundane. And Moira. She is as he remembers. The Goddess Bastet. He has a right to be greedy and fearful, but the hunger he feels is a creation of its own. Probably by those... fingers of his. Itching even now despite their previous failure.

"You're not mad, are you?"

His voice is slow, almost-kidding in a mostly dead pan drawl.

"Good heavens, of course not! Whatever for?" she says, feigning a sort of Lauren Bacall mild shock, and her smile is gentle and soft. "Come on now, and keep me company."

She twines one arm around the brass-plate pole which protrudes from the horse's back, leans her head on it.

He comes to a stop in front of her and scrutinizes the stallion's profile before replying, the cigarette hanging pensively from the corner of his mouth. Those dark eyes (insane) are rolled back, gleeful and seething. He can just see the froth flying from its stretched lips. Jack doesn't like this tree-horse, and he believes the feeling to be mutual.

His left hand begins to brush across his golden spikes, moving up from the back of his neck and causing a mild tingle as the strands move against their natural direction. After a moment of this, he grabs the pole spearing the pony and uses it to vault into position on the laquered saddle. This is done quiettly, but the speed with which it is accomplished is the truly amazing feat. Jack is fast. An unfortunate thing for most unwitting travellors at this time of night.

"Moira. How did you come to find me at this time of night?"

He is sitting in the conventional position, straddling the horse's back and facing her profile. He wants to touch her hair, like the last time they met, but instead he just takes another drag of the cigarette, left hand smoothly pulling it from his lips.

"Luck? Accident? I followed my nose." She winks the eye nearest him, slowly. His movements are quick, neurons firing and instantaneous movement- hers are careful, calculated, deliberate, and syrupy slow.

In fact, Jack leaves the trail of one whose candle is burning from both ends, a clear and blazing path searing across such planes as are visible only to creatures like cats and dogs, vampires and Moira.

She plucks the cigarette away from him. "These are bad for you, love," she says, takes a drag, hands it back to him, exhaling smoke.

He grins, the expression flicking across his face just as quickly as all of his other movements. He is a live wire, sparking far more than any guttering candle and perhaps burning twice as fast. Jack doesn't mind. He's always had a fascination with ruin, no matter who is being destroyed. He is a student of decay.

"My hobbies are bad for me."

He grasps the back of her pale hand as she moves to return the cigarette, pressing both its butt and her fingertips to his lips and inhaling.

"Especially when they come back from the dead."

He mutters into her skin then, smoke flowing around his face as he speaks. His free right hand removes the cigarette to safer ground.

"Not that I'm afraid of you, but... it's still a little disconcerting. Unless I'm asleep. Believe me, though. You are welcome in my dreams."

She twists around to face him now, resting her temple on the brass bar which stands between them, and reaches across to brush her thumb across his cheek. Her fingers are cool, dry, electric, static sparks that skip the skin and connect with the nervous system.

"My love," she purrs, smiling placidly. "I can't promise that you're awake, I'm sorry. It's a thin line, and I can't vouch for its location. But- does it matter?"

The taut copper line of his spine straightens, electricty flooding through his synapses and dipping along those solid knobs of bone. He is caught in a current, plug-dreams dancing through that mind which may or may not be awake. Ah, so this what skin is used for...

"What matters is that in whichever world we may be, you still exist. That means I am a failure."

His eyes are keen austrian crystals, far more glittery than the cheap plastic knock-offs laquered into the saddle of their horse. A bead of sweat rolls through the spikes of his golden hair and leaves a trail of liquid crystal from his temple to his cheek. He is tired, muscles crying out like a fiery choir, but gives no sign of this save for that one salty streak.

"Oh, my love," she disagrees, voice low and empathetic. She chucks him under the chin- a movement not at all like that of women to children- and leans foward a little.

"It's not a matter of failure or success, you must see that."

The sulfur-smell of nicotine precedes him, slithering away from its creator in looping coils. It bridges the gap between the two so that by leaning in, she must be breathing the smoke as he discards it from his lungs. He is pensive, a dark little frown on his lips and his brows furrowed.

"So... you can't die, then?"

He pauses, mind eagerly shedding the layers of logic as it plunges forward in search of conclusions. Closer to the little blackhole of madness that makes Jack such a naughty creature.

"Or... you never existed at all. You... I created you..."

He looks at her hungrily then, shaken from his revery. Jack has wolf eyes. He is even more intrigued by the chance that he might have built something rather than demolished it. Even more eager to oversee its deconstruction. Everything has a keystone... you just have to find the right hammer.

(erm. sorry, cami. i pretty much died. life suddenly got a bit more complicated. if you see this... yay. if not... oh well. my fault.)

In a display of remarkable agility, she draws one leg straight up and over to straddle the horse backwards facing Jack, flash of bare white thigh and little Batman undies. Would Jack have created her in Batman undies? Or is he more of a Superman kind of guy? Moira doubts it, and leans forward against the pole which still separates the two.

"Oh, that's possible. That's always possible," she agrees thoughtfully, reaching up to lightly brush her thumb over Jack's lower lip, Bogie style, Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in A bout de souffle.