faderift | [ Open ] Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

WHO: Jim Kirk & You
WHAT: Jim left a written request, and now awaits replies
WHEN: From Kingway 9 and on for a couple days, can be morning or evening (or another time if pre-arranged)
WHERE: The Skyhold Gardens
NOTES: Possible cursing, possibly discussion of death

His stomach twisted as he paced the pathways of the gardens, turning the silver band on his wrist over and over. A nervous habit, the need to fidget, but he couldn't stop it. He kept looking down, expecting to see something else there - the sleeve of a uniform, or the brush of a soft leather jacket. He could still feel those things on him, the sleekness of the cloth, their familiar weight. He wanted to reach up and strip them off, but they weren't there and they had never been. Had they?

He bit his lip sharply, nearly drawing blood as the gravel crunched beneath his boots. He shouldn't think on it to much, he told himself. Not until he had spoken with someone else, someone who might no more. Perhaps it was just something brought on by recent events, by the stress of a child's torture and death, by the stress of being an outsider and not belonging. Maybe his mind had simply supplied him with wishful imaginings when he was most vulnerable. And yet... and yet...

No. Stop. Wait until you could speak to someone and sort it out then. Drawing conclusions before you had all the data was one of the worst mistakes he could make, and he wasn't about to start now.

He just had to hope someone had answers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cosima's dressed for traveling, borrowed native clothes except for the boots and the glasses. She's busy, she knows the group leaving from Skyhold are leaving early, but something about the tone of the note caught her attention all the same.

It's almost like deja vu of their first meeting, except with the agitation levels reversed.

"Hey," she says quietly when she approaches. "Everything okay?"

Okay here meaning under the weird, weird circumstances.

He sees Cosima and there is a touch of relief there. He likes her, and she was a smart woman. If there was anyone to talk to about this, it was her. She would have some good theories, surely.

"Yes, and no," he shook his head. "Physically, I'm fine. It's more... a mental thing." He hated saying it, especially here, but it was the only way he could explain it. "A memory thing, I suppose."

"A memory-thing you think has something to do with the shards," she clarifies. It's not that much of a leap, based on the original message. She comes to sit on a nearby bench, stillness to contrast with his recklessness. "What happened?"

"I think it's related," he admitted. "I don't have much more than a feeling right now, but I thought it prudent to check with others."

He touched where his shard was embedded beneath his bandages on his hand.

"I seem to have gained memories."

"Like... from your future? Or like someone else's?" Either would be interesting, but it's perhaps telling that she jumped to from your future first. Delphine's arrival had triggered all sorts of questions.

"No. Mine. But if I remember them, they're not really my future anymore, are they? They're my past. Except I didn't go anywhere to gain them, I just slept."

This was making his head hurt. A lot. He let out a frustrated growl, though it was not directed at Cosima, moving back to his previous task of pacing. He thought better when he moved.

"Yeah, I mean, I guess it's relative. Unless they're so far in your future that your physical age doesn't match anymore." Cosima worries her bottom lip, thinking that through. "Has anyone else you've talked to so far had a similar experience?"

"Not that far," he shook his head. "I'm only thirty, and I don't think I look to different. A few places some scars should be, but other than that I stay pretty much the same." He touched his stomach and gave a half-hearted chuff. "I think I'm thinner here, which is a change I'll keep."

"That's trippy, dude," she says, frankly. "How are you holding up?"

Well, he couldn't argue with that could he? It was very trippy. He was tripping out as it were.

"I'll be all right," he said after a moment of thought. "I think I just need a bit more time to process it all. Some of these new memories - they're hard to swallow, to say the least."

"You want to talk about it?" They haven't known each other long, but she likes Kirk; he seems like a good man. Besides, sometimes the 'someone to listen' is more important than who it is in particular.

He sucked on his lip, clearly debating. It would be good to talk to someone about it all, just to even say it aloud and sort through it in his own head. The events, while at times pure insanity, we're disjointed or jumbled. They were in a chronological, logical order, which only added to his belief that they were, in fact, real.

"The last, really major thing I remember, was losing my ship," he said quietly, just speaking it aloud suddenly painful and making him wince, the images popping into his mind vivid and bright.

"Oh, shit, man. I'm sorry." She's nothing like a captain herself, but the tone he uses now in combination with the way he'd talked about it earlier paints a pretty clear picture. "Do you know what happened?"

He nodded. "A man named Krall attached my ship with a swarm of his own smaller ships. They literally tore her apart. I had to give the order to abandon her, and what remained crashed into the planet."

Cosima hesitates, unsure whether it would make it worse to ask, but ultimately: "...and your crew?"

"Some died. The rest were captured by Krall except for a handful," he shook his head. "I made it down to the planet and reunited with the handful that escaped, and with some extra help we got my crew back and out, at least."

Cosima worries at her thumbnail. "No wonder you're wrung out about it. Damn." It's a lot to take in. "I'm sure there's going to be no shortage of people who want to pick apart the implications for rifters but... that seems like something you should take time to work through, even if you hadn't gotten it in one big nighttime memory dump."

[ Open ] Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

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