faderift | i'll face my fears even if it damn kills me

Entry tags:

i'll face my fears even if it damn kills me

WHO: Abby & OPEN
WHAT: Coming through the rift. Making a real splash
WHEN: Both arrival and within the first week of her quarantine
WHERE: Kirkwall (specifically The Waking Sea); The Gallows
NOTES: Swear words galore, mentions of past injuries

arrival.

Tonight Abby's lucid enough to realise she's in her usual nightmare but not enough to stop it from happening, which is both depressing and boring. The hallway is endless even though she knows that it isn't, and she walks down it with her gun in her hands and her heart in her throat. The alarm is so loud she can barely think over the top of it.

The door at the end doesn't reveal a body on the floor. Abby, familiar with the routine, screams like she's seen one anyway even as she takes a step through and falls forward, out into empty, white space. She's still processing the shift when she hits the churning waves of The Waking Sea with an extra yelp, spun around underneath the tide until she barely knows which way is up.

If you're down at the shore you've got the absolute privilege of seeing her dredge up from the water like a drowned rat, shivering and bewildered.

She hasn't even noticed the rage demon looming up behind her as she staggers up onto shore. Still trying to get her bearings. Still half-convinced she's dreaming.

quarantine; week one.

The Gallows are like something out of a book she's read, Gothic and strange and thrilling. The buildings inside of it draw her eye; the Smithy, in particular, where Abby can be found watching curiously as workers hammer out hot metal and shape it into tools, and weapons. She's feeling the uselessness of her 'gun' but she's kept it anyway, perhaps out of habit, strapped to the side of her leg. It's just to feel something, okay, any measure of normalcy in a world where she's found herself kept in a fortress and wearing some kind of loose, cloth shirt and plain trousers held together by drawstring rather than zipper, so. Don't point it out.

The apothecary reminds her of The Once and Future King, comfortably smoky, sweet-smelling, and filled to the fucking brim with little bottles of... stuff, and things. Abby's most intrigued by the potions, though ultimately belligerent with the shop owner when she finds out she can't just. Y'know, have it.

Yeah yeah she's heard about the 'economy'. She doesn't have enough coin for the bottle she's interested in, but that shouldn't matter because-

"I'm supposed to be going out and fighting for you, but you're not going to give me any first aid? What the fuck do I do if something cuts me down out there? Slap a leaf on it?"

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Since her time helping Adrasteia with a few things, Glimmer has found it necessary to stop by the Apothecary a time or two. Mostly to pick a few things up or drop a few things off in the effort to help keep the people of the Gallows supplied with all the necessaries for mending their hurts. She's in the midst of picking up a carefully packed box of flasks meant for potions when Abby makes her remark and Glimmer has to smile.

"Something like that," she says with a warm smile. Her arrival in Thedas has turned her hair from pink into a more natural auburn shade, but she still wears her diadem with its single precious stone out of habit more than anything else. It's comforting, too.

"Here, I can buy it for you if you like?" She sets the box to one side and begins to fish for the coin purse at her belt.

You know when you want to complain about something but you're not actually expecting anything out of it? You just wanted to be a bitch for five seconds? Yeah. Abby blanches slightly at the sight of Glimmer, because she looks– well, important. Fuck. It's the diadem set neatly on top of her soft hair that tips her off, how well-kept she looks.

It now seems profoundly stupid to try and talk her out of buying it after Abby's been caught giving the shop keep a hard time over it.

"... I've got most of it," she admits, gruff, embarrassed. Trying hard to not to look it, "If you're sure."

"Of course. We have to help each other out, right?" She raises her hand and waggles her fingers, a gleam of green in her palm. She's assuming Abby is a Rifter--mostly because of the response to the apothecary.

"It's not a big deal. I've been here a little while. It.. takes some getting used to." She offers over a few coins along with a smile.

"I'm Glimmer."

"Sure." Look, Abby isn't looking for another faction. The one she turned on and left behind back home was a means to an end, it's not like she was ever pretending otherwise. It's difficult to get back into this mindset. It makes her feel strange, and fake.

Glimmer– really?– is looking at her, her hand up, palm out. Abby smiles, a quick, fleeting gesture that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She offers the rest of her coin to the shop owner, who has decided to stop looking at her in favour of solely addressing Glimmer instead. Fair enough.

"Abby." The little bottle is cool against her palm when she takes it off the counter-top and she looks away, turning it slowly over in one hand. "Thanks."

"No problem. It's not really a big deal, honestly..." Glimmer says. Her own smile is full and quite authentic all the way to the eyes, even if Abby is being stand-offish. It's not like Glimmer hasn't dealt with her share of prickly people in the past.

"Nice to meet you, Abby!" Her eyes flick down to the holster on the other's belt and she blinks at the lump of something vaguely gun-shaped.

"Is that...?" She gestures towards it vaguely. She remembers seeing them back in New Amsterdam.

"You too." It's not– wholly insincere. This is a fairly normal encounter, one that Abby might have been able to pretend was taking place at the stadium and with a new addition to the WLF's pack if, in reality, she wasn't standing here holding a potion in the middle of an actual, working apothecary.

Her gaze flickers down, following Glimmer's gesture, and without thinking she tilts her hip to get a little more light on the holster to see it by. Abby can't help a slight pang of relief. She's the first person to point it out with anything other than complete confusion.

"Yeah," she says, exhaling the word like she's been holding it in for too long, "It is, but it doesn't work. I don't know why."

"...I couldn't start to tell you," Glimmer admits. "Something to do with the magic that brings us here, probably. Guns and lasers and all of that kind of thing just... don't exist here," she says with a confused, thoughtful shake of her head.

"I didn't have one with me when I showed up, but all the stuff that did come with me seems to be working, more or less?" Glimmer offers a shrug.

"But it's magic, not technology."

"Lasers..." Abby echoes, staring at her, wondering if she's talking about– laser pointers? It's not the weirdest part of the whole sentence though, so she'll circle back, "Kinda seems like magic is an easy way to explain away anything that doesn't make sense."

She wouldn't call a gun 'technology', either. Weird to think that it probably is, to the people that already live here. "How did you bring over other things? The gun was all I had when I got through."

"Magic makes sense, though. It has a system--or least casting spells has a system," Glimmer insists earnestly.

"Um... I was dreaming about them? Maybe? I didn't have them with me when I went to sleep then next thing I know I'm falling through the sky with my diadem and staff and all of the stuff I thought was back home. Or... the staff wasn't back home, but whatever."

"If you grew up with magic, sure," Abby mutters, because it's obvious that Glimmer has and it's now less exciting that she could recognise a gun. She isn't from the same kind of world that Abby is from. The realisation is more disappointing to her than she thought it would be. Trying too hard, to cling to the familiar.

She had the dreaming thing explained to her, but it still doesn't make much sense. If– Abby had thought up her pack full of shit, she could have brought that through too? How was she supposed to know? The gun didn't even really make it through, it shoots caps. "Lucky you." She glances away, folding her arms. "Kinda wish I could get a do-over. Would have dreamed up something way better than this."

"Not that lucky. If I was lucky, I'd be home. I'm glad my magic is working again but I've been gone from home for too long..." Glimmer looks distraught for a moment, emotions shown clearly on her face before she wrangles herself back into queenly serenity.

"First I get kidnapped by a warlord, then I somehow get zapped out of his prison and end up in a city without magic far away from Etheria and then I end up in this place that does have magic but changes my hair color--" She runs a hand through the fluffy light auburn hair on her head, pouts. "--and still isn't home. It's been almost a year now." A sigh follows.

"...Instead of a gun that isn't working, maybe a knife or dagger or something?" She asks with a wry almost-smirk.

"... So even if I get out of this place, I'm not guaranteed to make it back?" Abby isn't sure how to help with any of that, and– honestly, it just ups her concern over her own situation. Everybody is treating her arrival like it's something permanent, and she's determined to find a way to get back. She left things behind she needs to get back to now, not in a year's time. Loose ends. People she loves. Her jaw clenches, muscles twitching under her skin.

"Great." That's– great. Add it to the list she's been curating in her head, fuck it.

"Yeah, I– don't work with knives, usually, but I guess I'll have to. Never held a sword before." And what else is there, when she doesn't have any supernatural abilities. Unless– "Can you learn how to use magic?"

"I don't know," Glimmer says with honesty and more than a little exasperation. "This is the first time I've gotten thrown from one place to another like this, so I have no idea what's going to happen next, honestly. I could wake up in my own bed tomorrow, for all I know--" She shrugs, heaves a weary sigh.

"I hope I do, every night when I go to sleep. There are people back home that I need to help." That she needs to make up with. People she's wronged. Her gaze drops away and she frowns. Magic. Magic is something better to talk about.

"At home you could. I haven't really tried to learn any of the magic here, though. In theory, it might be possible?"

"Nobody has figured out a way to get back to where they came from?" That's disappointing to hear. Abby doesn't have a particularly scientific mind; she would have thought the people who knew how to use magic could just... dunno, teleport themselves and anybody else away to safety? Fuck.

"Guess I'm going to find out," she hums, trying to keep her expression neutral in the wake of this bad news. "Got a lot of free time, all of a sudden."

"Not as far as I've been able to find out," Glimmer admits with a weary sigh. "But then I don't know a lot about the local magic, so..."

A shrug follows. She's doing her best not to be despondent but it's hard after what feels like she's spent so much time being tossed around on others' whims.

"Let me know if you want a friend to help you with that. I need to keep myself busy, too."

"Could always use extra hands." Abby doesn't know about 'a friend' (they just met, and Glimmer doesn't know anything about her), but she'll take a familiar face over somebody new, almost every time.

"Usually if I need to keep myself busy, I work out, but–" and here, she looks slightly sheepish, "This place doesn't have gym equipment like I'm used to using. Gotta get a new hobby, I think.

What division are you in?"

"There's always sparring and training together. That'll keep you in shape and help you get used to the new weapons here. I mostly use my staff, myself..." Glimmer says with a smile. She's helping, right?

"I'm in Forces. I really hate sitting around letting other people do my fighting for me, so no way was I gonna end up anywhere else, you know?"

"Yeah? I'm up for that." She's never fought somebody wielding a staff before... presumably that means she uses magic, right? Wouldn't be a bad idea to spar with her, then. Abby needs to get used to fighting people who won't physically fight her back.

"I do. I'm in Forces as well, but–" Well. She rolls her eyes. "It's just kinda obvious that I would be, right."

"I mean, you're big, yeah. Doesn't mean you have to be a fighter though, right?" Glimmer seems a touch confused by that implication. All kinds of people can be fighters or not be fighters as they choose, can't they? Glimmer is all smiles, though.

"Well, hopefully we'll get to do some work together and not just beat each other up in the yard, right?"

"It does when I don't know how to do anything else." Her tone is sarcastic but there's more than a grain of perceived truth tucked away behind it.

"But yeah. That'd be good." She's looking forward to work, actually. Work is easy, all she has to do is put her head down and do it. Figure everything else out along the way. "I'll see you around, in that case."

"Hey, I'm sure you know how to do lots of things!" Glimmer says brightly and with all the well-meaning supportive friendliness that she can muster. Hope you like having a ray of positivity in your life, Abby.

"Yeah, I'll see you around. If there's anything I can do to help you out, let me know!" Glimmer gives a little wave of farewell.

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i'll face my fears even if it damn kills me

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