faderift | you can't handle the truth

Entry tags:

you can't handle the truth

WHO: Whoever wants
WHAT: Kickoff of the truth plot!
WHEN: Right now
WHERE: The dining hall
NOTES: Feel free to use this to post open starters with prompts! Or make your own logs. Or create open posts on the network. Do whatever you'd like. No rules just right

If only the cooks had screwed up the soup. The problem is that it's a particularly nice soup today, full of fresh summer herbs, nicely seasoned, and plentiful. And so it's quite likely that you grabbed a bowl - maybe even got a second helping - and so ingested the potion that a devious hand had tipped in there earlier that day.

The effects begin to set in within twenty minutes of ingesting the soup. They may be mild - your tongue stumbling when you go to tell a little white lie...or they might be strong, and you might be overtaken by a sudden hysterical urge to tell deep truths to anyone who might listen. Or perhaps you skipped that soup, and instead, you're surrounded by babbling, confused people who want to tell you their life stories.

The potion's effects will last for up to two days. And they may at times be stronger, and at times weaker. Here's hoping you'll do minimal damage to your reputation in the meantime.

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There is...so much going on there. The casual admittance of torture. (Given what he knows of her and Abby's world, and their own history, he can't say that surprises him.) Something apparently too horrible to mention about--an aquarium. Which he's trying to figure out what that even is. Isn't that one of those fancy little bowls of fish very rich people sometimes show off?

And then the magic. Three years, so likely in that other world, the one between her own and Thedas. Being invisible and having perfect aim are already superhuman, he wants to point out, but she keeps going. The dreamwalking is a terrifying admittance. But it's in the past tense. So she can't do it anymore? Which is frankly so much for the better.

And then offers her hand.

Magic still works on Templars so long as they aren't actively doing anything to counteract the magic. It isn't like it'll backfire unless he wills it so. But casually using magic, magic for magic's sake, showing it off for no real reason, something that could be as useful and easy to exploit as invisibility, it makes him nervous. His hands tense on the tabletop. "I'll take your word for it. I think I'd rather stay visible for now. It isn't that I don't trust you," he adds, which seems unnecessary to him, but his mouth says it anyway.

The rest is just a jumble, and it's hard to know where to start. He pushes away from the table and stretches out for a moment. "Let's take a walk." She's obviously got her own nervous energy to spare, and she was invisible for a reason. Even if the reason is not wanting to be seen.

"You said you used to dreamwalk. You don't do that anymore? Is that by choice or you actually can't?" Let's start there. With something she doesn't seem to have to physically stop herself from saying.

Of all the things that Mobius can ask about, he asks about what she's most comfortable having a conversation about, bless him. She drops her hand in order to put her hands in her back pockets and expel the air from her lungs, rocking back on her heels, then forward on her toes.

Yeah. It's a lot. At least it's him, and not, like. Her commanding officer or some shit. She's pretty sure Yseult's nailed herself in her room. That would be smart.

"Yeah, walking." Walking's good.

"I can't anymore," she explains as they settle, her voice going back down to a normal pitch. "Because it was only with people who were with me in that other world, the one between Thedas and mine. And only if they were a Displaced. Like that place's version of a Rifter."

Unfortunately, the soup won't let her decide to pick and choose what to share about it.

"I didn't have a lot of control at first, so I mostly just concentrated on keeping people out of my head, 'cause that always went downhill fast. It was cool when I got to visit people I knew. They could show me the things they remembered, the people they missed. Sometimes it was their nightmares- I broke an angel out of some kind of weird torture facility once. We rode in a really sweet car and got to shoot at things. We woke up and he showed me his garden and stuff. I hope he's doing all right."

It would be smart, but Mobius refuses to be afraid of this thing. Yet. (Give it time.)

In spite of the nervousness about her offer, he is fascinated by the magic of Rifters. He just...does not necessarily want it used on him is all. Funny how Ellie seemed so relatively normal. Would not have guessed her for a mage in her own right, even if it's not necessarily natural to her.

"Sounds like they had some control on their end, too." Which, as he understands it, is not usually the case with dreamwalking. "Better you can't do it anymore. Imagine waltzing in on people with these nightmares. Not to mention the fact that it's really, really frowned upon. We'd protect you, obviously, but it's not a great look to consciously walk through the Fade and to touch the minds of others." Just as context. That's how the demons get ya!

"How about being superhuman? What's that about?"

"Yeah, that sounds like all kinds of shitty for everyone."

It's not something she really misses, all told. It was fucked up when it was happening, and it's nice to be secure in her own head for the most part.

But that all kinda fades out next to the sudden touch of fear, which doesn't normally get to her, but. Soup.

"Wait, are you okay with it? Me being-?"

She makes a little motion with her fingertips, implying the magic. She's never considered herself a mage in any sense of the word, but superpowers? Sure.

She wiggles her fingers, and he actually laughs. "I'm okay with you having magic, yeah. I do actually like to know what people know how to do from their own worlds. I'd be worried about Loki if that were the case."

But he did act a little weird, huh. So he keeps talking. "Magic isn't inherently bad or evil, but it is dangerous. Rifter magic is...it's different. You guys with powers are able to do things I've never seen or heard of anyone else doing, or in ways that we aren't used to here. It's amazing. But it's got the potential for chaos and misuse." He shrugs a shoulder. Like all power, really. "You've gotten the picture that Thedas has a contentious relationship with magic and mages. I don't necessarily want magic done on me, for instance. Again, not that I don't trust you, but that's...strange and unnerving, since I don't have inherent magic of my own. Maybe the kind of magic you can do is still a gift of the Fade in its own way, but it's still different from the naturally occurring magic here."

He glances at her sidelong. "That, and you surprised me. Didn't know you had magic other than, you know." He wiggles his own fingers, showing a bare hand. "What all of the Rifters come with."

Ellie nods; it all makes sense, and because soup:

"Good. I wasn't sure if you were gonna look at me differently or anything when you found out. I wasn't really scared, 'cause it's you, but, but you always have that shit in the back of your head, you know?"

Fuck.

"Anyway, I wasn't born with magic, but when I fell through into New Amsterdam I ended up with my invisibility and I didn't know why, I just had it when I showed up, like the shard from the Rift. But it turned out that- well, remember when we talked about gods? How there are things that are just so freaking powerful and hard to kill that whether or not it actually is a god stops being so important?"

Ellie shrugs and spreads her hands.

"Well, my powers are from Blue, and Blue was a god, there. But I guess it was sleeping, and somebody dug it up out of the earth and tried to take it's powers, and whatever they did killed it instead. So shards of his power flew everyone, tore holes in reality, and all sorts of people from other worlds just kind of fell through the holes, and anyone who fell through got a shard of his power. Kind of like the rifts.

"But then it turned out that there were other gods. Like a pantheon of them. And Blue dying like that woke up another one, Gold. And Gold was pissed."

Ellie grits her teeth, pushes for the main thrust of the story, so they won't be here all day.

"Anyway. The Displaced- that's what we called that world's version of Rifters- we ended up impressing Gold. It made us hallucinate another alternate world, where we were ourselves from another universe, but we didn't remember our original selves. And the Displaced rebelled against it and I guess we made some good choices. Because when we broke out of there, I got some of Gold's powers. And Gold's the god or war or something, I got faster and harder to hurt- but only if I'm in some kinda battle. Even if battle is kinda loosely defined. I've had Gold kick in for weird reasons. I'm- mostly guessing. I was still figuring it out when I feel through a fucking Rift."

Ellie sighs, but spreads her hands. "The other thing I can do- and I guess it's just me, because I never heard of anyone else able to do this- is that I can hit anything I aim at."

"I am," he starts after a not insignificant pause, "really glad that me being hit with this hasn't manifested in being unable to shut up."

...Which. Huh. Shit. Does that sound rude? "That's not me telling you to shut up, because I am endlessly fascinated in Rifter stuff, and I might end up writing most of this down so I don't inevitably forget. I'm just observing that some people are saying every thought that comes to mind, some just are letting some of their inside thoughts out, and some are only just compelled to tell the truth when confronted with it. Seems like I'm on that latter part of the scale. Which I'm thankful for."

So. Okay. Sometimes he's saying more than he might normally want, but, he wanted to make that clear, okay.

"You think the aiming thing is a manifestation of a third god, or just another Gold gift?"

"Oh thanks," Ellie huffs, but it's without venom. She sighs, shuts her eyes for a few seconds to gather herself.

"Yeah, write it down. Maybe we can figure out who the hell did this."

But she sighs, shaking her head, and reaches down into one of the various sheaths strapped to various parts of her body, some hidden and some not, to produce a knife. She flips it to hold it by the tip of the blade, then points at the other end of the room, at a wooden knot in the wall.

"There," she says -- and a golden glow suffuses her irises, bathing the air around her in the softness of that light. When she throws, it's with perfect accuracy, and the glow fades out afterward.

"No," she says, going to retrieve her knife from the wall. "Gold made it pretty obvious."

"Wow." With the utmost genuine awe. "I have never seen anything quite like that before."

Being away from Templar-ing for a while makes him far less antsy about magic. Does he like all the mages freely using their magic unchecked? No. Maker. That makes him very nervous. They're all technically apostates at this point, but it's not even all by choice since, obviously, circles don't exist anymore. But he doesn't feel some urge to reach for his blade when they do. He's friends with mages, from Thedas. He can see the use of magic in the field.

And Rifter magics are just different. They aren't beholden to any previously known or understood rules of how magic works. Is that dangerous? Of course, but in a manner that is far removed from someone like him caring overmuch. Not his job to police this sort of thing anymore.

"And that's why you had that aura around you when you--materialized into being. Because of Blue. You glow with the power of the god you're tapping into when you use a power. I wish it was like that with the Maker; it's beautiful."

Sometimes, there's a light that settles into Ellie's skin that has nothing to do with magic. Or maybe it does, depending on who you talk to. But the smile that lights her up makes her actually look her age. It drops everything haunted about her right out of her eyes. This is the person she would've been, without everything.

"Right? Fucking awesome. I wasn't so sure about having powers like this before, but now it feels like a part of me."

She drops back into the seat next to him, lifting her shoulders in a shrug, then laying her hand out on the table.

She pulls her glove off, so the anchor shows; the soft green that never goes away. Not really.

"Maybe it is," she muses, thoughtful.

It's beautiful. She's beautiful. Too young to have suffered the way that she has, and it's in moments like these that he sees her--he sees her. The Ellie Williams under the dirt, the grime, the blood, the sweat, the tears. The Ellie Williams under the hardship and loss. She is a gem, and he's thankful that she's here, with people who have grown to care about her, to let her grow, to slowly be polished into a shine.

"Thank the Maker I get to see this."

He could be talking about the shard. But he's looking so very softly at Ellie's face when he says it.

But on the other hand, he hadn't really intended to say that out loud. So. Instead. He refocuses on the anchor in her hand, proudly on display instead of hidden away. She has a point. In a way, this is the magical glow of the Maker. Some are afraid of the Fade and the powers it holds. Some are afraid of the anchor shards and what they can do.

Mobius has a healthy respect for that which is a part of the emerald waters from which everything was created. That can include fear. But so too a heavy fascination.

"May I?" And when there is no negative indicated, he reaches a hand toward hers, taking it gently. Reverently. He knows already, there is no dip or dive, no hole or portal, nothing physically aberrant about the area, but his fingers slide over skin anyway, along the area where she is blessed by his god.

"I definitely think it's beautiful. And that anyone afraid of this blessing and of the chosen of Andraste are fools for being so blind. It's special. You're special. And I'm glad you get to experience this."

Ellie watches his face, more than anything. He gets this pure wonder in his eyes when he talks about something like this, and it's weird, but also nice, to see it directed at her.

She spreads her hand, palm-up, for him to look at. It's the one with the missing fingers, but he doesn't hesitate in the least.

Her fingertips only twitch a little when he calls her special.

"Chosen of Andraste?"

"Rifters," he explains, before his brain really catches up with what he's saying, "and anyone else with one of these marks. You were all chosen by Andraste to be her heralds, in the wake of--well, in the wake of the Herald."

He hasn't said that out loud before, to another person. At least not since he's been here. His smile freezes, fingers halt, draw away slowly. Doesn't drop her hand but does nothing to hinder if she wants to pull it back. In the wake of saying something that probably sounds a little crazy.

It does sound a little crazy, and if she didn't know Mobius, she'd be having full-on alarm bells instead of just a bubbling in the back of her throat, concern pressing in on the heels of the discomfort.

Her fingers close around his before she thinks, a reassuring squeeze that comes out before she thinks it through.

Apparently, the magic isn't just in speech.

"I don't think we were," Ellie says softly, and then rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable. "Or at least not us specifically?"

She waffles, not because she's being untruthful but simply because she doesn't know. A half-dozen thoughts try to crowd in, but she shakes her head, like she can shake them off.

"No matter why we're here, we're here. Whether somebody chose us or it was the luck of the draw, we're what showed up."

She doesn't let go. She stays, makes him stay. He can see the lines of concern on her face openly. But she stays.

The smile drops like a sack of bricks, tension draining from his shoulders in an instant, and he dips his head when he sighs out low and slow. Whether anyone believes the same as him or not is pretty irrelevant. He doesn't expect anyone to buy into it; that's part of the reason why he doesn't say it.

"And I'm grateful for every last one of you. You're all a damn sight better than just demons coming out of those rifts, that's for sure." And that's a truth he feels everyone should be able to get behind. (There are probably those out there who might prefer demons. Who knows.)

"I'm not sorry for my beliefs, but I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable."

"It's not about your beliefs," Ellie says softly. "I don't have to get it, you know?" She presses her lips together. Dina's faith had never made sense to her either, or the idea of God or Heaven, or an afterlife.

Some things were beautiful, like parts of the Chant, or the songs, or the way Mobius would have his eyes soften when he talked about the Maker. It made Ellie wish she could believe in anything the way he did.

"But I can't think of myself as anything other than some girl who has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe finally showing up in the right place at the right time."

And something in her voice says she's afraid to hope for that.

"No reason it can't be both. Mine is not," he adds with a tired chuckle, "a popular kind of view. And it's much more likely that you're all in the right place at the right time. But I think they can both be true. They might even both be wrong, who's to say?"

But his thought brings him comfort. And hers brings her comfort as well. Even if she's afraid to want it.

He looks back up at her. "You're allowed that, you know. You're allowed to be that girl who's finally where she needs to be when she needs to be there."

Ellie's expression softens, and she bumps him lightly with her arm.

"I don't believe it," she admits. "But it would be nice. If it turned out to be true."

The idea of being something bigger than herself isn't so bad.

"But either way, I'm here. I'm going to make it count."

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