![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5
WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.
This is a timeline where, some mild chaos aside, things for the last month have carried on as normal. Riftwatch hasn't lost anyone at all. There were no funerals. The work continued. The late afternoon of August 15 may find people at their desks, in the midst of meetings or debriefs, in the library, in the sparring yard. Or maybe afield, seeing to errands or meetings or missions somewhere else in Thedas. Maybe, if they are particularly unlucky, they are deep in conversation with an ally or embroiled in combat with an enemy agent at the precise moment when the magical connection between two realities closes and the diverging timelines snap together into one existence.
At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.
For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.
For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.
At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.
For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.
For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.
no subject
Doing his trousers back up and rolling his eyes away from the histrionics, Benedict looks around the room that he realizes is unfamiliar to him. He has the vague recollection that he belongs here, or at least arrived of his own volition, so there's no reason to panic. At least no reason apart from the man on the floor panicking, but Benedict is resolved not to encourage this. He lights a cigarette and goes to lean against the frame of an open window, waiting it out.
no subject
This is his room. This is his house.
But he is in the mud. He is dying.
"I was dying." His gaze finally settles on Benedict. Recognising him. Recognising why he's here. But Josias is trapped beneath the immense weight of a dead horse. And he is dying. He scrubs his hands up into his hair, clutching over his skull like he could physically hold together the splitting of reality in his head. "What the fuck happened?"
no subject
His eyes widen as he realizes exactly what he's looking at and why-- he nearly forgets that he's inhaling on the cigarette, and lowers it with a few frantic coughs.
"You," he wheezes, and stumbles forward to catch himself on the bedframe, "you did die." Glancing Josias up and down, it strikes him that the fellow's manner has taken on a rather more aggressive bent, but that doesn't seem too strange for what they're dealing with.
no subject
He can't be dead. If he was dead then that would mean he'd died in the mud, trapped. That would mean this was what waited for him beyond, a second-rate house in a city he wasn't much fond of, the company of an attractive but foolish Tevinter.
But the mud is in his mouth. More sucked in on every inhale, his fingers scratching bloody and useless against the ground, the weight on top of him.
"I'm here. That doesn't make sense."
no subject
Benedict is growing increasingly invested, cheerful even, a smile at the corner of his mouth as it dawns him (addled as he is) what this means.
"Research, and. And Gela and Mobius and I, we went back, we stopped it from happening. We stopped you."
Remembering his cigarette, he takes a thoughtful draw from it, his smile growing.
"This is real. It worked."
no subject
"You went back," is repeated, a little numbly. Stopped it from happening. Impossible, and yet, people falling through rifts from other worlds should be impossible. Research. What had they done? How had they done it? Why? It couldn't have been to save Josias alone, no matter how much importance he might place on his own life.
He looks to Benedict again, and repeats, each word emphatic and sharp: "What, exactly, happened?"
no subject
"Time-- Rift magic," he says, forming his hands pointlessly into a shape that somewhat resembles a rift, "they had some people bleed a high dragon. Used its blood, sent us back through a rift, they-- they can do that, it's been done once before."
He sits down where he is, grinning with excitement at Josias. "We were able to go to... right before you went to Granitefell. And we stopped you. It worked."
no subject
He pulls himself up to his feet, still a little unsteady. Makes his way over to the nearest bottle of alcohol, unstoppering it and taking a decent swig. He's entirely naked. He doesn't seem to care.
"How bad was it, to inspire this?"
Memory expanding, winding into place. He remembers a dragon, now, silent in the night sky until it wasn't. Fire. The horse's screams. Then the mud. That had to be only the beginning. How many had died, how brutally? What had it taken to make Riftwatch do the most impactful thing he's heard them manage in years?
no subject
"We lost most of you," he says, a strain entering his voice: there's no reason to get all emotional about it, it's solved, isn't it? And yet. "There was no moving forward from that."
no subject
Probably with more interesting deaths to recall, however.
He rubs a hand across his chest, chasing away a ghost of pressure there. Pads back over to Benedict. Offers him the bottle. "Thank you," he says, sincere.
Maybe too sincere. His mask has been knocked aside, he knows, and the ongoing absence is slowly tightening a much different vice around his chest. But between the panic and Benedict's usual inebriated state, he should be able to wave things off. Why not indulge it, a moment longer? He'd died the hapless merchant's son; let him be alive without that fool, if only for a minute.
no subject
"You're welcome," he says, and takes a drink from it-- because being further under the influence is exactly what this situation needs-- but the sword is mightier than the brain, in some cases. "I should check in," he says, with the tipsy implication of 'but I could be convinced not to, just yet'.
no subject
The swell of it is akin to anger, heating the limbs and breath. He has a better option than to fall to rage and frustration, though, as bad an idea as it might be. He cups Benedict's chin, firm, tilting his face upwards and holding him in place as he bends to kiss him. Demanding, taking that pretty mouth as he has wanted to, but the mask of the meek clerk has never permitted.
no subject
He meets the other man's mouth in the way of one accepting a challenge, shifting his weight to press back against him as before. You're sure you don't want it this way, little man?
no subject
"We're going to do this properly, for once," he murmurs low against Benedict's mouth, Antivan as some small armour for the honesty. His hand slides the line of Benedict's throat to his chest, spreading broad, feeling the rise of easy breath there. Then he shoves, sharp, pushing Benedict flat to the bed, giving him the space to kick his feet apart and start dealing with his trousers.
no subject