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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
His own steps don't quite stumble, but there's a pause as he adjusts to where he is and what's happening, the sensation cresting over him like a wave.
Still, before he goes to find anyone, he pauses here. She was probably speaking rhetorically, rather to him in particular, he's aware. Regardless of timeline, their acquaintance has been glancing so far. But even so, he says: "You weren't to know." Quiet and sympathetic. No one can really know, when they only arrive after someone has been lost, much less sixteen of them.
no subject
The reply doesn't illicit surprise, but it's fairly clear that it draws her back into the hallway. Out of the memories.
"That's kind," she says, because it is. Replying to her at all, as much as the sympathy. "But I could've tried."
They'd told her, sixteen dead. But she'd heard bigger numbers than that before, seen whole caravans devastated, families destroyed. Had learnt the practicality of loss. This hadn't been the right place to apply that, and she would've known that, if she'd taken one second to actually listen.
no subject
Regardless of the motivation, he says, "You could have, perhaps. But you're far from the only person in the Gallows who has made a serious mistake and is trying to do better. Presuming that's your intent, it is not a mistake that cannot be overcome. At least I don't think so." Certainly, many of them have reason to understand that sort of practicality, even if they found it misplaced. Certainly, many of them have done worse things.
The fact that she recognizes, now, that it was a mistake is a hopeful sign as far as Vanya is concerned.
no subject
"I'm sorry, I don't think I got your name before."
Not an arsehole: learning people's names, instead of carrying on with them as "kind guy" in your head.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(In hindsight, perhaps a bit on the nose.)
"Are they more common, where you're from? I'm afraid we didn't get as far as their native habitat, or if we did I've forgotten."