player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5

[cozen]

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.

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.

Comments

[dastardly]

The excitement in Benedict's expression is palpable, shining out of him, giddy. Josias looks at him for a long moment and wonders what it must be like, to be on the other side of this. Feeling triumph and achievement, rather than cold and death.

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?

[altusimperius]

Benedict's eyes track him as he moves, just for a moment, but the question is sobering enough to imbue him with some modesty, and he looks back at his cigarette.

"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."

[dastardly]

Most of you. Maker, it must have been a bloodbath. Near half of Riftwatch's number had been there, last Josias had known. He thinks of specific names, considers asking, but-- what did it matter. They were all alive again now, like him.

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.

[altusimperius]

Having only really noticed the change incidentally, it becomes all the clearer when Josias approaches so confidently with the bottle, and Benedict takes it with a curious tilt of his head, his expanding smile intrigued. He certainly doesn't mind this side of the person for whom he has, frankly, assumed he's been doing a favor or two.

"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'.

[dastardly]

Benedict should check in. He has people he cares about, connections woven through the fabric of Riftwatch. Josias isn't sure he would even be on that list, if Benedict hadn't been here already. Isn't sure he would be on anyone's. He would have woken to the reality of his averted death alone, choking through the memory of it confused and frightened for his sanity. He hates the idea of it, suddenly and viciously. The idea, also, that he was likely not mourned in the other time. His father, certainly, but no one else. There was no one else.

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.

[altusimperius]

In the first split-second of the interaction, the sudden heat of Josias' movements gives Benedict the impression he's about to be throttled. This might have been a deterrent if he were fast enough (he'll decide later), but he isn't, and finds the results well worth any initial scare.
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?

[dastardly]

Of course, Benedict is never difficult to persuade to this, but it's clear he hasn't caught on to Josias' intentions. He wonders how long it will take, as he tightens his grip, a squeeze of pressure against Benedict's attempt to shift forward. Not that he'd want complete passivity. That was an entirely different indulgence.

"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.

[altusimperius]

[continued here for things getting increasingly NSFW]