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

[laruetheday]

"No," Clarisse argues back. "There's no rule saying you have to wear anything. The rock's only in your shoe if you choose to wear shoes. The socks are only wet if you put socks on. What, are you never allowed to take your shoes off in this universe? They're just attached to your legs? Stupid.

Also, I don't wear sandals," she adds, looking at Ellie. "I'd just wear my boots with no socks underneath." And they'd stink.

[notathreat]

"Ouch," Ellie mutters at Abby's explanation, scrunching her nose, and then, without missing a beat:

"And that's disgusting," Ellie says immediately to Clarisse, without a trance of irony or rancor. "Do you know how much fungus you'd get on your feet that way?"

[armd]

Abby's nose wrinkles. She looks revolted and tickled all at once. Foot fungus...

"Shouldn't be a problem for you, right? Aren't you immune?"

[laruetheday]

Hah. Tell her, Abby.

"Yeah. Plus it beats trench foot from permanently wet socks, right." Either way, there are no winners in this scenario.

[notathreat]

"I'm immune to cordyceps, not athlete's foot."

She's trying very hard not to laugh, though.

"And does it? If you have a rock in your shoe it'd eventually turn into a wound if you didn't take it out and that's a good way to lose a foot."

[armd]

"Have you tried being immune to athlete's foot?"

Seems like a skill issue. She isn't replying to the other half of this conversation at all by the way, it's just fun to sit here and gently needle Ellie.

[notathreat]

"Have you tried not being a smartass?"

The response is so instant, and it could be nasty, but unlike the last time Ellie quipped something like this at her, it's actually not.

They're on shaky ground, but it's like they're proving that they can tease each other and not have it turn into something actually shitty. It's new ground.

[laruetheday]

"Nope," Clarisse says. "She can't."

Nobody who lives in this room is allowed to let anybody know they have actual feelings except for once every few months. It's the rule when you live with military jock types.

Except for Wags, who can feel whatever he wants whenever he wants.

"Also, you're the one who created this no-win situation," she reminds Ellie. Trench foot or gangrene.

[armd]

Abby immediately starts quietly chuckling the moment that comes out of Ellie's mouth, and doesn't stop at what Clarisse says either... not even to try defend herself. Why bother when it's true?

"Create a different one," she says eventually, a bit breathy from laughing. "I wanna stop talking about feet."

[notathreat]

"That's the whole point of would-you-rather!"

Ellie doesn't laugh but she can't contain a smile sneaking in, either. Her eyes have got that glint in them. She's trying to hold out.

"Fine. Would you rather fight a bear with a machine gun or a pterodactyl with a flamethrower?"

[laruetheday]

"The pterodactyl with the flamethrower," Clarisse says, sounding almost offended by the options, "obviously."

She leans back against her pillows and stretches her legs out, almost like she's contemplating going to sleep. She isn't, but she at least wants to be comfortable. "It would be so easy going after a bear with a machine gun. There would be no challenge."

[notathreat]

"Nonono."

Ellie holds up a finger.

"The pterodactyl is USING the flamethrower. And the bear is using the machine gun. For the purposes of the question they're totally able to do that."

[armd]

"The Scars had some big guys," Abby mutters, "Felt like fighting a bear with a machine gun.

"You know, when they were allowed to have them. And use them. Only in 'special circumstances', like whenever I fucking showed up."

[laruetheday]

She has to think it over for a few long moments, but then Clarisse decides: "The pterodactyl still." But the more she thinks about it the more she's realizing that it sounds a lot like fighting a slightly smaller version of the dragon who almost bit her in half what feels like less than a day ago, and that's making her slightly less enthusiastic about the idea.

She turns to Abby, eager to change the subject. "Why weren't they allowed to use guns whenever?" She just assumed that in the world Abby and Ellie come from, everybody uses guns. Like all the time. So this is kind of interesting.

[notathreat]

"Because you fight things by going up and punching them," Ellie huffs. "If you shoot them with a silencer it doesn't matter how big they are, or what guns they have."

Kind of fucked up to compare notes on murder, but seriously.

Ellie nods serenely at Clarisse's answer. It takes a second for her to catch up, to think about it. Shit. Oops.

"They were a cult," she says, interrupting Abby a little. Sorry.

[armd]

"What she said. They worshipped a crazy lady who wanted them to be... of the earth, or whatever. And then she died in a turf war and the whole thing got even worse. They don't want anybody to use any 'old world' technology because they're supposed to be out there roughing it."

In a zombie apocalypse. As if life isn't hard enough. Abby's getting into what she's saying, gesturing as she speaks, rolling her eyes.

"It'd be fine if they wanted to go and do all that shit off in a corner somewhere without bothering anybody, but because we want to actually use guns and electricity and not take children as brides we're the ones 'nested with sin'. And deserve to have out guts carved out of our bodies.

"Obviously."

[notathreat]

"Child brides?"

Sorry, small interjection.

[laruetheday]

"Fucked up," Clarisse mutters, scratching the side of her neck.

The whole no guns and no tech thing is dumb, too, but it's at least possible. She knows it is, she's done it. (Without the zombies, but with other monsters, so there.) The rest of it...

"Not enough empty space for you guys, huh?"

[armd]

"Nope. Everybody wanted Seattle."

Which. Why? It was so rainy there. Abby squints and stretches her legs out, thinking. To Ellie, "Yeah. Why do you think Lev wanted out of there? That was gonna be him."

Poor kid.

[notathreat]

"Jesus Christ," Ellie mutters, making a face. "Glad the kid wised up to how crazy that was and got out of there. Fuck."

Any place where adults wanna marry little boys, man.

"How'd you meet a Scar kid anyway? Your folks had a fullblown war going on."

[armd]

Abby makes a face. "Not my folks. I was just there." Killing for them. Living with them. Enjoying all the perks that came with that.

She frowns, and reaches back blindly with a hand, searching for Wags' tummy to rub. Finding it, she settles with him in reach.

Clarisse knows this story already. "I got caught in their territory and they managed to knock me out. When I came to, they strung me up. Lev and Yara got me down." She shrugs a shoulder, like she's saying another day ending in y. "After that, it made sense to stick with them. They broke Yara's arm for trying to run. It wasn't good."

[laruetheday]

Oh, yeah, Clarisse is realizing that she does know this story. Some of it, anyway. Abby never told her the part about Yara and the broken arm before.

"Everybody out there sounds crazy," she says, but there's a kind of wistfulness in her voice. She just loves war, guys.

[notathreat]

"Why would they get you down?"

Details, Abby! Some of the stuff doesn't make sense without context!

"I saw them gut a dude, once. It happened really fast."

[armd]

"Because they're good people." Keep up!

Clarisse isn't getting out that easily. "Surely there are crazy cult people where you come from too."

[laruetheday]

Still seems like Abby is simplifying a really weird and complicated situation, buuut Clarisse lets it slide. It's not like she owes Ellie her life story or anything.

"No." Okay, wait. "I mean, probably somewhere, but I don't know about them. I feel like people only find out about those weird cults after they all drink poison or something."

Also, by the way, it's her. She's the one in the fucked up cult.