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

closed to gwenaëlle.

[portalling]

In another time and another place, they go to Hightown.

It’s been three weeks and change since that bizarre day when three panicked members of Riftwatch appeared in the Gallows and demanded to change the plan. As the details eventually emerged over the days to come and Strange learned about his other self’s involvement, he’d taken it in stride, time travel and parallel universes being just another Tuesday for him: crisis averted, timeline swerved, and everything is surprisingly fine, and so the summer ticks along in its distraction and busywork.

And so he and Gwenaëlle do eventually plan for some musical lessons, a first-time visit to her grandfather’s house. They leave the island, take the elevator up to Hightown, and it’s a pleasant ride with pleasant conversation, a particular chapbook waiting in his back pocket.

When they eventually arrive at the estate, he cranes his head to take it all in — the De Coucy residence in all its finery does remind him of the Sanctum Sanctorum — and, being ushered in, the sorcerer is unfailingly polite to her grandfather the Duke and the servants alike. He’s given a brief enough tour, shown the shape of the house in broad strokes, before they meander into the parlour with the pianoforte.

Strange immediately lights up at the sight. It isn’t exactly a common, cheap instrument to have here in Thedas, and so he gravitates toward it like a moth drawn to a flame. A finger pressed against an ivory key, a light note ringing out: painstakingly in tune, because of course, one expects no less here.

He’s peering at the latest sheet music still set out, sussing out whether it is the same musical notation he’s used to. While he pokes around, Gwenaëlle busies herself with a sideboard where a servant had set out some chilled summer-wine, good for a warm afternoon.

“You really don’t miss the comforts here?” he asks, bemused, rifling through the pages.

It’s a perfectly normal day. So far.

marcus rowntree.

[luaithre]

just a normal day. closed to barrow.

[luaithre]

The dimensions of this room are perfectly familiar. He can tell what time it is from the slant of light coming through the windows (late afternoon) and the air is permeated with the after-scent of cigarette smoke.

It's a different kind of smoke than the one he'd just been recalling. That smoke had been heavy with char, burned flesh, sulphur, the kind of smoke that pours thick and black up into the sky like ink. The ash of buildings and bones, not just dried leaf, fine paper. He is sitting at his desk when he last remembers being on his back. He is trying to apologise, and catch his breath to do so.

In front of him are notes, his handwriting somewhat scratchy and big, notes of—(he isn't reading it, but they are notes around a training schedule for the Forces division on anti-siege weaponry and the drilling there of).

He isn't reading. He's drawing in a sharp breath, the chair legs scraping slightly on the wooden floor where he jerks backwards from his desk, some, still seated. Raises a hand and grasps at his shoulder, which feels—perfectly fine, and not like it's been shattered at all, and his heart is beating fast but healthily, not the quick weak pulses of a dying animal. It's not as immediate as all that, because it's like he'd been asleep and is waking, and like there is some formless stretch of nothing between laying on his back in the mud and now sitting here in his desk, but also,

how to make sense of it? Marcus grips the edge of his desk with his other hand, and then snaps focus to the other person in the room sitting on the other side of his desk, as if realising, in that same moment, that they're there.

Ellie

[notathreat]

Closed to Abby

[notathreat]

In both realities, Ellie is braced for this. That there'll be a moment of something getting fucked up and disconnected, reconnected. That there will be a sense of timelines meeting, of a rush of memories unplugging.

It's happened before -- it's the kind of thing she doesn't like to remember. A whole life hallucinated. It makes her wonder what counts as real anymore.

But there's been that doubt. What if. What if doesn't work.

So when it does, it rocks every molecule of her being.

Ellie comes to when she's right in the middle of riding the ferry. She doesn't know whether she's coming or going, doesn't know what she's headed to or away from. All she knows is that the seared burns from the dragonfire on her hands are suddenly gone, that a horrific layer of exhaustion is gone, and that her insides don't feel like they're trying to eat themselves.

She stares down at the spread palms of her hands, watches them shake. And for the first time in weeks, feels something like hope. They shake harder. Ellie draws them into fists. Draws the air, searing, into her lungs.

Did it work? Does she dare hope that it worked?

She nearly falls flat on her face as she gets herself out of the ferry. Staggers, on the pier. She hears excited barking, familiar, and it drags attention up from the next step to all-too-familiar silhouette.

The last glimpse she had of Abby's face, it had been obliterated. It's there now, superimposed, a grim rictus staring back at her before reality asserts itself. Forces it all out. Leaves her, pale and sweaty as the ghost she suddenly isn't. It probably would've been different, if it had been anyone else. But Abby is the first person she sees. Abby is the confirmation that for once, things went exactly right. The world stutters into snapshots, and later she won't remember crossing the distance between them. The decision to do this. Whether it was a decision at all.

It's not so much a hug as an impact. Ellie's body hits Abby's with enough blunt force to bruise the shit out of them both, and quite possibly lay them both flat on the pier.

[armd]

She's out jogging with the dog when the worlds collide hard enough to make her stagger. Abby comes to a stop, hands on her knees, breathing through the sudden roil of pain and nausea, double vision: she is lying on her back, staring up into black smoke and trying to breathe through a body that feels like a clenched, bloodless fist. And she is here, touching her arms, bringing her hands together, clasping, daring to run them up across her face to feel that she's whole.

Before she's had a chance to make sense of anything, the dog mows her down.

He has to show her the way back. It's not that she doesn't know where she is, more that she can't think of the world around her as real, has to be persuaded to move through it, one hand on the dog. She's told anyone who has ever asked her that she doesn't believe in an afterlife and that hasn't changed, but she remembers dying too clearly, feels it clinging to her body while she defies it, to walk.

At the point that Wagner leaves her to go racing off she stops and blinks into the sun, stares at the river-water. His bark draws her attention up, in time for the collision, somebody slamming into her hard enough to hurt. Abby almost loses her balance. It pushes her into the moment; she gasps like she only just remembered how to breathe and grabs her, snares her hands into her shirt to hold on tight.

Her mind is spinning. The dog dances around them while they stand there, clutching at each other. Abby's heart is beating hard and when she pulls back, pale with shock and still holding to Ellie (too out of it to be embarrassed, but that will come later), it's to confirm that it's actually her, that she's there.

And she must be. No good afterlife would have Ellie Williams in it.

[notathreat]

Abby catches her like a bulwark, clutching at her like a sleepwalker before she latches on tight. She smells like pine, not the char and blood of the battlefield, not the stink of open-grave rot.

Ellie breathes.

Abby pulls her back before Ellie fully surfaces, Wags dancing around them and barking, and Ellie clutches at Abby's forearms to steady herself. It takes longer than it should. The two of them hold each other up, grounding themselves.

"It worked," she manages, just barely. There is a fierce, feverish light in her eyes. Raw grief, pain and relief, and hope. "You're back. Are you back?"

It's nonsensical as fuck, given the fact that Abby probably doesn't have any context for why she's apparently cheated death.

[armd]

"Yeah."

Her mouth is dry, and voice hoarse. Ellie is the most solid evidence she has of actually being here, but she glances up over the top of her head too as if she might see somebody else with her. Her fingers dig unknowingly into her arms, clutching tight. Holding on. "I think."

As back as she can be. There's a level of disorientation lingering as she attempts to place herself. Still waking up.

It worked.

Her focus snaps back to Ellie. "What worked?"

Is it bad that her first thought is blood magic? Only that she has no idea how she got from that battlefield to here. Very little makes sense.

clarisse

[laruetheday]

ota

[laruetheday]

She's in the armory, going over a long list of inventory, when it hits her.

The words on the list in front of her seem to swim, and Clarisse bends over double, suddenly nauseous, breathless. The list and pen she's been holding slip from between her numb fingers and go clattering on the floor of the armory, where they'll sit forgotten for the rest of the day. Sweat breaks out on her forehead as she tries to breathe through the feelings of utter disorientation, because she can breathe, now. The air in here is slightly musty, smells of oil and metal and leather all mixed together, something normally comforting and familiar to her. She can breathe, but each time she inhales she expects nothing but acrid smoke and the taste of her own blood pooling in the back of her throat. Her forehead presses against the stone floor, and she squeezes her eyes shut.

She's dying. She was dying.

Time passes like that. Minutes. At some point, she manages to pull herself off the ground. Slowly, like someone recovering from a sudden incapacitating illness, Clarisse makes it to the door of the armory and tumbles out like she's forgotten how to move.

The afternoon is hot, muggy with summer stillness. She can hear birds, and farther off, the sound of waves crashing up against the docks, the ferry.

Those are the things that feel like a dream.

She crashes headlong into the first person she comes across, like she hasn't even seen them, only stopping when their physical presence blocks her. She reaches out and grabs for their shoulders, as if holding onto someone else can anchor her here, in this reality that still feels so unreal.

"What happened to us?"

jayce

[pathlit]

closed to viktor

[pathlit]

The thing is, Jayce died fairly quickly.

He was dead seconds before his body hit the ground, neck snapped by the jaws of a dracolisk shaking him like a doll. The last sensation his body and mind recall in tandem is the sharp force of a pointed weapon punching through the muscles of his back, tearing through ribs to pierce his lung. Neither body nor mind suffered the effect of drowning in one's own blood because the dracolisk rendered the killing act immediately thereafter -- high on adrenaline and instinct, sure, but inadvertently merciful all the same.

So, when the timelines meld together on this warm and muggy summer afternoon where Jayce and Viktor have sought air, however sticky, on one of the library's balconies, it isn't agony that permeates his consciousness. It isn't much of anything at all initially. In one moment, he's leaning against the balustrade, peeling an apple with a pocketknife. In the next, he's holding a partially-peeled apple in one hand and a pocketknife in the other, his mind full of cotton, heavy and dragging along the confines of his skull as it tries to reorient.

A ribbon of red skin dangles from the fruit in his palm. Down, down below, the rhythmic crashing of waves against the shoreline is nearly inaudible.

john silver.

[hornswoggle]

ellis.

[heorte]

Byerly, OTB (open to Bastien) (and later Benedict)

[bouchonne]

One instant, he is slipping loose. And the next, he is in a brocade chair, a teacup in hand, his back aching like he's been sitting for an hour, a smile on his face.

Is that the Maker? he thinks, and wonders why the Maker would possibly look so very much like Porfiry de Tolly, Nevarran expatriate living in Kirkwall, trader in metals, admirer of Riftwatch. And he wonders why the Maker would have him sitting in this absolutely ass-ruining monstrosity of a chair. And why he, Byerly, would be smiling his meaningless nothing smile at the Maker.

"Excuse me," By says, and sets down his teacup, and rises. De Tolly doesn't stop him, nor do any servants - do they try? do they question him or his sudden distraction? Because no memory clings to the surface of his mind, he does not know, and will never know. Instead, he finds himself outside, looking up at the blue sky.

It is the Fade, then. It must be. Does the green sky of the Fade appear blue to a spirit? Does all look normal? There's nothing here of the strangeness that the Fade has shown before, but perhaps that is simply a matter of perspective. Perhaps it is bizarre, but to his mind, it seems normal. The idea makes him want to retch.

And so he wanders in a daze through Hightown, blinking in the afternoon sun, staring at familiar landmarks like they've betrayed him. And then he turns his gaze, and stops -

"No," he says, his voice low and strangled as he looks at Bastien.

closed to ellie

[laruetheday]

It wouldn't be right to say that she's over the shock of this, because how could she be? But she's upright, walking, talking, thinking a little more clearly now in the bright afternoon sunlight, and the only thing Clarisse can think about is finding Ellie.

Problem is, she has no idea where Ellie should be right now. She feels like she should be able to, but she can't. The only thing she remembers is that she was trying to breathe around the blood in her throat and wishing she could talk to Ellie again, hear her voice one last time, and now—

Now she can do that. If she finds her. If this isn't some fucked up dying dream.

Clarisse ends up walking around the Gallows like some kind of lost dog, not entirely certain of where she's going. It's not like she's the only one. She makes it halfway up the stairs to the griffon aerie before turning around and heading back the way she came, because if Ellie's here she would have come down already, right?

Eventually it occurs to her that Ellie might be looking for her, too, and this is how she winds up in the courtyard near the armory again, and this is when she sees the familiar profile, the hair that always looks so much more red when they're out in the sun.

Clarisse should feel elated, but in that moment she's terrified. That she'll speak too loudly or touch Ellie and she'll disappear, like a bubble popping, like getting ripped out of a good dream. For a few seconds she just watches, drinking in the sight of her, unable to force herself to move.

"Ellie?"

closed to abby

[laruetheday]

Later. How much later, Clarisse isn't sure. Time still doesn't feel real.

Clarisse is standing in front of the room she shares with Abby. Her hand is on the doorknob, unmoving. She's actually afraid to turn it, to go inside, because what if the room is empty?

She's seen a lot of people around the Gallows today, but Abby hasn't been one of them. And until Clarisse sees her, she can't relax. She can't let herself believe that they're really okay until she has everyone accounted for, and second-hand isn't good enough. She has to see Abby with her own eyes for it to be true.

After some time, (and at least one person walking past her down the hallway and glancing sidelong at the way she's just standing there with her hand against the door), Clarisse pushes it open and walks inside.

Wags is on her before she can even shut the door behind her, doing his usual booming barks as he wiggles and jumps up against her legs. Abby is a familiar shape on her own side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the bed. It could almost be any other day, any other time.

Clarisse feels something collapse softly inside her, a final tension unwinding.

"Hey," she manages, her voice shaking.

[notathreat]

Tears of heady relief flood Ellie's eyes and maybe later she'll be embarassed. Right now, no. In the moment, she's experiencing a fucking miracle.

She has her back.

It's bittersweet and overwhelming and the relief crashes through her like waves. They've corrected the course of time. They've dammed and redirected the entire fucking river.

And Abby is here.

"You died," she says, the truth a cut so quick and clean that the pain blooms only afterward. "You and Clarisse, and almost everyone else. So Tony and Viktor and Strange and Wysteria built something that -- that sent some people back in time. To warn you not to go to Granitefell.

"And it fucking worked."

[notathreat]

In the moment, everything had crashed together, had been a stack of cards crumbling down. Abby's warmth is still on her arms, lingering, and it still doesn't feel real. It won't be real until she sees them. Until she sees Clarisse.

It occurs to her to check the crystals, to reach out to her that way, but the fear chokes her nearly into a panic. Last time she'd never answered. She can't. She can't do that again. She just can't.

But she can put one foot in front of the other, and make her way back to the Gallows.

The sky's soft and blue, the sun shining down on the courtyard. Nobody's sparring right now. There is a dull ringing in her ears as she stares at one of the rips in a target that Maimer made before Ellie burned it with her, until she hears her voice.

It's not loud, but to Ellie it might as well have been a shout. She whips her head towards the voice so suddenly that she gets vertigo.

There she is. Standing in the light, smears of ink on her fingers the way she always gets when she's been writing. Her messy ponytail, the very slight cock of her head, the curve of her jaw. She's watching her like Ellie's the one risen from the grave.

Ellie can't speak. She can't breathe. For a moment she can't do anything but look at her, and then her feet are moving. Clarisse is closer and closer and then there, and when Ellie throws her arms around her she's whole and warm. Her heart's beating fast where they press together.

And finally, for the first time in weeks, Ellie can take a full breath.

"Clarisse."

[laruetheday]

It seems like Ellie crosses the distance between them in no more time than it takes to blink. Then she's there, warm, solid, pressing up against her.

Clarisse's arms reach up to wrap around her, tentative for just a moment, worried that if she squeezes too hard Ellie will fade away like vapor, like smoke. It doesn't happen, so she holds her tighter, tighter, just as scared to let go.

After a moment she tucks her face into the hollow of Ellie's shoulder, breathing in the familiar smell of her, leather and charcoal and soap and just a hint of sea spray. Her pulse beats up against Clarisse's cheek, faster than it should.

"Are you real?" she whispers, closing her eyes. Please. Please.

[notathreat]

Ellie can't help but suck back a sob as Clarisse puts her face into her shoulder, the crook of her neck, just as she always does. She tangles the fingers of her maimed hand into her hair, leaning her cheek into her temple, turning her head to lay her lips against her.

"Yeah," she whispers, laughs it, full of tears. "I swear." Good tears. Cleansing tears. The kind she couldn't let loose when they lit the pyre. Clarisse is holding her so tight it hurts, all her strength brought to bear, and Ellie wishes she'd hug her even tighter. It feels like her arms are holding her together.

She reaches up with her other hand, brushes the messy strands of hair back from her ear, lays her lips against it. Closes her eyes. Says what she swore to herself she would say the moment she was back in her arms.

"I love you."

[grindset]

It isn't much of anything at all.

A wooden tray lies on Viktor's narrow lap, lined with a rag, components and tools arranged together. Handle, chuck, frame. He's running an exquisitely thin detail file between two of the pinion's teeth, then fitting it against the drive wheel, looking at it up close and with serious eyes, first after every three strokes, then two, then one. Then it's on to the next groove.

He's had to move along the bench twice so far to stay inside his shrinking slant of shade. Now the sun encroaches on him again, a point too bright in the corner of his eye. It was barely funny the first time, he's about to say—

Instead he looks up. The light moves across his cheek, trembling in exaggeration of minuscule movements, synapse, muscle, pulse: signs of life. Somewhere, birds call to each other. Waves crash a rhythm. A red ribbon hangs and sunlight gleams on a knife gone still.

He looks, and scarcely breathes, and waits for a look in return.

[laruetheday]

Clarisse has been trying to figure out a way to say it for weeks, but it still feels right that Ellie ends up saying it first. She's always doing that. Giving Clarisse permission to say the things she has trouble saying, to ask for the things she wants, letting her know in so many ways that it's okay to feel the things she's feeling.

"I love you." It's quiet, but her voice doesn't waver. "I wanted to tell you. I've wanted to tell you for months. It's all I could think about. It's the last thing I thought about."

There are things that she might not ever tell Ellie, about that night, and what it felt like. How her fingers twitched trying to reach for her crystal, and how she wouldn't have been able to say anything even if she'd been able to. And it's probably better that Ellie doesn't ever hear those things, but still—Clarisse needs her to know this, at least.

That she was the most important thing, the final picture in Clarisse's head, even in the middle of all that smoke and blood.

[notathreat]

It's the last thing I thought about.

Behind Ellie's eyelids, she can see her. The line of her body, still. Broken bones and unnatural bent lines. Her eyes had been open, her lips parted, black blood streaking downward.

They'd cleaned away the blood, slid her eyes shut. Combed her hair. But Ellie still sees her in the dragon's ashes. In the wreckage. Alone.

She'd bled out quickly, but not instantly. It breaks Ellie's heart to know that she had time enough to regret what she didn't say. That she died, not while thinking of Elysium and the hero's welcome that awaited her there, but of what she was leaving behind.

"I knew," she reassures her, fingers stroking through her hair. "I was trying to find the right time to say it, too."

Ellie makes herself take a breath. It crackles with tears.

"I thought I was too late."

[pathlit]

Like ink spilled across thick parchment, his body language gradually shifts to reveal the recollection sinking in. The pinch of his brows, sight inward; the introduction of turbulence to his breaths, as if agitation arises with no clear etiology; the clenching of his hand around the hilt of the pocketknife, knuckles pale. He casts a troubled glance over his shoulder, but even that is hesitant, as if he fears what he might see.

The sky is unremarkable in its content. Beyond, the grungy silhouette of Kirkwall. Between them, the sea. The sea. The ground, scorched and muddied (by ruined supplies and the bodily fluids of the dead and injured). The sky, dark and heavy (with burning material, organic and not, living and not). The noise, unintelligible (in the cacophony of screams both panicked and delighted, the clang of metal against metal, the thud of an arrow hitting wood or a body, the roar of insatiable fire).

With a grimace, his eyes squeeze shut, nearly recoiling as his mind tries to reconcile the information immediately before it with the vague sensations confined to its skull, but the details fail to emerge. Exhaling, Jayce stares down at his hands, occupied by an apple and a pocketknife, while gnawing unease suggests something heavier is supposed to be in their stead.

Slowly shaking his head, he glances at Viktor. Viktor, who is looking at him.

Uncertainty creases his expression. "Something strange just happened," he says quietly.