29. stray

[heisrisen]

[Public video, backdated to September 23]

[The video is from the lab. Barbara and Iris can be seen a few feet behind, scrutinizing a monitor; Mal is visible, prone, on an examination chair, looks a little haggard, maybe dozing. The Emperor looks a wreck. A very composed wreck, clothes clean and hair passable, reclining in his own exam chair, but a wreck nonetheless. He has deep shadows under his eyes, his gaze loses focus, trails about, then jitters and darts, his jaw clenching as he tries to get his attention on track. The camera frame actually shakes slightly, hand trembling as he holds it. He flicks his eyes back to Iris and Babs once, as though to confirm they're occupied, but doesn't bother whispering. His voice is raspy, physiologically strained.]

Listen. Listen. There's going -

[A fit of coughing; brief but violent.]

There's going to be a door. Don't go through it. Don't go near it. Don't - don't be arrogant contrarian divas for once in your lives, and take my word for it. All of our -

[He jerks his head to indicate Babs and Iris, a little wildly.]

They did the work. Rigorous. It was falling apart, but now it's not, the other - the hell barge. It ate us. It killed us, and ate us, and put us back together from its - ichor, and the door is the maw. I'm not - mad. I am appropriately mad. I'm unraveling, but I'm right.

[The camera is shaking a little harder now, and Babs comes over, gently pries it from him. He makes a soft wounded noise, looks lost, before she turns the camera away from him and onto herself.]

He is right. Everyone who went through the door, or was seized by it, has displayed similar symptoms each time we approached the other barge, and everyone who let us analyze them shows evidence of the mirror barge itself woven into them. Normally it lies dormant, but right now it is using that connection to drag us back.

You don't want this to happen to you, and you don't want to strengthen that place. The door is usually found on deck, and very obvious. Stay clear.


[Spam for Sylvanas]

[After he's released from the lab - or before? Was he in the lab for something? He can't breathe, and he can't stop breathing. His vision swims and he stumbles, sags against a wall. No, a door. Something about -

- he jolts back to his feet, fear spiking, a jumble of adrenaline and invisible thorns. He wants to run, doesn't, walks with all the dizzy dignity he can manage, mouth dry, glancing behind him. The butcherman - no. He rubs the hem of his shirt between his fingers. There's a scar - belly, not lungs. So the butcher hasn't got him yet. No, it's something else.

He knows where to go. Not why, not what he's running from or whether he's alive or dead - neither seems quite right - but he knows where to go. The door is - the right door, not - wood, not steel, heavy and warm, handcarved, worn smooth but without chemical varnish. He traces the old mechanism of the latch, thinks of Çatalhöyük, the city built before doors. Intermediate history.

He thumps against the wood, whole-bodied, weary. He's safe here.]


[Private to Morgana]

[Raw, urgent, choking the words out before he forgets, scrawling make morgana leave on his arm so he can repeat it, if he has to.]

You're a warden. You can escape, you can - the planet I gave you for Christmas. Go. You should go there, if you can't go home yet. Tell the admiral to send you there. A month. A month should be enough?

Comments

[punched_hitler]

I'm not going to argue numbers with you. One, five, fifty, a hundred, it doesn't matter.

It's not gonna happen.

[heisrisen]

The numbers will increase if we don't cut the barges apart. We have a chance to end something truly evil here.

[punched_hitler]

By giving it what it wants? That's not the best answer.

[He's all for ending evil things. Trust him.

But he hates seeing innocent people die to do it. When they're not him.]

[heisrisen]

What it wants is the rest of you. What it wants is to gorge itself and keep churning through universes granting wishes to monsters.

We're what it already has.

[punched_hitler]

Then we wait until it gets closer and we stop it. There are always other options.

[They just might not be as neat.

But he doesn't believe this solution of yours is guaranteed, either. If it was... maybe this conversation would be different. Maybe it wouldn't.]

Not completely. Maybe we can use that.

[heisrisen]

[Aslan isn't 100% sure it will work either, truth be told. But if the admiral is stupid and stubborn and doesn't let them go, then all it costs them is an asphyixiation toll.]

Yes, completely. That's what we've just discovered.

It rebuilt us cell by cell from its own essence.

[punched_hitler]

Then why do you still want to oppose it?

[If you belong completely to it, why would it let that happen?]

[heisrisen]

It doesn't need my cooperation or my desire to use me. That's how ownership works.

[So, so bitter. He doesn't like this anymore than Steve does. He hates the barge and he hates that barge even more and he just wants to fix what his idiot hero counterpart srewed up and make it stop.]

[punched_hitler]

[His mouth twists a little, but -] Cooperation's generally in the cards, in my experience.

And if it's not? Then use what free will you do have and help find another way to solve this.

[heisrisen]

It needs our substance to be its own - done, not reversable by any means we have - and it needs us here to pull on.

It needs us to be shaped like the people it took, struggles included, the people who should be here, so that we are kept here. It doesn't think like people, it won't notice until we're cut loose.

[He shakes his head.]

Another way, another - listen to you. I am trying to solve this, but it isn't going to happen without any sacrifices.

[punched_hitler]

Look, I understand sacrifice.

But just I don't think we're there yet.

[He hates that he doesn't understand what's going on as well as he'd like. But he won't lose Bucky and he'd rather not lose anyone else along the way.]

[heisrisen]

An opinion based on desire, not any actual knowledge of the situation.

We delay and it gets stronger.

/Irisjack

[routemistress]

Oy. Calm your Imperial tits, my love, I've got a better plan.

=> spam

[heisrisen]

[He drops the comm into his lap. It's easier to pretend to be dignified when his hands aren't shaking.]

Do tell.

[He doesn't sound particularly enthused.]

[spam]

[routemistress]

[She has rarely wanted to hug him so badly. Once they were easy, draped over each other like cats without constraint; now she has to clench her fingers to stop herself taking hold of his hands.

She drops her voice so as not to broadcast what she says to anyone still connected by comm.]

Remember the funfair of no fun at all? A bridge you can cross one way, you can cross back the other.

Jack and me are a bloody sight cleverer than those two. We've 'ad the project going for quite a while.

[spam]

[heisrisen]

[He clicks his comm off completely, just a few words in, almost a reflex at her quiet voice. His instincts for secrecy are keen. His mouth twists as he listens, mind filling her concise explanation in with some of the details, sharp and quick even in pieces, and it's the bitterness of disappointment.]

Cosmetic. Hideous, but - they'd fix it too. They'd - all he needs is power.

[spam]

[routemistress]

Not just cosmetic. Jack turned into the Joker, Emperor. I saw 'is face laugh while 'e dismembered a bloke 'e loves.

[She takes his hands, then, lifts them and drops fierce, light kisses on his knuckles.]

That's the bridge I'm talking about. 'Im and me, not fairground rides on the deck. Infiltrators right where it counts.

We're going over there and taking back what's ours.

[spam]

[heisrisen]

[He makes a noise in his throat, a rasping whine, his hands tightening on hers, clutching, clinging to the contact. Like the world is spinning and she's the only still point to hold on to.]

How. How. What's ours. What's ours? Me before I went through a all-purpose spectral meat grinder? Because that me isn't there. What it's taken burned. Coal. Damned. It's hell, isn't it? It burns.

What. Will you bring back in a shuttle?

[She might, if she could find anything. Tardis. But there are limits on that, too, with respect to the shuttle.]

Infiltration doesn't - it only - it doesn't matter if you're in, it doesn't fix the problem, we can't do it from there and we know because we've been there before!

[spam]

[routemistress]

Now you're just being daft, Emperor. 'Ow many times does every atom of you replace itself, over a lifetime? My great-grandma's axe is still 'er axe, no matter 'ow many times I replace the blade and the 'andle. You're still you once we sever the connection, and we will.

[She holds his hands with one of her own, gathers him into her arms with the other.]

We will fix this. Between Rex and the Joker and you, I probably know more nanite tech now than any bugger on either ship, and you'll 'ave two of me working from both ends. We are not chucking anyone overboard.

[punched_hitler]

Sometimes that's all you need. Enough desire.

[And a very healthy dose of stubbornness.]

It's already pretty strong, by my reckoning.

[fireincarnate]

[Hello Steve, your best friend is fucking impossible.]

Sometimes, hope and will are all we have. Sometimes they're enough. [She lasted, on that shuttle, until the Phoenix found her. She hung on through sheer force of will as she was eaten up from the inside out.

They'll fix this.]

[punched_hitler]

[Tell him about it; he's ready to sit on top of Bucky at this point.]

They're usually all I have.

[And he makes them work. There just isn't any other choice.]

I'm not gonna let him jump. [Alone.]

[fireincarnate]

If he tries, I'll catch him. [AND YOU, MISTER.]

[punched_hitler]

I -

[For a second... it's a surprise, to even think about relying on someone else to help him take care of Bucky. It's just that it's pretty much always been the two of them. They've always been responsible for each other, because no one else would.]

Thank you. [He sounds relieved - and grateful. He's both, beyond measure.]

I really hope it doesn't come to that.

[fireincarnate]

[She's reminded, suddenly and viscerally, of Alex. She saw that same aching, grateful shock in him, when he realised he wasn't alone.

Her smile is warm and sad and determined.]

Me, too. But I'll be there if it does.