orderfromchaos | 10. messages + open spam

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10. messages + open spam

[Private to Elsa]

How do you feel about working on your powers wth Rogue?

[Spam for Helena]

[He talks to Cosima first, waits a day or two before turning up. It's unfair, maybe, using his presence - but his mirror self did it, and he wants the chance for his words to have at least as much weight now.]

Hey. Bucky said it was okay with him for me to visit. Is it okay with you?

[Open spam]

[Sometimes, Dillon just lies on his back on the deck, staring up for a few hours at a time, trying to understand the things his powers are trying to tell him about the stars, about whatever strange ether they're passing. If he understood it, really got what it was and how it worked, he's pretty sure he'd be able to get to the place between, with the red sands and strange ruins and Deanna's body. If he could just - reach.]

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[It's not actually Iris that finds Dillon on deck: it's Elvis, who's deeply concerned to find a person lying on his back on deck. This is not how a people do! He puts a large, wet nose into Dillon's face, perhaps to check that he's breathing, perhaps just for the sake of an easy facelicking.]

...Dillon? You all right, lovey?

Ack!

[It's so weird, coming out of it, because there's so much and it's so strange and he does get a lot of it, in the moment, but he can't ever translate it into anything human enough to remember. He curls up a little, laughing, shaking his head, trying remember gravity as orientation instead of another ubiquitous field, trying to think in English instead of pure math and the antimath of in-between.]

I'm alive! I'm alive!

[He's rubbing Elvis's ears rather than pushing him away, startled back into his own skin, his own two hands.]

[If it had been any other teenager, she'd have assumed ...well, teenagers do weird shit. With Dillon, though, she rather thinks his weird is of a less pedestrian order.]

You know, I can see their timelines. Like, that little white dwarf down there, it's long gone before that big blue one gets going. It's only from 'ere we can see 'em together.

What are they telling you?

They know they come back.

[There's something - aching and contented at once. Part of him is still a star, part of him feels their pulsing magnetic glissandos as familiar, like a newborn who knows no languages but recognizes the cadence of its mother's tongue. Stars recycle themselves more directly than carbon-based lifeforms, dust and fuel, fire and soul. They watch it happen, birth themselves out of their coagulated dead. They know. He wonders if Mentarsus-H knew she would take a triple-left turn onto the little blue rock next door. But he's too human, or perhaps too fragmented; he can't remember.]

[While she welcomed Ben's visit, she's still wary when it comes to Dillon, even after port. The memories of his mirror self still colour the edges of how she regards him and his powers are... unsettling. To say the least. So although she will let him stay for now, it's with some reluctance on her part. And she's not opposed to ending the visit abruptly if he scrapes up against too many of her nerves.]

For now.

[He sits by the wall opposite her, knees drawn up. It's not a fearful pose at all; it's someone who can't contain himself, but sort of wishes he could.]

He wasn't lying about seeing your soul, you know.

[She watches him, but says nothing. The fear that she was as soulless as those she was trained to kill has been present in her for a long time, the fear that she could never find a place with God, that no matter what she did she would end up damned. The only good thing about the other Barge was his mirror self's assurance. It had been undeniable at the time, though after she had returned to herself she had wondered about the truth of it. She doesn't know if she can believe this now, though she wants to.]

[A rueful, unhappy sort of smile, a faint huff through his nose, reading the uncertainty on her face, in the cant of her shoulders. He glances down.]

I could make you believe. But that'd be wrong.

Why would it be wrong?

[It's not that she doesn't agree, although her ideas of free will and choice are skewed and small and fragile. But she wants his words, his reasoning. Hearing why other people choose to do the things they do or not is something she is growing more fascinated by.]

Because trust should be earned. That's what real trust is.

[Her fingertips trace abstract patterns on the floor beside her. Her words come out in a low drawl. ]

And how would you earn my trust?

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Fine.

[She doesn't sound happy, or relieved. Just resigned. Like she knows she doesn't really have much of a choice if she ever wants to get out of here.]

I'm going to do it to.

I'm scared, but. We should.

Why are you scared?

Because it's scary. Because this stuff messed up my life, when I wasn't trying to use it and when I was. Because it comes from my soul, and I'm just going to have to hand part of that over for a little while so she can get a feel for it.

But there's no school in my world, either.

You really think she'll be able to help you?

Yeah.

I don't know how much, but - yeah.

Fine.

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[Wandering around without aim or purpose, it's never really been quite his thing. But there's not always a whole lot to apply himself directly to on the barge, now is there?

He's still shaking a few things off from that last flood; it wasn't a bad one, compared to some of the others, not by a long shot. But it did certainly still have some...repercussions.

Anyone he spotted lying flat on their back while he was out trying to get some air on deck, would have gotten ignored, passed right on by. But given who it is, well. He can't help but wonder.]

What are you doing?

I'm trying to read the way.

[His voice is distant and stilted, word jumbled into word, as though he's half-forgotten English and isn't sparing the energy to recall it fluidly.]

[Powers hesitates, and then with an expression that's a mix of "why not" and "why me" stops in his path to come over, standing more adjacent to where Dillon is lying and looking down at him with a pensive frown.]

Which "way" is that? Our way? I was given to understand this voyage had no particular charted course or destination.

The way to the place between worlds.

[It sounds like perhaps this should be capitalized. The Place Between Worlds.]

We don't stop there. We don't go through it, or not the part of it where I left her. But we've got to go tangent to it, or slingshot around it, or - we go to different worlds. There has to be a clue here.

Edited 2014-07-23 02:42 (UTC)

[Though he doesn't stop frowning his expression changes at some of those words, eyebrows raising. "The place between worlds". "The part of it where I left her".]

...What exactly are you trying to find, Mr. Cole?

Faith.

[Her name is Deanna Chang, he might have said under other circumstances, might say later. But names are a very human thing, and he is as far from his human tether as he has been in some time. Faith and fear were hers, as order and chaos are his. He's never known what to do without her, how to hold everyone together. If it's possible to look beatific and heartbroken at the same time, he manages it.]

[That gets another pause, though not as worrisome a one. He follows Dillon's gaze up and stays there, and when he speaks again it's in a tone that might almost have been a sigh.]

Well, people have been looking to the heavens for signs of that for countless generations. Who knows? Maybe they did find something.

Maybe you will, too.