Dillon Cole || Scorpion Shard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orderfromchaos) wrote2014-09-03 10:53 am
orderfromchaos) wrote2014-09-03 10:53 am
13. Lucky penny
[The memories reintegrating is exactly as strange as last time, fluid and roughly granulated at the same time, like having mud dragged through the crevices of his brain. He gulps for air, grits his teeth, pieces of him that are non-contiguous fitting forcibly together, gear teeth biting and grinding untill they snap and start to turn, the quiet weeks with Tessic like a deep breath in his chest, the barge a cacophany smacking him and then sinking inside, stones skipped into a river: Elsa, wary and brittle and bright; Vin with her severity and her old eyes and leaf-dappled shadow; Iris and the careful space between them like a fur coat, warm and safe and guilty; Hannibal like a cold hand on his shoulder; Abigail like the rocky ravines back home, harsh and amazing and beautiful. He clenches and unclenches his fists until it's easy to breath again, then gets up.]
[Spam for Elsa]
[He goes to see her first, in person, knocks on her door, relieved it's still there.]
I'm back. I don't know - I'm back.
[Filtered to Abigail, Helena, Vin, Jean, Iris, Bucky and Derek]
I didn't mean to go. The admiral - I was just home, I didn't ask for it, I didn't remember. I know - after what happened it might have looked like that, like I was running away, but I really didn't.
Just. So you know.
[He's run from a lot of things in his life. It's a character flaw he's aware of. But he didn't, not this time.]
[Public video]
How many of you saw parts of your future back during that flood where all our timelines got mixed up? Or any other time, for that matter?
I mean. What are we supposed to do with that? Knowing it's coming, but not when or why or how exactly. Should we do anything?
[A frown, a glance away, not biting his lip but kind of wanting to.]
Do you believe in fate, I guess, is my question. And what does it mean if you do.
[filter]
Quiet. I got airlifted out of the cemetary. Taken somewhere with - enough shields for me to think, a little. Without the chains and the shock chair and all.
I was only gone a couple days.
Re: [filter]
[She's relieved as fuck to hear it.]
I liked the chunk of future I got in that flood, most of it. I've already altered it significantly, mind you. It's my experience that very little's immutable.
[filter]
[And that's terrible, ha ha. He grins, a little askew.]
Which parts changed?
[private now]
[Run things by Jean or Iris before you do anything batshit, in other words, Dillon.]
Someone died. We were together another fifteen years after the barge, and then 'e went off by 'imself and died of old age.
We're rewriting that part. That's what the new timeship's for, partly.
[private now]
[Softly, somewhere between wistful and heartened. He's never brought anyone back for love yet - not his own, anyway. But it's nice to think someone could. That it could be a decision that brought about such a cute bright little thing, instead of the disasters that always trail in the wake of his roughshod miracles.]
[private]
Or maybe I'd got in the 'abit of running away just in case, I don't know. Maybe I were just so sure I'd mess it up it were easier not to give meself the chance.
...Cain's made friends with your Elsa.
[She'd been getting gradually dreamier, radiant; now she snaps visibly back into the present. Still smiling, still happy, but Iris is suddenly back in business mode.]
Struck me as unlikely as 'ell, but 'e's taken to 'er. We were trying to keep 'er cheered up, while you were gone.
[private]
[Heartfelt, deep in the way that only love and quiet relief is.[
I think - I think she needs that. Having a more friends than just me.
But it's hard to push, you know?