What You Take With You part II: Reflections In The Fog

[unpocoloco]

Who: All those on the What You Take With You mission and everyone else (who OOCly wishes to join in)
What: An important artifact is brought back only to immedaitely activate. Further details are here.
When: November 10th
Where: Daybreak Campus and around Soliel
Warning: Warn in headers as appropriate

On November 10th the recovery team sent into the Outlands makes their return with the obsidian mirror. Thus far it hasn't seemed any different than any other obsidian mirror, nothing spectacular about it beyond its age and where it came from. But Daybreak was only called to retrieve it, not anything more. The spell is worked to open the path between the Outlands and Daybreak, allowing them back. But as this happens, the mists rise up as they often do when the two worlds intersect. The team might even see it ghosting over the mirror before catching their own reflections in it. A light flashes over its surface and in that instant, the mirror activates.

Just one look in any reflective surface throughout Soliel-- a mirror, a window, a bit still water-- and people will be struck with sudden dizziness, a feeling of being knocked back, and then darkness. You'll find, on waking, a dark and desolate landscape full of smoke and fog. It'll be hard to tell where one is going. You won't be alone. People all over the academy have been brought into this vision. You may run into them, but even more likely, you'll run into the spots of color that cut through the fog.

And dwelling with this color? Why it's you. But better. Or maybe, much, much worse. It seems the mirror has something to show you. But is that something a promise? Or a threat...? Learn its lesson and you may escape both the shadowy realm and a terrible fate in your future. What image will you leave on the world?

Comments

[unpocoloco]

He snorts and shakes his head, hands going to his hips. He can't believe this.

"Look at you! Sounding all proper," He teases, remembering the kid who broke into closets with him. "I never thought I'd get to see you like this."

[subconmodo]

"Come on now, I wasn't that reckless, was I?" asks the young man whose counterpart graded midterms in his own blood.

[unpocoloco]

"Oh, I think we both know who set the hallway trap. And whose idea it was to make a rope line along the trees so we could leap through the one open window." And that's to say absolutely nothing of what his counterpart would do.

[subconmodo]

Avery rocks back and forth, heel to toe and back again, arms behind his back as he puts on his most innocent expression. "Oh dear... it appears my memory is failing me again. I can't remember that at all."

He hums. "Though I do remember someone teaching me how to pick a lock."

[unpocoloco]

"I think that crown of yours is weighing on your head, my friend. All that shining gold making you forget the trouble within." He's laughing. "I taught you lockpicking, how not to drive a car... you're doing your maestro disservice not recalling."

[subconmodo]

He can't help himself and laughs all over again. "All right, all right... I MIGHT have gone a little overboard back then. But I do have to have some measure of responsibility now. The joys of politics..."

[unpocoloco]

He grins wider for his victory, reaching out to bump Avery's shoulder with his knuckles. But then some of the joy seeps away. His smile stays, but it's sadder now.

"Right, right. You were going to rule a kingdom..." He muses quietly. He breathes a sigh. "Would you sit with me for a little while? I know we're in the middle of foggy nowhere but... I'd just like to spend some time with you for a bit."

[subconmodo]

"Of course. Why would I say no?" Foggy nowhere aside, he means.

"Goodness you've gotten to be tall."

[unpocoloco]

Tall. Of all the things about him now to notice, not his sunken face or mess of hair teeth. He laughs quietly. Grateful, he sits down right there.

"A lot has changed, my friend. Even you, a little bit." And a lot. "Do you remember everything from then? Do you remember Atchison? You were so scared of him. And I was scared of... a lot of things. We were going to run away, the both of us."

[subconmodo]

"Some things, but not everything," he admits, taking a seat next to Héctor. "I vaguely remember Atchison." He grimaces. "Such an unpleasant fellow. I somehow get the feeling he hasn't gotten much better over the years." He wonders if that was the man Ekkehardt was looking for earlier and hopes it wasn't. Polite man like that didnt deserve to deal with that grouch.

"I wonder what would have happened if we succeeded."

[unpocoloco]

"He's not that bad actually." The defense comes without thought, though the slight laugh says he doesn't entirely disagree there's unpleasantness. Still. "I've had the chance to spend time with him. He's a good friend to me. Like you were."

That's a good question though. It's one he's got to sit with. And the truth is, while he's fine being whole again, some part of him aches for that possibility.

"I think the magic that brought us there would have sent us back eventually, but maybe if we'd gotten far enough away. We probably would have had more trouble finding your home, but you could've come to mine. You might be less polite than you are now, not ruling anything. I don't know if you'd like it more or less. But I know I would have been better with you around. Just as a person. Maybe with luck too." He looks down at his hands, no longer that strange transparency, but whole. And dead. "...I lost that friend I always talked about. He wasn't who I thought he was. It felt like all my past had been uprooted. That it was all joke. But you were real. Even if the part of that past is... not quite normal. I never got to thank you for that. Until now, I guess."

[subconmodo]

Avery ducks his head and hides a smile. "I don't know what to say." And he doesn't. He's never been very good at this kind of thing, with putting his feelings into words, especially without that barrier of paper and ink between him and the world.

"I'm... um. I'm sorry your friend ended up terrible, though." He cringes as the words come out of his mouth. "I mean... Well, I mean exactly what I said, but." He rubs the back of his neck. "You know what I mean."

[unpocoloco]

There's something funny about it. He's as awkward as ever, but instead of that stiff and affronted look, it's almost shy. Avery can never seem to get the words out. But he can read them. He smiles warmly.

"I do," He says.

Ernesto is far from all this. It still doesn't make this entirely easy. The young Avery he knew never learned the truth like he did. It does seem like a much harder thing to face. Still he speaks.

"Can I ask you something? If you knew that something like that was going to happen, that someone would suffer for a choice, but there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from happening... do you think it would be kinder to be told or to let it be?"

[subconmodo]

Avery hums softly in thought, tilting his head up to look at the endless, swirling void above, the closest thing to a sky.

He can't help but wish it was filled with stars.

"I think it would be kinder to tell. Who's to say you can't stop it from happening? Maybe that warning is all that the person needs." He shrugs. "It just seems a bit pessimistic to me, assuming it won't work and all that."

[unpocoloco]

He hums too. He thinks that's probably the sort of thing he would say. If he didn't know better.

"Even if it was something that had already happened? That they just didn't know yet?"

He lifts a hand, opening and closing it. Pondering.

[subconmodo]

He frowns. "Then they definitely should be told. I know that if no one told me, I'd always wonder why they decided to keep it quiet. It's worse when no one bothers, I think."

[unpocoloco]

He's silent for a long moment. His hand lowers back down.

"I guess you're right." Wondering can be worse. Wondering if anyone ever really cared...

"You're my best friend. It doesn't matter who you are. But I know you don't like what you can be. Whatever side you're on. I wish you didn't. I like you for you. I wish you could see that either side of you... you don't have to choose and hurt. But I get it. I was afraid too. I didn't want to be what I'd become. What I am."

His voice is calm. Inside though, he's anything but.

"Do you remember Señor R, Avery?"

[subconmodo]

"Yyyes?"

He does, but he doesn't understand what that has to do with anything. He doesn't even understand what Teto means when he talks about Avery liking different hims.

[unpocoloco]

"His name is Héctor. Our name was always Héctor. I grew up, got married. Became Héctor Rivera. I took my music and traveled with it. And then I died. Only I didn't pass on. I stuck around and then wound up at school. One day a spell was cast. Parts of ourselves ran free."

He takes a breath. He braces.

"Your name is Avery Atchison. You had something terrible happen to you. Much worse than me, though you didn't die. It happened hundreds of years before I was even born and you haven't been like this since then. Until now."

[subconmodo]

He can only stare blankly for a moment.

For a long, long, agonizing moment.

"My name's... just Avery." The words come sluggishly, the only think he can think of to say as he tries to process the fact that Teto--Héctor--Teto is dead. Has been dead. Will be dead.

He's not sure.

The fog isn't supposed to spin like this, is it? "You're saying... You're saying that R was you and that jerk was--" he swallows hard, "--was me, aren't you."

[unpocoloco]

It's hard to meet his gaze. He finds himself looking away, sorry and uncertain, only to force himself to look back.

"You were just Avery. And I was just Héctor. But that changed." They changed, everything changed, better and worse.

"He's who you were and who you will be. You didn't have a choice. It was something you had to do, I think, to survive." His knees draw in closer. "And if not for that, if not for me dying and coming back, we never would have met."

[subconmodo]

Avery falls back, arms spread out at his sides. Surprisingly, the ground doesn't give way beneath him. It still feels like it is.

He asked for this. He didn't ask for any of it.

"You didn't deserve to die."

[unpocoloco]

He winces. He's not sure why that cuts so sharply. Of all the things that could have been said...

He pauses a moment then lays back too, hands rested on his chest.

"You didn't deserve what happened to you either. Things just happen and fair doesn't have much to do with it."

[subconmodo]

"I know, but..." But he still hates it. "I'm still sorry, you know?"

[unpocoloco]

"...Yeah. I know. I'm always trying to say the same to you. To Atchison." Though it's much harder for him to accept. A sorry couldn't change the past. It meant acknowledging he was hurt.

He wonders if Avery Atchison ever thinks it in his mind or if all those years have scrubbed that out.

"Sometimes I wish that plan to runaway really had been possible. Sure, it wouldn't change what happened, but at the same time... Well, I'm trying to make the most of things now. I'm still here for a little while. It's something."