💟︎ · audio

[dragony]

February already. It feels like it snuck up pretty quickly, this year. It's always kind of a strange month though. It doesn't feel like winter, and it doesn't feel like spring. Too short. Too long. And Valentine's day, right in the middle — kinda makes it feel like two different months entirely.

[ It's a soft, meandering opening. The words are quiet, and the tone level, and — like usual for Ruka — a little bit maudlin. Reflective. ]

... but maybe that's just me. It's my anniversary on Sunday. The ninth. I've exPorted a couple times, and disappeared, but I've always come back on the ninth. It'll be my ninth anniversary. I'm twenty, now, and I was eleven when I left my original world. I did all my growing up here.

Here, and in the other place.

...

I... I know that trip was miserable for most everyone who went, and that... I'm sure a lot of you would call it an illusion, or a fake existence, or... something to be forgotten, as quickly as possible. I won't begrudge you for that. But... that place was real. Those people were real. Everything that happened there was real. Just like all the different versions of our own histories that coexist, even if they conflict with one another's. They're all true. To argue otherwise is a cruelty.

... Sorry. I wish I could say, "it's too bad you couldn't see it in a better time," but I don't know if there ever was a good time. But... even something as terrible as that, it's. Better. Than the alternative.

[ What an incredibly evasive way of saying hey guys I know where we went and then not actually confirming where it was. Thanks Ruka. ]

...

Anyway. All that to say, um. If you're having a hard time... synthesizing the experiences, or you don't want to deal with the dissonance of... two, separate, emotional truths, then. Let me know. I might be able to help.

Comments

[voice]

[heartstings]

It'd be seven for me if, y'know.

Was kinda, in that place.

[dragony]

... Yeah. I lost two years, in porting out, but I never actually went home. I was just put on hold, I guess.

So, you lived out the other life, there? Do I have that right?

[heartstings]

Same, sorta. Like maybe seconds passed in those four years.

Yeah, and it sucked mondo donkey balls.

Audio

[softheartedshizun]

I don't know what happened, but it must be dificult to mostly grow up in a strange world away from your family.

[dragony]

It's. Um. A little more complicated than that.

I suppose you could say... the stranger world is where I actually had a family. My birth parents were always away, when I was young, so it's not like it... changed much. Being in a different dimension. I don't even remember what they look like.

[softheartedshizun]

Then... was being in a new world better?

video.

[goldtoxicity]

That's... really rough, I'm sorry.

[ he doesn't much like the emphasis on it being real, but... it was, wasn't it? everything they experienced. that was real. ]

... It reminded me a lot of where I came from. [ and he misses it. sometimes. terrible as it was. so he thinks maybe he gets it, in some small way.. ]

[dragony]

It's... [ It's not fine, and there's no pretending. ] ... Yeah. It's hard to think about, but I haven't been able to think about anything else, either.

Even the worst outcome, where everyone suffers... it's still better than one where everyone dies. But it feels cruel to... be glad about something like that. Isn't it?

[goldtoxicity]

I don't think so.

[ it does feel a little cruel, a little callous. but that's the way life is, really. even the best of them. ]

At least if you're suffering, you have the opportunity to turn things around... if you're dead, well...

audio

[besainted]

Out of curiosity, how would you help?

[dragony]

I'm an empath. I feel what other people feel. I can change what they feel. How they feel it.

[ Nobody has time for therapy. ]

[fridgeflower]

I was kind of trying to sort the technicalities of it, like how the transport back and forth works, whether some of us went backwards in time to the other world to live out those lives, or if we just had access to another version of ourselves, or-- Whatever, you know? I guess it doesn't really matter, either way. I don't really get where I'm going with that.

I mean, I guess that's why I've already given up thinking about it.

[ Anyway... ]

Let me know if you need help, too, alright? What you're proposing doing for people... If it's too much to swallow and I can help you manage it, I'm there.

[dragony]

It's hard to say. It might have, just, not had the resources to transport and create everyone into proper bodies, so... attached some minds to their counterparts, if one existed. I don't know. I was still me, as I am here.

[ She wishes she had an easier time getting out of her own head — that she could give up on overthinking everything. ]

... I can't promise that I will, but I'll try. I don't want to put too much on you, either.

audio

[burlyboy]

It was real? Shit.

[ He thought it was a mass hallucination. A dream. A nightmare. Everything else has been.

He hasn't had a good time synthesizing either, so to speak. ]

Gotta say, I left some unfinished business there.

[dragony]

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, then.

[ She's said it already — for anyone to claim otherwise is a cruelty. But it would be especially cruel to say it to her. ]

What did you leave behind? Or, who?

[Voice: Private]

[dazzlingdream]

As someone who has experience concerning this world, might I make an inquiry? [This request will be strange, but he has to take a chance.]

and private the whole way down

[dragony]

I'm listening.

audio

[monster_san]

I'm sorry that this brought back such painful feelings for you. [...] It isn't easy, knowing that there's another world suffering which is, in some way, your own.

[dragony]

[ It's painful enough to think about it on her own, and even to say it — as evasively and obliquely as she has — but it hurts, too, to hear it from others. ]

... It's as much my world as the one where I was born. More so, maybe.

I mean... it's not even really, you know, out of line. That tight grip. The people of that world had every reason to pivot that way. We've always been lucky, and too easily forgiven in this world.

There's a breaking point for everyone.

audio

[h2no]

No kiddin', huh? Valentine's is always a bitch for those of us who got left behind.

[he hums, disgesting the rest of what she says.]

I-- ah, were you familiar with that place?

[dragony]

Yeah... My ex-boyfriend, his birthday was Valentine's, so... it was kind of a double-whammy, for a while, when he left. I'm sorry you're going through anything similar now.

[ The condolence is a meandering buffer for time; when she runs out of anything to say, there's silence. She's no good at simplicity. ]

It, um. I'm... sure you've heard of... the world that was destroyed. By the thing that nearly destroyed this place, a couple months back. I came from that world. I saw it destroyed.

... The place you went, it was... it was that place. A version of that world that escaped destruction. ... The City where I grew up.

voice;

[cantgetanyworse]

[As it happens, Jane is having a good deal of difficulty with aligning everything into the correct places again.]

I might like that help, depending on what it entails...

[dragony]

It's... mmm... I think the easiest way to explain it, it's like... a guided tour of your inner self. The things that are important to you, or are affecting you... you're able to see them more clearly, and so it's easier to sort out what they should mean to you.

[khajidont]

[ He's still at work, of course. But that doesn't mean he doesn't keep an eye on the network. ]

It's better than the alternative.

[ Anything would be. There's hope there, still. It's awful, but there's hope. ]

...has anyone taken you up on your offer?

[dragony]

Mmm...

[ It's the truth; they both know it. Still, it's hard to accept something so awful, especially now that there's nothing she can do—nothing they can do—to help. ]

Questions so far, but nothing outright. I expected that much. It's hard to be vulnerable.

[ a beat. then, with levity: ] At least nobody's accusing me of being a supervillain this time.