Cable (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
verynaughtymutant) wrote2012-05-22 02:44 pm
verynaughtymutant) wrote2012-05-22 02:44 pm
Home Plot: Post 1
There were few places Cable had ever known as well as he knew Tabula Rasa, few places he'd spent so much time and few places he'd been where his mind was less busy planning out the next steps. But it wasn't his home, it was a prison, something powerful but hostile.
Providence hadn't been his home either, not the way it had been for some of his followers. He'd seen it as a tool, as a weapon, far more then he'd ever seen it as a home. The X-mansion had been much the same and even the station of Greymalkin had never meant as much to him as the AI who inhabited it's walls.
No, the place he still thought of as home, for all he tried to forget it, was the safehouses of Clan Chosen during the Askani revolution. Back when he'd had a wife and a child and hope and mercy and all the other luxuries that young men allow themselves when they think they're still immortal. And that was a time and place he tried his best not to dwell on. Even his dreams, these days, were more often in English and Russian and based on the 21st century. And those that weren't, he never spoke of.
But if he had learned anything about living on Tabula Rasa, and he liked to think that he had learned a lot, it was that the past would never stay buried there where it belonged when it could be used to whip and prod it's victims instead.
So when he awoke to find himself a younger man again, surrounded by the tents and platforms of a rebel camp, he was angry but he was not surprised. He did not know the details of this particular trick, not yet anyway, but the intent was as familiar to him as his own skin. He could feel the whispers of minds around him, and he felt a dull terror at the familiar shape of them. This was a personal hell for him, filled with the ghosts of those he'd failed.
Still, he was not one to sit and take his punishment. Whatever game this was, there was no reason he had to play it. If he was lucky, all he had to do was walk away, out of the camp altogether, and spend what time he had before being returned to Tabula Rasa, out in the wilderness. Alone.
The camp itself was shielded and camouflaged, of course, but it was designed to be difficult to enter not exit and the guards stepped aside as he passed. All so simple then, except he could feel the whisper of another mind approaching and this one wasn't a ghost but another responsibility to chain him down.
Cable closed his eyes for a second, let a single sigh come out, and then stepped forward to greet them, expression blank and masked.
Providence hadn't been his home either, not the way it had been for some of his followers. He'd seen it as a tool, as a weapon, far more then he'd ever seen it as a home. The X-mansion had been much the same and even the station of Greymalkin had never meant as much to him as the AI who inhabited it's walls.
No, the place he still thought of as home, for all he tried to forget it, was the safehouses of Clan Chosen during the Askani revolution. Back when he'd had a wife and a child and hope and mercy and all the other luxuries that young men allow themselves when they think they're still immortal. And that was a time and place he tried his best not to dwell on. Even his dreams, these days, were more often in English and Russian and based on the 21st century. And those that weren't, he never spoke of.
But if he had learned anything about living on Tabula Rasa, and he liked to think that he had learned a lot, it was that the past would never stay buried there where it belonged when it could be used to whip and prod it's victims instead.
So when he awoke to find himself a younger man again, surrounded by the tents and platforms of a rebel camp, he was angry but he was not surprised. He did not know the details of this particular trick, not yet anyway, but the intent was as familiar to him as his own skin. He could feel the whispers of minds around him, and he felt a dull terror at the familiar shape of them. This was a personal hell for him, filled with the ghosts of those he'd failed.
Still, he was not one to sit and take his punishment. Whatever game this was, there was no reason he had to play it. If he was lucky, all he had to do was walk away, out of the camp altogether, and spend what time he had before being returned to Tabula Rasa, out in the wilderness. Alone.
The camp itself was shielded and camouflaged, of course, but it was designed to be difficult to enter not exit and the guards stepped aside as he passed. All so simple then, except he could feel the whisper of another mind approaching and this one wasn't a ghost but another responsibility to chain him down.
Cable closed his eyes for a second, let a single sigh come out, and then stepped forward to greet them, expression blank and masked.
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Holy shit, her powers were back! She jumped up with a cry of pure joy and didn't land, hovering instead a foot off the ground with a ridiculous grin on her face that didn't fade until she realized she had no idea where she was. The terrain was all wrong for the island, for the school, for the Starjammer or any of the planets she'd been too back home. And while she was fairly well adjusted to being sent off into other times and worlds, it still made her apprehensive. Especially when she began to realize it wasn't as foreign as she thought.
Looking down, she started to notice details, the fit of the boots on her feet, the feel of the body armor she was wearing, the weight of the cloak on her shoulders. The smell of it, the way it moved, it touched something deep in her memory that she rarely, if ever, took a look at anymore. The uniform of an Askani warrior, specifically her uniform, the cloak and insignia that marked her as Clan Chosen, the Lady, the Mother Askani.
Instantly, everything stopped being fun again.
Internal shields went up, senses focused, and she started to scan the area as she lightly touched down. How was she back here? How was she back in a life that technically she'd never lived. Did she skip? Did she somehow send her mind through time and swap it with this version of herself? Did she send herself back to fight a war she'd only barely escaped?
And why did she know her brother was right on the other side of that hill? It didn't match. The times didn't synch up with what she remembered of her time as the Askani. They never lived in the same environment because bringing him to the future was the last thing she did before her body gave out and yet... there he was and here she was, too. It felt like a trap. It felt like something Apocalypse would do to lure her out once upon a time. But she had limited options. She had no food and no water, no map, and no idea how she'd gotten there. She was armed, which was good, knives, a gun and as she looked around there was a nice battle-worn Psimitar by where she'd lain, everything that would make her the perfect picture of who she had been.
She didn't want any of it. This wasn't her life, it had never been her life. And if this was some kind of cosmic joke, there was going to be hell to pay.
Calling the weapon to her side, she stretched out her mind again. In Nathan's direction was an encampment, he wasn't alone, and with returning memories as her guide, she could begin to make out the language. Familiar in its unfamiliarity. It was a rebel camp, one of Nathan's if the memories she searched were true. Which she still doubted, but with a sight internal sigh, she fixed her brother's position in her mind and started out. Maybe he (or his duplicate if this was a ruse), would know what was going on.
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"Hello Rachel," he said as he strode forward through the trees towards her, letting her have a good look at both his youth and the weapon he'd kept holstered and un-drawn at his side.
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"Nathan. Askani'son. We've met?"
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"And I haven't lost any of my memories along with my wrinkles."
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The mistake was intentional, she loved her brother, she trusted him, but in this place she didn't trust anything. Anyone. This world was violent and dangerous and she couldn't afford any mistakes.
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"His name is Zell and I'm almost positive that I'm meant to be the hard-nosed un-trusting one out of the two of us."
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She guessed it had mixed results.
"So by the look of you, this is your time, not mine?"
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If the war could ever have been won, this was the point where things had gone wrong.It was exactly the moment he'd wish to return to with a time machine if he didn't know that the universe didn't work that way. That, he supposed, was the cruelty of it.
"If it's a time loop, we'll be rest back to start within the next half hour. If it's not we could be here for a few days."
Or longer, there was no assuming that this time would follow the pattern of either of the previous occasions.
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She didn't need to know the situation because they weren't going to get involved, they weren't going to hang around talking to ghosts and illusions or fighting a war that had already been long lost. They were just going to find somewhere safe and wait this particular game out.
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She was remembering far too much to be entirely comfortable. She wasn't even certain she was speaking her-time English anymore, she was just... talking. "How close are we, do you know?" Translation: What are the odds of having to fend off an attack before they left? Because she didn't have to see the camp to know it was more front-line than HQ, everyone's minds were active, on alert, and there were sentries.
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Rachel's clothing wasn't enough to provoke comment just yet then as they walked through the camp, though the cloak, the Psimitar and her companionship with the Askanisson certainly marked her out as someone of importance. There were people and machines everywhere, training and active, moving things and checking computers. There must have been several hundred people in the camp and there were no civilians; this was a culture that simply didn't have that option.
"Close. This was the most valuable of the camps," he replied, and if she'd slipped out of English, he certainly hadn't. Any camp with his and his family there would be the best manned and so this had been their base for raids on Crestcoast and Ebonshire. "But we abandoned it before Apocalypse's forces found it. If there's danger, it'll be Stryfe."
The idea that they were looping the day his wife died was too plausible not to mention.
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"Because he's always a ball of fun, isn't he?" Although given the choice, she probably wouldn't mind a few rounds of one on one with the so-called Chaos-Bringer. Excalibur had missed pretty much all of that and she felt like she owed him a few million punches.
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Aliya and Tyler, or representations of them anyway, were close by. He could hardly forget what Stryfe had cost him.
This was a camp he hadn't been in years and yet he walked around it confidently, the old memories controlling his feet, nodding at people to move them out of the way until they ended up in an empty cabin.
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Were they here? His wife and son, the parts of a family that she didn't know. Maybe she could meet them, get to know them a little. She even found herself looking around, hoping to catch something of a face she might recognize from his memories.
Instead, they ended up at a cabin. "What's this?" She genuinely wanted to know. Was there something inside she needed to see? Someone she needed to meet?
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"It's a room," he told her as they walked inside. There was a hammock in one corner but otherwise it had been stripped of all items to be distributed among the rest of the clan. "Somewhere we can hold up in until this little illusion is finished."
He'd considered bodysliding her to Greymalkin or heading off to the wilderness with her, but this was probably the safest path.
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"You think that's going to work?"
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"Everybody in this camp is dead, and, no matter what happens, they will stop existing when we're returned to the Island. The only people whose lives I can save are those that came with me and the best way to do that is to let these ghosts do their own fighting and protect us while they do it."
Nobody knew what exactly happened if you died while on a dream trip but he wasn't willing to take any chances with it. And he absolutely wasn't willing to treat this clan like it was real.
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She would. If their roles were reversed, if it was the Greys out there, she would be out there with them. Even if it was all going to go away.
Besides, they all felt so real. Thoughts, feelings, she could pick them all out. Each an individual, each with hopes and fears.
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Though he could just about admit to himself, behind mental walls that no other telepath could ever breach, that at least part of the reason he was so sure was that he couldn't bear to consider the alternative. Couldn't allow himself to hope when he expected them to be dashed.
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And that meant, at the very least, going out into the forest again eventually for some space to let loose. Even if it was just to pick leaves and needles off the trees and spin them around like her mom used to when she was little, she was going to use her powers out in the open again, dammit.