Home Plot: Post 1
May. 22nd, 2012 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verynaughtymutantThere 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.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 01:23 am (UTC)"This is... Is this an island trick?"
no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 04:46 am (UTC)She took in the forest as they walked, tilting her face up toward the canopy. The air smelled different.
"Where are we?" She looked over at him.
"And if we're in the future, why are you so young?" There was a hint of amusement coloring her tone.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 12:17 pm (UTC)"And when I still had my dashing good looks, clearly."
The, belated, attempt at humor was forced and stilted even to his own ears, but he was trying not to show he was rattled by all this. He at least had a weapon and knew the area, after all.
The camp was just ahead now, he could see the holographic disguise that made it look like a cliff edge from the outside.