@stephen.strange | via morningstar network, a couple of days after cassius' post

[rehandle]

[ It isn't real. That's a fact upon a fact: none of it is real, but this even less so.

Usually, knowledge matters. It had for a while here too. Taken him from staggering frantically down part-collapsed tunnels over obstacles whose names he didn't know, calls giving way to bellows, in search first of life and then just of obstacles whose names he did know— to sitting quietly, raking thick air into his lungs, body too beleaguered to be good for more than waiting for the day to end.

And eventually he'd slept. And the day did end. And when he woke and turned on his flashlight to gear himself up for greeting the millions who ought now to be staggering back down into the tunnels, fresh from their reset - he'd found them exactly where he'd left them.

This will not be ending soon. This will not be over until somebody makes it so. But his thoughts won't be gathered into shape. The wall at his back is still hot from the blast. The air is cloying. His skin sloughs under his touch.

The quiet is too heavy. He needs the reminder. ]



Talk to me
Please



[ ooc: for those in the sim, none of the things described in the above brackets will be visible to anyone but him, but Stephen will have been seen by some about half a day before this post searching haphazardly around the tunnels, calling both in general and then specifically for people, then staring very intently with varying expressions of grim hopelessness at patches of nothing, and eventually giving that up for sitting very quietly on the ground in a tunnel somewhere. He's non-responsive to attempts to interact with him throughout and wouldn't previously have been replying to any attempts to contact him via the network either.

Feel free to assume your character has spotted him or been aggressively bumped into by him or heard about him being Weird, or on the flipside to have no idea he's been acting like he's having a really bad trip. ]

Comments

[rehandle]

[ The question loops around once or twice as his addled mind tries to grasp for it. He feels for a snatch of maybe a second the warmth of her skin on the undamaged parts of his hand and then it's too late.

The connection is weak but not so weak as to spare her the soft-edged rendition of all that he's feeling: the cloying dread, panic held only barely at bay by a mind too stubborn to be entirely overcome in the presence of others, intense claustrophobia, stress, pain and of steady decline, exhaustion, confusion, all of it a mess and hardly processed for how indecipherable one intolerable sensation is from the next. A few things take on different color: guilt, regret, impotence, shock. Grief is a strange beast all of its own and lurks somehow apart.

There isn't long to spend with it. Even this weak link is enough to tear them out of the old world and back to the new. He's looking up. There's light, daylight, bright sky peeking between dense branches. A breeze. Grass between his fingers.

His mind has just a moment after that to register a capacity to clear and then he's gone, back into the thick of it, submerged with devastating swiftness into the clog of everything that came before.

Stephen heaves in a breath that leaves in a helpless sob as his body burns anew with its slow death. He begins to hyperventilate, staring through dreary torchlight in search of comfort and finding only the silhouettes of things that could be bodies or could be rockfall. But he's done this before. It was hard then and it's hard now but this time he isn't alone. His hand slips from any lingering grip to seek purchase somewhere less dangerous, a forearm or a shoulder or whatever there is to find, some proof of company, and in turn some unspoken assurance that he's present and he's finding his way back. It just might take him a moment. ]

[angerberg]

[ the pitch in his breathing concerns her. yennefer grips him more solidly on his shoulders once he slips the grip of the empathy bond — for the best, as it had startled her too for it to activate thus. but he's less prepared. less aware. less solid. it earns him the scarce chance of prompting some second-guessing of her decisions. maybe she hadn't done what was best for him, surprising him with that. ]

Are you alright?

[ it has not brought him back to this tunnel, to the original simulation. not in the slightest. he's still trapped there, and it seems that the shock to his system hasn't done him any favors. ]

[rehandle]

[ No answer, but the answer to her question is obvious without the clarification. There's desperation in the way his tremors amplify as he holds her forearms tightly, keeping her rooted where she has him held, trying frantically to grasp reality and keep it close enough to hold himself together.

Too tight. Might be hurting her, he realises for the briefest second before that thought too is consumed by a selfish urge to survive. It's certainly hurting him, but at the moment that pain is good. Out of everything he's feeling, the searing hurt of reconstructed bones and once-ruined tissue is a familiar face in the crowd.

He urges himself to pay attention to it. To the sensible pain. The enduring pain that exists outside of this layer, outside of this simulation.

Finally he manages to acclimate enough to remember the rest of his body, that it functions outside of all that's crushing it. A nod in belated answer to her question, unconvincing perhaps for the breath that's still yet to fully slow and the eyes squeezed tight shut, but it's something. He's even managed to relieve one of her arms of his hold, pressing his fingers instead into the dusty ground at this side to keep the pain burning him a path back to stability. ]

[angerberg]

[ pain is a familiar friend of yennefer's. she has had only one constant companion in seventy years of life. so when strange grips her tightly, she only sets her jaw and shifts her weight to balance more solidly. weathering it has always been easier than ending it. there is no need to begrudge stephen causing it, either. who can she claim to know that has not caused her some level of pain? that, too, is familiar. ]

A failed experiment.

[ this is the closest he'll come to getting an apology. ]

Another to add to the list.

There's talk of one of us pulling people out. Maybe you ought to look into getting out of here while the getting's good.

[ step back from the fight and let the rest of them handle the interior. ]

[rehandle]

[ Another to add to the list. The faint trace of a private smile steals over his face. Yes, he knows. ]

He's had me out once. The freedom only lasts as long as the physical contact and he's more use to us without having to hold my hand 24/7.

[ Tony can't get him out permanently, and without a way out of the city there's little hope of him escaping the simulation altogether. He can't ask the others outside of the city to mobilise to get him out for the sake of his avoiding discomfort.

"Discomfort" undermines the reality, but it's just not feasible. The risk is too high and the benefit too localised. ]

I'll manage.

[angerberg]

There must be a way to make it more permanent.

[ looking at him like this leaves her exhausted and furious, makes more pronounced the powerlessness of their circumstances. she won't be powerless again. she didn't give up everything about her life just to be powerless. ]

[rehandle]

It'll be permanent when we're all out.

[angerberg]

There's nothing noble in suffering for suffering's sake.

[rehandle]

Even less so when there's nothing else to be done.

I'll be out when there's a way out. Until then, I'll survive.

[ Or he won't. Over and over, one way or another, he'll be here when it's done. So, on that note. ]

There's no food or water here that I can find.

[ If he can't get out, he's going to need to find a way to accept practical help. ]

[angerberg]

If you're asking me for something, then ask.

[ she would have protected his dignity if he'd had the sense to prioritize himself getting out for a more substantial time. ]

[rehandle]

[ The need for dignity is long dead. There's no trace of annoyance on his face, no hesitation. If she does this it'll be a favor on top of a great debt. ]

Water, please.

[angerberg]

Will you know to swallow it? I've no desire to help you drown yourself.

[ and he certainly seems in the state for it. if he's going to ask her to mercy kill him, he can ask properly. not aspirate on water. ]

[rehandle]

I'll try touching it first. If that works it should be safe enough

[angerberg]

[ she moves carefully. covers her hand with her sleeve before she takes his wrist to set his hand on her canteen as she hands it off to him. she doesn't let it go right away, ready for the possibility that he won't feel it at all. he seems so gone to her, this body entirely separate from the man she speaks to. but she tries. ]