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Post by Razoric on Mar 29, 2018 12:59:25 GMT -8
GM
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The reaction is immediate, horrified, and above all angry.
Hank practically leaps from his seat, furious. "How dare you! You don't even look anything like Marceline!"
"Shouldn't you be French?" Ethan asks, calmer, but worried for his friends.
Arielle... Arielle is dead silent. She swallows. "...I prepared a truth spell. She's... not lying. How?"
Valerie
Valerie feels a sinking feeling, and she spends several moments in silence trying to just... understand what is happening. Sadly, she comes up rather short.
Sure, she's curious about Ethan's question, and Hank's accusation rings true. Arielle's question is definitely on the docket. But changing appearances, and language, could be a way to answer them all. But there's an even bigger question.
"..why?"
GM
Heimarmene meets her eyes. She was there, in the dream before Valerie awoke. There were all those times she called the girls up so they could spend the day out.
"I spoke to you three of the Second Awakening. The Threshold Crossing. There is a cost to it, a price that is different for everyone who claims it - the world changes. When I crossed back into the Supernal realms, it was without the same protections that you receive with your Watchtower. It isn't a guided experience - it's you interacting with a potent world of symbols that, even with the Abyss in the way, underlies all of reality as we know it. I set up my place there, my connection, and in the process, I broke things."
She clenches her hands into fists, clutching at her legs. She releases a spell, hidden behind a veil, and the false image she presents to them falls away. Her hair lightens, her eyes darken, and her face changes subtly. Hank draws in a breath, tears in his eyes, as he witnesses Marceline once again.
Arielle begins to cry, too. "Why?" she demands, echoing her sister. "Why didn't you come back, what did you change?"
Valerie
Valerie brings a hand up to her mouth as if to hold her breath, her own eyes tearing up. It's like in the pictures they have of her, the journal's description... The woman who slowly withered away after the accident. The woman who, apparently, was no longer there for a while before she even died.
"I... I could understand not telling us while we weren't awake. But... why not after?"
GM
"At first, it was a simple mistake. When I left, I told you I'd be away for a while. Because you knew - all of you knew. When I did come back, a month or two later, I found that I'd died after a car accident. I found..."
She exhales slowly, struggling even now. "Valerie, Arielle..." She looks at her husband. "Hank - gods, where do I even start? There was a car accident. You died in it, before I could save you."
Hank is just not taking this well. Pain touches him, and it isn't just emotional. His legs are weak.
"... And so did you, Valerie."
"...shit," Ethan murmurs. He comes over to her wheelchair, and settles down by it.
Valerie
Valerie reaches down to feel at her belly, where a scar still is. The metal jagged piece pierced her end to end through the spine. It was incredibly lucky that she did not die. But, then...
"...you used time..?"
GM
"It changed far more than I wanted. I've spent the entire time since trying to fix what went wrong, and I lost... I lost a lot of time on that. It's hard, working with Time in ways like this. My Second Threshold was like a hammer, smashing it to pieces. I've been fixing it up, gathering Quintessence, going back, adjusting things. I knew distance would help you two Awaken, and I... I've been planning to come back since, but I hesitated, because I wasn't done yet."
"Then I tried to fly across the Abyss," Arielle murmurs. She takes Valerie's hand, hard. "But why not tell us then?"
"Guilt - and I still wasn't finished. I'm so much closer now..." She sighs. "I didn't want to come back until I could bring your siblings with me."(edited)
Valerie
Valerie squeezes down. Good thing it's Arielle, because she's kind of white knuckle gripping her wheelchair. She wipes at her eyes with the other hand before things get too blurry. "The watchers... you had somehow made progress? But then, the accident, and the use of time..."
How could something so mundane as some bastard who couldn't drive his truck properly undo so much magic?
She's struggling with memories from another universe as it is, and now with fractured time. What else did she know? Should she know? Does that mean that if they recreate the ritual, so long as no one messes with time, then Sariel would be aware? Be more powerful? Pre-awakened?
She feels like she's going to be sick.
GM
"Wait - wait," Hank asks, on the verge of breaking down. "Not only did I die in this other timeline - with Valerie - but by siblings, you mean we had other children?"
"Yes, Hank - and you weren't in the dark, either. You were my Banner-Warden."
"Had been since Cornell."(edited)
"We had another set of twins after Araqiel - Chloe and Jacqueline."(edited)
Valerie
"Oh god..." She reaches up to grab at her head. What sort of life did they leave behind?
GM
"... Those names are familiar," Arielle murmurs, and sure enough, Valerie feels like she should know who those were.
Like she forgot about a friend, or a cousin
Or, apparently, sisters
"Who were they?" Ethan asks.
"Semyaza, before."
Valerie
"...that... that might be why Sariel figured she could unlock our memories.. Because she was our sisters.."
GM
"Echoes still exist," she agrees
"Broken pieces."
"So yes... between the time that slips away and my own guilt, I - "(edited)
She sighs. "I am sorry."
"Sorry doesn't... it doesn't even begin to cover it," Arielle murmurs.
"You could have trusted us with this. We wanted you."
Valerie
Valerie slumps back into her chair, having a hard time even just absorbing this being a thing that happened. "..what will happen now?"
GM
"You've been helping - fairly directly, recently. The mirror I sent you to fetch is part of that."
"My returning - it's complicated, Arielle, Valerie, Hank. It can't be known what I am. It would violate the Pax Arcanum."
"But I have been laying the groundwork. Anomalies in spacetime - a Mystery that should prove distracting enough."
She looks between them, unclenching her hands.
"I know you don't remember them, but the others are my children, too. I have to save them before I can even consider returning here full time."
"Or whatever is to happen - if we can ever move past this."
"There's a lot of things I remember that you don't, events that happened for you and your memory of me, but not for me, and vice versa."(edited)
"I'm sorry, if this were easy - this wouldn't have happened."
Valerie
Val takes a deep breath, and lets it out shakily, feeling weak. "This isn't fair... you show up, and then, you'll vanish again except for once a week at most? We can't.. have that. Why can't you work from here? Or involve us? You can still disguise yourself as Heimarmene or something, to hide your steps. We... it's not like we'll tell on you!
"And, and... we've been working to save the others too. We found Sariel, she only has months to live, we need to find her one, you can teach us the ritual, or help us remember it, and we'll save them together! Isn't that easier? Better?"
GM
"Your process so far has left us fucking wrecks. Dad can't even speak," Arielle says. She closes her eyes and rubs at her face, her cheeks wet.
"...Mom... Mom, look. I don't agree with the way you're doing this, even though I do agree it's not great for you. At this point, you're basically our mom from another timeline, though I get that it isn't as clean or simple as that. Less a timeline than a short of - I dunno, mess of tangles?" Heimarmene nods, but Arielle moves on without waiting. "And I get that saving our sisters is important, I really do, but Val's right. It's not fair, and we want to help, and we want you back - why don't we just accept that things are going to be hard and complicated? Let's just - push past that and have each other, even if it's going to be weird."
Heimarmene sighs faintly "I will admit - part of the reason is that I do feel like an imposter to you, some interloper from another reality - even if, yes, you have it right. There's one reality, just a very tangled one. I feel like an imposter to myself in some ways."
"...but."
"You girls... you're right."
"It's not fair to you, and I can't push you away."
"If there's any good news here, it's that I was going to contact you anyway. I wanted your help - the final part of the process in my finding your sisters."
"I need a piece of them that still exists in this timeline, so I can weave back together the threads and re-establish them here."
She looks to Hank, and gets up, going over to their father. He's speechless, staring at the floor, a broken man, and it hurts to see.
"Hank... oh, gods, Hank..."
Valerie
Valerie watches her, still stunned and unsure. It's going to hurt no matter what they do, but there's no chance of healing unless they stay within range of one another. Letting her get away might mean never seeing her again, being kept at arms' length forever.
This, at least... if she's here, if they help, then they can understand what drew her away, and heal from it.
After a moment, Valerie turns her chair and wheels over to her father, taking his hand with one and uses the other to lift his chin up from looking at the floor. "Dad..."
GM
"That shard of the Abyss," Arielle says quietly. "My feeling that I was draining my sister and my dad - "
"That's part of it," Heimarmene affirms. "Lakshmi said he has to Awaken before it's truly gone, and she's right - it's the only way to assert his essential reality against the Abyss."
Hank looks to Valerie, not even seeing her at first. "Val...?"
Valerie
She leans into his side, looking up sadly at him. "Breathe deeply for me, okay...?"
GM
He does, inhaling and expelling breath steadily. He uses the techniques they taught him in the marines. Damn it - all this time they thought it was just something like ALS, only they never could be sure, never could find anything.
"You... I don't even know you," he says to Heimarmene at last.
She looks stricken, the comment cutting right to her anxieties, but she sighs and nods, rising.
"..." He puts a hand to his face, the one not held by Val
"I remember..."
"There were some clothes. A few years ago."
"I thought they were Val and Arielle's from when they were kids."(edited)
"But I remember donating those a long time ago."
Valerie
Val is rather heartbroken to hear him push Heimarmene away like that, but she can't blame him. Though when he starts talking, she glances at him, curious. "You think they were... re-materialized through the tangle..?"
GM
"Maybe. They were in the back of your closet, Val, after you moved out of the one you shared with Ari."
"That would have been their room," Heimarmene agrees.
Valerie
Valerie leans back. "How... close did you anticipate you could get to how things used to be..?"(edited)
She looks up at Heimarmene... Sariel.
GM
"I donated them to the neighbor girls, but the family moved. I don't know where."
Ethan smiles. "That, I believe, I can help with."
(close to what?)
Valerie
(fixed statement)
GM
(oh! I'll answer after I drive~)
GM
Heimarmene stands back from her family, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She meets Valerie's eyes, and it's hard to say that her fears weren't realized.
Valerie doesn't recognize her. Oh, her face is the same, her voice is the same, she's familiar, but -
"I didn't think I could get it perfect. I thought I could get it close enough."
Valerie
It's difficult to say if there was another Marceline Beaudry who took her place, the woman who acted as their mother like a splintered fragment out of time. She doesn't know enough about time, let alone archmagery, to even guess.
This... is a terrible mess. It's all so messed up. If only she'd come back from the first, replace the shelled husk that was, personally watch the results of her fixing things. Then, then maybe...
Valerie looks down at her hands, fidgeting on her lap, with some shame. She wants her to be her lost mother, she wants to be able to give her that. Not just this stranger who is like her. But it's not something she can just... do.
Not right away, at least. Her eyes shut and she gathers her thoughts and courage. "If... if we're going to make this work..." She glances up, to look to her father, then to her sister, to see if they're at all on board or if she's just being idealistic and naive. "We'll have to get to know you. The real, current you. We might not be the daughters you remember, or you the mother we remember. But, from there... we'll make our hearts up."
"If you spend time with us."(edited)
GM
Arielle stands up, coming over to look up at her mother, and she sighs and embraces her.
"Maybe because I didn't die, but - I feel like I can accept it a bit better. It's still a little - alienating. I'm still mad at you, Mom, but... I need you back."
Heimarmene hugs her back with a sort of desperation, and she sighs heavily, turning to look to her sister and father, particularly her father. Ethan's tail sways uncertainly.
Hank sighs, rubbing his face and looking up at Heimarmene. "...I buried you and I moved on, and - I assume you did the same."
"I still love you," she murmurs.
There's guilt there - Hank fell for Lakshmi, hard, and now his wife is back and it's hard. "I... Marcy..." He sighs again. "You should come home. Valerie's right, Arielle's right - the girls need you, and we - we'll have to figure it out. And I feel a hole in my heart, and the more you talk about the others the more I feel their absence."
A memory floats up - after the accident, there were times Arielle set the table for six, not for four.
Making room on the shoe rack for two pairs.
GM
Heimarmene didn't move on. She fought to bring them back.
Valerie
They'd need someone skilled with Mind to really get to dig back and see just how many memories there are of these little instances. Things Ari, dad, or even Valerie happened to do. Just referring to her - admittedly skilled - memory won't really cut it for deep scrutiny.
But it's enough, for now, to make it clear this isn't made up in any way.
Valerie carefully pushes up from her chair on uneasy legs and steps in to take her turn in embracing her. "We need to find Semyaza, even more than ever now."
GM
Heimarmene's tears fall as she hugs her back, arms practically holding her up.
"Yeah. We do." She exhales, whispering, "Thank you."
"Bagheera - Ethan. If you can help, I would appreciate it. I'm weak in Fate and Space, two areas you excel in."
Valerie
"If those clothes are related to them.." She squeezes her gently again before separating, the day's walk coming back to remind her she's still sore, and she slides back down to a seat. "If you can find those clothes, and bring them here, then maybe we can use that? Sympathetic and all."
GM
"I would be honored, Heimarmene - this family has been very good to me."
She nods. "They are the quintessence I need - a piece of that other time." She helps Valerie back into her seat.
"There should be some record of what happened to the family," Ethan says. "If I'm lucky, there will even be sympathetic links in the house itself which will lead me to them and so on."
Valerie
"So we should start flipping the place inside out to find every single hint, and see what we can do about doing the same to the neighbours' house."
GM
"I'll get on that," he says, and goes to kiss her head, because that's the closest part.
Hank tries to get up, but he falls back. Arielle frowns and goes to check him over.
"Your spells broke down. That's - impressive, since Lakshmi set those."
Arielle touches him and does what she can, repairing the damage and sighing.
Valerie
"Given all those spells survived the verge and a full out magical fight, that is rather significant."
GM
"It's the paradox of your existence - a literal one," Heimarmene says.
"Valerie already signed her name into the Tower."
"So she's free of hers."
Valerie
This, of course, brings all sorts of questions. For instance, what about Lakshmi - both her relationship to dad, and her friendship to Sariel/Heimarmene. God... this makes her head hurt to think. A time paradox saved and ruined her life all at the same time.
GM
At least her own life seems to have come out pretty decently.
"I'm going to go talk to the neighbors, try to get the number of the previous owners," Hank says, rising to his feet. He meets Heimarmene's eyes, and he looks away, heading out after grabbing his wallet and keys.
Arielle comes back over to her sister.
Valerie
"At least this puts quite a few questions to rest," she comments quietly to her after Arielle has sat down with her. "Ironically, better than the answers I expected."
GM
"Heh - what were you expecting?" she asks, smiling and leaning over the edge of the couch.
Valerie
"In the worse case? That mom had found a way to ascend and took it callously. I know it's unreasonable, but when I'm in a dark place, I go to dark thoughts. In the more gray area, just... death. Final, and with no time to leave messages behind, leaving us to scramble to pick up the pieces."
"This... is complicated, and it hurts. But she's here, and she knows things, even though the things she knows aren't quite that real."
"Not anymore, anyway."
"But they're more than we had. And... I'd like to make it work."
GM
"It's close to that... her reasons are better, certainly. I already feel a little less guilty - I spent all of this time blaming myself."
"Knowing your pain was because you got to live makes a huge difference for me."
Valerie
"Yeah. I'll admit that, ever since I found out about our souls... the idea of dying and leaving you with only half of one has given me anxiety."
"So, I'm happy I get to be alive with you, my heart." She takes her hand.
GM
{Just from what I know of myself?} She takes her hands. {I would not long survive you. Not without trying to resurrect you.}
She pulls her in.
Ethan fades into the room, his tail flicking thoughtfully.
"Nothing here - but now that I know what to look for, there are time anomalies everywhere."
Valerie
Val leans into her sister's side, resting her weary braincase on her shoulder. "No major surprise now that we know about it. We're living on a literal intersection of timelines."
GM
"Absence only, unfortunately, but yeah, it's a good sign I think."
"It's a strange feeling, but what about lately isn't strange? What of anything of our life isn't?" Arielle says.
"We spent most of our lives thinking one thing when we were really badass angels."(edited)
Valerie
"That's true. Our lives got pretty weird, both before and after becoming mages. Remember when we were naive and sleepwalking and rescued Ashlyn from the internet and you kung fu chopped those mafioso? That was pretty awesome."
"Hard to imagine it was just some months back."
GM
She laughs. "Yeah."
"And we're stronger than most mages at our level."
Valerie
"That's the badass angel part."
"Speaking of that bad ass angel, I'll want to have a chat with you about something at some point. Not urgent or anything, just... musings."
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