Jade Curtiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fonomena) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2024-01-14 01:05 pm
fonomena) wrote in come_sailaway2024-01-14 01:05 pm
iron bridges, melodic chimes; things i made for you back then
Who: Jade Curtiss & you
What: You ever wake up from a nap so long and ill-advised that now it's four months later and everything's been on fire and the apocalypse apparently may or may not be incoming--
When: Latter half of January, we're wobbling timelines as much as we like for this one folks
Where: Cabin 133 --> Cabin 109, various locales of the ship afterwards
Warnings: Potential high volume of gross feelings and unexpected hugs from unexpected places, also mad teenaged punching probably, but otherwise uuh probably nothing terrible??
(closed to steve & natsuno); folding chairs and building blocks
[For the first thirty seconds or so, Jade doesn't notice anything amiss. This is on account of not actually opening his eyes, and not actually thinking about anything, for the duration of those thirty seconds. It's quite nice.
The perpetual rock of the ship still sways, as it always has. All is quiet, as this hour of morning always is. This has been...a rather deep and dreamless sleep, which does happen for him on occasion, though it's a rarity. The couch-bed is oddly quite comfortable for once, as well. All told, this might just be the best night's rest he's had in possibly years--
And then he opens his eyes, and turns his head, and the serenity promptly evaporates.
(Gets up from an--actual bed, which is ostensibly Natsuno's bed. The rest of the room--all articles of furniture technically where they should be, yet there's a clean and distinct emptiness, more akin to inn quarters freshly turned over by housekeeping than a place two people have lived in for well over a year. Nothing in desk drawers, or the wardrobe. And all that before stepping out the cabin door, and into...a portion of the residential hall that's far further along than it ought to be. "133", reads the placard on the wall...?)
It's more an automatic impulse than practical sense that leads Jade's highly disoriented self down the hall to cabin 109. Are there...singe marks, on some of the walls? A scattering of debris even here, that he's rather certain hadn't been here yesterday? Later, worry about it later, whatever has transpired overnight. First things first. He reaches for the handle and the lock...does not budge. So.
Jade knocks crisply on 109's door instead, frowning slightly and arms folded expectantly. Surely not a particularly alarming sort of person to find on your doorstep at just a few minutes past six in the morning: a tall man in some sort of teal military uniform, unnaturally red eyes peering critically behind a pair of glasses, when the person on the other side of the door is revealed to be...hmm.]
...Well now, you're certainly not Yuuki. [It's not meant to be accusatory, at least?! ...Well, alright, it might be a little accusatory. Sorry Steve--]
(open i); magic mirrors to pretend
[The rest of the day progresses along, of course, as days tend to do. At some point Jade manages to make it out of the cabin hall(if not probably without sustaining a good punch or two from potentially multiple emotionally compromised teenaged youths in the process), but his feet take him around on something like autopilot while the rest of his thoughts still reel from the inevitable news reunion brings. Months, several months of absence. All while events continued transpiring, the situation upon the ship slowly but surely unraveling ever further out of hand, and now...
It really is as if some sort of disaster has swept its way through the majority of the public areas, residue from the chaos of the "launch" yet to be entirely cleared. Jade wanders from the atrium to sundries, the dining room and the library, the sprawling mess of the promenade and all the way up to the sports deck, a rough mimic of the route he'd always take in semi-daily walks of the ship to canvass its status in the past. The strangest part, of all this, is how it still feels as if he'd taken such a walk just the other day...and yet.
...Lingering overly long upon it only makes it increasingly, stiflingly disquieting. As his wandering progresses, Jade is increasingly wearing an air of searching for something, though it's difficult to divine exactly what that might be from a distance. In the interim, he can be accosted just about anyplace: perhaps squinting at the new shirts in the Bric-a-Brac, or opening the door to the Tommy Bahama and nearly tripping over the small wave of hot dogs that pour through it (???????), or peering pensively at the single lonely signpost holding sentinel between the pool bar and the adult pool. "The signs have been hidden. If anything comes here, it’s better that we tell it where we come from or where we want to go on our own terms..."
It really does seem that he's been returned none too soon. But whether it's entirely too late...well. Perhaps there's no point in fretting over that now.
Perhaps...]
(open ii); seismographic data in our hearts
[In the end, it's the memorial that finally makes it feel truly and unnervingly tangible.
He almost misses it in weaving carefully around the other various keepsakes left here, yet in the end it's the ridiculous rappig-shaped sticker affixing it to the little display that catches the corner of Jade's eye and holds it. Recognition sinks in as he approaches, the shape of the notebook paper, the densely narrow handwriting that's his own. Then, legible as he draws to a halt in front of it...the actual contents of the words. A partial argument proposal draft, started long ago, never finished. "On the societal integration of living replicas..."
The one good deed he hoped he'd ever accomplish. It had felt pointless to complete the draft, upon learning that this existence was likely simply an offshoot of the man still undoubtedly pursuing this cause back in the world of Auldrant. That other Jade who would certainly, ideally, strive to remedy the plight of replicas in his own stead. Yet still, someone looked at this paper here and now, and decided it was still a cause that could represent his memory--even here.
...Ah. Perhaps this is how it must feel, then, to stand before a grave with a heart that isn't numb. What a chilly and sinking sort of sensation. Or is this just a particularly unique sort of experience one gets, when visiting the metaphorical coffin you've all but literally been buried in?
Jade stands and stares at the paper for far too long, and even when he does reach out eventually, fingertips only pinch at a corner and do not pull--uncertain whether it'd be better to take it back, or leave it here.]
(wildcard); let's invent them all again
[Feel free to bring a prompt of your own if none of the above quite fit! 🎉 Jade can be found pretty much anywhere on the ship rn so, go wild go crazy]
What: You ever wake up from a nap so long and ill-advised that now it's four months later and everything's been on fire and the apocalypse apparently may or may not be incoming--
When: Latter half of January, we're wobbling timelines as much as we like for this one folks
Where: Cabin 133 --> Cabin 109, various locales of the ship afterwards
Warnings: Potential high volume of gross feelings and unexpected hugs from unexpected places, also mad teenaged punching probably, but otherwise uuh probably nothing terrible??
(closed to steve & natsuno); folding chairs and building blocks
[For the first thirty seconds or so, Jade doesn't notice anything amiss. This is on account of not actually opening his eyes, and not actually thinking about anything, for the duration of those thirty seconds. It's quite nice.
The perpetual rock of the ship still sways, as it always has. All is quiet, as this hour of morning always is. This has been...a rather deep and dreamless sleep, which does happen for him on occasion, though it's a rarity. The couch-bed is oddly quite comfortable for once, as well. All told, this might just be the best night's rest he's had in possibly years--
And then he opens his eyes, and turns his head, and the serenity promptly evaporates.
(Gets up from an--actual bed, which is ostensibly Natsuno's bed. The rest of the room--all articles of furniture technically where they should be, yet there's a clean and distinct emptiness, more akin to inn quarters freshly turned over by housekeeping than a place two people have lived in for well over a year. Nothing in desk drawers, or the wardrobe. And all that before stepping out the cabin door, and into...a portion of the residential hall that's far further along than it ought to be. "133", reads the placard on the wall...?)
It's more an automatic impulse than practical sense that leads Jade's highly disoriented self down the hall to cabin 109. Are there...singe marks, on some of the walls? A scattering of debris even here, that he's rather certain hadn't been here yesterday? Later, worry about it later, whatever has transpired overnight. First things first. He reaches for the handle and the lock...does not budge. So.
Jade knocks crisply on 109's door instead, frowning slightly and arms folded expectantly. Surely not a particularly alarming sort of person to find on your doorstep at just a few minutes past six in the morning: a tall man in some sort of teal military uniform, unnaturally red eyes peering critically behind a pair of glasses, when the person on the other side of the door is revealed to be...hmm.]
...Well now, you're certainly not Yuuki. [It's not meant to be accusatory, at least?! ...Well, alright, it might be a little accusatory. Sorry Steve--]
(open i); magic mirrors to pretend
[The rest of the day progresses along, of course, as days tend to do. At some point Jade manages to make it out of the cabin hall
It really is as if some sort of disaster has swept its way through the majority of the public areas, residue from the chaos of the "launch" yet to be entirely cleared. Jade wanders from the atrium to sundries, the dining room and the library, the sprawling mess of the promenade and all the way up to the sports deck, a rough mimic of the route he'd always take in semi-daily walks of the ship to canvass its status in the past. The strangest part, of all this, is how it still feels as if he'd taken such a walk just the other day...and yet.
...Lingering overly long upon it only makes it increasingly, stiflingly disquieting. As his wandering progresses, Jade is increasingly wearing an air of searching for something, though it's difficult to divine exactly what that might be from a distance. In the interim, he can be accosted just about anyplace: perhaps squinting at the new shirts in the Bric-a-Brac, or opening the door to the Tommy Bahama and nearly tripping over the small wave of hot dogs that pour through it (???????), or peering pensively at the single lonely signpost holding sentinel between the pool bar and the adult pool. "The signs have been hidden. If anything comes here, it’s better that we tell it where we come from or where we want to go on our own terms..."
It really does seem that he's been returned none too soon. But whether it's entirely too late...well. Perhaps there's no point in fretting over that now.
Perhaps...]
(open ii); seismographic data in our hearts
[In the end, it's the memorial that finally makes it feel truly and unnervingly tangible.
He almost misses it in weaving carefully around the other various keepsakes left here, yet in the end it's the ridiculous rappig-shaped sticker affixing it to the little display that catches the corner of Jade's eye and holds it. Recognition sinks in as he approaches, the shape of the notebook paper, the densely narrow handwriting that's his own. Then, legible as he draws to a halt in front of it...the actual contents of the words. A partial argument proposal draft, started long ago, never finished. "On the societal integration of living replicas..."
The one good deed he hoped he'd ever accomplish. It had felt pointless to complete the draft, upon learning that this existence was likely simply an offshoot of the man still undoubtedly pursuing this cause back in the world of Auldrant. That other Jade who would certainly, ideally, strive to remedy the plight of replicas in his own stead. Yet still, someone looked at this paper here and now, and decided it was still a cause that could represent his memory--even here.
...Ah. Perhaps this is how it must feel, then, to stand before a grave with a heart that isn't numb. What a chilly and sinking sort of sensation. Or is this just a particularly unique sort of experience one gets, when visiting the metaphorical coffin you've all but literally been buried in?
Jade stands and stares at the paper for far too long, and even when he does reach out eventually, fingertips only pinch at a corner and do not pull--uncertain whether it'd be better to take it back, or leave it here.]
(wildcard); let's invent them all again
[Feel free to bring a prompt of your own if none of the above quite fit! 🎉 Jade can be found pretty much anywhere on the ship rn so, go wild go crazy]
no subject
[Or how could he find the return so seamless--his memories of his tenure here so clear and unaltered? And why now, and not sooner, or later--or ever, for that matter? A sense of growing unease accompanies such thoughts, rather the same kind one might experience upon realizing they've narrowly avoided something terrible and have no idea how.
Which would make focusing more on Ava's marriage an ideal thing, really, except...here, a bit of a sigh.] Either way. It would seem I've missed a great deal, most of it likely more unpleasant than not. ...But of all those things, it is most regrettable that I missed your wedding. It's good to hear it was an ideal occasion, at the very least...I'd have liked to have attended, if I were able.
no subject
I was worried that all the souls were... destroyed. [and Tayrey had declared they were free. Ava isn't so sure about that, given the few that have spontaneously returned.] But I'm inclined to agree with Maximilien. In the matters of energy. Within a closed system, not sure where else they could go.
[but also like Maximilien, she struggles to fully understand the concept of a soul. how it differentiates from a ghost, she'll never quite know. unfortunately even Jade in his infinite wordy wisdom also has no answer.]
Had a lovely cake, and Phil played piano. And Maximilien walked me down the aisle. Valdis was my maid of honor, and Skulduggery was Peter's best man. Fio wore her nice dress as the flower girl. And the Captain attended too. [she touches lightly near the collar of her sweatshirt, at a necklace hidden underneath.] It is a shame. That your return wasn't under better circumstances.
no subject
Energy within a closed system would be the logical sort of mechanic, wouldn't it? With what little evidence we seem to have on hand at present, [aka he himself being back and intact on this particular day,] I'm inclined to agree with Maximilien as well. But, from there, it seems there are too many unknown factors to take any consistent measure of the how and why, where passengers disappearing and resurfacing seems to be concerned. More's the pity...
[Difficult to retrieve what cannot be quantified, let alone located. Jade is, alas, yet another member of the What Even Are Souls Anyway club--ironically, yes, despite the necromancer title everyone liked to foist upon him back home--and so his infinite wordy wisdom falls entirely too short there as well. Which...really is quite disappointing. One would think an entire four months being evaporated should at least amount to something gleaned.
...Still. The light outline of the wedding that Ava paints is a pleasant one. Jade can almost envision each person mentioned attending in his mind's eye even with these sorts of brief descriptions. Even the Captain, hm...? The light touch to her collar is seen but doesn't register; his own thoughts wander elsewhere, and don't stop to wonder.]
Oh, if we were to attempt some exercises in optimism, one could say that my return at least isn't under worse circumstances. I'm getting the impression I've arrived in something of a tense sort of breathing space...as everyone collectively waits for a second shoe to drop, hm?
no subject
So... yeah. Waiting for the other shoe. Hopefully it'll be a slipper and not a steel-toed boot to the face.