come_sailaway | [Closed] You're not who you say you are

"He doesn't care about the trees so he expended no effort. But he cares about you, so he would put forth every effort imaginable." Obviously. The Captain has the capacity to create things, Friday is certainly almost a person; why bother with the trees when they were just set dressing? Maybe he's holding Skulduggery in his private quarters for nefarious reasons. They don't know!

Max's eyes flick from Skulduggery's empty sockets to the lights in Ava's mask, and then back. He is most definitely missing some crucial bit of information here. That's what he gets for not wanting to talk about uncomfortable things like the fact in some diverging timeline he's wearing those horrible Overwatch sweats right now.

"What portal? What are.. " He sighs and the electricity coursing around his hand and the pipe he's holding shuts off. "No one is currently shooting anyone. Let's start again with some basic explanations. What memories? What portal? And what was on the other side?"

You know, communication or something.

It feels as though his bones are strung together with candyfloss, only one firm push away from falling apart. Ava's arm around his shoulders is a brace that forces him into the moment, staring first at Max and then at the empty audience as though waiting for someone else to show. Something else to shake this moment back into a dreamier, easier to avoid state.

The laugh that Max's comment draws out is more-or-less a single hysterical sob that dies as abruptly as it starts. When the moment passes and he doesn't fall apart, when the ship fails to collapse into a mass hallucination, when the Faceless Ones don't com for him, he lets out another awful noise.

"There's no escaping it," he says at last. "What happens to us is always going to happen. I was always going to wind up in that... place."

That eleven-month-old exhaustion finally hits and he finds himself barely able to sit up right. "I don't remember what I was doing. I just woke up in my bed after it happened, with these... memories crammed inside my head. Of falling through the portal, of the..." He tries to shake his head, but the movement is just too much. "...The things that were waiting for me... We call them Faceless Ones. And they... Do not like me. For some unimaginable reason."

It's a massive understatement, a catastrophic miss, but he can't bear to tell them the truth. That he'd laid eyes on madness-inducing gods, that they'd hunted him, tore his body apart and repeated it every night once there were no other playthings to distract them.

It's an awful sort of sound that escapes Skulduggery's mouth and mingling with the fading notes of the forgotten karaoke song. Not even resulting from the pain they'd intended to inflict upon him for answers. This is all going so much worse than she imagined, worse than her friend just being hidden away somewhere that she could rescue like a princess in a castle. Nothing that can be solved with threats and violence, her most reliable methods.

Everything he'd confessed to her, the fear of going back, somehow flooding his mind all at once. It aligns with what Ava suspected of the timelines, that they go on uninterrupted without them. But not quite the way she expected any of it to work, how his consciousness might cross over into the life he's deviated from. She has so many questions, but that's not the most important thing right now.

"Hey," she speaks hesitant and hushed. "You're here. Right now. With us." Maybe that's not so reassuring, in the present context. She finally removes her mask, so her voice is more familiar. "I've been so worried about you," she tells him with a small tremble to the words. "I wish I could have come with you."

Max tucks the pipe back into his sleeve, more to have something to focus on that isn't Skulduggery. The sound he makes is terrible and Max doesn't know what it means, for all that he tries to pretend he knows how to manipulate and out negotiate humans, and does so all the time, he does not at all understand them emotionally. The amount of people he's seen cry could be counted on a single hand.

The reason he got along so well with Skulduggery, the reason he'd even spoken to him to begin with, was because he was so obviously not human. Even after all these months of interactions Max still sometimes forgot that Skulduggery actually had been human at some point, he hadn't simply manifested as a skeleton from the beginning.

Max has decided that he's no longer qualified to really assist in this emotional debacle anymore because anything he says or does is likely to be wrong and make things worse. Ava would know what to do, already does seem to be fixing it by what she's saying. He'll let her take the lead so he doesn't say the wrong thing.

"So then, you really are you. You're actually Skulduggery?" Better to focus on the basics, the facts. The things that don't require empathy or emotional maturity. "But with, more memories, more time that you've lived in your reality while remaining here."

A pause, "That sounds awful. My... my apologies."

So much for remaining emotionally neutral.

The image of Ava on that dead planet very nearly drives him to his feet, although he only gets as far as dropping his hands to brace himself against the edge of the stage before going still again. "No," he hisses. "No, it would only have been worse if you had been there."

But that thought doesn't help, and he just barely manages to drive it away. One thing at a time, he thinks, reassured to hear his own voice this time around. Focus.

"As much as either of you are really yourselves," is the easiest way to explain the first point. "We... Here, we exist outside of time. But we still exist in the timeline. And occasionally, for reasons the captain either could not or would not explain, we... can connect to those future points in our lives. I think. I was... not in any position to understand his explanation."

Next point. "And that's because I cannot trust any of my senses. I... see things, hear things that aren't real. Which is why I attacked you, Ava. I didn't realize it was you until it was too late. And then I started to question my reality, and... Well. You both see how that turned out."

She immediately wishes she kept her mask on, flinching away at being told her presence only would make things worse. Is making things worse, her mind unhelpfully adds. Max's little stumble over his words hurts, she feels guilty for dragging him into this.

"That's what I suspected all along, that time goes on without us," Ava says softly, but had tried to take comfort in it. That Bill would never have to miss her the way she does him. Except now everything that Steven told her of the future, she's not so sure of that anymore. She might've disappeared anyway, after everything.

"We're the only versions of ourselves that each other know," Ava insists. "Which makes us the most important versions. I would have torn this entire place apart with Max, to make sure you were safe. And I hurt you instead..." Ava brushes her gloved fingers down the side of Skulduggery's jaw, still cradling him in her grip.

"But why is your face different?" That's the part that she can't shake!

"It's his original skull, the other was someone else's." That much Max knows, he unfortunately has not been made aware of the fact that Skulduggery won it in a poker game which is unfortunate because he would be delighted by that.

"That's why it looks better with his suit." Which is the first thing that Max noticed, he is an Omnic of dubious priorities.

There's a pause while Max tries to understand what Skulduggery is telling them, there's one part that he understands extremely well. And that's not being in the right mental state for literally anything. "As nice as it would be to have a full explanation of what has happened from the Captain, I spent four of seven days while camping pretending to be a tree so I understand why you might not have absorbed all that information."

He maybe sorta understands something about mental breakdowns now.

"Ah," and now he knows for certain that it was Max there with him in the Tommy Bahama. "That is it, exactly." On both counts. Really, on all counts, as he lets Ava touch him to satisfy her own curiosity. "We are the only versions of ourselves we need to worry about. The rest can deal with their messy Earth business."

He's come to the conclusion that he's the most well-off version of himself out there. On the timeline, he'll have to face down the Death Bringer. He'll likely have to reveal himself to Valkyrie and ruin her trust after she'd gone through so much to get him back. He'll have to deal with the Sanctuary's destruction and all the awful bureaucracy and politics that will ensue.

Here on the Eterna, things are much simpler. Clearer. He prefers it that way.

"Neither of you could hurt me in a way that matters," he says, like that's supposed to be comforting! "Really. I've found out that my threshold for pain far exceeds falling a few floors or being beaten with an... iron bar? Where in the world did you get that?"

"No, I know, I know how you earned your old skull in a poker game," Ava sounds near hysterics because that isn't the part that's even halfway weird in all of this. She already reacted to that with appropriate shock back then. "But if this is your original and you mentally synced up with the future of a you that can no longer be, how did you possibly get. It. Back?" Why are they both acting like it's so self explanatory when it makes no sense at all!

She peers over his shoulder to inspect his profile closer, taking in the higher cheekbones with more appreciation than before. Now that it wasn't the face of a supposed stranger attacking her. "Max is right."

He lets the pipe slide back into his hand and gives it a flip, there's the sense that he's probably broken someone's jaw with one of these before. "It's part of one of the morgue drawers. On the inside of the drawer it's the piston that causes the tray to slide out. I have a few, I brought supplies, just in case."

And then it's back up into his sleeve. For future interrogations.

"You won it in a poker game? You didn't tell me that." His eyes narrowing, suddenly all offended that this piece of information that's absolutely relevant to Max's interests was kept from him.

Skulduggery simply laughs. It's nowhere near his normal dry amusement, but at least he doesn't sound like he's about to break down (literally?). "I don't know how it happened. The captain doesn't know how it happened, either. Horrifying, I know. He says that it's part of his research." As it usually comes back around to.

"I hadn't seen it in decades. Valkyrie had to track it down from the police. She... used it as a sort of magical compass to find me in that other dimension. And then she brought me home." He reaches up to pat Ava's hand. "You both would find her terribly obnoxious, but she would have done the same thing if she'd suspected I wasn't myself." And for Max, he gets a special toe-bump of Skulduggery's shoe to his knee. "And yes. I won it after some goblins stole this one while I was resting in a church."

Yes she's quite impressed at Max's resourcefulness and musters up a small smile of approval and mostly relief they didn't have to carry through with any of their haphazardly thrown together plan. "Sounds like this Valkyrie friend had far more creative problem-solving methods," Ava sighs. She still likes to think if she was there, she could have done something.

"Maybe the Captain was hoping to... change... your mind," Ava suggests the joke with a hesitant delivery. But research. Into what? Converging multiple instances of self across timelines? What good could that possibly do.

None here, clearly, Skulduggery is one of the strongest minds by her estimation, and this has nearly broken him (and them along with.) But she places a gentle kiss to his cheekbone, and please just ignore that her own cheek is a bit damp.

"So is that's what causing you to... hear and see things? Because of overlapping consciousness?" Ava asks uncertainly.

That raises so many more questions! None of them are relevant now but, his skull can be taken by goblins? It's detachable? His original one was sitting in a police evidence box for years? What is going on in Skulduggery's reality????

"I want you to appreciate the restraint I have right now in not asking you several dozen questions about your skull alone." He huffs, because wow, just leave out all the important juicy bits.

Instead he will go to the closed door and retrieve his leather bag of goodies so it's not sitting in the hallway suspiciously. Plus then he can get all these ties out of his pockets.

"So you are hallucinating then? Hallucinating us?" That's weirdly touching actually.

What would have happened, if he'd allowed Valkyrie to comfort him this way? If he'd allowed Darcy? If he hadn't been so overwhelmed by trying to right the capsized ship that is his mind -- maybe then, none of this would be happening. Maybe he'd have already learned how to cope, figured out how to explain himself.

"It isn't the time-skip that's causing the hallucinations, exactly..." He wishes he could close his eyes, or at least turn his gaze away from Max as he moves to fetch his bag. He doesn't want to see either or their reactions. "The human mind isn't designed to comprehend the Faceless Ones. They drive most people mad from one look. Being that I spent eleven months in their company... I may have inadvertently glanced at them, once in a while."

Max returns, and Skulduggery leaps at a chance to change the subject, no matter how briefly. "I certainly hope I'm not hallucinating the two of you," he says, "Although I can't say for sure that I'm not. I don't know you two on the timeline, so I never... forced myself through that, thankfully. Now, what, exactly, were you two planning to do to me?" Because that bag is full of goodies, alright, and he has no idea what they thought they'd accomplish.

"Eleven months..." when it hadn't even been more than a moment to cram all that in his head, apparently. She tries to imagine the Faceless Ones, mostly pictures Friday as a giant twisted monster for lack of other description he gives. "And they hurt you?" she's still trying to make sense of what exactly happened to him, what he must have experienced.

She's trying to comfort herself just as much, that it is him, that he's safe and he's here (and even there the Skulduggery that isn't hers managed to get away) and Ava absolutely isn't ready to let go out of fear he'll somehow become the hallucination and slip away from them again. She's quiet as Max steps away, her gaze not leaving his path, unwilling to lose sight of him too.

"That wasn't planned for you you, just imposter you," she claims at the return of Max and the bag. "I was a stealth operative, you know, I know how interrogations are meant to go. Not like this. Turns out it's a lot harder to carry through when it's somebody you love." And she's just going to keep on going as if she didn't just confess that.

"So you trust him. The Captain? What he claims, that it was an accident. And not another way to mess with you?" Because if Skulduggery's judgement that she usually trusts has been so compromised, she's not so certain.

"In my defense I've never interrogated a skeleton before so I wanted to be prepared with multiple options in case we needed to torture out your location. From you." He kneels down and unzips it so he can fill it full of the ties from his pockets. "I did try to make the ties we were going to use to restrain you not as hideous as they could have been. As a courtesy to the real you."

Because those are the things that Max cares about, so hopefully that conveys how much he cares about Skulduggery. Because he's sure not going to do it with words.

"Eleven months though, that's an eternity." echoing Ava's concerns, because he'd been gone an evening at most. Max probably hasn't gone more than 12 hours seeing him around the ship. "Even without creatures that can apparently drive you mad with a single look, that amount of time would likely test any human's sanity."

He should probably be more resistant to the idea of being attacked by his friends for the purposes of a violent interrogation... But it is oddly touching to see the effort the two of them went through for him.

"What a sweetheart you are," he says. He's trying to be playfully flippant, but it maybe is a little more sincere than that. It doesn't matter. Skulduggery is positive Max will never bring any of this up again, out of both professional and personal courtesy.

The answer to Ava's question is unlikely to be as easily forgotten. So much so that he hesitates to answer. "They... usually enjoyed the chase and the catch in equal measure," he admits, his every joint feeling momentarily weak and easily separated. "As I am... especially resilient, they were allowed more creativity in their torture."

He holds up one hand in the air for them both to see. "I've had to put this exact hand back together... hm. Three-hundred-thirty times, now. I misplaced the lunate for three weeks straight. It was a complete miracle that I found it again."

Because, you know, that totally answers all of their questions.

They couldn't handle him gone for less than a day, much less eleven months.

"I avoided asking him to use his own ties, so we hadn't gone to complete extremes yet." Ava knows how much Max values them! Especially given the alternative for replacements.

But no, she doesn't like the answer at all, not because it doesn't answer enough but it's all too painful to imagine. It's not quite the same, but she knows enough of what it's like to have your body torn apart piece by piece, to live every day in agony of stitching it back together again. Only to repeat the process, over and over with no end in sight. She knows she hadn't needed to experience anything like these Faceless Ones to have gone mad from just the pain alone.

She'd destroy them all if she could. But she can't. It's happened. Did happen, will happen, because they're outside of time and unable to do a damn thing about it.

"I won't do it again," she promises, pressing her palm to the one he holds up. "Sneak up on you."

The important thing is that Max would have sacrificed his own ties in the furtherance of finding out what had happened to their friend!

His eyes flick over that hand, sensors cataloging the density of bone, the temperature, undeniable facts that don't have any significance. He's not handling the more intangible emotional parts of this very well, but at least he's not going to go pretend to be a tree again. He pointedly looks away from the bones of Skulduggery's hand as he can't imagine them being torn apart and reknit a single time, let alone over three hundred. There's something awful about finding out something terrible after the fact, when it's too late to do anything about it. A sort of helplessness that he's never felt before. Because he and Ava can't fix it, they can't undo what he's experienced - they can only move forward. And Max's plan will be to never bring it up again because he's not sure how to deal with the emotions of both empathy and sympathy he's feeling.

"How do we prevent it from happening again?" The timeline blips. The torture. Any of this.

"That... might be for the best," he tells Ava. As much as he would like to pretend otherwise. "At least until I've... mmm, gotten myself sorted out. Learned how to tell fact from fiction. After all, how permanent can madness possibly be?"

He knows the answer is pretty permanent, but he also knows that delusion is part of the whole deal. It balances out in the end.

"As to how we prevent any of this happening again..." Skulduggery flexes his hand into a loose fist, then drops it down to the stage. "We can't. Not yet, anyway. Either the captain was telling me the truth and has no idea how it happens, which means we have no way of safeguarding against it... Or, the captain was lying, which would mean he wants it to happen. If that's the case, he won't be inclined to help us prevent it. And unless something's changed in the days-and-months that I've been distracted, we have nobody aboard with any temporal or spacial abilities that could help us."

Not very reassuring, he knows. There's a good reason why he's been throwing himself into a manic vacation, after all.

She nods in understanding, though it's hard for her not to sneak up on anyone because she deliberately stays out of sight unless she cares enough to bother them. But she'll try.

"We couldn't stop it, because it was already meant to happen. And we can't stop it from happening again, because it's..." out of their control, apparently without warning. She wonders if this has happened to anyone else, if it'll happen to the rest of them. Ava really doesn't want to face whatever waits for her, even if it makes her feel like a coward. Probably nothing as bad as what Skulduggery just experienced.

"So what can we do? What do you need?" Ava asks. "Is there a way to help you know what's real and what's not?"

Well that's not ideal. That what's going to happen will happen no matter what they do, they're headed towards a specific course and there's no way to divert. And anything they do might have been expected to happen anyway.

That's the worst part, what if everything they do was part of the plan anyway? How do you fight against inevitability?

"There's a good chance he's telling the truth. I would think if he did know how it happened, and enjoyed the emotional fallout, he'd simply tell you that. He'll get more of a reaction out of that admission than pretending to not know." and ultimately it's what Max would do if he was the Captain. So far that assumption has been pretty accurate, which is another thing he shouldn't think about for any length of time.

He huffs lowly because you know who knows a lot about portals and magic? Ebalon. You know who he's absolutely not going to suggest they talk to? Also Ebalon.

"Yes, let's focus on the current situation, and deal with the larger impact later. Sometimes it's the smallest thing that can tip the balance."

Skulduggery is feeling very much the same as Max in regards to the captain, apparently on multiple levels, but they are both consummate professionals when it comes to avoiding sensitive and emotional topics. Usually, anyway. This week was an exception to prove the rule.

"I'm personally inclined to believe him, but it helps to hear a rational mind agree." One day that will be him again, but for now, deferring to Max and Ava's judgments will have to suffice. "Helping me is easy enough; I only need to occasionally confirm someone is physically present. My hallucinations are annoying but, thankfully, incorporeal. I'm glad I gave myself that leeway; it would be awful if I had tactile hallucinations as well."

No way to have developed those when you're constantly experiencing one single tactile sensation for months on end, after all!

"And the others have to be warned, obviously. But explaining it is tricky. I've already weathered questions over technicalities and logistics, and the whole thing is absolute nonsense."

Alright. She trusts their judgment on matters of the Captain over her own instinct to assume everyone is lying.

"You'd know I'm a hallucination if I'm not finding excuses to touch you, anyway," Ava calls herself out for being overly handsy. She likes knowing not that other people are there, but that she still is. "It grounds me too," she tells him.

But she does loosen her hold on him finally, even if she doesn't completely break the connection.

"Maybe you should... write an FAQ. Pass it out when somebody asks. Cut down on having to explain the same thing over and over."

"If you asked I'm sure Captain Stede would put up fliers." He's only partly joking, because he's pretty sure that man will take any excuse to put up fliers. It might be a little less alarming to read about someone you know experiencing tons of torture that lead to hallucinations when it's written in very fancy calligraphy.

"But truthfully, it might be best to inform those you know in advance, we can't be the only ones who would suspect something untoward is happening and take drastic measures." And not everyone will be as discerning when selecting ties for restraining purposes.

[Closed] You're not who you say you are

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