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

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

Who: Ava, Maximilien and Skulduggery
What: Skulduggery is not himself and his bffs Ava and Max are going to kidnap whoever this is and make him tell them where the real Skulduggery is.
When: End of June
Where: the Library
Warnings: Mild violence, emotions, potentially hugs.

The skeleton that Ava and Max have seen on the ship is not Skulduggery. It just isn't. Not only does he have a different skull, he has entirely different mannerisms and a more subdued personality. Whoever this is tried to set Ava on fire and Max saw him looking at clothes in the Tommy Bahama, two equally terrible things indicating that whoever this is, is not Skulduggery.

Ava had set a plan into motion and at the prescribed time Max is on his way to meet her outside the library to plan how best to take down a skeleton imposter.

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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.

Skulduggery's head tilts in a short, abrupt shake of refusal. "Nobody will know the specifics of my time away unless I have a good reason to tell them. I am not sharing my newfound weaknesses with just anyone."

He's already let too much go as it is; bits of it have slipped out to the people closest to him, the ones who readily notice his new skull or strange demeanor. He doesn't know if he would have ever told Ava or Max about it if they hadn't attacked him.

"...But the other parts are important. I tried to write down what I discussed with the captain, and I passed that on to Palamedes and Jade. Given I trust them to be both rational and magically-adept, they made the most sense at the time." He trails that last bit, knowing now that it probably hadn't made any sense to anyone. "They both hunted me down for clarifications, but I'm sure at this point they've thought more about it than I have."

That's just encouraging them to attack you, Skully.

But she does look slightly slighted that he told other people first. 'Rational people,' she mouthes to Max. They're rational. But no, not magically-anything.

"It's okay, I forgive you, clearly you weren't in the right state of mind at the time." She pats his new-old skull gently. It might take a bit to get used to his new look, but at least she won't have to associate it negatively anymore. Not the face of an enemy.

"At least the... worst of all this is over, yeah?" Hahaha. That sounds incredibly naïve to her own ears.

Wow, how dare Skulduggery decide that the woman who stole a kayak and all the lobsters, and the Omnic that went on a shooting spree and attacked a guy who can throw the moon, aren't the most rational people he knows. Max is hurt and offended.

"Very well, I trust you know best how to disseminate this information. And to who." He's certainly not going to tell anyone. Both because knowledge is power, but also out of respect for Skulduggery, who as far as he knows hasn't told anyone about his damaged power source.

"Please don't tempt it Ava."

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

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