milliways_bar: In the hallway outside room 496.
[after this thread and Illyria's subsequent return to Milliways.]It's late - late enough that she should be sleeping. Wesley'd insisted that she get some sleep after the lights came back on, after the most immediate evidence of the threat had passed for another night. She would have argued, but they'd come to some understanding and she didn't
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Not until it cracked apart.
Time would crack this place apart, if that wizard they'd brought back didn't provide answers. She'd have beat them out of him herself if someone else hadn't gotten to him first. Now there was only waiting, waiting to see if their journey to retrieve the man had been a waste of time.
She wasn't a patient creature, and she had even less patience for the presumptions Fred was making before she even opened the door. One of which was I bet she's not even in there.
Illyria took some small amount of pleasure in proving her wrong.
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They were all creepy options, which is why Fred's next two words come out accusatory rather than merely observant.
"You're here."
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"It is my room."
Her words are neutral enough, but they have a sharp edge to them.
"You thought I would be elsewhere."
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"Why aren't you? No offense -- well, okay, maybe a little offense -- but why are you here? I mean, why don't you just go back to our world, or I guess any world, now that you can. If you're not going to fight this thing, why are you here?"
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"Do you humans all fail to communicate with one another this spectacularly, or is it unique to those who come to this place, I wonder? I have just come from tracking the sorcerer Urza Planeswalker across a number of worlds. He has been retrieved, no thanks to most of those locked in that that room doing research."
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"Oh."
Fred looks incredibly sheepish.
"Well, don't I feel stupid."
Seeing that Illyria's about to answer the rhetorical question, she hurriedly speaks again.
"Don't answer that, okay? I know you know, and I know you don't care for the whole apology thing, but -- you know what it's been like for us here. That thing downstairs is just ticking away, faster and faster, and maybe staring down destruction is routine for you, but for the rest of us it's... actually, sort of getting to be routine for us too."
Fred sighs, frustrated.
"This isn't coming out right."
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Another time she might have been amused, but as this was approximately the kind of thing that Illyria had to willfully filter out of her thoughts on a daily basis, she lacked the patience for it.
"Allow me to make the point that you seem to be failing to make. You are afraid. You want some reassurance that the key will be found in time, that you will not die in this place. You came here to ask me if I could do anything to stop it, and finding that I have done what I can, you wish to know if it will be enough."
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But she can't. For all that she isn't panicking, she is afraid. She hates it, hates that they're stuck in the library with no weapons against this thing but books and minds when its weapon was time, the one enemy of the defense that was usually her strongest. The simple truth was that no matter how hard they worked, no matter how close they came, no matter how many breakthroughs they made, time could still run out on them. And then they'd have to run. And then... she didn't want to think of the options that came after.
"Can you give it?" Fred asks, quietly curious.
"You said you'd brought Urza back. Can he undo this thing before it undoes us?"
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Even if they both wanted to. Even if they resented the other fiercely at times, for a moment there hadn't been resentment in Fred's question, and it's enough for Illyria to answer her with a calm quiet honesty.
"I do not know. He was injured beyond speaking of it when he was brought in. It is likely he will recover enough to offer what information he knows, but that does not promise success. The device has a key, and it is yet out of our grasp."
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Fred's voice is calm and unwavering, not defeated, but accepting. Knowing that the situation, while not hopeless, was neither particularly hopeful. Knowing that they were doing all that they could -- that even the more powerful creatures in this place were doing all that they could, had done all that they could, and that now they could only wait and see.
"It's not enough."
She's still quiet, but with a sudden ferocity under her words. "I'm sorry, but it's not. You're so calm, but you said yourself that you don't know. You don't know if this Urza person even knows where the key is. You don't know if he'll be able to tell us how to get it back, or if we'll get to it in time. But there is something you do know, because you know I've been thinking about it this whole time."
A pause, in which brown eyes meet blue ones, both unwavering.
"Time. That's the key, not the key we don't have, but the one some of us do. You know there's a way to buy us more of it."
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"My power to affect time only extends so far, and only selectively works in this place. It did not affect the clock itself when I used it in front of it. The wards prevent that. I cannot pull the entire Bar out of phase from the clock, nor the clock from it."
She knows better, knows that isn't what Fred means, but the alternative is so truly offensive to her that she cannot believe Fred would dare to suggest it.
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Illyria's tone is mocking, scathing.
"You have no idea what you are asking, all for the sake of if. Do you know what the return of my powers very nearly cost? Do you have any idea how close your beloved Wesley came to a far more permanent death?"
She fairly spits the words back at this presumptuous human who dared to speak so only because they wore the same face.
"No. I will not relinquish them a second time."
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Fred's not really surprised by the knowledge, nor particularly hurt, but there is a quiet sort of defeat in the observation.
"You can't. You talk about Wesley like I'm supposed to believe you valued his help, but you don't value his continued existence enough to do the one thing in your power that would keep him here, and safe. You put him into danger so easily and think it's okay because he's willing to follow you. Because for whatever reason he trusts you."
She stares at Illyria a moment longer, her expression full of nearly as much contempt as Illyria usually held for her.
"He trusts you, and that's his right. But I don't. Knowing you won't hurt me doesn't come anywhere near trust, Illyria. So if it comes down to a choice, if it's you or me? I'm going to go with me."
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Illyria is by all appearances unfazed, completely unaffected by this outburst. As cold and impassive as she ever was.
"Are you quite done wasting my time and your own?"
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Done trying to reason with a pathologically selfish creature that she's currently incredibly ashamed to look like, and perhaps done trying to accept her, as well.
It seems that had been the true waste of time.
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