Entrance - reprise
((First there was this. Spoilers for ep 25.))
Hughes doesn't register the door swinging open, nor closing once he's through. He barely registers hitting the ground through nerves that are already nearly overloaded. The first thing he registers is the sound, the low murmer of voices interspersed with laughter that denotes a public arena. And then the rafters above him, where there should be a night sky, as much as one can ever see the sky in Central.
Or nothing at all.
He is still for a moment, trying to put together a puzzle for which he lacks several of the pieces, and then he raises his hand, studying it as though he half expects to see something utterly alien. It isn't, and this is almost more puzzling than if it had been.
He gives himself a mental shake, and pushes himself to his feet. Slowly, because he still hurts, traces of phantom pain firing along his nerves from a wound that is no longer there, that has no trace of having ever been there. He touches his chest to confirm this, pats at his uniform, pristine but for the slight disarray caused by having fallen onto the floor of what is apparently a bar.
A bar?
He adjusts his glasses and looks around himself. Still a bar, and not one that seems at all familiar, not even in the hazy manner of recollections of a youthful pub crawl that had gone just slightly too long.
"Where...?"
(( New mun. Thus Hughes is starting over.))
Hughes doesn't register the door swinging open, nor closing once he's through. He barely registers hitting the ground through nerves that are already nearly overloaded. The first thing he registers is the sound, the low murmer of voices interspersed with laughter that denotes a public arena. And then the rafters above him, where there should be a night sky, as much as one can ever see the sky in Central.
Or nothing at all.
He is still for a moment, trying to put together a puzzle for which he lacks several of the pieces, and then he raises his hand, studying it as though he half expects to see something utterly alien. It isn't, and this is almost more puzzling than if it had been.
He gives himself a mental shake, and pushes himself to his feet. Slowly, because he still hurts, traces of phantom pain firing along his nerves from a wound that is no longer there, that has no trace of having ever been there. He touches his chest to confirm this, pats at his uniform, pristine but for the slight disarray caused by having fallen onto the floor of what is apparently a bar.
A bar?
He adjusts his glasses and looks around himself. Still a bar, and not one that seems at all familiar, not even in the hazy manner of recollections of a youthful pub crawl that had gone just slightly too long.
"Where...?"
(( New mun. Thus Hughes is starting over.))