There's not a word yet...[open]

[cassie_of_troy]

Who: Cassandra, Bret, Cris, and anyone else!!
What: Still alive, baby?
When: Tuesday evening
Where: Some random bork place in Jhelbor

Comments

[weedyshyguy]

Bret was in a daze. He was glad to have Jemaine -- not have him. Whatever it was to be around him again. To just be near him...

He was happy. The happiest he'd been in a while. He was.

That didn't make Jemaine any less vexing though. He'd always been grumpy and difficult to live with. They'd had spats. But this was...different. And Bret knew part of that was his fault and he hadn't exactly helped things but grabbing Jemaine's hand like he had. And squeezing. He'd pulled away as soon as whatever that feeling was went away, but it was still...More than he was ready to admit to. And he'd decided he was never going to admit anything

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra was startled. Not by the hug, that was kind of nice. She was more startled that she wasn't startled. If that made any sense. She hadn't even seen Bret coming, hadn't heard him, had had no indication, really, that he was nearby. And then, there he was, his arms around her like the loving big brother she had never had (although she had had fifty). Her shock was momentary, her whole body jerking. And then it softened and she was wrapping her arms around him, holding him just as tight.

She somewhat surrendered her sense of time for a moment, just living there, feeling this powerful affection. Truth be told, it was rather addicting. She wasn't sure she wanted to let the moment pass too quickly. How much she had changed since arriving in Rowan. Perhaps, just perhaps, even for the better, if this was any indication.

"Don't thank the gods," she told him gently. "We survived on our own. We..." She couldn't bring herself to conjure up any sort of lecture right now. She was just so happy to see him. "We survived."

[weedyshyguy]

Bret nodded. "We did. Yis." He pulled away, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, squeezing lightly. "You're okay? Not secretly hurt or anything?" He looked her over. She didn't look injured. But maybe she was just trying to be strong.

He was tired of that. Of everyone trying to be strong and tough. It was hard to do it himself, lately. He couldn't imagine how everyone else was dealing with this. He supposed he'd been keeping together because Jemaine was there and, well, he could only imagine what he'd gone through. He wanted to be supportive for everyone but it was just plain tiring.

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra nodded, giving Bret the same once-over he was giving her. "I'm fine," she told him. "I was guarding the medics in the forest. I thought if the worst happened...the mermaids might start attacking the injured." She paused, weighing her words carefully. "I suppose we were lucky in that respect." Not in others, of course.

"And you? You look..." He looked like Bret. That was incredibly comforting. "You look good," she said finally. "Certainly a lot better than some of the other worldwalkers." To say nothing of the natives. But that was a pain that she had compartmentalized for the time being.

"What happened to you during the fight?"

lkafjdsl sorry I broke it D: won't happen again

[weedyshyguy]

Bret chewed his lip and shrugged. He didn't like thinking about the fight. Given, he hadn't done much and he'd actually been out of the worst of the battle for a while, but it was still difficult. He'd managed to mostly avoid thinking about death in his life back home. Here...he'd witnessed it. Possibly caused it, if that squid was really his fault. But he wasn't going to think of it that way.

"We got out of the bubble and onto the island with the tree." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "I think my magic summoned a squid. It...helped. Cho put symbols around the tree, Sonic, um, beat up mermaids. Me and Jemaine kept an eye on Ianto -- oh, he had to be knocked out. Um. And then a rowboat fell out of the sky and we got in and went across the lake. Me and Jemaine just watched over Ianto, basically."

Only after he finished did he wonder whether that was what she wanted to know. Oh well, it covered everything. Good enough.

Re: lkafjdsl sorry I broke it D: won't happen again

[cassie_of_troy]

Huh. Sounded like Bret's wizarding abilities were getting stronger. If a rowboat fell out of the sky, she rather suspected he had been behind it. She gave his elbows a tight squeeze, offering him as comforting a smile as she could muster, but Cassandra's smile, like her laugh, was rusty from a lack of use. It probably wasn't doing him much good at all.

"I'm glad you're not hurt," she told him softly. "I saw terrible things with the medics. Dangling limbs. Terrible burns. There was blood everywhere. It stained the dirt." She paused briefly. "Some of our people were hurt." Not exactly her people, but worldwalkers, nevertheless.

Cassandra glanced from side to side and lowered her voice when she spoke next. "Things aren't over yet," she hissed softly. "I sense danger. The elves, humans, and demons won't be able to coexist for long before disaster." Again, she paused. "I don't want to lose you again."

[creaoi_ang_cor]

After the day spent recovering from the energy he'd spent in battle, Cris hadn't been able to work up the courage to open his journal. He'd tried, once or twice -- lifted a corner of the cover or flipped rapidly through the pages with his thumb, hoping and not hoping that something would catch his eye. He didn't want to know who might have sent out notices of their survival. He'd start worrying about the people who hadn't.

He'd found ways to distract himself, mostly among the demons. Once things had begun to settle down (and even a little bit before then), he'd been able to find small groups to drink and gamble and share stories with. He'd go to sleep every night wondering, curious -- but not enough to take a look at what might (or might not) have been written

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra turned around at the sound of her name. An enormous smile spread across her lips as she saw the familiar, lithe form of Cris heading in her direction. Of course, she hadn't doubted his ability to survive. Not at all. Not for a second. Regardless, she was still incredibly relieved to see him now.

"Cris!" she called back to him. And then she felt a little stupid. He knew his own name and it was clear she could see him.

Let it be, she decided.

She stopped walking and waited for him.

[creaoi_ang_cor]

Cris had been hanging with the demons for a short time already this evening, so he was just the slightest bit tipsy. But even if he hadn't been, he was pretty sure his behavior wouldn't have been much different:

As he ran up to Cassandra, one hand slipped itself around her waist, the other took her hand -- and with the dexterity of someone rather skilled at leading, Cris spun her around in a short little dance. After a few spins he brought them both to a stop, stepped back and pressed a kiss to the hand he was holding.

He grinned up at her, at a temporary loss for words. They were both alive, and he couldn't think of a way to express how that felt right now.

"Gods, but it's a relief to see you again." Well, that wasn't a bad way to start.

[cassie_of_troy]

Baffled though she was, Cassandra couldn't help but laugh. What was he doing? She didn't know. Whatever it was, though, she found it enjoyable and quite entertaining. Perhaps she was a bit more desperate for levity than she realized. Or perhaps she had been a bit more concerned for Cris' safety than she cared to acknowledge.

And then he thanked the gods. Everyone seemed to be hung up on doing that. Cassandra was far too pleased to see him, however, to complain much. And she certainly wasn't going to provide another lecture. Instead, she just shook her head with a small smile. "I'm glad to see you as well," she told him genuinely.

this is before cassie runs into cris, because em fails at timeline

[not_even_dreams]

Sam's days, as well as his nightmares, had been filled with lights.

Honestly, though, the phantasms were more frightening in daylight than they were when he was dreaming. At least dreams ended; at least he (usually) knew when they were over. Since the battle had died down Sam had watched what seemed like shining spirits move through the city. He'd seen golden fire consume the bodies of the dead, and traced the sigils on the walls of Jhelbor with his fingers as though that might help him decipher them. And always somewhere in the city was that dazzling light like a sun descended. Sam might have approached to try and find out what it was, but it hurt to look at. He couldn't get close

Re: this is before cassie runs into cris, because em fails at timeline

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra raised a thin eyebrow. Quite the way to start a conversation. "Do try to contain your happiness," she said softly in a a voice somewhere between a whisper and a hiss. It was not, however, a serious accusation, although, judging from the frazzled appearance Sam presented, she couldn't trust that he understood that.

She approached him slowly. Something was definitely off. The way he was looking at her...he wasn't exactly looking at her. But it was. Cassandra frowned slightly, folding her arms as she came to a stop a respectable few paces away from him. "You're alive too," she said quietly. "Good."

Not that he was her best friend in the world, but Cassandra certainly saw no need for the loss of any more life. It was just a waste. A terrible waste.

[not_even_dreams]

Sam shrank away slightly when she hissed at him, turning for a moment back to the sigil. He hadn't meant it like... well, like however she was taking it. Always the way, wasn't it? Misunderstood at every turn.

Yes, it was just like being back in London.

"Sorry. It's only..." He swallowed. A very large part of him was afraid she wouldn't see anything different. That he was just the same old Sam, only worse than before. Much, much worse. "...I think something might have changed."

God, he hoped something had changed.

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra tilted her head like a curious cat. She immediately dropped her defensive tone of voice and stepped over to him. "Something might have changed?" she repeated gently. "What do you mean?"

But already, Cassandra could venture a guess. There were two distinct possibilities. The first was that something terribly traumatic had happened during the battle. This was certainly plausible. Cassandra herself had seen some perfectly terrible things. Nothing that she thought would necessarily shake Same, however.

The second, more likely possibility, was that Rowan had happened to Sam at last.

[posinglikeaswan]

Jemaine was angry. And when he was angry he walked.

Dancing was more a Bret thing, anyway.

Hell, it wasn't so much that he was angry anymore -- he was hurt. In a very short amount of time he'd fallen through a tree and into an alternate universe to be handed over to another man as a pet by a fifteen year old girl who somehow managed to try and kill him twice. And that, that had only been the first hour. He'd then found out that he'd been living with an imposter for just under a year in New York, which quite frankly still baffled him, and alternate universe Bret was coming with the worldwalkers to rescue him and Ianto who had seemed a little unstable on their first meeting but had gradually become less crazy and more lucid. And then everything came apart, a whirlwind of chaos and destruction. For hours all he could see and smell and hear was red. There had been so much blood on his and everyone's hands and Ianto -- Elimyr had snapped Ianto like a sprig, twisted him around her lithe fingers and fractured his mind completely. And

[cassie_of_troy]

Instinct took hold of Cassandra and she hissed, whirling around and pulling back from the man. Her fingers curled into claws and her pupils dialated in her already enormous eyes. For a second, she remained on the balls of her feet, ready to run away or charge at whatever had assaulted her. In the next second though, she saw him trying to stabilize himself and decided he had probably bumped into her by accident.

Cassandra's posture relaxed and she dropped her arms to her sides. She hadn't seen him before. He was a curious looking man. Not exactly handsome, although not ugly either. Awkwardly shaped. And perhaps slightly disoriented. A worldwalker? There were some that she didn't yet know. It was possible.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

[posinglikeaswan]

Jemaine rearranged his glasses and fell back a step. She didn't look pleased at all. In fact she looked the opposite of pleased, she looked very displeased. Well it wasn't as if he ran into her on purpose. He wrapped his arms around his chest protectively and squared his shoulders.

She was pretty, though. Kind of old looking. Yeah, that'd go down well -- hi, I'm Jemaine, you look very old. What's that? Go fuck myself? Well that's not very nice. But she didn't look old in the sense that she was ageing, rather that she had an ageless, classical appearance. Sort of elegant and regal. She also looked as if she could rip his eyes out with her nails. He shrunk back at the thought.

"Jemaine," he swallowed and gestured at himself lamely. "And you?"

[cassie_of_troy]

She blinked in surprise. This was Jemaine? Bret's Jemaine? That was...interesting. Quickly, she gave him a second look. Still awkwardly shaped, she decided. And she wasn't quite certain what to make of the visor he was wearing in front of his eyes. She had seen similar ones before in Rowan, but that didn't mean she understood the purpose.

Now that she thought about it, his accent was similar to Bret's accent.

"Cassandra," she said after a moment. "Bret's friend."