(Untitled)

[all_happening]

Gideon was surprised he was coming off as calm as he fucking was with this shit. Inwardly, he was a ball of nerves, which didn't get any better as he fucking stood up front. Everyone was gathered in a halfway decent set-up on the beach, and he knew all eyes were on him. While he didn't usually mind that shit, suddenly it was all in a different

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[wishesandsmoke]

There'd been nothing to it, really. It had been, for Eden, merely a matter of leading Penny to where she already wanted to be, and then playing witness without getting all fucking teary over it. After the fact, actually, she'd had to step aside and take a moment. It was so weird, the way happiness could make you cry. There was nothing in this but pure joy, and there she'd been, wiping away tears.

Now she wandered around the edge of the reception, having already congratulated her friends, toying now with the fabric of her dress, smiling. It had all come together so beautifully that it still didn't feel quite real.

[cantbebribed]

"Eden, hey!" Matt was almost sort of impressed that he recognized a few people around the reception, seeing as he didn't really know either of the people actually getting married. It made wandering around while Daphne went off to do her thing an awful lot less awkward when he had targets to instinctively head for.

[wishesandsmoke]

"Matt," Eden greeted, bright as she gave him a little wave. "Hi! I didn't know you were coming." For all that she had helped Penny out, the guest list had definitely not been in her hands. Plenty of the people circling around were only vaguely familiar to her, another reminder that she really needed to get out more.

[cantbebribed]

"I wasn't all that aware, either," Matt said dryly before offering up a small shrug and a smile since yeah, it definitely hadn't been all that bad. "I'm a plus one."

[wishesandsmoke]

"Ah," Eden said, nodding, "gotcha. Worse fates, right? The bride gave away my plus one because I had no one to bring." She rolled her eyes, smiling wryly. True, Penny had given it away to try and fix her up, but somehow that was only more embarrassing.

[cantbebribed]

"Ah," Matt repeated, making a borderline sympathetic face before shrugging. "Course, I've been wandering around by myself for a while now while my girlfriend schmoozes, so we're probably about even. Worse fates," he agreed.

[wishesandsmoke]

She laughed softly, nodding. "Well, at least they're all happy," she said. "Which one's your girlfriend?" There were a handful of women around she didn't really know, though most of them were teenagers or thereabouts.

[cantbebribed]

Matt didn't bother checking the last spot he'd seen her since she tended to flit around a lot, but he pointed her out quickly enough. He was pretty sure he could pick her out of any size crowd, so long as she wasn't hiding behind anyone of moderate height.

"See the short blonde over there?" he said, sounding almost proud. "Her name's Daphne."

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden followed Matt's direction, her brow arching. "Oh," she said, smiling a little. "We've met actually. Ages ago. She seems cool." That Daphne knew the same world Eden had known, that she knew of the Petrellis, put Eden on guard some, but at least she wasn't a whackjob like Elle.

[cantbebribed]

"Oh, well there you go," said Matt with a small shrug and a wry smile. "Guess it is a pretty small island, huh?"

[wishesandsmoke]

"Tiny," Eden agreed, laughing dryly. "And you live here long enough... Actually, I only met her here, but I guess she's from home. But home in the future? This place just gets more and more confusing."

[cantbebribed]

"Yeah?" Matt asked automatically, before what that meant quite clicked. "Because she's actually from... well, not my home, but a... version of it?" Eden had really hit the nail on the head with her 'confusing' analysis.

[wishesandsmoke]

Not knowing whether or not the same held true for Eden, since Daphne came from a future she'd no chance of seeing one way or the other, she still knew what that was like. Mohinder's version of the world to come hadn't been the same she'd heard elsewhere, thankfully.

"A split in the timeline?" she asked, wry, faintly amused that things like that could realistically apply to life as she knew it. "I can't think about that sort of thing too long. It drives me crazy. I mean, my instinct's to try and decide which one's real, and if they're all real..."

[cantbebribed]

"Something like that," said Matt with a nod (a confused nod, but a nod nonetheless). "Though when I start driving myself crazy, it's more about how other timelines always sound so much better," he added dryly, though not nearly as bitter as he might have been a few months back (he was dead anyway, after all).

[wishesandsmoke]

"Well, people end the same whatever timeline they're in," Eden replied, her cheerfulness mostly genuine. Death had only succeeded in adding to a predisposition to morbidity. "Anyway, the only one I've heard much about involved New York City blowing up, so it looks like I avoided a bright future right there."

[cantbebribed]

"...yeah, I'd say so," Matt said, a little caught off guard by that, even though he really shouldn't have been.

"You, uh, wouldn't happen to know an Indian guy, would you? Name of Suresh?" About yay high, very holier-than-thou?