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Guy is reclining on the roof of an empty building, staring up at the sky as he reaches out with his other senses. Hearing the sounds of the city, muffled, smelling the wet, feeling the cold and the tickle of snow in a detached way. It’s peaceful like this, and the snowflakes have him remembering years long distant, when he was just a man.
Spider (he/they) — Yesterday at 11:48 PM
There's a sudden sort of ... strange feeling, something perhaps remembered from being human.
Yes, it must be. A vampire's bloodstream doesn't react to pressure. A vampire doesn't have a bloodstream per se, just the sort of diffuse infusion of vitae through the body's tissues.
So why does it feel like coming up from underwater up here on the roof? A sort of... no.
Not physical, not really. A sort of ... metaphysical bends. Guy may be a sort of middle-of-the-road Ordo, status-wise, but something almost instinctive in him feels ... prompted, somehow, magically. His Beast shifts uncomfortably inside his skin.
A voice from behind him, terribly familiar. A perfect Fuerstenberg accent... but one that hasn't been heard for a long time.
A long, long time.
"When you were nine," the voice says in Early New High German, "you found a small cat in the snow, the color of campfire smoke. The night smelled like this."
He freezes, and has to force himself to take a breath through the underwater and shock feelings. “It wasn’t even that cold, but she shook and shook. She had nowhere to go out of the wet and chill.” He sits up and looks behind him with the mechanical grace of one who no longer has to put effort into moving his body.
Yeah, okay. That's --
Look, someone's Obfuscate or magic or something is very very good, or he's looking at -- himself.
Leaned against an exhaust vent on the opposite end of the roof and looking precisely the same way he looks -- no visible markers of age, everything precisely in place.
Well. Except for the outfit he wears. It's some sort of smooth, sleek, charcoal-covered thing. Skintight, too. It has pockets, though -- he's hooked his thumbs in those, and watches his present-tense self with unblinking eyes. "Your mother didn't want you to keep her because of the fleas. We," he amends now that he actually faces himself, "sat by the fire after dinner and picked out every damn flea for weeks until she gave in."
He stands and tilts his head for a moment. “Good choice. We didn’t even tell her about that part. She would have wrinkled her nose at the mention of fleas, and gotten bored.” He pauses a moment. “What brings you…back here? I would have to assume.” (edited)
Not a smile, no. Just a little flicker of something like amusement at the corners of his eyes. "Exactly."
And just like that, the little Verification Story Of Not Attacking Yourself is set aside almost neatly, its object achieved. Very practical, Once and Future Guy.
He takes in a deep breath, frowning mildly, as if he had thought about what he'd say and now it isn't quite correct. "The incident that put Petra in a coma was a symptom of a larger, longer war. A wizard war." And the tone of his voice bears markers of a sort of mental exhaustion that it takes Guy himself to hear. He doesn't need to tell himself 'this whole thing is complicated and annoying, but that's the shortest way to say it,' because he can hear it in his own voice. "It's hard on them. The Lost. All this uncertain reality bullshit." Following that, the unspoken so here I am instead of her.
He takes the delivery and acceptance of the “password” in stride, and nods along at the explanation. “And we can’t stand as pillar for all of them. And there’s only so much we can do for her, and we hate that. And we are patient, but the enemy is careful because it’s a Wizard War, and the weaknesses we could exploit ourselves are exploitable by any of their enemies.” He huffs, having made clear he sees that weariness and what it means. It’s not about waiting or working or thinking, it’s about unsolvable problems. Because when all you have is a hammer, you learn how to solve almost anything with a hammer. It’s a special skill.
“Since we both know you don’t have to tell me to move Heaven and Earth to support her, I’m guessing it’s something else.”
He just nods along with himself, just so. It's easier to continue on in German, and so he has been. It'd sound strange to anyone who overheard them, but -- well -- not only is it harder to know what they're talking about, but it's such a relief, in its own way, to be able to talk to someone in your native language.
Even if only for a minute, even if it's only another you.
The words that come next, though, come with more exhaustion than he's ever heard in his own voice.
"You have to get them to talk to each other."
Yeah, so about that hammer-type problem solving.
It’s true, there’s something bone-deep about speaking in your native tongue, perhaps even more for old vampire, stirring things deep inside themselves. So it’s camp slang and the voice of a man with a foolhardy captain that comes back with, “And how in the Name of Christ is this old double-man going to pull that off? This isn’t latrine duty, this is plain above my pay.”
"Fucked if I know," he answers himself. "But that's the assignment." He wrinkles up his nose.
"There's a limit to how many times it's okay to go back and forth, or so the wizards tell me," and if Future!Guy discovered internet text tagging, that last bit would come with (joking derogatory).
Mostly joking, anyway.
"So... they can't keep coming back here. And also, this -- " he gestures to himself and back, "makes us, uh."
"Time criminals." That, at least, gets said in English, and with a mildly pained expression. "The Very Important Wizards take this sort of -- shenanigans -- " another word not said in their shared native language "seriously. Apparently. So. We're criminals again now." Total deadpan.
"They each have pieces, but -- they aren't talking to each other, and the more they don't have the information the other has, the more likely that you end up in a fucked future rather than becoming me." A pause. "At least that's how I think it fucking works."
Wizards (derogatory).
He huffs and shakes his head, nodding. “Get two ancient groups of enemy wizards to sit down and talk things out to avoid the Bad Endings, be as stable as the earth, no, more stable than that for the Lost in my life, keep up on my night jobs, and play my cards close to my chest because I don’t know which Wizards, on either side, will be able to tell I’ve touched illegal time shit and take offense.” He nods. “Ok, sounds about what I should have expected.”
Sometimes, when you're you, you assume that you know what the fuck you're talking about without explaining everything. This is especially frustrating when you can't say everything because you have been TOLD that if you say too much, you risk unraveling reality, or at least the reality that you like.
"Oh. No." And here pauses, his expression briefly, and ever-so-slightly, pained. Maybe only Petra and Rena would know what that little expression meant without having to really think about it. "I meant the Lost and the Mages."
He pauses. And snorts. And shakes his head as he laughs. “Ahhhh, ok. That makes it infinitely easier, then,” he says with sarcasm so venomous the average onlooker would have been able to tell it was there. “Do I get a talking point to lure them both to the table with?”
A vague and weary shrug of his shoulders. Sometimes you get assigned to dig a new latrine trench, or worse, lime down the old one. Sometimes you get assigned to get the soul-torn escapees of inhuman torturers and a bunch of humans who are just really fucking full of themselves in every possible way to the table.
Which one's worse? Can't say.
"Mmm," his future self grunts. "If 'please talk to each other so the magical fascists don't take over' doesn't work, you're real fucked, buddy. But you can tell the Lost that the Mages know who the angel and the shooting silver star are." A pause. "And... " Oh, he sighs so wearily. "Tell the Mages that the sexy pigeon knows where the clearing is."
What.
He pauses to let that all sink in, letting the sounds connect deep in his mind. “Ok…ok. I’ll speak to those I know, we’ll try to act as a bridge. Pass along those choice bits when it seems it will tip things.” He rubs his forehead.
“Thank you for letting us get deeper into this. You…we know what we’d do for these people. For her. I can get them to talk, somehow.”
He looks at himself for a long moment, never having moved from his leaning posture against that air vent.
"I know." What else is there to say? The statement is an acknowledgement of the thanks and a broad, encompassing umbrella under which all of their shared complicated and immeasurably deep and solid feelings can take shelter.
Now he moves, but only slightly, pushing off the air vent to stand up straight and unhook his thumbs from his pockets. A double-tap to some sort of device on the suit's wrist, and the world gets that weird pressure in it again, as if someone's leaning their massive weight on his chest and he can't catch his breath. It shouldn't feel like that. He hasn't needed to breathe in centuries.
"Be careful."
And then he's gone. The world doesn't invert itself and swallow him up, he doesn't step through a rip in time and space, there's no real drama in his actual disappearance from the rooftop. He just -- vanishes, more thoroughly and completely than Obfuscating or anything else he's ever seen.
There's something deeply unsettling in watching yourself disappear like a film glitch, but is it more or less unsettling than your future self telling you, with all your martial capability and Resilience and Vigor, to be careful?
Guy runs his hands through his hair, lets out a long sigh, and shakes his head. There was always more time to worry. Right now he needed a plan, and to hold Petra as long as she’d let him.
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