driftfleet | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Erik Lehnsherr & anyone
Broadcast: Fleetwide video, unintentional
Action: The Marsiva
When: 26th Feb

[When the feed begins, Erik is already awake. Awake, but not yet moving from the bed. He's holding himself in the kind of intense stillness that preludes a burst of activity. And it comes shortly after, as he rolls swiftly to his feet and surveys the deck. This isn't the mansion, that much is clear. Nor is it part of any realm he's been in that he can tell. His brow furrows as he glares daggers into a featureless wall. While there is nothing of particular interest about it - it's just a wall - he seems to be observing something he finds off-putting about it.

He shakes his head abruptly, a quick jerk of the chin.] No. [With nothing further to say than that, he turns and stalks out of frame, with only a cursory glance at the communicator left behind.

Ten minutes pass, the feed holding on a truly exciting shot of that empty bed and floor.

But soon enough he re-enters the frame, wearing an expression somewhere between frustrated and resigned. This time, he does notice the communicator. After a considering pause, he walks over, reaching out ... and turns it with a finger, pointing the camera at the wall. His voice rings out clearly a moment later.]

If someone is watching, I'd appreciate an explanation. I haven't got much patience for these kinds of games anymore.

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[She switches the feed over to a private one, feeling a little exposed otherwise.]

I'm Kitty. Kitty Pryde. [As if a last name will help him know her. She wouldn't have known him at this age in any world.] I'm [She almost says "an X-Man" but that might be just as hard for him to recognize, or worse, it might be something negative to him. After all, every other X-Man she'd met in the prison and here saw the man as a villain. Well, all but Charles.] a mutant.

I know a future version of you. [Maybe even just his future self. She's never met anyone from her world since leaving it, but it could still happen.]

[His eyebrows raise at "mutant". That, at least, might explain some familiarity. And yet even then, he would still expect most mutants familiar with him to only know Magneto. Only a handful of mutants still living know him by his real name. Well, them and the CIA.

But it's the second part that brings him up short. The future is a time that's never brought him anything but bad news.]

A future version. [Still, even Logan knew his name in the future. Things change.] That's not something I expected, but it's also not the first time it's happened. When in the future?

[~~Oh you movie characters and your actual dates.~~] Long enough for your hair to go white. [Though she suspects that was not entirely with age. His older son's is white too.] A couple of decades maybe. We were on the same team.

Edited 2016-02-27 04:52 (UTC)

[That would mean he was in his sixties, so it doesn't line up. He lets out a breath, looking to the right as he thinks.] Then it's not the same time.

[Which is hopefully for the best. Their goal was to erase that particular version of reality, after all. Erik looks back to Kitty, with a sharper focus. "Team."] And this team - was it on Earth?

[Truth be told, she's never been sure how old Erik was. She knows he was in the holocaust. She also knows he has a newborn baby and is married to someone not that much older than herself and he's one of the biggest badasses around. He can be a little hard to pin down. And ultimately, the hows and whys weren't that important. They had their mission.

And while she and this Erik may not have been from the same world, they certainly had the same goal, not that they know it. She had to help erase her own timeline to restore a different and better one. Not that she likes to get into that lightly.]

It...was. [That question surprises her though.] Where else would it be? [The X-Men weren't exactly strangers to outer space. Apocalypse kept them busy domestically but they had ties to the Shi'ar and Starjammers.]

[That's actually a relief, and a bit of it shows. It means he hasn't forgotten a third realm of teams. After hearing from Leto that a third existed, it was enough to set him on edge. Well... more on edge.]

I've been part of teams before, but on different worlds. This isn't my first time being removed somewhere without my knowledge, and... it's always worth checking.

I can only assume I haven't met you before, to my knowledge.

Well... [About that.]

I was in another place before this one too. A prison. There was an Erik about your age there too briefly, but he never mentioned other teams and he could be from a completely different reality than you.

I see lots of people here I met there and no one has remembered it.

[Hmm... different realities. It's a good thing his own trials have given him a leg up into this train of thought.]

I have had some experiences like that. I've been in two different worlds before, and some I knew in the first didn't remember me in the second. Although... [Here, he has to sigh.] Given everyone lost their memories in both places, routinely, it's always possible that didn't mean anything.

[And it means he can't be entirely sure that isn't still happening to him now. Completed soul or not.]

It sounds like it could get pretty complicated. [She knows how that goes. Yet, it's strange speaking to him like this. He's not the same leader she's known much of her life.]

People would sometimes leave the prison and return without remembering being there. I don't know how much of that was memory tampering and how much might mean they were from a previous time period or slightly different reality. It never happened to me directly. [But from the way he speaks it feels like he was used to something far more common.]

Reality seems like such an unstable thing these days.

[He rubs at his chin, then starts to move across the Hospitality Deck. He keeps the communicator in hand.]

I don't remember a prison with other people. How were they keeping you there? [Not all mutant abilities are suited to breaking out of places, and he doesn't know what Kitty's is. But there are always ways of trapping a mutant in spite of their power. He knows that well enough. Calling it a prison, though, implies a certain type of location.]

Trust me, I know the feeling. [There's a soft sort of smile.]

A few ways. It was an underwater city beneath a dome with some kind of forcefield shielding. On top of that they were keeping our bodies comatose while our minds connected in a shared virtual reality state. It all felt real, but it made escape tricky. When we did wake up in our bodies once there were inhibitors on us, keeping people with powers from being able to use them. [It's a little strange to feel like she's just giving the boss a report. Except the report does him no good and he doesn't actually know her.]

[His distaste only grows the further into the explanation Kitty gets. Inhibitors makes him scowl outright. He had been told, very briefly, about those sorts of tools. Part of that future they can only hope has been altered by now. That doesn't apply to other realities, though.]

It sounds elaborate. But not infallible. [Nothing is. There's always a way through obstacles.]

Were you brought here from that place?

That was the hope. We had a team working on it.

[She nods.] I was there for about a year and I've been here a month so far. How long have you been away?

That's the frustrating part. I wasn't.

[Erik's reached the viewing windows, where he stops. The vista of the stars beyond is distracting, but only for a moment. There will be time enough to think of that.]

Where I was, you were brought there because your world and your soul had been destroyed. You had to regain all the pieces of your soul to leave. If you managed that, your world was also brought back into existence.

I did that a month ago. I went home. [But not for long, it seems.]

[She watches him curiously as moves about. It's strange to see him so young, but there's still much that reminds her of the man who took her in after she lost everything.] I'm sorry. Not that anything ever really sounds fair, but that's definitely one for the unfair list.

How are things at home?

It's a bit hard to say, for the moment. Things are tense in some areas, but improving in others. Ideally, it will stay that way.

[Of course, a lot of the tension came from his own escapades. It's strange, though, to discuss his world with someone who's both familiar with it and not at the same time. Much the same as she's familiar with him, but he isn't.

He tilts his head a bit, regarding her closely.]

What about yourself?

Sounds like a start.

[She kind of wants to evade or deflect that question in some way given the answer, though talking to Logan about it recently actually made her feel better about it. He made it sound like maybe he was from the version of the world their sacrifice created. Made it feel more meaningful maybe. Less like they saved everyone by killing them. Well, not killing, but making it so they'd never exist at least not as they were. So there's hesitation, but she's honest if brief.]

Gone...I think. It's kind of a long story.

Gone...?

[His first thought is the Reapers. After all, that's what destroyed his own world. It doesn't add up, though. She wouldn't know that unless she had ended up in Kyriakos. So then... something else. It's an ugly feeling.

Erik remains silent for a moment, then looks out the viewing window, giving her a reprieve. The destruction of your world is no small thing.]

It sounds like it would be. I'm sorry.

It was kind of the lesser evil. [It was also your idea, but that seems like a lot to drop on him. Especially when it's not the same him.]

And here we are now.

We're not the only mutants here. And their experiences with their versions of you probably aren't as good as mine.

[He watches her for a moment, expression unreadable, before looking out the window instead. Logan was one thing, but other realities as well... he was still divided on his own experiences with himself. So he gives a neutral response.]

Is that so.

They're good people. [She doesn't want any trouble between them even if she doesn't really know any of them that well yet. Not on their own merits.]

[Eventually, he shrugs, though it's hardly nonchalant. His posture is too tight for that. More an acknowledgement of another mess to deal with.]

There isn't much I can do or say regarding other versions of myself. I can only speak for what I've done on my own terms. [And his part in a future that no longer exists.]

[She nods. She's never had to deal with the ghost of any version of herself that wasn't an X-Man.] So, what have you done? Does the name X-Men mean anything to you?

[Oh, boy. There's a question he's less keen on answering over a video phone.]

I've heard of the X-Men, but more as something that will happen. Charles Xavier hasn't yet begun that process, in my time. [Rather, he hasn't begun it again, after it collapsed in the Vietnam war. But Charles had told Erik a little of what he'd learned.]

As for what I've done... that might be a conversation best had in person, once it's possible.

[That doesn't exactly flood her with relief, but she nods. Some things are just easier in person.]

When you do get shuffled, call me. We can meet up on the station or I can get to your ship. I'm a pilot on the Windrose.

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