[snuggle up real close everyone]

[cephalon]

Who: The fair crew and visitors of the Windrose
Action: Aboard the Windrose
When: May

[It's a mingle! Make friendly everyone~]

Comments

[passingthrough]

Well that's something at least. I'm sure I've left some details out that could swing back toward uncomfortable though.

[grandstanding]

Don't take it as a challenge.

[passingthrough]

[Smiling as she silently crosses her heart. No bringing up his children or Rogue.]

It's usually more that it comes out without me realizing how that might affect someone from a different world with a different life and different relationships. Or just forgetting what a mess my reality is compared to 95% of other realities. Which can swing either way. Sometimes I act like other people's homes are perfect when of course they aren't.

[grandstanding]

[He nods, understanding that to some extent.] It's cultural differences on a massive scale.

[passingthrough]

Yeah. So much culture shock in the prison. I'm largely adjusted, but also not completely. Kurt would still be where I was way back then.

[grandstanding]

It wasn't quite the same where I was. Given people only remembered bits and pieces of their lives, the confusion was... equal opportunity.

[The number of times he'd seen something that was nonsensical in someone else's memory was surely matched by how confusing his own seemed to them.]

[passingthrough]

I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing. I guess so, but also...wide-scale head fuckery.

[grandstanding]

[That actually gets a laugh out of him. Kitty has no idea.]

Yes, it was indeed.

[passingthrough]

At least you can laugh about it now? [Literally.] I think I've been lucky in my abductions. [She doesn't like thinking about Erik or Hank or Charles for that matter in that place.] Hank told me a little more about some of the things that happen. [Look at her playing so well with Hank and even calling him Hank instead of growling out "McCoy."]

[grandstanding]

[He does make note of it, and is privately glad things are on a more even keel now. Hearing that Hank has talked about the past, though... he has to wonder.]

Did he really. [None of them are particularly fond of discussing what happened, but Erik would also believe Hank has the fewest hangups about it.]

[passingthrough]

I'm sure I have plenty of character flaws, but none of them really include lies or tall tales. We've had some talks. Kind of not how I saw that going with us, but he's not the Henry McCoy from my world.

[grandstanding]

It's always good to hear. I was just wondering what he'd told you.

[passingthrough]

He talked about the time he died and how some of the games have to end in death.

[grandstanding]

[Erik doesn't look remotely surprised at the mention of Hank's death. Or even bothered.]

So, the heavy things. You really are getting along.

[passingthrough]

Mutants have funny ways of bonding, don't we? [She's pretty sure this goes beyond mutants, but still.] I told him that I die back home too. A few seconds after I was pulled out for all the prison fun.

[grandstanding]

Oh... I'm sorry. [And he is. He had known that Kitty's world was no more, but to hear her tell it this way, her death occurred before that. It makes it more real. And yet, unreal, because he never knew her then. He didn't see her live, or die. She has always been alive to him.]

[passingthrough]

[She smiles at him gently.] It's okay. I'm alive now. Just not in any hurry to get home. And I've known for awhile though Kurt accusing me of masquerading as his dead friend when he arrived gave it that extra layer of confirmation.

[grandstanding]

I suppose it would. [A tragedy for them both.]

I've died before, but it was never permanent. It never happened at home. [Barring the world-destroying event that had resulted in his waking up in Kyriakos to begin with. Everyone on Earth had been destroyed by that. So the story goes.]

[passingthrough]

I think it's made him even more protective of me.

Did you know it wouldn't be permanent when it happened? [She wonders how different that really makes it.]

[grandstanding]

You're the only ones here from your world. It's not surprising.

There was always a period where we didn't know. But it happened so frequently that it became obvious that everyone would be revived afterwards. I treated it as permanent, as much as I could. [Because there was no guarantee. And to slide into a mindset where he found it less awful to die since he would be revived, well... it warps things. He had fallen victim to it at the end, willfully letting himself get killed when he couldn't stand the rules of the game anymore.]

[passingthrough]

Yeah. They became temporary in Marina too. They hadn't always been and I wasn't sure if they'd always stay that way once it changed, but if you don't treat it like it could be then... I don't know. I figured it was just a line it would be hard to uncross later. For killing and being killed.

[grandstanding]

It is. People in that place... they started to assume they would be brought back. It made them reckless. Too willing to die just because they disliked what they were asked to do. [Only two instances had inspired that kind of reflexive refusal in Erik. They had ultimately been the only two times he'd been killed in Kyriakos.] It warps your mind, when you die and come back too often.

Most everyone there were children. They behaved like it, too.

[passingthrough]

Hard situation—being without your memories and forced to make life or death decisions for a game. Natural mind warping from the experience or something about the place? A penalty?

[grandstanding]

The former, but the latter happened as well. [The less said about some penalties the better.]

[passingthrough]

I can see why you aren't eager to talk about your time there. Then again, I don't really talk about the prison that much. [Not as much as she thinks about it at least.] And it was fairly low on the trauma scale. [Especially when compared to home.]