driftfleet | (no subject)

Who: Felix and you?
Broadcast: none
Action: Starstruck & Iskaulit
When: Monday

In what passes for the early morning hours Felix jolts awake in his room. This time, he is certain it isn't just another nightmare. Just as he is certain that the source of them isn't just his own traitorous mind. He'd been home again. This cold fact isn't much of a comfort to him when the memories of years in other worlds warred with events that to him felt like only minutes ago.

At the time he'd been merely numb, but the shock impels him to move. He gathers his clothes in a rush and goes to the showers, head down and feet hurried. When he gets there, he runs the water as hot as he can stand and lets it run over his body. He stares blankly at his wrists, feeling the ghosts of pain where there should be open welts. The same way the rest of his skin is unblemished by any forming bruises or the lingering impression of hands all over him. There is no soreness. No aches. No stains. Everything his memory tells him he should be feeling - almost still feels - but the reality tells him otherwise.

His magic, too, is still strong. Not that weak, fluttering fragment that they'd made of it. The ritual, as he'd only discovered he'd been the focus of far too late to stop it, had nearly drained the life from him. And would he have, really, if he'd been able? He'd needed the money to help his brother. Hadn't he?

One thing that was the same, however, was that lurking presence at the back of his mind. The one he'd dismissed at first as a figment - some glitch of the augment or remains of his nightmares - was proven to be more than real. The fantôme...the rachenant, as it had named itself...was indeed a spirit he had invited in on the road to Caloxa. And it had followed him here.

Beloved. Thou needst me. Thou hates the one that have chained thee here. I can free thee, it whispered as he tried to scrub away the memories.

The water runs cold before he leaves the shower, probably leaving a surprise for any of his early rising shipmates, but he's not quite in the mood to chat. Instead, he dresses and makes for the shuttles, hair still wet and unbound but not caring so much about appearances.

He takes the shuttle to the Iskaulit and wastes no time in getting to Malum, where he relieves the bar of a few bottles of wine. Crowley would understand. Rather than sitting at the bar, he finds a dark corner to ensconce himself, being not quite in a hurry to explain why he's getting drunk before breakfast.

Funny, he thinks, that weeks ago he was judging others for just this life choice. He made the mistake of believing he'd become inured to anything the fleet could possibly do to him. As it turns out, he was wrong. Just like quite a few things in his life.

(ooc: feel free to run into him at any point. This is the second phase of Felix's canon. Warning for vague allusion to rape and possibly more in tags)

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Tyrion nodded his thanks, and slipped into the seat that had been vacated for him. One corner of his mouth lifted up, "My dear lord Felix, I think we both know that you are far too much man for me."

He sipped the wine, giving Felix a thoughtful look. "So what you are saying is ... you're having a bit of an interesting week."

A pause, and then a faint snort. "Let us just say that I am trying to figure out the whims of women."

Felix echoes the sentiment with a soft snort of his own.

"On one hand, I can't say I know very much about that particular subject. On the other, I have been accused of gossiping like one, so perhaps I have some insight to offer."

Anything to dance around the subject of why he is here for a little longer.

Tyrion's mouth twisted up at the corners, into a grim little smile. He took another sip of his wine, before he sighed and stated wryly,

"Would you believe me if I told you that the reason that I cannot tell you is because the whims of another woman, who I promised not to tell because of the whims of the first woman?"

He shook his head, "Why do I ever involve myself in these situations? I believe I am just a glutton for female punishment."

"Actually, yes, I would. Women are vicious, and frankly I'm glad I choose to have nothing to do with them in the intimate sense," he answered with dry humor, sipping at his own glass as well. It helps to hide the frown.

"I don't envy the hard place you find yourself stuck in. Though few of us are in very enviable positions to begin with."

"Then you are a wiser man than I - with the appropriate feelings in the right place." He sighed, before he sipped his own wine. Then his eyes narrowed on the other man.

"So, fair is fair, story for story. Why are you here?"

"Still playing that game, are we?" Felix drawled, returning the scrutiny, though his gaze was somewhat hazy.

"Summary for summary, in this case...is that I have been going back home. And...well, things have not gone quite as I expected." His hopes for the future were never all that bright, but they hinged on something that was yet still in the distance. How could he have accounted for everything that would have fallen on him trying to get to even that point?

"I think the game is the only way two practiced liars such as us will in fact, ever speak truth, don't you? At least about how we truly feel." Tyrion's smile was all but bleak, as he sipped his wine.

A frown crossed his face, and then he stated simply, "That was your problem, my friend. Never plan. Plans are the gods way of laughing at us, when they turn them ass over backwards."

"I never much believed in the gods. At least in my own world. Perhaps I should revise that position, as it seems something in the universe wishes me nothing but misery, but I have known for far too long that I walk those paths through my own ill conceived choices," he muttered.

"Besides, I did not really plan anything. No more than any person expects to wake up the next day. We walk with the expectation that the ground will keep being there. But there are always things we cannot anticipate, no matter how little we expect." Like being here, to start off with. The point of the matter was that he hadn't really thought about what getting to Corambis would entail for him and Mildmay. Much in the same way he hadn't quite comprehended the journey to Troia, but his excuse the first time had been madness, and this time his only madness was despair. There were weeks where he might not have cared if he'd died, and he might have nearly surrendered to that if it weren't for his brother saving him yet again.

And that brought him to the rest of the issue. Draining yet more of his wine, he set the glass down and contemplated the contents as he continued,."That's only part of it, to be somewhat truthful. I have been here for years, and to suddenly...feel everything that I was feeling then...only to come back from it like the most vivid of dreams imaginable. The shift is like falling off a cliff."

"Well, if nothing else, the gods do try to teach us humility. For some of us, that's a harder lesson to swallow." He lifted his own glass in a silent salute, smirking up at the ceiling.

Rolling the cup between his short fingers, he narrowed his gaze on Felix. Nodding with understanding, as he tried to understand what precisely was happening with him. He let out a soft 'ah', before nodding his head once.

"There is a girl here, beautiful young woman named Kara. She said it was something like a dream made a memory - you knew it happened but there was little you could do to change it." He tipped his head. "Was it bad enough that you wanted to?"

He's known of several people who have come and back and returned, though none who seemed to have experienced in quite the way he is. Naturally, not even the usual rules would apply to him. Regardless, it's the first time it's been really described for him. Knowing what he does, he finally realizes why people would dance around the particulars. Even if going home merited nothing but good things, the feeling on it's own was sufficiently disorienting as to inspire the need to forget about it as soon as possible.

"Yes," he said, voice cracking slightly, the truth spilling out despite himself. The honesty isn't in the words - as he would have said the same regardless - but in the tone of his throat and the slow swallow that follows.

"But I cannot, can I? Wishing it so is a waste of time."

He shook his head sadly, putting his glass aside as he folded his stubby hands together, looking solemnly over at Felix. "There are so many things in my life that I wish I could go back and change, and yet it will never be so. I will always kill my mother by being born. I will always grow up fearing and hating my father - and he I. I will always lose the one woman who loved me, to the family that despises me. I will lose the brother I respect because of the machinations of the sister I loathe."

He looks down at his hands, "We cannot change our past, undo our scars. What we can do is learn from them. What we can do is forge our way through, one way or another. Life is a road, but it is a winding one. I am not sure if people truly realize that."