You can check out anytime you'd like.. [Hotel Corona Mingle]

[thespaceopera]

Who: The Fleet!
Broadcast: If you want
Action: Hotel Corona or Planet Ikke
When: December 7th onward



[After the mystery and isolation of their last destination, the Marsiva seems determined to head to brighter, busier territory. After a long journey through remote, nebula-painted space, speeding along at a brisk pace for the Host ship, the Marsiva brings her Fleet to a sudden and prominent point of traffic.

It seems that the Fleet has happened upon some sort of vacation destination! Maybe Atroma thinks that the passengers deserve some rest and relaxation... or just wants to distract them with something huge and shiny.

Welcome to Hotel Corona! Feel free to enjoy yourselves and enjoy the sites! If a hotel resort isn't your thing, you can head on over to the nearby planet and explore it's icy wonders.

In order words: it's a mingle!! Everyone get in! ]

[>> Plot Post]

Comments

[exothermia]

[For a normal everyday question, it's one he always has difficulty answering.]

Managing well enough. What about you?

[passingthrough]

Mmm, better than that I think. [She wouldn't have gone with managing.] The hotel has been good for me. Things were getting heavy before the stop.

[exothermia]

You mean the last system?

[passingthrough]

The last system wasn't great, but it didn't bother me the way it did some people. [She's not magically sensitive and she used a speedster to cheat and get to the ship site faster, so she never spent enough time on the planet for it to get to her.] But it wasn't really somewhere I wanted to spend time either and I get cagey cooped up on the ships.

The real problem was losing people. Sascha disappeared. Rogue. A few of my crewmates. Vision. Finn. I'm used to it, but it was just feeling like a lot.

[exothermia]

[His own feelings about the planet are rather tainted with the misadventures he'd had on the ruined ship, and in the salvage stations. Not to mention, for most of his stay there he was still mired in the worst of his grief.

Losing people, however... he sighs quietly. He hadn't realised Vision was gone. Rogue he had known about.]

I'm sorry to hear that.

[While Erik had known a few who had vanished, only Adelina's departure had really affected him. And even then, he had felt a shameful relief that she left before she learned what had happened to him in his ten years away.]

[passingthrough]

[She nods.] You'd think I'd get better at it, but pretty sure it goes the other way. [Like a bucket of loss she carries around with her all the time just getting heavier.]

But the hotel has been good. Not that it stopped Remy from leaving. But private bathrooms are nice.

[exothermia]

No one becomes 'good' at losing people, Kitty. Not if they still have a heart left.

[Erik had become worse at it over time, because he had begun to care more. Opened up his life of solitary vengeance and let others in. It hurt all the worse when those people died or vanished.]

I only spoke to him a couple of times, but I imagine you knew him better than me.

[passingthrough]

[That earns a thoughtful look. Of course he's right. It's what she'd say to someone telling her the same things. She knows it, but she still gets frustrated with herself. How is she supposed to move forward when there is so much of the past to drag around with her?]

A version of him was an X-Man back home. At least for awhile. He still worked with us sometimes later. The one here worked for a Magneto who was not leading the X-Men. He was a good guy though. [At least this is her prognosis.]

[exothermia]

Yes... he told me something like that.

[With much wariness, he's certain.]

[passingthrough]

[She brushes back a strand of hair.] I know. It's strange hearing about other versions of yourself. Or other places where you don't exist. [She isn't talking so much about his world since they are just before her time and Charles mentioned something about her vaguely. But it's come up before.]

[exothermia]

It is. But at this point, I'm past worrying how it reflects on me. There's nothing I can do about other worlds, other lifetimes. It's enough to deal with my own.

[It's not something he's thought about in a long time. It's somewhat of a relief to realise that he no longer holds himself to reflections through other types of glass.]

Hearing about them, though... that's still a connection I would never have anticipated. There's value in it.

[passingthrough]

[She looks at him, wondering if that last bit is about her at least in part. About the way they got closer because of it before the new revelations pushed her away again.]

Makes things less lonely sometimes. [Strangers wearing familiar faces isn't ideal, but she's come to seek home in it. Maybe she wouldn't have if she'd always had Kurt, but she had to find ways to move on.]

[exothermia]

I told you once, I think. That two different realities already exist for my own world.

[passingthrough]

I remember something like that. And mine was a reality that was never supposed to exist at all.

[But that's never a fun subject.]

Do you know anything about the other Erik?

[exothermia]

Only in passing. That he was still alive at the point where they sent Logan back in time. That he was working with the remains of the X-Men. And that none of the things that happened to me in 1973 happened to him.

[He sighs.]

There's a fifty year gap we know nothing about, save the rise of the Sentinels. I don't know if anything that's happened to me since... happened to that man.

[passingthrough]

Sentinels are annoying. [They are much worse than that, but when everything is bad something still has to fall lower on the list and for a girl who disrupts circuitry by passing through it and who excels at tech, sentinels are low on her list. Still, she isn't trying to make light. She means to commiserate.]

Which things happened in '73? [Summarize a year?]

[exothermia]

[He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. A lot of this he's covered before - way back when they had their first conversation face-to-face. But that feels like ten years ago to Erik, these days.]

For one thing, I was in prison. I was broken out on Logan's directions, so I can only assume in the other version of reality, I stayed there for longer.

[passingthrough]

Right. [She hadn't put the year with it, but she remembers the story.] Not one of those prisons with a beach and unlimited food and a bowling alley. [Like the one she was in last.]

[exothermia]

No... the featureless, below ground kind.

[passingthrough]

That sounds...awful. [She's been free in hell and trapped in paradise. That sounds like some kind of compromise of the worse of each.]

[exothermia]

[He considers not saying any more; it's not a subject he's ever liked discussing. When you get down to it there's little to say. He spent nearly a decade staring at the same pentagonal walls. And yet, some of those old barriers have weakened, if only because newer ones were raised around other things.]

That tends to be the case with solitary confinement.

[passingthrough]

Life hasn't been very good to you. [It's not said with pity. After all, life has knocked her down a lot too. It's really just her feeling more understanding about making bad choices. Sometimes that happens when it feels like all your options are bad ones.]

wrap?

[exothermia]

No. [There's little point saying otherwise. He lifts his chin slightly.] But I'll continue living it regardless.