driftfleet | Naviadna Mingle

[Keith stared at her for a second.]

Uh... Yeah. [Granted, on this planet, most everyone in the Fleet did. It was pretty strong. But Keith had been hearing singing planets every time they landed on one. He didn't know why... but here he was, feeling all this energy. He took a deep breath.]

I do feel it.

[He felt it off her right now, he felt it from the Lions, he had this Thing he couldn't explain when it came to weird energy and quintessence...]

It is very similiar... to Altean energy.

[But it was more than that. Other energy was here, from other worlds, other realities, all blended and twisted together, the same and yet not. Different tunes for those who would hear the call of it.

And then there was the energy within her, that would distort this call.]

Explorers have been here once before, and remained. Their legacy is ... here.

[Honestly, Keith couldn't tell the difference. It was energy, and it was strange, and he could feel it. Pretty basic. Though, there was a little bit of a familiar twist to some of it, like the Lions, like the energy that was around the Castle, stuff he'd sort of gotten used to feeling all the time after a while, but then lost once he'd been pulled into the Fleet. Maybe that's why he felt it so keenly sometimes... because it was familiar, and something from home that he missed having.

Her comment about other explorers caught his attention. He nodded.]

I heard someone talking about the First. There's a memorial. The people native to this planet are their descendants.

Time flows... differently between these realities. We cannot for certain say from when or where they may have been drawn... and how far removed those that are here now, are from them.

[Surely much was diluted, but yet, energy was... energy.]

They had no choice but to remain bound to these circumstances. To... build from them.

[She's speaking more now, even if it is slower than usual. It's... easier to talk, with him asking questions and her gleaning what she could, from all of this. It was a strain but it was... knowledge, there for a reason. There to remind them of possibility, even where others had failed in the past.]

I wonder how they got here... or, were brought here. If there's a clue on how we can get back home.

[Though, that meant losing what he had here, and he had a feeling Lance wouldn't like that idea. Still, it was a risk they constantly took, and Keith had this stubborn streak about doing the right thing, even if it meant sacrifice. Heck, it's not like much has gone right in his life anyway, so why should anything be different? He just couldn't see the point of trying to achieve something he felt he was going to lose anyway to the detriment of everything else.]

Perhaps it is... in their history.

[If they were called here by the planets will, or somehow stumbled upon it, while searching for proof of other realities. Only to remain caught...

And yet, here they were, drawn in to this reality by the Atroma's whims, just happening to drift by a planet like this, on this course.

There's something else that he says that disturbs her far more, and that is the thought of returning home. Being drawn back into their immediate circumstances without any hope of the time they had here retaining any meaning at all was... well. Meaningless, at least for where she currently stood, as much as she was so far behind Keith and the others. An unhappiness flickers within her, the pulse of the energy changing, only for a brief moment, but she falls silent.]

It would be worth a look, right-? [But maybe not? Keith frowned a little.] Do you... want to stay here?

... perhaps.

[What a question, one that peeked into her wrestling desires.]

To return will mean to return to war, without any guarantee that... what was learned along this path will maintain its meaning.

[She'd already lost so much. More than she even knows.]

[Keith frowned. In a roundabout way, it was something he and Lance had been sort of dancing around since they'd started dating. Neither one of them really wanted to talk about the inevitable... that going back meant losing what they'd gained.]

Yeah.

I can understand that.

[Having been back a few times, or gotten new memories from home, or whatever it was that happened to them, Keith knew for a fact that anything learned in the Fleet wasn't retained when they left.]

It doesn't come with us.

Not unless we are able to find a way to leave here... on our own terms.

[But even then, to return home at all... was a prospect she was struggling with. Even if she could maintain her own mind, the circumstances around her were not the best situation to be in. For want to follow her son -- he would not even want her, and she'd cling to him like a shadow at best.

Funny how those circumstances could feel so distant, so apart from the way she was now.]

How... many times did you go back?

[She knew that it happened, they couldn't help announcing it every time, and save for the few remaining, most had returned now. It's the closest she's come to asking about what's going on there--but she doesn't want to know, not with the dread of knowing that their paths, their fates seemed so bound to it no matter what.

Her current dilemma with the energy wasn't helping much either, but it was getting... easier, just by continuing to talk and focus outside of the conflict within, whatever needed to be done there, or accepted.]

Mm.

[Keith had to think about that. They'd first arrived after the second battle against Zarkon... the one where they'd lost Shiro. His first return home had brought him back to the Fleet after Nacxela, and then another after he'd found his mother. Two more after that, if he took into account the fight with Shiro, and then coming back after being on Earth, stopping the Altean mech, and recovering from their injuries. So... four times.]

Four. Each time was similar. It was only a week here in the Fleet that we were either sleeping or missing. And it was some stretch of time back home... different each time, I think. And back home, it was like we'd never left. We didn't remember anything, we were dropped right back to the last thing we had remembered... like Drift Fleet didn't exist.

But, each time we came back, we'd remember it all again, and have our new memories from home inserted into it. It was weird. Makes me feel like I've been through more time than I actually have, maybe. I'm not sure. Last time I was home, I was 21. But, when I'm here in the Fleet now that I've been back home a few times, I feel like it's been longer than that... that I should be older.

[And maybe it had been. Keith wasn't sure. After all, he found out that they had missed three years after the fight with Lotor because of the tears in their reality from the battle. The whole thing had been maybe four years? Five if they counted the time from the Kerberos mission... He thought. Keith wasn't really sure anymore. But, they'd been out in space at least a year as a team... three for himself if he counted his time with Krolia in the abyss, but three years after that battle when everyone thought they'd been killed...

Time was confusing...

And don't even get him started on converting between Earth time and those time measurements everyone else used... tics and vargas and quintants...]

[Four times. Four times to experience a passage of time, to have those recollections jumbled, and yet to be drawn back here. There were those from other universes who had gone through similar things, she knew, whose futures were all the more changed for those events. Who sought to be free of them.]

... Since my arrival here, I have not yet returned. The person I am now is... not who I was then.

[Keith shook his head.]

No. I imagine not.

[He didn't know everything there was to know about her, but calibrations had showed him that she had trouble with her memories. He imagined that had something to do with it, at least.]

I don't think I am, either. Even with going home all those times.

You have more experiences to weave between those lines.

[It's strange to consider, but there was a weight in it, the concept of being tossed back and forth and having one's entire personal narrative rewritten over and over again.

There's silence for a moment. It's almost as if it does not matter, whom she is talking to; only the fact that these are experiences that can be discussed, as strange as they are, because they were here in the moment.]

To be drawn here is to step out of ourselves and yet... become ourselves.

[He supposed she wasn't wrong. He did have more experiences, having gone back and forth so many times. And it was disorienting every time he came back, trying to figure out the revived memories each time and reconcile certain feelings among his teammates... about others from home.

Like how, if Lotor had shown up earlier, he would have been the one being held back by his team, not the other way around.]

Yeah... I guess it is.

[Keith wasn't normally that deep of a person when contemplating things... like existence... but she had a point, and he could sort of understand it with how things worked.]

It brings a sense of perspective, in a way.

We would not know to miss it, but it would still be a loss.

[And she'd had more than enough of those to not want to suffer another. Her gaze lingers on the flowers for a moment. It's gotten easier, to manage, at least the more that she is able to reaffirm what she wants to be.]

[Keith nodded.]

Yeah. You're right.

[He looked back at her from the flowers.]

Are you feeling better now, at least?

[As in from when he first found her here...]

[ Honerva falls quiet for a long moment, a little surprised by the question, but also to consider it. The energy is still palpable, though her expression seems less strained, as for a moment, the glow brightens, blinding, and then dims, softer, muted.

She exhales softly, and then looks back up toward him. ]

... yes. My condition has improved.

[ Which in itself is strange to say. She's not used to commenting on her state, physical or otherwise for others. And even stranger than that, the person she was answering now, but the point had been made: they were not, exactly, who they were. Perspective. ]

... Thank you.

[Keith squinted against the glow, blinking to clear his vision as she spoke.

She thanked him.

He took a breath and then nodded.]

Sure thing.

[They definitely were different here than home. This conversation couldn't have happened back home, and Keith was definitely aware of that.

Even so, even if it was her, deep down, he was still glad to help. It was just who he was. He supposed he got that from his dad...]

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