exsiliumlogs | [closed]

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Date & Time: 01/24 onwards
Location: civic gardens usually, or just generally out 'n about
Characters: Bariyan e Kodhi (

blacklord), Martin Darkov (

theguideless), Ranka Lee (

symbioses), Koltira Brightdawn (

brightdawn), Ico (

hornedomen) POSSIBLY MORE TO BE ADDED IN THE FUTURE
Summary: Catch-all log for timeswap Bariyan 'n flower shenanigans
Warnings: timeswap Bariyan is weird

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He watched Bariyan, not wholly reassured. The laugh...Bariyan didn't laugh much. At all. And in the context of being alive, well...Martin was left very uncertain.

Was it best to take him at his word? What did it say about him if he couldn't do that? Bariyan was different now, but still Bariyan. Laughter, life...pieces of Bariyan he hadn't know until now. That's all, right? It was as he'd just said: it wouldn't matter, so long as he could take care of him.

But not worry about him? Impossible.

"Is it better here?" he asked, trying to get ahead of his circular thoughts. "Now that you're healed...seeing this place. What are you thinking about it?"

"It's strange," he said, quite truthfully. "There's much that I don't understand. And I don't like the weather -- I'm from a much warmer, drier place."

He contemplated the question some more as they walked, navigating around the broken statues, avoiding going over carefully tended flower beds.

"But I like it," he added, after a bit. "It's... alive. There's people here, and they're living as best as they can, and it all seems to be holding together. I'd... like to stay, I think."

He didn't think he would be allowed, though. He had faith that death would come and find him, sooner or later. Most likely sooner.

In that quiet time breaking his response in two, Martin worked to keep as much of his attention on Bariyan as he could without risking tripping over or smacking into something. That much had changed little between bodies: still a very single-minded boy, giving nearly his all to one thing at a time (though nature mercifully allowed him to keep up the involuntary stuff like breathing business as usual). He nearly did trip, scuffing his step before a root snagged the toe of his shoe, but only quietly hissed a sound before stepping over it. Not his fault, not the root's...he had been wondering about warmer, drier places.

That was where he was from? Something like that bright, dusty land they had all just been in? Bariyan rarely mentioned things of the past, and always pretty briefly...Martin was quick to jump at the chance to know more. Even if this Bariyan didn't know him...somehow, Martin could know him better? And be better for it, if he were to see the one he knew the best ever again.

That idea fluttered nervously into his head at stay. Martin watched him as much as he could between steps and turns, ignoring the scenery for the most part.

What if he did stay, like this? Alive, smiling...laughing sometimes. A stranger for the most part, but...would it always be that way?

Scary thoughts, he felt. A betrayal to what he already loved? Even if it was the same Bariyan, estranged?

...More confusing than scary, then.

"You might stay," he heard himself saying, barely aware at the start. He hesitated, licking his lips. "I mean, there's little control over it, from individuals...some stay a long time. Some don't."

Bariyan thought about that. He'd spent the past day assuming that it would all be undone, soon, that he'd blink and feel a sharp edge against his throat and that would be that.

He hadn't dared to think about what would happen if he were allowed to stay here. A while. A few years. Perhaps longer....

No. That couldn't be allowed to happen. He was not going to run away from death.

So he laughed instead, a defense mechanism that kept his doomed mindset from cracking through the surface, and looked forwards.

"Perhaps," he said. "That appears to be out of our control, however. Have you been here a long time, Martin?"

"I think so..."

But then, what constituted a long time? If it were the Martin he was before, it may as well have been a century. If clarity poured out freely through his senses once more, it was barely the length of a single breath. The moment he was in, the way he was...it almost inevitably put him in the middle of both.

He still didn't really know much about calendars and date-keeping, either.

"I don't know many people here who have stayed as long as I have. A lot have gone." Vanished, or dead in certain cases. Gone.

His smile quirked faintly. "But I never learned enough about how things work here, after all that time. That's strange, isn't it?"

"Not so strange," Bariyan said, "not considering how little we know about the world in general. Or... worlds, as the case may be."

He deliberated on the next question; it'd come to mind immediately, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to ask it. Now it had been hanging in his head long enough that he assumed the only way of making it go away would be to answer it.

So he sighed, and ran his hands through his hair.

"How long was... I here, then?" Bariyan asked. "Before this, I mean."

Martin took nearly as much time to answer as Bariyan did in asking. He really had no way of knowing for certain, and counting would've been impossible. He'd have hardly thought to try tracking back on the network, as technically un-savvy as he was.

"As long as I have, at least," he said, his shoulders lifting a little. "You were one of the first people I ever encountered in this place, back before." Back when the both of them were so different.

"I see," he said. He left it at that.

Everything else, he kept to himself, turning over in his thoughts. If he was here, then he must have come here in the past. He was certain of it. There was simply no way that it could have happened in the future, because he didn't have enough of a future to do so. But wasn't he supposed to remember, then? Wouldn't he have recalled being here...?

Perhaps not. Some sort of magic was obviously to blame, and magic did strange things that Bariyan could never hope to understand.

Easier to think of himself as two separate people, then. Himself, and the one who'd come here, the one who might have led a happier life.

"Did I tell you...." Another question that he wasn't sure he ought to ask, though this one had only just occurred to him. "Did I tell you anything about my own family?"

He stared for another lapse of time, as much wondering about the question as he was trying to find the answer. He'd been curious to know for a long time, but never outright asked. Not even in talking about his own family – an easy segue.

Yet even so.

"No," he said, dragging the sound out a little as he thought. "But I...know you have a son. Or I'm only sure of it."

The way he cared for him? That was one thing. Very like Peter. But in being called back from the start, a lot of those feelings were for a son, my son, echoing out into an expanse people couldn't perceive. It wasn't as easily forgotten as much else, yet Martin had kept it to himself, feeling it wrong to do anything other than that.

"I had a son," Bariyan corrected, gently, and found that even that was too much. He shook his head, smiled, added, "He couldn't have been much older than you when he left," and said no more.

It'd been a long while, now, and so much had happened since, but some things would always hurt. Some things were a long time dying.

Ko was gone, now; and Bariyan soon would be, too. Ko had converted to he Court after he'd left home. Ko had believed in an afterlife. Bariyan didn't.

He would, maybe. He would have to, wouldn't he? After what had passed...what would pass, for him. Between the both of them. And even with his recollection bound and blurred from the things humans rarely know, Martin was certain there was more than decay waiting for them. That son, too.

But the shift in Bariyan's demeanor kept him silent; he'd be unhappy if he had to talk about it, wouldn't he? Even with that look on his face. There was already too much unhappiness...Martin didn't want to be the cause of more if he could help it. That wasn't why, he felt, he was there.

So he kept silent, following along, trying to tilt and weave himself in a way as to make the least amount of noise. That body of his wasn't trained enough for it like the old one was.

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