[open] eyes on your goodbyes

[firstroar]

Date & Time: Dec 5 - 20
Location: Moonbase
Characters: Blue, you
Summary: Can't shake those watcher ways (DEETS)
Warnings: ? notify me


While some rushed, leaping at the chance to leave, Blue lingered with the hesitant and stubborn who held back for a time. It wasn't for lack of curiosity; the artificial intelligence had given him the footage of life back in Exsilium, the possibility of life and continued hope. Fresh hope, even; who knew who was waiting for them below?

But after the whirlwind of conflict and mounting frustrations that suffocated the hold wall to wall, Blue longed for the chance to breathe again. And, in the same way one finds relief in opening the window of a stuffy house, Blue's mind and heart could feel refreshed...and itself again. It was easy to get lost in the emotions of others, so packed together and so heated; he needed time to recollect himself.

Recollect and reconsider. Collette had been right; it was time. And Gamora was right, too – there was too much chance for sinking back into the stagnant routines, broken up only by more disaster. He had a window of opportunity to consider, and it wasn't one to keep to himself.

The air of hope that came with the exodus bolstered the notion, and Blue, more himself again, could turn outward once more and consider these strange and fascinating people around him. It would be more on them than him, truly. He knew that. But he didn't know them.

So, by lingering as others prepared to leave, he gave his attention to the swirl of changing moods and thoughts, to the passing conversations and dreams around him – all the things within the reach of his mind. A little further than that, to those he deemed friends; their well-being mattered more than his, after all.

Comments

[firstroar]

[Blue has navigated his way around crowds of emotion for hundreds of years, but old age and closed-quarter conditions have a way of compounding and making it a struggle. it's one thing to spend life around minds similarly sterilized by unfeeling machines, very much another to find yourself in an ocean of free-flowing thought from a dozen-and-more worlds.

this trickling away of those minds? it will come with its share of relief. Blue could walk here and not feel crushing weight on all sides.

THEN THERE'S THIS GUY

but turning a corner at the wrong time brings him face-to-face with one of the densest clouds of negativity a single body could emanate he's felt. it holds him back and makes him stop, like some kind of invisible barrier, while his eyes drop and find the short, crabby source.]

[crab]

[ karkat hadn't been expecting someone to turn the corner, and as a result comes very close to walking smack into blue -- he draws to a halt, takes a few hurried steps back, and glares up at him with an expression appropriate to having been personally offended in some way. ]

And what do you think you're staring at, buttcrumpet? [ he snarls. some part of him is aware that taking his existential misery out on the transport population is not the most ideal coping mechanism, but the rest of him reasons that the transport population can go fuck itself, he's not a transport, he's an import. ]

[firstroar]

[all that unpleasantness redirected at him is worse than the unpleasantness itself. it's very...new, too; something this palpable would be hard to ignore for the weeks they've all been here.

first, he moves, stepping aside to allow him to pass should he wish.]

Someone new. [his eyes lift from Karkat himself and glance more at the gloomcloud around him.]

[crab]

[ of course, to karkat, it simply looks as though blue has decided to gaze off into empty space, which gives him a certain amount of pause. he sort of wants to find a way to be offended about that, too, but it's difficult considering he did just open with a complaint about being looked at. possibly he's just trying to be polite? god dammit, that's not the way he's supposed to react. ]

Yeah, I dunno if you noticed, but about fifty of us materialized up here sometime last week. Unbelievable, I know. [ is his slightly less aggressive retort.

the gloomcloud is not what you would call palatable to browse. the foremost emotions that make it up are those of anger, resentment, self loathing and bitterness. these are the easiest emotions to feel, the safest ones to express; beneath them are the more vulnerable emotions, such as sadness, loss, grief, fear, insecurity. it is also not consistently directed at blue -- more often than not, it turns inward, attempting to cannibalize its origin. the sheer depth of karkat's self loathing is ever apparent. ]

[firstroar]

To some extent, it is.

[that's when his eyes return back to Karkat proper. he's adjusting, second by second, to accommodate all the unhappy mixed drink that is his mood.]

For how much has changed, this seems constant. It's what should be least likely of all.

[crab]

Shows how much you know. As long as their machine functions, I sincerely doubt the serial interdimensional abductions are going to stop. [ the bitterness spikes on the word their -- the initiative are behind a significant portion of this unhappy mixed drink, after all. ] Port outs and Port ins are about one of the only constants you can safely rely on.

[firstroar]

Even that contradicts the intentions the machine's keepers have for it, and for everything around them. [a small tug on one side of his mouth, a wan half-smile.] That, too, shows how much I know about it. Very little.

[crab]

How does it contradict them? They get a limitless supply of shock troops with close to zero drawbacks. [ he's pretty sure if the alternian space fleet could have they wouldn't have hesitated to do something similar. alternate universe cannon fodder, anyone? at least it might take some of the heat off of the lowbloods who generally filled that role. ] Why wouldn't they want to keep replenishing their stock?

[firstroar]

[he frowns a little. where the time stuff comes into play, Blue's still half-convinced.]

It's not so much that...as it would be negating this point in time's need for the aid altogether. If they succeed in altering their world to suit a lifestyle never needing this technology... [doesn't that. negate it? that's his feeling, but trying to draw it out is still difficult.]

[crab]

That's the way it would work if this were the alpha timeline, yeah. [ time is horrible. karkat doesn't even time travel himself and he can tell you time is some bullshit. ]

[firstroar]

Alpha timeline. [a questioning tone, a leading pause. even bracing for it, Blue's still not sure he's going to be following this any better than times before. if it's going to even be like times before.

time...]

[crab]

[ he lets out a long suffering sigh, and some of the gloomcloud hanging over him abates in intensity -- anger written over with exhaustion. he is very tired. ]

Time isn't so much this in progress thing as it is a bunch of points to choose from. [ this is not his aspect, so he has some difficulty explaining it. ] The past, present and future all exist at the same time.

It's like... it's like a movie. You can fast forward, you can rewind, you can choose which scene to experience, but you can't change things, not without making it another movie entirely. You create an offshoot, and as there's only one widely distributed version of the movie you just watched, what you have is just an irrelevant, knockoff copy of the original. It won't be the one that endures for future generations. It'll just be forgotton. That's what you call a doomed timeline. That's what the Initiative are creating. Repeatedly.

[firstroar]

[Blue's arms fold to settle his elbows in his hands while he listens.]

How...would one even know how to determine one as the original at all? What guarantees every variation is inevitably doomed?

[crab]

Time isn't my aspect, so I can't exactly go parading myself around as an expert on the subject, but time paradoxes are generally what result in doomed timelines. Say I went back in time, right now, and murdered you before we could have this conversation. That wouldn't make this conversation not exist. It still happened, but because I created a paradox, I created an offshoot timeline where it couldn't, and doomed myself and everyone in it for good measure.

[firstroar]

[his head shakes a little while trying to follow the logic.]

It seems feasible, but... [frowning, looking past Karkat.] More than I can grasp.

[crab]

You've got to think of it like-- time is all already there. Your personal position in the timeline doesn't actually matter, in the grand scheme of things.

[ he exhales. ]

I guess it's easier to understand when you've had an entire universe's timeline at your fingertips.

[firstroar]

[something...Karkat's done, then? it's simple enough to guess.

still.]

For trying to explain to me... [he bows his head.] Thank you very much. It may be more than just words. Experience has a role to play, as well.

[crab]

[ if blue is paying attention, he'll see the shape and color of karkat's thoughts and feelings shift, memories of creating the kids' universe, memories of a karkat in golden pajamas on a golden planet being obliterated, friends killing friends, and the horrible realization -- cancer. he'd given an entire universe cancer. ]

Time is pretty bullshit, anyway. It's mostly better to leave it alone and try not to think about it. My point was, what the Initiative are doing isn't going to solve anything. The contradictions and paradoxes that exist here prove that.

[firstroar]

[he smiles weakly, eyes squinting for a beat. there's only a little Blue can resonate with in those memories, and it's not a pleasant connection.]

I don't know if that can stop. Not so suddenly, in any case. [a slight pause.] Or if it's even supposed to.

[crab]

I don't know if they should. Maybe splintering the timeline again and again is how they manage to stave off doom? There's no way to anchor yourself to the alpha timeline again once you've diverged from it, though. This place is a pretty miserable state of affairs.

[ just how miserable pulses outward from karkat in waves -- he is utterly convinced of the initiative's goals' futility, of his own and all transports' eventual doom, and the unfairness of it, of what the initiative have done to him, ripping him away from everything he'd given the vaguest shit about to dedicate his limited remaining existence to their lost cause, for what? for what? for nothing at all. ]

[firstroar]

[first impulse is to impress all hope is not lost, but Blue stifles it. Karkat has his reasons to be unhappy; they're still very fresh, where perceived.

still...]

You've not seen the whole scope of time here, have you?

[crab]

No. [ ruka understands, he thinks. not only about time, and about the initiative, but about what has been lost, taken from both of them. she understands, but he still can't bring himself to trust her, even aware that pushing her away hurts her. ] It's not really possible, under normal circumstances, and I doubt they're going to make us play any reality warping video games here.

[firstroar]

[he shakes his head a little, agreeing with that, but his stare gets a little distant again. notion of Ruka is like a familiar sight or sound, but obscured, nagging to be acknowledged.

but...no. let's not dig up names and notions out of the psychic air and rattle the troll.]

Then I'll believe in something other than a doomed future.

[crab]

[ he has had people do that before, and his reaction has tended to be less rattled, and more incredibly vocal displeasure. ]

Believing in something else won't save you, you know. Believing really hard doesn't make this version of Earth even slightly less doomed.

[firstroar]

Of course not. But it can motivate action – whether that will help build the foundation to better or worse things isn't within our sight. Moving forward still matters.