hashtagafreakingghost

[Oh.

Oh, no.]

Ashley. Hey.

[His voice is quiet. Sincere.]

I know you didn't. Okay? Neither of those things. I'm sorry. For your friend, and for. That you had to go through all that. That must've been...that was fucked up. Shit shouldn't happen like that.

[Bad things shouldn't happen to good people.]

I believe you.

[She breaks off into a muffled sob. A murmured attempt at an apology- or an explanation? A wobbling I didn't want but it dissolves before she can get any other words out.

A soft trilling noise on her side, and her cries are softer; she's likely buried her face somewhere.

In the end, she can only barely murmur:] Thank you.

'Course.

[That must have been one of her Pokémon. That's good; it's good that this place never lets anyone be truly alone.]

Like I said: I've kind of been there. So, for real, take all the time you need, whenever, and know that I know how it is.

[A strangled mm of confirmation. Ashley's in no shape to do much but cry for a time. There's this part of her that wants to just spill everything, to wail about the wendigos, and the bite, and Josh, and...the twins.

But. He said...

...so when she can, when her sobs have subdued to sniffles, she says:] T-tell me. [Clears her throat.] I- do want to kn-know, what you've, you've been through, s-so tell me.

Th-the meteors. The aliens. A-all of it.

I mean. If we do that, we'll be here, like, all year. I mentioned this all started when I was thirteen, right? I can...maybe get through up to the trolls tonight.

Okay, but you'll still tell me, right? Even if it takes awhile, I- I don't care.

[It's the least I can do. This bubbling urge inside her drives her on, like she has to know.]

I--Yeah? Sure? I mean, I'm not the best at telling stories and TBH I'm a little unclear on some of the behind the scenes metaplot shit, but I'm generally an unstoppable fount of talking about the subject, so. All right. As long as you're positive you don't mind sitting through three literal years of outer space time travel bullshit.

I don't. At all. [Another sniffle. On her end, she's got...quite a few snuggley Pokémon close.] Besides, it distracts me from...I don't know, being out here in the dark with just my Pokémon to light things up. [Because like an utter cliche, she hates the dark.]

Y-you um...you were at...another dimension...?

Yeah. So, um, eventually we all get there. Rose gets John in as his server player, I get Rose in, Jade gets me in, and then John closes the circle and makes sure Jade turns up all right. The thing that happens is each of our houses ends up on our own personalized mini-planet. Mine was LOHAC. The Land of Heat and Clockwork.

[...]

Okay, maybe this part I should draw.

Go ahead. If you think that'd be easier to explain with, th-then, yeah.

I do comics, you know? It's easier for me. Anyway, I'm sending you something like how LOHAC looked.

...I...can see why it's called The Land of Heat and Clockwork.

Yup, that's real lava. John got the Land of Wind and Shade, Rose got Light and Rain, and Jade got Frost and Frogs. You'd've liked the girls' planets, they were both really pretty. Rose's had clouds that basically rained light, there were rainbows and white sand everywhere. And I spent a lot of time on Jade's. It was all snowed over at first, but there were these trees--huge. Kind of the way you imagine the forest in Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of being small and scared in the dark it's just sort of majestic and serene and lonely. The trees were kind of dead 'cause it was winter, but they had this moss growing on them or something, and there were these star-shaped red flowers...and hummingbirds. Little purple hummingbirds. And the Aurora.

They sound...beautiful, Dave, really wonderful, but...

[...]

The Earth... Was it...?

...

Yeah, it. I mean, I wasn't there, but.

[He pauses again, silent.]

That's why I don't know about anything that happened from the second half of 2009 on, 'cause for us, it. Didn't. Happen, that is.

[Her breath catches audibly and for a moment, she's quiet.]

I'm so so sorry. I... I'm so sorry.

[After a moment, he sighs slowly.]

I dunno. Maybe I should feel worse about it than I do, but I was too young to really understand everything I missed out on. Like, I feel bad, don't get me wrong, that was a solid fuckton of people who didn't get a chance to get out like we did. But...

I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on it, back then, not with everything we had to do in the Incipisphere. And Bro did a good job making sure I had the chops to survive.

Edited (When you spell a made-up word wrong) 2016-02-26 00:04 (UTC)

Bu- but that's awful! I mean- for you, I- that you had to go through all of that, no matter how...prepared...

[She slows to a stop.]

...Wait. Your brother...trained you for the...the apocalypse?

[Because let's just call this what it is.]

Kind of? Well, yeah, I guess so. Sorry, this is one of those things I mentioned I'm not a hundred percent on. None of us ever figured out exactly how much our guardians knew about what was going on, and Bro was always pretty inscrutable anyway.

I would hope he didn't! If he knew about this, if all of your families knew about this and didn't tell you...! [She sighs.] Well, it would be horrible. To just...let you charge into this thing.

[There's a surprised beat of silence.]

Huh. Yeah, I guess that would be pretty fucked up.

[Looks like someone never even thought about that before.]

Well, John's dad probably didn't know much of anything. And Jade's grandpa was dead...I wonder if Rose's mom tried to tell her, and Rose just didn't listen. Or thought she was just, like, extra sozzled or something.

You...you're talking like you all only had one person looking after you... What about- oh, God, this is a horrible question, I'm sorry- what about your parents...?

[Dave breathes out and then sucks on his teeth for a second.]

Ummmmmmmmmm. Right, okay. This is where shit starts to get kind of weird, so...fair warning.

Bro was technically my gene daddy. And Rose's. And then her mom turned out also to have donated her DNA to our shared pool. And then John's dad isn't actually his dad at all, and Jade's grandpa was both of their dad, and John's nanna was. Well. You can probably figure it out.

...

This is where time travel starts figuring in.

[The shock and all that starts to fade into what right about now.]

And that's how...Rose is...your sis...ter......

...

Okay. O- Okay, uh. How- DNA, do you mean, you're... Is this some kind of mad scientist stuff?

Yeah, pretty much. Yup.

[...]

I'm not taking a dramatic pause or anything, I'm just working out the best way to explain this bullshit without sounding completely off the walls bonkers. But I'm starting to think that might be impossible. Okay, so after I got into the Medium but before Jade did, John managed to go from...Rose's planet, I think? To a laboratory in an asteroid belt circling all our planets. And there were some machines in there, and he mashed his hams into their buttons like a brainless moron in an ugly green lab coat, and what he ended up doing was making baby time paradox clones of our guardians and then mixing the two sets of DNA to make baby us.

...Maybe I should've drawn that, but it doesn't look any less insane on paper, believe me.

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