THE FRACTURED WORLD: ARRIVAL

[modormenace]

 

A

rrival for some goes all but unnoticed. It's a sudden shiver, the sensation of being watched... and then nothing at all. Life continues serenely as it always has. The only indication of any change comes with sleep, wrapped in dreams: vague and distant echo imagery of another life, melting away in the morning.

 

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or others, arrival is a sharp jolt. In the space of a single blink, they find themselves in an unfamiliar world, surrounded by the trappings of a life they have not lived. They are replacements, spirits taking possession of bodies belonging to people very much like themselves...

 

A

nd for the rest, arrival is a procedure. Routine. Those ported in to the Fractured World wake hazily in the comfortably dim light of the Porter room, laid out on an exam table. Their wounds, if they remember having any, have been healed— and even those who remember their own deaths find themselves miraculously restored. As they regain consciousness, an automatic audio-visual presentation is triggered. Regardless of their backgrounds or physiology, all imPorts 'see' and 'hear' this message as if in their own language:

"Greetings, imPort."

The voice is calm and gently authoritative, almost certainly selected by committee.

"On behalf of the Synod and all imPorts it represents, we welcome you to the planet Earth."

A decidedly non-humanoid robotic arm holds out a palm-sized device and rather insistently demands the new arrival take it. This is the imPort's comm, used for accessing the Porter's database of information, as well as the communications Network— though it won't receive communications from outside the Porter building until carried through one of the many Gates set up in a long, crescent-shaped array on the far side of the room.

As each Gate is approached, information about the faction it leads to flashes up on the comm device's screen. Which will you choose?

THE WHITE TOWER SANCTUM AURORAE KRAKOA HOUSE OF M EMPIRE OF LIGHT EQUALITY BEFORE LAW THE TWIN CITIES OLIN VALE EDEN SEEKERS OF THE NEW DAWN NORTHWESTERN IMPERIUM GREEN PIECE MAD BURNISH LUMINARY

Comments

[rebelarrow]

[Once Claire has safely switched hands, Judd slips backwards, respectfully creating more of a distance between himself and the councilor, arms slipping behind his back out of habit.]

She was under my protection the entire time.

[Even if he wasn't within arms reach, she was absolutely within his telekinetic range, and he would have allowed nothing to happen to the child so long as she was there.]

I don't mind waiting a few minutes. I know it's not typical to leave one's child unattended, even if they are sleeping.

[numberthree]

[ She has no cause to doubt what he said, and there's a nod for that.

Claire's never been safer than she has been the whole time since she came to Krakoa. Sometimes Allison thinks she might be the safest person on the whole thing. The only person her age, and adored by everyone in their own ways, because she has nothing but adoration for them and for her world, and they all get to both forget for a little while in her, the things they know that she doesn't, and see in her the promise of the future, of other children, other generations if they keep holding on here. ]

Feel free to wait inside or out here. I'll be right back.

[ She's not all that picky about that, for the moment. Sometimes. Not not tonight. And even though her house is often crawling with her brothers, and her sister in law, there's no one but them out here on the private stip of cultivated ground with a portion of the beach not far off.

It really only does take a few minutes, and the longest part of it is just getting the dead weight of her more than half-asleep daughter into nightclothes while she isn't awake enough to help. Tucking her in, and placing a kiss in her hair. Being grateful for one relieving breath that this world is so different from theirs. From home. From White Tower. That she's safe, even decades if Allison's own history can only go to the worst.

Then, she heads back out, to find where Judd settled on. ]

[rebelarrow]

[Judd nods once before stepping outside and resting against the outer wall of Allison's home, arms crossed in front of him. The sunset has mostly faded by now, but there were still brilliant hues of red and purple dotting the horizon.

It made him nostalgic for home.

Brenna loved to watch the sunsets and would try to get Judd to love it too. He'd much rather watch the joy in her brilliant eyes, brown with their shocks of arctic blue, and feel it pulsing down their mating bond than to look up at the sky. But he was looking tonight, and she, as always, was right. There was much beauty there.

Hearing Allison's footsteps approaching, he reluctantly turns his head in the direction of the door.]

[numberthree]

[ Allison's not that surprised to find that he didn't choose to follow her in and wait in the living room or the kitchen, empty room and empty chairs without Luther or any of her brother's having made themselves at how in them, but it doesn't garner an opinion about Judd one way or the other.

It just seems fitting of who he is.
There's a strange kind of comfort in it.

Stepping back outside, Allison holds the screen so it closes quietly, still in her hand.
Claire might have looked dead to the world, but she wasn't taking any chance with waking her regardless. ]

Thanks, again. Really.

[rebelarrow]

[Judd nods once again before motioning to the door with his chin.]

I can close that silently if you would like.

[His voice is never very loud, but now it's at a near whisper out of respect for the Councillor and the child sleeping inside.]

Are you certain you are all right leaving before Luther returns?

[Words chosen carefully, as he cannot see any harm ever befalling Claire, with or without her mother present.]

[numberthree]

No. [ Is simple and swift. ] But thank you for the offer. I wouldn't want to miss it if she managed to somehow get up again and come looking.

And it shouldn't be too bad, so long as we don't go very far.

[rebelarrow]

[Judd nods. He isn't a father, but he's watched his brother with Marlee. He knows better than to get between a parent and their child.]

My brother is the caretaker for his daughter as well as our niece and nephew. Despite them all being Psy, I don't think anyone but Sienna fully recognizes how Walker always seems to know where they are and when they feign sleep... And Toby is a much stronger telepath than Walker.

[The innocence of children, he supposed. A luxury he was never afforded, so he isn't fully sure what that entails.]

Wherever you wish to go is fine with me.

[numberthree]

[ Allison gave a small shrug, but there was something about her expression that shifts. A twist her mouth that seemed fond even through the light exhaustion of her day. ]

It's just one of those things that seemed to happen when you become a parent. You just know. She's out cold tonight, but there are nights she does pretend, or fusses too much going down, and then ends up out of bed three or four times. But you can mostly see those coming, and what has left them too wound up to settle at the right time.

[rebelarrow]

[Judd's mouth twitches into something that could generally be called a smile, but it definitely doesn't reach his eyes.. and not in his usual, Psy way.]

Such abilities do not extend to uncles, I'm afraid. Or, I suppose, this uncle.

[There's a pause as he looks back at the house.]

Though I am happily mated, I will never be a father.

[numberthree]

Don't be so certain. [ It's gentle more than ribbing. If he was her brother, or maybe anyone except so very much himself, she might have knocked into his arm or shoulder lightly. Instead, she followed his gaze back toward the house, before looking at him. ]

I was never going to be a mother. Ever. But, especially at twenty-four. I wasn't against it. People parenting. Having kids. It just wasn't in the cards of how I was raised or what I expected of my life, my future. [ But neither was any of this, was it? Small steps until you looked back and couldn't tell quite when or how, but you were here. ]

I definitely didn't expect to walk out into the debris of a bomb radius, all young and unbreakable angry, and come out the other side of that day a parent. [ It wasn't that easy, or really even that fast. Deciding to keep Claire took well over half a year, but the point stood. And Claire had changed everything that was everything. Finally snapped her ability to stand the White Tower's games. Even staying to stay at Luther's side. ]

[rebelarrow]

[Judd doesn't take offense, and listens to what she has to say with genuine interest.]

It isn't about my personality, cold as I know it is. Or even my background as an Arrow. [He pauses slightly, as he realizes he's never fully explained what he is. Not to Allison.]

My full designation, Tk-Cell, is extremely lethal. Though I've broken Silence, spikes in emotion, especially anger, can cause me to lose control. I maintain control thanks to years of harsh training as an Arrow.

Changelings--what Brenna is--are the opposite of me. They wear their emotions on their sleeve, and revel in them. Touch and the bonds of pack are crucial to proper Changeling development.

My child, were we to bring one into this world, would be half-Psy, half-Changeling. Even if I would find it acceptable to condemn another being with my deadly abilities, I would then have to train them to shut out a crucial part of who they were.

I couldn't do that.

[numberthree]

[ Allison gets that he means what he's saying. It's a familiar litany in a lot of ways. Even if she's chosen to make good choices here, Claire is surrounded every day with an entire family of people who were trained from birth to be heartless and cruel in the hunt for their objective. And yet those are the very same people Allison knows would burn the world to the ground and leave any number of bodies in a line behind themselves, to keep her safe. It doesn't have to be pretty, to be true. Love has a lot of faces. ]

Or you adopt. Like I did. I know sometimes people can't really tell that from the surface, especially with how young Claire is. But she is. Was.

[rebelarrow]

[He nods slightly at the suggestion. He knew that SnowDancer as a whole was supportive of adoption--Kieran was human yet never considered anything other than SnowDancer--but it wasn't something he had ever discussed with Brenna.

The two had a lot of things to talk about, he's learned. There was still so much he doesn't know about his mate.]

I am not opposed to the notion, though I admit it never crossed my mind. Psy, at least since the dawn of Silence, have entered into fertilization agreements in the hopes of gaining offspring with powerful abilities and garnering more power for their family groups. Adoption among Psy is rare.

More importantly, it's not a conversation I've ever had with Brenna. I do not know her stance on the issue, though I can say with certainty she understands my... apprehension.