middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

The Endless River

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!

A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Did I do something?" Koumyou doesn't want to make this about himself if it isn't, but he has to at least ask.

Quietly, subdued, worn out by his own earlier interaction with the river.

And concerned.

"No!" That response, at least, is genuine. Devero whirls back to face him, concerned now himself. He reaches out to pluck a trailing sleeve. "No. You haven't done anything."

"Then what's wrong?"

Koumyou searches Devero's face, as though he'll be able to read the problem that way, somehow. It doesn't tell him much.

"You've been... pulling away, since Erda. Not all the time, but..."

His gaze flicks to Devero's joint, then back to his face. The sudden uptick in smoking hasn't been beyond his notice, either. Which wouldn't really be noteworthy -- after all, he'd been trying to get Devero to do more things he enjoys, hadn't he? -- except in combination with the rest.

"Please talk to me, Devero."

Dev's face really doesn't give much away, not as shut down and addled as he is. He follows Koumyou's eyes to the herb in his hand, moving belatedly to hide it behind his back-- as clear an indication of guilt as he could give. He knows he's been smoking too much. He knows that amount of herb he's used out of his stash in the mere days since he got the box from the train has been absurd.

"I'm not-- I--" Again, with someone else from the train he might be able to dissemble. With Koumyou, he doesn't want to.

His voice drops to a wretched whispers and he hangs his head. "...I'm sorry."

Koumyou's own expression is so concerned, now. He steps a little closer, trying to peek up at Devero's face.

"I just want to help you," he says quietly, "Please?"

Devero meets his eyes for a moment, his own swimming suddenly with tears, and then turns his face away. "I know, I-- I just--"

He rubs the back of his free hand across his eyes. It doesn't help much. "I don't want to hurt you. I'm afraid--!"

"Hurt me, how?" Koumyou's mind, of course, grasps for possibilities, none of which include physical harm. Has Devero begun to lose interest in him? Koumyou's always assumed that would happen eventually. How could it not? The priest is certainly no catch.

"You don't need to be afraid, Devero," Koumyou holds out a hand, silently offering it. "I can handle a lot. Whatever this is, it's obviously hurting you. Please tell me?"

Devero looks at Koumyou's offered hand and shrinks away, wrapping his free arm around himself and bringing the joint to his lips with the other-- no. He half turns away from the priest again, licking fingers and thumb and pinching out the ember at the end of the cigarette. Enough for now.

His focus on the herb is a stalling tactic and even as he does it he knows that. But how can he even start? There's been something nasty festering inside him since Erda, something made that much worse when he realized what Jack had been doing to Rich under his damn nose--

Something at war with the fragile sense of pride and achievement he'd let himself start to feel for his role running Base Camp.

Something tangling up badly with all the fears and insecurities that she had fostered and strengthened and then used to crush him and bind him under her foot. He'd hoped, perhaps, to exorcise the demon of Valdana in his heart by confronting her efforts with a magic space pebble, but all it's served to do was make him afraid that he'll fail the people counting on him again-- afraid she's been right about him all along.

It all comes to a head here on the bank of the Endless River, days of shame and fear and self-loathing and THC not helping him cope at all. He turns to face Koumyou, to his shining priest holding out his hand to the man who'd tried to kill him mere days before. To the man he's made a promise to, that he won't run from the infection inside of him.

To the man he loves desperately, to the first person to see what Valdana had left inside him and call it rot, to the beautiful being who'd told him that just being himself was a thing of value and worth--

Devero takes on trembling step forward, then collapses to his knees at Koumyou's feet. He wraps his arms around the priest's thighs, and buries his face in his robes, and releases the sick, stubborn conviction that he has to deal with this on his own.

He grips Koumyou crushing-close, and lost for words in the torrent, he starts to cry.

"Oh, Devero," Koumyou says softly, heart wrenching for the other man. He settles the hand he'd offered on Devero's head, instead. The priest's bony fingers thread through his hair in an attempt to sooth, even just a little bit.

"Let it out, it's okay. I'm not going anywhere."

Koumyou's hand in his hair, his touch gentle, makes Devero cry that much harder. The turbulent storm that's been building inside him is finally making catastrophic landfall, and he hangs on to Koumyou like the man's a literal lifeline in the raging flood.

A person can't cry this hard forever, though. After a few minutes-- that have passed like an eternity, at least to the floundering man who's been drowning in his fears-- his violent weeping tapers off. He releases Koumyou's legs to sit back, looking away from the damp mess he's made of the priest's uniform robe.

"S-sorry," he whispers, as if some tears and snot are in any way important right now.

Those robes have had a lot worse. And recently, too.

Koumyou crouches down to his level once released, reaching into his ARMs band for a second to produce a clean cloth and a bottle of water. He offers both up with one hand, reaching to brush some of Devero's hair out of his face with the other.

"There's nothing to apologize for," the priest tells him gently, his brows still knit with concern.

"Yes there is!" Devero protests. He snatches the cloth and the water and just-- holds them, freezing when Koumyou touches him again. His eyes well up and he scrubs them angrily, painfully with the still-dry cloth.

"I don't mean your robes," he says, averting his eyes. He's not actually worried about those; he's seen with some of that 'a lot worse' on them. "I mean-- for-- for trying to fucking kill you on the mission!"

Ohhh.

"Devero, falling for an illusion like that -- that could have happened to anyone. That could have happened to me!"

And then that part of the city would have gone down. The illusion wouldn't have stuck for as long on him, but it would have been long enough for a lot of casualties, undoubtedly including Devero himself.

"But it didn't!" He's spent a lot time thinking about this since it happened, especially once platform had passed and things had settled down. On Erda and during platform day, he'd been so busy he hadn't had time to obsess over it, but in the days since...

This is the main reason he's been hitting the herb so hard: to try and not reaudit that battle over and over, obsessively searching for some trigger he could recognize next time, some-- tangible thing he could deflect, some evidence of why it happened to him and one other person and no one else on the field.

"How do you know they didn't target you?" he demands. "How do you know they didn't target everyone? And everyone else was strong enough to resist it?"

That's the only conclusion he's been able to come to; that he was somehow lacking in something necessary to keep the demonic illusion out of his head. That he was, once again, a failure and a disappointment.

"Because I'm someone who can use illusions, himself. I know full-well I can be tricked by them. I have been before. I fooled my teachers with them a time or two, too. It's not a matter of strength or weakness, Devero."

Koumyou actually goes from kneeling down to sitting seiza, fully intending to stay down here a while.

"I think someone else at our location was hit, too? I vaguely remember Trunks having to restrain someone..." his senses are weird with that many tendrils out, both wider-reaching and more confusing. "From what I've gathered, those of you who got physically close to the demons were the most at risk."

"One other person," Devero says. "There were-- a dozen of us. More? On that field. And I know it was more than just me and one other person engaging those fucking things up close." Wasn't it? The big picture of the fight's progress is actually a blur to him once it had come down to melee combat, his attention unable to extend much past himself and his next opponent.

Devero curls up right there on the ground, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms around them. He hides his face. "I didn't even know. I didn't even know something was wrong with me, I just-- I thought you'd been killed and I-- what if I'd killed you?"

He's been obsessing over that, too-- how it would feel to having taken his Sanzo's life while he was trapped in some fucking illusion, and how it would have turned the tide of the fight, if Koumyou had gone down. It makes him sick to think about.

"So you had bad luck and got close to one of the illusion-casters," Koumyou says simply, because to him, it really is that simple.

He shakes his head, though, and scoots closer on the ground. "Devero, not to sound egotistical but... everyone on that battlefield could have turned to attack me all at once and I wouldn't have gone down."

And it's true, because at worst he'd have just cocooned himself in the sutra to wait them out. Let them pummel on the indestructible paper that had forged the very stars, that's fine. Get nice and close to the holy paper and let it slowly drive the demonic influence from their minds.

Having scooted closer, now he reaches out with his hands for the arms wrapped around Devero's knees. Just a light touch.

"...I can help you learn to recognize illusions, and learn to break out of them, if you want. It's tangentially related to the focus-building we're already working on. But Devero, even I would have been fooled for at least a few minutes, I'm sure of it."

Tired like he had been, especially mentally while controlling all those tendrils, he would have been easier prey than normal. And more prone to believe the lie, for at least a short time.

It can't be that simple. There has to be a reason it had happened to him, a fault or a failing intrinsic to who he is that made him susceptible--

I don't know how not to believe you. Not just that he was worth something, but that he wasn't personally responsible for all the bad things that happened to him. It's such a thick wall, such a powerful armor he's had to assemble around his psyche, a desperate and snatching way to gain control over the abuses that she'd subjected him to. After all, if the way she hurt him was his fault, surely he could figure out the right words to say, the right way to act, the right person to be to appease her. Couldn't he?

That fact that he never had hadn't kept him from trying. And the defense was so robust that even here, he can't figure out how to take it down, how to stop himself from, well, blaming himself.

He utters a sound that's half a laugh and half a strangled sob. "You're right," he says. "You wouldn't have." Much easier to focus on how powerful and amazing Koumyou is then on what a miserable shitstain he is.

He looks up. "Anything you can teach me, I want to know. I can't-- I can't let this happen again."

Even now, with the person he trusts the most, he can't release himself from culpability.

Edited 2021-04-13 03:29 (UTC)

Koumyou doesn't have to stretch mentally to figure out why being controlled might have set off Devero's issues, at least. He may not have the whole picture, but he has enough to guess at how easily that could set off the other man's mental land mines.

He holds out his hands, palm up, toward Devero. And offers him a little smile.

"Well, we've had two missions with illusions involved in a row, so it's probably a good idea anyway, isn't it? Since it seems to be a trend, and all."

At least Koumyou's not pushing him on it. Devero finds himself almost dizzily grateful for that, enough that he does reach out and lay his palms on Koumyou's.

"Right," he says, averting his eyes. "Who knows, next one could be even worse. Worse illusions, or more, or-- s-something." The prospect deeply, deeply concerns him; his hands on Koumyou's are trembling a little as he says it.

Koumyou rubs his thumbs gently over the backs of Devero's hands, and gives them a squeeze. "You're from a world without magic, without illusions," Koumyou points out gently, "it's like... it's like how I wouldn't automatically be equipped to handle anything from your world, you know? Everything requiring an EMID and such... I'd need help, wouldn't I?"

Being a teknull, and all.

"...Yeah," Devero says softly. He sounds a little reluctant to concede the point, but Koumyou's right. "I'd have to show you how things work, get you hooked with an ID wristlet...." It's no different than Koumyou having to show him how magic works, and get him the right tools to deal with magical things.

He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and releasing it before opening them and looking back up at Koumyou. "Thank you," he says, his voice small. "For wanting to help me."

Koumyou lifts Devero's hands in his to kiss the back of one, and then the other. "Of course I want to help you, Dev."

"Of course." He repeats it, his voice small. As the possibility of learning from Koumyou how to identify and escape from illusions sinks in, some of the weight of his tense fear and miserable guilt lifts. He takes another deep breath-- and then it rushes in on him that he could have asked his Sanzo for help with this right away.

He didn't have to suffer alone with this for so long. Of course Koumyou wants to help him.

So replace one source of shame with another then. He ducks his head again, looking away. "I'm sorry I didn't-- I should have just said something--"

"It's okay," the priest, of course, isn't going to leave that alone, either. He gives Devero's hands a gentle squeeze, "You're not used to having someone on your side like I am. I get it."

Sanzos are typically a solitary act, after all. He really gets that.

The Endless River

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