So Familiar a Gleam: Conclusion

[voidtreckermods]

Time to leave!

There is not much of the city left, but the park is holding together as those anchoring help those who are not voidtreckers through back to where they belong. Monsters continue to attack and a little further out there is a battle of hearts and minds being fought with the mass of colours and chaos.

Eventually, after the bulk of citizens had been evacuated everyone with SCA's on would hear Jin-Roh's voice after a few frantic beeps, as Chiff aligned everyone's SCA's. "We are almost done here, if you are with anyone not tethered to a voidcraft get them to the evacuation point, as quickly as possible."

Anan pulls out of the anchoring point to call out to any defenders in the park. "Come on! Anyone who isn't a voidtrecker! It's time to go."

Luckily those off fighting the entity headed the message and made their way to the park as Jin Roh spoke again.

"Everyone else get ready. When we call it you need to leave. If you don't have your SCA on then get to someone who does."

As the last people rushed to the park Anan calls out again, through her SCA and outloud to the park. "You need to unanchor, before you can evacuate. Everyone be ready."

She goes in again though, because there are some last people, those from the large battle, getting through as another message was called.

"Almost there. Be ready. On my command..."

Anan unanchored again. "Quick everyone unanchor."

"NOW" Jin Roh's voice came through strong on their SCA's. Hopefully those with SCA's would grab those without.

There is some outside help as well, the train pulls anyone who is unconscious or still under the entity's control, forcibly evacuating them. This includes Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and Zagreus.

Luggage Carriage

There has been a mass evacuation before and that was crazy enough but since then the population of the train has almost doubled and now it is an extremely tight squeeze as everyone crashes into the luggage carriage at the same time.

The train jerks and rolls as they enter into the void at breakneck speed and again as they seem to slow, rather than speeding off though the void.

There's a crackling from their SCA's. "Voidtreckers? Voidtreckers come in!" Anan's voice. "Please tell me you made it..."

There's only a few moments of signal and soon they are flying though the void again, away from the strange non-world, the entity sealed for now. To new adventures, but first hopefully some time to recover from all that has happened.

Comments

[jingyeets]

Jingyi's too tired to even manage a fuss for being pet, particularly when it's soothing to someone used to casual contact. He'd usually object anyway, because wow? Let him offer to be therapy dragon first!

He does snort at it, rolling his closed eyes. It's the effort that counts.

"Young Master Rich didn't make it make a lot of sense. It's not even proper courting, it's like... like... test bouts." Like sparring, only for... romantic reasons? He's too tired to try and figure it out right now, because it's not dating conceptually that doesn't make sense—it's more the impermanent expectancy, that things won't necessarily work out. "To see if you're compatible enough for love. Which, whatever. Being close to people, being loyal and devoted and caring, that's not something only for dating."

Which, on the train, wasn't that a given in a way beyond anyone's direct control? That things like that couldn't be so exclusively the domain of romance when people disappear, when they leave, when they come based on no logical flow. Inigo had already had to deal with that, and Jingyi doubted he was the first one, or the only one, to be heartbroken by who his heart formed attachments with, only to have them go.

He grumpily makes himself stare at the screen, willing that couple to something happy. Something long lasting. It's very difficult being a die hard one true love romantic when you're surrounded by every evidence that it's so exceedingly rare, only a fraction of any population will ever come close.

"No! Look up! Come on!" At the last moment, the heroine does, spotting her love interest as he's slipped and holds onto a railing while one of the rivals attempts to stomp on his hands. For a scholar, he's doing some deft work with timing in where and how he grabs on, for all he clearly doesn't have the muscle bulk to simply pull himself back up again. Lady Main is on it.

[yondu]

Luckily it's just a casual oops. In a better state of mind he'd be a little... well, not mortified at himself. But he'd at least pull a face of realization and move on. Right now it's just a tiny bit of awkward.

"I dunno what proper courtin' is to y'all, to be honest. I know Stakar an' Aletta hooked up over fightin'. He liked her for it." Didn't like Yondu for it, though. But that's not the point. "Centaurians 'supposed to use their fins but mine got cut off. I just got this fake'n." He gestures loosely at his head.

"Nope. But it gives ya permission to get in their personal space. An' means they probably ain't gonna hurt ya. Probably, I'm... I dunno. I know a lotta bad folks. But yeah, go on a date an' it means you can do a lotta close stuff."

He doesn't want to mention specifics to the dragon. But when the Lady Main kisses her goofy grinning man, he can halfass motion at the screen. "Yeah, like that. Better to do in a state where you weren't about to die right before." But they still look very happy just that they survived together, and he wishes her luck on finishing her adventure and promises he'll be waiting at the end of it.

"I died before comin' here. A lot of us are workin' on borrowed time. Me too. To some people even a week of sharin' someone's space might be worth it."

[jingyeets]

He's known this has to be the case, though it's not something he's had admitted to him directly so much. He knows the truth with Xue Yang, of his world. That rattles around inside his head. Jingyi doesn't have enough attention span when tired to keep more than one input connection working, so he's visibly confused when he looks from the screen, that he's politely turned his eyes away from watching kissing actually happen (they're not real, they don't need the privacy, he's still giving it to them anyway), to Yondu, with his eyes too wide and staring.

When he says, "That's too cruel," his voice is small, and what he means is cruel difficult to point out. That the dead can't rest, that no one reincarnates, that they're teased with life and when this train won't hold them anymore, they die, having been remade into specific kinds of heroes. It's exactly where his fears on demonic cultivation would lead him, to the irresponsible side of things, and not because people don't deserve life.

Like this, poised on a swords edge, that's cruel. Promising nothing, at any time, except a guaranteed death in a quick, immediate sense, and nothing you can do about it.

There are some things he can't say in good consciousness. He doesn't say those things. Instead, he says what he can. "May your journey be long and filled with happier moments," because he can mean those things, and think beyond them, but share those two things without hesitation. The what ifs aren't things he entertained even back home. Simply the will make it happens.

No promises he can't keep. He allows the weight of his head back on Yondu's arm to be a form of reassurance, ears a touch turned outward, distressed.

[yondu]

"Some of the moments haven't been too bad."

He thinks of young faces actually looking happy to see him than looking afraid. He thinks of a man with pretty blue eyes smiling at him at the side of a river and just melting him in a way he hadn't felt in a long time. He thinks of a grown assassin breaking apart, shattering, and crying against him and trusting him not to harm him.

He looks down and finally realizes that there's a dragon using his arm as a pillow. That's not too bad, either, he guesses. He's got some good stuff in there that he probably wouldn't have had, otherwise.

He dully looks back at the screen and she's in a knock-out drag-out with the leader of the opposing cult. He's wearing some skimpy ensemble that shows off his musculature but isn't the best to fight in, he notes. Reminds him a little of one of Peter's buddies, Drax.

"Better than what I'd been gettin' back home." Sometimes when someone's lived a hard life, remarking that things aren't so bad, they might even be pretty good, is hard. Because you're constantly aware that you might lose it.

"I did a lotta bad shit. I had to. I thought I had to, anyway. Now I don't gotta live like that."

[jingyeets]

Another flick of his ears, and his eyes start sliding half closed. One swivels to keep track of the noises from the film playing, further twitching whenever a strike lands between those fighting on screen, or a body hits some other object and the person that body belonged to huffed out a response.

"Aah," he says, eyes finally closing. "So you did bad things there, and you're making up for it here, in a way."

Having time and ability to make up for the bad decisions and actions taken, and moving forward, putting better things into the world. He has to believe in redemption; he's seen it in action, both for crimes real and imagined.

"May your journey be long and harmonious," he says, leaving his eyes closed. He can hear the Main Lady as she wins, the short speech of the cultist leader, and the sound of their fall. Then silence.

[yondu]

He doesn't offer up specifics. He's told enough people what he did. He didn't know the worst of it, but it still weighs on him relentlessly. He's not coped with it.

It doesn't help that he doesn't think he deserves to heal from that, and a lot of people agreed.

Now Yondu is caught in this weird place of being like a person with a pet cat on them, unable to move. In a less tired state, dislodging would be easier, maybe. But it's a comfortable little weight and he's just a sleepy dragon and now Yondu's too tired to get up, credits and all.

So he just closes his own eyes, feet still propped up and popcorn in his lap, and eventually his head tips to the side of his seat as he starts to drowse. Pinned by tiny dragon.

[jingyeets]

And Jingyi, used to sleeping alongside people he knows, and comfortable and taking comfort inn the steadiness that comes from being around someone else breathing steady, drifts off to sleep without protest. The proverbial cat nonplussed about is temporarily conquered nap buddy.

Redemption, like film credits, can roll out or not, but exhaustion? Took you out. For now, in their weird metal string of capsules hurtling through the void, that was all right with him.