Not the girl next door or a girl from France (Open RP)

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

It was early in the morning, perhaps an hour or so past sunrise (two hash marks on the Fantasyland sundial), and Miss Mrs Una Persson was out looking for ... something. She'd woken up from a vivid dream with the conviction that she really needed to find a Royal Albert gent's bicycle. Of course, as the dream faded, she couldn't remember why that could possibly important. But by then, she was already halfway across the park.

Well, sod.

Nothing for it, she decided, but to get something to eat and figure out what to do with the new day.

((Any and all are welcome to chat with or bother her at any point in the day.))

Comments

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Amnesia? No. Does it involve wacky hijinks?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "It can. But what it is, is a sort of fail-safe. When you settle into an era for any length of time, you have to adapt. New ways of thinking, speaking, being—and part of that is selectively 'forgetting' the things that don't apply until it's time to move on again."

Una stuck her hands in her pockets and sighed. "Here, the problem is that I seem to have forgotten how to travel. I can remember that I've done it, but the details ... it's like remembering that you played a piano concerto, but looking at a piano and not remembering what the black and white keys do."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Well, shit."

Logan thought for a minute, as they walked, about the idea of being someone else, or another version of himself. It was the kind of thing he'd been trying not to think about too hard for a while now; he wondered if it was anything like Elle and Veronica, if they had more in common than he knew, if that was some kind of weird archetype or whatever, pretty little blonde girl throwing off sparks, or freakish typecasting, or what. And what kind of roles would his actor play? The idea of being someone else wasn't without its appeal, but he kind of figured if anything about him carried through the universe or multiverse or whatever it would be his dissatisfaction and screwy luck. All of it might be moot if Una couldn't remember how it worked, but...

Cards on the table. (Most of them, anyway.) "Here's the thing. I've got...a few reasons why going back home, being stuck there after things I've learned here - assuming I'm not going to just forget everything, which is kind of depressing and anyway it's not like you can plan for that - there are reasons why that would really. Kind of suck." He'd tried to imagine it, being back in Neptune, in high school for God's sake; testifying at his dad's trial, knowing what was going to happen, knowing that none of it was exactly real anyway, but having no one there who knew that besides him and maybe some people wearing tin hats. He figured it would take two nights, tops, of staring at the walls of his room at the Neptune Grand before he'd crack for good. "Even by my standards."

"But it's not just that. It's. Lilly. She's dead."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una stopped in her tracks. Catherine died too, once didn't seem like the tactful response.

"Do you mean that she will die? Or that she's already—?"

Because there were entirely different implications to each of those two scenarios.

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"I mean," he said carefully, handling the words as though afraid they'd break somehow, "in my world, the world I'm from, two years ago some complete bastard hit her on the head with a glass ashtray and left her dead for her family to find in a pool of blood. She says - the her that's here? - she says she hung around for a while afterwards, as - I don't know, a ghost? Something - I never saw her. But she knows about some of the stuff that happened to me and Veronica afterwards, like she was watching. But here. She's alive. Has a pulse and everything. Is talking about...about moving on and stuff." He studied the ground at their feet. The world around him - even the small world, the Disneyland-shaped one he could see in peripheral vision - seemed oppressively large, clear and cold.

"So what happens if or when we all get out of here? If this goes blip, bye-bye, and we're all cut loose?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"I wish I could tell you," Una said quietly.

"There is every possibility that we may find ourselves back where we left off, with only the vaguest memories of all of this." She studied his expression. "It's what I've thought the most likely, based on ... certain previous experiences of mine. But there is another possibility: that we'll all have become unmoored in the multiverse, and may find ourselves somewhere else altogether, the way my friend Bastable did. I honestly don't know, Logan. But I can tell you that if I knew of a way to help you and your friends, I would."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Well, that's why I'm asking," he said, his tone almost impatient in its intensity. "I don't. Want her to be dead. If there's a way she can stay living."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una bit her lip. "There ... may be."

There was death, she knew, and there was death. And she didn't know enough, perhaps, about Logan's home parallel and where it fit in with the rest of the multiverse. "If there was a way to take her from here to another parallel ... perhaps. I must be honest, Logan—I don't know for sure. But that doesn't mean it's impossible either."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

Not impossible. Something, hope maybe, was stabbing in his chest, and he would've been almost afraid of what showed on his face except...except who cared?

"Good. Okay. Um." Questions, what was the next question here? "Any ideas on how?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

The look on Logan's face nearly stopped Una breathing, and she could have kicked herself; false hope was the last thing she wanted to give him. But what she'd said was the truth, no more or less, and he could only take away from it what he wanted.

"Refuge on another parallel, perhaps. One that exists out-of-sync, time-wise, with your own. Which, of course, all pre-supposes one can get there in the first place, which is at the moment, academic." She didn't mean to sound brusque; she was simply trying to lay out the facts.

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Hey, I can live with academic. I'm supposed to be in school anyway." Okay, that was incredibly weak, but what the hell. "When you say another parallel..?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Time isn't really linear. It's a field, in which many time streams and realities coexist—'parallels' is just one of many words for the geometry of it. Any reality or universe has echoes of further realities that exist in parallel with it, and then others beyond that. So there might be another where a person could take refuge, could live in a way similar to their home universe. It's risky, of course. And there is always the possibility of being 'rejected' and tossed into another stream, or another future."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

Logan rubbed the back of his head, thinking. "Lilly's pretty adventurous," he said, hesitantly. "At least...I mean, in the trying-to-pick up-sailors-at-Fleet-Week way, you know. Partying hard, wanting to travel and meet people and...have her own way. Which maybe isn't the same as the kind of adventurous you'd need to be to be in some alternate universe. But maybe it is, maybe she'd love having a whole new world to conquer. I don't...I haven't really, um, come near mentioning any of this to her."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"It may be best not to, at least for now," Una said. "There are so many factors, Logan. The possibility of even doing such a thing, and the sheer strength of will it takes to maintain one's own identity throughout the time streams—the psychic strain has broken people. And," she smiled a little, "while I can believe that many here have considerably more strength of will than your average person, I cannot overstate the risk."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Riskier than being dead?" he asked, a little flatly. "Murdered, at seventeen?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

She had to grant him that point.

"I suppose it depends on whether or not you believe that there is a fate worse than death," she said. "And I don't say that to be flippant. People have ended up mad, lost, no memory of who they are. Alive, yes, but shattered." She hesitantly reached out a hand, but didn't quite make contact, waiting for him to permit it. "I'm not saying you're wrong to want to save her," she said. "I just want you to know what you're asking."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"Lilly's a force of nature. I mean, I'm not saying it'd be great to be dumped into, like...post nuclear-apocalypse-world, or whatever, but. It's kind of...why I think I'd better talk to her about it, if there's any possibility." He looked up, and - noticing her outstretched hand - smiled a little wryly, with a bit of wobble. "Not that she'll necessarily take me seriously on the subject. She doesn't, in general. But I, I owe her anything I can do."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

She let her hand come to rest on his shoulder, very gently. "Jerry destroyed people, almost destroyed worlds to save his sister," she said. "There's always a price, Logan. And I make no promises. I don't know what I can do, if anything at all. Just ... think about what I've said, all right? And if there is anything that I truly believe I can do, I will tell you. That, I do promise."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

"...How would destroying worlds even happen?" he asked, semi-diverted from old guilt for a moment. "You don't need to promise...I'm not asking for you to, like, beat anyone up for me, or for her. Or to give up your place on a lifeboat or fork over your life savings or...or anything. Maybe just, I don't know, spend a couple spare hours sometime doing 'Multiverse Travel: an Introductory Workshop for the Desperate and Overconfident.' I know there's always a price, believe me."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Anything can happen with sufficient diversion of energy," she said. It's a tasty world. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to come off so heavy-handed. It's hard not to, after all this time. I'll talk to her, if you want. After you've done. It's the least I can do."

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

He nodded, then cocked his head and smiled quizzically at her. "'Least you can do'? You don't owe me anything."

Although.

Logan didn't seek out other people's secrets, unless he thought they affected him or were likely to affect someone important to him. But he wasn't unobservant, and Una hadn't been exactly as...circumspect about having some association with Logan's nearest neighbor. He didn't know what it meant, but.

If any of this showed, it was only in a faint flicker in his eyes, and the lighter tone in which he added, "Even if you did, it's not like most people care about paying off that kind of balance. I just thought it'd be something to do."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

She met the quizzical look with one of her own. "Oh, I was just speaking in terms of what I'm capable of. Although if there was something I did owe, I should certainly want to set it straight." This last said lightly, as a joke, although she did wonder if there was something specific he was getting at.