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hadriel2017-08-15 10:23 am
storyseeker) wrote in hadriel2017-08-15 10:23 am
video;
Hey everyone. One of the new kids in town here—I'm Elena Fisher. It's nice to meet you. Well, smartphone-meet you.
[The video shows a blonde woman in a borrowed Henley shirt who apparently scaled some structure before deciding to introduce herself. It's not as high up as her husband's first network post, but apparently "arrive, go higher" is just something members of their household do.]
I get that there's a lot going on here—Nate's been catching me up, and I've been trying to get myself up to date. So I'll try not to ask any dumb questions.
[She read the guide, she saw Chris's post. So far her basic response is: yikes.]
Hopefully this doesn't immediately contradict myself, but has anyone been able to figure out if there's some kind of pattern as to who comes through the Door, and when they come from? It's a pretty small sample set, but so far half the people I've talked to know someone else here from their home—which strikes me as pretty unlikely, considering how few people are here and how many different places the Door could be drawing from. What's more, those people aren't even from the same point in time, so whatever power brought them here didn't scoop everyone up at once. Pretty inefficient.
I don't know. Even if there is an identifiable pattern, I can't say what it would mean, what the goal would be. But suddenly I've got a lot of time on my hands, so...it's something I wouldn't mind figuring out.
[The video shows a blonde woman in a borrowed Henley shirt who apparently scaled some structure before deciding to introduce herself. It's not as high up as her husband's first network post, but apparently "arrive, go higher" is just something members of their household do.]
I get that there's a lot going on here—Nate's been catching me up, and I've been trying to get myself up to date. So I'll try not to ask any dumb questions.
[She read the guide, she saw Chris's post. So far her basic response is: yikes.]
Hopefully this doesn't immediately contradict myself, but has anyone been able to figure out if there's some kind of pattern as to who comes through the Door, and when they come from? It's a pretty small sample set, but so far half the people I've talked to know someone else here from their home—which strikes me as pretty unlikely, considering how few people are here and how many different places the Door could be drawing from. What's more, those people aren't even from the same point in time, so whatever power brought them here didn't scoop everyone up at once. Pretty inefficient.
I don't know. Even if there is an identifiable pattern, I can't say what it would mean, what the goal would be. But suddenly I've got a lot of time on my hands, so...it's something I wouldn't mind figuring out.
no subject
[Nice and soft. Too big to wear every day, but oddly comforting as she began her exploration of this place.]
So I've been getting more of a bead on things here—honestly, Nate, it seems like we might be the rule and not the exception for once. A lot of people here know someone from home, and almost none of them are from the same time. I feel like it should mean something, but I don't know what.
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[It's so rude. He only has like five shirts here anyway.
Nate stops close to the middle of the building in the vain hope that she'll make up the distance and relieve some of his anxiety.]
Really? [In fairness, he hasn't been asking those questions, but he so very rarely thinks about environments in the same terms as Elena.] You think it's intentional? I heard the Door was kind of a "random selection" thing.
no subject
It could be intentional, it could be true randomness that only looks intentional because of the sample size. There's still too much we don't know.
[Every little piece of information helps, though. She's already learned a lot more than what she started out with.
Including—oh yeah. He'd distracted her with his face, but there was something in particular she really wanted to bring up with him.]
One of the things I didn't know is that you had a fake wife the other week!
1/2 why this
He opens his mouth. He closes his mouth. He waffles painfully for a few long moments because he'd really hoped he wouldn't ever have to think about his unwilling trip to Pleasantville again, but here they are.]
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/shovels popcorn in mouth at my own damn thread
[The fact that he'd been brainwashed to think he was married to someone else, that he was someone else, hadn't made her angry. Nate was obviously the victim in that scenario.
But the one-word answer, after a total lack of mentioning the entire incident? Yeah, that's starting to do it.]
That's all you have to say about it?
please put away your Angry Face it's not necessary
[Nathan Drake has never responded well to authority figures, criticism, or accusations, and he's frankly a little pissed off that this thing that happened before Elena even arrived is now hovering over him again like the Ghost of Hadriel Present.
At the same time, he does recognize that he maybe should have put it on his list of "things to tell Elena" when she showed up, but then, he was a little preoccupied with showing her all the cool shit he'd found.
More than anything, it legitimately slipped his mind. But what else is new?]
I woke up thinking I was a high school history teacher in a small town. I was "married"- [finger quotes] -to the bio teacher. One of the other residents here was apparently our kid? Nothing happened.
I could do so much worse
There's no obvious way to approach the subject. But it starts by opening your mouth and letting words come out.]
That's an awful lot of 'nothing.'
[She turns partially away, pacing closer to but not right up against the edge of the building. She's not going anywhere, but she can't look right at him when she says this—not when she has to say it, because she can't trust his initial denial. Because she knows he's lied to her already, not long ago.]
Look, if—if you slept with her, thinking you were married, I wouldn't blame you for that. But I do deserve to know about it.
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[-exactly what he meant, per se. Nate cuts himself off as soon as he sees her wander closer to the edge of the parapet, and it feels like a knife is twisting in his gut. Not again. He closes the distance by a couple of feet.]
Elena, I didn't sleep with her. If I did, I would've told you about that. When I say "nothing happened," that's what I mean.
[This, at least, is sincere.]
It was a few days of being someone else with...all these memories I've never had, people I've never known. I didn't say anything about it because it wasn't important, it wasn't- me. And you showed up, and that was the only thing that mattered.
no subject
Okay.
[She knows him. He isn't lying now. Maybe it's stupid, since it wouldn't really have been him who did anything, but it's still a relief.]
But let me be the judge of what matters next time, okay? I trust you. But just being here is disorienting enough—I don't want to be left in the dark.
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Sadly, he is not yet that self-aware.]
I know.
[Her proximity to the edge of the building is more concerning to him now, and he does recognize that if he's going to come clean on something, it should be anything else related to Hadriel.]
Can you- can you c'mere, for a sec, it's- [Nate's mouth flashes through a quick grimace.] You're making me nervous over there.
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But he said it didn't happen, and she believes him. It's the tone in his voice that gets her attention now, a faint nervousness and alarm that she can't see the cause of.]
What? Why?
[She glances over at the edge of the building; no, it hasn't suddenly crumbled, it remains sturdy a few feet away. She does walk closer to Nate, though, concerned by shift in his demeanor.]
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Back in her orbit he doesn't want to admit that there are a number of things to which he was subjected in her absence, one of them being her realistically probable death.]
...there...was another event, uh. It happened a few weeks ago. Everyone was sort of- [Incapable of finding the right word, Nate settles for:] Haunted? By someone they knew. Even if that person wasn't dead. They just looked like ghosts.
[He gives her a moment to let this much sink in before continuing.]
As the days went on, the ghosts got less transparent, like they were gaining a form? And it's because they were taking life away from the people they were haunting.
[Nate's jaw tenses, and he grudgingly admits,]
You were my ghost.
no subject
She listen carefully and quietly, taking in more than his words. This is clearly not easy for him to say, but he's still talking, and she's glad for that. His actual words bring nothing but dismay, though. Of course it hadn't been easy for him to be here during the four months he was alone, but this is bad.]
Taking life away...
[She reaching out to touch his face, running her thumb along his jaw, to try and relax it but for her own sake as well. She needs to feel that he's still alive.
Of course she would be his ghost, because it would be the same the other way around. Nothing could hurt her more than Nate.]
What happened?
no subject
He's alive.
Sure, for a period after that event, he really wished he wasn't. He'd helped out Richie with his own ghost and knew he'd have to get rid of his if he wanted to avoid dying but there was no way he could pull the trigger when faced with a choice like that. As far as Nate was concerned, there wasn't a choice at all.]
Ghost Elena was too smart.
[Nate smiles sadly, unsure of what to do with his hands. He settles for the fingertips of one to touch the hem of the shirt she's wearing.]
She knew she was killing me. I told y- her, that I wasn't gonna- [His throat tightens. He needs to differentiate between them, but he can't.] ...we were climbing a building, I told her I would wait it out. Turned to give her a hand up and...
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To save you.
[Of course. It's what she would do. If it had been her, really been her, and it was save Nate's life or be the cause of his death...well, just like for him, there would be no choice at all.
But hearing about it now, he doesn't have to go into detail for her to understand the devastation it caused. She knows because it's every nightmare she'd had since she fell in love with Nate, every fear she's had when watching or just imagining him making a leap for safety from whatever's after him. And in a way, that nightmare had come true for him.]
It wasn't real. I was safe at home the whole time, okay? [As if that helps. She takes his hand and presses his hand to the center of her chest, palm down so he can feel her heartbeat.] I'm alive. You didn't let me fall.
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[Nate says, albeit halfheartedly. He does know, even when the line between reality and fantasy here is often blurred, he is fully aware that the version of her he couldn’t touch was not really Elena. He held her briefly and it felt real, she spoke the kinds of words that Elena would say, and acted when he was paralyzed with fear.
He watches her take his hand now, pressing it to her chest where she is warm and alive and thrumming with the kind of energy her double so lacked and Nate honestly wants to erase the part of him that contests it.]
I just- you standing right next to the edge of a building sort of- it freaks me out a little.
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[Boy, does she. Elena doesn't have to have experienced the death of his phantom double to have a really good idea what it was like for him. Just the thought of it happening the other way around sends a chill down her spine and threatens to choke up her throat.
She leans forward, kisses him softly and briefly, and squeezes his hand when she pulls back.]
Even so—I'm not going to wrap myself up in cotton and avoid all risk. I'm sure I'll climb something again eventually.
[She'd hate feeling stifled, and he wouldn't really ask that of her.]
But it doesn't need to be right now. We can head to lower ground.
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He makes a small sound when she cranes up to kiss him and he meets her halfway, albeit with a reluctance born of concern.]
I'm not asking you to.
[Nate stresses, not wanting to be misunderstood.]
I just saw your transmission of you- up here, and kinda panicked.
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[He can feel that panic—something she understands entirely—and still swallow it, admit what he feels and not ask her to limit herself to make him feel better. It's one reason why she loves him, and it's why she can freely decide to hold back—for a while.]
Nate, I'd feel exactly the same if it had been me. I'm not going to live in a bubble, but I'm also not going to go out of my way to freak you out. I'm glad you told me about this.
[She hates that he was hurt that way, but hopefully she can help with that now.]
no subject
Yeah.
[He says quietly, huffing through his nose. She doesn't pull away and as a result he slips an arm around her waist, squeezing gently.]
Why don't you, uh, tell me about your Hadriel theories, huh? More interesting than Bangkok smog?
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[Elena stays right where she is, letting him be the first to move away. She knows how much contact can help.]
On ground level, maybe?