TLV IC Inbox

[falkeditupagain]

[It seems someone has decided to change his voicemail following graduation. Hes trying so hard to sound professional, business like, but Hanna's usual enthusiasm bleeds through easily.]

You have reached the mailbox of Hanna Cross. If you don't have an appointment, my secretary will follow up with a return message shortly. [a short pause.] meaning me. I'll get back to you, don't worry.

And if this is an emergency what are you doing on the phone? Cardio is your friend. byyyye!

Comments

[falkeditupagain]

"Oh...huh. I guess that's what I meant, he'd have nowhere to go if he did." But that's definitely a little different than what he imagined. He wouldn't call John a parasite, but he was definitely still attached.

He frowns, trying to figure out exactly how that would work, "Wait-" He wants to get it right in his mind before he tries to wrap his head around how that probably affected the both of them. Memory and the shape of it, losing and gaining was always a hard subject to the affected and those around them. "How long were you gone for? I mean, time is fucked, but like, here versus home? And when you say dragged...uh, his mind went with you and his form didn't?"

[lestercraft]

He gives a brief hum of acknowledgement. "It might be easier to think of John as renting space in our reality. He's not a being that naturally belongs here, so he need somewhere to live. And without his new body, he was dragged back into mine, so we were still together back home. I was still blind."

He shrugs a shoulder idly. "Thanks to memories we got from a very early flood, we knew that we were supposed to be home for- perhaps three months and change. Thanks to John remembering that where I didn't, we were only gone for a little over one month. And... we got separated by the King, somewhat forcibly. After which I came back to the Barge briefly, but I was only here briefly before I- went back, our bond does work ways, but... it went poorly, basically. We both came back to the Barge at around the same time, independently. We were only gone for a week here, overall."

[falkeditupagain]

Splitting him without his body, instant deportation. He gets it, "And I'm sure that was fucking jarring when he remembered having his own form, and you didn't."

The back and forth of that sounds complicated, Hanna staring down at his own knees, thinking about it. A month is long enough for a whole bunch of shit to happen. Hell, if he could go back home just a few hours before what actually happened, knowing what was supposed to? He could fix so much shit, or at least get a better outcome.

"Apparently, my buddy Conrad died shortly after I did, like minutes and hours after. I met him on the Narrenschiff." He was supposed to be waiting outside still, "Now that I know, I think I might be able to fix it without much at all, depending on when I end up when I have the chance to. That knowledge must have really saved your ass. Did you believe him when he said he knew, or...was that a bit of a fight? That shit can get really complicated."

[lestercraft]

"Admittedly it took John some time to convince me, and not for lack of trying. At that point in our time together he had... damaged some trust between us - we had just learned he was a piece of the King in Yellow, and had gotten tricked into going through with a ritual that was supposed to join John back to the King. It didn't work, John was too different, but the King still dragged us into the Dreamlands to try and separate us by force."

He lifts the arm not looped around Hanna to fuss with his hair again. "In all honesty, nearly that entire month was spent in the King's prison. We were only actually travelling there for a few days, a-and after we got separated I was with Edwin, ah- h-he was called Yellow then, for a couple more."

[falkeditupagain]

"And I'm guessing that those Dreamlands are nothing like Kirby's." That'd be kind of funny, but he's thinking probably not. Though with that in mind, he wishes he still had a gameboy...he now has an itch to play some Kirby pinball.

Not letting himself get distracted though, he nods, finding his curiosity piqued by each little piece of information Arthur mentions. "Do...do you mind talking about what happened there? I mean, spending a month in a prison created by an entity like that, must have really fucking sucked..."

[lestercraft]

In the version that they lived through, rather than the memories they got from the flood, that he knows are real in some way thanks especially to Edwin and Charlie?

"Honestly, compared to everything else of the King's, his prison was... relatively unremarkable. Just a series of- giant holes in the ground, maybe fifteen feet deep, sixty paces around the wall." Because distance was harder to measure when you couldn't see, but depth was easy to try and reach. He gives a hum. "You know, I don't even remember getting put in there? The King was trying to get into my head at that point, trying to get me to let go of John, o-or just break me. But since I refused, he left us there to rot. To try and win by a war of attrition."

[falkeditupagain]

"Why is there always just some stupid hole you're supposed to rot in? You'd think they'd think of something else. No one is original any more." Whether it's in his own mind, lost in a series of doors that might as well be a pit or a literal pit of a prison.

Hanna can't help but crack a smile, thinking of the look on the King's face if he even had one. Perhaps he had a tone that gave it away. "It is funny though... I bet he was pissed, skinny little man like you giving him the finger. Arthur Fucking Lester and his balls of steel."

[lestercraft]

"Ah-" and he gives an awkward chuckle. "Well, less skinny before. Part of it did involve trying to starve me out. When breaking my mind didn't work, he tried my body instead."

He rubs his thigh, a little above his knee. "And when trying to wear me down slowly didn't work, since John and I broke out after a month regardless, he lost patience and tried to do it more... quickly." A tight smile, more of a grimace as he huffs. "Broke my leg in three places before John was forced to agree to leave me, before anything worse."

[falkeditupagain]

"I figured," He doesn't mean to draw any negative attention to it in any case, though he gets it. It's always a weird thing to be smaller than you see yourself, much like when a person might look in the mirror and feel confused because the person looking back isn't quite as young as they feel they still are.

Hanna sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth, "I mean, I was wondering why he didn't just start with that method honestly. But I figure something might have happened to John if he'd just killed you to get him to figuratively and literally detach?"

[lestercraft]

"We do have an answer for that, actually," he points out cheerfully. "When we were tricked into a ritual that was supposed to rejoin John and the King, John was already too changed to go back - whether it's because he found his own sense of self or because he was entangled with me I'm not fully sure, but regardless - the King couldn't just take him. And because I had a- a-an anchor, of sorts, to my own mind, my soul, he couldn't separate us, nor could he just destroy me, since it'd destroy John as well. And killing me still prevents John from leave my body, since that way means I can't actually choose to end our arrangement, so he'd be trapped in my corpse forever."