( prp ) where art thou (America & Jeremiah)

[lizbot]

It was the handwriting that truly clicked it together in America's head. Her breath caught as she saw the date on the tag. "Miss Viv?" A pause and then, slowly sounding out the words as the thought occurred, "Are you...are you waiting here for Mr. Liam?"

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

It was a combination of things that did it for Jeremiah. From the feeling that rose in him when he was near the student to the way she answered him and knew his name. His fingers actually went to America's elbow, though they were loose as he stood with her.

The date was just another thing that suddenly spun the world out of place along who she was.

"You dream of this? Of what's happening for us?" Jeremiah looked to her, speaking a moment after America before looking to her again. They had come here looking for something related to the past and somehow they had found the past instead. Though a thought occurred that if she was not waiting for Liam, as America asked, just what was she doing here.

lizbot

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Vivien smiled, something close-mouthed and secretive. Somehow it didn't look all secret-y on her face. It kind of just looked like how she smiled. "No," she said. "That life's long over. And I'm dead. Surely you've noticed."

She got up, and brushed herself off. There was something terribly corporeal about her, despite the fact that she was dead. Like seeing someone from the other end of the uncanny valley, Vivien was too real to be real. "This is the gallery where Liam proposed to me, before the start of the cycles," she said. She kicked a foot out ahead of her, the metal accents on her scuffed black suede combat boots catching the light in the dim gallery. "These weren't the displays. I wasn't an artist. But time makes artists of all of us, I think. In silence, purity, isn't that what they say? I'm not silent anymore, and now that I have the opportunity to talk, I find I have so ******** much to say."

On the fourth finger of her left hand glints a ring. A red stone set into a silvery metal. A ring that only existed in one reality, firmly on the hand of the dead girl. Unattainable, for all it was so damn close. "I'm not Sunny, I can't influence much. But I can do enough. I could always do enough."

lizbot

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

It was the same kind of realness that he remembered in his first meetings with Sunny. Jeremiah was unsettled in a way he could not really place but it had been some time since something had truly made his danger sense prickle.

"We found it," he replied, "in the book you gave him. A note to meet him here from you, a note to himself to bring the ring." His fingers are still curled around America's elbow because the sight of the ring - the one that has, quite literally, haunted his thoughts and dreams - makes his head spin just a little bit.

"We came looking for something of the past and found it." A beat. "Found you." A breath. "So what do you have to say?" His lips twitch upward into a wry smile. "... because I'm fairly certain there are a lot of questions but that would be rude."

Especially when she was there and able to speak. If the dead were hear to speak then it was best to listen, wasn't it?

lizbot

this qtpie is eating dindin and told me to go ahead first

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"The Cagemaker's Conundrum," said Vivien, smiling. She had a quite clever look about her. Something about her eyes glinted in the light. "Yes, I gave that to him, and I left the note inside it. It was the first book I was published about in, did you know? I was going to do such great things."

She leaned back on the desk. As they focused on her, the space around them seemed to be shifting. The macbook had become a textbook, and there was a washed-out look to the paintings on the walls. "It was a pretty good gambit, wasn't it? I wanted him to come, but I didn't foresee his husband going mad and trying to remake the world. Or a bunch of kids deciding to try to stop him."

With a little sigh, she crossed her arms over her chest. The ring glinted. "How is he? Have you seen him? I was worried."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

"It's quite an interesting book. Your work in it is, for us, invaluable." The shift to the world was not missed, Jeremiah's eyes flicking to it but almost immediately refocusing on Vivien. Something about what she said-

"Did you mean for him to come now?" Or was that then? "He's-" His attention went to America, knowing that she had been questioned by Officer Bliskiss. The glint of the ring made a distant ache in his head that he tried to ignore.

"I have not seen him for a while. We usually catch each other in the morning at Equinox but he disappeared and is being searched for." Perhaps America would have more information about than he did.

shibroswol

1izbot

word count to here: 1121

 

[lizbot]

Jer's grip on her elbow gave America a moment of caution, even if she wanted to go up and pepper the girl with all sort of questions. She wanted to ask her about the Veil and memories and about the book, and just about Vivien herself. She gotten to know the child version of her, and then a bit more through the book and it's notes, but that was all sideways and the person herself was right here now. At least the ghost of her...

Even more though, she wanted to hear what the other wanted to say, now given the opportunity.

"He's trapped up in something," America added. "So he's a little found, a little lost, and doesn't seem okay at all, gotta say. They think he went looking for something of yours. Maybe the ring, mentioned in that note." She nodded toward Vivien and the ring glinting on her finger.

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

"I meant for him to come when he was ready," said Vivien. "I left the note as a reminder before I gave him the book. I thought... I don't know what I thought. Certainly not that he'd run off to New York."

She fiddled with her ring, staring down at the red stone. It glinted golden red, the color like dried blood. "I wonder what he went looking for," she mused. "This ring only existed in my reality. The first cycle, when I died. In every other, he would have been already married to his husband, and too old for me besides." She seemed saddened by this. "But then..."

She trailed off. "But then, what's a little grave robbery when it's the end of the world?"

lizbot

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah looked to America, head tilting towards her but questions about Liam and his current state were for another time. Not this one. "Perhaps he was chasing your memory, as he has spoken of you before."

It was not to him but to others yet he had heard more than once.

"Do you mean the first cycle after the cage was created?" he inquired. Jeremiah's heart ached at the thought of her always waiting for someone who may never come. Someone she had loved, someone who had loved her but found another, someone who was not bound to the cycles as they were ...

"Months ago, before the red moon, I requested information about The Enemy, things that would be pieces of it." Renard? Nothing was certain. "One of the things I saw was that gemstone, though it was not always set in a ring."

... and if grave robbery was the way they had to get it. Jeremiah was resolute, looking to America to share a look (and give her a small nod) before looking back to Vivien.

"Where does one go when the world is ending and we need to find that ring?" Though part of him wondered: did she truly mean the world was ending or that it would simply be another reset sooner than later.

lizbot

shibrogane

 

[lizbot]

"Or," America ventured slowly, remembering talk of the original timeline, "did the world already end?"

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

"No. The cycle in which the cage was created. The first execution of a program is numbered one, and that's how I've always thought of it." Vivien shrugged. "I don't know what Liam might have given me in other runs of my life. I know that I died young in each of them, sometimes by my own hand. Usually." She grimaced. "I didn't want anyone to remember me in decline. Where I didn't get that option... things were ugly."

She tucked her hands in the pocket of her jacket, the ring slipping out of sight. "The ring's mine," she said. "Those three kids dug it up." The irony of her, barely more than a teen herself, calling the original trio kids didn't seem to strike her. "Grave robbery's been and done. How else would they have bound up Liam, too? Didn't you read my book?"

She looked at America, and smiled. "Worlds die many times before they're dead. The end I mean hasn't arrived yet." Vivien laughed. "The great KILL command at the end of us all."

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah understood, almost immediately, what she meant about dying by her own hand and things becoming ugly. He remembered, starkly, as illness had taken Algie's mother bit by bit.

The news about the ring was not surprising. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Liam had been just as bound by Renard but not as much, somehow. "A personal item of his to counteract what they were doing?"

Jeremiah looked to America then and back to Vivien. "In the aftermath of the red moon Liam's voice changed. Before that ... it was different. It was as if he was many voices at once." It was likely not relevant but the thought had risen in his mind.

lizbot

shibrogane

 

[lizbot]

"I'm getting through it," America's expression dropped for the barest second, a flush rising on her cheeks. Maybe if she just thinks of it as Vivien talking directly...

Blinking rapidly, the girl reached up to pat her cheeks, giving a little shake of the head. A silly thing to get all distressed over, when someone was talking about the end of the world and choosing to...that part too, she can't focus on that, not when there was work to do.

Swallowing her embarrassment, America smiled back tentatively, asking, "Professor Noor was gonna cause the world to end?"

shibrogane

azuredreams

 

[shibrogane]

"A freely given personal item." Vivien's gray eyes were oddly luminescent in the light. "A ring he allowed to leave his possession, but to which he attached great personal meaning, and which he longed to regain. It's very difficult to forge a greater tie to a sigil. And once the work was complete, the ring ceased to exist. It became mine again."

She shrugged. Vivien shrugged a lot, and didn't really talk with her hands. She was oddly still. Maybe she always had been, or maybe it was because she was ******** dead. "I don't know anything about voice changes. I only know that Renard's drive to save the world led to the man I loved being caught in an endless hell. My poor Liam, he feels things so strongly, and they made him relive my loss, and the loss of all his friends, over... and over... and over."

Vivien sighed.

azuredreams

lizbot

 

[azuredreams]

"It was always Renard," Jeremiah said, his attention turning to America. "He kept everything close to him, did not necessarily share it all with Liam." So it was as Vivien said: Liam had been caught up in it.

"We talked once about it, about having to watch those around you over and over again ..." Liam had seemed genuinely bothered by this but it was an undeniable truth of the situation he was in. He turned his gaze to Vivien once more.

"They were caged together? Renard's magic was bound, I know that."

lizbot

shibrogane