[PRP] Checking In (Liam & Ezra)

[Silverah]

It was a rare sight for Professor Liam Noor to make his way across Rider-Waite's campus to the music department, but not entirely unheard of. Today, for whatever reason, he had decided to make the trip, taking his time to cross the college's manicured lawns.

In the music department, he checked the sign-in book outside the practice rooms, and then made his way swiftly down the hall. He knocked once on a door - and then opened it without waiting for a response.

"Ezra?" he asked the young man seated at the piano. "Do you have a moment?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"I have many moments, and I savor all of them equally," said Ezra. He didn't have any sheet music up on the stand before him, and when Liam poked his head in he'd stilled his hands. "What's up?"

Unpossessed by the Burning Man, Ezra had no burns. There were wicked scars, strange distortions in his hands from the surgeries required to repair them, but most of them were hidden beneath his unseasonable white and steel blue cardigan. He seemed normal, really, except for those.

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam, being polite, did not focus too long on the scars on Ezra's hands, though he certainly noticed them. The universal collision had affected each of them differently - Ezra had been unfortunate in many ways, but he'd always known him to be a resilient young man.

"Leila came to speak to me recently," he said, without further preamble or throat clearing. "She knows she's put you in a difficult situation, but that doesn't mean she's not worried about you."

He frowned - mostly to himself.

"And I'm sorry for my absence from your life as of late. Recent events endeavored to take me out of the picture in an altogether too permanent manner - but I prevailed."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"You mean the world collision," said Ezra, "and you mean the woman that replaced my mother."

He had never liked dancing around things. Stupid phrasings, yes, because he was a lyricist at heart. But emotional things, he wanted to be straightforward as anything. "I... was kind of indisposed myself," he said. "The me from their world used me to try to remake this whole thing for his idea of perfection, I suppose." Ezra looked down at his hands. "So I don't know what's happened since then. Only that my mothers are gone and Melany is no longer my girlfriend."

He sighed. He'd been planning to marry her.

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam sighed and pulled up a chair from the line of folding chairs stacked against the wall. "Yes," he said, and didn't blame Ezra's wording one bit. "That thing and that one."

And with that, he allowed himself to look longer at Ezra's hands.

Something, Liam thought, had gone very, very wrong. But perhaps it had resolved itself since then.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "I feel terrible about all this. My life's work was meant to prevent this exact sort of thing from ever happening. But enough about my problems. What can I do to help you?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"How did you come back," asked Ezra. His face was awful and crumpled, like a note dropped into the trash. "I don't know what to do. I was supposed to finish my thesis in two months, and there's nothing done. I might have to withdraw from the program and if I do, who's to say I'll get back in? They'll see I quit." Ezra had never quit on anything in his life. "How do I get Melany to even talk to me again? She won't answer my texts. It sounds like every ******** Reddit post ever involving an abusive boyfriend. What if she hates me forever?"

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam pursed his lips. "I'll speak to Melany," he volunteered. "See if there's anything to be done there. I also happen to have quite a bit of sway with the school's administration. If you'd like to take medical leave for the rest of the semester and finish in the spring, I'm sure that can be arranged as well."

Which explained nothing about how he'd come back. Liam leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.

"I had set a failsafe, in case the worst ever happened. Of course, being a failsafe, I wasn't able to test it first - so undoing its workings once it was triggered took a bit longer than I had hoped."

Shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"I want her back," said Ezra. "Or at least to let me explain..." He fell silent, leaning on his elbows, drawing a discordant clanging of notes from the piano. "I wouldn't ever put her in danger. Not without, without telling her why, and why I thought it was necessary..." He shook his head, pushed his hair out of his face. "I don't want to take leave, I want the last eight months of my life back, and I want..."

Ezra was quiet for a long, long minute.

"I don't want those people to get hurt or die, I just want my mothers back."

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

All of this sounded perfectly reasonable to Liam - and, unfortunately, very much not-doable. At least as he understood time and dimensionality. Their world, as it had existed, was gone. Like a taped-over video cassette.

Saying so seemed unproductive, however.

He scooted his chair closer to Ezra. "I'll speak to Melany," he said. "See if I can unravel this. I can't take you back in time."

Time magic was at least partially what had caused this mess - what would continue to cause this mess if they couldn't undo it.

"I don't know what I can do about your mothers," he confessed. "But the world state has already been changed so many times..."

He seemed to be implying they might have another opportunity to influence it, if only they were proactive about it.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"That's true," said Ezra, though he didn't seem particularly comforted by that. It wouldn't be his way to want to wash away whatever the other-universe analogue to himself had done to make Melany hate him. She deserved better. Maybe she deserved better than Ezra, too. "The guy who took over my body tried to do something to change it, too," he said. "I don't know..."

He said, "The thing you did to come back. Would it work on other people?"

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam was quiet for a long moment, like he was mulling a moral conundrum over in his head - and, in fact, he was.

"I will not lie to you," he said finally. "It would. It would replace any interloper with the original version. But you would have their blood on your hands. I have already done terrible things in the service of magic. But I don't know that I would ask you to follow that same path."

"You want your mothers back. That is understandable. Would you kill their replacements to achieve that? They did not ask to be here."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Ezra gritted his teeth. "No," he said finally, "I don't want to kill them. I don't want them to hurt. I just don't want them here when it should be my mothers, and... they already killed them. It's not fair they get to get off without consequences."

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam nodded.

"If you are to do this," he said. "It must be your own decision. Your own action. I will not do it for you. Knowing that, do you still want to know?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"I don't want to know," said Ezra, "I'm not going to do it, I just... I'm not a ******** psychopath, Liam!" He seemed genuinely hurt that Liam thought he would do it, knowing it was murder. "What they did to my mothers was morally repugnant but that doesn't make it just for me to do it back. It... hurts. That's... That's all."

Silverah

 

[Silverah]

Liam hesitated. He realized he'd gone too far and he dismayed to have hurt Ezra. It had not been deliberate. "I understand," he said gently, and stared off into the middle distance, deep in thought.

"There may be another way," he said. "I am only guessing here. Renard has been... altered. He is no longer the original version native to this universe, nor is he entirely the replacement - he is something between the two. Perhaps it is because he is somehow the linchpin that holds both universes together, the axis mundi, of a sort - but perhaps the same can be done with others. A merging of the disparate halves."

"This world will be reshaped once more before the year's end," he said firmly. "My otherself was sure of the necessity for such a thing to happen and wrote about it in great detail while he inhabited my life. We are likely not powerless in that reshaping. You may be able to bring back... not your mothers as they were, but a part of them. Their experiences. Their kindness. Their love for you."

shibrogane