Video; Pretty much right after the Queen of Hearts illusion goes down

[unrecovered]

[First on the screen is Wash, brightly lit by the glowing Bond Engine, looking tired and excited and relieved and honestly just...overwhelmed. Today has been a goddamn Day, hasn't it.]

Soooo. The Bond Engine works, I'm pretty sure we have magic back, we went on the ship, and...

[The video turns around to reveal a voidfish - smaller, but still very much a voidfish - waving a tentacle at them.]

There's another voidfish down here. I...think it's a baby.

Comments

[eudaimonikos]

[....oh, OH! The tiny star! Michael is definitely going to need to talk to Wash about everything that happened while he was, apparently, insane, but right now - ]

That makes so much sense! Oh, I'm an idiot!

[also let him wave at the baby!]

[unrecovered]

[Oh thank God Michael doesn't seem to be a homicidal creature of the night anymore.]

[...there's a joke about demons here, but it's not worth making.]

[So he humors his roommate by turning the video so the baby voidfish can see him waving, and the voidfish waves back, and then-]

You knew?

[Probably not, but Wash does not have better words than that right now.]

[eudaimonikos]

[yeah, he's gonna apologize for that, but also not right here in a public forum]

No, no, not exactly. But when I talked to the voidfish last, I...well, you know. I wanted it to know it could talk to me about what was wrong. [we all heard the poem] It pointed out a couple of the stars I put on its tank. I thought it was trying to tell me it missed someone, like a friend or something! But one of them was smaller.

[He'd briefly considered family, even. But honestly, friends are always the first thing that occurs to Michael. He doesn't have family, after all, none of his kind do.]

[unrecovered]

[Clues, but no context. Wash can't blame him for not putting the pieces together when he was missing some.]

...oh.

[No, he doesn't really have any further insight. He's still Processing.]

...how long have they been separated?

[He doesn't expect Michael to have an answer to that one; it's more a slow realization than anything else.]

...if it can do the same thing its parent can...what don't we know?

[Yyyyyep, there it is. There's the implication that hasn't really sunk in until Right This Second.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Michael had jumped straight to the emotional implications for his buddy the Voidfish. The rest of that...]

Oh. [.....] Damn.

[unrecovered]

[Wash is quiet for a bit, thinking. There's no real way to drill down on this efficiently - the best they can do is fly blind until they encounter static, and with no direction or clues, it'd be ineffective at best. So he comes to a slightly more direct conclusion.]

I think we need to talk to Lucretia.

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah...

[That's...Michael has never exactly trusted Lucretia, so it isn't the gutpunch it could've been. But it's still a fair amount to grapple with. Memories: he invented that trick in his own world and he hates it.]

Uh. Can I come down and see the little voidfish first, though?

[unrecovered]

[Much as Wash hates anything getting in his head, his entire experience in Faerun has been people and magical items doing exactly that, over and over and over again. He doesn't like it, but he's starting to begrudgingly get used to it.]

[Yay.]

[The request throws him just a bit, and he shrugs. He isn't exactly the baby voidfish keeper or anything.]

Sure? I don't see why not.

[eudaimonikos]

[EhhhHHHhhh. Michael shrugs awkwardly; Wash is already down there and he'd feel weird just appearing out of nowhere on him after how badly their last few interactions went.]

Where are you?

[unrecovered]

The basements under the main part of the base.

[He gives directions as best he can; it's one thing to navigate an illusion and another completely to get there once everything's back to normal.]

[eudaimonikos]

Okay. I'll be there in a bit.

[He doesn't have anything else to do right now. Well, okay, he has a few things he should do, but this sounds like a good start. Michael heads off, slipping his hands in his pockets nervously as he goes.

It takes him rather longer to get to the basement than it should. Had to stop off to put the teeth somewhere else, they were weird.]

Hey. Uh...I'm sorry about all the torture. And for being a dick, after that. And I think I hypothetically stalked the streets of your fake city for a few decades?

[unrecovered]

[Wash spends the interim time looking around the Starblaster - there's plenty of questions about what's in here, but no answers without asking Lucretia, and he's got bigger fish to fry when it comes to questioning her.]

You weren't yourself, Michael. I'm not going to hold it against you. [He shrugs.] Hell, I thought I was a Sean Bean character for a year. I'm surprised I didn't die.

[It's a joke, sure, but he honestly can't blame Michael for the magic-induced backslide. It's not like any of them exactly asked for this.]

[eudaimonikos]

[A Sean Bean...huh. Michael hadn't really taken the time to put that together.]

How are you alive?

[It's easier to accept forgiveness - to forgive himself, even - for this one than for Wonderland. In Wonderland, he was himself. That was the problem. This time...he was a character from a children's story. The old kind that were still meant to be warnings, yeah, but still so detached from reality.]

I was in some kind of war with the Tooth Fairy. And maybe Santa Claus.

[unrecovered]

Turns out the secret to that is to not actually be a Sean Bean character.

[He's smirking just a bit at that - it's easy to poke fun now that it's over and he no longer thinks Gondor is his responsibility, or even real.]

[(This doesn't explain why he still has the horn of Gondor hanging off his hip. He doesn't have an answer for that one.)]

[He blinks at the mention of other childhood fairy tales - wasn't this a movie?]

Okay, that's the part I want to hear about.

[eudaimonikos]

Uh...well, I was the Boogeyman, you know that. The spirit of Fear, or the personification of it, or something? I cared very much about people being afraid, because then I'd be stronger, and more perceptible. I think you all only perceived me regularly because...well, you know.

[They were the only real people in the place to begin with, and Michael is definitely not actually invisible based on belief. That sounds a little awful, honestly.]

I was fighting with some other fairy-tale immortals, trying to gain their power. Stole a bunch of teeth from the Tooth Fairy over it. [.....] Somewhat related note, don't move the blanket on my bed.

[He couldn't figure out what to do with them and he was panicking, so he just tossed them on his bed and hid them with a throw blanket! You know, like a functional adult.]

[unrecovered]

["Don't move the x" is classic Reds and Blues for "I have something I'm not supposed to and I don't want anyone to see it." Right now, given the context, that's kind of a disturbing prospect.]

You have a bunch of...baby teeth. In our room.

[Fairytale war narrative officially forgotten, because what the fuck.]

[eudaimonikos]

I don't know why they're still real.

[Weren't the kids they came from illusory? The Tooth Fairy he got them from certainly was, so ???]

[unrecovered]

[Yeah, no, there really is no better response to this than a resounding "what the fuck."]

I think we should blame Karsus for that.

[eudaimonikos]

Well, you could say that about anything.

[Michael has met Karsus exactly once, and he is the worst.]

Could be worse. I had a lot more in my weird cave lair.

[unrecovered]

[Wash has had relatively extensive dealings with Karsus and that is an accurate assessment.]

...this has been a really weird year for you, hasn't it.

[In its tank, the baby voidfish waves. Hi there!]

[eudaimonikos]

They've all been, lately.

[But on the grand scale of Michael's life, that's like having a couple of particularly life-changing weeks. A year...that can be a lot to a human, he suspects.]

Are you...okay? [WAIT PAUSE SERIOUS TALK TIME TO WAVE TO THE BABY] Just, uh, generally?

[unrecovered]

[...right. Demon. Attempting to restructure the afterlife before getting yanked to Faerun. Michael's sliding scale of weird is a little different than Wash's.]

[That's a question he honestly isn't expecting, and he needs to take the time - provided to him by an enthusiastic tiny voidfish, evidently, thanks - to actually think about it. Is he okay?]

[Well, he's spent the past year having his memories fucked with, which is fucking great. He'd just helped bring back magic, which - despite his personal misgivings - actually is fucking great. He's just found out Lucretia has been hiding a voidfish baby, which means his memories are likely still being fucked with. Also evidently it's been a year and now the Hunger is just about knocking on their door?]

[Also Karsus is alive and at fault for at least a chunk of all this.]

I...don't...know. Today has been a lot.

[And it's not even close to being over yet.]

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah...yeah.

[This is very true. Michael ducks his head a little, nodding. He doesn't like being on this side of it very much - but the fact that he's been on the other side multiple times helps contextualize it a little differently for him. Maybe he deserves having his memories fucked with a little.]

Well. You don't have to deal with it by yourself or anything, alright? I'll come with you if you're going to go...have any confrontations.