crushed_pearls | Come Sail Away IC Inbox

"...Everyone keeps asking me that." Erin props her cheek on her palm. "Hell, even Ruby asked me that and I thought she'd get it. She was...little. Real little. Her sister was barely bigger and practically raising her. Useless fucking dad too busy being depressed that he married a warrior who went out the way warriors go. Stupid. No one who raises a sword dies in their fucking bed. So, I stayed. Gave them someone in their house who could let them not be okay. Learned to cook blind. Loved 'em. I mean, I already loved Ruby but...you know...and then when Ruby went off to school to learn combat I got kicked out."

"...It was a pretty good life, allowing for how sorely I missed everyone here."

"Oh, Erin."

Her voice is soft, but there's no judgement in it. Just a sympathy there that there really wasn't another option that wasn't leaving Ruby to the whims of fate.

Quietly, she puts her hand on the table, palm up. It's an offer of a touch, but not one to be imposed.

Erin takes that offer, feeling absurdly grateful for it. Her cheeks burn, not that Helena can see it. "...Anyway. Fact. Three, right? Three: you can physically manipulate the environment of the past, but you can't seem to take it with you. I definitely had some of Ruby's things from her house and they are. Very not here now. And, fact four, the person whose past it was seems to remember both your visit and what I'll call the 'original' timeline, as if both happened. Which brings me to my baseless speculation." Erin squeezes Helena's hand softly. "Visitors have full continuity of memory; hosts have duplicate memories. I think they're dreams, in the sense that a square is a rectangle...fuck wait you don't do shapes...they're dreams the way a haiku is a poem but not a limerick. If you follow?"

"...Dreams seems like a good way to put it. A dream that echoes over your memory, one of the ones that lingers there."

She leaves one hand in Erin's, using the other to pick up a glass of water to drink.

"Except it doesn't always happen immediately. Sometimes it...takes a bit for the dream to come through."

"...Think there might be some you're waiting to receive, Helena?"

"...I don't know. I have things in my head that should be impossible, more dreams than I know what to do with. I have Darcy killing one of those hunters I spoke to you of, I have Max being chased down by a different one, and neither of them should be there. I have people visiting me at my home, meeting my father, I have..."

It's a stronger feeling through the Glamour, something warm, something that makes Helena pause and just consider the weight of it again.

"Years."

"Sounds like you picked up something you want to keep." Erin quirks a little smile, hums a little hum. "...Does it matter if they really happened, do you think? Or does it matter more who was there, and what they did and said?"

Putting down her water, her eyes close, debating on if she will or won't tell. But...

"Promise this stays between us?"

A much lighter request for a promise than the heart wrenched one that had come to her before.

"Until, or unless, you release me from my vow," Erin agrees readily. "...Also the sushi really fucking hits after two years in a forest let me tell you."

"...Security walked into one of the rifts and found me. And spent a couple of years there, until it followed me to the gates of hell and died for that."

It's very, very softly said.

"I have a very confusing set of memories now, along with all the others, to handle."

"...Security did come back, right?" Sorry Helena she really needs to make absolutely sure about this one.

"Yes. I was there when it woke back up here."

If it hadn't...she doesn't want to think about it.

"It's doing fine, now."

There is an extended and audible sigh of relief. "...With so much to keep straight, when you usually have such an orderly mind...it's gotta be rough. Especially to realize that people close to you saw you before you became the you that you are right now. God...if anyone met thirteen year old me..."

She says, unaware that the narrator is working on that right now.

"...years, Erin. I know you saw it from one end, and I'm seeing it from the other. What am I supposed to say to that?"

It's a great weight to process.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to it either," Erin admits. "Part of me wants to suggest writing it down in case you forget later, but...years."

"I already did that when I was up the entire night waiting for it to come back, when I realized it was dead and it was my fault for bringing it there. I have pages and pages of a life I'm not sure I even lived, but that I remember like ghosts that left impressions in wax. It makes me realize how much changed. What could have changed. What, perhaps, should have, regardless."

A beat.

"I have to apologize to anyone that got dragged into one of those hunting grounds, though."

"I'm not sure an apology is the balm that wound needs. Anyone with a heart will be worried for you, little bird."

Erin squeezes Helena's hand. "...Life in America is rarely sunny for the blind, even without a clown car full of murderers."

"I feel like it's my fault that they'll have had to endure that fear, that pain."

She sighs, and squeezes Erin's hand back.

"Goodness. I've been going on and on about myself, and I haven't even asked you how you are, even when you just told me you spent two years away. You're welcome to roundly scold me for the selfishness."

"...Little bird I can, and will, cuddle you and that is a threat."

"That doesn't change that I haven't asked you how you're doing after two years in the forest."

"Like shit!" Erin admits, even as she makes good on her threat with a wing hug. "...Feels like I lost something I didn't even know that I wanted. Happy?"

"No."

But she's hugging her back, completely accepting any and all cuddles. That's a good way to put it, really.

"But thank you for telling me the truth anyway."

"Swear to God if I end up running an orphanage when we get out of here..." Erin sighs. "There's nothing for it. I'm just. Tired, and sad. Y'know?"

Erin will feel the nod against her, the understanding inherent in it. One has to feel what they feel, let the sorrows exist as well as the joys.

"...I know. I know."

She won't try for words of wisdom or anything like it, because she does know a little, from the other end. If somehow, Security had stopped her from answering that letter-

No, she can't go down that path. It's too crushing.

"Now, little bird...anything in particular happen that you need to talk about?"

The deflection only works for so long Helena.

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