[network] Event: Long & Lost [NIGHT 217]

[snowblindmods]

it's been so long between the words we spoke
will you be there up on the shore, I hope

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Comments

[thewarningafter]

How is deal with it or you won't last constructive?

[bookofnope]

Pay attention. The important part is that despite appearances, the worst you will find here is what problems you bring in, like that notion everyone has in their heads that they're useless because they can't - let me guess - save us? Protect us all?

[thewarningafter]

Someone has to, and it's kind of my job now.

[Not really. His job was to guard the sanctum, and he didn't even make it through his first day before suffering an inter-dimensional kidnapping.]

[bookofnope]

Yours and everyone else's, apparently.

[thewarningafter]

Whereas you just gather information for the fun of it.

[bookofnope]

Essentially, yes. Anyone who knows me will tell you that my very last motivation in my efforts is philanthropic. Which does not make them any less useful, note.

[thewarningafter]

Anyone who knows you will also tell me you're a vampire.

[bookofnope]

I am a vampire. And I've been one long enough to know we hardly have the monopoly on selfishness.

[thewarningafter]

No, I suppose not.

[Stephen sees an opportunity to abandon this discussion and he seizes upon it.]

So how much did Joss Whedon get wrong?

[bookofnope]

Other than the blood-drinking, sun-fearing basics? Just about everything except the breathtakingly good fashion sense.

[thewarningafter]

And so humble.

[There's a smile in his voice, though.]

[bookofnope]

Don't get me wrong, I do wish I could grow a mane and beard to keep myself warm, but barring that I have to comfort myself with my impeccable style.

[thewarningafter]

You can't?

[Weird. And here Stephen's beard is already overrunning his face, to his annoyance.]

[bookofnope]

Vampire? [He says it like it's meant to be obvious.] Undead? Only breathing by some kind of utterly inexplicable technological wizardry?

[thewarningafter]

Hey, I don't know. Part of what originally stirred up the vampire mythos was the illusion of hair and nails continuing to grow after death.

[bookofnope]

What you mean is, vampires have used human misunderstanding of the decomposition process to encourage mistaken perceptions about themselves.

[thewarningafter]

Sure, if we're assuming my world has vampires. My point is that my PhD isn't in vampire facial hair studies.

[bookofnope]

Medicine, I assume? Based on the messiah complex, though it's common enough here not to really be a clue.

[thewarningafter]

Yeah. I was a neurosurgeon.

[He's grown a little more comfortable with that was over the last year or so.]

[bookofnope]

Now that's different. [Sudden interest there. They didn't have that kind of doctor before.] I see why you'd be having an interesting time of it, what with all the, I believe the term is "mind-fuck".

[thewarningafter]

Considering I'm aware of at least one period of major alterations to my own basic cognitive functions since I got here? Uh, yeah. This isn't exactly my first rodeo, though.

[bookofnope]

You've mentioned, yes. Multiple deaths. They must have been either creative or gruesome, to leave an impression after the first few.

[Here in Norfinbury we are very casual about discussing multiple deaths.]

[thewarningafter]

[There's a pause as he swallows, throat dry. Any other night he'd shrug off the comment, redirect the conversation back to what he'd meant to bring up, the good memories of knowing what the hell he was doing. Tonight, though...there's something in the air tonight that has it all spilling out into the open, even for a stranger.]

Not all of them did, I guess. I don't...I don't remember how many times he killed me. I wake up from dying all night in my dreams and I can't tell if it's a memory or if I'm imagining things that never happened.

[bookofnope]

[That strikes a chord, a subtle one. Beckett is an intimate friend of nightmares by now, and of muddled, meddled-with memories, even before Norfinbury. Curiosity pulls him like a spider's line of silk hauling up trussed-up prey. Not good news for the prey, but one of the strongest materials in nature, it turns out.]

I know that feeling. [Softly spoken, the confession almost permitted, he tells himself he's building trust.] And who is "he"?

[thewarningafter]

Do you?

[That surprises him. What gives a vampire nightmares?]

Dormammu. He's a...I'm not going to say god. He wanted to consume the Earth, and I...decided he wasn't going to do that.