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TEST DRIVE MEME #7
1. before she hung up, she said she was a skeleton
[there is no note in your cabin. no forces stall your legs if you decide to walk anywhere but the atrium. in fact, for the first time in hundreds of years, newly arrived passengers on the Serena Eterna are waking up with absolutely no guidance. nothing but your fellow passengers in the halls - or maybe in your bed.
perhaps you end up in the atrium eventually anyway. it is where guest services is, and where Gal Friday… actually hasn’t been in a few days. until today. and she is visibly frazzled, her hair uncoiffed, her suit rumpled, something a bit like a bruise blossoming down from her hairline and over her smooth features. more papers than ever cover her desk, and when she turns to face you, her voice is as cheerful as ever, but audibly strained.]
Welcome aboard the Serene Eterna! [a pause] You know how to work a life vest, right? Everyone knows that! You don’t need me to teach you that!
[a light bulb burns out behind her head.]
… I’ll get right on that!
[freedom includes the freedom to not know what the fuck is happening. maybe you should reflect on that.]
2. grandma went and can't stop screaming
[it’s something about the lighting fixtures, this month. has the Bellona always had a massive chandelier? maybe. who knows. don’t ask questions. either way, in the stillness of the night, or day, or late afternoon, there is a noise like a cord being cut, and the chandelier plunges into the audience below.
it hits nothing, of course. no one is ever in the theater. and that, perhaps, is what the trouble is.
so, the chandelier starts to… travel, one could say. it starts to hang in various rooms: the dining halls, the bars, the clubs… sometimes, if you’re out on the pool deck and suddenly realized you’re under a shadow, you can glance up and see it suspended 20 feet above your head, securely fastened to nothing in particular and yet remaining perfectly in place.
until it isn’t. until it falls, crystal shattering on whatever surface it lands on: floor, table, person… and, wherever the chandelier goes, a lilting childish voice follows it, singing without any obvious source.]
Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies… ashes, ashes, we all…
3. jeff bezos murdered the infinite tommy bahama
[the lights of the Infinite Tommy Bahama go out three days into October.
barely an hour after its closure, the lights go on again, and a new banner is unfurled.
physically, it is the same store. you can even see the old signs hidden behind the new ones. however, long gone are the tropical prints and khaki dress shorts. now, one can purchase any number of officially licensed or legally distinct Halloween costumes, decorations, and various other haunted accoutrements, leading back as far as the eye can see, and then farther still. is that a Gal Friday mask? spooky! well, at least you’ll be good and ready for the Halloween party at the end of the month, which is absolutely just a normal party and in no way whatsoever anything even remotely resembling a trick. there are only treats at The Infinite Spirit Halloween!
note: bahamanuel is still here! somewhere! it kinda looks like dan bongino.]
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He means it as much about Duscur as it is about Dimitri.
He glances at Darcy. In a quieter voice, he adds, “Infirmary. Please.”
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Later, though. When they're alone. For the moment, Dimitri gets to his feet, offering Dedue his hand. "The infirmary's on the lowest deck. I'll help you there."
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“Mm,” he nods, too overwhelmed by everything that has happened to fight anymore.
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"Just down this way and to the elevator, you should be able to get yourselves the rest of the way."
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Still -- it's comforting, and it revives something warm and fragile in his chest, to have his companion pressed up against his side like this. Even under the circumstances.
He wants to ask Dedue what happened, but that's far from their greatest concern. He's content to make the trip to the infirmary in silence, though he bristles, glaring and on edge, at anyone they pass.
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They walk in silence for some time. Dedue knows Dimitri well enough to know he’s absolutely wondering what happened. But Dedue doesn’t know how to talk about it. Just the idea of opening his mouth to speak the words feels draining.
Instead, he finally says, voice cautious, “Erin believed you were a knight. Is it unsafe to refer to you as Your Highness here?”
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"Not ... unsafe, no. When I first arrived, I feared it might be, but that wasn't the case. Quite the opposite. Did Erin explain that the passengers here are from different worlds? We're the only two from Fódlan here. In most of them, only a few nations have kings, and their power is greatly diminished. Some worlds don't have kings at all. I don't have any authority here. 'The prince of Faerghus' means nothing to people who've never heard of it."
Dimitri looks up at Dedue, pleading.
"I don't want them to know me as a prince. It doesn't matter to them. I don't want them to think that I think it should matter. I -- I can have friends here. It may be selfish, but ... I don't want that to change."
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He tries not to think about how much it hurts when Dimitri says he finally has friends here. It’s foolish to get upset. Dedue was the one who abruptly shifted what they had into a work relationship. He can’t have it both ways.
“Then I will not say your title when we are in public,” Dedue says. It’s the best compromise he can manage. Not saying anything is easier than saying the wrong thing, and he still can’t even utter the name. It’s all been drilled out of him.
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Dedue has enough to adjust to as is. Even if he'd been inclined to try, Dedue's reaction to Erin squashed that impulse.
"I haven't said you're my vassal, when I've spoken of you. It would have given away too much about my own standing." Which is the practical excuse for his personal discomfort. "But ... I've tried to avoid calling you my friend, either. I think it's what they assume, anyway, but I didn't know if you'd object, if you ever had cause to learn."
And now he does, for all that Dimitri had desperately hoped otherwise.
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“The people here. They do not know of the Tragedy of Duscur? They do not have an opinion on the people of Duscur?”
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He'd needed it, his oaths and obligations an anchor in this alien world, their recitation a way of sinking tooth and nail into his past and his identity. He still can't reconcile himself without them.
"I've tried not to connect you to it, as far as I could," he goes on. "I don't know if I've succeeded. But I -- I haven't told anyone how we met. I haven't said your name when I've spoken of it. I thought ... I was given the chance to define myself apart from my past. You deserve the same."
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But... that does not sit right with him at all. He thinks back to his conversations with Mercedes, about how he still carries the culture within him wherever he goes, even if there is no place he can call home. It’s something that has given him comfort, to think of himself not just as one person but as part of a path towards future generations. A future where maybe preserving all this knowledge and culture can be important again.
Even with the methodical scrubbing away of all traces of his heritage, he still has always put the earring on, still carried seeds of Duscur plants from one place to the next.
He still feels shame when he talks of Duscur. Still anticipates the accusations against his culture, even when those accusations fail to arise.
But he thinks about how curious some of his friends were to learn more back when they were at school - Ashe asking him about the seasonings and cooking techniques he used, Mercedes asking about the different gods of Duscur - and he LIKED talking about it.
Maybe this could also be a place where it is ok to talk about Duscur without judgement.
“Thank you for giving me that option,” Dedue says. “I would still like to say where I am from,” he admits. “I would like to be able to be proud of it again, someday.”
And if Dedue isn’t dragging Dimitri down by being visibly from Duscur next to him, then a lot of things change.
“It does not bother me if others view us as friends,” he says. “But I have sworn an oath to the prince of Faerghus. And my duty comes first. That is what I will tell them.”
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It's not just a question of culture, though. Dedue's status as a survivor, and his relationship to the Tragedy -- he can define what those things mean to him, choose what he wants to reveal and how. He can have at least some privacy about his past, his fears, his grief, without his appearance and his circumstances betraying his story at a glance. It is, perhaps, some bittersweet consolation for their severance from that past.
It does not bother me if others view us as friends. What does that mean? Should Dimitri take some hope from it? Or is it a polished, tactful way of closing the door on the possibility, even here? The latter, Dimitri has to assume, if even now Dedue is talking about duty.
But, selfish, stubborn fool that he is, Dimitri's heart still hopes he's wrong.
For the best that they reach the infirmary where they do. Maneuvering through the door is a complicated affair, given that neither of them is exactly slender. The room is mostly empty, apart from a lump huddled on a far cot with a single blue braid spilling over the covers. Jinx doesn't respond to their entrance, or to Dimitri's voice, so she's likely deep enough asleep they won't disturb her. "That's odd. Watson or Tendi is usually here ... that may be for the best, for now. I can contact Watson, but there are some things I should explain, if Erin hasn't, and I'd rather we sit down first."
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Slowly, he sits down and lets out a sigh of relief. While limping to the infirmary, he'd been gritting his teeth through the pain until he'd almost forgotten just how bad it was. Now, he doesn't know if he can get up again.
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Dimitri fidgets, uncertain, then opts to seat himself next to Dedue. It feels better than standing over him. He wants to reach out -- for Dedue's hand, or his shoulder -- but without the excuse of physical support he can't be sure if it'll be welcome. So he sits, their shoulders barely brushing, a quiet offer of support for Dedue to take or leave.
"How much did Erin tell you, about where we are?"
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“I know that we are prisoners aboard a giant ship. We have been taken from different points in time and place. But we nonetheless continue to exist back home,” he summarizes.
Closing his eyes, he says, “Erin said that we cannot escape. That this place is as far as dreams are from reality.”
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And now for the worst part. Dimitri steels himself, searching for words. It's hard to explain something he's been trying not to face, himself. Never mind that his head starts to hurt if he thinks about it for too long.
"I don't fully understand it," he begins carefully. "Some of the more scholarly passengers have compiled a document -- it's in the library -- but ... it's not that we have left Fódlan, exactly. More that we, here, are copies of the Dedue and Dimitri still at home. And at the instant we awoke here, our paths began to diverge from theirs." Deep breath. "If we were to be sent back, we would be twins with ourselves. We can't return, because 'we' never left."
Before that can sit too long, Dimitri continues, hurriedly, "I don't know if they're correct. I pray that they're wrong, that there is some way for us to find our way home." Simply escaping isn't enough; he knows better than to offer it. Darcy or Skulduggery might be able to accept leaving for worlds unknown; Erin, who can be happy calling the ship itself her home; Giles and Ossie, whose home exists at an angle to the rest of the world -- but Dedue and Dimitri are bound too tightly to their birthplaces to take root on foreign soil. "I have not given up, and I will not give up. I swore an oath, and I will not see it broken. But ... for now, that is what we know of our situation."
He shuts his mouth, and watches worriedly for a reaction.
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He listens to the rest of Dimitri’s explanation, and his blood runs cold. Truly, it had done so the second Dimitri agreed with Erin’s phrase about dreams, but now it is much worse.
“I... had a feeling. That what she said was true.” He clenches his fists. “For a moment, I believed I could not go back to you. That was the worst of all. This is why... when I learned you were here... I had to see you. I have been uprooted before. But without purpose, I... I would truly lose myself.”
He thinks for a moment, then adds, “I cannot accept that we can never return. Neither can you. There are dreams we share that must come to be. But in the meantime, we will stay here and we will think.”
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When he's calmer, Dimitri knows that the dead are dead, and it's not really their voices that haunt him -- but it's hard to remember, and easier to forget. Given what they learned last month, it's all too possible that the corpses at the diner and the shades in the mirrors really did belong to previous passengers. Dimitri shudders and casts off that thought before it can swallow him.
I believed I could not go back to you. That was the worst of all. The words lodge like a knife in Dimitri's heart. His hands flex uselessly on his lap. "I've missed you," he whispers, the admission torn like barbed wire from his chest. "And -- I prayed that you would never have to suffer this place. Even if it meant never seeing you again."
He sighs, wet and shaky; drags a hand down his face, and dares to lean into Dedue's side. "But you're here now. There's no changing that. It's a great deal to adjust to, but I will be with you as I always have been. As long as you want me." He's never been able to fathom Dedue's faith, his certainty. How can he be so comforting in the face of all this? So effortlessly steadying? "We will find a way out of this. It will take time, and it will take patience, but we will. I promise you."
("There he goes again, making promises he can't keep. The boy never learns.")
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Dimitri’s admission hits deep. “I cannot imagine...” How long had this Dimitri been alone, split off from the version that Dedue was with every day? Dedue feels... well, feeling guilty is foolish. Dedue can’t be angry at himself for not being in multiple places at once. But he still feels the guilt all the same.
“When did you arrive here?” he asks softly.
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