Participants:
| Scene Title | He's Still Here |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | More than a memory remains. |
| Date | June 11, 2021 |
Yeah Bouy: Flood Timeline
As everything started to settle down, Castle waited for a while before finally finding a moment to pull Chess aside in one of the lower areas of the small ship. It felt difficult to find privacy, and they hoped they knew it may not last for very long, with the tension still building among some of the travelers, but there was something very important that they needed to say before anything else happened.
To her especially.
“He’s still here,” they say simply, even though they don’t switch fully into the Irish accent or the green eyes that they had shifted into a few times before. They still looked gaunt and tired, pale and worn by the whole experience. They felt smaller. Castle had never been a large person, and while they were still tall really, they were now shorter, and even skinnier than before, somehow even more fragile looking. “We didn’t really think this would happen. The Looking Glass was supposed to be a more stable method than the way we crossed originally.” The Suits were supposed to protect them. They weren’t supposed to be as vulnerable to issues.
“I— “
They don’t finish the apology they want to make.
Chess pulls off the wet windbreaker she had been wearing outside in the cold, damp night, gritting her teeth to try to keep them from chattering. Her hair is damp in the bangs and the front where the hood didn’t protect it, and she too looks exhausted, though not as thin nor gaunt as Saffron.
At Castle’s words, Chess shakes her head, her brows drawing together, and she reaches to touch the other’s wrist; her own is still cold and a little wet from taking off the damp windbreaker, hardly warming and reassuring.
“Don’t be sorry,” she whispers with a shake of her head. “It’s not your fault. You-”
She begins to say more, but she can’t speak either. Her face crumples and she looks away, not wanting Castle to see the tears when she knows how hard it is for them already.
“Don’t worry about me,” she whispers instead.
“Well— I can try to do the rest, but that last— that’s just an impossible request, Lady Stardust,” says a voice that is much closer to the one she was used to, but only in the cadence and tone and accent, really. The voice itself still sounded wrong, but it felt more familiar. As were the eyes if she looked back for a moment. But that doesn’t last long as hands that are shaped wrong reach up to touch her face. They’re somehow rougher, long years of hard work under them and lack of resources to keep them soft in the Ark behind them, but the way they touched her felt similar.
“I do have something to apologize for tho. For not responding properly before.” There’s a thin self-deprecating smile, but it doesn’t last long before they continue. “Close your eyes. We’re going to try something. I tried to use the Castle earlier, and it didn’t— “
Well, that could sound bad so— they don’t finish. “So we wanted to try something else. Do you trust us?”
Tearful eyes turn back to seek Castle’s face at the sound of the more familiar accent. They meet the green eyes that she knows so well, even if they’re in the wrong face. When the apology comes, Chess shakes her head again, and the tears she’s holding back stream down her cheeks.
“You didn’t know,” Chess whispers, the words choppy as she fights the sobs that she’s pushed down for the past several hours.
The direction to close her eyes draws her brows together, and she tips her head at whatever it is they want to try. “Of course I trust you,” she says, eyes rolling like that’s a stupid question — even if Castle looks like a stranger. It’s almost normal, that gesture, the tone in her voice, and it strikes her a moment later how odd that normalcy seems.
After a shake of her head, Chess closes her eyes, her hands seeking Castle’s. “For the record, it’s nice to see Saffron, just… you know. Not without you. At the cost of you.” Those words threaten to make her tears spill over again, and she squeezes her eyes more tightly closed.
No, they didn’t know. “I’d wanted you to say it again when we weren’t maybe going to die, but— “ There was a sad little laugh, because, well. They hadn’t died. But perhaps what had happened might turn out worse in the end. Basil didn’t want to stop touching her, even if he hated that it wasn’t his hands doing it. “I’m glad you get to see her, but— yeah. The idea that I might never get to touch you again with my own hands…” for a moment, that voice that isn’t quite his shakes a little, but then there’s a slow inhale.
“If this works it could be a little disorienting but what isn’t these days…” he says with that same almost self-deprecating laugh. Because they were living in weird right now. Too weird sometimes. As if to wipe away her tears, thumbs move to touch her closed eyelids and then
They were on his boat.
Standing there in the middle of his boat, with the couch and the small table and the soft sounds of the harbor and wind. A song played over the stereo system and the dim lighting filled the room, even as everything seemed to fade a little bit around the edges. A song was playing, and she recognized it, but it just tugged at her memory rather than felt like something she could even really listen to. It was difficult to focus, like trying to remember a dream. But it wasn’t Saffron standing in front of her when she looked up— it was Basil.
And Saffron.
Standing beside him, with her head tilted to the side curiously, as if trying to figure out what was wrong with something. “It isn’t quite working the same as it should be. Maybe I’m not used to a third person being here yet.”
“No, it’s great,” Basil says, both with excitement, and relief in his eyes. Relief, and a bit of moisture, despite the fact this wasn’t even really physical. It looked like it, felt like it somewhat, even if everything still felt— a little blurry.
The only things really in focus for Chess were Basil and Saffron.
When Basil puts into words the fear that this might be permanent, Chess trembles; her lips press together to keep from speaking or sobbing again. The effort to hold herself together is an exhausting one, an endurance sport, especially after the energy she used earlier in the day.
But then he’s standing before her, and she gasps, one hand reaching up to cover her mouth. The other rises to reach for him, but then stops short, the fingers curling in on themselves, like she’s afraid of touching and ruining the illusion.
That the change of scenery is possible of Saffron’s ability to pull memories from the dead drifts somewhere below the surface, but she pushes the thought away — or tries to.
Her eyes, wet with tears, move from Basil to Saffron and back again. “Like virtual reality,” Chess manages to say in a husky voice after lowering her hand from her mouth. She lifts it tentatively, slowly, to Basil’s temple — like if she touches him, he might disappear entirely.
“More like a memory,” Saffron explains, as there seem to be little shadows of images that shift in and out of sight in the room. Images of them. The two of them sitting on the couch together, then at the kitchen, them standing near the window that seems to look out into a painted sky. A sky that could be straight off of a dozen canvases, that seems to move and shift, like it’s still being painted. It’s too fuzzy to make out specific details or moments, but their clothes and hair change and they almost fade into the background.
Focusing on each other is better. Easier. More solid. They even feel like they remember.
“This is where we go. When we’re not here. Places like this. Memories. Not always here, but I tried to think of here cause— well— I thought you’d be more comfortable here.” For a while, this was their home. More or less. And it was where he hoped they would be able to go back when this was all over.
They had always known there were no promises, but…
“And this is where I fell in love with you,” he adds, with a softer smile, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers, eyes closing.
They don’t even notice it, but while the memory doesn’t fade, there’s one thing gone from it suddenly.
Saffron.
The two of them deserve this moment on their own.
It’s not real. Part of Chess’ mind whispers that, a pervasive and insidious thing that keeps the sweetness of the spot from being as comforting as it would be if they were there in person. Still, she looks, feels, breathes in the smells that she associates with the blue houseboat, with Basil and their moments there.
We didn’t have enough time, whispers that voice, and tears well up again, flooding over her lower lashes and spilling onto her cheeks. She wraps her arms around him still, wondering if her real arms move in the real world. But he feels real, and her fingers curl around the fabric of his shirt. She inhales the scent of him, and a sob racks through her, muffled by his chest as she presses her face against him.
“I love you,” she whispers. That pragmatic voice in her head urges her to lift her face, to see him while she can, and she lifts her eyes to search in his, green and in the right face — for now.
“I love you, too,” Castle says in kind this time, voice soft as he looks back at her. There’s another voice in the background, coming from the boat, but it’s also his voice. A whispered memory. One they share.
“Let me throw a hypothetical question at you now, for fun. Let’s say you were told that the world was going to end and everyone you ever knew or would ever meet was most likely going to die— what would you do with the time you had left?”
A faded image of the two of them sitting on the couch, that first night after the party, when she had been dressed as Ziggy Stardust. That Halloween that felt so long ago.
“I’d try to stop it. Probably stupidly and to no avail, if past experience is any indication.” she had answered.
The image fades and he glances back at her again. “That was when, you know. I knew I liked you pretty fast, but— that was when I knew if you stuck around I was going to fall helplessly in love with you.” If she stuck around. If he stuck around. And if she showed that her words were more than just words.
Which she did.
She turns to listen and watch, her head resting against his shoulder. The memory is one she’s replayed in her mind — it’s a strange thing to see it from a different perspective, but in a way that makes it seem more true, Chess finds.
Her lower lip trembles at Basil’s words, and she lifts her head to look back up at him. Behind the gloss of tears, her eyes shine, a deep brown that’s almost black, but this close he can see the deep, almost burgundy tones in the irises.
A soft, shaky breath escapes her in the form of one of her short laughs, and her fingers tighten on his shirt. “Is it too late to change my answer?” Chess asks wryly — not because she’d want him not to love her, but because now they’re here, and despite this trick of mind and memory, apart.
“I don’t know the exact moment for me,” she murmurs. “It feels like I’ve always known you, always loved you.” She looks back to the other them on the couch, and smirks slightly. “I kept planning that night to warn you that I don’t do relationships, that it wasn’t going to be anything serious. Standard Chess script,” she says with a smirk. “But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.”
“Would you change your answer if you could?” Basil simply asks, voice soft as he leans his cheek against her head, not really even looking at the memories forming around them, because they continue to blur and fade half-formed. Almost as if they have a difficult time solidifying, or staying solid. They were there, that’s all that was needed for the moment. The rest could come back with time, hopefully. For the moment, they had this place to themselves, as much as they could.
They were still inside Saffron’s head.
He didn’t really expect an answer to that rhetorical question, though, cause he continues, laughing a little as she lays down how she would have tried to give him warnings. “Not sure that would have discouraged me. The Mas family isn’t exactly known for doing as we’re told.”
She doesn’t answer – or she’s still trying to find the words for her answer, when he speaks again and keeps her from having to. She laughs, the soft huff that rarely grows past a single syllable, for whatever reason.
“Me neither,” she murmurs, turning back to look up at him, studying his face, the color of his eyes, the length of his lashes. All the things she thought she might never see again, in that instant she saw a stranger in the suit that had held Basil before they jumped.
Her brows draw together, though, and she tips her head in the direction of the memory of them. “That’s only part of who I am. Maybe the only good part, and maybe not even that good. Blind bravery is commendable, maybe, but now that I’m here, I have no idea how I’m going to help. I’m not a scientist. We need to build things, not explode them. I want to help, but I don’t know how, and now you-”
Biting her lower lip , Chess looks down, tears catching on her lashes.
In a small voice, she continues, “Your hopefulness is what gave me courage, and it’s hard to find it now. Not when I can’t see you.” After a beat, she adds, “No offense to Saff.”
“You’re wrong. You’re exactly what this team needs,” Basil states, around the hint of tightness in his voice. Even if he was just a projection of thought, he still seemed so human, because that was how he felt about himself. That was how he pictured himself. He didn’t even try to stop the tears that showed in his eyes as he looked back into her own. “Everyone here has some kind of baggage, some kind of purpose. But yours… aren’t quite the same as the others. Unlike them, you weren’t chosen specifically for the baggage you’re bringing with you.”
His thumbs shift, moving along her face to brush away those tears on her eyelids, a gentle feature touch that, for a moment, doesn’t even feel real.
“We’re all complicated people, chosen by other very complicated people. Almost all of us specifically for those complications.” Including him and Saffron, honestly. “That you don’t know why you’re here is the main reason I think you’re the one that’s going to save all our asses— “
There’s another pause, and he adds after a moment, truthfully, “And you’re the only one that I know won’t abandon the mission at some point.”
She looks down, leaning her forehead against his. She doesn’t argue, but he can feel her head shake very slightly – not enough to dislodge them from where their heads touch.
“You give me too much credit. I’m not that complicated,” Chess jokes softly instead. “I’m happy to leave most of my baggage behind. At least no one here thinks I’m a terrorist.”
Her eyes rise again to study his; her brows knit together. “You’re taking care of me, but I should be taking care of you. I don’t… I don’t know how though. I can’t fathom what it feels like for you or for Saffron. How can I help?” she whispers.
It’s suddenly raining.
One moment it wasn’t raining, and the next it was. The boat was still there. The scenes and memories stop, the boat suddenly empty of the memory ghosts that had haunted it except for the sudden and constant patter of rain hitting the roof. The painted sky through the windows showed clouds and streaks of darkness that must have been meant to be rain.
Basil breaths in slowly, as if trying to steady himself. There was still no visible sign of his sister, though it’s likely she was watching. “I— “ It had been easier to focus on something else, focus on just letting her know that he was still there— of telling her that no, she was important to this mission, that he trusted her more than anyone else on it. Including himself.
He blinks, tears fall from his eyelashes.
“You can… believe me,” he says after a moment, when he leans forward, to press his forehead against hers, eyes sliding shut. “Believe me when I say that we’ll see each other again. That I’ll hold you with my own hands. That it may take a while, but it will happen.”
Chess turns to look up and around at the sound of the sudden rain – it’s raining in the real world, outside of this safe mindscape, she knows – has the sound somehow broken through? When she turns back to face Basil, brows lifted questioningly, a soft oh is murmured when she sees the tears in his eyes.
Knowing he hurts as much as she doesn’t help at all.
“I…” she begins, then stops.
She can’t lie, not to him, and it actually pains her, visible in the way her gaze drops, as she squeezes his hands in hers. “I want to believe.”
But want and do are different things.
She sniffles, and looks back up. Her eyes, dark with tears, are a black mirror, reflecting a miniature him back at himself. “I believe in you, so that’ll have to be enough.”
“I’m not gonna give up,” Basil says in a whisper, even if it will take a miracle, it took a miracle for them to have met in the first place anyway. “And any time you want to see me until then, all you have to do is ask Saff. I know it’s not the same, but…” It’s better than nothing? Which is what they would have had if his sister had had any other ability at all, probably.