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[fibrosis]

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[motivation]

i have no idea

[ oh alvis. that'll be a fun conversation. ]

you missed me while i was in stasis for a few days right
i dreamt about the future
except it can't have been a dream 'cause johnny remembers the same shit

[fibrosis]

[ ......great. ]

you're already in my future, apparently
i wouldn't imagine you're immune to the same issue

what did you see?

[motivation]

"a lot" doesn't even begin to cover it
johnny left, johnny came back
i finally got the last pieces of who i am

[fibrosis]

and?

[motivation]

let's grab a bottle of something strong and i'll tell you

[fibrosis]

guess i didn't have anything else planned for today
your place or mine?

[motivation]

mine

[fibrosis]

see you there

[ he'll realise afterward that he's not actually sure if he should bring something with him or not, so he'll go ahead and err on the side of more alcohol lying around not really being any sort of drawback and pick something up. ]

damn that icon is gorgeous

[motivation]

[ the door to dutch and johnny's place is unlocked; dutch figures if she's in and someone's stupid enough to come looking to rob her, that's their bad luck. she still gets up from where she's been sitting on the sofa, a bottle of whiskey already open on the table, two glasses. one is half-full.

more alcohol is never a drawback, though, and she takes the bottle he's brought from him after a hug. (still getting used to him being awake again. she's missed him.) ]

thank you i made 250 of him from s3 this week bc i don't have a problem

[fibrosis]

[ he doesn't mind if she wants to keep the hugging thing going. he'd probably be having the same inclination if he'd had to watch her sleep for any extended period of time, too. ]

Hey Dutch. Guess I'm here for my history lesson.

no ofc not

[motivation]

[ not seeing him for a while isn't the problem. knowing he was in a tube all this time? that was. ]

Wouldn't it be a future lesson?

[ she nods toward the sofa. ]

wow i suck at this

[fibrosis]

Guess that depends on how you're looking at it. [ considering it's already happened in some context, he'd say it's a little more like history than soothsaying in this case, but

sofa. sitting. ]

[motivation]

[ she sits down as well, curling one leg underneath her body. instead of talking, she first takes both glasses and hands one of them to him. dutch herself takes a long swallow of hers, first. ]

I don't know where to start. [ is an admission. ]

[fibrosis]

[ he might take a little sip of his own, partially out of reflex but also just a bit of mirroring going on to see if that helps her feel a bit more at ease, because clearly whatever else she's learned about from having gone back home for a little while - and he's... really not sure how that works if everything's been... well. that's a line of thought for another time, since he doesn't want to distract himself from paying attention to her right now.

clearly whatever she knows now has her a bit. frayed. ] There's no rush. It doesn't have to be in perfect order.

[motivation]

There's green plasma in the Quad. It's Hullen. It can take over people. Turn them into stronger fighters that heal instead of bleeding and that share a hivemind of sorts. Khlyen was one of them. The Nine made a deal with the Hullen decades ago that the Hullen wouldn't invade the Quad yet, that they'd only do it later.

Khlyen's daughter looks exactly like me. [ no, that's not right. ] I look like her. Because I am her. She's Hullen and she can do weird shit with the Green and she pulled me out of it as a child.

And she's come to the Quad to turn us all into Hullen. So I'm going to kill her. [ was going to kill her? probably. ] But it'll kill me, too.

[ enjoy that word vomit. ]

[fibrosis]

[ ... ]

How far ahead of me are you again? Now. [ because holy hells, dutch. he doesn't actually seem too surprised by the news, but decently so, and that's mostly just because it's a lot to take in. ]

So, the Nine made a deal with this... plasma that can control people? Who controls the hivemind? This other woman who looks like you? [ he would say Khlyen, but he didn't miss the use of the past tense there with his name. that's another question entirely.

as is the last thing she's mentioned. ] What do you mean it'll kill you too? [ well ] Beyond the obvious interpretation.

[motivation]

It's Hullen 101. If you kill the source — usually a plasma pool — you kill the Hullen that came from it. If I kill Aneela, I die. She's my source.

[fibrosis]

[ "It's Hullen 101." she says, as though that helps at all. he knows she knows that doesn't actually help, which just... honestly furthers how rattled she seems to be by it. he just does his best to keep up. ] Because she took you out of one of of these pools. [ which is... weird and difficult to absorb so he can't even begin to imagine how it must be for her, with even more context and understanding of this 'aneela' person in general.

he's still wrapping his head around a fair deal but ] Is there not another way to kill anyone affected by the plasma?

[motivation]

[ for what it's worth: dutch is, too, in her own way. she's had more time, admittedly, but — it's still a lot. so many years without knowing where she'd come from, she she is.

now she has answers. ]

There isn't. She dies, I die. And if I don't kill her, she'll kill me.

[ either way, she'll die. dutch looks at alvis with an expression of acceptance that would be more suited for his features than her own. ]

[fibrosis]

[ if he just sort of. rolls with it, doesn't treat it so much as an 'other' sort of experience - well this is more weird than anything he normally has to pretend is normal. is rolling with it going to make it seem even more weird?

whatever, he's going to roll with it. it's what he does. ]

Stopping someone doesn't necessarily always mean killing them.

[ that's (gently) directed at you and the person apparently trying to fight against you. he has faith in you dutch, in your ability to be able to stop someone either trying to kill other people or - and especially understandably so - yourself. he doesn't expect whomever you're talking about to have the same mindset, but it still doesn't mean it's not reasonable. from his own current mindset, at least. ]

[motivation]

I don't see any other way. Not this time, Alvis.

[ maybe there is. d'avin had certainly tried looking for one and even he'd failed. death is something dutch has come to accept. what she can't accept is not mattering. living in the shadows, hidden away. ]