( open )

[evasives]

WHO: cassian, helena + YOU (ota!!)
WHERE: dreamscapes and new amsterdam, maybe elsewhere
WHEN: throughout ic march & early april
WHAT: dreams! cooking! it's a catch all!
NOTES OR WARNINGS: several warnings - will note above each header for specifics but many dreams involve blood and death, please be aware of the individual warnings! starters in the comments.

( hit me up if you want anything else specific: communism @ plurk, romanitas#5368 @ discord, or pms! or wildcard me, i'm easy. )

Comments

[evasives]

I do not blame you for your questions, but I don't know if I can tell you anything about yourself in it. My consciousness in the dream was... shared. Split. The perspective moved around, but it always came back to trying to figure out who I was.

[ he hesitates, but both jyn and clarke have experience with seeing future branches of their powers, and it seems important to note the variety of them. ] It is possible I saw my own power as well, just... not something I can do yet, nothing I have tried.

As I explained on the network, the turning point seemed to be the desperate urge to be whole again, to fight back against this Swiftlet device. And that is when all these powers, what I theorize are the Displaced powers, seemed to activate at once as we all reached out for them in unison. Yours included. I think we were all there.

[strove]

A proven connection. [That's what it is, right? The disconnect between them now is only when they're awake. Clarke knows as well as any of them do how things have changed in the dreams.] A way we were connected before—or can be again. [Her focus ties on her big dream for this world: to do right by it, to help it come back from the brink of death. She doesn't know if they've done that already. She doesn't know if they can.

She shakes herself out of that line of thinking. No, it's not a physical shaking, but she nods to herself, putting it together.]

I don't think it would hurt to begin to seek out things we're connected to, especially uniquely. We know that we're connected to one another and to the gates, but what else? If being threatened could unearth powers, what happens if we can manage those more ... purposefully? I know I discovered what I could do while I was stressed and trying to help someone. Is it heightened emotions or what? But it might be important to get it down somewhere so we can make sure we can start drawing in additional connections.

[realists]

If you were fighting against the Swiftlet, that sounds like a heightened emotion.

[ jyn's own powers are much more controlled than some people, but jyn also doesn't bother to control her emotions most of the time. she'd pushed them down until they almost atrophied, now that she feels anything, she doesn't bother to try to squash them anymore. ]

Fight or flight.

[ apt, considering the birds. ]

[evasives]

[ he doesn't want to admit to it, but it seems too important. ] Each new time I discover a new facet of my power, it tends to come after a high stress or heightened emotion situation. That's exactly what the dream was like, a pushback to a danger, and it woke up all of us to fight back. It makes me think we were all there at the same time.

[ among other things. he is still trying to process the dream and it's overall potential context. ] Fight or flight would fall in line with our apparent bird motif.

[ he looks briefly at jyn in agreement, and she stares at him pointedly instead. they've been doing a lot of talking about this whole thing lately, and neither of them are big on the concept of gods with a sense of reverence, but even clarke is talking about them being connected. it had crossed their minds, begrudgingly, especially with the perspective he'd had within the dream. ]

The fact that the wish was to be whole - it makes me wonder if we are pieces of some kind. Or if we... have pieces of something. Of power.

[strove]

[Pieces. Her brow furrows. That makes her recall some of what Ball said, making it seem as if they could ... have that inside of them. Some piece. Something connected but not. She recalls, again, Sniper's exaggerated reaction to it: the way they insisted on having it taken out of them. That they wanted nothing to do with it.]

Ball said that they were looking for the gods in deep depths. That this single god was "spread all around." Everything we've learned since makes it seem as if we're touched, like the people we saw in the ruins. [A beat.] But I don't know that those experiences match ours, not exactly.

What I do know is that we keep ending up connected. More and more, actually. Jyn doesn't like the gods part and—frankly? Neither do I. But it's the only thing that's happened to make sense of things for me. The only question is ... [She draws her arms toward her, crossing them over her torso.]

Why us? That's where even that theory begins to lose me. Whether intentional or not, we'd be connected to these gods. Right? Why though?

[evasives]

I cannot say I am a fan of the god aspect either. [ higher beings, higher powers... he supposes the closest to that kind of thing is the force, which cassian has honestly never gave a single fuck about. the jedi helped oppress his planet, the force never did him any favors. ] But perhaps my concept of god differs from whatever this world has.

I thought about reaching out to Ball, somehow, as everything I have seen seems to line up with... whatever his logic is.

[ the big old why question, constantly dodging them all. ] I had the sense that the Swiftlet was meant to control me - or whoever's eyes I was seeing through in that particular moment. And it was plunged into my chest, which I do not feel a coincidence. It had happened before, and they wanted to do it again, take me away from where I was and what I had chosen.

I do not know why us, but if we all have pieces of a god, whoever had this Swiftlet apparently wanted to control us, and by extension presumably, that power.

[realists]

[ they have a puzzle but so many pieces are missing it's impossible yet to see the big picture, which is incredibly frustrating to jyn personally. she drops the sandwich on a plate and slices it into triangles before she returns to the living room, setting the plate on her knees once she sits.

they don't have a coffee table. ]

There was a research group, Spinetail, looking for something in the Mariana trench, that might have been what he meant.

[ but that is just an idle thought that can be examined later. ]

If this god -- [ said so begrudgingly ] -- had offered her power to people through the years, like the people in the ruins, and then hid away when humanity proved too weak for that kind of power, it tracks someone would try to take advantage of it eventually. I personally vote Johann because he's heap of bantha shit.

[strove]

Don't forget the role that Spinetail played in Zerzura. [If they are beginning to find links in this world, that could mean something. Clarke does worry that one could be a reflection of another. If they didn't find this stuff before Zerzura, did they somehow bring it over and make it a reality? She doesn't voice it, chin set with concentration.]

They were a research group there—and in charge in some way. We still haven't worked out what being there really meant for any of us, at least beyond what we were told.

[Being consumed by another world and forced to think they were apart of it doesn't seem scientific. Not in light of new information.]

[evasives]

We could have brought elements of that Spinetail over, given we seem to have brought over the entire population too.

[ zerzura is his weak point; he hadn't dived too deeply into the world, having fallen victim to it, and he doesn't have many pieces of it. ]

Maybe it was an experiment. [ fucking shrugs?? ] That James Henries man existed in both worlds as well.

[strove]

It doesn't feel like an experiment. [The desperation that people there felt is something that Clarke is all too familiar with. Sometimes people will lie to themselves about what they want, so long as the outcome goes the way they'd like. She's seen it too many times before.]

But it's not as if we can return to it. Like we can ask questions.

[evasives]

I meant Zerzura itself. But I try not to get attached to one single theory. It makes it easier to pick up other threads.

[ he isn't throwing out the fact that they might be someone's experiment, but he's not going to die on that hill either. ]

[ speaking of questions. ] Do you think Ball or his followers will know anything about these dreams? My dream?

[strove]

[Ah, fair. A misinterpretation, if only because Clarke has heard the other theory a lot. She is relieved by how flexible Cassian tends to be about this, at least from what she's seen and discussed with him.]

They might know if it was common among those who were like us before. I don't think Ball would know about these dreams. Maybe the ones we had before—the one that was described with the bridges?

[realists]

Maybe one of their gods deals in dreams and one whole thing in this karking clusterfuck could be easy.

[ jyn's face wrinkles up like that wasn't meant to be said aloud but she has the brain to mouth filter of a toddler sometimes and now it's out. she points her sandwich slice at cassian to note dryly: ]

Don't worry, I know that wasn't constructive.