#ark intro

You are pretty sure this is not the Land After. The Land After, the Land of Heroes, is a world of desert and ruins. A place of heat, and sun, and scarcity. There’s heat and sun here, but hardly scarcity. This luxe tropical resort is about as far from desert and ruins as you can get.

Maybe the books were wrong. Maybe this is the Land After After. Maybe someone got here before you and rebuilt the place from the ground up. 

Well. Does it matter? You’re here now. You passed through one of Skaia’s portals, which any newly decanted carapacian can tell you always leads to the Land After. Waking up in bed, surrounded by placid ocean, is a much more pleasant arrival than you expected from all the fire and falling and wreckage. 

You fish around in your RAG OF SOULS for the ring. It would be bad if you lost the ring. You’re not sure how it would be bad, but sometimes things just happen. Fortunately, you feel your fingers close around a hard, cold shape. You draw it out...

Room. 4 walls, 2 curved like the arcs of a circle. Bed. Only 2 doors, but he could make more exits if he needed to.

The man licked his dry cracked lips as he looked at every inch of the room, using it to calm himself. He had no idea where he was and, worse yet, no idea of how he got there. His memories were foggy, like they had been taken from him, but it didn’t put him on any more edge than he was on as usual. His hand protectively touched his head; his senses still too dull to feel what was missing. Batman’s mask was gone. He was wearing soft linen pajamas that he could not recall belonging to him. He was Bruce right now.

Mouth realized how dry it was. Bruce rose and lumbered to what looked to be a bathroom. The whole room was cozy in appearance, light brown boards lining the walls. The carpet was a disgusting green, not that it mattered. He’d be leaving soon.

The mirror reflected a tired man back at Batman. There was a soft purple under his eyes and a murky olive color rested inside his cheekbone. Wherever he had been beforehand wasn’t good.

He was awoken on the Ark by Kaspar’s wailing, as he often was when he passed out in unfamiliar places. He wasn’t on the cold tile of a neuromod removal room or the hard bed of a Transtar infirmary, or even the wet pavement he often found himself on, and he didn’t remember going home.

He shot up, hand going for his gun, but it was gone, and he was just clawing uselessly at his holster. Panicking, feeling trapped, he looked to Kaspar, who bobbed closer to his face.

“I have registered no threats, Commander. It is safe to stand down.”

Like hell he would. Grunting and yanking off one of his heavy belts, he was prepared to bean someone with it if need be, and got a handle on his surroundings. A room. There was a closet, what appeared to be a bathroom, a nightstand, with something that looked like a Transcribe. He slid the transcribe off and into one of his pockets, and left the room wielding his belt like a flail, Kaspar bobbing nervously behind him.

He’d never seen a place like this, and he’d seen a lot of fucking places. It was time to get out, find his shuttle, find someone who could explain this to him at a safe distance, something.

At one of the fastest paces he had ever run, he dashed down the staircase and stumbled into the main lobby, whipping his head around, and then looking to Kaspar with a panicked expression.

As the thought enters his head, though, Wei Wuxian frowns. He’s in no particular hurry to rise, but even from where he’s laying, he knows that the scenery that meets his eyes isn’t what he should be seeing. The last ceiling he remembers staring up at is a simple, elegant one, typical of the Cloud Recesses. And... Lan Zhan had been there, right? 

There’s something discomfiting about not being able to remember, exactly---it feels not unlike the time before his death, which is still hazy---but it’s likely better for him to focus on the now before anything else. Lan Zhan definitely isn’t here now, and the light coming through and lighting up the room doesn’t look like it belongs to the Recesses at all. Rather, it reminds him of the rippling reflections thrown onto the rafters of his old home at the pier, moving effusively, at times catching light so brightly that it hurts to look.

With a deep breath he swings his legs forward, sits up, and stands in the same movement. After a quick shake of his head to dislodge any remaining fogginess it’s to the window with him; he shields his eyes with one hand as he presses himself near to the wall, looking upward. Bubbles trickle upward against the pane. The watery light is harsh this close to the surface, yet he can’t suppress a grin as he squints against it even with his hand casting a shadow on his face.

“What kind of sect has built something like this, huh? Isn’t this a little too different?” It’s spoken aloud, but he’s musing idly to himself, standing back a little so he can look properly outside into the light blue of the ocean. “And, come to think of it, where is this? It can’t possibly be Caiyi, right?” Even as he speaks he knows the answer: it’s impossible for this to be anywhere that he knows. The color of the water, the feel of the not-glass window, even his own body---something feels different about all of them, even if he can’t place his finger on what that may be.

With a loud sigh---if it can even be called a sigh for how noisy it is--- Wei Wuxian lets himself fall back down on the bed, but it’s not a soft landing. “Ow!” Something jabs him right in the hip, and it’s with a click of his tongue that he pulls the offending object out from under himself. Hanging loosely between two fingers, it doesn’t look imposing: it’s rectangular, just longer than his hand in its largest dimension. The screen lights up as he holds it, and it’s with a message.

Wei Wuxian stares at it like he’s suddenly forgotten how to read. It’s not that the script isn’t familiar, but it still takes him seconds to take the few characters in, eyes wandering over the words again and again. After a moment, he breaks his silence with a much softer hmmm, then: “So that’s how everything is?” For a split second he’s almost tentative, unsure---what it is that he wants, or feels, or what he should---or if there’s a right answer. It shows on his face, a fleeting softening of his eyes and different curve to his smile than normal.

(( Hi! This is Per. Seph’s app has officially been sent in and I’m waiting for it to be processed, so I figure now is a good time to get some starters written out and ready to go! 

It doesn’t work with sheer brute force alone, unfortunately. So she decides to try again with her trusty Fishbones-- which, wait. What the fuck. Where the fuck is he. Holy shit. Oh my God, Fishbones is gone. 

Further inspection-- by which of course we mean tearing her room to metaphorical shreds-- reveals that not only is her trusty Fishbones missing, but also her beloved Pow-Pow, her precious Zap, and her darling Flame Chompers. This is where the panic sets in. Sure, she can handle being dumped in the middle of the ocean without warning or reason, but taking all of her weaponry? Her prized creations? Her best friend? Completely unthinkable. 

The speed in which she grabs the Holophone off the nightstand would make one think her life is seconds from ending, and, in her eyes, it is, a little bit. Instead of opening the file that details what’s going on and the rules of this new universe-- because what kind of fucking loser reads the rules-- she opens up the first messaging app she sees, and sends out a missing person ad to everyone in her contacts list.

She knows this the way she knows that the sky is blue, that the treaties on her desk are far overdue, that she has received a personal letter from a union manager begging her to contribute to their cause, to raise her voice against the mistreatment of her people. They are facts, and they are important, but they are not important enough to be her first priority right in this moment. Yes. She is dying. It hurts, and she’s scared as she hasn’t been since she strained to bring her daughter into the world, remembering her own mother’s screams, and then later, hopeless moans, and even later, silence. Her fear makes her heart pump fast, faster, faster, her blood spilling more, pooling hot and slick beneath her.

It isn’t important.

Emily.

Corvo’s there, and her vision is blurring too much to see what face he wears- the tender sorrow of a lover and father, or the stiff rage of the royal protector? She wants to cup his cheek and tell him it will be alright, but there’s no time, no time. She knows this to be true. She can’t even hear the words she’s saying to him, but the thought echoes in her head, and she knows she must be repeating them out loud.

Find Emily. Protect her. You’re the only one. You’ll know what to do.

She can’t hear his reply. The frantic beating of her heart is slowing, and peace is stealing over her, even as her hands shake, trying and failing to lift, to find his face.

Won’t you?

She can’t feel his arms around her, anymore, can’t feel his tears hitting her face. Is he still there?

Is she?

Corvo?

She remembers the man who is still a boy, the man with oilslick eyes and a curious quirk to his lips, arms crossed, head tipped as he watches her. She knows him, knows who he is and what he does. For a shining moment, she knows-

His mouth is moving. He is speaking to her. Or to no one. Or to himself. She can’t hear his words- later, she won’t be able to remember this moment. He asks her a question, or gives her a command, or simply makes a statement. She doesn’t know, after all, who he is, or where she is, or what’s happening.

The whales sing her to sleep as his fingers slide into the cavity in her chest.

Years. Months. Centuries. For endless eons, for only seconds, she knows everything. She can feel the pull of his objects, and it makes her shake, afraid, eager. Her heart, her body, pumps and beats and spasms until she is no longer facing it.

Why am I so cold?

Corvo’s voice comes from a great distance, and she knows him. She knows the wiry brush of his stubble when she cups his jaw in the morning, leans over his face and brushes her lips against his eyelids and nose and cheeks until he has to wake up to catch her mouth with his. He’s asking her something, and she knows, but she doesn’t remember how to speak, how to answer.

He must get what he’s looking for, though, because there’s silence, then, and darkness, though she didn’t realize there was light to start with- and then, the steady beating of his heart that allows her own to calm, to slow.

Is it the Month of Harvest? Time has lost all meaning.

Again, and again, Corvo asks of her, and she gives. She whispers to him of Pandyssia, of the plague, of his companions, of the places he goes. She sings sweet secrets to him that people would never have given up. Callista and her whaling dreams. Samuel’s scars. Sweet, sweet Cecilia’s work-roughened hands.

She gives and gives and gives and gives until there is nothing left of her, until she is drawn thin as a string and ephemeral as a gossamer thread, and then that snaps, and she is adrift.

What’s in a name?

He tried to seize control of the military after the Empress... after she?

Who is this ‘Empress’?

The Empress was murdered.

The more he forces her to see, the more it hurts, the more it aches. Every beat of her heart is agony, the light is blinding, searing flesh from bones. The whales mourn, and she joins her voice to theirs, but Corvo doesn’t hear. He can’t hear. No one can hear the whale song any more.

Can you hear them too? Crying out in the dark?

He doesn’t answer.

She knows herself, at the end. She knows herself when she speaks to her daughter, grown so beautiful and hardened and scared and vengeful, when she places her hand in Corvo’s and tells him that he has to let her go.

She’s losing herself again, and he needs to stop Delilah more than he needs to cling to her soul until there is nothing left of it, again, but the whispers of the things the Heart knows.

(Her hand in his. At the same time, her hand in Emily’s. She loves them both so, but what they’ve done... even when she’s wished vengeance, she never wanted this. For herself. For her people. For them. They both let her go, together, separately, in different realities. It doesn’t matter.)

She’s free.

Jessamine Kaldwin’s eyes open in the darkness, fingers folded over her stomach as if she’s been laid out for a funeral.

Fingers.

Fingers?

Twitch.

Fingers.

For a very long time, or perhaps only a moment, she is silent and still. She remembers... how to breathe. She remembers her name, distantly, with a numb sense of familiarity. Yes. She is, or was, Jessamine Kaldwin. Is she still? She doesn’t know. She stares at the ceiling and knows this place, the way she knew the Void. Unknowable. Purposeful. The people here. Lost. Confused. Angry. Relieved. 

Her breath rushes out when she sits up, slow, remembering how to have a body. There’s a glow nearby, and she reaches out for it. Piloting this sack of meat is like trying to tie a hagfish in knots. Like trying to.... be alive.

Like trying to remember her name. She stops, stares at the screen of the device.

Who is she? 

Jessamine.

Yes. Jessamine. She reads the notice on the screen, then tucks the device into the pocket sewn into her pants. Her stomach clenches. It has been... a very long time since she has eaten. Or quenched her thirst.

She thinks.

It is so hard to hold onto anything. For another span of time, she remains seated, filtering back into herself slowly, slowly. She repeats to herself words that become a mantra.

I am Jessamine. I am alive. I am Jessamine. I am alive.

And finally, it changes.

I am supposed to be dead.