~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Hera | Memory room | ®Hawkpath® |

"Not here. This...was because of him."

Suddenly, she was telling a story. Pulled into the memories and letting herself be taken with them...letting him understand what he was seeing, because that seemed like the only respectful thing to do. For the people who were in them.

As she spoke, the memory zipped away, replaced by several consecutive ones - a man in a laboratory. Eiffel, shouting, pointing to the syringes on a nearby table. The woman from before, banging on a window as the scientist watched, dead eyes. The scientist again, ripping out wires - that memory went black in an instant with a screech of dying processors, and Hera flinched, watching her own lobotomy in slow motion all over again.

"He's still here," she added, a note of icy bitterness in her voice. "Eiffel isn't. He..."

Flash. More memories. Eiffel, working on the inside of a shuttle, pausing only to wipe sweat off his brow. Another woman, dark skin, curly hair, with a piece of shrapnel shoved through her stomach. Eiffel, on the comms, asking about the injury - about progress.

Beep.

Beep.

Flatline.

"He was trying to help that woman get home," she said, and they were in the shuttle again as a massive explosion rocked the entire thing, sending it spinning off into space. "It was her fault, and my fault, and Minkovski's fault, and Eiffel's fault, and nobody's fault." Space. Visual sensors, watching the shuttle go further...and further...and further.....until it was gone.

"It just...ha- a- ppe-ppened." She let out a bark of a laugh - bitter, full of anger. "Isn't it funny? He survived all that, he survived drown-ow - ni g ing in his own blood and having a nee ee eed el dle in his lung and being on li f e fe support for days, and then he ddd ies. Because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Zuko gave a small nod, unsure how much to really share with Sal. He had told him more than he had willingly shared with most people. Everyone knew he was looking for the Avatar, but very few people knew where the scar had come from. He didn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t like remembering what it was like to see the apathy on his father’s face when he had been burned. He tried to push away the feeling that Ursa would have tried to prevent it from happening. Ursa would have saved him. Ursa had already saved him. Because of that, she was gone. A shudder went through Zuko, and he half hoped that Sal hadn’t seen it.
“I’m going to find him,” he added, voice quiet. He had to sound certain. If he let himself doubt for even a moment that he would find the Avatar… well, then it was all over for him. He was going to find the Avatar. There was no question about it If he didn’t, then he wasn’t ever going to get home. He wasn’t ever going to get his honor back. What was a man without honor? He pushed that thought away as well. Sal knew the whole story, now, but he didn’t need to know all of Zuko’s feelings about it.

Everything?
Kelsier blinked at the ceiling of his small hideout, the words slicing through him like an icy wind. Of course, Nico was going to try to save her. Of course, Nico wouldn’t accept that she would stay dead, just because she was supposed to. Kelsier never would have, after all. He’d have been planning right now, if he’d been there, planning against the inevitable. Something was only impossible once you stopped trying, after all.
But he knew what else would have occurred to him by now, if he’d been there.
He sat up. He was safer here than he was out there, but he itched for movement, the risks of fighting almost seeming appealing. He could be captured, and he knew that was what Nico feared about this place more than anything else. Sitting still, however, was torture.
“I’m curious how you intend to do that,” he said finally, knowing he could easily be cutting Mare off. Especially now that he’d been quiet for a little while. Nico wouldn’t have forgotten he was there, but it was easier to settle into a conversation when you weren’t being interrupted all the time.

Mare glanced up, watching the kid for a long moment. It was a poetic sort of thought…the idea that you lived on in the hearts of the people who’d known you. A tiny, reluctant smile flitted across her expression for a moment, too quick to tell how sad it was, because that was a trait closer to her than to Kel, and the fact that Nico carried it made her feel a little undone. Like he’d learned it from her, somehow, though of course he hadn’t.
“I think that’s part of why we all want to be known so badly,” she told him, looking at the dust again. She began to copy the lines, her eyes narrowing in concentration as she did. “We’re all so afraid of being forgotten.”

Hera | Memory room | ®Hawkpath® |

As he spoke those last words, the room shifted again -space and station fogged and faded out, and then snapped into a wide open field - barren, empty. Ash falling like snow to the ground around them.

"What happened to your planet?" asked Hera, voice hushed with curiosity as she looked around at where they were standing, the barren landscape stretching out on all sides. "Why does it look like this?"

Nico hadn’t forgotten that Kelsier was there, but hearing him speak was… unexpected. He loved Kelsier, and he was grateful he was okay, but… he didn’t like what he had to say. The fact that saying it at all implied doubt. Nico didn’t blame Kelsier for doubting him. If there had been a way to save Mare, Kelsier would have tried to do it first. The thing was… Nico knew how she died. All he had to do was make sure that she lived. All he had to do was keep her alive a little bit longer, because that was when Kelsier had escaped from Hathsin. If they got past that point… would the House let him go? There was no more past to draw from in that case. If he lived that long… if they both did… would Kelsier get to see Mare again?
“I have the advantage of knowing how it happened,” Nico whispered, hoping that Mare didn’t ask what Kelsier had said. Nico would have been happy to facilitate a conversation between the two of them, but he would much rather help Mare survive long enough to talk to Kelsier herself. He couldn’t pretend he could fix the rift between them. He could just… give them a few more minutes to talk. He couldn’t summon Mare’s spirit in the House, so this was the closest he could come.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in my world’s Underworld,” Nico told Mare after a moment, hoping she would believe him. She had believed him so far, hadn’t she? Unless she was still just playing along… he shook the thought away. “I’ve spent a lot of time with the dead. And some of them… yeah, some of them don’t have anyone who still remembers them on Earth. But traces of them still exist. Things they aren’t even thinking about. And just because nobody remembers their name or their smile or the way they walked… they still exist. And they keep making a difference in the universe, even if they aren’t making a difference on Earth anymore. I don’t mean… to sound morbid, but… death isn’t the end of everything.”

Kelsier and Mare | Switcharoom | strider

It wasn’t doubt Kelsier had meant to imply, though he wouldn’t have been able to say Nico was wrong to think it. Nico was capable, and he was smart. Kel didn’t think he would leap straight to sacrificing himself, even for Mare.
The problem was that you didn’t have to leap straight to a conclusion in order to reach it. He knew what he himself would have thought, if he’d been there - this was a room and he had died in those before, she had already died once, she had given herself for him when there was no chance of her returning, what sort of coward would he be to fear a temporary death when she had looked a permanent one in the eye without flinching - but Nico didn’t carry the same guilt he did. Nico had never met her before this room, and there was none of her blood already on his hands.
Kelsier should have died there.. He already knew that.
His skin was beginning to react to the air again, he realized, the boils marring the scars his arms already bore. He wondered whether they would stay, once he blinked out. He didn’t know if boils like these even left scars.
He gave a quiet sigh. He should have been back there, not trapped here. He should have been with them, and he should have been able to save them both. Instead, he had to sit and wait and hide. Damn you, House.
“That’s not really an answer,” he told Nico, pulling himself to his feet and moving on. He needed more of the flames, anyway, if he was to survive this.

Mare glanced at him, puzzled, before she realized what the murmur meant. Kelsier had said something else, then. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been to her, or Nico would have told her, but it didn’t much matter. She didn’t think she could hope to figure it out just from Nico’s response.
She thought about asking, but something held her back. It could have been the knowledge that she was dead for Kel, now, but she didn’t think so…she shook her head, clearing it. Maybe she was just still trying to process that knowledge.
“What is your…Underworld…what is it like?” She asked quietly, her dark eyes resting on him instead of the dusty flowers between them. She knew it probably wasn’t the same as whatever she faced, if she faced anything at all, but there could have still been something to learn, couldn’t there? And who was to say, whether different worlds were all united at death?
That was an almost comforting thought, though she didn’t know why it would be.

“No, it’s not,” Nico conceded, letting his gaze drift down towards the ground and the flowers the two of them had etched into the dust. How often did guards come down here? Would they need to erase their drawings before someone found them and figured out who had been drawing things that the Skaa weren’t supposed to know about? Although… that begged the question whether the nobility were allowed to know about flowers, either. Was information being withheld from everyone, or just the Skaa? How deep did the inequality run? Did the nobility know how the world had been, before the Lord Ruler? Anger shot through Nico, though he had no way of finding that out. The only people he had been given the chance to meet in Kelsier’s world were Skaa, and they wouldn’t know.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Nico admitted after a moment, his words loud enough for Mare to hear without trouble. “But I’m going to do my best. I’ve done the impossible before. So have you. How… how hard could it be to do it again?” He tried to sound cockier than he felt. He didn’t know that he could save Mare, but who would he be if he didn’t at least try? He wasn’t going to leap straight towards dying for her, but if he had to… the chances were much higher that he would come back than she would. Nico had died in the House before and had been perfectly fine. Mare had never even been in the House. This was akin to her permanent death. If she died here, Nico highly doubted the House would bring her back.
“I… don’t know if my Underworld is at all similar to what happens after death for you,” Nico admitted, pulling his full attention back towards Mare. He rubbed at his arms, wincing where his hand came in contact with the scratches from reaching for geodes. He had scars on his arms from before, but they weren’t as numerous as these. The cuts were shallow, but there were so many of them… it was a miracle more of the prisoners didn’t die from infection.
“You’re judged based on what you did in life,” he continued, letting his eyes close as he let himself imagine the Underworld around them. “The really bad people are punished for eternity, and the people who just led ordinary lives have an eternity of… well, average, I suppose. It can be dreadfully boring, but… it’s not as lonely as it seems. It used to be that you forgot, when you died. You were forced to forget everything about your life before. It’s not like that anymore. But… the people who do extraordinary good, they get a paradise, when they die.”

“I don’t think I’m constrained by the things someone should have seen in their life,” Nico replied, giving a small shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never really tried to make dreams for anyone, if I’m honest. I just use it to talk to the Hypnos kids, sometimes. I guess… it feels a little bit like an invasion when I actually enter someone else’s dreams. It’s their head, and if they didn’t specifically invite me, then I kind of feel like I shouldn’t be there at all, you know?” he shrugged, a small blush touching his cheeks. He wouldn’t have wanted most people from Camp in his head, so he couldn’t imagine why any of them would want him in theirs. Besides, demigod dreams were often more revealing than other dreams. They were often warnings of the future or signs of something happening somewhere else. Things that the dreamer needed to know. Things that were often too personal for an intruder to sit in on. Nico squirmed a little at the idea of someone interrupting him while he was conversing with Hades in a dream. There were things said in those conversations that he didn’t want overheard by anybody.
“The point is, I don’t think it would be too hard to show you my world. If there’s something that your head can’t conceptualize, then… we’ll just have to leave that part out. But I don’t really think that’ll be an issue. It’s not like you have to understand how things work in my world in order to see them working.” He knelt down, letting his hand drift softly over the flowers. Letting some of the butterflies alight on his skin the way they had in that room so long ago. A couple weeks ago? A few days, maybe? It felt longer.
“If you think that something you choose to create isn’t as revealing as something you make subconsciously, you can’t read people as well as I thought,” Nico replied, something amused touching his voice. “What you chose to make tells me more than what your brain would have forced on you. It tells me about who you choose to be, which is more important than who you are on instinct.”

“I’m tired of learning the basics! I want to learn more advanced-” Zuko’s shout trailed off into nothingness as he realized he wasn’t facing Iroh anymore. As he realized he wasn’t even in his world. There was nobody here who could teach him how to do advanced firebending. He let out an annoyed grunt, shedding the top layer of his armor and kicking it angrily into the corner. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be back in his world, convincing Iroh that he was ready to learn how to firebend at the level he was at before the burning. He hadn’t been advanced then either, but he hadn’t been learning the basics, still. He couldn’t lightningbend like Azula could, but at least he had been pretty good at controlling his fire. He was getting back to that level now, but it had taken a long time. He was beginning to run out of patience. The Avatar would have mastered all four elements – how could Zuko defeat him if he only knew the basics of firebending? The rest of his crew knew more than the basics…
It took a few moments for the room to penetrate through Zuko’s mind. It wasn’t the living room. He wasn’t alone.
“Hey,” he said, his cheeks reddening just a little bit. It likely wasn’t noticeable to anyone who hadn’t known him a while. He glanced around, then kicked off his shoes and stepped onto one of the practice mats. It felt… well, it felt almost as good as coming home. A tiny smile flitted across his face as he bowed to the place in the room Master Piandao would have been, once.

Zuko let his gaze travel back to Sal, giving a small nod of approval once he realized that Sal, too, had removed his shoes. He didn’t know if Sal was actually interested in learning, but there were training swords here… it was similar to the place Zuko himself had learned how to fight. A place like this had been his home as much as the palace had been. He had certainly received more praise from Master Piandao than he had from his father. Not that his father had thought his sword fighting was particularly impressive… it was just something that sort of made up for how bad his bending was.
“I’m… trying to convince my uncle to teach me more advanced firebending,” he replied, his expression shifting for a long moment before he stepped forward and grabbed a set of blades from the wall. He held them out for a moment, testing their weight before he handed them over to Sal. They were a good set of blades, though probably not as comfortable as a set that was made specifically for someone. Zuko still remembered making his own blades with Piandao.
“Do… you want to learn how to use them?” he asked after a moment, realizing a second too late that he had jumped to a conclusion before actually checking on what Sal wanted.

“Good,” Zuko replied, stepping back to grab a dulled set of blades for himself before he returned to the practice mat. “It means you won’t have any bad habits you have to learn. It’s… a lot easier to learn from scratch than it is to relearn if you’ve had a bad master. Fortunately, I know what I’m doing. So if you listen to what I tell you, then you won’t ever have to unlearn it and relearn it. If someone tells you to… they’re a bad teacher. Which uh…” he blushed, this time the color in his cheeks a little more obvious. “Which isn’t to say that I’m a great teacher, just… that I learned from the best. I know what I’m doing, and that means I can see when what you’re doing is right. A lot of my training involved critiquing my own master. He wanted to teach me that nobody’s infallible.”
Zuko breathed out, eyes closing as he settled into position. “The swords should feel like an extension of each other, and an extension of your body.”

Zuko looked sharply up at Sal, eyes widening for a moment before he realized the other boy was probably joking. A nervous (but genuine) smile slid over his expression as he nodded.
“If… you do actually find something in my stance or fighting that could use improvement, let me know. A true master can learn as much from his student as his student learns from him. At least… that’s what Master Piandao said. I… don’t have any experience teaching anyone, so I guess I wouldn’t know.” His blush deepened, but he pushed the thought away, melting into position.
“You’ve seen me use my swords, but… not often. And not the way they’re meant to be used. I think… it might be helpful for me to do a demonstration. If you want, I mean. So you can see what I mean by having the blades as extensions of yourself. They’re weapons, yes, but when used properly, they aren’t as unwieldy and heavy as they seem now.”

Zuko felt the glass shatter as he rammed his way through, the fragments cutting his skin as he flew past them. He didn’t think to glance at Sal, just tried to brace himself for landing on the other side of the glass. It had been level with the floor he’d been standing on. He didn’t hit the ground on the other side. He looked down, eyes widened as he realized there was a chasm directly beneath him.
“Fisher!” he screamed, eyes widening as he scrabbled to grab at something. In the split second he had, the only portion of his companion’s name he could remember was the surname. He held his breath, hand catching on the broken glass he had just broken through. He wouldn’t be able to hang on for long with the sharp edge digging into his palm. He searched desperately for the person who had been screaming, but there was nobody now…

Zuko glanced at Sal, dipping his head and getting into position once more. He breathed, letting the feeling of the moment take over him as he began to demonstrate some of the beginner forms that Piandao had taught him. He was used to adjusting his technique to the opponent he was facing, but he didn’t do so now. There was no opponent, after all, and he likely wasn’t going to get beyond the basics with Sal today. He needed to see what those looked like in action.
Zuko pictured an enemy in front of him, all of his attention focused on the invisible foe. His movements were smooth, blending seamlessly into each other to the point it nearly looked like a dance. When he was finished, he lowered the swords and bowed, barely out of breath.
“There,” he said, returning to his starting position. “You have to feel the connection with the steel.”