ic contact

[14thcommander]

It's Hange, Hange, Hange! Were you looking for me? I'll get back to you posthaste. Or when it's convenient.

[ communicator & actionspam it's all good ]

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[tetractys]

Bill makes a grumbly non-verbal sound and starts heading up to hang out in a corner of the ceiling. No pillow, only become corner spider.

Oh, an orange.

Bill squints tiredly at the orange, takes it with one long delicate spaghetti. He's been dragging his usual little communicator-bag along the ground behind him, and he reaches inside of it to retrieve a little movie-theater-sized bag of peanut M&Ms. Puts in Hange's hand in place of the orange. Okay. Deal.

"HE'S PROBABLY DEAD."

[14thcommander]

Oh, oh, M&Ms. Lark fed some of these to her. Hange rips the rag open and eats a few and vanishes into her kitchen again to retrieve bread, cold sausage, apricot preserves that are almost the last of what she bought in Constantinople.

"Getting bumped off the barge means a return to, uh, default, right? He's probably dead and I hope he doesn't remember us."

Hange pushes the sausages towards Rhys. Eat. Eat them.

[therushingsky]

"I should have made him tell me how to get to the Netherworld." Rhys comments, quietly furious with himself. He straightens the plate of sausage a little, which is enough like eating that it might distract people from the fact that he's not in the mood to eat right now, "He would have done anything for me. I could have made him tell me, and then I'd be able to go after him. At least I'd be able to try."

He knocks back the last of his drink, before wiping his mouth and glancing back towards the bottle.

Sausage he can take or leave, but another drink...

[tetractys]

Not the kind of dead he meant, exactly, but Bill is remembering his conversation with Beetlejuice about the mechanics of the afterlife and how no one vanishes the way they would in a normal universe... eh.

Bill has gone up to skulk in the ceiling with his orange, which is coming apart under the attentions of four or five moving wires. He likes oranges because they have many many parts to take apart, it's like a puzzle became a fruit. Reminds him of Credence, too. Long story.

"IF HE COULDN'T ESCAPE USING THE NETHERWORLD, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO FOLLOW HIM USING IT EITHER."

[14thcommander]

Hange's room has thick exposed joists, under a slanted, whitewashed ceiling. Bill's Christmas gifts of mountain bike and skis are rigged to hang up among the beams so he has company.

The hostess seems to have gotten quiet, herself. She eats a sausage with stony, contemplative air and then follows Rhys' gaze to the booze and makes a tipping gesture with one hand. Help yourself.

[therushingsky]

Rhys will accept the invitation and absolutely help himself to a second glass.

"He never tried. He didn't even like talking about it because he hated the Netherworld and loved the Barge."

And maybe it wouldn't have worked either way, but Rhys could have tried. He puts the booze bottle back down, sulking into the glass.

[tetractys]

"HE NEVER TRIED?"

Okay, that was a little bit of an anger shriek. No, no, okay, no, there's no point. Bill gathers himself and starts making a line of orange segments on one of the joists, as if he's setting up a firing squad.

"FORD DISAPPEARED ONCE. HAD TO START ALL OVER."

[14thcommander]

Woah buddy. Bill has that pitcher of margarita, but Hange pours him some bourbon and reaches the glass up over her head. Drink more.

"People don't usually turn up again, do they?"

[therushingsky]

"He didn't want to go back there." Rhys insists quiet and stubborn, "It would have been giving up on the chance to be alive again."

Talking about the possibility of him showing up again softens the blow a little. Having Betelgeuse arrive again with no memory of them would be bad, but-- he's pretty sure even an amnesiac Betelgeuse would jump back in on three friendships with zero prompting.

[tetractys]

"WOULDN'T HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR IT, BUT BUCKY BARNES HAS COME BACK ABOUT FIVE TIMES NOW..."

So it can happen.

Bill looks at the bourbon. What does he trade for this? Hm. He's decided these are bartender rules, and he will repay her afterwards. He reaches to take the drink, sets it on the rafter.

[14thcommander]

Hange is thinking of the future. There's a fundamental coldness to her sometimes, and it lets her do things like this. A little less than a year's worth of work might be gone, but less than a year's worth of work is tantamount to nothing. She's failed worse, and harder.

"Yeah," she replies vaguely to Rhys. "You know, I was never all that clear on if his afterlife was so lonely because that was how it was built, or if he just - didn't meet people, or couldn't cultivate them somehow... Bill, keep Gortys' deal, but if I disappear from the barge, promise to raise the roof until another wardens donates mine to me."

[therushingsky]

"Wait, what are you guys doing with Gortys's deal?"

Rhys asks, glancing up between them, still nursing his drink.

[tetractys]

"I WAS GOING TO BRING BACK MY STUPID HOME DIMENSION."

His enthusiasm for that idea kind of goes back and forth. Right now he's firmly on: Nah, fuck em.

"LOOK, DON'T MAKE A DECISION RIGHT NOW. LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS."

Hange's communicator beeps, and from his position in the ceiling, Bill's eye flicks towards it.

[14thcommander]

“I’ll leave it as is right now.”

She is Determined, not that she looks it at the moment, hunched over the tea table, head resting heavily in hand. This will Happen. Also she’s not answering that.

[therushingsky]

"Fucking. Stupid." Rhys says, low and soft, "Tiffany was telling me-- the list of things she's tried to do with her deals that he won't give her. We can make and unmake whole universes, but she asks him to use her deal to do anything about this place, and gets blown off."

The fact that she's still waiting for an inmate who disappeared years ago to return feels. Pretty significant right now. He takes another swig of liquor, placidly ignoring Hange's blinking communicator.

[tetractys]

"WE NEED TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN."

Very casual, as if arson is a trip to the grocery store. Bill floats down to peer at the comm resentfully, drink in hand. It's still not his, he doesn't actually pick it up -

"HEY. IT'S THE BIG GUY. WERE YOU WAITING ON SOMETHING FROM HIM?"

[14thcommander]

"Eeuuhhhhh..."

Responsibly, she should probably say something about this.

Hange does not want to be responsible. She wants to wallow for at least twelve hours. She does not scold Bill or Rhys for the seditious sentiments.

"Uh, I asked him about Betelgeuse, if he'd really disappeared..."

She sort of reaches for the comm like enh! but it is a weak and drunken reach, a not-very-invested reach.

[therushingsky]

"With all of us inside it."

Rhys agrees, because what's the point in trying to do it right? What's the point in trying not to hurt anyone? People get hurt anyway. People work and work and disappear.

He finishes his drink, then reaches for the liquor again.

"His cabin's definitely gone. Unless the Admiral is just evicting people other than me now, that only means one thing."

[tetractys]

"SURE, YEAH. I MEAN, FULL DISCLOSURE, YOU COULD PUNT THIS THING THROUGH A STAR AND I'D COME OUT FINE ON THE OTHER SIDE- "

Bill drifts down, bumps the comm with a few tendrils to center it to how he's looking at it.

" ... BULLSHIT."

He picks it up, hustles it over to Hange. "YELL AT HIM."

[14thcommander]

"Gghhhnnn."

Hange makes a somewhat drunk noise. As she is prodded. It requires some grinding of knuckles in her eye before she can see properly, and parse the message Bill is showing her.

"Hey. Hey. What the hell?"

[therushingsky]

"What?"

Rhys has just poured himself another drink as they've been chatting, and he leans forward to peer at the communicator, squinting to read it upside-down.

He makes out one word. The only one that matters.

"Holy shit-- Is that for real? Does this mean he isn't-- Holy shit he isn't dead!"

There's a rush of absolute joy-- It'll take a minute for this being the most savage dumping of his life to catch up to it.

[tetractys]

"WHAT?"

Bill crowds in now, too.

"...YOUR DEAL!"

Okay, look, Beetlejuice is his friend, but at the moment nothing has actually changed for Bill about never seeing him again because he vanished, so. He's got priorities.

[14thcommander]

"I..."

Hange is feeling a really cosmic mix of emotions right now. Is this... happiness? Is this...... drastically increased stress??? Is this......... DECREASED stress? What IS it? She should be bouncing off the walls, but instead she just sits there, trying to parse this.

"Oh! You can keep Gortys' deal! This is great!"

She knows what emotion to have about that.

[therushingsky]

Rhys laughs, a tiny explosion of loose relief, before his mood settles a little bit.

"Haa-- that asshole. I can't believe he just bailed on us."

Thinking of Betelgeuse alive and on a pleasure cruise or something, It's so much less bad than thinking of him-- reset. As lonely as he was before he arrived.

Still, it's not great. He takes another drink.

[tetractys]

"OR HE GRADUATED AND THEN, FELL OFF THE SHIP, LIKE WARDENS CAN DO TOO."

Bill is back in the rafters, has skipped the straw, and is drinking straight from the blender.