ic The Innocent

[Gizmo]

Trevor subtly raised one hand in a forestalling gesture, taking note of the guards still within earshot. Producing a minimalist business card from an inner pocket of his jacket, he handed it to Aquaria with a small tilt of his chin, saying, "Continue later." That done, he led Erin back down the hall the way they'd come until they had a modicum of privacy.

"Good news: Jesse had nothing to do with Accolon's family. He mistook her." Pausing for a moment, the taciturn detective considered his wording carefully before proceeding. "From medieval world Merlin created. Anchored like you, evidently, remembers that reality. Remembers his family there. ...remembers who restored this world." Trevor was silent, giving Erin a chance to absorb the implication on her own.

[Avenger Assembled]

His eyes never broke from hers, and his voice never rose above a whisper - but Blue Jay had been among enough to know honest hatred even in the most restrained of voices. "<Your mockery means nothing to me, child. Aye, once you might have roused me to great rage - but I feel nothing now but the knowledge of what I am called to do. Go from me, if you have not the stomach to finish what you started. If you will not be hot or cold, then I shall vomit you from my mouth.>" He pointed that finger at her again, and she could see the muscles twitching in his good arm. "<But in the name of our Savior and St. Jude the Apostle, I do swear that I will restore to life what has been taken from us all. There will be no more families torn apart, no more lives ended, by your spells and curses. This world of lies will fall, and you and your friends will fall with it.>"

[Raveled]

Blue Jay shook her head, bewildered at the sad, angry man in the bed speaking French. "<I never heard of St. Jude,>" she said, "<but I've never met a god I put trust in. Especially not one made of metal. If you're going to cry over the Curator, you deserve to be in here.>" She took a step towards the door, and paused. "<I don't do spells or curses,>" she said. "<I do arrows. If you hurt my friends, you will learn exactly how well I do them.>"

She walked out of the room, rubbing at her eyes. None of this made sense, and the late night was beginning to creep back up on her. "Dr. Cleary," she said to the psychiatrist outside the room, "how long has Accolon been here? And why was he locked up, exactly?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Cleary, who had been watching on a closed-circuit camera, looked deeply depressed as Blue Jay emerged. "He was picked up in early January near Freedom Hall on a public disturbance charge - when he struck the FCPD officers with hyperkinetic reflexes, it became an issue for the meta-criminal justice program. Initially he was a psych case. He claimed to be a native of Ville d'Ys, visiting the city with his now-missing family, who had been taken away by 'wizards and knights plotting against our godly world.' When our research showed that Ville d'Ys is a city from medieval French folklore, it seemed pretty straightforward that he was a disassociative case." Cleary cut the channel to the now-silent Accolon. "The Atoms checked him out and he's not from an alternate universe - his dimensional signature shows he's from Earth-Prime. A few months after he appeared, he made restitution for his crimes and convinced the Providence authorities he was not a threat to himself or others. He was a trusty at Providence for three months, and when he showed good behavior he was transferred here. If not for this incident, he probably would have been released at the end of the year." 

 

He perked up as they were joined in the hallway outside the medical bay by two others. "Ah, here are Ms. White's contacts. They may be able to help shed some light onto this situation." 

[Raveled]

Blue Jay frowned at the date. That was all wrong for someone who came from the Curator's world. And a reference to Ville d'Ye's made no sense; she was pretty sure the Curator had only recreated real cities. Unless he went mad on that world and when he returned to this one... No, focus Tona. Overly-elaborate theories weren't going to help her, here. She should just meet with Ms. White's associates. Wait, Ms. White? What that the one that looked like --

Wander was in the corridor, with a young man it took Tona a minute to recognize. He was tall, wearing black, and had black glass over his eyes. Tona felt her heart begin hammering and a wave of excitement wash away her fatigue when she realized that she in the presence of two of the Slayers of Omega. And this time he would recognize her and they could talk -- if she didn't wimp out like last time and leave without saying anything.

She schooled herself mentally, took a deep breath, and nodded coolly to the two heroes.

[Electra]

"Good news: Jesse had nothing to do with Accolon's family. He mistook her." Pausing for a moment, the taciturn detective considered his wording carefully before proceeding. "From medieval world Merlin created. Anchored like you, evidently, remembers that reality. Remembers his family there. ...remembers who restored this world." Trevor was silent, giving Erin a chance to absorb the implication on her own.

 

Erin paled as the impact of his words struck her, shaking her head immediately. "That can't be right," she replied, her voice a vehement whisper. "That world existed for barely a day, it popped out of nowhere, it was never really real  How could it have generated new people?" The answer struck her immediately; Jessie herself was from a world that had likely existed for no more than a few hours, yet she was perfectly real. "But... there was nothing else we could've done! What were we supposed to do, let reality be unwritten? Why wasn't he changed back along with everyone else?" She rubbed her hands over her face, struggling to absorb the implications of Roland's claims. 

 

She shoved her concerns aside for the moment when Cleary reappeared, this time with Blue Jay in tow. She nodded cordial recognition to the young woman, then turned baleful attention to Cleary. "You might have mentioned," she suggested, her voice crisp almost to the point of snapping, "that the reason Jessie 'attacked' another resident was because he screamed at her and tried to stab her in the face. And you might have given her some reassurance that she wasn't in trouble, in which case she might not be in her room with her bags packed, terrified that you're going to send her back to prison!" 

 

With a deep breath, she took a deliberate step back, keeping more than arms reach between herself and the target of her ire. "Has Roland said anything yet?" she asked Blue Jay. 

[Raveled]

Blue Jay glanced between Wander and Dr. Cleary; apparently there was a lot of emotion in the Brave right now. "Too much and nothing at all," Blue Jay said. "He talked about me, 'the golem, the circus freak, and,' um, you, I suppose." She shrugged. "He admits he attacked the police officers, but he keeps insisting this world is the wrong one. And he says he'll bring his world back. But," she added, glancing back at the room, "I don't think he'll be doing too much from an infirmary. Not for a few weeks, at least."

Edited June 16, 2014 by Raveled

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'll go speak to Jessie about her status," offered Cleary, who was evidently choosing the better part of valor when dealing with the angry powerhouse and her friends. "With everything I've heard today, I don't think there'll be any issues with her remaining at Project Freedom." On the monitor behind him, Roland Accolon was clearly visible, his eyes wide in a thousand-yard stare. He was obviously much more badly hurt than Jessie, and his confinement to the guarded medical wing had certainly been deserved. His lips were moving, and pressing a button on the observation screen gave them all an audio feed from his room. "Kyrie, eléison; Christe, eléison;, Kyrie, eléison; Christe, audi nos; Christe, axáudi nos," he went on and on, murmuring in a deep-voiced Latin thick with emotions that he'd kept hidden as he spoke to Blue Jay earlier. 

[Gizmo]

"Geai Bleue," Trevor greeted the teenager calmly with a shallow nod that carried the weight of a polite bow. The dark haired heir knew well enough to stay out of Erin's way as she hotly confronted Cleary, falling back to keep an eye on the situation as a whole. He didn't have any good answers concerning Accolon's predicament; for all their experience with alternate realities, parallel timelines and multiversal duplicates the harder he tried to understand the governing rules of such things the more the shifted like sand squeezed between fingers.

Listening to the Claremont student's report, he made a faint murmur of understanding. "Hronos, Fast-Forward," he supplied, trusting the archer would fill in the gaps quickly enough. Given the flicker of expression on her face when she'd seen him walking behind Erin he could only assume she'd already made an intuitive leap regarding his identity. For all he knew she'd already seen him without his mask during the day long overlay of their world. As a refugee from the Terminus and one of the group rescued from the Curator's worldship he hoped Blue Jay harboured enough good will toward him to avoid taking advantage of that information.

[Raveled]

Blue Jay moved to stand next to Midnight, not inclined in any way to get between Wander and anyone Wander felt like yelling at. She wondered for a moment why he was mentioning the two heroes that, besides herself and Wander, had been unaffected by the magic Merlin had wrought when Accolon was from the Curator’s wo--

Oh. She kept her mouth shut to avoid her embarrassment. It was exciting enough to be standing next to the Marksman, after all, and to be in the same room again as the Brave. Although, his words got her thinking. “I thought the magic spell just changed people,†she said, quietly enough to avoid Cleary’s attention. “But if that’s the case, why does Accolon remember that world? Did it… did it create new life?†She felt a chill as she considered the logical corollary; that when they had ended the spell and destroyed that world, they had killed even Accolon had known.

[Electra]

Erin nodded to Blue Jay, mentally filing away all the anger and guilt to work through later. "All right, at least I can straighten him out on a couple of things, like who he's really mad at. You," she said to Cleary, in a voice that wasn't a request, "go talk to Jessie and tell her she's not in trouble. Maybe even get her to unpack her bug-out bag if you can." 

 

She turned her gaze to Trevor and Blue Jay, looking lost for a moment. "Do we know anything about what happens when universes overwrite each other, like what happens to whatever gets smoothed away in the merge? Maybe... I dunno, maybe Mark would know, or somebody smart like Dr. Atom. I don't know what we're going to tell this guy about how his world got destroyed, or what happened to his family."

 

Squaring her shoulders, Wander walked into the secure ward and stood at the foot of Accolon's bed, waiting for him to notice her. It didn't take long, that thousand-yard stare snapped to attention on her within moments. "I hear there was a misunderstanding here earlier," she said neutrally, her voice flat. "If you're looking to take out your anger on somebody, Jessie's not the one you want. I am." 

Edited June 24, 2014 by Electra

[Avenger Assembled]

Roland stared at Erin, his battered face warring between uncertainty and anger. "Your sister?" he inquired. For the first time, hesitation showed in those fanatical eyes. "I am sorry. I would not have struck her if I had known." His eyes narrowed and he stared down the length of his hawklike nose at her. "But you are still the enemy of my soul. By the Grace of God and the blessings of our Saint Eligius, I will heal this wounds within a week, even if I do it behind the iron bars of your gaol. But here I am now, helpless for you to do as you will.  Do you have more stomach than the girl with the bow?" he asked her. "I will not rest until you and yours are defeated and what has been taken from me has been restored." 

[Electra]

Erin kept her hands loose at her sides, her feet flat on the floor. Unarmed, in her civilian clothes, a faint smear of axle grease on her cheek, she didn't look like much of a threat. Of course, someone who'd just been put through a wall by the even less imposing Jessie would probably not be fooled by that impression. "I'm not here to hurt you," she told him, "but you aren't going to want to hear what I have to say. Your world is gone, and it's never coming back. The reality that you know was a spell, overlaid onto this world that exists now, by a villain looking for more power and a hero trying to stop him. Your world, your village, you, everything that you remember, existed for less than a day before we changed it all back. I don't know why you're still here and why you remember when nobody else does. I'm sorry." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"So, what?" demanded Roland, and though that sneer was still in his voice, listeners could hear an undertone of desperation gnawing his words. He was keeping it together, barely, but between his injuries and his agitated state his heartrate was racing on the medical monitors - this was not a healthy conversation for him to have. "Would you have me just abandon my home, my wife, my family, because you say our world was false!? My little Ihanna is just eight years old, she calls me her drôle papa when I put her to bed at night, she is not a LIE!" His breath was ragged and pained now, his good hand clenching into a fist. "If not you, then who was it? Who was it that snuffed out all that we were, all that we might have been, like blowing out so many candles?"  

[Gizmo]

Trevor did not answer Blue Jay's question directly, instead pulling out a palm sided tablet computer from his jacket. With a few swift taps he brought forth a stream of information, eyes darting back and forth behind his sunglasses as he flicked from page to page, thread to thread, following up on crumbs of information, sifting through oceans of data and rotating the pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle in his mind. "Ville d'Ys? Saint Eligius. Hhn." Slipping the tablet away again he took long, even strides that carried him into Accolon's ward.

"Patron of clockmakers." The words were soft but precise, enunciated so as to be perfectly clear without being clipped or harsh, drawing attention to the dark haired young man standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. "Strength. Accelerated healing. Some speed, likely. And temporal inertia." That last entry to the list of the powers Accolon had demonstrated was meant more for Erin, the term likely meaning little enough to anyone without their repeated exposure to reality altering powers and time-travel abuse. "Gifted abilities. You're a champion. Charged as a protector."

[Avenger Assembled]

"...aye, by the grace of God. Any guild has enemies, especially one with wealth and power, and ears in every fine court." said Roland, staring oddly at Trevor. "I guard their vaults and defend them against their enemies, as I have sworn to do on behalf of the blessed Saint himself and Mother Mary. I have not the craftsman's art myself, but I have had the blessings of St. Eligius since the accident with the blessed orrey ten years ago. I can run, and fight, and heal my own wounds. I have not the speed of your friend the circus freak, but I have speed enough for all that. But I am no saint, sir," he went on. "If you think to buy me with some guild now. The oaths I swore were for men now gone and in a place now lost to me." 

[Raveled]

Tona was feeling acutely uncomfortable. She had come here expecting a villain of some sort, but Accolon's situation had a weird resonance with her own; they had both been shoved out of their worlds to come to this one, but Tona had come here to train, and she knew she would be back to save everyone. Accolon had been ripped from his world and didn't know if he would ever go back. Tona didn't even know it was possible.

She didn't want to confront him, even with the Marksman and the Brave in there. Instead, she turned to talk to Cleary. "Does Accolon have any family on record? Any... any next of kin or something like that?"

[Electra]

Erin had been silent while Trevor spoke to Accolon, scowling at the floor while she clenched and unclenched her fists. Finally she looked up and broke back into the conversation. "It was me," she told Roland flatly. "I led the team that broke the spell and undid the universe that you remember. It was to save our universe and everything we've ever known, but it still happened. Your powers kept you from disappearing with the rest of the changed universe, but the rest of your world is gone now. As far as I know, there's no way to change that back, and if there were, it would mean erasing the lives of everyone who exists now, and we can't let you do that. But if you need someone to blame, blame me, not the other heroes, and definitely not Jessie." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Roland was silent for a few moments, taking long, deep breaths as he tried to calm himself. When he could speak again, he focused on Erin. "And I struck with hasty, mortal intent at your sister. The fault was mine. If I would be your enemy for that, or hers, then let me be your enemy." His jaw tightened as he looked at Erin. "Whether done for good or for ill, the deed cannot be undone." 

 

- 

 

"No, nothing," said Cleary, who had discreetly returned while the heroes were occupied. "At least, none the conventional authorities were able to find." Like many regular citizens of Freedom City, he was evidently comfortable letting superpeople handle super problems. "It's such a tragedy; but perhaps now there'll be some resolution. I wonder, if he is from an alternate universe, if the French authorities would any better at finding his double." He relaxed. "The good news is, Jessie White is unpacking her bags and her suitemate is helping repaint her room." 

[Gizmo]

The double-edged way Accolon phrased his ultimatum sat poorly with Trevor, who walked a few steps further into the room, placing his back to the camera streaming them to those watching outside and facing the displaced man impassively. "Hhn. Fatalistic." The word was soft and carefully spoken but there was a note of admonishment in his stance. "Enough of blame, enemies. Choices to make." His gaze burned though his sunglasses directly into the Frenchman's eyes, pitting the dark haired detective's considerable presence against Accolon's attempt to fixate on Erin. "Infinite worlds. Could search for one closest to yours. May be a Roland Accolon here. Could search for him." Shoulders squared and jaw set, there was very little of the unimposing socialite to be seen out of the camera's view. "Could ask if protecting others was a job or the right thing to do." Each syllable carried just as much weight as Accolon's recited prayers.

[Electra]

Erin waited to hear Roland's reply, but when the refugee was silent, she spoke up instead. "Jessie's not my sister, you know. She's my double from another dimension. Both of us are doubles to the woman who really belongs here on Earth Prime. Our worlds were destroyed and we had nowhere else to go. I lost my whole family, and when I came to this world all I could feel was anger and grief. I've been here six years now and it still hurts. But the heroes here, they gave me the same chance they're giving you, to put all that pain towards doing something good, saving other lives. It doesn't change the past, but it helps." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Roland remained silent so long it was briefly as if he was ignoring the heroes entirely - until finally he spoke. "What is Creation, then, if all our hopes can be snuffed out so? If all our oaths, and our protections of those we love, and all our fights for justice, and all we have known and never known," he added with a look Trevor's way full of great grief, "can be banished like dust in the wind, on your world, and...your other, and in mine?" He took a deep, shuddering breath and asked a question.  "You said this Jessie White was you from another world, and you yourself come from the same place, and there is a third of you yet who belongs here. Is there another Roland Accolon? Another Genevive and our blessed little girl? Can some shadow of what we were still be seen in this place that has burned away all else?"