deercountry | i couldn't stand the person inside me, i turned all the mirrors around

who: kylo ren + you
what: intro and settling in
where: throughout
when: June, around tdm time

I.

Kylo Ren doesn't cope well with being displaced as he is. Not when the Force around him feels... strange. Not quite as full of life, perhaps dull and muted is the word to use? He doesn't know -- he's gotten the introduction, read the leaflet, listened to the chatter on the beach he'd woken up in a body that felt just ever so slightly off. Like a pair of trousers that once fit but needed to be adjusted for whatever reason.

Now that that disorientation had passed, he picked up the bag of his belongings: a sodden cape, leather gloves, the hilt (which goes on his belt) and the broken pieces of the mask (which he nearly throws back into the ocean upon finding them), and moves throughout the city. For a man so tall, and dressed all in black his attempts at blending in might seem somewhat laughable, as does his not-so-sunny disposition, a scowl that seems almost etched onto his features.

He brushes through the crowd without much of a word or pleasantry to anyone.

And force help anyone who wants to catch his eye.

II. (nightmares)

The way Kylo has always avoided the nightmares and memories that typically plague his sleep? Work and train himself into exhaustion, until his mind is too tired to dream at all. Normally, it works well enough, he can function and behave normally - or as normally as Kylo Ren does. Here, without a purpose or cause to cling to, he feels a bit... lost. And it's simpler to lose track, so he begins to have nightmares. Violent, and vivid. Plunging his lightsaber through his father's heart, the way his uncle had stared down at him, and his only friend -- Tai, being cut down by Ren.

It doesn't only happen during the night, but in the day as well. He pulls himself out of a dream, standing straight where he'd nearly slumped over where he stood to shake the dust out of his mind.

"Don't bother. I don't require any assistance." He says to any single onlooker or one attempting to reach him.

III. (wildcard)

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Almost everyone," she said. She had a good memory. Which was one of many reasons why she'd been an excellent spy. "You seem rather memorable," she added. "You're awfully tall!"

Of course, compared to her, almost everyone was tall. Usagi and Varian had been two of the very few people she'd ever seen literally eye-to-eye with.

Gods, she missed Varian!

But back to the present and to the stranger at hand. "Well, welcome to Trench, I suppose. I know it can be a bit of jarring place, at first. But it's also a truly wonderful opportunity, I think."

"So I am aware." Tall and all in black makes Kylo a sight that's hard to miss and rather memorable. He can give her those: tall and hard to miss in black attire.

Instinctively, he hunches his shoulders down ever so slightly.

"Mm. Appreciate it, I suppose. I've yet to really come to any conclusion on either." Jarring, yes. Dreams of a different body, waking on the shore with his memories all scrambled --

"Can I ask you as to how your arrival to this place was? Was it so..."

Kylo trails off.

"...fishy."

She smiled sweetly, giving him a little bit of a nod. "Yes. That's how everyone arrives. And how everyone who leaves...leaves." The symmetry provided a very small measure of comfort. At least you usually knew where the people you missed were.

Except for those rare instances when they returned home completely and came back without remembering you and over a year and a half of memories.

...not that she was still hurting from that or anything.

"Don't worry. The smell goes away!"

"I don't suppose anyone has tried to swim out, have they." As a fish, or human--though strangely enough the desire to leave isn't strong or persistent. There's an odd sense of belonging, and he's well aware that's it not natural.

... wait, does he still smell like sea water? Kylo gives a subtle sniff. As he's thinking that perhaps he could use another shower just in case, something about this woman strikes him... odd.

"You look like someone I've met here. Uncannily so."

Ariadne's smile dimmed. It was just barely perceptible, but it happened all the same. As much as she loved the multiverse, this was a part that she came dangerously close to hating.

"Padmé or Sabé?" she asked, biting on the inside of her cheek.

There was also that strange 'Jane' person that she'd heard of once or twice in Deerington. But given the number of people that Trench seemed to reel in from Anakin and Obi-Wan's world...she figured the odds were against poor Jane.

His brow raises ever so slightly as he notes the slight change in demeanor, but Kylo doesn't bring attention to it. Perhaps a sore spot? Also there's another one, one he does not know of by name or appearance but perhaps similar enough to his grandmother it's worth trying to learn more.

"Sounds as if you hear this often. Padmé. I am not familiar with any others bearing her resemblance."

"I hear it a lot," she said. And once upon a time, it hadn't bothered her all that much. Not until Anakin Skywalker came into her life and decided to...

Well, he hadn't ruined her life. Not really.

But not for lack of trying.

Even now, she was still furious with him. And Ariadne wasn't made to be angry, so she didn't really know what to do with the feeling. It just sort of...was.

"I'm afraid that I'm not from their world, though," she said. "Has anyone explained to you...the multiverse?"

There's a story there, Kylo feels. Though he's not one to pry, not intentionally, not without the need.

"Mm. No, I'm afraid not. I've heard of it in theory, but it's never been more than that: a theory."

A head tilt.

"But from the sound of it, that means they can pull us from different galaxies and different points of time within them."

"And different universes completely," she said. Ariadne only had the vaguest sense of what a 'galaxy' was, but she knew that universes contained them--sometimes many of them--so universes had to be bigger. "Sometimes, you might encounter two different versions of the same person, made different only by one slight change, one different choice. And more often than not, you'll encounter someone who's never even heard of something you think of as mundane, familiar."

Ariadne smiled and shrugged. As if to say, 'What can you do?' She had gotten to a point where she anticipated it.

But not to a point where she took it for granted.

"It's extraordinary, really. In Trench, you have the opportunity to meet people you were never supposed to meet. Never could meet!"

"I have met someone -- two someones like that already." Both his grandparents died before he'd even been born. Anakin had been somewhat not at all what he expected, but Padme. Strange how little he'd wondered or known of his grandmother before now.

There are more. Others, but...

"You seem to take this all in stride. Like you've been here a while." Kylo's not sure, that even with whatever compulsion to feel a sense of belonging that he can feel... that at ease. Even with the new opportunities offered, he's not particularly trusting that a seemingly simply fine or good thing will remain that.

"Have you?"

She nodded, offering a smile that she hoped would put him at ease. The poor man seemed so...tense. Which, of course, made perfect sense given the situation. But it was possible there was something...more.

The way he said that he'd met people...

Well, she would have to learn more about whatever world had brought him here.

Later, of course. Not wasn't the time to pry too much.

"I suppose you could say that I've been in the multiverse...goodness! Two years already." She was only nineteen when she arrived in Deerington. And now she was more than twenty-one. "I wouldn't say it's been the best two years of my life, but it's been rewarding, I suppose. It can be liberating to be separated from your own world. At least, mine, I would say."

i couldn't stand the person inside me, i turned all the mirrors around

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