We drown traitors in shallow water [post t5]

[chiseler]

[There are a lot of things Luke could have said about the trial and the way things played out. There's a lot of things Luke could have said about someone like Kazuma fooling all of them and the anger people felt...but he won't. He won't say anything about it to just anyone.

He won't talk about how he gets it. How he knows first-hand what that's like. How he's hardly affected by this at all. It's a pretty fucked up situation, but...over the course of the last week he's come to find there are people on this ship that are a little more delicate and need to be watched over. It's sort of like watching kids back at Camp again before everything went to hell.

Adam Parrish is one of those people. He hadn't stuck around for most of the after trial, but later in the evening he continues to think about the fact that Adam was genuinely upset about the betrayal.

...gods, why did coming back mean having to feel things again? Uggggggh. So maybe he feels bad. And maybe he's a little worried but Adam has other people to look after him, doesn't he? But what if they're busy? What if they also have problems and he's left alone and it turns into bitterness and angst and anger and--

--yeah he doesn't get much time to think on all of that before he finds himself in front of Adam's door. So he pauses, scrubbing a hand over his face before curling his hand into a fist and knocking.]

Parrish, you in there?

Comments

[antietam]

[ Now he really has to process that. That hits him harder than everything else, which is weird. Luke was talking about holding up the sky, but that's something Adam can't even imagine. He has no idea how that would work. He can imagine death.

But Luke is right next to him and fine. He thinks about Hancock and how he specified that he wasn't a zombie, that he never died. And here Luke is, the real zombie. What do you say to that? Rest in peace? Sorry about that? ]

So... you're the hero. [ Of something he caused, but it didn't sound like he had much of a choice. Sure, Luke is biased, but that doesn't really matter. Adam isn't looking for facts. ] I guess you don't know what'll happen if you make it out. [ Will he go back to being dead? He doesn't really want to think about that. He could get a new chance at life. ] Have you tried asking?

[chiseler]

[...this...surprisingly went okay. That's about the only reason that Luke decides he's finally fine with turning his head to look at Adam even with both eyebrows raised. But then again, he's deduced that Adam's either from a world where weird shit happens in other ways, or he's just amazingly chill. Probably the former.]

Yup. I'm the hero of the prophecy and for years people like my parents and Hal knew that, I think. Or at least knew that I'd be on the path to that. And Annabeth's knife was the cursed blade because I'm the one who accidentally cursed it. I don't know how she did it, but...she got to me. [Because he cared about her. He already knows that. It's the next question that leaves him sort of floundering again.] There's no way I'm asking Alice something like that. Besides...I already know what'll happen to me if I make it out. [He huffs.] Heroes go to Elysium. They get the chance to try for rebirth. Pretty sure I was on my way to Tartarus to be sorted before I was pulled here instead. So...you can see why some people might thing I'm a better target if they knew all of that. I don't have anything to go back to because as soon as I go back, I'm starting over as somebody else. Or going back to being dead. Nobody needs to know I can try for rebirth.

[antietam]

[ This all sounds horrible. Does anything good happen where Luke's from? Because it sounds like Luke was born just to sacrifice himself for... something. Adam isn't entirely sure what the point was of powering a titan just to destroy him. Harmony? Something Luke will never get to see?

The idea of rebirth gives him a little hope but then Luke says starting over. Which, for Luke, might be nice, but... ] You wouldn't have any memories if you were reborn? You wouldn't remember Annabeth? [ Because that seems like an injustice. Obviously she's important to him. He runs a hand through his hair, still trying to understand everything. ]

That's... I can't say I expected that. [ He kind of wants to tell him that all sucked but he probably knows. ] But I understand your point now. You have more at stake because you're trying for a new life.

[chiseler]

[...it's unfortunate that his default reaction is to snort with vague amusement. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't think anybody would be expecting that and a hand comes up to scrub at his scar a bit out of habit. The nice thing, Luke thinks, is that doing all of this really hopefully will change something. It's just up to Percy and Annabeth now.]

Exactly. If I get out of here, I get back so I can try again. But people get desperate enough here... "hey, why not go after the guy who's already dead?" [But...] I won't remember anything from my former life once I go through rebirth. I won't remember my name, I won't remember everything I did in my life as Luke Castellan, and I won't remember Annabeth, Thalia, Percy or Grover. [Let's just throw new names into the mix.] The thing about people like us is that if a hero dies and successfully gets into Elysium three times, they can go to a place called the Isle of Blest. It's the ultimate paradise. But that means continuing to live and be a hero those three times. Annabeth, Percy and Grover were all in the throne room during the final battle. They all know I'm going for rebirth. [But not Thalia. And it sucks...but he can't exactly dwell on that.]

[There's a pause.] You know this means you can't hide anything from me after I just told you all of that, don't you.

[antietam]

[ He still thinks it isn't fair. It's hard enough to get through life and then he has to start over? And be a hero three times? He barely knows what that means but Adam can barely handle one life, is only slowly starting to understand what a hero is. And Luke, really, isn't that much older than him. Was younger when it all started. ]

So they can find you. [ Alright. He'll let that point go. It isn't his life. He'll just scoff at Luke. ]

I don't have a story like that, promise. I'm not hiding anything. [ After a second, he pauses, then rolls his eyes. ] Alright, fine. [ He gets up and goes over to his bed. He lifts up the mattress of the bottom bunk and if Luke is looking closely, he'll see a slice in it. Adam sticks his hand into the mattress and then pulls out the weeding scythe. He turns and shows it to him. ]

Since you're my partner, you should know, I guess. No one else knows, so I hope you can keep it as much a secret as all that. Unless you want to see my magical hand lotion, that's it.

[chiseler]

[A shrug. He's not going to tell Adam that there's no way they could find him. It's better to leave it alone. Instead, he's curious when the boy gets up and he's...not sure what the hell is going on and then suddenly:]

Okay what...[Just like that, tragic backstory is on the backburner because Adam has apparently been hiding the weeding scythe? Please don't mind him if he sort of recoils because scythes are kind of not okay in any shape or form.

Wait. Wait a sec.] I'll get back to making fun of your magic hand lotion in a second. Didn't this thing go missing weeks ago? It was you? [...gods, what now.] Okay. Explain.

[antietam]

[ Adam doesn't really see the big deal. Alright, it's kind of a surprise given his stance on weapons and fighting in general, but he doesn't know why Luke is recoiling. It should be pretty obvious he's not going to use it on him right now. ]

Explain what? People weren't going to give up their weapons and if you haven't noticed, I don't have anything. So I took it from the garden and hid it. It's just in case, basically. [ He looks back to his destroyed bed. ] It's usually under the mattress for accessibility, but before trials I put it inside of it in case I'm a suspect.

I don't know if your lessons help much with this thing, but it can't hurt.

[chiseler]

[There's a pause. There's a long, long pause...and then he starts laughing. It's almost hysterical laughter because was this planned? Was any of this planned? Did the gods find another way to fuck with him?

He should stop laughing. It's Adam. Adam might take offense to that and while Luke's still a little wary, he manages to regain control shortly after and he nods slowly.]

...yeah. You were the one who wanted to take all of our stuff, weren't you. You're a lot smarter than some other people, hiding things like that on trial day. [He takes a deep breath, another helpless sort of chuckle escaping.] I think you can guess from what I told you that Backbiter was actually a gift from Kronos. But when I changed--[Or, you know, became possessed]--and Kronos took over, the weapon changed, too. [He continues to stare at the thing before there's a shrug.] I think I've had enough experienced with a scythe to be able to help you out.

[antietam]

[ Adam steps back when he starts laughing, clearly concerned. He doesn't raise the weapon or anything, but that kind of reminds him of Kazuma and wouldn't he feel stupid.

He doesn't really understand until he finally says he has experience with a scythe. Well, that's something he wouldn't have guessed. Scythes probably do have a place in mythology that Adam has no idea about. Still, no need for crazy laughter. ] Oh. [ He'd say coincidence but he doesn't believe in that. ] Guess we do make a good team. [ He places the scythe under his bed and fixes the mattress over it, then sits on it. What a day. ]

We'll have to have any scythe lessons in here, but I wouldn't mind it. [ He sighs. ] I guess I owe you a lot, don't I?

[chiseler]

[Nobody ever said Luke had great timing. Given...you know...that he didn't help save Olympus until the very last minute. He doesn't fully relax until the scythe is away and yeah, okay, no need for crazy laughter. That was bad. Ahem.

With Adam on the mattress, Luke winds up flipping so he's laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. He seems to be making himself comfortable. This was both a good and bad way to spend his last couple of hours of valued player time. It was bad in the sense that he's wired from retelling that whole story...but it was good that it went as well as it did.]

Learn to fight with a knife first and then I'll try to teach you what I remember about wielding Kronos's scythe. [He looks over, cheeky grin evident suddenly.] You owe me pretty much everything. You have enough information that could easily mean betrayal against me and I'm teaching you how to fight like me. [...but...partners. Right.] I do wanna know about the hand lotion though. Seems kind of unhelpful in the grand scheme of things. [Unless you were to, like, forcefeed it to somebody or something weird. He's also just sort of interested in getting the subject off of him now.]

[antietam]

[ Adam chuckles at whatever Luke must be thinking in regards to betrayal. He really isn't sure what he would do with everything he just learned. Write it on the whiteboard? ] Look, if the scythe gets used, you know enough to get me killed. For sure. [ It makes them a little more even but still, Adam pays close attention to debts.

The hand lotion is much nicer subject to move onto anyway. It's next to his bed, so he grabs it. It's just a plain white container, no label or anything. There's some writing on the bottom but that's it. ] Not helpful for killing, no. It was a gift. [ It makes him smile. ] My hands get dry and it's pretty painful... This helps pretty well and it never runs out. Because it came out of a dream.

[chiseler]

[Someday he'll stop being paranoid. Today probably isn't that day. There's a sound that's probably meant to be agreement but nope off the scythe subject onto dream lotion. ...neverending dream lotion. He tilts his head out of curiosity, examining the bottle from his place on the floor and also subtly studying Adam's hands.]

So...whoever gave it to you has the ability to interact inside their dreams and bring back whatever they feel like? [Considering the fact that demigods have been known to be able to see each other's dreams, he's not too terribly surprised. If anything, he sounds fascinated. If they were still partaking in #dildogate he might make a joke, but this seems more important on a different scale.] Or is the dream thing something you can do too?

[antietam]

Yeah, that's it. [ He is somewhat surprised Luke got it right away because when he first heard about it, he was not having it. Really, Luke's definitely seen weirder. ] He can take out anything. Even people. It's pretty god-like, right? [ But he always compared it more to the Christian god than what Luke's dealing with. ]

I probably wouldn't have the gift if I could do it myself. No, I can't. I'm not a dream-thing either. You might be surprised, but I'm fairly normal.

[chiseler]

Guess so. [Even by demigod standard it's a little weird even if he can understand it. Then again, he just told Adam that his daughter-proxy was born from Mr. Chase's brain.] Can't think of anybody who can actually do something like that. How did someone fairly normal get wrapped up in things like this? There's always a story to that.

[antietam]

[ Adam takes a moment to think about it. There's really no story to it. ] They're my friends. I met them at school. When I met my best friend, Gansey, he said he wanted to find the dead Welsh king Glendower and get a favor from him. I didn't really believe in it at the time, but he's one of those people. Always has followers.

The guy who can take things out of dreams, Ronan, well... I was sort of forced to be friends with him. Since he was friends with Gansey. None of us knew about it until he told us that he brought his pet raven out of his dreams. [ This is all sounding weirder than it was at the time, but. It's still not gonna beat Luke's story. ] And... none of us knew that our other friend was a ghost, even though he kind of kept telling us. It all sort of happened that way.

[chiseler]

[Wonder what that's like, going through a normal school system and making friends. It sounds normalish, but.]

Three things. Why was Gansey looking for this king? Why did Ronan pull out a bird? And how do you not know your friend is a ghost especially if he actually kept saying "I'm a ghost"? […actually it kind of just sounds like dumb teenage boys and that makes a lot of sense to him.]

[antietam]

[ Adam seems to enjoy talking about his friends, anyway. He's much more talkative than he would be about himself. ] There was a legend about Glendower not being really dead and that he was somewhere on the east coast, being transported from Wales secretly. If you found him, you could ask him to grant you a wish. That's why Gansey came to my town in Virginia, because it's the center of a lot of magic.

Probably mostly because of Ronan. He just... likes animals? A lot? Her name is Chainsaw. [ She is a member of the family. ] He grew up on a farm and now he runs that farm. I guess it's also a dream farm since his dad could do the same thing as him.

[ Now he looks a little embarrassed. ] And Noah never said ghost. He'd say things like, I've been dead for seven years and we all laughed. It was only in hindsight that... he never ate or went to school and was always cold. You really don't consider these things, alright?

[chiseler]

[He's noticed that Adam doesn't like to talk about himself and that alone makes him wonder why that is. What is Adam Parrish hiding that he doesn't want to share with the rest of the world despite the fact that Luke just told him he tried to destroy the world and he's a zombie? Instead, he's committing all of this to memory instead. There's a small "heh" that comes when he learns all of this takes place in Virginia.]

Used to have a safehouse in Jamestown that the three of us would go back to from time to time. [The three, of course, being Luke, Thalia and Annabeth.] I don't think I've ever heard of this king but I'll take your word for it. Must have worked…if Gansey ever found the king. Did he?

Can't say I've ever heard of a dream farm either or ravens named Chainsaw. [He lets his lips twitch a bit in a smile.] So the dream thing's heriditary. That answers that. Ronan's gotta have limitations though doesn't he? And I still stand by if it looks like a ghost and acts like a ghost it's probably a ghost. [By now he's chuckling to himself.] So you have a magic hunter, a dream creator, a ghost who hasn't moved on yet, and you as the straight man. [Hm.] The tarot cards come from one of them?

[antietam]

Huh, never been to Jamestown. [ Adam has barely ever left his small town. He doubts Luke would have heard of it, but he almost suggests that they could have met up once in the past. But no. How weird is it to have so many different Americas?

When it comes back to the king, Adam frowns and shifts. ] We found him. He was dead. No magic. No wish. But things worked out anyway. [ A shrug. ] I've never seen him have limitations, except what the—uh, the leyline can withstand. That is, the magic energy that exists everywhere. I'm not joking when I say he can make real, living people. His father dreamed his mother, and he accidentally dreamed his little brother when he was three. [ He wonders if Ronan would get angry at him for spilling all his secrets. Probably. ] But a person is considered a big thing for the leyline, it took a lot of energy out of me when— [ Alright, maybe that's too much. ] Well, when he did it again.

[ The cards hit a sore spot now that they're gone and he hunches over. ] No. They came from a psychic named Persephone. She taught me how to use them, and then... she died. So we have some psychics too, and a not-quite psychic. The girl who's half tree.

[chiseler]

Not a bad place. Kinda wish we had more time to explore…we were in Richmond for a while, too. That's where we found Annabeth. [It is strange to think of how many versions of a world there can be, especially worlds with magic. He's not sure how something like that could work out, how a dead king you're searching for could still make things okay. But then again, Luke's always been all or nothing.] Can't say I know much about leylines either. We have powers and everything but it's not really the same as traditional magic…unless you're one of Hecate's kids or some of the others with those kind of powers. If a person can be dreamed up in a dream…how can they keep living? [He narrows his eyes.] …and what did he do to you?

[But he sits up, watching Adam closely.] …so that's a pattern. Alice grabbed a bunch of stuff we received from people who're now dead. Why doesn't that surprise me? [He makes a face.] We don't call them psychics. They're people with the gift of Prophecy. […and why are there also multiple worlds with tree girls?] Let's back up for a sec. This goes back to the tree-lights thing you told me a little while ago, doesn't it? Didn't realize it was really that personal.

[antietam]

[ The subtle differences in magic and other fantastical things is weird. Sure, there are a lot of different forms of magic in legends but Luke's obviously talking about something entirely different. He kind of wishes he could study it all, but he doubts his college would have a course on that. ] Well, that's the problem. The dream can only stay alive if the dreamer is. So, when Ronan's dad was killed, everything he dreamed fell into a deep sleep. Including his mom. [ And what's with that expression and question, Luke? Adam laughs. ] He didn't do anything to me. Well, not directly. I was sort of connected to the leyline. Fixing up the leyline made it stronger and Ronan could do more. But that also means I feel when he takes out something like... a little girl.

[ He thinks about his psychics and the prophecies Luke told him about. ] I guess they're about as vague as you mentioned, yeah. And Blue—I mean, it's not that personal. She's my friend. She comes from a family of psychics, but she's not one. She just amplifies magical energy.

[chiseler]

[Take a mythology course, Adam, it'd be the same thing sort of. In all seriousness he nods solemnly. That makes sense. If the dreamer isn't around to dream, then the dreams can't take life of their own. He wonders if it's possible for someone like Ronan to be able to take on the dreams of others to sustain them but now that's overly complicated.]

Now that was the piece of information that was really missing. [If Adam's connected to a leyline, he's directly connected to magic. It's hard to imagine being able to feel "magic", and though his eyebrows raise when Adam mentions a little girl he doesn't press. He wants to, but he's giving him a look just to see if Adam will supply the information on his own.]

You're the conductor of the leyline and Blue is a catalyst. [A beat.] What happens to the leyline if you're not around? Anything?

[antietam]

Oh, really? [ Just going to pretend like he's forgotten to mention it before. He sees Luke's look about the girl and he doesn't mind talking about it but it's more personal than any of this, so he's going to put it off while he clears things up. ]

It depends, I guess. When I—took on the responsibility, it was in really bad shape. People kept using it. There was another dreamer and he took things out recklessly, which really weakened everything. He wanted to destroy the world. But he died and I got back to fixing things. Now that it's just Ronan, everything seems to be the way it should be, so I think my job is done. [ He could just leave it at that, but well, he owes Luke. ]

The tarot cards were how I communicated with the leyline. Or—the forest, I guess, that was the center of it. So yeah, that's the whole tree thing.

[chiseler]

[A flat look. Yeah, really. He's onto you, you little shit. But this is different and he's finding he's actually enjoying hearing about all of this. It's different. It's like listening to stories about people who weren't doomed from the start. It's also all the more reason he's interested in keeping Adam alive whether Adam knows it or not. Luke's motivations have shifted slightly just from the last hour or so.]

There's always at least one person who wants to destroy the world. [He sounds vaguely bitter that the other dreamer was killed and yet everyone else lived, but that's his own issue. And then, ever so casually:] You guys killed him? Or something else?

[…and suddenly it all makes sense.] The tree thing. [A sage nod.] So it was like…you'd speak to the trees and do a reading, and the reading was how you interpreted what they were saying. Something like that? [And then before he can even stop talking:] Wonder if there's a way we could communicate with the ship itself with something like that. [There's a wary little grin.] At least when you get back, your trees will talk to you.

[antietam]

[ Adam looks surprised at that question. It's also a little funny because the people who were there would never kill someone. Adam just wasn't there. ] He killed himself. [ Oh, that's probably a little awkward, huh. ] Not heroically or anything. He wanted Ronan to join him in destroying the world and when Ronan said no, well— [ he scoffs ] he went even more insane. Kidnapping and murdering sort of insane. I was busy with the leyline so Ronan could fend him off, so I wasn't there. [ And his group of friends refuse to talk about anything important ever. ] But from what I felt... he dreamed something really big, and it took him out.

[ Adam nods at Luke's interpretation, glad it doesn't sound that weird when it's coming from him. ] They could speak Latin, but usually they wanted more complex things than I could understand. Also, I'm pretty sure ships aren't living like trees are. [ There's a sort of awkward pause. ] The forest is gone now, though.