milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"You have GOT to be kidding me."

Standing in the open doorway, Cisco stares at the bar shaking his head.

With a sigh he tosses his toolbelt onto a bench beside the doorway and steps through into Milliways, letting the door close behind him.

His annoyance at what he had to go through to get here evaporates quickly, and when he takes a seat at the counter he’s all smiles.

"Hi, Bar. Remember me?"

That is absolutely not a squeal of delight when Bar produces a napkin with a cheerful greeting and a mug of Butterbeer to go along with it, anyone who hears one is clearly just imagining things.

Taking a drink, he turns on his stool to observe the bar at large, wondering just what exactly he can get into this time.

[ooc: link leads to a short oom.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Wasn't here for that one, but I heard about it," he says ruefully.

"... There's a fourth kind of thing that happens here sometimes, though, with bad guys. Sometimes they wind up going down a different path than the one you're expecting."

"Okay, I'm interested, explain," he replies, giving a 'go ahead' nod.

"Well, so just for instance ... a bunch of years ago a young guy came in here who was barely out of high school, but already well on his way to becoming so powerful and so evil that people wouldn't even say his name. Course by time he got to that later point in his life, almost nobody knew his real name, so his earlier identity was let's say a riddle."

A quick glance: with me so far?

Cisco's eyes narrow as he puzzles through that, then widen and he gasps when he gets it, nodding rapidly.

Yeah, he's with you, Andrew.

"Okay, but let's say he spends some time here and maybe meets some people. Folks he never would have met if he'd stayed back home. And I don't know, maybe he makes friends, maybe something more than that. Maybe he has a couple of life-changing experiences here. And, long story short --"

He gestures widely. "Poof, alternate timeline where Lord Don't-Say-His-Name never existed, and there's this guy somewhere else who maybe once dreamed of being an evil overlord but really he's a lot happier where he is now."

"Milliways reformed the Dark Lord?"

"... basically yeah?"

Andrew spreads his hands palm up and smiles, in semi-conscious imitation of the shrug emoji.

"That's so awesome." Cisco grins. "And also interesting, because it means that things really don't necessarily happen the way we uh, might've seen."

"Right. I mean, if you've seen it, it's probably happened somewhere -- but the person you're talking to might not be from that particular timeline?"

He lowers his voice. "What I still can't figure out is how the stories leak like this. People are writing stuff that they think they're making up, but somewhere it actually happened. Is that some kind of narrative causality, or is 'making up' just some bizarre extra-extrasensory perception where you tune in to actual events on some kind of multiversal frequency, or what?"

He considers the issue and options, and shakes his head. "I don't know, man, have you ever seen Stranger Than Fiction?"

"... is that the one with the guy who starts hearing his life getting narrated? I remember the trailers but I never saw it."

"Yeah, but it isn't just a narration, someone is actually writing his life," he replies, anxious. "Like, it's not so much a 'written as it happens' thing, but a 'it happens because it was written' scenario. The movie becomes about the guy trying to figure out if he's in a tragedy or comedy, and hunt down the writer who's essentially trying to murder him for her book."

An interesting premise for a movie, but a freaky scenario for one's life.

"He also falls in love and stuff, but my point is, aside from the lack of narration, how do any of us know there's not some Stephen King wannabe at the keyboard key stroking out our lives?"

"... I'd say 'don't tell the Stephen King characters about it' except some of them already know, cause they met him? And the whole writing-happening causality question is seriously tangled up in that series, so yeah, I got nothing."

Cisco's face blanks for a moment, then shifts into a seconds-from-fear pleading expression.

"Please tell me Pennywise isn't one of the ones hanging out here."

Because, no. Just, NO.

"Never saw him, really hope we never do," Andrew says fervently. "But we used to have a whole bunch from the Dark Tower books. And, um."

Something indefinable shifts in his expression, in his voice.

"You ever read 'Apt Pupil'?"

He nods, relieved, and then his interest immediately picks back up again.

"Gunslingers?" Okay, that's awesome.

It takes a moment for him to place the mentioned title, and then his face screws up. "For real?"

"It was ... god, years ago. But yeah. Todd Bowden."

His mouth twists on the name. He hasn't said it aloud in a long time.

(And, sudden and unwelcome, along with the sound of the name comes the memory of the one time he tried to start a D&D campaign here, and Todd's incomprehensible insistence that he wanted to play.)

"Gross," Cisco replies, with much disapproval. "Did he make friends and not turn out to be a horrible person, too?"

"... Not so much." He swallows. "I think ... I think he was trying. To make friends. But to bring them around to his way of thinking, not to let them change him."

A long beat.

"He murdered someone. Here. Shot her."

"Ew, more gross," he says about Todd trying to change people.

Cisco's expression drops into shock, and any of the non-serious notes that usually occupy all of his reactions and words drop out.

"Seriously? What happened?"

"He ... got away with it, I guess. Sort of." Andrew's voice is low, distant, just a little hollow. "We weren't sure for a while who did it, but ... he came back and told me. And then went back to his world, and died the death he gets in the story. Nothing changed."

I watched it happen, he doesn't say.

"... Sorry." He makes an effort to smile, or at least to lighten his expression. "Got a little grimdark, there."

Ciso's mouth thins into a line, and then a frown forms.

"It's cool," he says, shaking his head to the apology. "That sounds... pretty damn awful."

"Yeah," he says, quieter. "It was that. But it was a long time ago."

(And the thought strikes him: good grief, is Bowden the real reason he hasn't found or made time for a tabletop campaign in all the years since then? Is it really?

Note to self: seriously, get back into therapy, this is frelling ridiculous.)

"Anyway," and he doesn't really have a sentence to go with that anyway but feels like it needs saying.

Cisco flashes a smile, part sympathy, part apologetic, and part understanding about that 'anyway' that goes no where.

Picking up there instead of the grim topic, Cisco gives Andrew a nod. "It sounds like you've been around this place a long time."

"Yeah. Over a decade, on and off."

He glances around the room, with undisguised fondness in his face. "It's a good place."