milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's late afternoon when someone who really looks like he doesn't belong here saunters in from the front door. (It's probably the uniform.) There's surprise on his face at first - who isn't surprised when a bar you've never been to before shows up where your closet should be? - but the expression is soon replaced with a big smile.

There's a blue flash and he's at the bar ordering a cup of coffee, black, and then another flash and he's seated in one of the comfy armchairs by the window. Legs crossed ankle over knee, he sits back and watches the display with an odd curiosity.

This has to be it. The place the workers at the Commission only whisper about.

Number Five has finally arrived at Milliways.

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"Initially," Wilford says. "But I didn't hire him here."

He hired him in one of the most disliked worlds Milliways has ever seen.

"You took him to your world." Timeline. Universe. Whatever. He'll figure it out when the world isn't ending.

"People do it all the time. No rule against it."

Well. There might be now, after some of the shit Wilford's pulled. He hasn't bothered to check though.

"Right." He takes in a deep breath and straightens his shoulders. "Well, he's an adult. He can make his own decisions." Stupid as they may be.

"He's a good kid," Wilford says, completely genuine. "A little fucked up, but who isn't?"

"You should ask him to show you around some time."

Wilford would offer, but there's the whole... actual child thing. Which is just icky for so many reasons.

"If I find him." Five keeps his tone neutral. He's not going to get his hopes up of meeting his brother here.

"What about our age range? We were all born on the same day. I'm just older now."

Wilford looks at the kid.

"Older," he says. "You sure about that?"

He doesn't reset, and last he checked, time travel doesn't work like this.

"Positive. I spent forty years roaming the post-apocalyptic world, then five working. Makes me fifty-eight." He puts the eye back in his pocket. "Had a glitch when jumping back. Made my body thirteen again."

Wilford laughs. That sounds all too familiar, in a very ironic way.

"That fucking sucks, doesn't it?" he says.

He may not have gone back that far, but he sure didn't enjoy being 22 again either.

"Yes. It does." It really fucking sucks. "No one takes me seriously and it annoys the fuck out of me."

"Never fucking again, I'll tell you that much."

Like he said, firmly in the present.

"Having to pretend it was all intuition got old in a big hurry."

Yeah, he definitely broke some laws doing that. And got away with all of it.

"You time travelled?" He knows it's not impossible - he does it, after all - but he's never met anyone else who could without a briefcase.

"Reset," Wilford says. "It's a little different. You can only go back. They only hand out licenses for going forward if you've got Jeff Bezos money to hire the eggheads who make it work."

He shrugs. "People do it anyway, but I ain't that stupid."

He's pretty stupid sometimes, but at least he knows his limits.

"I can do both." Just not well.

"What's a reset?"

Sounds like Five got stupid to Wilford, but he doesn't voice that.

"Exactly what it sounds like. You fuck something up, or get hit by a bus, you reset and do it again."

He pauses for a moment, and then pulls an old, leather-bound journal from his inventory. From Five's perspective, it simply appears in his hand from absolutely nowhere. Wilford opens it up to a random page and holds it out for Five to see. Each line is a date and time, followed by a brief note.

"Just pick one and go. Most people aren't dumb enough to go back 15 years to settle a grudge."

Wilford is.

He was thirteen and arrogant. Of course he was stupid.

Fives leans in to read the page of the journal that appeared from nowhere, but it's not the weirdest thing he's seen.

"You have to die?"

Wilford shakes his head, ready to snatch the journal back the instant he suspects Five will try to snatch it. Wilford's dates are almost daily at the point he opened to, usually in the evening. Occasionally a day gets skipped, or logged twice a few hours later. But for the most part, he seems very careful about leaving his options wide open.

"You can go back at any time. If something kills you and you're not supposed to die, you'll go back to the most recent. I made a name for myself exposing a surgeon who liked to kill people on the table a bunch of times before he actually did his job."

Five isn't going to steal it. What use is it to him?

"Everyone where you're from can do this?"

Wilford's used to being cautious. If someone steals your save log, you're fucked.

"After a certain age. Kids usually can't, but they don't really need to either."

They just bounce.

"So it's not really all that special." Why that matters to him is pretty obvious. Daddy issues much?

Wilford shakes his head, and blips the journal back out of existence.

"Imagine my surprise finding this place full of a bunch of squishy wimps who are all over if you hit one too hard."

"We're all unique, different powers." But they sure don't feel special anymore.

"What are the cape laws like where you're at?" Wilford asks.

He knows this is a touchy subject for a lot of capes and cape-adjacents around here, but he's going to keep asking until he gets a level-headed answer from someone.

"Cape laws?" Genuinely confused, he frowns at Wilford. "What does that mean?"

Fascinating.

"Super powers and shit. People like you," Wilford says. "Most places start regulating as soon as people start walking through walls for good or evil. The missus needs to be licensed to give palm readings in our basement."

But if their world doesn't have this regulation, that really only leaves a few options.

"You're telling me you're the first ones doing this?"