nexus_crossings | Icy Mirrors and Mistaken Identities

Icy Mirrors and Mistaken Identities

Unlike the sudden freeze of last Winter, this year there has been a subtle chill, a gradual progression of frost across grass and stone. It nips at your skin should you forget to wrap up, but is otherwise harmless. That is, apart from one section of the Nexus.

It seems to wander in the blink of an eye. Here one moment, gone the next. Sometimes slyly, sometimes by placing itself directly in a traveller's path. Either way the area is shrouded in a thick fog that is staggeringly luminous, suggesting a strong, obscured sun is trying to get through but only succeeding in illuminating the air itself. Even the most frequent Nexus visitors soon find themselves lost. It's eerily still, there is only the sound of your breathing, of your footsteps crunching frost and thin ice.

As you venture further you spot silhouettes standing in the distance. Drawing closer you find tall slabs of ice are scattered throughout the misty landscape. They all tower over you, and the perfectly cut surfaces all shine like mirrors back at you. The more you walk, the more of them seem to have erupted from the earth, until you catch yourself moving in the corner of your eye. At least, you thought it was yourself. You soon find yourself wondering: Are you alone?

((Winter Event! Hurrah! This event allows you to bring out a doppelgänger for your character to cause chaos or try out a different side of them! Details can be found here. Or for questions and plotting, the OOC post is here. Threadhopping and mixing up characters and doppelgängers is definitely encouraged. Feel free to ask me anything and, most importantly, have fun!))

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Adia lets out a gasp when Josh squeezes uncomfortably tight. She's well-aware how close he is to actually hurting her, and that, combined with his vacant stare and stuttering words, immediately put her on edge.

You had one job. Her mirror image clicks her tongue disapprovingly.

"H-hey... Hey, Josh, it's okay. I don't know what I said wrong, I'm sorry." She doesn't pull her hand away... not that she thinks she could if she tried. "I'm going to try my PINpoint again, okay? It's been five minutes." She pulls the device out with her free hand, nearly drops it onto the hard ground. "Don't let go."

She presses the button to take her back to the Plaza. This time, blessedly, it works.

He wants to articulate why it's so upsetting. Why the realization is enough to shake the foundations. How can he know what's real when any possibility of things could be real here in the nexus? How will he ever know that the Chris he sees here is the same one from his world? If Dr. Hill truly knows him the way he claims to?

What if the things Chris told him about that night were wrong? Wrong because they were from different versions of the same world? What if Josh...actually had killed like they had accused him of doing. There is no redemption from something like that. And he doesn't remember that night very well. He could have done anything.

What if...trying to start over in the Nexus is just him running from his punishment? How could Adia stand looking at him? A murderer. A monster. She might be the one seeing things right now, but he's the truly terrible thing here.

" ...Is she still here?" His voice is so quiet. So weak.

It only takes Adia a moment to adjust to her surroundings, having teleported to the Plaza many times before. She looks around frantically, but only sees the usual smattering of couches and chairs. No strange fog, no giant imposing ice mirrors...

No other Adia.

Adia sighs in profound relief. "No, she's gone, thank Zeus." But that relief is short-lived; Josh still looks miserable, even more so in the comforting familiarity of the Plaza.

What did she say wrong? She feels awful that she's upset him, especially because he was trying so hard to help her in the first place. "We're safe here, okay? Everything looks the way it always does." She gives his hand a comforting squeeze, even though hers aches a little from the way he's been holding it. "Everything's fine."

"Good job...Adia. Youuu did it."

His lips quirk at the corners as though he's trying to smile, but then seem to give up on the expression before falling back into a blank stare for several moments. He does focus on her face again though and give a nod.

"You beat her. Y..you should feel proud." Josh knows how difficult it is to fight off those things. He doesn't want her to be discouraged. He looks down at their hands. Nods. Longer than he probably needs to. "I just realized....I could be an alternate. I could be no better than one of those mirror things...."

"Yeah... I guess I did." She smiles, more for Josh's benefit than her own. She doesn't feel particularly proud, just lucky. All she did was run away. "You kept me calm until my PINpoint worked, Josh. I couldn't have done it without you."

Which makes his self-doubt all the more heart-breaking. "No, you aren't -- that isn't how it works. Even if there are different versions of you, it doesn't make one the original and the rest alternates. You aren't a-- a warped reflection of the real Josh."

She hopes she's making sense to him. An existential crisis is fun for nobody, but seems especially damning for him. "You can forget I said anything, if that helps."

"Listen--theeey don't. They don't gotta ruin you. They know what t'say. To get underrr yer skin. but they're not real. Okay? They're not...you."

He pulls his hand away from Adia so he can reach up and poke her gently in the chest over her heart. Josh is shaken, pale and sweaty. But he seems determined to try and explain this to Adia.

"Only you are...are you. And I'm th'only me. Others....they can have th'same name. But they're not me. If I'm....if I'm an alternate...then that jus' means there's better versions of me out there. Heh. Good.....fer them."

Adia nods mutely and lets him make his point. It's good advice, regardless. Even if she never hallucinates again, that sort of whispered poison is somewhere inside her, anyway,

She takes his hand again after he pokes the spot over her heart and holds it a moment before letting go. "Okay. But Josh? You're my friend. Not them." She's feeling a bit shaky herself, now that the adrenaline rush of escaping is starting to wear off, but her voice is unequivocally steady on this.

Less certain is the look she gives when her gaze sweeps the Plaza again. No fog, as far as she can see, but she didn't notice when she wandered right into it, either. "Do you want me to walk you back to your apartment? Or, um... can I get you a hot chocolate or something?" She has to repair the damage she caused, somehow. She can't leave Josh alone like this.

"...R..really?"

There's so much hesitation in his voice when he asks. Josh doesn't feel like he deserves to have friends. Not after what he did. And maybe what he did has nothing to do with Adia but it doesn't change the sort of sick person he is.

Who's to say he wouldn't do it again?

"...Y..yeah. Drink might be nice. Warrrm us up."

"Really." She smiles, her gaze soft but worried. She's not the type to abandon someone because they're having a rough time. Maybe others have left Josh behind, put off by his mental illness, and that's why he expects so little from others.

If she knew the truth, the whole truth, she'd think that he deserved better friends than ones who humiliate little sisters and then let them run off in the night to die.

"It's the free stuff, near the vending machines." She gently nudges him with her arm, turns him in the right direction. "This way. I'll make you a cup."

"Yeah...Yeah, okay."

it's himself Joshua doesn't respect. Doesn't like or hold in high esteem. Why should anyone else? His sisters always used to talk about how caring and protective he was, but they were wrong. He failed them and he failed his friends because he's a fucked up psychopath.

That's what Dr. Hill told him even.

He obediently follows Adia through the brushed off paths of the Plaza back toward the sitting area where most of the people in the Nexus congregate. in truth, Josh doesn't quite know what to say about anything that's just happened. He couldn't see the other Adia after all. He's glad she seems to be okay. Just wishes he was stronger.

Josh hasn't failed Adia yet. And even if he did, she wouldn't hold that against him. But she has to reluctantly admit that she doesn't know Josh as well as she thought she did. She'll have to be more sensitive in the future about what might trigger him.

Adia approaches the coffee machine and rifles through the instant packets. "Looks like they have hot chocolate with and without marshmallows," she says, pulling out one of each. "Which one would you like?"

Adia doesn't know what to say about what happened, either. Mostly, she's relieved that it's over. "Do you think... do you think that my hallucination was caused by the ice? I mean, she's... gone now, and... " She smiles self-consciously, "Well, it's not like I don't have my own issues, but I've never hallucinated before."

"Anyone who doesn't like marshmallows is objectively wrrrong."

Slowly, the normalcy of their activities seems to be calming Josh down. Little by little he's losing the fearful glances around them and the far off stares that take him galaxies away from where anyone can reach him. His own mind may be a quagmire of traps and self destruction, but he's managed to remain functional up until now for the most part.

Josh knows how to claw himself back.

"I...I don't...don't know." Josh shakes his head while he thinks back to the fog and the mirrors. "It's posssible. SOmeone could have used magic or...or something. Drugged us. I don't know any more than you do Adia... I'm wondering why I didn't."

Adia giggles softly and sets to making a marshmallow'd hot chocolate for Josh. She'll just keep at what she's doing then, as it seems to be helping. "The ones in the instant packets melt away too quickly, but it's the thought that counts."

She fights back a small shiver at the possibility of being drugged. That's the second time Josh has suggested it. "Has that happened here? People being drugged?" It seems more scary than mere magic... as if someone personally had it out for her.

"I don't know, either, but I'm glad you didn't..." She watches the hot water pour into the mug, then uses a stirrer to carefully mix in the powder. "It might have been magic. That's happened to me here before." She passes over the full cup. "Here you go."

"Beggars can't be choosers."

Says the son of possibly the richest man in Canada but hey he hasn't been a spoiled rich kid in well over a year now. Living like a hobo in a shack in the wilds and more recently couch surfing at Ice Bear's place.

"Mm? I don't know. Might have. I just figure it's a way I know people can be messed with from my world." He gratefully accepts the cup and takes a moment to enjoy the wamrth it brings to his hands.

"Right," Adia agrees as she makes a hot chocolate for herself. It wasn't too long ago that she was living a comfortable lifestyle as well. She practically lives off the free coffee and wifi.

She'll just add that to the list of things to worry about when visiting the Nexus, a list that is unfortunately growing longer by the day. This is not the Nexus she remembers, where the biggest concern was being hit with a LOL. "Yeah, same for us. I guess the AV field only protects against overt violence..."

"Nothing's perfect, Adia."

Josh blows at the steam rising from his cup and after a moment takes a cautious sip of his drink. He's usually not one for hot drinks, but they both really needed to warm up a bit after everything they'd just gone through.

Green eyes flit up to her and he tries to look more calm than he feels.

"It'd be boring otherwise. And you'd still have to put up with me."

"No, I suppose not..." She squares her shoulders. "But I won't let it stop me from coming here... so you'll still have to put with me, too."

That last bit is said with a smile, although she is serious about not abandoning the Nexus. Or Josh.

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Icy Mirrors and Mistaken Identities

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Scene?

Sure! This was fun. <3