riverview | [ text | un: jkent ]

They got here a month before you?

[There's some thought that needs to go into that, it's possible the people that he'd asked before who were still here were on their fifth month by now - so it wasn't exactly an extraordinary answer. If he's right it fits into the pattern pretty neatly.]

Seems like there's been an uptick in new arrivals these last few months.

I think so? My dad was here and he had friends and stuff. That usually takes time.

[ Jon doesn't fully know and it shows. ]

Yeah, there's more and more people. Which is nice!

[Don't tell Ed friends take time, that's not how he operates.]

I wonder if it will keep up like this... Maybe there's a certain quota the portal is trying to meet.

I dunno if that's the portal or whether it's the rules this reality lives by. Portals rarely have that kind of stuff. They just pull people.

[He wasn't really serious about that part, but SURE OKAY KID.]

You seem to know a lot about this stuff.

[ Jon shrugs. ]

My world's kinda special. We have had portals and all kinds of crazy stuff for a long time.

Must make it a lot easier to adjust to.

[On one hand, Ed had a similar advantage having been to other worlds before, but on the other hand - those worlds had someone running the show and claiming to be in control of it all, so this was still different.]

It does, actually. But everyone here comes from different places so it's cool to hear new things. Like the aliens! The aliens are cool.

[ Jon is really into aliens. For personal reasons. ]

Aliens, huh?

[Not something Ed's really ever had to address before, but it occurs to him they're on the moon of some other planet so he shrugs.]

Aren't we all by default, technically aliens at this point?

[ Jon pauses as he considers this. ]

Yeah, I guess. But not the cool ones.

[Okay, he's laughing now.]

What makes them cool, exactly?

[Tell him about cool aliens, Jon. He's ready.]

[ Jon pouts. This should be a universal truth! ]

Cuz they travel in space ships! And they get to see different kinds of planets and animals. And there are . . . uhm, unusual . . . [ Give him a minute. ] . . . Unusual cultures!

[Well, unusual cultures was certainly a universal truth in this place. Ed's still smiling at how earnest he's being about all this, even though it did make him pause. He was pretty sure none of the pilots he knew considered themselves aliens, but if that was the pre-requisite for this kid he wasn't going to stomp on his world view.]

That makes sense. One of my room mates is an alien...

[By Jon's definition at least three of his room mates are aliens.]

My brother's also traveled in a space ship, though... It's how he got here, actually.

Wow, really?

Someday I'm gonna travel in space too.

[ Of course, in Jon's case, it's doable. Though he's never tried it, Jon knows Superman can move in space without an issue. ]

Yeah...

[Ed doesn't know all the details, and he's not sure he should be sharing them even if he did. Explaining the Gate would probably not be a good idea, so he's gotten used to referring to it as a portal between worlds. It just happened to make more sense here. He looks a bit more serious now.]

He did it- to follow me through some portal. Wound up here, instead. Me being here already was just a funny coincidence in all that.

A . . . portal and a spaceship?

[ It . . . does makes sense. Rift-energies could pull that off. Kathy would know more though. ]

So he wasn't looking for you?

Well- you know what you said earlier about your dad... Not really being your dad?

[He's trying to figure out how to explain this.]

I've been through other portals before, I haven't been on my home world in five years now. The theory is that we go back to whatever time we were taken from, if we go home-

[It wasn't really a theory for him, Ed had seen it again and again.]

If it all adds up, Al's from my future. So he followed me through a portal that I- haven't been through yet, to another world. When he got here the me he found wasn't the me he was expecting.

I've been gone five years, but to him... I never went missing in the first place. Which, I guess means I make it home eventually.

[He doesn't sound too thrilled about that.]

[ Jon absorbs this quietly. He may not fully get the train of events, but he gets the ramifications of them. ]

That's tough. Because they're the people you miss, but not the people you remember.

It's not so bad.

I haven't seen him in almost two years, being in other worlds and back home he's been looking for me for two years-

[Not for the same reasons.]

So I guess it all adds up.

[Even if he did have way more PTSD than Al remembered, and the last Al Ed knew was from a later time period - having already arrived in Germany with him. This Al came from before that, which meant Ed knew some of his future that he didn't yet, even though Al was from a later time period than he was.]

Edited 2017-07-30 11:26 (UTC)

I didn't say bad. Just . . . y'know, tough.

[ Jon loves his father here. There's no doubt in his mind that his father cares about it, even if they stumble around each other. But Jon does miss his parents strongly. It's not the same. ]

Right.

[Ed can't really relate to that, even though he had made the connection to make it easier for Jon to understand - Al was still his Al from his world, their timeline was just not the same. He wasn't missing his own actual brother from home, because he had him here, and in the flesh which was better than the alternative.]

It's probably harder on Al, to be honest. He's not used to this like I am... I actually spent a few months with an Al from a completely different world, we didn't even share most of the same experiences. That was tough.

[Having his actual brother here? Not so much.]

It's not a competition of who has it tougher.

[ That's dumb logic. ]

[That wasn't what he meant at all, so he's a little surprised by that response.]

I just don't think much gets to me, anymore. You get used to all of this after awhile, even when it changes.

[He mostly feels bad for Al, he knows he wants to go home - but he doesn't say anything, because Ed doesn't.]

I . . . guess?

[ Jon shrugs. ]

Sorry. I mean, there's stuff I'm used to, but personal things are always kind of iffy. They'll always get to it in some way.

I've seen my brother come and go in a place like this enough times to think I was hallucinating it.

Guess I'm just used to personal things being what I had to get used to.

[There's a lot of stuff Ed would never get used to. Talking to gods, befriending demigods, that whole thing was still weird... Not to mention immortals, Cain was still a big mystery to him.]

Everyone reacts differently, I guess.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject