changehistory | Open 'verse RP [Open -- Separate threads fine]

He'd come home out of some weird need to find his roots, again. Or something. At the current moment he couldn't remember. Souvenir shops lined the streets he roamed too long ago. The house had burned over three centuries before and even the alleys were swept now. There had been nothing to bury, and no money for more than a mass grave had there been, so there were no markers, nothing to see, nothing to kneel at.

Wandering into the new St. Paul's, built after he left, after the fire that took them, he nonetheless felt something settle. He sat in a pew for hours, trying to remember what it had felt like when he came home, saw this, sat here the first time, a different man. Not Matthew. Not Takezo Kensei. Something else, someone else. A man without country, time, family.

For a time, he'd thought to find it again, but now the dream seemed farther away than it had even when trapped in that cell, and he was cold.

It was well after dusk when he left. He found a pub, a table in a corner, and with a wry smile that cursed all the years in between, he ordered a whiskey and asked the bartender to leave the bottle, working to bury himself in the one thing left that had any familiarity or link to the old.

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He shrugged a little, eyes dropping to his whiskey. "I got out. It's done, for now. Just...nightmares."

She nodded slightly, averting her eyes back to the glass. "Well, I'm only a phone call away if you find something there is."

"Would have been nice to have had my phone on me in that coffin," he muttered. But Hiro hadn't been that stupid.

She chuckled slightly. "I'm sure it would have been. But there are other ways to communicate -- you just have to get creative."

"Oh, I'm all for creative," Adam murmured, perking up, though for once his look was more intrigued for his own sake than laced with sexual innuendo.

She tilted her head to the side again, thinking for a minute. "If I'm getting to close for comfort, let me know -- I'm not looking to make you uncomfortable."

She paused again after that, before crossing her legs under the table and leaning back in the seat again as she began to talk. "I'm presuming that even with your abilities, there is some form of death involved. You suffocate, black out, and are for all intents and purposes dead, yeah?"

"I'm not uncomfortable," he said with a slight smile, that faded as he listened before nodding.

"Yes. Or starve, though there wasn't enough time for that, really. Only when air got in did I revive again."

She nodded, biting her lip slightly. "I've seen this with people in comas -- The spirit separates from the body, and they're able to communicate through Ouiji boards or other talking boards. If you could find one being operated by someone you trusted -- you could communicate with them."

Adam's eyebrows went up. With everything she'd told him, it wasn't doubt that such things were possible, but the concept would never have occurred to him. "I don't remember anything from when I was...dead, though."

"You usually don't. It's a very strange phenomenon, but I've seen it done, so it is possible."

This was more difficult to explain than she had thought. It was really more of a separate plane of existence than anything else, and she shouldn't be surprised that the metaphysical self's memories and experiences didn't translate over into that of the conscious mind.

She paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain it better, but words seemed to be failing her this time around. "From what I understand, the spiritual consciousness still has the same knowledge and experiences that the conscious mind has, so it can use those resources to their advantage, but when the soul and body rejoin, the memories aren't present."

"So...if I learned how to communicate that way in my conscious, physical mind--in theory my spiritual consciousness would remember to try it?"

"That's the theory," she nodded. "Granted, I've never actually experienced this myself, but -- there's no reason why it shouldn't work."

"So...how does it work?" he asked, leaning forward again.

"Well -- you've seen a Ouija board before, yeah? There's all the letters on the board, and you place your hands on the planchette and ask a question? Well, the way it supposedly works is that the spirit is on the other side of the board, and is dragging the planchette across the board to spell out what it wants to say. Now, if say -- you were buried alive again, and your spirit and body separated, and I happened to be having a seance, you would be able to communicate with me through the board." She paused for a second and hoped that that didn't sound as jumbled as she thought it did. "Makes sense?"

He nodded a bit, frowning. "So, really, it all depends on if you've got your Ouija board out or not. Do you have it out often?"

"Generally whenever I'm working a job," she nodded. "Which is often enough. And I never put it away really -- it's always on display at least."

"So if it randomly started spinning and moving...you'd notice?" he asked with a half smile.

"Something like that, yes," she replied, returning the smile as she leaned back in her chair again.

"I'll definitely keep that in mind, should it ever happen again," he said, a touch fervently.

"I hope you do," she said softly. "No one should ever have to go through what you had to go through -- no matter how much physical trauma they can withstand."

He smiled a little, eyes dropping. "It was...worse than the thirty years of torture that came before, yes. There was no...hope. At least before, I had something to hope for."

She nodded softly. "Whoever did that to you really had no right."

"He thought he did," Adam said, lips twisting. "I killed his father."

"Still doesn't give him the right to subject you to something like that," she watched him carefully, settling back into her chair more. "Blood for blood I understand, but -- it still doesn't seem right."

His smile was a bit cold, something darker in his eyes. "It wasn't blood for blood, though, was it? Eternal...damnation for one life. Not his judgment to make."

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