Dabbler ran, pursuing Landis down the dizzying swirl of dreamstuff, all the while cursing Anna to himself. "Zorlond!" he shouted. "Stop! You've got to face the truth sooner or later!"
The scene resolidified as the dream whorl Landis had fled into finally disippated. The naked magician turned like a rat at bay. Peripherally, Dabbler recognized the scene -- the large house occupied by Jim Russell, in the thread where all the members of his family from variant threads were real and present simultaneously. The very thread the virtual-Z had seemed to expect him to have ended up in rather than the scene of Landis' "party." There was no sign of the Russells, though....
"The 'truth,' is it?" Landis sneered. "That's what I've got to face? What do you think I've been facing, boy? Why do you think I drove everyone off in the first place? No one can help me with this, don't you see, they can only get hurt! Like you're going to get hurt, if you don't leave me alone!"
"You know I can't do that, Zorlond," Dabbler said.
"So be it! You're bringing this on yourself, boy!"
Dabbler saw that another spell was coming, and hesitated a split second between trying to dodge it and trying to block it. Were his powers even up to that now, he wondered? He wouldn't find out, at least not this time, because the hesitation was fatal.
The spell hit. And Dabbler remembered....
Before Las Vegas. Before the family reunion when everything had gone south. Back at home, with his favorite brother. They were just boys, finding out about their bodies as boys will. Totally innocent, something all boys outgrow....
But did we? he wondered. A flash-forward, and he was the Author Dabbler, his brother the Author JigSaw. A wrong drink at the Bar & Grill had made Dabbler a nonpowered girl, and she wanted to get back to normal in the worst way. So she visited JigSaw, and did....
Another flash-forward, and it was JigSaw who was the female, seeking out Dabbler's bed. And she found it. And, as Gidget Walsh, she stayed....
Forward again, to the Antipodes. Several sex changes. In and out of each other's sleeping bags. Both pregnant, though miraculously not by each other.... (Well, mostly not, in JigSaw's case, though that was a pretty weird and complicated situation, in which Dabbler's genes were involved but he wasn't....)
The present, or nearly so, and both Dabbler and Gidget learned of their pasts as Characters, and siblings. And blew it off as a matter of course, and stayed together in spite of it.
But knowing isn't the same as remembering. Is it?
Landis loomed over him. "So, Mister Author-man, now you know, don't you? You know what you were, and what you are. Now you're having to face the truth. How do you feel about it?"
"Like I've got a bad hangover," Dabbler croaked. "Weird shit...."
Landis smiled nastily. "Can't help being curious. You know who your are, but I still don't. So who are you, kid, and what are you doing haunting my dreams?"
"I'm ... Dabbler, naturally. Who else would be dumb enough to come trying to save your butt? Rotten number to do on a friend, Z...."
Landis' face fell. "Dabbler?" he breathed. "Oh shit, man, I'm sorry, this just gets worse and worse, deeper and deeper. Shit, I'm fucking everything up!" He extended a hand to help his friend up.
Dabbler waved it away and pushed himself up from the floor by himself. "'M alright," he muttered. "Just a lot to sort out, that's all. D'you know I'm living in sin with my own brother? Sister now, actually, but still...."
"Huh. Knew there was some reason I always liked you. Bites, does it?"
"Actually ... no. I mean, yeah, it's got roots back in the time when we were both Characters, but that was nothing, really. We've done a lot more depraved things as Avatars than we ever did when we were merely human."
"Exactly!" Landis exclaimed, tears coming to his eyes. "You understand, then! What our 'Originals' did to us! Why I had to shut everyone out! Shit, I'm sorry you had to face it too, but at least now I'm not alone in this!"
Dabbler looked at his friend. "You never were, Zorlond. But -- I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I do understand. We're not our pasts, Z. Really, in a lot of ways our pasts don't matter to what we are now. What matters is what we are now. I look at my Character past, and I don't really find much to be ashamed of. I look at my Avatar present and everything I've done in my present life is okay, too. Sure, I've made mistakes, things I wish I hadn't written and all, but I try to make up for those when I see what they are. And Gidget definitely wasn't one of them."
Landis' face clouded. "He's still with you, isn't he? Your Original. He's making you say these things! You couldn't really be 'okay' with it all otherwise." He started backing away.
"Zorlond, no, wait, it's not like that--"
Neither saw the hidden onlookers suddenly rush in on them until it was far too late.
What--? thought Dabbler, as he went down beneath the press of bodies. Who--?
The Russells, of course, answered the virtual-Zorlond voice within him. Given the setting, who did you expect?
Landis, meanwhile, was keening in fear. Until his wail was abruptly cut off....
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Sun Sep 19 01:22:25 2004
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