returnjourneylogs | BACKSTORY: ANOTHER BORDER

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BACKSTORY: ANOTHER BORDER

"Slowly, painfully, I realized what I had been reading from the very first words of his journal. My husband had had an inner life that went beyond his gregarious exterior, and if I had known enough to let him inside my guard, I might have understood this fact. Except I hadn't, of course. I had let tidal pools and fungi that could devour plastic inside my guard, but not him. Of all the aspects of the journal, this ate at me the most. He had created his share of our problems―by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much, by trying to see something in me that didn’t exist. But I could have met him partway and retained my sovereignty. And now it was too late."
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

Introduction

March 23rd – March 31st, 2022
Welcome to the backstory log for the "Another Border" simulation! Here, we play out big moments in our characters' AU histories. We've included a list of ideas below; feel free to experiment and figure out what feels right for your character's past and motivations. Consider what specific moments might have prompted them to venture into Area X!

This log is set before a simulation begins, to give players a head start on ironing out the specifics of their AUs. During this time, Peregrine life will continue as normal.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask here. You can familiarize yourself with simulation basics on our events page.

Ideas

Your first meeting with an important or influential person.
Doing something important for someone.
A time you really screwed someone else over.
A personal loss in your life.
An injury, illness, or similar struggle.
Domestic events: falling in love, getting married, building a home, having a child, navigating a change in a relationship, divorce.
Getting a new job or a promotion.
Discovering a passion.
An important religious or philosophical moment, a moral challenge.
An event that changed how you see the world for the better.
An event that changed how you see the world for the worse.
A sight you saw or place you visited that made you consider your place in the world.
A dark night of the soul.
Learning about the discovery of Area X.
Getting your Area X assignment.

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Everything is a blur. There's panic and fear and chaos, and words that sound a thousand miles away. What happened? Hell if anyone knows, no one can tell her anything with any amount of certainty. It has her terrified. A numbness and a shock as she's given condolences and apologies from strangers and no one knows if he's dead or lost but it's been weeks and there's an alarming amount of flowers piling up at her door and she has to purposely step around them to open it.

For a long moment, she just takes in the sight of William.

Halfway expects to hear her husband call down the hall, asking who's at the door.

There's just a silence that makes her want to smash the nearest vase of roses.

"William." Instead, the emotion escapes as relief as she wraps her arms around him, and she's surprisingly strong for some widow rattling around a stupidly lavish home like a ghost. She told herself she wouldn't cry on him, because the poor man has been through enough already, but there's a definite threat of tears when she lets him go and takes a step back so he can actually come inside. She sniffs, wipes her face just to be sure she's not crying, and nods.

"Please. Come in, it's..." Good to see him? "I'm glad you came."

What time, he'd said when she asked him to the house. Hours in advance he'd laid his clothes out on the bed: touched his shirt at the elbows, hooked a finger inside the collar. He'd turned his hands over, examined the veins at his wrists. Blue tending toward purple, the width of a penstroke.

Thin-skinned, Robbie had called him.

He traded the shirt out for a grey one in the back of a drawer. Threadbare and short-sleeved, the cuffs worn away as though they'd been nibbled at. Faded letters advertising the Florida lottery. His awareness of time came and went: to be safe he drove to her house and waited in his car. Rang the doorbell exactly on time.

She could have said three in the morning and he'd have done the same thing.

He looks gaunt, his posture rickety as an old chair. When she seizes him in her arms his eyes widen. He doesn't lean in or relax, but his hands find her waist, resting on either side as if to assure himself of her shape. She lets go and he follows her into the house.

The flowers strike him as both simplistic—bunched together in the crude orderliness of a child's drawing—and a kind of cruel joke, although nothing in Robbie had bloomed in the end. He wishes he could explain it to her, the neat lines of her house, brick slotted into brick. Why it makes him want to laugh.

“I don't know anything new. I mean, I don't remember.” He sounds more disturbed than apologetic. Frustrated. He brushes one of the rose blossoms with his fingertips, retreats into manners. “Thanks for having me.”

The time, his clothes, none of it really matters for Claire. Her own appearance isn't that of the woman she was: leggings, a loose and faded shirt, and an equally loose knitted sweater hang off her slender frame. No finely pressed dresses and obnoxiously ironed t-shirts, here. She can't remember the last time she ran a brush through her hair or stepped outside. It shows.

Claire watches William inspect the flowers with a sense of validation. Stupid, aren't they? she wants to remark, but he speaks up before she can find the words. Her arms cross around her middle, and she lets out a deep sigh that makes her shoulders heave.

"I didn't invite you over to interrogate you," she says. "I have questions, of course, but I just... I needed to see you. None of this feels real. I don't know why these flowers are here when it feels like the both of you are still--out there."

She motions at the door. But now Robbie is the one out there, status unknown, but the business ties and so-called friends seem ready to bury him.

Claire runs a hand through her hair and lets out another long breath.

"We didn't lose you, too. That would have been too much." Lost. Lost is the only word she really accepts.

He leans in to smell one of the bouquets—the scent faint, sickly. His eyes closed, his whole body somehow involved in the process. See you, she says, and instinctively he hides his face. “The air was heavy in there.”

He lifts his gaze to her. He'd emerged with more of a beard than he'd had in his life, stared himself down in the mirror as he scraped it away, terrified of what might be underneath. Now he studies her face, sees himself reflected in her eyes. Maybe she knows: the way she crosses her arms makes him think so. “Like—some people, you can almost hear when they're thinking. They're loud about it. Like that.” The frenzy of growth, the necessity of rot.

He pulls himself away from the flowers. Wonders how long she'll keep them once they've started to die. “He's not coming back.” He says it with quiet conviction. They're only a few feet apart but it feels like parallel dimensions, like if he tried to reach for her space would warp around them. “I don't know”—his gaze breaks off, his breath caught in his throat—“if I am either.”

Edited 2022-03-26 14:49 (UTC)

Claire's one of those people. A glass face, Robbie always said, because even when she struggled to mask her emotions, it was clear something was going on under the surface. Much like now when she watches William, wanting to both pulls him close and hold on for dear life while simultaneously wanting to grab him by the shoulders and shake him because how did it come to be like this? They're ruined.

William isn't the first to say Robbie isn't coming back, but hearing it from him does hurt in a new way. It's clear that it does, too--her already glassy eyes worsen, red around the edges, and the tip of her nose goes red as well. But she sniffles and holds it back, because she keeps reminding herself that no one knows anything for certain. As long as there's that, there's hope.

"You've been through something beyond imagining," Claire says gently. After a beat, her arms unfold so that she might touch a hand to his elbow. "You just need time. Let me help you."

[ Theon’s apology was, admittedly, a bit of a mess. On social media, he chalks that up to the intense emotions he was feeling in the moment. In person, he couldn’t care less. His sister had linked him at least three body language analysis videos about how “fake” his apology had been. Who would have ever thought that so many conclusions could be drawn based on what direction his eyes were looking?

But he still apologized. Who cares if he actually meant it or not? What was he supposed to do? It isn’t his fault people got offended. All he knows is that his views are down and still dropping. It’s the worst, and he’s certain it means his life is over if he can’t remedy the problem.

If worse comes to worse, he can always fake his best friend’s death or just continue to show off his massive amounts of wealth, but today he plans to film a reading he has scheduled with a supposed psychic. Theon believes him about as far as he can throw him, but that doesn’t matter. He’ll do it for the views.

Theon barely looks at Loki as he sets up his camera. In fact, he hasn’t taken his high end sunglasses off. Did he even ask permission to film? He can’t recall, but surely he did... ]

Oh, you don’t mind, do you? Bit late anyway. Just ignore it. Ready to begin?

[Loki moved past having a shop years ago, once he started gathering wealthier clientele. Instead, he's set aside a room in his home to host readings, decked out with all the expected tapestries and candles and overstuffed chairs. At the center sits a table with a (completely untouched) crystal ball set atop an emerald green tablecloth.

From the moment Theon began setting up the camera, Loki's been shuffling his worn deck of tarot cards. He should have known this was coming-- he'd looked the boy up as soon as he'd made his appointment, after all --but he isn't really. Prepared. To be recorded. It's really throwing off the vibe in the room, honestly. And Theon is already bringing a ton of negativity in just fine on his own.

Not that he's going to say anything when Theon paid for the premium reading, of course. When Theon finally turns back to him, he clears his throat and nods, clasping the deck between his hands.]

More than. [He flashes a kind smile.] What brings you here today? Is there a specific concern you're looking to explore?

[They used to be much closer, years ago. Before Loki started pursuing his psychic business in earnest and becoming successful, really. And he knows why. Knows Alice is a skeptic, a scientist, and while she has never outright said she disapproves, she also hasn't said she approves, either.

But he's still glad to see her, pulling her into a hug the instant he opens the door.]

Alice! Ahh, you look fantastic!

[He gives her a squeeze before releasing her and stepping aside to let her in.]

Come, come! We've got to catch up. I've made some tea, if you're interested.

[He leads her to a small sitting room-- not the one he uses for readings, just to avoid any awkwardness there --and gestures for her to sit as he pours them both a cup.]

Silco.

[ Rhys sits in the dimly lit room, the sound of the bustling bar right above them dampened by the rotting insulation between the floors and nicotine-stained walls. He jiggles his leg as he waits, all nerves, he's late a payment again, his most recent winnings used to buy a replacement for the arm he sold to pay off another chunk of his debt. ]

Listen, I know you guys were expecting money to come in last week and- and it is, it's on its way. I just need a couple more days to secure it.

Loki

[ It's not that Rhys believes in actual magic, that isn't a thing, but some time in the last year he's started to become somewhat superstitious. He figures with his current lifestyle he could use all the luck he gets, so he started carrying totems around, looking for signs, and seeking out Loki, a local psychic who's ad he saw in the back of some paper and felt particularly compelled to get a reading from.

The joke was on him though, because despite following Loki's predictions about which horses to bet on in the upcoming race, Rhys had walked away a poorer man.

The little neon "psychic" sign glows and blinks in the window as Rhys pulls open the door of the office, stalking into the place with a sense of purpose. ]

Hello? Loki?

[Loki spins on his stool from where he'd been sat hunched over his computer-- God, making an Etsy was a mistake, it's so bad for his back --eyes wide with surprise. He hadn't had any appointments, and he couldn't remember the last time he had a walk-in this late.

But he recognizes Rhys almost immediately, and he recognizes Rhys' annoyance a second after that. Oh dear.]

Rhys! It's so good to see you! I'm not forgetting an appointment, am I?

The thistles that grow between their houses are the same color as yesterday. Ellie has been told via Aki, who learned through unverified reports on some cryptic subreddit, that they are different colors in the Shimmer. Everything is different in the Shimmer, according to him. The air will smell different, the sun will shine brighter, and the sky will be blocked out in iridescent ooze.

It makes her notice everything, the color and the shape of the real world. Joel approves of her new bent for observation. He thinks she's taking an interest in survival, says it's time they moved out farther, beyond the boundaries of cell phone towers and surveillance. When you only have to rely on yourself, then you're truly free.

She can't argue with that, but she thinks she'll miss Aki. Even after she was adopted, they kept in touch. Ellie tells Joel she needs some alone time in the woods, and walks to their old neighborhood. He respects that, though he doesn't know her real reasoning. It doesn't really matter, in the end.

They used to play pretend, when they were younger. Now they pretend they aren't pretending. Her questions are the same, anyway. Sitting by a rusted swingset, Ellie makes a grass whistle and listens. "How long does food last in the Shimmer?"

She expects the answer will be mundane, but there's always the chance he'll say something fantastical with complete conviction. Maybe the tuna sandwiches she packed would have spouted winds and flown away.

It hasn't really been the same since Ellie was adopted. Sure, he could say that about any of the other kids (if he wanted). Could say that about himself, aware he's about to get shuffled off to another family. But—he doesn't. He won't.

So, when Ellie tells him she's taking a break from her weird cabin-in-the-woods, pretty sus educational rite, Aki skips school. He doesn't feel bad about it; it's not like it matters. And when she showed, he tossed a book at her, filled with those dumb puns she likes so much, and some crappy candy he swept off the desk of the asshole who sits in front of him in bio.

"Depends." He rocks on the swingset, seat creaking and feet still on the ground. The end of a dum-dum sucker sticks out of his mouth. "You know they say time moves differently in there?"

Ellie sets the book on her lap, letting anticipation mount before she reads it. Instead, she hands Aki half of the sandwich. Joel caught it in a river-- she's not really sure it's tuna. But it tastes fine with that much mayo, so who really cares.

"It does?" Ellie, always with her nose in a sci-fi book, feels her imagination begin to light. "Does it move backwards?"

"It's not a time travel machine," he says, a little haughty. "Maybe it's more like a black hole? The closer you get to...whatever, the more unstable it gets."

His nose wrinkles when he looks down at the sandwich. "Why's there so much mayo?" Like saying it alone offends his sensibilities...and yet that doesn't stop him from popping the sucker out of his mouth to take a bite.

Mentioning space phenomena is a great way to get Ellie to pay attention. She considers her answer as she chews her food, speaking as soon as the idea rises to the surface-- around sliced tomato and spinach. "Then it'd have to be moving at a different orbit than the rest of earth. Or it's... super dense."

Which might explain it, but- "Joel-" she swallows her food. "Joel says when we go into the woods, there won't be any mayo anymore. He's trying to get rid of 'perishables'." She makes a single scare quote with her free hand.

Edited (i love wikipedia.) 2022-03-30 20:46 (UTC)

He frowns at his mystery fish, ready to chase that idea; it couldn't be that simple when it doesn't affect matter the same way, but—

The swing squeaks to a halt.

"You're going?" He's known that's the plan. He just thought...well, he hadn't really thought about it.

"How soon?"

She looks up, a bit of haughty pride catching in the angle of her shoulder, the slant of her spine. "I can handle it."

Self-sufficiency is what Joel prioritizes, and she'll rise to meet that. He's shown her a lot of stuff.

"If I don't like it, I can bail. He, uh, he hasn't told me when, yet. But I think it's soon, or he wouldn't be getting rid of stuff."

Edited 2022-03-30 22:59 (UTC)

[ He walks straight up to the desk, slamming his remaining hand down on the wood (followed by a wince of pain- too hard.) ]

All my money on Seabreeze?! ON SEABREEZE?! That's what you said right? That's the horse you said would win!

"That's not why I was asking." He rolls his eyes and goes back to his sandwich, rotating it in a sorry attempt to keep its innards from spilling on him.

"How long are you gonna be gone? Months?" A pause. "Years?"

A fried onion hangs limply from Ellie's mouth, like the tentacle of some devoured thing. She slurps it up loudly, trying, as ever, to get a rise out of Aki.

When she's finished, she answers- "I dunno. Did you read that book I loaned you, about that guy who died in the woods?" A very thoughtful description of Into The Wild. "Maybe you'll never see me again."

She wiggles her greasy fingers. Ooh, spooky.

The bell over the coffee shop door rings the same way it always does when she pushes it open-- too cheery, too bright for so early in the morning, as if mocking her for her pathetic addiction to sugar-blasted coffee. But Grace barely takes notice anymore. Too many days' sleeping-in time replaced with early coffee runs before heading to the dreary soul-sucking office that occupied far too much of her life lately. It kept her away from the things she used to prioritize; hobbies, friends, family. Now it's just work, playing a lot of phone tag with increasingly disinterested college friends... and coffee.

"Seriously, Jason, call me back," she tells her phone as she hustles into the ever-lengthening queue in front of the barista with the poorly bleached hair and exhausted expression. "I know you're avoiding me. I'm not mad, I just want to talk about this. Please." She sighs down the line. "I have time after work today. Just... call me, okay? Before you do something you can't take back."

She hangs up her phone and chucks it into her bag, as if burying it underneath the piles of nonsense cluttering it will end up pushing the frustrations away. It doesn't. Grace sighs again, a huff of exasperation let loose. Maybe coffee will do it. Another order taken, another step forward in line. How much longer is this going to take?

How much longer does she have?

He makes a face back at her, but when she says that, he bristles.

"Don't say shit like that." Sometimes people really do leave and never come back, no matter how many promises they make. "That book was stupid, anyway. Did you read anything else about that guy? He had no idea what he was doing."

He chucks a wrapper at her head.

Sometimes, Ellie thinks about going out into the woods and finding a place to die. That's not why Joel wants to wander out there, she knows. And that's not what she'll do, she just thinks about it.

She catches the wrapper with one hand and grins.

"Yeah, he was an idiot." She tosses it back. "I'll be fine. I'll try'n find a way back when I'm done. I don't wanna be out there forever."

She doesn't say back to you. Neither of their teenage egos could handle it.

Aki ducks. The wrapper lands on the other side of the swing, bright against the dirt, and the look he shoots her from behind the chain is sullen. But it's quick to crumple into a sigh and he turns, cramming the last bit of his sandwich into his mouth.

"They're sending me to another family, anyway," he says, muffled and hanging backwards over the swing. The litter's just an excuse. "Different city."

The paper lands, and Ellie thinks it's okay to leave it; it's biodegradable. She also thinks Joel wouldn't like her to; it's evidence of where they are. He's convinced someone might hunt them down, one day, might try to find them. The government could fall any day.

And if things like the Shimmer exist, maybe it could.

"Which one?" She might be able to find him. It's not like the 70s, when nobody had fucking emails.

"Is it..." She opens her pun book. "Dublin? I hear it grows twice in size every day." A slight groan; that was terrible.

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BACKSTORY: ANOTHER BORDER

for william (screams)

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for loki!

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for Alice!

for Silco and Loki

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for aki.

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for Bucky

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