33 Apocalypse Avenue, Tuesday Midday

[bitten_notshy]

Jack had gone to check the board listing off the missing early that morning, and wished he hadn't. Dinah was gone now too -- her and George and Nina and an unfathomable list of others. It seemed impossible that the person who had explained the situation to him had been swallowed by it mere days later.

It made him realize he had others to check on back at home.

Cautiously, he pulled out his phone and dialed his roommate back in London. (It was a sad state of affairs when he'd be happy to talk with Kevin about his latest workout routine or who said what on which chat show the night before, but there it was.) No response, not even a beep, just dead expectant air.

He tried his adviser at college then. His friend Alistair. The Detective Inspector's Office within the London Police. The pizza shop down the road from his flat. It didn't matter; none of those calls were getting anywhere, and (when he checked it) his emails from home had gone suspiciously silent.

And then he gave up, closed his eyes, and rested his head on Ronan's kitchen table. They'd get through this. He knew that. He was just running very low on hope, and he'd never expected to be the last of his world.

[OOC: Open for phone calls or those staying there!]

Comments

[icecoldfrost]

"That's just it, isn't it," she pointed out. "It started slow for everyone else, too, small things you couldn't prove to anyone else. How much longer does my world have, then? Because I know I'm right, even if no one there believes me. So, what, then? It's okay because it's still there now?"

Jack, better than almost anyone else, most likely knew how well Emma dealt with being helpless.

[bitten_notshy]

"My world had more than a full month from the first thing I noticed to -- whatever this is today," Jack said. "But no, it's not okay. Nothing will make it okay until we fix it. And we will. I promise."

[icecoldfrost]

Coffee. There was coffee. The entire reason she'd left the comforting cocoon of her blankets in the first place. Emma grabbed the second mug and filled it, ignoring the now-broken one she'd flung at Jack. "Don't make promises you may not be able to keep, Mr. Priest," she said coolly.

"Do you have any idea how delicate, how complex the human mind is? Everything is interconnected; to try and remove all the memories of, say, Sebastien from people's minds without damaging other memories that person touches, to make it smooth with no gaps or holes or sense of loss, takes power. Takes detail and finesse, and whatever it is has managed to do this with billions of people and places simultaneously."

"I can do it to one person at a time, maybe even a half-dozen. But removing entire continents and history from the collective subconscious memory of a planet would take a god." Perhaps the collective power of those telepaths held captive that Jono had mentioned could manage it, but Emma refused to even consider such an option.

"We will do what we can, and more, because we are who we are and we do not let people just take what is ours without a fight. But make me no promises and tell me no lies."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack silently went to get a broom and dustpan to clean up the shattered mug.

No promises, no lies: He respected it, but he wasn't sure what else he had to offer.

Better to do some housework.

At some length, he finally managed: "You're right, of course. I've been reading enough the last few days to know you're right about all of it. But saying we'll do what we can sounds like we've given up already."

[icecoldfrost]

"Don't be maudlin, darling." Exhausted, emotionally and physically drained, and it didn't matter; she shot him an arch look over her shoulder that was pure Emma - fearless, superior, stubborn, and utterly confident in her own abilites. "I fully intend to take back what's mine, on my terms."

"We're going to figure out how to change the rules, and then game is ours."

[bitten_notshy]

"Mmmm." Jack didn't see how that was different from what he'd said to start with, other than that she'd done better at avoiding cliches, but it hardly seemed worth having another argument. He was sure in Emma's head it was absolutely different.

Maybe it was in some way he couldn't puzzle out just now.

He dumped the mug remnants into the dustbin.

"When you look like that, I'm not sure a God would stand a chance against you."

When all else failed, flattery was generally the safest route with Emma; besides, it was true.

[icecoldfrost]

"I heard that last bit," she informed him crankily as she sat down. "So you think you can charm your way into my good graces by extolling my virtues?"

...not that she was opposed to that, mind you.

[bitten_notshy]

"If the main alternative is biting each other's heads off until Ronan kicks us both out -- yes, very much so," Jack said sunnily.

It was a fake sunniness, but he was good at that.

"Does it really bother you?"

[icecoldfrost]

"Only if you don't manage to live up to your own expectations," Emma quipped back. "Seeing you sulk is always a mood killer."

[bitten_notshy]

"I can't promise not to sulk, but I can promise it won't be because I'm not living up to my own expectations," Jack said softly. "Mostly because I'm not sure what my expectations of myself just now should be."

[icecoldfrost]

Emma sighed and rubbed at her eyes with one hand. "Jack, you aren't going to solve the crisis overnight," she said gently. "You're brilliant, darling, and trained by a detective with centuries of experience, but that doesn't make you responsible for fixing everything."

[bitten_notshy]

"No, but it does mean if there's some -- intelligence behind this, I should be in a good spot to ferret it out," Jack said. "The trouble is that I can't see any. It's just cruel."

[icecoldfrost]

"Random, too," she pointed out. "Or at least it seems that way to me."

[bitten_notshy]

"If we could see the whole pattern, it might not seem random," Jack said. "We're guessing based on a handful of puzzle pieces, and we don't even know how large the jigsaw is."

[icecoldfrost]

"It's probably one of those three-dimensional puzzles where all the pieces are varying shades of blue or something," Emma replied helpfully. "Which makes it difficult, but not impossible."