[Plot] Where Everybody Knows Your Name

[Miriam Bell]

"A mirror frame. I had some success calming the chaos in their head with... I guess you could call it a sea of tranquility." she says and conjures up the mental image of the stillness of the mirror-surface she'd imbued Will with. "And I thought it might give that state some stability." Miriam's too mentally exhausted and shaken to bother trying to explain herself too much, instead opening up her mind to share her thoughts and reasonings with Sam more directly. It's probably the most vulnerable she's ever been towards Sam and that includes the time she accidentally locked herself in a coffin filled with blood.

"A mirror frame to let him rest and give the voices in his head step through the proverbial veil. Could make it a soft-serve ice-cream machine but I do have some standards."

[Samantha McManus]

"So where did it give?"

[Miriam Bell]

"I just couldn't pull it together, too many voices and distractions snapped the whole thing before I could connect the frame around him. Fix one spot, another came loose."

[Samantha McManus]

"Did it feel like he was pushing back? Because this seems like it'd contain him, in some way."

[Miriam Bell]

"I honestly don't know. Perhaps. They're all kind of pushing back against each other to begin with."

[Samantha McManus]

"What did it feel like for you when it was happening, Will?"

[Will Stanton]

"It's...difficult for us to put into words," Will said, self-consciously adjusting her name badge as she tried to explain. "When Miriam hits that mind whammy, everything goes a little...fuzzy. Not in a bad way; if anything, the silence is much needed. But it does somewhat keep us from really focusing on what's going on.

We just worry...maybe there's too much of us for Miriam to be able to handle? It was easier the other way around, when we attempted to contain Miriam, than Miriam containing us."

[Miriam Bell]

"Not exactly a long-term solution." Miriam says a bit tersely but the other telepath in the room can tell it's because she's being guarded about having been so vulnerable.

[Samantha McManus]

"So you don't think there was anything in you fighting that containment, just... too much of you?"

[Will Stanton]

"We...

If it was full containment. That would be a problem," Will said, after some careful thought. "But Miriam has assured us that there is a...way out. And that we won't be...shoved into a corner and forgotten.

And most of us believes her, we think. Trust is difficult. We don't do well in a cage. And we've had bad experiences before," she said, pacing across the floor a bit.

"Black Air. Melpomene. Antarctica. Muir. We would not be surprised if our history causes us, on some level, to rebel. But, we assure you, we're not trying to...consciously do that."

[Miriam Bell]

"The whole idea is it's not a cage. It didn't feel like they were resisting intentionally, but I could be wrong..."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well you'll forgive the war goddess for thinking in terms of conflict, aye?"

[Will Stanton]

"With the voices inside our head raging, you're not wrong. We think you've just identified the wrong enemy," Will nodded.

"As always, we are our own stumbling block."

[Miriam Bell]

"Well, if Sam strong-arms your subconsciousness to play along it might go smoother."

[Will Stanton]

"I suppose the combined powers of a war goddess and a vampiric muse could probably squash lil' ol us," Will smiled

[Samantha McManus]

"Well, let's get a feel for you again before we do any... squashing," she says, closing her eyes and reaching out with her mind.

[Will Stanton]

For a moment, the all-too-familiar scope of Will's mindscape flittered in front of Sam's eyes -- forest, town, factory, sewers, everything in it's proper place. By now, Sam knew it well enough to get around blindfolded.

But this time...Sam hadn't really checked Will out since the original MGH incident, and things simply were not the same. Miriam had seemed a little shaken when after her encounter inside Will, buffeted by his thoughts. Sam was going for a more metaphorical approach, and so the same overwhelming affect came more as currents in the air as she reached out, buffeting and swirling, making it next to impossible to get a good grip on Will's headspace -- a physical, or at least astral, representation of the invasive thoughts, voices in his head, and indecisiveness Will had noted. And the images she could get were...wrong was not the right word. Different. Less coherent.

Everything...flickered and flitted. The forest fluctuated between a redwood forest, a tropical jungle, something straight out of the Lorax, a logging camp in the center of a clearing, a zoo. The town grew and shrank, looking at one moment futuristic, lined with neon lights and cassette futurism aesthetics, and the next stone age caves carved into the side of the rock, nothing fancier than a stone axe as tools. The factory was alternatively industrial and whimsical; now a standard office building, now a series of bespoke stalls, now a towering monolith piercing through the skies. Even the statue of Will's Sam in front changed and shook - slight variations in pose, form, overall shape.

It wasn't that the aspects of Will's head were shifting and changing -- this wasn't some kind of intermediate process of shifting, which might be where Sam's head first went. It was more that it was all there, just at a slight right angle from reality -- like she was seeing bits and pieces of a larger diamond passing through the plane of the Astral, with different facets occasionally catching the proverbial light. Or a kaleidoscope, held up to the light, different bits and pieces falling into place at different points in time.

Sam -- or, rather, the Morrigan -- was used to the chaos of a battlefield. This wasn't a million miles off, but it was it's own kind of chaos -- it's not that the different aspects were fighting, per se, so much as they were trying to occupy the same limited space. It's no wonder Will had got Miriam to basically shut him down mentally, if he was trying to deal with all this on a constant basis.

It goes without saying that trying to actually enter the mindscape alone would be, at best, highly difficult. Not strictly impossible, if she wanted to try to push through, but this was not a calm, ordered mind.

[Samantha McManus]

"I'd say you feel like you're being designed by committee in there, but that doesn't quite do it justice."

"You're being designed by several committees, and they haven't worked out a rota as to whose day it is."

[Will Stanton]

"There's quite a few of us around -- with the multiple brain voices, that is. Tosh, for one. You, in a manner of speaking..."

[Samantha McManus]

"You didn't always have this many, though. Quite a few of these seem new."

[Will Stanton]

"New?" Will said, stopping to consider that.

"Yes. And maybe also no.

New to us, perhaps. But we don't think they are...recent? It's more that we...couldn't access them before. Like, they were there, somewhere, just out of our reach."

She frowned for a moment, wrinkling her brows. "There's a faint...they're not unfamiliar, though we couldn't tell you from where. Like deja vu of deja vu."

[Samantha McManus]

"So either you're schisming like crazy in there, or they're... coming from somewhere else."

[Will Stanton]

"Those are, we assume, the polite ways of saying we're exceptionally extra, yes?" Will smiled.

"But yes. We don't know where they would be coming from, mind you. We're not a telepath, and we've never been able to fake that."

[Samantha McManus]

"Let's try something else," she says.

"Will, I need you to die."

[Will Stanton]

Will blinked.

"Come again?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I need you, as possibly the finest actor this or several adjacent universes, to die as convincingly as possible."

[Will Stanton]

"And we need to hire you to give the Spectator that review."


"...we trust you know what you are doing....but to what end?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I need to see your light, and it's at its' brightest in the dying."

"If there's anyone who can fool the universe, it's you."

[Miriam Bell]

"Okay no one ever gets to call one of my ideas terrible ever again."

[Will Stanton]

"We're good, Sam, but that good? To fool Death, somehow? We don't know..."

As Will paced around the room, the paintings on the wall began to run and melt, the floor shifting a little under everyone's feet -- it looked like the room was preparing to undergo another change.


"...This has happened once before. We were dying -- for real, dying, the light going out. The Morrigan was there, and she....pulled us back from the edge."

"And our murderer was there, too," she said, looking up at Miriam.

[Miriam Bell]

"I hate this plan. I hate this plan a lot. I just want everyone to know that."

[Samantha McManus]

"I can't force you to relive that if you're uncomfortable."

[Will Stanton]

The room around them started shifting and twisting, as the various pieces of Will around the room went from art gallery to high-class penthouse -- something close to, but not quite, Miriam's tastes. Everything was also slightly off-kilter -- angles bent, lines astray, as if the blueprints Will was working from were warped in his own head.

"No, no, we...we trust you. We trust both of you. You're NOT Melpomene and our Morrigan. You're Sam and Miriam. And you would not intentionally do us harm..."

Will's outfit had changed, as well -- loose, white flowing robes, a modern updating on ancient Greek designs.

"But if we are going to die, we know of only one place where it happened. And we will need help."

She turned to look at both Sam and Miriam. "We are comfortable. If either of you are not, we understand, and can work around it. But...it helps to set the scene."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam looks around the room with an inscrutable expression on her face, brow furrowed. Everything being slightly askew doesn't bother her nearly as much as the fact that, with the angles straightened, she could see herself liking the place. She suspects she won't soon enough, considering the play they're about to put on with this stage.

"Any reasonable person you tell about this is rightfully going to question the sanity of everyone involved in this. Even by ritualistic sacrifice standards this is messed up, Sam. I just want you to know this." And then she manifests a mental construct in her hand that looks like a knife styled to look like half of an antique pair of scissors. Sam could probably tell the thoughts that went into it pretty well. A lot of them are vague memories of Miriam's own near-death and they are not exactly pleasant.

[Samantha McManus]

"Will just gave you an out," she says, eyeing the knife, "so why are you still doing this?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Because I'd rather be there to help than not." she says with a hint of a scowl on her face.

[Will Stanton]

"We will owe you for this, Miriam. Whatever you would like. Consider it a fair trade for this."

[Miriam Bell]

"You owe me nothing. Now stop before this gets sappy and let me bloody well get in character." she says, straightening her neck and putting on an air of looking down her nose at everyone in the room. She hasn't exactly studied Will's memory of Melpomene in depth but she's picked up more than enough.

"Just remember, Sammie." she says, letting her voice go cold and hollow with only spite to give it any emotional edge. She grabs Will's robe by the shoulder and spins them towards her until Will's back is pressed against her chest and she has her arm across the shapeshifter's. "This is your fault." And with one swift motion she plunges the knife into Will's neck and kicks them forward towards Sam.

[Will Stanton]

Will gasped, first in surprise as she was grabbed, and then in shock as she tried to breath despite the perforated throat. Her white dress quickly began to turn red as blood rushed from the wound, and she staggered forward and collapsed in Sam's general direction.

Almost in sympathy, the rest of the objects in the room began to deteriorate as well -- bits and pieces breaking and falling off, mimicking the primary Will's fall.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam is honestly a little surprised by the suddenness of it, but she tries to steel herself, grabbing onto Will and casting her mind out to try to keep the shapeshifter's light in the here and now.