Not Until We Are Lost

The island had been better than the black and white world. The island made Eva feel a little more sane. Being on the ship, however, did nothing for her. She was glad to see her own clothes again. Surprised to see the things she'd had before the island, and the island stuff, mixed into all of it.

But she left the room to explore some.

She wanted the hell out of this experiment. She didn't want to be a part anymore. She didn't want to go to new and interesting locations and meet monsters that she'd never even dreamed of. She wanted Gotham. Normalcy. A lab.

It didn't take long until Eva realized that she was going in circles. Circles and circles and doors and doors.

She sat down in the hallway, unsure if this was really happening, again wondering if she'd just become totally unhinged. Not seeing Olivia since the black and white, she was really unsure if the other woman even existed. That did not help.

Eva was going crazy in this place.

She wasn't used to being treated delicately. She didn't approve of it. She could hear her father's laughter in her head, taunting her for what she had to go through. It wasn't that they opened doors for her. That was fine. It was that they didn't trust her to take care of herself. Or do anything. She couldn't pick out books without somebody trying to foist romances on her, or home journals. She couldn't carry groceries without some dick taking them out of her arms and walking behind her all the way home.

Most of the time, she didn't know where Olivia was. Maybe she'd abandoned Olivia. Or maybe Olivia had abandoned her. Eva couldn't remember. She had flashes of the woman in her memory and couldn't tell if they were recent or from the diner. She couldn't even be totally sure that her interactions with Olivia were things that happened outside of her head.

Insanity was a thing that was hardwired into her DNA. Her parents were both unstable. She knew this. It wasn't news. It wasn't surprising. She saw the genius of them both, but she also couldn't deny the crazy. Look how Jack treated Harley, yet she stayed, or came back, always. Look at Jack's obsessions.

For a long time, Eva had pushed it away, thinking it would never touch her. As she'd gotten older, she had to admit that it was a possibility. And now, she was wondering if she was falling apart completely.

The lack of color didn't help, either. Eva was used to color. Needed it. Well, realized she needed it now that she didn't have it. She'd never thought about it before. Now it was a huge deal.

With everything going on outside, the repression, the gentleness toward her gender, Eva stayed inside most of the time. She would look out her window, the lights off, watching. Wishing that it would all stop. Wondering - once in a while - if she killed herself, if she'd wind up back in Gotham. This all a sick dream. Since she couldn't be sure, she didn't try. Death was not a thing she wanted to experience at this time.

Eva sat on the bed, wondering if Olivia was anywhere nearby. Wondering how many days had passed.

The last thing Eva remembered was Rayne. Rayne and shoes. A shopping trip turned into a covert intelligence gathering mission. After that, there was nothing. She didn't like the gap in memory, but she knew there had to be something else that went on. Considering the fact that she was now sitting in a diner, staring at somebody she didn't know.

She was less bothered by the fact that nothing was in color.

Eva adjusted her dress, deciding that she wasn't going to freak out about any of this. Not the fact that she was wearing clothes that weren't hers, not the fact that she was pretty sure somebody had given her hair curls. And not the fact that she was pretty sure that she didn't have any money to pay for the coffee sitting on the table in front of her.

She leaned forward, elbows on the table, to speak to her companion.

"So. Any idea what the fuck is going on?"

There was a gasp from the passing waitress at the f-bomb she'd dropped, but Eva made a face at her and didn't apologize. She had never been one for watching her mouth.

The books Piotr gave her had helped. She'd read throughout the night, studiously. The more she learned, the more convinced she became that this world - this Earth - was nothing like her Caeleste. There was mention of other worlds far from Earth, but it seemed that little detail was available past that. No mention was made of different planes of existence, so Rayne kept that thought to herself. It was possible that these Earthlings didn't know about different planes of existence. It was possible, in fact, that Earth couldn't even access them.

There seemed to be very little magic involved in anything here. Instead, the people of Earth relied on science, the understanding of how the pieces of their their world worked. It was, perhaps, a little like alchemy. But their religions didn't have gods who were active, or gods that could be called on for magic. It was very strange.

Blood magic, she discovered, worked as well on Earth as it had in Caeleste. There was that.

After answering a good amount of questions from the warrior who'd brought her here, Rayne left the inn where Piotr had arranged their stay. It was night in Electric City, but the lights were bright. She stepped out onto the street, took her bearings, then began walking east. It was best, she thought, to get accustomed to the city that purportedly had the answers she was seeking.

Enigma groaned softly as she rolled over, her hand reaching out for her husband, frowning as she realized that Bruce wasn't laying in the bed with her. She raised her head, pushing her hair from her face...and realizing she wasn't in their bed off the Dutchman's clinic.

In fact, she was in her bed from Boston. In the middle of her hideout in Gotham.

"Fucking bitch!" she cursed as she fell back against the bed. She had switched world three in her life, and only once she was awake for it. She knew Dutch, and the sadistic bitch of a ship would not have given her a room like this, when she had a perfectly functional one in the ship's clinic.

Which meant she shifted worlds again.

She slid from the bed, grabbing Bruce's shirt from the floor, glad that had at least transferred over, before finding her slippers from when she was sixteen and leaving the room.

It was...odd. To find things from two different lives, neither that she actually currently lived in one place. Her gun next to her school books...her father's cane with her mother's umbrella's.

She returned upstairs, opening her closet...and was faced with the reality of her duel lives. School uniforms mixed with her costume mixed with her...more exposed clothing mixed with what appeared to be some of Bruce's clothing.

( Gotham City...Again )