Ethan arrives and stumbles upon the Karaoke party. He is surprised to see Victor -- who is just as surprised to see
him.
⚠References to murder / death / resurrection
Perhaps a more sensible man would have been going up to the first person they saw, snatching them by the collar, and demanding answers as to what was occuring. It wasn't as though Ethan hadn't been plucked from a wave of opportunities and obligation before he'd found himself jerking awake in an unfamiliar bed. The heat of battle still had his heart racing when his eyes had snapped open and alarm had been clear on his features as he'd desperately tore through the lodging to try to find a trace of Brona, or her allies, but came up short. After a spell of time, once a letter that had flown through the air and came into his possession, his nerves had calmed down enough that stepping from the strange lodgings out into an unfamiliar hallway had seemed like a logical step.
He let his feet lead the way and soon enough it was his other senses that were driving him. He didn't know where his allies were but he knew well enough that the present danger he'd found himself in was no longer as dire. Moving towards the sound of merriment, Ethan had stumbled upon a cabaret of sorts. Several dozen participants were strewn throughout the spanse of trees. It was clear it was a moment of merriment. Curiosity had led him to crossing his arms on the periphery and taking it all in.
While some had approached him, and given him bits of information, it still was a lot to take in over one evening. But he didn't quite know what else he could consider doing. Was he to return to the room? He got the impression that answers were not going to come easily but drinks? Drinks did and he flashed smiles of gratitude at the attractive individuals around him. On occasion, his attention was pulled back to the cabaret stage.
And when one voice stood out? His eyes drifted to the stage again and his head gave a tilt.
"Well, I'll be damned," he muttered to himself as the amusement grew on his features. He'd never quite seen the good doctor in such a light. It was also a song that Ethan hadn't ever heard despite his many travels. When it was clear the ballad was over, Ethan was already making his way through the crowd towards the stage exit, all the while whistling and clapping his hands.
He didn't have answers but it did seem as though he had Victor. "I've got to say, doc..." he began when he was finally in ear shot "...never thought you'd be one for the performing arts. And such an attractive voice at that."
Victor had meant to sing something in honor of Elizabeth, more of a sea shanty than anything else. Maybe something from the DDR that she liked. Only the moment he’d gotten the nerve to get on stage and try to bring himself closer to the faintest feeling of Elizabeth, the song he’d wanted wasn’t the song he was given. It was a song he knew he’d never known, but somehow he knew it well enough to sing it at the time, well enough to be certain to correct the words enough to make it about a Pirate King instead of a queen. He was sure that Elizabeth would at least have been happy for that.
But the song hadn’t made him feel any better. In fact, it made him feel even more disappointed and even more sad. He missed her. And the emptiness that existed afterwards nearly made him miss the whistling and the clapping. He’d intended to slip off unnoticed to deal with his feelings, but when he’d looked up, he found himself looking at Ethan.
He faltered for a moment, trying to decipher when Ethan was from and what he may or may not know. There was always the chance that they’d end up in a fight and he wasn’t entirely sure he was up for it. “I…” He stared for a moment. “Um.” Yes. He was very eloquent tonight. “Ethan.”
"Victor," he responded back with the amusement still sparkling in his eyes. He cast a glance past Victor, to the next individual to take the stage, before he brought his gaze back to the only man that he recognized in this place.
It was a gentle nudge of his head off to the side as a silent question of 'shall we?'
Victor could not contain the anxiety that cropped up as Ethan motioned for them to walk off. He wasn’t sure anything would happen and Ethan seemed in a good humor, but it didn’t stop him from fidgeting with a bit of paper in the pocket of his jacket.
Still, he followed the direction he motioned, taking a moment to adjust to the new arrival. He looked briefly around for Rey, not able to immediately find her. “You’ve just arrived,” he said after a moment. “Do you, by any chance, remember Chicago or Tumbleweed?” He assumed not Tumbleweed because they had not been very talkative. But perhaps it was easier to tease than be angry at this point.
“I suppose, what I should ask is...what do you last recall from home?”
Ethan's hands slid easily into the pockets of his coat as he took several steps away from the main area, putting distance between other individuals and himself. Having spotted Victor participating with the others, Ethan surmised the other man had been here at least a tad bit longer than Ethan had. It was likely he had more answers to the questions Ethan hadn't quite felt comfortable asking the attractive strangers.
Pivoting on his heel, he turned to face Victor. "That I have," he agreed. He didn't want to elude to how waking without memory of arrival reminded him far too much of nights woken in alleyways after a full moon so he moved past that statement once he'd spoken. "Now, doctor, when is it you made time to visit the Americas?" He raised a brow as he asked this question. "And you'll find tumbleweeds aren't terribly memorable my friend."
He drew in a breath and gave a shake of his head. "Diving straight into it, I see." He cast his gaze off again as he thought back to Brona and the most recent hours. "Miss Croft and I were taking up arms with her newfound sisterhood." He brought his gaze to her. "Wasn't too long past she and I came across you, of course, but got a feeling you might not have just come from those moments yourself. Is that right?"
Victor studied him for a moment, realizing he knew neither place. It was not entirely surprising. No one remembered him the way he remembered them. But perhaps it was for the best. When he mentioned Brona, Victor expected something more of an acidic tone, but he was confused to find that it wasn’t there.
“I do not recall that, no. It must be further than my memory. I was...rather unwell last I recall after being trapped in the room with Sir Malcolm and our separate illusions.” He glanced down, not wanting to think too much about the haze his mind had been after that. His fingers flexed. “I have not been home in some years, however. I first arrived in Chicago. Much like arriving here, though, I arrived somewhere in the middle of the city and was picked up by a group. Then I arrived in a new town. It is not a tumbleweed. It was a place called Tumbleweed. It was in Texas. It is amazing how far things have come in the future. Medicine, electricity. Everything, honestly. I could not have imagined it before.
"That common? Things being further than memory?" Studying him for a moment, there was a sense of understanding to the illusions and he gave a nod. Poole's enchantments had left their marks on all of Ethan's family. He just hadn't been fully aware of the depths of such until a significant amount of time later. He'd been too wrapped up in facing his sins in the immediate after.
"Wagerin' that makes little in the way of sense if I put my mind too much to it." He'd just seen Victor back home. And even if he hadn't? He recalled Victor's presence in his company months prior. How was it he'd been away for years? Still, if he could make concessions that Victor had been here for some time already from his own observations, he could make concessions that allowed for the potential of years. "'Course, when did much of anything make sense for our company as of late?"
He gave a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head before raising a brow at him. "How far along in the future we talking, doc? Any idea when this? Miss Waugh was informative but didn't go as far as to give me a date."
He was being relatively not hostile, so Victor did his best to relax. “Happens more often than you’d think. Our being around in these pocket dimensions does not shift what happens back home. We are…copies of ourselves.” He wasn’t sure how else to explain it because that was how he understood it for so long. “I once watched parts of our show but that was all stuff I’ve lived and nothing past that.”
He sighed. “Last I was aware, it was 2020. I am…approximately twenty-eight now.” He knew that was a while since the twenty-five he’d been before and yet seemed so little. “As for when this is, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to have an exact year.” He’d checked, but even that yielded nothing to him.
"That'd explain why it is you are home and here all at once," Ethan murmured after a brief pause to let the thoughts turn over in his head. And if Victor was the one stating this as fact, Ethan wasn't hard pressed to question him. But a puzzled look crossed Ethan's features when he referenced a 'show.' "Come again, doc?" A brow was raised. "What do you mean by a 'show?' Like the tall tales I used to put on?"
He hoped neither of them ever reached a point of notoriety that they were featured in productions by amateur thespians.
Both his hands moved out of his pockets and came to rest on his hips as his head tilted to the side. "2020?" That was a date that felt impossible to even imagine. He was barely ready for the dawn of the twentieth century. And if he were honest? He didn't think it likely he'd make it to see that momentous occasion but this was not spoken to Victor. "Gettin' up in the years with the rest of us," he said with some hint of amusement.
An exact year being elusive brought a sigh. It wasn't important, Ethan imagined, but it would have been nice to be aware of.
Victor paused, considering his words for a moment. “Ah...it’s not really important.” Because even if he knew about it, it seemed like it wasn’t something terribly well known. “But something like that, yes.”
But he allowed the year he was last aware of distract from everything. “Yes. It was quite far. There were places with multicolored lights and they could be on at all hours of the night without turning off.” He remembered how amazed he’d been when he first saw the electricity. Everything in Chicago was so new and surprising. “And there is even more poetry to catch up on, but that might be more interesting to me.”
He gave him a small smile, but there was something that he was still curious about. “I assume you know...about what I’ve done,” he said after a moment. “But yet you are...still talking to me. It is...ah...unusual in my experience.”
He gave a shake of his head along with a tic of his tongue to express his discomfort over the notion of this 'show.' He'd need to press Victor more about that in the future but he'd have preferred anonymity if at all possible and it didn't sound as though this were the case.
Still, a slight smile crept across his features at the wonderment Victor conveyed over the technological advancements of society. Ethan knew how the leaps and bounds in that field could mean a significant amount to the other man. "Possible I might be able to see that for myself at some point, I reckon." And he imagined he'd appreciate doing so. It was easier to think of a future where the world progressed instead of being succumbed by darkness. With the point he'd just come from? That felt like the best sort of hope one could cling to. "Certainly more of your scope of interest but I appreciate it from time to time."
He pulled in a breath. "To Ms. Croft?" It had been a source of vicious rage inside of him upon the immediate discovery but Brona had demanded civility. "I don't condone it. Damn near could of snapped your neck when I found out but..." He sighed before shrugging his shoulders, "...having her around is a balm on an ache. And you and I? We don't have much in the way of our family left."
It was possible that this place was a much different beast than the last two. No one batted an eyelash when he revealed his name. No mention of the books or any media involving him. That didn’t mean it wasn’t part of their knowledge, but the change between Chicago and Tumbleweed was noticeable, but he’d mostly adjusted.
“I suppose you might.” He thought that there would likely be plenty of lights around. Even the music machine was much more advanced than he’d had. “Elizabeth was a big fan of the...DDR machine and the children like the video games.” He forced his expression neutral as he spoke of them because the concept of never seeing them again was a darkness he didn’t want to explore in this moment. “You likely would have been entertained by their games.”
He nodded at Ethan’s words. He understood. He would never expect him to have condoned it. It wasn’t a great part of his life, but it had made things difficult between him and Ethan most of the time. “I suppose that is the future? I am not certain I want to ask, but should you wish to speak on it, I will not stop you.”
The words that Victor spoke were foreign to Ethan. What was a 'video game' and was DDR some sort of abbreviation or code? The confusion was evident on his face but there was something far more important than the lack of understanding for the words. References to individuals. "And who is Elizabeth? And 'the children?'" Children were not known to Ethan in terms of Victor from back home.
Not unless he was counting his creations; and Ethan highly doubted that. They were grown individuals with life breathed back into their souls. Children summoned an image of youth. And the woman's name? They must've been individuals from Victor's time away from home. It was damn near certain.
"Our family?" There was a sigh and a shake of his head. "No. We can speak on it soon. But not tonight? You seemed to be having a merry evening. Wouldn't want to ruin that just yet." But Ethan knew well enough that Victor would deduce clear meaning. They'd lost people and clearly more than one.
Victor noted the confusion, remembering when he was also confused by them. He opened his mouth to explain about what they were when Ethan asked about Elizabeth and the children. “Ah. Elizabeth is my…well, I suppose the modern world is girlfriend. We were never married, but we’d meant to be eventually. Only we never thought it was something to stress ourselves over. The children are Caroline and Abraham. They were children from a future I hardly know is real in any place now. The future changes ever so slightly and nothing is guaranteed.” It was possibly true that he didn’t express that it would take their own children to convince them to marry most likely and not until they were older.
He shrugged slightly. “I am uncertain that I shall see any of them again.” There was a sadness in his expression there. He had gone two weeks without her before. He wasn’t sure if she might just be delayed, but he was also not certain the emptiness hadn’t found him at last. “She was a pirate king. Elizabeth. She was born a gentleman’s daughter, but she chose to be a pirate.” He missed her, which was...well, complicated because he was notably not very good at not sinking into his feelings.
“I’m not sure I would say merry,” he replied after a moment. “But we can talk about it when you are ready.”
His head tilted even more. He'd not known Victor to have any attachments. Now he was being told of a rather serious romance that included children out of wedlock. Not that Ethan had any issues with that himself. It was simply a surprise to hear from the other man. His amusement over Victor surprising him in multiple ways, however, was not allowed to be shown over his features.
Especially once the other man stated his own fears.
He cast his eyes away for a moment. With his arrival only hours past, and everything feeling like a whirlwind, he'd not considered the possibility of never seeing others he cared for again. He'd only just gotten Ms. Croft back in his graces. "One can't be certain of anything, my friend. I trust that one day you may have the opportunity to be reunited." This was offered the smallest of smiles. Whether it be that his paramoure joined his side here or they were reunited in the next life. "You are full of surprises, Victor," he noted in reference to the additional information he gave about this Elizabeth. A pirate by choice wouldn't have ever been in the consideration of what Ethan felt someone Victor might be interested in, let alone in love with.
"The spirits make it merry," he noted before nodding. They'd speak of it another day. He took a step closer and swung his arm around the other man's shoulders. "Now, let us discuss more of this situation we've found ourselves in..."