logsinthenight | [Closed]

characters: Armitage Hux and Buffy Summers
location: bar of the Invincible
date/time: day after they wake up from the dream
content: discussing what happened at the Lighthouse
warnings: mentions of death, etc

There was a lot that he didn't understand what happened in that dream reality at the Lighthouse. His father....the messages. He had woken up alone outside of the Lighthouse, in the darkness only lit by the dim glow of the bonfire nearby. There was no sign of what had just happened. He had been glad when Buffy had contacted him- if anyone could help make sense of what happened, it would be someone who had also experienced the same thing.

Meeting at the bar was perfect since he was sure he would need something to steady him as they sorted through what had happened. He ordered a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the spirit who tended the bar, grabbing them and taking them to a table to wait for Buffy to arrive. He poured out one glass for himself before she arrived. It wasn't the best whiskey he had ever had but it would suffice.

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It took a whole lot of effort for Buffy to convince herself that taking her scythe downstairs with her wasn't being paranoid. She was going to patrol after they were done here, she'd need her weapon with her. Just in case. And yes, it was too much effort for her to walk up the flight of stairs to grab it from the room she shared with Peter Parker.

She was being paranoid, not stupid. Stupid would be to disregard all they'd seen and forget about the thing that had murdered her. Stupid would be to assume that it wasn't real and couldn't come find her at any moment. She wasn't stupid.

Giving a brief wave to the spirit behind the bar, she made her way to the table and the ginger-haired fellow sitting there. A familiar face she wished she didn't know. She slid into the seat across from Hux and set her scythe across one beside her, in easy reach. Just in case.

"Hey."

He moved one of the glasses towards her so she could pour herself some of the whiskey. The talk they were going to have was not going to be pleasant. He eyed the scythe, raising his eyebrows but didn't common on the weapon. He had his blaster and knives on him, concealed but still within easy reach, just to be safe. He was already dead but that didn't mean he wanted to die again.

"I take it you had the same, vision, of whatever it was in the Lighthouse. I'm not sure if we had a similar experience but we can at least compare notes," he said, getting right to business. "I noticed you were limping, is your foot injured?" It was strange if her foot was broken but the wounds he saw when she died in the Lighthouse didn't seem to be present from what he could notice. "From kicking the door, correct?"

She'd almost forgotten the limp, she'd gotten so used to it in the last day. A constant ache, the same as what she'd felt in the dream, but then all of her ached in one way or another.

The drink she poured was a generous one.

"Yeah, from the jackass door," she confirmed, taking a sip of the thing that wanted to be whiskey in a previous life. The face she made confirmed that it was not good alcohol, but that sure as hell wasn't going to stop her from drinking it. "Nothing's broken but it hurts sometimes. More often than not."

"Do you remember what happened while we were in the Lighthouse?" he asked as he poured himself another glass. There was no nice way to ask someone if they had really been brutally murdered but he was trying to make sense of what had happened.

"We were together until the cover over my father's body was lifted. That's when you and Wanda vanished," he said as he took a sip of whiskey. "I didn't see you when I went to the top of the Lighthouse," he said as he set his glass down.

Frowning, Buffy took another sip of her drink, grimacing again, though to a slightly lesser degree this time. The burn of the alcohol on her throat was a welcome distraction from the pain in her shoulders.

"Oh, I remember the Lighthouse," she told him with a look of distaste that had nothing to do with the liquid in her glass. "But it was my sister under the plastic sheet, or something pretending to be her. Then, yeah, you both vanished."

"I doubt it was really my father in the Lighthouse either." Brendol had dissolved more than anything, his remains were nothing but goo that had been disposed of in space years ago.

"Something used our pasts against us," he said with a frown. "I went up to the top level and went to the computers. It seemed as everything happened at once there." If she had been at the top and had a similar experience as he did as well, perhaps they could start to make sense of what had happened.

"I was able to gain access to the network and access to everyone's private messages. They are monitoring our communications here."

"Color me not surprised," she muttered, setting down her glass. If she didn't know the spirit behind the bar was of the good, she might glare at if for being complicit in whatever the hell was going on with this creepy town.

"I'm not computer girl but there were controls up there. Radar, with something big at the corner of the screen, and portals. There were a whole lot of numbers that I didn't understand and it kept trying to initiate a reset, but I picked one and it did... something. I think."

"What did it show?" He poured himself another glass before pushing the bottle back towards her.

"I saw a countdown to a reset as well. I also received a message on the computer claiming it was my father." He wasn't going to say what the message said since he didn't want to deal with questions about Brendol Hux. He wasn't ashamed of what he had done but it was not something he cared to think about.

"Did you see me at all at the top?"

"I don't know..." She shook her head, wrapping her hand around the bottle but not pouring it just yet. What did it show? Too much. Not enough. And with what had happened immediately after...

She shook her head again at his second question, frowning again. "No, I didn't see you, not unless you decided to turn into a big monster and skewer me."

What fond memories those were.

"No, that wasn't me. I saw it as if it was happening right in front of me on a screen but when I turned to look, I couldn't see. It was as if we were in two different realities suddenly, somehow." He wasn't sure what other explanation that there was. There was nothing logical about anything that happened in that Lighthouse.

"You got a chat message as well. You said something about your sister," he commented, wondering if she got a message from him as well.

Okay, that called for more alcohol. She finished off her glass and poured another one. A big one. Because what the hell.

"There was a message on the screen," she told him after her expression recovered from the post-alcohol grimace. "Trying to pretend to be Dawn again. But then— There was something about why it had to kill me and only one of us surviving. I didn't understand it; my sister's alive and had nothing to do with my death."

"Interesting." So his answer had been sent to her. He wasn't going to elaborate on that since it would involve answering some personal questions about his father most likely.

"After you were killed, I saw the Lighthouse keeper and a man I couldn't identify at the top of the tower. I couldn't see what they said to each other," he said thoughtfully as he took a drink of his whiskey.

"I think perhaps we should speak to the Keeper. She must know something about what had happened. And how she has so much information about our personal lives."

Buffy was quiet for a moment, weighing their options before shaking her head.

"I doubt we'll get anything from her," she said with a sigh. "We can't be the first people to ask these questions and from what I've seen, no one else has those answers. And it's not like we can go ask her in person and demand answers."

"We have to find answers somehow," he pointed out thoughtfully as he idly played with his glass in one hand.

"Perhaps we can look somewhere else. There has to be more to this world than just the limited place of Beacon," he remarked. He wasn't sure about stomping off into the wilderness but there had to be more to this place and sitting around wasn't going to help anything.

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