fifthofthecovenant | The Last Voyages: IC Contact

"I wasn't really expecting to ever get one," Chase grumbles back, but he's too busy flipping through the pages-- there aren't really very many-- to worry about the food. He feels kind of ill anyway, seeing what he's done laid out in black and white. It's all there, from the car accident to the fight with Caleb, hell, right down to flirting with that girl to make her boyfriend jealous so he'd be distracted from Chase and Caleb. "It's been a long time."

Longer than it seems, even, what with the whole year he doesn't really remember. It makes it feel very long.

Wen Ning was feeling a bit passed over himself, after all these months, but he doesn't want to poke at Chase's sore spots. It's done now. "Read it while you eat," he says instead, because there are rules and Chase doesn't get to avoid him while he's standing here.

The problem is, he knows Wen Ning will sit and nag him until he eats something. He's not entirely sure it won't come back up again later from the stress, but that's going to have to be a problem for future-him. So he glowers at Wen Ning a little, tucks the folder close to his chest, and moves to the desk where the food is.

"So what happens now," he says, looking down at it but not starting just yet. And because he knows Wen Ning would just say "you eat your breakfast" if he left it at that, he adds, "With the warden thing."

"We figure out how to get you out of here." Wen Ning finds the barge mostly very peaceful, but he doesn't think Chase enjoys it, and besides, graduation is an unmitigated good. "Or set up to do it yourself, if you want to."

Chase actually doesn't mind it here, between not having to hide what he is, the awesome pool, and the even more awesome library. He'd mind it a lot less if he had all his magic back, and maybe once he gets all his magic back he can actually make some progress on the reason he agreed to come here to begin with.

But if Wen Ning knows all the shit he did, he's surely not going to give it to him. He stares at the snacks unhappily. "What if I'm not ready to go back yet?"

"Be a warden? It's not bad. And you probably have use for a deal." He doesn't need to know the contents of the file and the specific twists of Chase's life to know it wasn't a happy one.

Chase laughs, short and sharp. "I can't be a warden. I don't like people. I've got no reason to want to help them." Maybe eventually-- maybe even soon-- it might occur to him to use a deal for his parents, but the idea is so far from his current mindset that he can't imagine it.

"Have you met some of the wardens?" Wen Ning is a complete pushover, and there are few things he actually minds on his own behalf, but he has eyes. The wardens are at least as maladjusted as the inmates.

Well. He has a point. Chase makes a face. "I have things I need to do, still. In my own world." He's always intended to graduate, even if he hasn't known how, just-- not until he's ready. Not until he has his spell worked out.

"Yes, and you can come and go once you're a warden." Frankly, there's far too much freedom, and he finds it sort of scary and paralyzing. But he's completely willing to weaponize it if Chase is going to be silly.

Hard to come and go when you're dead. Or, at the very least, decrepit. Chase isn't being silly, he's being realistic, dammit. He shakes his head. "Not gonna work, man."

He reluctantly plucks at the snacks, something easy to use as finger food. "What is your deal, anyway?"

He's surprised it hasn't come up yet. "Taking full advantage of the admiral's generosity." He wants the past changed in a very specific way, and he's continuously refining exactly what he'll ask for, checking maps and testing hypotheticals against himself. "I was supposed to die with the last of my family. You know what happened instead." Nails, brain, basement storage. "We surrendered, because at least that was on our terms. But it wasn't as inevitable as we thought, us being hunted. If everyone still thinks they're dead, and the admiral can send them somewhere far away and out in the country, and I stay away? I think they'll be alright."

Reasonable wish. Bring back your family, keep them safe. (Hell, it's what he's trying to do, himself, and he's not even a warden.) But also: "You aren't going home after this?" Chase asks with a little frown.

"Not back to them, anyway." He hasn't really considered any other options, but he can't rejoin the clan. What he will do, he has no idea. Night hunting out in the countryside, probably, he might be able to stay mostly anonymous and useful like that. It'll be long and lonely, but what else is there for it? "Everyone knows about me, and the Ghost General can't be anything but a weapon."

Chase has a brief and very stupid urge to just say he should come back to his world instead, except he's going back to die, and probably his corpse former-warden would freak out his parents... so he just frowns some more and pokes at the snacks again.

"The world's pretty big, I guess. Would it be safe? Even somewhere else somebody might figure out how to use you." And he still hasn't worked out a good protection spell. Probably won't, until and unless Wen Ning actually gives him back the rest of his magic.

"As long as it doesn't come back to them." He shrugs. "If the Ghost General is still rattling around somewhere, that's one thing, probably won't end well, but nobody's problem in particular. If he's staying with a family in some mountain village with a suspicious resemblance to the last few Wen, well."

Of course Wen Ning doesn't give too much of a shit about himself. Because he's a good guy. "I'm going to figure out how to make you possession-proof," he mutters, mostly to himself. "Eventually." If just so he can go to his own death without worrying about him.

"Oh, that's not why." Though, hm, it is a potential problem, and he's still touched that Chase is fussing about it. "It's... politics. I'm a known menace to society, and so's anyone surnamed Wen, and if anyone got wind of that particular weapon in those hands again..."

"Yeah, because all the snacks and fussing over people is so scary," Chase grumbles. He knows that Wen Ning has some spine in him somewhere, he's seen it, and he knows he got-- used-- for awful things. But that part's not really Wen Ning.

He sighs. "So, you're just going to wander around?"

Truth doesn't matter at all, not that the truth is as glowing and blameless as Chase imagines. "Mendicant priests and rogue cultivators are pretty common. I can do a bit of good and people probably won't ask many questions." He was never a good night hunter, but he's hard to hurt and he'll probably manage.

Chase pokes at the snacks again for a minute, then decides it probably isn't something he can worry about right now. "I'm not likely to graduate for-- a while," he warns. "So you'll have a while until you get your deal."

He does fully intend to do it. Just not yet.

He doesn't think you can schedule it, but that certainly doesn't bother him. "That's not a problem for me. I like it here. Do you?" He isn't always sure how seriously to take Chase's moody grousing.

The Last Voyages: IC Contact

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whoops, too many threads in his inbox, lost this one

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