Challenge 3: Ouroboros End Scene -- non Transformers fic

[dragonofdispair]

So... this is from my one non-transformers ongoing epic. It's a crossover between several tabletop rpg 'verses. It's starring Battletech's Theodore Kurita and follows his journies through his "afterlife" in the Dungeons and Dragons Planescape setting, hitting several other game-verses along the way. It's been slow writing, but fun, and I am actively writing it. I don't exactly expect any of the Transformers people to know what's going on though. If you don't feel like you can expand on it, I would still appreciate some comments.

PS: Cobweb, who's mentioned several times, is a cat-themed planar-traveller (and OC) who's helped, and hindered, Theodore several times during his journey to this point.

PPS: Just occured to me I should include a link to the rest of the story (or at least as much as I've written): http://archiveofourown.org/works/2665814/chapters/5958680

Theodore closed his eyes.

And opened them. He did not recognize this dreamscape. In his time he had visited hundreds of dreamscapes, but there were as many of them as there were dreamers, every one of them different.

This one was small – a house – and a familiar looking vidset system made it achingly familiar. Old homesickness gripped his heart, but he did not want to sit and rerun old memories of vid programs in someone else's dreamscape. So he ignored the vidset in favor of the window. It looked out onto a herb garden and a path, stones baking in the hot sun. Heat shimmer blanketed the entire scene. Becoming aware of the heat, did not, in turn, affect Theodore's perception of it – the house stayed pleasantly cool. The place this dreamscape emulated must be climate controlled.

He looked through the edge of the dreamscape, toward Dreamheart and saw it, not far away. Dreamheart was a galaxy of dreamscapes that formed, crashed and fragmented like the beads in a kaleidoscope. It loomed close, drifting slowly away as the dream continued. A new dream then, the dreamer having just crossed the Veil.

It wasn't his own, he knew. Since the battle, Theodore had not had a dream of his own. Sometimes – like now – he entered the dreamscapes of others, but usually he did not cross the Veil as he slept.

He told himself he did not miss it.

Sometimes he allowed himself to realize how much he lied to himself. But dreams were for people who had not travelled to their very Heart, to the madness beyond, and lying to himself was how he avoided regretting decisions he wouldn’t have changed even if he’d known what he would sacrifice in following through with them.

Recognizing that his thoughts could lead to nothing but sorrow, he determinedly left the window and went to find the dreamer.

It did not take long for the dream to turn darker, the only bright spot was a pot of tea steaming on the table, eye catching with its brightly colored knitted teacosy. The walls of the next room – the kitchen – were splashed with blood and decorated with bullet holes that cracked the simple tile. Corpses littered the floor. One figure, in the center, clung to life, but shadows closed in from the edges of the room as the dreamer died from the gunshot wound in his gut.

Recognition was a thunderclap. He was old, and wounded, changed by a mortal lifetime as Theodore was not, but under the evidence of a lifetime that had known very little peace, he was still there. Theodore had known him, a lifetime ago.

“Victor?” he asked in Common – no English, as he knelt to examine him, trying to get his attention as he determined if this was just a nightmare. Victor's dream-body was badly wounded – fatally so – but looking through the veil of the dream, away from Dreamheart to his old friend's body he saw the same wounds. He was delirious, Theodore judged, the dream only a semblance of consciousness while Victor's body died from his wounds.

Theodore could have done something, brought Victor's body entirely to the dream and healed it, but to do so without Victor's permission would be selfish. The Victor he'd known had wanted peace, but had set that aside time and time again in favor of his duty. He was a good man; he'd find that peace in death, and Theodore did not have the right to take it from him.

Slowly Victor's eyes focused on the interloper in his dream. “Who – Theodore?” He blinked in surprised and his body convulsed, trying to laugh and Theodore saw his body outside the dream shudder in response. With a frown, Theodore altered the time flow of  the dream. Victor's body would only last a few minutes, but a dream could last for as long as they wished. “I was expecting Takashi and my father again.” The shadows crept closer and Theodore pushed them away. Victor was already unconscious – when the shadows covered the dreamscape, he would die. “But I was hoping...”

“For Omi.” Theodore finished for him as he knelt at the other man's side. He ignored the comment about their fathers. "She's moved on. She saw you had found happiness again and moved on."

Theodore pushed the shadows back again as Victor closed his eyes and relaxed. "I'm glad for you." Then he stiffened, and Theodore kept the movement from worsening the wound -- or rather, kept Victor from realizing it should. "Why are you still here?"

He smiled. "The usual -- slaying monsters, rescuing princesses." He brushed a lock of grey hair out of Victor's eyes and didn't think about the fact that Victor was physically older than he was. "Waiting for you, I think."

"I can think of worse Angels of Death."

"I'm not -- I can't take you to your afterlife. I can only comfort you as you die." Victor nodded, accepting the words.

"Omi?"

"I can't summon her, not in truth; it would only be our memories, but if memory is what you want…?" he stopped as Victor shook his head. Not the comfort he wanted. Very well. "Or I can take us someplace else, spend what time you have left someplace more comfortable."

Tiredly, Victor closed his eyes and nodded.

Theodore took Victor's hand. If his role was to comfort the dying, he was relieved not to have to do it here, in this dream reflection of Victor's death. With a twist of will he could no more describe than he could count the layers of the endless Abyss, he brought them both away from Victor's dreamscape to another. He felt it burst behind him, the dream stuff returning to Dreamheart.

Instead, they stood on the green grass of a large wooded glen. Dappled sunlight warmed them where it hit and small birds sang as they flitted from tree to tree. With no dreamscapes of his own, Theodore could only bring Victor to that of another and there was only one he knew of that was permanent. He didn't think Ana would mind -- the Victor he remembered had been good with kids.

A child's laughter made Victor look up. His wound was gone -- unneeded in this place -- but he didn't notice the discrepancy. Dreamers rarely did. A young girl of about eight years old, ran up, pulling a kite behind.

"Hi!"

Victor knelt to eye level with the child. "Hi. I'm Victor. Who are you?"

"My name's Ana," the girl held out a worn out plush toy of indeterminate type. "An this is Bam."

Victor solemnly shook the toy's… appendage. "I'm pleased to meet you both."

Ana smiled, and the sunlight brightened."'Kay. Wanna play?"

"Of course," he allowed himself to be led by the hand, while Ana chattered about the playground on the hill and does he know how to swing and can he teach her to fly a kite? and with each step, he shed his years and his cares and the responsibilities that had marked him, until he was a boy a few years older than Ana. Theodore watched them go. Victor's body only had a few minutes -- a few hours here, if Ana willed.

Maybe he should find him? He'd dreamed of Omi, so long ago when he still had dreams of his own, so he knew her afterlife could be reached through Dreamheart. And where Omi was, Victor would also go. Probably the others, as well. His sons… He could find them and…

And…

And what? Convince them to join him? Go… flit around the planes like butterflies collecting treasure and fighting evil?

Stay there and live happily ever after? That would be a proper ending to a story. The World Serpent would release him from its coils…

It wouldn't change what he'd seen or done or been. He'd walked to the end of time, held dreams in his hands in the moment before they became part of Dreamheart, delved into the madness where place and time and thought all dissolved into Truth and returned. He wasn't sane any longer, nor was he mad. He was, as Cobweb was, a creature of narrative, the steps of the Hero’s Journey the only law that governed him. And Victor, Omi and the others weren't. They were creatures of space and time and thought. They'd never seen how the endless infinities fit together in a sea of primordial otherness. To them space and time were space and time; thought was contained in the mind. To Theodore space was the onion-layers of madness; thought the maelstrom of dream stuff at Dreamheart. And time… Theodore didn't discuss time. It tended to end badly. Suicides, riots and destiny haunts popping out of the woodwork to maul bystanders badly. They wouldn't understand what he was now. If he were truthful to himself, he probably couldn't understand them anymore either.

Still, maybe he should. After all this time, even after all the grief, he still loved them. Love counted for a lot, in existence and in stories.

But he wouldn't stay long. Just long enough to tell and hear the latest round of stories, then he'd leave. Just as Cobweb had once told him was her habit when she returned to her home.

"Goodbye, Victor Steiner-Davion," he said quietly to the two children on the hill. Neither looked up -- they couldn't hear him over the shrieks and giggles, the howling, flapping and crashing of some serious kite flying. "We'll see each other again."

Even if it took Theodore an eternity to find them. What was eternity, to one who'd traveled to the End through the sands of time?