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[braveoff]

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[guylining]

oh no that part i'm weirdly used to

i feel like i was gone a lot longer than i was
mostly it's a hangover from some shit that happened at home, it wasn't really a good time to end up back here

it's okay i'll get used to it again
thanks, though, i appreciate it

[braveoff]

I'm sorry about that, then. Can't really relate to that part but the listening offer doesn't expire. Just in case.




[ ... ]

You didn't remember here when you got home, right?

[guylining]

no i didn't, i'm sorry. believe me if i had, i would've tried to get you all out from that side.

[braveoff]

No worries, man, I just have to check. For other people's sake. It's not like I'm going anywhere either way.

[guylining]

what does that mean? you've been here so long that you stopped believing, or...?

[braveoff]

I didn't believe in the first place. I'm dead at least three times over.

[guylining]

at home? what happened?

[braveoff]

So much, man. It's a really long story how I got there but what did me in was getting kidnapped and held for experimentation. By the time my girlfriend blew my brains out there wasn't anybody home anymore, just a monster. And then the building was demolished as a cover-up. "Explosion in the lab, tragic, blah blah" sort of deal.

[guylining]

jesus christ

so you revived here after all that?
for more experiments

fuck these people, i swear to god

[braveoff]

Nope.

I woke up in an arena full of monsters on an alien planet, still infected with the shit I'd died from back home. Spent a few years there fighting their war before making a bargain to be cured. We won. That was pretty cool. Then they offered to send us all wherever we wanted, so my fiance and I were aiming for a friend's since we're both super dead in our home worlds.

No idea where they went, but I wound up here alone. This place is my second universe hopping rodeo.

[guylining]

well, wait

if that's the case then of course you have something to go back to. your fiance is waiting for you, you can't just give up on that

you have a whole new life to make together, that's huge

[braveoff]

Dunno. All I've ever heard from people who leave here and come back is that they went home.

I don't know what they'd do with me. In theory I was just in transit? Hope said that if anything went wrong, like we didn't end up where we were trying to go, we should crush the tether and we'd be brought back to their world to try again.

Who knows where I'd go, if they kicked me out of here.

[guylining]

if they took you from transit you'd be right back there, like nothing had ever happened

mate, you can't just think there's no hope.

[braveoff]

Back where? Lost in interstellar transit? Maybe.

Reality has kinda beaten the optimism out of me at this point, sorry. I appreciate you trying, but the most I can manage these days is rolling with whatever shit gets thrown at me next.

[guylining]

i know that feeling pretty well. it's not easy to keep hoping

giving up isn't good, though. if we do that, then they win. and i might not always have hope, but i definitely have enough pettiness to take some of theirs.

[braveoff]

You were here a long time before, right? Do you think they actually control how we come and go? Nobody's ever even been able to say how they're doing it, so I've gotta wonder if they're doing it.

[guylining]

i've always believed they control it all

might be paranoia talking, idk. but it's still what i think

i want to find out though. that's exactly what i want to do