024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias + ???
WHEN: Days 024-027
WHAT: The consequences of their actions.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted January 23rd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Onryo" 怨霊

DAYS 024-025
CONSEQUENCES
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments —
there are consequences.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
When the unwilling residents of Mathias Township wake on the morning of the 24th day, they will find themselves in yet another set of frustratingly unnerving circumstances. None of them are where they last remember being, and some of them have strange marks on the palms of their left hands. It's all incredibly unsettling, but truthfully they should be used to it by now. No one will remember traveling to their new location.

Residents can wake up anywhere within their new location and in any position. Curled up in a bed, sprawled on a couch, huddled beneath a coffee table, propped against a wall... Wherever they are, they will themselves to be in quite an unusual state. While they are wearing whatever clothing items they went to sleep in, plus their shoes and a coat. The newest arrivals to Mathias Township will perhaps stand out for being slightly more appropriately dressed than their new neighbors. They are all a bit damp, physically worn out, and half-frozen from their apparent walk through a blizzard.

Each of the four locations is inescapable — residents are trapped, with exterior doors and windows being shut tight and a blizzard raging outside. The locations are stocked with fresh food and water and a large pile of firewood for the fireplaces in each building. The circumstances residents will face, however, may vary wildly between locations as the forces at work in Mathias respond to the recent actions of certain individuals.


BOARDING HOUSE | GREY GULL
NEW HOUSE | MYSTERY MANSION

These residents will wake with a mark on their left hand palms, a spiraling black symbol similar to those some may have seen around town. All marks are identical and cannot be removed, but will have seemingly vanished from their skin on the morning of the 26th day.

Castiel, Daisy Johnson, Dean Winchester
Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Helen Magnus
Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater, Sherlock Holmes

DAYS 026-027
IN THE AFTERMATH
After their ordeals of the past two days, the unfortunate residents of Mathias Township will be grateful to find that they were back where they are supposed to be, a chill still clinging to their clothes in whatever place they went to sleep the night of the 23rd day. New arrivals will wake in the living room of the boarding house. None of the residents will wake with anything in their possession from the locations in which they were previously trapped, including any notes or documentation they may have made during their time there.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall heavily on Days 024-025, resulting in white out conditions from the wind that blows in gusts of over 35 mph; the temperature also drops drastically, making conditions extremely dangerous for residents. The blizzard clears on Day 26 and residents are left with a cold, calm world covered in white.

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is... ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. Kylo Ren and Thomas Richardson have vanished without a trace.

— NO NEW DEATHS have occurred in town, but there is a new "grave" in the small makeshift graveyard near the schoolhouse. Rey's corpse has been moved and covered with stones to wait for the ground to thaw enough for a proper burial.

— THE LANTERNS will be gone from the morning of Day 024. No trace of them remains.

---

OOC UPDATES

— A GIFT for everyone! As a thank you for being part of this spooky little game, every character in the game is being gifted 2 Activity Points. These may be banked over here — instead of linking to an AC post, you may put "New Year gift" in that field. Happy 2021, friends!

— NEW LAYOUTS have been installed for our communities! Huge thanks to our Eldritch Librarian Stars for putting in the time to get this place looking shiny. (You may have also noticed some new page layouts being installed — these are also our Librarian's handiwork!)

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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Doc Holliday | Day 26

[thering]

For Ellie
After the flurry of activity back in the house they had returned to had died down, Doc had made up a list of things to do now that the weather permitted it. It wasn't a long list but it was enough to keep him occupied for more or less the whole day. They had to resupply in case this lull in the weather is only temporary. They were running dangerously low on first aid kits. Something more permanent needs to be done about the additional guests - more beds at the very least. Later in the day he was keen to find those new houses they had awoken in. But first - check in on the neighbours.

Ellie was one he was the most concerned about. He wasn't sure if she had decided whether she was going to be staying in 1304 or leaving. Had someone decided to move in with her?

Doc shows up with some pancakes - Raylan had made far too many that morning and he doesn't much feel comfortable showing up empty-handed - and knocks a few times at her door, announcing "Miss Ellie, it's Doc." After suffering through a day of unsettling noises in accessible places, he doubts she would appreciate some wordless knocking.


For Five
Doc had heard that Malcolm had gone to town a bit in the Boarding House. He wasn't sure about the extent of the damage the young man had done, but he can at least trust Negan not to understate things when he had asked. Still, he had reason to want to visit Number Five so when he had heard that Malcolm might have smashed a few things in the kitchen, Doc retrieved a couple of sets of items from 1307, the unused moonshine house. At the same time he could check in on how their current batch was coming along, unsupervised for two days.

They have had to use many of the extra items they could take from 1307 because of their own additional guests, but Doc figures the least they could do is to spare a pair of matching dinner plates, side plates, mugs and bowls for Klaus and Five. Tying them together with a strip of cloth, Doc heads to the Boarding House early in the afternoon.

He doesn't take his time dallying around the kitchen to survey the damage, heading straight to the Hargreeves's room and knocking with the tip of his shoe. When Five opens the door he'll be immediately presented with the peace offering.

"I heard there was-... an incident, and that the two of you might be needing these."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie is glad to have woken up back in her regular house. Sure, she's alone, but...well, the cowboys are probably back where they belong too, right? Anyway, she can handle being alone for a little bit. It's not like she's never been alone. (She's rarely been totally alone, but whatever.)

She's tuning the guitar in the living room when she hears the knock. It makes her jump, but Henry's voice follows the sound. It's just Henry. She can handle that.

So she sets the guitar flat on the sofa where it won't fall or tip and goes to answer the door.

Of course, he has food. She kind of laughs about it and steps back to let him in. "You know, I do actually feed myself. It's okay if you just come without food."

[thering]

"Then I would not know what to bring you." Maybe some warm clothes that are her size or some broken down planks they had been using as firewood, but. It feels like it would be crossing something of an unspoken line to bring something from the toy store or a filed down knife or something.

Closing the door behind him, Doc follows her inside, flashing a small smile. She seems alone. He would bring the matter up later.

"I presume you went on a little adventure over the past two days?" Doc opens the floor for discussion.

[enduresurvive]

The mirrors are at least uncovered and back to normal this time. Whatever that was about passed, and Ellie is grateful for that much.

"Just you is okay. You don't have to, like, bring me things. It's cool," she says, and means it. It's weird! She's not used to anyone needing to fawn over her or anything! Just checking up would be fine most of the time. Besides, she does like Henry or she wouldn't keep talking to him anyway.

"You too? What, did everyone wake up somewhere weird? That blizzard was a pretty nasty customer, but...it's not the first time I woke up somewhere crazy here. At least this time it was just the boarding house and I wasn't alone, I guess."

[thering]

"'tis impolite to show up empty-handed, but I will keep that in mind." Of course if it was an emergency he would dispense with the formalities, but so far, luckily, there hasn't been any of those kinds of emergencies.

"Everyone in the house woke up somewhere else," he confirms. "I believe Negan and Malcolm were both with you in the boarding house. I had heard some strange things had occurred there, but. Strange things had occurred everywhere we ended up, it seemed. Raylan and I were in two separate houses that no one that we had spoken to so far had visited before."

"Nothing-- strange like the-- museum though," Doc brings up quietly. He tries to change the subject quickly, bringing up his unsettling experiences in delightfully vague fashion. "Just. Noises and things in the mirrors."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie sort of laughs at that. "I know you're super old-fashioned and all but I swear it's fine," she says. It's not that she minds, she just feels awkward about it. It's definitely not a common custom where she's from, and she often feels awkward about people giving her things out of nowhere.

"Wait, two new houses? Do you know where they are from here?" she asks, curious. There's new things they're being show fairly regularly. She has no idea if it's a pattern or anything like that, but she's curious just how big this damn place is. It had seemed so small in that first rainstorm, but by now it seems to stretch on further than they can imagine. That's not a fun thought.

"I saw Malcolm, but I dunno who Negan is. Or I guess I dunno what he looks like or anything. I met a lady who can do magic, though. She was wearing the most incredible dress I've ever seen in my life."

She pauses, and her eyes drift over to the mirror above the fireplace without meaning to. She'd been so afraid of the mirrors for a few days there. She's not now, but...

"What kinds of things in the mirrors?"

[thering]

Old-fashioned would be insisting they conduct all their conversations on her porch because he wouldn't be able to come in without the man of the house present. But it is cold outside and, well, he doesn't want to maintain that kind of distance. He wants her to feel safe around him, for her to know that their door is always open. Standing around on a porch doesn't give that sense of familiarity.

"Raylan's was nicer." For no other reason than because it had whiskey. He did not ask Raylan enough questions to realise that it was bigger and grander and all the rest of it.

"Did you now? I hope she was kind to you." Doc has met a few magic-inclined gentleman but he can't say he knows of a witch or sorceress or whatever she would call herself. He does not believe they would get off on the right foot with his severe allergy to witches. He might have even offered to shoot her if she had been mean to Ellie.

"Do you remember seeing those phantoms holding the lanterns some days ago? It looked like them, living within the mirror. If you turned around to look for them they were not there." He conveniently neglects to mention his theory that a few of them might have escaped from the mirror on their second day in that house. No need to scare her.

[enduresurvive]

"Nicer? But all these houses are nice," she says. They seem nice enough to her. "I mean, other than the ones that are all messed up. Is there some new place out there we couldn't reach before, or is this like when I woke up some weird ass place and then woke up at home again?"

How many weird ass places are in this town, anyway? It seems so much bigger and stranger now, somehow.

"Her name's Yennefer. She was pretty cool," Ellie says. She's a little in awe of Yen and her accent and strange clothes. She hopes she didn't dream the sorceress up, because that would be extra weird. She doubts that's the case, though. She hasn't heard of people hallucinating other people here.

"Well, that sounds like some spooky bullshit," she says. She believes him, of course. She's been here in this town long enough to believe that all kinds of weird things could happen here.

[thering]

"Nicer still," he confirms. If it wasn't so full of unsettling spectres and noises he would have even suggested to the housemates to move in there. It's spacious enough to house more than five people.

"I was thinking to go look for those houses we ended up in, later. I took something from the house but it was no longer in my possession when we returned. I should like to take it once more. Or at least take a photograph of it." Malcolm had mentioned he had a working mobile device he could use for such a task. Although whether it is still working or has any battery left, he isn't sure. Perhaps Neal the artist can recreate the image. He will think on it more later.

"Perhaps you would like to come along? Or find Miss Yennefer again? Or-... were you planning on staying here or moving? It- did not seem as if Miss Rey is returning."

[enduresurvive]

She raises her eyebrows, impressed.

"Wow. Well, we can try to see if we can...find a camera, maybe? What was it, anyway?"

She doesn't actually know enough about Henry to know something he might be interested in. Besides...it must not be something immediately useful, if a photo would do? So she can't guess.

"Yeah, I'll come along. I'm...gonna stay here for now, though. Don't worry. I can take care of myself. I know...I know Rey won't be back or anything. Maybe someone else will wanna stay sometime. Malcolm said I could come see you guys any time, so..."

Ugh why does this feel so awkward.

[thering]

"It was a photograph of some people standing in front of a big house, labelled 'The Lodge'. There were a dozen of those, taken throughout time." It's actually not for himself, it's for Number Five, but Doc is the kind of man who doesn't do very much for himself. His only agenda is to get out of this place. It is safe to say that he is merely supporting someone else in anything else he happens to be investigating also.

"Our door is always open. We do have a couple of new housemates, but we are making space for them." So she should know that there will always be food and other supplies available, over at theirs.

"I would invite you over, but you seem happy here." And she probably wouldn't want to squeeze in with all of them. Not to mention the matter of not being able to get a proper night's sleep with Malcolm's sleeping troubles. Sometimes he thinks she can hear the commotion even from all the way over here.

"I just don't like the idea of you thinking that you are alone. I hope you know that you are not." He flashes her a tight-lipped smile and reaches over to rest his hand on her shoulder.

[enduresurvive]

"What are you gonna do with a photo?"

Ellie doesn't sleep well anyway; she has nightmares, inescapable flashbacks of Joel's death and other traumatic things she's lived through. Sleeping and eating are secondary ideas to her consuming grief and rage. Her anger is chilled here, at least somewhat, because there's nowhere to direct it. The people she's angriest at are a universe away, and she's not really keen to take that anger out on anyone undeserving. So she holds it inside herself, which is maybe not the best thing to do either, but here she is.

"Wow, how many people you got living there now? You're gonna run out of bedrooms."

She shakes her head. "I know I'm not. I get that."

Sometimes she feels alone as someone from a world grounded in stark, horrible reality and not some weird magic shit. Henry, for all his immortality or what the fuck ever, doesn't seem as hard to understand as someone like Eliot or John, with their magic and whatever. Even Five, who she likes a lot, can do something that seems impossible with that teleportation thing. It's cool as hell but it's still impossible. Henry being 130 or whatever is also impossible, but it's easy to forget that, because he seems so normal.

"Hey, um...I had this crazy thought. The weather here is really fucking nuts, right? Not even a month and we've had the storms and the fog and the blizzard. Well...people lived in this town before we got here, obviously. But I'm guessing they didn't just hang out in their houses through blizzards. So...what if there's another way to get around that we haven't figured out yet? What if that's how we get to the lighthouse or the place I got the knife from or...or anywhere, really?"

[thering]

"A fellow by the name of Number Five seems to think the photo is of importance. I would give it to him." Either it is no longer important then, or all the years the photos were taken would end up meaning something that Five can make sense of.

"We are five, at the moment, but we are making do with an extra mattress and the couch. They had stayed because of the snowstorm, but we would not ask them to leave if they have made themselves comfortable." Besides, Neal hasn't fully recovered and Negan... well Negan just kind of does whatever he wants and they are happy to have him around regardless.

Coming to a stop perching against the backrest of the couch, Doc slips into a more casual lean and listens to her theory. It made sense, right up to the end. What... other way?

"There are no animals. No vehicles. I can't imagine they were all blessed with Mister Five's gifts..." Doc drums his fingers against the back of the couch as he considers. He would have just hunkered down and stayed indoors until the bad weather passes them by. Back in the day, no shops or schools or services would have opened if they were hit by days or weeks of unforgiving weather. They did not have this concept of 'business as usual'. But that doesn't mean she's not right. It has been a string of unusual weather phenomena in a relatively short span of time and who is to say they didn't have a yearlong killer fog problem once?

"...of course. The cave!" he exclaims as he straightens up. As if she knows what he's talking about. "The last time we woke up somewhere we did not sleep in the night prior, I had awoken in a wet and dark cavern. We had followed the light thinking it would have led us out-" and also because of Doc's crippling claustrophobia meaning he would have never gone deeper into the darkness but that's neither here nor there and hopefully would never come up in conversation, "-but what if we had ventured further into the dark?"

omg he comes bearing gifts

[fika]

Five is pissed. It's unsurprising to anyone, really. Waking up in different places was starting to give him whiplash. Not to mention? This place looked trashed to high heaven upon their return from an unplanned vacation.

The second detail was the lack of notes from his journal that he knew he took.

Still, he notes down the ones he remembers in hurried, scrawled writing: 1702, 1754, 1783, 1801. The map dates. Under them, 1951, 1990 (Lodge, Raylan).

When the knock comes, Five is alone in the room, with Klaus having gone out to fetch something from the convenience store. Cigarettes, maybe. So, he knows it isn't his brother when he maneuvers himself stiffly to the door, sides still at a dull ache. He's getting used to it now. The perpetual discomfort.

The third detail of their return, of course, is the missing bottles of painkillers, some of which would have been handed over to Doc. A detail he remembers as soon as he swings open the door and has to peer up at the familiar face of Holliday.

He stares at the bundle of plates, taking them off of Henry's hands on instinct. "Yeah, sure was. What the hell happened?" A beat, and the true root of the issue: "They broke the coffee pot." He absolutely does not sound childishly upset. Nope. :(

always!

[thering]

"Oh I don't know," Doc lies, falling all too easily into this frankly terrible habit of covering for Malcolm's... indiscretions. "I have not been here in several days." That much is true at least. "Some strange things had happened where I ended up though. Perhaps it is related to that. I will go looking for a coffee or teapot you can use in the interim."

He steps inside after Five, watching the man bringing the dinnerware away somewhere. Belatedly he thinks he would return with more for the other rooms. They perhaps ought to keep their own dishes and mugs in their rooms for good measure.

"How are you and Mister Klaus holding up? No doubt you were both whisked away on an adventure yourselves?"

[fika]

"Strange is a word for it," he ground out, setting the bundle on his desk and trailing in before Doc. He gestures vaguely out into the room by way of invitation to sit.

"You don't - need to do that. There's plenty of houses, and I'm sure any one of them can have a coffee pot. Or a cafetière." It's the questionable nineties. He'll be fine, for all his belly aching.

"We're fine," he shrugs. It isn't a lie, but Five doesn't tend to pour his sentiment out all the time. It was annoying, a pain in the ass, but he came back feeling like he learned something. "And yeah. A mansion. Quite possibly the Lodge we keep seeing, though we couldn't go outside to actually check."

He leans himself onto his desk with crossed arms. "It's good you stopped by, actually. Where were you taken to?" Carefully, he eyes Doc. No evident harm done, at least, which was a good sign.

[thering]

"Funny. I thought the same. I ended up inside a two storey house I had never explored before, but could not go outside to survey what the exterior might look like." Doc leans back against the sliver of wall next to the doorframe, not wanting to risk resting his weight against the door in case Klaus came back and tried opening it.

"Actually the purpose of my visit today was to report to you about your photograph. I saw a dozen copies of it. I had taken one with me to give to you, but when I had awoken back in 1306 the photograph was gone. I'm afraid I do not believe the date of the one in your possession would be of any significance - the photographs in that house were dated between 1872 and 1990. The strange thing is, it appears as if some of the same people were in every photograph." So, either they were ageless, like Doc, or time travellers like Five. He can't think of many other explanations how that can be possible.

[fika]

"Really?" Five's interest is immediately peaked, eyebrow ticked up. "Huh, so there's at least two options, for where it could be, and not a goddamn clue on how to locate it."

Now, the real kicker comes after. A sort of point that gets Five to react sharply, the relaxed posture growing more angular as he leans forward. "Shit, you don't say." So, maybe Doc really did save his hide. "The same faces? Completely?" Now this was interesting. And very, very worrying. Because the only other time travellers Five has met before the mention of this has been the Commission, and that is not a run-in he wants. And as for an existence of others?

Not preferred, but he will cross that bridge when he gets to it.

None of this stunk of their bureaucracy, but he has to make sure: "Did you see a black briefcase in any of them? It would be about this big," accompanied by vague hand gestures.

It wouldn't make sense, but he can't help that his pulse is just about ready to deafen him.

[thering]

It's hard to tell how big a house is from the inside, so he cannot say for certain that the house he ended up in might have been too small or too big or about the same as what was in the photograph. With the blizzard outside he couldn't see if the clearing was just outside the house, either.

"The same faces," he confirms. "Not all of them, just some. But they were the same people. I am sure of it. Dean Winchester saw a film depicting this, also." The film, in fact, may yield more information about that particular moment in time, but he does not know when the film was made or what else was in it. They were too busy worrying about the lanternless spectre in the mirror. Perhaps Five can pursue this with Dean.

"They were arranged similarly as the photo you have in your possession. I did not see a briefcase. Although maybe they keep that sort of thing in the house?" He wouldn't rule it out. Early photographic methods were expensive and a briefcase would not have been important enough to feature in a shot. "Is it important?" He would have looked for a briefcase in the house if it was important.

[fika]

“A film?” His nose wrinkles, but he makes a mental note to follow up with that lead. “If he saw it during our forced vacations, his memory might be the only thing we have from that.” And Five honestly wasn’t sure how much he was willing to bank on someone’s memories, but it might be the only thing he’ll have, which was still more than the pile of worn papers he found.

“I couldn’t bring anything I took with me. It disappeared when I woke back up here,” said with his hands on his hips - perhaps a mannerism he was starting to pick up from his conversation partner. “Tried to bring back some medical supplies for you, too. And whiskey.” A fruitless thing, as it turned out.

He sighs, and rubs the back of his neck before shaking his head. “Well, yes and no. Probably not important to the grand scheme of things, and probably really better that it wasn’t there.”

Five has been cryptic on the past he’s left behind, largely because he had no proof of relevance. Equally so, it was something that was difficult to explain for people who didn’t see time in the same way he did. “But, seeing the same people in different years strikes me as something the Commission would do.”

“They - were my former employer. An agency set outside of time, and tasked with maintaining the Time Continuum. We’d use those briefcases to skip around different timelines.” Five fails to mention what said maintenance included.

“When I first got here, I thought maybe they were responsible for this shit. But the more things that happened here, the less likely that got. I asked because I wanted to be sure.”

“None of this feels like them, even if -“ even if it got taken over by her, he almost says, before almost blissfully remembering she was dead.

Hopefully for real this time. “- well, none of that matters.”

“But then that does beg the question - how the hell did they appear in all those photos?”

A thoughtful beat. “Any ideas on your end?”

[thering]

"No, it was a- there is a video store in town. But you may need to ask him about the title and what the packaging might look like. I do believe it had this... spiral mark on the box." Doc wasn't marked, himself, so he can't show it to Five. He wouldn't have even known that the mark is already gone.

"I appreciate the thought, but. Next time I guess you oughta just drink it on my behalf," Doc sighs about the whiskey. Raylan had thought to bring him some too. At this point he's not even worried that he's giving off dependent, alcoholic vibes. They have too many other things on their plate.

The commission and all the rest of it is all very interesting talk. Clearly not something that Doc has ever seen or experienced. It makes sense that he would look for a briefcase; evidence of some sort of timeline interference, and definitely more important than a bag of clothes or trinkets that Doc was thinking of.

"Well I'm still alive so clearly someone took their eyes off the ball," Doc jokes, not realising what being one of those agents entail. "The way I see it, they are either like me, attained eternal longevity through some unnatural means, or like yourself, able to move through the years in a matter of seconds. Maybe they do have a sophisticated briefcase, or some other object that can help them traverse through the ages. But we have to bear in mind that none of the clocks in this whole damn town can agree on what time it is. Hell, hardly any of us can agree on what year it was before we came here. The years could simply be numbers and the whole concept of time... might not be so linear here as the way I conceive of it."

Doc knows he's in well over his head. It doesn't bother him as much as it probably should. He knows he's more of a doer than a theoriser. But in this particular instance, there isn't much he can do. Arguably there isn't much he can do when it comes to anything in Mathias. He's just been trucking along quite happily probably spinning his wheels. But hey, since they're throwing out anything that might stick, he doesn't mind playing at that game for a little bit.

"They must have had some way of agreeing on when to conduct their business, something regular, not dependent on the clocks or the crazy weather. You'd never know when the shops are open or closed or when it was time to send your children to school otherwise. Maybe we need to start there?"

[fika]

“And the spiral is significant?” He’s not been marked either, and neither did he see anyone who was, but hearing about it now...

He makes a mental note to follow up with Dean, in that case. If something else doesn’t come up and knock them on their ass.

There’s a crooked little smirk, though, arms folded. “Oh, I have. Had to wrangle a bottle away from Constantine though,” it’s mostly a joke, though with Five, it’s hard to tell. “But, didn’t want you to feel too left out.” To be fair, any of them here could be easily accused of alcoholic dependencies.

Five’s expression withers, a little, at Doc’s following comment. Something that’s almost a wince, a single twitch in the corner of an eye as he looks away. “Yeah. That's not a bad thing, you know. There's better places to be than on their radar.” Though honestly, it didn’t sound like the Commission was ever remotely part of Doc’s world. If they had discovered inter-dimensional travel, there is no way he wouldn't have heard about it.

So, he’s going to run on the assumption that Doc will never know about the Commission any more than what Five himself says. “Actually, how did your longevity come about?” He can’t say he wasn’t curious. Since they were sharing, and all.

“And don’t remind me. I'm just about ready to toss any clock I see into the trash as a matter of principle,” the clocks are a slap-in-the-face sort of reminder.

The idea that Doc says makes sense. A lot of sense. If they go with the theory of time irrelevance, even to the previous residents, then that means they must have had some sort of other way of keeping track.

“What, like phone calls?” His delivery is wry, but not dismissive. This is a very good point. And once again, a little too close to what his aforementioned former employer would have done. Its the Board of Directors all over again, and he's surprised how much he hates to think about that blood soaked memory. “...The Bulletin board, maybe?”

“But that’s assuming that time was never something anyone cared about here. And if that was the case, why the hell keep any clocks in the first place?”

[thering]

"A few people in the house I was in had the same spiral mysteriously appear overnight on their hand. Not myself though." He isn't sure what the significance of it is, or why it only tainted some of them and not others. He had confronted some spectres in the mirrors himself. He arrived unmarked and he left the house unmarked.

"You must tell me more of the commission sometime." Perhaps when he's over for dinner with Klaus. They have recently taken another New Yorker under their 1306 Phillips Drive wing who proclaims to be quite decent in the kitchen. "And then I would tell you the story of the witch who granted me eternal longevity. But in short, it was through some unnatural kind of 'magic'." Doc isn't trying to be deliberately cryptic - he just doesn't know how it actually works. All he did was say yes.

...a bit like marriage, really. Come to think of it. Would have explained why his fell apart.

Anyway.

"If I ran a business here I would not call you everyday to tell you my shop is open. The telephone did not even work in the house I was in, although perhaps the blizzard had damaged the line." In either case, even setting the tediousness aside, the phone did not seem reliable enough.

Five did raise a good point - no need for clocks if there is no need for time itself. So there must be a need for clocks. Perhaps...

"Perhaps each clock is timing something. If we knew which clock to consult we might have been able to foretell a three day long stretch of night. And a different clock is aligned with the shops' opening hours. And a different clock yet again for Sunday service." If that were the case then some clocks could tell the same time or at least be aligned to move at the same speed in every building that has a clock.

"I suppose at the end of the day it could simply be the battery cells running out of charge after such a long time, causing them all to go out of sync. That would be the simplest explanation. But it may be worth exploring other possibilities too."

[fika]

"Huh - no one had any of that in the mansion," outwardly, it doesn't sound significant, aside from the fact that it came and went away all by itself like. Like hives, if it was more 'cult shit' and less allergies. "At the risk of sounding paranoid, I really doubt that that's anything great."

He makes a face, even if in that sense, they'd make for an even exchange of stories. But it would also mean delving more into what the Commission stood for. Maybe even what he did, or what they made him. "It's nothing exciting, but. Maybe." Maybe a moonshine glass in.

The magic stuff...is still a bit beyond him, even now, even with everything (honestly, as is the marriage stuff). But it makes more sense now, that when they first met, Doc had mentioned more along the same vein - that maybe this was the cause of magic. Kind of like Constantine.

He isn't being cryptic. It's enough of an answer for Five to get the idea and move on until a better time to bring it up. If at all.

He listens on, contemplating the idea of the clocks instead. It isn't out of the realm of possibilities. "Either could be just about as likely, at this point," he says, pulling his right sleeve up enough to show the wristwatch. "Except, this one works. I found it here," it's offered to Doc, slipped from the wristband. "Every time I look at it, it's a different time. And I mean like, hours difference."

He's poured over this enough, eyes flicking back to the walls over his bed, chalk mostly wiped way from the equations he's scrawled in his obsessive attempts at solving this one thing alone.

"Another possibility is that whatever event caused everyone here to disappear must have messed with the passage of time, too. Maybe, it's still messing with it." It would make sense.

Sure, the batteries running out also made the most mundane sense, save for the wristwatch. "Whatever this is, it's a symptom, not a cause."

[thering]

Doc takes the watch, holds it at arm's length and squints a bit like the old man he claims to be, watching it move.

"If it is of no use to you, why are you keeping it on your person?" Doc flips the watch around to see if there is anything engraved on the back. Sure enough, when he flips it back over, more than mere seconds had just passed according to the faulty timepiece. How bizarre. He holds the watch back out to Five.

"Anything strange ever happen to you while you have been here? I would not claim to understand how your... moving around works, but. Have you ever tried to move from one place to another but ended up skipping through some time instead?" It would be difficult to tell without a working clock but Five could have tried to blink into the adjacent room and ended up covered in dust not seeing whoever he was expecting to see there, or meeting the original inhabitants of the town by accident or something.

"Would there not be other consequences to the desynchronising of time, not solely evidenced by the clock? Would the- bread not go mouldy or the milk not spoil at random intervals? Should some of us not be experiencing some physical changes if months or years are passing in a matter of seconds?"