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 Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 2:27 pm
Well, something had drawn out the ghosts, so whatever it had been, whether it was just being there or concentrating on nothing more than just existing, he didn't know. What he did know, though, was that it was interesting and he wouldn't be against looking for more.
Valhalla held another door open for Ganymede to make his way though, looking around for something that could potentially cue memories, or whatever they were, to pop up. He stayed quiet as he listened to what the senshi thought about the topic he'd brought up, shrugging lightly.
"I don't think it's possible to live anywhere other than Earth at this point in time," he said, glancing out the window to a moon close enough to see. "Right now, you can only take people to your own specific world, right? And you took some time to concentrate before we left. That would be a whole hell of a lot of energy to get more than a few people here at a time. And without water or food... well, it's just not reasonable. Maybe other people's places are more livable, who knows.
"I've always been from Earth," he continued, not fully understanding why he was saying it, but deep down he knew it was the truth. "I might have pledged my allegiance to Jupiter, but even in the past I was... born on Earth." He stopped to frown up at the planet still visible in the sky, not understanding why he said the he'd been born on Earth when... shouldn't it have been 'my ancestors were born on Earth'? The other knights who have mentioned going to their place all spoke of meeting their ancestor whose name they now had. Ganymede was born with a soul that belonged to the one in the past. Did that mean...?
"I'd just like to know why everyone is fighting all the time. I don't understand it..." he finished quickly, pushing open another door rather hastily and jumping back when it swung off its hinges and crashed to the floor, sending a cloud of dust into the air. "s**t," he breathed, clutching at his chest. "Sorry! Sorry... I didn't mean to..." Well... oops...
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:33 pm
Ganymede listened to Valhalla, nodding here and there as he did so, not really knowing what to say in response. He knew so little about the knights. He knew so little about everything, really. It was actually quite startling, how ignorant he was about everything. Five months on and he knew barely more than he did the night he awakened. Talk about pathetic. That was going to have to change if he had any hope of continuing. He could commit himself if he liked, but until he knew what he was committing himself to... perhaps it was nothing more than empty words.
He raised his brows as Val opened another door and more or less knocked it in, looking at him as if to say "what are you doing breaking my stuff?", but he didn't really mind. "It's okay," he reassured him with another small smile. "It's not like everything else here isn't in a similar state. That door's probably been waiting to cave in for a while now."
He stepped over it into the room it led to, which was much smaller than ballroom had been and not as potentially beautiful as the mirrored hallway. In fact, it seemed very enclosing. A large rectangular table took up most of the room, one of its legs broken so that it leaned to the floor at one corner, with chairs all around it -- some upright, others little more than splinters of woods and shredded, dust-ridden upholstery. There were no windows, which added to the gloom of the place. Instead, the walls were decorated with what must have been tapestries, but now looked more like large, faded rags.
"Not a very impressive room, is it?" he said, stopping a few steps in but remaining close to the door. "It looks like some sort of meeting room, maybe? I'm not really seeing anything, and it feels..." His stomach churned uncomfortably and he made a face. "... very oppressing..."
Ganymede glanced back toward Val. "I wonder if we knew one another before..." he hazarded to comment. Part of him thought it would be rather nice to have had somewhat of a connection in the past, too, and another part of him, a little voice in the back of his head, was asking why it should matter when they were together here and now. "If you were from Earth and you went to Jupiter...? I know I knew Europa somehow... I don't know about any of the others..."
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 9:28 pm
He quickly feigned innocence when Ganymede gave him an accusatory look, although he was glad that it seemed as though the senshi didn't mind. The place was pretty old, after all. It was surprising how much of it was still standing, especially when looking out at the baren landscape out the windows. Not that this room had any windows...
Valhalla frowned as he stepped into the room, looking around for only a few moments, before reaching out to take hold of Ganymede's arm and lead him away from it. If there were ill feelings brought out by just standing in the doorway, then it would probably be best to get him away from it.
"Who knows. I guess it's possible... If it was actually me, that is. I haven't met any other knight who has talked about themselves being on their planet," he explained, not wanting Ganymede to get his hopes up that they had something more in common. "If I go to Valhalla, I'll probably meet an ancestor or someone like that. Or maybe no one at all. I don't know. Maybe only senshi get reborn like that," he suggested with a shrug, looking down the hall and trying to figure out where to go that might give Ganymede a better reaction.
"And even if we were alive at the same time in the past, who knows how far our ages were apart. I might have been an old man when you were born. I don't know. I guess I'll have to go to Valhalla and figure some stuff out," he said with another shrug, glancing out the mostly destroyed windows of the hall they were heading down. There seemed to be a courtyard of sorts, and the remnants of a large fountain, but Valhalla didn't stop, even as they passed the doors leading out. He didn't think it was worth a stop.
"Not that it wouldn't be nice to have known each other. At least that would help make this crazy mess a little more... well, familiar, I guess..."
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 10:14 pm
"You should go," Ganymede told him, allowing himself to be pulled away without arguments. He was sure there were more interesting things to see elsewhere. "I think it's worth at least seeing once. I was skeptical until Europa took me along with her the first time. I mean, even if I didn't see anything there, just knowing what's out there and that at some point we were apart of it..." He trailed off, not really knowing how he wanted to finish the thought.
He passed the doors leading out to a courtyard and found a set of stairs, which he turned on to climb, pulling Valhalla with him. He hadn't been up to any of the other floors yet, and though he worried about the structure holding up well enough for them to actually be able to walk without anything caving in below them, he hoped they wouldn't be restricted to just the ground floor.
"Even though it's sort of creepy and depressing here, I still kind of like it," he told him. "There isn't really anything except dust and ghosts, but... it's mine. I haven't really been able to say that about much of anything before. I might not care to live here, but it's nice to escape for a while. It's nice knowing I have some place to go when I need to. It's almost like it knows me, you know. Like it recognizes I'm here, like I belong."
He opened a few doors and peered into a few more rooms, turning onto one hall, then another, until he stopped quite abruptly after opening the door to what he thought had been just another random room. There were couches inside, and tables here and there, with paintings and tapestries on the walls. What looked as if it could be a silver platter still rested on a low table between two of the couches, and he thought he saw, among all the wreckage and filth, the shattered remains of a tea cup.
"I like the feel of this room," he said, though he didn't know why. "It's not as stuffy as the last one we were in. That one felt very oppressing. This one feels a little better."
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 10:46 pm
Valhalla really wasn't sure if it would be worth it to go to Jupiter, but he figured he would at least think about it, if only to give Ganymede that peace of mind. Right now he had to worry about school starting back up, among other things. "Alright, I'll think about it," he said out loud after a few moments, allowing Ganymede to pull him up the stairs behind him.
The architecture of the place was rather amazing and he wished he had more time to just stand and appreciate it more. Maybe next time he came with Ganymede to visit he'd bring a sketch book with him. Or a camera... Although, he'd have to be careful about other people seeing things like that, especially when they were very obviously not on Earth.
"Wow, look at the crown molding," he said out loud to himself, staring up as they walked, and almost ran into Ganymede when he stopped at the entrance to a room. He grabbed onto his shoulders so as not to knock him over, peering around him into the room beyond. "What do you think it is...? A sitting area?" he wondered, looking towards the couches and tables.
"Maybe this was Ganymede's private drawing room?" he suggested, not really knowing what it had been used for, other than sitting. He gently pushed at the senshi's shoulders to have him go in, walking slowly along the creaking floor. They didn't know how well the building would hold up, after all. Hopefully there weight wouldn't cause too much stress.
He reached out to touch one of the couches, before trying to brush some of the dust and rubble away, but he didn't sit down. "I don't know if I'd end up breaking this, too..." he said, wary of how fragile everything could be. He didn't want to break even more things that didn't belong to him. Especially not when Ganymede felt so closely connected to it all.
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:56 pm
"Maybe..." Ganymede agreed, continuing to look around the room as Valhalla entered further. He wasn't seeing anything more than old furniture, broken objects and the occasional fleck of dust floating in the air, but the feel of the room, though ravaged and dead, was quite comforting. Once again, it was difficult to explain.
He made his way slowly after Valhalla, crossing to the couch and looking down at it, then to the low table bearing the silver platter. It, like everything else, was very dusty and tarnished, but he imagined he could have almost seen his face in it if it had been washed and polished appropriately. He bent over to trace his finger through the dust covering it, making random shapes along the surface, before straightening back up and wiping his dusty finger off on the side of his bustle skirt.
"There's another door over here," he said, momentarily leaving Valhalla's side to approach it. It was on the far wall. The door itself bore a few scratches in the wood, but other than that it seemed in decent shape, definitely not ready to fall off of its hinges quite yet.
He didn't hesitate once he grabbed onto the handle, and pushed it down to swing the door inward.
It was obviously a bedroom. A wide bed with tall bedposts rested with its head against the opposite wall. A few wisps of fabric hung from the posts, as if there'd once been a canopy suspended there. One small table sat on either side, and along the right wall was another table situated below a large rectangular mirror edged in gold. Crystal light fixtures hung from the ceiling. Paintings and tapestries decorated the walls in here as well, and two doors of shattered glass opened up onto a balcony, half of which was missing.
"This was my room," he said without thinking, and shook his head to correct himself once the sentence registered. "His room."
He didn't know which explanation was better. It was both him and not him at the same time.
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 2:08 pm
He didn't see Ganymede leave his side right away. Valhalla was busy inspecting the intricate details of the couch that must have once been a very beautiful piece of furniture. Now, though... it had definitely seen better days. "How old do you think all this is...? It looks over a couple hundred... It's not like any style I know of on Earth. Well, there are some similarities, but nothing like--"
Valhalla stopped suddenly, glancing up when he heard Ganymede's voice. He turned to see where he'd gone, before carefully making his way around the pieces of broken things that covered the ground. He couldn't help but try and glance over the senshi's shoulder and into the bedroom, wanting to see what it was like. "You must have liked crystals... Or maybe it was there before...?" he wondered, not really knowing what else to say to him.
It must be a strange experience, though... knowing something in the past used to be the person who he was today or... something like that. It was a bit to wrap one's head around.
"Did you want to go in...?" he asked, not trying to pressure him to explore more, and part of him wondered if he should even be there. Shouldn't Ganymede be exploring all this on his own for the first time...? "Uh... I can stay out here," he offered, taking a few steps back. He wanted to check inside the table drawers to see if there had been things left in them over... who knew how many hundreds of years.
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 2:31 pm
Ganymede glanced here and there to try and find something that might give a better indication of the building's age, as well as that of the objects inside, but there was nothing, and he couldn't very well make any good guesses of his own.
"Hundreds, yeah," he said, not thinking about it much as he continued to gaze around the room he'd just found. "Maybe thousands..."
And suddenly the room wasn't old at all, nor dark, nor dusty, nor broken in any way. The walls were cream colored with gold detailing, and the white crown molding that seemed present in nearly every room of the palace. The plush rugs that carpeted the floors were also cream, but the bed was made up in red, with heavy hangings tied to the tall posts by golden tassels. Where previously there had been a pile of rocks and split stone on the floor, there was now a handsome fireplace, and the tables around the room were littered with various objects -- a book, a hairbrush, a vase of red flowers.
"No," Ganymede said absently, barely hearing what Val was saying behind him. "You can come in."
He took a few more steps inside himself, slowly, lest he ruin the image that had suddenly appeared before his eyes. He went to the bed, ran his hand along the red coverlet, to the side table, caressing the leather cover of a book. He turned to the open doors of the balcony to see a lush garden beyond, and a figure standing by the railing, long fair hair swaying gently in the breeze.
"I can see what it used to look like," the present Ganymede told his page companion. "I suppose it's what you would expect from looking at everything. Very grand. And out there," he said, motioning to the balcony Val wouldn't be able to see as anything stable, "it's him again. He has blond hair like me, but... I think it might be a little lighter, maybe... and it's not as curly..."
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:42 pm
"Right," Valhalla mumbled, stepping into the room and looking around at a scene far from anything 'grand'. "Ganymede, please be careful," he cautioned, watching warily as the senshi made his way over to the broken doors of the half destroyed balcony. Him being so close to broken glass and a high drop was making the page a bit nervous. Probably because he wasn't whisked away into the world that Ganymede could see.
He didn't look at him as he stepped over what was left of what must have been carpet, and moving slowly over to the senshi by the door, reaching out to take hold of his wrist and lift it up for him to see his hand.
"When you see these... memories or whatever they are... does the present disappear?" he wondered, lifting his other hand to wipe off the dirt and dust that the senshi had swept up, and then didn't do anything to get rid of it. "Can you see that the balcony is barely there?"
He dropped his wrist once he had finished, and took a step back to glance around at what was left of the room. "I don't think you should be here alone," he said, feeling bad for saying it but... until he had been promised that these memories didn't cast an illusion over reality, then it wasn't safe for Ganymede to be there by himself. Not when he could be walking through a hall with a caved in floor, or onto a balcony that was no longer there...
It gave him a bad feeling in his gut that something was going to happen.
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:12 pm
Ganymede looked up when Valhalla grabbed his wrist, and the images or memories that had appeared around him vanished. He glanced up at his companion curiously, then looked down at his wrist when his hand was dropped and pondered Val's question and subsequent concern.
"I don't... know. I mean, it's not like I'm seeing two rooms at once, so... I don't know. I sort of feel like I'm still in the present, like I'm watching it all from somewhere else, but it looks like I'm in the room at the time that it's all taking place."
He could see the potential dangers in that, especially when he looked back out onto the balcony and saw how easy it would be to trip off.
"But I don't forget about where I really am," he tried to reassure both himself as well as the page. "I mean, when I see it, I know I'm not there. I acknowledge that it's not reality, or at least not my reality now. Even if I couldn't see a broken balcony, I still knew it was there."
He'd simply overlooked it, too intrigued by what he was seeing to pay it much mind. Knowing that, he supposed he couldn't argue against Val's comment. Not that he was bothered by the idea of bringing someone with him every time. It was nice to be able to talk about what he was seeing. It helped him process it a bit more, made it seem more real, sharing it with someone instead of it all being in his head.
"Maybe we should get going," he said, a bit regretfully, but Val did make a point, and he felt it would be better to explore the place slowly anyway, instead of speeding through it all in one go and potentially missing something.
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 9:35 pm
He felt bad for making all the visions or whatever they were disappear, but he didn't like seeing Ganymede with that dazed look. Even if he said he knew he was still there, he certainly hadn't seemed to realize that as he touched things that weren't there or had been covered in the dirt and grime of hundreds of years.
Valhalla frowned, taking another step away from Ganymede to glance around the room, trying to imagine it as grand, but it was a little difficult when everything looked so... sad... He let out a sigh as he turned back to the senshi, nodding to him and his decision to leave. "Alright... and if you don't take me next time, at least bring someone with you...? Please...? It would make me feel better. Or at least don't go exploring too much," he added, knowing there might be some time in which Ganymede might need some alone time. He knew he needed time by himself every now and then.
Reaching out, he took hold of Ganymede's hand, preparing himself for the journey back home. He still wasn't really sure about going to Valhalla, but he would at least keep it in the back of his mind. Who knew... Maybe he would need a break from studying?
"Thank you," he said, before they could leave, offering Ganymede a small smile. A sad, concerned smile, but a smile nonetheless. "For taking me with you. This has been an amazing experience." He paused, thinking of something as his smile turned a bit awkward looking. "Um... would it be okay if I told my girlfriend about this...? She knows I'm, uh... Valhalla, and might like to know what I've been doing." Hopefully that wouldn't be too much to ask, right...?
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 9:45 pm
Ganymede laughed at Val's question, not even bothering to waste time thinking about it. "Yes, do tell your girlfriend you've been gallivanting across the universe with a pretty boy in stockings and heels."
He knew "she" wouldn't mind, given that he was her, but he thought it would be interesting, and perhaps even a bit amusing, to hear Chris talking to him about Ganymede. He'd get more of an idea of what he thought of it that way, seeing as Chris was likely to be more open with him when he was Paris. Part of him liked hearing about himself whenever he was with Valhalla or Chris. It was nice to know Chris thought about him so much in either form.
"And you're welcome. You'll just have to return to favor sometime. I think I'd like to see what Valhalla is like."
Seconds later, his phone was in his hands. He didn't bother leaving the room, as they would be able to return to Earth from here just as well as in any other part of the palace. He would like to explore the bedchamber a little more the next time he came, whether alone or with someone accompanying him, to see if any more images of the past would flash before his eyes.
"Hold on tight," he said, and grabbed Val's hand.
He closed his eyes, concentrated, and pressed the center button, and Ganymede was still and empty once more.
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