It seemed entirely fitting that fragments of memory, seconds of emotion, sight and sound...all playing out to interconnect....came to him in the midst of his meditation. The exercises were ones that he and Yaya had concocted to train the demon's Nergal side, controlling the shifting and allowing Sharra to clear his mind and focus. A blank slate, there was a moment where the blond lost control; a touch, both familiar, and incredibly bizarre, arose in the center of his thoughts, interrupting the shifting of his body like a geyser erupting...only to gravitate into the center of those memories, taking shape to form a presence. A fleeting life form that opened its eyes, and for a moment the boil saw a flash of acidic green, as though he were staring at his own reflection, cat-like eyes boring into a replicated stare.

"Hey." There was another image, himself, wearing the oddest of outfits, the black and white ensemble clinging to his body and showcasing the muscle beneath. Perhaps this twin of his was a bit sturdier...as though he'd put far more time into honing his body. There was a flash of curiosity...in tandem with slight mortification. My, but this other self was attractive. Heh. Narcisissm, he supposed. He could live with that.

"Who are you...?" The question hung in the air, teetering somewhere between rhetorical and sincere, Sharra's nonplussed expression leaning it towards the latter. It was an answer he was expecting, but dreading as well.

"You. Kinda. I'm a bit like a memory copy. It's a thing."

"So you're like...a memory elemental." Sharra's expression remained quizzical, wondering what business this particular visitor...this doppelganger, possibly could wish of him.

The echo smiled then, a motion that was more felt than seen, a sliver of that wry emotion, lopsided though it was, that indicated profound regret, and a certain element of grief. "If only. I'm nothing so concrete as all that."

"Well that's depressing." Sympathy came included with the words, but they were blunt, echoing that devil-may-care attitude that even this hardly concrete figure before him bore.

"Aye." He murmured, the word falling off of his lips in familiarity, picked up from someone held dear, "It most certainly is that. But that's why I'm here. The last fragment of myself, of who I was..." And all that they'd done, all that they had survived was held therein, and a stubborn, ceaseless affection, the most powerful and prevailing of this alien warrior's emotions. Cast to the winds, he was devoid of any animosity now, save mayhap a lingering grudge towards the Voice. "...everything that we survived..."

"...and since you're me, I kinda want you to keep it..." A clawed finger extended, and the apparition grew closer.

There was no panic, no fear in the Nergal's mind as he felt a light touch at his temple, the Orychanian's hand cool and almost eerie in its translucency. Face to face now, the demon vaguely registered the other boil's breath wafting over him with the chill snap of a fall breeze.

A being who had already died...

Sharra suddenly knew the surety of that, and of quite a fair chunk of other things, with the same confidence by which he knew his own name. He was Sharra Eldwaithe, and somewhere, on some plane of existence, he had lived a wholly different life.

There was a childhood...cast adrift to the stars away from his own people, a transplanting, shocking and mortifying to someone of such a young age. There was worry, fear, anxiety, a fear of solitude...

And then it vanished.

There was never any loneliness, not from this moment forward. Worry, yes, the occasional fear that develops as a person changes and grows, but always there was a friend alongside. A face that Sharra recognized, the name ringing in his head with an abrupt, warm fondness that it had not before possessed in such intensity. It was as though someone had stepped into the place where the Nergal's knowledge of this boil was contained, and flipped on a light switch, flooding the room with illumination.

"Marosa..."

The tiny redhead was a constant in these memories...from the moment of their meeting they had been friends, playful and intensely loyal, both displaced from all that they knew. The bond they forged in that adversity seemed utterly unbreakable.

There were others as well, Roch...Lumikki...Hunters.

But there was so very much more.

For Sharra dreamt of Kings.

The Voice. Knowledge of the entity came with loathing, the fight that emerged for their friends and loved ones contained unbroken zeal. They might not have won the fight, but their enthusiasm had not waned. They were devoted to their cause, to their King, no matter where they might have to go.

And then the memories blossomed, coming alive with a new light and color as Sharra's doppelganger struggled to the edge of that Labyrinth, fraught with emotions that even he contested, unsure of the soundness of them, the wisdom of following the aching in his chest above the warning in his head. There were sensations, heartbeats....a kiss. A sudden understanding, and the thought-shattering realization of acceptance...flashes of skin, desperation.

Ah, Jack. He was going to be seeing images of the fey boil like that for some time. Mayhap that did not bother his conscience as well as it might have, soothed instantaneously by the accompanying threads of emotion. A honeyed temptation that Sharra did not think to thrust from his psyche, but one he accepted, feeling for this alien self as he might a brother, a comrade. The Orychanian had but one request, and he would honor it.

A spike of grief, terrible anguish and knowledge left him reeling next, as he witnessed the Ganerie's death on the battlefield...the life seeping out of both of them in a manner that they could not combat. There was no physical enemy to fight, and that was perhaps the cruelest fate of all.

Sharra expected that to be the last, that to be the fading memory that seeped into his waiting mind.

No....

Eyelids opened once more, finding himself Silver, a blank slate, far less a twin to his original, as though he had been wiped clean, ready to start anew. But such was far from true. There was one last pilgrimage to be made, one last final burst to the Tower. And that was when everything came unravelled.

The Truth was spoken, and there was a horrible outcry, disbelief as they all faded to the stars.

The last moments were given back to them, as lovers were reunited, a relief flowing through Sharra in tandem with his doppelganger.

"It was always Marosa for you, wasn't it...?" He felt driven to speak the words, even if they only sounded within the confines of this dreamscape, anything to drive the weight from his very core.

"Yeah." His twin smiled an easy smile, "I guess it was. Good luck now." And it was with a last salute, that the Orychanian turned, to walk off into nothingness, never once looking over his shoulder. He had already said his final farewells, a true space cowboy.

His absence left a gaping emptiness, one which those memories then swarmed in to fill, drowning him for a long second in a universe where he had never met his djinn...


--


Sharra came to waking with a sudden cry, finding his physical form sweaty and breathless, heart pounding with adrenaline and a heady exhiliration.

Oh Jack help him.

Life was about to get a wee bit more interesting.

"Aye, that it is..."

An answer to no one as Sharra let himself fall backwards, splayed out on the floor of his bedroom.

Best to let this one digest for a bit.