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It had been some time since Jordan showed up to breakfast as a shambling, zombie-like being; the addition of a coffee machine to his personal possessions meant that he could apply caffeine before leaving the room to start his morning, which meant that it was much safer to approach him at breakfast, if anyone was so inclined. Today he looked almost alert as he negotiated possession of a bagel and cream cheese and found a table to sit at.

Jordan looked up and smiled. "Hey, Maddie. Good to see you; of course I don't mind, I never mind. How are you doing?" The last time they'd seen each other hadn't ended well, and he'd been preoccupied for some time afterwards. He was glad to see her now.

"He's okay. He doesn't remember anything about the retrieval mission." Jordan still wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, but he wasn't going to complain. The mission had been confusing and deeply stressful, and he was still dealing with the dreamlike memories of his fragment's life. Harrison didn't have to deal with that, and that was fine by Jordan.

Madison's confession made him wince. "I'm sorry. I should've checked in with you. The timing was pretty rotten."

"It'd be nice if something went as planned once in a while," Jordan said dryly. "Well, no, I guess things don't go pear-shaped all the time. Just a lot of the time."

His eyebrows went up at her next comment. "Really?" The trials had changed everyone, he supposed. Some more than others. A faint and hazy memory of A2 making sharp remarks surfaced, distant and dreamlike. He hadn't thought much of it. They'd all been under stress, and he still didn't like to think about some of the more erratic parts of his own behavior during the same time. He shrugged at Madison. "Not judging," he said, with a cheerful smile. "I mean, apparently I like jerks, so there's that."

It was more than that, of course, but he trusted that Maddie knew him well enough to understand.

"It's changed us all," Jordan said, nodding a little. "Life directions and all that. Here's to fresh starts?" He raised his mug, smiling.

Jordan went quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts; he touched Ferros's ring with his thumb, mentally steadying himself. "It was like a simulation," he said. "A dreamworld generated from something in the unconscious minds of the people at the center of it. There were seven; Harrison and Wilson were two of them. I didn't have much to do with anything other than blue kingdom, though. That was where Harrison was. There were - the people in the dreams were like versions of themselves, ourselves that might've been real if things were different."

He paused, some ambiguous expression flickering in his eyes, quickly masked. "When we went in to bring him back, we took the places of our other selves. It was pretty damn unsettling to wake up in there and have another set of memories, someone else's life and thoughts that were you, but not quite." He shook his head, his mouth quirking into a lopsided smile, though not really a happy one. "In there, we were pretty much the Mafia, believe it or not. Really bizarre. The weapons were still with us as our partners, but they were human. Ferros was my bodyguard."

He sighed. "We got sent in with instructions that we needed to kill the dream-Harrison so the real one could wake up. It ... wasn't easy. Harder because of what the other selves had been to him. Even knowing that he wasn't real and the other versions of us hadn't been real, it was hard to shake the sense of loyalty. And of course there were complications. When is there ever a mission without complications, right? I'm pretty sure Merlin and Excalibur stepped in towards the end, and I'm still not sure what I think about that."

Maddie got a sharp and thoughtful look. "You're in Death. I wonder if you could get any access to information on what actually happened while we were all off in dreamland."

"I don't know. I was pretty focused on what we had to do, so I never actually left blue." Jordan grimaced ruefully. "The force behind everything, the thing that drove the conflict between the kingdoms, was called the Voice, but I never got much of a sense of what it was or what it wanted. Harrison might've been able to tell you something about it, but he doesn't remember anything. All I really know about the Voice was that it wasn't too pleased when we started trying to figure out what was going on with it; it tried to discourage us from investigating too hard. Which, of course, just made me want to know more." He shrugged. "I thought for a while that the Voice might be Merlin, but I'm not so sure now. There wasn't much by way of answers, and honestly, I was too relieved that Harrison was awake and okay to go chasing after the matter further yet."

He hesitated, then admitted, "And I guess I didn't want to think about it too much. The other me - I could see why he was who he was, but he'd sold his morals somewhere along the way, and that disturbed me. Disturbs me. He wasn't so far off from me, but completely different at the same time."

He nodded. "I wouldn't want to risk getting Caelius's attention either," he said dryly. "I can see where you're coming from there. It'll be awesome when you get your promotion, though." He grinned. "Maybe we'll throw you a party or something."

"You'll always be family to me," Jordan said, quietly and seriously, and leaned across the table to rest his hand over hers. "You're, like, my sister, okay? I'm not the boss anymore, and I shouldn't be, but you're family, and that's not going to change."