Voice: un.TheStrandInstitute

[nobasisinfact]

To the person who chose to change any suit I wore yesterday, I'm sure you think you're amusing, however, that's far from something I plan to become upset over.

[Yes, he realizes this is a challenge. Yes, he realizes this is probably Loki. No, he doesn't care.]

Comments

[11calls]

If that's what I want? Have you lost your fucking mind? No, it's not want I want. I love you. I want you. But I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy, I'm not imagining things and I'm not willing to live with a lie.

You talk about truths in the universe all the time, Richard. But you can't even admit this one to yourself. Even when the evidence is right there in front of you.

[And Alex just sends her memory of that day, complete with the sounds of him fighting the demon, the shove and everything that came after. Including the demon trying to kill her.]

I'm not choosing to leave. You're choosing to shove me away. Again.

[nobasisinfact]

That was during an event where reality was augmented.

[11calls]

Our whole lives are happening in events where reality is augmented! You did something no one else was able to. You fought the demon's possession on you. More than once. Do you think that I didn't investigate the hell out of what happened to everyone during that incident?

You shoved me away, more than once.

You're lying to yourself, Richard if you don't think that this is what's happening.

[Alex's voice gets small and sad and hurt sounding rather than angry.]

And I don't know how to help you stop.

Look. I know you've been wanting to keep me away from that whole part of your family history, what Oneida means and all of that. But it's not helping either of us.

[nobasisinfact]

I'm not 'keeping you from it'.

[He sounds a bit insulted that she'd even think that. At this point.]

You know as much as I do.

[11calls]

Maybe! But something still happened, and it wasn't just a nightmare. We've both been in tons of other nightmares at this point, and nothing like that has happened before. It's not the space because I was down there when there was the flooding and that didn't happen. We've both been down there since then and it didn't happen.

But I do know that I'm not crazy or imagining what happened. And I know I didn't do it and the demon didn't do it. There's no one else who could have but you.

[nobasisinfact]

Why are you so insistent that I'm psychic?

[11calls]

Because nothing else about that makes sense!

[nobasisinfact]

If I were psychic then I would have been able to find Coralee.

[11calls]

Not if someone was blocking you from doing that. You don't think that Warren would have known how to stop you from finding her any way he could?

[nobasisinfact]

That sounds more like a convenient excuse.

[11calls]

I really don't think there's anything convenient about any of this.

[nobasisinfact]

The time I attempt, and fail, to use psychic powers Thomas Warren just happens to have a way to block them?

[11calls]

How do you know he hadn't been blocking them before?

He's not here now, and this happened. Maybe finding someone just isn't in your wheelhouse. You didn't find me when Annie had me kidnapped.

But either way: you wanted to get me away from you when you had that demon inside of you. That is what you wanted to have happen and that is what happened. No imagining it, no tripping and falling, no the demon doing it. You did it without physically touching me.

[nobasisinfact]

Pushing you away could have been a manifestation singular to the nightmare. Aside from that time I've done nothing remotely psychic.

[11calls]

[Flatly.]

Never. In your entire life? And never in another nightmare?

So why then?

[nobasisinfact]

I don't know.

[11calls]

Do you have a hypothesis?

[nobasisinfact]

Not yet.

[11calls]

Is me imagining it or being insane off the table as one?

[nobasisinfact]

You're not insane.

[11calls]

And I didn’t imagine it?

[nobasisinfact]

You've told me you didn't.

[11calls]

[And Alex is just going to replay it again, the force of it both times and it feels the same as the demon strangling her without touching her.]

I didn't.

[nobasisinfact]

Then it isn't on the table.

[11calls]

Okay. Good. Then we'll figure it out what the hell it was.