ALL THE WALLS OF DREAMING, THEY WERE TORN WIDE OPEN

[diogenesis]

Who: Mycroft Holmes
What: Learning the Truth.
Where: Queensgate
When: Sukkardi, Rundaren 14th
Notes: Closed post. Takes place before this.
Warnings: A little existential mind-melting.

It's hard to have expectations when one doesn't, due to one's own request, know what to expect. The small item Mycroft has received in the mail (3000+ years old/made of glass? no—made of Egyptian blue/meant to be shaped like a scarab/impression in the shape of the Feather of Ma'at on the underside) with an attached note reading 'Ask Me!' (paper type: unknown/ink type: unknown/handwriting: unknown) is somehow unexpected regardless.

It sits, seemingly inert, in Mycroft's palm on top of the white linen in which it had been wrapped, and he spends a few moments staring at it disconcertedly. It's obviously meant to have some sort of supernatural power, since the figure alone, fascinating as it is, proves nothing. As for the note, 'asking' an inanimate object anything seems silly, but he's done stranger things lately.

If it's going to give him an answer, though, he'll want to prepare himself first, for more than one reason. He'd been aware when he made his request that the territory he wanted to explore was a dangerous one, particularly in a place like this, but he knows his own limits, and he knows he can't survive much longer without mental foundations on which to steady himself.

With that in mind, Mycroft goes about pouring himself a drink and settling down in his chair in the library. It's quiet, perfectly so. He closes his eyes, breathes slowly, takes the time to dial every part of himself down to its baseline—mind organized and calm, senses relatively inactive, focus softened, body relaxed. Experience has taught him this will help cushion a potential blow. Accomplishing such a peaceful state takes half an hour; he spends another fifteen minutes letting it sink in properly.

Once he's satisfied with his state of mind, Mycroft takes the scarab from the side-table where he'd placed it. This time it rests against his bare skin. He runs his fingers over it, traces the feather-shaped impression on the bottom. The edges of the design have been worn smooth by time, but the mark is unmistakeable.

He closes his hand loosely around the old glass, thumb pressed against Ma'at's symbol. His voice, when he asks the question, is quiet, calm, and determined.

“Are both this world and the world from which I arrived real?”

The answer is immediate:

« Yes. »

Yes. Yes. But not just yes. It's every yes, it's not even the word yes, it's Yes, it's a True Yes, and the Truth of it burns through him until he can't see (but his eyes are open) and all he can feel is his mind working so quickly that it feels like slow motion, staring into space and seeing every star, feeling their existences as Truly as the deep sharp pain of a knife in his heart, not only knowing the True Yes but recognizing it, it's a taste on his tongue, it's a sound in his ears, it's miles and miles and eternities of information in his head that he'll never parse the finer meanings of, streaming through him like a ticker tape, flying by like scenery out of a car window, and yet clicking into place like the final gear in a transmission. It hurts, it's too much, he feels like he's drowning, dying, and like he'll come alive again in the next instant because in the face of Truth like this, what is death? Colliding universes, he can almost see them touching (but he can't, he can't reach that far, it won't let him, and it's frustrating because oh god he wants to see everything and it's so close, but it's also good, because he knows it would destroy him), their enormity sitting heavy in his chest, so heavy he could sink into the earth, and their impact so mighty it sends him flying, years and light years and stratospheres away from everything he's ever known, flying so far that he comes full circle and lands back where he started, Around the World(s) in (how long?).

He lands back where he started.

The sweet, painfully-clear ringing of the Answer slowly dies down, and Mycroft begins to sink back into his own body again. Touch is the first sense to register—the pull of gravity, the shape of his chair, the fabric under the fingers of one hand and the glass-like substance under the fingers of the other. He feels his tongue in his mouth, his clothes against his skin, his feet in his shoes like it's the first time he's been confined in such a way. Smell, taste, and hearing come back into play more subtly (suddenly hearing silence after hearing nothing is notably surreal), and finally he processes the fact that he does, in fact, have his eyes open and can see.

It's early evening now. It was 2:30 PM when he'd last been aware of such things. The sun is what tells him the time as it filters through the library windows, catching spinning motes of dust in its lazy rays. His steadily-growing collection of cross-dimensional literature sits on the shelves undisturbed. Two fingers of scotch still wait for him in the glass at his side, though the ice has long since melted. The sculpted piece of Egyptian blue is still in his hand, warm and sweaty from his prolonged touch, looking no different than it had before.

Yes.

He lands back where he started, and he Knows it's all Real.