We're Here To Talk About Your Car's Extended Warranty...

[Will Stanton]

A tug was all it took; just the slightest suggestion of being wanted out.

Will's other hand caught the edge of the cauldron as he gasped for breath, looking around at the room around him as if he was really seeing it for the first time. Blinking and centering himself as he rose, unsteadily towards the floor.

His hair was a bit longer than normal; a bit more untamed. There was a faint bit of eyeliner around his eyes, too. But it was still his face, still his mind recognizable behind the eyes, even as they kept staring around.

"Jesus wept, but that was...indescribable," he finally said, a little shakily. "I feel a bit like I'm going to throw up."

[Samantha McManus]

"I'm thinking reconciling that much shared memory was a lot."

"...only came out 33% Bowie, though."

[Will Stanton]

Will shook his head, trying to free the cobwebs from it.

"It's still sort of...percolating up inside here," he said, gesturing towards his head. "It's still..."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "It's...so strange. Just standing here. It's not like when just a bit of me comes back; this is a huge....this is a huge chunk of life. Finely aged, with a funk to it, as it were. And I don't know which is..."

He looked around again, shaking his head as if that would cause everything to lock into place. "It's just that I haven't been here before, and yet I have, and it's disorienting. I tend to go with the flow, but it's like...a confluence. Being battered around by the conflicting tides."

He chuckled a little bit, grinning. "I know I'm not making sense, but making sense is overrated, or so I've learned."

[Miriam Bell]

"Bold to assume you made sense before. But as long as it's not... throwing anything off in there?"

[Will Stanton]

"I mean, I suppose that depends on your definition. You kind of...pulled all of me out at once. It's disorienting, to say the least.

I know, for a fact, this is the first day I've ever been in this room. And yet I've been living here for quite some time. And both of these facts are true, and it's quite...quite a lot to take in."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well whenever you match up certain parts of you for a bespoke purpose-built Will, there's a certain newness, aye? It's not not you, but it's a perspective you may not have used before."

[Will Stanton]

Will nodded. "There is, for sure, and Miriam just kinda pulled and yanked without requesting a certain part, so you get the combo platter, as it were."

"But this is...I mean, this isn't a bit of me that went out for coffee and saw a cool rock or something. I'm not a fae now. I mean, I am a fae. I mean..." Will sputtered, and then kinda sheepishly shrugged.

"It's a lot in one go, and there's not a...centerpoint to fall back on."

[Miriam Bell]

"It's just two sets of wildly different memories, right? It'll... probably even out over time?"

[Will Stanton]

"'Just', she says," Will smirked. "You want to see if we can smush yours and Sam's head together and see what we get?"

A little snarkier than Will!Classic, at least.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. It doesn't feel...wrong. It feels strange. I've done strange."

[Samantha McManus]

"Probably doesn't help that the Wyldclay's mind was omnishambles. Like a city built on a city built on a city."

"I don't think they had the box, or if they did they didn't have anyone to unlock it."

[Miriam Bell]

"Were they part of you then? I know they didn't remember and I'm fairly certain, but it'd be good to know for sure." she says, with an unspoken 'whether we brought them home or kind-of-killed them' hanging in the air.

[Will Stanton]

"I am standing right here, you know. I like to think that my mind aged like a fine wine more than anything else," Will scoffed. "Like I said, I've done strange.

And no, no one there was able to open their box. I mean, it took finding you here to have that happen to me; Lord Oberon was less concerned with what I was and more with what I could be. No sense living in the past, as it were."

"And I don't really... I don;t know if they were part of me," Will admitted. "But it doesn't feel... It feels the same as when part of me comes back. Mostly. Just more of it. It doesn't feel foreign."

[Samantha McManus]

"So if there was a box, they might not have been just a part of you."

"They might have been you."

[Miriam Bell]

"Well yeah, they're all just Will. Not to worry, you're still the least sane one here, Sam."

[Will Stanton]

"So if there was a box, they might not have been just a part of you."

"They might have been you."

"I think you're right. At least, the evidence points your way," Will nodded, thinking. "If I wasn't me, you would think we wouldn't...blend together so well. I mean, we'll have to watch me for a few days to make sure I don't act weird...

...er than normal...

...but there's no initial signs of rejection or anything."

[Samantha McManus]

"I suppose it makes sense that getting tossed into a black hole didn't split you so much as... fork you?"

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm not chasing down infinite Wills, I'll tell you that much."

[Will Stanton]

"I'm feeling rather forked by the whole experience, yes," Will deadpanned.

"It's a lot to wrap my head around. I guess I'll have to accept not being the special snowflake I thought I was."

[Samantha McManus]

"Oh aye, you just got fractally reproduced across an unknown number of universes, lived to tell the tale, or tales, and can be put back together with multiple lifetimes and timelines of experience."

"Truly you're a replaceable cog in an uncaring cosmos."

[Will Stanton]

"See, you get it. It's no wonder I seek out a Morrigan, to bask in the warmth of irrelevancy."

[Miriam Bell]

"And they're immune to sarcasm too." Miriam helpfully and not-at-all sardonically supplies.

[Samantha McManus]

"How else would you survive being unceremoniously flung through dimensional boundaries?"

[Will Stanton]

"I'm pretty bouncy, when I want to be. I can survive being flung multiple places, and at least you don't hit something when you're sent out to the cold vacuum of space.

I'm a shooting star, right? No wonder I draw the attention of such interesting people."

[Miriam Bell]

"Well, I can't argue with that."

"How much do you remember from, you know, all of that anyway? Not the floating in space but the black hole?"

[Will Stanton]

Will grimaced for a moment.

"Enough. Hawking radiation, roasting and puncturing my cells from the inside out. Being stretched apart, atom by atom. The world winking out bit by bit, until the only thing that existed was me and the pain.

And the screaming. You're not supposed to hear screaming in space, but then, every last...every last inch of space was filled with the pain. Everywhere in existence all at once, being torn left right and asunder; all of existance was my pain.


...I'd rate it zero stars. Which I suppose makes sense, considering the state of the universe at the time."

[Samantha McManus]

"...and you came out of that with a head full of chocolate."

[Will Stanton]

"I think I went in with a headful of chocolate. Or, at least, part of me did," Will said, scratching his chin. "More of a meat guy back in the High Court. Hunting and all that."

[Miriam Bell]

"So you think the 'meat guy' part got thrown into the magical fairy land or did they make you that way?"

[Will Stanton]

"Nature versus nurture, right? Maybe I just adapted to the environment I found myself in. I was a couch for 30 years here, remember. Felt like the right thing to do at the time.

Though now I'm having a hard time picturing myself staying like that for so long. Seems....stagnant. Wintery."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well now you can do both. Could always do both, I suppose."

[Will Stanton]

"Be a cake and eat it too," Will nodded.

[Miriam Bell]

"The incredible power of being a regular human being. Only you would get ripped apart by a black hole and spend hundreds of years among the fairies and come out more normal somehow."

[Will Stanton]

"Let's not say things we can't take back," Will grinned. "'Normal' is a high bar to clear."

[Samantha McManus]

"There's a very real possibility that, at some point in time, your wife will be contacted by various Morrigans who will all drop off one of you."

[Miriam Bell]

"And without a fancy mirror or cauldron she'll be stuck with the lot."

[Will Stanton]

Will was about to crack another joke for a moment, and then blinked. "Huh. That's a fair point. I didn't have a fancy cauldron. Back in the Society, that is.

I mean, the bog was good; I'm very pro-bog, but it wasn't a fancy bespoke piece or anything."

[Samantha McManus]

"If you want a bog, you'll need to get your own place."

[Miriam Bell]

"Society? And why would they make you a bog unless Wyldclay had the same issues as our Will did?"

[Will Stanton]

"The Hoffman Society. The strange people back in my old dimension, where I served proudly as collector of weird and unusual things, as part of a protection agreement to keep the more...notorious types from getting after me. Plus, such beautiful things to play with," he added. "And I do like playing with beautiful things," he grinned, shooting a look at both Miriam and Sam.

"But no, they didn't construct something for me; that was my own doing. See, whenever I was killed, that is, stabbed and murdered to death, I would awaken a few hours later from the swamp itself. It just made sense to sort of move that inside; lower the commute, as it were. The Paths were useful, but those hallways could be quite long."

[Miriam Bell]

"Mm, yes, I can't imagine why somebody might get upset to the point of murder with such a bratty little flirt." Miriam smirks and reaches out to firmly but affectionately cup Will's cheek.