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[ it was the first thing that came to mind when she was finally in a position to build in the real horizon outside of the dream. after so long of being unable to reach it, stuck waiting until the new month to see eddie again in nocwich, this has become a place of comfort for her - a monument to one of the very first friends she made in abraxas, someone that never gave up on her in that other lifetime.

river smiles when he walks into the clearing, sitting on the ground near the edge of one pool of water. ]

I missed it.

[ her expression drops just a little bit and she looks back out to the water, listening to the faint music for a moment. ]

I miss parts of it. [ that other life ] I wanted to keep this one. It's still yours, too.

Yeah, I do too.

[ He comes to join her on the ground near the pool, and only when he’s on her level does it occur to him that they haven’t really seen one another since the island. Between the storms and Nocwich’s brief closure (and helping Steve through the aftermath of Nero’s death), there haven’t been many opportunities to talk beyond brief mind-conversations. There were those eight hundred years, of course—centuries full of Eddie visiting River again and again in an attempt to close the ever-growing distance between them, but it’s hard to know how much any of that counts. While his experience in the crater wasn’t awful, Eddie still struggles with where to place all of these things. It wasn’t real, but it definitely felt real, and maybe in the end, parts of it were sort of real?

It’s all confusing and difficult to navigate, but Eddie is just glad to have his friend back, just as strange and off-putting as she was before. ]

Kind of weird to miss something you didn’t really have, huh?

[ It’s a place he’s returned to a few times throughout the last month, though, in his memories and his dreams. What River’s created is true magic, and he considers himself lucky to be a part of it. ]

But I’m glad you decided to keep it. It would have been one of my choices too.

[ it's too much to grapple with for one whose grasp on reality was tenuous long before they fell into that other timeline. she still isn't convinced of what's happening now, even - how can anyone know for sure that this isn't another layer of the dream? everything that happened felt real, as real as the things she touches and hears and sees on the other side of it.

this is where she's been stuck ever since they woke up, and she chews on it for a moment longer after eddie speaks. ]

We had it. Or - I think we did, at least.

[ it's confusing. she frowns a little, looking at the ground between them. ]

They can stay with you. Nightmares and dreams. The monsters don't need to be real to live inside of you. There are footprints in the sand, scars left behind from teeth and claws. Maybe it was imaginary but it happened to us.

[ she's speaking from experience even beyond abraxas. they manipulated her dreams to turn her into a machine and there's no undoing it now, the same way they can't take back the things they never did in that life they didn't live. they remember it, so it happened. an oversimplification, perhaps, but she doesn't know how else to look at it. ]

[ He has to admit, she has a point. Someone or something (likely the Singularity) absolutely messed with their brains, and as off-putting as that is…in a way, it all still happened. It all still exists in their memories, and plenty of them can recognize where that behavior came from. There’s no shaking it, so maybe trying to separate the two is pointless. Reality and fantasy have become so intertwined, one can’t fully extracted from the other. Maybe it just is what it is, for better or for worse. ]

You know, for all intents and purposes? I guess we kind of did, and I’m glad we have it now too.

[ He smiles reassuringly, but he learned quickly and early on just how sensitive and volatile River can be. Dwelling on those strange eight hundred years, or on the trouble in Thorne—neither one of those seem like the best directions to take. If River wants to bring them up herself, Eddie will gladly speak about them, but for now, he takes things in a different direction: ]

You know, I just realized that you still haven’t heard what I can really do on a guitar. Mostly because the type of guitar I like to use doesn’t work in the real world, but uh, if you’re interested? It sure works in the Horizon.

[ whatever else they may feel about what did or didn't happen, at least she can agree that she's glad they have this now too. a piece of the dream, a good one; something river built that eddie made better just by being himself.

it's whys he sought him out on this sleepless night in the saferoom. she welcomes the segue into better things and sits up, immediately intrigued. ]

Your electric guitar? Is it for Goat Destroyers or the classics?

[ all of his favorite songs are six hundred year old classics by now, y'know. ]

Classics? River, I am a modern man.

[ His eyes are enormous as he clutches his hand to his chest and pretends to look deeply offended…but he has to admit that the Back to the Future metaphor he used to explain the Henry situation to Steve kind of goes both ways. Eddie hasn’t met a whole lot of other people from the mid-80s here. Most are either from significantly further in the past or significantly further in the future—in which his beloved Metallica are both apparently classics and sell-outs, a fact, by the way, that he is very conflicted about.

He’s never asked where or when River is from. He’s never thought to do so. It’s such an easy assumption for him to make by this point and he tends to just roll with it. So he rolls his eyes dramatically and grins as he relents: ]

Okay, yeah, maybe they’re classics.

[ Nothing wrong with that, really. ]

I don’t really have anything new for the band right now, but I’ll probably get Nanaue to help me out when I actually get the time to, you know, relax enough to work something out. I mean…he couldn’t even keep a beat a few months ago and now he’s a regular John Bonham.

[ Which brings them right back to the “does it count or doesn’t it?” question of that 800 years. Because Nanaue has actual skill now, and songs that Eddie struggled with before are suddenly a breeze. Like he’s had a very long time to practice. He almost wishes he were back home, just so he could finally nab that record deal.

But it doesn’t matter right now. He’s clearly excited by the prospect of playing because he doesn’t wait for River to confirm that she even wants to hear him play. He focuses his racing mind for all of two seconds, and he beams as a red and black electric appears right in his hands. ]

Now, she’s not the real deal, but she works well enough to get the job done. What do you say? Wanna hear a classic?

[ river can't help but smile at eddie's usual theatrics. over the course of that false lifetime, he never changed much. his powers grew and his memories faded the same as everyone else, but he never lost his penchant for loud music and terrible jokes and all the other things that quintessentially define eddie munson. so it's not like it's been a long time since she last saw his goofy expressions or heard one of his niche pop culture references.

but it feels like it's been a thousand years since she could properly appreciate them. eddie might not have changed much but river did, and she knows how much losing his friends like that hurt him.

it's why she built this place as her domain, why they're here now, why she thought of him when she needed to escape the fear and anxiety that's brewing deep beneath castle thorne.

it's why she eagerly turns to face him as he summons his guitar too, happy to see his enthusiasm to share something that is so important to him - relieved to know that he still wants to share it, that whatever happened in the dream didn't ruin their friendship that is so important to her. he needs no invitation; she will always be happy to hear him play. ]

Many artists are credited with their finest works during times of strife or inner turmoil. I'll be there when you go on tour again.

[ unlike the way she supported them from afar for hundreds of years. either way, she's still goat destroyer's number one fan! river folds her feet beneath her and gives eddie her full attention with a smile. ]

Ready when you are, maestro.

[ y'know, purveyor of fine classical music! ]

[ Eddie’s theatrics honestly only got more intense in that false lifetime. He’d really stopped holding himself back and brought every single one of his already-thin walls down, and there was something kind of nice and freeing about that, sort of like being a wild, rambunctious kid again. But at the same time, it is sort of exhausting for a normal, mortal Eddie to be turned up to eleven at all times. It’s true that he thrives on loud music and chaos, but he thrives equally as much in quieter moments like this.

Which is why he doesn’t choose a loud, wild song for River. Despite everything going on in the real world, he’s enjoying just…being, just existing beside the falls with someone he cares about and considers to be a good friend. ]

You better be. It would be sort of embarrassing if Goat Destroyer can’t draw in their biggest fan, so, uh…I will be holding you to that.

[ He puts on his most serious look, but fails to hold it and breaks out into a grin. He truly missed her so much in that span of false time, it still sort of aches as much as it would if it was real. And he would say he isn’t expecting any real strife or inner turmoil anytime soon but…yeah, he’s been dealing with a level of that since they got back to their real lives. But he doesn’t need to address that right now, not when he’s playing someone else’s song. So he takes a few moments to puts on a big show of pretending to agonize over which song to choose, despite already knowing exactly what he wants to play.

When he begins, it’s with a somewhat surreal tune, and sure, it’s probably technically about drugs, but it has a killer solo halfway through and he thinks River is probably just the right type of person to appreciate the bizarre picture being painted by the lyrics. And with lyrics like "asked us if we were happy, we said we don’t know" and "we thought we were lost but no matter how we tried, everyone was in peace of mind", Eddie may just be viewing it as an interesting reflection of what they recently went through.

When he closes out, he grins like a jackal and still manages to dip into a deep bow, despite being seated this entire time. ]

What says my captive audience?

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