Owner Pose
Caitlin Fairchild The presence of Troia in the Tower has become a sort of sustainable disruption in routine. She is not 'Donna' in the personal sense, but she is a version of Donna. Enough that even for Donna's lifelong friends, it's hard to discriminate between the missing Titan and the Last Titan.

Still, it's a little awkward for Caitlin, because this is also not *her* Donna. Someone who has spent ten years getting to know the redhead so well that she can overlook Caitlin's myriad quirks and faults. Caitlin hesitates on the precipice of transitioning from the Tower proper to the mystical hallway that leads to Troia's abode. The redhead takes a second to steel herself, juggling her grip on the heavy black plastic cases in her hands, and walks into Troia's realm.

"Troia?" Caitlin calls. "It's me. Er, Caitlin," she amends. "Are you around, or is this a, uh, bad time?"
Donna Troy     Troia is not there when Caitlin enters, but she appears very shortly afterwards. Appears, literally. Slightly after her voice says "I'm here." This is not the way Donna would ever show up. Probably not even if she /could/ pull the trick off.

    "Caitlin Fairchild," she says, wearing the not-quite-smile she often wears. It's another pretty unfamiliar thing, to see that mouth smiling without it being the widest smile you ever saw. "You go to too much effort to get here." Troia quirks her head to one side. "I've watched you with your instruments, trying to plot a path through the labyrinth. That's not really how the labyrinth works. You will find paths, because you are looking for them. It's a kind of feedback. As your instruments show you pathways that are for that instant in time correct, you persuade yourself that you have created a map. Because you expect to get to where you wish to go when you follow the map, you do. If you expected your maps to fail, they would instead fail."

    She looks with curiosity at the cases Caitlin carries in. "Are these more instruments you have brought to measure more things? Perhaps it would be simpler to just ask me for answers before you attempt more measurements. While there are many things I cannot answer for you, equally there is much about this place I can answer for you, far better than your instruments can."
Caitlin Fairchild "Maybe I use the instruoments because I believe I'll get lost without 'em," Caitlin says. She's dressed in light colors in anticipation of summer; grey-white mottled leggings and a lightweight white hoodie with "Columbia Medical" in pale blue lettering. The corner of her mouth tugs up in a smile. A beat later she puts a bit more effort into the friendly expression, remembering that Troia might not pick up on the subtleties of Caitlin's expressions.

"But I don't have any science experiments today," she promises Donna, and sets the cases down on a stone slab. Caitlin opens them up and steps aside so Donna can see their contents-- a pair of longbows, one of them done up in the classic style of Themyscira and the other adapted with some more modern components and design considerations. "I figured you're probably getting a little stir-crazy, and thought-- well, some target shooting can be a nice way to relax," she suggests. "We could shoot off the tower, or go down to the dock, or--" she trails off, shoulders wiggling in a shrug. "Whatever works for you?"
Donna Troy     Troia stares dubiously at the bows. "Stir-crazy?" she asks. "That's an amusing phrase. Why would I be going stir-crazy? You understand that from my perspective, all that has changed is that you are your team-mates keep wandering into this chamber. My life is rather more varied than it usually is."

    She gives a slight shrug. "If it would make you feel better to fire arrows, I have no objection to this." She gestures with a hand and the walls of the room suddenly race away, the space opening up until the walls are a good hundred yards away. "Is this sufficient space for you?" she asks. "I can make it larger if you need more room." With another gesture, a set of targets appears by one wall. "

    "This would be easier than going to your roof. The labyrinth does not seem eager to allow me to pass it. I could use a travel-sphere, but I am concerned that such a mode of travel would be considered provocative by Olympus, and I do not wish to involve you in that conflict."
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin's brows go up at the casual rearrangement of the space. "A hundred yards is OK," she tells Troia, quickly. "Much past that and I'd need to grab a spotting scope anyway. And my accuracy gets a little dodgy with how much of an arc we need."

Caitlin picks up her bow and removes two pins that keep the bulk of the tension off the string. She carefully relaxes the bow in her hands until it's unfolded to the full size. The bow is clearly made specifically for Caitlin and out of materials both magical and exotic in order to let her capitalize on her strength.

"So ... Olympus, wouldn't want you to leave?" Caitlin inquires. She slings a quiver belt around her hips and loads arrows into it. "Not this world's Olympus, right, but-- your world's. New Kronus?" she hedges.
Donna Troy     "On the contrary, Olympus would be glad for me to leave here," Troia replies, as she inspects the other bow, her fingers lightly pressing against the layers of compound material, and tracing the delicate recurve. "When I am here, they cannot touch me. Were I to leave, they may consider it an opportunity to put a final end to the war."

    She looks up from the bow, watching Caitlin with her own bow a short time. "You are still confused by the nature of things. There is only one Olympus, only one New Kronos. The infolding is not some kind of juncture between different potentialities within the trans-universal medium. It is an infolding of potentialities within the great sphere of the realms of this particular reality."

    She nods her head in the direction of the bow Caitlin's readying. "This bow seems very different from the other one. Why is that? Does it serve some different purpose? It is less elegant in the way it is formed. The materials are... over complicated. The chains of atoms inelegantly long and tangled, and the substance is purely physical. The other extends through more layers of what is real than this one. Ah... perhaps that is the purpose? A challenge to yourself, to utilize a limited form like this, as with a composer who picks a singular scale, or a painter using only a few colors?"
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin just stares at Troia for a beat. The redhead's pretty intelligent, but what Troia is describing utterly fails to get any traction. She works the words around a few times while Troia critiques the bow in Caitlin's hands. By the time she catches up with Troia's train of thought, the tips of her ears are pinking a bit in a combination of embarassment and a litle irritation for the design.

"...I built this bow," Caitlin says finally. Fingers curl around it, holding the tool close with a stubborn sort of protectiveness. "It's for me to use. I built one a lot like this for my friend Kate after hers got broken. I liked hers enough that I rebuilt my old bow with some of the improvements we came up with."

She turns away from Troia and picks up an arrow, nocking it with a smooth motion. The bow comes up to eye level, arm extended, and Caitlin elevates the arrowhead a few points before loosing. It flies off like a loosed bullet despite how heavy the arrow must be, and hits the 100 yard target with an audible *thwack*.
Donna Troy     Troia frowns slightly to herself, watching in silence as Caitlin finishes the assembly and takes her first shot. "You hit the target successfully," she says. "Slightly less than a hands-width from the very center of the target. I am sorry Caitlin. I have offended you, but I did not mean to. This bow was your own construction, and you are proud of it because of that fact. The concerns I raised felt critical to you, and worse they were ignorant of the concerns that are important to you. I hope you accept my apology."

    She stares down at the ground, one hand held within the other in front of her, as if she doesn't quite know what to do with them. "Talking with mortals is a new experience for me, Caitlin. In fact talking with anyone who is not a Titan is a new experience for me. It is hard for me to adjust."

     Her head quirks sideways to look up at Caitlin again. "Though you might say that I still am talking to Titans, because you and your friends call yourselves Titans. I think perhaps that is the single strangest thing about all of this. That all my life I have known only Titans, and when I at last meet some other people, they too call themselves Titans."

    "Will you tell me more about who you are, Caitlin? You and the others who call yourself 'Titans'. The Wonderlander, Terry, he talked to me a little about it, but I find his explanations often raise more questions than they answer. He keeps talking about entertainments called 'ABBA' and 'Encanto' and going into elaborate side-lines as to why they are relevant to what he is discussing, when clearly they are not. What I understood from his convoluted explanations, you are a group of people who came together with a shared desire to operate as heroes, to reshape the path of your world's development to a path you believe brings greater good. Is that correct? Why did you chose the name 'Titans' for this venture?"
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin's posture quickly relieves itself of tension at Troia's earnest apology; she listens with quiet attentiveness as Troia tries to explain the hurdles she's forced to address to deal with the strange mortals inundating her home.

The sidebar about Terry even provokes a laugh, a wryly sympathetic once. "Terry's... a special case," she says, delicately. "But he means well. He loves music and movies and uses them to relate to people. Which works great if everyone's got the same taste in entertainment."

Caitlin reaches for another arrow, nocks it, aims, and looses. The motion seems like something she's practiced many times, her focus more on refining her technique than simply loosing arrows downrange. "But it was, uh, Donna, who came up with the name." She glances over at Troia, a flickering up-and-down. "I think Richard pitched 'The Supremes' but that was apparently a musical band. I pitched 'Incredibles' but that got shot down."

"Anyway-- Donna pitched Titans and it stuck. It felt right. Y'know, more than a team. ... Family," she amends. "Knowing what I do now about the Titanomachy, I admit it's kind of a funny choice."
Donna Troy "Zeus rebelled against his father, and chose to claim authority for himself. The division of opinions on that was not as cleanly split among the generations as you might think. My mother, for example, refused to take sides in the dispute. "

    Troia takes a seat on her place in the curved bench of thrones, which somehow appears to be a lot closer to the spot from which Caitlin is firing arrows than it had been a moment ago. "There had been questions about Kronos' leadership for a while. There were those who thought the idea of giving Zeus a chance was not such a bad one, but objected to his methods of trying to achieve it. But it's not as funny a choice as you think. After all, the Titans were a family too. Even though they were all very different from me -- I was so much younger than everyone else in New Kronos -- they cared for me, they tried to make sure I did not feel alone. They gave me something to belong to. They... they were /my/ family."

    She gazes out the giant window to the stars beyond. "Richard -- I have not met this one yet. It seems there are always more of you to meet. The name he opted for and the name you opted for -- they would have been less hubristic. But you chose, in the end, to adopt the name Donna had selected, rather than your own choice. Did you then decide that her name was more appropriate, once you had heard the suggestion?"
Caitlin Fairchild "He's pretty busy over in Bludhaven and Gotham these days," Caitlin tells Troia. "He doesn't hang out around the Tower much anymore. But he was here in the beginning."

She starts to take aim at another target, then changes her mind and lets the bow swing from the end of her grip. "Anyway-- I don't really remember what tipped her in her way. I'm not terribly creative," she admits. "But it was a cool-sounding name and everyone just.. liked it, right off the bat. It sounded like something ... big and impressive. Like right out of legends. Maybe that was part of it, just a bunch of... kids, really, trying to stand up and be counted like the League did. Or the old Justice Defenders. Y'know." She nocks an arrow and looses a snap shot. It misses the target, but not by much. "A legacy."
Donna Troy "I should disapprove," Troia says. "I should disapprove of... of all of this. Of taking our name as your own. Of coming to New Kronos without permission. Clambering over the thrones, sitting casually upon them as if you all had no respect for the great gods who once sat there, who those seats were made for."

    "Yet I find myself... not. What purpose would such feelings have? Perhaps it is the opposite. You took the name and did with it what the original Titans have not done for millennia. My people stepped away from the mortal world after the first Titanomachy. They would visit, from time to time, to observe. But they would not interfere."

    "Yet you do. You interfere. You try to make your world better. All the power that the original Titans have... had... that power could have done far more good than you do. Yet it did not. A part of the universe shut itself off from the rest, recused itself of responsibility for the universe it was part of. Perhaps it is better that the name go to those who continue to do what the original owners of the name stopped doing."

    Troia blinks slowly at ancient stars, and turns back to look at Caitlin. "You made a choice, and when a different choice was presented that you recognized was superior to your own choice, you adopted that choice instead," she says. She gives a thoughtful nod. "That is appropriate. When you say that you are not creative, you are observing that there are those who have strengths you do not, and you refrain from denying your weaknesses, to make the whole stronger. This is something few, mortal or immortal, are good at doing. Perhaps this is why the others look to you for leadership."
Caitlin Fairchild "I think it's because I'm one of the first Titans," Caitlin counters with a one-shouldered shrug. "It was just the six of us. Richard had the most experience since he was Batman's sidekick," she explains. "So he had been fighting monsters and villains for a few years before we even formed up."

She sets her bow down and picks out a seat, one that looks least like a lofty perch for a god's rear. "I think that's one of the reasons the team worked as well as we did. We all had different strengths and skills and we helped each other compensate. Richard isn't bulletproof, but he's a great tactical mind. Vic and Raven have their own strengths and weaknesses too."

She looks around thoughtfully, propping her weight back with one palm on the stone near her hip. "I guess it's different now with the new people hanging around. Richard's gone, Vic and Gar never really had a... hmm. They don't like being in charge of stuff. I don't like it either, but I kinda can't help it. If people are hungry, I'll go nuts unless I get them fed. Same sorta compulsion when it comes to managing the team and dealing with crises. I don't know if I'm all that good at it, but I know the others get really stressed out with the idea of being in charge, so..." she shrugs, eloquently. "Someone's gotta do it, righT?"
Donna Troy     "Did it not occur to you that your reluctance may not be unconnected to their willingness to look to you for leadership?" Troia asks. "People would be inclined to be less trustful of someone who sought out leadership, because they could not know whether that person was providing leadership for the benefit of those they lead rather than their own benefit. Your reluctance to lead means that those who follow you are reassured that your leadership is for their benefit."

    Troia sits back in her seat, raising one hand, into which an arrow flies. She turns the arrow over and over, studying it carefully. "Yet perhaps that creates a pressure for you that you are not entirely comfortable with. This 'Richard', he was the leader of your group in the start? Then it seems natural that the people within your group who were used to leadership would look for it in someone else. They trust you, so they look for it in you. Is that why you feel uncomfortable around them?"

    She raises her head again, the arrow held loose in one hand as she studies Caitlin. "I sense an unease around them in you. I have seen how they defer to you, and seek your council. Yet I sense an unease in you when they are around, that is almost as clear as the unease you feel in my presence."
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin toes at a rock with her foot, unwilling to meet Troia's gaze for a few moments. "It's not that," she says, hedging. It takes her a few beats to find the right words. "I screwed up a couple months ago. I let someone manipulate me and I ignored all my friends. I argued with 'em and even got in a couple fights. I ended up going toe to toe with some good people who didn't deserve it. One of 'em could have died, even with me holding myself back."

She rubs her wrists, where dark purple scars emerge from under the gold-hued braces. "I apologised to everyone, I tried to make amends. People seem to forgive me. But it was... still a really bad idea all around. I let the team down in a big way. Thinking of it like that... makes me think I'm not really suited for being in charge of things for the team. I can't even be in charge of myself."
Donna Troy     Troia's head turns one way then the other as she listens to Caitlin's explanation. Her brow furrows, then clears, and small muscles in her face twitch as if abandoning facial expressions part-formed.

    "I often find myself confused talking with you... with mortals," she says finally. "I can understand the words you are saying. I understand the intent in meaning. Yet somehow often this is not enough. You say things that you know do not make sense, yet you convince yourself at the same time that they do. It makes communication very confusing."

    "You say that you 'let someone manipulate you' but this is an irrational thing to say. To be manipulated by someone is to act in a way they cause you to act despite your intent. If you allow it, you are not manipulated. If you are manipulated, you did not allow it. The word 'let' indicates intent, yet the word 'manipulate' indicates a lack of intent. I suspect you are trying to persuade yourself of culpability."

    She frowns again, and gives a small nod of her head. "And yet you do, you accept culpability for your actions while you were being manipulated. I still struggle to understand how you get to the next part of what you say though. The others in your group look to your opinions, yet you doubt your opinions. Is it that you deem your friends foolish for putting their trust in you, and feel that their foolishness requires they have a stronger hand than your own to guide them?"
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin's eyes roll skywards in mute supplication and she exhales steadily through her nose to try and keep her temper from swelling. "I didn't say it was all nicely rational," she says. Vexation underwrites her tone of voice. "I made a mistake and then despite everyone warning me about the fallout, I kept *making* that mistake. I was .... so focused on trying to do the right thing that I didn't want to think about the fallout of my choices. .Or the consequences for the others. From my friends."

The redhead looks at her bow and sets it aside. Her mood for target shooting seems to be waning. "Look-- I'm supposed to set an example of How To Do Things for the younger Titans. And I screwed up. I got into the wrong fight and I ignored or resisted all my friends telling me I was doing the wrong thing. It wasn't as simple as an honest mistake or even a mis-step. They trusted me to do better, and I let the Titans down. How can I ask anyone to take advice from me when I couldn't be bothered to take advice from them?"
Donna Troy     "Do you?" Troia replies, whip-fast. "Ask them, I mean. To take advice from you. That was not the impression I got. Rather it seems to me they look to you, despite your reluctance to lead. When they are uncertain, they consider your actions and your opinions. Despite your mistake."

    Troia tilts her head to one side. "I must re-iterate my conclusions. Your response only makes sense if you consider your friends to be foolish for looking to you for guidance. Is that the case? If you would deny that, then you must accept the only other realistic possibility."

    "That your friends are wiser than you, at least when it comes to the singular question of where to look for apt guidance. Have you ever followed another leader, Caitlin? Would you say that leader was perfect, that they never made mistakes? All leaders do. All /people/ do, mortal or immortal. You should not question yourself or your capabilities for leadership due to having made a mistake. You should only consider whether you are able to learn from your mistakes, or if you keep making the same mistakes over and over again."
Caitlin Fairchild "Leaders? Yeah. Richard," Caitlin says, automatically. "And--" she gestures at Troia with a frustrated thinning of her lips. "Donna. They were in charge. One or the other. They called the shots on the battlefield, they handled the business and PR stuff for the team-- Richard had been a full-time hero for like, two years before he formed us up. And y-- Donna was raised as a princess."

Caitlin pushes at her hair; finding it not to her satisfaction, she start trying to loose it from the hairband holding it back. She gets up and paces away, using another band to hold the red hair back from her face. "It's not that they were perfect. It's that they listened to the rest of us. And their mistakes didn't get people killed."
Donna Troy     "Did you refuse to listen to other people? Or did you listen to them, consider what they had to say, and believe after having done so that they were wrong?" Troia replies. "In the first case, I would agree, that would suggest you would be problematic as someone for people to turn to. Why turn to someone for advice or guidance if they do not listen to you? If on the other hand it is the second case, then we're back to the same point: you made a mistake. Do you do that a lot? Or was this one large but single mistake that has damaged your confidence? That would certainly accord with someone who claims they 'let themselves be manipulated.'"

    She stands up again, walking over to where the second bow still lays, this time picking it up to inspect it more closely rather than just brushing her fingers across it. She turns it over and over in her hands, studying the shape carefully as she talks. "We were lead by Kronos," she says. "He was good at listening. And usually he was good at knowing when to listen. But in the end he made a choice that doomed the Titans, and it was a choice he had made before thousands of years ago. He chose to preserve my life and fight the Olympians because of an ill-understood prophecy. Did that make him a bad leader? I don't know. Two choices with terrible consequences, but how many decisions had he made other than those, which had been good decisions? Does the sheer weight of the bad decisions mean that even though they were incredibly rare, he was a bad leader?"

    Her eyes still fixed on the bow rather than looking at Caitlin, Troia places the bow down with one end resting on the floor, the other held in place with a light pressure from the palm of her hand. After a few moments the bow seems to undergo a strange slow-motion explosion, each layer of the compound shaft stripping away from the next and moving out, leaving a faint column of light shaped into the original form of the bow. One by one each layer disintegrates into a fine mist that expands out into one or more columns, until there is a sequence of a couple of dozen slender, bow-height columns of colored mist lining up in front of her.

    "My inclination is to say that you should not judge a leader by the depth of their errors, but rather their frequency. Unless you can see the future, you have to rely on your best judgement, however serious the outcome if you are in error. If your judgement is usually good, then you would make a good leader."
Caitlin Fairchild "I'll...." Caitlin heaves a weary sigh. "I'll try to keep that in mind. I'm not saying you're /right/, just that... I can see your point." She turns around in time to see the lightshow of Donna deconstructing the Amazon bow. Caitlin very prudently picks up her modern weapon and nudges it out of immediate sight under a bench with the tip of her toe.

"You're different than Donna," she observes. "I mean, not in a bad way. She likes giving speeches. But she doesn't have any of that--" a hand waves at the bow. "Mojo. Or if she does, she's never used it. I guess it explains why she's got all those superpowers though. I was wondering about that a bit, how an adopted girl from Man's World would end up with all that power. I figured it was something Queen Hippolyta did. Only now I'm learning that it's the Titan bloodlines in her." She shakes her head, marvelling mutely.
Donna Troy     "I'm not saying I am right either, Caitlin Fairchild. I lack experience in these matters, and harbor significant doubts about my own wisdom. I only seek to offer an alternative perspective that you may process in your own way. "

    She tilts her head sideways to study Caitlin very intently for a few moments, and then there's a sudden inrushing of the columns of mist into the light-form 'ghost' of the bow, that reassemble into a material form that looks identical to how it had been before Troia had started disassembling it. The brief silence is broken by a loud snap as the bow comes together again. Troia walks back to her seat, leaving the bow standing impossibly on one end, and sits down again.

    "She was raised an Amazon. I conclude you brought two bows assuming that I would have an Amazon's interest in archery. I do not. I have never before fired a bow. Donna and I are different people, Caitlin. I have studied the sciences and magics of my people, not trained to be a warrior."

    She holds out her hands, and dust-like motes of light flow towards them from all around, congealing into the shape of a bow. After a few moments the glow cuts out and she is left with a perfect replica of the Themysciran bow. "However I have not been able to do as much of this 'mojo' as you call it until recently. It's hard to explain this in simple terms, but when you kill a god, their power does not simply disappear from the universe. It's more that a god is... almost a sentient expression of that god's power, that binds that power together, and binds it to a place and time. This is the place the Titans made their home, so it the power of the Titans is closely tied to it. I too am closely tied to it. I am in harmony with the realm of the Titans, so I am in harmony with the power of the Titans. In time, my harmony with this place will fade, as this place fades, as the power of the Titans fades. And as I too will fade. I do not have... the capacity to replace the twelve. The truth is, I'm not even sure I am fully a Titan. My mother always refused to tell who my father was. She was a complicated woman who saw far, and did not always share her reasoning. Koios, her husband, was a kind man. He treated me as his daughter, but he was never certain I was. Nevertheless, hear, now, for a limited time -- I have access to a great deal of power."

    She crosses her legs and leans back, tapping a finger idly on the stone arm of the seat, studying Caitlin closely again. "So. You have become convinced that Donna too is of the Titan bloodline, as your friend Terry suspects?"
Caitlin Fairchild "Terry is guessing. I went to the source to get the truth for myself," Caitlin says. "Diana and I flew to Themyscira to talk to Hippolyta. I got some details, and some clarification. Donna is, absolutely, a Titan. But she was brought to Themyscira to be raised. That seems to be the biggest differeence between you two."

Caitlin takes a big breath, sighs expressively. "But she didn't know much more than that. Or at least, she wouldn't or couldn't tell me." The redhead rubs her arms as if chilled. "I ... well, I'm strongly considering trying to summon the theoi for more details. Maybe even a way we can get Y-- Donna, and you, sort of, uh... co-inhabitaing, maybe. Or sorting out everything into two realities that work for both of you."

An awkward beat passes. "The Queen is here. At the Amazon Embassy. I don't know if you even want to see her, but she would like to meet you. If you're amenable."
Donna Troy     Troia is silent for a while, deep in thought, the bow she had summoned into existence resting forgotten on her lap. "You understand this is all... this is impossible," she says after a while. "I know you are convinced that I come from some parallel universe from your own, some alternative version of your friend. This is not the case. I am quite certain of that. There is something inherent to a universe, the substance-below-substance from which it is made, that is characteristic of a universe. You might call it 'ylem' though I believe your word does not accurately describe what it truly is. You and I are of the same ylem."

    "And that's what makes it impossible. I could not have a twin sister with the same name that nobody has mentioned to me, who was raised on Themyscira. The reason there was a new war, the reason the Titans and most of the Olympians are dead, is because of a prophecy that must have applied equally to such a theoretical twin as it does to me. It makes no sense."

    "And yet there is this peculiar infolding. And I know that it is in some way connected to the power of the scepter and crown of Wonderland, a power that lies close to Dream. Caitlin, I understand this will be an upsetting concept for you, but you should prepare yourself for the possibility that when we unfold this puzzle the truth may be that your friend Donna never existed. That your memories of her, and those of your friends, are a distorted dream of me, manifested not just in your minds but also in your records, by the chaotic power of Wonderland."
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin's pacing grows more and more agitated as Troia starts lecturing her. The theory of parallel universes. The primordial building blocks of the universe about the impossibility of it all. It's far too many threads, too many moving parts that occupy a frustrating intersection of math and magic in a way that the human brain is not intended to understand.

But when she says her bit about Donna being a dream, Caitlin rounds on the Titan and closes the gap between them with two lunging steps. She comes up short, hands balled into fists at her side and a wild-eyed fury on her fair features. The aggression would be surprise enough but the sudden switch from confusion to barely suppressed fury is all the more alarming.

Caitlin takes a few shaky breaths, trying to steady herself. "Don-- Do /not/ say that," she tells Troia. "I'm getting Donna back." The words are a little strangled. "She is real. It's-- she's more than just a friend. I don't have the words for what Donna means to me."

Finally her eyes break contact, and her shoulders slump. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you."
Donna Troy     There are remarkably few beings in the universe that would not at least flinch with Caitlin bearing down on them. That Troia is one of those very few is in equal parts due to her confidence of her invulnerability here in this place of power and simple ignorance -- the concept that a mortal could be a threat to her is one that has simply never occurred to her.

    When Caitlin backs down and apologizes, Troia nods her head slightly. "As I said, I understand that it would be upsetting to you. You have no need to apologize for your reaction. It is a possibility. For that reason it is something you should come to terms with and prepare yourself for. There may yet be another explanation I have yet to consider, but I believe this is the most likely answer to our dilemma. Perhaps I should consult with the Dream Lord, though I am reluctant to do so."

    "Your response -- your emotional reactions -- these are all dependent on your memories of Donna, because she is not here. You are a logical being, you can see that. And you can determine from that fact that the scenario I outline, where those memories are newly implanted in you, would produce exactly the same reaction in you. Your certainty of her existence does not provide any evidence of her existence."

    Troia says all this gently. It's obvious she's trying to /help/ here, trying to soften a blow by making Caitlin consider it in advance. But it's relentless. Donna wouldn't speak this way. She'd leave Caitlin time to consider it on her own rather than pushing her logic. Donna understood humans.

    Or at least Caitlin's memories tell her that.

    "The power of the crown and scepter are closely tied to dream, Caitlin. And I know they are involved here. Given the facts we have, it is a logical conclusion."
Caitlin Fairchild "I'd believe that, but there's the fact that the Tower exists," Caitlin proposes as a counterpoint. "Along with every scrap of evidence that Donna lived here. Biometric data. Duty logs. Video recordings. The memories of hundreds of Amazons who knew her since birth-- her mom included. And every citizen who ever saw her, who ever said 'That's one of the Titans!'" She jabs a finger towards the open air to drive her point home.

"And yes, I know what ylem is. Whatever you are, you match the superstring resonance of this reality. We've dealt with that before, it's one of the first things we checked."

"What I think? I think that you're a product of a closed timelike loop," Caitlin tells Donna. "Some fragment of Donna, some potential that didn't come to fruition in this universe. You're one of Donna's potentials. And when we cracked into Wonderland, we let loose an intersection of probability mechanics. It moved backwards through time until it reached the critical moment, then propagated forwards with the new chain of consequences. And when it got back to the breakpoint--" She splays her palms in Troia's direction.
Donna Troy     Troia gestures, and an image of the crown and scepter, currently stored in a secure locker in the tower, floats in the air between the two. "Magic, Caitlin. The tower exists, but her part in that may be false memories. The evidence you describe exists today, but it may not have existed a few weeks ago. A few subtle tweaks to reality as you knew it to create a different reality as you know it now. "

    "And remember what your time-displaced friend said?" With another gesture, the image of the crown and scepter vanishes, and a ghost image of Irie appears, turning her head to face someone who isn't there. "Donnasnotgone," Irie's voice can be heard saying, echoing faintly. "I mean... that's /her/." The image of Irie turns to face someone else who isn't there. "That's you." And back to address the first person, shaking her head. "They look the same because they /are/ the same. Just.... trust me. She's not gone."

    The ghost Irie vanishes. "She said she had seen the outcome of all of this in her own time," Troia says. "Your Donna... the person you believe you knew... despite the distortions between your memories and reality, according to your friend we are the same person, and she was telling the truth as she saw it. Not different versions of the same person, the same person."

    " Your hypothesis of a closed time-like loop -- if that's the case, there would be two versions of the same person existing in parallel. If you are right -- where is your Donna? I can find no sign of such a person anywhere in the universe." She sighs and leans back. "Caitlin -- there's something else. I should tell you this, it is the right thing to do. But you may react badly to it. Will you promise to try not to get upset?"
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin wanders away and resumes pacing, both listening to Troia while wishing she could ignore her-- or silence her somehow. Since manners will let her do neither, she just has to absorb Troia's coldly calculating logic. And while her heart disagrees, it's clear doubt plagues Caitlin the more Troia lectures her. The redhead's hands clasp the back of her neck and she strains against them to look upwards and relieve some of the nervous tension in her neck.

When the dark-haired princess hedges, Caitlin looks back at her, then turns to face the woman. "...I.. yeah. I guess. I'll do my best," she acquiesces.
Donna Troy     "It's a dream, Caitlin. We know that the power that triggered this is connected to dream," Troia begins softly. So it makes sense to consider things in terms of dreams. Dreams stem from the hidden parts of the mind. While they contain much randomness, they are indicative of states of mind."

    "So consider this. I am the last Titan. My family is gone. You believe there is a version of me who was adopted. Who was raised on Themyscira. Consider the parallel. A child living amongst immortals. Tell me, Caitlin. Donna is your friend. You must have talked about your childhoods. I imagine she was lonely, being the only child in such a place? Perhaps she always felt like an outsider because the experiences of those she was raised by were so much greater than her own? Perhaps she always tried really hard to /catch up/ with them, because they all knew so much more than she did, and she was desperate to prove their worth to them?"

    "That was /me/, Caitlin. That was my experience. Just... displaced. Into a simpler environment."

    "And then consider this. " Troia gestures around her. "This place I live, alone, with my family gone. The last Titan. Yet your Donna, she found a new place, this Tower of yours, with a new family of Titans, did she not? A family who loved her, to replace the ones I have lost. The friends I have never had. Even... even a mission in life. Doing the kinds of things I wish the Titans had done. /Helping/ like the Titans once did, rather than hiding away. Using our power for good. Your Donna... she sounds very like a wish fulfilment fantasy, doesn't she?"

    Troia slumps a little, hands wrapping around the bow and holding it in her lap, eyes cast downwards. "Caitlin. There's a possibility that... that the distortions of reality are greater than we suspect. That it extends further than just Donna. Do you understand the potential implications?"
Caitlin Fairchild "Like I said, this isn't the first time we've dealt with dimensional disruption," Caitlin repeats. She dithers, then moves to sit down across from Troia. She tucks her hands between her knees and leans forward with slumped shoulders so she's not looming over the seated princess.

"Look-- I'm not a physicist. I'd feel better if this was the sort of thing I could put under a microscope. Especially when you talk about dreams and stuff, how they are part of this."

She purses her lips, looking upwards, then looks to Troia again. "Here's the problem with your argument: the scale of conspiracy. You're talking about a scenario where more than two decades of memories, among gods and mortals and immortals and machine intellignece-- have all been created and carefully altered in order to convince us of an illusionary Donna who had taken your rightful place here."

"Or-- you're the variable. *This*, here, is the intrusion into our reality." She gestures around her. "I know you feel /real/. I believe that you *are* real. I don't know much about the, um, Dream-place, but I have read that it's a place where causality isn't exactly a static arrangement. This is why I talked about a closed curve. Donna's past, moving towards her future-- and you're a future, moving back to your past. And at some point these two probabilities collided. The biggest nexus in Donna's life was being delivered to the Amazons. It literally changed the course of her life. You're the product of that potentiality, which somehow survived in the Dreamscape, or when Terry cracked into Wonderland, it leaked enough of that reality into our world to rearranged it entirely."
Donna Troy     Troia gives a non-committal gesture, half shrug, half nod. An acknowledgement of Caitlin's suggestion without granting any actual agreement. "You overstate the complexity of this 'conspiracy' as you call it," she says. "There is a certain... universal parsimony. Reality has some elasticity, but it attempts to repair itself. Because of this, a relatively small change can have apparently large consequences. There is no 'carefully altered to convince you' involved here. There is simply the inevitable consequence of a dream being manifested at a very low level of reality. What I suggest is a few altered memories here and there. A few illusions to fool the mind. A lesser change to reality than the creation of a god. And bear in mind that you do not know the extent of this disruption, you only assume it. Are machine intelligences on other worlds so altered, or would they lack the references your own machine intelligences provide? Have you any evidence that the memories of any other than a single demi-god, Diana of Themyscira, might have been altered?"

"Then there is the question of the dream. Can you deny that this Donna of yours sounds like my wish-fulfilment? Your explanation ignores the impact that the crown and scepter have on this. Remember that I consulted with the Oracular Truth, and Gaia's own truth reveals in the involvement of those artefacts. Your hypothesis that this could be caused when Terry 'cracked into Wonderland' and yet..." she gestures towards the portal, still standing in the room. "It was I who did that, not Terry. He was unable to. Your reasoning is paradoxical. The breach into Wonderland can not have engendered itself."

    Troia takes a deep breath. "Either way, we conclude that this infolding has caused some aspects of reality to exist that did not exist before. We both agree on that. But if I am right -- if your Titans are a wish-fulfilment, then undoing all this..." she gestures, a wide sweep of her arm. "There may be more than simply the memories of Donna that are part of that wish-fulfilment."
Caitlin Fairchild "I don't-- I /can't/ accept that," Caitlin says. Lips press into a thin, bloodless line. "I won't lose Donna. She's-- well. I won't lose her. And if she is your wish-fulfillment, then you should want that as well." The redhead gestures vaguely at the unoccupied thrones. "The last Titan. No relatives. No friends, no /family/."

"We have two possibilities then. One where your version of reality is correct, and you live this lonely life with nothing connecting you to anything else. Or a life where you're happy because you're well-loved, and you live a life of great purpose."
Donna Troy     Troia sighs and leans back, her face a deep frown. The bow in her hands vanishes. "Caitlin... it is possible that there is not really such a thing as your Titans. It is possible even that you did not exist before this all happened, and that when this effect is undone, either intentionally or simply because such distortions are not stable... it is possible you too do not really exist. I hope this is not the case."

    "But what you're saying..." she leans forwards again, squaring her shoulders. "Just because something is the preferable option does not make it the truth. What do you suggest, that we somehow attempt to /fix/ reality to match a wish fulfilment? Even if that were possible, it would be irresponsible."

    "Furthermore Caitlin... it is not necessary for you to remind me of the condition of my existence," she says quietly but a little coldly. "Every day I awaken and my first thought is to remember afresh the truth that I am alone. That my family is gone. That I was not there for th... that I... I am the cause of their death. That everyone I loved would /still be alive/ if it wasn't for me, and all that is left of them now is statues to remind me that the Titans are lost."
Caitlin Fairchild Caitlin's lips thin again and she shakes her head, then rises quickly and walks over to collect Donna's own bow to return both to the case. She puts her bow into the case and slams it shut, latching it with more force than is necessary.

"You know, you're not like Donna at all," she says, and turns to face the last Titan. "Donna was always hopeful, even when things were at their worst. And she always put other people's needs ahead of hers. You need to believe you're the authentic version of my best friend, and you want to believe it -so much- that you are trying to sell this delusion where the whole world is wrong and you're right-- even if it's a reality where you are clearly brutally, painfully alone."

Shaking her head, Caitlin's heavy stride takes her towards the exit from the pocket realm.
Donna Troy     Troia watches Caitlin, blinking, and slumps back down into her seat. "Because something is uncomfortable, that does not make it false," she says. "This... this isn't what I /want/ to believe. It's what I fear is true. I am only trying to prepare yourself for that possibility, Caitlin."

    She watches, sullenly, as Caitlin makes for the exit, for the stairs that look like they should take her to the upper levels of New Kronos, but will inevitably lead her back to the the dorm corridors of the tower, because the Labyrinth seems extremely easy to traverse when you're leaving. She waits until Caitlin has disappeared from her view in silence.

    Only when Caitlin has gone and Troia is alone again does she say anything more, a whisper for nobody's ears. "I /do/ have hope, Caitlin. I hope you are right. Yours is a better reality than mine."