Owner	Pose
Jonathan Sims	There's a plan for tomorrow: head back to Oxford, but this time through the Astral Plane. See what the crack in reality might look like from that side. There could be another fight with a spider-thing, so Jon is bracing himself. Having poured over some books of potential monster anatomy that left him /shuddering/, he's come out to the sitting room to grab some alcohol.     Specifically, the Spirytus. When he wants to relax and enjoy himself, he grabs the Hierophant bottle to sip some scotch or the High Priestess to make an old fashioned. When he wants to get /drunk/, he grabs the Judgement bottle and takes shots of Spirytus.     He's wearing a bronze skirt and emerald green t-shirt today, and his nails are bubblegum pink, which doesn't /entirely/ fit the mood. Indeed, as he pours himself a shot he peers at his nails and mutters, "Maybe I should change that before tomorrow. Black? Purple? Hmm."
Gabby Kinney	"Dark green," Gabby suggests as she comes up alongside Jon to lean against the bar herself. She hadn't really tried the Spirytus yet, though she knew it was there if she really needed it. Would it work though? Some part of her was thinking it was best to just leave the HOPE it would work alone instead of knowing for sure. Either way she stares at the bottle a long moment before turning her attention back to Jon. "You're hard to snag these days," she points out with a wry grin that was only slightly teasing. Her head lays down on her pillowed arms, and she still peers up at him watching intently. "So. I didn't really get to ask before, with everything going on... But what the giant eyeball hell is going on, Jon?" At least she's straight to the point. "And please don't give me the whole 'I don't want to get you involved' shpiel that Rien's been trying to feed me lately."
Jonathan Sims	Jon sighs heavily. "You're already involved," he says grimly. "You have a key to the Velvet Room, you're potentially involved. They're coming after the Justice League Dark. I know that Rien means well, but I don't really truck much with 'I want to protect you by leaving you in the dark.'" A pause. "There /are/ things... I have knowledge in my head I cannot share with /anyone/. It's terribly dangerous just to know some things exist. And the Old Ones often do operate in that fashion. But now that we know they're coming for all of us anyway? Forewarned is forearmed."     He peers over at Gabby. "So... that's the first bit. The Old Ones are after us, I'm not sure... why exactly. Because we cut off their flow of souls? Because of something we have yet to do? Both?" A beat. "It's probably both, come to think of it."     They down the shot, then pour another. "Do you know anything about all of that? Have you read Lovecraft or heard about Nullspace?"
Gabby Kinney	Gabby Kinney reaches out for the bottle after he pours a shot to slide it over for herself. Maybe it was time to try it out. She reaches across the bar to fish out a glass for herself which she fills while sitting up straighter. "Mm." "I have..." Here she pauses letting her breath just slip out of her lungs entirely. Not exactly a sigh but she wasn't sure how to say it either. "I've not read Lovecraft but I've seen enough things related to it's mythos. And Nullspace..." Here her face scrunches a little. "I've been in Limbo before, Jon. Not just as ME. We were pretending to be demons of the realm." Her lips work, not making noise, and she dares to finally lift the glass to take a sip with her face scrunching. "Limbo, the magic there, is whateve it's willed to be. A few of us started to forget we WEREN'T demons. I only slipped a few times but..." Her head drops forward with her free hand lifting to scrunch a fist in the side of her hair. "Sometimes I feel like I'm starting to remember a dream I had and I feel like 'Yes, I know this!' when something is mentioned, but then it slips away again. So no... I haven't heard of Old Ones... But yes I have. In another life I can't remember. If that makes any sense at all." Allowing herself a smirk she decides, "I guess 'deja vu' is the best descriptor. It FEELS so familiar but isn't."
Jonathan Sims	"I don't know if Limbo is part of Nullspace or not, but negative energy... it /unmakes/ things. It violates that whole 'energy can neither be created nor destroyed' rule." Jon frowns down at the shot glass. "I used it on Caitlin Fairchild, when the angels first attacked Manhattan. We were desperate, and I thought she was trying to kill people. The look on her face..."     Jon shudders. "Never, ever again. I'm not using that power on a living creature /ever/ again. It's... /wrong/."     He picks up the shot, downs it, and pours another. "I'm not an expert on Nullspace by any means--Rien knows a lot more than I do. But these things... they /appear/ to be originally from another timeline, and came here using Rien somehow. They feed on fear, and twist everything they touch. There's at least one timeline--maybe more than one--where alternate versions of me were direct servants of theirs." He smirks at Gabby. "Your brother actually alerted me to that. When we first met, Wade called me 'Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.' Another timeline, see? They've been after me specifically for... all my life, probably? Two of them, the Ceaseless Watcher and the Mother of Puppets."
Gabby Kinney	"Yeah, he seems to be able to tap into a bit of that 'otherness' I've found," Gabby has to agree. She's known Wade long enough to know that his off the wall remarks always seem to come from SOMEwhere. Which is why she took them in stride and just believed him. He wasn't lying, she could tell if he were. He was just saying what he knew. "Lot of people think Wade is nutso because of that stuff. But he DOES ... I mean..." She tilts her head to the side a long moment. "He knows things. He's seen things. Wonder if maybe his mind went wandering in the past when he was being tortured. Or due to his relationship to Mistress Death." Oops. She glazes that over for now to clear her throat. "I'm going to guess the spider was the puppet one? And the Ceaseless Watcher is what you called in with the giant eyeball thing. So." Here she pauses, frowning at Jon. "I know it was dire times but... It doesn't seem like a smart idea to be calling on someone that means to use you as a servant."
Jonathan Sims	"Wade is insane," Jon says, with a smirk, "but not for that reason, no. It's possible the knowledge drove him mad, it's possible a sane and well-adjusted mind could never have tapped into it to begin with. Hard to say. But I believe him, because--he knew things about me that /no one/ else has ever known. He just... knew."     A nod, then. "But, yes. The spider serves the Mother of Puppets, and the eye is a manifestation of the Watcher. I'd actually escaped a dream of them by... I gouged out my eyes to escape the Watcher, and Agnes, my daughter, she... burned away the Spider's web, somehow? I don't entirely understand /that/. But fire seems to work on the Spider, which is good to know."     He downs the shot, and doesn't pour another just yet. "The Spider's come for me twice before in my life. The first time, it had infected a children's book, and a bully stole the book from me, so he got taken instead. The second, my best friend gave me food poisoning so she could take my place in a psych experiment, knowing it would mean she'd serve the Mother of Puppets in my place." He frowns down at the bar. "Wiped my memories of her eventually, too."     A shudder. "But... last week... the Spider was trying to... it made me hurt Pixie, and it... she was going to use me to kill Cael, unless I gave into her. But I... mmm. I didn't quite... how can I put it?" He tilts the empty shot glass back and forth. "I've been giving a lot of thought to the arguments they were using to convince me. The idea that I might /want/ to serve the Mother of Puppets or the Ceaseless Watcher. That I might want to... control every aspect of my friends' lives, that I'm terribly nosy and curious, that I'm paranoid, that I'm terrified of being manipulated. My, umm, my Shadow self, in Jungian parlance. All the dark and nasty things I don't really want to... accept about myself. And I sort of... how do I put it? I... accepted that? And I offered the Watcher a deal--that it can look through my eyes, and feed on fear, in exchange for power to defeat the other Old Ones. But /only/ until we seal them away again."
Gabby Kinney	"We all have that. Those dark thoughts. It's okay to HAVE them," Gabby points out. "What we do or don't do about them is what matters. That is our choice." A little smile is offered and she reaches out to pat Jon's shoulder. The touch lingers there, giving a squeeze, before withdrawing again. Touch was one of those things she was fond of participating in but she knew it wasn't always that way for him. "I know how to kill people. I know how to make them hurt in the worst ways possible. It's SO EASY to think of how I could do it. I choose not to. All arguments aside, I choose not to." Except that once. Except that time she didn't have all the right details. "I'm not a big scholar or anything but I do recall hearing a clip once about multiple dimensions and how they exist because we do make different decisions. Just because you made the decision in one dimension doesn't mean you HAVE to here. So... just be careful." "Really, really careful. Because even if it seems like a reasonable deal to you? It's got it's finger... eyeballs? Eyeballs in you now. It won't want to let go."
Jonathan Sims	"Yeah, well--I told Chas everything. He's got eyes on me." Jon smirks. "...No pun intended, but that /is/ a good pun, hmm? I don't intend to use this power except against the other Old Ones, and I'm going to use it to seal /itself/. In the other universe, the Spider used the Watcher to get what she wanted. I just... well. I'm /not/ serving her, but I can recognize a tool when I see one."     He sighs. "If it turns out to have been a mistake... well... sometimes you make a choice, in the moment, and sometimes that choice turns out to have been the wrong one. Even the right choices can have repercussions you didn't expect. That's part of life. You make a choice, and live with the consequences. The risk of killing Cael with my own magic--I think I'd undo all reality before I willingly let that happen."     They smirk. "I /might/ have a bit of a weakness, concerning the people I love."     Then he looks over at Gabby. "You're right, in that we all have that. It's what the Old Gods--the subtle ones--prey on. Our weaknesses, our fears, our desires we don't want to admit to having. I know that I would risk anything and everything for those I love--that I'd choose Cael over the universe, if it came to that. Knowing that, accepting that, I can reason my way past the initial emotional response to go--what does that really mean? I want her safe and happy. Would she /be/ safe and happy, if the universe didn't exist? No. If she's dead, at least her soul is still /somewhere/. So I can tell the Old Ones to fuck off on furthering their plans or working for them directly."     He tilts his head a bit. "I guess I explain all of this because... they'll come for you, at some point, I'm fairly certain. You've been close to all of us through this. If you can hold onto that knowledge... it might help."
Gabby Kinney	"I know," Gabby assures seriously when the last part is brought up. Her gaze was serious, and she wasn't smiling through any of it. She'd been seeing how this THING was tearing up so many of her friends after all. Seeing it and knowing she couldn't do anything about it other than be there to listen. "Honestly? I figure I might be one of the safer ones out of all of us--I don't have a direct connection to magic like the rest of you," she points out with a wry smile. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to be safe. Just that I'm not a priority target." "Maybe it's the strategic side of me, but it doesn't makes senes to waste a lot of energy on a target that isn't going to have a high payoff." Her fingers tap against the glass she had, considering. "Knowing what I know now, that they feed off of fear and negativity, I think I'm probably going to be seen more as an easy snack when they need one the most." Not a pleasant thought, but he was right: She could expect it. Slipping off the stool to her feet she flashes Jon a grin. "Okay. Just know I'll help any way I can, all right? I don't want your loved ones to die either. Or any of us, for that fact. You're all my friends, and family, and that's important to me." Glancing to the drink again she adds, "Try to get some sleep where you don't dream. You could use some rest."
Jonathan Sims	"I don't know," Jon says softly. "The Spider said they want Cael for their own purposes. I don't know if magic has much to do with it at all. The other timeline had no magic, no mutants, no superheroes... just the Old Ones. Maybe magic /insulates/ us. Just..."     He reaches out a moment, to squeeze Gabby's shoulder in return. "Just be careful, okay? I believe in you. I believe in all of us. Just remember that, and I think you'll do okay."     Then he pulls back, and smirks, "I /have/ to dream. It's the only reason I even sleep anymore. But thank you. Be well, Gabby."