Counseling - Will Graham's office

[empathicfault]

Please reply here if you have a counseling session with Will Graham, or if you're inquiring into the office about something. Will is available to come to you, if you request it. If you'd rather not talk, he also offers to bring food and/or be silent companionship, either as a human or a wolf. Just let him know.

Handwaved sessions are also readily available. Either contact me via PM, plurk, or this post. If your character has regular sessions with him, please check out Will's Insight Post and let me know what Will might be able to glean from your character.

Comments

[empathicfault]

"Sure thing. People tend to come here looking for different things, so I wanted to know what you were looking for."

He opens a drawer and looks over a paper, frowns slightly. Ultimately, he slides it towards Vash. The top reads: Basics of the Barge There's a few paragraphs on the front and a deck map on the back.

"This isn't entirely applicable- but it is a good place to start. It talks about floods, Breaches, that sort of thing. Anyone go over that with you yet? It's kind of a...unique 'feature' on this ship."

[love_and_peace]

He sees the map first, and starts to shake his head -- no, thank you but no, that's not what he means -- but then Will says floods and breaches, and none of that sounds good.

"Breaches? As in hull breaches?" He laughs, a little uneasily. "No, nobody's mentioned those, or how a ship in space could flood."

[empathicfault]

Will turns the page over to the page describing them, and gives Vash an apologetic smile. He's still glad he asked. "That's the thing. We're not in space, technically. We're traveling through different realities.

"So when there's a flood, there's some effects from that reality on us. And that can really hit a wide range. Just to give you an example...in one case, we stopped worrying about anything. It was a real party, until it wasn't. The one we just went through allowed people from outside realities to call in. It's an opportunity to talk to people you don't usually get. And once, we all shared nightmares with each other." Dreams, it was dreams. But Will rarely has anything else to share.

He leans back and bites his lip as he decides how to continue. "Breaches are a little different, even from that. We get 'submerged' in that reality for a short amount of time. All of us 'turn into' people native to that reality. We get a set of memories from there and live out approximately one week in that setting. When it's over, we're back here and remember ourselves. It's a rough trip, for a few of us. And I suspect everyone goes through at least one existential crisis navigating them."

[love_and_peace]

You can't trust your memories, is what Vash hears Will saying. They're not yours alone anymore and they can be shared, or changed, on a whim that's outside your control.

"Why?!" He can accept that the ship runs on a kind of math that's complicated enough that it might as well be magic, and he has no problem at all with the idea of multiple universes. The void outside the windows isn't really space -- he can work with that! He can.

But his memories are his. There's people that only he remembers, things that nobody else should have to see, and all those are his burdens to carry! This isn't right!

"I thought we were brought here to help people see the value of life, and... and the futility of killing!" Really, his first impulse is to jump right up, go find the Admiral, and cancel his deal... but none of the people brought here as inmates get that option. He can't abandon them like that, no matter how worried -- or angry -- he might be. "But making us forget who we are? This just sounds like some madman's experiment!"

[empathicfault]

[ooc: oof this is so late, and I know a lot has gone on. I'm sorry. We can certainly handwave the rest of the convo or ignore it, if you'd rather!]

Will rubs his face for a moment. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think the Admiral entirely intends for these to occur. They're...on the way to ports he needs to hit to keep the ship fueled. At least, that's how he's explained it. There's a whole larger structure he's broken away from and it's no longer powering his ship, so he has to be more careful. And maybe that means literally cutting through the corners of universes."

Will realizes he's been hunching forward- he sits up straight now. "I've been very wary of them. They've been less destructive for me than expected...but I'm still sorry you have to experience them. You'd think the Admiral would put that in his little talk that none of us can remember."

[love_and_peace]

[[ooc: Not a problem! I'm going to direct the conversation away from breaches though, if that's cool, since so much time has passed.]]

His list of things to discuss when he finally manages to track down the Admiral just keeps growing. His memories can't be trusted entirely, and things are certainly going to get worse, but there's nothing he can do about that. Worrying won't make it any easier... and it's not his problems that he came in here for anyway. He'll deal with breaches if and when they occur, but for now he needs to know about the inmates. That's why he's on the ship, after all -- to help others.

So he visibly shakes off his concerns about breaches, and memory loss, and sits up straight himself, his smile broad and friendly and very obviously fake. "There was a lot that wasn't covered in that talk I don't remember!" he agrees, with artificial cheer. "At least I can leave any time I want to..." Or so he assumes, anyway. "...but fully half the ship's roster can't say the same. They're stuck here, until we help them, but how are we supposed to do that?"