Imaginary nodding.

<3

Their courier is booked, he looks like this picture on the app (short beardy fellow).

Wordless acknowledgment. Vague nervousness about somehow doing it wrong.

<I think Pete will be okay.>

Imaginary smile.

They go meet the courier outside the dorm building. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

And does the courier know if they can offer to bring Pete back with them?

"Yes, I can bring him along if he wants to come."

He goes looking. It's unreasonably easy when he not only knows where Pete sleeps but also has the ability to ask if anyone's seen him. The latter thing means it's Pete who finds them first, comes up behind them and asks what they want with him.

And he turns and sees Pete for the first time. "I, um. So if you want to you can come to another universe. - It's me, uh, you called me Hear Some Evil at one point..." (It's up there with 33 as things people call him go. Pete had to explain the reference before he really appreciated it but now he does.)

Pete tsks. "He got eaten by the snake."

"Yeah, it turns out it's a portalsnake that teleports people. Or so the people where I landed said. I didn't test it other than once by accident. Um, you... told me about your wife... you wrote a couple of signs for me... I don't really know how to prove myself and telling you that stuff doesn't actually prove anything, they can read minds. The people I ended up with, I mean."

Pete flinches disgustedly.

"It's, uh. It's touch range. They literally touch your actual brain on the inside of your skull. I don't know why I thought that was going to make you make less of a face when I started explaining it. Anyway, obviously I got, uh... healed... and also I have an apartment. They just gave it to me. Also a social worker that, uh, I think my impression is that she seems more useful than what you said about yours? So I thought maybe I should let you know that happened, or something that looks exactly like it happened and they don't really need to convince me to say this, they could totally just puppet me."

"...I never thought you were all there but you have a tongue."

"If you want to go you can just come with us and tell the teleporter you want to. If you want. I don't - I'm not saying I have an opinion about whether you should move there and ask for them to give you an apartment - "

"You don't have an opinion on whether I should move to the place where the social workers are so fucking useful that you got an apartment in less than a week and regrew your fucking tongue, my fucking god, what's wrong with it that you don't have an opinion."

Shrug. "Technically as far as I know they didn't tell me that the healer and the social worker were the same person? I don't have an opinion because I never have opinions! When have you ever known me to have an opinion!"

"Do they read your mind?"

"Mine, yes, I asked them to. Repeatedly. They were really insistent about not reading minds without permission. Uh, there are longer-range ones who just read everyone, or so I'm told, but I also heard they're really easy to block out and everyone who hangs around with them learns and that's why they read minds all the time, since you'd only not be blocking them out if you didn't mind. They - act like they all care a lot about not being - invasive? Maybe it's just an act, I wouldn't know, but it's a pretty consistent one. Except I think this fucked up forest called Lórien might be a god and a mind-reader so maybe don’t let them talk you into visiting? It sucks there."

"...Fine. I'll tell your friend that I would like to go live in a magical fairy realm with free housing and healthcare for everyone, and a pony." Sigh. "If it'll work on me. I'm not a ghost."

"I bet you could be but I really don't recommend it. I don't have any specific reason to think that's relevant?"

"You don't think you being a ghost is relevant to whether you can go to a magic fairy realm where they grow back tongues and eyes?"

"It seems like the teleportation works on live people? Anyway, you can come with me if you want, or stay here, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. I'll be busy because I decided I wanted to be possessed - "

"Okay, you know what, stop adding more things. Just tell me - have you found the catch yet?"

Headshake. "I’m not that smart but I don’t see why there’d be one. They demonstrated being able to possess people, why bother with tricks? If they wanted to kidnap you and flay you alive and then heal you and do it again I don’t see why they couldn’t just do that."

"...You get why that’s not comforting?"

"No, do you usually worry about things you can’t do anything about?"

Sigh. "You’re welcome to take me away to a magical land of adventure and well-funded social services if that’s a real thing."

"Okay. And even if you don’t want to hear about why, I’ll be busy."

"Are you happy about it?"

He shrugs and curls in on himself but he smiles so tenderly that Pete looks at him and laughs and says, "Do you have a sweetheart? You?"

"...No, you were right about me being a ghost. But I think I’m okay."

"Fucking finally."

There’s a little stuff to pack. Not a lot.

Ashkon hangs back, surmising that he oughtn't introduce himself since Pete seems kind of overwhelmed.

It's kind of exhausting and once they've done something that vaguely resembles exchanging contact information and gotten back to Vanda Nossëo he just wants to go play stupid browser games for an entire day or something. (Obviously Ashkon is going to do things at some point in the next day. He predicts and is happy about this but refuses on principle to put in completely unnecessary scheduling effort or willpower.)

It's cool, though. He's been torn away from a lot of friends before and this is the first time he's ever gotten back in touch or been able to offer them any help with their problems. It doesn't feel like something that's really happening but it's still nice.

The courier needs to know which world on the route Pete wants to be left behind in, and wherein.

He'll take an information place somewhere people won't read his mind.

Okay, so, like, any major bus station?

Yep.

Sure. Pop pop pop pop pop pop here's a bus station and pop pop pop pop with Ashkon and his transportation.

Stretch. Yawn. <Thank you for helping me do that.>

<No problem.>

<If you want to stay up all night we should get some coffee.> And if not then they have the Have Horrible Nightmares button and Ashkon can do whatever he wants with it.

<Yup, I'll need to find the replicator. I'm glad you don't eat solid food, I can wrap my mind around drinking but eating solids is really weird to me. I think that's a me thing and nobody else minds, and I would've gotten used to it, but.>

Aww, he likes being convenient. <Your thing is better except I’m not sure how you’d skip sleep that way.>

<Yeerks don't actually sleep. We can kind of drowse but we're never totally unconscious.>

That doesn’t sound appealing compared to getting to sleep comfortably on some reasonable schedule but it does sound better than nightmares or having to sleep every night no matter what.

<Being unconscious doesn't sound appealing to me from my perspective, but I'm up for trying sleeping. If I'm in front we can see if your heartbeat responding to my emotions instead of yours and stuff like that helps with the nightmares at all?>

He has no idea what to expect but that sounds like a fascinating experiment. Even if it doesn’t help at all it’ll be nice to know.