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There are two kinds of objects.

Sometimes when Arashk picks something up, he experiences memories attached to it. The object itself need not be terribly important to the person or people whose memories Arashk finds himself in, but human contact is key. If something has spent most of its existence sitting in an attic, he will not see those years and years away from humanity. He may see the time the item was packed away in a box, and hear the conversation taking place above it, even if it doesn't factor into the discussion at all. But no object he comes across is psychically significant if it hasn't spent time around people. Everything depends on the human mind and human emotions. Based on the data he gathers, he's formulated a hypothesis that an item's psychic significance doesn't extend to before the moment it became whatever it is in most people's minds. He's not going to see what happened to one of the knife thrower's blades before it was melted down and repurposed to become a weapon any more than he'll see children climbing in the branches of a tree when he touches a book.

Type two is the one that offers an open link, and those kinds of items are significantly less available to him, but he's encountered a fair number of them, mostly during readings. He's rather proud of his discovery of this ability, just because he guessed it beforehand, so it didn't completely blindside him like most aspects of his newfound psychicness. Items of type two basically afford him the same view into a person's emotions and general thoughts as skin-on-skin contact sometimes does. He discovered this when he asked a preteen girl for permission to hold the locket she wore around her neck. It clearly meant a lot to her, and he'd suspected that items with great emotional value attached to them would be somehow psychically significant. But instead of receiving a vision of how she'd gotten the locket, as he had expected, when he held it in his hand he immediately was experiencing emotions that were not his own—thankfully not particularly strong ones, just mild curiosity and doubt, and the vaguely threatening thought You'd better not break it. He'd returned it, and immediately when he was able, he'd gone and retrieved Livia's copy of Pride and Prejudice, which he'd been continually telling her he was reading but that he hadn't actually touched for some weeks. Clearly it was important to her, and he really had been meaning to get through to the end, but it just hadn't happened yet. And he was glad, because now he could test the geographical limitations of this ability. When he picked up the book, he felt an immediate adrenaline rush. Sure enough, when he checked a few hours later, he discovered that at that time, Livia had been in the middle of an act.

Thank God these classifications mean there is still a fair number of objects out there that give him no visions at all, just a slight vague tingle of memories.

He doesn't know how the line is drawn, how an item's type is determined, and he suspects he never will. Or at least, he'll never have a much more concrete understanding of it than he does now; each object feels different, and he's never surprised to learn that any given object falls under one category or the other, but were he asked for an explanation, he'd never be able to give one.

After dinner that day, Arashk takes the paper plate to his room and places it in his seldom-used trash can. It ought to look perfectly harmless in case of any inspections taking place in his absence, and it's so rare that he has cause to empty his personal trash can that he should be able to have it available for re-experiencing that vision for quite some time. Even with this, he'd still be a bit worried that the Master might look through his trash and find the plate suspicious, but fate seems to have smiled upon him in this case, because he has brought disposable cutlery and plates and containers to throw away in his room on multiple occasions before. If the Master has been monitoring his trash—and really, he wouldn't put it past him—this shouldn't appear to be any cause for concern.

His next step—also known as his first step, and the only step in sight—is to acquire a type two object of the old man's.

Arthur Loriss, he's discovered his name is. This knowledge came the old-fashioned way—he just asked one of the acrobats about "the old guy" and got a name pretty quickly but not much else. Seems the dude pretty much keeps to himself. At least the name's stuck in Arashk's head this long.

Though the majority of him is still dead set on not spending valuable energy worrying about this name thing until he's gotten out of his current situation, some part of him wonders if the issue is related to his psychic abilities. Not its origin, but its prevention—after all, he doesn't seem to have had any similar problems since he came into his abilities. If he'd just done so a few weeks earlier… maybe he'd still remember his name.

Anyway. Enough thinking about that. He's got an old dude to rob.

It's going to be very difficult, though. He doesn't see Loriss a whole lot, and he's never actually spoken with him. And he has to assume that he's in on it, ready to report any suspicious behavior immediately to the Master. So when he does take a type two object, he has to leave Loriss with no reason at all to even consider the possibility that Arashk had something to do with its disappearance. Everything relies on stealth. It would be preferable for him not to notice it's gone at all, but people invariably notice when their emotional valuables go missing. No two ways about that.

He's sitting in a spare chair in the practice area, and originally he was idly watching Terrence across the ways as he lifted more and more ridiculously huge weights, but he hasn't been paying any attention since the first ten minutes or so. Instead he's been staring at the yellow grass a couple yards in front of him, trying to come up with a safe way to take Loriss' valuables. So far it's been a completely fruitless endeavor, and his mind has instead been continually drifting towards the people he's trying to protect.

To his dismay, in recent weeks his dreams of them seem to be growing less and less frequent. Well, "dismay" may be too weak a word—more like terror, terror that this inexplicable connection to these people may one day be out of his reach, and he'll lose his knowledge of the happenings of their lives, lose everything. Instead, he's been dreaming every once in a while of Livia and Sebastian and Terrence, of their various comings and goings in the towns they visit. His best hypothesis is that his dreams focus on the recent and upcoming activities of the people whom he spends the most time thinking about and interacting with. He doesn't quite know where to draw the line, because he hasn't had any real interaction with his friends or family back home in a long time but he sure still thinks about them a lot, and he spends enough time plotting the downfall of the Master that he ought to be making an appearance sometime as well.

He doesn't have normal dreams anymore. He kind of misses them.

He's in the middle of wondering whether his girlfriend has recovered from that cold she came down with last week when he suddenly snaps to attention, ready for Livia's presence. After a quick scan of the area yields no results, he turns around, and there she is, hand extended, mere inches away from where his back was.

She withdraws her hand and raises it instead to push a wisp of hair from her forehead, taking a step back. "You've gotten better at seeing me coming," she says, offering a small smile.

Arashk stares at her hand, relief flooding through him that he was able to find her before she touched him. After a moment, however, he remembers that only skin-on-skin contact has the potential to cause visions, and bites his lip, shuddering inwardly at the implications of his automatic aversion to the idea. What ever happened to Operation: Brush Against Livia and Seb When Possible? he scolds himself.

Not really sure what to say, he offers the simple greeting "Hi, Liv," voice lacking energy.

She cocks her head. "You okay? You sound tired."

He shrugs, and goes for the easy out. "I am."

"Why's that?"

Arashk tilts his head, looking up at her, searching for a plausible lie. "Bad dreams?" he tries, and could just about kick himself; what a lame excuse, and the way he said it sounded like a question.

"What does a psychic even dream about?"

It's not something she's ever asked before. He launches immediately and automatically into another search for a lie, but stops short, suddenly wondering if that's really necessary. He always feels the instinctive need to lie whenever questions about his powers are asked, but… lately he's been realizing that he doesn't have to anymore. He has a consistent story, because that story is true.

Then again, in this case, the answer Oh you know, just my family and friends I was torn away from when that "Master" of ours freaking abducted me wouldn't work either, for quite different reasons.

"That's a bit personal," he finds himself saying.

Liv nods quickly. "I'm sorry, you're right, that was out of line for me to ask."

Seeing an opportunity, he says quietly, "We've all got secrets."

She nods in agreement, trying for nonchalance. She doesn't do a bad job of it, but very little gets past him lately, and it was his goal to stir up some kind of reaction in her. He waits for her to say something, but when she does, it's only, "Whatcha doing out here?"

He suppresses a disappointed sigh. "Just… thinking. You about to practice?"

"Yeah. Just small scale stuff; I don't really have a lot of energy either."

Arashk hasn't watched Livia practice very much. She's usually off in her own corner. Arashk doesn't know why; it seems like she should be in full view, using the tightrope and the trapezes, but for a circus performer she seems to enjoy her privacy. When he has watched her, though… every time he's walked away frustrated and amazed. A lot that she does seems like it should be very much not possible. She'll alter her trajectory midway through a jump, dive forward and continue her momentum in a series of tumbles that goes entirely longer than it should be able to, jump when it looks like she didn't even bend her knees… She especially likes to stand and walk on her hands, and one time when he startled her with his entrance while she was in the middle of such a practice and she started to fall over, she managed to straighten up again in a way that did not look at all natural. The lower half of her body just kind of turned on the way down, she flung one hand in the air to steady herself, and she ended up straight as ever, toes pointed skyward. Arashk didn't even know what to say or ask. It was too bizarre, and she played it off as a perfectly normal thing.

"Must be nice not having to practice or prepare," Livia says, shaking him out of the recollection.

She's standing beside him now, and really doesn't seem that keen on heading off to practice. He'd offer her a chair, if he had an extra one; as far as he's concerned, laziness is to be encouraged. "But you enjoy the practice, right?" he asks idly.

She takes a fraction of a second too long to reply, and he looks up at her face quickly. She's wearing a soft smile and her eyes have an unfocused look to them, and something inside him that he knows he has to trust tells him that it would be a good idea to continue pressing the issue.

"Of course," she says as soon as he comes to this decision, and she sounds genuine, but there's something else behind her words. "It's just… sometimes I wonder… Never mind."

"Wonder what?" he urges, immediately interested.

"It's nothing."

"No, go on. Tell me." He tries an encouraging smile, but she just shakes her head, so he ventures, "You wonder if it's necessary?"

"It's not that." She bites her lower lip, but it turns into a tiny smile again as she continues. "Just… you know. I wonder where I'd be today if the Master hadn't told me about the show."

Bingo. "How'd that happen, anyway?" he asks, trying for all he's worth to sound casual.

She shrugs. "He was in my hometown, holding auditions, and he saw my performance at a gymnastics competition. Encouraged me to try out."

She's leaving something out. He knows it. It might not be important, it might be personal, it might have everything to do with that shouting match in the sunflower kitchen and nothing to do with the Master himself, but he can't risk not finding out. "It was that easy, huh?" he probes, and he knows his mask is crumbling and his desperation is just starting to show, but he can't do anything about it. Not anymore.

After a long pause, she nods. "Yep. That easy."

He stares at her, and she clearly isn't going to go any further and he's sick of no one talking to him about things he has to know, and in a moment of pure impulsiveness, he reaches out and grabs her hand.

Right off the bat it's clear as day that he's staying within this time. He's not reaching into her past, so she must not have a specific event in mind, which is a bit unexpected, given the conversation. But it's something he's seen numerous times in readings—when something happens that really matters to a person, after a while of thinking about it, it becomes less about the specific memories, and more about the feelings behind them. The woman who had won five hundred dollars in the lottery last year wasn't thinking about the day she found out so much as the happiness and the comforts the money had brought her; the older gentleman who was remembering the day his twin children were born was thinking about the joy of new fatherhood mixed with the fear for his wife; the young lady whose longtime boyfriend had broken up with her several months before was broadcasting nothing but grief and confusion. All he got from them were emotions, brief snippets of dialogue, and a name here and there. He had to flat out ask them for details. Hell, Arashk himself has displayed similar symptoms and he knows it; after the first month or so he stopped thinking so much about the specifics of his situation during his constant bouts of resentment and just kind of started picturing the Master's face and considering how much he hated it.

In Livia's mind he sees the vague shape of a face, and it might be the Master's and it might be someone else's; he can't make out enough details to be sure. Everything around him feels… confused. Confused and extremely bitter. He slides back and forth between thoughts and feelings and every time he lands on one it's something new: a feeling of great pride tinged with trepidation, a void left where something wonderful ought to be, a heart threatening to pound straight out of its respective chest, the simple word why playing on a loop, the feeling of falling, the very specific mixture of fear and anticipation that signals a change in living space, a name, a… a…

A name?

He consciously tries to steer himself back to that, and eventually succeeds. Upon examination, all he can really say of it is that it's very… unusual. An anomaly. He can identify it as a name, but he's never been able to do so without also figuring out at least part of what that name was. The piece of information is shrouded with a grey fog Arashk can't pierce, and from it leaks a thin mist that hangs over the entirety of her thoughts. He never noticed it before, but now that he sees what appears to be its origin, it's undeniable—that mist was present every time he stole a glimpse inside Livia's mind. All coming from this name she knows but doesn't.

It doesn't make any sense. It's two facts that conflict fundamentally and he doesn't know how to reconcile them. Nobody remembers that a name exists and thinks back on it and holds it as important but forgets the name itself—

It hits him so hard he thinks he sees stars.

The situation is a little too familiar.


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