Seymour

<snip>
“We can’t all be Seymour…”
“No…we can’t…quite right. Look speaking of whom, can you help me back to him? I’m a bit lost…”
“Shu-sure….” Jay stammered “Ah…are you alone?”
“At the moment yes. But my friends are somewhere, Seymour thinks being held captive by Ra.”
“The-then…you might as well come to terms with the fact you’ll never see them again….”
Definitely not her Jay.
</snip>
Her Jay...
The thought alone was enough to make her heart lurch, and so she hurriedly pushed it away with a sharp pang of sorrow
Jay wasn't hers and he never would be.
He had made it more than adequately clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her in anything other than a platonic sense, and as such, she really ought to stop thinking about him in any other way
Besides, she grimaced, trying hard to keep her eyes off the otherworldly Jay’s arse as she trailed along behind him, she had bigger things to worry about than the tattered fragments of her heart - Her Jay's welfare, being chief amongst them

At the moment, she was hoping, really hoping that time didn’t flow slower here than it did in her own reality; Jay had perhaps two, maybe three days left before he succumbed to the virus, and the scenario of a year passing in her own reality for each day that she spent here, really wasn’t something she wanted to consider
Did alternate realities even work that way, she wondered?
Maybe they'd return home to find that a similar period of time had elapsed as they had experienced in this reality
Maybe not
She needed White Wolf to be able to answer that question
That said: If all else failed, she had taken the precaution of performing a full trawl on Jay, which at least left her with a neurological backup and the skills, if not the resources she required to engineer a faximile of Jay from scratch; but then that wasn't really the point – she didn't want him to die in the first place; especially when she had no idea when or even if she’d ever be able to assemble the technology she needed for a full reconstruction

Other-Jay slowed his pace to glance back at her, his brown, nervously shifting eyes never quite meeting hers
“It’s... ah... It’s not so far from here...” he uncomfortably unfolded an arm from around the equipment he was carrying to gesture vaguely off down the dusty street and pushed his horn rimmed spectacles back up his nose before turning, with a flick of his unkempt and longish hair, to continue on his way
Cass shook her head as she followed him. He had the same nice arse alright, but attraction was so much more than purely physical; this guy had none of Jay's presence, his spark or dynamism or any of his... his... well, his animal magnetism, damn it!
It just seemed so...
She stopped herself
There was no point dwelling on what had happened when she needed to concentrate on the here and now; getting home and fulfilling her promise to save Jay’s life was her only priority – Preferably with Katrina and at least some of the crew in tow, but as far as she was concerned, they were expendble

“This is... Ah... This is it!” Jay exclimed as he came to a halt and gestured towards a doorway set in a low wall
“You sure?” Cass frowned at the weathered and battered looking door “I don’t remember it looking like this”
“Typical Narcissa” Jay sneered, futilely scooping a lank lock of hair back behind an ear only to have it fall forward onto his face again “Always so suspicious”
Cass shook her head
“No, it’s not that” she protested “I just don’t know my way around... This is another entrance, right?”
Jay favoured her with a contemptuously thin smile and lifted the latch on the door to shoulder it open and walk through, leaving Cass standing out on the street on her own
Definitely not her Jay

Ducking under the low stone lintel, Cass followed Other-Jay through the doorway and into a small dusty courtyard which they crossed to open another door and enter into the smoky gloom of the small room beyond
The heat was the first thing Cass noticed; dry and searingly hot, walking into the room was like stepping into an oven, and the dizzying intensity of the heat near took her breath away, leaving her sheathed in sweat within seconds
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Cass belatedly realised that Seymour was within, stripped to the waist and sat cross-legged before a large brazier, filled with dimly glowing coals, and surrounded on all sides by what she hoped were animal bones, scattered across the floor
“Look what I found” Jay grated as he strode nonchalantly into the room
Seymour’s eyes glittered in the gloom as he glowered up at Jay
“How many times have I asked you not to interrupt an augury?” he rumbled
“Well, this stray little waif was out walking the streets” Jay shrugged indifferently “Figured you’d want her back before she was ...taken”
Even in the dim half-light cast by the brazier, Cass could make out the multitude of scars criss-crossing Seymour’s sweat slicked torso as he shook his head and clambered to his feet with an audible sigh
“You were right to bring her here” he conceeded “Thank you”
He paused to gaze past Jay at the uncomfortably flushed looking Cass, still hovering near the door “You look like you’re about to faint” he observed, his voice tinged with concern “We’ll take refreshments before I attempt another augur. Thank you for bringing Narcissa back here Mister Chrysler; you may return to your duties”
Jay just shrugged and pushed uncomfortably closely past Cass without another word, leaving her to turn and gratefully follow him back out into courtyard and the comparative cool of the late afternoon sun
“Smegging hell, that was awful” she gasped in between gulps of fresh air as Seymour made his way out through the door to join her
“You get used to it” he shrugged, pulling his long, sweat-damp hair out of its ponytail to scoop a few stray strands back in line and retie it, all the while eyeing Other-Jay as he scurried across the courtyard "That boy..." he murmured darkly as he banged through a door into a different part of the building
"What's his problem?" Cass asked as the door swung closed behind him
"Nothing good" Seymour murmured, but shook his head at her questioning glance and gestured across the courtyard towards a different door instead "Come. I'll make tea"

It wasn't long before Cass was seated in a small but mercifully cool room in another part of the building, drinking sweetened tea with Seymour, on a threadbare rug
"I feel revolting" she grumbled, fidgeting in her mud, sand and now sweat slicked clothes
"We'll get you some more appropriate desert attire" Seymour nodded as he fumbled to pull his own robes around him to cover his naked and scarred torso "It'll draw less attention to you"
Privately wondering whether the scars were as a result of him practicing magic, or whether they were indicative of something else, Cass quickly averted her eyes; worried that her inquisitiveness might be interpreted the wrong way. She was unsure of exactly what sort of relationship Seymour had with her dead counterpart, and while Seymour was in good shape for someone in their fourties, or fifties, she had never been into older guys for variety of personal reasons
"You mentioned my companions when we met" she said instead "Have you any news of them? I... we need to get home as soon as we can"

She went on to explain her predicament and the precarious position Jay's life was in, back in her home reality
"Perhaps you and I can help each other" Seymour nodded when she had finished "My spies and divinations have revealed that the Emperor intends to open a gateway back to your home dimension, for exploitation and conquest"
"From personal experience" Seymour went on "I know that the magics required to open such a gateway are immense, and will leave the Emperor much weakened and vulnerable - an ideal time for our forces to strike against him"
"Won't he anticipate just such a move?" Cass asked
"He will" Seymour conceeded, and paused to take a sip from his glass of tea "But opportunities like this don't come along regularly, and to do nothing would allow Ra to gain even more power"
"It's risky" Cass observed
Draining his tea, Seymour glanced down while he toyed with his glass
"I won't lie to you Narcissa" he began, his eyes suddenly flicking up to meet hers before he continued "It will be dangerous and some of your friends and mine may well die"
Cass grimaced; there were several whose deaths she would welcome, but she very much doubted she would get to pick and choose
"What's the plan?" she asked
"If my divinations are correct, there'll be a disturbance of some kind at a feast in honor of one of your crewmates tomorrow night" he began "Beyond that, other than the ritual, events are strangely uncertain"
"Uncertain is not good" Cass interjected
Seymour paused to place his tea glass back down on the brass tray on the floor between them to refill it with tea
"We should prepare for an assault" he said decisively "Our chance will arive during either the feast or the ritual"
"That really doesn't sound like much of a plan" Cass scowled
"Don't worry Narcissa" Seymour smiled in response "We'll have you home in good time to save your Jay"
"He's not my Jay" Cass retorted, perhaps a little too quickly
Seymours eyes glittered as his weathered features creased into a smile
"Nothing lasts forever" he said

<tbc/>
<ooc>Apologies for the low posting rate recenlty - I've had a bunch of stuff to deal with IRL; normal service should be resumed presently</ooc>