somewhere in time {Druig}

days before the emergence

Druig stares out the window as the clouds pass him by; the roar of the jet engines is only a small hum in the cabin. He thinks to himself about how peaceful this could be: sitting high above Earth with nothing to bother him but his own thoughts. Unfortunately, though, there's very little peace to be found in this metal machine in the sky. He takes his eyes off the window to look around, but all he sees is his family drained from the events of the past 24 hours. Ikaris stares into his room-temperature drink as Sersi sleeps with knitted eyebrows in the seat beside him. Kingo, Sprite, and Karun sit together in the front, but all they've done in the last few hours is stare at their shoes. And Thena — Thena sits alone in the back, her hollow gray eyes looking ahead at nothing. There really is nothing more exhausting, Druig thinks, than the feeling of being sad.

Druig himself sits incredibly still as Isis sleeps against his shoulder. As he tries to accept his own feelings of sadness, he feels her stir next to him and her eyes flutter open. Her gaze wanders around as she tries to remember where she is. Eventually, she sees him beside her and immediately a smile appears on her lips.

"It's you," she whispers with a dreamy voice.

"It's me," he whispers back with a smile to match hers.

And just for a moment, they both savor how good it feels to be with each other again. But the moment is incredibly fleeting, and he watches as she remembers where she really is. He watches as she remembers the death of Gilgamesh, and the brightness drains from her eyes. Without saying a word, he reaches his arm around and holds her close. He thinks about how he would do anything to make her feel better. She thinks about how much she wishes that she could fixate on anything other than Ajak, or Gilgamesh, or the end of the world. So, she asks him the first question that comes to her mind:

"You haven't been on a plane, have you?"

He shakes his head. "I think I prefer the Domo."

"Likewise," she says.

"So... What else have I missed?"

"Missed?"

"Yeah, like what else is different about Earth?" He senses that she needs a distraction, so he carries on the train of thought. "You must know better than I do."

She takes a deep breath as she ponders the question. "Well, you must've at least heard that Earth has superheroes now."

"I might have. You know any of them?"

"No, not really. Can't seem to work up the courage to introduce myself," she jokes. "They've got all kinds of powers, though. It's amazing what humans can do now."

"We could probably still take 'em in a fight."

"Well, I don't think you would even let them put up a fight," she plays along.

"Exactly," he nods with a smile. "Okay, so Earth has superheroes. What else is new?"

"Oh, what about phones? Do you have one of those yet?"

"I have a phone," he scoffs, clearly very proud of himself.

"Oh, that's good because there's something I wanted to show you on mine — " She reaches into her pocket and pulls hers out.

"What's that?" he asks to which she just rolls her eyes with a smile. 

"What?" he asks again with such an earnest confusion, and there's nothing on Earth that amuses Isis more than a confused Druig.

"It's my phone. Duh," she answers. His eyes widen as the screen lights up.

"What do you mean? Aren't telephones supposed to have that part that you hold up to your ear and that other bit that you spin around in circles — "

" — Look," she interrupts him as she opens up the camera. "We can take photographs. Just like that."

She opens up the picture she just took — it shows her smiling while Druig squints at the screen. He's rarely ever interested in the technological advancements of mankind, but he reluctantly admits to himself that this might actually be quite amusing. Or, maybe what he's actually amused by is how much Isis' eyes light up when she tells him all about this camera thing. 

"Even better is that you can also take videos," she continues. "Watch this." She lets it record as she continues to rave to Druig about this magical little device.

"And then you can just play it back right away." She smiles with excitement as she plays back the first of hopefully many videos that she'll be able to get of them together. She notices in the playback that Druig doesn't even look at the camera, though. He just can't seem to take his eyes off of her. She quickly shuts off the screen, trying to hide how much this makes her blush.

"Alright, so maybe a few things have happened in my absence," Druig says. "What about you, then? What's new with you?"

"Well... I guess I can start at the beginning," she replies. "After I left, I lived with Ajak for awhile. And then I went to see the world for myself. I went to find Thena and... and Gilgamesh. I lived with them for awhile, too. I found Kingo and Sprite after that, and let me tell you — those were an interesting few years..."

Druig happily lets her go on and on and on about her many stories and adventures. He realizes how much he loves hearing her voice and how his existence is better because of it. Honestly, he'd listen to her talk for an eternity if he could.

"... And that was the last time I willingly watched one of Kingo's movies." Her stream of consciousness finally trails off. She apologizes, a little embarrassed: "Sorry, I've just been going on and on."

"Don't be sorry," he responds immediately. He absentmindedly runs his fingers through her hair, and it makes her heart race. Which is strange, actually, since it's not the first time he's ever done that, but for some reason — and maybe it's something to do with the nearly one hundred years they spent apart — she feels different around him in a way that makes her nervous and excited all at once.

"What about you?" she asks. "What have you been up to?"

"To be honest, not much," he says. "I wanted to ask you something, though. Did you ever miss it? The garden?"

"If I'm being honest... not exactly," she answers. "Something I realized is that I didn't love the place itself. I just loved the fact that that's where you happened to be. But I think you loved it because it was safe for you."

He nods; as usual, she's probably right. But, he did also love it because that's where she happened to be. "I love you," he so badly wants to say right now. And he knows that they've already said those words to each other many times in the past, but he thinks that it would be different this time — that it would mean something different. But he's just not sure if it would be the truth. They'd been apart for so long, after all.

So to his own disappointment, all he says is: "Hm."

And before he can change his mind about telling her everything, a voice over the speaker tells them to prepare for their descent back to the surface.

"When was the last time you saw Phastos?" Druig asks her.

"A long time, actually," she says with some sadness in her voice. "He stopped talking to us after he... Well, after he — "

" — He gave up on humans," Druig finishes her sentence.

"You know about that?"

"After you left, Phastos actually came back to the garden on a few occasions. He'd just drop off new technology. Wanted to make sure we weren't falling too far behind, I guess. But, one day he came and he was different. He didn't say much to me, but I could tell that he had given up on helping humans. And he never came back after that."

"Oh," she says in quiet surprise. "Do you think he'll even help us, then?"

"I hope," he answers. "We need him."