ALFG deleted scene

This scene was from when Dirk and Damara were still trying to find a way to get to New York. It got cut out, so the story only focused on how Dirk found the suspicious meeting and got his memory wiped.

“Are you alright?”

It’s a weird question to ask, especially coming from Damara, but Dirk Strider has been acting weird lately, so it warrants being asked.

While Damara wouldn’t classify them as friends, not even acquaintances, because she’d tack ‘begrudging’ at the beginning of that first, she has been observant. More observant than Dirk has given her credit for. She knows that he goes over every single plan, every single detail, because he feels guilt over his past actions, and while his gift for planning would be deadly in some circumstances, he’s not in a good place right now, so he overthinks, and she has to push him forward. She knows that he is meticulous, almost to a fault. He tries his best to look presentable despite circumstances (and when they were still on the road, that had been difficult, but by the Empress, he tried his best), and he’d be damned into the furthest ring before he left a mess in his wake. She knows that he’s the kind of person who takes matters into his own hands because he doesn’t know who else he can trust to handle these situations.

Anxious. Perhaps even alone. He feels the only person he can rely on is himself, and in that regard, they are similar.

That last thought leaves a sour taste in her mouth because she’d never once want to be likened to Dirk Strider, but then again, perhaps that is why she understands him, even superficially.

There is no one Damara can trust. She must take matters into her own hands because she can’t afford to squander trust on those who don’t deserve it. From the very beginning, she has been alone. From the very beginning, she has always stood by herself.

That is why she has to push Dirk forward, because they’ve built a shaky truce here, and he’s useful sometimes, but he hesitates too often because of guilt, guilt, and more, pesky, disgusting guilt – honestly, who needed that, these days? There’s only so much emotion to go around, why not pick something useful like anger? That gets things done.

While Dirk has sat and stewed in his guilt, she’s gone around and befriended sailors and learned things, and she’s noticed the most fascinating details about Ben.

She’d met him one day on the port, hanging about, sitting with a few drunks. He’d said a few sentences to them and they’d laughed, but always forgot what he was called. She wonders now if they’d ever even known his name. There’s a possibility he’d been just like her – someone trying to hustle their way through everything by sharp wit and an even sharper smile.

They’d rarely talked, of course. In fact, their interactions probably couldn’t be counted as conversation, as they’d only exchanged a few nods, and a few laughs. It was more of just passing gestures.

But while Damara had no interest in striking up small talk with him, she did want to observe him, because there was a lot to see there. The hidden eye, the ever-present bandages like he constantly gets into fights - and of course, the evidence of a messed-up timeline.

Damara isn’t godtier, but she’s learned that that means jack squat in the Game. Being godtier simply means stepping on another level of your ‘heroic journey’. Another tier.Ascension is only the act of fully incorporating oneself into their aspect, or beginning to fully incorporate oneself into their aspect, depending on how far they are into their journey.

It’s some stupid, hackneyed, cheesy garbage. Damara’s skipped over the warm and fluttery feelings and the inspiring speeches, and gone straight into the useful parts.

And it’s that being a player automatically grants you access to some parts of your powers.

She isn’t a godtier, yes, but she is still a Witch of Time, and as such, her role and ability is to manipulate time itself, and at some level, at least notice it so she knows which strings to pull.

And around Ben, it’s faint, but it’s there. The evidence of a tampered timeline. She can’t see as clearly as a Seer would, but she’s willing to bet one horn that if a Seer were to look at Ben they’d probably choke on air and gawk at the absolute bastardization of his existence’s timeline.

Him tampering with the beer bottle left a small mark too, but Dirk wouldn’t notice that. Damara would, though, and she did.

Whether Ben had showed his time abilities on purpose, she’s yet to find out, but she had known one thing then. He was a SBURB player. Given that the Earth hadn’t been wiped out of existence yet, and with the evidence of his butchered timeline, it was possible he’d jumped back in time.

The question was, for what?

So she’d pushed and pushed and pushed, and she’d talked to Ben, not even bothering to ask Dirk about it (and poor boy, he probably wonders why she’d been so insistent – she hasn’t told him anything yet; logically, she knows she should, but something is telling her not to, something in her instinct and her mind that says that would be a bad idea, so she doesn’t), and then, they’d found themselves in a nice house with some food and a lot of comfort, and it had been a lovely bonus to finding that the house’s owner (whose name had slipped her mind) had the same corrupted time-marks as Ben.

(After, of course, feeding Dirk some bullshit about wanting to see her friends too.

As if.)

What a day that had been. What a find.

She doesn’t say much to Ben or to their host, but she does attentively listen when they’re given a tour around the house, just in case she finds anything of interest. Sadly, the house is unremarkable. A little hastily cleaned-up, sure, but everything in it is rightfully supposed to be there, including the photographs.

There is a part of the house that they’re not supposed to go to. Damara tries to go investigate, of course, but all the doors refuse to open to her. So she mostly reads and hangs about the garden, looking at the ocean and thinking. Sitting by and watching the sunset is strangely calming.

Everything’s been good so far, even though their trip to New York is still being delayed due to a few preparations, but she’s fine with sitting by and figuring out what’s up with Ben’s timeline, so that’s no trouble.

And then one day, things get a little strange. She wakes up from a dreamless sleep feeling as if she’s forgotten something, and that in itself makes her feel a little antsy, because she wants to remember, but she can’t pinpoint what she’s forgotten or why she’s forgotten it. And then when she tries to go back and check the forbidden part of the house again, Dirk stops her before she can.

Dirk, paranoid Dirk who she would have thought would have been all for this, and who has already gone around the house himself to snoop, stops her.

Something about it rubs her wrong. An irrational hunch that sends her hackles up.

“I’m fine,” he says, in response to her question. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re not at all curious of what’s in the locked rooms?”

Dirk frowns at her, and he pauses, too long, as if he’s…buffering. That’s the only word Damara can think of. Like something in his thoughts has stalled. “We should respect our hosts’ privacy,” he says, “They’ve already given the rest of the house to us.”

“The rest of the house isn’t much use to what we actually want to know. What’s behind these locked rooms, though,” she says, “We might have something to learn from them.”

For a minute it seems like she’s gone through to him, but then he blinks and shakes his head, and then pulls her towards the kitchen, purposeful.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he’s just feeling respectful today, and he’ll be back to being paranoid the next day.

But maybe it’s something else.

Damara’s not about to rule anything out.

She sits at the dining table for breakfast, surprising Dirk, but Ben isn’t there. Neither is their benefactor, but they are left with a lovely letter that in three days’ time, they will be able to sail to New York, which is good, because they do have business there.

Do they really?

Damara finds herself pausing again, thinking, trying to scratch at an itch that isn’t there. A thought niggles in the back of her head, that maybe, just maybe, she’s been making choices that haven’t been her choices.

She almost breaks the spoon in her hand as she considers the thought.

And maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s just bad timing, but this time she doesn’t forget. She fixates, and there’s no voice in the back of her head that tells her to forget, there’s no invisible hand that swipes across her eyes and clears the last of few minutes from her mind.

She remembers, and she’s going to find out what’s wrong.