dualislogs | i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

Entry tags:

i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: Another Heart meeting, a warehouse raiding, a Travis-bot-napping.
WHERE: A different run-down warehouse on the outskirts of town.
WHEN: Jan. 15
WARNINGS: Please use these in comment subject lines if applicable!

It's been a solid four months since the last time the Heart made contact with our intrepid band of kidnapped adventurers - plenty of time to think over what was said at the last meeting, to see for yourselves what sinister plans the Head has in store for everyone, to gather your own information. The well-meaning but shit-at-acting group of revolutionaries promised they'd be in touch, and today, they've made good on that promise.

Around mid-morning, there's another mysterious text message sent from an impossible number, and just like the last time, there are a number of hoops to jump through to get to the message and security precautions to make sure the message is erased without a trace. The message this time invites you to a different run-down warehouse in the far north end of town, tonight, when the streetlights spark to life.

Shortly before sunset, it begins to rain. It's a steady shower, not a violent storm like the night the mechanical doubles attacked, but the rain is piercing and cold, not quite freezing but not far from it. Hope you remembered your umbrella!

This empty, dusty warehouse is also dimly lit inside by a few flickering overhead lights, and once the last stragglers have entered for the meeting, the lights shut off as a burst of loud electrical humming echoes through the warehouse. All electronic devices inside the perimeter of the warehouse - yes, that includes your phones! - have been temporarily disabled, and will remain so until the overhead lights come on again.

Buckle in, everyone - it's time for the shitshow to begin!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drifter had the right idea the first time - get the hell out.

Nick's doing her best to herd people toward the back exit, where the tunnels are that can be used for a clean escape. She's better equipped to fight off the Iterations, so she's decided to leave last, hold off the attackers as long as she can in her giant doll form, crackling bolts of dark energy forming in the palms of her porcelain hands -

But she sees Drifter heading back into the warehouse, grabbing people and leading them away, and that's great, but for all of his armor, Nick is afraid he's going to get himself killed anyway. Again. And who knows if this will be the time he won't come back? She turns human again and races toward him, dodging people and the debris now falling from the crumbling warehouse roof as the fight inside rages on.

"You need to go - get to the tunnels, the roof, whatever - just get out, OK?"

"I'm plannin' to, don't doubt that. And you ought to, too."

He grabs her wrist. "Don't go under because of them." Because he can see now they're not worth it. They were a fools investment that he'd be more worried about if he hadn't ripped the chip from his brain.

"Come on, Darlin'! You been bein' a hero, but now you've gotta be a monster. Go hide from the townsfolk with the pitchforks. Don't get ever'thin' you've learned and earned die here tonight. An' it will, you know it."

He pulls a little.

"I can cover an exit pretty good and generate a whole lotta heat. I didn't have enough small arms ammo to take care of more than a couple of these things, and you're not gonna be able to manage it. You're in too deep! You gotta go!" He looks increasingly desperate as he's trying to convince her.

"Dyin' doesn't feel good! Trust me."

He’s right; Nick knows he’s right. She isn’t a hero - how many times has she herself said as much? There are people here with actual experience, and she should leave the heroics to them and get gone.

There's nothing inherently virtuous in being killed. Bianca’s words, after they’d fought off the Null - or rather, Nick hid from fighting the Null. They push to the front of her mind. She was right, too, and what Nick said then still holds true: I don’t want to die.

She starts to go with him when Drifter tugs her by the wrist away from the fray, overwhelmed with how much he seems to care about whether she lives or dies tonight. He’s the first to ever express this kind of concern over her, and for a moment she can’t breathe, throat choked with every feeling she doesn’t have the time to explain to him. She blinks back the sudden and unexpected start of tears, inhaling a hard breath to keep her composure. She can’t have the luxury of falling apart right now.

A loud noise from inside the warehouse draws her attention back, a scream of pain as someone is electrocuted by an Iteration. She stops and looks back over her shoulder, then turns back to Drifter. She places her other hand over his on her wrist, not to pull them apart, just to call his attention.

“I do trust you,” she says, not for the first time since they met. “And I’m not a hero, I know that, but I - I can’t walk away from this.” She smiles weakly. “I don’t wanna die, but I don’t wanna see anyone else die, either. I couldn’t live with myself if I could’ve done more to stop all of this and didn’t.”

He grabs her hand then, with his other hand. The first firmly around her wrist still, not quite willing to let her go.

"Don't! Listen to me, please. It's okay to retreat. Your fight is done today! Nothing you can do will help these people anymore. Just get out the ones that got dragged into it, too."

He sees the emotion in her eyes, and he latches onto it. He tries to appeal to it. "Don't follow someone else's moral dogma. Come on, Nick. You'll die! They knew what they were getting into. They can't hide behind you and taunt the enemy anymore."

Which is what they've been doing. This bear-baiting bullshit ends tonight, and he knows that they'll plow right through Nick to make it happen. "I wanted 'em to win, too!" he at least adds in. He wouldn't have made them weapons if he didn't think they stood a chance at the time. But you know what? They don't anymore. "But it's over. Just take a good long second to look." A second might be all they have to do that.

"It's over." At least for the Heart, not for the other people in the room that need to flee. "Set the example for these new souls and run."

Edited 2020-01-21 00:36 (UTC)

He’s right about that, too - it’s over. After tonight, even if everyone manages to avoid being captured or killed (and they won’t, Nick knows they won’t), the Heart is finished. She’s not trying to hold on to ideals she never fully invested in to begin with. It’s not her responsibility to be their knight in tarnished armor. She’s not a hero.

But there is something else she can do. Not many among the Heart were trained fighters - Nick doesn’t even count herself as one, but she has power, and she’s always been afraid to use it. Right now, she has the chance to set aside her fear and use the Talents she’s been given to fight back.

And she needs to try. She can’t be the terrified girl hiding in the closet from her drunken, hateful mother’s violent rampage any longer. She doesn’t want to feel helpless anymore. She is a survivor, and she’ll be damned if she lets anyone - human or machine - make her feel like anything less ever again.

She huffs a weak, mirthless laugh and squeezes her eyes shut, pushing the tears she’s been holding back to slide down her cheeks. “So you do remember my name.” She looks back up at him with a thin smile; she’s never minded his nicknames, even gave him one herself, but the fact that he’s using her actual name now feels alarming - wrong, like ear-splitting tornado sirens droning in the middle of the night. Her topmost hand rotates up to clasp at his, a silent plea that she follows with words.

“Believe me, every instinct I got’s tellin’ me to leave right the fuck now, but I can’t. I got one more trick up my sleeve, and I’m gonna hit these fuckers with everything I got. And if that helps even one more person get away? Then it’s worth stayin’ behind a little longer.”

Her thumb brushes slowly across his knuckles, and she inhales a deep, steadying breath. “I’m not gonna die. Trust me.”

"I remember everyone's name but mine," he says curtly. And honestly, he won't accept any new name for himself.

But hell, why is she crying? Why is she crying but still gonna do this. He's the trained fighter here and even he can see that he'd just get captured. There's a pressure at the back of his head, too. It's distracting. There's pain around them, fear. Ur likes it.

Eir Ur Xol Yul Akka.

He's gotta get out of here. They've gotta get out of here but she won't come. He grunts. "Things worse than dyin'," he says, but resigns himself and finally let's go. Withdrawing his hand is necessary, because a ball of fire swells in his hand, fire spewing from between his fingers, a round shape that looks like a mini sun forming in his palm and clenched tight. It's burning hot, too, even at her distance. like holding a hand too close to a radiator.

He throws it at the staging area, streaking fire along the backside. If there's any evidence, he's burning that down. And she can use the fire for cover if she wants.

Without another word he pulls back and looks a little more for anyone he knows. He'll get out of here after that, go to her place, wait around he figures. See if she can avoid ending up on whatever chopping block the Head has planned for them.

It doesn’t feel like any kind of victory when he concedes and releases her hands. It just hurts, and at the present moment, Nick doesn’t have time to pick apart the whys. She watches him leave, and before she can shatter, she turns away and becomes the giant doll again. She can’t cry anymore; her eyes are glass, open and close on weighted hinges. She no longer has a heart to break, because she’s hollow inside.

A few lumbering steps forward, and she stops again, calculating the best path of attack. There’s a cluster of Iterations targeting a pair of people unlucky enough to still be stuck here, and she has a clear line of sight to them. She holds her hands out in front of her, about a foot apart, and a small cloud of crackling dark energy forms between her palms. Slowly, she pulls her hands apart, and the dark cloud grows bigger and bigger, until it’s as wide as she is. With a final burst of strength, she pushes the cloud in the direction of the Iterations. As it envelops the robots, they’re blown apart, pieces scattering backwards, and several rumbles of thunder can be heard from overhead.

Now she’s done - exhausted, barely standing as she switches back to her Facade form. Now she can leave. The fight isn’t quite finished, but she’s done all she can, so she slips out the back, narrowly avoiding the blaze Drifter set, and finds the entrance to the tunnels. She can navigate back to her apartment blindfolded, but she can only move slowly, stumbling here and there, one arm braced against the concrete wall for support.

She doesn’t allow herself to dissect her feelings about what’s just happened. All of her energy is focused on getting home. She can fall apart once she’s safely behind a locked door.

The tunnel exit leads her a short distance toward the bar, and she hauls herself up the stairs and through the door to her apartment. She locks the deadbolt behind her and collapses back against the door for support, face buried in both hands.

She'd given him the key and he'd let himself in. He'd just waited around, picked up a thing here and there, looked at it like it was a relic of a lost age. Even if here everything is perfectly sensible. He hears the door close and turns to it, and she doesn't notice him. Just slumps with her face in her hands.

Good news is she made it.

Bad news is they didn't.

So that's how it ends for them, huh? Not just dead, but a lotta closed doors. He'll figure it out. He always gets out.

His footsteps are loud, plodding, not at all as sneaky as they could be, and he crouches in front of her with his arms folded on his knees.

"Hey Darlin'."

For a moment, when she hears footsteps, she thinks maybe it's an Iteration that's been waiting here for her, and her heart plummets deep into her gut. This is it, then - she tried so hard and got so far, and in the end, it doesn't even matter. She's been found. And she's too tired to fight anymore, so she just ... waits.

But it's Drifter's voice that greets her instead of the robotic droning of the Hand's foot soldiers, and her hands instantly drop from her face. She laughs weakly, relieved, and blinks away a fresh wave of tears. "Hey, Trouble," she murmurs, then gasps a deep breath in while she wipes at her face with her sleeve.

"I thought you were mad at me." I thought I'd never see you again.

"People can get mad when they're worried, you know. People can get mad when you ain't lovin' yourself properly."

He looks tired, reaches over and brushes at her loose hair, then wipes her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"They didn't make it, did they? Aside from you." He had no real attachment to any of them. But she bet that she really cared about a few of them. Now she might even see their faces out wandering around.

"I got rid of my chip. They cain't use me no more." He finally tells her. "I wouldn't ever say I'm trustworthy, but the Head ain't gonna make me do nothin'."

“People can get mad and leave and never come back, too.” Which is what she thought would happen when he left her at the warehouse. Which explains the tears, at least in part. The other part can be explained by what she adds to that thought: “I never had anybody care so much about what happened to me. Not even - not even them.”

As the same time she admits this aloud, she realizes just how true it is, and she falls down into the dark hole of her own thoughts, lightly rubbing a hand over her mouth. Once again, Drifter was right - the Heart was using her. Nick knew that on some level, because she got used to being used and discarded as soon as her usefulness was used up a long, long time ago, but she hadn’t fully considered just how fine the Heart was with harm being done to her, either through use of her Talents or as a result of her association with them. Hell, she was the most out in the open of them all, wasn’t she? She was the one at most risk, talking to people in search of new recruits.

She shakes her head, shakes herself from her thoughts and answers his question. “I don’t think so. I saw Marie get taken off but they prob’ly got more of ‘em, too. I did what I could but it - it wasn’t enough.”

And that’s another dangerously dark hole she doesn’t want to fall down into right now. She’s too tired to fight with herself, too tired to beat herself up for everything she’s done wrong, and Drifter’s just dropped a bombshell. “You - your chip?” She frowns deeply. “But that would’ve killed you.”

"Small price to pay for not bein' under yet another thing's thumb." He has no regrets. It just hurt a little. But, to the other subject.

"They shoulda learned to use the guns. Or got me the parts to make somethin' bigger. But looked like they were much more into talkin'." He wipes his nose. "Well, at least no one else got took. I don't think, anyway.

"Protecting themselves wasn't just on you. You ain't a gun with a mind! You ain't the fist they punch things with. They all had their own hands, their own eyes! An' I know you're the type to be feelin' bad over this kinda thing but Darlin', they fucked themselves all on their own.

"I think I told you about 'em. But back home, there's the Traveller's dogma... this belief you give people whatever they want, just be some Athenean explosion of knowledge, freely bestowed. But then there's the Sword Logic. That idea that people don't deserve to live if they can't force their way through life. Me? I think there's gotta be some sorta middle ground. I don't see the value in giving. I see it in sharin'.

"Darlin'. You gave more than you had in you. They didn't share enough." He brushes her cheek with his knuckles. "You more than did your best. And out of the lot of 'em, you're the one the Head's always gonna live in fear of, even if that red-head signed her name to it... or was it the squirt? Whichever. You get the point."

He confirms the death and Nick’s expression pinches, pained. It’s good that his chip is gone, but the price he paid for it? Drifter might not think it’s a big deal, but Nick disagrees. She remembers how much having her own chip extracted hurt.

“Y’know ... when I said I didn’t want anyone else to die, I meant you, too. Doesn’t matter if you always come back. You shouldn’t have to do it at all.”

She listens closely to everything he tells her, and when he brushes his knuckles against her cheek, her eyes close and she reaches up to cover his hand with her own, leaning into the touch. She’s never paid much attention to philosophy and had no use for religion after her father died, but what he says makes sense - in an abstract way, not a way she can see applied to herself.

“I never was any good at sharing. Comes from bein’ an only child, so I’m told .” She laughs faintly, all she can muster. “Everyone around me my whole life, all they did was take. Guess I got used to it, ‘cause I figured that’s just how the world works - everybody just takes, and they only give if they’re tryin’ to get somethin’ back.”

Nick also learned at an early age that to express her own desires was to invite ridicule, to admit to having some kind of deficiency. She’s been accused of selfishness before, of course, but never for anything on as grand a scale as what Drifter’s talking about. She lived most of her life without so much of what she needed and wanted - love, approval, encouragement - that pretending she didn’t want or need anything or anyone became part of her cold bitch persona, a plate in the armor she wore to defend herself against a world that seemed to only want to hurt her more. It’s why she only ever sought out scraps of what she wanted for herself in being what someone else wanted - a good time for a night, a dedicated employee, a shield and a fist against an enemy too great to fight alone.

Nick is, in many ways, still learning how to be a person. Whether he realizes it, Drifter’s helping her with that, more than anyone she’s ever met.

“I gotta go lie down ... doing any of those big-hitting things I can do always takes everything I got. But ... “

I don’t want you to leave. God, she hates how needy that sounds, even just in her head, but it’s the truth. It’s not just that Nick feels fragile and doesn’t want to be alone after what happened tonight - she wants him. She inhales an unsteady breath and opens her eyes to gaze up at him.

“Think you could stay with me for a while?”

She doesn’t expect him to say yes. But she won’t know if she doesn’t ask, and this is something she truly - and selfishly - wants for herself.

"Me dying is on me. Worth it to get the thing out of my head. It's nothin' for you to worry your little head about. A little death here and there might be required to survive."

Whether its theirs? Or someone else's.

"Just 'cause everybody takes doesn't mean you gotta give. Hell with 'em if they don't give nothin' back. Even if you owe somebody your life? You don't owe 'em your comfort. I ain't even talkin' delerious happiness, joy. Nothin' like that. I'm talkin' not sufferin' on their behalf. And sister, I don't want nobody sufferin' on the behalf of mine... Not unless I'm payin' 'em to do it."

Give and take. He wouldn't ask that for free.

But.

"Yeah, I'll stick around." He agrees more mildly, less aggressively, and he takes her by her upper arms to pull her up. At least he's stronger than he looks, and does it with ease.

"I should do it anyway in case they come lookin'. Come on. Am I takin' you to your bed or the couch?"

He slings his arm down to catch her behind the knees, hauling her lanky body up into her arms to carry her to where she wants to go and be put down.

The most absurd part of everything Drifter’s telling her, these instructions he’s giving her on how to better love herself properly, is that Nick would never have described herself as giving. She used to go out of her way to make it known that she had nothing worth taking, and yet turned around and gave of herself anyway, mostly without realizing it. She’ll need to think long and hard about this revelation, but later, when she’s of a better mind for heavy contemplation.

“Thank you,” she murmurs as she’s pulled to her feet, both for the help up and for Drifter agreeing to stay. “Bed,” is her answer for where she wants to rest, though being picked up and carried there startles a quick laugh out of her.

“I could’ve walked, y’know.” Maybe. Probably, with a shoulder to lean on. Still, she’s not complaining. It’s just an odd feeling, being carried - something that hasn’t happened since she was a small child. Her arms find ways to steady herself by holding onto him; she leans in closer, calmed a small amount by how solid and strong he is, the way he smells, all the ways her senses tell her he’s here - that she isn’t alone.

Once they make it to the bedroom and he’s set her down, Nick moves to one side of the bed, a silent invitation for Drifter to join her, if he’s of a mind to indulge her. There’s no ulterior motive - she’d just greatly appreciate the company.

"I'm stickin' around, don't you worry none," he promises as she holds onto him. "I was gonna insist on it anyway. I'm better fit to fight and get us out of here than you right now. You need a good lie down. Come on, take it easy."

He's great at putting minds at ease and hauls this gangly giraffe of a woman in there and puts her down on the sheets, grabbing her boots and yanking them off unceremoniously once he has her in place. (Too bad she doesn't have a ghost, it does make tucking in a hell of a lot easier).

When she pats the bed next to her, he sits beside her, back against the wall, feet crossed lightly at the ankles, and looks down at her.

"You need a good sleep, Darlin'. I'll look out for ya, alright? Patch yourself back up in the body now. Worry about your head later."

“Well, aren’t you the gentleman.”

Those words might sound slightly in the vein of light teasing, but they’re also tightly wrapped in fondness. She’s not at all used to asking for much in the way of help or anything approaching this kind of care, much less receiving it. Nick learned at a young age that she needed to be strong enough to stand on her own feet and take care of herself, because no one else could be bothered, and the attention Drifter’s given her tonight makes her feel strangely self-conscious. It’s not a bad feeling, not unwanted - just different. And juxtaposed with the shock of being ambushed at the warehouse and fighting for their lives, it’s all the more meaningful for her.

She’s not well-versed in expressing gratitude with words. Words and feelings can become weapons turned back against you, and Nick grew up to be someone who keeps many of her words and feelings locked away in secret chambers of her battered heart. Touch is a much more comfortable language for her. She pushes herself up to sitting level with Drifter and leans in to place a soft kiss against his cheek.

Then she makes an attempt with words anyway, voice hushed, heart aching with more secrets than she has the energy to unpack and tangle loose tonight.

“I hate this place so much ... I hate that we’re all stuck here. But I can’t hate the part where I got to know you. Knowing you’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”

And he deserves to know that.

When she kisses his cheek he feels her lips on both rough skin and dead nerves. Scars that will never fully heal, and he was brought back to the world with. They have no real sensation, and he doesn't know where they come from. At least she knows where her scars started.

"I don't think you'll feel that way forever. I got a bad history, ill luck follows me everywhere 'cause of the business I get into. But I like you enough to ask you to promise that when you need me to get out, you'll tell me. You won't find excuses to keep me around. Do it for you. Be ruthless for you, alright?"

He reaches over and, in contrast to those words, puts his arm around her and pulls her so her head can rest on his chest.

"Tell you what, though, I already got a plan in case one of those things bust through that door. I'll get ya outa here." Another promise that she can rest easy.

She folds easily against him, grateful for the warmth and weight of his arm around her. It may be a small gesture, but it does a lot to soothe her anxieties and her over-fired nerves.

“You think I’d try to keep you if you didn’t wanna be kept?” She chuckles quietly. “I know better than that.” The man calls himself Drifter, after all. Nick reckons there have to be reasons for that. She may want him to stay, but she understands if he doesn’t. She’ll find pleasure in the time when he does and store away the memory of it to revisit when he’s gone.

She shifts slightly, settling in against him, slips an arm around his waist and closes her eyes. Her breaths even and deepen, but despite her state of exhaustion, she doesn’t nod off quite yet. She thinks for a hard moment about what Drifter’s asked of her before she answers him, words spoken in a quiet, drowsy drawl.

“I used to be ruthless. I used to be a real mean shitstain of a person. Hated everything and everyone - mostly myself. An’ I took it out on everyone else - started fights, insulted people just ‘cause I could. Really I just didn’t want anyone to get close enough to hurt to me anymore than I already been hurt. That’s all I trusted anyone to do - hurt me the worst way they could. So I’d hurt them first, before they got the chance.”

She isn’t typically this forthcoming about her self-analysis of the person she used to be, her motives for acting the way she did. But she’s worn out, physically and emotionally, and that’s stripped away many of her usual defenses.

“I don’t wanna be like that anymore. Maybe I’ll get hurt more this way, but it’s better than bein’ shut off from the rest of the world.”

It took her a few years and a shattered mind to figure that out. But now that she has, she refuses to spend any more of her life on being afraid to love. Even if her heart ends up broken again, she knows she can and will survive it.

“You’re taking it as a given that there’s gonna come a day when I want you gone. I get it - I always expected nobody really wanted me to stick around. Sometimes that was true, but not all the time like I thought. And I don’t think me wantin’ you to leave’s as inevitable as you think it is.”

How much heartbreak, she wonders silently, has he endured in his countless lives to expect such a thing from her? How terribly has he been treated over how many hundreds of years? How many more scars does he have that can’t be seen as clearly as those on his face?

“How ‘bout this - I’ll do you one better. I promise I’ll always be honest with you. So if you’re ever in doubt that I’m just makin’ excuses to keep you around, you just ask me. And maybe then you can believe that I’m telling the truth when I say I don’t want you to leave, and it’s ‘cause you’re important to me.”

"Pushin' people away isn't bein' ruthless. You were out there tonight fighting for allies you knew were fools, that hadn't accomplished much, that were willin' to make other people dig rather than share their own wealth for the success of all. Now, I gave 'em a fighting chance too. Up until it turned out that they weren't set to fight. Naw. That was real evident from the start that was meant to be all up to you."

His heart hurts a little at her comment. That he's important to her. ~~He shouldn't be.~~ That he wants her around. ~~Girl, be careful, he's got him a pale horse and Hell in the shape of hate and triangles follows after.~~

"I get you on wantin' company, though. But no matter if you like me, in the end? Best that you like yourself more. Be ready to like yourself more, Darlin'. Always like yourself more than anyone."

The noble, the meek, the heroic, the suave, the charmingly inept.

She's gonna be the old one that remembers everything one day. He rubs her shoulder with the arm that's settled around her. She's going to have to find a way to cope and not let the dark eat her up completely.

“Guess we just got different definitions of what ruthless is.”

She didn’t like herself then - doesn’t much like herself a lot of the time now, either - but she did what she did to keep people away from her as a way to prioritize herself, keep herself out of harm’s way, and she didn’t care about the effects on anyone else. She did what was necessary to survive. Doesn’t that more or less amount to the same thing as what he’s saying?

She takes a deep breath in, as near to relaxed as she can be, under the circumstances. The light tapping of the rain outside strikes a rhythm against her window, adds another layer to the slow cadence of their breaths, in and out, the soft syllables of Drifter’s voice answering hers. Nick curls in a little closer around him, like if she holds onto him long enough he’ll somehow understand why he’s so important to her.

“I more than like you,” she mumbles sleepily. “I can get company in any bar anywhere. Can’t say the same ‘bout you.”

She’s already decided on a way to hold back the dark - by refusing to cut herself off from making and holding onto important connections with other people. Even if they’re trouble. Even if they’re monsters. While it’s true that she’s likely to outlive almost everyone she meets and she’ll be forced to deal with the pain of loss over and over, she believes that a policy of self-imposed isolation will be a much worse way to spend her abnormally long life. She already walked that path once, and she’s recognized that she was a much worse person for it.

She’s not afraid to love anymore, even with the knowledge that it will inevitably end.

"I reckon. I think of it as if these people you get involved with keep expectin' things of you, then you expect things right back. Don't give nothin' for free, 'cause people like it know how to bleed us old folks for everythin'."

Drifter's centuries old and most of his experiences are loss and betrayal. He keeps a wall up, a constant wall, for his own protection and the protection of others (because, in the end, stopping the Darkness or at the very least getting the hell away from it is the most important). An oncoming apocalypse only he knows about, and the preparation for doom always lingering in his head along with those invasive voices.

She curls close and he doesn't expect it to hurt a little. But it does, causes a throbbing deep in his chest.

"I hardly ever find company, Darlin'. But I live kinda rough so... When you got better options? Maybe don't bang the destitute old space hobo." He rubs her shoulder.

It's taking him a moment to interpret what she's saying as anything nearly romantic. His brain's been all bent out of shape, twisted by years of running, by being surrounded by 'Brothers' that made a practice out of hurt. Tragic shadows that taught him a lotta bad things but nothing about like.

“I learned not to expect anything a long time ago,” she murmurs. “Less disappointment that way.”

What she used to expect was the worst, ugliest sides of everyone. It’s what she saw in the earlier years of her life, an existence almost entirely devoid of kindness and affection; she was treated badly, so she expected more of the same. But the last few years have given her a different perspective. She doesn’t expect people to be awful, but she isn’t surprised if they are, either. She keeps her expectations low. It’s a realistic outlook.

She’s close to finally nodding off, but something Drifter says pulls her back the other way. When you got better options. It’s like a discordant note in an otherwise harmonious symphony, a jarring reminder of someone else’s parting words. Nick sits up, searches in the dark to lock onto his eyes with her own.

“D’you really think I’m just settling by bein’ with you?” She’s quiet - not angry, just intensely serious. Mouth pursed tightly, she shakes her head.”’Cause I’m not. ‘Mnot just using you as a - a placeholder ‘til something better comes along. This city’s got more people than I could count - I got plenty options right now. But I chose you. ”

She sits back on her heels, the pounding of her heartbeat echoing in her ears. This kind of raw honesty in speaking about her feelings is terrifying, but Nick pushes through her fear and continues, because she’s decided it’s necessary for him to hear this. What she’s confessing to isn’t just romantic - she’s not naive, and she doesn’t have some misguided schoolgirl crush. What she feels for him is much, much deeper.

“Y’know, you’ve been sittin’ here tellin’ me to love myself more, but it’s like you’re hellbent on not letting me do the same for you. Why is that?”

"Look, you need to rest after all that, alright? It's about keepin' yourself safe. Trust me on this one, alright? It's not about me likin' myself. It's just a fact that I carry a whole lotta warnin' labels.

"Hell, I sell weapons in wartime. Says what sorta company comes to me usually."

Her seriousness, though not intentional, doesn't have the effect she likely intends. To him, he's not as complimented by the idea that a person would find him worthy of affection in a field of contenders. He's seen the 'You're my favorite out of all the others' option used far too option as a loyalty tack. Lord Shaxx's fault, mostly.

He knows she doesn't mean it that way. But the resistance is strong. And nothing about Drifter he's tailored to earn fondness- it's all meant to distract.

Something to deal with later, not tonight. Not when they're bathed hip-deep in failure, and he's angry at their choices. Both he and Nick are compromised now. That's a heavy thought, and he wants to keep his ears open for the iterations.

Edited 2020-02-06 02:50 (UTC)

“I know you do. You told me over and over that you can’t be trusted, that you’re dangerous - hell, that’s practically the first thing you said to me that first time I met you. I don’t care. I decided to trust you anyway, ‘cause y’know what? Nobody’s safe. Not entirely. And no place is safe, either. Not just here - everywhere.”

Every dimension she’s been dragged into over the past few years has been fraught with peril. She nearly died in Vancouver, and it triggered a fundamental change that she can’t undo. Even her childhood home town, a tiny settlement in rural Kansas, needed to be navigated like a live minefield. Nick’s only ever known safety as a matter of degrees, never an absolute.

“Bein’ scared of getting hurt or fucked over isn’t gonna stop me from livin’ my life anymore. Living is messy and painful and hard as hell, but I’m not gonna let anything that comes at me break me, no matter how much it hurts. I’m way too stubborn to give up.”

For Nick, it’s not about avoiding the blows thrown her way anymore. It’s about being strong enough to endure them, and she’s more confident now than ever before in her life that she can do exactly that.

“Look ... I don’t wanna fight. I just wanna be with you right now. Can we agree to that?”

Tentatively, she reaches a hand out, asking for Drifter’s - for reassurance, maybe, that he isn’t going to push her away tonight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i hope you're ready for a firefight ...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject