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

[uprisenheart]

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!

Comments

[metamorphotic]

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.”

[be_notorious]

"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.

[metamorphotic]

“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.

[be_notorious]

"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.

[metamorphotic]

“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?”

[be_notorious]

"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.

[metamorphotic]

“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.