[He doesn't particularly wine or dine his fellow inhumans even if that is their right as rightful lords of the earth. Still the woman they found in the cocoon and brought to him reminds him of his own transition.
It was - difficult.
This is not something human beings will ever understand. He folds Grant ward and the rest of the humans he's inhabited away and watches her peel off the rest of the cocoon waiting to see where she'll go. What she will...become.
This is the first of his people he's personally supervised coming out of the cocoon. It's bigger then HYDRA's pathetic ideals. The moment he's free he leans forward and speaks, mind to mind, doing his best to send as much positive emotion to her.]
[ She doesn't know where she is. That alone would send her into a mild panic, because she doesn't remember leaving her apartment and she doesn't recognize anything here and god, she got kidnapped again.
The last thing she remembers is taking the vitamins the doctor insisted she have. Perfectly healthy girl, and still the doctor pushed. And now she's here, brushing and peeling off the last of whatever this is and--
Her train of thought derails when his voice fills her head. There's still eerie... good vibe from it, but her inborn stubbornness and distrust pushes back.
She's just going to take a few giant steps backward, away from this guy. ]
Y-Yeah, someone's done the whole "take me away for my own safety" thing. A friend of mine, actually. He got tazed.
[ The way he stares, it makes her shift uncomfortably. She's seen a look like that before, on the face of someone she had trusted. But this time she doesn't have that attachment. His look makes her acutely aware of the fact that she's still in her pajamas. She crosses her arms in a lame attempt to cover herself.
She wasn't hungry or thirsty until he asked. There's a whine in her stomach, and her throat is dry. Still... ] How do I know I can trust it? [ It's a yes, but it's a wary I-might-throw-it-back-in-your-face yes. ] All you've told me is that you're here. Great. But where's here and who are you?
[At that he smiles, and he snaps his fingers. Guiyera rolls in a tray of meats, vegetables, water, and wine. He nods and Guiyera tastes each dish in turn as Hive shrugs his shoulders.]
I can bring in someone else to taste it if you'd like but Guiyera is one of us, one of our kind, an important distinction.
[He shrugs then stands and - clearly with difficulty - extends his hand.]
[ Her stomach whines even louder at the sight and smell of food. But still, she holds back, watching Guiyera keenly. No ill affects, nothing immediate at least.
And she's really hungry.
There's at least one question answered as he stands and... yeah, there's something not quite right. But it's automatic that she reaches out to briefly take his hand. Years of ingrained manners and politeness. ] Grant. I'm-- [ She considers lying to him for a moment. Maybe they already know her name. Maybe lying to them will make things worse. ] --Dawn.
[ She moves forward to the tray, still eyeing things warily. ] What do you mean, one of us? One of our kind?
[He's not about to coddle the woman after what he's seen her do. It takes a lifetime of training to move like that, he should know because she kept up with him. There's blood smeared across his face and his knuckles and he's dragging her through the alleyway.]
[ She's no stranger to fighting her way out of things. Usually with more backup. Usually backup has superpowers.
Instead it's just her, and then it's just her and this man from out of nowhere. And he's good, yes, but even together there's still too much. He's got a hand on her arm, tight, and it's instinct that she resists. That she tries to pull away from him.
He helped, but she still doesn't know him, and they're still not safe. ]
Run where? They're coming out of the woodwork and what the hell is SHIELD?
[ Dawn never paid a whole lot of attention in civics. What she knows comes from cursory glances and personal experience. Now, if he had said US Army, then it might have clicked better. ]
I-I'm not powered. [ Maybe. She's not sure. This morning is all a blur. ] I don't know what's going on.
What does fish have-- [ As he gestures, she ducks, trying to get out of the way and stay mobile at the same time. It's not as easy as it sounds. ]
He went through the wall?
[ She vaguely remembers that. A man in a uniform in her doorway, pointing a gun at her. She went for his face, swinging hard. She expected it to be distracting, to maybe break his nose. But she just remembers him disappearing and then everything went to hell. ]
[And Ward steps back as a SHIELD agent appears, a man, wearing that same suit and tie combo and wielding a gun. Ward's attention is drawn by the men behind him but the single man-
Come quietly. he growls we don't want to hurt you.
As he advances is all her. He makes a fist and swings.]
[He remembers days far back beyond anyone's memory.
He misses those days. The world was wide and vast and unexplored and the sense of community he had felt with the others who had been taken and abused by their supposed Kree masters had formed the first communities. It had been heady, it had been heartbreaking, to be apart often from friends, from family, from loved ones and raised to the stars.
The ties that bind still linger. They linger in settlements like the one he's found, far away from his people yet still aware of their presence. The beast (Lash he called himself.) was unable to sever each connection entirely. That is his purpose, he wants to be connected, needs to be connected. Needed to be connected.
It's not the same since Coulson and The Team blasted him. Some mornings he wakes up as Will Daniels, he is haunted by tastes and smells on Grant Ward's undead tongue, he has a fondness for pecan pie - something neither of the previous men hate, but Malick's baby brother loved. They'd steal it from the kitchen and cook would complain to father but his brother would always take the rap until at last he'd killed him.
A thousand memories, a million, but those three lifetimes ring truest. He is connected to them, their heartbreakingly short lives. He combs through each memory like a child looking for sea shells. He would rather have those three memories fresh in his mind then anything else in the world.
And some days he is reminded of his purpose. All inhumans have a purpose, the clan elder said to a boy just before he underwent terragenesis. Just before his blood called him to the stones and the mist. He emerged with a third eye, horrified, unable to ever mingle with normal human beings again. A girl a month before, after her sixteenth birthday came out of her cocoon covered in scales. She had sharp teeth. She had shoved away the doctor who wanted to help her. Things are not so different after all.
Alveus had stepped in after that in this small mountain community. The girl was clawing at anyone who came close but he had shifted and sat down and told her his tale. The others gathered around, people from all walks, some from all places. They weren't the only community he was told, they lived scattered and every time he thought about bringing them together, taking back the planet from the humans...
His head ached. He heard Jemma screaming. He saw Skye shot. He watched Gideon betray him again. And again. and again.
Time he tells himself, and he shivers and masters his ability, to unite them all blindly, to make them all want to serve him and tells her about Thomas Sharpe, who he was once upon a time, who was born with a sixth finger and cursed for a witch. He tells her about Kat Bucket, a london whore. He tells her indirectly about himself as his tentacles shift in the breeze. She doesn't feel better but she allows her family to take her back to their dwelling.
He could make her feel better. This is what he struggles with. He is a narcotic by nature. He could give her the peace she so desires, make her happy with her inhuman choices but every time he opens his eyes he sees the lives of someone else.
And there is someone else too. A woman, a young girl really whose psychic ability far outstrips his own (his skill really came from millennia of observational experience and a bare skimming of an advanced alien brain.) He had to figure out how to build a wall around his innermost thoughts but he did it, was one of the first to do it probably. Still it's not made of the strongest materials.
Idly he wonders if his thoughts might sound like bees. Standing there watching the sun set.]
How do they sound? My thoughts?
[One inhuman he'd known millennia ago saw colors for thoughts. Another saw pictures much like the films that would one day rule the world. He doesn't bother looking at her.]
If your brother knew you were out here he might be angry.
[The last thing he remembers with Lincoln is - waking up. Not a part of anything greater, no white light, just waking up. The details are sketchy and it doesn't help that the inside of his mind is screaming, they're all screaming. It takes him days to sort out every tangled thought the humans wrapped his brain around, he swears revenge. Alone on a dying planetoid, alone again until he hears...a space ship.
There's no other word for it. that's what Daniels had, a space ship, and this is a space ship only it's unlike any ship that Daniels has ever known existed. The beings in it are just that - beings.
For the first time in millennia he sheds his human skin and appraoches the beings ready to kill them, ready to raise his hands and devour them, he is the storm - but they're willing to get him off planet. You're from Pax right? sure I've been. How the hell'd you end up way out here? Lost on a star ship?
It's a family, and the little boy is...pink.
He can only face up to the stars with a human's sense of wonder. Among them, among aliens for the first time who don't want to kill him, or use him, or torture him, his wonder is reborn.
There are a few people who guess, a few people who throw around what he is - Kree experiment. Drucking Kree! he has over a millennia worth of experience under his belt.
Nothing has prepared him for this.
It makes him nervous. He's had to kill a few beings, their remains reduced to ash and bone and their meat and flavor sit heavily in his belly. However in some planets - ironically the ones close to the Kree homeworld he begins to realize that the food agrees with him more. It stirs up feelings. Regret. Anger. He remembers every day of his transformation. He remembers it very well. It is etched in him and discovering that the Kree are not well liked...
Perhaps he could return to earth. Plead his case. Perhaps inhumans could be persuaded to take arms against their former overlords in a more direct manner. Perhaps even, the so called avengers could help. He can set aside his directives, his biological directives for that. Whatever has left him here, whatever has left him alive has done so for a reason.
Still he feels more accepted here and more free to be himself then he ever has before. even if this self was made with torture. There are rules here however, ones he doesn't know which is what brings him to the dive bar in Knowhere. He is looking for Star-Lord. Star Lord destroyed Ronan the Accuser. Star Lord is a human living in space.
Will Daniels has quite a lot to say about this, but he doesn't have to pretend to be him. Grant ward's facade hasn't appeared in what feels like years. It is his flesh, his meat suit, there is after all a shortage of bodies, but strangely the more he remains as himself the less he wants to change back. Being a monster made of tentacles does not shock many here.
The question becomes, will it shock his contact. Wearing a hooded robe he procured on a nearby planet he lowers it, boldly, red eyes grim.]
[Whatever had happened to him when that...thing was bonded to him had changed him. The old spells and scrolls he'd bought made sense. Read a book, raise a wave, chant words, make the lights go out. It was as if he saw the world in a different way entirely and he wasn't entirely ready for the spell that had saved the young man in the backseat from the muggers. They could seperate but he'd ached, finally dragging him back to the hotel.
Maria had said there was another world, this young man was tied into it somehow with a degree of magical skill.No encounter with an elder god leaves a man unchanged.
Shaking, he parked his car in the parking structure of his hotel and climbed out, moving back to check the back seat and shake the sleeping figure.]
[He doesn't remember exactly what happened to him. One minute he was walking, talking to Sabine on his cell phone, the next thing he knew he had an object pointed into his back. A mugging, he supposed. He had felt something dig into his back and all he could think was 'Great, they're going to ruin this jacket. She just gave it to me not too long ago.' Then there was... he... didn't remember.]
[He remembered feeling a weight in his chest, and something dark pull at his neck, but he had no idea if that was the thing he knew or what ever just happened before him. Everything after that was black.]
[And as always, when it was black in his head, he wandered in his mind, the world around him, in his mind, was filled with creatures and darkness, slime and things that couldn't be allowed out. He wasn't even sure if it was a real work inside there or his mind playing tricks on him.]
[Didn't matter. He didn't like it.]
[When someone shook him, he gasped, feeling startled out of his darkness. The hand in his head had came to his shoulder to do more then shake, but the hand in reality shook him looked human. Looking up to see a man there, he then realized he was in the back of a car. Confused he glanced around a moment, sucking in a rushed breath]
[He's amazed the kid didn't jump back. Brian thought he was a big name in Las Vegas. that might make this easier. Dressed in a black silk shirt he cuts a very impressive figure. It's his eyes - dark with pain and sadness.
He raises a hand to the kid and pulls it back, squeezing his fingers.]
...This is going to get complicated. We're at the OmniSteam.
...You don't know who I am?
[Cool.
He feels like this man. He can feel the aches in him, see a glimpse into his mind and for one moment he has to look away.]
[Darwin still is dealing with not being dead this time. He was sure that knife tip went in, and he was sure he should have felt the cold he normally did when he bled to death. His hand pulled back and lifted at his shirt and coat, scrambling a bit to feel, but all he felt was a healing scar. Maybe it went in but something stopped them from going farther. But he didn't know what happened.]
[And then there was this man, offering him a hand to get out of the car. He... shifted in the back seat, sitting up better and looked around, confused.]
I ah... We're at the cleaners? [He said almost dumbly, like he didn't get that at all either.]
[Darwin was new to this area. Traveling through is all. It's what he did. He wandered. Sitting still too long allowed the darkness in his mind to bleed out into his daily life. And it was a mess in there. After all, he'd been alive for... for way too long. Even if he barely looked over 20.]
I ah, no, man. Sorry. Not sure I know who-- ah [The man seemed impressive, and for a moment he felt stage lights burning and he felt something strong about him. As he stood he stared at the man, hand squeezed back and looking more so confused.]
[Yeah, he's confused about the HBO thing, but he just let it go for now, a nod of his head and he was eyeing the man. Very impressive, but confusing.]
[What the hell was going on?]
Get me... taken care of? I ah, I think I'm okay. Nothing too bad. Promise. I'm a... nobody. You really don't have to go through all this trouble. I should, you know, thank you and leave you be.
[he said on an unsure tone of voice, frowning at the man as he moved with him for some reason. Fucked up big? What?] What do you mean fucked up?
INHUMAN RECRUITMENT.
It was - difficult.
This is not something human beings will ever understand. He folds Grant ward and the rest of the humans he's inhabited away and watches her peel off the rest of the cocoon waiting to see where she'll go. What she will...become.
This is the first of his people he's personally supervised coming out of the cocoon. It's bigger then HYDRA's pathetic ideals. The moment he's free he leans forward and speaks, mind to mind, doing his best to send as much positive emotion to her.]
You're safe.
Whatever happens to you now you are safe and I -
[your king]
Am here.
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The last thing she remembers is taking the vitamins the doctor insisted she have. Perfectly healthy girl, and still the doctor pushed. And now she's here, brushing and peeling off the last of whatever this is and--
Her train of thought derails when his voice fills her head. There's still eerie... good vibe from it, but her inborn stubbornness and distrust pushes back.
She's just going to take a few giant steps backward, away from this guy. ]
Y-Yeah, someone's done the whole "take me away for my own safety" thing. A friend of mine, actually. He got tazed.
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He won't pry. No feeding off his own kind but he folds his hands in his lap and shrugs.]
You're free to leave when you wish but it might before the best if you stay for the moment.
...Are you hungry?
[she should be. Terragenesis eats up a lot of bodily calories. But he's watching her too intently. No physical mutations yet.
Interesting.]
Thirsty?
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She wasn't hungry or thirsty until he asked. There's a whine in her stomach, and her throat is dry. Still... ] How do I know I can trust it? [ It's a yes, but it's a wary I-might-throw-it-back-in-your-face yes. ] All you've told me is that you're here. Great. But where's here and who are you?
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I can bring in someone else to taste it if you'd like but Guiyera is one of us, one of our kind, an important distinction.
[He shrugs then stands and - clearly with difficulty - extends his hand.]
You can call me Grant.
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And she's really hungry.
There's at least one question answered as he stands and... yeah, there's something not quite right. But it's automatic that she reaches out to briefly take his hand. Years of ingrained manners and politeness. ] Grant. I'm-- [ She considers lying to him for a moment. Maybe they already know her name. Maybe lying to them will make things worse. ] --Dawn.
[ She moves forward to the tray, still eyeing things warily. ] What do you mean, one of us? One of our kind?
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[He leans back.] There's no need to be afraid. You're among family.
[He gestures.] Which is where it begins. ...Where it begins is...difficult.
[He frowns as Guiyera steps to the wall. Grant shrugs.] Do you believe in aliens?
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RUNNING FROM VIOLENCE.
We don't run now you're dead you get me?
We don't run now, SHIELD takes you.
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Instead it's just her, and then it's just her and this man from out of nowhere. And he's good, yes, but even together there's still too much. He's got a hand on her arm, tight, and it's instinct that she resists. That she tries to pull away from him.
He helped, but she still doesn't know him, and they're still not safe. ]
Run where? They're coming out of the woodwork and what the hell is SHIELD?
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They're worse.
And they fuck with powered people. Like that stunt back there.
[putting a guy through a door. Still, that Dog of Hell might have had it coming]
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[ Dawn never paid a whole lot of attention in civics. What she knows comes from cursory glances and personal experience. Now, if he had said US Army, then it might have clicked better. ]
I-I'm not powered. [ Maybe. She's not sure. This morning is all a blur. ] I don't know what's going on.
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[It could be a natural adrenaline reaction. Still.]
...Eat any fish late- Aw shit.
[He shoots, gesturing her for her to get down]
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He went through the wall?
[ She vaguely remembers that. A man in a uniform in her doorway, pointing a gun at her. She went for his face, swinging hard. She expected it to be distracting, to maybe break his nose. But she just remembers him disappearing and then everything went to hell. ]
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[And Ward steps back as a SHIELD agent appears, a man, wearing that same suit and tie combo and wielding a gun. Ward's attention is drawn by the men behind him but the single man-
Come quietly. he growls we don't want to hurt you.
As he advances is all her. He makes a fist and swings.]
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He misses those days. The world was wide and vast and unexplored and the sense of community he had felt with the others who had been taken and abused by their supposed Kree masters had formed the first communities. It had been heady, it had been heartbreaking, to be apart often from friends, from family, from loved ones and raised to the stars.
The ties that bind still linger. They linger in settlements like the one he's found, far away from his people yet still aware of their presence. The beast (Lash he called himself.) was unable to sever each connection entirely. That is his purpose, he wants to be connected, needs to be connected. Needed to be connected.
It's not the same since Coulson and The Team blasted him. Some mornings he wakes up as Will Daniels, he is haunted by tastes and smells on Grant Ward's undead tongue, he has a fondness for pecan pie - something neither of the previous men hate, but Malick's baby brother loved. They'd steal it from the kitchen and cook would complain to father but his brother would always take the rap until at last he'd killed him.
A thousand memories, a million, but those three lifetimes ring truest. He is connected to them, their heartbreakingly short lives. He combs through each memory like a child looking for sea shells. He would rather have those three memories fresh in his mind then anything else in the world.
And some days he is reminded of his purpose. All inhumans have a purpose, the clan elder said to a boy just before he underwent terragenesis. Just before his blood called him to the stones and the mist. He emerged with a third eye, horrified, unable to ever mingle with normal human beings again. A girl a month before, after her sixteenth birthday came out of her cocoon covered in scales. She had sharp teeth. She had shoved away the doctor who wanted to help her. Things are not so different after all.
Alveus had stepped in after that in this small mountain community. The girl was clawing at anyone who came close but he had shifted and sat down and told her his tale. The others gathered around, people from all walks, some from all places. They weren't the only community he was told, they lived scattered and every time he thought about bringing them together, taking back the planet from the humans...
His head ached. He heard Jemma screaming. He saw Skye shot. He watched Gideon betray him again. And again. and again.
Time he tells himself, and he shivers and masters his ability, to unite them all blindly, to make them all want to serve him and tells her about Thomas Sharpe, who he was once upon a time, who was born with a sixth finger and cursed for a witch. He tells her about Kat Bucket, a london whore. He tells her indirectly about himself as his tentacles shift in the breeze. She doesn't feel better but she allows her family to take her back to their dwelling.
He could make her feel better. This is what he struggles with. He is a narcotic by nature. He could give her the peace she so desires, make her happy with her inhuman choices but every time he opens his eyes he sees the lives of someone else.
And there is someone else too. A woman, a young girl really whose psychic ability far outstrips his own (his skill really came from millennia of observational experience and a bare skimming of an advanced alien brain.) He had to figure out how to build a wall around his innermost thoughts but he did it, was one of the first to do it probably. Still it's not made of the strongest materials.
Idly he wonders if his thoughts might sound like bees. Standing there watching the sun set.]
How do they sound? My thoughts?
[One inhuman he'd known millennia ago saw colors for thoughts. Another saw pictures much like the films that would one day rule the world. He doesn't bother looking at her.]
If your brother knew you were out here he might be angry.
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There's no other word for it. that's what Daniels had, a space ship, and this is a space ship only it's unlike any ship that Daniels has ever known existed. The beings in it are just that - beings.
For the first time in millennia he sheds his human skin and appraoches the beings ready to kill them, ready to raise his hands and devour them, he is the storm - but they're willing to get him off planet. You're from Pax right? sure I've been. How the hell'd you end up way out here? Lost on a star ship?
It's a family, and the little boy is...pink.
He can only face up to the stars with a human's sense of wonder. Among them, among aliens for the first time who don't want to kill him, or use him, or torture him, his wonder is reborn.
There are a few people who guess, a few people who throw around what he is - Kree experiment. Drucking Kree! he has over a millennia worth of experience under his belt.
Nothing has prepared him for this.
It makes him nervous. He's had to kill a few beings, their remains reduced to ash and bone and their meat and flavor sit heavily in his belly. However in some planets - ironically the ones close to the Kree homeworld he begins to realize that the food agrees with him more. It stirs up feelings. Regret. Anger. He remembers every day of his transformation. He remembers it very well. It is etched in him and discovering that the Kree are not well liked...
Perhaps he could return to earth. Plead his case. Perhaps inhumans could be persuaded to take arms against their former overlords in a more direct manner. Perhaps even, the so called avengers could help. He can set aside his directives, his biological directives for that. Whatever has left him here, whatever has left him alive has done so for a reason.
Still he feels more accepted here and more free to be himself then he ever has before. even if this self was made with torture. There are rules here however, ones he doesn't know which is what brings him to the dive bar in Knowhere. He is looking for Star-Lord. Star Lord destroyed Ronan the Accuser. Star Lord is a human living in space.
Will Daniels has quite a lot to say about this, but he doesn't have to pretend to be him. Grant ward's facade hasn't appeared in what feels like years. It is his flesh, his meat suit, there is after all a shortage of bodies, but strangely the more he remains as himself the less he wants to change back. Being a monster made of tentacles does not shock many here.
The question becomes, will it shock his contact. Wearing a hooded robe he procured on a nearby planet he lowers it, boldly, red eyes grim.]
Are you Gamora?
[His voice is poised.] Friend of Star Lord?
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Maria had said there was another world, this young man was tied into it somehow with a degree of magical skill.No encounter with an elder god leaves a man unchanged.
Shaking, he parked his car in the parking structure of his hotel and climbed out, moving back to check the back seat and shake the sleeping figure.]
...Wake up son.
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[He remembered feeling a weight in his chest, and something dark pull at his neck, but he had no idea if that was the thing he knew or what ever just happened before him. Everything after that was black.]
[And as always, when it was black in his head, he wandered in his mind, the world around him, in his mind, was filled with creatures and darkness, slime and things that couldn't be allowed out. He wasn't even sure if it was a real work inside there or his mind playing tricks on him.]
[Didn't matter. He didn't like it.]
[When someone shook him, he gasped, feeling startled out of his darkness. The hand in his head had came to his shoulder to do more then shake, but the hand in reality shook him looked human. Looking up to see a man there, he then realized he was in the back of a car. Confused he glanced around a moment, sucking in a rushed breath]
I'm not dead? What happened?
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He raises a hand to the kid and pulls it back, squeezing his fingers.]
...This is going to get complicated. We're at the OmniSteam.
...You don't know who I am?
[Cool.
He feels like this man. He can feel the aches in him, see a glimpse into his mind and for one moment he has to look away.]
C'mon.
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[And then there was this man, offering him a hand to get out of the car. He... shifted in the back seat, sitting up better and looked around, confused.]
I ah... We're at the cleaners? [He said almost dumbly, like he didn't get that at all either.]
[Darwin was new to this area. Traveling through is all. It's what he did. He wandered. Sitting still too long allowed the darkness in his mind to bleed out into his daily life. And it was a mess in there. After all, he'd been alive for... for way too long. Even if he barely looked over 20.]
I ah, no, man. Sorry. Not sure I know who-- ah [The man seemed impressive, and for a moment he felt stage lights burning and he felt something strong about him. As he stood he stared at the man, hand squeezed back and looking more so confused.]
I feel like I should know you...
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[Leave it at that. Never mind that he ...felt his confusion.]
We're about to go up and see my kids and my sister. Get you taken care of. You're going to tell me who you are, as much as you can. Do you understand?
[his voice is soft, commanding. then it relaxes] Cause I might have fucked up in a big way okay?
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[What the hell was going on?]
Get me... taken care of? I ah, I think I'm okay. Nothing too bad. Promise. I'm a... nobody. You really don't have to go through all this trouble. I should, you know, thank you and leave you be.
[he said on an unsure tone of voice, frowning at the man as he moved with him for some reason. Fucked up big? What?] What do you mean fucked up?
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