Kara has survival instincts. Like every human being, they're written in her blood. That sheer will to live has been her only salvation more times than she can number, but it's not the same as self-preservation.
She can summon that, too, has in fact gotten good at it since meeting her daughter, but today isn't a day for sense. Not on the heels of trying to bleed out at her own front door, of stumbling, finally, into the Winchester after a flight from teddy bears, tight lipped and bone white and arms full of weeping little girls. Not after Mitchell and his fucking whiskey. Not even for this hulk of a man in the sand in front of her, bleeding, groaning, puking.
Kara could step back, but she doesn't, she stands there, chases insanity instead of sense, and watches him until he's done. "You didn't land far from the clinic," she observes, steady in the face of her own flash of nerves. "It's not all bad news."
There was a woman in the ring, and she was no Card Girl. There was something in her tone, and maybe he was just delirious, but even before he looked up, he thought military.
Rubbing the back of his good hand across his mouth, he squinted up at her, one of his eyes rapidly swelling shut. That was the least of his worries.
"Yeah?" he croaked, "You wanna go ahead and tell me what the fuck that means?"
She eyes him, cataloging the injuries on the face now upturned, the way his arm hangs, the passing glassiness in his one unobstructed eye. "It means you're not about to die," she answers, not quite stupid enough to look away from him, even if the naked pain in his face is almost enough to turn her head.
Sitting back on his hunches, he sat there for a moment just to catch his breath, swaying through a wave of vertigo now that the adrenaline that had kept him going through the fight had ebbed.
"Yeah... Yeah, I can walk," he slurred, "Soon as you start making some sense and tell me where I'm walking to."
Something new that Lisbeth did in her spare time, when she wasn't giving orders to students or debauching youth, was figuring out new ways to smoke. She'd replicated clove cigarettes by now, and stood over him. She exhaled, filling the air with the smell of it.
The poor bastard, she thought, to be found by her.
"What the fuck happened to you?" she asked. "Who did this?" Her accent was slightly thicker with the possibility of his appearance. "They around still?"
He knew that much, and while Pop was making damn sure he was taking care of his lungs, it was habit keeping track of where he could and couldn't light up. Everybody was so goddamn health conscious, these days. Eating right and not smoking and finding Jesus and living their boring fucking lives, and when he wasn't training, all that granola eating, organic bullshit made him feel even more like some kind of outsider.
So, the smoke would've been comforting, if it weren't for the nausea. Luckily, he'd already puked up everything, so she could blow the shit in his face all she wanted and all it was going to do was make his head swim just that much more.
She was talking, this skinny, tiny little thing with a scowl that meant business, and all he could do was wipe a hand across his mouth, squint up at her and slur, "What the fuck're you talkin' 'bout?"
Lisbeth dropped into a crouch, only looking smaller. She took a long drag from the cigarette as she looked him up and down. "I would ask if you're a boxer, but the injuries aren't in the right places."
She looked back towards the jungle, hoping someone better equipped to help him would come out about now.
"Yeah, thanks for noticing," Tommy muttered, spitting into the sand and then, with a heave of a breath, he pushed himself upright to sit on his haunches.
"You wanna tell me what the fuck's going on? Or would you rather keep staring?"
While the reactions towards yesterday's attacks seem to range from terrified to amused, Thor's own is distinctly the latter; much as it had reminded him of something Loki might have done (and indeed, there's a part of him that wonders, despite the evidence, if his brother hadn't played some part in the events), there was a certain joy to be found in plowing through the bits of fluff with Mjolnir, even if the challenge was lacking. In the aftermath, Thor has spent the better part of the day rounding up stuffed carcasses, the 'dead' slung over his shoulder in a hand-tied net. He means to burn them later (they're no good for eating), but he's distracted from his self-imposed task of gathering when he crosses a relatively large man (by mortal standards, at least), sitting on the steps of a building Thor has had little reason to enter in the past beyond simple curiosity
( ... )
He hadn't had a smoke for four months, and Pop would've smacked the cigarette right out of his mouth, but if ever a guy needed an excuse to fall off the wagon, this was it.
His shoulder ached, sure, but it was a dull throb now, the rattling aches and pains in the rest of his body fading into the background. He had bigger shit on his mind.
But this guy... This guy was fucking huge. Well out of Tommy's weight class, but that didn't mean he hadn't taken one or two of 'em down before. That also didn't mean he hadn't gotten his ass handed to him by a few, too.
His eyes narrowed just slightly, he exhaled a stream of smoke and said, "Yeah, something like that."
"Not with these, I hope?" says Thor, hoisting his net off his shoulder just enough to give the toys a shake. There's an easy bemusement about the question, for all that it's tinged with an edge of doubt; he doesn't think he has seen this man before, which would therefore indicate a new arrival, but truthfully, Thor has been more concerned about learning the land than the people. He's friendly, talks to those he runs across throughout the course of his day, but he's not always the most observant, a bad habit he's constantly trying to correct.
Eyeing the sack of ruined toys, Tommy blinked slowly, a line of confusion drawn between his brows. "Not with those," he confirmed, taking a drag from his cigarette and flicking ash onto the sand by his bare feet.
These people really were all completely batshit.
"Couple hours ago, thereabouts. Feel like I've got a goddamn sign around my neck."
Declan's actually been spared giving the welcome speech before now and seeing the man land on the sand in front of him, he sort of wishes he'd missed out on this round too. But the way he's guarding that shoulder, Declan knows that pain, and he keeps a healthy distance.
"Bloody hell, mate. Good way to show up. Got a friend that's a doctor if you want her to patch it, otherwise, I'm good to put it back in myself. My left's always getting dislocated."
He thought, at first, that it was the ref standing over him, talking at him, a jumble of words he didn't quite understand. Yeah, his shoulder was in a bad way, he knew that, but he hadn't tapped out and he was conscious, which meant there was no damn reason for them to pull the plug on him yet.
"No," he muttered, waving the guy off without actually looking up, "Just... Fuck off, I ain't done." Clumsily, he pushed to his feet, his injured arm still held close at his side, and then finally, his vision swam into focus and he got a good look at the guy.
"Declan. If you've just showed, you probably don't realize you've ended up somewhere else entirely instead of where you were before."
Christ, it's confusing to his own ears and Declan wonders if there is a quick and easy way to explain the island to someone who's just shown up. He decides there probably isn't, not really, and shakes his head.
"I can explain later. The shoulder's more important."
"I wasn't on the goddamn beach before. Think I noticed that," Tommy said, unsteady on his feet, his tongue heavy and slurring, but a lot of that was the adrenaline. Adrenaline that was quickly fading, replaced with pain and a kind of bone-deep weariness that had little to do with the fight.
"No. No, you get the fuck back. Forget the goddamn shoulder. You tell me now."
Strangely enough, the man's resemblance to Eames was among the last details that Kate noticed when she spotted him on the steps. He was larger, for one, certainly heavier, brawnier, and if Eames had any tattoos, she had not yet been in a position to see them. She wasn't sure if Eames smoked, but she was sure she had never seen him do so. None of these differences, however, were what first caught her eye. While the smoke slowly rising overhead and melting into the humid air would have been sufficient cause for attention from most, what Kate first saw were his injuries, the likes of which she hadn't seen in a while. There was something else as well, new and unfamiliar lines etched into his brow, an aggression and a weariness where Eames, carefree as he was, exuded only confidence
( ... )
They were friendly, these people, or just curious. He couldn't be sure. He'd spent a hell of a lot of his life in the ring, in front of an audience, but he'd never felt so much like a goddamn bug under a microscope. There was something in her expression that he couldn't quite pin down, but it made him distantly uncomfortable, in a way he wasn't really used to.
She approached him cautiously, like you might a caged animal, and at least that wasn't unfamiliar.
"Yeah, so they tell me," he muttered, and he was weary enough that his old, boyhood accent had come back with a vengeance. Time in Tacoma, time in the Marines, had smoothed out some of those rough edges, but being back in Pittsburgh, being around Pop, meant that it was all fresh again.
"I think you're probably right," agreed Kate honestly. It wasn't that islands like this one and the last existed to drive people insane - although she had seen that happen, too - but the people who found themselves drawn in were damaged more often than not. Not just physically, either, she thought, scanning over the man's appearance once more. "It's sorta fitting, though," she adds, shrugging. "Crazy people, crazy situation. Maybe that's an entry requirement."
"Sounds about right," Tommy said with a low rumble of laughter, taking a drag from his cigarette and when he looked at her, something softened behind his eyes. If they were all crazy, it stood to reason that he was, too. And it wasn't like he hadn't thought it before. He'd been screwed up since Iraq. Hell, since long before then.
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She can summon that, too, has in fact gotten good at it since meeting her daughter, but today isn't a day for sense. Not on the heels of trying to bleed out at her own front door, of stumbling, finally, into the Winchester after a flight from teddy bears, tight lipped and bone white and arms full of weeping little girls. Not after Mitchell and his fucking whiskey. Not even for this hulk of a man in the sand in front of her, bleeding, groaning, puking.
Kara could step back, but she doesn't, she stands there, chases insanity instead of sense, and watches him until he's done. "You didn't land far from the clinic," she observes, steady in the face of her own flash of nerves. "It's not all bad news."
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Rubbing the back of his good hand across his mouth, he squinted up at her, one of his eyes rapidly swelling shut. That was the least of his worries.
"Yeah?" he croaked, "You wanna go ahead and tell me what the fuck that means?"
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"Can you walk?"
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"Yeah... Yeah, I can walk," he slurred, "Soon as you start making some sense and tell me where I'm walking to."
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The poor bastard, she thought, to be found by her.
"What the fuck happened to you?" she asked. "Who did this?" Her accent was slightly thicker with the possibility of his appearance. "They around still?"
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He knew that much, and while Pop was making damn sure he was taking care of his lungs, it was habit keeping track of where he could and couldn't light up. Everybody was so goddamn health conscious, these days. Eating right and not smoking and finding Jesus and living their boring fucking lives, and when he wasn't training, all that granola eating, organic bullshit made him feel even more like some kind of outsider.
So, the smoke would've been comforting, if it weren't for the nausea. Luckily, he'd already puked up everything, so she could blow the shit in his face all she wanted and all it was going to do was make his head swim just that much more.
She was talking, this skinny, tiny little thing with a scowl that meant business, and all he could do was wipe a hand across his mouth, squint up at her and slur, "What the fuck're you talkin' 'bout?"
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She looked back towards the jungle, hoping someone better equipped to help him would come out about now.
"You're fucked now."
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"You wanna tell me what the fuck's going on? Or would you rather keep staring?"
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His shoulder ached, sure, but it was a dull throb now, the rattling aches and pains in the rest of his body fading into the background. He had bigger shit on his mind.
But this guy... This guy was fucking huge. Well out of Tommy's weight class, but that didn't mean he hadn't taken one or two of 'em down before. That also didn't mean he hadn't gotten his ass handed to him by a few, too.
His eyes narrowed just slightly, he exhaled a stream of smoke and said, "Yeah, something like that."
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"Did you only just arrive?"
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These people really were all completely batshit.
"Couple hours ago, thereabouts. Feel like I've got a goddamn sign around my neck."
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"Bloody hell, mate. Good way to show up. Got a friend that's a doctor if you want her to patch it, otherwise, I'm good to put it back in myself. My left's always getting dislocated."
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"No," he muttered, waving the guy off without actually looking up, "Just... Fuck off, I ain't done." Clumsily, he pushed to his feet, his injured arm still held close at his side, and then finally, his vision swam into focus and he got a good look at the guy.
"Who the fuck're you?"
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Christ, it's confusing to his own ears and Declan wonders if there is a quick and easy way to explain the island to someone who's just shown up. He decides there probably isn't, not really, and shakes his head.
"I can explain later. The shoulder's more important."
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"No. No, you get the fuck back. Forget the goddamn shoulder. You tell me now."
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They were friendly, these people, or just curious. He couldn't be sure. He'd spent a hell of a lot of his life in the ring, in front of an audience, but he'd never felt so much like a goddamn bug under a microscope. There was something in her expression that he couldn't quite pin down, but it made him distantly uncomfortable, in a way he wasn't really used to.
She approached him cautiously, like you might a caged animal, and at least that wasn't unfamiliar.
"Yeah, so they tell me," he muttered, and he was weary enough that his old, boyhood accent had come back with a vengeance. Time in Tacoma, time in the Marines, had smoothed out some of those rough edges, but being back in Pittsburgh, being around Pop, meant that it was all fresh again.
"I think you're all fucking nuts."
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"I'm Tommy."
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