all in all that i know there's nothing here to run from

[dugdowndeep]

Jack has been in the agora for some time, a recently roughed-up but currently well groomed young man sitting still and unobtrusive. If there have been questions asked around him, it would be difficult to say he heard them; he certainly hasn't been answering. Just sitting

Comments

[nogooddog]

Charlie isn't the type to pass up a man with booze especially when it is the good stuff. So he pops down next to Jack and snatches up the bottle.

"It's not healthy to talk to yourself, Pal. People will start to wonder."

Without asking, he begins to unwrap the gold foil. "Also? If you leave a place next to you empty and a bottle open you never know what kind of riff-raff will take a seat and help themselves."

[dugdowndeep]

The look he gives Charlie is not so much affronted as tense, as if it takes a great deal of effort to restrain his natural reaction to that offense, and the fact that he is managing to do so for multiple seconds in a row is a minor miracle.

"Understand before you attempt to open that," he says with sharp t's and a measured pace, "That enjoying that particular bottle of champagne is worth more to me than your life, and another bottle of equal quality is worth less than either, if that's what you're after."

Which is a lot of fancy words for, Step the fuck off.

[nogooddog]

Charlie continues to work on opening the bottle completely nonplussed. "Man, I got no idea what the Hell you just said except for the bit about my life and I'm already the walking dead so that ain't really a concern of mine."

He ponders the cork under the foil and then decides to answer Jack's original question. "As for parents - they didn't do nothing for me aside from die."

[dugdowndeep]

Jack hears the response but doesn't look like he's listening, instead carefully unclenching his fist and bringing that hand to his temple.

"It means give that back and I'll get you another." He doesn't sound like he wants to offer that courtesy, but maybe it will get him further, and surely a little diplomacy is worth not celebrating his son's birth with violence.

[fireburned]

"Is that the best question to ask right off the bat, really?"

The only change to Harvestman's general... Harvestman-ness is the clean, somewhat new clothes he was wearing.

[dugdowndeep]

Jack smiles a titch to see him and gestures to the bench. Sit, if you want.

"I'm not expecting anyone to pour out their hearts to me, if that's what you mean," he says with enough eye-rolling in his tone to suggest why no one would share their feelings with him anyway. "It's a question that can be answered relatively impersonally, and that's all I'm after, not your deep dark secrets."

[fireburned]

"That ain't what I meant." Harvestman sits on the bench anyway. He'd join Jack in whatever drinking the man decides to do, if he could - instead, he just leans back and eyes him.

"My father," he says, after a moment. "Didn't talk to me for nearly a whole damn year 'cause he thought I was gay. And my mother skipped out on us when I was four. Anything else I reckon was my own damned fault because I was a fuck awful kid, but I ain't quite been able to let those two things go."

[dugdowndeep]

The part about his father earns an actual wince from Jack - empathetic, with a hint of a nod, for reasons Harvestman can probably guess. Here is where other people might comment on that similar experience, and if Jack's purpose was to ruminate on his own parents' failures, he might, but it isn't. He already knows not to do what they did.

"Do you think it was worse for her to be gone, versus just being a bad parent? -I know that's not a fair question, but hypothetically, if you had to choose an absent mother or a poor one."

Time-line note: after everyone else

[itsmyvow]

Michelle watches her brother: the champagne, the easily identifiable stationary, and his nerves. She knows what's happened. For a moment all she can do is smile. Elisheba has a cousin. All the standard questions (boy or girl? Weight? Name? Mother and child's welfare?) run through her head.

The smile is a bit more wry when Jack doesn't immediately punch the almost thief of his alcohol.

Waiting until everyone else is finished, like awaiting a petition at court, she's a little nervous, not sure how she will received. Eli is four months older than her cousin.

Four months, four minutes, time is irrelevant.

They're family; numbers shouldn't matter, but they might.

"Mine separated me from my brother." Each word is a statement in itself.

[dugdowndeep]

Running into someone from home has always been a risk. Jack has done what he can to minimize it, but at the end of the day he always assured himself, even if someone recognized him, it would be impossible to confirm. Xanadu is a city at the crossroads of possibility; that he is himself and not some stranger with the prince's face would always be his secret to divulge

[itsmyvow]

To be blunt, Michelle would never have needed confirmation. This is Jack. Even without signs or faith, or even the culmination of the search she's been on, she would know Jack anywhere. It's difficult to hide from the only other person who would understand life in the palace. Though, as it stands, Michelle is quite sure she wouldn't want to.

Despite this, she doesn't move closer to him. It is easier to be rational while maintaining a physical distance.

Everything about Michelle is a bit softer -- a few extra pounds, the lack of tailoring of her clothes, the evident lack of attention from anything resembling make-up. She no longer has the time nor the inclination to care about such things.

His response makes her cross her arms and purse her lips for a moment. Should she ever have needed proof of Jack's, well Jack-ness that tone would be it. "I could've listed them out like a petition, but I decided to stick with the most relevant."

[dugdowndeep]

That earns half a smile from him, uncertain and cynical but affectionate. "No, I guess we don't want to be here all week."

There's something comfortingly familiar about garnering her annoyance. With everything that has been on his plate since they last spoke, he hadn't thought about missing her. He'd worried about her safety, certainly, but they hadn't been close so much as steady constants in each other's lives as of late - and considering how they'd parted, he hadn't exactly wanted to dwell on how their next meeting would go. But here she is.

"I hope exile hasn't been as hard on you as it was your tailor?" ...Who Jack can only assume has died, by the looks of her. (It's easier to focus on superficial details, to start.)

[ouroborosdance]

There is something familiar about Jack, alcohol, and the pair of them trying to recuperate after a very long week, month, or...you know, year or more. Hasibe stays in a nearby doorway for a second, watching him ask his question, and then crosses the Agora, the click of her heels echoing. She sits on the broad, flat arm of the bench Jack has claimed for his own, legs crossed neatly (because she's in some tiny cocktail dress, as per usual, with a coat tossed over her shoulders, but her arms aren't in the sleeves).

"My mother went and got herself murdered," she says, in a tone of voice to match his smile, "took me a while to forgive her that one."

[dugdowndeep]

Jack imagines Hasi knows him well enough to guess whether he actually feels sympathy at that response, so what he shows of it in his eyes is brief but genuine, unlike the cynicism he returns to just after. It's not a mask with any particular purpose, for once, just a face to wear until he figures out what he's feeling.

"But you found it in your heart eventually, hm?"

[ouroborosdance]

"I don't hold grudges well," she admits, which is probably more the root of it than anything else- she can try to hold onto things, but most of the time, her anger will eventually dissolve and turn into something else instead. There are, of course, exceptions, none of which have much bearing on this conversation.

"And I suppose over the years...other things built up. We don't take well to being parented, my sort, those relationships are tentative and fade away even if we don't want them to." Hasi rests her hands on her knees, watching Jack. "Are you celebrating something?"

She punctuates that with a nod toward the champagne.

[dugdowndeep]

"I am," he answers simply and unhelpfully. But his expression softens minutely at the question, a shine catching his eye. He's too exposed, here in the agora, to show or say much more than that - but there are other ways.

"My sort tend to need a great deal of parenting," he continues after a beat as if she hadn't asked anything at all, offering the slip of paper to her wordlessly, "Which is unfortunate because we're spectacularly bad at it. But then I suppose that's why we marry far, far away from the bloodline."

The stationary bears a butterfly crest and a brief message: Joel Ishmerai 8/21.

[visitedupon]

It seems apt to answering a question about parents that Veda does it with a child in tow; she's seated and Mayaseralle is at her feet, the toddler intently focused on a shining puzzle-toy that she can't quite decipher. (It's one way to keep her quiet.)

She seems at first as though she's going to ignore the question like she has some others, her attention more on a little book she's been carrying around...but she doesn't, in the end, even if she chooses her words carefully.

"They got me killed," she says, eventually.

Mayaseralle looks up, but Veda smiles at her and shakes her head.

[dugdowndeep]

The child catches his eye every so often, half fearful, half wistful gazes that never linger but perhaps repeat often enough to stand out. But her response snaps his attention away.

"That's a new one." It's an answer he can relate to better than most, funnily (or unfunnily) enough, but he refrains from sharing that precious nugget of information. "Well, you seem to have recovered admirably."

[visitedupon]

"Sorcery of one nature or another," Veda shrugs; they honestly don't seem to have much of an answer to it, just speculation that she feels no particular obligation to launch into at the drop of a hat with a perfect stranger. "To die in one world and wake in another is not so unusual here, I'm coming to see. And war is not so unique, either."