Legacy

Participants:

danko3_icon.gif huruma_icon.gif

Scene Title Legacy
Synopsis It turns out Huruma has a mutilated son despite having tried to kill him at one point. Danko has a pack of cigarettes.
Date December 12, 2009

Madagascar


Danko is walking.

He's pretty good at it, having done a fair amount of it in his lifetime, heavy pack hoisted up high on his shoulders and skullish head down. Technically it's dark enough that he should have stopped half an hour ago, but he'd hung back in the beginning to ensure that he wouldn't have to be anywhere close to most of the others and now he has catching up to do. If he feels like it. On second thought, when he draws himself to a gradual halt and squints up at the sky fading bluish grey against the swath of jungle green latticed overhead, he's not sure he does.

The colorless bristle of his burr has dried out since the last heavy rain and mostly stands up like it's supposed to, grey and white blending down into a sandpaper stubble collection that could probably stand to disappear. He itches at it as he tips his attention back down onto the muddy ground and then sideways off into thicker growth, where there are more insects and less of a chance of being mowed over by an enemy vehicle in the night.

Less chance of being mowed over- but a considerably bigger chance that he has a tagalong he never really intended- nor wants- to have. Danko hung back long enough for Huruma to take note of it; and when he doesn't complete his journey through the woods after the others on the animal-trod path, she excuses herself without warning and disappears off into the forest as well. It isn't like she has nothing better to do- it is just that Danko is one of two people around that do not seem to deny her presence before it is even physically there.

She does less to hide herself as she approaches him, at least one crackle of twig under her boots signaling that she is moving closer. Huruma does not appear until he is in the thicker brush, slipping sidelong through the wall of greenery and out of the shadows intertwined within it. Her features are partially obscured by hanging leaves, one last layer of branches in front of her- one way of putting a wall between herself and Emile, just to begin with. Her eyes find him past the spotted light between dark green spaded shapes.

"One of th'empty villages is bound t'ave a razor- nobody would miss it." Scruffy bald is so last year.

A single cracked twig at his periphery is enough to have a sidearm off its strap at Danko's leg and cocked, if not necessarily at ready. He keeps it low, nose down towards the mud and the worms writhing therein while he presses his careful way deeper into the brush, quiet and sure-footed as whatever left the hoofprints he's left behind.

A few feet further and there's a tree trunk wide enough that its base affords some shelter from the wind and any rain it should drive with it. After another minute's idle consideration, Emile's slung his pack down off his narrow shoulders and drawn in a breath that looks a whole lot like relief while there's no one around to take notice. …Except for the fact that there is.

His attention snaps aside to lock on Huruma's appearance half an instant before she addresses him, and it's only by virtue of the fact that cautionary reflex manages to overtake the more murderous set that he doesn't blow the back of her head off. Mild irritation sets his teeth out in a line while he eyes her, but he shakes it quick enough to shrug his rifle off without a flounce. Even in light of her apparently unfavorable opinion of how manly he's looking lately.

Is that how it is going to be? Alright. Huruma sidles further out of the dark brush, wandering around the backside of Danko's tree. Running one hand against the bark, she reappears on the other side in a few moments, visible skin covered in the same drizzle that happens to be covering anything it can land on. The gritting of teeth is not quite ignored; it only serves to make her vulture-like movements all the more picky. She circled in, circled around- and now as she peers past the edge of the tree, Huruma circles above, so to speak.

"Sometime on th'Ankofia, I said tha'you used t'ave brown hair- I don'think anybody b'lieved me." She may have told Eileen and Candy some- ah- other things, but those are not worth the mention unless she wants him to cut her legs out from under her. "Where did you go? Or was tha'trip o'yours jus't'get away from us?" Huruma's lips curl in a smile, the side of her jaw rubbing against the treebark as she leans there, peering over the curve of trunk down at Danko.

"I encountered heavy opposition upriver and was diverted off course into unfriendly territory for several days. As you may have noticed, 'unfriendly territory' encompasses most of the island." Marginally more relaxed through the tired set of his shoulders now that the twig breaker has shown itself to be Huruma, Danko thumbs over the hammer again and flexes at the trigger, releasing both in a soundless glide of metal across metal. That he delivers his report as he would to someone more official is an automatic thing, careless and off-hand. It's his story and he's sticking to it.

"The rest of the time was spent trying to figure out where the hell everyone went. If your recent run-in with the locals had been any quieter I probably wouldn't have found you at all." His brows tip up, matter-of-fact, and then he's itching again, as uncomfortable with even the ghost of a beard as he doubtless looks while he eyes her and her tree. His tree. "You think I'm playing for the other team?"

"I never said that-" Huruma does pause a moment to peer more critically at him, but there is still the air of her usual moods. "But I cannot say th'same for all th'others- an'Dajan, Tau, th'MLF, they only know you by …reputation. Mmm." She appears to slide along the rest of the tree, finding one of its upraised roots nearer the broad side to crouch down onto, spine against treebark. Her attention moves again to the obviously uncomfortable scruff along Danko's face, one hand roaming up to brush at her own skull. The dark hair that is there is short, wiry, threatening to go into its most natural state of small, rigid curls.

"But in th'end, we found …bigger things t'worry about." A pause. "…No pun intended, Emile."

The looted jacket's shirked off next, camouflage bulk a size or two too big despite rolled sleeves and the bullet resistent vest locked in underneath. He tosses it a little carelessly over onto his pack before starting on said vest, pale eyes passing back over Huruma with something that reads more of old, resigned tolerance than real amusement. Wouldn't've made it this far if he couldn't endure an occasional ribbing. Most people know better anyway.

But she gets away with it, for now. He's preoccupied with rolling wire-strung shoulders once the last of the extra weight's off his back, vest dropped down into the mud with little care for its already poor condition. "And what do they think about your reputation?"

Huruma's face meets Danko's look of tolerance with a rather knowing smirk. She knows better, but it all fell into place so easily that it was one of those moments she had to take. Now she watches the ex-ex-marine with a tilted gaze, leaning back and sinking into a sitting position, sidesaddle to the snake-like root holding back a wall of jungle ground. It's a good spot- a wall to virtually three sides where Danko has put himself. Something else seems to have come to rest there before, judging by various scuffs along the lower bark. Once the question rolls back to her, Huruma's features tighten against a clenching of the jaw. The topic looks to have already put the woman off of her usual game, eyes peering away from Emile and towards the direction of the other campsite.

"Most of them are frightened- Tau looks at m'like I will decide t'stick him any second. I scared th'piss out of him- I tried something- he got in m'way." Gabriel and Eileen stopped me, I paid Gabriel back later- Huruma leaves out some parts, noticeably not including anything about Dajan. She does, however, sound like she is glad to speak about it to someone else.

"S'it bother you?" Doesn't look like it bothers him. That might even be the implication there while he threads his dog tags out from under his collar and drops himself down into a springy crouch next to the tumbled pile of supplies he's shed. He tips further back into a sit from there, bony ass finding temporary rest on gnarled root some three or four feet from Huruma's perch while he plies around for a box of cigarettes and a matchbox shored up in one of the pack's outer pockets.

In a matter of seconds he's lit up and smoking, spent match snuffed out betwixt his fingers and flicked aside. Apparently pristine maintenance of mostly undamaged jungle isn't one of his bigger priorities here.
Huruma tenses the muscles in her shoulders, rolling them in a slight stretching motion. Her attention stays off into the jungle until the flick of a match, and it follows the little orange dot across the gray tones of Danko and the trunk of the tree. There is something new- something actually morose- that is not something he has encountered out of her before. Whether or not he pays that much attention is left for him to decide- as is whether he chooses to say something if he does see it. "Don'let th'men know you'ave those."

Bother her? "Only coming from Dajan." Eyelids shutter brown against white, pupils stirring from the near south to Danko again. "But he is frustrated- not frightened."

Danko's the same as he's ever been over there on his root. Entire decades have done little more than wear lines in around his cadaverous countenance along the pathways of familiar expressions. His hair has thinned and faded; his face has sunken in and the disarming softness of youth has lifted from his person like a fog to bare the hard edges and reptilian cold built up underneath. But his posture's the same. His demeanor, his disinterest in niceties and his distraction. He still smokes.

"'Dajan''s the one with with the," face, says a hazy sketch of his cigarette hand before it rubs at his nose and pokes his smoke back into the corner of his mouth. "You like him?" Emile doesn't even try to look like he cares one way or the other, the biggest failure of a fun gay bff to confide in maybe in the history of ever. He blinks slow and swallows, relishing the rationed rush of nicotine through his bloodstream, off in his own unruffled world.

Huruma's world, on the other hand, has been ruffled numerous times and flattened hastily back down within the past week, give or take. She stares at her boot now, examining the worn sole, the muddy laces still slick with water. The one with the Face. The Face she Gave Him. The scars, both physical and not. Danko may be the Worst Gay Bestie Ever, but at this point he is the only one that doesn't know- partly it is to keep him in the loop, but deeper down it is Huruma having a sudden feeling of needing to sort her business out for herself.

"He's my son." Not the right answer, no. She doesn't answer that one, as the answer is a more profound 'yes'.

Oh.

…Wow.

Emile sniffs, brows canted up in laggard, half-hearted appreciation of the onion-layered, awkward wad of difficulty that particular nugget of confession represents in the big scheme of the…group dynamic. Or whatever it is that they have. Together.

They are a group and they are dynamic. Maybe that counts for something.

More than amusement or curiosity at the revelation, once again there's resignation through the lines etched in light over his brow and sketched grey through his thoughts. One more distraction for a team that's so far failed to make much of a name for itself in terms of any kind of cohesive direction or attention span.

Smoke clouds tenuous ahead of a sigh pushed slow through Danko's sinuses, and with all the things he could potentially say, he opts to go with a dry: "Mazel tov."

"I wish it was tha'lucky of a thing. I thought I'd really killed him, long ago- his sister is still alive too." Two kids, keep counting. Huruma never remarks on his seeming lack of reactions towards much of anything- if its not on his face or in his emotions he probably does not want to share, or probably has no input regardless. She almost suspects it is the latter this time around; though the onion does indeed have many layers to it, and that much is clear. Insomuch as she cares to comment further about the topic, whether or not he cares. She does stop after a bit, thankfully. Danko sighs, Huruma sighs to match. With less smoke and more air.

"Per'aps it is a good thing. Per'aps not." We'll see. Right now it is straddling that point.

A sniff against the humidity is hard to read as anything beyond distant ambivalence. A kind of underplayed shrug that never reaches the ridged curve of his spine or the hunch of his shoulders over his knees, even if he does look at her a little sideways upon hearing that Huruma Jr shouldn't be alive at all. It is what it is. She is what she is.

An animal.

"You planning on staying here?" is inquired as one might ask a stray dog the same question, mild without expecting a conclusive answer in the seconds before his grey eyes finish ghosting over her and find something else to look at in the forest.

"For a short while longer. I needed …a break." Huruma can only take so much constant contact with the new Bravo group. She settles against the tree again, feet hanging, eyes peering off at something else in tandem with Emile's look. "I promise t'be quiet." Her index finger lifts to her lips now, a gesture to match her words.

No argument. Especially if she promises to be quiet. Company calculated for with one last sidelong glance, Danko stifles a yawn through the teeth he has bitten in around his cigarette and leans to sort through his pack proper-like. There's a bedroll in there somewhere — or at least a blanket, mismatched as everything else he's picked up out've abandoned houses or dead bodies.


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