Participants:
| Scene Title | Man Down |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Fresh out of the Homeland Security attack, if not quite fresh enough for the taste of some, Teo has some bad news to break. In about two minutes, a relatively quiet evening turns into a knot of thrown punches, pistol threats, and malfunctioning Evolved abilities between some of the most dangerous men in New York City. |
| Date | November 16, 2009 |
Staten Island — Old Dispensary
On the outside, this sprawling multi-level complex has not seen use in many years, its walls covered in greenery and stone exterior and glass windows showing evidence of disrepair. Surrounded by a chain link fence, a drive leads from the street to a large dock, and around the back one can expect to find more sprawling greenery that eventually leads to a concrete drop off into the Atlantic Ocean.
Passing through the chainlink fence and into the dispensary will reveal that the aged and crumbling outside is a facade. The loading dock is kept clear for the most part of everything save vehicles and supplies, though a section has been quartered off and transformed into an open workshop. The dispensary itself has been transformed into something akin to a makeshift dormitory, complete with common areas, a sizable kitchen and eating area, with various rooms converted into bedrooms for the residence. One room has even been set up as a makeshift clinic, amply stocked with supplies.
The back lawn and garden of the dispensary is surprisingly well tended, green and lush during the right months. Vegetables have been planted in accordance to season closer to the building, though someone has indulgently planted a plots of flowers - notably sunflowers - here and there. Further out, the ground drops a little and makes it to a concrete edge from which opens out into deeper water of the Atlantic.
The situation report has improved in the past five or six hours. A few were spent plugging raggedly-fleshed holes, carrying distended silences, short-flared arguments, and waiting for the crawl of clock hands to establish a point in time at which it would be safe to move out without threat of Homeland Security descending from above. Not that you could be really sure, or that time improved on what secretive travel routes and calls ahead could not, but they needed time, too, to regroup, rally morale. The pastor and the…
Whatever the fuck Teo is lately. Checking in with the Ferry went okay, in the end, insofar as there was enough medical equipment for a cursory patch job, shot of antibiotics, and that Teo has no control over what Joseph is going to be telling their compatriots about what went down as soon as he's out of sight, but he owes a few explanations himself, which take precedence over protecting his popularity or.
His punctured shoulder, though it feels like it could use a little coddling, in conjunction with rubber-battered ribs, during the tooth-rattling bounce-a-thrash of the boat skimming the sea Staten-ward. After the lurch of engine and surf, driving to the dispensary was relatively painless, despite cloying fatigue threatening to put his face into the wheel four or five times. He's as blind as a bat out here, in the undwindled night, crowded by paranoia and blinkered by the negator who'd poked a psyionic finger into his third eye.
It's his birthday today. Technically was, technically yesterday, the Sicilian remembers as he lurches past chainlink, into the door. "Raith!" His voice is so raw from thirst, exhaustion, and cold that it barely sounds human. He wipes browned blood off his palm and onto his pant leg, lets the hall funnel his voice down with acoustics. "Ethan. Gabriel— hello?"
"How come I'm second?" Boots clap softly against the ground as Ethan emerges from whatever shadow he was lurking in. Stepping into what is currently passing for light, the Wolf frowns down at the boy, bringing up one hand to tap his lips thoughtfully. He arches a brow as he studies the length of the Sicilian youth before tilting his chin over his shoulder. "Oy! Electrician is 'ere." Slowly his attention swivles back down to Teo. Taking a step forward, Ethan does something very un-Ethan like.
Offering his hand in support, the Brit motions with his head for Teo to take his offer and follow him in. "Get in a fight with y'hooker again, did'ya?" Whether Teo takes his hand or not, the Wolf will begin to lead the man further into the Dispensary. "Now what is it Lassie? Y'tryin t'tell us somethin?"
There's only so many people who would come stumbling into the dispensary calling for him. And that number is, apparently, one. Well, whatever. "Hey, that's great news!" Raith calls out after Ethan's shout, half-walking, half-stumbling down the hallways as he pulls on his coat over his sleepwear. Which is almost identical to his daywear, in any case. "What's going on? Do you assholes realize what time it is? I don't wake up this early unless I have to, or there's bacon, and I don't smell any goddam bacon, so this had better be important."
Appearing from the shadows in a manner similar to Ethan, one look at Teo changes his mood for, well… for the Raith, maybe. "Fuck," he says, "It's zombies, isn't it? Did they bite you? How many are there?"
And why is Gabriel third? Though he doesn't share Ethan's sentiments and so such a point goes unvoiced. Creaking foot steps herald Gabriel's appearance instead, where winter-dawn light is struggling through windows and curtains. He, too, was sleeping, but his walk is brisk at what sounds distinctly like an emergency drawing him out from probably the attic, if the thunk of the staircase folding down is to be of any indication.
He appears somewhere around the mention of zombies, raising an eyebrow at the back of Raith's head before he's looking past the King of Swords to regard Teo. There's no real surprise to see the younger man looking like shit. How often do they come home with various hurts and ailments? His arms are folded around his midsection, a grey T-shirt too thin against the morning chill, pulled on hurriedly, his pants the kind of sleeping in and feet bare against ice cold wooden flooring.
Ethan and Raith have— kind of— spoken all questions necessary, and Gabriel is silent to allow for an answer.
Though lying's a sin and Teo is slightly pathological about his religion sometimes, he feels no real compulsion to explain the subconscious motivation that internally slides into painfully sharp focus as soon as Ethan asks.
'Oh, you know,' he'dve offered otherwise, 'Descending order of who I was least hoping would be home.' In light of this fact, he'd probably be due a little caution or hesitation in sharing with the class while he's being led by the arm, hitchy and squinting, into the recesses of the dispensary, but he's never been very good at either of those things and personally regards that as a waste of time. So it is. He doesn't exert himself even to scowl at zombie or dog jokes. Like fingers braced on the rim of the band-aid, driver braced on the lip of the board, the kneeling devotee daring to part eyelids at the surreal glow from the altar.
"D'partment of Homeland Security took Eileen." Teo is grateful for the support, anyway. Keeps his feet steady though his voice is still riding dangerously close to the crumbling edge of adolescence. His eyes shift past Gabriel on their way to Jensen, or shy from the former and retreat to the latter. The words are difficult; remembering isn't. "Ambushed us doing Ferry work."
The bandage comes away with a napkin-sized switch of skin ripped away and beading serous; the diver slips off board, caves the roof of his skull in on the spring-jointed plastic.
"They cut her down when she stopped to cover th' other operative and I."
The acolyte's eyes pop to find the altar burning with oil smoke and wax-wicked flames.
"CS gas, some rubber rounds. I think they wanted her alive."
Munin's in a well.
Last time they heard this type of news, Ethan pressed a gun against Gabriel's head. And then went on a rampage to retrieve her. This time, the third party of their crew is less Chinese, more crazy and their messenger is less bird more… Teo-y. His reaction this time, fortunately for Gabriel, does not involve a gun or knife at the former serial killer's head. In fact, only a glance is sent to Gabriel, waiting til the other man looks back before his eyes avert, to the ground, to the ceiling, to Teo's shoes.
Teo's support vacates out from under him, Ethan withdrawing from helping the man. His back turns as he takes a few steps away from the rest of the group, falling instantly silent. Thousands of thoughts charge into his mind as his hands clench into fists. One of the most dominating thoughts being that Feng, somehow, someway, must be behind this. Of course he would take Eileen alive, to go after him. Because really, after all, it's all about Ethan.
Keeping his back turned to the others, Ethan remains creepily silent and still.
Ethan may be leaving Teo to fend for himself, but fortunately, Raith quickly steps in to take over. And he makes a point of ignoring Ethan's reaction for the moment. "Gabe, be a pal and get some patches-" Raith's own terms to mean bandages, needle and thread, all the things used to 'patch up' the holes that people sometimes get in themselves- "Keep talking, Teo, everything that you can remember. How long ago, where, all that. If we're lucky, they haven't moved her out of the city yet, and we can figure out where she is." As he speaks, Raith guides Teo towards the kitchen, towards the giant table donated by Peter, maybe in case they he needs to play brain surgeon. "Ethan, stay with us. Y consiga la tequila."
Gabriel does meet Ethan's eyes. They've been here before and this tree looks familiar. Sleepy curiousity and vague irritation has melted away to allow for a steelier kind of attention as, when Ethan steps away, Gabriel locks his attention on Teo. Phoenix had been a complication. This is substantially greater. He also doesn't go to get 'patches', despite the fact he wears stitches artfully applied by the Sicilian not a few evenings ago, though the bandages beneath his shirt are his own.
"He's fine," he gently contradicts, raising a hand. Steel sets in through Raith's arms as psychic voodoo renders him still, and jerking his own hands off the younger man's injured form. A push through the air from Gabriel's hand has Raith stepping back, as jerky as a toy soldier, before he's summarily released.
Teo's ankle twists, though not enough to truly damage - enough to bring him down, however. A wandering step has Gabriel coming forward. "Why are you here?" And not her, is the implication, not truly why Teo would come back to the Dispensary. Why is he able.
It should come as no great surprise to anyone, least of all Teo himself, that where as he was storking painfully around upright a moment ago now he is on his knees, one leg cramped around an uncomfortable ankle, confronted by the sort of question you can have been thinking about all staggering evening and still not be able to come up with a decent motherfucking answer for.
His back bounces on the wall, once, and one leg skews over the stooped knee of his other, defiance to gravity and further trauma rather than at Gabriel himself. He doesn't exactly have a shit-ton of pride to trouble himself with, or not the sort that would dent at being made to sit on the floor. He just. Would— prefer to be more 'fine' than sprained.
Though Raith has the authority of the group and a number of logistically appropriate questions, and despite that Ethan asks the same siege engine of questions without having to say a word, it's the former serial killer who commands his attention. "They cut her down," he answers. "I tried to get her. I swear, I tried, but they gassed us— 'bout eleven PM. Five of them. Four?" He doesn't even know who the fuck he's asking.
"Didn't recognize any 'f them. They took Danko, di'nt give chase. Wireless doesn't have a bead on her. 'R the unit that took her, must've stripped the GPS units out 'f the…" Phone, vans, things; Teo's train of thought slides buttergreased off its tracks, takes his gaze with it, skewing haphazardly collisions into the faces of the men standing above and near him. Back to Gabriel. His eyes blink white-ringed in the half-light of the hallway, hand in a sticky curl hung over one knee.
When the puppet string at his foot wilts and unravels, he doesn't notice how soon, nor question why.
This was less unexpected than maybe it should be. "Gabriel," Raith says. What else is he going to do? He has no telekinesis. No telepathy. No dragon punch. But he can still speak, and he can speak with authority. And right now, there's only one thing he needs to say. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"Me?" Gabriel doesn't break a predatory gaze off Teo when he directs that response to Raith, an eyebrow twitching up in nonchalance. "I'm listening to a story about how one of our operatives was captured and our operation compromised because someone fucked up." Teo's neck jerks as if he were shocked, enough to knock his skull back against the wall in a sharp rap of almost patronising punishment, the kind of gesture one might do on their own.
It's not enough, of course, and Gabriel steps back before he can do something that is enough. His hand lowers, jaw sets. "If you're here, then she could be here." Judgment is stonily spoken, hissed sibilant from between bared pearly teeth.
Constructing a proper defense under these circumstances seems like an exercise in elaborate torture that invites increasingly elaborate torture, and the truth of the matter is, there's no way the Sicilian can know he hadn't brought this upon them or Eileen.
The wall rockets force through the back of Teo's skull and his eyes narrow on reflex before he squeezes them shut, just briefly, acknowledging the twinge of pain that reverberates hollowly through with it. He wheezes a long breath out through the grille of closed teeth. He wipes his knuckles past his mouth, diverting a trickle of mucus from his nose that he knows is there despite that his face is still numb. His mouth comes away with a roughed-off scab latched onto his lip.
"I think there was a negator. 'Nd gunmen. They just wanted her, picked her out by name— blinded us with high-beams in the middle 'f the ambush." Ambush of an ambush. That's almost funny. Teo's teeth bare briefly into a boxy rictus. "Midtown ruins, and that's all I remember." And that would be as much information as he can dig out of his head at Raith's behest. The rest of him is left inert on the floor, for the few bleating seconds before he starts to clamber up onto his feet again, the heel of his glass-pocked hand smearing the wall.
"Take the night off, Jensen."
The words come from the quiet kid in the corner. Turning around, the thing most different about Ethan since his return from quiet corner are his eyes. Though he doesn't carry the demeanor that most would expect. Rage Ethan turning over tables and throwing faces into frying pans isn't present tonight. The man who turns around is cold. "Or stay. Whotever, but for this part…" Ethan steps away from the spot he had been holding stoically and makes his way over to Teo. "You're not in charge." Holden doesn't even glance at Raith as he makes the declaration. It's crisp, it's clear, it's final.
"Now I realize, that you went to the trouble of comin' over 'ere to tell us. Means you at least cared for a little. Though obviously, this wasn't your first stop. Maybe you thought your life was more important than gettin' the message to us straight away." He stops dead straight in front of Teo. His neck cranes this way, then that. "I can see how you could think that." He admits with a little shrug of his shoulders, conceding the point, partly. "But our boy's right. You're alive. And you're 'ere. That takes y'to two strikes, my friend. You're lucky you only fucked up twice tonight."
When Teo starts clambering up, Ethan's fist is flying down at head to ensure that he stays down on the ground. "Consider that an encouragment to next time, try 'arder." Ethan turns back to Gabriel before glancing to the door. "Y'wanna get dressed then, we'll 'ave th'boy take us to where it all went down."
"Are you both fucking insane!" How often is it that Raith yells? He may bark orders with fair regularity, but there likely isn't a clear memory in anyone's mind of the last time this happened, when Jensen Raith, apparently, lost the rest of his mind. "Has it occurred to you, either of you, that this is exactly what we need to not do? If there was even the slightest chance we'd show up where it happened, do you really think HomeSec won't hang around with a least a full platoon? And while we're on the topic of why someone, who shall remain nameless-" And to underscore that they shall remain nameless, Raith leans back and shouts their name to the heavens- "ETHAN! HOLDEN!"- And then, back to regular yelling. -"is a fucking moron, would you have preferred he come straight here and lead them right to us? Or that he evade them and come back here, only to bleed to death before he could tell us anything? Fucking genius!" A finish by throwing his arms up in exasperation. Oh, but the wrath of Raith hasn't ended just yet. "And you!"
In a move that is, perhaps, one of the most unwise he could make, Raith seizes the front of Gabriel's shirt and pulls him down the short distance necessary to bring them nose-to-nose. Were he a god, he may as well be ripping comets down from the sky. "Eileen could be here, but she's not, so straighten your head-in-ass priorities the fuck. Out! You want to be a big boy, wear the big boy pants and walk all over the guy that fucked up? Fine. Maybe you want to wait until after we assess the situation and do everything in our power to get her back? Unless feeling good about yourself really is that much more fucking important than she is! ASSHOLE!" With something that's part shove and part open-handed slap to the face, Raith once more puts distance between himself and Gabriel, silently wishing he had the ability to set people on fire by yelling at them.
"You should know better!" he shouts once again, his rage finally almost spent, "But you don't! You're an idiot!" A finger jabbed in Ethan's direction. "And you're a child!" Then in Gabriel's direction. "And that is why I'm in charge!"
Gabriel's body tenses and twists like an animal caught in a trap when Raith first grabs him before locking down into steely stillness. There is one thing that Raith can appreciate, aside from the lack of true struggle after that initial token effort - Gabriel is listening. Whether he likes what he hears is another matter entirely. His legs jerk and move stiffly when he's finally released, eyes going wide with both anger and shock, reeling back more steps than with which Raith had directed him. Teo is all but forgotten when Gabriel's hand raises in retaliation.
Raith legs near buckle beneath him, but as quickly as they were captured, they're released again and instinct dictates that the other man does not collapse in the same way Teo did. Something's wrong, and a quizzical glance to his own hand manages to cut through the sheer rage that would make most men who don't wield phenomenal cosmic power throw a punch instead.
And so he throws a punch instead. That is, that's the intention between two long strides forward, a hand out to grip Raith's shirt and the other coming around to connect fist to face. If Vanguard has taught Gabriel anything—
—it's that they're fucking crazy. Possibly no moreso than Phoenix at its worst, the Lighthouse once upon a time, thrown bottles and scatalogical epithets before they rubbled Moab Fed Pen, but that analogy says nothing delightful about anybody involved.
Teo stifles the squirt of blood and some coarse-throated noise, both, in the sleeve over his arm, his eyes shrunken in their pits by a sketch of negative emotions, denim-clad legs in a pretzelled sprawl across dusty floorboards. There's a stain of dubious and indistinct hue on his knee in roughly the shape of New Zealand. He flicks an unwieldy motions with his free hand, something vaguely and fretfully soothing, trying to reassure somebody that it is okay. That he is okay, in fact, if anybody was wondering.
Guys need to get something out of their systems. He understands, insofar as that he can already tell that there's a deliberate restraint against lethal force involved, here, and if they didn't love Eileen the way they do and always have—
The world would have ended in January. "Hnnghk," he insists.
"Jensen. I've tolerated you because everyone else tolerates you. Because Eileen tolerates you. I 'aven't cared what th'fuck we've been doing. Things just changed. So I'm not going to allow you to pretend you're smart anymore. You can follow us, or you can stay 'ere and cry that the big boys won't do it your way." Ethan watches the exchange stoically and then Gabriel is puunchiing. He looks very bland, not really caring. But once Gabriel gets his anger out.
"We need to go check th'scene. If for some reason other than Raith wanting to be right, there is a platoon out there, we'll be careful. Stick to the darkness. Which really goes against my original plan of stealing some of Eileen's dresses and parading down into the ruins singin' Billie Jean, but such disappointments are a part of life, I suppose." Raith's firestorm is met with a collected calm, as the Wolf glances back over at Teo. "I know I just 'it you in the face. But I 'ope we can move on from that, amigo. We need you to take us t'where it 'appened. It's our first step, it's a weak, shaky, little baby step. But it's the first and only one we got. Fuck, maybe there is a platoon out there. All th'better for us to ask nicely what they did to our little friend." Taking a step away, Ethan simply smirks over at Raith. "But in all likelihood there will be rocks and rubble and rocks. Maybe something at th'sight that will 'elp us figure out whot we need to. Probably not, but I'll be fucked if they left us a lovenote, and I'm not there to read it." Touching fingers to his lips, the man bobs his head. "Don't think it's Feng. Shouldn't be Feng. Doesn't feel like Feng."
His head flicks over in irritation when Teo isn't answering him. Oh, he's all bleedy and hnnghk-y. Whoops. Reaching down, two hands go to seize the youngest man in the room by his shoulders and haul him to his feet. "Sorry bout that mate." A beat. "Well not really, felt good 'onestly. But your face looks more retarded now and I do feel bad for that. "Take us to where it went down, Theodore, or at least close to.. And we'll get all the details out of y'on the way."
Glancing over to Raith. "You're in charge of Eileen. She ain't 'ere. And when it comes to lookin after Eileen, you 'ave never been and will never be in charge of that. So wrestle with your ego if you 'ave to, but we need to start this somewhere. This party is only eligible to men Eileen 'as wanted to fuck." He glances to Gabriel then to Teo, nodding a little. Probably. "But you can always come if you 'ave a nice smile and an uplifting attitude."
Raith is not having a good day. First, he is confronted once more with the fact that he's the only one in the room who knows what he's doing, the only real professional. That was bad enough. And then, he unexpectedly wobbles and Gabriel's fist connects with his face, causing blood to flow from his nose. Probably not broken, but still a nice, spiteful lump of searing pain. Maybe, just maybe, that would have been where it ended. But of course, that's not where it ended.
Ethan had to keep talking.
As the saying goes, that's all Raith can stands, and he can't stands no more. His vision tunnels and goes red, and with a shout that's somewhere between a battle cry and a roar, he charges straight at Ethan, shooting into his legs and heaving up to throw him off his center of gravity and take them both down to the floor, following the 'ground' maneuver up with 'pound,' dropping fist-bomb after fist-bomb onto Ethan's face. Or at least trying to; it's suddenly gotten very, very hard to strategize the best way to do this. "If you didn't have to rob a fucking liquor store, maybe we could've done our jobs and kept this from happening!" Raith isn't shouting in an attempt to make a point anymore. He's just shouting because it happens to come out, followed by a stream of assorted obscenities. He isn't interested in being right anymore.
Right now, he's only interested in destroying something.
Gabriel shakes his hand out around the time Raith is diving for Ethan, and both men mostly just get Gabriel's turned back. His own head is pounding from too much blood being pushed around his body too quickly, adrenaline soaring. Irony being that if Raith was wrong, and if Gabriel thought he was, there'd be mostly sneers and manly walking away, as opposed to mainly swung fists.
He is, however, right.
Which only makes it worse, somehow, when Raith leaps head first into what can be called their level. Running his thumb over his fist, gone red from connecting with the older man's bony face, Gabriel turns enough to watch the scuffle break out between the two alpha males. It occurs to him that he should probably break it up.
But it'll end, soon, maybe with one of them unconscious, and that's okay too. He slices a glance towards where Teo is, and wanders that gaze boredly towards where a high open window often sees a bird alighting on its ledge. Bare now, of course.
"I am homosexual," Teo notes, somewhat querulous in his factuality, at a carefully modulated, not quite shy conversational volume, so as not to interject inappropriately into the wild scuffle that almost clipped him at the collision point an inch from his elbow but a relevant note, he thinks, as long as Ethan's going to be making ludicrous jokes about Eileen's sexual considerations in front of her angry boyfriend.
He has, of course, also long since thought that Jensen was quite right— insofar as that the former CIA agent's logical deduction was, pretty much, precisely the same as his own, as much as he figured inevitably that getting curbstomped would be a natural part of the emotional cycle before the others eventually syncopated into some rough, tactically-acceptable agreement.
It's all gone wrong, though. He is additionally with Mama Duck on this one: the launch and second round of pugilism is unnecessary and twenty shades of bad shit. He finds himself wading in, which Gabriel would and apparently does find relatively ill-advised. "Ferm— fermatti.
"Come on— th're's other things we can do, too," he adds, acknowledging helplessness as the worst of all sentiments to have to labor under. "Contacts we can call." Having been popped in the face twice in an evening by people with malicious intent and decades of military training, Teodoro is less intelligible than he'd otherwise prefer to be, hooking his good arm around Raith's left and bracing his good shoulder against the possibility of inadvertently intercepting Ethan's retaliation.
Blood spurts out of Ethan's mouth as his head slaps hard against the ground, a coughing slash grunting sound is made as Ethan tries not to drown from the startling amount of blood almost instantly working its way down his throat. One pound, two pound, three pound, no more. Something hard presses against Raith's stomach. And unfortunately, it's not Ethan trying to play tummysticks.
Click
"Enough now." Ethan snarls as his arm flings up to snake around one of Jensen's his hand eventually winding up on the man's collar. Pushing him up a little and then to the side as if to throw off his flailing. A glob of blood-spit flies out from his mouth to plant itself firmly against Raith's face. "And our jobs? Yours must be teaching birds to drink tea or making over elaborate coffee bicycles. You're right Jensen, you're much better than me." Shifting momentum, Ethan gives a powerful shove in order to cast the other man off him and to the side. Though his gun remains drawn and kept on Raith.
"Fuck it then. I'll go on my own. Gay Theo, could you draw on a fucking map where you were. I'll chek it out myself. And if I get caught, you can ride bikes and fuck birds as much as you want, you idiot fuck." Ethan growls.
Cold words may not have cooled Raith's temper off, but cold steel certainly does the trick. Teo, despite being out of sorts, picks a perfect time to try getting Raith off of Ethan, because he's too focused on the weapon shoved into his gut to throw an elbow at the Sicilian's head. He simply allows himself to be pushed away and pulled off. He doesn't even throw a fit about Ethan spitting on him, just wipes it off and then spits blood and mucous that dripped into his mouth out onto the ground. "You do that," he snarls back at Ethan. Not his proudest moment, for sure, "Maybe if you're lucky, they'll put you in a cell next to Eileen, and then she can tell you that you're an idiot." Whatever Teo ends up doing (for his sake, hopefully he'll draw Ethan a map and sign it, 'Fuck you'), Raith is content to sit on the ground and try to rub the pounding out of his head.
"Gabriel, hace algo útil. Consiga la fucking tequila."
Dull brown eyes track back to Raith, then towards Ethan, as if Gabriel were weighing the pros and cons of which man to follow - if any. Nothing more bruised than his dignity and his slow healing stab wound singing out in protest at all this moving he's doing, he's certainly not moving or responding anything to the command or query or whatever contains about two words he understands.
"I have contacts as well," he finally states. "I'm sure Sarisa Kershner is waiting by her phone right now. Are we done, here?"
You know, the punching and caveman behaviour. That's to Raith, sweeping his attention back over with surgical precision. "If you think going back is going to land us where she is, either we all go or none of us go." Or just Ethan goes, a sentiment with which he allows for a glance to Ethan and a shrug. "What's our first option otherwise?"
There's a bob of Teo's head, generalized acquiescence to Stuff. "Yeah. Cool." A pale eye flicked sidelong at England verifies that that is, in part, confirmation that he can draw on a fucking map where they had been, though all the curses and bike-riding and sex-related insults do not immediately puzzle themselves apart to reveal who their target is. The whole world, maybe. It's an angry kind of day.
Gay Theodore leans his back against the wall and pulls his jacket flat, tries not to stare at Ethan with his eyes out of paranoid overcompensation for the crippling of his ability. When he glances down at his shoulder, his irises lose the glassy refraction of the hallway light like a nocturnal animal swinging away in the savannah, seep dark, squint speculatively at the fabric too dark to tell stains by, his face gone pleasantly blank with patience. He will wait here until somebody brings a map. Maybe pen also.
By now, the combination of grit and blood both thin-spread and laddered in clots makes him a parody of a soldier in camo. Technically, he does blend right in.
"I'll go get that fucking map then." Do they even have any fucking maps? Well he'll at least go to his room and pretend he's getting a map for at least fifteen minutes. At least. Shoving himself to his feet, Ethan sheathes his sword. Meaning he tucks the gun back inside his coat before he's shouldering past Raith and Gabriel to allow them to do the intelligent thinking without him.