Participants:
Also featuring:
Scene Title | The Weather Today Is Slightly Sarcastic |
---|---|
Synopsis | Deckard breaks out of hospital and confronts this episode's damsel in distressed with mixed results. |
Date | December 29, 1998 |
England, London: King's College Hospital
Hydration, stitches, and at one stage, a female police officer with the iconic checkered tie who checked in, checked out, talked more to the nurse that had been on duty than the man laid up in bed. Despite it being somewhere between Christmas day and the New Year, the weather seems uninclined to snow pleasantly, and instead pisses watery ice down on the South London suburb which Deckard can possibly detect. Surprise American with a hole in his chest, a gun strapped to his back, and the name Mike Burrows printed on a seemingly very legit identification card that claims the lanky gentleman to be in his early thirties.
Plus some pints of blood and medical attention, minus a firearm, this is almost an equilibrium.
When Deckard wakes, it's to a politely folded stack of clothing to change into at the foot of his bed, the boots he'd been wearing within reach, but upon the former, a folded paper crane that's been tipped over, maybe from his own shifting around in his sleep. It's an invitation, by its own right, and if he counts the small Japanese/Chinese samurai as something that really happened as opposed to hallucination, then he's been here just recently.
Other items include his wallet, his knife. Wherever his gun has gone, Hiro hasn't yet been able to locate it.
The world is awfully white when Flint opens his eyes.
Sterile tile ceiling, tile floor, flat walls and the glitter of chrome somewhere in his periphery. He's cold. There's a papery crinkle and a pinch at the inside of his elbow when he sits up, left hand pushed automatically to tightness in his side where fresh stitches hold everything that's supposed to be in in and keep everything else out.
Not dead. Just in the hospital.
Right wrist glanced to automatically to check for the cold clamp of a metal cuff, he's quick to snuff the IV needle from the crook of his arm when he sees it instead.
The next five or six minutes are spent at an uncertain, brooding hunch, scruffily still as he watches passers by trickle past through the outlying hallway. No police, no red alert. No suits. No guns.
It takes him another few minutes to get dressed, paper crane examined, turned over and dropped like a bit of possible food that turns out not to be before he stoops painfully to pull his pants on. The jacket and knife are last, the latter tucked swiftly down into the pocket of the former before he thinks twice, snatches the crane and — steps caaasually out into the hallway, where he picks a direction and starts walking. Eventually there will be an exit sign.
And eventually there is an exit sign, and it's even in English. Har. Beyond, it's stopped raining, and when someone breezes through the doors beyond, there's an icier chill to the air that suggests a change of weather, like perhaps it will start snowing after all, eventually. A slice of sky above dreary looking crowded buildings across the road shows a bruise-coloured, thick overcast day that makes the concept of shifting hours by sunlight significantly more homogenous. It could be any hour.
He has about thirty feet of walking to do before he's clear. Which is of course when the quasi-familiar voice of the cop who'd asked him some basic questions the previous night, barks out some words from down the corridor he'd just traveled. "Mr. Burrows!" sounds indignant, almost, surprised.
Maybe he had been cuffed to the bed.
The slap of polished shoes suggests the female police officer taking off at a jog after him, which could break into a sprint at any second.
Oh dear.
The casual air Flint'd forced upon himself stiffens into a glance back over his shoulder. Guilty as sin and then some — tension wrings tell-tale into the hollow of his jaw and his eyes go hard, mustering the resolve to run.
A twitchy false-start jerks over into a retardedly desperate snatch at a nearby rolling cart which, upended, sends half-finished food trays scattering helter-skelter across the breadth of the hallway.
The one he's now sprinting through, forearm barred up football style to sweep someone in scrubs out've his fucking way and out the exit door into the stairwell. The ground is generally down however many stories, so — that's where he goes, taking two, three, five steps at a time until he's at ground level enough to thrust himself out into freezing humidity and slush.
The copper's voice rings off the white walls of the hospital, barking orders, things like stop and get out of my way, some of which are for Deckard, some of which are for the milling populace of the hospital, and all of which are of a distance that isn't quite sufficient. But fortunately, once he's outside, there will be traffic, crowds, side-streets to sidle through, the sprawling city of London providing any number of places to duck and weave through and evade just one police officer who has to deal with some homeless guy with an unlicensed gun.
Except the world reconfigures itself almost as soon as Deckard's boot hits the chilly sidewalk.
It doesn't reconfigure much. There are a lot of streets down this way that look similar, with similar people, similar buildings. Except it does change, transforms within the blink of an eye into a different set of similar people and similar buildings. Point of fact: the hospital is no longer right behind him. A cornerstore is instead, with a Pakistani store owner currently pickin up one of the signs outside to bring it in.
It's a little darker out, too.
Harsh breath spooked into a startle and hold halfway through exhalation, Deckard stops cold when the map changes around him. Like a moose who's just had a flashbulb go off in its face and probably nearly as dangerous.
The rest of his breath sifts out at a slower fog once the setting seems steady for more than a few seconds. He looks suspicious.
Also undead. If the store owner looks his way, it may be to pick up on the lurid light in his eyes when he scans his surroundings a second time. Irritable, now. Paranoid. This isn't the first experience he's had becoming unstuck in time.
Traffic rumbles down the thin streets of South London, and in the coming dusk, headlights paint yellow light along the backsides of other cars, the immediate slick asphalt, nicking pavement along the bend of corners. Conversation from people on the street is scattered, irrelevant — comes most boisterous from a small group directly across the road from Deckard, pipes up in passers by that cross by him. Someone's voice stalls out when they care to notice the light of the lanky man's eyes, but only walks faster.
If this place is significant and means somethings on account of Deckard being teleported here, without care to jetlag and timelag both, then it doesn't indicate why immediately. But it might in several short seconds.
There's a skreeeeeeeeeeeeee of car tires to avoid collision, something shimmering in the air like a heat wave— impossible, in the pre-snow weather— and then something of a similar rangy-limbed build brutally bodychecking Deckard with all the momentum of a tackle, but very little of the intent and skill, with one hand gripping a squareish bottle of liquor and the other clawing air in a panic. From the direction of the road. The impact of a car hitting another, rebounding off a street lamp some distance down the road, drowns out the cursing of Deckard's not-exactly-an attacker.
The tinkle of glass on the road, the screech of stressed brakes. "Fuck," is hissed, breathlessly, hand like a steel claw around the bourbon he might have paid an older friend to buy for him. In indistinct fabric of blue denim, grey cotton of a sweater, hair dyed a shocking platinum and long enough to get in eyes, a John Logan with ten, eleven, twelve years docked from him is more wondering at the car crash just feet from them, than the man he just flung himself into.
Less self-conscious as an invasive species than the average postbox, Flint stares all the harder at stifled conversation. He could be Death standing out on the corner for all the doom and gloom clinging close to the worn leather of his jacket, hatchet-hewn countenance and bony hands more skeletal after two weeks of harder luck than he'd been having.
Then, adrenaline slick and quick as a nictating membrane, his eyes fade dim and refocus after screeching tires and blasting heat just in time for him to be hit by however many ~stones~ of drunken hooligan halfway through a flinch for his pocket.
The all around result is that neither of them is hit by a car or stabbed, even if Deckard makes a noise a little like the one you'd expect a boar to make if you rolled over it with a tank. So a whinging, sudden expulsion of hot air that sounds a lot like a painful grunt. But a deep and manly one.
Somehow.
That the culprit is familiar takes him some staggering and hunching and remembering to open his eyes again to discern, for all that recognition is, in turn, utterly transparent to one John Logan if he's paying any amount of attention at all. Teeth bared in shocky, deeply unhappy disbelief, one hand still pressed hard to his middle, Flint is staring at him rather than the crash.
A graze of bright red streaks Logan's— or, just John's hand as he upturns his palm to wrinkle his nose at city grit and blood smarting his hand, which is then carelessly distributed on the side of his thigh as he watches the spectacle of the car crash's aftermath, and the gathering people making a circle around the site. Brownish liquor is bubbling out from the slightly tipped bottle, pattering on the ground, before he thinks to correct it. Adrenaline has flushed his face a little pink, breathing shaky.
No one is paying attention to him, though. Except the man he shares a sidewalk with.
Old enough to resemble himself of the future, bone-deep, and the same light green eyes that now turn to Deckard, blinking. "I didn't see you there," is meant to be apology, coming off as defensive. "Sorry, I— it was coming straight at me an'— " His accent has consonants dropping like flies, speech less surgical in its deliberation, and a little out of breath still.
"And I wasn' looking." Not at anyone on the other side, or at coming cars, apparently. "Sorry," is said again, with a teenager's hasty, half-arsed attempt at making things right by slapping a verbal bandaid over the wrong. There is no recognition in return. Obviously.
Paper crane disfigured into a tatty crumple in the sweaty palm of his left hand, Flint slowly works the right one into a fist as well. Tendons strapped pale around the bulge of his knuckles.
He does this so that he can think a moment and then sucker punch Logan full in his pretty face. Preferably while everyone's still staring at the car accident.
Cheap bourbon is quick to make a pool on the ground when its dropped, glass cheap enough that it doesn't actually shatter on impact — it's actually just hard plastic, at that. No one said teenage drinking is classy. Logan completely ignores this much, however, focusing on the spurt of blood promptly staining his hoodie as he staggers back, almost staying on his feet with a windmill of one arm, but gravity inevitably wins out, landing in an indignified sit on the sidewalk.
"What the fuck!" cracks in his throat, almost shrill, and muffled from the clasp of his hands as tears instantly sting to his pale eyes, because that hurt. It won't be the first time he's been punched, usually by people his own size, but he has less on his record than the one in the future, who's a little better at rallying in instant response. Usually with a weapon.
This is more the beginnings of a long education. "The fuck is your problem you fucking wanker I said sorry!" It all sort of comes out as fast as one word, but he's working on getting to his feet, all scrappy rage mixed with wariness and shock.
"This time," graveled out with about the negative amount of sympathy any other John Logan he's met would expect, Flint flexes futilely at bruising-to-be across the back of his hand and finally shakes out the crane proper, not bothering to retrace fold lines along any specific path. He's looking for clues, the art inherent in careful papercraft disregarded with the same callousness he just tested on naked face.
"Go ahead and hit me back." Crinkle crinkle. He indicates the crane with half a gesture. "I just need to check with Ziggy to see whether or not I'm here to kill you."
"You think I wouldn't?" is snarled as he greases up excess blood on the sleeve of his sweater. The 'th' is softer, comes across like fink, the weird play of softer slur making his voice harsher, all lower class grit and emphasis. Soon, there will be a wail of an ambulance, tow trucks, more police officers and less spectators. For now, the status remains quo as Deckard studies the paper crane, and then there, beneath a wing, is the suggestion of stuff printed on the paper within its bends and folds. Photograph, written instruction. That it's a grainy, photocopied picture of a John Logan with more fashion sense is probably discouraging.
Unless he is meant to kill him, but when Deckard finds the words, He will need your help. He has needed your help, probably not. Only a couple of seconds to study, anyway, because the youth has his bearings enough to deliver a shove to Deckard's chest, palms landing hard enough to bruise, conviction in his violence.
He did say kill, right? "You threatening me?"
Photocopied photograph. Photocopied photograph of John Logan. …Crinkle. A photocopied photo of John Logan will need his help. Nose rankled with automatic distaste, Flint is in the process of looking for a more detailed explanation under the remains of the crane's other wing when Little John's shove buffs the air hard out of his lungs.
An unfired synapsis short of automatically clobbering the younger brute in the face again, Deckard bristles with draconic force of will instead, all teeth and spines and bony ridges leaning in, otherworldly light suddenly searing cold through his stare — making him seem that much larger. "Yes."
The plan was to punch the man in the face in return. That plan is evident in a bloodless set of knuckles half-cocked and ready, and the flashing, volatile light of delinquint bad choices in his eyes — the mundane kind, no glowing, none of that.
Flint's are glowing, though, and John's readiness to sock him one drains as fast as liquor from the fallen bottle. A bloody nose has done some to drain his face into paleness, and now he goes ashen, sudden fright making his jaw drop and eyes go round. He freezes like a deer in the pathway of the oncoming truck.
Fuck this. Without particular care for dignity, principle, powerplays, John simply turns on the heel of a sneaker and makes a run for it with one uncertain glance back that doesn't do much to slow his loping getaway.
Oh.
Deckard's grinning gloat lasts only as long as it takes him to recall the paper in his hands. Which — he wastes a precious beat rereading once more (just in case he missed something like haha, but seriously though kill him) before he takes off too. Slow at first, then faster when it sinks in that he's losing ground. He's used to being on the other end of foot chases such as these.
Also, he's wearing cowboy boots.
And he hasn't eaten.
"John!" tried hoarse once they're a fair distance from the accident site, Flint's hard-pressed to think of anything convincing to say after just the name. Breathing at a faint wheeze when he draws up to a halt at a corner a few long strides later, the best he can come up with is a faltering, "I — I know where you live!"
If this was 2010, probably, in a scenario where Logan is being chased in a full fright-induced sprint — he might be clutching a lamppost to stay standing and cursing his own smoking habit, and also easy to catch up on. This incarnation seems to be actually in shape in the way boys can be, all frenetic energy but also some endurance. A cop car is all fashionable black and white, flashing red and blue, ignoring Deckard entirely as it makes for the crash site.
Last he saw, the blur of grey cotton and bleach-blonde was zipping around the corner like he knows the neighbourhood — which he does. By the time Deckard is rounding it himself, John's pushed himself over a chain link fence and landing with a whud, shock absorbing up ankles and knees.
He turns, then, wiping his bloodied face to smear the red away enough for a twist of a frown to show. In his other hand is a pocket knife, a small and mean little blade. Not quite keychain size, but not the same depth of the gravity switch that had dug into Flint's skull once. Or will. Something. It's the yelling of his name, as common as it may be, that has him rounding on the older man — just, with seven feet diamond link fence between them, with a gate closed by a chain. Grafitti patterns the walls on either side.
His stare is wide and expectant, defensive confusion making a line between his eyebrows.
It's a little while before Deckard is rounding the corner himself. He has to lean against a wall and catch his breath first, sweat prickling dark at his sideburns and glistening cool close to the leather of his collar when he finally approaches.
Not that much shorter than the fence, he doesn't step all the way up to it. Leery of getting dragged into another chase more than he is the show of that knife, even if his eyes do tick too brightly after it before they fade dark again. The movement leaves a short track of orange drifting surreally in Logan's field of vision.
"Someone sent me to help you," is less incredulous than it is exasperated and worn out. "Where I'm from we say hello by punching each other in the face."
"Do they," is challenging in tone, as well as thickly incredulous, to pick up the slack of that one. John's breathing hard too, but in measured inhales and exhales that's starting to slow as he focuses too intently on the cyan-lit rings of Deckard's irises, even as they pale out again. His posture is as straight as a ruler in a meerkat's alertness, and he rotates the pocket knife around in his hand. "There's something fucked up with your eyes."
Fing. Wiv. Lazy speech still strung taut with tension. "Who? What the fuck're you talking about? You're— you don't look like a copper. Or anyone from the Department."
Also American, but he's already stuck on the glowing eyes.
"I dunno," isn't a great start for all that it is an honest one. "God, maybe. He has a sword." God has a sword right? Raggedy breath strung out in increasingly painful waves as adrenaline leaves off and the ache in his chest intensifies, Flint closes his eyes hard and leaves them that way for a while.
"Maybe that was it," is awfully optimistic however many beats later, once he's straightened his spine back out again and taken a laggard step nearer the fence. "Maybe someone was trying to run you down."
The effect of the fence has it that John doesn't step back in rhythm of Flint's step forward. Kind of like the wild animals in the zoo and the faith you have in the walls that keep them penned in. The way the youth is eyeing the other man is a fraction more suspicious that the way you'd consider a caged lion, but just as interested. "You don't look like much've an angel either," is pointed out, a few notches milder than his tone just prior. Despite himself, he's folding the knife closed, and shoving it into a pocket, with the kind of nonchalance of someone who shouldn't be carrying around cutting implements. Or holding them like he might use it on a person.
He pauses, then risks a glance over his shoulder, up the open-air concrete stairs of pedestrian walkway, and this time, he paces some steps back, setting distance between them, now, leveling out the height difference. "What's your name? You know my name, what's yours?"
Flint has a certain feral mein to him that compliments whatever limited reinforcement the fence offers. He doesn't particularly care to be on the opposite side of it but he clearly recognizes that trying to climb it would be a mistake. Instead he's left to peer unblinking through the open links, raptor focus cycling unholy blue every so often. Having to turn the ability off is already eating at him. New sunglasses are quickly rising to the top of his list of things to steal.
"I'm not an angel," leaves room for speculation re — what he isn't…not… while he browses after the knife, fingers clawed gradually into a hook through available fence while his breathing finally catches up with the rest of him. "Felix."
By now, if Logan knew how, if he was even able to, Flint might be matched glowing stare with glowing stare, from the way each bleed of bright cyan seems to put Brixton native on edge. But either he's unmanifested or oblivious, because it never happens. "Felix," he repeats, with an edge of fresh fear. Probably, he isn't religious — but you don't have to be godfearing to be superstitious either. Still. Still. "Then I guess job well done, then."
Despite the fact he managed to clear the car and Deckard's involvement in that was getting winded by sixty something kilograms of teen. "Just stay away from where I live, got it? Or I'll— " That's the tricky part. Not honestly sure he can take the yank in a fight, and call the p'lice seems like a distasteful idea, even at this age. And threatening death doesn't seem like a realistic option either. Shockingly enough.
"Just go away. I can look after myself." He's turning, then, walking for the concrete staircase in the tense way you do from a dangerous dog so as not to inspire it to chase you by running.
Sketchily paranoid as he has a tendency to be, Flint looks about ready to buy into his own purported success. He didn't actually have to help. Much. He just stood there and fate did the rest — and. He looks up the fence, then feels once over the ridge of fresh stitching bumped in under his shirt before turning away. Yeah.
Useless cell phone clipped open and shut out of habit, he slides it back into his pocket and adjusts the sit of his pants on his bony hips. Looser than he'd like without his holster to level everything out. Also, regular meals.
"Salaud," is muttered independently of Logan's parting reassurance when he finally starts to walk, one last glance up the fence turning over into a lazy crease and fold at his demolished crane. Distracted. There is probably a bar around here somewhere. In londontown.
The echo of John's retreat upwards bounces the rhythmic impact of soles to concrete back down to Deckard as he makes his own journey in the other direction, but he won't hear hesitation, and then the whud-whud-whud of footsteps in the other direction as Logan changes his mind about something. "Maybe you should at least tell me'oo it is that's supposed to be tryin' to— 'ello?" But there is no one, and he could have sworn he might have hesitated in time to catch the older man clearing the mouth of the alleyway.
"Wha'ver," is an uncertain slur to no one in particular, before he picks up speed back up the stairs.
Not-angels might be able to disappear, and while John Logan is left to consider the implications of this, Deckard finds himself in yet another part of town. It is, at least, the same time of day — just a different sidestreet, and maybe Hiro is God-with-a-sword, because the distinctive sounds of pub conversation seems to drift nearby.
There is also the scrape of some steps forward, Hiro stepping into where dim streetlamp light barely brushes illumination.
Looks like it's time to talk.