Got a look that'll kill, voice that'll carry,
Half a dozen women that think I want a marry.
I got trouble on my mind, I'm refusin' to lose,
But still I got a find someone to abuse.
I'm gonna run spread the news, help say the word, jump the fuck back and just act like you heard.
They call me white sinner, black martyr, live wire,
Fire-starter, jungle brother, red neck cracker, freak of nature, new world slacker,
Sex junkie lookin' for a dealer,
You can play the leper, girl, and I can play the healer,
Shit is only gettin' realer, baby haven't you heard,
That the bird, bird, bird, yes the bird is the word?
And it go on and on like a rolling stone, baby, anywhere I lay my hat is my home.
After seven years and a dozen circles around the world, Teo was still just walking it off in 2019. Or, you know. Right up until Gabriel Gray telekinetically sawed his head in half. He might even have thought he deserved it.
However, thanks to some agile maneuvering through space, time, madness, and whatever other intervening mediums, Teo has reemerged in 2009, usurped the body of his younger self, and is currently rolling through human history like a pig in shit. God only knows.
After Phoenix was safe, Teo was temporarily cast into the illusion that he didn't have things to do. His temperament was not suited to standing on podiums and explaining about his feelings on Evolved-non-Evolved relations.
Despite that his personal experiences co-leading a pro-Evolved activist/terrorist/thing organization probably could have provided the intellectual and political world with some authentic gems of wit to pass on, it remained so painfully obvious to him that even the most dangerous of these people were still people and that coexisting with them was a question of practical services. His answers lacked poetry. He got tired of the question, What power would you want if you could have one? He was not terribly marketable, and he faded into the background.
He spent two years finishing up his degree in Italian literature, zip-lining through the cloud forests of Panama, trying his hand tuna fishing with the camera della morte, practicing Aikido, talking Deckard through his withdrawal, and doing a mediocre job dating various people before he wound up on Alexander's doorstep in Georgia. Alexander had gone home to Redneck Land where he was living on a little island which was very idyllic. Water everywhere, and Teo still loved water. Swimming, kayaking, you know.
He then almost accidentally killed himself with a broken piece of old pier and that was apparently the right sort of romantic, because they got together shortly after. Toward the end, the floors were covered in maps; places to go, though it was beyond him to request they sell the house, because he figured they had time. They didn't.
For whatever reason, Alexander agreed to come out of retirement in order to attend the assembly at Columbia University and died along with Helena. Teo hadn't gone. Predictably, he became temporarily deranged by grief afterward.
Fortunately, he had managed to cultivate a vivacious support network, between old college friends who were suddenly illuminated as to their erstwhile schoolmate's disappearance and the jumbled sundry of comrades he had worked with throughout his term with Phoenix. Abby got Romero to talk to him. Romero saw he was screwed up in the head and that was pretty key to his forgiveness: understanding. Finally understanding. Romero said things would get better, but slowly. That made sense.
Hana let him in because he insisted. They hunted down Humanis First! in a largely government-sanctioned capacity and then went to Israel to fight terrorists under comparable designation, in that the law politely glanced in the other direction as needed. Under her rigorous tutelage and without friends and intimate foes to provide frequent distractions, Teo got very good at that. Distractions were, of course, ever-present anyway.
Their increasing share of comparable experiences were no reason for him to stop asking Hana awkward questions, after all.
He visited New York with considerable frequency, too. Abby's wedding to that EMT guy or whoever, Eileen's wedding to Gabriel, Gillian's wedding to Peter, and just in time to get the champaigne bottle plucked out of his grasp by Tamara, mid-swing, when he tried to 'inaugurate' the detective agency in appropriately classical fashion.
On his own part, and understandable most of all by his ever-loving ziaLucrezia, successful or otherwise normal romance eluded him. He knocked up Delilah without knowing it and persistently failed to cash in his cluepons even after their friendship brought him to cross paths with his little ginger-topped offspring several times afterward. A few years later, after Eve showed up in an unexpected — and successful effort to save his and Hana's lives from ambush, he also knocked up Eve without knowing it.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, his career in counter-terrorism with Wireless continued reasonably unaffected by anybody on the other side of the planet until he decided to give the Formula a try. Their discussion was terse but not brief. Their good work and personal relationships (translation: 'accrued favors') with Pinehearst's authority figures meant the opportunity was there, but the risks and potential rewards were the subject of some debate before he followed his compulsion to do his job better, with Hana's stoic support.
By now, he is registered as a limited telepath and he and sensei are still beating up crime for no salary. Change is overrated.
Personality
Most of the time, Teodoro Laudani operates like a disturbingly simplified creature, a sociopath with nothing but a viciously practical probability engine and cold inert ashes for an inner-life, give or take a few superficial, make-believe behaviors he borrowed from his kinder, sweeter, younger self. He is a liar, a thief, a murderer, deadbeat dad, cheat, and rapist. Complexity and contradiction arise with the fact that most of the brutality he commits is done so because he is terribly upset about something that happened eight years ago. He's watched his friends die, play to the whims of a corporate megalomaniac and, worst of all, can't know for sure any of it was wrong on any standard worth acknowledging. As a result, he has developed a serious case of inconsolable rage. Now, he is trying to change the course of history.
He doesn't believe in God anymore (the world seems to be driven by the clockwork pistons of the machinations of slightly less prepossessing assholes than God, frankly), but if he did, he'd feel like he's been waiting and training for this single, impossible opportunity for the past eight years. What are the odds?
Pretty fucking slim, is what. It's the closest thing to a sign as Teo is capable of recognizing anymore.
Albeit one that may have come too late for many things. Tragically, those very same eight years that have kept him proactive and effective also necessarily bled out his conscience, reduced his capacity to patiently coddle subjective stupidity or hangups, and obliterated his ability to see a life beyond fighting (the good?) fight. The very people whose lives he fights in refusal of losing again nevertheless remain dead to him whenever he seeks out their companionship; that is, while he can not bear allowing them to die again, living with them is equally impossible. Similarly, he is haunted by the maudlin happinesses and other tragedies that have, from Logan in prison to the countless weddings he attended alone, the lives he has taken and solitude spent. He is unable to unlive his experiences, no matter how edifying or healing that could be. Having ultimately committed himself to a paramilitary career the likes of which he admired so long in Hana and Christian, he is aware these skills came at a cost.
Refining the raw material of self-immolating passions and physical recklessness into something useful and precise is like folding and hammering out, there is no way to unmake that edge into something ductile or harmless; not even by smashing it to pieces. Never having been the most nurturing personality or gentle teacher, he is less now than ever before. Even if not in so many words, he had said it: he would have made a terrible father. If enough people had fully understood why he thought so, they probably would have stopped wibbling their lips, shut up wasting their breath on chastisement or idealized family units, and pragmatically agree.
Peculiarly enough, Teo has recovered most of his self-confidence, compared to the permanently rueful state of hands-wrung self-loathing that he had existed in when he was twenty five. Not only does he like himself, he actually loves himself.
It is the motherfucking world that has a problem.
That is not, however, to say that he is nothing like what he was before or that he has entirely regressed to the sixteen-year-old barbarian who got little Gianina manslaughtered in her tender youth. He remains 'a little' unpredictable but fundamentally steadfast in his many attachments, very sorry, lustful, neurotically vigilant, optimistic, self-sacrificing — perhaps even for honorable reasons now, and laboriously aware that every single one of his actions will have consequences. His favorite color is still red! Either he isn't all that mean, or his younger self wasn't essentially all that nice. Even now, he still loves sea, though he avoids the shore.
Evolved Human Ability
According to Pinehearst's databanks, Teo was a synthetic Evolved with basic telepathic capabilities. In reality, he had not explored the full extent of his ability when tests were originally run and chose not to update his 'Registration' with the true nature of his gift. He is an astral projectionist. A vague stunt list is as follows:
Reading visual and auditory stimulus through nearby human minds. In other words, he can see what you're seeing and hear what you're hearing, but he has no idea what you're thinking (And Lethe Sings Reminisce);
Access to the passive/receptive feedback of his targets' Evolved abilities. Ie., sonar hearing, if not projection, and uncontrolled access to Tamara's madness-inducing precognitive perceptions (Attaboy);
Hana is still Teo's mentor and remains the face he's seen most frequently for the past 10 years, amid otherwise interchangeable or frequently abandoned acquaintances, former comrades, and lovers. She permitted him to make her one-woman war on Palestinian terrorists a two man effort and, briefly, three. Thanks to shared experiences in inconsolable losses, they are more alike than they used to be. Despite this, Teo still manages somehow to blindside her with weird questions, though the more time erodes past, the less he finds himself capable of saying the harder words.
Abby will apparently remain under some shape or form Teo's guardianship until the end of either of them or the world; Helena's command dating back to November, 2009. They tried dating, way back when but sadly it didn't work out. He still occasionally visits for dinner, periodically reminds Hana to keep an ear out for mentions on the wireless. They still swap gifts. He continues to adore her craziness, because it means she's the kind of person he has huge faith in. If you can't do right by yourself, why are you here?
Bebe has the dubious honor of being the woman who turned Teodoro straight. Or, at least, of being the first one he slept with after the novelty of constantly shoveling fudge wore off. She was sweet and cleverly spoken for him when Al died and he was distinctly pleased she would be caring for Sonny afterward, kindly ignoring the fact that that entire relationship is a contrivance of codependency.
Brian's an arrogant bitch now, or so they say. Teo finds this more entertaining than perturbing, and is pleased that the Lighthouse is like a fastfood chain among charities. The availability of a quick order of altruism and child care can't be a bad thing. They have never been close, and still aren't, but it's all good.
Cat is an acquaintance with whom Teo no longer spends much time, but he likes to know that she's doing well upholding the law with the considerable weapons in her arsenal. He tends to conduct his conversations with her in Italian, however rare this conversations are. It amazes him how successfully she took to civilian life. He has finally, largely let go of his guilt over Danielle.
Deckard is doing well, or so Teo hears. Cleaned up, takes care of Abigail— sort of. Teo wishes him all the best, which is sort of a pleasant graduation from bringing him his vacuum cleaners and hookers or stumbling under around his dubious chaperoning in a drunken haze of weeping rage. Relatively unknown fact: Teodoro has a little crush on him.
Delilah is… Teo's baby-momma, and stabilizes him when she can tell he needs that. She's come a ways from the little girl who dragged his drunken ass out from underneath a Staten Island overpass and peeled herself off a tub in gooey-skinned panic. She is self-assured but more cautious now, keeps a bar, and her hair is still red as a fire engine. He likes her in polka dots, thinks she is still cute as a button, admires her for graces she finds effortless.
Elisabeth is Teo's best friend! Not the way Al used to be, given 1) no sex, and 2) he doesn't tell her everything-everything, but she still receives more unabridged updates and stark truths about him than anybody else in their combined social circle does, whether about their love lives or how angry he is with her about something. They aren't incredibly close to each other, but they are remarkably honest with each other. Her son is Teodoro's godson.
Felix and Teo parted ways when Leland's ability manifested, on the grounds that Teo had no plans to sleep with him again unless Felix were to be cheating. Pretty fucking awkward, vengeful, and ugly, but being in love with somebody who's more in love with another person gets that way. More evidence of the asshole quotient. Still, Teo is generally friendly and helpful but safely distant, wherever the FBI boy is concerned.
Eileen is really cool and gorgeous annnd actually Teo kind of has a crush on her too but you can probably blame it on the accent that still clings to her breath. He thinks she does good work with SCOUT and even felt an obscure twinge of sympathy when she lost Ethan.
Gabriel cleaned up a lot. It's kind of amazing! Teo is extremely impressed and happy that he's doing well, although that whole 'marriage' thing seems to make him more of a cautionary tale than someone to look up to.
Leland got Felix without working for it. That's fucking irritating, though it would probably gall Teo worse if he'd actually been trying to win the skinny old Russian over. Oh, well. Good guy. Could've been friends. At least Teo doesn't consistently hold a grudge.
Sonny split up with him amicably when Teo waffled, balked, and ultimately refused to come out after the end of Phoenix, and higher calling overseas called the doctor to expand his horizons when Teo didn't want to go anywhere for once. The timing was all wrong. They're still friends. The sporadically wistful kind, who seem to be doomed to move toward diverging horizons: Sonny toward prestige and old age, Teo to early death in a ditch.
Walter is Teo's babychild and Walter knows it. Teo doesn't. He should probably suspect, but Delilah doesn't say anything because she figures he would freak out (he totally would).
Eve showed up in Israel and saved both his and Hana's life from a remarkably well put-together ambush, and he let her stay due as much to some mutual attraction as practical use. He then knocked her up, and coolly did not object to her leaving after the miscarriage. Eve is probably evidence that Teo's kind of an asshole sometimes. Also, that girls like assholes. She's mad at him enough to fit this category, though he isn't really angry at her.
Romero — it's the strangest story, and one that Teo doesn't tend to share. It's value was in the execution, not the retelling.
Alexander was somebody Teo loved, though it was never entirely clear how much he was in love with his best friend. It turned out to be moot point, insofar as that Teodoro remains horribly haunted by his death, realizing he had been, in some small part, a poisonous reminder that Alexander had betrayed Phoenix in torture during incarceration, which was subsequently why he came out of comfortable privacy to appear with the Columbia 14. And, you know. Get murdered. The guilt subsided, but little of the pain went with it.
Helena gave good orders. It isn't difficult to interpret Teo's free-wheeling, counter-terrorism ways as him being stuck doing what she asked him to — or apologizing for having failed — ever after. 'Help me,' she said. 'Lead Phoenix.' Big oops.
Lucrezia's disappearance hurt, but some figment of Teo believes that even if she is dead, she died doing something to redeem herself and left with the kinds of regrets that were honorable to harbor. Bizarrely, at odds with the yawning void that the other 13 left in his life — and though he mourned for her, his aunt never felt truly gone.
All the remains of our cadaver of days,
I keep hidden away, keep them there just in case.
I wanna visit that place,
Blow the dust from the bones
Off a body of years that I leave all alone.
Just a body of years, see the skin disappears
And the blood turns to stone,
And the body of years, now a pile of bones.
Like a sheet of veneer, each a piece of my soul.
It's a body of years that I leave all alone.
Just a body of years, now a pile of bones.
You know, oh, falls down,
Can't stop trippin' on these.
Go down, get back up,
Get my foot in the door and my face on the page,
Make my mark in the world with a bag and a blade.
It's a body of work that you can't ever change,
Like a body of years that you take to your grave.
There's nothing we can say or do,
The damage is in front of you.
I'm sorry, but sometimes things fall apart.
Take some time to understand
The situation's out of hand,
But you didn't see it from the start.
So ask me questions,
Try to pull the band-aid slow.
I want you to feel this right before I go.
I wish we all could freeze and explode.
Wish we all could freeze and explode.
Wish we all could freeze and go home
I'm getting tired of being lost,
It's time I control.
As my crew flies like astronauts,
I watch as we get old.
We'll meet again some other day,
I hope you'll finally see
That the hardest thing I've ever done,
Is say good-bye to me.
Take it straight up and watch me get in,
Feel it when the sun is up and let the vibe in.
Don't you feel the rain drops are near?
You're the only tool to break the music
And your time is so useless,
And your days are not of muse breaks.
Feel me get in.
C'mon,
Feel me get in.
Oh yeah.
Take me up and out,
'Cause rainy days are all I feel.
I'm walking about.
I know that there's no time
In the days of muse breaks.
I had to hang on tight.
Looking back, I wish I had more time for you.
"No reason to get excited,"
The thief he kindly spoke.
"There are many here among us
"Who feel that life is but a joke, but
"But you and I, we've been through that,
"And this is not our fate.
"So let us not talk falsely now,
"The hour's getting late."
All along the watchtower,
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went,
Bare-foot servants to, but huh,
Outside in the cold distance,
A wild cat did growl,
Two riders were approaching,
And the wind began to howl, hey, oh,
All along the watchtower,
Hear you sing around the watch.
Trivia and Notes
Federal agents involved with foreign affairs may be aware of Wireless and Teo's counter-terrorism with both American and Israeli governments, though local (New York) law enforcement is probably aware only of their assistance in going after Humanis First! He has an official designation of some fancy, obscure-clearance kind.
Quit smoking, drinks only in moderation, mostly at Delilah's tavern, which he had helped to set up. Personal progress in great bounding strides.
The full extent of his Evolved ability is not listed here or ICly with Pinehearst and may be revealed later if there is any storyline point in that actually happening. He isn't exactly a telepath, it turns out. Please see above.
I love you; cannot even recognize
you. How much of me could you understand? (Only
that I love colour, motion, thin high air
at night? The recognizable parts
of yourself?)
We love only heroes. Glorious
death in battle. Scaling walls,
burning bridges behind us, destroying
all ways back. All retreat. As if
some things were fixed. As if the moon
would come to us each night
we could watch
from the battlements). As if
there were anything certain
or lovely
in our lives.
