Participants:
| Scene Title | Ties that Bind |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Faulkner tries to find out if anyone else had any strange visions during the fire. He finds more than he'd bargained for. |
| Date | July 2, 2021 |
363 days ago, Isaac Faulkner had been attending a 4th of July party with his friend, Seren Evans, at the estate of musician/Ferryman/SESA official Robyn Quinn.
That had been a long time ago. After the first abduction, before the second; before the plane crash, and the stroke, and being dead and then alive again; before half the world burning down. After Isis had gone, but before she'd come back and left again, the distance between them now too great to truly bridge.
It had been another life, in a not-entirely metaphorical sense of the word.
And yet, life goes on. Isaac Faulkner is still here. And for all that he's lost — his power, some of his health, potentially his future if they don't find a cure for whatever is breaking down in him — he's gained something, too. The bizarre vision he'd had when Isis had used her power on him, and then the clarified version he'd witnessed during his episodes during the evacuation from the Ohio River Fire… he's still grappling with it. Trying to figure out where to go with it.
He decided to go to Brenda's.
Brenda's Bar and Griddle
Sheepshead Bay
July 2nd
11:17 pm
The sign on the door reads CLOSED, but Isaac raises a hand and raps three times on the glass anyway. He's expected.
The closed sign indicates to the public that Brenda's has a Private Event, albeit there is no sign of a crowd gathering. Behind the large glass windows overlooking the street and out to the water, the seating shows no signs of change for the venue from its restaurant layout, so it isn't a dance party that's on the books for the night even though there's music audibly playing inside the restaurant.
Rather, the event is an intimate one. One of the attendees, Shaw, is heard calling out a quick "I'll get it! Coming!" to the back as he turns down the radio to a less pervasive background track. He busily wipes his hands on his dishwasher's apron that sports the Brenda's logo when he reaches the doors and takes out a small jangling ring of keys from a front pocket. Perhaps laughable, to consider such a security measure in a world where superpowers that allow some to simply walk through walls, slither through vents, or undo a deadbolt with their mind exists.
"Hey Isaac, come on in," Shaw greets the other man with a smile and a gesture waving him in. "Eanqa', he's here!" Shaw's voice isn't normally this loud by the very nature of his personality, but he projects because he must.
It may not be a dance party, but there is someone in the dj booth. Namiko, booted feet resting up on a table and over sized headphones sitting over her ears, fiddles with a decent sized lighting console. She's bringing the bar's ambiance down to minimum— what she likes for a small gathering. Low lighting, but warm and inviting. The music, too, is just meant for background. Lo-fi beats to chat to.
"Hey Shaw," Isaac says, mustering a smile in return. "Thanks again for agreeing to this. Holding the restaurant open and all," he says, looking a bit sheepish. The sight of Namiko in the DJ booth elicits a flicker of surprise on his face, but he offers a casual wave, his smile returning almost immediately. He's glad that Shaw and Isa haven't been abandoned by those dearest to them in the face of the whole PHARO mess. Maybe a tiny bit envious, as well, but mostly just glad.
"How've you all been?" Faulkner asks Shaw as he follows him inside.
Leading Isaac further in towards a comfortable lounge seating area by the bar, Shaw waves toward any number of cozy cushioned possibilities. He unhooks his apron from around him, pulling it over his head and draping it on the back of a single sofa chair. "Mmmm." The sound is noncommittal, the man casting a brief look toward the DJ booth before he turns back to Isaac. "It's okay. For us, I guess, we're glad to be." Instead of sitting, Shaw tosses off the easy slip-on shoes from his socked feet and hops on to the sofa chair, folds his legs in to sit in a compact figure with arms wrapping around shins. "How about you? Everything—" Shaw pauses the small talk abruptly, head jerking up as he realizes, "Did you want a drink? Did you eat?"
"Everyone's drinking!"
The voice of Isa Khan rings through from the back and out comes the dark haired woman balancing a wooden tray with small glass bottles, hazel eyes alight the way they usually are just after she's gotten done working on something. "Testing time," As she sets the tray down and puts one hand on her hip, surveying the bottles and wrinkling her nose.
Isa almost doesn't say what the flavor is, "New flavor, totally new. It's," waiting a moment to consider her words carefully. "Unorthodox." Glancing over at Faulkner she smiles softly and shrugs a shoulder, "Shahid has encouraged me to step out of the box with my moonshine." That's not mocking either; she genuinely is trying to take her husband's advice.
"Plum."
Plum moonshine.
"Don't give that face!" Snapping at Faulkner before her expression softens and she grins. It's the most relaxed he's ever seen the engineer but those close to Isa know she isn't always on the attack.
Faulkner quirks an eyebrow, but doesn't seem offput by Isa's snap. "I know plum wine was supposedly quite a thing; it'll be interesting to see your take on it," he says with a cool grin of his own.
Then his grin fades a bit. "And to be honest… a drink might not hurt," he says quietly. He glances to Shaw. "I wouldn't say no to food if you're offering, but… there's something I'd like to ask first. Get it out of the way."
He looks to Isa and Shaw. "On the day of the evacuation. When the river caught fire and Raytech was attacked." With that opening laid out, suddenly he finds himself hesitating; it's only with an effort he manages to push forward. "Did. Did either of you… see anything strange? Have any… episodes, or anything like that?"
When the drinks come out, Nami ditches the DJ booth and slips over to Isa's side. "Listen, this is so out of the box, it's inter dimensional, okay? This species of plum doesn't even exist in this reality except," she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder, "in my garden." It seems the young woman has no qualms about mentioning the strangeness. It's just a part of what makes this little family unit tick. And perhaps she figures that a friend of Isa and Shaw's is already in the know.
She tilts her head at the mention of episodes, but whatever her parents have or haven't told her, she's leaving the question to them.
Shaw sits up only a little straighter from his peculiar sitting position but doesn't unfold completely when Isa appears with drinks. Looking over the glasses and decanter, he makes a quick count of it before deciding it's fine. If they need more shot glasses, there's always the bar over yonder.
The man beams a smile to wife and daughter, proud of them both, glad to be able to share their experiments and accomplishments and eccentricities altogether with Isaac. If there was a worry about a little dimensional destruction of an NDA, it's not here and now. "I already love it," claims Shaw without any evidence or tasting at all. Call him a biased judge. But will it change when he actually tries it?
Isaac's question pulls his focus away from the immediate hospitality mode, and Shaw looks off to the empty restaurant in recollection. "The smoke was bad," he admits softly, but he can't bring himself to conflate it with his also admitted biased feelings about fire itself. For obvious reasons. "Strange like… like what happened in January?" The strokes that those who had suffered, and in the case of Kimiko Nakamura died from, were some rather terrifying moments. But somehow the victims of the kidnapping and Pharo replacements were all still here, minus a big one.
Still, Shaw shakes his head slowly, ignorance of more recent episodes showing. He glances back to Isa searchingly.
Isa knows her husband and even Nami know just what to do about food, mostly because she's not the real cook. She's the drinker.
"We are a one of a kind brand thanks to our very smart daughter," winking at Nami and marveling at herself at the strangeness of it all. They themselves being from where they are from, these sorts of products. A poet could write a whole book from just the creative aspect of it all.
When Faulkner is asking about what happened that day Isa grows grim and settled down in her seat.
"You mean like flashes of memories that don't seem familiar?"
That tone is grave and her skin has gone white with that thought of her own episodes. It might be better to focus on what exactly happened to their friend here. "Did something happen to you?"
Isaac's eyebrows rise at Namiko's explanation; he turns to regard the shot glass, suitably impressed. "Not just plums but dimensional plums, then?" Faulkner asks, grinning. "Interesting."
He takes a drink, pausing a moment to study the flavor before swallowing. "Hm. Tastes a little… mellower… than the lemon brew." After a moment, Faulkner nods all around. "Not bad. Not bad at all," he grins.
Shaw's answer is somewhere between reassuring and disappointing in its normalcy, but when Isa gives her answer Faulkner goes still, his smile dying on his face. His gaze drifts down to his glass. "Yes, like that. Exactly like that," he says, his voice small and quiet.
After a moment, he clears his throat. "I saw… something I'd forgotten. Hard to believe you can… forget your mother's face, but. I was very young when she, ah. Died." Faulkner's delivery is far less confident, more vulnerable than usual.
He picks his shot glass up, finishing the contents in one gulp. "Could I have another drink?" he asks, forcing a smile. Then he takes a deep breath. "You?" he asks Isa.
As much as the compliment to her work gets a grin from Namiko, the moment mothers and deaths are added to the conversation, she stiffens. It's brief, but not subtle. She glances around the table, then steps back. "I'll, uh, go heat up some food."
To give them some privacy, perhaps. At least for a few moments.
It takes Shaw a little longer to parse what's exchanged between Isa and Isaac. There's a moment as the man cups his drink to his lips, that the liquid barely drips onto his tongue before he realizes with a sudden mental impact, what is being implied.
"It was Tuesday." He blurts out. Shaw coughs with the faint tones of dimensional plum tickling his tastebuds, and sits up straight now. He stares after Namiko's back as she retreats to the kitchen, dark eyes lingering there but then turning back to present company. Those same dark eyes dip to the moonshine in his hand. He turn the glass one way then the other, his brow pinching as the recollection returns.
"It was Tuesday. Raining. We close early on Tuesdays," Shaw says, looking up again after to his wife. His partner. His phoenix. "Your nose was bleeding." A beat skips. He swallows dryly. "When we came home, you were crying."
It's on that thought that Shaw pushes up to his feet from where he sits and moves so that he can sit beside Isabelle. And this way, he can peer at Isaac in the same direction, the same angle. Shaw nods for the man to help himself to the bottle of experimental flavor moonshine, and takes a smaller drink of his own. He doesn't look at Isabelle directly when he speaks again, but leans lightly to touch arm to arm, elbow to elbow. "I didn't ask you that evening. Do you remember what you remembered, Eanqa'?"
The sound of glass shattering echoes through Brenda's. "Fuck!"
Time has slowed to a crawl as Isa feels an intense heat at her back and flames roar in her ears overtaking her senses. The fiery woman has gone pale as a sheet and her hand shakes where the glass of moonshine was being held previously, now pieces scattering across the floor after she had thrown it against the wall in an outburst. Isa doesn't hear the sound, she's just rattling the table because of her hand.
You are a monster.
That distorted version of her younger self's voice rings through her mind and she hears the scream of her parents.
Suddenly her sense of hearing rushes back like a tidal wave crashing over the flames and she lets out a long held breath. There's a moment of silence that passes, a pin dropping would sound like an avalanche. Isa gets up out of her seat and goes to grab three bottles from the bar. Her steps are more like stomps and she slams the bottles back on the table glaring holes into the bottle of tequila before she rips the top off and downs a healthy portion, not stopping for air while she gulps the liquor down.
When she thinks she's about to say something instead, Isa takes another deep guzzling of the bottle and puts it on the table a bit more gently than before. "I saw my own mother as well," wringing her hands around the neck of the bottle as if she wants to choke the life out of it, which is ironic seeing as: "And how I killed her."
To admit this to a practical stranger takes a lot for Isa but they have bonded through shared trauma in the least, she feels being honest is the best possible way to maybe find more answers but the guilt rears it's head and overtakes her. Legs begin to bounce up and down on the chair. "How did yours die?"
Trying to shift the conversation, not wanting to dwell.
Another deep sip of tequila is swallowed and not even that can erase the bitterness resting in Isa's mouth.
Isa's sudden flash into motion, like an ember roaring into flame, sees Faulkner go still, watching. His eyes track her as she rises and storms over to the bar, storming back with a trio of bottles. He only relaxes when she asks her question, taking one of the bottles and pouring himself a generous shot. Tonight, it seems, is going to be a heavy drinking night.
"I was four years old. Eating a bowl of…" he pauses to chuckle. "Count Chocula. Count Chocya," he laughs, the sound of it in stark contrast to the bleakness of his face. "My… her… husband came in. They fought. I don't remember what it was over, but he was… he was furious. He tried to slap her, and she…"
He laughs again, shaking his head. "She decked him. Laid him right the fuck out."
Faulkner's expression falls quickly, though. "I remember… she picked me up and carried me out, but… he followed shortly after. He had a gun. Mom tried to get me away, she was screaming for help, and… and he shot her." Isaac laughs again, a wheezy, choking noise, but his eyes are wide with horror, a tear trickling from the corner of his eye as his hands start to shake. He forces himself to take a deep breath, then drains his shot in a single gulp… which immediately sets off a choking cough.
That's fine. Far better than thinking about what he'd been talking about.
After a moment, he slumps forward, eying his glass. "You're… the first ones I've told about this. The only ones. I… wanted to find out if it was… if it was just me, or what."
"But how could I forget? How could I… just… forget something like that?" Faulkner murmurs softly, asking no one in particular. His gaze is still downcast, his eyes intently studying the shape of his glass, the arm of the chair he's sitting in. Anything but looking at someone else.
Even Shaw jumps a bit at the glass shattering. It's not because he's afraid of Isabelle or her sudden mood shift, but the noise, the sight of the debris, it tweaks a memory from the very back of his mind. He takes a calming breath. Dark eyes follow Isa instead of focusing on the shattered tumbler, but Shaw waits for Isa's return with the bottles. He waits still longer, watching and listening as she describes her experience this time.
He ignores the shattered glass and picks up the third bottle, fingers wrapping around the neck of the bottled moonshine. Shaw pours himself a short one, drinking it down before pouring again. Isaac's recounting also files away into Shaw's inner repository. He turns a meaningful look back to Isa. They had been down this road before, when the Kaylee of their timeline pried open the memories locked away. When it came to be known that Shaw's uncle Faruq had been present, involved in the placement of Isabelle into the Ashford family following the death of her biological mother.
When they found out Isabelle had been an experiment.
"Something happened," he says to the pair, but with a sympathetic nod to Isaac as the man laments a forgotten past. "A door that is open now, and can't be shut." Shaw lifts his glass to his lips with a second pull from his drink. At his exhale, he speaks a name with a tone of dark mystery surrounding it. "Charles Deveaux."
Isabelle frowns at the memory Faulkner relays, eyes on the bottle before flicking to his face. She feels for him but something else makes her angry. "That old fuck spun everyone's memories in a blender seems like. Dogshit ass Company," which makes Isa's eyebrows raise and she leans back a bit.
Thinking of her knowledge of the former secret organization while gripping Shaw's hand at his description, she loved his way with words.
"Charles erased my memories because I was an experiment, my mother also. They gave me my ability of fire." A pause before she takes another drink.
"This means your family was Company related. What were their names?"
Isaac feels a sort of rolling nausea, accompanied by a dull and distant pain behind his eye that warns of his nigh-perpetual pre-migraine stirring to wakefulness; tonight's going to be a bad one. But what Isa's said is worse.
Your family was Company related.
Definitely true, but not something he'd actually articulated. Not something he'd really and truly considered. Had his mother been… a Company agent or somesuch? Had that had something to do with that last fight? Or…
Faulkner shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Too little information; speculating now is just going to lead down into a maze of could-have-beens. "I don't… she never said his name. But he said hers."
He takes a shaky breath, eyes still closed. "Elia. Her name… was Elia."
Shaw's eyes search within his spirits, trying to pierce through an increasingly alcohol muddled recollection. "What did Kaylee say to us," he utters, harkening to a different time and place, one more or less wartorn than the current land. "There was a formula." He looks back to Isa's hand in his, then to her face. "And the Company - Arthur - was going to make you disappear, or something like that. Before my uncle…"
His uncle Faruq had said he wanted to place her with the Ashfords. Isabelle's string had already been tied to Shaw’s. He hadn't known just how much so until they opened those closed doors with Kaylee.
"Your mother," Shaw wonders in Isaac's direction, "you saw what she looked like. You remembered her. You remembered Elia. That's… that's the important thing. Remembering. I don't, not really, not for mine." Shaw presses his lips together, face screwing like he'd bitten into a sour lemon, taking a moment to try and recall. But nothing comes.
There is silence from Isabelle but the look she gives Faulkner is one of pure horror.
"What did you say?"
She looks confused as if she can't believe what she's hearing, Elia. The name echoes through her mind as well as the screams of Elia and Isa's father. Faulkner's sister gets a sick look on her face and chases it down with more liquor. "Shahid was right. There was a Formula, they injected me? Us? Sometimes it's unclear when I think back to that memory." Isa seems haunted by this, she hadn't even told Shaw all of it. She can't seem to look Faulkner in the eye.
She feels ashamed.
"My ability manifested as a kid, rare apparently." Tone dripping with bitterness at the notion of somehow that being a crowning achievement in her life. "I burned my whole apartment down. With my parents in it." Tears begin to form and Isabelle grabs the bottle. "The Company had taken me to some secret place where they took people with dangerous abilities. Level 5. They kept wiping my memory but she was there somehow, she was alive." Isabelle knows it sounds crazy. "I saw the rest of the memory play out. Our mother has an ability. She can come back from the dead, they call it rebirth."
Our mother.
"Her name is Elia. And I'm so sorry." Sorry that she killed her even if she came back. Sorry he has that traumatic memory to live with and now this.
"She's alive. Faulkner." Isabelle sobs into her hands. Angry, wretched sobs.
Faulkner's expression is blank and disconnected at all of this; his head is spinning. The alcohol probably isn't helping. Isaac pushes to his feet, shaking his head.
"Wait. Wait, wait. Wait. Are…" Isaac pauses. "I… I've never heard of anyone else with that name before, I'll admit. But… how sure are we that it's, that it's the same one? I mean…" He trails off, shaking his head. "She was. She was, uh. Probably… a few inches less than six feet tall. Brown hair, kinda… kinda wavy. Had, uh. Hazel eyes?"
He shakes his head; he remembers her, but getting that image to reality is difficult. "But wait. You said you manifested early?" Faulkner asks, looking to Isabelle. "Or… were… given this ability early? Forced to manifest? God I barely even know what I'm saying at the moment."
Faulkner takes a breath. "What I remember… it would've happened when I was four years old. So that'd have been… '98, probably. I'm assuming your incident was before that, but… wait. Didn't you say you were, uh, from… another timeline? How does that work with all of this?"
It's really all Shaw can do to bear witness to the reality shaking revelations that Isa and Isaac come across and share. "Eanqa'," he tries to soothe as his wife sobs, taking the bottle in her hands, placing his arms around her fully and kisses against the top of her quavering head. Even so, he regards Isaac and the description of the woman called Elia grabs him.
Slowly, Shaw nods to confirm it all - he'd seen much, including the face of the dark-haired woman buried in Isa's and now Faulkner's unearthed memories. The only uncertainty there in the man's dark stare is a lingering worry about the current timeline's federal agents ready to pop out at them all for a breach of a signed paper contract. None come, though. Emboldened, Shaw swallows his fear to reply. "Sickness and zealots who killed our kind. They called the virus, Shanti-Rage." The specter of their pasts haunt them still from the shadows of memories. Shaw's features pale a little to speak its name, and his hands cling all the more firmly to Isa.
"But," the man interrupts his own swirl of thoughts, "We escaped. Most of us. Not all of us. To a time where there was a cure, and they gave it to us, generous of them, or perhaps in interest of self-preservation. I don't know. The Company was… Is? Was. In control there. Was Elia alive?" He looks back to Isa there, feelings entirely mixed up. "I don’t know. I know that we had a good life then," Shaw admits softly, "We had a good life, until it we couldn't."
He only knows, evident from the way Shaw gazes upon Isa, that he would follow her to her very end. “Your ability,” Shaw notes with a look back to Faulkner, “do you remember when it began to show?”
"Another dark haired woman named Elia associated with The Company?" Reddened hazel eyes pop open, eyes that match Elia's give Faulkner a look. There is already a dynamic forming in his older sister's mind.
"They were in control but they mostly did good. And yes we did have a good life," Isabelle whispers softly to Shahid and rubs his chin with her hair.
Shaw explains the best he can about their totally fucked up situation and Isa adds, rubbing his arm as she does so, "I am a timeline transplant two times over, Shaw once over. M-Elia was pregnant with me when she crossed over. They injected her with the Formula. It took on both of us. I grew up in our.. very dark home world and came here. Our mothers on that front are different people." At least Isa thinks so? "We would need to see how this world's version of me connected with Elia to be sure."
Her sobs have stopped and she's just staring at the blonde man sitting across from them, laying her hand in Shaw's and using his as a pillar of strength. "When I manifested I incinerated our whole apartment with everyone inside. I have been choking with the guilt." The most recent memories have shown her that Elia lived but the action of killing your own parents never left you. "There is a catch with her ability. She didn't abandon us, when she dies she forgets about her previous life. Gets a reset I guess. She doesn't remember any of her children."
This is a lot for Isa to say and even harder to get all out.
Faulkner's ability interests her as well.
Faulkner listens as Shaw and Isa spill the tangle of their history. Histories, rather. He remains silent for the most part… right up until Isa talks about her — their? — mother's ability.
"She… doesn't remember?" Faulkner asks, and for a moment he looks hurt anew. But then… then he lets out a rueful chuckle and shakes his head. "Guess I… can't really cast stones, can I? I didn't remember, either…" he says, his expression again growing forlorn.
Then he shakes his head. "If she's not dead… that'll have to be enough. That and the memory of her."
He sighs then, and looks to Shaw. "When I manifested is a thornier question now than it was last week. Last week I'd have told you it was in a cabin in Montana, a few years ago. Now? Who knows? If my very memories can't be trusted…"
He falls silent for a moment, staring at his glass. "I was always afraid of the dark when I was young. It felt like there was something there. Was it just a simple childhood fear? Or… something more?"
There's a sense from Shaw that he's stuck in doing mental gymnastics over certain points being made, least of which is that Isa and Isaac are in fact half-siblings. That makes Faulkner… "Brother, you need not fear the dark," the man says as he looks from sibling to sibling. The family was growing. To him, this is comfort.
"But, what do we know, if anything else… What can we do with this information?" Shaw scrubs a free hand over his beard, mouth pursing in thought. "We need to find ourselves, all of us, first. Find out, then we could work on finding Elia. The immortal?" His gaze slips to Isa's face, softening. "A mother phoenix."
Namiko clears her throat as she comes back into the room, her patience and her manners running thin apparently. She brings over a tray of food, but there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to her choices. Fruits and vegetables in bowls, rice and chicken, chips and salsa, and oddly enough: waffles. It seems to be a free for all, since all the food goes to the center of the table.
"Um," she says, because where patience falls, curiosity rises, "does this all mean he's both my uncle and a robot?" The privacy, it seems, was little more than a mirage. Because she was listening. But at least there seems to be little judgment in her question. Interest, though.
Isa laughs at Namiko's question and takes a chip while wiping a tear from her eye, "I guess so. You have robot parents and a robot uncle lucky you."
Namiko puts a hand to her chest, eyes closing for a moment before she speaks.
"That is rad as hell."
Looking back at Faulkner Isa shakes her head, "We all didn't remember Issac, they've taken that from us." The Company, she wishes the Founders were alive today. She would love to have multiple words with them. But Shahid is right, "We have to find ourselves first then we can focus on finding mom." Mom, because she was their mom. This was her brother. She had blood family.
There's a part of Isabelle, a huge part that she's kept hidden even from Shaw. Underneath the anger and swearing is the pain of not seeing anyone in the world who looks like her but now that had changed two times over and she couldn't feel more lucky and grateful.
It was a blessing amidst the horror that was their pasts. "Once we're all back to ourselves Kaylee can do a proper mind dive, she's a great friend I know she won't refuse if she's able."
Isaac takes a drink when Shaw calls him brother. For all his talk about being a twin to the original, it still shakes him a little — the idea of having family, at last. He lets out a strained chuckle as Namiko and Isa add the same sentiments. "I… wasn't expecting this," he admits. "I came here, looking for clues to my past. My family." He musters a smile, shaky but sincere. "Found more than I expected."
The subject of Kaylee and mind dives isn't something he's quite as sure about… but then, right now, there's a lot he's not sure about. Still, the fact that it was Kaylee that Isa suggested elicits another shaky chuckle. "Kaylee, yeah… I met her through Aman. She helped straighten the people at that Park Slope B&B out. I wonder. If I'd thought to ask her to look then…"
He shakes his head. He'd had no real reason to suspect that someone had been messing with his brain then. "No way of knowing, I guess. Just… ironic, isn't it? I'm a little blown away that one of the first people I met when I came back to New York would turn out to be my sister!" he says, smiling. He raises his glass. "To family," he says simply.
He grabs a piece of fruit out of one of the bowls, because now that he thinks about it he is a little ravenous; it's been a long day.
Shaw immediately pops up with the intent to help Namiko with the food tray, but there's no need. So instead, he simply smiles broadly at his adopted daughter, warm and proud. "Yes, robots, but even so, they gave us hearts and minds. Maybe there's more to it all. Whoever did this, they wanted something to keep us human."
Shaw rubs his fingers against each other, turning to the spread Namiko brought. Of course he goes for the waffle. "Strange, that they would make robots that still needed to eat," he considers as he shoves the waffle into his mouth, grinning around it. So much for manners. It's like he grew up in a failed civilization or something.
And when Isaac lifts his glass to toast, Shaw hurriedly swipes up his drink glass to do the same. "Chu Frahmly!"