Loren knows not what he's done. (skelterhelter) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-15 21:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | damian wayne, tate langdon |
Who: Roger & John Loren.
What: Roger runs into John, and reminds him of who he is.
Where: Shadow Bar in Caesar's Palace.
When: Let's say just now.
Warnings: general Roger language.
They lived by vampire hours in the city. The evenings put Vegas through a rinse cycle of acid trip nightlights and clocks did not exist here. It was generally sometime around 9 AM when things began to wind down. There was no such thing as last call in this part of the desert, but the occupancy of bar stools began to diminish. Certain parts of the bar were a ghost town now, sparse enough to depict tumbleweeds blowing.. but it was never completely dead. There was the constant, musical beckon of slot machines and quarters against metal, the whoops of winners and the groans of defeat.
It was times like this when John got to thinking about the Passages hotel. The boy in his head wanted John to visit again, to go inside the door with the polished hallway that smelled like lemon oil. But through Tate, John knew what that hallway led to. He knew the kinds of things that lurked in that house, the darkness that pried it's bloody nails beneath the planks of human reserve. John didn't want that.
Having wrapped his shift up some twenty minutes ago, John now stood against the gleaming black cul-de-sac of Shadow Bar. The dancers had long since gone home, and most of the tourists were now safely tucked in their beds among the floors above. A few stragglers remained at the tables and the bartender was wiping down bottles before he slid John something clear over ice with a twist of lemon rind floating in it.
Damian seemed suddenly uninterested in Roger’s life, though the both of them knew that wouldn’t last. His first 24 hours back in Gotham had been rough with a rocky start through puberty and adulthood. Roger felt for him and even had a sense of pride for how the kid refused to take shit from anyone without being a complete pyschopath. That was a good survival skill. With the kid keeping to himself in the back of his brain, Roger took advantage of the quiet and got to work. The Shadow Bar had a couple contacts he had to set in stone, but even after all the business was taken care of, Roger stayed. The desert may not have had the luxury of an ocean, but a dark club with steady beats could wash away just as much trash.
Relaxing alone in some removed booth with just a glass of water, he scanned the room lazily and noticed the profile of what seemed like a familiar face. Leaning forward to get a better look, Roger couldn’t believe there was another ghost from his past. Loren was, putting it gracefully, a cold blooded son of a bitch. They met in Florida and teamed up to chase down some Scarface wannabees with that kind of machine efficiency Roger didn’t have to use very often anymore. Those men they bagged and tagged deserved a lot more than he and Loren gave them. Eventually, chasing those kinds of people made Roger feel like he was hunting down monsters who had let their humanity evaporate into the southern mist for a couple bags of cocaine.
But, Roger was softer now. And, from the looks of it, so was Loren. That wasn’t something Roger thought was possible. Edging out of his booth, he stepped towards the bar. “Loren. You never seemed like a Las Vegas man to me.” He smiled nicely down at his former partner and took a seat. “I better not hear you’re joining up with another bounty company. You know mine is the fucking best in town.”
Never much of a drinker, John untwisted some citrus skin between the gun oil grace of two fingers. He could appreciate the varnish of a bartop beneath his hands and the vicious burn of fermented juniper in his throat, but aside from that.. there was no connection to the art of inebriation. No association for John with good times and social keggers. All he knew of booze was learned from the stumbling tourists who started altercations and the vodka-soaked strippers who came by in the after hours to tune down in front of a slot machine with a pack of mentholated cigarettes.
This particular bartender had learned through grueling and awkward sessions of trial and error that John just wasn't the kind of man comfortable with small talk. Any attempt bordered on painful, as invigorating as an afternoon soaking in the tarpits of San Andreas. Which is why the guy behind the bar quirked an expression at the approach of the new, jovial smile that sank down beside the off-duty security. The bartender vanished into the stock room and John gave a sidelong glance when the man sat down. "Sorry?" Loren? There was a flicker of discomfort and distrust, followed by a swift detailing of charred, ashwood eyes. Even if John's demeanor was that of a gentle giant, the cool awareness in his stare was all Loren, all day long. "I.. don't know you, friend."
Roger raised his eyebrows, that smirk still lingering. No, this was Loren. Bounty Hunters didn’t forget faces. “Stop fucking around.” He joked, realizing that he never knew Loren to be someone that would bullshit just for laughs. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he ever saw the man laugh at something genuinely funny. It occurred to Roger that, despite his handsome mug and charming personality, there were people out there that didn’t remember him. He’d have to change that.
“Come on. I’m Roger Darman. Bounty hunter.” He took a sip of his water, chewing on the ice a little. “You and me hunted some of the worst guys in Florida. There was that one guy who thought he could bribe us with three bricks of cocaine and I shot him in the kneecaps? It was a real laugh riot.” He smiled fondly. Those were good times. “It got to the point where if one of those bastards saw us coming, they’d start swimming back to Cuba.”
That fruity rind was meeting a slowburn kind of execution in a hunter's steady hands. John's knuckles were tight and pale as dishwater, mashing lemon oil into his prints even as the bitter skin condensed into something unrecognizable. John knew drunks, he dealt with them every day.. but this man, Roger, was dead sober. A glance south told him that it was water in the stranger's glass, because John always noticed things that shouldn't have been possible. Like the difference in viscosity, between iced liquor and ice water. It began to occur to John, as the man continued to harp on about once upon a time, that Roger might actually recognize him from somewhere. Not him John, but him him.. and when he shifted in his barstool to regard Roger, there was something new in his eyes. Something that had never belonged to Loren. Fear. "When was this?" The questions tripped over one another, loose and eager. "How long ago?"
It occurred to Roger that he was poking a sleeping bear. Maybe something wasn’t right (something is definitely not right about him, Darman.) and he went through some brain damage after they separated. But, what was the harm in telling a man about his past conquests? Florida was harsh, but Roger was proud for all the work they did down there. Not many things scared a well protected crime lord, but a calculated solider and a bounty hunter who enjoyed his job too much seemed to do the job quite nicely. Still, he put a stop to his boisterous story telling.
“Four or five years ago. You got tired of Florida a lot faster than I did, my friend.” Roger gave another smile and looked down at his glass. Out of all the ghosts that had shown up in Vegas, this one seemed the strangest.
The look he gave Roger right then would have been more fitting if the man'd just sprouted a second head. "Florida," he said.. and the word was like sea spray on the tongue. He could almost remember a horizon of nothing but blue, all ocean and sky. A bounty hunter, apparently.. did that explain his comfort with guns or his almost passive approach to the bloodshed in his nightmares? He wanted to ask about his name again, but hesitated out of some inherent awareness that such a question would be strange. Besides, he knew what the other man had called him. Loren. Some inner part of him resonated to it like a tuning fork, and he knew it was true. Loren would have been extremely suspicious of this entire situation, but John was too shiny & new to wonder at ulterior motives. The boy in his head was quiet as ever, bored and yet displeased with this turn of events. "Look, I'm sorry.." His expression collapsed into something genuine with an aw shucks kind of lift to the shoulders. "I don't remember you, but.." John, no Loren, tilted his head and ran a palm against the short shear of his hair to expose an outline of pale, surgical scar tissue. "I had an accident awhile back."
Roger gave a look of concern followed by the immediate sense that he had fucked up. “Oh shit.” He said simply and then looked down at his water. In a way, John was given the chance to stop being the person he was before. It wasn’t that simple, though. Roger could tell pieces of Loren were still there. Waiting for the chance to seep up through and take over again. “Well, listen man. Maybe this is a chance for you to start over.” Roger wondered what he’d be like if he could erase everything he had done and known to this point. Guilt over his mother? Gone. Special training and that need to do right? That would be gone, too. Maybe he’d relax a little. People don’t change because they got knocked in the head. No, no they didn’t.
"So I was a bounty hunter?" He smiled, obviously not understanding everything the profession had entailed for him in life. Loren thumbed the condensation on his glass before take a heavy swig that knocked most of the gin back, it was something more reminiscent of his harder drinking self. "What was I like? How did we meet?" He asked these questions with a rapt attention that bordered on desperation. He found a splinter of truth and wanted more.
Roger smirked at that spark of innocence in Loren’s voice. “We both did something stupid and went after a guy during a drug deal at the same time. I remember hiding, looking through my scope and seeing you looking back at me. We just sort of agreed to take them out together.” His eyes unfocused as he remembered meeting Loren. “Bounty hunters don’t like working together because a majority of us are greedy. You and me, though? We didn’t give a shit about the money. I knew taking in the big threats would have to be a team effort. You were...a weapon. Not trained to hunt like me, but to kill. I needed someone dangerous and I think you needed a direction.” Roger could have lied, but he was the worst at it. More than that, Loren needed to know what he was capable of.
A fucking pin could have dropped with the audible snap of a ping pong ball considering the silence that came into the bar after Roger's story. The bartender was gone, vanished into some storage closet while these final two patrons exchanged their stories. Loren stared at Roger while the man spoke and a kind of dawning horror sprang loose like demonic daisies in his mind. The words sounded like something so completely far fetched that Loren actually began to laugh, a half-cocked smirk signaling that he'd caught on, Roger was fucking with him. A weapon? Trained to kill? Him? The guy who teared up at that Sarah Mcclachlan commercial with the abused animals? Loren's smile slipped with final realization of the absolute truth embossed in Roger's eyes. "You're.. serious?" Even as he asked, Loren was hit with the weight of uncovered memories. It really made sense.. the guns, the dreams about blood, the way he even thought of himself as Loren now in this past minute of discovery.
Roger didn’t look like he was kidding, but part of him wished he was. The right thing to do was to tell Loren he was just some nice intel guy who needed some extra cash. But, this guy’s mind was going to come back and when it did, Roger wanted him to be prepared. “Of course I’m fucking serious.” Roger replied dryly. “By the time you left Florida, we were considered a pair of fire breathing demons to the pieces of shit that deserved much worse than what we gave them.” He shifted in his seat, finding the dead water of the bar a little unnerving for once. “But, that’s in the past, Loren. You have a new life now. You don’t need to keep hunting.” Roger’s voice indicated that he would always be a bounty hunter whether he liked it or not. At least Loren might have a shot at changing his mind.
There was a linchpin in place to keep the strange resurgence of memory from weighing down on him like horrific anvils, and it was bending. But that's in the past now, Roger said, and Loren nodded into his empty drink before drawing some gin-soaked ice onto the stomping grounds of his teeth. "Yeah," he murmured, but it was the kind of agreement that spoke of a mind on other subjects entirely. "Yeah," Loren said again, stronger this time when he pushed his glass away and gave Roger a crooked attempt at a smile. "Thanks, man.. I'll see ya around." Or not, but it was getting late and there was plenty of investigating to do about the name Loren, especially in regard to anything having to do with Florida. There was a pat of Roger's shoulder as he passed, but no true goodbye or sense of rekindled friendship as Loren made for the door. An hour ago there would have been, regardless of familiarity.. but that was just another part of John left behind like the rind in his glass.