lookforheaven (aucontraire_) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-06-22 19:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [06] june, adelaide hawkins, james hawkins |
Who: Adelaide and Rodeo
Where: Downtown Austin, Dog Park
What: Time to come clean, little mama
When: Backdated to immediately after this
The action hero stranger - Griff, they have since learned - is being tended to. There is a minion of Rodeo's - a Prospect if you're getting official with it, which Adelaide isn't - looking over her vehicle to buff up what can be buffed up and make it look less like it has been through a gunfight and a few explosions. Rodeo has been assured that his people, Adelaide included, are unharmed, and he spoke with Bishop and Teagan both to get the story of what happened out there.
It's been a much longer ordeal than a drive to her brother's place for a chat should really be, but such are the endtimes.
She is in his trailer washing her hands now, blood falling away from when she'd pressed her shirt to Griff's wound, noticing scrapes to her arms that she hadn't made note of at the time. It is lucky she is in one piece, and though Adelaide is a pragmatic sort of survivor, not prone to histrionics, certainly it does make her think.
What if a stray bullet had found her, or a stray raider, and she'd never gone back to the Capitol? Could she stand the idea of Charlie being raised by Thomas alone? Could she stand the idea that Rodeo would never have even known that Charlie existed? Sure, the boy would be impeccably well taken care of, have access to every luxury and privilege that the apocalypse affords, but who would he be? The idea of her son growing up to be a fussy, persnickety, Princess-and-the-pea, sateen-weave sheets sort of man twists at her heart.
When Charlie was born she'd asked Thomas, sweetly, for the right to pick out a first name. She could have not done that, and she is fairly certain another Thomas Robert Lansing, maybe called Rob in public and Teddy by his mother, would have been born into the world. She could have taken her power of naming and gone with a tribute name to the brother who, at the time, she had thought was dead. A little James Hawkins Lansing running around the Capitol would have been something to see.
But instead she had picked a name that held no preconceived meaning to her, a name that had been placed on the heads of so many men, great men and average men and probably terrible men as well. Charles I, Charlie Chaplin, Chuck E Cheese. A name that her son could make into anything that he wanted it to be. Thomas Lansing is neither a perfect man nor a perfect devil, Adelaide knows. James Hawkins isn't perfect, either. Adelaide Hawkins Lansing sure as hell isn't. And if Adelaide continues to have any say in things, Charles Lansing will take the best parts of all of them and make of himself something all his own.
If left to their own devices Thomas would no doubt impart his exacting standards. Rodeo would have the boy Patched the day his voice changed. Adelaide wants none of those things. Or all of them, depending.
But she needs to be there to see it happen. She needs to be careful, and she needs to be smart.
She sighs a little bit, and shuts off the water just as she hears Rodeo's footsteps approaching, coming back from tying up loose ends. First, she needs to tell her brother the truth.