Rooms

[Call while he's out picking up food]

Ring ring!

Who: Siren
When: Recently
Where: Sewers
What: Siren finds a man's soul
Warnings: creeeepppyy

( She cooed and touched his squishy skin that practically fell off on her fingers like delicate fish. )

[comm to eddie n.]

[A few nights after this. Beeep beep beeeeppp until he picks up.]

[Note left on the door of Wayne Manor]

smallville,

no idea where you are. took the truck. buses should be running any day now. enjoy your showers once the waters back.

lane

[As Jenny S, after she's been around for a week or so.]

Can't say I'm surprised.

Who: Lagertha and Ragnar
What: Settling in to a new sort of life
Where: Hedeby (Vikings Door)
When: Now-ish
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of canon-typical violence

( He was there like the North Star at night, like one of Floki's steady, solid decks beneath her feet. )

[Call: Steve Rogers]

[After this]

Surprise New Sharon Carter Assigned Ringtone! [she thinks she's funny okay]

[The handwriting is tight and tall, the letters carefully scrunched together.]

If another student asks me to partner with them in Advanced Potions, I may very well poison them so they spend the next week in the infirmary.

[Afternoons held heat. Latent, sticky regret of the dawn broiling tar in the streets. The city at midday smelled like rubber and gasoline, but there was a part of Brielle that did not mind the smell as much as she used to. There was something complex about gasoline, and she could contemplate it from the backseat of stretched towncars. The driver wore a little black hat and never looked her in the eye. The staff skirted around her like so many ghosts in a miserable graveyard. It was widely known that she was a guest of the Vega's criminal echelon. Even with the absence of management, the place ran smoothly with Brielle as the phantom bride of the top floor. They took her into the city on Sundays and they hung her silks out to dry in the mornings.

Evenings held a breeze. The water carried cool memories from the oceans as easily as it carried sailboats. Nights were when the speakeasy brewed with violence and music, gangsters and stolen liquor. But it wasn't night yet. Early evenings like this, when the heat bent to accommodate cooler gusts, the building felt very quiet. The walls decompressed like exhales, and Brielle opened the windows of her bedroom. It hadn't taken her very long to get used to the opulence at all. It was not hers, but she'd had similar things once. She'd had imported carpets and cherrywood that gleamed. She'd had music and silk and nights that whispered promises of violence. Nothing in the world, even in this world, seemed very strange to Brielle.

Not antique pasts or polite gangsters or journal correspondence with perfect strangers. Not vintage outfits or the trunk that gradually accumulated stacks of cash like one might accumulate dust. Sometimes she wondered where it came from, but discovering the truth might just be worse than mild worry.

Downstairs, she could hear the staff beginning to prepare for the evening. People shuffled outside of her door, and the band was beginning to tune their strings from down below. Brielle, meanwhile, sat at her writing desk and opened her journal.]

[Eddie N]

I heard about your city. Is there anything we can do?

[Selina K]

I heard about Gotham. I hope you're all right.

[Steve R]

Did you [...] move out?

[Tony S]

We have a new head of security. Did you know this?

[Jane F]

How are you settling in?

[Mary Jane W]

I think we need a back-up plan.

[Grouptext sent to Bucky B, Sharon C & Steve R after this]
We have his location. En route shortly.

[The Falcone принцесса the old woman called her, and she slept in the backroom, untouched by customers. The in and out of brothel life in the East End was just a backdrop to dreams that weren't restful. Sleep, if it could be called that, and the doctor came and spoke in quiet Russian, worried words and instructions, and in the depths of Gotham certain things were certainties. The Falcones were the powerhouse, and that was that, and even the doctor sounded respectful.

The woman on the mattress in the backroom knew nothing of that. She hadn't woken up in two days, and that was for the best. The world outside was coming alive, lightbulbs and water and victory, but it wasn't over. And even when it ended? What then? Across town, a girl in a hospital bed, and no one in the family would celebrate. How could they? And it never ended. It was a cycle, repeating, and maybe it had just been too long.

There were things worth waking for, but why? Only to lose them again and again? Fleeting, temporary, until they were gone for good, and what was the point of it?

In her sleep, she counted days. Numbers instead of sheep, and they were tired and bloodied. Ra's. Crane. Zombie. Ra's. Crane. Zombies. She could go further back. Back to bombs and tick and tick, but even asleep that was too much effort. The old mattress creaked as she rolled over, and the old duenna clucked her useless concern from the doorway.]

[Across the city, as things begin to improve, there are still those places where the people don't have enough: food, water, essentials. In one of the hardest neighborhoods hit, a building opens. Yesterday it was boarded up, ruined, condemned. Today it is open, secure and safe. And inside? Food and water for those who so desperately need it. A place to rest before moving along, however long that may be. It is crowded, but there is space enough. But only those truly in need are able to find their way inside.]

[locked to gwen s., steve r., tony s., harry o., jess d. individually.]

[Locked separately to each. After a few days without hearing from a certain bug.] Heard from Peter lately? Or is he still dying of embarrassment after what happened when we were all doped up.

That was definitely the quickest trip ever from Hawaii to New York. The logical part of my brain wants to know how, but everything else doesn't want to know. This shouldn't be possible.