InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "government hooker"

Audrey Jensen (fknaudrey) wrote in somerealityrpg,
@ 2019-07-30 00:16:00

Entry tags:

active: five hargreeves

WHO: Audrey Jensen, Five Hargreeves
WHEN: Some nebulous time between 7/20 and 7/30, approx 2 AM.
WHERE: Abandoned subway station.
WHAT: Discussions of dubious events.
WARNING: References to past sexual assault, self-harm, and murder; copious drinking. More will be added if necessary.

They were halfway through the 6 PM showing of Midsommer when she texted Five to let him know that she'd stopped by the liquor store on her way to work and, if he was feeling like a story, to let her know where to meet. It wasn't so much that she'd finally worked up the nerve, but that she'd had the thirty bucks burning a hole in her pocket and they happened to have her brand of bourbon there when she stopped in to have a look around. She took it for fate, providence, serendipity, some bullshit like that. She bought the bottle, sent the text, and an hour later she had a location. It seemed appropriate. She sat through Crawl at 9:30, programmed the Google Maps on her phone, and peered briefly into the lobby to make sure there weren't any kids messing around before going back to the man-eating alligators, letting the cheesy creature feature take her mind off the cold weight slowly sliding down on her shoulders. It shouldn't have felt so heavy, and yet it did.

By the time she'd gotten all of the chattering teenagers out of the theater and cleaned the sticky amalgamation of candy and soda off the floor, it was that ungodly time where time wasn't really real anymore. That also felt right. She was getting used to cabs and subway lines the same way she'd been used to trollies and busses back home. The same general idea, just a different map to follow. The fact that it was right about that time when all the bars were emptying out didn't really bother her. It was just noise, just bodies, and she'd always carried herself with a certain air of "fuck off". Anyone who tried something had to anticipate that she was going to bite back. She stuffed her vest down in her bag with the bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel and a pair of shatterproof glasses and headed straight for the subway station, her fingers wrapped the taser in the front pocket of her bag. One could never be too careful, after all. Even if it was fake New York, it was still New York.

It took a while, and it really was the end of the line. She was practically the last person on the train when the car emptied out and the last few tired (and some heavily inebriated) passengers made their way upstairs and into the night again. But Audrey went on, along the gently curving walkway and fluorescent lights, the graffiti, and occasional rat; her boots hollow and empty on the subway tile. Weird passageways jutted out from the walkway, some of them lit and some of the cast in total darkness, but Audrey kept glancing down at her phone, a little green dot slowly moving closer and closer to a little blue dot until the two finally intersected and she glanced around, walked ten feet further, and took an abrupt right into a closed-off stairway. Five was already there, waiting, and Audrey released her grip on the taser for the first time since stepping out of the theater to reach into her bag and pull out the bottle of bourbon with a smile instead.

"Nearly top shelf," she said. "Single barrel. Kentucky. Did you already do a surveillance sweep?"

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jumps
2019-07-31 12:12 am UTC (link)

If just about anyone else he knew had asked that, Five likely would have given a snarky response. Perhaps under different circumstances, he might have given one to Audrey, though without the same acid behind it that he might have given to one of his brothers or someone else he was getting to know. But the circumstances of this meeting -- of their conversation -- dictated a different behavior tonight. And, he found, he was curious about Audrey, found he might actually not immediately dislike her. Somehow, he'd already managed to drop some of the barriers he kept up even while engaging in playful banter with others. They were still there, ready to pulled up at a moment's notice to help reinforce the others, but there was an almost acceptance of openness that wasn't there with just anyone.

"Taken care of," he said simply, folding down the corner of one page of a paperback novel he'd picked up recently. Tucking it into an inner pocket of his jacket, he glanced down from his spot on the stairs, under one of the few florescent lights still working, though the occasional flicker made him wonder how much longer it had before it gave up. "The place is ours," he added, sliding over from the middle of the step to one side, a hand sweeping out in welcome for her to take a seat should she want to sit.

Somehow he doubted these stairs received too much care, though, at that moment, he didn't care if his shorts got dirty. He'd dealt with far worse, though, if he were honest, yet again having nothing to wear but the Umbrella Academy school uniform he'd worn when he actually was thirteen had been a bit of a pain. This entity, whatever it was, clearly had some sense of humor. At least it had given him something other than bowling shoes to wear. And, he supposed, at least it had provided clothes. Not his first pick, true, but, in the end, whatever annoyance he might have had had quickly faded. One day, he supposed, he'd look for new clothes. Two in the morning was not that time.

Two in the morning was, well, two in the morning. Not an ideal hour for most, but when you couldn't sleep, it was just another hour in the day -- an hour where very little was open and nightmares were loud and angry and hungry, demanding as children and twice as nasty. The text had been a welcome distraction, and Five hadn't minded waiting in the corroded veins of the city, a new book and anticipation to distract from another sleepless night.

"Ours for at least a few hours," he amended. Although he'd spent quite some staking the place out and inspecting it, one could never be too careful about who might decide to check on this particular abandoned section. He'd even gone so far as to set a basic warning system at the top of the stairs, in case someone came from above. Below, he was confident he could hear coming, but above seemed the easier of the two entrances to sneak through, especially with limited overhead lighting.

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fknaudrey
2019-07-31 01:55 am UTC (link)

Anyone else - anyone but Noah, anyway, and she was even dubious about him anymore - and she might have double-checked the assurance that there weren't any cameras or microphones or other surveillance devices stuck in the chipped tile and stone around them. Radio waves buzzed at a different frequency than electricity and fluorescent lights, it bounced back a slightly different sound than copper and steel and cast iron. Tiny differences. But it was impractical to hardwire a system like that and this far down a WiFi signal would have to be insanely strong. She only had half a bar on her phone, after all. But if Five said he has checked, she trusted him. It might have been stupid of her, she'd been duped by less, but there was just something about this air of calm he had that made her smile and shrug and head forward towards the steps.

The smile was all facade, but Audrey wore it naturally. She'd been wearing it long enough. It just fell into place in these awkward moments when it felt like she should put on that "everything is alright" expression. And she was still trying to maintain that appearance even though they both knew why they were here. Still, they could have those few quiet moments while she brushed a bit of rubble off the steps and sat down next to him, pinning the bottle of bourbon between her thighs. She slid her bag off over her head and propped it up on the step on the other side, dropping the flap open and pulling out the box of glasses from where they were shoved down next to her camera, her work vest, two books, and pill bottle. She handed the box to Five to open while she popped the plastic safety seal around the top of the bourbon and twisted the cork loose - all quiet, easy - the smell of syrup and spices wafting between them as she filled the glasses liberally and slapped the cork back into place.

"L'Chaim," she said, with more than a hint of irony as she accepted her glass from him and placed the bottle down on the step between them.

She leaned forward and settled her elbows on her knees for a moment, letting the bourbon breathe and letting the silence rest again, before she took a hard drink and rolled her shoulders forward. "So," she said, rolling the glass between her palms and watching the dark golden liquid tip close to the lip of the glass without spilling over, "I guess the beginning is the right place to start then, huh?"

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jumps
2019-07-31 11:44 pm UTC (link)

Five obliged without question in regards to the box of glasses, letting himself momentarily get lost in the act of simply doing something with his hands. It didn't require much thought to open a box, and while he could have let his mind wander as it was wont to do, for once, it was quiet. Not calm, per se, but quiet, almost detached. Two different parts of himself in the same vessel, aware of each other but entirely independent of each other. It wasn't until Audrey spoke and took her filled glass from him that his mind snapped back into sync with his body.

"Yamas," he replied, raising his glass slightly in her direction before unintentionally mimicking her posture. His eyes focused on the glass in his hands, on the liquid inside, and his nose filled with the syrup and spices of the bourbon. He thought he detected vanilla and maple among the scents, and he raised the glass, briefly closing his eyes and letting his nose and mind focus on the aroma.

Opening his eyes, he looked over at her, taking a second to study her -- the way she rolled the glass in her hands, the set of her shoulders, her profile, how her gaze seemed focus on the glass and sloshing liquid inside. "When all else fails," he said, voice calm, almost gentle but not quite, as looked back down the steps and took a sip of his own drink, "do as the king says: 'Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'"

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fknaudrey
2019-08-01 12:55 am UTC (link)

Audrey laughed softly and dragged the inside of her lip through her teeth as she tilted her head back slightly "Adventures in Wonderland," she said and glanced around at the flickering lights and pieces of old, neglected litter. Close enough. But it was a brief moment of the weirdo in me recognizes the weirdo in you and, maybe it was coincidental, but she always appreciated those moments when she connected with someone on an idiosyncratic level.

She dragged in a slow breath and ran her hand through her hair, from front fringe to the short shaved bit at the back where she lingered for a moment and then exhaled. "So I was thinking on the way over," she started, "even though you didn't go to high school you sort of saw a microcosm of the major cliques. Jocks, mean girls, nerds, theater kids and goths rolled into one, band geeks, whatever Diego is - probably the punks getting high and playing quarters under the bleachers. I was somewhere between nerd and punk and goth. I didn't really have a place, but I also didn't feel like I needed to be defined by my group. In high school that makes you a pariah, though."

It was apparent she was working up to something, and she leaned back enough to move her feet up one step closer to her body and took another long sip before she started again. "Nina was a mean girl. She was a stone-cold mega-bitch. As long as I knew her the one thing that seemed to legitimately make her happy was tormenting other people. I could fill a novel with the shit she did. And people just let her get away with it. She outed people, she took nudes of people in the locker room and passed them around, she started rumors, she bullied people for their clothes and weight and skin problem. You name it, she did it. And then laughed about it.

"Then there was her boyfriend, Tyler. Tyler was a jock. Tyler was maybe worse than Nina, is his own way. Because where she was never inherently physical about her attacks, he was." She trailed off for a moment and took another deep, stilling breath and a long drink, nearly draining the rest of the glass. She idly held the cup out to Five, her arms tucked in against her sides, just her hand and wrist swiveling out towards him without actually looking at him. She was still looking down at the toes of her boots, the fringe of her hair shadowing her face.

"We didn't have a girls' lacrosse team. There wasn't enough of us. So the team just went co-ed. A couple of other teams in our division were already co-ed, it wasn't a big deal and the goalie on our rival was a girl too so the coach was down for it. Some of the guys were typical bros about it, but nothing that wasn't handled pretty quick. But one morning after practice, a friend of mine showed up to give me some notes for a science class and we hung out for a few minutes on the field going over them before he left to go walk across the street to get coffee and I went to shower before class..." She was stalling. It was obvious by the way her phrases quicked and slowed. More gaps between thoughts and then all at once. But she swallowed hard and clenched her jaw before forcing the next bit out.

"By that time the other girls were done and leaving and I was the only one in there. I didn't even notice Tyler come in. See, a year before, Nina had started this rumor that I was gay, and Tyler wanted verification because he thought that a girl would have to be gay to turn him down. And he didn't like 'no'. What was I supposed to do after that? Tyler and Nina got away with everything. I just went to class. Tried to act like nothing happened. I never told anyone."

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jumps
2019-08-01 03:47 am UTC (link)

As she spoke, he stilled, listening. He picked up not just her words but the cadence, letting her story fill the silence while he kept quiet himself. His eyes slid back to her as he spoke, and, while he didn't have the best mental references to pull from for each clique mentioned, he understand the words well enough to make a few educated guesses, not to mention simplify his siblings into each category. They all overlapped in his head, making it easier what she meant by being in one more than group. He could also understand, to some extent, what it meant when you couldn't easily be put into a box and how people reacted.

Taking another sip of his drink, letting the liquid coat his tongue and sit in his mouth before finally swallowing, Five continued to listen as she described this mean girl, this Nina. It made him wonder, very briefly, if either of his sisters could have ended up like her had they had any semblance of a normal childhood, with or without their abilities. The thought left as quickly as it had arrived, and shifted a bit to look just a bit more fully at Audrey when she trailed off.

Without missing a beat, Five twisted toward her, setting his glass on the step above him. In quick, efficient movements, he uncorked the bottle of Four Roses, refilled her glass, and set it back on the step between them, cork in place. Then he picked his own glass up and sipped, noting the haphazard pace, the quickening and slowing of her words and phrases. He watched her, letting her take whatever path she needed for the words to come out.

As she continued, his jaw clenched, though the grip on his glass remained loose. What felt like a day ago and also a year ago, his brother, Luther, had mentioned a code, that he surly had one when he'd worked for the Commission. He hadn't, but there were still things that crossed the line, even for him.

Taking a long drink from his glass, Five said, "History is filled with lots of moments, some big and some small, some good and some bad. And some are really bad, to the point that no one should have been made to live through them. 'The Great Leap Forward,' for instance. Mao Zedong pushed for a shift in China from a predominately farming society to an industrial, modern one in the span of five years. On top of forcing farmers into industrial careers, nature was not on the country's side. It led to mass famine. The Yellow River flooded in 1959, which contributed to starvation from crop destruction. And as what happens when rivers flood, people drowned. If that weren't bad enough, people were tortured to death for stealing food, and, in some places, they resorted to cannibalism just to survive."

He paused and finished his drink, licking his lips. "Meanwhile, Chairman Mao dined on French meals worth thousands of dollars and drank twenty year old Scotch. He even told his men that there would be many deaths but that, essentially, the ends justified the means. At least forty-five million people died between 1958 and 1962 in China because of his Great Leap Forward." Holding his empty glass between both hands, Five looked at her, willing Audrey to understand what he was trying to say without saying, that no one deserved to go through certain things, including her. That she had his empathy, though not his pity. He did not want pity himself, and he suspected she might not appreciate it, either.

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fknaudrey
2019-08-01 05:24 am UTC (link)

Her heart was beating unbelievably hard by the time she finished, ricocheting from her chest up into her throat and back down again, over and over again. Instead of being flushed, she felt cold, ice along the back of her neck and her shoulders and trickling down her spine and arms. Not even the bourbon burned it away, but it did make the knot in her gut unwind a bit. And, to her surprise, so did the sound of Five's voice when he started speaking - soft and even. She tipped her head to look at him, watching him as he spoke. She didn't want to look at him as she told the first part of her story, it was too difficult, and she needed to concentrate on getting the words out of her mouth, but now the little changes in his expression brought her a strange kind of comfort. Odd as it was, she understood what he was saying with his anecdote.

Finally, she nodded, almost unconsciously mirroring his expression with her own. "When rubber was first discovered," she started, "the primary source of it was in the Congo. The Belgians, led by King Leopold, settled the region and proceeded to rack up the human rights violations against the local population - beatings, torture, amputation, disease, murder. He formed the Force Publique to keep the peace, and most of them would later go on to become warlords once the Belgians left the Congo stripped of resources. If that wasn't bad enough, once rubber was discovered in other areas and, later, synthesized, they started mining gold instead. And that exact gold would be used in the production of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just," she looked away for a second and rubbed at a scar on her left arm, "it never stops. One thing leads to the next and the next and on and on."

She took another drink, swifter this time, then turned and set her glass down on the step so she could drag her hands over her knees and down the front of her legs, then pulled her knees up to her chest. "They were supposed to be the only ones," she said, "Tyler and Nina. I found out, by accident, that Tyler was hacking into people's webcams and videotaping them having sex. It's a long story. But then Nina got a video of my girlfriend and I making out in my car and put it on the internet. I wasn't that bothered by it, but Rachel had a lot of self-esteem issues and the comments on the video really got to her. She... she self-harmed. She cut herself. And I was upset for her. I knew then that they weren't ever going to stop doing this to people, that they were just going to escalate. And I told Piper. And she said... let's do something about it, then. I thought it was just going to be the two of them. I really did. But fuck it felt good. And I don't regret it, at all. The only thing I regret is that when I told Piper I was done with it, she... she put me in my place by hurting Rachel."

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jumps
2019-08-02 03:49 am UTC (link)

A soft, almost smile tugged at the corners of his lips as Audrey spoke, as he saw that she had understood him. When was the last time anyone had understood him about anything? Had anyone? For a moment, he thought Klaus might have, but then he'd let himself get distracted by a briefcase and the impending doom of his entire world. Other than that, however, he could not name a single person who ignited that strange spark of pure recognition in him. She'd understood his quote and, now, his anecdote, something he thought no one outside of his family would get without explanation (and he wasn't so convinced everyone inside his family would get it, either). For one moment, he wondered if this was what it was like to not be so alone in the world.

Sitting still, he listened as she spoke, eyebrows furrowing. He already had an idea of where the story was going based on their previous conversation, but that didn't mean he enjoyed actually hearing aloud about Audrey's girlfriend. Or about how she'd been used as a means to control her.

Looking down at his glass, Five quietly spoke. "I tried to save the world, and no one understood. One life to save billions... But someone I cared about was used against me to save that one life." He set his glass down and made short work of refilling it, letting himself briefly get lost in that simple act. The weight of the bourbon bottle, the soft splashing of the liquid, the right amount of pressure to recork the bottle. He didn't want to think about Dolores, and he especially didn't want to think about the ultimatum Luther had given him. And he certainly didn't want to think about how there was a very real possibility that that one life would have been the wrong life to prevent the apocalypse, that it wouldn't have made a difference at all.

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fknaudrey
2019-08-05 11:02 am UTC (link)

She liked that smile. It was small, subtle, but it was there and it made her feel safe and understood. At that moment, she needed that. Everything felt so raw and vulnerable, exposed, like an entire layer of skin had been peeled off and left the very air around her stinging the nerves underneath. But one simple smile was enough to settle some of that. If she was going to mix metaphors - and, hell, why not, her emotions were always such a mess that it felt like a thousand different things at once anyway - that feeling of fear and anticipation was like the waves of dread the came at the edge of some high up place; the l'appel du vide. And that same rush came in a smaller way in the darkness at the bottom of a staircase when you thought there was one step only to discover there wasn't one. A swift rush of dread and then safety. She had expected the height and she had found security. She'd found Five there to catch her.

"Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges," she murmured softly, not really expecting him to place one line from a nearly five-hundred line poem, but she'd always loved Swinburne and Notre-Dame de Sans Merci was one that was especially dear to her in all its dark sensual imagery. It was her own way of acknowledging Dolores without actually saying it out loud, in case she was a subject that Five wasn't ready to talk about yet.

Audrey unwound herself slightly, moving her feet down a step from where she'd been tucked tight into herself, braced against the emotional onslaught she'd been preparing for, the one that never came. She rolled her shoulders and stretched out a cord of tension in the left side of her lower back, then picked up her glass again. "There's no sense in thinking about the things I could have or should have done differently," she said, pausing to take a drink, letting the alcohol chase away some of the lingering numbness in her limbs. It soothed that cold that had born down on the back of her neck and wrapped around her chest. "I've torn myself up over it already, all the mistake I made, and it doesn't make one bit of difference. It happened the way it happened. If I could go back and undo it, maybe I would. Maybe I'd undo all of it. And maybe it would have happened anyhow - with or without me sparking the fire. I can't say."

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jumps
2019-08-06 04:41 am UTC (link)

Instantly his eyes went from the bottle in his hand to Audrey, the muscles of his face twitching slightly -- surprise and curiosity, interest and wonder. And, again, that strange spark of recognition, of being seen, truly seen. It was almost petrifying, to have someone he barely knew cause such frisson in his stomach and down his spine. Who are you, he wanted to ask. How do you know me? he wanted to whisper, to search for answer he didn't think could possibly exist.

"Dolores," he breathed, barely a whisper. Was it the comic books she had mentioned? Had Dolores been in those? Or was it something else? Who are you? he wondered again, his face open, a strange vulnerable feeling in his chest, as he looked at her for the answer that he knew he wouldn't find so easily.

As she spoke again, Five watched her, his drink forgotten, the bottle of bourbon in his hand ignored. Who was this person, he wondered as he listened, who could have such an entirely different experience than he, yet also share so many similarities to his own? He could change the past, but he'd tried, when he'd been willing to do whatever it took to see his family again, to save his family, it hadn't been enough. And he had no idea if his second attempt would work. He had no idea if, in the end, all the effort in the world would matter. And, for a brief moment, it was almost okay. Almost.

"It's like The Time Machine. Not the book. The movie from 2002," he said quietly, finally setting the bottle down. "He goes back in time to save his fiancée, and, in the end, he can't." He looked at his glass on the step, at the liquid inside, debating on picking it up. "It isn't comforting, but maybe some things find a way to still happen." Suddenly he didn't want to pick that glass up. "But it's just a story," he added, looking back up at her. "In the end, it's about what you do after the bad thing happens that matters more. And that shapes you just as much as the catalyst. Sometimes more."

Was he explaining it right, he wondered. It made sense in his head, but so many things made sense when he didn't have to explain it. And it was so difficult -- so very difficult -- to admit that he had tried to change the past and failed, that, in the end, some things happened. Part of him still believed that, maybe, just maybe, he could change it, that if he wasn't the only one to know about the future then maybe that would change it, but he would never know now.

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fknaudrey
2019-08-11 07:03 pm UTC (link)

She tilted her head slightly, a look of surprise and amused curiosity mingling on her face. She really had not expected him to recognize the quote and yet the look on his face and the soft whisper than followed it said that he obviously had. It was sort of amazing, really. She felt that cool excitement bloom up in his chest and her cheeks warmed as a smile slipped onto her features. "Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs," she murmured, her French accent decidedly more Creole than Parisian. But there was still that curl to the soft consonants, the thing that spoke of a degree of fluency.

"Sometimes in the middle of surviving we either forget to or just don't have the chance to live," she said. "Maybe this place is the after, the second chance, though? I'm not a natural optimist, but I can't help but think of it that way." After all, New York was supposed to be her second chance. It would be nice if she could exist in a place where the last two years didn't constantly haunt her. Every house, every building, every face, was a reminder of what had happened. But this place was different. Brooke was here, but Brooke shared her feeling of wanting to run from it as far as they could. Leave Lakewood behind. She wasn't sure what she would do if Noah or Emma showed up. She missed them, yes, but it still hurt and she still needed a little more time to find herself. And then there was the sinking, terrifying thought of Kieran or Piper returning from the dead and somehow showing up here...

She banished that line of thinking with another quick swig of bourbon and sighed. "There are a lot of people here looking for a way to get back where they came from because things are happening there, big things, important things, but I wouldn't mind staying. I've met good people here. There are things I want to get back to, too, but I have to think that there's some version of me back there handling that as well as I would handle anything."

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jumps
2019-08-17 08:42 pm UTC (link)

A second chance. Was that what this place offered? A place to start over, a place to live without the same worries he had at home? No looming threat of an apocalypse or near soul crushing loneliness. No desperate need to save his family, to see his family again and just be around them even if he'd long since lost the ability to know how to do that. Because most of them were here. They'd been here when he'd been hijacked during his attempt to save them. He still didn't know what had happened to Allison and Luther, if they were safe somewhere in another time in his own reality, or if they would show up here but later. But Vanya and Klaus and Diego were there, and, maybe, just maybe, he had a second chance with them. If they let him.

And, if he let himself, maybe he would have a second chance at a decent life. Maybe not a happy life, but something filled with anything but how stay alive from one moment to the next.

"I don't think," he began, picking up his glass, "that there's much of anything for me to go back to." And if there was, he thought as he took a sip, he suspected it would contain a lot of the same things as before; the Handler and the Temps Commission hunting him -- hunting his family -- the threat of an apocalypse, and the struggle to stay alive just a little bit longer. It was exhausting, and Five was tired -- so damn tired. He didn't think he could ever rest properly, but that didn't stop exhaustion from pulling at his mind, from wanting some kind of respite from having to be on high alert.

Idly, he rolled his glass between both hands, watching the liquid inside slosh about. "I wouldn't mind staying, either," he said after a moment, glancing up at her. "I don't know about doppelgängers, but if I have one..." His brow furrowed slightly, his lips pressed together for a second. The possibility of having another version of himself back home was strange and presented its own mystery, though his brain didn't want to dwell too much on it just yet. Thankfully. It was too full to handle one more thing right then. He shook his head slightly. "I don't know. "Maybe he's handling things like yours is. Maybe he's handling it better than I could." Or maybe, if he had a double, that double was dead. A depressing thought, but he couldn't help it from formulating.

"Regardless," he raised his glass toward her, "to second chances and new friends." Presumptuous, perhaps, to call her a friend, but what else did you call someone who saw you so clearly when no one else did? He quickly drained his glass before he could think too much about that.

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