[OPEN] So what's on your mind?

[lahire]

Who: Jack La Hire and You
What: Settling into yet another new home
When: Early November
Warning(s): In headers as needed

1. There's a piece of me that knows his name [The Oak and Iron]
There is a new face in town. Perhaps you might recognize him from your time in the Black Stag Casino. Perhaps you just have an eye for newcomers. Either way, here he is, sitting at a table alone with a meal he's barely touched, watching everything going on around him with the haunted eyes of a prisoner.


2. Every once in a while, he'll show his face [Out and About Town]
It has been decades since Jack has been allowed outside. While he's not literally kissing the grass in gratitude, he is lying on his ground, under a tree, staring up at the branches blankly with not a moment's care for how dirty his clothes (his casino dealer uniform) might be getting. Or for the fact that it is starting to rain.


3. And when he does I'll have something to say [Aces Wildcard]
[Find me on Discord or PM to plot.]

Comments

every once in a while, he’ll show his face (CW: referenced child abuse)

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

When he sees the young man under the tree, in the rain…there’s something about his lack of response to the weather that reminds him eerily of John.

Not in a good way, either.

The motionless figure reminds him of the too tense boy who never flinched or faltered, excelling as a soldier because he excelled at doing as he was told.

He reminds Sam of John before he learned obedience and ‘doing as one is told’—that he could choose submission to authority over obeying because he would be beaten if he didn’t, and sometimes even if he did.

That boy hurt Sam. The man he became made Sam proud…and then Sam took part in hurting him again.

No more.

Moving out from the overhang of a tree with thicker branches, he walks calmly over to where the young man is laying, seemingly as unfazed as he by the rain.

“Wet clothes can be damn uncomfortable.” He calls out over the patter of rain drops. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to watch the rain somewhere drier? Maybe with a hot drink in hand?”

[lahire]

"I haven't been outside in a very long time. Please. Please, just give me a few minutes longer?"

Jack's eyes focus up at Sam, still as inky and dark as ever.

2.

[abhorrently]

It's starting to rain.

It's been raining by the time someone else finds him, a late autumn storm of water dripping through branches and soaking the earth, and any recently transferred servants who happen to be lying on the ground. And Fever is filled with life and freedom, being out of that lodge, being in the middle of the rain. She feels invincible. She feels fantastic.

There's a man lying under a tree, and given that he's present, that means he's alive. A shame, because a strange dead body would be a rare find. But regardless...

His clothes set her at a strange unease. Why is he dressed like that? Why does he look like someone she glimpsed at that lodge? Only one way to find out.

"Are you all right?"

The standard question to ask, half hovering over someone's prone form.

There's a piece of me

[when_a_grids_misaligned]

One of the patrons is alternating between eating the soup of the day (something tomatoey) and drawing in a sketchbook. This is not in itself noteworthy, although the way the outline of her form keeps blurring and glitching and the lighting that falls on her flickers out of sync with the lamps might be. If he ever got to see a television before or during his durance, the effect will be familiar.

After a few minutes of glancing between him and the page with less pencil motion every time, she picks up the soup bowl, stacks it on top of the sketchbook's cover, and seats herself at Jack's table. By way of greeting, she says, "I recognise you from the casino."

[lahire]

"That is likely to be the place people recognize me from, if at all." Jack does recognize the glitching, but seems confused by it--and by the Wyrdness about her overall. He squints, trying to make sense of her...everything.

"You...?"

[lahire]

"Not ill or injured."

That defines 'all right'...right? Maybe not. He doesn't answer her original question in the affirmative.

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

"All I wanted was something to eat..."

It takes all Sam's strength not to rub his chest with the ache he fees--no, it's pain, flat out. This kid asking for just a few more minutes with the same pleading desperation in John's voice over the radio is more than any compassionate being can stand.

Sighing, Sam shifts to crouch beside the young man with nary a wince despite his knees protesting in the damp weather.

"I think I can do that--but I'd like to ask you to try something for me in exchange." he replies softly, gently. "Does that seem fair to you? Won't involve going indoors yet, I promise, and it won't hurt, either."

[lahire]

The look that Jack gives Sam is dull, empty, as if the promise of it not hurting doesn't really register. Or doesn't matter. It's a lie, or it isn't.

"What is it you want?"

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

Sam just shakes his head with a firm twist of his mouth, though his demeanor and tone remain gentle.

"Not an answer to my question, son. You can take your time, think about it--there's no rush. I'm not looking for a specific answer, just an answer--even if it's 'I don't know.' But you have to answer the question: do you think that's fair?"

[lahire]

"I can't tell if it's fair, without knowing what you're asking. You might want me to kill someone, in exchange for the extra time. That would not be fair. And I would not be a good person to ask for that, anyway. I was not made to be a killer."

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

Sam can't help but let out a little sigh of relief at that answer--equivocating, but the man has an opinion. He had to do a lot more prodding with John before he'd break that iron willed self control and allow himself to show he was feeling something.

"That," Sam declares, raising a hand to point at Jack, "is not only an answer, but it's a great answer."

Gesturing for Jack to sit up, he points out a few places as he speaks.

"The tree over there, where I was standing, has much thicker branches so you're less likely to get wet. Plus, there's overhangs at a few of the shops, and I know the Oak & Iron has at least one place where you could sit next to the window and open it, if that felt like a fair compromise. That's what I'd like to try--just moving somewhere you won't get soaked to the skin. If that's okay with you, we'll both watch the storm. If not...I'll join you out here, and we can enjoy the rain together. But, after you're finished, you'll let me get you back to wherever you're staying, make sure you're in dry clothes with that hot drink. Something tells me you might need help remembering some of those little incidentals--a young man I know used to have similar problems, you remind me a little bit of him."

[lahire]

Jack does sit up. As he does so, Sam can see the mess his fingers are. Long and spindly like the branches of the tree above them, bending in ways human fingers were never intended to bend.

"I can move. Wherever you would like. Though I do not have other clothes to change into. I arrived with nothing. I have nothing."

[abhorrently]

"Why are you on the ground, then? Sleeping?"

If he's not incapacitated, then she doesn't need to think about dragging him to one of the many physicians around.

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

"Not so." Sam corrects, eyes widening a little at the sight of those impossibly long fingers, but shifts to stand and offers him his hand to help him stand.

"The room at the Oak & Iron--everyone who arrives gets one. They should have some clothes in the closet. They're simple, very basic essentials, nothing as nice as these you've got here. Plus, you should have received a stipend when you got here--I didn't show up the usual way, so I had to make some inquiries and head for town hall, but I got mine as well."

He hesitates, and on a hunch...

"Have you got much experience with shopping, son?"

[lahire]

"What do you mean, that you didn't show up the usual way?" The question falls out of him accidentally, and he flinches a little as he hears it. He shouldn't be asking. He shouldn't be prying.

"I did not know I was allowed to use what is in the closet. I assumed it was someone's already. Not for me to touch."

[lahire]

"I was not allowed outside, where I was before. I have not been outside in...a long time." He isn't even going to offer a frame of reference here. But he definitely means before the Black Stag.

[abhorrently]

She looks at him for a moment after that, considering something.

"Is anyone following you here? Or is it just you?"

If the demons show up here again, there's not a force she can reckon with that'll stop her from trying to draw Aster's blood.

[lahire]

"Just me. As far as I am aware, at least." It's not a situation he has a good way to explain yet. He hasn't worked out his lie.

[abhorrently]

"Okay."

But she's offering a hand out to help him up anyway.

"You can feel the rain better in an open area. Come on - there's no one who'll stop us."

2

[cacophonish]

Jeff flops down on the grass, right beside the stranger. He looks up at the tree, and the sky peeking out between the branches, clouds heavy with rain, then tilts his head to look at the man, eyes wide with curiosity.

"What are we looking at?"

[agoodsupplyofbodybags]

Sam glances over at him, but it's deliberate: he smiles, lays a hand on his shoulder with a firm squeeze of approval.

"Excellent work." he praises before answering. "There was a two week period where some people with ties to the island residents were brought in. I was one of them--everyone went back home when the two weeks were up, but I didn't. It's...hard to explain, but I was brought from the location we were all being held and over to the Oak & Iron. Held over, somehow, and woke up in my room rather than coming on the ferry."

Leading the young man over to the tree where he'd taken shelter, making sure they're protected from the rain, he continues by offering his hand to shake.

"Name's Trautman, by the way. Sam Trautman--and if you question what belongs to you and what doesn't, well, rest assured you can at least say you have a friend."

[lahire]

He takes the offered hand, his too-long branchlike fingers wrapping all the way around it tightly as he stands.

"No one at all?" Like he still doesn't completely believe he's free to decide what to do for himself.

[lahire]

"Nothing. We are feeling the cold ground and the wet grass and the rain." Jack exhales slowly. "We are enjoying being outside. Being...free?"

[lahire]

Sam's hand is accepted, but that doesn't look like a normal handshake, those spindly-wrong fingers wrapping aroooooound Sam's hand. It is not really a comfortable thing.

"I am Jack La Hire. That is the name on my paperwork."

[abhorrently]

"Not a soul. I've done this over and over since the rains started, and no one's come to tell me different."

It's not hard to find somewhere open nearby - the trees, the town, they give way into a space filled with grass and fresh air, where the rain falls down on the both of them openly, and Fever throws out her arms and tilts her head back. It feels nice - it feels free in a way she thinks she must have liked since childhood. She'll never know, but she can imagine. It stopped being chilly and started being fun.