savetheearth | Mission 7 - A Chance Meeting

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Mission 7 - A Chance Meeting

Who: Anthony Sparado, Hajime Aikawa, Chinen Shou, and NPC mcfirestarter
What: Cleaning up some loose ends.
Where: Downtown Locke, couple of areas likely
When: December 1st, late afternoon/evening
Warnings: Violence, death, probably profanity.

Text: [The hurriedly typed address of a small bookstore somewhere downtown.]

Got a bite. It's show time, hope you're hungry.

Action: After the sting at Espresso Yourself things had fallen quiet again. By now quiet was worrying, instead of signalling peace and a break from madness Tony had come to associate the quiet with an impending shitstorm. With luck, and a good bit of skill, maybe he'd be able to cut this one off before things got unbearably messy. That was the plan, anyway.

Shou's contacts had given Tony a lead or two, and that coupled with his own ever increasing hunter's instincts he'd finally tracked down his quarry: The modified human that had been made to look like him.

After shooting a quick text to the both of them (he couldn't give them more time as much as he would have liked to) he began to move in. Storm clouds rumbled ominously overhead, briefly distracting Tony. Something about all of this was weirdly familiar, and unsettling. He adjusted the sword on his shoulder, shoved aside the anticipation causing a funny knot in his gut, and began to move in. Now he knew he spotted the guy around there somewhere. He couldn't have gotten too far, could he?

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From the second Tony and company had appeared at his door, desperate for a place to crash and lie low, L had been doing a fine job holding things together. He was getting better at compartmentalizing, putting aside the smaller concerns to better deal with the larger ones, but it meant that he tended to wait until the dust settled and he was alone to implode and collapse inward. And now that he wasn't needed anymore, and Richard had arrived, wasn't his work finished? His worrying certainly should have been. While a small amount of guilt chewed at the back of his brain (Tony might not be able to communicate to Richard what happened, how much did Shou tell him, will he need to know more?), he was, for the moment, free to quietly fall apart.

The showers were a communal affair, with heads lining the tiled walls. More development would eventually mean more privacy, but for now, a typical boys' locker room was where anyone living at the school was going to get clean. He removed and neatly folded his blood spattered clothes, keeping a soft, freshly laundered towel nearby as he turned on the water and waited for the room to fill with dense, heavy steam. The familiar sting of Lysol against his bare skin started powerful and irritating and prickled gradually into numb, resigned comfort; this was what he could always rely on to make him feel pure and sterile. White rooms, bleached walls, discomfort he could live with if it killed every trace of slimy mold.

As hot water pelted down on his head and soaked his dark hair, L watched it glide across the floor and disappear into the drain. Even if it was only on a molecular level, it was taking the deadest and dirtiest parts of him with it. Secure in that knowledge, L permitted himself to feel something like peace for the first time since seeing Shou and Hajime carrying Tony's limp body toward him.

Talking with Tony had been difficult. It wasn't only that the kid couldn't form any kind of coherent response, but that he might have said far more than he meant to in the face of said unresponsiveness. There would be some things they would need to discuss later, when Tony was able to speak again, but for now...

For now, there were a few things he needed to discuss with L, too.

It didn't take him long to track the younger man down, but he wasn't about to go walking in on him when he was taking a shower. So, he waited outside, leaning against the wall and going over things in his head, over and over until he felt like he was running his own thoughts around in circles.

Just when they thought things might settle, everything turned upside-down again. He really ought to be used to it by now.

Showers were how L dealt with stress, but they couldn't last forever. Eventually, like everyone else, he needed to suck it up and face the music. Toweling his strawberry-red skin off and giving his hair a quick ruffle, he put on the same grimy clothes he'd walked in with, having nothing else. That had been an unfortunate lack of foresight, on his part; too late now. Pushing the swinging door aside with the damp towel over his arm, he didn't expect to see Richard, and the way he immediately stiffened when he saw the older man probably said as much.

He tried to regain his composure; there was no real reason to be anything more than startled, the kind that came with thinking one was alone and then being proven wrong. Rewind. Reset. Try to find some kind of vaguely appropriate greeting for the aftermath of so your kid was shot in the head...

One didn't spring readily to mind.

"Before you say anything, I was at least as shocked as you were. I didn't know anything about this," he said, a carton of cigarettes and a lighter coming quickly out of his pocket. Having something to keep his hands busy helped.

The way L immediately tensed on seeing him had him tilting his head as if in questioning. He didn't blame L for what had happened. It didn't feel right to really place the blame on anyone, given the circumstances, but he couldn't help but feel angry at the entire situation.

What was important, he had to keep telling himself, was to not misdirect that anger at the people who didn't deserve it.

"Yeah. Figured I could trust you enough to let me know if you'd heard anythin'." At least.. he'd hope so. Despite L's more troubling characteristics, he is someone that Richard would trust with Tony's safety.

L was having some trouble with his lighter. It snapped four times before he managed to get a flame; the issue seemed to be his shaky hands, but the nicotine would help with that. He inhales the acrid relief, holding his breath for a moment before exhaling.

"I outsourced contacting you to Shou. He was eager enough, I needed to clean Tony up, and it would have been really inefficient and stupid to have two people furiously texting or calling you when you were probably on your way here in your car the second you heard what happened. It's been hectic," he adds quietly. "He wouldn't calm down without a tranquilizer, but there shouldn't be any long-term effects... especially with the healing abilities it appears he's pulsed back."

He leans against the wall, in a state of soggy exhaustion, before wordlessly offering Richard the cigarette carton.

'Outsourced'. The word choice might have amused him if it wasn't for the situation, but at least L had a very accurate grasp of exactly what had happened as soon as Richard knew what was going on. Nothing about this was good, save for the fact that the kid was alive, but who could say now how long his recovery might take...

He glances down at the carton, then huffs out a breath and takes one, leaning up against the wall beside L as he toys with the cigarette rather than moving to light it.

"Had to pull over when he told me about the headshot. Who the fuck tells a guy somethin' like that when he's driving..." Not that Shou could have known, and he knows that, but he's trying to inject at least some sense of normalcy into this. "... What happened, L? Tell me whatever you can."

L notices the way Richard toys with the cigarette rather than lighting it. He offers the lighter, thinking that perhaps that's the reason. Smoking alone isn't as isolating and shameful as, say, shooting heroin alone, but it's a small portion of that emptiness.

"I thought that might have been the case," L says, staring straight ahead and folding the arm not holding his cigarette over his chest after Richard has either accepted the lighter or declined to. "Though... I don't know that I could have broken the news any more considerately. It's one of those rare cases where the cold, hard facts actually sound worse than they are. Most people don't survive headshots, but as you've always known, Tony is rather exceptional. We're... very fortunate, that's the case."

He takes a deep drag, preparing to do his best to fulfill a request that's a heavy one, whether Richard realizes it or not.

It's not enough.

"Walk with me," he says. "Whether this indicates weakness to you, or seems pathetic... I'm going to need a drink, first."

He turns and heads back into the communal bathroom without another word, and if Richard follows him, he'll wind up in a bathroom stall, watching L removing the lid from a toilet tank in the second stall from the left, withdrawing a plastic bag with a hidden fifth of Stolichnaya.

It's part of the reason, but the biggest thing is he really just needed something to do with his hands. Still, being given the lighter is enough of a prompt to have him lifting the cigarette up, touching the flame to the tip and taking a deep drag in.

"Ain't no real delicate way to tell someone their kid got shot," he mutters, handing the lighter back and flicking a small amount of ash away. What draws the raised eyebrow isn't the fact that L needs a drink - he could probably benefit from one himself, right now - but the comment that comes along with it.

"And I ain't gonna begrudge anyone needing a drink after this shit."

Even L, with all his personal problems. Richard's history being what it is, it's hard to view this kind of thing as 'weakness' and not a comment is made to the fact he's stashing alcohol in a toilet tank.

L wonders idly if this counts as peer pressure. Richard is older than he is and was doing hard drugs when L was still in pressed suits competing in tournaments, and on the surface it probably seems like he's just offering another adult a cigarette. But deep down, L has to admit that he really wants Richard to smoke with him. It would actually be devastating if he didn't. He releases his breath with Richard lights up, not having realized that he was holding it in the first place.

He opens the bottle, and unceremoniously inducts another vice. He wasn't going to get wasted, not with Tony upstairs requiring some level of alertness, but something to take the edge off was absolutely in order. "I don't have a cup..." he says, making it sound like an apology as he raises the bottle to his lips and tips it back. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, wincing at the acrid taste, before handing it over to Richard.

Richard tends to smoke socially, though not often, so this isn't exactly new for him... but it's been a long time since he last lit up a cigarette to relieve stress. It works, though, in that soothing kind of way that he'd all but forgotten about. Maybe it's more the repetitive and familiar action than anything else.

Still, he waves the bottle off with a small gesture and a shake of his head. "Not for me, thanks." Not while Tony's still half conscious upstairs. All it would take was one fumble and besides, he still has to drive home.

"You go ahead."

L's hand offering the bottle wavers at Richard's rejection, and he pulls it close to his chest, glancing toward the tile with hollow eyes before taking a deep draw on his cigarette.

"Is there... anything else you want to know? About Tony? About any of this?" he asked, sounding suddenly tired. He doesn't raise the bottle to his lips again, because if he's drinking alone anyway, he figures it's better to wait until he's by himself physically, too.

"Anything you can tell me." He was mostly ignoring the cigarette now, too, letting it smoulder until the ashes dropped of their own accord.

"I haven't seen Shou and you know Tony ain't in a condition to be talking." He could only hope that the kid had understood what he was saying when he was talking about getting away from here for a while. "That he got more than two syllables out was a fuckin' miracle."

He rolls the bottle's between his palm, doing his best to rearrange his shattered thoughts into something that resembled order and logic. He'd known that this part would be difficult, but he hadn't thought it would be to this extent. He feels like a radio that just can't find a frequency, endless static obscuring his ability to be helpful.

"What happened," he says, settling heavily into the groove of a subject with a determined path, from beginning to resolution. "From what I understand of it... as you know, Tony has someone Albero's modded to look like him. He's not a perfect match, but the resemblance was strong enough to get him in trouble for crimes he didn't commit. Tonight, the objective was to commit arson on camera while looking like Tony, and Tony tried to stop it. He went after the perp, and even though Hajime and Shou were supposedly involved... they got separated and he ended up trying to take on an armed thug alone."

He nods at the parts he knows. The doppelgänger, and the trouble it had got Tony into (that alone had been enough for him to consider just packing up shop and getting out of there entirely), but he stills as more recent events have some detail added to them.

There's a niggling little voice telling him that he ought to be angry at Tony. He should be, because how many times now has he told that kid that he can't just go running off alone whenever something bad happens? How many times has he told him he's not alone?

It's not as easy as that, though. It's never going to be that easy.

"... Of course he fuckin' did. I need to put a beeper on him or somethin'."

He rests a hand against his cheekbone, wondering just how bad the swelling is now, or if it's beginning to bruise where Tony's flailing punch had caught him. He keeps his eyes on the floor.

"It's normal for a teenager in so many ways," he says quietly. "But if it gets worse than this, I don't... I worry that I won't be able to help him. I'm very afraid of that."

It's not something he's commenting on yet, though the bruising has caught his gaze a few times by now. He guesses it's a result of what happened.

"Not much about Tony really fits into 'normal teenager' anymore," Richard mutters, rubbing the back of his head and turning his eyes up to the ceiling to sigh out a soft breath. "And you don't gotta worry about being the only one around to help him. That's not somethin' you need to take all on by yourself."

"I think you're wrong," Lazarus says, a little too forcefully. He wants badly to believe that it's the case, because the alternative has a lot of hopeless implications for Tony and everyone in his life. "It's a lie to say that Numbered are normal, or that they're just like anyone else, but the essence of a full life's experience shouldn't be denied any of us. He's going through changes that are frankly terrifying, but he's also insecure, and headstrong, and foolish, just like a normal teenager. It might not be everything but it's more than 'not much,'" he insists.

"I hope he finds someone who makes him happy. I want him to go to college, feel the satisfaction of making the world a better place, and live a very long and happy life. I think he can have those things; don't you?"

He's never been worried about being the only one around to help Tony, but it's no secret that their relationship is more peer-oriented than one between a guardian and a child. What he is worried about is being brittle and frail compared to other Numbers, and incapable of sufficiently doing anything at all for Tony.

Maybe at another time this kind of conversation would have been welcomed. Right now, it isn't, and there's a faint tensing of Richard's jaw as he glances back over to the door and privately thinks that this isn't the kind of thing they should be talking about in a restroom.

"Of course I fuckin' want those things for him. I'm his father." It's the first time he's said that, really, and the word halfway sticks but not because it's something that doesn't want to be spoken. More that it's strange to say. Richard had never really banked on having kids, and especially not one that would drive him so close to a breakdown by (almost) no fault of his own.

"Don't talk about this like I don't know the damn situation, L." He wheels 'round on the heel of one foot, aiming a soft kick at the base of the nearest wall. It makes little more than a soft 'tap', then another while he scuffs one hand through his hair. "Look, I'm not gonna discuss this in here. It's weird."

The breaks and cracks in Richard are impossible to miss. His composure is slipping, and while L realizes he's only human, he's right. Richard is Tony's father, and difficult or not, he took that burden on himself willingly. It stings to think of it that way; L knows that "burden" is a word that scares Tony, that makes him behave desperately and foolishly.

He watches Richard silently as the other man kicks the wall in frustration. "Is it so impossible that you don't know the situation?" he asks afterward, flint-eyed. "He doesn't tell you everything. I'm not a parent, or anything, but I'm pretty sure I can overcome some weirdness to discuss concerns about my friend's future. I can be accommodating. I can be flexible. I can talk about this anywhere. Where would you be more comfortable?" he inquires, doing his best to keep his tone neutral and free of any traces of arsenic.

"... Don't do that."

It's low, a soft and tired-sounding warning that doesn't go any further as he quickly glances back over his shoulder. Don't talk like he doesn't care enough to know. Don't talk like he doesn't care enough about Tony's future to discuss it. He never expects L to sugar coat anything and he wouldn't want him to - that's not how their friendship works - but right now...

Right now his mind is too scattered to appreciate any part of what L might be trying to do.

"You wanna talk about this? A'right, we'll talk about it. Let's siddown somewhere that don't feel as if the Houston Texans are about to run in after a game."

Then he pulls the door open, holding it for L to leave first and lead the way.

L certainly tends toward venom more often than honey, and if one were to press him, they'd get plenty of reasons. Hard living has made him hard, he has no patience or sympathy for self-pity, he is a doer and not a dreamer... and in many ways, it's probably for the best that he's not a parent. It's an attitude that adults respect, but it breaks children.

"Fine," he replies neutrally, standing and following Richard and passing when the other man stands aside to allow him to exit first. Richard's discomfort with the locker room admittedly doesn't make much sense to him; he knows that Richard has gotten used to more posh surroundings in recent years, but he won't find that anywhere in L's rough, work-in-progress academy. In fact, making it more comfortable and cheerful in general is something that people like Shou insist on helping him with.

If Richard simply has a fear of locker rooms, though, or a surprisingly prudish attitude about showers or commodes that L personally makes sure are scrubbed clean nearly daily, he will accommodate. He's stretched thin today, but he can at least take it that much further.

"Tell me where you want to go so I don't choose another spot that you find 'weird,'" he instructs crisply.

Under normal circumstances, Richard could handle this and likely better than most. Right now, every nerve is stripped and all he can think about is Tony, the teenager that he took into his home and swore to keep safe, almost dead in a room not too far away from where he is now. It's nothing to do with the surroundings (he seen and lived in worse), or even the fact that it's a locker room, really. He just needs a little more time to gather his thoughts and it's more easily done by walking.

And he could probably just have said that, but he's not exactly thinking straight. Everything feels like it's coming through a fog.

"... Outside. I gotta get some air." The thought only comes to him then and suddenly seems like the best idea in the world. "Please."

One great and cruel irony of L's existence is that he only begins to truly understand and get along with people when he knows their breaking points. Figuring out such a definite quantity often entails pushing them to those points, after which they either bond with or want nothing to do with him. It's a high-risk high-reward approach that makes a lot of sense for someone with L's extreme personality... but it can backfire, and tends to do so badly when it happens.

His eyes and face are hard, and remain that way, but he nods, turning wordlessly and making his way toward the nearest fire exit. He trusts Richard to follow him.

The problem with Richard's breaking point is that he's already long past it and holding himself together for the sake of the one person left who really needs him right now. It's a strange state to be in and he probably shouldn't have driven here at all (Shou telling him about the extent of the injury almost causing him to crash aside), but here he is, and now in the delicate company of someone who is now pressing him further.

Getting outside is the best idea that he could have had. As soon as the cold air hits him he feels better, more focused, and certainly not as penned-in as he had before.

He leans against the wall beside the door and breathes in, exhaling slowly.

"You got another smoke goin' spare?"

It's not until they actually are outside that L appreciates the openness and fresh air himself. He spends so much time in the school, breathing the dust and plaster and smoke from the occasional cigarette, that he sometimes forgets how invigorating it is to step out the door. Though he's not dressed for the weather, standing in his shirtsleeves, he doesn't complain about the cold, slipping his hands into his pockets and withdrawing his carton of cigarettes even before Richard asks for one.

"Of course. It's a habit now, so I wouldn't be caught without one."

He holds a cigarette and lighter in one hand, offering them both to Richard.

Mission 7 - A Chance Meeting

Later; L and Richard

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