tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

When; 18th of Dec
Rating; PG?
Characters; Nick Hardaway, Wanda Maximoff, Faye Valentine
Summary; Nick arrives in the city, requires a shower, a change of clothes and a smoke.
Log;
The first thing Nick notices - aside from the fact he's finally capable of noticing things on his own again, alone in his mind inasmuch as he's ever been alone in his mind - is that he doesn't have a heartbeat. Or much in the way of a decent body temperature. What he does have is a headache.

It makes perfect sense, except he's not in (that fucking house) Rose Red any more. This is the second thing he notices, and he's too tired (too relieved not to be trapped any more) to worry about exactly where this is, besides 'not hell on earth'. Here is better than there; it'll do, it'll have to do. He cracks his knuckles, rolls his head backwards and from side to side, and absently pats himself down for a pack of smokes while he takes the opportunity to casually skim the area with his mind - populated, evidently...very populated. Hello, there.

No smokes. Some sort of device, though - right, that'll come in handy, probably. He's aware, on one level, that he's compartmentalizing; that he's focusing on a metaphorical one foot in front of the other rather than the reality that he's spent the better part of a year dead, tied to the thing that killed him like living in the belly of a parasite, and that he has no bloody idea where he is now or much of what happened to everybody else. He can take a good stab at who made it out - who wasn't in there with him - but beyond sincerely hoping that he didn't die for Cathy so she could get taken out five minutes later by something else, he's not altogether ready to dwell on it.

He's too tired for this; he's too old for this, he thinks, agelessly unrepentant tendencies aside. His head hurts and all he can think is to wonder if anyone noticed him gone. If his parents, in Marske, know their bewildering boy who owes them a call or thirty isn't actually getting back to them like he said he definitely would this time.

There's no psychiatric handbook for the kind of PTSD you get from being eaten by a house; there's no one to tell him how to handle this if he were inclined to listen to them, or if he were inclined to let them know it needed telling in the first place. Nick mentally ranks his priorities: shower, clean clothes, beer, cigarettes, personal mental health. Right then. 'Not reeking of death' seems like a good start, and probably useful toward the end of asking the important questions like 'where am I', 'how did I get here' and 'really, are all afterlives kind of crap, then?'

...maybe he'll sit still for a while first, though. His head is killing him.

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Wanda is taking first opportunity to look around outside that apartment, on her own, unarmed. She's done her best to feel like she really belongs there, but something keeps striking her as not quite right, like she's being humored. (Maybe it's paranoia, but she still doesn't feel trusted, there are these abrupt shifts in behavior and...she needs to stop thinking about it.)

Her arms are wrapped tight around herself, and even though it's relatively dark out, she doesn't feel scared. Not of zombies, anyway.

When she spots Nick, she slows, wide-eyed. He looks a little out of it, with which she sympathizes.

"Hi," she says, carefully, "are you all right?"

For all she knows, he was trapped this entire time hiding from the not-quite-dead. Alternately: he was one of them, which could really be worse.

Mind reading is second nature to Nick; he doesn't think not to, when he realizes he's acquired company some how. Wanda's mind is fascinating, too; he can read her, certainly, but there's something underneath the surface thoughts available, something they hide.

It's not in his nature to break through existing barriers without a reason - but he examines them, remembers them, wonders about what he's not seeing. He gives her a tired sort of smile, leaning back a little to look up as she slows. "Probably."

"All right. Did you just get out of lockdown, or--?" Wanda stops in front of him, touching her hair self-consciously. Usually she isn't anything other than breezily confident, but lately it's seemed less and less possible. Nick looks about as exhausted as she feels (she hasn't slept much at all, maybe a few hours a night if that, since the attacks started, but has neatly kept from mentioning that to anyone).

"Something like that," he murmurs, mostly to himself, and then he shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck, straightening, unfolding, standing up. (He's tall, and he's thin; unassuming as he is, he manages a presence that takes up more space than he seems like he should.) "No, I've just arrived. I don't suppose you could tell me where exactly I've arrived at, could you?"

"Oh, you just--" Her demeanor changes to a more solicitous one, more obviously concerned. "You just arrived. I apologize--I hadn't realized. This place is called the City. People are taken sort of at random, when the City wants their presence...I don't pretend to understand it, but if you've got a good tolerance for weirdness, you're a step ahead of the average visitor."

She hopes he doesn't freak out. He doesn't seem like he will, but you never know.

Nick just sort of gazes at her for a moment - long enough for the lack of a response to be more than a little strange, awkward even - like he's looking past and through her, out of step and somewhere else. "Right," he says, not abruptly, refocusing without evident concern, "That makes about as much sense as anything else might. I'm Nick."

She looks up at him silently while he looks past her, aware she isn't really quite visible for now, and inclines her head slightly. "I'm Wanda Maximoff. I haven't been here for very long myself, so--I know what it's like."

Sort of, anyway.

"Is there anything you need?"

Nick exhales and appears to be sort of considering sitting back down, actually. "A pulse would be nice," he says, mostly to himself, and then he chuckles a little ruefully. He's in shock, he figures, and he has no idea what he's going to do when that wears off. "But if we're not whistling for ponies, then a shower and clean clothes'd be very nice."

Faye is passing by on her back from the corner store she's gone to for over two years when she needs cigarettes, and she passes by Wanda and Nick. To be perfectly honest, she's a bit more drunk now than she was when she left Remy, so she short of teeters on by with a nice sort of "Hellooooo~" when she sees them.

"If you're looking for showers and clean clothes, the apartment buildings always have something empty but clothes cost money unfortunately because I like them does anyone have a lighter?" Because she can't work hers right now.

Faye's arrival doesn't really give Wanda much pause--it's nice to see people out and about wandering the streets again, honestly. She's still a bit jumpy, like the disease could come back at any moment, and this grounds her in the present reality.

"I don't have a lighter, no," she says, apologetic, "but you can use the shower at my apartment, or one of the empty rooms nearby, Nick, if you prefer."

She smiles at Faye, noting the sliiight tipsiness. Can't blame her--most people are probably going to be drinking after this week.

"I might actually," Nick says, patting his pockets again - he decides in the time it takes to find the matches he dropped in his pocket that morning, forgetting the pack of cigarettes next to the bed he didn't spend a lot of time in, that he'd rather go somewhere there are people than any empty anything - and producing matches. "Trade you a light for a spare," he says, to Faye, holding off the matches just yet, and then to Wanda- "I'd be very much obliged."

Faye doesn't really work on bargains very well. Mostly she's used to just taking, but this deal seems good to her, so she pulls out her pack, which is nearly empty. "Hope you don't mind Camels," she says, surprisingly clear as she peels two cigarettes apart, sticks one in her mouth and holds the other one out to Nick.

Cigarette clenched between her teeth, Faye sticks out her hand in Wanda's direction and says, "Faye Valentine."

She leaves them to the exchange of smoking implements--not her thing, but it doesn't faze Wanda a bit--and reaches out to shake Faye's hand. "Wanda Maximoff. It's nice to meet you. I think I heard your Network message earlier, actually."

She supposes there's worse timing for Nick to arrive. He could have got there during the deluge of zombies instead.

Considering where he just came from, that probably would've been particularly traumatising. In the meanwhile, unaware of the zombies beyond what he can skim off their minds, he'll take that cigarette and obligingly trade Faye a light for it.

"Nick," he says to Faye, absently, and then, "Dr Hardaway, on occasion."

"That's a comforting thought," Faye says, inhaling her cigarette, essentially, after shaking Wanda's hand, with a smile. She's had a reputation for being something of a big mouth for a while now, so it's hardly surprising. She nods to Nick. "There aren't a lot of doctors here. You'll probably eventually find yourself in high demand."

"Are you a medical doctor, then?" Wanda inquires, with a curious tilt of her head. She does imagine people who can treat illnesses would be rather rare, but she supposes it's just as likely he's a physicist as anything else.

"Psychiatrist," Nick supplies, shaking out the match he lit his own cigarette with and exhaling smoke. "I haven't been working for a while." It's been said, of course, that a psychiatrist is never - never really - off-duty, and of one with Nicholas Hardaway's particular gifts, that's probably especially true.

He skims through Faye's mind briefly while they talk, too, absent-mindedly taking a step that'll take him out of convenient throwing-up-on range.

Faye rolls her eyes, though it's good-natured in its irritation, and suppresses the slight queasiness in her stomach. She's supposed to be better at holding her alcohol than this.

"If you plan on taking up practice here, well... you'd probably find a little bit more than you bargained for in some people," Faye says, glancing upward like someone is just going to fall out of the sky and onto their heads. In this place it wouldn't be that unusual. "Some of them could probably use it, though."

Psychiatrist she files away for no real reason beyond what she considers idle curiosity regarding the profession. "At the very least, it would keep you busy," Wanda contributes, with a wry smile, "If you value that sort of thing much."

Which she does, hence the two jobs and increasing tendency toward taking on greater responsibility and not sleeping enough.

"I guess we'll just - or I will - see how it works out, then," Nick says, friendly, even, not committing even to casual conversation. Good job, Nick. "I figure clean clothes are a bit of a higher priority first off."

...yeah, although: aside from being a bit tired and rumpled, there doesn't look like there's anything wrong with his clothes for him to be quite so fixated. And he is, underneath the casual demeanour; it's veiled, but not as well as it could be.

Faye gives him a look: a casual up-down sort of processing. Granted, her mind is still a bit muddled so it might be less casual than she intends. "When I first got here," she begins, as if this is going to be some great tale with adventure and mystery, "there were clothes that fit me in my closet. That might've been the City's way of telling me to put pants on, though fuck all if I cared then."

She crosses her arms, bundling her jacket closer, and nods at Wanda as if looking for agreement. "It's not like your clothes are even a mess. I've seen loads worse."

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