sixthiterationlogs | and me, i am not a mess, i am a wilderness, yes.

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and me, i am not a mess, i am a wilderness, yes.

WHO: Jason Todd and anyone who wants to meet the Red Hoodlum.
WHERE: The Fountain, House #9, basically everywhere else.
WHEN: Aug. 2-4ish
OPEN TO: All y'all. (Please feel free to use brackets or prose, I'll match tag style!)
WARNINGS: Jason's remembered past trauma re: death and probably some swearing. Maybe violence. It's Jason, who knows.

nature can't amend its ways (fountain; closed to kira).

People are fond of saying things like third time's a charm, but there's absolutely nothing at all charming about waking up underwater for a third time - even if it's really only the second time. The last time Jason remembers something like this was actually just a repeat of the memory of coming back to life in the Lazarus Pit, relived as though it was the first time all over again, thanks to Wonderland's capricious whims - but hey, details, right?

The point is this: waking up underwater sucks, frankly, and even though there are no bandages to rip off his face this time, Jason is a panicked disaster, thrashing against the water as he pulls himself to the surface, screaming loud enough to blow out his vocal cords, ready to fight. He was born a fighter, and reborn twice as much of a fighter - which raises the question, naturally, of what sort of fighter he'll turn out to be the third time around.

you'll not be my master - you're barely my guest (house #9; open).

Well, a new guy's gotta find a place to stay, right? And Jason's spent enough time scavenging on the streets and squatting in buildings where he doesn't belong to know what to look for. Securing a base of operations (not a home, this place will never be that for him) shouldn't be too difficult.

He's drawn to a red house, because of course he is, and climbs warily up the stairs. All signs point in the direction of concluding the house is unoccupied, so. This is as good a place as any. If Jason's lucky, maybe his neighbors aren't the friendly sort and he can avoid any more face-to-face interaction for a while.

i'm an agent of the natural world (errywhere else; open).

Know your terrain before you launch an attack - that's Fights 101, which Jason learned at the booted feet of none other than Batman. So he sets out exploring the village, poking his head around in all of the public areas, maybe skulking around places that are a little less than public, too. After all, he's new here - if he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, he at least has a good excuse for it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For Kira's sake, hopefully not three times as much of a fighter--when he hears the scream, the earthquakes and wendigo are too fresh for it to be ignored. It's too real to be ignored, the wild mix of fear and anger most of them just don't express. Not where people can see and hear. Not in the middle of the fountain park, even when someone finally broke down enough to wash the blood off one specific tree.

He runs past it, Aurora in the kind of pursuit that easily surpasses. For once, he's not thinking about what a pain this is, he's not resentful when there's nothing familiar about the face.

Screaming means they might not be able to swim; screaming means they might be hurt.

"Aurora, he shouts, so much louder than he usually is that it doesn't sound like him to his own ears. "For once in your life, down." She wheels and runs tucked to the edge of the fountain, like a sped up stop-motion of its shadow chasing sunset. Someone should have been waiting, he thinks, as he gets the guy by the straps of his bag and hauls him to the edge. Aurora makes the curve of the fountain by then, a triangle of black fur and ridiculously tall ears at Kira's elbow as he levers his feet on the stone to offer any actual weight for the guy to haul up on.

"Shush," he tells them both, even if she isn't adding to the noise yet. "Grab onto something, we'll get you out."

He can swim, he knows how, it's just - the shock of nearly drowning, the confusion, the jumpstarted memory of coming back to consciousness in the Lazarus Pit, remembering flashes of the Joker's pasty, grinning face, the unhinged laughter, the crowbar cracking his bones inside of his skin, What hurts more, forehand or backhand?, the ticking-down of the last seconds before the explosion that killed him - it's a lot to remember all at once. Jason got good at pushing those memories into the deep, dark, dusty recesses of his mind and not thinking about them, and having everything pulled so sharply back into the foreground is painful enough to leave Jason entirely unbalanced by it. Remembered trauma is so much worse when it sneaks up on you like this; it feels like getting punched in the face twice over, once for the actual damage that was caused and another for how unexpected is the memory.

You would think someone like Jason would learn to expect the unexpected by now.

Ultimately, it's not the voice speaking to him or the awareness of his surroundings that pulls Jason's focus but the dog. Dogs are good. Jon had dogs, and Jason helped the boy take them for walks, but this isn't one of Jon's dogs and this isn't Jon and this doesn't look like any part of Wonderland Jason recognizes, and believe him, he traipsed down every foot of the grounds, looking for a way out.

The screaming stops, replaced by deep, panicked breaths and loud coughing, and Jason doesn't fight being pulled out of the water. Maybe that's what someone should've done the first time, too - pull him out instead of leaving him to fend for himself. Jason's done more than his fair share of fending for himself.

"What," he coughs, dropping to hands and knees on the ground once he's fully pulled out of the fountain, "the hell's, going on?"

Fuck but that's an awful noise, cutting off into nothing much better. Kira doesn't know what kind of arrival is the good one--Ravi doesn't really count, swimming back up with the answer to every question already set in his mind. This has to be worse, not knowing if the guy is hurt on top of not being any closer to a real answer to that question.

Not one he's allowed to talk about, with anyone but Karen.

Aurora noses in first, Kira grimacing as they separate. She snuffs his hair and can't resist the drip from her new friend's, face, a breath in the guy's ear before she licks his entire sideburn. "Jesus," Kira sighs, rolling back in to put both arms around her and drag her back, "give him some space. Sorry, fuck."

Using her to lever up, Kira crouches behind her and just--sets a hand on the guy's shoulder, slow and easy. He's already had to kick one guy in the balls, he'd rather not repeat it. "I'll get to that, I swear, I just need to ask--are you okay?"

That’s the kind of question Jason doesn’t hear often and often doesn’t know how to answer when he does hear it. Does he even know what baseline OK is? Did he ever? Maybe before the Lazarus Pit, he could’ve answered more easily, but now ...

He settles on a wheezing cough-laugh as his first reply and “I’m not dead” as his second. It’s not really an answer to the question posed, though; Jason takes a moment for his breathing to normalize, feeling the solid earth under his hands, and gives Kira a nod and a vague waving off.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he lies, sitting back on his heels. As if he hadn’t just screamed himself halfway hoarse with how much he isn’t OK. “Who’re you? Where am I?”

Not by most definitions, no, and Kira's not going to get into the philosophizing over whether any of them count as alive. Maybe lived is the thing in doubt. They breathe, they bleed, they die in their confines, but everything before, he doubts. Letting the guy brush him off, he puts the hand to better use, corralling Aurora at his chest.

"Well, I'll show you the clinic anyway, in case your head hurts or your chest gets tight, later." He knows remembers enough to know you don't drown all at once--water can get to the brain just gargling the wrong way at the bathroom sink.

"I'm Kira, this is Aurora. The rest is--not really complicated, just a lot of blanks we haven't filled in yet. Number of people kind of fluctuates, usually under a hundred? Everybody comes out of this thing with the clothes on their back, and we just kind of make do in this village for now."

Jason ... doesn't exactly remember being dead, but he remembers what it was like to not be alive, to see his last seconds ticking down in a countdown, to know that he was entirely alone and no one was coming to save him. Pain, and then nothing. He knows the difference, so he's fairly confident in his assessment that he isn't currently dead (again).

He listens to what Kira says, most of it unfocused facts that don't immediately stick in his mind: a clinic, a small village. "Not Wonderland?" he asks, to confirm what he's already fairly certain he knows, and holds a hand out for the dog to sniff, now that he's not fighting to breathe normally again.

"Don't really have the drugs for that one, no," he agrees, letting Aurora step over his arm, still bracing it on her chest, to let her sniff and promptly lick the guy's hand. She's not one to ease into her many and immediate friendships--which makes some sense. No one's ever hurt Aurora, to teach her any caution.

"What about you," he asks, while Aurora strains a bit to get at the guy's face. She gets far enough to snuffle at his elbow. Kira is at least taking stock of the scrubs, for his eventual notes.

New face, teal scrubs, no immediate external injuries. The scars are weird--not because Kira can judge, the old hook under his hair--but always that idea of them, with his idea of the place itself. Someone growing them in tubes and what--injuring them again? To match some record of a reality long gone? "We're safe enough for now, I can get you food and fresh clothes if you want. You got a fountain side elevator pitch of shit I should know? Need to drink blood or eat brains; nut allergies?"

He doesn't bother to argue that there hadn't been any drugs in Wonderland - none that he'd been aware of, at least, because if there had been any, with as many children as were running around, he would've tracked whichever queen was responsible and personally beaten her to a bloody pulp. He focuses on the dog, on scratching under her chin, on settling his heartbeat back into its proper rhythm.

The questions startle another of those wheezing laughs out of him. He distinctly remembers arguing with someone about whether he was a zombie because he'd died and come back, but no one's ever asked him if he ate brains outright.

"Is that the kind of thing you normally hear from the new arrivals?" He shakes his head. "Nah, nothing like that." I was murdered a few years ago but I got better seems like the kind of thing that Kira doesn't necessarily need to know right away, if ever. Jason points to himself with the hand not occupied by the dog.

"I'm Jason."

The house is unoccupied... in the long term. In the short term however a recent arrival pointed out to Steph that she has spent more than half of her time so far in this place sleeping, and she has decided that she should at least pretend to be a real person and not a hibernating bear. For Steph this means first and foremost foraging for potential weapons. She has a stick the size of a bo staff and her overall pockets are full of rocks varying from sharp and blade-like to round projectiles, but that’s just a little on the pathetic side. The store room didn’t hold anything that struck her fancy, so she started scavenging in the houses she knew to be unclaimed.

Hearing someone coming up the stairs Steph stopped her search and, not entirely sure why she didn’t just call out and let whoever it was know she was here, crept to the nearest window. Escape just seemed like the logical move.

Jason is having an aggressively bad day, there's no debate about that - still damp from the fountain, displaced and coming down from one hell of an adrenaline spike. But he can sense there's someone else here, and - honestly, he just got to town and he's already Tired. However many months of being toyed with in Wonderland, and now this pile of utter garbage. He drops his pack on a nearby chair and sighs loudly.

"I'm in no mood for games," he drawls, matter-of-fact in his announcement. "If you wanna dance, you better just come out now and get it over with."

Steph flinches at the voice. Caught. She grabs her makeshift staff and stands her ground, the window at her back.

“First of all, I was just leaving,” she calls back. Only now there’s an unknown man between her and the ‘normal’ exit, and he knows where she is. No way she’s going out that way.

“Second, what are you, Clint Eastwood? No, I don’t want to ‘dance’.” She never could resist poking a bear when it said things like ‘if you wanna dance’.

The voice that calls back sounds like it belongs to a woman - which doesn’t make Jason relax on that fact alone, he knows danger knows no gender - and less than intent on threatening - which could be a ruse, of course. Body language tells you more about a person than what they sound like alone, though, and the quip about Clint Eastwood draws a quiet huff of a laugh from him.

“You got something against Clint Eastwood?” That might be a dealbreaker. Jason leans back against the arm of a suspiciously antique-looking couch in the living room, arms folded over his chest.

“Seriously, come on out. I won’t bite unless you try first.”

He doesn’t seem to have moved from where he first called out, and he doesn’t sound angry... So far people in this town have been pretty alright. Still, she takes the stick-staff with her as she creeps carefully through the house.

“I just think he pulls it off better than you could,” she calls from just outside the living room. She checks around the corner, her makeshift weapon held out of sight. He sure does look comfortable there... and not like anyone she’s seen around, for what little that’s worth. She decides to chance it, and leaves the stick leaned against the doorframe to join him.

“I didn’t think anyone was living here,” she explains defensively, hooking her thumbs in the pockets of her overalls. Today she’s wearing her black scrub shirt underneath.

"Guess I got my work cut out for me, then." Not that Jason spends a lot of time working on Clint Eastwood impersonations, but maybe it's a hobby he'll find time to take up, with his recent change of surroundings.

He's not angry with Steph specifically - the gruffness in his tone is more a product of his baseline anger at the world, a smoldering heat in his heart that never quite goes out. Most of that dissipates the second he sets eyes on her. She's young - a teenager, probably not much older than Jason was when he died - and that gets to him, needles its way under his skin. He can't help thinking about all the kids he saw stuck in Wonderland, too - Tim, Damian, tiny ten-year-old Jon. None of them deserve any of this.

"Place looked empty to me, too," he says, tone notably softened. Jason unfolds his arms and holds out his hands in front of him, palms up - see? no weapons. "If you were planning on moving in, I can clear out of here."

Unarmed, but fit. Not somebody Steph wants to get in a fight with. For now she stays firmly planted at the door.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I have a place.” Not that she’ll tell anyone where it is, probably ever. The doors and windows are barred to keep intruders out.

“So you’re new?” At least she hasn’t been so unobservant that she missed people looking around town.

Jason nods, dropping his hands to the side of the couch, two fingertips tapping idly against the upholstery. "Kinda raises the question of what you're doing sneaking around here, then," which is an invitation to explain if she wants, but not a demand for information. He only just got here, and he was willing to move on to a different location, so it's not like he can really be territorial about the house.

He doesn't quite laugh at the question about being new, but he does manage something halfway resembling a wry smile. "Yeah, just got pulled out of the fountain about an hour ago. Can't say it my best entrance ever." Though - screaming aside - it was probably a little bit more dignified than his first time on the Wonderland network.

"What about you? Been here long enough to set up shop somewhere else, obviously. You got a name, or do I just call you Sneaky Girl?"

The question makes her blush, but her response is stubbornly cool.

“I was scavenging. Don’t worry though, I didn’t find anything interesting.” Just the same stuff in the house she’d already claimed.

She blanches at the nickname. As epithets go that one is just sad. He could at least have made it sound cooler.

“Stephanie. Or just Steph. I’ve been here a few weeks. Not long enough to forget how gross it feels being soaked through. There’s usually a fire going at the inn. You’d dry off faster.”

Yeah, it's not the most pleasant feeling, but he's lived through worse. He would dry off faster in front of a fire, but unfortunately, the inn's a public space, which means a likelier chance of people. He's not keen on fending off any more well-wishers or prying eyes at the moment. His emotional reserves are typically in short supply anyway, and coming to underwater was a little too reminiscent of coming back to life in the Lazarus Pit for his taste. Arrival took a lot out of him, so. He shrugs.

"I'll be OK. Thanks for tip, though, Stephanie-or-just-Steph." Dad jokes? You bet. He smiles. "I'm Jason. Were you scavenging for anything in particular or just ... stuff in general? Maybe I can keep an eye out for you."

She rolls her eyes at him. That was a very Dad joke, at least as far as she understands the idea. Her dad wasn't much for jokes of any kind.

"Just... looking for inspiration." She doesn't want to say she was looking for potential weapons. For one thing, she doesn't want him to know she's unarmed. For another, she doesn't want him to know she's uncomfortable being unarmed.

"We don't have a lot of proper supplies to work with, so I thought I'd get creative with it."

Sam's vodka still looked like something out of a Rube Goldberg drawing. There were pipes and tubes and glass jars and jugs. Everything was rigged up by string over burners and counter tops. The whole thing had to be disassembled and reassembled every time she used it, or no one would be able to use half of the kitchen. As a whole, Sam tried not to be that person. A dick. Admittedly, it was a habit that came to her naturally in most arenas of her life. But she had surprisingly excellent kitchen etiquette.

Especially for someone who couldn't eat.

She was working on her second batch of the day, her eyes following the clear, shining bubbles as they traveled along her patchwork distillery. To be perfectly honest, her heart wasn't entirely in it today. Or, at least, her mind wasn't.

It was August, if her calculations were correct. Right now, Lollapalooza would be starting up. Or would have been, if the city of Chicago still existed. She had her doubts. She missed concerts.

Or, you know, anything familiar.

And she was softly humming a Red Hot Chili Peppers song when she heard someone walk in and glanced up. It was a n00b. She could tell right away. She spent a great deal of time observing, and while she didn't know everyone's names, she knew most faces. "My condolences," she said.

Well ... this is not exactly what Jason expected to see in a kitchen, evident from the puzzled frown he wears once he sets foot through the doorway. It reminds him a little of the Batcave, of Bruce's weird chemistry stuff he'd use to analyze clues, and that's not exactly a pleasant thing to remember, so he pushes it to the back of his mind and focuses on the woman addressing him instead.

"Am I that obvious?" he asks, eyebrow arched, mildly amused. This isn't a huge place; maybe everyone knows everyone else in the way small towns function. He wouldn't know - Gotham was too big for that kind of close-knittedness, and Jason's more the type to keep to himself and keep other people at arm's length anyway.

There was something straightforward about his question that Sam appreciated. The Kindred world was full of half-truths and obfuscation. These days, Sam preferred being a blunt instrument. It just made life so much easier.

For one thing, you didn't have to try to remember what you lied about.

For another, you didn't have to give any fucks.

She smiled a little bit, shrugging one shoulder so the synthetic curls of her wig slid behind her back. "There's no flashing neon sign or anything," she said. "But I've been stuck here a long-ass time. You get to know people."

Jason too is more of a blunt instrument than precision tool, no patience for bullshit, and that means being here in this place already has him in a bad mood. Wonderland was bad enough, but there he could at least pick his own clothes. Teal is not his color.

He leans a shoulder into the doorway and folds his arms over his chest, considering her answer. "Yeah, I guess that'd do it. How long's a long-ass time, exactly?"

Sam took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Simple math was easier. The truth behind the numbers was always more complicated. "Fifteen months," she said. She felt like a parent on the playground. Although when, exactly, they switched over from months to years was still a mystery to her.

One of life's little mysteries.

"Not the worst," she added. "Some people have been around way longer."

Edited 2018-09-03 23:41 (UTC)

A neighbor, the brunette who happens to spy him climbing the stairs, she is not. In fact, she's not normally somebody who spends a whole lot of time wandering about the village, but in the aftermath that has followed the Wendigo attack, Rose has made a point of avoiding the Inn.

If she was out in public, people would eye her warily like they thought she was going to break or crumble. If she stuck to her room she was a stationary target for those well-meaning types who wanted to check on her. She knew she was supposed to be grateful that people even cared, but it was weird and unnatural for somebody who was used to taking care of herself.

She might have ignored him another time, but there was something welcoming about a person she didn't recognize. Finally, somebody who didn't know about the shitshow that had been the village the last week.

"I wouldn't worry about getting arrested." Her head cocked to one side as she observed him, her arms folded across her chest. "It's not like we have any police around here." A beat. " A police station... but I think that's being used as a barn?"

So much for avoiding any interactions with the settlement's other citizens. Jason sighs quietly. At least she doesn't sound like she's looking for a fight? Not that Jason isn't always ready to fight, he's just ... tired.

"Only thing police are good for is hassling people who don't deserve it," he states, dryly, casting a way eye in Rose's direction. Maybe his experiences have been colored by his hometown; Gotham PD was notoriously corrupt, only a few decent cops in the entire lot, and most of 'em were all too happy to beat up kids and sit idle while the costumed lunatics ran wild. At any rate, he's not worried about being arrested, even if there were cops around.

"You need something?"

Her own opinion of the police was neither here nor there. They stayed out of the affairs of her people and when a Moroi or Dhampir messed up enough to gain their attention, there was always an alchemist to step in and smooth things out - read - cover things up, for them. Something she rather wished she’d been told about before she started dropping bodies across Russia.

While there’s nothing particularly wrong with his question, she can’t help but bristle, like prickles were shifting beneath her skin and setting her teeth on edge. For a second there, there’s a slight hardening of her eyes and Rose’s pushes back from the tree she was leaning against to step into the sun.

“Nope.” Shoving her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. “Just figured if you were going to attempt to hone your creeping skills you might want to save it for something worth the effort.” Okay fine, so he hadn’t been creeping really but he hadn’t waltzed up those stairs like he owned the place, either. Rose found a conclusion to draw and she was only too happy to pounce on it.

Jason gives her a look that manages to be both pointed and sour at the same time. "My creeping skills are already at the height of perfection," he says flatly, "I don't need to hone them." He learned plenty about stealth during his days at Batman's side, after all.

"Anyway, what do you care? This isn't your place, right? It looks abandoned." He peers into a window, just to check again.

[ unfortunately for jason, one such neighbor is the friendly sort, albeit in the shape of a giant fuck-off block of a man. there are two dogs flanking his sides, one a black and brown bloodhound who looks serious but also tired - not unlike the expression frank is wearing. the other is a sleek black german shepherd who is incapable of walking in a straight line. jason had already met the dog which frank has no way of knowing so when she launches herself at him from across the path he attempts to call her back. not that hard, honestly. she's friendly just A LOT. ]

Come on, girl. He didn't ask to be tackled by you.

[ but enjoy your kisses anyway, jason!!!! frank just kind of shrugs while aretha drops to sit next to him and cants her head, equally chill about it. ]

[It's true, he didn't ask to be tackled, but he's sturdy enough to handle it and he likes dogs anyway, so. Not really a bad thing. Wearing something suspiciously like a smile, Jason bends a knee to the ground and - once he recognizes the dog from the fountain - gives her a good scratching behind the ears.]

It's OK, I don't mind.

[Dogs are good and pure and Jason likes them a lot!!]

Awful nice of our kidnappers to allow dogs around, too.

Edited 2018-08-13 00:47 (UTC)

Yeah, they're real sweethearts.

[ a dismissive agreement even though of course he feels the same way. otherwise he wouldn't constantly be stealing other people's dogs. ]

You just get here?

Better'n people, a lot of the time.

[Yep, Jason is one of Those People. He looks up from the dog to Frank and nods to the question.]

Yeah, yesterday. Nearly drowned on the way up, but I guess that's nothing unusual.

Say hello to one of those weirdos who noticed she got a new neighbor. Kamala is at least the kind who comes bearing gifts someone may actually want. She's got a small batch of peaches she just wandered off to pick and washed at home. She knocks on the door and waits for whoever has taken up residence here to open up or not.

Kamala doesn't know who she is going to get. Usually people aren't all that afraid of a tiny teenage girl who gives off the aura of an overeager, but very sweet puppy. She figures it's better she comes to say hello first than the giant man she lives with. Of course he beat here earlier making her effort a little bit wasted, but hey. Jason can enjoy the peaches still!

Jason isn’t really afraid of the rest of the settlement’s population, but he is wary - a lifetime of experience has taught that people more often than not can’t be trusted. Why would anything be different simply because his location’s changed? It wouldn’t.

A knock on his door is a little more civilized than simply breaking in, at least. But Jason doesn’t know what to expect on the other side of that door either, so when he pulls it open, it’s only by a crack, stopped by his foot while one blue eye peers out at the girl on his doorstep.

“You need something?”

Kamala tips her head towards the opening of that crack. Her inner monologue is going somewhere along the way of 'wow this is weird' or 'maybe he didn't notice his guest is me: literally the least threatening person in existence.' She smiles goofily because she is about to make a joke. She absolutely wants to laugh at her own jokes.

"No, but you do!" She holds out her basket of freshly washed peaches proudly. "Welcome to the neighborhood! Things are crazy and weird, but enjoy some peaches anyways."

When Jason slowly pulls the door the rest of the way open, the look on his face is that of someone who's just been doused with a bucket of ice water. He's reminded instantly of Cissie and the basket full of kumquats she brought him when he'd first arrived in Wonderland, after their talk on the network. She was nice to him, for no other reason than because she could be nice, and even though he's only been gone a couple of days, he misses her deeply.

"Um ... thanks," he says, tone much softer than it had been. He reaches out to take the basket off her hands and shakes his head to clear the stunned expression off his face. "D'you do this for everyone who shows up here?"

This is progress. Kamala happily hands it over. "For the ones who move in close enough for me to notice they're new! So pretty much just you so far, but I am working on it." Said in the tone of someone who actually means that. It's hard because they don't exactly make apps for new arrivals here. They definitely don't come in at the same time. Kamala wants to do it if only because they deserve to not feel alone.

"I'm Kamala by the way. If you need any help, I live at the house with a cute animal and scary man who gets followed by dogs constantly. You can't miss it."

Over the course of his nearly a month in the village, Druitt has managed to map most of the village well enough to have a suitably accurate mental map. Not that it means anything just at the moment, of course. Or not in all the ways it might have prior to his arrival in the village. But even so, he figures it can't hurt to have a decent enough idea of where things are.

That said, while he has most of village down well enough, the same can't yet be said of the outskirts of town. He might not anticipate needing to get out there in a hurry - and never mind that his usual method of getting somewhere in hurry is barred to him at the moment - but that doesn't mean that it's not still a good idea to know the entirely of his surroundings.

That said, it does come as something of a surprise to find someone who appears to be doing very nearly the same thing; there's a moment of silence and only afterwards does Druitt speak.

"Finding anything of interest?"

Scoping out the unfamiliar terrain is just basic common sense, in Jason's book, and knowing what boundaries exist and what's beyond them is just as useful as inspecting the more populated parts of his new home. He senses Druitt standing there in the moment before he speaks, and holds his breath for that silent pause while he waits to see if this is going to turn into a fight. That's the norm, in his experience, more often than not.

"Might be," he drawls, turning his head to give Druitt a visual once-over. Nothing super threatening in his stance as of now, but that can always change. "Who wants to know?"

Apart from the fact where he's tall enough to just casual loom by virtue of existing, there's nothing in Druitt's stance that suggests that he's inclined to be immediately hostile, at the very least. He does seem to be oddly comfortable in the scrubs that everyone seems to arrival in, but this has a lot more to do with the fact that he's always tended to prefer darker colors and as such black is quite simply a color he happens to be okay with. (Not that he won't replace them with something else if he ever gets the chance, but for now, they'll do.)

But rather than actually address that fact, he simply shrugs at the question.

"Just another of the people trapped here."

A passerby, nothing more. Or so the casual tone of his voice suggests, at the very least.

See, Jason's used to being the one who looms over people with his bulky six-foot frame, but there are a few people who are still taller than him. Bruce, for example. (He doesn't want to think about Bruce.)

And then there's this guy. Not a big deal; Jason was on the short side for his age when he was Robin, and he regularly went toe-to-toe with thugs twice his size. It's not always about height - it's about knowing how to move.

Which Jason is not currently doing. Instead, he stands his ground, arms folded across his chest. "Been here long?"

There is very definitely more to it than height, that much Druitt can agree to. Not that it doesn't help, but he has more than a few tricks up his sleeves besides. Even with one of them having been closed off by virtue of whatever trick the Observers have managed. But he leaves that be for now. While he's not unwilling to fight should it turn to that, he's not about to the one to start one. Not when there's hardly any reason to at the moment.

Instead he simply shrugs at Jason's comment.

"A couple of months."

Long enough to get the hang of the basics, but not really terribly long in the scheme of things either. Especially when he's quite aware that some people have been in the village for years.

Jason isn't really looking to fight either, but when you're someone who was basically born a fighter, it's difficult to turn that instinct off. Sometimes, in Jason's case, it comes out of his mouth instead of his fists.

"So are you professionally nosy, or is this a special occasion?"

Fortunately, Druitt is used to people who are more than willing to employ a very carefully pointed turn of phrase. True, the sharp smile that answers the comment - or rather his recognition of what he reads as the sort of sharp-tongued barbs mostly the Five have always been inclined to - is not precisely the most comforting of things. But neither does it seem to be anything that suggests that this is going to be moving to anything other than a conversation. Just that it might have taken a bit of a turn.

"What would you say if the answer were yes?"

He's not terribly nosy, as a rule. But he is interested in what Jason's answer might be, even if it's nothing more than a hypothetical.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

and me, i am not a mess, i am a wilderness, yes.

fountain

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House 9!

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The Inn's Kitchen

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House 9

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house 9

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near the edge of town

yes good

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