[arrival and ota] subtract my age from the mileage on my speeding heart

[jokerized]

WHO: Tim Drake
WHERE: Fountain, Inn, various houses
WHEN: Evening of July 9 and onward
OPEN TO: OTA with closed starter
WARNINGS: Underage character who was subjected to torture, arriving from the moment he murders his abuser.

---

( introduction )

fountain; july 9; veronica

Tim doesn't want to die badly enough, if the deciding factor is the water's chill. When he wakes up, there's less shock than a physical ache, awareness of his own skin fading in the dark. If only it were warmer, he'd float here until it choked him back to sleep. If only he could just sleep, the dark and dreamless transition from Barbara's grip to this.

Whatever this is. It doesn't rush around him like the river, though it's almost as cold. Tastes better too, when it slips into his mouth.

It's the kind of physical, present, lucid thought that he clings to, swallowing a little more and putting his hands on what feels like concrete siding. Some kind of pool, a wall to kick off from. This is good, this is working: something to do with his body that is only about keeping it alive. Whatever its condition, he's a strong swimmer, and he comes up with his arms catching around the legs and sweeping skirt of a statue.

The park, maybe? The statue is in decent condition: no moss, no vines, no signs of long-term deterioration. An old part of the Manor, closer to the cave than the house? The trees he finds outside the fountain's edge are too wild, the path too foot-worn to be the manicured lawns and carefully edged forest. Bruce's neighborhood is the only part of Gotham to have this many trees without Ivy's meddling.

Nerves build with the chill of the water, soaking into his--scrubs.

Right. That makes a surprising amount of sense, and the first slip of a laugh is genuine, but what follows is a horrible tic, rasping out of a sore throat. He's still trying to swallow the laughter as he gets a grip on the statue and pulls himself up, standing on the platform with her to look out at the twilit wood. In his movement, he notices the press of the backpack, the dragging weight on his shoulders. Is he outside some facility? Did he give Leslie the slip? That--sounds like him, even if he can't remember.

Shuffling his way around the statue, still holding tight, he continues to huff and swallow nervous laughter, trying to decide which way to go.


exploring; july 10-11; ota

The inmates are running this prison, far as he can tell. He doesn't know if this is some remote, free-range asylum disrupted by an earthquake, or there's been no time to breathe before tumbling through a rip in reality.

Or he's just crazy.

That one always starts the wheezing laugh tickling his throat. Nothing is funny, but everything can elicit it. It isn't just--it isn't just what happened. The ugly laughter is just easier than finding the words. Easier than thinking: what does it mean to be stuck here. Would Bruce really send him so far away, let him be taken again?

Is he angry?

Disappointed.

Whatever this place is, it isn't an entirely foreign world. A yellow sun rises and sets, it's temperate enough for the clothes in his pack. People gather supplies and offer meals in two of the larger buildings, and no one is hunting him down with medication or mandates of group therapy. He shelves the first theory pretty quickly, and puts the other two up just below it, in easier reach. Theories get in the way of deduction, and there's a lot of ground to cover, a lot of disparate information to parse.

Finding crude paper in one of the storerooms, Tim adds to his pack, adding a small jar packed with charcoal and a sharpened stick. He wouldn't have needed a notebook on the streets, but he knew those streets the way he knew how far he could jump, the way he knew the fit of his boots. His grasp of information has suffered in transition, and when he isn't slipping in and out of houses that look shaken in on themselves, he can be found at the board in the Inn, copying information with his makeshift pencil, trying to pick out the facts from speculation.

[Find Tim at the blackboard and map on the Inn's first floor, or exploring any house in a state of disrepair. It can even be your house, if it's suffered damage in the quake.]

Is this all as strange as it is seeming? Was I dead or was I only dreaming? [OPEN]

[thegreatexperiment]

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Around town
WHEN: Post-quake
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Some shell-shock. And because it's Sam, a lot of swearing.

---

As hard as Sam tried, she couldn't stop thinking about the night of the Rain of Fire. Compared to what had happened to her and the life she knew that night, an earthquake should have seemed like small potatoes. She lived in stupid California, for fuck's sake. This shouldn't have been enough to scratch up memories of the Rain, like a scab being ripped off her elbow. But introspection had never been Sam's greatest talent. So she understood herself less than complex physics or genetic sequencing or the right way to make fun of people who actually liked Walter Keane portraits. And when the memories flooded her brain, she was helpless to stop them, much less understand.

Sam was fast. She’d been fast even before she died. High school track team. Only for a hot minute, it seemed, but it had stuck with her. And it served her well, now, as she raced through the jumbled and ripped up streets of Los Angeles, jumping over steaming craters in the concrete, dodging around debris that was so twisted and mangled that she couldn’t even begin to guess what any of it had originally been. Was that bent metal rod a piece of the international space station? A support beam from a skyscraper? A fender? No way to know, no time to care.

She raced along Vine, her wig tilted to a terrible angle, her clothing ripped and torn. Her shadow stretched out in front of her, illuminated by fires from every direction. No matter which way she turned, she couldn’t erase the image of Sterling Engelhart being sucked down into the earth. “He had a piece of me with him,” Elizabeth kept moaning to Aubrey, before she succumbed to torpor and the hunters opened fire. If Sam believed in miracles, she’d call it one that no one had been shot. She’d separated from Grace and Avery at the Ordo library, then immediately turned tail and started back for home, despite their protestations that she should stay with them.

Even in this state of emergency, Sam was still afraid to reveal her secrets to them. Karen had well-ingrained the notion that no Kindred could really be trusted. The streets were full of the dead, dying, and bewildered. Most of the people that she passed seemed to come to life only when a large chunk of building fell from above. And then there was screaming and running and still more dying, as if they were reliving the first volley of space junk and satellites all over again.

“Joanna!” she heard someone screaming. “Joanna! Where are you?”

Sam did the math in her head. Based on her rough estimates, Los Angeles had probably lost well over one-third of its population tonight. And it was still too soon to make a final call. The looting hadn’t begun yet. And the panic. That too would inevitably raise the death count. And as for the rest of the world? Who knew?

Sam walked to a pile of rubble, leaning over to move a piece. She didn't hear anyone or anything underneath. With a scowl, she kicked it. What had it even been? A shed? A supply store? A fucking outhouse? There was another way this was different from the Rain. The landscape was still alien, whether it was pristine or wrecked. She was an outsider, a foreigner without any landmark to navigate by.

Her walkie crackled from her belt. “Mother to Sleepwalker.” Avery’s voice. He sounded formal. It was the same voice he used when he was in Court. “This is Mother to Sleepwalker. Come in Sleepwalker.”

She yanked it free, bringing it to her mouth. “This is Sleepwalker.” Her voice didn’t tremble too much. That would probably come later.

Avery’s tone softened. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to force herself to believe it.

“I wish you’d stayed.”

“I have to go.”

“Will you at least tell me where you are?”

And there was yet another way this was all different from the Rain. There wasn't anyone around here like Avery, anyone to worry about her whereabouts or even care if she was alive or dead. For all she knew, she was dead and now a fucking ghost, haunting this clown rodeo. Angrily, she pressed the heel of her palm against the side of her head. She wanted to force the memories out. And maybe hide her face a little, as her expression crumpled.

003 ♠︎ i was born a ramblin' man

[beallmysins]

WHO: Jax Teller
WHERE: House #10, Inn, river
WHEN: 1 July - 9 July
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: Jax is his own warning. Language, for sure. Probably going to be sex eventually, knowing him.

---

i. doin' the best i can (house 10, 1 july)

Jax is on the roof when the ground starts shaking. Being from California, he's no stranger to earthquakes, though they're a lot worse down south than in the valley where he's from. Still, he's familiar enough with them to know he doesn't want to be on a fucking roof repairing shingles when one hits and as soon as he feels the first waves, he scrambles down as fast as he can. He's quick but he's not quick enough to escape harm - he scrapes his shin and bangs the ribs on the same side he'd injured several weeks ago.

Fuck, he hisses, hitting the ground and heading to clear ground as fast as he can. The earthquake isn't anything they can control but he knows the best place to be is as far away from structures as he can get and just wait it out. There'll be aftershocks but those won't be as bad as the initial - this is always the worst part.

It's just a few minutes, all told, but it feels like hours. The world seems to stop when the earth starts to move and when it ceases, the sky opens up and rain begins to fall. It's been dry for weeks and the sun's been all fucked up so the rain is a welcome sight, steam rising up from the ground from just how goddamn hot it'd been before the quake.

Jax limps his way back toward the town, favoring his right leg and trying to keep from slipping on dirt paths that are rapidly becoming mud because he's got to have a drink and a doctor and he thinks the drink could replace the doctor if it's a good enough drink.

ii. and when it's time for leavin' (inn, 2 July - 9 July)

One of the things that Jax has in abundance is the ability to do labor and now that there's houses damaged from the earthquake, he's got something worth trading. He's not a jack of all trades like Moana but he makes do with what he has and if they've got the tools, he's got the strong back and the know how to do most things that a house needs.

The Inn is the best place to go and see if someone needs work so he hauls his ass up there every morning for breakfast and to offer his services. Now that the days and nights are actually separate and not one long stretch of sunlight that only changes in hue from yellow to red he's feeling a lot better than he has in a month or so; that never-setting sun shit had been getting old and he's happy to see the rain and the sun and the twinkling of the stars and moon at night. It's simple shit, yes, but it's a sign that this place is returning to some sort of normal.

The first two days he parks at the Inn, he doesn't have much to do. It's pouring rain and there's no way he can get anything done when he can't see his hand in front of his face. By the third day, though, not only has the sun come back but it's not so goddamn hot and he thinks he can get a real start on helping get some of the houses back into working order. There's plenty of things he can do that others might not be able to and he knows there's shit that other people are able to do that he can't; Moana's living proof of that.

He's taken to sitting out on the front porch of the Inn when the weather's good, making his offer for labor as people walk in and out.

iii. a good time down on the bayou (river, 4 July - 9 July)

After a long day of fixing roofs and figuring out how best to repair collapsed porches, Jax likes to bathe off down in the river. The days of rain have brought it up a little and it looks a lot better than it had a few weeks ago even though it still needs some more rain to get back up to the levels it'd been before the drought. The water's cool here and flows in a way the water up at the waterfall doesn't so he prefers taking a dunk down here before heading back home.

Sure, he's got a bathtub like everyone else but the dirt and the grime he's been accumulating while working on houses means he'll end up having to clean his tub out four times a week and he doesn't have time for that shit. He'd rather wash off in the river and save the bath for in the morning when he washes his hair and gets his shave.

He's not shy about using the river, either. Plenty of people come down here to bathe and he's hardly the first to strip down and take advantage of the water to cool off after a long day. He ducks under the water and holds his breath for a few long minutes, just letting his mind focus on the sound of his own heartbeat before popping back up, water sluicing down his bare back and arms.