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[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

[fogey]

Five, for his part, barely looks up from his drink.

"And you are?"

[vest]

There's a moment of hesitation. He isn't used to introducing himself by name, too used to being a fugitive by now.

Still, it's only a moment before he says, "Simon Tam. River's brother."

Because, honestly, that's about the only context he has that anyone here will give a damn about.

[fogey]

His eyebrows raise and drop when he hears Simon's name -- and relation to River.

"Is that so?"

He does actually turn to look at Simon now, considering that.

"Huh. Took you long enough."

[vest]

Well, then.

Bullseye, Five, thanks for that.

Where before Simon had been attempting to stay good-natured, his expression closes off with a slight clench of his jaw as he does his own eyebrow raising. That he wasn't here for River when she needed him, that it was for so long, that he had no idea, is a bit of a sore spot, and still recent enough with River being how she is to feel a little more like an open wound.

"Yes, it seems the express public shuttles between here and the ass-end of the 'verse were taken off-line by a chaos god, or I would've made it here sooner."

[fogey]

Five would feel the exact same way honestly, so naturally he chooses to be an asshole about it.

He shrugs at Simon's answer, but there's clearly no hard feelings at the sass. Simon isn't the only brother around here, after all.

"Well, welcome to Chicago." He doesn't sound very welcoming, but then again post-apocalyptic Chicago is a shit hole. "Or something like it, anyway."

[vest]

No, he isn't. It hasn't gone without notice that his sister has amassed a strange conglomerate of siblings in his absence, and he isn't sure whether to be flattered or deeply concerned. Because his sister is crazy, and this rift apparently has a type.

"I certainly wouldn't be able to tell the difference, anyway."

Simon takes a moment to actually drink some of what's been poured for him before asking, "Were you here before?"

River was. The pre-apocalypse Chicago, for some vague amount of time she hasn't been able to clarify for him. And that concerns him, too, that she's been going from one strange place to another all alone, and until recently without treatment.

[fogey]

"Before what, the apocalypse?"

That seems like the only real before Simon could be referring to, anyway.

"No, I wasn't."

There's a funny lilt to his voice as he says that. No, not this time; for once, he doesn't know what a world was like before its destruction. Has only been here for its last gasp, and its impending doom.

[vest]

It is, and he nods between Five's question and answer for confirmation. The lilt in his voice is odd, but Simon was never as good at intuiting other's as River was. Even before she could outright read people's minds.

"She had mentioned you'd seen something, I thought it might have been that."

And he is pretty curious about that, too, but with River, "he saw" can mean a hundred different things, and Simon isn't accustomed enough to Chicago's peculiarities yet to grasp exactly what the extent of that implication is.

[fogey]

Number Five goes very carefully still when Simon says that. It lasts the space of a breath; and then he exhales, shakes his head tiredly.

"Yeah, I saw something."

Then he shoots Simon a sideways look.

"Drink's on me."

Aka, sit down for this part.

[vest]

Simon might not be as good at reading people as his mind-reading sister, but contrary to popular belief he isn't an idiot. The combinations of stillness and the look is enough to have his stomach doing a flip of unease as his back straightens, jaw tense as he looks down at the bar, then back to Five.

"What was it?"

People have been helpful, here. They've gotten River to a point of recovery that might have taken him years to accomplish on his own. He knows they've seen scans of her brain, that they're aware of her being a reader, but this is starting to feel like the other shoe preparing to drop before he has to gather her up and run again.

(Where would he even run to in this place, anyway?)

[fogey]

"Suit yourself," he says first, because like, he sure tried to offer you sit down and drink something for this.

In fact, he's going to swallow a gulp of his bourbon before saying anything else, because he sure needs a drink, thinking of that memory again.

"The Academy." Then, "Her Academy. I saw what they did to her there."

[vest]

Well, lāshǐ.

Sitting down and having a drink would not have helped at all. When he does finally sit down next to Five, it's less about needing to and more about finding a way to look inconspicuous. A habit picked up meeting with criminals in blackout bars -- the only other time he's spoken to strangers about River and the Academy. And a habit he's not particularly good at pulling off. His posture is an obvious attempt at being casual, but every muscle is still tense, his back still ramrod straight, one foot on the floor ready to run at the first sign of the law.

Her Academy is something Simon takes note of for later, when he's not about to have his heart beat out of his chest.

"What, exactly, did you see?"

They can cover the 'how' later, it's much less of a priority than figuring out what the hell Five knows about his sister. Because 'what they did to her there' is a vast pit of information even he only knows bits and pieces of, the scraps collected by a group of underground resistance fighters with barely any access.

[fogey]

He gives Simon a cool look, out of the corner of his eye. Five's a good read of body language, but he doesn't need Commission-grade skills to guess at how Simon's feeling.

"I didn't see how, exactly, they screwed with her brain. Just the effects of it."

Just, Jesus, like that isn't plenty. Just how she'd been a vibrant, sweet girl, just how they'd taken her and tortured her, just how she'd only been a kid.

[vest]

To be fair, he was much better at acting like he didn't care when he had nothing else to lose.

Simon frowns, some of the tension easing out of his jaw at least. His heart rate is still above the ideal for being at rest, and his foot is still on the ground, but this could be worse. Five could have seen much, much worse.

At least as far as he knows.

"Yes, the effects are hard to miss."

River doesn't talk about what happened there, at least not in ways that are easy to interpret. She'd told him once that he'd found her broken, and he hadn't been able to refute it. They'd effectively killed off the parts of her that made her his mèimei, who was too smart by half and liked to tease him, who didn't wake up screaming most nights. He's still not sure he'll ever get that back.

[fogey]

Five opens his mouth as though to say something, then seems to think better of it. He turns back to his drink instead, taking another swallow.

"No kidding."

She'd been normal, before, more than. And now...truthfully, he thinks she's amazingly stable, all things considered, but there's no going back. There never is.

"How long was she in there?"

[vest]

She's doing better, that's true enough. Simon wouldn't be sitting here in a bar if she wasn't. He'd be either with her or standing in an infirmary going over her charts, like studying them would reveal some new insight into how to fix things.

"A little over two years."

Not much time to a man who was alone for forty, but still far too long for a young girl to be tortured.

[fogey]

Five's been through a lot, but he'd be the first to admit he, at least, wasn't ever tortured for two straight years.

"Jesus."

[vest]

That's about the reaction one would expect, and Simon's tension eases just a little more. Five isn't going to hold this over his head as a threat, which is a nice change of pace. He'll have to learn to get used to people not being monsters. Probably to counter the fact that there are actual monsters.

"She doesn't talk about what happened there, so if there's anything you think might help her treatment let me know."

Because that, truly, is the priority.

[fogey]

Oh, Five would counter that he is a monster. Just not in this way.

No fucking wonder she doesn't talk about what happened there, Christ. Who would?

"Doubtful. I didn't see anything that indicated specifics of what was happening to her."

Maybe someone more medically-inclined could pick up hints and clues, but Five's better at physics than biology. All the medicine-adjacent skills he has come from years of having no one to take care of his own illness and injury but himself.

[vest]

In all honesty, there's not much Simon would be able to do with the details of what Five saw beyond letting it fuel his guilt for not getting there sooner, for not being able to get her out in months instead of years.

It's disappointing, but Simon nods and manages to not sigh and give himself away.

Then he goes out on a limb.

"How long were you in your Academy?"

And, look, he feels like he's shown far more of his cards, and River's, to Five than is strictly reasonable. He wants to know more about who he's dealing with, and if the Academy he's from is anything like the one he broke into.

[fogey]

Now that's a baleful look Simon's getting now. A sore spot, after River.

"Thirteen years." Then, "It was nothing like hers, obviously."

The Umbrella Academy might've been messed up in its own ways, but it was a long way from that.

[vest]

Simon nods, even after that look.

"I doubt we'd be talking like this if it were."

He'd heard the stories about other children that had come out of the Academy, aphasic and insane. Dead. Five is none of those things.

What worries him, though, is how River had talked about him. That she'd used phrases that she'd used before in reference to herself. Easy enough now to write a lot of that off as his sister being, you know, crazy, even if she is getting better. Still...

"I apologize, if she got... Confused. About the association, if she picked up on it."

[fogey]

"Obviously not."

Five hasn't heard those stories, but it's not hard to guess. If River was in this state after two years, imagine longer. Also: the other poor kids can't be any better off.

He shrugs off Simon's apology, finishing off his drink and calling for another from the bartender. Whether or not he'd planned on another glass before this conversation, he sure as hell needs one now.

"It's not your fault. It's not her fault, either."

[vest]

Imagine longer, and imagine children that weren't already predisposed to River's kind of intuitive awareness.

He allows himself a moment to feel grateful that Five isn't going to hold any of his sister's potential ramblings against them before he grimaces.

"No, I suppose the best thing about this place is that the Alliance can't keep hunting us down."

[fogey]

"It's unlikely, anyway."

He doesn't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but he remembers Theon speaking of enemies from Westeros causing trouble in this world. He's still waiting for the Commission to catch up with him sooner or later; because they always do, eventually.

His drink arrives, and he takes a healthy gulp from the fresh glass.