metalogs | [Closed] Judged By the Company He Keeps

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[Closed] Judged By the Company He Keeps

Who: Huvrye

effiomsfavorite and those close to him
What: Guess who's finally getting shot!
When: April 14-15
Where: Jason's safehouse, Huvrye's apartment
Content Warnings: Violence, gore, probably some PTSD, further CWs marked in threads as needed

Birds of a Feather (Narrative)

For all that Huvrye has been warning people against associating with the Red Hood, citing just how dangerous the gang leader can be, the consequences of his actions sure do blindside him.

Because he's been associating with the Red Hood - three times over a span of months, but two of them very visible and the third well known in crime circles - and people have noticed. Specifically the D'Amico family, who are only on Huvrye's radar under 'organized crime; do not interact.'

Which is why he's not prepared to find half a dozen of them waiting for him as he lands in an alley just outside of neutral territory, demanding he come with them and brandishing guns when he refuses.

Great. Wonderful.

The fight, such as it is, is mercifully short. There are no metas among the people the D'Amicos sent - they'd probably thought he couldn't do much more than fly, and weren't prepared to face down everything a Lasardhin homunculus is capable of bringing to combat. Two of them are down from broken spines or broken skulls, brick walls cracked and broken from where they'd died on impact. Three are torn apart, missing limbs or chunks of chest or half a head as a result of Huvrye bringing his alchemy to bear. The last has been shot with his own gun.

Huvrye stands, leaning heavily against a wall, covered in blood both his and not, with a pair of gunshot wounds in his gut for his trouble. Great. This is exactly what he needs tonight. With that much gunfire, someone's going to investigate sooner or later, which means he needs to get out of here soon. Neutral territory is close, and with it the Descendant. He can hole up in the safehouse overnight and heal for a bit. He shrugs his jacket off, wraps it tightly around his waist, around the wounds, and ties it off as best he can, and activates the magical disguise hidden under his sleeve. Wings hidden, hair and eyes and ears different, and a full foot shorter in appearance, he heads out of the alley looking like a normal human, walking quickly, pushing through the pain until he makes it to the safehouse (carefully, carefully, making sure he hadn't been followed) and slips inside.

1. Jumpscare (Closed to Dylan)

Thankfully, there'd been no one in the safehouse when Huvrye had arrived, and he'd set about taking care of himself - laying out towels in the corner, cleaning out his wounds as best he can, and applying pressure. He'll heal - it'll take a bit, but he's got enough energy that it'll happen sooner rather than later - but he's not going anywhere else tonight. After a couple of hours, the bleeding stops, and he passes out on top of the towels, fully intending to sleep the wounds off.

He's still very much asleep in the morning...lying on the floor, on bloodied towels, in bloodied clothes. Not the best impression to give anyone heading into the safehouse without context.

2. Just a Flesh Wound (Closed to Huvrye's friends)

He spends the morning recovering in the safehouse (charging his phone, apologizing yet again to Dylan, doing his best to make sure the D'Amicos don't know where he's gone to ground) before he heads home in the early afternoon. He leaves in disguise, drops it to fly back to his neighborhood, and activates another disguise to get in the front door of his apartment building. He sighs heavily when he walks in the door. He needs to clean up. He needs to get something to eat. He needs to rest - the bleeding may have stopped, but it'll still be a bit before his wounds are fully healed. And he needs to talk to quite a few people - he hadn't realized so many people had noticed he'd gone missing.

(It'd only been a day. They cared that much?)

He closes the door behind him and heads towards his room.

[I'm open to Huvrye's friends having heard from other friends about his situation/injury - if we haven't already talked about it and you think yours would know/care, let me know and we'll do a thing!]

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Because it should've happened a while ago and it's never too late to start.

"Because I'm not worth it!" That's the crux of the matter - the thing Leo doesn't seem to understand, and that Huvrye can't get around. "My problems aren't worth you getting killed, Leo! I'm the expendable one here, not you!"

(Leo doesn't know what he is. It's blindsiding Leo with a truth he has no context for, and doing it while he's exhausted and in pain and losing his temper is not the best way to go about it, but here they are.)

Leo freezes, his eyes going wide.

It’s not what he’d expected at all. He’d been braced for more arguments that he was too young, or maybe too inexperienced, too untested, he didn’t have enough training, his damn powers don’t even work-

He had been ready for that.

He wasn’t ready for this.

“…What?”

...well, it's an argument ender, at least.

(As though Huvrye isn't well aware this is about to become a very different argument - one he'd already had with Mark and had to walk away from.)

"I'm not worth it," he says like it's a known fact (because it is, even if Leo is only just now learning it). "My problems will never be worth your well-being. Let me handle this."

(If he knows saying things like that will start an argument, maybe eventually he’ll question why.)

Leo gives a jerky shake of his head. “What… what do you mean you’re expendable?”

He wants to argue that the safety of his family would always be worth his well-being, but he’s too stuck on this first part to continue.

Last time he told this to someone, it was Mark, and Mark had started something in him that still burns, still questions his lack of personhood and whether he could actually be one-

He doesn't want to do that with Leo. Leo doesn't need to know what he is, or carry that burden, or have to answer those questions. Leo is a kid with enough on his plate already.

"I've been a soldier all my life in a war that doesn't end," he says, and it would be the truth if not for the gaping hole in the middle where I'm a homunculus should be. "I got used to the idea." He puts a hand on Leo's shoulder. "You have family that you need to get home safely to, and you have family here. I'm not going to let you put yourself in danger for problems I can handle - not when you have them waiting for you." That much is a full truth. He's also well aware that it's a cheap shot.

It is a cheap shot, and Leo tenses under his hand when it’s put there. Bringing his family into this feels wrong. Everything Huvrye is saying feels wrong, setting off alarm bells in Leo’s head.

“Soldiers aren’t expendable. They’re still people.” He says it from the position of a strategist thinking about the next move: the people who he’s directing aren’t pawns, and if the strategist ever forgets then they’ll let anyone die to win. Leo never wants to be a leader who would do that.

(He doesn’t realize that Huvrye might not be thinking of himself as a person to start. That’s unthinkable.)

“And… and you have family, too.” He can’t say for sure about the people Huvrye talks about from home, but… “Or what are me and Hunter, chopped liver?”

He lets the remark about soldiers pass by without comment. Armies outside of Lasardhi are generally made up of people, but he's a Lasardhin homunculus, which means normal rules do not apply. He'd rather avoid that argument as it is; he knows how it goes already, and he doesn't want another round of it.

Especially since Leo throws him for a complete loop as he continues talking, calling himself and Hunter Huvrye's family. That...that's not right, is it? People have families, and Huvrye isn't a person, so...he can't. Right? That doesn't mean he doesn't care about them - it's just another thing he can't have.

(The ember in his chest that Mark had fanned to life latches onto family and burns a little brighter. Why shouldn't he have a family? He loves them - isn't that enough?)

"Of course not," he says, a reply to Leo's question that takes just a moment too long, and he knows Leo is too perceptive to miss that moment, but what else can he do? "I love you both, and I'd do anything for either of you, and that includes getting you home in one piece." He knows Leo goes out on night patrols, and that he can handle himself, but there's a difference between taking out an opportunistic mugger and taking on organized crime and he does not want Leo tangled up in the latter. He doesn't want to be there himself, but that ship has already sailed.

The pause does not go unnoticed, and it makes Leo tense more. Maybe he was wrong, and Huvrye doesn't really think of him like that. Maybe he just took Leo in out of pity, some misplaced sense of duty to a kid who didn't have anyone to look after him.

But if that's the case, why all the other stuff? Why hug him after a nightmare or go along with Pizza Fridays? Why say...

But then Huvrye answers, and says it again ("I love you both") and Leo feels security and warmth and frustration all at the same time.

"Well I'd do anything for you, too, because that's what family does." He says it with conviction. "And you didn't come home in one piece. I can't just ignore that!"

He's raising his voice again. He just can't help it. Huvrye saying he's expendable, putting himself and Leo in different categories, has shaken him in a way few things do.

There it is again - the insistence that Huvrye is family. He's talked with Leo enough, gotten the stories about his brothers and father and sister; he knows, to some extent, what family means to Leo.

And here Leo is, folding him into that family structure. Like he deserves it. Like it's easy.

(Like he's a person.)

He can't tell Leo he's not family, that he can't be family - Leo won't understand, and it'll either hurt him or turn into an argument that Huvrye is trying to avoid or both, and that's the last thing either of them need. He needs a different tack.

He sighs and winces at the movement - the bullet wounds can't heal fast enough. "I need you to," he says. "At least for now." It sounds temporary, but for now can last until the end of time as far as Huvrye is concerned, so long as it keeps Leo out of danger. "I'm hoping they'll decide I'm not worth the trouble of hunting down, and they won't do that if you go poking around - they'll just target you too."

The “for now” sounds suspicious, but it does get Leo to back off just slightly. The wince helps - he’s supposed to be helping Huvrye but instead this conversation is literally hurting him.

“…Fine. We can wait and see if they drop it.” He doesn’t sound happy about it, but he can admit it’s a reasonable course of action. “But if they don’t, I’m not letting them come near any of us again.”

That means Huvrye too, deal with it.

"If they don't, we'll figure out a plan of action then." It's a we he has no intent of actually fulfilling - Leo has no idea who they're dealing with him, and if Huvrye can keep the information from him, then hopefully he can keep Leo out of danger.

(Or Leo will just throw himself headfirst into an adjacent danger, but Huvrye can at least try.)

No, he doesn’t know exactly who he’s looking for, but there are ways to find out… Like, through Red Hood…

He pockets that thought for later. At least Huvrye is agreeing to include him if something happens (or at least talking like he is) so Leo will calm down and focus on the problem in front of him.

“Okay… I’m actually not too bad at planning, so don’t worry, I can help.” He’s going to keep inserting himself in this situation just in case Huvrye is being tricky, but for now…

“Do you need anything? Do painkillers work for you?”

Leo don't you dare.

"Okay." Pushing the problem further down the line is probably not the best of plans, but given that the plan will depend entirely on whether the D'Amicos continue to pursue him, it's about all Huvrye can do right now while still keeping Leo relatively calm and uninvolved.

He's about to deny needing anything, but pauses. He'd used up his reserves healing - he'd gotten some rest, but he still needs to be ready in case this isn't over. He remembers tearing through the tunnels of abandoned Sestrinn, on the verge of collapse, nearly dying - nearly letting Yin die - because he'd been too run down. He can't let that happen here. "Yeah, but not for long. I need a meal - if I order something, can you get the door when it gets here?" He'd be fine to get it himself - it'd just be a little pain - but maybe letting Leo help will calm him down a bit.

He dares.

"Yeah, I think I can handle that." He'll probably hologram watch it so he doesn't startle the poor delivery person, but he's on it otherwise. "I can grab you some meds while you order, just a sec."

And he's up! And off to wherever they keep their medicines, a stash that Leo has bought in case of various inevitable consequences of superheroing (and also in case he catches the flu, which in Leo's experience is... not something Huvrye would want to deal with, if they can help it).

Helping does help Leo calm down, though, so mission accomplished there. It gives him something to do with all the excess energy he built up worrying about him.

That is literally the opposite of what he told you to do!

"Thanks." Huvrye lets him go and pulls up the delivery app to figure something out. He wants pho, but he also really does not want pho, because having it now means running the risk of associating it with recovering from a gunshot wound. Pizza is out for that same reason - they have pizza too often for him to risk that.

There's a hamburger and fries ordered and awaiting delivery by the time Leo returns to the living room. It'll be a bit before food arrives, but at least it's coming.

Trying to order him around was the first mistake!

Leo returns soon enough, passing the bottle off to Huvrye before sitting back on the couch with him.

"...Still kinda crazy that you can recover from a wound like that so easily."

Most people would probably be dead, including Leo, if the bullets penetrated his shell.

He accepts the bottle from Leo, shakes two out, and swallows them dry. They won't do much - his system will filter them out pretty quickly - but they should take the edge off for a bit.

"It's a fairy thing," he lies easily. "I didn't realize we were built so much tougher than humans until I accidentally put one through a table in a bar fight."

He's going to need to explain that, and he knows it. He'd rather explain that than why he's so much harder to kill than most people.

"You did what!?"

There is definitely a story here, and Leo wants to hear it. He can't even imagine Huvrye getting into a bar fight, actually, so he's curious how that even happened to begin with.

"Man, how strong are you? When you feel better we should arm wrestle."

Huvrye just shrugs. He'll definitely take that subject change. "It was my first week here. Some drunk human kept trying to grab my wings, and after about the third time I told him off, he took a swing at me. I swung back, and-" He makes a sweeping gesture. "Straight through a table. Security wasn't very happy, but at least they'd seen enough not to kick me out."

He doesn't address the arm wrestling comment. Maybe Leo will forget about it.

He will not forget it.

"Haha, oh man. Sounds like he got what was coming to him, though."

Touching someone when they tell you to stop is a big no-no, don't people know anything about consent!? Leo can imagine he would do the same if some human kept touching his shell after being told to stop. Well, maybe not through the table. Or, maybe. He's never fought a normal, baseline human before.

(Cassandra does not count - Cassandra could crack him like an egg if she wanted to.)

"I guess you could say his turns were tabled." Leo no.

Huvrye shrugs again. "Evidently bouncers are the only people allowed to end fights in bars, so like I said, they weren't happy, and I learned I need to pull my punches against humans."

(So he knew exactly how hard to go against Kevlar. So he knew what it would take to put his would-be kidnappers down. He'd learned early, at least.)

The pun processes for a few long seconds, and then Huvrye shakes his head. Nope.

It's okay, he knows secretly Huvrye thinks he's super funny.

"I don't think every bar has bouncers, so how were you supposed to know?" Then again, it's not like Leo has been in any bars. That party in Sunset Falls has been his only experience with drinking so far. "Anyway, I say if the guy could get up and walk then no harm no foul."

Pause.

"Could he get up and walk?"

Huvrye shrugs - it's not like he frequented bars either. Not a lot of options for a homunculus in Lasardhi.

"He was a little wobbly, but he made it." After the bouncer had woken him up, that was.

"Oh, then, see? It's fiiiine."

So says Leo!

He settles back a bit further on the couch, giving Huvrye another quick once over with his eyes.

"You wanna just... chill and watch tv while we wait for your food?"

The whole thing wasn't really fine in the first place, but Huvrye's not about to belabor the point. He has no idea what happened to that guy regardless.

"Sure." He gestures to the remote. "Go ahead and pick something." He might take a nap while he's waiting for his food, and he's pretty sure he can sleep through whatever Leo chooses.

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