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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In between the conversations - and arguments, as at least half of them become arguments by the end - yesterday, Huvrye has managed a couple of meals and a good night's sleep. He'd even slept in a little - not on purpose, but he's not about to complain. The wounds have mostly healed - there's the occasional twinge when he moves wrong or twists a little too far, but they should be fine by the end of the day. Good.

He's in the kitchen, making coffee and scrounging up a late breakfast when Donnie comes in. He's not the turtle Huvrye had been expecting to see; that said, he's honestly not sure whether Leo had gone to school today, and he hasn't tried texting yet. He fetches a purple mug down from the shelf and places it next to his - both empty, as the coffee isn't ready yet. "Good morning."

There is a very brief deer-caught-in-headlights moment when Donnie finds out that the kitchen is occupied. There was a very quick internal debate over whether or not to about-face and retreat to his room again before Huvrye greets him and effectively aborts that line of thought.

"'morning," he manages to reply, shrugging off some of the awkwardness as Huvrye sets out a mug for him. He can't help but cast a look towards the main room for any signs of Leo.

As much as they've welcomed him into the apartment, Donnie seems hesitant to go rummaging about for something to nibble on. He looks back towards Huvrye, who looks perfectly fine despite all that something bad had clearly happened prior.

"...so...everything okay?"

It's been nearly a week, but Donnie still isn't acting like he lives here, and it's starting to worry Huvrye. He'd known it might be a while, but still, he'd hoped having Leo here to help would make for a smoother transition.

Though the chaos over the past two days probably hadn't helped with that.

That train of thought seems to be the correct one, as Donnie goes right for the conversational deep end. "I think that depends on your definition of 'okay.'" Some things are better; some are worse; and nothing changes the fact that he'd disappeared for a night and come home with two bullet holes in his stomach. "How much did Leo tell you?"

It's hard to get used to the idea of living in a new space that's already been inhabited. Donnie's not sure if there are some expected rules, boundaries... That's probably just his usual Donnie-brain overthinking things again. He doesn't know a thing about Huvrye though, and as nice as the guy's been, the turtle's concocted some strange notion that he should try extra hard not to upset him, if mostly for Leo's sake.

Everything else has just been exhaustion related. If Donnie could unequip these inconvenient emotions then he would love to just stick them in the fridge.

'Okay' has been way too overused lately and a slight wince slips from him at that question of clarification though unrelated. He shakes his head at the follow-up.

"Nothing, actually," he admits. "Heard when you got back." And a good chunk of everything else that that implies.

That answer says a lot and implies more. "And the conversation afterwards?" Might as well get a feel for how much Donnie knows before continuing.

The softshell hunches his shoulders a little at that, which already speaks volumes.

"...kind of hard not to," he points out, even as he looks away. Is it really eavesdropping when there's a shouting match going on for a good part of it?

And there's confirmation. Great.

The coffee maker finishes with a gurgle, and Huvrye sighs and pours out two mugs of freshly-brewed coffee, offering the purple one to Donnie. "Yesterday was not my best day." Not his worst by a wide margin, but definitely not his best either. "If you have questions, I can probably answer them." He doesn't particularly want to rehash his arguments from yesterday, but it's better for Donnie to get the information from him than to draw his own conclusions based on what he'd overheard.

Donnie pulls the mug closer to him, wrapping his hands around it with a murmured thanks.

Questions? Oh, he has them. He doesn't want to revisit the points Leo had dove into, and he definitely doesn't want to stoke another argument. He doesn't think they'd hold much water anyway, not when he's new here, not when he hardly knows Huvrye. But he knows his brother, and he can understand why Leo would be angry about things, insistent that he could help.

"Okay..." Donnie says as he mulls over these thoughts. He takes a careful sip of coffee before he lowers the mug onto the counter, looking over at Huvrye.

"Not to sound horribly blunt and I don't mean it to be rude either, but there's not really a good way to ask this... But what are you?"

Breakfast is still at the back of Huvrye's mind, and he idly turns the idea over as Donnie thinks, eventually putting a pin in it. Questions first; food later. He'll live.

At least the first question is simple. "You're not the first person to ask me that here, and you won't be the last," he says easily. "I'm a fairy. Everyone where I'm from is - there's no such thing as humans in my dimension." A beat. "And none of us are six inches tall, like everyone else seems to think we should be." He may have gotten that question - and the reaction he's headed off - more than once.

Brows lift and then level out again. Donnie'd thought he'd heard Leo say something about fairies. He's glad that Huvrye hasn't taken offense, anyway.

"Well, I can understand that line of thought when it seems most modern representations of fair folk tend to be miniature models with fancy wings," he notes dryly. "So how's that work then, where you're from? If there's no humans then you're basically the people of your dimension?"

He's not surprised Donnie has cottoned on as quickly as he did. "Yep, that's exactly it. What humans are here, fairies are back home. It's still weird not to see wings on anyone else."

A whole world of faeries. Well, he supposes it's kind of like a whole underground of yōkai. Sipping from his mug, Donnie nods.

"How's life like there, anyway? Is it like...here just with less tech and noisy humans, what all did you do?" He hasn't forgotten the point of this, but he feels he needs a better understanding of where Huvrye's coming from. He already knows Leo's standpoint. Of course, there's other things Donnie wants to ask Huvrye anyway but he's working his way around.

"No, it's pretty bad." Civilian life might be okay, isolated from the horrors outside the city walls, but Huvrye has never had a civilian life. He literally was not built for that. "I'm a soldier in a war that's been going on for a long time, and it's no longer safe to be outside of a city. This dimension has a lot of problems, but it's also a lot nicer."

Wars are never a great thing, especially ongoing ones. Donnie arches a brow as he weighs all that.

"Well, that is pretty true," he admits. "Not living somewhere that a war's happening is always positive." He's not so convinced that it's the greatest, not with the obvious problems happening, but while the Earth he knows isn't perfect, it's still home.

...but he's trying to get used to the idea of this being home for now. For Leo.

"How long is long? The war, I mean... Or how long have you been fighting for?" He suspects that fairy time is a lot different from Earth standards.

Edited (WORDS) 2023-04-19 07:26 (UTC)

Huvrye takes a drink of his coffee, thinking. How long has the war been going on? His entire life, that's for sure - he'd been made for a war that was already happening, though the conflict with Isor had had its peaks and valleys before he'd come on the scene and inadvertently leveled it (and everything else). And then there'd been Certis, and Endon, and the Corrupted...

"Over a decade," he says, palming a warming array on the counter and putting his mug in the center. "Probably closer to two." Probably longer than that, honestly, but he didn't want to say much more on that front. He doesn't know what the human standard for war is, but he doubts they get as all-encompassing as Lasardhi's war.

(He has to believe that. The idea that this world could be just as bad as his if it had the opportunity is chilling. There's a reason he doesn't want Fantastic in power.)

Donnie's eyes automatically slide over towards the array, though he resists the urge to inspect things with his goggles again. For now, anyway.

He frowns behind his mug. Compared to the wars that had apparently gone on in Earth history before, a decade or two isn't necessarily long, but it's still pretty long to stretch out any conflict and as someone who knows how exhausting a single battle can get, he can't imagine having to keep doing something like for even longer, not knowing whether you're really making any progress. Two decades is already more than his own lifetime. It's strange to think about, having to fight for that long or be surrounded by a war all your life.

But then they could've been on a similar path, he and his brothers. He's not sure how long a fight started by the yōkai would've gone if Draxum had his way back then, but things would've been different. Much different.

Donnie looks down at his coffee. "...what did you do before you were a soldier?"

Huvrye shrugs. "Nothing, really. I've been a soldier my entire adult life."

It's the truth; just not the whole one. The fact that he was created as an adult - that he'd never had a childhood or a family; that there was no before he was a soldier - may be relevant, but that doesn't mean it needs to come up.

It's that phrasing that Donnie homes in on. His eyebrows are doing alternating sets again- they've gotten quite the workout since he's gotten here.

"That sounds terribly depressing," he says as he puts his coffee down to rest an arm against the counter. "There weren't any other options? What did you like doing when you were like, the age Leo and I are?"

Well. So much for it not coming up. He's got a choice: he can either try to build a lie of an early life based on what he knows about civ living, or he can stonewall, act like it's too painful to talk about, and hope Donnie will have some respect for his space. Neither one is perfect, but one of them is certainly easier.

"There weren't for me," he says flatly, his tone a closed door. "Like I said: here is better."

Too soon? No, it's not that. Well, maybe not just that. Donnie can't help but frown, a flicker of...something flitting across his face as he wonders if he's overstepped his limits.

He looks back at the array and the coffee it currently warms.

Fine. He was trying to knock but that door's been shut. Time to find a back entrance to the mystery that is Huvrye.

"...So is having a glowy core part of the whole fairy thing?" he asks, not caring that it's a jump from the line of conversation they'd headed down. It's still related, he thinks, he's just backtracked a lot. Makes sense on his mental crazy board anyway.

He sees that consideration cross Donnie's face and figures he's bought himself a little time. The closed door method is working, at least for now. Good.

He picks up his mug, takes a sip of coffee, and nearly snorts it up his nose when Donnie asks his followup question. He swallows hard and looks at Donnie, wide-eyed. "What?"

(The last person to see his aural center had been connected to him on a very deep alchemical level and he is absolutely certain that's not the case with Donnie, so what is this.)

Not the reaction he'd been expecting, but it's clear Huvrye wasn't expecting this line of questioning either. Donnie's brow arches sharply before easing into a neutral look.

Very deliberately, he reaches up to lower his goggles. At least this time he's prepared to see...whatever it is he's meaning to see. It's just as abstract as he remembers it for what brief glimpse he'd had.

"There's a lot going on there, but...then there's like...a blue fireball, nestled in the middle of more of these array things," he says, pointing towards the coffee heater. "Different layout and symbols."

It's the goggles. Of course it's the goggles. That explains the reaction Donnie had had they day he'd arrived - he'd been inspecting the warming array, but he must've gotten a look at Huvrye as well.

(It doesn't explain why goggles that supposedly see magic energy are picking up on decidedly non-magical alchemy, but he'll worry about that later.)

"Oh," he says, like he hasn't heard this one before. "That's my aural center. Every fairy has one - that's how we generate aura." He pauses for a moment - might as well see if he can get Donnie off track. "Not sure how you're seeing it with goggles that are supposed to pick up magic, though, since magic doesn't exist where I'm from." Worrying about it later isn't as useful as making it a distraction now.

Donnie holds up a finger. "I did pick this crystal up from an alchemist's vault. But please, do tell me how alchemy and magic differ." Hold on, he's not done yet.

"And what aura is, actually, now that you mention it, because that's a term I haven't heard you use before. I am going to assume it's related to alchemy though."

Well, it's a distraction, at least. He gives Donnie a flat look. "I can't, because I'm not an alchemist and like I just told you, magic doesn't exist in my world."

Aura is easier, at least, and his expression relaxes into something more neutral. "Aura is energy generated in a fairy's aural center and also by the planet. We can use it to power alchemy, and it's also what gives fairies their wings. I'm a red aura, so mine are red." They're a plain, boring white, but the red glow outlining them is what's important here.

[Closed] Judged By the Company He Keeps

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