re_mybrains | [MW] Pennsylvania

Current Location: Harrisburg, PA

Entry tags:

milliways

[MW] Pennsylvania

It's a pleasant March afternoon in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -- sunny, partly cloudy.

In the courtyard of Pennsylvania Apartments, the bang of the front door slamming is still echoing when it opens again.

Two dozen zombies, in varying states of decay, are staggering towards it.

A human lighting generator, a superhero, a geek, and two regular schmoes are coming out the door to face them.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

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"The hell you are."

She's next to him in a second, sheathing and looping her weapons away, being careful to not slip in blood (slipping in blood is always an Achilles heel) and various zombie detritus.

She even reaches for his hand. The one not holding the gun.

"What are you talking about? Tom, what's going on?"

Shaun's still staring, and the look on his face suggests he can't decide whether Tom is brilliant or crazy. He quietly picks up the bat and hands it to him.

"Take it. You might need it."

Kendra's got one hand and his gun's in the other, which leaves him momentarily stymied. He holsters the gun in the back of his waistband and takes the bat.

"Thanks, Shaun."

He sounds a little hoarse.

"Elle! Thanks -- thanks for the help!"

(His other hand is tight around Kendra's, in spite of himself.)

There's no mistaking the look of a man handing over a favorite weapon. Andrew manages not to make any aww noises, but he's still visibly moved.

The look deepens a little, and takes on a tinge of unease, as he registers Tom and Kendra's joined hands.

Oh.

That could get ... awkward.

Elle, however, just grins from the doorway.

It's a sort of haughty look, but that is at least better than creepy.

And it's all she does before stepping calmly over the zombie corpse that blocks her path back into the Bar.

Kendra will have to personally thank Shaun later for the bat bequeathing, because that was a generous gesture of altruism that shouldn't go unnoticed or unrecognized.

But in the meantime, there's a roil of urgent unease at the base of spine. She doesn't like this.

At all.

"I need to talk to you alone for a minute, Tom. Unless you want to hear it all right now."

You want stubborn? Tom may have met his match.

. . . Oh, this is gonna go well.

Tom swallows, and shoots a glance at the others. "Excuse us a sec? Keep an eye out and yell if you see anything coming."

Then he looks over at Hawkgirl -- shit -- and leads the way to a spot a little beyond the battleground.

Kendra, in turn, pulls him a little further with a firm tug on his hand, so as to be hopefully out of earshot. She'd throw caution to the winds and simply carry him up to a rooftop, but he's looking a little too tight around the eyes. The last thing she wants is to spook him any further.

But she does insinuate herself slowly into his personal space, moving to stand close and squeeze his hand in turn.

"Tom?"

"Don't--" he starts, and breaks off.

"Fuck, Hawkgirl, please don't talk me out of this."

He's back to not making eye contact, blinking at a spot in the air about two inches from her shoulder.

The lack of eye contact is noticed. It makes it worse, because he's somehow not fully present.

"No, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be quiet while you conveniently act out a death wish. I'm not that woman. Are you trying to commit suicide?"

"No!"

That gets him looking at her.

"Look, if I wanted to get horribly devoured by zombies I wouldn't have brought you guys here in the first place. I survived here five, six months -- I can do it again."

With that, she grabs his hand and slowly (and irreversibly) tugs him backwards a few feet, further away from the madding crowd, so that she can get out of the line of sight of everyone but Tom.

Words usually come easily for Kendra. But there's something undefinably horrible about just abandoning him on a dying world, something that she can't quite articulate while he's seemingly in panicked about-to-bolt-pell-mell-into-certain-death mode. She has to try to calm him down first.

Then maybe he'll actually listen.

Right now, the only thing she can do is silently lift up the gold of her mask, so that she can finally let him look at her eyes.

Really, as Tom's hysterical panics go, this only rates about a 3.

"Look, I have t--"

The mask comes off.

He shuts up.

She's staring right back at him.

Kendra's been rather impressed with Tom's tendency to not panic in a crisis. It's after the crisis that worries her.

She runs a hand through her short brown hair, tousling it slightly, a gesture that betrays more ease than immediate self-consciousness.

"Do I have helmet hair?"

"Nope, you're good."

A deep breath. "This is a big deal."

Whether he means his own situation or the mask coming off is up to her.

She nods silently, a very delicate and slight motion.

"It is."

She means both.

He moves to scrub his free hand over his face, stops, and wipes it on his jeans. Damn zombie goop.

"I have to do this," he mutters tiredly. "I really have to do this, okay?"

Kendra, who takes the kind of care packing her daily supplies that most people take for planning for natural disaster up to and including probably having an earthquake solar powered blanket somewhere on her person, also carries plenty of Sani-Dex goo-annihilating alcohol wipes. Because, as Tom mentioned, zombie goo should not stay lurking on live people who intend to stay that way.

This is why takes two packets from one of her canvas belt pouches and offers them to him, helpfully tearing off the tops first.

She takes a third to wipe off her hands with.

"What do you have to do?"

Her voice is even, calm, and unhurried.

Tom blinks, derailed, and accepts them, laying the cricket bat on the ground.

"Come back here. Get to New York."

Fortunately the packets tear easily. She opens hers, taking out the wet cloth and beginning to slowly wipe the blood spatter off of her forearms, above her gauntlets.

"Why New York? Why?"

She still hasn't decided whether or not to just grab him and yank him back to Milliways.

This is hard.

"Best chance that the survivors there are organized. There or DC, I guess. Maybe there are even people somewhere who have contact outside the country . . ."

He scrubs off his hands and distractedly crumples the wipes into his pockets as he finishes.

"Because this needs to get done."

"Give me those. You don't want to pull them out accidentally and blow your nose into one of them. You'll get infected."

Her voice is still very, very even.

She holds out her hand for the pocketed cloths. Her eyes move upwards again to meet his, steady and brown and insistent.

"So this is a rescue thing."

Edited 2008-05-09 04:28 (UTC)

"I don't even know, Hawkgirl, it's -- I can't just leave this place to die, I can't abandon it. It's my home."

Belatedly but obediently, he pulls out the cloths and hands them to her.

"I know what it's like to look at a world fighting for its life. I know what it is to look at a world like that and feel the responsibility for it settle on your shoulders."

She knows what it's like to look at a dying world, too, and have to leave it behind with every atom of her being fighting and screaming not to do just that.

The cloths are taken gently from his fingers.

"I'll burn these as soon as I get back. If I go back."

Or maybe she'll take them back home to the JLA in one of those specimen bags she carries and give them to Pieter Cross to analyze.

He frowns. "If? Oh, no. Like hell you're staying here."

Superheroine or not, he's not keeping one person here who doesn't have to be here.

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