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| Dead Flowers; -Hartley | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 1 2013, 04:10 AM (284 Views) | |
| Jamie Madrox | Sep 1 2013, 04:10 AM Post #1 |
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Date and Time: Immediately following the Case Closed thread. [align=center]JP with Jamie and Hart[/align] How long had he sat in that dark office with Trevor Fitzroy? Had it been hours? Surely it was long enough to kill off the better part of a bottle of whiskey or whatever he’d been drinking, and long enough to leave his vision swimming in a blurry haze. He was smoking now. When had he even picked up cigarettes? God, they tasted like ass. Who liked this stuff? The better question was what was he going to do? Not an easy cut and dry question and it wasn’t an easy cut and dry problem. See he was tired. He was weary and worn out and didn’t exactly know what was the right answer to this or apparently any other problem. He brought the lit cigarette up to his lips and looked around the dimly lit bar at all the other pathetic assholes like himself. That’s exactly what he was too. His chuckle was laced with irony and in the sharp intake of air with the cigarette dangling out of his lips he came up coughing and he kept right on it until his eyes were misted up. God, I can’t even smoke cigarettes right… As he ground it out a wisp of smoke curled up into the air in front of him and he saw cast in it the face of the recent widow. Her look of horrified disbelief flashed before his eyes and he felt the weight of her in his arms as her legs gave out and she leaned into him with wracking sobs. That fatal gunshot rang out again and he jumped, looking over realizing it was just the sound of a man slamming an empty shot glass upside down on the bar. Blinking his eyes he tried to clear his head again and failed. With a shaking hand he reached out for his drink. "Sprite please." She turned to look at him after sitting there and passing off those two words to whoever was tending the bartop and her look was one of simultaneous and mingled empathy mixed with frustration and anger. The bleak outlook of things had only been made moreso by recent tragedies involving the Purple Man. Jamie had not recovered so well, or not at all, as she seemed to come to understand when looking at Madrox from her newfound barroom perch. "And a coffee for him." She turned to Madrox as the lady stepped off to fix a few things for them. "Something you want to come clean about?" That voice. The familiar voice. He knew it from somewhere in the back of his mind, in the depths of his soul he knew that voice better than he could ever put voice to. He didn’t hesitate to finish off his drink though before he looked over at her. “Look who it is,” he said. “My death buddy.” He narrowed his eyes at the sound of it. “Death buddy? Birth buddy? Sheiiit, guess it depends on whether this is Hell or Earth.” There was that ironic laugh again. A Jamie in the back of his mind didn’t much like the sound of it. It was…hollow. “Come clean?” He leaned back hard against the wooden back of his chair and thought about it. “Hm, not sure.” Then he snapped his fingers. “I know! I been meaning to tell you. I am a suck-ass detective.” He was laughing again. “Ever heard of Sherlock Holmes?” He frowned and shook his head. “I’m like the opposite of him. I’m Earlock Sholmes. But…shhhhh,” he shushed her and looked around. “It’s a secret!” She was staring at him, her eyes, a long time ago brown and deep, shone now with a sinister, red-purple glow. It was an effect she could never get used to seeing in a reflection, and she figured it unnerved people more often than not; yet another reason they were almost always hidden now behind red-lensed frames. Her eye contact didn't break here, though, no, she continued, peering down her nose over the rim of he glasses at the drunken, rambling Madrox. "You're trashed." She said, not accusingly, not like that first question. This was more worried, a bit angry. A bit deflated and disappointed. "I know what you were jawing with Trevor about, Jamie." She said, bluntly and chase-cuttingly close. He heard her. Of course he heard her. But he didn’t outwardly respond to the unspoken accusation. “I…” He sought out those eyes of hers that were hidden behind the ruby lenses and couldn’t quite see anything but a dim glow, piercing through the darkness that he felt within him. “I went over to her place,” he said. “Our recent client? She was…so hopeful. I mean I could see it in her eyes. She thought…she thought I was there to give her good news. That I’d found her husband and that he was….okay.” Jamie had made it a point to get to her before the cops did. This was his job-his responsibility. He owed it to her. “Christ Hart, I had sat with her weeks ago when she hired us and I told her we would find him. I told her we’d bring him back. What kind of arrogant prick does that?” He hung his head. “The guy had a daughter. Where’s daddy, she said. Did you find my daddy?” He looked back up at her from beneath shadowed brows, tears stinging his eyes but held in check by damnable male pride. “So if you’re wondering…yeah I’m having a bit of a time here.” |
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| Scryer | Sep 3 2013, 01:47 PM Post #2 |
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The drinks arrived and she took her glass of soda and slid his mug of coffee over to him, taking the half-emptied bottle of beer and pushing it over the counter to where her powers told her a garbage can would sit. "You're done with that crap. If I can't wallow in it nobody can and I don't give a damn how hypocritical that makes me." Madrox lamented the need to tell Batista's wife about his bloody demise. Hartley still saw it in her dreams. She'd seen it nonstop for hours after the fact. Psychometry was a terrible power, one that was nothing if not a constant pain and sometimes, very unusually, useful in figuring things out with vicious and vindictive hindsight. Mostly though, it just painted her thoughts with the stories of others. Her mind a constant scrying pool, a seeing stone for other peoples' traumas. She hated it, and she hated what she did with it and she wished the world would just hold up for five minutes and make some goddamned sense. "I'm not wondering. It's clear as day. If it ain't Fitzroy thinking about different ways to off himself or Riva worrying about Ed getting killed at his job or Alix worrying about you, it's you going on and on and on about how much you suck or how much we suck or how much this all sucks." She slapped her gloved hand on the bartop. "Guess what Madrox? Life sucks. Then you die. Sometimes, you get to come back, but life still sucks after that." She'd stood up at some point, her dark brows that didn't match the recently blonde-ed head of hair knit up in a furious scowl. "You're the head of XFI. You're the leader. You don't get the luxury of breaking down like this. You don't get slack. That's for people like Jubilee or Blake or Gibney to do. You don't get to whine down when things don't go right. None of us do. We play at things like we aren't trying to be heroes, like we're just rent-a-cop boot-sniffers, but we're one of the only things keeping Mutant Town from becoming a superhuman ghetto, and we're one of the only groups of organized metahumans that have goddamn perception of what's really going on out here With all this." The whole damn place was looking at her now and she didn't care. But for the sake of it she reigned herself in and came to sit on the stool. "Batista's dead. He's worm meat. People die. You can't give up because of that otherwise you're just what they take you for." She jammed a finger on his arm. "Is that what you are, Jame'? Some coward who makes a fuckup and cries about it?" |
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| Jamie Madrox | Sep 3 2013, 05:33 PM Post #3 |
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He knew exactly what this was. Even a drunk sorry bastard could have seen this one coming more than a mile off. It was the tough-love talk. The pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and you-don’t-have time-to-feel-anything-so-just-get-up-and-dust-yourself-off-and do the right thing speech. Of course it was. And of course she (like everyone else) assumed they had a bead on exactly what he was going through. Either that or plain ol’ just didn’t give a shit…which was mildly depressing but what were you going to do? Still, he waited until her Oscar-worthy performance was finished, too numb to get angry or defensive or rise up to whatever the hell was going on. Then he said, “Aaaand, cut! Good emotion. I can tell you practiced that one. We’ll go ahead and keep it as is.” He winked. “It’s raw, you can really feel the enmity. Good work. It’s a fucking wrap.” Even in the midst of his sarcasm…in the back of his mind he was thinking of historical leaders of the world, those who had lost men or made mistakes that cost people their lives. It caused no small amount of conflict within as he did. Surely there wasn’t a man alive who had been even remotely in the situation that he was in who hadn’t felt what he was feeling. He was, for lack of a better way to say it, only human after all. He turned his attention for a moment to the still smoldering cigarette in front of him as he thought about where his path was leading right here and right now. He thought about Hartley and what she had been through…and he of course thought about how he hadn’t particularly been there for her in the tough love capacity when she’d had something of a booze-binging breakdown. Maybe he should have… Looking back at her out of the corner of his eye he frowned. “I don’t know.” It was a simple and truthful statement, and devoid of all the previous sarcasm he’d been using. It was sincere despite her inevitable retaliating response. “I really don’t know what I am.” It was a statement that held more than one level of meaning. “I know one thing though. Someone has a blood-debt on their head. Whether it’s Spiral, or whoever it is…they have to pay that debt.” And for just a moment the heat of vengeance shone through the pathetic façade. Whether or not he was the one who should be leading anyone in anything was another matter entirely. |
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| Scryer | Sep 3 2013, 06:49 PM Post #4 |
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His outburst cutting off her attempts to punch him into gear saw her head snap back and her eyes go wide as he barked out quips in the style of some Spielberg Lucas Monster and made a general mockery of everything she'd just said before turning about to look around, as if he needed time to drum it all up. To consider it all before he continued. She felt steamed just then. Since their comeback, she'd stuck pretty closely to Jamie, at least as close as she could. She'd been through a hell of unknowns and a slog through familiar, booze laden territory, she'd had a gun to her head on more than one occasion. She'd had thoughts of worse more than one occasion, and it'd finally been a last ditch, secret psychic purge from Alix that'd gotten her mind in order. That'd set her problems in a line capable of being dealt with. She'd gotten over it. She'd gotten over her issues, or so she'd thought. At least started to. But in that trivializing, vicious, and mean-spirited retort, she felt all the confidence in herself wash-out through an open grate somewhere in the pit of her chest. He went back to moping, abandoning vitriol, his tone somber and reflective and she just really didn't give a shit. Spiral wanted their blood. She had broken toes and bruises along her side from trying to replace a blind ninja superhero. The world was taking a shit on anyone and everyone and he wanted just stop and cut the losses because he couldn't hack it as a big boy. And then he wanted to toss her attempts to help back in her face like it was all fake? "Hey, Jamie." She waited for him to turn and then the knuckles of her fist shot out, catching him long and in the cheek, sending him flying from the chair and onto the ground, unthinking of the havoc a shot like that could cause when it was leveled on someone like the Multiple Man. She stared down at Prime, the whole bar quiet. |
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| Jamie Madrox | Sep 3 2013, 07:26 PM Post #5 |
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Drunk as he was, the impact caught him completely off-guard. In fact, he scarcely got a single word out “Wha-“ when her fist collided smartly with his face with the wet, splatting sound a hand makes when hitting raw meat. The impact brought stars to his eyes and before he knew to try and catch himself he began to fall and didn’t stop until he struck dirty barroom floor. Two multiples tumbled out and rolled to a stop beside him, and the dazed- stunned and plain stupid expression on his face might have been comical under just about any other circumstance. The sober dupes were far quicker to get to their feet, both of them holding out their hands in a gesture of ‘peace’ or ‘surrender’ to Hartley. “He had that one coming,” one of them said. The other one nodded and looked down at Jamie. This of course only served to piss him off further since nobody knew how to push Jamie’s buttons like…well, Jamie. “You messed with the wrong hombre,” he said through his teeth. Then he prepared to use some of the martial arts bad-assery he’d been taught by Bishop not too recently. Specifically, this was going to take the shape of a swift leg-sweep which was intended to wipe Hartley’s legs out from under her and bring her down to his level. Unfortunately in his advanced state of inebriation he missed her foot and hit the leg of his bar stool instead. It toppled sharply and came down like a blunt hatchet straight to his man jewels. Red in the face he doubled over in agony and moaned pathetically but he didn’t have much chance to recover before his own dupes were hauling him up to his feet and pinning him against the bar. Neither of them looked any more pleased with him than Hartley did, but no matter how much he struggled against them they kept him in place. “What he means to say,” one dupe said over to her, “is sorry.” And then Jamie wriggled free and he cast a scathing look from his dupes toward her. “Dammit Hart,” he said as he wiped a bit of blood off of his lip and looked at his pink-tinged fingertips angrily. Then he looked at the dupes again and back at her again. “Dammit. I am sorry.” And he made sure to look her right in the eyes before he said it again. "I'm sorry." Dammit. "Where'd you learn to hit like that?" |
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| Scryer | Sep 9 2013, 01:16 PM Post #6 |
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Jamie continued to make a complete ass of himself in front of the bar. People looked like they were considering stepping in, especially when he went to kick at her legs, but firstly, she'd seen that coming a mile away and was out of his reach anyhow, and secondly she held a hand up to them to tell them that everything was gonna work out fine. The dupes hauled him up and apologized on his behalf before Jamie did so as well. "Yeah you really are sorry. Is this what I looked like?" She left the I Forgive You out. Because she didn't. Not yet. "I learned to hit like that somewhere." She said, never having really thought about it before. "You have to come off this pity party horse, Jamie. It's not fair to the others. To Alix. We're out there literally busting our asses trying to keep this entire neighborhood, and in some cases, this whole damn city, from taking a massive shit on its pants and calling it a day." She pulled herself back up to the bar and took a seat, sipping at her drinkin and inquiring as to the coffee she'd ordered, which she slid over in Madrox's direction. "You lost a client, you lost a few. It sucks but it happens and its gonna happen again, there's nothing you can do about it, you didn't pull the trigger, that grody scuzz Killgrave did, because we had him beat and he went and wanted to do something childish to feel like he still came out on top." She shook her head. "It sucks man, but this is what Killgrave wants. He wants everyone trying to fix this stuff to question if they're doing any good. You walk away from this and you're letting them win." She shrugged. "But I'm not gonna talk you into staying around. It ain't my place and it ain't my purpose, but believe you me if you bail on us I'm done with you." |
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| Jamie Madrox | Sep 10 2013, 06:18 PM Post #7 |
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Jamie didn’t need her forgiveness for how he was feeling or the doubts he was experiencing right now. Maybe he needed a portion of it for being a jerk or even a sarcastic jackass, but everyone was entitled to that one once in a while. Besides, it would be hypocritical of her to hold that over his head-all things considered. Of course she had to play the Alix card. Alix…who literally would run her selfless self into the ground if someone wasn’t there to watch out for her. He saw her almost do it a few times and he knew that was part of her nature. Of course she was just a better person than he was. But some light bulbs were starting to glow in that space between his ears nonetheless. Whether or not he should keep being a private investigator wasn’t really the issue. The issue right now was that ducking out right now was leaving people he cared about…people like Alix and Hart and Guido and all of the others…in a bad predicament. No matter what his opinion of himself was he suddenly realized that he couldn’t duck out right now. Not like this. After Illuminati was taken care of. After the current crisis was averted-well, then he’d do what he had to do. But right now he owed the people he called friends a little more than that. “Okay, okay,” he said with a shake of his head as he settled into his seat again. “You made your point.” He avoided eye contact with Hart and the dupes alike. He really wanted nothing more than to be left alone. But with a jaw set tight he just frowned and cleared his throat. “I’ll be back on the job tomorrow.” The words still sounded hollow and tasted bitter to him, but he knew it was the right thing to do. Good old Jamie. Do the right thing. He loathed himself right now, and no pep talk or tough love was going to alter that. What he needed was to rally. He needed the strength to throw into this fight…another big offensive maneuver. Take the fight to them and stop just trying to put out all of their fires. And when he thought about it he could almost feel the will returning-but not quite. Tomorrow. It would probably be back tomorrow. |
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| Scryer | Sep 20 2013, 12:38 PM Post #8 |
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It was just so frustrating. Had she been this bad? As much as she liked to believe otherwise, maybe that had been the case. It'd taken Alix to drag her out of that self destructive spiral, and she wondered if she just wasn't tough enough to pull Jamie out of this one. But he was right, Alix needed him to keep her steady, and he needed her for the same reason. She wasn't everybody's friend. She wasn't even nice to everyone, and she was sure more than a few people at the brownstone just flat out didn't like her. These days she just felt rowdy and disagreeable and though she hated it she also did it anyways. It was her way, terrible as it was. But it made it so that she wasn't a very stable person to lean on. "I don't want you back on the job, Jamie." She said, her voice shifting from accusatory to something almost pleading. "I just... we just want you back." And it had to be hard. "I know its hard." What with all that death and humiliation. "With the losses we've had to take under belt." But that's why they did what they did. To protect the people the big ones forgot about. "But we keep steady, and we don't lose ourselves to what the bad guys want. The X-Men save the world, Shield saves the world. We save the folks that live in it. And people are gonna die and that blows. But we can't let one fuck up ruin a hundred wins. And I know it doesn't seem like we're winning at all right now but we can." She rolled her eyes in spite of herself. "And there I went on the Tony Robbins bullshit again, and I know you don't want that, so I'll stop. But dammit Jamie. We kind of need you. And we kind of want you to stay around." She shrugged. "I'll be back home. I have something I need to check on... just... drink the coffee man, and... you know, if you need to talk." She gave a nod and then squawked an apology to the guy behind the bar. "Later." She said, and then she stepped away, palming at the back of her head. |
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| Jamie Madrox | Sep 20 2013, 05:25 PM Post #9 |
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Jamie was too filled with self-loathing and pity to care too much whether he’d sufficiently cooled Hart’s ire. She was upset with him? Join the club! No way was she as upset with him as he was as upset with him. He stopped when he thought that, letting the words ring through his head once, twice, three times. They almost made sense. He knew what he was getting at anyway. He sat at the bar waiting for her to lay into him again. He could feel her looking at him…no doubt wondering why she had chosen to team up with the captain of the Loser Squad. When she talked he felt a wall of defensiveness quickly leap up between them…and just as quickly it crumbled under the sincerity of her words and heartfelt tone. He blinked a couple of times and looked at her over his shoulder. The last part of her sentence rocked him to his core. "I just... we just want you back." Blinking a few times he continued to listen to her, staring into the inky depths of the coffee cup that the bartender had snuck in on him when he was making an ass out of himself a few minutes prior. Steam curled up from the mug but he didn’t say anything in response to her plea. She was right. He was worthless like this. This was not how he operated. Jamie had been accused many times of using humor to deflect his feelings, of using humor as a defense mechanism and many other such similar things. And while there might have been a hint of truth in some or all of that-it was an oversimplification. In his current defeated and deflated state of mind he could not function. He started to see where it had all fallen apart-when he first realized that everything was at stake and when he first began to understand that he had something to lose for the first time in his life. It was easy to be the carefree joker when you had nothing to lose. He made eye contact with her just before she left. It was going to have to be enough for now-the unspoken words of gratitude he infused in that glance. There was a lot of things to think about, and it was frankly hard to stop a moving train and get it to go the other direction. He needed a little time…that’s all. By the time he left the bar-some two hours later- he had finished off the better part of a pot of coffee and a pitcher of water. Perhaps he wasn’t fully healed yet, but at least the train was back on the right track. (continued with Alix at Brownstone) |
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8:55 AM Jul 11