Pick Me Up, Dust Me Off

[helpdesk_hero]

Life hadn't gotten easier after Utopia. Not by a long shot. Where, after that, does a human being go? Sure, one of the greatest geniuses in the world, but that doesn't mean he has a place in it. Instead he'd gotten to shore, dressed up in casual clothes, and mostly hitchhiked across the country. All the way from San Francisco to here. Chicago. Home.

It's taken two months to get this far, and he's in no great shape. There's a bit of a beard on his cheeks, his clothes are torn up, and he feels like shit. Do you... how do you get comfortable enough to go home in this sort of state? How does he go back and hope they accept him? He feels... miserable. David sighs and sips lightly at the cup of coffee in his hands, keeping them warm. Some person bought it for him, and he's still got to figure out how to get over to Hyde Park and his family's house. To figure out a story.

Two nights he's been in Chicago and he doesn't know what to do. He feels so weak. So useless. Such a broken man after the fall of mutantkind, yet again.

Comments

[zoomandboom]

Tommy was usually never still, but even for him he'd taken it to extremes lately. He'd just kept moving. Billy, the Kaplans, they'd all told him that he could stay with them. But Tommy knew that it wouldn't hold out. And he didn't belong there. The only place he'd ever belonged had been on the team, and the team was gone. So where the fuck did that leave him?

He was too pissed to just hang around and wait to see if the others go over wanting to play civilian or take a break. Now, when they were gonna be needed more than ever. Or so Tommy assumed. The truth was he just couldn't really find any other spot to even try to mesh, let alone have it work. The others had just let it go like it didn't even matter. Tommy didn't understand how they could do that when it was all that had mattered to him.

So he kept moving. He helped people where he could, and he teamed up with others who needed a hand a couple of times. It just wasn't the same.

He was in Chicago chasing a group running alien-tech guns that someone had tipped Kitty Pryde off to and she'd passed it off to him. It turned out to be two guys out of the back of a van. Tommy trussed them up with evidence for the cops and then he was just ... done again. But he'd paid up on an apartment for the month because he thought it'd take longer, so he might as well stay. Chicago was as good a place to find petty crime shit to stop as anywhere.

He was too restless to go back though, so Tommy just went out. He stopped his meandering when he spotted a young man on a park bench. Tommy had a good eye for faces, and he'd looked through most files on the different teams that had been active the last few years. So the face pinged him as familiar. A little more thin and haggard, and more stubbled. But familiar. Maybe one of the X-types. Or used to be. Most of them were just people now.

Tommy didn't know if he should bug the guy, and he almost just kept going, but finally he crossed to the bench, dropping down next to him. "Hey. Davidright?" He was pretty sure that was it.

[helpdesk_hero]

Someone sitting down on the bench next to him, where he was looking out at the water of the river, well... that wasn't strange. That person greeting him and knowing his name? Strange. David actually almost flinches away, half afraid this is going to blow back at him, some attack or something, until he sees the shock of white hair. Too young to be Quicksilver so...

"Speed. From the Young Avengers. You know my name?"

[zoomandboom]

Tommy shrugged. "Ireadmost of the files on most of the teams so I knew everybody." If there was ever a big fight, so it was easier to pick out who needed rescuing, or who was on which side or whatever, if it came to it. Sometimes that stuff got crazy. Plus Tommy just tended to speed read through everything if it was there.

"You can call me Tommy, if you want. Thereisn'treally a Young Avengers anymore, anyway. You waiting for someone or something?" Tommy had the feeling he wasn't, but he asked anyway.

[helpdesk_hero]

What? Wait?

"The Young Avengers disbanded? But... What?"

That doesn't make sense. From his understanding they had basically been together even through the Civil War. That seems so much more important to ask than admitting how... terrible he feels.

[zoomandboom]

Tommy tipped his head back. "Yeah. Everyone split their own way." He still didn't get it. Or he did, he just hated it. Everyone else had something else, someone else. Tommy just didn't. But even if he had, Tommy thought he still wouldn't have understood. He'd always have wanted to stay a team.

"You lose your powers?" Tommy asked. It was tactless probably, but Tommy usually was. And it made sense. Most mutants had lost their powers.

[helpdesk_hero]

Wow, rude question, but David nods.

"Yeah. Long time ago. M-Day. And then Utopia happened, and that failed. Surely your Grandfather told you."

Yes, he was aware of who Tommy was in mutant lineages.

[zoomandboom]

Tommy half-smiled, more rueful than amused. "Think it's not that long to like, most people dude." But it felt like it to them. Well everything felt like a long time to Tommy, but just in general. A lot had happened in their worlds since then.

"Don't really talk to him," Tommy said. Though he did give David a little look of surprise that he knew. He guessed it wasn't like it was a secret. He looked exactly like Quicksilver, after all, and most people knew that. "But I heard some. So you came here? Thiswhereyou'refrom?"

[helpdesk_hero]

Where he's from? David sighs and leans forward on the bench, folding his hands in his own lap. This is all... a mess. But he would get that but a hero?

"My parents live in one of the 'burbs. I haven't... been home in a while. Since the mutants moved to San Francisco. Not that I have anywhere else to go."

[zoomandboom]

"Did they kick you out? Before?" Tommy asked.

No where to go. Tommy got that. He could always find a place, a way to make money, shit to do to get by. But that wasn't the same as having an actual home, or a family, or a place it felt like anyone wanted you around. The thing about that was, once it went away, even that got fucked up. Because then you realized they hadn't even cared that much about having you around anyway. You'd just been useful while they needed you and then didn't matter that much once you weren't.

Tommy guessed that felt even worse if you didn't even have your powers anymore. He was surprised David was even talking to him, if he knew all the points of his parentage.

[helpdesk_hero]

Not really. Just... his father hadn't approved of him being a mutant, but had 'supported' him. He'd never been turned out. But that he'd chosen to stay with the X-Men was definitely going to be a problem.

"My family was complicated. They were 'supportive'. But when I became human again they were happier."

[zoomandboom]

"Yeah," Tommy said, though he really didn't get it. He didn't understand families, either.

"So you're justgonnastay with them now? Get a job or something?" Tommy wondered how that worked. How did you just go back to some kind of normal life after you'd been something else? How did you do a normal life if you'd never had one to start with, even?

He didn't want to have to do it, but sometimes he wondered if he wasn't gonna have a choice. "Do you want to go back there?" he asked impulsively.

[helpdesk_hero]

What other choice did he have? Then again, getting a job might be harder. He's technically a terrorist. Maybe? It's hard to say.

"Do I want to? No. Do I have another choice? If I had one, I wouldn't have hitch-hiked across the country to come here."

[zoomandboom]

Yeah, Tommy definitely knew that feeling. "You can crash with me," Tommy offered. "I've got a place here for at least two weeks and dunno where I'm going afterward, but not like it's a problem having someone along anyway. Its got a couch." It wasn't even that shitty. Tommy COULD make money when he needed to, since he could do backbreaking labor quickly, it was just a matter of finding places and people that didn't care if a mutant was doing it overnight. Usually if it meant that they could pay him half what they'd pay a crew to take six weeks to do it, they'd get a lot more tolerant in a hurry.

[helpdesk_hero]

"You don't even know me."

IT's the logical thing to point out. And David is all about the logic. He just stares at Tommy, not sure how to take all of this. Clearly it's not an anti-mutant thing. That would be stupid. But... why would a mutant, and a former Young Avenger, give a damn about a human that was once associated with the X-Men?

"I'm broke. I can't help you with your rent."

[zoomandboom]

"Yeah. Iknow," Tommy told him. "But it sucks to not have anywhere to go that you want to be. And I've got room. So why not?" Maybe there was more to it. Tommy could see himself being the same way - teamless and alone with nothing to do - if he didn't have his powers. Billy would still have offered, but Tommy wouldn't have believed it any more than he did now.

"It's paid off anyway for now. If you don't want to stick with me if I stay longer or when I leave, or if you get a job and want to handsomeover, that's cool. But I can usually get money," Tommy said with a shrug. "Up to you."

[helpdesk_hero]

"You're really just going to allow a stranger into your home for literally no reason?" Davis asks, sounding VERY confused. What even could drive the guy to do this for him?

[zoomandboom]

Tommy shrugged. "It's not a home, it's just where I'm staying," he said. "I don'tthinkyou're gonna try to kill me or anything. And I'm pretty sure I could fight you off if you did. If you don't want to, it's cool. I just thought ... don't know. I just figured I'd ask, all right?"

[helpdesk_hero]

He's a homeless man and it's not like he has another offer. At the very least he can, you know, get clean before seeing his family. He's so tired. So tired and worn out.

"You really think it's okay? I mean, taking a homeless guy home is sorta not the greatest idea?"

[zoomandboom]

Tommy turned his head to look at David more squarely. "You're a guy who was a heroandlost your team and got stuck without a place. That's not like picking up somebody who might knife me for it. It's okay with me. Besides, I havebad ideas all the time. So it's on brand anyway?"

[helpdesk_hero]

But the last people cast him out. And this one is taking him in?

David looks SO confused.

"I don't understand you."

[zoomandboom]

Tommy grinned. "Yeah, I get that a lot." He shrugged. "I'm not trying to talkyouinto it dude. If you want to hang with me a while, then you can. If you don't, then you don't have to. If you want to leave after a night or two, then you can do that. Up to you."

[helpdesk_hero]

"A night. I gotta... I don't wanna go see my parents and not be presentable?" David suggests. "Just a night?"

[zoomandboom]

"Okay. I've got a spare razors and stuff, so you can use that," Tommy said. "It's not that far, so we can just walk. Some people get weirded out if I carry them anywhere. Come on." Tommy hopped up, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket and waiting for David to follow.

[helpdesk_hero]

"Are you saying my beard doesn't look good?" David asks. He knows it doesn't. That being said, he raises an eyebrow.

"I've been carried by a lot of mutants. I wouldn't protest. But," he grabs his back and slings it over his shoulder, ready to follow Tommy.

[zoomandboom]

Tommy rolled his eyes. "You're hot with or without it, but think you'd look better without the scruff. Plusyousaid you want to clean up before you go back, yeah? So I just figured." He'd been clean-cut looking in the picture Tommy had seen on his file, so he figured the beardy look was a product of not having anywhere to go, not preference.

"There's a sandwich place on the way anyway, we can get something to eat," Tommy said with a shrug, falling into step beside the other boy, only now realizing David was taller than him since he'd been sitting.