metamorphotic | you've got to carry your heart like a torch in the night.

[a while is pretty open-ended, but nick guesses he must mean on the much longer side of that range. it makes her think of graham, her mentor of sorts, back in vancouver, and ushahin, her friend in hadriel who gave the term millennial an entirely different meaning. she wonders, not for the first time, what it feels like to live that long and acquire so many memories over so many years. she wonders how she will feel once she too reaches that age - if she manages to live that long. if she doesn’t make any fatal mistakes.

it’s with this knowledge that nick now concludes that drifter would have nothing to gain by lying about wanting to help the heart’s efforts. chances are high that betraying them to the head would mean he’d only end up stuck here for a much longer time.

very gently, she reaches out to take his hand in hers and inspect where the wound would be with a light brush of her fingertips. as he said - good as new, no scar. her gaze lifts to center on his face again, expression a mix of curiosity and concern.]

Doesn’t it hurt when you do that?

[She's still much more capable of kindness than him. He? Has it inside of him, but it's like shrapnel in his soul. Small, unpleasant pings of pain that come around with memories. He has cut off his sense of companionship but it's left phantom limb syndrome. It's not going to grow back, but where it once was echoes in his mind.]

[He doesn't flinch from the touch. She needs to see.]

It hurts like hell when it happens. Not after. And I didn't want to have to get shot or near killed to prove it. That was easier.

[There's no pleasure in harming himself. Definitely no pleasure in other people harming him, even if that's his expectation.]

[He wants more than the Head. He wants so much more.] But if it does happen, I promise you sister, I come back twice as strong just from how pissed off I am. Right to the very core. That's the thing, I heal from this? But I don't from bein' sick. I gotta die all the way and come back, real slow and painful. The Head can still get what it wants out of experimentin' on me.

[nick laughs under her breath and releases drifter’s hand.]

Been a while since anyone’s called me sister.

[she’s genuinely amused, but it reminds her of tim and how she’s been separated from him in being brought to this little side quest, and her mouth presses into a tight line as this memory forces its way to the front of her mind. it’s one of the reasons she joined this group of revolutionaries, after all.

and if nick had any lingering reservations as to drifter’s sincerity about making an alliance of sorts with the heart, they vanish in light of what he states about dying and coming back, about experiencing sickness, about anger. that’s the last piece of what she needs to hear, and she nods, mind made up. she believes him.]

You wanna get out of here, show me what you wanted to show me? I think ... maybe I’ve got somethin’ to show you, too.

[He wriggles his fingers as they're released, just because while he doesn't much mind being touched if he's allowing it, he's actually not made skin contact in quite a while. He's worn gloves for years thanks to his armaments. Bare skin is still strange.]

[He sometimes wears gloves now just to hide from distraction. Not that having her check out his hand was bad in any way.]

Well, I guess it's time for that 'I'll show ya mine if you show me yours' line. [He leans on the bar to wait, polite about it since, as far as he's concerned, he's got all the time in the world. Patience is something he's learned in spades.]

[nick stands up from the stool and returns behind the bar to place their glasses in the sink. she raises an eyebrow at that cheesy as hell line, barely managing to suppress another laugh.]

Wow. I think I haven’t heard that line in about ... five years? Or twelve, depending on how you count the time. Frat boy used it trying to pick me up - what was his name, Jeff? Brad?

[she shrugs - it doesn’t really matter what his name was, he was barely a blip on her radar - and tilts her head toward the main door, this way.

they don’t have far to go, just to a plain, small door on the right, set between the bar and the neighboring barber shop. nick presses her palm to the lock plate and holds the door open for drifter, then slips inside and leads the way up a flight of stairs to the second floor, unlocking the door to her apartment in the same manner as the door downstairs.

it’s a smallish space, more cozy than cramped, and there is no technology in the city’s standard for current in sight - no computer, not even a television. nick taps a lamp on the bookshelf near the door to fill the apartment’s interior with soft illumination and waves her guest an invitation to come inside.]

Sorry, [she says, picking up a black sweater tossed over the back of the comfortably worn couch,] I wasn’t expecting company.

[a half-empty water glass is swept up from the coffee table in front of the couch as she makes her way to close the curtain in front of the window overlooking the street. the rest of the furniture is similarly worn but in good shape: another bookshelf full of haphazardly stacked paperbacks and records, an old boxy stereo and record player perched on the topmost shelf, an overstuffed chair to the side of the couch and next to her guitar in its stand. nick picks up an open notebook on the floor next to the guitar and closes it, then tosses it on the coffee table and disappears into the tiny, adjacent kitchen to drop off the items collected in her tidying up. she returns a moment later and crosses the floor of the living room to reach the stereo, pressing down the button to play the tape resting inside the deck. it’s a homemade mix tape, found among a crate of random curios in the bar’s basement shop. the warmth of a woman’s voice winds through a sinuous song of cold synthetic beats and beeps, loud enough to obscure but not entirely drown out the conversation that’s about to begin.]

So. [nick turns to face wherever drifter’s decided to land.] Who’s goin’ first with the show-and-tell?

[Drifter's immediately strange when he comes in. He doesn't settle, not exactly. But he goes around to look at whatever books she has, picking one up and flipping through the pages curiously. The paper's not brittle and old.]

[It's the little things that remind him of the old world, and sometimes he thinks he remembers. Looking at the stereo, the record player, things from Before enter his mind. His previous life, belonging to a man that actually had a name. It's just bits and pieces he can't quite assemble.]

[He's still standing when she comes in, this time eyeing a clock, before he stalls, opens his coat, and pulls out what's very obviously a gun. A strange one, with swirling energy caught behind a grid in the middle. He lets it hang in his hand, though, offering it lightly.]

A free sample with thirty rounds. Submachine gun. I call this 'The Bug Out Bag'.

[He lays it on the ground and steps away from it so it's not so much of a threat.]

Stick a man in the apocalypse for a good millennia and he picks up a few skills. One of those is makin' stuff out of next to nothin'. And I figured you might need to be equipped to fend off some robots.

I can make a lot bigger than that.

[He gives her plenty of room to pick it up and take a look at it.]

[despite growing up in a tiny town in rural kansas, and despite all the dangers she’s faced in other worlds, nick’s never held a gun before. neither has the heart utilized weapons like this in the time they’ve been active, sticking instead to constructing homemade explosives, because the parts can be acquired without raising too much suspicion. until drifter made contact, there hadn’t been a weaponsmith they’d trusted enough to risk placing an order. this could change everything.

nick approaches the gun warily, more out of caution for the gun itself than concern that it’s some kind of trap drifter’s laid for her. she retrieves the gun from the floor, inspecting it quizzically as it rests in her hands. finally, she glances back up to him.]

What’s the price tag on something like this?

Price tag for something like that is the usual. What other people would ask for theirs. 200 to 400. As much as I'd like to just donate freely, you see, I got only one way to make the ammunition for it. And unless y'all decide to kill a livin' breathin' soul, which is what I'm guessin' you're aiming to avoid, that's how you're gonna get ammo for it.

But if times get desperate, then, yeah. You can knock someone off, thing'll refill another thirty rounds. Ten in a Hand Cannon. [He opens his coat, pointing out the holstered weapon there. His own pistol, Trust.] Twenty in an auto-rifle.

You want one of those bigger items, though, I'm gonna have to ask for 1000 and good heavy supplies. And keep in mind, Sister. I can make somethin' made to take out everything from behomoths to tanks to the children of gods. You want somethin' big to take on a giant AI? I can manage that.

[He's already on decent terms with a giant AI back home. Enough that he could pick at its nanotech safely.]

That's as cheap as I can go. The bigger price comes in that I really wanna find out how it's pickin' people out of its universes. I've only managed to reach two, but I'm betting I could figure out how that mess works.

[He sounds utterly confident in it, but with little bravado. That casual sort of goal driven confidence. He's set his sights on something and he wants it. He'll storm through whatever he needs to to get to it or die trying. And he'll die again, and again, and again, and keep trying. His ghost has made a relentless monster of him. But a monster that, at this moment, has no ill-will towards anyone here.]

[being a monster doesn’t make you a bad person by definition. nick struggled with that for a long time, until - with help from the other monsters she’d befriended along the way - she came to understand that even monsters have a choice to be something other than a force of chaos and destruction and pain. and she made her choice.]

There has to be some kinda device that’s bringing us here. I’ve seen it before - twice, actually. [that’s part of her story, one she’ll eventually tell him, if he still has a mind to listen.] We just don’t know where it is, or what it is we’re lookin’ for. I’m not the one running things, so I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can to make sure you get what you’re asking for.

[she stares down at the gun in her hands again, not entirely sure what to make of it.]

Can you show me how this works, or does that cost extra?

Yeah, I can give you the rundown.

[He moves up beside of her, and rather than taking the gun from her hands he guides her fingers and the weapon into place.]

This is how you hold it.

Now this? This is the safety. This is the magazine. You pop it out like this- and then it'll absorb a light brick -and then you'll pop it back in. No reloads at the moment, though.

[Up closer, he smells much more like a mechanic. The more that he shows wear in his face, from things that happened before he found immortality, one must guess considering that he heals without scars.]

Then you aim and shoot. I just wouldn't recommend it in here. You probably couldn't kill an iteration, but you could kneecap one with this and slow it the hell down.

[she expects the showing to be more visual than tactile, but she doesn’t jump or shy away or even resist as he rearranges her hands to hold the gun properly. a few short years ago, she’d be yelling and threatening violence to anyone doing something as unexpected as this, immortal or otherwise, but time and her experiences have given her perspective. she’s much more selective about her battles now, much less volatile at heart.

and it’s been a while since anyone’s been this intentionally close to her - something she genuinely misses, something from before her life turned topsy-turvy. that auto shop scent is impossible to miss with him standing this close to her, and she finds herself smiling softly in recognition of it, remembering how she used to come home from working at her uncle’s garage with a similar smell lingering in her hair. even at the front desk, it was impossible to escape. she now smells faintly like plain soap and laundry detergent, with light traces of cigarette smoke - she stopped smoking heavily after being whisked away to a ruined city where all supplies were scarce. her fingers have calluses built up from innumerable hours playing her guitar.]

Wasn’t really planning on shooting up the place tonight. Besides, Rick’d kill me if I blasted holes in the walls. That’d be coming outta my paycheck forever.

[she laughs, almost under her breath, but her mirth is brief. she feels like she’s lying as to her intentions with the weapon, and while there are things worth lying about, that isn’t one of them.]

I’m not the one who’s gonna be using this anyway - I don’t fight with weapons. I just gotta show everyone else how, if I’m gonna sell ‘em on sending some business your way.

[her gaze flicks up from the gun in her hands to study his face; she can see better here than in the dim light of the bar. what battles has he fought, she wonders, that left such permanent reminders on his skin?]

Thanks. I’ve never seen anything like this before ... I guess this is where people who know more about weapons would say it’s a work of art, huh?

[At least he intends the approach to be earnest, not invasive. Not that creepy, meandering sort of wander that hands can do when the person behind them is foolish enough to make a move on someone they barely know. His hands are the hands of a mechanic and a fighter, and they move like he wants to teach, not to rule over.]

[She does smell nice, though.]

Maybe'd give you an excuse to learn to plaster, huh? Might as well avoid it. This'd cut a chunk in some brick.

[He sighs, though.]

Nah. It works smooth as butter, but it ain't art. Only one gun I ever make is art an' it requires a real particular part. There are definitely some prettier guns but mine? Mine are made to last and be easy to repair. Swords, too. I can make those. Best thing about swords where I'm from? They can shield you from bullets so long as they're charged up.

[nick’s spent enough time working in bars to spot a creep with wandering hands. hell, that’s a skill she learned well before she was old enough to work in a bar - the product of growing up a girl in late 20th century american society. she can read nothing of that sort of intent in drifter, and it’s ... refreshing.]

Don’t really know much about art, either. Music, though? I could talk your ears off about that. Not like in the “I went to a fancy expensive school to learn how to read and compose music” kinda way ... just from listening. Playing and singing too, but mostly listening.

[the diy method, self-teaching. partly out of necessity, partly because nick’s always been stubbornly independent, wearing the claim that she doesn’t need anyone else like a badge of honor.]

Where you’re from sounds like a real trip. How’d you learn to make stuff like this?

Makes sense. Everything I learned I learned from scratch or watchin' people, about the same as havin' an ear for music.

[He steps away, taking a good look at how the gun fits in her hands. Yeah, that'll work just fine.]

Well, some of this knowledge I had to make a few unfriendly deals for, just to be around the right people to give it to me. Good thing was it kept me alive. Bad thing was it goes around with me. Probably will until my dying day, until someone figures out how to put a God back in it's damn hole.

[Alright, he's a little bitter.]

Then a few other fellas picked me to learn their mess. I didn't want 'em, but they found me 'worthy' against my will. The reason I've been around so long is 'cause the Traveller picked me as one of its damn fighters an' I wanted nothin' to do with it. An' hell! Looks like the Head found me worthy too. Guess I'm a popular guy.

[He goes to settle down on her couch, plopping lazily onto it and spreading his hands, and his face is set to irate at his inability to cling to his own fate.]

But I've been alive long enough and made enough damn deals to understand how univeral portals and pocket dimensions work. So if your crew is lookin' to get out, at least head to somewhere better even if not get home? I think we should do ourselves some favors.

[he has such an interesting way of speaking, and nick finds herself drawn into the cadence of his voice, the way his words wind around and sideways and back again. she spends much of her time at work listening to people talk about themselves, and it’s not that she flat-out doesn’t care or pay attention - what they have to say usually just doesn’t stick with her. not the case with drifter.]

I’m sure we could use your expert know-how on all the dimension-hopping stuff. There’s a couple of us who’ve been tossed around a few times, but I think I’ve done it the most, and I don’t really know a lot about how it works, y’know?

[this is the second stop for at least one other kid in the rag-tag group of revolutionaries. but he wasn’t interested in figuring out the mechanics of how they were brought here as much as he wanted to simply strongarm his way back home, by any means possible.]

You said that you wanted to hear about the places I’ve been before I ended up here. If you wanna hang out for a while, I can tell you about it - if I can ask you two questions. The first one’s pretty easy - d’you want something to drink? [she grins, a little lopsided.] My menu’s not quite as extensive as the one downstairs, but I’ve got a few things on tap.

Yeah. I figured if I helped y'all out in what you wanna do, you could help me get at whatever roadmap the Head is using to get to people.

[He crosses his legs lazily, one ankle up near his knee and he scratches at the scruff on his cheek, along one of the scars that he's had for a full damn millennia but can't rightly say where he got the things.]

But yeah. Tell me about 'em. I could stand to learn somethin'.

[He's listening, even if he's looking damn casual about it now. Just merrily relaxing for the moment 'cause he knows moments where you're allowed soft furniture and a good story are fleeting. Always somethin' about to beat down the door. Hell, could just be an empty stomach starting to complain. Just give that a moment.]

[she nods gently and heads toward the couch, carefully placing the gun on the coffee table after double checking that the safety’s still on before she takes a seat on the couch next to drifter. she frowns in thought for a moment, then returns her full attention to the man sat next to her.]>

Let me know if you change your mind about that drink, yeah? [she really doesn’t know how he’ll react to her main question, so maybe that will make for a necessary distraction.] What I wanted to ask - and if this is too personal, just tell me to fuck off, I know we just met an’ all - but I was curious, since it sounds like, from what you said, that you didn’t really have a say in what happened to you. [and neither did nick.] So ... if you take out the part where you have to keep going through dying and getting hurt and coming back from it ... other than that, do you like living as long as you have? Or do you get tired of it eventually?

[she inhales a sharp breath and quickly adds:] I’m not askin’ just to be a nosy bitch or anything, I just - I haven’t met a lot of people who can talk about this from experience, and I’d kinda like to know what to expect from what I have ahead of me.

Well I'm not real particular. I'll take whatever you got too much of. Live what I've been through and any swill is like a fine wine.

[He settles in, leaning on the arm of the couch. He rubs his mouth contemplatively in thought, giving her a more careful look than he had before. Then he sits up.]

I think we don't know how to live no more. Not in the way we were born to. If you're not careful with it, you start dependin' on your abilities rather than your skills. You forget what it was like to do the little normal things humans do. Then you watch 'em goin' through it, watch 'em strugglin'.

A person fighting for their life is more alive than someone like me'll ever be again.

But contrary to my show downstairs, I ain't a guy who enjoys pain too much so that'll have to do.

[it’s a better answer than she expects, and she’s grateful he doesn’t seem to take offense to her asking. she’d wondered if what he tells her would be the case, that living so much longer than a human’s lifespan changes you; she only has ushahin’s memories to draw ideas from, and he’d experienced so much pain and loss that it was hard to focus on anything else. his memories shattered her mind until he put her back together again, but they also gave her perspective, and she’s grateful for that, too.]

Sounds like this kinda life gets pretty lonely.

[but she’d guessed as much. good thing she’s already used to being lonely. she gives drifter a small, sad smile and rises with a murmured be right back, then makes her way the short distance to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water and a glass with two fingers’ worth of whiskey - not top shelf, but not bad for middle of the road. she sets both on the table in front of him and takes a couple steps back, hands shoved idly into the back pockets of her jeans.]

Fair’s fair - time to show you mine now.

[she’ll get to the story of her travels in a moment, but what happened to her before she began the voyages is just as important. nick takes a deep breath and closes her eyes and shifts - no flashbangs, just a silent change. one moment she looks like she has since she and drifter met, and then next she’s grown half a foot taller. her short dark hair grows into cascades of curls that come down past her shoulders; her skin smoothes and whitens into porcelain, perfect except for the deep crack spidering over her forehead; a long, black victorian-style dress made of layers and ribbons and lace replaces her ordinary street clothes. she opens her eyes - same brilliant shade of blue, only now made of glass instead of living tissue, fringed with long, dark lashes - and looks up at drifter to check his reaction. she doesn’t imagine there’s much that would surprise him, given what he’s been through and for how long, but she’s always a little nervous about showing her transformation for the first time.]

Not a gun, but I did make it myself.

[her voice is mostly the same, except for the slight echoing quality, caused by the fact that she’s hollow inside.]

I've seen people like me with plenty of friends. A lot of 'em feed off each other's power, though. A bunch of like minded powerful people surrounded by weaker ones? Does things to the mind.

[He doesn't think people like him in particular should exist. A Lightbearer is inherently an unnatural, inhuman creature, and painting it otherwise is romanticizing a tragedy.]

[But then she changes, and whatever drink he was about to have is ignored because he's getting to his feet. What the hell sort of super is that???]

Damn, what is your skin made out of? [It looks fragile, but he takes her hand and steps closer, squinting. Feels a lot firmer than it looks. Tough as Hive chitin.]

[nick’s never been entirely comfortable with being center of attention. if you stick to the shadows, stay out of sight, you stand less chance of drawing focus on yourself, of making yourself a target. such behavior became instinct learned from living with her mother, a strategy for avoiding marlene’s insults and violence when they were forced to share the same physical spaces. nick got better at taking center stage when kennedy recruited her as lead singer of her newly-formed band, but even now, being in the spotlight makes her heart pound.

she doesn’t technically have a heart in this form, but if she did, it would be pounding now, too. putting herself on display like this feels like those anxiety nightmares she’d get before a show - naked on stage, familiar words forgotten, the crowd booing and laughing at her while she’s frozen to the spot, paralyzed with fear and unable to speak or escape. it’s like drifter’s now seeing all the secret parts of herself that she keeps hidden away, and it’s equally thrilling and terrifying. what can be more intimate than showing someone your true self? even though nick’s exponentially stronger in this form, she feels much more vulnerable.]

It’s ... made of me, I guess? [she doesn’t pull away from his exploratory touch. her skin is cold, but easily warms in his hand. no one’s ever come this close to her when she’s like this. no one’s ever thought to touch her while she’s in this form.] S’posed to be something like porcelain, I think, but I don’t break that easily. I’ve been shot and stabbed, and it just chips away a little. I’ll have cuts and bruises when I change back, but I heal pretty fast.

[she finds that she doesn’t mind being touched. the warmth feels like an anchor to this body, something nick’s always struggled with. slowly, she inches closer and holds out her other hand, an invitation if he cares for a closer inspection.]

Didn’t really come with an instruction manual, and we’re all different, so I’ve never seen anyone else who looks like me to ask.

Yeah, it sure as hell is a new one on me.

[He squints those steel-blue eyes as he walks around her, taking in the difference even in clothing as it changed.]

Where I'm from magic and science sort of collide. Ever'thin' in me wants to find an explanation to how you just pulled that off. [Even if people often write him off as not being intelligent enough to carry it. He comes back around to her front, rubbing his chin, surprised by the entire transformation but not fearing it and not doubting it. He's an old soul who's seen many things, and she's a young one in something rare and new.]

You know, there's an Exo just down the hall from where I work. Fiesty woman. Has a lotta passion in her, and a china pattern inlaid into her armor. Never actually got to touch her chassis, she's not really partial to my kind, but I always imagined it'd feel a lot like this.

You're a work of art, woman. I'd relish that.

[Though the more stunted, less creative and emotional part of his brain hopes she isn't stuck like that for a while now just to show him.]

You usin’ my own lines on me now?

[she doesn’t have much of an expression in morphus; her features are set in that stiltedly pleasant style typically found on dolls. but her vocal tone suggests that if she weren’t physically unable, her red painted-on mouth would curve into a teasing grin.

she’s not art, though. art’s beautiful, and nick’s never held the opinion that she’s much to look at - especially not like this, with obsolete clothing and a cracked forehead, a hollow, inhuman facsimile of a person. or maybe if she is like art, she resembles those artworks meant to shock and horrify the observer.]

I can tell you exactly how I pulled it off, but I can also keep quiet if you’d rather do your own exploration and try to figure me out.

[Drifter isn't exactly a pretty person. Not with the scars and the battered look. Even without his post-apocalyptic gear he looks something like a vagabond. His own work is often derived; scrap turned into a kit-bashed but effective aesthetic. Nick here is cleaner than anything he could ever make.]

You know, I bet I could make some armor tough enough that you could save up this form. [He lightly pokes her in her abdomen, through her dress, looking pleased with himself.] Save this baby up for the last moment in a fight.

[scars tell stories, and that’s a hell of a lot more interesting than some arbitrarily approved standard for what’s considered pretty or beautiful. nick prefers imperfect things - clothes from secondhand shops, books that are creased and worn and scribbled in the margins. part of that’s because she grew up poor and it was typically cheaper to acquire previously owned things. part of it’s a good old-fashioned rebellious streak, a defiance of the norm that only the new and pristine are worthwhile. both factors developed into an appreciation for the battered aesthetic that she still values, and that extends to people, too.

nick switches back to her human appearance just as quickly and silently as she changed before, laughing quietly with her hands pressed to her abdomen.]

Hey now, I may be harder to kill like that but I’m still ticklish. [the grin of genuine amusement indicates that she doesn’t actually mind the poking, that the protest is only for show.] Might have to take you up on that, if you’re plannin’ on making that a habit. What’s a set of custom armor go for these days?

[she should give a better explanation, now that the showing part’s finished. hands settled at her hips, she levels a steady gaze on drifter and begins:]

People like me, we’re called Nightbane. I have no idea who decided on that name, it sounds like the name of a shitty mallgoth band, but the point is I ain’t a regular human. “Developmentally atypical human” is what I was told after I Became. A kid I met on my last jaunt said I sounded like a mutant from his world. [she shrugs.] I found out what I was a few years ago, the hard way - got attacked by something that wanted to kill me. Presto change-o, now I’m a monster with weird abilities and a super long lifespan, as long as nothing manages to kill me while I’m like this. [she gestures up and down her body.] Can’t exactly live normal anymore, either.

you've got to carry your heart like a torch in the night.

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