ArchivedLogs:One For All

One For All
Dramatis Personae Anole, Masque	2013-04-18 Masque picks up a lizard from jail.
Location <NYC> NYPD Station - Garment District
Despite the fashionable clothing of those outside, almost everyone inside the NYPD station is wearing the same dark blue uniform, gold badges flashing on their chest. A few, however, are in business clothing, and a rare one or two are in crisp white uniforms. The police station is several floors high, each dedicated to a different department, and a rare parking lot in the back where the cruisers and trucks sit. There has been a lot of paperwork, a lot of waiting. A lot more paperwork. Bureaucracy is tedious, and it's no different here at the police station than anywhere else. Masque has had a lot of minutiae to get through. But eventually it's gotten through, and a uniformed officer is escorting one small green teenager out from holding cells in the back. Anole is grubbily dressed, old jeans, ratty sneakers, a dirty hoodie with holes in its sleeves. He's also looking /very/ confused, having been told he made bail with absolutely no idea how this happened. /He/ certainly is not full of moneys and his phone privileges sat disused for lack of anyone to contact. He is hesitant as he steps out into the lobby, frowning uncertainly and tensed as though expecting a joke. There is not immediately someone there to welcome Anole back into freedom. Should he look around, he would find no familiar faces. The man known pretty exclusively as Masque doesn't reappear into the lobby until Anole has been given enough time to, perhaps, sink from confusion into paranoia. With any luck, he has! Crreaak. That'd be the door to the bathrooms. Sauntering out comes Masque, though still in his baggy, red coat, has his hood down and wears a bright white bandage slapped over half of his face. The bad side. He looks almost looks like a perfectly normal human being! He's even sort of got his back straight as he exits the bathroom, hands still dripping with water. Damn airblowy things. They'll dry on their own, damn it. The look on the visible half of his face when he finally spots Anole is one of vague surprise, as if he's had a long day ahead of him that he never /truly/ expected to come to an end. "There you are," he grates, clearing his throat even though it only makes his voice worse, somehow. A quick glance around, and he jerks his head toward the door. "Come along with... -- uncle Phillip." Yich. He /visibly/ fights back a scowl. Anole /is/ drifting rapidly from confusion to uncertainty to /panic/, wide-eyed and more than a little nervous as he looks around. The officer who released him is no help, leaving the teenager to his freedom and heading back into the back. Anole has started heading for the door, still wide-eyed-frightened like perhaps they will stop him, but then the appearance of Masque stops him in his tracks. His eyes can't really get wider or probably they would. His mouth fish-gapes open and closed and "-- Hi," is a distinctly nervous squeak. "I didn't -- I didn't think -- hi." He is /backing/ towards the door, now, his eyes on Masque all the while. "UnclePhillip." Masque does not smile. But on the plus side, his scowl never truly manages to manifest, and disappears as easily as it came. He too, starts toward the door, though his eyes are on /it/ and decided /not/ on Anole. If anything, he just looks bored. With every step, his back arches slightly more. Much better. Halfway toward the exit, he smacks a hand onto his face and rips the bandages off, tossing them unceremoniously at a trash bin nearby, and missing. No longer needed. "Let's get your as--" A twitch. "--get you home. 'S been a long fuckin' day." Anole /scuttles/ out the door, hurriedly, though not so hurriedly that he doesn't hold it open for Masque behind him. He pulls his hood up over his head as he steps out into the sunshine, and at first he is quiet. Nervous-quiet. But then: "-- Did you bail me out I mean clearly yes but why did you I mean /thank/ you that was um that was nice." There is a /squinting/ as Masque re-emerges out onto the street, and as Anole's hood goes up, so does his. There's a spot of silence in which he looks around and surveys the streets around them, and it almost appears he's not going to respond at all, until... "One for all, right." Flatly spoken, uninterested. Aaaand he's off, walking with seemingly little regard of whether he is being kept up with. Though the limp that is suddenly returning to him after having left the police station helps slow him down at least a /little/, one foot occasionally dragged moreso than stepping. Whether Anole follows, apparently, is up to him. Anole does follow and he's kind of limping /himself/, limphopskitter to keep up with the older man. There's bruising on his face, darker green on green, and something in the stiffness with which he holds himself tells of more but he isn't complaining -- just /puzzled/, looking at Masque. And tentatively smiling. "Y-yeah. Yeah! I mean you're maybe not my uncle but you're kinda like family, right? That's why you came back?" The good side of Masque's face gives yet /another/ twitch. It's a smile, of sorts. A bitter, almost disdainful sort of thing. A moment later and he's wrangled it into control again, and just looks tired. His answer comes after a short pause again, eyes flitting hastily across strangers' faces as he passes by them, nearly colliding with two of them as they refuse to move aside until the last second. "I spent more time with the Morlocks than any other 'family' I've been with, a dozen times over." A pause. "'Phillip'. Tch." Anole is somewhat the opposite, in his darting skittish route down the sidewalk, avoiding looking at any faces and quick to step out of the way of other pedestrians. "You -- you go by Masque, right? Is that what -- is that what you /like/ to be called?" His green hands slip into his sweatshirt pockets, endeavouring to cover as much visible abnormality as possible. "Are you back for good?" "Ain't been called nothing else for so long I can't be fucked to remember what my name was before." Masque answers without pause, voice lowering just a pinch. His eyes remain steely grey, throwing a glare back at anyone who so much as looks toward the strange pair of people. "I'm back for as long as I'm back." "Oh -- oh." This pulls Anole's brows inward. He hurries along after Masque quietly, for a block or two. "Thank you. I was -- that was scary I mean they /hit/ me." And then another moment of quiet. "-- I'm glad you're back I think it's important. Um. To have -- to have people." There's an unmistakable tenseness to Masque's movements, for a few seconds. The lines across the bad side of his face grow slightly deeper as the muscles contract, and his nose wrinkles. But then... it's gone again. Hands curl in an out of fists at his sides as he limps forward, fingers splaying restlessly. His response is delayed long enough that Anole may think it wasn't going to come at all, and when it does come, it is decisively cold and /clear/. Like a command. "Don't let 'em hit you." "I -- but they're /cops/," Anole says, his frown deepening, too. "I mean I didn't want to but they -- I had handcuffs and I think they --" He shrugs, and ducks his head kind of sheepishly. "Cops are just kind of scary I mean they're dangerous and sometimes they shoot you. I think I might be going to jail." He does not sound Terribly Thrilled with this idea. "Have you ever been to jail, a lot of people in the tunnels have and I don't think it's -- I think they hit you /more/. If you're. Like us." "Then don't /let 'em/." This time, Masque's reply is /snapped/ back, complete with a glare in the other, smaller Morlock's direction as he comes to a full stop. "For Christ's sake, kid. You think I'd still be alive if I let people just walk the fuck over me just 'cause I'm like-- you? No! I'd be stuck to the fucking road like a stray cat!" He's seething, hands more permanently into fists as his gaze drags forcibly across Anole's face. Anole's step hitches, pausing briefly as the older man does. For a moment he shrinks back a step, but then he straightens, looking Masque over. "-- Oh," he says, like he is maybe only just considering this thought. "-- Oh, I --" He frowns, down at the sidewalk and then up towards Masque. "-- I don't want to be stuck to the road," he decides firmly. "I mean, what do /you/ do when people are -- terrible?" That is a good question. And Masque doesn't have an answer immediately ready for it. At least none that he permits leaving his brain. Though it seems to be /trying/, making him grit his teeth and narrow his eyes (though more on one side than the other) as they lock onto Anole's. Then, very gradually... his hands rise, bony fingers curled inward toward his palms. And then slowly outward. Towards the smaller Morlock's face? No. They clamp back into fists - lightly trembling with the sheer force behind his intentions - and are sent right back down again in a gesture of frustration, his head dipping with an exhale sharp enough to send the hood of his coat a little lower, drooping past the part of his vision that would allow him to glare into the faces of those around him. He starts walking again, limping still, but slower this time. "/Keep/. /Moving/." He finally manages, voice raw. "You get even, and you /keep moving/. To do nothing is to go back. You do that, you might as well quit." These last few words are spat out in vehement disapproval. Anole watches Masque's hands carefully. His posture is tense, though he is looking at the other Morlock with more curiosity than anything else. He swallows when Masque drops his hands, and starts walking along behind him again. His head tips up in contrast to Masque's dipping, straightening, his jaw set. "I'm not quitting," he says quietly. He limps up, to walk beside Masque instead of behind him. When he repeats it, it's firmer: "I'm not quitting." "Good." Masque's face relaxes into a scowl as if that is its default state, his hands digging deep into the pockets of his coat, as if there's /gold/ down there. He remains alert - even if he is no longer looking up at people's faces, his eyes still scan the sidewalk and what is visible of the street next to it without pause. "And do me a favour." The seething anger has left him. Just bored annoyance, now. "No more thank yous." "Oh -- o... kay." Anole bites down on his lip, here, and he only keeps up the head-up jaw-set firmness for about half a block before he's returning his gaze downwards. He scans the sidewalk, too, but at intervals his eyes flick sideways towards Masque. His hands are FIRMLY in his pockets also -- at least for about the rest of the block. And then, just after the next street has been crossed, they emerge so that he can dart sideways to curl his arms around Masque and hug, one quick tight squeeze. It... is not an overly pleasant sensation, for eitherparty. Masque's coat proves more baggy than it actually looks, easily giving way under Anole's arms. The squeeze emphasises the fact that Masque is not, by any stretch, prime hug material. He's awkwardly hunched, narrow with little meat on his bones that doesn't actually /need/ to be there in order to survive. The body of a man who has ceased to manage three meals a day - or two, or one - for years upon years now, and hasn't had the mind to care for at least half of that time. Moreover, the body of a man who doesn't... know what to do in this situation. So he stands. Stands, and shudders. Facial expression stuck firmly on I Don't Understand. Anole is pretty stringy inside his baggy hoodie, too; the hug is sort of a loose COLLISION of bones, sharp and angly until Anole lets go. He steps back, giving Masque a shy smile and a brief tug on the sleeve as he starts hurrying along again. "'kay. No thanks," he says, "let's go home."