A Lullaby for Gods chapter 36

My PC is still shot, but I had ALFG on google drive, so watch me try to hammer out chapters on my phone [dabs]

Also, this isn't in PDF,  rules still apply. Please be respectful and do not repost this anywhere, even if I may not be ae to crosspost this on AO3 for the time being. 

A Lullaby for Gods

Chapter XXXVI: MEANWHILE

The man is definitely suspicious of him, but Dirk likes to think he’s pulling off the whole ‘tourist’ thing rather well. He’s a sunburnt boy in anime shades with clothes stolen from a stranger’s closet (not that anyone knows that), and he hasn’t had a haircut in months, nor has he seen a packet of gel, so he’s taken to lobbing his hair short with his sword whenever it gets too uncomfortable. He’s not really any good at it, so it’s an uneven mess, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least pretend he’s doing it on purpose.

So he looks like some hipster tourist trying out some styles. Not that Dirk’s sure, exactly, of what a hipster is. That had been long before his time – a time that he’s now flung into, it seems – but maybe it confuses people as much as it confuses him, so he’s blending in quite well.

The man looks like a tourist too. To Dirk, at least. He just looks like he’s spent more time here in the port than Dirk has. And if all goes well, Dirk’s not going to be spending time on this port anymore, and maybe do what he’s heard happen in the movies Jake had been so fond of – smuggle himself and Damara onto a ship. He just needs to convince Damara to go along with the plan. A plan he’s also unsure of, and he’s only considering because he’s getting tired of moving out in the open in small distances, but it’s the best he’s got.

He doesn’t quite like it, the feeling of just settling for an unsteady plan, but he needs to move when he’s got a troll with him, in an apparently troll-less Earth.

“So, uh, say that again?” the man asks, in perfect English. Definitely a tourist.

“Do you know anywhere that can fix a sylladex?” he asks. He’s lost count how often he’s had to ask that.

The man levels him with a look, and then asks, “Where are you from?”

“Not from ‘round here, that’s for sure,” Dirk says.

“You sound Texan. Bit of an accent there leaking through.”

He remembers Dave for a second, the boy offhandedly mentioning where he’d been from during one pocket of peace and awkwardness in the short time they’d spent around each other. 

Dirk doesn't have much of an specific accent, as he'd learned language mostly from books and movies, and thus his vocabulary and intonation are skewered, but if the man says he sounds Texan (maybe he'd subconsciously tried to imitate Dave's accent) , he'll roll with it. 

“You got me,” Dirk says, “Thing is, I brought my sylladex here with me, and I’m not quite familiar with this place.” He says, and then, just in case, “It’s a small thing I’ve been working on, sir. Might confuse people a bit. I forget to give context sometimes and just assume most folks know what I’m talking about.”

“You dabble in engineering then?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. This is steadier ground. “I love building things. Once designed an AI modelled after my younger self. You can imagine how that turned out.”

“Hopefully better than how Tony Stark did when he first started out,” the man mutters, and then, “I’ve been around the best of the best technology in New York, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know what a sylladex is. Can you show it to me?”

Dirk sighs, adjusts the bag on his shoulder. He’d stolen that one too, from a kid. It has the logo of a blue-red-white shield with a star at the center on it. “Nah, I think I’ll pass, sir. Personal project and all that.”

The man looks like he’s about to say something, but Dirk bows. “Thanks for your help, Mister…?”

“Coulson,” the man says, “And you sure you don’t want me to take a look at that sylladex?”

“I’m sure.” He says, gives a polite nod, and starts off to where he knows Damara is probably drinking someone under the table. Girl’s got the alcohol tolerance of a demigod, and they’ve found that people freshly off the boat and away from the sea don’t really mind that she obviously isn’t human, on account of them seeing weirder. Dirk hasn’t asked what they mean.

Just as he’s expected, Damara is, in fact, drinking with some people just a few ways off the port. They’re lucky it’s already night time, and she doesn’t need to put the hood of her cloak up.

Her drinking buddies are all red-faced, and two of them are singing off-key while one is laughing her head off at nothing in particular. Damara’s just swirling the rum in her bottle, looking very pleased with herself. She waves a wad of bills at Dirk when she spots him. They’d betted, then.

“Can you tell her to slow down? She’s gonna get poisoning at this rate.” Someone says. Oddly-dressed, but Dirk’s not an expert of this era’s dress code, so he shrugs it off.

“Megido-san, you really do need to lay off the alcohol,” Dirk switches languages effortlessly. 

Damara snorts and then looks him in the eye as she chugs down the bottle.

The red-haired man, the one who’d spoken earlier, runs a hand over his face and sighs, exasperated. “Mutants,” he mumbles under his breath.

Dirk raises an eyebrow. Maybe there were trolls in this Earth, after all? But Damara’s not a mutant, obviously.

Damara’s already finished her bottle and is trying to look for another. Dirk hurries to her side and swats her hand when she tries to reach for a half-empty one left by a sailor who’d passed out.

“That’s enough,” he says.

“It’s enough when I say it’s enough,” Damara says.

Dirk huffs, and then swats her hand again when she tries to take the bottle. She glares at him.

“I’d listen to him, really,” the red-head says. Dirk glances up at him for a moment. “I mean, I know travelling folk when I see some, and you two look like you need to go somewhere.”

“Yeah.” Damara clicks her tongue. She knows full well the stranger can’t understand her. “Off this planet, maybe.”

The stranger gives her an odd look, and then shakes his head, most likely just thinking she was actually talking about where she and Dirk were headed. 

They don’t really have a destination. Dirk knows this, but moving is something to do and it’s all he can really do right now, so it’s what he focuses on. He doesn’t have the luxury of having an entire island to himself to sort his thoughts out and plan a course of action.

“You know,” the man says, “I know you’re both doing fine on the ports here, but mutants aren’t really…common here, so.”

Damara frowns. “I’m a rust blood, not off-scale.”

“Mutant might mean something else here,” Dirk whispers to her. 

The man continues, a little nervous, but clearly well-meaning. “If you could sail to New York, there’s a lot of mutants there. You wouldn’t have to hide under cloaks a lot.”

Huh. Dirk glances at Damara, who’s just staring at the stranger like he’s offended her. New York. The Coulson guy had mentioned that earlier. New York. Maybe they had a lot of trolls there? He adjusts his bag again as the strap starts to slip.

“Where’s that?”

“Miles from here,” the man says, “Although I can call in some favors if you want.” He scratches his cheek, suddenly bashful. “I know I must sound like a trafficker, but I just understand how you feel. I have friends who’ve had to move because they were different from everyone else.”

“Because they had grey skin and horns?” Dirk asks.

The man laughs. It sounds fond. Dirk’s never fancied himself a good judge of character, especially at first meetings, but he was good enough. That laugh sounds friendly and mirthful, glad as one remembers their friends. 

“Well, a different sort,” the man says, “The sort that control elements and see the future?”

Dirk turns to Damara just as she turns to him, and they share a look. Psychics? Although, the man hadn’t answered to the description of trolls. So maybe he’d been talking about something else. Psychic humans? He wouldn’t discard the thought aside. If trolls had psionics, why couldn’t humans?

“Wanna see something cool?” the man asks. His hair falls over his face in a way that covers his other eye, and Dirk can see bandages peeking out from under his bangs. Maybe an accident. His visible eye does light up with an excitement of showing a secret to a stranger.

Damara shrugs and waves for him to go ahead before Dirk can say anything, and the man cautiously approaches, kneeling in front of her. Dirk slowly curls his fingers, ready to receive a sword from his sylladex if the man tries anything funny.

But he just reaches out to a bottle, the one Damara had discarded earlier, and presses his fingers to it. Red light glows from his fingertips, and Dirk watches as the bottle slowly refills itself, from the bottom up. Damara fixes her gaze at it, curious, and the man pulls away his hand as the bottle is once again filled.

“Mutants like that,” he says, and he says it like a secret, but Dirk isn’t quite sure he gets it. 

“In New York?” Damara asks. Her English is choppy and her accent is thick, but she’s been trying to learn and she’s catching on scary fast. Dirk’s seen her pick fights more than once, throwing the most eloquent insults he’s ever heard someone say.

The man nods. “In New York. I have friends who moved there.”

Damara purses her lips to a thin line, thinking. Dirk moves the bottle away from her in case she reaches for it. 

“I think we’re good here,” Dirk says. Psychic humans are good and all – and he can’t deny it’s a possible when one’s just demonstrated abilities in front of him – but he’s not about to immediately act when he hasn’t verified the information yet.

Like the man’s said. He had sounded like a trafficker. There’s a possibility he’d just lock both of them up and sell them off somewhere. He’s read horror stories on the internet before the game had started. If it comes to it, he and Megido can make their way to this New York by themselves.

The man shrugs. “Think about it,” he says, and then starts gathering up the bottles to clean them up. “You’d best turn in for the night too. It’s gonna get cold.”

Dirk inclines his head politely, and as does Damara, and they both leave the man as he cleans up after the mess left behind. He’ll have a time getting his crewmates back to their homes.

A few minutes later, Dirk remembers something else Dave’s said. His sister, he’d said, was from New York.

-

They’ve got enough money to get them enough food to last at least two weeks, so they’ll survive fine until that time, and once they run out, they can go start pickpocketing again. That, or Megido strikes up another bet with a bunch of haughty fools who think she can’t hold her liquor. Dirk doesn’t exactly approve of this, but it’s not like he can stop her. Besides, he thinks she likes showing off to the humans that she’s way better at them at drinking.

He’d asked her once, how she’d never gotten even buzzed at alcohol, but she’d just shrugged. And then one other time, when Dirk had treated them both to a rare indulgence of orange soda, she’d started giggling hysterically like she was drunk. 

Funny how biological differences work.

“New York?” she asks, testing the syllables out carefully. 

“I don’t know where that is,” Dirk says. Beside him, the seagull whose wing Damara broke a while ago, sits, anxious. It’s just been flying around with them, watching, sometimes sitting close to Dirk when it’s feeling particularly brave. Dirk doesn’t know why. He’s pretty sure it hates Damara, and is only sidling up to him when it finds him because while it can fly, it’s not back to its full hunting capabilities yet, and depends on him for scraps of food.

He hopes it’ll go fly its way back home, soon, somehow.

“Some help you are,” Damara says, scoffing and biting into the bread she’s holding. When the seagull tilts its head at her, she finishes it off in a couple of bites, clearly starving, and makes a shooing motion at it. It flaps off the opposite roof.

“You already broke its wing,” Dirk says.

“Well, it’s healed. It needs to go mind its own business.”

“It’s lost,” Dirk says, “Because, again, you broke its wing. And we have to nurse it back to health.”

“You could have left it to die.”

Dirk frowns. “No, I couldn’t have.”

Damara shrugs.

He sighs through gritted teeth and tries to go back to their previous line of conversation. “Just because I’m from Earth doesn’t mean I know how it looked like several centuries ago.”

“So you’re temporally-displaced,” she says, tutting. “Lovely.”

“You’re dimensionally-displaced.”

“And that’s my excuse for being of no help.”

Dirk takes off his glasses for a moment, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “Had this Earth been mine, it would have been easier to navigate,” he says, “There’s a lot more people here. And there’s a lot of places I’ve never grown up with.”

Damara hums. “Why’s that?”

“The Batterwitch flooded my Earth,” he says.

She’s silent.

He presses on. “I grew up on a waterlogged planet. I don’t know a lot about the Earth’s original geography. Aside from Pangaea or whatever that used to be. I couldn’t exactly ask anyone aside from Roxy.”

“Couldn’t you look it up?”

“I could look up anything the Batterwitch hadn’t had purged off the internet, but just because I know a few names doesn’t mean I know specifics,” he says, “You know what Earth is, right?”

“Obviously.”

“Do you know how to get from the north pole to the south pole?”

Damara gives him a flat look.

“Exactly,” Dirk says, “I know a few things. Doesn’t mean I know my way around this place, and there’s a lot more humans around here, so we have to be careful. And you still have to survive.”

“We know about New York,” Damara says, suddenly.

Dirk slowly turns to her, curious. He fiddles with his glasses, restless. “What’re you thinking?”

“What do you know about New York?”

“Not much,” he says, “Only that Dave once told me Rose was from there.”

“Hm. Who’re they?”

“Ectobiological children,” he says, “Didn’t spend a lot of time with them, didn’t talk a lot about New York. So I’ve got no idea what New York is.”

“We can go there.”

Dirk frowns. “We don’t know what’s waiting there.”

“That human’s idea of mutants is a little skewered,” Damara says, “But it’s something we can work with.”

“No, it could be a trap.”

“You’re acting like we can’t fight.”

“Even so, we can’t go in blind,” Dirk says. He wipes his glasses on his sleeve and puts it back on his nose. “We need a plan, we need something to fall back on in case something goes south, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been surviving day to day without an idea as to how we can get off this planet.”

“I have a plan,” Damara says, “We go to New York.”

“That’s not a plan, Megido-san.”

“Pray tell, then, Strider, do you have any better ideas?” she asks

He shuts up at that. He doesn’t really. Of course, he can always just try to fly out of the atmosphere, but there’s Damara to account for, and the humans would definitely notice him darting out towards the sky. And if they do manage to get to space, Dirk isn’t familiar with this solar system either. For all he knows, planetary alignments are different before the Condesce’s reign too. 

Or perhaps the Condesce has a base in one of the planets, and flying there would just be jumping straight into a fiery pit. And then there’s the issue of there being no food in space, and Damara needs sustenance to survive. 

Not for the first time, he’s thankful for godtier bodies.

“If you want a plan so bad, go kidnap that human, have him tell us everything he knows,” she says.

“No.”

“He’ll be useful. He knows New York. He knows about the mutants. He has abilities himself,” she says, and Dirk doesn’t miss the thoughtful look in her eyes as she says that. 

“We’re not kidnapping anyone.”

“You wanted a suggestion for a plan, and that’s my suggestion for a plan.”

“We are not,” Dirk repeats, “Kidnapping anyone. And I’m still not sold on the idea of going to New York, wherever that is.”

“I am,” she says.

He folds his hands together and looks down at his lap as his brow furrows in thought. Mutants, the man had said. Mutants who had abilities. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Do you want me to read your mind?”

“Megido-san.”

“Took you a while to catch up,” she says, “Mutants with abilities could equal to godtiers who got dropped here, just like us.”

“That guy said his friends had moved there.” He starts running his thumb over his knuckles, rhythmic. A nervous tic. “If they were godtiers – from my session or from the other human session – do you think they were dropped here, only earlier, and moved there?”

“It’s possible,” Damara says, “The problem is, how long have they been here on Earth, if that theory’s correct?”

Dirk pauses for a moment. “We’re not going to New York,” he says, standing, and then interrupts before Damara can protest, “Yet. I need to look a few things up.”

She waves a hand at him, irritated. “Go look it up then. Break into another house or something. You’re resourceful.”

He scoffs, pulls off his bag from his shoulders and shoves it into her hands. “Yeah, whatever. Go find someplace to hide. See you on the port tomorrow.”

“If I don’t get off this island by myself first from your indecision.”

“I’m not indecisive,” he says. He raises his arms up in a stretch and feels his spine pop. “I weigh my options carefully and plan according to each outcome.”

“And you keep weighing and never act,” Damara says, “Indecisive.”

“Prepared.”

“Paranoid.”

He glares at her. She laughs.

“Get that head of yours working, Strider-san, “ she says, “And trust me when I say we have to go to New York.”

He wants to quip that he has no reason to trust her. Again and again he’s thought that they both know that, and for all the times they’ve both looked after each other now, they’re both aware it’s only because Dirk is the only person Damara can trust, and Damara is the only person Dirk can trust. The second it stops being that, Dirk’s hightailing it out of there as fast as he can and praying that Damara’s telekinesis somehow doesn’t catch up to him.

But he settles for shaking his head and hopping off the roof, taking flight. He doesn’t turn to see Damara slide down the pipe to go find someplace to stay the night. 

The seagull watching them bounces up to his feet as he lands on the opposite roof.

“Hey, buddy,” he says.

It caws at him softly, and he wonders for a second if it’s gratefulness that’s making it stay. No matter. He has an idea for how to break into a house. 

“So,” he says at the bird, “I’m gonna need your help.”

-

He finds New York. 

On the internet, of course. He finds cheap flights (that they can’t afford or fake, so sneaking on board is the only option that’s really feasible here – Dirk considers the whole ‘stowing away on a boat’ plan again) and finds photos; it looks like a loud and angry and polluted city he would probably be very overwhelmed in. He’s already had a hard time adjusting here, so he doesn’t think he’ll fare well in a big city.

Still. It’s something. It’s a lead. It’s a goal and his mind has immediately latched onto it. It’s a point of surety in the months he’s spent wandering around unsure of what to do.

On one hand, Damara’s drinking buddy could be lying and would sell them and their organs to the nearest black market possible, but on the other, he could be telling the truth, and not too long ago, maybe Dirk’s friends really were here. Maybe this was a weak point in this universe that Dirk was able to fall though here from where he’d been before.

Not that he remembers what happened before. Thinking about it always makes him frown, anxious. What did happen? And how had it affected Damara, who technically hadn’t even part of their merged sessions?

New York, he thinks, eyeing the screen of the latest laptop he’s commandeered for the night. It’s been almost a week since he’s started his research. Perhaps the answer is in New York…

He squints at a thumbnail of a video posted on Youtube, of what looks like a missile that’s half consumed by green light. There’s a few stray green pixels here and there, and they’re either bad editing, or the flash of green has been so bright that it’s managed to distort the camera’s clarity. The title says Disappearing Missiles in New York.

Dirk clicks on it, not knowing what to expect.

And nearly drops the laptop.

The video is dated early October 2013, so it’s possible that it’s only been a few weeks since this has happened. Dirk will rest easy knowing this did happen early October, so he looks the incident up on news sites and comes up with more than twenty articles, all of them confirming that several missiles had disappeared during an attack in New York, some of them strategically reappearing near an enemy ship to eliminate it. There’s speculations of it being teleporters from SHIELD, crafted by STARK Industries and still unreleased to the public (not that the public would have much use for it, and certainly no one wanted thieves to have their own teleporters), but from what Dirk can see, it looks more like – 

“Space magic,” he breathes. 

He looks up more articles, about New York attacks, and for the rest of the week, he reads up what he can about the city that even though he’s sure he’d get lost in it, he figures he might be able to keep himself safe if an attack ever happened while he was in the middle of the street.

It helps that there’s something nearly everyone in the articles knows and talks about, even when they don't say anything too incriminating about it. Like a beacon, sticking out to him almost unnaturally.

The Safehouse, they call it. Maybe he and Damara could duck in there for a while?

But there’s something suspicious about it, something else that sticks out to him. The Safehouse, according to several blogs he’s combed through, is known to nearly everyone in New York. Now, this could just be a case of everyone not putting forth information, because, duh, everyone knows where and what the Safehouse is, and what it does.

But it might also be something else, and Dirk’s gut says it’s something else. There’s something about how people mention the Safehouse, and nothing else about it. Not who runs it. Not how it’s built. Nothing substantial about it at all other than it’s the safest place in New York, and it can be counted on when there’s an attack.

If it’s so popular, then journalists should have crowded there to get a few interviews, especially when it was first established.

Speaking of when it was first established, Dirk tries to look up its history, and finds that it’s only been operating for almost a year. It’s relatively new, then, so hype for it wouldn’t have wound down. 

Maybe this earth’s culture is a bit different than what he’d read up on when he’d been younger. Hell, maybe he interpreted it wrong. But there’s still that suspicion swirling in his gut, that something is not what it seems.

Maybe he should do more research. More research would ensure that he’d plan better, only – well, Damara won’t be too pleased to hear him badger for more time.

And she isn’t, when he tells her. 

“You’re suspicious of what?”

“Of the Safehouse and how it operates,” he says, “They’re well-known, but it’s like their information is also well-hidden. Very carefully tailored, you might say.” He pauses for a moment, thinking his words over. “As if it seems like there’s a lot of information about it, but when you actually dig, there’s nothing of substance, and it’s just hiding behind the image of being well-known.”

Damara stares at him for a moment and then looks away, as if exasperated. “You are paranoid, you know that?”

Dirk frowns. “I have a hunch, and I am not about to ignore it.”

“And the space magic you saw?” Damara asks.

He quiets.

Then, “Might be from another session.”

“That’s better than nothing. We can form an alliance and get out of here, and then each be on our way. I don’t see the problem.”

The problem is that something seems wrong about all this. Something is missing, something is out of place. It’s not necessarily evil, but it’s just…different. And Dirk wants to scratch at the itch to see if it’s nothing or if something nasty is going to crawl out the other side.

“I’ve already been asking Ben about getting to New York, anyway,” Damara says.

Dirk – Dirk almost falls off the roof from surprise. There goes trying to make plans, he supposes.

“Ben? No honorific?”

“He’s a friendly enough boy. Shy. Timid. Bit quiet, but more than willing to talk about New York. Insisted he thought it was weirdly formal for me to tack on an honorific and that first-name basis is fine with him,” Damara says, “Not that he’s stopped respectfully addressing me by my last name.”

“You haven’t corrected him.”

Damara almost smiles. “No, why would I?”

Dirk pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

Beside him is their tag-along bird. Damara’s still antagonistic towards it, and it’s already been a while, so Dirk doesn’t think that’s going to improve any time soon on account her getting used to its presence.  He likes the poor thing though, and it seems to have grown attached to him as well.

He sighs as the bird rubs its head against his leg, comforting.

“Okay,” Dirk says, “What did he say?”

“One of his friends is a highblood,” Damara says, and then frowns, shuffles her words. “No, rich, I meant. High-ranking in your society.”

Dirk nods. “So, not a troll, just a high-ranking human?”

“Yes. I don’t know the word for it in your language.”

“Aristocrat,” Dirk says, “But you can just say rich.”

“Okay. Rich,” Damara nods, testing out the word on her tongue. “Rich, and helps mutants to get where they want to go. Apparently, earth’s definition of mutant is just different from mine, and it’s not skewered at all. Just cultural differences.”

“Yeah, I looked it up,” Dirk says, “Eyes of different color – ” He’s very aware how he slots into that category “ – low melanin, a couple of extra limbs.”

“Psionic abilities, completely different physical form,” Damara continues for him. “And his friend’s a mutant too, but has been able to hide it well and avoids questions because status is a powerful thing.”

“An aristocratic outcast. I’ve read that story somewhere,” Dirk says, chuckling.

“I tried to read a book like it,” Damara says, “A few days ago. But I couldn’t quite decipher the language’s symbols yet.”

Dirk hums.

“Anyway,” Damara continues, “His friend helps mutants get to places, and this isn’t the first time they’ve sent mutants over the sea to get to New York.”

“Why New York?”

“I don’t know,” Damara says, “Maybe it’s a bit of safe place for mutants. You did mention a safehouse.”

“That’s for attacks,” Dirk says, “Unless…”

Unless of course, the reason for the Safehouse’s secrecy is because it was a meeting place for mutants, which are still looked down upon on this earth.

It fits. Not very well, but it fits somehow, and it’s a possibility.

“Before we finalize anything,” Dirk says, “Can you ask your friend if he knows anything about the Safehouse?”

Damara nods, and then grins. It says, I told you so. “Considering it?”

“I wouldn’t have researched New York if I wasn’t considering it.”

Damara stands up, laughing. It doesn’t sound too mirthful, but it sounds arrogantly triumphant. “I’ll ask him,” she says. “Don’t worry too much about it, Strider-san. We just need to get to New York.”

“If it were only that easy, Megido-san,” Dirk says, “If it were only that easy.”

-

It's too convenient. It's too damn convenient. That's what Dirk is currently trying to tell Damara right now. She's already talked to her friend, who had happily arranged a meeting between them and the rich benefactor who'd apparently had a bleeding heart for mutants, and it was too convenient. 

Something will drop, Dirk thinks. And he doesn't want to be there when it does. Damara can dive headfirst into danger all she wants with her disregard for her - or anyone else's - safety, but Dirk would rather stay alive for the small chance that his friends are in fact here, and that he can find them. If it means going about it the long way, then so be it. 

Damara is about to lose her patience with him though, not that there was a lot of it to begin with. 

“Listen here, Strider-san,” she starts, breathing in deeply like she's stopping herself from strangling him right here, “You wanted a lead - you wanted a place to start, I got you a place to start.”

“A very risky lead that might be a dud.”

“We are getting nowhere flitting about these islands and you know it,” she snaps, and then takes in another breath to steel herself. Her teeth are flat but Dirk has no doubt she will tear his throat out if she decides he is slowing her down, but Dirk can't bring himself to be afraid. “If it is a dud, and it turns out to be dangerous, we show no mercy.”

“There could be two of us and many of them.”

“They're humans,” Damara says. 

“Dangerous in their own right,” Dirk says. 

“They haven't met me,” Damara says, with an air of finality. “We’re going to that meeting. And I don't care if you think it's too convenient.  At this point, Fortune owes us for sticking us together when it's the worst thing it could have ever thought of.”

“Oh gee, thanks,” he says. 

She sneers. “You've stretching my mercy thin, Strider-san.”

“Accounting for our safety, but I'm not getting any gratitude for that, am I?” Dirk says.

They both stare each other down, the air between them thick with contempt, and then Dirk backs down first, because arguing isn't going to get them anywhere. They've been getting on each other's nerves lately, much more than usual. Where Damara would have silently nodded or occasionally pushed his buttons because of her need to lash out even in the smallest of ways (pent up anger will do that to you; you try to be civil to those who are innocent, but in the end, when there's nothing to focus that hate on, you destroy everything in your path for the sake of catharsis), she's openly snapping at him, and he's only been able to take so much until he's wanted to defend himself, somewhat. 

But they need to stop. If they're ever going to get anywhere, they need to stop. 

“Okay,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

Damara doesn't say anything. 

He sighs and sits back down. They're at the docks today, and there's barely any ships in the harbor. “I did a little digging about New York.”

She glances at him for a moment, and he figures that's a good enough response. 

“Mutant abductions are common in New York,” he says, “Or that's what people are theorizing. There's been missing reports of mutant children, but it seems like the cops are turning a blind eye to it. I don't know how reliable my sources are, as I'm not familiar with the internet of this era, but with the number of articles I've combed through, I'd say it's something.”

“And you're afraid we'll be brought there to be abducted as well?”

He shrugs. “Might have some connection.”

Damara thinks for a moment, lips thinning out and gaze nearly burning a hole into the concrete floor underneath them both. 

“Strider, why are you really afraid?”

He pauses for a second. She hasn't tacked on an honorific. 

“I'm sorry?”

“Why are you really afraid?”

“I -” he starts, and then doesn't continue. He doesn't know how to. 

Why is he afraid? 

Because this planet is big and it's easy to get lost? Dirk lives and breathes for challenges, and he'd easily take this one on. The risk of this being a trap and so he'll never see his friends again if he puts himself in danger? A while ago, he wouldn't have batted an eyelash at the danger, and instead charged head-on with several plans, always confident he could succeed in this. 

It would have been like a game. It's always been like a game to him, no matter if he has to take things into his own hands to ensure the overall success of it, it's just a game to be won. A challenge to be overcome. 

Except. 

He frowns. It looks more lost than angry. 

“I don't know,” he says. “I don't know.”

Damara looks at him for a second, looks through him, and then stands, brushing dirt off her pants. “Then figure it out, Strider-san,” she says, “Because until then, I lead. Someone lost can't help another to find their way.”

And then she walks off, to who knows where, leaving Dirk staring at the stormy ocean by himself. 

-

They're going to meet Ben today. It's already past Halloween - Roxy’s favorite holiday, Dirk remembers - and today, Ben's back from the sea and he's going to take them to see his friend. 

Dirk hasn't said anything in protest since the last time he and Damara had argued, and instead has taken to stealing a phone and tracking news about New York on it. The arguing won't get them anywhere, and as much as he hates to admit it (so he rarely does, and just ignores it and does what he thinks he has to do) , Damara has a point. Dirk has been so overwhelmed at overthinking things that he can't really focus on anything right now. Most days, he thinks he does and then - well. 

Perhaps Damara’s been paying closer attention to him than he's expected. If only maybe to overthrow his self-appointed role as leader of their duo even when neither of them have talked about it. 

Ben is a few minutes late to their meeting place, which is fine, really, because he might have had to stay a while lifting crates, so both of them have time to sit around in silence and kick their feet back and forth. 

On the roof of the nearest building is the bird who's taken a shine to Dirk lately. It's presence is the smallest bit of comfort Dirk can afford right now. 

He wonders where it will go later, when Dirk's going to New York. If he goes to New York. 

Once again, he hopes it goes home. At least one of them in their ragtag trio of a troll, a human and a bird deserves to go home. 

Damara gets to her feet suddenly, and Dirk turns to where she's facing and -

“What the hell happened to you?” he asks. 

Ben laughs, a little sheepish and nervous, and brushes strands of red hair away from his only visible eye. 

“Nothing,” the man says, “Bit of a fight.”

“Hell of a fight,” Dirk says, looking at his broken arm and bandaged leg, as well as the plaster on his cheek. 

“It's fine,” Ben says, “Do you still want me to take you to - “

“Yes,” Damara says, and the man nods, cheerfully motioning for them to follow him away from the docks. 

“I don't like this,” Dirk whispers as they walk, too many paces away from Ben so he can't hear them. 

“You've said that before,” Damara says. 

“No, look at how injured that poor guy is,” Dirk says, “Was it a fight or an accident?”

Damara frowns. “It could have been an accident - why are you so suspicious of everything?”

Dirk has to carefully choose his words for his answer. “I don't know,” he says. In his loss for words, he lets himself switch back to English.  “Something just doesn't feel right. It's just a hunch, but it's really strong. From the Safehouse, to how convenient this is that it almost seems like it's planned, to...that.” He motions to Ben's injuries. “I just feel it, like it's in my gut, like it's in my - “

Soul. 

He stops himself. Examines the feeling again. He's not good with feelings, he's barely had an example of them after all, and he's mostly had to fabricate them until they felt like an automatic response, but this feels genuine. This feels instinctual. 

He sees Damara look like she wants to put a hand on his shoulder but is hesitating. In the end, she lowers her hand and shakes her head. “We can defend ourselves if we need to,” she says, and then, softly, “You're not the only one who wants to see their friends.”

She goes on ahead, following Ben who hasn't stopped to look at them, and Dirk stares at her as she gets farther and farther away. 

And then - then he blinks, and he feels like he's lost a bit of time. Not a lot but not too little either, and this time Damara and Ben are farther away but they're calling for him. He can't even clearly remember why he'd stopped, or what he'd been thinking about that he'd been so distracted, so he immediately runs to catch up with them. 

Above them, a few meters away, a bird watches and sees everything. A hand gently pets its head, and it tentatively lets it, still too weak to fly. It stays deathly still and hopes the hand will not see it fit to snap its tiny, fragile neck.