MAY TDM

[monstertruckers]

code

Things are a little stranger than usual at the gas station and garage. Namely that gravity just isn't working as it should. Objects float, pieces of the floor float... Even unlucky new arrivals can also find themselves floating! It's going to be a challenge to get around without any scrapes or scratches... Though at least there's what looks like a hospital nearby? Granted, it's an upside down hospital, but it's better than nothing.

01: SUMMONING CIRCLE

Drifters come to with an odd floating sensation hooked into their stomachs, and instead of laying on the concrete find themselves drifting a foot or two above the floor. An unfortunate few may be stuck on the ceiling. Whether they crash down hard into the floor (and the various vials, daggers, and broken glass scattered about) or remain floating in the air is a coin toss.

Still, it might be best to lend a hand with pulling them back to the ground, and hoping gravity will work as normal in another breath or two.

Once they make their way out, they can see a gas station and garage located in the midst of strange, floating rocks… And an upside down hospital close by, for those who had a rougher landing.

02: START UP

New arrivals will have a similar experience to before; a Convoy waiting for them, and a collection of vehicles, one of which feels like it belongs to them. The key to the vehicle may already be in the ignition, on the dashboard… It may have even been on their person, ever since they woke up in that garage. Either way, Drifters have the keys to the vehicle now.

…But there’s a few rough edges on these vehicles. Flat tires, cracked windows and mirrors, maybe some stuck doors and locks; all of them the sort of thing that requires two pairs of hands and supplies. The garage can take care of the (sometimes floating) supplies… Now it’s just a matter of finding some extra hands.

And hopefully no one's vehicle has decided to float. But one can never be sure in a place like this.

03: HUSKS AND HAUNTS

The inverted hospital seems to have trouble deciding the exact formation of its hallways, whether the new arrivals should be walking on the ceiling, floors, or walls. But one thing that is certain: this place isn’t entirely deserted. Warnings of “Beware the Husks” have been spray painted on the walls. Metallic bodies line those same halls, some of them broken open. A wet trail leads from the broken Husks to the rafters… Where several odd monsters wait to drop down. Some look like they’ve merged with the hospital equipment, while others look like they’ve been cobbled together from different body parts. And all of them look ready to turn the newcomers into a corpse, or part of a specimen collection.

Strange, malformed chimeric creatures that are Unknown stalk the hallways. Unknowns come in three different colors, red aligned with fire, green with poison, and purple with lightning.

Adding to that are the various screens flickering on, and diagnose new arrivals as infected. The screens declare the infection seems to be contained, but requires further study… And if the monsters aren't enough to worry about, there’s also the restraint systems trying to activate and tie the new arrivals down.

04: TESTING (CW: Needles)

The deeper someone plunges into the hospital, the more the building reacts to them. More defenses are deployed, treating them as thieves or intruders. Traps and monsters alike wait for them, with syringes melded into the forms of attackers, or lining places where someone might step or reach for. The syringes make a quick bite on skin… But it’s only a few minutes later where the effects become clear. Something in those syringes is now in the blood and forcing monster transformations. There might be an antidote amongst the supplies… Or the newcomers might need to rely on each other, in order to stay anchored.

The needles can also force temporary Swarm traits, along with:
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to hunt and share their prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.

05: LONG WAY DOWN

A portion of the gas station breaks away with groan and a rumble. And it is slowly pulled up and up, taking a portion of new comers with it! They (and anyone watching) will need to act fast, as gravity starts to go weird the further they rise. They’ll need to find a way back down, taking any supplies from the now-floating garage that they can grab.

What’s more, they are drifting closer to the broken moon, and that seems to be having a strange effect on those stranded on the new floating ruin. They may start to feel their control fray, and their forms shift, the higher they rise.

In terms of getting back down, there’s a handful of tow lines in the ruin that might work as ropes. There’s also a few pieces of rock that are floating up more slowly, and could work as stairs back down… Or there’s just jumping and falling fifty feet and hoping for the best.

06: PSYCHIC ECHOES

There's one last quirk to this area; a few scattered bits of odd plantlife, and the odd dead brain monster. While these things aren't a threat on their own (beyond being unnerving) they still pack a psychic punch; mainly in the form of temporary psychic abilities.

It's possible that after coming in contact with either plants or corpses, newcomers will find themselves gifted with either empathy (projecting or receiving emotions) telepathy, OR the ability to share their dreams with others, and having their dreams influenced by others in turn. This effect fades in just a day or so, but is still capable of causing mishaps.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Broadcast: The garage contains a few burnt out monitors. But a handful of them are playing a message over and over again on loop, filled with static. It’s a recording of important looking people in lab coats advising people to remain indoors and avoiding all objects falling from the sky. Especially “moon shards.” They insist that they are working to contain and cure the infection, but the safest action is to remain inside.

Warped Air: As seen in Long Way Down, the air overhead has strange warped pockets in it. There seem to be slightly different shards hanging suspended in the air, looking more silvery than the surrounding rocks. Almost like it could have fallen from the broken moon overhead.

Medical supplies: Most of the medical supplies found in the hospital seem to consist of healing salves and potions, a handful of healing herbs, and a few antidotes for poison or sickness. As for reverting transformations… It’s advised that new comers be careful of taking any experimental medicine. It may revert a change. It may also leave them hallucinating nightmares and fears, and they’ll be wanting someone close by to help administer the drug.

NAVIGATION || RESERVES || APPLICATIONS

Comments

[facethefacts]

Deacon's relationship with the Brotherhood is complicated. Back in the Capital Wasteland, he'd seen them do actual good for the community, would even venture to call himself aligned with their missions, but up in the Commonwealth, things had been a bit different. More bigoted.

This is considered in his mind, sure, but when Danse asks, however incredulously, if Deacon really wants to know who he trusts, his lips contort in a sort of expressive shrug and he nods, because he has already thought Danse was a stand-out man from the Brotherhood. A good person. One would even venture to say a pal. And given his recent predicament, his association with that faction mean very little, anymore.

Thoughts of Danse not trusting Deacon, should they be projected in his direction in any way or form, have no impact. Because why would they? Deacon's well aware that he's a liar. It had started out as a defensive mechanism, continued on as a tactical means to an end, and become just a force of habit. He has no idea why he even does it these days, just that he can't stop.

Deacon watches, arms folded and eyebrow raised, as Danse answers in the most soldierly way possible, like he's debriefing him or delivering a tactical report.

"So no parties on Saturday nights, I guess," he replies, "Sounds like one big dysfunctional family. The kids must love you," he smiles, teasingly, then moves to root through the drawers where Danse is pulling the chain, looking for anything else that might be useful; hooks, carabiners, hitches, whatever else they may need to get the job done.

[androidvictoriam]

"No, there are." Never has Danse sounded more long-suffering than he does right now. "The music is ungodly. I don't know where they even found it. And don't get me started on the stuff they've painted on one of their vans."

Honestly, he really should be fine with big-titty pinup art, as he is with most proud old military traditions, but he is mildly scandalized nonetheless. Even if it's good art.

He doesn't know any of the rowdy teens around here well enough to consider them part of a family unit, dysfunctional or otherwise, and he suspects they wouldn't want his particular type of buzzkill around either--but Deacon's phrasing strikes a chord anyway, and not because Danse has ever been near enough Railroad HQ to hear it said about them. He does feel that kind of frequently-grudging kinship with the people here who understand the hardships of the wasteland, the increasing sense that none of their conflicts--political, ideological, interpersonal--really mean much anymore. It doesn't even matter if he likes them or not. There are bigger things at play.

It doesn't really strike him as all that strange that Deacon has effortlessly insinuated himself into this idea within a span of hours, such that Danse is already wondering idly what he'd make of the others as if the entire dynamic is important to consider. They're already accustomed to sharing a common enemy. It's just an altogether different one here, if not that much more inscrutable or unpredictable than the Institute.

(Or the Enclave. But even if Danse had a reason to think Deacon knew the Capital Wasteland like he does, he's learned his lesson about judging a truck by its paint job.)

He brings the chain over to assess what Deacon's assembled, and nods approvingly as if he knows what he's doing, which he...sort of does. Well enough. It'll probably work. "All right. You get that attached and I'll go get my truck. Rendezvous in five."

[facethefacts]

"God, you're really selling this for me." Deacon scoffs, "That stick up your backside is like a meter for how much fun something is gonna be for me."

It isn't that he actually thinks being stuck in this place is offering him a fun side-quest; if anything the thoughts and feelings his mind might project are much darker in tone. Fear, regret, melancholy that he masks with a smile. But there are still people here that need help. And there is a certain comradarie that comes with being stuck in a shit situation together. Deacon knows this better than anyone.

Sharing common enemies does a lot toward building the peace. It's why Deacon finds it so easy to work with others despite their disagreements. As long as a person isn't actively committing truly evil acts, there's no point in holding grudges. Deacon has worked with The Railroad for some time now with colleagues that find him truly obnoxious and unsettling. And in that time has even seen a side of Danse that earns the man extra sympathy- which he has to remind himself he isn't thinking about right now. At least with the other man right beside him.

He seems pleased enough with Danse's approval and makes his way back to his stupidly-shaped vehicle, lacing the chain around the frame and hooking it to itself so that it's secure. When Danse returns with the truck, he hitches it similarly to the back of it and waves the other man on, ready to spot the vehicle and try to wedge it up so that it isn't dragging across the road.

[androidvictoriam]

"I don't recall asking you to assess anything about my backside."

The moon in this strange world may be warping them all into monsters, the vehicles they drive may be appearing miraculously out of the ether, but the real incomprehensible magic at play here is that Danse is actually joking--with actual innuendo, however tame. He's begun to adjust to being flirted with around here in a way no Brotherhood subordinate would have dared, and the humor comes just a bit more naturally now. Maybe the stick wedged up there is more of a ruler than a yardstick these days.

He doesn't expect it to be anything more than a joke, or received that way even if it were; Deacon's reputation might involve some things Danse finds unsavory, but philandering isn't at all one of them. He's caught off-guard by the picture of himself--not of his own imagining--that flickers briefly into his mind as he brushes past: not indecent, fully clothed, but clean-shaven and unscarred, hair parted differently with a little shock falling in his eyes. He doesn't think he's looked anything like that since Rivet City, and even then, his face was more torn-up than that.

He looks sharply at Deacon, who doesn't look like he's been caught out in anything he shouldn't, but when does he ever? It's possible he wasn't even the one thinking it, though why anyone else within echo-range would be picturing Danse like that, he doesn't know. Maybe someone's just reflecting on how the gouge carved out along his cheek mars his features. If he lets himself get distracted by it now, the bizarre sausage truck is never going to get off the ground, and then he'll feel obliged to let Deacon ride shotgun with him, and that is enough incentive to have him climbing into the driver's seat to get the project underway.

It works after all, even after a harrowing moment when it looks like the yanking might just make it all worse, and the Wienermobile finally stands tall and proud once more. Danse hops back down out of his truck, meaning to assess it from this new angle, but he can't help letting his attention drift back to Deacon instead. Why was he picturing something like that? It's going to eat at him now.

"Well," he says, loath to actually bring it up, "there you go. Wonder if it's comfortable on the inside."

[facethefacts]

Isn't that interesting... Deacon gives his fellow Wastelander a confused smirk, because he's certain that Danse has not had even an inkling of a sense of humor since they'd reunited met, and it's a positive change of pace that puts him at ease. It's taken at face-value, of course, for the joke that it is. If he's going to be stuck some place and the only person he recognizes is Paladin Danse, it's a relief to be able to volley that sort of thing back and forth between them.

"Well... I don't think I'd have gotten the chance before. It's nice to see you've shed your exoskeleton." Deacon's tone is dry, but he is genuinely pleased to find Danse has abandoned the power armor that tied him to the Brotherhood. Even if it probably would have been useful in this place.

After the ordeal with the vehicle and everything is looking right-as-rain, he's feeling the same sort of excitement one does when happening upon a particularly good stache. Or any particularly interesting Old World widget. It's enough of a distraction to push those images of Danse's past from his mind, which is good, because the other man moves within close range again.

Deacon nudges him with the back of his forearm, a silent 'thank you' if it could be perceived as one, and then he steps toward the door. "Let's sate that curiosity of yours, friend," he replies, purposely picking that word in hopes that it tells Danse everything he needs to know; Deacon is offering the olive branch here. There are no hard feelings from their days spent with opposing factions. Danse is a synth, after all, and even if Deacon hadn't always thought him a stand-up guy, Deacon's mission is to protect and save people just like him.

He pries open the door and nods inside. "I haven't really looked inside yet. Come on, I'll let you call dibs on something you like for helping me out."

[androidvictoriam]

It's not so much that Danse lacks a sense of humor so much as that he'd never have allowed Deacon to see it before, anyway. Jokes have historically been for people he doesn't need to uphold a spotless Brotherhood reputation in front of. And then, once that ceased to apply, he might have said they were for friends, and that had gradually loosened to allies, and then further still to 'people I can be sure I won't have to kill,' and then he'd found himself making some kind of deadpan 'handyman' pun and a morbid joke about the Institute to Arcade and all bets had been off from there.

He doesn't think he really has friends here. Not like he did back home, however few they might have been after his exile. It's nice to have a generally harmonious community, as the drifters seem to be, but it's not the same kind of thing, doesn't make him feel less individually isolated even when the local magic is making everyone's thoughts vibrate together like a hive. Deacon's wording is a precision strike exactly where and when he needs it most, and he blinks at it, projecting that surprised warmth around him like a tangible aura for a beat before he collects himself again.

All right. Friends, then. Here, where neither Brotherhood nor Railroad exists, either at peace or at war.

"I don't know if there's going to be much to claim," he says dubiously, leading the way inside on instinct as if still taking power-armored point to defend a squad. There might be feral ghouls lying in wait. One never really knows. "Usually we've got to find anything good the old-fashioned way." Looting abandoned buildings, et cetera, the usual. Standard wasteland pastime. It's one of the only normal things about this place.

"Speaking of which, I've got a box of Twinkies in my truck. You're not going to find those in the mess hall here."

[facethefacts]

Friends are, believe it or not, a fairly new concept for Deacon. He's not sure he remembers the last time he's even made a friend since following Nora around the Commonwealth, and as an extention of that relationship-- now a man offering a helping hand-- Danse feels like the kinda guy who could use one nearly as much as Deacon could. Sometimes all it takes is recognizing another person's loneliness to realize you have more in common than you'd think, and Deacon could see it in Danse's eyes when the Brotherhood packed their shit and flew away without him.

The inside of the car has multiple hotdog-colored seats, the back wall lined with a bench made up of some sort of storage drawers that look promising. There's a console in the back that he assumes manages the electrical properties of the vehicle (he'll tinker with that later) and a door just past it with who-knows-what behind it. It's roomy inside... and the ceiling is decorated like a cloudy blue sky.

"What's a Twinkie?" he asks, pulling a face, then plops down onto a cushioned seat and kicks his feet onto the bench.

"Oh man..." he groans, pleased with himself, "I'm gonna spend all day in this chair. Or maybe that one-- or that other one-- damn." After his bout in the hospital, he thinks he's earned it.

[androidvictoriam]

"It's like a Fancy Lad, but cylindrical. I thought they were a little suspect at first, but they're delicious." Regardless of what planet they're on or what universe it's in, some things remain an inexplicable biological constant. Synths do be loving snack cakes. But he'll share, if it's someone from home.

He frowns up at the ceiling, needing a second to figure out if it's a skylight or a painting, and then sizes up the seating. It does look decadently comfortable, by the standards either of them is used to. That's not such a bad thing to have around here. Of course, the convoy itself has seating and bedding that put anything from home to absolute shame, and Danse isn't the only one who finds that weird enough to steer clear of it and sleep out in his truck instead, but as an occasional treat...

He sits down opposite Deacon, sinking into the cushion with a surprised little hum of pleasure. "Well, I'm appropriating this one until you kick me out, so you'll have to make do with any of the others." He leaves his feet off the bench, though.

[facethefacts]

"Oooh. Now you're speaking my language."

Deacon arches off of the seat to pat at his pockets, stopping when he finds something he's looking for and fishing it out before flopping back down: a semi-crushed pack of cigarettes.

"Trade you one indulgence for another. You smoke?"

He's already pulling one from the pack and fitting it between his own lips, but then holds it out to Danse in offering. It is not beneath him to christen this absurd vehicle with the stink of nicotine, but he'll definitely open the windows... there seems to even be a skylight amongst the blue sky ceiling. Once Danse accepts his trade, Deacon hops up to do just that before lighting anything.

"So what do you think of her now?" he asks, grunting as he pushes open the skylight window. "Pretty sweet, if you ask me. I'm thinking I can fit a rack for weapons on that wall over there... maybe throw out some of these empty seats for a mattress and then, WHAM! Mobile safehouse."

[androidvictoriam]

Danse doesn't bother to respond verbally to the smoking question, but the promptness and the heartfelt noise of appreciation with which he accepts the cigarette suggests the affirmative. Smokes aren't easy to come by in this place, and he tries to have enough dignity not to bum them from others too often, but if Deacon's offering before he can ask, he won't argue.

(He can pay Deacon back if they ever get home, he supposes. Nora owes him a whole damn carton of Grey Tortoises, if she's inherited the ones that used to be on his desk along with the rest of his worldly possessions on the Prydwen. There's no sense thinking too hard about any of that here.)

Deacon's plans for the noble Wienermobile get a sharp side-eye, because 'safehouse' is precisely the kind of terminology that sets off the mental I should be doing something about this alarms that Danse hasn't yet had time to take the batteries out of. A safehouse for who? he thinks, realizes it's probably clearly audible, decides he doesn't care if it is or not, but doesn't externalize it.

"A weapon rack would be a good thing to prioritize," he concedes, sizing up the space. "Not that the mattress wouldn't be, but the convoy has beds if you don't mind bunking with strangers for a while. You're going to want backup guns first."

[facethefacts]

"For me, ding-dong," he answers Danse's thought verbally, not realizing he's answering a thought as he pushes another window open, this one on the side of the vehicle. He's not looking at Danse and hasn't noticed his lips aren't moving, so such a distinct thought-question hadn't registered as something more private.

"Could probably pry the grid off of any old garage wall and mount it there. If it works for heavy tools, it works for guns." he continues on his way back to his seat, fishing out his lighter before retaking it. He lights his cigarette and then passes the lighter to Danse, exhaling that first pull as he speaks.

"Mmm, pass on bunking with strangers. I've shared the occasional flea-infested mattress when desperation called for it, but I'm not big on spooning."

[androidvictoriam]

Well, it does make more sense than assuming Deacon is planning to use the place to aid and abet dangerous unknown quantities and turn them loose without any further monitoring, whatever that would entail here. The 'ding-dong' goes without comment; Danse has been called worse before and sometimes deserved it less.

The fact that it's been answered aloud when he hadn't said it aloud also feels comfortable enough, after so many days of things just Being Like That around the camp. He'd almost venture to say it's a perfectly acceptable means of communication when people want it to be, as opposed to accidental eavesdropping. Danse has taken entirely too well to the influence of the swarmlike hivemind, and he'll keep finding it weirdly natural unless someone actually points out that it's happening to him. In any case, his approval of the tool grid idea is likewise projected without him bothering to voice it, occupied as he is with lighting his own cigarette.

"It's not quite like that. There's some degree of privacy. Individual bedding compartments; I'll use them myself if it's raining." Or if he's ill, which has happened here to a far more serious extent than he'd ever experienced back home--nobody has had perfectly smooth sailing with this unavoidable mutating energy; the lucky ones just seem to be suffering less than others. He's given Deacon some sense of that already, at least.

"Honestly, you're better off just stripping a bed and taking the blanket. They're soft enough to use as bedrolls. I tried to use one for its intended purpose and I woke up thinking someone was smothering me."

[facethefacts]

Deacon hums, taking another drag of his cigarette. He leans over, tugging open one of the bench drawers to see if he can find something to ash into. Inside if it is a bunch of trash, including a chipped and broken mug that Deacon blinks at for a moment before unceremoniously placing atop the bench and ashing into it.

"Huh." he acknowledges Danse's explanation, "Guess I'll check it out sometime." Maybe even take that suggestion, while he's at it. If these seats push back he'll sleep just fine on one of them.

"What makes you so confident someone wasn't?" he asks, just to be a shit. Maybe a stealth boy was involved. Or maybe Deacon is just paranoid.

[androidvictoriam]

Danse has a fairly well-attuned sense of when Deacon is being a shit, even if he doesn't always understand how or for what purpose, but he considers the question in earnest for a moment anyway, ashing into the mug in turn without yet taking note of what it says.

"I think I can be trusted to discern the difference between an overstuffed duvet and an assassination attempt once I'm actually awake," he says. "In any case, don't start. I really am trying to trust these people as long as we're all in the same predicament, and it hasn't been an easy road."

He taps a bit more ash into the mug, and only then gives it a proper once-over, head tilting in the most canine gesture he's made since he started sprouting actual wolf parts. "What in the name of God--"

[facethefacts]

Deacon shrugs, biting his tongue for once in regards to Danse's skillset, but the part about trusting the others is something he finds intriguing. Deacon doesn't know that he can trust anyone, and that includes Danse in some regards, but if Danse is being honest here, it's really throwing him off.

"You can't trust everyone," he mutters into his cigarette, his voice straining before his inhale. It's a hard truth about life, and one lesson he might instill on Danse yet. Or would be if the other man wasn't staring at that mug like a confused dog. Deacon's eyes follow Danse's to the insane slogan on their makeshift ashtray and huffs out a brief laugh, shaking his head.

"Don't look at me. I just got here."

[androidvictoriam]

"Maybe that's what accounts for the shape of this vehicle," he mutters. "The previous owner rendered it necessary to compensate for something." This is the funniest he ever gets, Deacon. He's still going to shift uncomfortably in his chair, because he did not ask for the mental image that's now living in his head.

It's a distraction from the more serious advice, and the thing is that Danse doesn't disagree with it. He knows Deacon means it. He knows why Deacon means it. It would be sage advice in the general wasteland, and maybe it still is here, too--Danse doesn't know everyone in the convoy as well as he probably should by now, and some of them might be deeply unsavory characters. But he still can't take it to heart the way he's meant to.

"I know I can't let my guard down around everyone. But paranoia has served me far worse here than giving the benefit of the doubt would have. I've learned that the hard way. And when I have needed assistance, there's always been someone willing to provide it. That's what I meant when I said that people cooperate well here. If anyone's doing it for some ulterior motive, that hasn't been evident."

[facethefacts]

Okay, but its still funny. And Deacon appreciates the attempt enough to snicker softly, even as they turn toward a more serious topic.

Trust is a delicate, fickle thing. Deacon doesn't want to say it out loud, but Danse's history- joining the Brotherhood- makes his judgment of trust in general kind of weak in Deacon's eyes. It's all well and good that he's no longer part of it. That thrills him, but the fact that he was able to look at what they were asking of him and not question it makes Deacon side-eye everything being preached to him now even more. It's not Danse himself that Deacon finds untrustworthy as much as Danse's judgment of others... but Deacon is well past paranoid and has become something even worse. Something that there probably isn't even a word for in English. Maybe German. There's always some twenty-letter German word for everything.

"You'll have to forgive me for wanting to make my own calls there, pal." he mutters with an exhale. "Don't worry though, I'm great at learning from my own mistakes."

[androidvictoriam]

"I suppose I can't expect you to do otherwise." Deacon will be Deacon, after all. And this is far more along the lines of what Danse had expected when Deacon asked him who to trust, status-quo skepticism from the man who thinks he has to be the chessmaster of a game most people haven't even agreed to play.

There's a little wave of stubborn defiance in response to the notion that his career choices should call his judgment into question, an of course you'd think so, a dismissive thought that Deacon and the rest of his shady compatriots would have a vested interest in discouraging people who want to bring their operations to light--but there's only so hard Danse can still dig his heels in about that when they both know exactly why his career had ended in flames and tears and shoot-to-kill orders, so he pushes it aside.

"I'm not trying to dictate anything here. You asked me what I thought, and this is my answer. I'm just trying to warn you against preemptively burning bridges like I did."

[facethefacts]

Deacon doesn't react to Danse's thoughts, not physically. But there is a thought there, deep in the recess of his mind that he tries like hell to push out: It's not his fault. The Railroad could have given him better memories, something to better protect him from where he was fated to be outed, but they didn't. They were still figuring it out, after all, after they'd been wiped out just a few years earlier. Deacon can't take Danse's distaste for him personally, because he knows he doesn't make this easy and he knows that Danse isn't even really aware of his origins... something Deacon sometimes wonders about. Would it be easier to forget his past? Who knows.

He waves off Danse's defense casually, shaking his head. "I know that. I wanted to know what you thought. It's just not my style." Trusting anyone, that is. Not burning bridges and entire interstates while he's at it.

[androidvictoriam]

The thought, though audible, is walled-off enough for Danse not to understand all the reasons why Deacon's thinking it. But he bristles nonetheless at the pity he reads into it. He's not always one to get angry about being pitied, even when it's humiliating, but if there's anyone he won't take it from, it's an agent of the Railroad. His own seething thoughts run in parallel to Deacon's, more accurate than he has any way of possibly knowing.

From the moment I was taken in by the Brotherhood-- he can hear himself imploring Maxson, outside the listening post with Nora standing in front of him and Deacon lurking behind. Taken in, like a stray animal, like any other one of those single-named wastelanders who make up the East Coast Brotherhood's most fanatically loyal bread and butter, whatever rank and title they earn filling that empty starving void where a family name ought to be. Danse was one of dozens of those. Taken in by the Brotherhood, like he remembers being allowed to spend the occasional winter night sleeping on the floor inside a stranger's doorway, in the homeless orphaned trash-picking childhood that never fucking happened.

He'd blamed the Institute for that before he knew better, because in those first chaotic days before he'd thought anything out, it made enough sense to simply blame all of his misfortunes on them like the entire rest of the Commonwealth does. Everything wrong in his life could be attributed to pointless Institute cruelty, whether it made logical sense or not. He'd asked Nora why they couldn't have given him memories of parents, siblings, someone who loved him--why they had to make it all so gnawingly painful and lonely, if it was all made up anyway? He doesn't have any more of an answer to that now that he knows there's someone different to blame.

But he will blame the Railroad for it. And he'll be damned if he lets any one of them, Deacon included, judge him for finding brothers and sisters and elders where they refused to give him even the semblance of those. His thoughts might as well be a fire alarm for how audible they all are, and the way he rubs his temples to try and calm them doesn't actually help.

"You'll be fine, I'm sure. Though you won't have any alternatives to this group if you're not." He gets up, sensing that he's probably just about overstayed his welcome in the would-be safehouse--though if telepathy weren't involved, things might have sailed smoothly a bit longer.

[facethefacts]

What Danse reads as pity, Deacon feels as guilt. He was responsible for escorting the freshly liberated synth later known as Paladin Danse to Rivet City. The agent that left him there as this stray animal Danse thinks himself. Vulnerable to The Brotherhood's indoctrination. He may not have implanted Danse's memories himself, but he cannot help still feeling responsible.

That fire alarm rings deafening into Deacon's mind, but his poker face holds true. He doesn't react. He can't. But he'll certainly lie sleepless all night with a pit in his stomach over it later. That's his own burden. Danse is only one of the synths Deacon had liberated. Distantly, he wonders if they all curse him like this one does.

"I will," he echoes. "I'm used to flying solo, anyway."

He leans forward, snuffing out the cigarette into the broken mug. He won't ask Danse to leave, but he's not going to beg him to stay, either.

[androidvictoriam]

There is a part of him that does appreciate not being asked to leave, even if he hasn't said anything to merit it. The pack mentality he doesn't want to acknowledge is rearing its head again, telling him to smooth things over, but he lets himself be just self-indulgently angry enough to push it aside.

Not quite so angry as to stomp away without further ado, though. He pauses in the doorway as he goes.

"Let me know if you need a hand with the gun rack." He crushes his cigarette butt underfoot on the ground outside, and leaves.