[Open] These Broken Pieces Of Life

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, Open
WHERE: Young Avengers HQ, The Diner, The Greenhouse, The Beach Cave Hot Springs
WHAT: Returning to Temba, Broken Down Home, Farming, Failing To Hide Emotional Pain.
WHEN: August 1st through 15th
WARNINGS: N/A

I. Another Ruined Home | Young Avengers HQ

Freedom. Sunlight. A sandwich made of greens and beautiful vegetables from the greenhouse. A meal that was doing nothing to make what was before him any better. Home, for the last several years... Broken.

"Fucking hell," he grumbled around his mouthful of baconroom wrap. "Because when it fucking rains..."

It fucking poured. The roof was busted open, the door fallen off, and he could already see through the opening that their shared living room space was fucked. And now Tommy had no choice but to hope that things would be fixable. That he could bring out the things that mattered until such time he could have his home and his life back.

"Fat chance that, with my luck."

II. Moving In Day | The Diner

It's only temporary, Tommy tells himself as he pushes into the Diner and puts the heavy box in his arms on the table. He's so tired after all of the work of cleaning the HQ out. Fuck, he just hadn't wanted to deal with that today.

"Tea," he decides, moving to the counter to fish out the kettle so he could fill it with water. Once he's got the thing full and his hand near it to start heating it, he looks to the door in the corner that he never really used. One of the two sets of stairs that led up into the apartment that was once Eli's. A space that hadn't been used in years.

"Home sweet home I guess. But damn, how am I supposed to get a new bed up the stairs? They're narrow!"

III. Whistle While You Work | The Greenhouse

Stressed? Frustrated by the turn of events? Need to feel accomplished in life? Have you ever considered Farming(tm)?!

Tommy groans at the voice running stupid infomercials in his head as he enters the greenhouse, grabs a basket with pruning sheers and gloves from the door, and looks around. The green, the smell of plants, the familiarity of this place... It's strangely soothing to Tommy. Like coming home. Perhaps it was, given no one had put as many years of care and attention into this place as he had.

And this? This was the place he remembers. Tommy immediately moves to the first area where he should have been harvesting already and sets into it. And he pauses only when he hears motion.

"Someone there?" he calls out, looking around. Strange. Not many people came here like he did.

IV. The Calm Is A Lie | Beach Caves Hot Spring

He didn't come here often. There was always the risk he'd turn the wrong way and end up in the crystal rich parts of the minds. Super charging his powers right now was not something Tommy was particularly keen on. It would only make all of this decidedly worse.

Caution was the watch word as he moved through the caves, hand on a wall, until he could hear the water and feel the heat. The springs. A place to soak sore muscles, and he'd been sore as hell since they'd headed underground. No amount of sauna could have helped with it. Now Tommy didn't hesitate for even a second to strip out of his clothes and slip into the almost too hot water.

"Fuck," he mumbled once he was settled into it. It felt so good. So freeing. So nice.

"Fuck," he repeated as he felt a sting in his eyes. It's just from the heat of the water. It's from how hot it is, turning his skin a little pinker. That's it. He's not crying. He's not crying.

Comments

IV

[spinsandneedles]

Of course Tommy's not crying, the water all over his face is clearly from all the splashing Sonic just did by canon balling into the hot spring. Why no, he hadn't checked to see if anyone was in here before becoming a problem for someone else. At least he hadn't jumped in close enough to Tommy to do any accidental quill stabbing?

Sorry, Tommy. He'll apologize once he surfaces.

[doubled_speed]

Shit, that is REALLY hot on his face. Man don't do that. He raises his hands to wipe his face off.

"Wow, Sonic. WOW."

[spinsandneedles]

Sonic makes a very undignified yelping noise and whips around, clearly startled by the fact that he is not at all alone in this cave. It's very uncool, but it's fine. He's just a bit jumpy after being stuck in a shitty bunker for the better part of a month.

"Geez! Give a guy a heart attack, why dontcha!" Says the guy that just appeared out of nowhere, of course.

[doubled_speed]

Yeah, hi. Tommy offers a small, weak wave.

"Says the guy that splashed me," Tommy answers.

3

[thepurpleone]

"At least you guys are still okay," Donnie sighs, checking the leaves of each of the plants he had in one marked off section of the agricultural building. At this rate his experiment was going to be pointless what with his control group gone with the shuttles and the other one charred if not flattened by debris. He'd saved a few of the latter when they'd all gone down, but he needed to find a new place to transplant them...and hope they wouldn't die from all the moving around.

He freezes at the voice before his head clicks the name into place. "It's just me," he calls back, dusting his kneepads off as he gets to his feet again.

[doubled_speed]

Good thing Tommy hadn't fully heard Donnie's words to his plants. Because he might joke about how these ones don't talk back. But there's the guy and he comes over to see what he's up to.

"Ah. The plants I don't remember getting put in. Guessing this is a project of yours or something?"

[thepurpleone]

"They're supposed to be, anyway." Donnie pulls out his notebook and tablet, still sorely missing his phone as he flips through for the camera app.

"Dustin suggested that a lot of the plants in Temba aren't native to the planet, and that they're affected by the storms too. So the plan was to see if those changes can be identified and isolated." He makes a face. "But my control group is gone with the shuttles, and the specimens I had outside are mostly toast if not crushed," he sighs. The latter was the most important since they'd be directly exposed to the elements.

"...I brought some of them with me when we all went down, I just need to find a new place to plant them outside."

[doubled_speed]

The suggestion from Dustin earns some thoughtful nodding from Tommy. That could be about right too.

"The soil," he says. "The issue is in the soil."

Because Dustin had theories, but Tommy, he had data. At least, he'd figured some stuff out over the years.

"The stuff in here can replace as the control. Soil here is clean. Anything I've planted here, native or otherwise, has no problems. Anything outside? Well, there was this whole thing last summer. Apparently a huge series of storms while we were off planet. Mutated the stuff in the cities. But only in the cities. So I'm sorry you lost the experimental group, but at least your new control is fine."

III

[farrahfawcetts]

Steve figures that he should start getting to work around here. He picked up Agriculture awhile ago and barely even worked in the greenhouse at all before all the shit went down. He pushes in and frowns at everything. Yeah, there's gonna be some clean up. What else is new? At least there isn't a gaping hole to hell this time.

Hearing Tommy, Steve walks closer, hands up in a gesture of peace. "Just me, man. Came around to help out."

[doubled_speed]

What, was he used to gaping holes to hell in his greenhouses? What sorts of greenhouses have you been in, Steve? They aren't the right sorts of greenhouses. Besides, everyone knows you get to hell by touching booby-trapped door knobs.

When he sees Steve he smiles at the other guy, giving a little wave to him.

"Well, if it isn't the dude who gets high in bathrooms to make friends," he greets, offering a nod.

Also the guy that punched Billy and yeah, Tommy was a bit annoyed by that but he also knew Billy probably prompted it so he's not going to press.

[farrahfawcetts]

"Not always! Sometimes I feed demon dogs raw meat. I make friends all sorts of ways."

Steve smiles and walks over, glad to see Tommy again after everything.

"How did the crops and all hold up? I picked up the plant stuff right before the volcano so I'm still new but I want to help fix everything up."

[doubled_speed]

“Makes you sound like a super hero when you put it like that, man,” he teases. Because he actually has the energy to tease again. That’s always nice.

“Seems like they did pretty well. Looks to me like the sprinkler system kept running, so they got watered. Thus stuff survived for years without us. The greenhouse seems the most survivable place there is.”

III

[newmemorywhodis]

Link visited the Greenhouse sometimes. Moreso now that Zelda was here. But it wasn't how he usually found his ingredients. He wasn't exactly a gardener, so most of the time he just foraged for what he needed.

Except there wasn't much to forage, right now. Everything was buried under dust and cooling lava. So here he was.

And when Tommy calls out, he pops up his head up above the beds of tigertubers he'd been harvesting.

"No," he says.

[doubled_speed]

Okay, that's a guaranteed way to have Tommy laugh. He moves and in a flash he's by Link.

"Really? No? Not anybody? Damn, that's sassy."

[newmemorywhodis]

"Nope," Link says. There's no hint of a change of expression, not even a twitch.

Which might be him fully committing to the bit...or just the fact that his face normally looks like that anyway. Hard to tell.

[doubled_speed]

Yep, this is a snort of amusement because that line is just so good when given with such a straight face.

"You're absolutely a riot, man. Just, insanely funny."

2

[playingtough]

Billy feels like one of the last people to come out of the mines despite how much he had hated being down there. He tells himself it's just to avoid the other Hawkins people because Robin gave him too much to think about, Harrington was punchable, and he didn't know what to think about with Munson.

Just easier to leave them be.

Which is why he wasn't going back to the hotel. The door slams open and in walks Billy, hoisting the last box of leftover supplies from the food area they had made use of for a month.

He hears someone else as he heads to the back, dropping his blanket on a table as he goes. "Brought whatever the hell was leftover from down there. One of the knives is shot though, so I'm keeping it," the blond calls out as he puts the box on the counter. The knife he had used to carve into the walls was the one in question.

[doubled_speed]

Tommy watches Hargrove come in, and head right on past him to the back. The blanket gets his attention, thoughtful. Guess people were getting resettled in their homes now. Except for Tommy. It wasn't an option.

"If you need it sharpened, let me know," Tommy says as he continues the heating process. "You as glad to be back up in the sun as I am?"

[playingtough]

The box in place on the counter, Hargrove goes to take one of the seats there to lean against it. Fingers drum on the top, antsy without cigarettes to take some of the edge off.

"I don't. I was using it to carve the walls while down there." He sighs, putting more of his weight into his lean. The counter supports him, and that's all that matters right now. "Fuck yeah. I was starting to go stir crazy down there. Ready to leave even if the stupid aliens tried to bar me from leaving."

The blue eyes give Tommy a once over. "What're you doing here? Figured you'd be back wherever you were living before this shit happened."

2

[quark_assassin]

As an answer to Tommy's question, the sound of the back door leading into the kitchen opening betrays Dustin's arrival. It's almost comedically routine, given the circumstances - a volcano appeared over the span of a month, earthquakes have reduced half of the city to rubble and the other half is covered in ash, they only just returned to the surface to assess the extent of the damage, and yet here Dustin is, slinking into the Diner like he always does to grab some food, clean some dishes, and disappear like he was never there.

The fact that Tommy is already at the stove just completes that image. Dustin can't help huffing a laugh, realizing the part he's playing in his own little joke.

"Is the loft even intact?" he asks, eyes flicking towards the stairs. "Wouldn't bother unless you've assessed damages."

[doubled_speed]

Okay, wtf Dustin? Use the front door like someone who isn't a gremlin. What were you doing back there man? Just very 'cat who steals the treats' vibe here.

"You can use the front door," he reminds Dustin on reflex. Still, the other question is really important.

"Haven't had the courage to check yet. And I don't know how to assess damages, man. I just... I've got to go somewhere."

[quark_assassin]

Like usual, Dustin stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that the front door exists and is available to him. He probably never will.

What Tommy tells him afterwards is much more concerning, anyway. "I can take a look," Dustin offers as a similar reflex. His gaze returns to Tommy, eyebrows lightly knitted. "Your last place didn't make it?"

IV please!

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis was trying to find every damn part of water and check on the fish. After the fiasco of catching two burned fish, and having fed them his bait out of guilt, he was attempting to fix what he could. He felt pretty useless but refused to go home like this.

Eventually he came upon the hot springs and saw Tommy with his head down or so it appeared to be. With a small handful of hope and happiness at seeing the other, the king got a little closer and heard the other curse.

Keeping his distance, it sounded as if the other was upset. And of course Noct knew all about trying to tough shit out on his own and putting the world's burdens on his own shoulders.

So he went for a soft tone. "Hey."

[doubled_speed]

It was a long way to travel to get here, and yet Tommy is somehow completely unsurprised that Noctis has found him while he's like this. There seemed to be some special gift in the older man, his ability to find Tommy when Tommy is just hurting and needs an ear to listen to him.

"Hey," he says, his breath catching as he tries to hold his tears in. "What brings you into the caves, Noctipus?"

[fatedsacrifice]

Tommy's tone..there was something in it that tugged at the king's heartstrings. But for the other to save face and give him some time, Noct decided to launch into his original reason for coming out this far.

Sighing and shaking his head, he started. "Saw a lot of fish that were in pretty bad shape. So instead of catching them, I fed them what little bit I had. That led me to start to look around to see how other pools or bodies of water fared and see if there was something I could come up with."

Dark blue eyes then locked onto Tommy, albeit briefly. "And then I found you."