| Cloak and Dagger: Homeless | |||||
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| What: After weeks of searching, Tandy finally tracks Ty down. But she doesn't get the reunion she'd hoped for. | |||||
It's a familiar scene...
It's nearing midnight in New York, and it's beginning to drizzle. A young man leans against the wall of a convenience store in a very poor neighborhood. Taking refuge under the minimal awning, and with his hood pulled up over his face, he's able to avoid getting wet. For the most part, anyway. There aren't a lot of customers this time of night, and it looks like the young man has been standing alone for a while now.
Playing with his phone, the young man suddenly curses. "Dammit! Summbitch beat my Magma Rager. This is some bullshit!" In anger, he closes the app on his phone, and swipes over to his text messages instead. He's in the middle of typing out 'Yo. Fuck you for getting me into this game. Every time I get a good card I...." when he's suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a stranger.
The young man doesn't think anything of the fact that he didn't see the stranger arrive. After all, he was busy playing his card battle game. But although he doesn't seem surprised by the man's sudden appearance, he seems a bit disturbed by the man's wardrobe.
A dark figure, whose cloaked form blends in with the night sky so well that he looks more like a nebulous shape than an actual man. It's extremely unlikely that there is a closer approximate of the 'Ghost of Christmas Future than his cloaked figure. As he walks across the parking lot, he makes no noise, heading directly toward the young man outside the convenience store with gliding steps that barely seem to make contact with the ground.
"Hey... uh.... can I help you with something?" The young man puts his phone in his pocket, and reaches for the waistband of his jeans. There, he's got a Lorcin 380, and a couple of plastic bags full of... stuff.
The cloaked figure barely seems to register the question, until he gets closer to the building. The fluorescent lights fall on his face, revealing that he actually has one. He's younger than the 'businessman' who's been loitering outside the conveniences store, but he looks quite a bit older.
"Yes. You can help me. You have something that I need."
Several seconds later, the figure is walking away from the convenience store, with his head hung with sorrow underneath his billowing cloak. "I'm sorry. You were a waste of space, but you didn't deserve that."
Behind him, the body of the young man has been left out in the rain, his body already stiff with rigor mortis and his face frozen in an expression of abject horror.
They haven't been together but the blonde could feel him, there being no amount of distance that could sever the connection she now has. It has led her on a bit of a goose chase, for a while with some wrong turns and missteps to be had along the way, but eventually she got close enough to know exactly where he is, that being several blocks over and down the street aways.
She ran, ran faster than she ever thought she could, driven by the need to see him. There was a longing she felt while they were apart, a hunger to see him, the need to know he is alright. The closer she got, the more she found herself in tears and by the time she arrived they were streaming down her face, thankfully lost to the rain.
"Ty..."
Now standing in the middle of the street, the girl, dressed in the white bodysuit and white boots, watches as he begins to leave, confused. Should she approach him or should she stay? The uncertainty keeps her frozen in place, her feet held fast to the ground as if trapped in ice, hoping he'll come to her.
Ty had promised that he'd never leave her after he and Tandy woke from their incredibly long comas. But it certainly didn't take him long to break that promise. But, of course, that raises the obvious questions: Is this creature still Ty? Does the promise still count?
Whoever he is, the figure freezes in place at the sound of the voice that he wanted to hear more than any other sound in the world. Unfortunately, it's the voice of the woman he'd most like to avoid. With his back turned to her, he looks like little more than a floating sheet from which inky tendrils slither in undulating coils.
The voice that he responds with is not the voice of Tyrone Johnson. Ty was warm, and gentle. This voice is rough, cold, and tinged with cruelty. Even his entire way of speaking has changed. He no longer speaks like a teenager, instead he sounds more like a character actor from an old play. "You should not have come for me, Tandy Bowen. The man you hoped to find is beyond your reach."
Slowly the figure turns around, revealing what appears to be a completely empty cloak. "Run now. Go home, and forget about me."
"The man I hoped to find will never be out of my reach as long as I can still feel him."
Tandy steps closer, not caring about the fact that Ty has changed and that the man in black is someone unknown to her in more than one way, this 'stranger' not about to get Tandy to leave. "I do not know what has happened to us, but I do know that we can not go home, now. Ever, maybe." While Ty's voice has chanced Tandy's hasn't, really, the girl still sounding rather like she did before the night they were severely injured and rendered comatose. "You are my home now. And I will not leave you."
Those words. Spoken with such conviction but what she doesn't let show is how he is breaking her heart by trying to send her away. They've been through so much together since they woke up and here he is now, trying to shoo her home? It rends deeper than any blade ever could, twisting into her very heart, he very soul, like a jagged knife hacking away at her.
As the light drizzle starts to pick up, the empty cloak doesn't seem to notice. Perhaps the cloak he wears is simply more water-repellent than it looks? Or, more likely, he simply can't feel the rain on his skin anymore. Of course, wherever he's keeping his skin, it doesn't appear to be here.
"Don't do this, babe. Don't make this harder for me." He still speaks with the voice of a ghost, but a hint of his old tenderness has crept back into it. "There's something very wrong with me, and it isn't safe for you to be with me anymore."
Although he's protesting, he hasn't teleported away again yet. Nor does he move away from her when she draws closer.
"I can feel something... something terrible. I just know that I'm not myself anymore. I want to hurt you... so badly. The things I want to do to you, it's like something from a nightmare."
Tandy reaches over once she's close enough, seeking to touch him. His arm, his face, anywhere she feels like it might be allowed, so afraid that doing so will send him recoiling from her. "You do not get to leave me. Not now, Tyrone Johnson. We need each other." Sighing, then, Tandy looks up, watching the raindrops fall just before they land upon her face. It's cold, even with it being almost where it'll become the hottest part of the year, but she doesn't really notice it. All she feels right now is the sense that her life, as messed up as it is, is about to become shattered.
Glancing back into the hooded portion of the black material, she adds quietly, "You want to do things to me, Ty? What kind of things?" The words tremble, getting caught in her throat only to then come tumbling out past her lips, coming out in a jumble mess. "Why do you want to... why?"
He doesn't move at all, but Tandy's attempt to touch him was doomed to failure before she even started. There's simply nothing there for her to touch. Within the cloak there is nothing but a chilling darkness, a never-ending void that draws all life and light within it like a black hole.
Feeling her light draining into him, Ty quickly shuts his cloak, blocking her hand and turning off the energy transfer. But no matter how fast he shut it down, he's drained enough energy to look slightly more solid. In fact, the outline of his face is visible again.
When he speaks, it's with a sense of deep shame, as if he's confessing sins far worse than anything most men could understand. "I don't know why. I just know that it gets stronger the closer you are. It's all I can do to keep from taking you, devouring you until there's nothing left. Can't you see what I've become? I'm a monster, and if you don't leave now... I think I'll kill you."
The drain is immediately felt and it causes Tandy to pull away, those blue, blue eyes of hers going wide. "Ty..." Something is wrong. So, so horribly wrong and she does not know how to fix any of it. Choking back a sob, her hands are now clutched, held before her as she looks down and away, her expression only able to be described as crushed. "What... why? What happened to you?"
This lasts for a minute, perhaps two, the girl too distraught and sick to say anything, but when she does speak it is almost too impossible to hear. "I love you. I love you and you are not going to get rid of me that easily. You are stuck with me."
The outline of his face is only visible for a few seconds before it disappears again within the suffocating darkness inside his hood. Whatever he took from her, it wasn't nearly enough to help him. But as his face disappears, his spectral voice takes back the hard edge it had formerly. One might think he felt nothing whatsoever for the girl before him, other than the hunger he's already confessed to.
"I know you do, and I'm sorry. But you're not going to be able to find me again. If you're smart, you won't even try."
His entire 'body' starts to swirl, as if he's being sucked into a vortex that doesn't disturb anything other than his nebulous form.
"Please, Tandy. Don't remember me like this." The words hang in the air, but the boy is gone, leaving nothing but the wind, the rain, the hum of the flickering florescent lights, and the discarded body of another victim.
A lurching, painful ache takes hold when Ty speaks, hurting her worse than the damage that was done to her when the limo was plowed into, hurting her more than it did upon realizing that she'll never be able to see her family and friends ever again. With just several statements Ty has taken her and crushed her, leaving her utterly destroyed.
"No... no, Ty. Please don't. Don't g..."
But by the time she is able to formulate the words he is already gone. Disappeared like at the store.
There might be a dead body not far from where Tandy's been left but the man is by no means the only victim Ty has left in his wake tonight.